Derek Fildebrandt, Western Standard CEO, traces Alberta’s political chaos since Ralph Klein’s 2004 exit—short-lived premiers like Kenney, Notley, and Prentice—and predicts Danielle Smith may buck the trend as the first conservative to serve two full terms. Her Quebec-inspired provincialist rhetoric stems from Alberta’s unique Confederation origins, but unlike Quebec, she prioritizes fiscal autonomy over social policy. Nahid Nenshi poses the biggest electoral threat, while municipal overreach and Smith’s Bill 20 aim to streamline party funding, favoring conservatives. Saskatchewan remains Alberta’s most reliable ally, though cooperation hinges on Ottawa’s treatment of Western interests, not just partisan labels. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, a feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the CEO of Western Standard.
But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast by going to RebelNewsPlus.com, clicking subscribe.
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All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, a feature interview with Derek Fildebrandt, the boss of the Western Standard.
It's May 20th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, I was just saying to our next guest that although I was born and raised in Alberta, and I actually still have my Calgary phone number, even though I haven't lived there in many years, after a certain point in time, you can no longer have a chuckle and say, well, I'm an Albertan in exile in Toronto.
I mean, I have been out here, and of course, I put roots down here.
This is the head office of Rebel News.
We have offices around the country, including our chief reporter, Sheila Gunn Reed, is in northern Alberta.
We have reporters in Calgary, Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa too.
But I sort of miss Alberta, and I'm out of touch with it simply because I'm not there physically all the time.
I go back as often as I can.
As you know, I've gone to Coots, or at least the Lethbridge Courthouse, probably a dozen times over the last couple of years because that was the closest place to the Coots border crossing.
And there's still echoes of the lockdown prosecutions there.
But to rely on me for the latest news in Alberta is probably not the best.
Who lives and breathes Alberta and all things Western 24-7?
Who actually has the word Western in their name?
Well, it's our friend Derek Fildebrand.
He's the boss and founder of Western Standard.news, and he joins us now via Skype.
Derek, thanks very much for joining us.
I really do rely on you for the no BS take of what's going on in Alberta because I've been out here in Toronto for long enough that maybe I miss things from afar.
So it's great to have you on the show again.
Well, thank you, guys.
I always love being on the show.
And I should maybe correct you.
I'm the re-founder of the Western Standard.
You are the first founder of the Western Standard.
I mean, it was a completely new company started from scratch, but I go with the term re-founder.
Well, I appreciate your kindness in saying that.
I mean, you do keep that Western spirit.
I remember when we had the print magazine of Western Standard, pro-Alberta, pro-Western, pro-beef was one of our missions.
And I know you keep that alive.
Provincial Fight for Alberta00:15:05
I mean, look, from out here, Danielle Smith is regarded, you know, in those medieval maps, they wouldn't know what was in a certain area and they would write, there be dragons, you know, when they didn't know, when the whole world hadn't yet been explored.
And I think in Toronto, when they look at Danielle Smith and Alberta, a lot of media said, there be dragons.
They don't quite understand it.
They know it's dangerous and not like Toronto or Ottawa.
Danielle Smith has been premiered for a little while now.
I think she's found her sea legs.
I think she's grown into the job.
That's how it looks from out here.
How does it look to you?
Well, I think the cartographers in Toronto are right when they say here be dragons in Alberta.
We are fire breathing very often.
A it's an old, it's a long-standing Alberta tradition that is uh probably stronger now than it possibly ever has been.
Um, I mean, without getting too far into it, Danielle Smith had probably the most um uh she had the quickest transference of power, likely in Canadian history at any level of government.
Uh, normally, when someone wins the leadership of a party, there's a transition period with the outgoing leader, or if they defeat another party in election, you know, there's two or three weeks, uh, sometimes four weeks transition uh between the parties uh in power.
That didn't happen in Alberta because uh the city premier, despite being the same party, was hostile to Smith and Kenny, of course, yes.
And like he was making spending announcements literally the day of the leadership vote, um, totally unprecedented.
And uh, so she she had herself sworn in.
I think she was elected on Thursday or Friday, she was sworn in on a Monday.
So there was no transition and therefore no premier's office even to come into.
And so it was a it was a chaotic uh way to hit the ground running, but I think there were good reasons for doing so.
Um, but you know, she's she's never been in government before, except for, I mean, technically a backbencher in the PCs for a few months, uh, but I wouldn't really count that uh as government experience.
Uh, you know, she's been in media, she's been in advocacy, she's been in opposition politics.
