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00:00:01
Aloha means hello and goodbye
63 Plays4 years ago
Shannon Phillips, the NDP MLA for Lethbridge West, breaks down Alohagate with us. Producer Jim Storrie joins host Duncan Kinney to wrap up the pod and gets some things off his chest about this scandal.
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Transcript
Embrace 2020 as the Year of Staycations
00:00:00
Speaker
say while travel outside the province is not recommended at this time. This is your chance to get to know your province even better so please embrace 2020 as the year of the Alberta Staycation.
Promotion of Left-Wing Podcasts
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to The Progress Report on the Harbinger Media Network. We're one of just many excellent left-wing podcasts on Harbinger, and two I will quickly recommend for you are 49th Parahel, hosted by lefty content king Rob Rousseau and the Alberta Advantage out of Calgary. 49th Parahel just had Dan Beckner on to talk about the goals of the McDonald-Lory Institute trying to drag us into a second Cold War.
00:00:33
Speaker
And the Alberta Advantage had two podcasts that I just listened to right in a row while doing chores over the weekend here that were very good. One was on the corporate grift that is the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy, and the other on Operation Solidarity in BC. Really good stuff, I cannot recommend it enough. And at Harbinger, we are building something that's challenging right-wing corporate media dominance from coast to coast. So get access to exclusive shows and other supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now, on to the show.
Guest Introduction: Shannon Phillips
00:01:02
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. Recording today here in Amiskwichiwa, Skuygen, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty Six territory. And I'd like to wish a hearty aloha to our guests for this episode. NDP MLA for Lethbridge West, Shannon Phillips. Shannon, aloha from the bottom of my heart, aloha. Well, aloha to you too, or as we say down here at Blackfoot territory, Oki, which is the Blackfoot greeting and the place where I have stayed.
00:01:32
Speaker
for the duration of this pandemic and certainly through the holidays, right here at home.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Uh, no doubt. No doubt. That me too. Wasn't really a question really until some things happen.
Pandemic Challenges for Shannon Phillips
00:01:45
Speaker
Uh, did you spend the days like me, uh, kind of between new years and today looking at your phone, getting hourly updates about which UCP cabinet ministers or senior staffers were out, you know, holidaying in a summer in a, in a nice warm location or were you a normal person and like enjoying your family and drinking hot cocoa, going to bargaining, that kind of thing.
00:02:04
Speaker
Well, you know, Duncan, as a practicing politician, I don't think you would ever really categorize me as normal. There's no question I spent way too much time on my phone and I worked a lot over the weekend. And when I went in and looked at the email inbox last night, or actually it was yesterday morning, I spent some time in it last night and got up at six o'clock in the morning and started sending emails to people. People are stamed. And so there's no question that people were engaged. And so therefore I was engaged.
00:02:34
Speaker
because that's my job. Still, you know, between Christmas and New Year did try to do a little bit of normal people things, you know, some baking with the kids when we got out, did some cross country skiing in in castle. So that was good too, trying to, you know, keep it super local and outside as much as possible because otherwise, you know, I have two boys and they'll kill each other or burn down the house or something. So yeah.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah, you got to get outside. But before we get to the gross details of this scandal, which I do have before me and which I do want to lay out in detail before we get to those, what like give me a bit of a smattering from your inbox this morning.
Constituents' Frustrations during the Pandemic
00:03:12
Speaker
What are your constituents kind of saying to you about this? Well, you know, I have to say, Duncan, that the worst ones are people who write and say, look, my father died this year and we didn't get to have a funeral or my elderly mother has been in long term care
00:03:29
Speaker
And I have seen her decline because she's been so lonely and isolated. It's that type of stuff that I can barely contain both my sadness and my rage when I read that. We've all had tough moments during the pandemic. I think that's a universal experience that there are some days that have just sucked for pretty much everyone. I don't know anyone who's been like, yeah, this is great. But there are some human experiences that as soon as
00:03:58
Speaker
you start engaging with folks that just come tumbling out and it is heartbreaking. And when they see these people gallivanting off all over what my mother would call hell's half acre, they cannot wrap their heads around it. And quite frankly, neither could I, Duncan. My first reaction was you can go somewhere. It didn't occur to me that that was the thing that people were doing at all.
00:04:27
Speaker
And, you know, no less people in public service who obviously have in the case of people who started the lockdown. Right. Well, but also people have really, really important jobs and, you know, and going on these expensive vacations that in, in any time when you're in public service would, you know, like now being revealed that she was going to be gone for almost a month. Right.
00:04:55
Speaker
like on some super fancy Hawaiian holiday, that's a bit rich. And it kind of shows, I think, the extent to which these folks really have a sense of entitlement that ordinary people certainly don't have outside of a pandemic, but really more so now.
00:05:16
Speaker
You know, my colleague Jim made this point on Twitter, right? Which is like when you own three separate Tim Hortons franchises and you've been on a Hawaiian holiday for the past 16 years straight that you are a different person and that like the rules as they apply to normal people do not apply to you. And then this is clearly what happens, right? Well, I guess, but I think during the pandemic that even people that I know who are of some means
00:05:47
Speaker
I would and did I you know and no people of all kinds of backgrounds and They didn't go anywhere even if they do, you know go on fancy holidays that other people don't go on right Because it's just not happening this year because life's different this year and ordinary people with a moral compass and with a bit of character understand that and you know, I just
00:06:17
Speaker
What is interesting to me is the extent to which people's feeling of great isolation and loneliness came out so quickly. You know, when people write to their MLAs and they share these deeply personal details and you can tell that it's wrapped in so much anger and frustration and loneliness, you know,
00:06:43
Speaker
It's a bad day to be a UCP MLA, obviously from a public opinion and issues management perspective. But if I was one of those people, one of those MLAs, I'd feel pretty bad about myself on how you made other people feel. Because I went in, especially this morning, early morning, one of the benefits of not having to commute is you just start work right away at an ungodly hour.
