Jason Kenney’s post-resignation attacks on Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act—calling it "unprecedented" while previously ignoring federal laws like gun regulations—have reshaped Alberta’s leadership race into a Taves vs. Smith showdown, with Smith’s anti-establishment stance gaining traction amid voter frustration over Kenney’s "strongly worded letters." Federal nitrogen rules and Trudeau’s handgun import ban, framed as ideological overreach, risk backlash from farmers and gun owners alike, while CEPA’s misclassification of single-use plastics as toxins highlights regulatory absurdity. Kenney’s interference and Trudeau’s policies expose deepening divides, with Alberta’s future and federal conservative unity hanging in the balance. [Automatically generated summary]
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's long goodbye appears to be contaminating the race to replace him.
I'm Sheila Gunread.
You're watching The Gun Show.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney offered his resignation some time ago after failing to secure two-thirds of the party's support.
But you wouldn't really know it because that was a long time ago and he hasn't gone away.
And now, all of a sudden, he's injecting his unwanted opinions into the policies of the candidates who are vying to replace him.
Now, Jason Kenney has said that he does not have a favorite.
However, Travis Taves, Jason Kenney's finance minister, seems to be the one that is the establishment pick, which perfectly explains why Jason Kenney is criticizing a main policy of one of the outsider anti-Jason Kenney candidates.
Daniel Smith has something called the Sovereignty Act, and it would ostensibly put a little bit of meat on the bones to Jason Kenney's constant, strongly worded letters sent to the federal government every time the federal government steps all over Alberta.
She adds the or what to the threat.
And Jason Kenney doesn't seem to like it.
He's called it nuts.
It's weird.
Who asked him for his opinion?
Nobody wants it.
Now, we're talking about that tonight, but we're also talking about the federal conservative leadership race.
We're also talking about Justin Trudeau's gun grab that he is doing in advance of the passing of his next gun control piece of legislation.
We're also talking about his nitrogen targets and how Dutch-style protests could come to Alberta farms.
And tonight, joining me from his Calgary office is Corey Morgan of the Western Standard.
So joining me now from the Western Standard office in Calgary is my friend Corey Morgan.
Corey, I wanted to bring you on the show because you've been an active political watcher for a very, very long time.
And before we get sort of into the things that are sort of sorting themselves out federally, because I think that's sort of a decided thing, I wanted to talk to you about the leadership race to replace Jason Kenney.
And as I suspected from the very beginning, Jason Kenney's long goodbye is starting to cause problems in the leadership race where he's sticking his nose into things.
He slammed Danielle Smith's proposed sovereignty act as just nuts.
Can you break that down for us?
Yeah, well, I mean, you kind of laid it out already.
I mean, if a person's going to stay in an interim role or a long-term lame direct role, as Premier Kenney has chosen to do, it's pretty much expected then you would stay out of the leadership race.
I mean, it's not a rule, but it's a matter of convention and form and just class.
His chosen successor, the establishment candidate, is Travis Taves, who isn't necessarily all bad, but he's certainly the one that Kenny wants.
There's no doubt about that.
And Daniel Smith seems to be the presumptive leader at this point.
And I guess Kenny felt obligated to go in and take a swipe at her main plank being that sovereignty act.
And I don't think it helped as far as Taves goes.
I mean, it established Smith as the non-establishment candidate.
I think Kenny has turned this from a three-person race into a two-person race.
Brian Gene has been fighting for oxygen already as a non-establishment candidate in there.
And now it's going to be Taves versus Smith.
And when you consider that half of the party already threw Kenny out recently, it's not a place.
It's not a good endorsement for Taves.
Well, and when you look at some of the language that Jason Kenney is using to describe the Sovereignty Act, you think, well, just six months ago, you were saying this stuff on perhaps another issue.
So to quote him directly, he says, the proposal is for Alberta to basically ignore and violate the Constitution in a way that is unprecedented in Canadian history, Kenny said.
I'm quoting from the Calgary Herald.
