Josh Andrus of Project Confederation predicts Alberta’s May 29th election will hinge on energy sovereignty, citing Danielle Smith’s Sovereignty Act and the UCP’s projected 50–53 seats amid voter focus on affordability and crime. He argues Western wealth funds Eastern Canada—like Quebec’s spending—while federal climate policies, such as Motion 84, face banker resistance like U.S. Jamie Dimon’s pushback. Sheila Gunn-Reid warns Rachel Notley’s return could revive "just transition" job cuts and criticizes the NDP’s wildfire campaign events, contrasting with the UCP’s suspension. Their goal: shift public opinion toward constitutional equalization abolition and unrestricted cross-country trade to counter Alberta’s perceived colonial status. [Automatically generated summary]
The Alberta general election is right around the corner.
The media has their own ideas about what the real election issues are, but I think these people are completely out of touch with reality.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Friends, it's with great anxiety and trepidation that we, or at least I, approach the May 29th general election here in Alberta.
You might recall I wrote two books on the NDP, one called The Destroyers and one called Stop Notley.
One documented the radicals that had just been elected in Alberta back in 2015, and one made the case for making sure that those same radicals were never elected again in 2019.
So this is an issue that I know deeply, and that's why I'm concerned.
Will Albertans be stricken with collective madness one more time and stick a toe or jump right into the ocean of socialism by sending NDP leader Rachel Notley back to the Premier's office in a repeat of 2015's four long years of darkness?
Or will Albertans stay the course and ignore the fear-mongering of the NDP and the screeching of the liberal media and send freedom-minded, pro-business, United Conservative Party leader Danielle Smith back to her chair in the Premier's office?
It all will be decided by Calgary.
So just like, don't, don't be crazy, Calgary.
The NDP and the media are hoping that Albertans are plagued with some sort of province-wide amnesia wherein we don't remember what the reality was when we lived through what felt like nearly every day, opening up the news to read about hundreds of people being laid off at some energy company.
All of this thanks to Rachel Notley's ineffectual leadership, her anti-oil policies, and also her sycophancy with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's anti-energy agenda.
Notley called it social license, but it was really just being a doormat.
So joining me now is Josh Andrus from Project Confederation to discuss the Alberta election, Alberta's role in Confederation, and his predictions for May 29th.
Take a listen.
Joining me now from Calgary is Josh Andrus from Project Confederation.
Policy Objectives and Think Tanks00:04:42
Now, Josh is the executive director of Project Confederation.
We've covered Project Confederation here on Reb News in the past, but I've never had Josh on my show before, and that's to my great regret.
Josh, thanks for taking the time.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about who and what Project Confederation is?
Yeah, Project Confederation was born out of frustration with the way that Alberta in particular, but Western Canada has been treated within federation, going back to really before the formation of the provinces, even back to the purchase of Rupert's Land by the Dominion of Canada, which is the land that Western Canada now sit.
Really, at the end of the day, the West has been treated like a colony where we've been essentially mined for our resource revenue and to pay for large industrial projects and other luxury products in Eastern Canada, lavish social programs in Quebec being a flashpoint right now, given the amount of money we spend on equalization.
So, what I realized was we needed some kind of an advocacy group to focus just on policy.
We're not a political party.
We're just a nonprofit think tank that focuses on bringing forward public policy that can help alleviate some of these concerns.
We issued a nine-point policy proclamation in 2019, shortly after the federal liberals were re-elected.
They'd outlined nine different policy objectives that we felt the provincial government should implement.
I'm not going to go through all nine of them just for time purposes, but the big three for me, at least at this point, were abolishing equalization from the Constitution of Canada, unrestricted cross-country free trade for goods, services, and infrastructure such as railways and pipelines, as well as some kind of electoral reform that gives the West a better say on Parliament Hill.
Right now, Alberta alone has 34 seats in the House of Commons.
Ontario and Quebec have 199, which means that just naturally, most policies are going to favor the 199 seats in the House of Commons as opposed to the 34.
So that's something that we need to take into account.
So those are the policy objectives that we're trying to, the big three right now.
We also do have like the firewall initiatives, which essentially was Stephen Harper as well as five other academics put together firewall letter in 2001.
We have dusted that off and brought it back.
So we're working to make some progress on that.
So, you know, as you're talking there, I'm thinking, oh, well, our new premier who is campaigning for reelection, I think she's adopted, at least to a certain extent, some of those policies in theory.
Theory, yeah.
In theory, and I suppose even in legislation with the Sovereignty Act.