00:07:11
Speaker
You know, it actually really struck me emotionally, the extent to which people felt personally insulted and hurt and the extent to which that came out. It really shows just how awful the UCB is because, you know, this should have been recognized that this was going to happen on Friday when Mr. Kenny waltzed out and said nothing to see here. We're encouraging travel. He literally said that.
00:07:40
Speaker
You know, the fact that that was his first response, he literally said it. This was on Friday. This was three days ago. And Jason Kenny was saying, oh yeah, travel is good, actually. You know, and then when you read these emotional responses from people, it shows you to the extent to which we have actual failings of character running the place in that legislature.
Consequences for Political Travel during the Pandemic
00:08:08
Speaker
Let's get to the details here. Today, there was an announcement of resignations of a sort. Let's bring these up. Let's get them on the record. We're recording this at 4.17 PM, Monday morning, January 4th. Things could still change between the time this gets edited and posted and the time you're listening to this, but this is what we know right now.
00:08:31
Speaker
So Tracy Allard, MLA for Grand Prairie and Minister of Municipal Affairs. She went to Hawaii. She has stepped down as a minister, but she is still in caucus and she is still in MLA, right? Sonia Savage, MLA for Calgary Northwest and Minister of Energy. She went to BC for a few days to check up on a property she owns. No consequences for her.
00:08:51
Speaker
Jeremy Nixon, MLA for Calgary Klein, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Community and Social Services. He also went to Hawaii, and he has now stepped down from his largely meaningless parliamentary secretary role, and he will no longer be appearing on committees. Tanya Furr, the MLA for Calgary, began
00:09:09
Speaker
went to Vegas to see her sister. No more committees for her. Those are the consequences. Jason Stepan, Backbench MLA for Red Yourself, visited sunny Arizona. Again, no more committees for him. Pat Rain, a guy who when Jim told me about this guy, I had to be reminded of who he was.
00:09:29
Speaker
this backbench MLA for Lesser Slave Lake. He went to his favorite cave in Mexico. And again, the consequences that he faced were a stern talking to and no more committees. Jamie Huckabee, Jason Kenney's Chief of Staff went to the UK where we should be reminded that there is a variant of COVID-19.
00:09:48
Speaker
uh that is currently rampaging through that country he uh he dodged the rules around traveling to and from between canada and the uk by routing through the us he has resigned or his resignation was accepted or forced it's never really clear but he's fired he's gone uh matt wolf the famous issues manager he visited his parents in saskatchewan violating interprovincial travel rules again no consequences for him and the the people who kicked all of this off
00:10:12
Speaker
Michael Forian, the Press Secretary for Education, and Alisa Snyder, the Press Secretary for Advanced Education. Both of these folks went to Hawaii. They kicked this all off with a lovely Instagram post. No word on any consequences for them at this point, but I imagine their careers in politics are probably coming to an end. Shannon, do you think this announcement and these consequences are sufficient?
00:10:39
Speaker
I think that the MLAs, the electeds who left the country should face consequences of being removed from caucus. I don't see any alternate universe in which, if anyone had done that in our caucus, that that wouldn't have been the case. You know, that there wouldn't be an actual consequence. And that actual consequence is not sitting in caucus anymore.
00:11:08
Speaker
not being part of the team. Now, as for Minister Allard, I think that she should have been removed in the first instance from her job as municipal affairs minister, but she should never have been allowed to leave the country in the first place. Particularly not that we've just learned that her memo that went into the Premier's office assigning her acting minister asked for December 19th to January 10th
00:11:38
Speaker
to have her duties covered off by Rick McIver as acting minister. That's an insane amount of time for a minister to request an acting. I've never seen anything like that. I would never have the chutzpah to have done that. That's just a mind-boggling
00:12:00
Speaker
amount of time to be like, yeah, I'm not feeling it, you know, in terms of the job, especially now, my heavens. The details of how a minister kind of leaves the country is definitely something I want to ask, considering your past history as a minister. But so what Allard gets a demotion from cabinet caucus, so she gets, what, a $60,000 less a year. At least, yeah. But for every other backbencher who had their committees, who are now no longer working on committees, it's like
00:12:29
Speaker
That's actually less work for the same amount of pay, right? There's no consequence there. No, Alberta MLA is with the exception of a couple don't get paid to be on committees anymore. In fact, this is nice for those MLAs and it's worse for their colleagues who have to do more committee assignments.
00:12:56
Speaker
So, you know, the ones who did follow the rules get an extra kick in the teeth and that they have to attend more committees. So I imagine they're really impressed and they were probably really impressed with their colleagues to start with and now doubly so. So, you know, it's not a consequence at all. And that's why they should be given the boot from caucus. You know, the problem for Mr. Kenny is, of course, the emergent far right within his caucus and within the province.
00:13:25
Speaker
And so, you know, it's not at all for sure that at least some of those folks wouldn't wander off into a different political vehicle if they were booted from caucus. And that's why he knows he can't boot them.