But here's where it gets a little bit, huh, Kenny?
Where he would probably argue with himself just a little while ago to not enforce the laws of the land, including federal laws, which include the criminal code, which is nuts.
Didn't we get our own chief firearms officer because we were not going to enforce the federal laws around the firearms laws because they violate what we think are the natural rights of Albertans.
And yet he's saying that, okay, well, it's fine for us to do it on this one issue, but not Danielle Smith's issues.
Yeah, no, it's ridiculous.
I think a lot of his fear is she's going to succeed where he failed.
A lot of why Kenny got pushed out by the membership was because he talked big and did nothing when it came to Ottawa.
I mean, let's not beat around the bush with it.
We got sick to death of it as Albertans, and clearly the members of his party did as well.
Well, we'll talk about provincial police.
We'll talk about a provincial pension plan.
We'll send angry letters.
We'll talk about shutting off the pipeline to the East.
He didn't do a single thing.
And Smith is looking clear that she's going to act.
And it's frustrated and upset him.
And now he's swiping over.
But as you said, yeah, the words are pretty hypocritical with some of the stuff he was talking about.
But again, he was always talking.
Smith, she'll probably act if she gets the chance.
Yeah, I think this is the or what that everybody has been looking for.
Jason Kenney's strongly worded letters to Justin Trudeau never got us anywhere.
And this is an opportunity to put some meat on the bones on whether it's unlawful or unconstitutional.
I think that is kind of besides the point when she is willing to do something, anything other than waste paper in another letter to Justin Trudeau.
And she really has established herself as the anti-Jason Kenney candidate.
She is the anti-lockdown candidate.
She's willing to apologize for Jason Kenney's transgressions as far as civil liberties goes.
In her very first press conference, when she announced that she would be running officially, she said, yeah, I'll go on an apology tour because Albertans deserve one for how they've been treated for the last two years.
And I think everybody at this point knows that she's the frontrunner, given how all the guns are pointed in at her.
We saw that during the debate as well, where everyone was saying, oh, well, you said this about cancer, as though it's some sort of shock that lifestyle does affect all health outcomes.
But that was shocking.
That was somehow incensive towards cancer patients when she suggested it, although it's, you know, just common knowledge.
But yeah, during the debate, all guns were pointed in at her.
And I think that indicates that everybody knows she's the frontrunner.
Well, and they entrenched her further as such.
I mean, I was critical of that first debate because strategically, they didn't even understand what they were doing.
Every time they attacked Smith, they gave her another four minutes to speak.
And it accommodated that debate.
She got to speak for half of it when there were seven people who were all, you know, the other six were fighting to be noticed throughout this debate.
But every time they turned their gun at Smith, the way the format was set up, then she had more time to respond.
And likewise with Kemmy, Kenny has just brought Smith back into the headlines and given her another whole week to explain to people why she feels her sovereignty act is what's going to serve Albertans.
It's not harming her a bit.
Now, what are her membership sales like?
From what I understand, she is selling memberships, sort of akin to the way Pierre Polyev is selling memberships at the federal level, that she's engaging new voters and disaffected voters, people who said, yeah, I was pro-unity.
I voted for Jason Kenny because I thought he was the right guy for the job.
Then I sort of recoiled in horror from politics for the last two years.
It sounds like she's bringing those people back into the fold too.
And it's odd because I would think that those people would maybe be Brian Gene voters with buyers' remorse.
Potentially, you know, and again, though, they're just not so much pro-Brian Gene as anti-Jason Kenney to a large degree.
So, and with Smith grabbing the attention and the fire right now, and she's been doing it strategically smart.
I mean, when she came out and said she was going to reopen nominations where they were closed questionably and things like that, well, those were people who already basically sold thousands potentially of memberships on her behalf for the nominations.
The people who bought those memberships were furious.
They never got a chance to vote.
She got herself instant supporters in there and who already had memberships.
As you said, like Polyev, she's holding town hall meetings across the province and they're being very well attended.