But you say you're not a political party, and I think that's great.
I think it's important to be working outside of the mechanisms of a political party so you can launch these ideas, float them, see if they're a good idea, and then have political parties adopt them.
Is that sort of what you guys are doing?
Yeah, the idea is to focus on policy.
I find political parties, their objective is to take a snapshot of what they feel is publicly popular at any given point in time and build a platform around that.
The objective of a think tank, the left has been doing this like extremely well for the past decades.
Broadbent.
Broadbent institute.
I mean, if you think of any political issue on the left, you can probably list off five to ten think tanks that have popped up in the last five years to deal with that.
Conservative side, we don't really have that level of influence on the idea side of things.
So policy ideas that are generated have a tendency to, we face a tremendous amount of opposition from left-wing think tanks.
So the idea with the think tank is to try and change what the public's opinion is on an issue at any given point in time.
So a party, like I said, takes a snapshot of what they think they can win on.
A think tank's job is to try and change what people think on a particular issue, try and persuade people to support a particular issue.
And when it comes to Western alienation, it's a big issue that we don't want to inflame tensions any more than they necessarily need to be.
If they get inflamed, we think it should be the federal government that we're pointing the finger at, not at ourselves for being overly aggressive.
But it's one of those things where if we take the right approach, I think we can manage to sway enough people on side to our positions that we can get genuine change.
I mean, we did one of our positions was to hold an immediate referendum to abolish equalization from the Constitution of Canada.
Forcing Banks to Invest Forward00:06:21
Alberta did hold that referendum in 2021.
And it passed with a 63% success rate.
It's one of those things where if we can put the right ideas out there at the right time, we can get public support for them.
And it's all about just being intelligent, strategic, and academic in your approach.
Now, you mentioned that we are treated as a colony here in the West and you won't get any argument from me about that.
And our resource wealth is being extracted and then sent to places like Quebec where they have a balanced budget sometimes.
And you're like, how did that happen?
I know.
But more recently, we're seeing sort of an incompatibility with this because not only do they want our resource wealth, but then out of the other side of their mouths, they say, but you also cannot develop those resources, as we're seeing with the just transition.
And that's really been something that Project Confederation has been banging the drum on that if Rachel Notley, our NDP leader, is re-elected, I suppose, re-sent back to the Premier's office, there will be absolutely no opposition to the phasing out of our industry, our jobs.
And this will all be done at the expense of the rest of Canada, which relies on Alberta's resource wealth.
We saw when she was premier from 2015 to 2019 that in a lot of ways, she did nothing to advance Alberta's cause on the national stage.
And in some ways, almost acted as if she was a doormat for federal policy.
When the federal government renewed the equalization formula with very little consultation from the provinces, the NDP either didn't notice it or completely ignored it.
Not only that, you have policies like the carbon tax, which especially given today's current political and economic environment where affordability concerns are front of mind.
We could see a provincial government that is actually trying to limit the ability of our energy producers to produce affordable energy at a reasonable cost for consumers and for some of these large scale, the heavier emitters, we could say it, that are producing oil and gas products for the rest of the country.
We still have a pipeline bottleneck, which means that we need unrestricted cross-country free trade.
So these are the issues that I think need to be on the conversation piece around the water coolers across the province, because we do need to have serious conversations about how energy products and how affordable energy keeps costs low for everybody.
And it's one of those things that I'm sure you guys have reported on it.
Energy poverty is a problem in other parts of the world.
I don't think it's so much of a problem in Alberta.
But if we continue down this path, I could see people having to choose between heating their homes and feeding their families.
And that's not a position I think that we want to be in.
Especially when we are so energy wealthy.
You know, we have 800 years of coal under our feet, let alone all of our oil and natural gas resources.
You know, you just touched on something that was introduced in the House of Commons yesterday.
So, you know, we have these pipeline bottlenecks and approval bottlenecks.
So I guess bureaucratic prohibitions by inconvenience.
But I noticed yesterday, it was on the order paper notice in the House of Commons.
And, you know, we didn't talk about this before we started recording, but I'll just, I'll I'll take your temperature on it anyway.
It's motion 84, brought forward by the liberal MP from WICBI, whose name escapes me right now.
But it is to bring the Paris Accord targets to the banking system.
So what they want to do is say, okay, well, we don't want financial institutions to finance these projects if these projects will put us over our Paris Agreement targets, which is very chilling, because I think, you know, what we saw with the Freedom Convoy is you could have wrong thought and then get debanked as a citizen, but now you can have climate crimes, I guess, according to the liberals,
and get debanked and denied financing for these major energy projects.
