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Jason Kenney's new radio show is mid
150 Plays2 years ago
Rory Gillies of the Alberta Advantage joins host Duncan Kinney to break down Jason Kenney's painfully boring new radio show and how modern Canadian conservatism is built on the Back to the Bible Radio Hour with 'Bible' Bill Aberhart and his protege, Ernest Manning.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Progress Report
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey folks, Duncan Kinney here to remind you that The Progress Report is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network. A new pod on the network that I want to highlight is the latest from darts and letters. Host Jay Cockburn looks at forensic DNA technology's relation to ideas about law, race, and criminality in an episode exploring the frontiers of forensic DNA and artificial intelligence.
00:00:19
Speaker
Also, the Progress Report newsletter is back and publishing again, and our editor Jim Story is actually writing it right now as I record this. There is definitely going to be something in there about the Calgary Police's shameful display this past weekend, where they sided with the pro-COVID protesters, pushing counter-protesters out of the way so they could continue their march. So check the show notes for a link to sign up for that newsletter. Now, on to the show.
Alberta's Media Landscape
00:00:56
Speaker
Thousands of our citizens depend on the radio, either their own or their neighbors, for the news of the day. They are not able to afford a newspaper. I can quite understand, therefore, what a drug stand the radio is. Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney, recording today here in a Miskwichiwa sky again, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty Six territory on the banks of the Kasis Kasalwanisipi, or the North Saskatchewan River.
00:01:26
Speaker
Joining us today to discuss Jason Kenney's blockbuster new radio show and his dollar-store impersonation of the Back to the Bible Hour is a member of Team Alberta Advantage Rory Gillies. You will know him from the Alberta Advantage. He also writes for Jackman. You might also see him on Twitter as LeftWigxit, one of the lonely people pushing for a left-wing wagxit.
00:01:52
Speaker
Uh, but Rory, welcome to the
Jason Kenney's Radio Show Analysis
00:01:54
Speaker
pod. How are you doing? Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to talk about Bible bill, uh, a subject matter. I don't really get to talk about as much as I would like. You are one of the like premier Bible billologists, like in my circle and like friends and acquaintances. So I think, yes, I, I too need to know more about Bible bill and I'm happy that you're on the show. But before we get to Bible bill,
00:02:16
Speaker
I do have to apologize because a precondition of coming on this, on the show was that you did have to listen to Jason Kenny's radio show, your premier, your province on CHQR and Ched and Edmonton and Calgary. It breaks my usual rule of never listening to podcasts. So I didn't make this podcast.
00:02:42
Speaker
Well, I thank you for your service. You know, I think off the top, I just gotta say it was incredibly fucking mid. It was not interesting, not cool, not fun to listen to in any way. Really only one worthwhile kind of bit of confrontation or like bit of radio that maybe lasted like three minutes total in the whole hour. And yeah, just gotta say, not a fan.
00:03:09
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. It was pretty dreary. There wasn't really anything spicy that happened either from weirdos who... Well, there was a little bit of one which we'll get into, but generally, I feel this is a place where Kenny is in his element.
00:03:24
Speaker
because he can really, I mean to an extent he like knows his stuff so he's able to give answers to things and knows how to answer them in ways that don't necessarily get him into trouble. But I mean of course there's still slip ups that we see him do at press conferences from time to time.
00:03:41
Speaker
Yeah, no one's ever going to accuse Jason Kenney of being unprepared or not knowing his talking points, but I still ... If you've watched his Facebook Lives, which again, they're like three hours long sometimes. He could do this shit for hours, where he does his little Professor Kenney shtick and he'll entertain the idiot questions from the hoi polloi. He knows his stuff. He reads his briefing notes. He talks to his comm staff. He knows what his talking points are going to be.
00:04:06
Speaker
but like there's never any there's no there there like there's no person there's no like conviviality there's no like anything behind the eyes really you know yeah he's just a pure politician he does nothing else but be a conservative politician and unsurprisingly he's good at it
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He's a professional politician, but I mean, and my brain has probably been poisoned by listening to Kenny and his press conferences and his Facebook lives for so long. But do you think there is like anything in here in this hour long show, which really only had maybe like 20 minutes of actual content? Uh, do you think there's anything in there that resonated with regular ass people?