She's being very well received.
I mean, we don't know the numbers, but I can't imagine from looking at the other candidates that they're pulling in those kinds of numbers right now.
Now, shifting to, I guess it's a federal issue, but a strongly Alberta issue is the federal government's nitrogen targets.
They came along at a time when farmers are kind of busy.
So I don't think that we are seeing the sort of outrage that we would see and that we have seen with Dutch farmers rising up against these nitrogen targets.
And again, we've got another strongly worded letter from the prairie premiers who expressed their disappointment.
But where's your what there?
Well, that's it.
And I mean, I think a leader's got to come up with, you know, what are you going to do about it?
We're going to the provincial police force.
We're going with maybe even stepping in then with agricultural regulators.
Like the battle's got to come on.
You've got to start drawing the lines in the sand.
It's not a question of whether the constitution applies or not.
The constitution says we're allowed to take beer from Quebec into New Brunswick, but apparently we can set that aside when it's impractical for Quebec.
It's time for us as a province and other provinces to tell Ottawa to get stuffed.
And this fertilizer issue is a prime example of it.
It's a disconnected federal government that's stuck on an ideological nightmare of a train that will think nothing of crushing the agricultural producers to make themselves feel better when they go to international meetings with the WEF or the UN to say, oh, look how we fought climate change.
It's an absurdity, but they keep rolling with it.
So I'm surprised they've been as quiet.
As you said, farmers are busy.
I mean, it's the middle of season.
They're starting to cut hay.
Harvest is coming along.
But if these, if we start seeing regulatory limitations on these fertilizers, there's going to be a backlash.
But the government should be preemptive rather than waiting.
That's part of it.
It's always been reactive.
We've always been playing defense.
I think that's, again, some of the appeal of Smith.
She's saying, well, we're going to play offense.
That's enough.
Yeah.
And I think, too, they might get much of the same reaction as we are seeing in Holland, where progressive city people are siding with the farmers because this is one issue where everybody's involved.
Luckily in Alberta, people are still maybe one or two generations away from the farm.
There's still a lot of people who are still connected to somebody in their family that's farming.
I don't think it's like that in other parts of the country outside of the prairies.
But once you start seeing the price at the grocery store just skyrocket because yields are down, because input costs are up, I think you might lose the public on this issue.
A lot of people who take public transportation for work or ride their bike or take an Uber, for example, they don't really feel the price of the pump the way a carbon tax makes everybody else feel the price of the pump.
They don't immediately see it the way that everybody else does.
But I think when you are meddling with the food supply, you're going to see other people who normally aren't involved sort of get engaged in the issue.
Yeah, even progressives need to eat.
When they see those prices go up, they often are the first ones to go, hey, why aren't prices go up on anything?
And farmers make a much more sympathetic figure than oil company CEOs.
I mean, there's been decades of working to portray energy heads as mustache tweaking evil monsters from the monopoly board.
When you've got family farms out on the prairies, even if it's a couple of generations separated, it's going to make a lot better news copy for people saying, look who you're hurting that even progressives can relate with versus, say, somebody then in a suit and tie in an office tower.
Now, on another issue of undemocratic government overreach, although there's just so many, the Justin Trudeau liberals have decided not to wait until their law is passed to bring the law into force.
And I'm talking about the halt on the import of handguns.
Now, their law is set to pass in the fall.
That's the timeline whenever they decide to go back to work.
It will pass because it's going to be supported by the NDP.
It will cause absolutely zero effect in violent crime rates because it is not lawful Canadian gun owners who are causing the rise in violent crime.
And I think it's up almost 6% in the last year.
Violent crime is up.
But instead of waiting for the democratic processes to take their rightful course, Justin Trudeau became Canada's best gun salesman.
So he had to put a stop to that.
He brought in the ban in advance of the law.
And it's another example of Justin Trudeau just doing things just because he can do them and not being democratic about it.
I mean, it's so authoritarian, it's crazy.