Um, but I think she's come now to learn to govern and um and built a team around her that uh is a lot more solid than it uh seemed to be when she took power.
You know, I'm thinking back and I think that you know, sometimes you see a resume.
I'm sure you get a lot of young people looking to work at Western Standard, and you like to see someone climbing a ladder.
But if someone changes jobs every six months, you say, Well, what's that about?
Is there some issue there, some stick-to-animity issue?
Who knows?
And I say that because if you look at the position of Premier of Alberta, so I'm not talking about the person now, I'm talking about the office.
Jason Kenney, the previous premier, didn't even serve out his full term.
Rachel Notley, the previous premier, one term only.
If I'm not mistaken, it was Jim Prentice before her.
Tell me if I'm getting my memory correct.
You have to go back quite far before you get to go to Ralph Klein.
Well, that's one of my favorite topics.
Decades, decades ago.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Well, this is one of my favorite topics.
I think I know where you're going with this.
Is the least stable political job in Canada is Premier of Alberta.
I was in high school the last time an Alberta premier completed a, I should say, an Alberta Conservative Premier completed a term in office or was re-elected.
2004 was Ralph Klein's last election, and he was more or less pushed out of the leadership after that.
And you had Ed Stelmack.
He won 2008, pushed out of the party, gone.
Allison Redford takes over, wins in 2012, pushed out of the party, gone.
Jim Prentiss, well, Hancock in there for a couple of months, but Jim Prentice takes over, loses the election to Notley, gone.
So we've had only one term or less premiers since Ralph Klein's retirement.
And I mean, it's still early days, but I'm going to take a wild gamble here and say that Danielle Smith will be at least the first conservative to make it to a second election.
If she could literally, even if she loses that election, but if she makes it to that election, she will have been the longest serving conservative premier in Alberta since Klein.
And how that next election goes, we can get into that in a bit.
But Smith, in ways that Stellmack, Redford, and Kenny never had, seems to have the party behind her, at least for the time being.
But events have a way of getting in the way of things.
Yeah.
Now, would you say that's a bug or a feature that Albertans are like, you know, a rodeo bull that does not like to be ridden and does everything to buck a politician off.
I mean, you could look at it as a plus.
On the other hand, you're running off in all directions.
You're voting for the socialists and you're voting for a conservative.
Well, not that kind of conservative.
I mean, is it a plus or a minus that no one seems to be able to stay on that bucking Bronco?
Well, it depends if you like the cowboy riding the Bronco.
I have not liked any of the premiers really since Klein.
And even Klein in his last years was past his best before Dayton, probably needed to be bucked.
So yeah, because I've generally not been a fan of Alberta premiers for, I guess, since I was in high school, before I was in Albertan, I'd say it's a positive bug.
If you happen to like the premier, it's negative.
But I think it's largely been a consequence of the conservative, for lack of a better term, and it's not a very accurate term, but the conservative civil war, which broke out sort of between some prominent conservatives and the succession of Klein, and the succession of Klein alienated people on the right.
That led to the breakaway of Wild Rose coming back together with the United Conservative Party.
Then, you know, and Jason Kenny is very skillful bringing that together, but then disastrous ability to keep it together.
So, conservatives in Alberta are, you know, the bumper sticker, be ungovernable.
Well, we live by it for better or worse.
We made a documentary by that name, ungovernable.
I know what you mean.
I remember that.
Well, let me ask you: one of the reasons why I think Toronto folks are nervous about Danielle Smith is she uses language that only Quebecers are allowed to use, talking about provincial jurisdiction and the federal government should butt out and say no to Ottawa.
And really, I mean, listen, every provincial premier in their own time loves to fight against Ottawa.
Even Premier Fury of Newfoundland.
I mean, even frankly, some liberal premiers are poking at Trudeau because it serves them.
But no one's allowed to go full, you know, not nationalist, but provincialist, like the Quebecers are.
Danielle Smith explicitly uses language like Quebec premiers does.
And I think that bugs fancy Toronto folks who they can tolerate it from Quebec, but they hate it from the cowboys.
What do you think?
Yeah, and I think it goes back to the very old two nations, two founding nations theory of Canada.
You know, it's a very upper and lower Canadian view of what is Canada.
You know, the prairie province, the prairie provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan in particular, to a lesser extent, Manitoba, we were the only provinces not to have already been colonies and negotiate with the federal government and other provinces to join Confederation.
We are created by fiat, You know, without getting too deep into the weeds here, you know, Alberta and Saskatchewan came out of the Northwest Territories.