Purpose and Impact of Kenney's Show
00:04:47
Speaker
I don't know. I found that one third of the questions were critical of Kenny from his left, and then another third were critical of him from his right about specifically around the pandemic restrictions. And then the other third was like, we think you're doing a good job. Can you do this other particular thing? Like a very specific policy question or whatever, right? Yeah, which actually felt like a planted question.
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, he's just not a very relatable dude. And I don't think anyone really knows what makes him tick, aside from the fact that he likes being a politician, he likes being in charge. But yeah, it does not make for a compelling radio. If you were to clip it into a podcast, it would not make for a compelling podcast. The final tally was over an hour, was six phone questions, five text questions, three softball questions from the host.
00:05:44
Speaker
And of course, one premise rejected, which has become a hallmark of Kenny press conferences over his time in office, which is like the general kind of incredulity whenever he's faced with like a contrasting narrative or ideology that doesn't match up perfectly with his. But yeah, I agree. It was a pretty hostile crowd. And anyone who expressed any kind of sentiment, the majority of folks who did were like, fuck you, man, I don't like you.
00:06:13
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing, it was difficult to figure out what the point of the show was, like who is Kenny speaking to? He says at the beginning that he wants to do this because it gives him a chance to talk to ordinary Albertans, the Martha and Henry's of suburban Calgary. And he
00:06:37
Speaker
Because he says this is better than going to talk to people in party settings or talking to the media. So this is more of this is what his stated goal of this is. But I don't know if that's necessarily what the point of this is or what the angle. I think that's a point worth bringing up, especially later on when we're just like, what is it all for? Because like, yeah, like I'm not convinced that the 10 a.m. talk radio crowd is any larger than the
00:07:04
Speaker
crowd, or if it's worth it for the effort and expense, then the crowd, he gets on a Facebook live. You know what I mean? It's like 10 a.m. on Saturday morning. It's like not really a prime slot for talk radio.
00:07:17
Speaker
No, absolutely not. And so yeah, I struggle to understand this thing. I wonder if it will last very long because again, it's just boring. It's dull as fucking dish water. But I did bring up the one bit of conflict on the show, the one bit of spiciness where he did reject the premise of the question. And that was he was challenged by a caller who had a question
00:07:40
Speaker
about the curriculum and like it's the only clip that is really kind of worth playing from it. I'm just going to, we're just going to play it. We can listen to it, react to it. Dr. Angela Grace here. Um, Mr. Premier, I have a question for you about the draft curriculum. Why have you budgeted $191 million to taxpayer dollars on implementing a draft curriculum that over 40,000 parents, 95% of teachers, the deans of education and educational experts, school trustees and school boards,
00:08:10
Speaker
First Nation may be an Inuit opposed and say is racist, whitewashed, aggressive, and will cause children significant harm. And part two, will you be attending the province-wide ditch the draft curriculum protest on April 2nd?
Kenney's Defense of Curriculum Changes
00:08:25
Speaker
Well, thank you, Dr. Grace. I think that qualifies for a heavily loaded question, but thank you for it. So I'll tell you why we're redrafting the curriculum because we have a democratic mandate to do so. One of the key commitments we made to Albertans in the last election was to hit the pause button on the NDP's highly politicized curriculum to have a open transparent consultation process with parents and also subject matter experts and teachers on how to come up with a solid
00:08:55
Speaker
balanced, revised curriculum that would provide for especially better outcomes on areas like literacy and numeracy. We've seen, as you know, a worrisome decline in outcomes amongst Alberta students in international standardized tests over the last 15 years, clearly linked to the embrace of failed teaching methods like, for example, discovery, math and inquiry learning.
00:09:20
Speaker
So the commitment we made to Albertans was to get back to tried, true and tested teaching methods and curriculum content that is more content rich. And that's exactly what we're doing. I don't accept a lot of the premises in your questionnaire. For example, the survey of teachers was a tiny fraction of teachers, but we have delayed implementation of the math and language arts, excuse me, of the social studies and other curriculum subjects for an additional year.