Revelations and Fallout from Political Travels
00:13:40
Speaker
But he's going to have, like he's damned if he doesn't, damned if he doesn't, right? Because if there are no consequences and there aren't, and in fact, he's just made life harder for
00:13:52
Speaker
at the other caucus colleagues who did stay home, or at least we think they stayed home. They've never actually copped to the entire list. It's been up to the media to figure it out. I think he's still going to have internal caucus turmoil over this because
00:14:09
Speaker
The ones who stayed home and acted like ordinary people and didn't go gallivanting off all over the place, those ones are feeling the heat too in a big way, right? From their membership, it'll show up in fundraising dollars, all the rest of it. And I'm sure they're not impressed and I'm sure that some of those were already ones who were
00:14:32
Speaker
like already had one eye on the Wexiteers and the far righties and feeling like Kenny wasn't going far enough for their liking.
00:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, and you know how I said this list was subject to change, you know, as of recording. Literally, while we're recording, I have gotten a story messaged to me from the fine folks, published by the fine folks at Press Progress headline. The head of Jason Kenney's public inquiry into anti-Alberta activities worked remotely from Palm Springs. Subhead.
00:15:03
Speaker
Commissioner Steve Allen worked remotely on the public inquiry during a quote personal trip to Palm Springs spokesperson confirms Okay, well, you know, this is the thing like the hits just keep on coming for these guys, right I I mean I I mean the Steve Allen thing is is ridiculous but I mean that whole he is ridiculous at least his his current position and
00:15:30
Speaker
And the fact that he agreed to take it, I think he's sullied his own reputation and that of Alberta and Albertsons with the terrible job he's done and the terrible way he's handled that whole silly exercise. However, I think in terms of accountability, we need to focus more on the electives, right? No, I know, I know. It's just funny to get this one while I'm recording.
00:15:57
Speaker
How many how many others how many others is the question? There's gonna be more right because like clearly this is a whole Sort of segment of society that I didn't really even know existed in terms of they're just rank stupidity You know, there's a Venn diagram of having too much money and not enough brains And there's a whole bunch of like UCP and UCP adjacent people in that Venn diagram apparently There's just no other way to put it right it's just rank cluelessness on these folks part
00:16:28
Speaker
Um, you know, I'm, I'm less, I'm less concerned about, uh, uh, Savage or, or the other staffer guy went to like, I'm not super clear on the inter-provincial travel. I know there isn't a travel ban to, to BC. So I'm not as, I'm not as fussed about that as I am about the international travel, especially, uh, uh, when there is, you know, it's, it's just rank obvious on every.
00:16:54
Speaker
particular or every, you know, web posting, every, you know, those of us who watch Dina Hinch on TV and on YouTube, we got the message that we weren't to travel and we were to stay close to home. And a group of people who get literally in-person briefings from her didn't get the message, right? That's what I think we should focus on. And yeah, I do think that the right sanction here is to toss these clowns from caucus.
00:17:24
Speaker
So people are angry and not just you know, like The social democrats or lefties centrists liberals, whatever you want to call them But I think conservatives are pissed too. And and I think this is why can he backtrack so forcefully? Oh, yeah and why uh and why this is going to I think haunt them for months and perhaps years to come is that
00:17:49
Speaker
their base is pissed. And my question is to you is how do you think this compares to the Sky Palace and those kind of multiple Redford era scandals that happened? Well, those were a tempest in a teapot compared to this, right? This is a violation of not public health orders in the legal sense, but certainly all public health directives.
00:18:18
Speaker
Not to mention just good morals and common sense, right? It was it wasn't illegal, but they did obviously or they wouldn't have been able to get on airplanes But you know, it's we are supposed to govern ourselves according to personal responsibility according to somebody I heard anyway You know and and keep our travel to essential travel and You know spending like three and a half weeks in Hawaii. I don't think is can be
00:18:46
Speaker
can qualify as essential travel because it's a family tradition. The right is not amused. I got a few emails this morning that were people who were writing things like, dear Jason Kenney, please don't make me vote NDP. I don't like them.
00:19:05
Speaker
But I am not happy with you and and so one really struck me was really interesting You know because he was he was enumerating all the things that made him mad and this was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back right and But in there it was war with doctors. It was laying laying off health care workers and
00:19:24
Speaker
you know, mismanagement of pandemic and now this, right? This is the straw. But notably, you know, for people, even people who support the UCP, notably those first two things had to do with, you know, the public services and the health care system and the overall approach to fiscal policy and how we negotiate with health care workers.
00:19:47
Speaker
I mean, I think the hate flowing through the veins of conservatives right now is real. And I think it is equal or even greater than what we saw during the Sky Palace and the South African flight.
Analysis of Jason Kenney's Political Strategy
00:20:00
Speaker
Scandal era, but I think that the difference in These scandals is that there is very little chance of consequences for kenny There's there's nothing going on under the hood and caucus. There is no one there to hold him accountable Michaela glasgow was like literally the bravest mla On this file and her criticism was she called it a major lack of judgment when she was asked about this by the yeah I think matt jones from calgary southeast did a did sort of use similar language
00:20:29
Speaker
And his interventions in the matter weren't outright campaigning for cabinet, which it appeared that Glasgow was doing and using it as an opportunity. I think it's not exactly true that there's nothing happening under the hood and caucus. I think it's very clear from Mr. Kenny's actions, you don't need to be a political galaxy brain to see that
00:20:59
Speaker
He is pandering to the far right within caucus, within pandemic management, within a few other files like budget and so on, dealing with public sector compensation, negotiations, those kinds of things. You can see that he is doing that because he's afraid of the right.
00:21:24
Speaker
Not because he's particularly afraid of dumping votes off the truck in Calgary that are sort of in that more center kind of area, but because he's afraid of that eight to 10 points that splinters itself off on the right. And he's afraid of those folks who might already be sort of eyeing a different way to actually start making moves.