Tightening the Border Against Gangsters00:10:44
Yeah, those orders in council, not enough Canadians pay attention to it.
I mean, this last year, the amount of times that the democratic process has been suspended, ostensibly for the purposes of dealing with an emergency.
And I mean, this is a longer term plan, what's going on here.
I mean, they had that legislation already crafted.
They were just waiting for the right horrific firearm crime to happen.
And that happened in the United States and Texas.
So they said, okay, now is the time to drop this legislation, Bill 21.
And then I think, as you said, it was twofold.
I mean, they realized, oh, wow, now we've got to run on firearms.
People are ordering and ordering.
We're going to have even more to deal with later because the reality is they want to seize them later.
There's no beating around that push.
So the more they get out there, the more work they're going to have ahead of them.
So they need another excuse.
They waited until the Montreal shooting.
Okay, that's it.
Now we're going to do an order in council and stop the legal firearms from crossing the border while the illegal ones continue to pour across at the Akwazosny Reserve.
Yeah, yeah, and that's exactly it.
There are things that they could do to address the rise in crime in Canada's progressive cities.
They absolutely could.
One of those things is tightening up the border because that's where illegal guns are coming across the border and ending up in the hands of gangsters in Canada.
They can also tighten up the border in a way that would stop the fentanyl from pouring across the border, which is the currency of Canadian gangs.
But instead, they always, because they're lazy, they take the path of least resistance and they go after the people who already spend all day long jumping through hoops and getting background checks.
Yeah, and it's an ideological drive.
It's definitely, we're seeing the march.
They want to pick up where they failed back in the 90s with the long gun registry, which again, the only reason for the registry was because they eventually wanted to seize them.
They've got more strategic now.
Well, listen, the handguns, the legal handguns are already all registered.
And as you said, these are people who jump through the hoops.
They're law-abiding.
Let's target those.
Let's get after those.
Let's disarm everybody with those.
And then we'll move on to the long guns.
It's an ideological push and no common sense or reality is going to change that.
I'm afraid.
The goal isn't to fight crime.
The goal is to disarm the populace and they're going to move ahead with it however they can.
Yeah.
And even though the gun registry was ended, thankfully, by Stephen Harper, there's a backdoor registry already happening in Bill C-71 where retailers now have to keep the records themselves and the RCMP can come just take those records.
And then if they need to do confiscations, like they did with the Narenco, like they did with the CZ-858, when they just moved that across classifications one night while everyone was sleeping, again, through an undemocratic tool in the law.
So those, whether it's the handguns today or the long guns in two years from now, these things are coming for Canadian firearms owners.
And I'm not hearing a lot, unfortunately, from the federal conservatives campaigning on this.
They all sort of pay the standard conservative lip service to firearms rights because they know their base in the West cares about those things.
But I'm not hearing like, okay, we're going to challenge this in court.
We're going to do this.
We're going to do that.
I'm not hearing a ton of that.
No, it's because they're campaigning to Toronto and Montreal, you know, and lower mainland Vancouver.
That's the reality.
That's the battle, the wall we keep smacking up against in this country.
Those three cities dominate the seats in parliament and the rest of the country is secondary as far as that's concerned.
And whether you want to take it as a point of principle or not, the conservatives are looking at it strategically.
They always do.
So yeah, they'll talk to their base during a leadership race because they have to because it's members, but they're already hedging their bets and making sure they stay actually as publicly non-conservative as possible, particularly in things like firearm issues where it's going to be difficult to sell in downtown Toronto.
And again, that's where it gets back to the provinces had better really start stepping up their means of autonomy because we're not going to see any good change in Ottawa.
You know, and it's weird because the conservatives don't have a problem talking about complicated issues like what causes inflation.
They do their walk and talk videos down the street talking about what causes inflation, breaking down this big macro idea to how it affects your family.
They do it on monetary issues, but they never do it on issues of, well, ultimately, firearms issues are property rights issues.
And you don't see them trying to articulate the issues that matter to this whole chunk of Canada in between Toronto and Vancouver.