I just want to get your opinion on that.
Yeah, that's an easy one to answer.
I've seen these types of legislature motions or whatever form of political theater you want to call it, trying to force banks to dictate or trying to dictate to banks how they can lend their money.
We've seen pushback from that in the United States with a lot of these large-scale bankers such as Jamie Dimon.
He's one of, I think he's JP Merrigan Chase CEO.
He's one of the biggest on Wall Street.
They've been pushing back.
So even if the government does move forward with this motion, I don't necessarily think that the banks will get in line.
They did in terms of the Emergencies Act.
But it's one of those things where from an economic standpoint, if you essentially are dictating to banks what kind of energy products they can invest in and the energy products they're investing in are more expensive than the existing infrastructure that we have, it's going to drive costs up.
And that's not something that's going to be popular amongst the public if they see their heating and their energy costs and their electricity bills skyrocketing.
And it's something that I think is already leading to some bleeding from more of the staunch green left individuals.
I don't think that their policies are as popular as they think they are.
So if they do bring this legislation in, I anticipate there will be pushback from bank CEOs about, you know, these are just basic micro and macroeconomic concepts.
We're talking about bankers have a tendency to understand these better than politicians, I would say, in most cases.
So I do think there will be pushback on it.
I don't see it being successful in the long run.
Yeah, I hope you're right.
From your lips to God's ears, I mean, this sounds like it was written directly from by Mark Carney, which is sort of his role at the United Nations right now is implementing these ESG ideas hatched in a inside of the United Nations into the financial sector.
NDP Campaign Risks00:10:15
And then you see this motion brought forward, motion 84.
It's going to be debated.
Hopefully it dies a quick death.
Just changing lanes here to the Alberta election.
We're recording this on the 9th.
We'll publish this on the 10th, but we head to the polls here in Alberta on May 29th.
And I'm sure you've noticed there is just an absolute full frontal attack on our Premier Daniel Smith.
Now, I don't have a horse really in the race.
I don't belong to any political party.
I don't work for a politician.
I don't want to be a mouthpiece for a politician, but I care about jobs and I care about the impact of the government on normal people, farmers, ray-hands, all those things.
And I just think Rachel Notley would absolutely destroy any sort of economic recovery that we're undergoing here in Alberta.
What do you think really are the main issues in this election?
Because if you paid attention to the mainstream media or to the NDP, it would be things Danielle Smith said in a podcast.
But I don't think the general public actually cares about those things.
I actually, I'm going to put my prognosticator hat on, so I hope I'm right.
I think what you're seeing is the NDP, because of like, and this is an interesting observation that I've made over the last couple of weeks here.
The poll numbers haven't really changed too much from the day that the writ dropped to today.
Now, it is only eight days into the campaign, but the NDP has been bringing in a, it's a full frontal, you're right, it's a full frontal assault on the credibility of Danielle Smith's decision making.
I don't think it's sticking.
I don't think it's working because I think most people in this province, at least the ones that were here four to eight years ago, they remember Not Lee's record and the media may try and change the channel and Twitter will just exoriate Danielle for what she said.
But I don't think Twitter is an accurate representation of what is going on in the mainstream of public thought.
I actually think in a lot of ways that the media itself, the mainstream media has lost public trust.
And I think that it's going to be one of those things where they are going to try and change the channel.
Whether voters go for it or not is another question.
I don't think they are right now.
The polls seem to be holding steady with the UCP at projected to win in between 50 and 53 seats.
That's where they've been at since October.
Nothing's really changed.
So whether these attacks are working or not, I don't think they are.
I think that the issues that people want to hear about are affordability.
I think they want to hear about crime is another one.
I know the federal catch and release policies are very much, I mean, downtown Calgary, I was downtown working at the office the other day and I pulled in and there was someone overdosed in the alley.
And then three hours later, there was some homeless people fighting in the same alley.
So it's becoming an issue that I think most people want to see changes for.
People don't feel safe riding public transit.
They don't feel safe walking by themselves in the downtown core, even some more commercial areas of the rest of the city.
And it's a public safety thing.
And the third, and I think that this ties in, is in this province, especially, energy policy is central to our economy.
I mean, everything runs on energy.
And in Alberta, that's especially so.
So it's one of those things where I think the NDP, because of their alliance with the federal government in 2015 to 2019, I think most people are remembering that.