00:21:52
Speaker
So this does complicate those matters because that has been a dynamic all along. I think the other piece that does make it complicated is the effect on things like just fundraising. We've already seen them take that money from Ottawa and clearly they were already having problems with respect to fundraising. Maybe it's because they have so many bills to pay without all that RCMP stuff. I don't know.
00:22:19
Speaker
But they availed themselves of our federal public money to finance their partisan operations. The NDP never did. And I think that obviously this is gonna further affect fundraising and that is real, right? The other piece that it may affect is their stomach for some of their right-wing fever dreams that were allegedly gonna be moving on to the ballot
00:22:49
Speaker
this fall for the municipal campaign. They wanted to put a bunch of silliness on the municipal ballot, like a provincial police force or messing around with our CPP. We'll see the extent to which now he's got steel in his guts for those kinds of fights because they're not popular. I mean, especially CPP, people hate that idea and it hasn't even
00:23:15
Speaker
gone into contact with the opponent yet in terms of a campaign. So we'll see if he can actually do what he was wanting to set out to do, which is juice turnout with a bunch of grievance vote in October and open up the barn doors of PAC spending in and around municipal campaigns with all of these ridiculous referento on the ballot.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yes, I do just want to come back to the point about consequences and the differences between now and what happened in Redford's time. Kenny is not resigning, right? And this government and this political party are both created in Jason Kenny's image. And the people that are there, they're almost all of them by his good graces.
00:24:02
Speaker
And I mean, you're, you see these people more than I do. Like I'm talking about the UCP MLAs and who's who, but I mean, I, I talked to people too. And, and mostly disillusioned. I mean, obviously the inner circle of the UCP aren't talking to me. The folks I talked to are, you know, disillusioned conservatives.
00:24:19
Speaker
And they're like, Oh yeah, like the latest, you know, it's like, it's, it's, it's the Harper regime all over again, but without kind of like Harper's, like mycroft homes mind at the center of it all.
00:24:36
Speaker
And conservatives will eat their own. And when the trust is broken between leadership and the rank and file, conservatives give a shit about that. But again, there's no one at the party or the government level who will hold Kenny accountable. So there is, I think, just a difference between these two kind of scandals here. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, okay. The first difference is that then they had two political parties. Alison Redford was not a man. And there was a far-rate
00:25:03
Speaker
alternative that was splintering the party on the inside in terms of everything, organizing, fundraising, candidates, all of it. Kenny's entire thing has been, we need to uniter and we need to beat the NDP.
00:25:23
Speaker
And so that's what he'll continue to say. You need to stay here, otherwise the NDP wins. That's all he's got anymore. Certainly all these ideas of him being this really smart guy who's really good at politics, none of that was true, actually. He's had to sort of refashion himself, I think, in order to pander to the right to some sort of populist, but he is a terrible populist. He's really bad at that particular kind of
00:25:52
Speaker
of politics. And in that, I mean, you know, just doing things that are popular, you know, because because at its root, you know, you're talking to people in a language they can understand, and he has just completely lost the plot on that. So, you know, he does have a different political calculation. I mean, all everything's different in politics, you know, at every different juncture, when you're fighting the last war, then you're, you're probably losing.
00:26:20
Speaker
Mr. Kenny, I've watched him now for 18 months, a couple of years, and he certainly loves to lean back on the last war, and he thinks that that's what will be successful. So he is going to continue to do what he has always done. He will never admit he's wrong. He will not change course. And he conducts himself with an astonishing level of hubris. We saw that on Friday.
00:26:50
Speaker
The voters put that in check over the weekend and good on them, right, of all stripes. It's the first time that I have seen his hubris checked by the voters. So we'll see if it happens again. But I've never seen him chastened, ever, and he should have done it on Friday and stood up there and put some steel in his spine and stood up and said, you know, I've got a failure of leadership here and I'm going to fix it.
00:27:20
Speaker
I think Albertans would have forgiven that, but not this. But if we learn anything after the last couple of years, it's that he wasn't some galaxy brain, a political mastermind at all. He's not good at this.
00:27:40
Speaker
i think i think the jason kenny is this political puppet master playing six-dimensional chess uh... no that's wrong uh... and honestly the guy puts in an eight to ten hour work day which puts him ahead of the vast majority of his lazy ass colleagues but i mean i think yeah there's enough evidence to show that you know this scandal and everything else that that is sticking to his regime is entirely of his own creation right because
00:28:07
Speaker
The political party is him because the government is him and because he wants to get these very specific things done in this specific order. You know, we've seen what we've seen. He's the most unpopular premier in Canada. He's burned through 20 some points of popularity in 18 months and a whole bunch of political capital. And he hasn't even made the cuts yet. He's only announced them like those people haven't even gotten their pink slips. You know, he's announced to everyone that he's about to piss on them, but he hasn't even actually sidled up and done it yet.
00:28:36
Speaker
And so what's going to actually happen, you know, I think, I think this really puts spine in the steel of, of workers who are about to, you know, see who are about to be subject to these plans for, you know, massive, large scale layoffs and privatization of healthcare as just the first one. And, um, uh, I think, I think this is a, a huge blow to his political agenda, right?
00:29:02
Speaker
Well, he's lost the ability to say to Albertans were like, you know, on any level for any political proposition that he might make to them, you know, that we are in this together. We and, you know, we're all going to pull through and weave together some kind of political identity for himself that puts him in and among the people. Right. I mean, Klein was able to do that. Right. Until he sort of lost the plot at the end.