We weren't entities before.
We wanted to come in together as Buffalo.
Now it's vetoed by Sir Wilford Laurier, anotherwise generally pretty good prime minister, but certainly a Laurentian.
His name is Laurier, for God's sakes.
And, you know, so Alberta and Saskatchewan and Quebec, I think we're the only provinces with institutional problems with Canada itself.
Most other provinces, their issues can be resolved with elections.
I don't think our issues can be resolved with elections.
The ball can be moved a bit.
I mean, things were better for the West under Harper, but he was incapable of making constitutional change.
And our issues like Quebec are constitutional.
And we both seek decentralization.
The problem is we seek very different kinds of decentralization.
They seek decentralization of social policy for things like culture, the ability to spend money, but they certainly don't want to decentralize the collection of money in Canada, whereas that's our primary concern.
So we have very constitutional issues.
And Smith is much more radical on this than any premier, I think, in any of our lifetimes.
And I think the big word was sovereignty.
And, you know, we use a lot of Anglo-Canadians don't understand the use of the word sovereignty in Quebec.
There's independists, people who believe in independence, there's federalists, and then there's sovereigntists.
And sovereigntists can be federalists or independists.
It's a spectrum of things.
In Alberta, support for independence goes up and down.
It's currently a low ebb because we have a pro, I think, a provincial government that people feel is fighting for them within Confederation, and people have a large degree of faith that this federal government will be gone.
But we have a sovereigntist government here in Alberta for, I believe, the first time ever outside of Quebec.
Oh, no, early Confederation, I think there was Nova Scotia had a full-on separatist legislature.
Well, let me talk about, I want to get into some of the particular policies and issues in Alberta right now.
But before we do, I want to talk about what I think is the greatest threat to Danielle Smith's re-election.
Anytime Justin Trudeau wags his finger at her, or worse, Stephen Gilbeau, she's got to be going up in the polls.
So if anytime the Globe and Mail criticizes her, that's going to look great on her in Alberta.
I mean, Stephen Gilbo is just so detested everywhere, but in Alberta, he's an object of ridicule and mockery.
And well, for good reason.
But I think the threat to Danielle Smith being re-elected is the prospect of Nahid Nenshi, the former mayor of Calgary, now running for the leadership of the NDP.
Media darling, of course.
The NDP does well in Edmonton, regardless.
Nenshi has huge name recognition in Calgary.
He's got a team.
He's got some organizers.
He's got some demographic constituents.
If he becomes the leader of the NDP, which he may well, do you think that that will give, do you think he's got a real chance of winning for that party again in Alberta?
I think he's their best chance at government.
I mean, it's too far out to say Alberta politics is the most chaotic in Canada by far, and it has been largely since Ralph Klein's departure as premier.
But I mean, if you're playing the long game, I mean, it's Alberta.
The safe bet is always conservative.
If the conservatives have an unpopular leader, they toss the leader.
And as long as the conservatives are united, they tend to win.
But, you know, things have changed.
There's been new people coming to Alberta.
Some coming from the East carry values closely aligned with Alberta.
Some people come here and they don't really understand what makes it special.
People also coming from other parts of the world, new Canadians, on the whole, tend to vote for leftist parties.
And then as they get to second and third generation, become more conservative.
But the NDP has built itself into a serious political contender here.
Alberta is not the one-party state that it was growing up for me and growing up for you.
He'd be their best bet.
That being said, he couldn't even lead his own council as mayor of Calgary, effectively.
And leading a caucus is a different thing.
It's a team sport.
He's not traditionally been a team player.
That being said, people can learn.
People can evolve.
And people around him seem to know that's his weakness.
But I actually, I think the greatest threat to Danielle Smith is Pier Polyo.
If Pier Polyev wins, which it seems very likely that he will at this point, she and the conservative movement in Alberta are going to lose their avatar of evil, their foil.
You know, Justin Crudeau is rightfully to blame for a lot of Alberta's problems.
But, you know, if anything goes wrong in Alberta, we can point to there.
And with a conservative government in Ottawa, the aggressiveness of the Alberta Conservative government to fight Ottawa is likely to be tampered somewhat.
So I'd say Pier Polyev is our biggest challenge.
Isn't that interesting?
And I remember that's true.
I mean, when Preston Manning came about, he diverted a lot of the separatist anger.
His motto was the West Wants In.
When Stephen Harper became prime minister, he took a lot of the energy out of the Western rights movement.
They said, okay, Harper will do no harm at least.