00:09:49
Speaker
and more recently for grades four to six for math and language arts, precisely in order to take on board input from Albertans. So look, I know that this unfortunately has become a bit of a political football and I know that people on the left want to use the curriculum to inject their political ideology into the curriculum. This government won't do that. We were elected with marching orders to get back to basics in the curriculum. That's exactly what we're doing.
00:10:12
Speaker
So instead, you're putting your highly politicized ideology, military, political and Christian ideology into the curriculum. And what you're saying is you had this mandate to do it. However, the Argyle report isn't even out yet with a whole bunch more
00:10:34
Speaker
survey results along with the Have Your Safe survey has not been released publicly, so the public actually doesn't know what the experts are saying.
00:10:46
Speaker
All right, fair question. Mr. Premier, you have just a short response time for this one before we go to break. So there's a multi-year, extensive, transparent and open consultation process. We've actually slowed it down to allow for more consultations because we do want to know what everyone thinks. The NDP draft social studies curriculum had zero mention, you talk about the military, zero mention of
00:11:09
Speaker
a Canadian military history of 120,000 war dead. In what world do you educate a future generation with zero acknowledgement or respect for the contributions of the people who defended our
Leadership Review and Approval Challenges
00:11:20
Speaker
freedom? That's not a militarized curriculum. What we need is a, when it comes to social studies, inaccurate and objective reflection of who we are as a society and how we developed.
00:11:29
Speaker
Thank you, Mr. Kenny. We're going to pause for the bottom hour news. If you have questions for Premier Jason Kenny, or if you have concerns or issues you... All right, all right. That's it. That was really the only spicy content out of an hour of fucking boring ass talk radio. Even then, it's pretty tepid. It's like a person comes on who's mad about the curriculum, justifiably so. Jason Kenny sticks a whole lot of ideology into his answers to those questions.
00:11:57
Speaker
If you're looking for the totality of the only interesting bits of this hour, that was it. Yeah, and it was also very rich to see Kenny complain about the politicized curriculum review that the NDP had been doing, a curriculum review that if I recall correctly was started under the previous PC government.
00:12:19
Speaker
But the fact is that saying, oh, well, the social studies curriculum has currently been delayed for another year for more public input. The reason it was delayed is because it was slagged very heavily by teaching experts and teachers and the public in general for being highly politicized because Kenny is talking about how
00:12:39
Speaker
You know, we don't talk about Canada's war dead and sacrifices and the military apparently is not in this NDP ideology curriculum. But the social studies curriculum was written by Chris Champion, who is highly ideological and in fact doesn't really contain much about Canada either. It was mostly about like weird stuff about ancient Rome and ancient Greece, which is just like
00:13:05
Speaker
reactionary. This is not a podcast about Chris Champion, but Chris Champion is like the final form of what happens if you're like a white Greek statue guy. But okay, so like, there you go. That was the only interesting bit. There's still a couple of things I want to talk to you about the show before we can pivot to the historical context.
00:13:27
Speaker
The host I think is worth bringing up a little bit. I think just absolutely baby shit, soft questions. Let Kenny get away with just blathering on about his very first question was about the defamation case, which has been brought forward by environmental groups who were like, Hey, like this inquiry happened and then didn't find anything bad or wrong happened. And then you were out here saying,
00:13:49
Speaker
that you were misrepresenting the findings of your own inquiry. Yeah, he did that and the host didn't challenge him on that because the inquiry found that there was very little foreign activist money being sent to Canada to landlock the tar sands or whatever the accusation was.
00:14:12
Speaker
Yeah, very little money and nothing wrong. They did absolutely nothing wrong. The inquiry, the commissioner at the head of the public inquiry went above and beyond over and over repeatedly within the context of his final report to say that
00:14:27
Speaker
Nobody involved, did anything wrong. It got like an extra year and like another million dollars to do it too. Yes, yes. I mean, it's funny just talking about the past three years of Kenny government because it is, they just repeatedly and continually fucking shoot themselves in the foot.
00:14:45
Speaker
Well, the post at one point even stated, oh, here's a text message question. I'm going to ask, oh, actually it's way too long. Let's ask a really short one instead, which was just like an easy yes, no answer. So like somebody might've had like a good, like deep contextual question there and the host just simply set up too long. Oh yeah. And it was some dumb ass question like, are you taking money from the pharmaceutical industry to push vaccinations? And it's, he's like, no. And it's like, oh yeah, really, really hold them to account there.