00:29:34
Speaker
Obviously, people like you and I, I'm older than you, so we disagreed with that agenda, but we couldn't disagree with the fact that Albertans were behind him, by and large, at least the majority of them. What Kenny's lost the ability to do, whether that's on pandemic response and
00:29:52
Speaker
and stay home or follow the public health orders or any of that kind of collective effort or any other collective effort that he is asking of the electorate, he has lost the ability to make that straight case that arguably even, I would say up until probably about summer, he was still able to make that case. I do think that many of the cuts have already been noticed and felt they have already begun
00:30:23
Speaker
And that demonstrates to us the extent to which those systems were already under stress after a year of Essential zeros that is to say losing ground to inflation and population in education and health care We are already seeing really really severe strain there and you're right it is before the cuts but there have been cuts is I think what I'm trying to say and and because he's sort of dribbled this out that too has
00:30:51
Speaker
affected is political fortunes. But to get away from sort of playing pundit here for a minute and just zero in on what the effect will be on ordinary people. So when a government loses the plot like this, they can do one of two things, right? They can course correct, or they will just double down and hope like hell
00:31:19
Speaker
that, you know, through grievance politics and other things that they can, can juice the turnout to be able to, you know, turn out the vote where they need to win in order to maintain their majority. I think it's pretty obvious when what we've learned from Mr. Kenny's character that he is going to do the latter, which is going to mean significant suffering for ordinary people. And so I don't like to play predictions because, you know, he could course correct. He could.
00:31:49
Speaker
In which case, yes, we will be better off, not as well off as if we would have a government that isn't full of people who lie on the rag. But I doubt that will happen, but the amount of human suffering that I believe that we are going to see as a consequence of the budget coming in February or whenever they decide to bring it in is actually going to be quite staggering.
00:32:17
Speaker
And finally, I just want to close it off with the angle on this story that just might drag it out for an extra few weeks. And that is, you know, what did Candy know and when did he know it? Well, you know, when you leave the country as a certainly as a minister, you have to send a memo into the Premier's office. I believe it's through Cabinet Coordination Office, although I'm not certain about that. And but you you send in
00:32:45
Speaker
I noticed that you are going to be out of service or leaving. When I would go to BC because where we go doesn't have very good service, I would appoint an acting minister and have to send in a memo because if I didn't have cell service, then I couldn't act as a minister. Even when you leave the province, oftentimes you would appoint an acting. That was our policy anyway. And so that goes in now.
00:33:14
Speaker
We didn't just do whatever we wanted. We had to send in our time off requests back then when we were in government and now when we're in opposition into the sort of central coordinating body. So the ministers had one and the MLAs had the caucus office.
00:33:35
Speaker
It wasn't a question of us just, you know, taking off whenever we felt
Political Accountability and Travel Notifications
00:33:39
Speaker
like it. Like these things were coordinated so that not everyone is gone at the same time. So we have the right, you know, spokespeople around on offsetting weeks and so on. And I cannot imagine a scenario in which
00:33:56
Speaker
you know, the Premier's office cannot immediately confirm which of its ministers are gone, particularly high during a global pandemic when you're not supposed to leave the country for holidaying reasons.
00:34:10
Speaker
First of all, I mean, my leader would have never allowed that in a million trillion years, but there's no way that the Premier's office wouldn't have been advised of where that person was going because it's just too important. Your minister signature is oftentimes needed for all kinds of different things. But even MLAs, there is a process, at least there is for us through the WIP. And if the WIP on the UCP side didn't
00:34:39
Speaker
I did say don't leave the country and people did it anyway. That right there should be grounds for being kicked out of caucus. It certainly would be on my team. There is no way that if the whip tells you to do something and then you go do something else, that that doesn't come with a consequence because the whip speaks for the leader. Now, as for Jason Kenney's chief of staff, I was reflecting on this the other day. I don't think that there was one minute
00:35:08
Speaker
out of four straight years that I was a minister that I didn't know or I couldn't have told you with almost exact precision of where my chief of staff was at any given moment in four years, even if the answer was sometimes, you know, oh, he's out of service and he's climbing a mountain in Banff. I knew when he went out of service and I knew when he came back in.
00:35:31
Speaker
I knew when his holidays were because we would coordinate them and do it all as an office. I knew if he ever went out of the country, which I think was only once. But your chief of staff is your three-legged race partner for the duration of when you're a minister or a premier. There is no way on God's green earth
00:35:56
Speaker
that Jason Kenney didn't know that his chief was out of town. If he had no idea that his chief left the country, get a new chief because your chief should talk to you. You know, from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, you're three-legged racing with that human being. And if they don't talk to each other, then probably time for a new relationship.
00:36:19
Speaker
And that was our interview with Shannon Phillips, the NDP MLA for Lethbridge West.
Public Outrage over Political Travels
00:36:24
Speaker
Unfortunately, technical difficulties kind of cut off the end of that interview and we weren't able to get a proper goodbye on tape, but thanks again to Shannon for coming on the show. Before we get to the final part of our pod with producer Jim and I just going over this gong show of a scandal,
00:36:39
Speaker
We have called a few choice comments from Jason Kenney's Facebook page. These are underneath his recent announcement about the resignations, such as they are. Before we get into my conversation with Jim, I think it's instructive to just kind of see what's out there in the world. This one is from Lorraine M. Foster.
00:37:00
Speaker
My husband did not attend his brother's funeral. We did not see our daughter and her family, who live in Calgary, over the holidays. We respected the guidelines and did not travel. If the members of Jason Kenny's government are not smart enough to follow guidelines, they are certainly not smart enough to be making decisions on Albertan's behalf. They should all be fired.