I think the people don't want to see further attacks to the energy industry, whether they be from, we'll call it foreign attacks from the federal government or domestic attacks from our own provincial government, carbon taxes, stronger environmental regulations that are necessary, things like that.
I think those are the issues people care about.
And I think because the NDP is not really speaking on them or then the UCP is, I think that's why we're seeing the polls relatively stable given the attacks.
Like some of them are, I don't know if they're even accurate attacks, but the attacks that the NDP have been leveling on Danielle.
Yeah, I just saw some reporting from the Western Standard, who've done some great work on this, that it's on a Main Street research poll that shows that the undecided in Alberta are very recently breaking in favor of Danielle Smith.
So these attacks on social media and Twitter is definitely not real life.
Like the farmers down at the ANW in the morning.
They're not on Twitter.
They don't care.
They care about the price of fertilizer and carbon tax is not helping with that.
It shows that the undecideds who I think were probably conservative, but also Jason Kenney skeptics who were waiting to sort of plant their vote with Danielle Smith or maybe just sit on it.
They're breaking towards the UCP in like very recently.
So I think the NDP's campaign of desperation and nothing else is falling flat on its face.
Yeah, and I think it's, you're going to see, you're going to see more of their desperation.
You're going to see more of the attacks.
I'm sure they've got more controversial things that Danielle has clipped at certain points in her career.
I don't know if those are really going to impact the bottom line anymore.
They should.
If they were, they should have been.
And the polls haven't really moved.
So at this point in time, I think that it we are hope.
I don't want to say hopefully because that's not fair to any of the other parties.
But I think that just in terms of the direction that the election is going, that it should be UCP majority territory, which given that this is really the NDP's last cry, it'll be interesting to see what happens post-election.
Then again, I am thinking way too far in advance.
There's a lot that could happen between now and then.
Maybe something with the wildfires goes sideways.
I don't know.
I mean, it's impossible to predict those types of events.
But if everything remains equal and the wildfires are put out with no real loss of life or property damage, I do think that the UCP is in good shape to hold on to power.
I do too.
I think Calgary is going to save us all from ourselves here in Alberta.
South Calgary, at least.
Yeah.
Calgary is going to save us.
I mean, rural Alberta, it's always going to go UCP.
Edmonton is a write-off.
We should just build a wall around Edmonton and just leave it.
The UCP, Danielle Smith, has rightfully suspended her campaign so that she can focus her attention on the state of emergency here in Alberta.
But the NDP, they're going hard.
They are taking every opportunity to attack the premier, hold campaign events.
As we're recording this, I think this is day two in Lethbridge.
I think they were Medicine Hound Lethbridge yesterday.
Again, Lethbridge today.
They don't even have the decency to say, okay, you've suspended your campaign.
We're going to do the same because the province is in a state of emergency.
Let's rethink this in three days, 48 hours, whatever.
They're not even doing that.
Do you think that's going to impact people's perception of them?
I mean, I couldn't think any less of them, but there are people out there who probably have like a middle of the road opinion of the NDP.
Is this going to affect how they feel?
It really depends on what's said and the tone of the campaign.
And I know that they've been negative, but it's one of the, it's going to be very interesting because I do think that they've got, I mean, the UCP has some challenging candidates that have said some controversial things, but I think the NDP is in a position where the more they talk during a wildfire, the more likely it is that someone says something akin to an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quote.
So I think it's a risky move on the NDP's part.
I think that if the NDP continues to campaign like this, eventually someone is going to say something that, at least from their vantage point, is damaging to the electoral chances of the NDP.
I mean, Alexandria O'Casia-Cortez is a lot of things, but she's unelectable in the province of Alberta.
And I think there's a lot of NDP candidates that are adherents to her philosophical inclinations.
I'll leave it at that.
Yeah, I can't wait for them to trot out the climate change did this while Park Glenn County is like, you know what I mean?
So, yeah, I think it's, I think it's a, it's a tough, it is a very tough position for the NDP to be in.
And I, I understand why they're, they're campaigning.
They are behind.
I mean, you have to, but hey, I think it's a risky move.
It's, it's one of those things where, yeah, if you're out there campaigning and someone says something controversial about the wildfires, especially if it's someone's farm is burning at the same time, it's going to impact their electability, their chances of electability.
In a place like Lethbridge, where Lethbridge East, like the south side of Lethbridge at least, is pretty conservative leaning.
That is a potential swing riding.
I know that there's a reason they're down there, but if Shannon Phillips says something controversial, it could turn people off in South Lethbridge or even North Lethbridge that maybe don't think we're going to die in seven years from climate change like AOC.