00:15:13
Speaker
Just giving him a conspiracy theory question where the only factual answer is no.
00:15:19
Speaker
Yeah. And you brought this up earlier too. Like again, I struggle to understand how this radio show helps Kenny's two goals, main goals for the next year and a bit, right? Which is like, he's got to survive this leadership review, which is happening April 9th. And then presuming he, he takes that, he wins that. And again, that, I don't think that's a sure thing. He's got to win the election. And I'm not, I don't understand how a weekly fucking radio show where he kind of dully repeats his talking points and he does his professor Kenny schtick helps either of those things.
00:15:49
Speaker
Well, I agree with what Kenny said at the beginning that this wasn't really a helpful exercise or this radio show is not really helpful for him winning this leadership review. I think that's true because that's not really the audience he's speaking to here because in the context of leadership review, he has to do all the party glad handing and behind the scenes stuff and talking to the actual membership risk. This isn't really aimed at that.
00:16:13
Speaker
If it is, I don't think it would be very helpful for his surviving this leadership review. In terms of the election, I don't know. I mean, it does certainly give him a platform to talk about this stuff. And generally, it's quite beneficial, because Kenny gets to even answer from that critical question from Dr. Grace. He basically is allowed to just repeat all of his talking points back without really a lot of challenge.
00:16:44
Speaker
But he's just so unpopular that it's, I just don't think reminding people that you exist is a good strategy. You know what I mean? Like people just don't fucking like you, man. Yeah. There was a poll that came out today stating that his net approval rating is negative 40. Yeah. Yeah. There was a poll in my notes area, another poll, think HQ poll from last week, only 20% of Albertans want him to stay on as leader.
Political Strategies and Ethical Concerns
00:17:09
Speaker
I think the poll you're talking about, that research co-poll that came out today, the Alberta NDP had a 15-point lead over the UCP. Yeah. Rachel Notley's net favorability is plus 12. Kenny was beneath all the other party leaders, some of whom I'm only vaguely aware of.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah. I was like, who are those people? Like Morashita Hinman? Anyways, those people have a lot of work to do for people to know who they are. But again, just sit back, man. One, you're busy. You got thousands of people who you got to cat herd and get to show up to a convention and get to vote in your favor and not lose that leadership race.
00:17:51
Speaker
and let the money roll in, man. Oil prices are a gazillion dollars right now. Let the money roll in and start dispensing cash to your political friends and allies and just shore up your coalition. I just don't get it.
00:18:10
Speaker
This is like, or bringing up the oil prices reminds me that this is also, that's probably a possible reason for this because the strategists in the Kenny government and the UCP who support him are seeing this is like a turning point that if prices stay high, which is certainly for a while, which is certainly possible, people will, the economic good times will come back. People will kind of like forget all the stuff that they're really mad at Kenny at. So kind of getting back out into public and talking about
00:18:40
Speaker
your record in government and what you plan to do, it might be useful in that sense. If oil prices are high, because was it like the bumper for the bumper like teaser advertisement for this show that came out earlier in the week was like Alberta is like the future for Alberta is like brighter and things are getting better, which is very much what the message of the UCP wants everyone in the public to hear.
00:19:09
Speaker
sunny days are coming. Yeah. I think maybe you did just successfully get into the head of Brock Harrison there and Jason Kennedy's brain trust. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's the most favorable kind of bit of analysis we can do because I just don't think people like hearing his voice. I don't think people like knowing that he exists. He's just an unpopular dude.
00:19:28
Speaker
Let me know if you'd love to forget all of the shit they hate about conservatives again and again and again. I mean that's why we elect like decades-long conservative governments because people in Alberta are extremely forgiving of conservative politicians.
00:19:44
Speaker
They are, but I mean, when someone got this unpopular in the past that the PC party would just take that leader out to the fucking, to the back 40 and drown him and drown him in the Creek, right? Like this party, this new United conservative party just doesn't have those mechanisms to take Kenny out. I still believe he's going to take, I still believe he's going to win this leadership review relatively handily because we get his party. He created it.