00:37:18
Speaker
Our daughter, who was a nurse, had her booked holidays canceled and had to work through the holidays. I guess we know who keeps this province moving forward. Again, that's from Lorraine Foster on Jason Kennedy's Facebook page. And this one is a nice choice one.
00:37:33
Speaker
Uh, from Curtis Browsin. He's quoting Jason Kenney here. Quote, Albertans want their MLAs to be accountable to them. A UCB government would introduce a recall act allowing voters to fire their MLAs in between elections if they've lost the public's trust. That's Jason Kenney from February 14th, 2019. Curtis Browsin's comment, whenever you're ready.
00:37:55
Speaker
And finally from Debbie Krakowski, I couldn't travel to BC last month to bury my 17 year old grandson, but they could travel out of the country. You weren't clear with them on the restrictions. I've been aware of them from the start. Were there different restrictions for politicians or were we all under the same restrictions? This sounds like a lot of double talk and sweeping under the rug to me. For the record, I voted for you. Now you're making me rethink my decision. That's Debbie Krakowski on
00:38:22
Speaker
Jason Kenney's Facebook wall. And Jim has now stepped up to the mic and has joined me after a long hiatus away from the mic. Jim, welcome back. Hey, thanks, Duncan. You know, I understand a lot of the outrage that I'm seeing there, hearing there. I mean, I'm feeling kind of the same way myself. My father passed this year.
00:38:47
Speaker
His service was out in British Columbia and I didn't travel because of COVID. Frequent listeners probably know that I was in and out of the hospital already this year and did not relish the thought of going back because of corona. And so I sat that one out. It's not like that event is going to happen again next year. I can just go again.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's kind of infuriating that you have people like Tracey Allard keeping up her 17 year Hawaii Christmas streak while the rest of us are stuck at home. But, you know, I am personally not a very big hypocrisy politics kind of guy. I don't really give a shit about the $15 glasses of orange juice type scandals, especially when we're talking about
00:39:44
Speaker
Conservative voters who for the most part assume that politicians are all corrupt Which is why they're all such big small government fans because they think that government is shit in the first place And so you you know, you don't really get very far by telling them. Oh
00:40:00
Speaker
Jason Kenny's a crook. Well, they already kind of assumed that Jason Kenny was a crook. He was just he was a crook on their side, right? What I care about are actual material impacts on people and in those terms I think this is a lot worse than the Sky Palace.
00:40:15
Speaker
It's a lot worse than Lukaszuk's phone bill. It's a lot worse than people taking up extra seats on a flight to South Africa. Because at the end of the day, those were like minuscule drops in the provincial budget that had basically no impact on anyone. Maybe they spoke to some people's character, but they didn't hurt anyone. This stuff, though, I mean, we were just reading last week. I'll make sure to throw this up in the show notes for the pod.
00:40:44
Speaker
University College of London did a study on people in the UK who were breaking the COVID guidelines out there. And they found that people were following the rules at first. It's when they started seeing authority figures breaking the rules and taking advantage of loopholes, that kind of thing, when they stopped breaking or when they stopped following the rules.
00:41:09
Speaker
And I mean, we're already having a hell of a time in Alberta getting these anti-mask assholes to do the bare minimum. And now, I mean, it's going to be even more people breaking the rules, even more people spreading COVID. COVID is going to be here longer in the province.
00:41:26
Speaker
That's serious stuff. Here's a comment from Jason Kenney's Facebook page again. The hypocrisy of this is also infuriating. I think it's time to just open it all up, Mr. Kenney. If government officials have no fear or feel no worry of COVID-19, then why should I? Because you and Dr. Hinshaw say so. You have lost the trust of Albertans and it's now time to live our lives freely. I want to see my family and friends
00:41:46
Speaker
Exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point all in all caps. Yeah. Yeah, exactly like the the far right Dipshits they are they're going around calling these these COVID measures which were very far from an actual lockdown in the first place calling them tyranny tyranny
00:42:04
Speaker
Well, what's more tyrannical than having one set of rules for the powerful and another set of rules for the peons? Like they're I had to say it but they you know, they're they're wrong about the big picture but the but some of these details they are getting right Well, I mean the classic conservative politics where they're where they're on they get the first part right but the second part is wrong the the part about breaking the rules and the example that that sets though and and the study that you reference that
00:42:32
Speaker
is the concerning part because one, I think we're set for a huge spike in cases over the next five days, 10 days anyways, just from Christmas and New Year's and from people not following the rules. But now.
00:42:45
Speaker
Like again, what's, what's the, like the study doesn't lie. Like when, when that fucking asshole British MP staff or whatever it was Cummings broke the rules in the UK, there was significant rule breaking, significant backsliding on following the public health guidelines around COVID-19 after that. And we're just going to see that again here. Like it's, it's, it's, I don't see how we couldn't see it any other way. The only thing that is possibly saving our ass here is, is vaccination, but our vaccination rollout is
Critique of Vaccination Rollout
00:43:14
Speaker
We're gonna bring it me and you and I are gonna get vaccinated in like November or something November 2022 November 2023 the vaccination rollout is fucking scuffed I mean the minister who was in charge of it was Allard. Yeah, she took three weeks off to go to Hawaii in the middle of it Yeah, I mean I mean yes, it was her deputy minister responsible for but who gives a shit What's that what's another big issue on this one that you wanted to raise I know
00:43:45
Speaker
The issue of caucus revolt and like we talked about this with Shannon, but I still think it's an issue worth parsing because I and I think we disagree on this and this makes for better podcasting better radio is that I don't see it I just I just don't see I just don't think there's any there there and But you disagree so so give me your take on on the kind of caucus revolt line on this Okay, well in the current trajectory. No, there's I don't think there's any risk of a caucus revolt and
00:44:15
Speaker
You compare this to the Sky Palace, and it's the inverse of the Sky Palace, right? Because it was the premier who fucked up, maybe less so than ultimately was the story. I mean, there were people who had vested interests in running her out so that they could take over, and they kind of torqued this thing for outrage.