And I think you're right, Polyev would be the same.
Fixing Elections Before April Fool's?00:04:33
I wonder if there's any thinking on behalf of Danielle Smith's team to have a cause for an election before the scheduled federal vote.
I mean, as you know, Justin Trudeau is going to raise the carbon tax next April.
Every April Fool's Day, it goes up.
God forbid the government tries to bring in this insane plastics registry.
Who knows?
There could be a reason, a legitimate reason that's built up into a cause, like almost a referendum on a certain issue.
I'm just brainstorming.
I would bet strongly against that for two reasons.
One, only one government in Alberta has ever broken its fixed election date law, and that was Jim Prentiss's.
And it ended in tears.
And, you know, Danielle Smith remembers that very chaotic era.
And the second reason, very tangible right now, is there's a bill before the legislature at this very moment to move the fixed election date to the fall, I think in October, November, yeah, in October.
I hate these October fixed election dates because they often follow my birthday.
It's very inconvenient for me.
So, and they're moving that fixed election date back six months rather than forward six months.
So It'd be quite something for them to set a new fixed election date and then pull the trigger that early.
I think they're going to stick with it for both those reasons.
Well, you and I have been bantering about big issues, sort of macro issues, but what are the day-to-day issues?
One of the things I've been following is how Danielle Smith is sort of being the grown-up when you've got these crazy left-wing city councils.
You'd think Calgary and Edmonton are amongst the two most conservative cities in the country.
I mean, Edmonton has a bit of more of a blue-collar flavor, but it's still a small government right-wing place, I think.
But their city councils are atrocious.
The mayor of Edmonton is a former Trudeau cabinet minister.
Calgary, you have the most despised mayor in Calgary history, Jody Gondeck.
And one of the things I love to see is Danielle Smith basically saying, you guys are not going to be able to do insane little projects.
Cities are a creature of the province under our constitution.
Come back to normalcy or I'll basically overturn your craziness.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Danielle Smith has basically said to the cities, we're going to stop the craziest of your ideas.
Is that right?
Yeah, there's a bill before the legislature right now.
I think Bill 20.
It's controversial.
It's got some pretty broadly accepted points in it.
Some other points are a bit more contentious.
Right now, the province, any province, can overturn bylaws or decisions of any municipality because municipalities do not exist constitutionally.
They are corporations of the province.
The province can, you know, your Ontario viewers will know that in the 90s, one of the bad decisions of Mike Harris was the forceful amalgamation of municipalities in Ontario.
And they had no say in it.
They just were forcefully amalgamated.
And that's why, you know, you've got, I've got some family in the Ottawa Valley who are on farms and have nothing to do with Ottawa, but they're part of the city of Ottawa.
It's bizarre stuff.
So the province, you know, we generally want to support local autonomy.
Decisions are best made as close as possible to the people.
But jurisdiction matters.
And just as the federal government is constantly trying to reach into provincial jurisdiction, municipalities, for one reason or another, are always trying to reach into higher jurisdictions.
Nai Menchi, for example, was trying to reach into federal jurisdiction, pronouncing on international issues.
He felt the need to talk about geopolitical issues as the mayor of Calgary when my concern with my mayor and council is: do you plow the roads, fix the potholes, and pick up the dog food?
So, you know, we've got this.
Thankfully, the Calgary City Council overturned it because it was grossly unpopular, but we had this single-use products ban.
They tried to, they took Guilbo and they said, hold my beer.
And nobody even knew about this.
Shorthand Politics00:03:33
I went to McDonald's to get an Egg McMuffin one day and they asked me, would you like a bag?
And I was like, Are you stupid or something?
Like, yeah, of course I want a bag.
They're like, well, that'll be 15 cents.
That's nuts.
And then they have to ask you, do you want a fork?
Do you want napkins?
It was really.
You can tell that they've never worked a day in their life in an actual business, but they were so happy to impose these bizarre and stupid rules on, oh, that's just the worst.
You know, and one of the things I understand that Premier Smith is doing is she's bringing in political parties at the municipal level.
And I think that will solve a lot of this because people know when they see the blue team federally or provincially, that means conservative.
But if you don't have parties on the municipal level, you don't know who to vote for.
And I think simply bringing in parties will wipe out a lot of the crazier aldermen who get elected.
Is that correct that she's bringing in that rule?
Yeah, mostly.
Political parties will be established in Calgary and Edmonton.
I don't believe they'll be established anywhere else, although I can't see why not.