00:20:07
Speaker
So maybe, maybe, maybe, but I think there's another angle on this show that's worth exploring. And that is from the journalistic ethics and commercial aspects of this. So this show gets simulcast on both CHQR 770 and CHED 639, and it's pretty broad coverage.
00:20:29
Speaker
Uh, you're probably hitting possibly your potential audiences around, you know, two, two and a half million people probably. And, uh, and it's very funny to think, I just don't think Saturday morning at 10 AM is a very commercially successful or viable position. So it was interesting to see the advertisers that they had on the show. Any advertisers jump out at you from, uh, from who is advertising? Uh, some privatized healthcare, uh, for.
00:20:55
Speaker
Uh, elective surgeries in BC. I mean, that's a, and Kenny even answered a question related to how the privatization of elective surgeries is good for reducing wait times.
00:21:08
Speaker
Which it is not. Just to repeat for everyone, it is not. I mean, the top ads for me, it was a close tie between the doggy joint medicine ads and my old high school chum, Cody Battershill, speaking of doing his ads for Canada Action, the Astroturf group that's received considerable financial support from oil and gas companies. Yeah. It's good for Cody's real estate business if there's an oil boom all the time.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yes. And, but aside from the horrible ads, it's also worth talking about like how we got to this point where, uh, you know, this, this massive broadcaster chorus is giving essentially free airtime to the premier. Uh, you know, according to John Vos, who's the, the, the station manager responsible for this, they're just, this is just free airtime. This is not paid. It's not a paid program like what you usually actually frankly get.
00:22:06
Speaker
uh, early Saturday morning on Chad and, and, and CHQR. So, but it did come out from the premier chief of staff that they are buying ads to promote the show on chorus. So is there an actual difference there, Rory?
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's from a perspective of journalism ethics, I think this is very ethically questionable. It's one thing to bring the premier on for a call in show here and there, because he's the premier, but to give him an hour call in show every week, to, to basically like spit out his talking points to every question is I don't really
00:22:47
Speaker
think serves the public good in terms of like making politicians accessible because it's ultimately it's a very controlled environment for Kenny and one that he's very good in.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's highly stage managed. Kenny is comfortable in the format. The host is certainly not, you know, it's not like I'm hosting this show, right? Like it's just some schmuck. And so, yeah, I think, I think ultimately I agree. It is very ethically questionable for, you know, our public airwaves to be given over to Jason Kenny in this fashion. We know that the same deal, according to reporting from Charles personnel, the same deal has not been offered to Rachel Notley or any other provincial level politician.
00:23:30
Speaker
And even if they did offer this to Notley or some of the other party leaders on an equitable basis, I still think it's ethically questionable because the problem is that political figures are going to use this like political figures will, which is basically an opportunity to broadcast their talking points. And it's not particularly challenging them or like
00:23:57
Speaker
doing any kind of like deep dive into what's going on politically in the province. It's just basically politicians getting to talk about what they want to talk about.
00:24:07
Speaker
And I feel bad for all of the actual journalists that chorus and global employ. Like it must be fucking embarrassing when your boss is like, here you go buddy, here, here, premier, here, there's a little show for you. Like, come on. And there's still so many unresolved questions, right? Like who is paying the host? Is it, is it chorus? Like that hasn't been answered. The journalistic rules of engagement have not been made public.
Historical Influence of Radio on Alberta Politics
00:24:30
Speaker
Uh, you know, like.
00:24:32
Speaker
How much is being spent on the advertising? Again, unknown. I'll FOIP it at some point, but why don't you just tell us? How do they screen the questions? How did this idea come to be? Was it Corus approaching Kenny? Was it Kenny approaching Corus?
00:24:54
Speaker
Is there like some political friendliness within like choruses like executives and Kenny or in the United Conservatives? Because I imagine to an extent like Alberta's business class is like very apprehensive about the possibility of who would replace Kenny that they don't want some sort of like weirdo freak in charge of the UCP.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, especially if you've got Brian Jean going on about the great reset and Klaus Schwab and what have you, but yeah. I mean, it also isn't the first time that a sitting conservative premier has had free access to the airwaves, including on these very own radio stations. Ralph Klein had a monthly show on CHQR and CHED called Talk to the Premier, and it ran from like 1993 to the early 2000s. We unfortunately do not have any archival audio from this, and we don't even really know when it ended.