It's an issue that we care about, but you never see conservatives try to take that issue and make the people in Toronto understand that these people who own firearms in the rest of the country, they're not your enemy.
They just have different hobbies than you.
Yeah, and it's a good way to put it.
I mean, if you can articulate something as complicated and dull as monetary policy, just showing the statistics.
We've got the statistics.
The amount of firearms that are used in these crimes, they aren't long guns.
They aren't grandpa's duck gun from the basement.
They aren't registered legally owned handguns.
They are smuggled guns brought in by gangsters, used by gangsters and targeting the people who are legally owning these firearms won't do a darn thing about it.
It shouldn't be that hard to make that case.
And they're willfully not making that case.
Yeah, and there's so much issue around or so much ignorance around the issue that it's really easy to address it if you wanted to.
When you've got people like Chris Ya Freeland saying, what do you need a handgun to shoot a deer with?
Where the hell are you shooting a deer with a handgun?
You know, but no, that's a really easy conservative attack ad to say like, these are the people making the laws.
They're really not, they're not bright about it.
Why would we let these people who don't understand the law make the law?
But the conservatives don't come out on that attack.
No, they don't.
And it's not the government's place to tell me what I do or don't need anyways.
I don't if it's a whimsical thing, if I just want to, you know, collect them, it's none of your business.
As long as you're not breaking laws, leave me the hell alone.
But they do dominate that discussion.
And part of what they're doing is, as you say, it's lazy policy, looking like they're doing something feels more important than actually doing something.
That's why mask mandates got so popular.
It wasn't that they did anything to stop anything.
It's just that you say, look at all these nice little drones running around with masks.
Look how much we are doing.
Look how much we are accomplishing.
You have a visible evidence of policy.
Even if it's not working, they want to make it look like it's working.
And likewise, oh, look, we just took 10,000 guns, 100,000 guns, a million guns out of Canadians' hands.
Look how good we're doing a job.
And then people aren't drilling down enough to realize, well, none of those guns were committed crime.
Right.
That's an excellent point.
That is an absolutely excellent point.
It's true.
It's the theater of public safety all over again with no real effect on anything.
And actually, frankly, I think it's going to get worse because on the flip side, the liberals are stripping away the mandatory sentencing guidelines for certain gang-related firearms offenses.
So while they're cracking down on the people who are following the law, the recidivist gun criminals that are actually doing things to make your communities less safe, well, it's getting a heck of a lot easier to be a recidivist.
Yeah, I mean, it's just bizarre where you're lightening up on incarceration for the dangerous offenders.
I mean, our system is a mess, you know, and we've got a lot of people who are in for a bunch of minor property crimes and the system's backed up with that.
The courts are backed up, yet they seem to be going out of their way to find ways to release dangerous people among us.
And we see that with sex offenders too, even if it's not related to the guns, but how often do we see press releases coming across from police services saying, yeah, we're releasing this gentleman in the public.
He's a very, very high risk area fan.
We're just giving you a heads up because he's going to be walking among you soon.
You know, if the liberals really cared about crimes, maybe they look at some of the press releases.
How can we actually maybe reduce these guys from getting out and harming people?
But that's not what they want to do.
No, they're too busy keeping little tiny Metis grandmas in jail for 49 days for the crime of being annoying in public.
That's right.
Well, for embarrassing the wrong man.
Right.
That's exactly it.
Yeah.
You know, and it's so interesting because I speak quite frequently with some people who work to at least alert communities about dangerous sex offenders who are getting out of jail.
And a lot of these guys are offending while they're on bail and then getting more bail for the offense they committed while out on bail.
And they are often released to the same communities.
And it's like an eight-hour trip through the court system before they get in front of a JP.
They're out the door and that's the end of it because they say, yeah, yeah, no, I'll never do it again.
And that's good enough.
And they can get out the door.
COVID made it a lot easier to get bail if you're that kind of person.