00:44:37
Speaker
At the end of the day it was it was the premier who fucked up and then it was the people underneath her who held her to account, I'm doing scare quotes here, by knifing her in the back and throwing her out.
00:44:48
Speaker
They threatened to resign. They had levers. They were willing to pull, which I don't think we have in this case. Yeah, but what's going to happen in this case is Pat Rain going to threaten to resign if Jason Kenney kicks him out of caucus? Resign from what?
Effectiveness of Punishments for MLAs
00:45:04
Speaker
Pat Rain barely has a fucking job. He makes $120,000 a year to go sit and do nothing, but he barely has any responsibility.
00:45:12
Speaker
Just to interrupt you on Pat Rayne, you messaged me about this and I was like, who the fuck is Pat Rayne? And you had to tell me and I, I mean, I follow Alberta politics for a living. I had no idea who Pat Rayne was. Now I know. Apparently he lives in Texas for the most part. I don't know. I mean, I don't want to shit on the guy too hard. He's a good Red Deer boy like me is my understanding. Hasn't house in Red Deer, but his constituency is lesser slave-like.
00:45:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, point me to one conservative politician who lives where their seat is. You know, you've got two or three MPs from Edmonton who live in Ottawa. Taniyao is more commonly seen in Edmonton Strathcona than in Fort Mac, et cetera, et cetera.
00:45:55
Speaker
Speaking of Taniyau, has anyone found him yet? We're recording 517 on January 4th and still no word on Taniyau's location. If you know where Taniyau is, please call Jason Kenney immediately. He's very worried about his boy. All they know is Mexico.
00:46:13
Speaker
which is just hilarious we know the country that he's in that's it okay but let me get back to these these committee members for a second because let's uh let's be real about what really happened with these backbench mlas and the punishment of removing them from committees i think you and you and shannon touched on this briefly but
00:46:32
Speaker
There was like a very small attempt at a scandal. Years ago when Rachel Notley was sitting on a couple of committees and one of them, it didn't have any meetings and Notley didn't like take, she didn't draw her pay from that committee, other politicians did, but somehow Notley was the one that the conservatives screeched about over it.
00:46:53
Speaker
and so the the UCP one of their commitments was to take away pay for I think maybe even the NDP got rid of pay for committees like pay for committees is long gone whenever it went away it's you know you don't get paid for that it's it's just considered kind of like part of your regular job duties you don't get a bonus for it now
00:47:10
Speaker
And it's like barely real work. Like if we had more of like a functional legislature with like discourse and debate going on between parties, then maybe things would be getting worked out in committees. But generally what goes on in the committees is the UCP guys sit down and they say, okay, this is what we're gonna do. And then the NDP guys on the committee, they'll spend about half an hour being like,
00:47:35
Speaker
this is a really bad idea i have these amendments that i would like to propose that would fix uh that would fix this up to close these holes or fix these problems and what you're proposing and then the ucp guys at the end of the meeting are like fuck you no meeting adjourned and that's that's all that happens in any of these committees
00:47:51
Speaker
Yeah, committees have even less power in Alberta than they have in Ottawa, and they definitely don't have the power that they have in the American government. Yeah, it is not prestigious to sit on these committees. It's not great for your career. It doesn't give you influence. And you don't get any extra money for it. So it's a chore. It's like busy work. So these backbench MLAs have been relieved of having to do the dishes.
00:48:14
Speaker
But they still get paid just as much every year So it's like kenny has given them an extra like four hours of vacation every week They can sit around and play candy crush or I don't I don't know what a conservative do whatever they do I mean they have to show up to work and stand when they have to stand and say I when they have to say I and then they have to do a bit of constituent work, which whatever some some like doing that some don't and
00:48:36
Speaker
Pat Rain, your mileage may vary. And yeah, you're entirely correct. So he has punished them, scare quotes behind the mic here, by taking away a chore. And that's it. Kenny can't fire these guys as MLAs, right?
00:48:55
Speaker
He could throw them out of his caucus, but he can't make them stop being MLAs. He could call them up and demand they resign, and maybe one or two of them are spineless enough that they would actually do it. But I suspect that most of these guys, if he called them up and was like, I want you to step down and have a by-election in your area, they'd be like, nah, I'm going to keep this $120,000 a year paycheck and sit as an independent, and if you want to replace me, you can try in the next election.
00:49:24
Speaker
That's the, that would be the actual punishment that he could do. He could kick them out of, he could kick them out of caucus. It would be bad for their careers. They would probably not get reelected the next time. And that's about as much as he could do. He's not doing that. And I think the two reasons that he's not doing that is first of all, if he starts throwing like Tanya Fuhrer, Jason Stephan out of caucus, then people are going to start asking, why is Tracy Allard still in caucus? Why is Jeremy Nixon still in caucus? And he really doesn't want to throw those ones out.