Although she did clarify her marks, but she did say that one.
Yeah, is it seven years?
Because the clock's been ticking for a while.
It might be closer to three.
We might already be dead.
I don't know.
I died already.
Maybe.
Dang, I missed it.
Josh, I want to thank you so much for being generous with your time.
Now, is there a way that people can support Project Confederation, see your work?
What's the best way for people to know what you're up to and get involved?
Canadian Gun Rights Advocacy00:05:48
Yeah, so just check us out.
It's www.projectconfederation.ca.
There's some big buttons at the top right-hand corner of our website.
To join, you can join our mailing list.
We send out regular updates, sometimes twice a week, especially during an election campaign.
Just kind of getting our message out there.
We're focusing on affordability right now.
We're focusing on energy policy.
And these are the two things that we think are going to drive, you know, drive people to the polls.
And so we are, we're coming at it from a Western Canadian perspective and talking about the benefits of energy.
And honestly, it's just, it's a good, it's a good read.
Check it out.
You can donate as well if you like what we're doing.
But really at this point in time, I just want to, I want as many people getting our talking points as we can get them.
We think it's good information that helps you communicate to people around you what some of the issues are and what our take is on it.
Yeah, I think your website is full of great arguments that normal people can take out into the world to help articulate their viewpoint to their CBC consuming friends and neighbors.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But not on the website, Josh.
Absolutely.
Actually, there is a room for quotes.
So it might.
Well, Josh, thanks so much for coming on the show.
And we'll have you back on again very, very soon, I promise.
Yeah, this was good.
I think I want to come back for sure.
I enjoyed this.
Thank you.
Perfect.
Yeah, cool.
Well, we've come to the letters portion of the show where I happily take your viewer feedback or your constructive criticism.
It's the reason I give out my email address right now.
It's sheila at rebelnews.com.
If you want to drop me a line about the show, put gun show letters in the subject line or don't hesitate to leave a comment on one of the platforms upon which you're watching us, like Rumble or even the censorship platform of YouTube.
I think accepting viewer feedback and constructive criticism is so important because without you, there really is no Rebel News, is there?
We rely on your support and what you think about what we're doing and what you think about the topics we're covering because we'll never take a penny from Justin Trudeau.
So we have to talk about the things that you care about.
Now, Today's letter comes on last week's show where I interviewed Rick Igersich of the National Firearms Association about Justin Trudeau's attempts to buy back property that was never his in the first place to compensate firearms owners for the confiscation of their lawfully acquired property that was never used in the commission of a crime.
And it's all based on Justin Trudeau's initial ordering council, which is completely undemocratic, to ban 1,500 models of firearms, which has now ballooned to 2,000 and includes many Canadian hunting rifles.
So the SPEN writes to me, and this comes to me via Rumble, actually.
And he says, or she says, I'm not sure, doesn't matter.
Even with all this NFA coverage, Rebel has been doing recently.
Now, I don't say it's disproportionately NFA.
We talk to the CSSA all the time.
And we also talk to the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, too.
So we talk to everybody in the firearms rights universe because it's an issue we all need to be working together on.
Anyway, the spend race, even with all this NFA coverage Rebel has been doing recently, I still don't understand what exactly it is they do to help the firearms community.
We hear lots of talk about their advocacy, yet there's nothing visible outside of the gun communities themselves.
All of their work, in quotation, seems to amount to just screaming into an echo chamber to gather memberships and donations while doing nothing forward-facing of value.
Well, I'm not sure then, the SPEN, that you watched the interview at all, because Rick was updating us on a court challenge that the NFA is a part of in federal court.
They're challenging the ordering council, which the liberals used to ban 1,500 and now 2,000 models of Canadian firearms.
They're doing the tough work to fight this stuff in court.
So you have to do the advocacy because you have to raise the fundraising dollars so that you can then go into court with five other allies because the NFA is one of six involved in this case.
But you have to raise the money through awareness of the issue to be able to pay some lawyers to take on the government who has more money than you can ever imagine, all of our money to fight us with, and just deep pockets to hire the best lawyers in the country to fight the National Firearms Association, the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, and four other groups.
So that's why they do advocacy because they need to tell you about the issue so you can care enough to get involved.
And then they take it to court, which is exactly what's happening here.
So I hope that answers your question.
They are doing more than just raising awareness, as the left would say.
They're taking the government to court, which is something we do at Rebel News here a fair bit.
So hopefully that answers your question.
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.