00:25:44
Speaker
I mean, I assume Chet and CHQR have these archives somewhere they might know, but again, unknown how long, but it was monthly. It really seemed like Ralph Kline's happy place, to be honest. While we weren't able to find archival audio, there was this
00:26:03
Speaker
profile in March 1994, McLean's, where author writer Brian Bergman, kind of his entire lead of this like big long feature where he's talking about Ralph Klein cutting social services to the bone, which he was, what's what he was doing in spring 1994. The entire like opening paragraph, multiple senses go on. I'm just going to read a few bits from it here.
00:26:27
Speaker
The premier of Alberta is in his element, dressed in blue jeans, white sneakers, and a well-worn turquoise sweatshirt. Ralph Klein settles into a swivel chair in a studio at Edmonton's Ched radio station for his monthly live phone-in show, Talk to the Premier. Strapping on a set of headphones, Klein, a former radio and TV broadcaster, casually adjusts the sound controls just seconds before airtime.
00:26:47
Speaker
For the next hour, he deftly fields calls from across the province, gesturing with his hands as he makes his points and gazing reflectively at the snow-covered parking lot outside the studio. On this Saturday afternoon, most of the callers are from rural Alberta, a stronghold of Klein's conservative government. And the tone is friendly and informal. No one addresses him as Mr. Premier. Instead, it's how you doing, Ralph? For Klein, who has just endured another grueling week defending his controversial plans to slash government spending, the exercise is clearly a tonic. As he remarks during a commercial break,
00:27:17
Speaker
I think there are a lot of people saying, out there saying, Ralph, you're getting hammered. Maybe you'd like a nice call to make your day.
00:27:26
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you, 630 Ched and CHQR 770 for giving our premier, for giving Ralph Klein a safe space to feel good about himself as he fucking cut everything to the fucking bone. Yeah. Kenny gave a shout out to Ralph Klein's show at the beginning of this saying this is just like what Ralph Klein did, which is very much trying to draw on that
00:27:48
Speaker
legacy popularity of Klein in Alberta. But what's interesting to contrast these two things is in 1994, yeah, Klein was doing very controversial cutting social services to the bone, but he also faced very little like coherent public opposition to it. And this is also- Or political opposition, right? Yeah. The liberals didn't give a shit. Yeah. And the public sector unions were not really able to put together an effective opposition to Klein.
00:28:17
Speaker
and mostly voluntarily took a 5% pay cut. And in this period, in the 90s, Ralph is relatively popular, whereas Kenny has the opposite problem where he's actually incredibly unpopular right now, and he's turning to a radio show as probably an attempt to try and turn that around.
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like is, is Kenny here just like running to the comfort of, of talk radio? I mean, it is an overwhelmingly conservative form of media, right? And, but he still wasn't able to escape people who are mad at him. So like, you know, like TBD, whether this is actually going to be like the safe space it was for, for, for Ralph.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Kenny had to field calls from somebody who was asking if there was going to be an inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic, which I think is reasonable, except they wanted it to charge people in Alberta Health Services and the government for having any public health restrictions at all.
00:29:18
Speaker
What are we going to string up? Dina Hinshaw was the subtext of that callers question. But also in questions about how the government's handled COVID, Kenny actually was perfectly willing to punt it back onto Hinshaw and say, oh, well, all these decisions were made by the chief medical officer. And we're just following her advice, which from leaked documents last year is not really true. Exactly.
00:29:46
Speaker
But I mean, Ralph Klein, Premier Kenny, these are not the only conservative Alberta premiers with their radio shows, their own radio shows. And again, you're the Premier Bible Billologist here on the podcast and really in the Alberta podcast space, I would argue. So we've had, you know, Jason Kenny, Ralph Klein have their own talk radio shows, but really it does not compare.