00:49:52
Speaker
I mean, Allard's got influence. The Nixons have a lot of influence. He doesn't want to throw those on. But he also doesn't want to kick six or seven MLAs out and have them sent off to the corner to hang out with only each other and talk about how mad they are at Jason Kenney and scheme amongst themselves. And that's the only thing that could possibly be the seed of a caucus revolt. I don't think that it's like 100% would cause it, but it would take it from like 0% to 5%.
00:50:21
Speaker
Okay. All right. Well, you've made the case for a caucus revolt. I think, you know, there's a lot to say here and it is hard to kind of distill your, your rage and your anger into something that is coherent. I don't even think I have sworn once on this podcast. Uh, you know, you go back and listen to the tape, but like, I am angry and, and it is, and it is hard and I've been angry at this government for a long time and it's hard to be angry all the time.
00:50:46
Speaker
You know what I mean? And being professionally angry on time on the line takes a toll on you. It gives me no pleasure to be right all the time about how venal and awful and bad for regular people that this government is. It kind of actually sucks to be right all the time. And so not to say that I'm tired. I like the job that I have. I like that I'm able to talk to someone like Shannon Phillips or that I'm able to talk with you, Jim, here. And people want to listen to this.
00:51:15
Speaker
But I think it's also important to realize that like
00:51:20
Speaker
Jason Kenney has told us to all eat shit here. And that like as given our system of government and the way we have structured it, he is essentially our king for the next two and a half years. I mean there's only there's really only two routes to doing anything about Jason Kenney being premier. One of them is like it's it's safe but not very exciting and will take a while.
00:51:45
Speaker
Which is that people could line up behind the new Democrats and try and win the next election and I have I have a lot of issues with the NDP but I would still recommend that people vote for them and I mean be
00:52:01
Speaker
Be reasonable about how much of your hopes and energy you're going to put behind a political party Like they are a tool that you should use to get what you want And they are not a team that you should give your total and utter devotion to But that means waiting until 2023 which is a pretty fucking long time Yeah in the immediate term the immediate far more There are some there are some things you can do that will dramatically affect You know your life and the lives of your people of the people around you and that is you know getting
Advocacy for Union Involvement
00:52:30
Speaker
involved in your workplace and talking to your coworkers and getting involved in your union. When a wildcat strike happens in places like Claire's home and Barhead and Elk Point, that is the shit that scares the UCP, much more so than a great zinger in question period from the NDP.
00:52:52
Speaker
And and wherever you are listening to this, you know, it is incumbent upon you to talk to your family and your friends and your coworkers about, you know, the material conditions, how your material conditions can improve. And that is by standing up and asking for them. Yes. Yeah. I mean, there is a lot of.
00:53:12
Speaker
I would say overly optimistic talk about, you know, snapping the fingers and suddenly having a general strike appear. And I don't think that betting everything on that is a great idea, but there's more to effective labor power than general strikes, right? There's just actual regular strikes. And like you were saying to Shannon during the interview,
00:53:41
Speaker
Because of all of these fuck-ups and all this bumbling around over the past year and a half,
00:53:47
Speaker
not just the COVID screw-ups, but like the war room screw-ups, the inquiry screw-ups, just like tripping and falling over themselves in the legislature and not getting bills passed. A lot of the really heavy negative stuff in the UCP agenda is still to come. People have not, like the majority of the layoffs have not hit yet. Yeah, some people have laid off, but like three quarters of the promised layoffs haven't happened. I'm pulling that number out of my ass, but like a huge chunk are still to come.
00:54:15
Speaker
And what that means is that the majority of this strikes and the majority of the labor unrest has not happened yet. The battles are going to get bigger and bigger over the next couple of years, especially if Kenny continues to go really hard with this austerity agenda and continues trying to dismantle the social welfare net here in the province.
00:54:36
Speaker
So in the immediate term, I think that people should get involved with their labor union. They should get involved with local non-electoral leftist organizations in their community that they think are important. You know, you got a lot of like anti-racist groups in the bigger cities. You have things like the groups pushing for the green line in Calgary. You've got the groups trying to support safe consumption sites down in Lethbridge. These are all effective groups that are fighting against the UCP agenda.
00:55:05
Speaker
I think probably you should get on the NDP mailing list.
Audience Support and Contact Information
00:55:08
Speaker
I don't know maybe you want to send them five bucks maybe you don't want to send them five bucks but you're probably going to want to vote for them in the next election the way things are looking but I wouldn't put all your hopes and dreams behind them either. Yeah and with that folks I think Jim and I could talk about this for another half hour or an hour but I think we got to end it here. I just want to end it by thanking everyone who stepped up and became a donor over the past month. We doubled the amount of
00:55:33
Speaker
regular monthly donors we have to the progress report and if you are hearing this now and you still have not jumped on the train it is very easy to do so go to the progress report dot ca slash patrons put in your credit card number your details five ten fifteen whatever you can donate a month
00:55:49
Speaker
that is very helpful to us. And we're going to have more details about our plans for continuing to exist that are going to come out. We have a timeline. There are some goals we definitely have to hit over the next six months in order for us to continue. But I'm not going to burden you with this at the end of the podcast. But if you like what we do, if you like this podcast, please, please support us. And I think that's it. If you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, I'm very easy to reach on Twitter. I'm at Duncan Kinney.
00:56:17
Speaker
And you can reach me by email at DuncanKatProgressAlberta.ca. Jim, how can people find you on Twitter? Don't. He's the catch-up man on Twitter, and he's at Jim's story. He's a great Twitter follow. Don't listen to him. Thanks so much to Cosmic FamU Communist for the amazing theme that we played at the beginning. Thank you for listening, and goodbye. Bye-bye.