Why, you know, like Wheatland County shouldn't be allowed to have like, you know, the Wheatland Wheatman or something, you know, whatever you want to call your political parties.
Well, with a common platform, you know, it helps people.
I mean, anything you can do to help people understand, like, it's shorthand.
When you say conservative, it's shorthand for about five things.
You don't have that at the municipal level.
Well, look, I generally don't like political parties, but they're a necessary evil of politics.
And what's happened in Alberta and in many other provinces, I can't speak in detail about Ontario, but certainly in the two big cities of Alberta, and to a lesser extent in the smaller cities, is we have unofficial parties, but mostly on the left already.
And that's so the way that works is money on the left in municipal elections comes dominantly from unions.
And there's a very small number of big unions and they control the purse rigs.
Those unions sit down.
There's Calgary's future.
It's essentially a political action committee funded by the unions.
And they can say, okay, in this ward or for the mayor's chair, this is the candidate who's got money and these other candidates don't.
So there'll only be one financially viable candidate from the left on the ballot in every ward and then for mayor.
On the conservative side, well, money comes dominantly from businesses, big businesses, middle media businesses, small businesses.
And that's not centralized.
There's thousands and thousands of them.
So last time you had two or maybe one and a half viable conservative candidates on the ballot in Calgary.
And so the left effectively, the main, one of the main functions of political parties is to sort the wheat from the chap in the nomination process and make sure you've got a single unified candidate.
The left has that in the two big cities and the right does not.
So this is just making official what we're already doing in many cases.
And yeah, I think having political parties, you know, candidates identified with parties is an easy shorthand for some people.
Often, if I don't know any good candidate for alderman or for school board, I just look up who the unions have endorsed and then I vote for the next guy on the ballot.
Well, that's probably more effort than a lot of people do.
And that's the thing, having that shorthand would help people.
Allies and Partisan Stripes00:03:46
Hey, I'm grateful for your time.
It's great to catch up.
And folks, just to remind her, we're talking with Derek Filder, who calls himself the re-founder.
He's the founder of WesternStard.news.
And you've got to go to them if you want to know what's really going on in the West.
I'm proud of our rebel news reporters in the West, of course, but Western Standard focuses on the West.
Let me ask you this last question.
I always had a dream when I was growing up in Alberta that we would find allies.
I tried to look for commonality.
Alberta had an entrepreneurial spirit.
Well, there's a lot of entrepreneurs in Ontario.
Albertans felt left out from Confederation.
Well, Quebec says they feel that way, and Newfoundland, too.
Looking around the country at different provincial premiers and the spirit in other places, does Alberta have allies?
I think it's got a really good ally in Saskatchewan, not just the Premier Scott Moe, but the people.
It really, as you said, Alberta and Saskatchewan used to be one place called Buffalo, or at least it was supposed to be.
Does Alberta have allies around the country, or is it still the favorite whipping boy of the other provinces?
Well, I forget who was who coined the phrase, but said countries have no permanent allies, just permanent interest.
Right.
I forget to coin that, but I think our only truly natural ally in 2024 is Saskatchewan.
Demographically similar, even organized similarly, one big city in the north, one big city in the south, and reliably conservative.
But I feel at this point, even the Saskatchewan NDP, if they were to somehow ever come to power, I think they would understand the permanent interests of Saskatchewan to an extent, maybe not as well as the Saskatchewan Party or the Saskatchewan United Party.
But BC, we have a lot of commonality with, but our commonality with BC and to an even greater extent, Ontario, is highly reliant on what political party is in power at that time.
They have less of a permanent interest in alliance with Alberta.
Doug Ford, I don't think, is hostile to Alberta, but I don't think he's a particularly natural ally of Alberta.
He is happy to be the biggest beneficiary of a federal largesse.
I mean, the guy is a walking EV plant.
And as I said with Quebec, there have been times historically where Alberta's found common cause with Quebec against federal centralization.
The issue generally is that we seek different kinds of centralization.
Where we do have common cause with Quebec is generally in protecting existing provincial jurisdiction.
So, and frankly, that would be even stronger if the PQ came back to power.
But the CAQ, the PQ, they're both strong defenders of provincial jurisdiction.
So outside of Saskatchewan, I'd say our allies for Alberta are highly reliant on their partisan stripes at the time and how generous Ottawa is feeling at our cost.
I think you're probably right.
Listen, great to spend some time with you.
Good luck out there with WesternStard.news and keep in touch.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me, Ezra.
Right on, our pleasure.
That's Derek Fildebrandt, the boss of WesternStandard.news.