But then you look at how Tamara Leach was treated at Pastor Art, whatever you think about him, nonviolent guy.
And, you know, they're held for 49 days and 50 days, respectively.
Yeah, the priorities are politicized.
There's no getting around that.
And they see those crimes against the state, I guess, as far as they're concerned, as much more serious crimes of questioning the state or standing up to the state than people who are literally harming people, assaulting people, or, you know, even at their worst.
And we're seeing those cases molesting children.
It's just an absolute disaster.
And really, again, something that nobody's campaigning on.
What else are you working on at Western Standard?
Can you give us a sneak peek of what's cooking down there?
Well, we're just working a lot on heavy coverage, of course, of the UCP leadership race.
This is kind of our turf as a Western publication.
We got people inside the campaign teams.
That's something that's always been a skill of ours.
We get a lot of good inside leaks and everything.
I've heard there's a big scoop coming.
I haven't even been privy to it, but something's going to be coming out of one of the campaigns soon.
I don't know what it is.
And just, of course, more and more of the regular news coverage.
We don't have anything right on the edge.
We're getting into late summer, so we're looking forward to the big stuff coming soon.
Yeah, we're still in the heart of boring barbecue season.
And predictions on the federal conservative leadership.
Is it, I think it's a runaway for Polyev.
It is.
And I guess, you know, the biggest concern there is just how unified that party is going to be when that race is over.
So Polyev wins it in a first ballot.
Toxic Definitions Debate00:02:26
Fine.
Something that was concerning, though, and she's working.
Tasha Carradin, I had her on my show when I spoke with her, but she spoke along the lines too, almost hinting that if Shere doesn't win, it's time to form another progressive party to take those disaffected conservatives in.
And I can't think of a more effective way to keep Trudeau in for another term than to split that party up.
So we'll see what happens.
Yeah, causing division where there was none.
That's great.
What a great strategy.
Corey, thanks so much for coming on the show.
And we'll talk very soon.
Yeah, you bet.
Thanks.
Well, this brings us to the portion of the show where we welcome and invite your viewer feedback.
If you'd like to leave me an email or a note that you want to have read on the show, best way to do that is to send it to my email.
Sheila at rebelnews.com put gun show letters in the subject line.
So it's really easy for me to find because I get, frankly, hundreds of emails a day.
But also, do not hesitate to leave a comment on the videos on Rumble.
I go poking around over there sometimes and looking for interesting comments.
And if you want me to find them, you got to leave them first.
So today's comment comes to us via email.
It's from Bill, who writes to me, Sheila, would not the Trudeau administration meet this definition of toxic?
What is toxic is defined under Section 64 of SEPA.
Now, SIPA, for those people who don't know, it is the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
And let's see what Bill has to say.
A substance is toxic if it is entering or may enter the environment in a quantity or concentration under conditions that A, have or may have an immediate long-term harmful effect on the environment or its biological diversity.
B, constitute or may constitute a danger to the environment on which life depends.
Well, you know, Justin Trudeau making nitrogen targets, which make it difficult for farmers to grow our food, sure seems like that's dependent on life or C, constitute or may constitute a danger in Canada to human life or health.
Justin Trudeau's Toxic Plastics00:01:21
I'm also willing to hear those arguments about Justin Trudeau.
But I think it's interesting that Justin Trudeau and his liberal government would probably fall closer under a toxic definition under SEPA than my good friend, single-use plastics.
Justin Trudeau, for some reason, has listed single-use plastics as a Schedule I toxin, along with the likes of lead, asbestos, and mercury, which is absolutely insane to think that this government thinks your plastic straw, your takeout fork, that those are some, or your plastic bag at the grocery store, by the way, into which you put your groceries.
Justin Trudeau has decided that that is something as deadly dangerous to human health as lead.
It's a good thing he drinks out of those drink box water bottles sort of things.
We have recently switched to drinking water bottles out of water, out of when we have water bottles, out of a plastic, sorry, away from plastic towards paper, like drink box water bottles sort of things.
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.