00:30:10
Speaker
to what Bill Eberhart and Ernest Manning were able to do with the back to the Bible radio hour. And it really was the kind of foundation of conservatism in this province. It was really built on this province-wide radio show. What can you tell us about the back to the Bible radio hour and how it kind of built up? Really, it was the foundation of Prairie Conservatism.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, so William Abraham, he's better known as Bible Bill for his radio broadcasts. He was a high school principal who kind of moonlighted as a popular evangelical pastor. He was a charismatic speaker, so he used to fill theaters in Calgary with every Sunday with people who come out to hear him speak for his religious sermons. So in 1925 he decided to
00:31:02
Speaker
start broadcasting this on the radio, which was a very, very new medium at the time, through his prophetic Bible Institute located here in Calgary. So his sermons could be heard all across Alberta, Saskatchewan, into Manitoba and BC and some of the northern United States and had a fairly large audience. So he mostly just talked about weird religious crankery
00:31:29
Speaker
But in 1932, during the Great Depression, he gets into the theories of social credit, which he promotes as a solution to the economic devastation of the downturn. Not to get too deep into what social credit is, it's basically kind of a money crank theory. It's this idea that we're not treating money
00:31:53
Speaker
correctly, that basically the government can just take money and how to put it, they can, that money is like a certificate and you just, if you just redistribute all these certificates, then it'll fix the problem. Uh, it's not really the same as like socialism at all. It's cr, it's crankery to get into social credit. Like the actual ideology is, is like, is pretty, you go down a rabbit hole and be like, what the fuck are these people talking about? Like there isn't even the like shared language to really understand what the hell major Douglas was on about back
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, Major Douglas being the British founder of the theories of social credit. It has a lot to do with complaining about the banks and the banks controlling too much money. This often has a rather obvious anti-Semitic tinge to it, which social creditors in Alberta and Canada at different times like indulged in publicly.
00:32:45
Speaker
And as a general rule, it was also like most of the social credit monetary theories were abandoned pretty quickly because they didn't really work and weren't even constitutional.
00:33:00
Speaker
But Abraham used this radio show to promote social credit, right? He turned it into a political party. Yeah, so he talked extensively about what social credit was and his interpretation of social credit, which Major Douglas disagreed with. But yeah, and he used the
00:33:17
Speaker
Bible Institute to print social credit pamphlets and encourage people to start social credit reading groups. So by 1935, the 1935 provincial election in Alberta, the ruling United Farmers of Alberta Party, which had been in power since
00:33:33
Speaker
like for 14 years was like very unpopular because they had not done a very good job dealing with the depression. So the Zokrad party went from zero seats to a government in a landslide victory and Bible Bill then became premier and he was premier. He was premier and in office until 1943 when he died suddenly of a heart attack.
00:33:55
Speaker
So the connection where we're starting to get into more modern Canadian conservatism is that he was succeeded by Ernest Manning, who is the father of Preston Manning of Reform Party fame. And Ernest Manning would be premier for the next 25 years. And Manning has kind of an interesting story because he was just basically a kid who was into electronics and early radio stuff in living on a farm in Saskatchewan. And in 1925,
00:34:25
Speaker
he bought a radio and then he tuned in and heard Bible Bill and was converted, moved to Calgary and became his protege. So he also inherited the National Back to the Bible Hour when Eberhart died. And as far as I can tell, he was on that weekly until like the 1980s, which is after Manning was out of office.
00:34:51
Speaker
So Manning ran this- Just on that podcast. Yeah, for like 40 years. Just grinding out a podcast every week for until a year. He was in his 80s or whatever, right? When he finally stopped at 70s maybe? Yeah, around 80. He dies in 1996. So basically, most of his life, he was on the national back to the Bible Hour weekly.
00:35:19
Speaker
And it's worth pointing out like radio back then was the like, you know, the television plus social media, you know, it was the everything. It was the mass media. Right. And and as in the technology space, too, it was pretty much unregulated. Like you could do absolutely wild things like you talked about the coverage that that Bill Abraham was getting on his shows like Manitoba, Saskatchewan, B.C., the United States, like these because of the entire like
00:35:47
Speaker
airwaves hadn't been colonized by commercial radio yet. You could do, you could hit so many people and like the stories from this time in radio are actually insane. So like the guy who essentially invented country music as like a commercial genre was like a crank who used to sew goat testicles into men in order to cure impotence. And like he, it's a wild story. There's a bunch of stuff that's been written about him and I would encourage you to read
00:36:14
Speaker
to read up about John Brinkley. But at the peak of his powers, he had a transmitter in Mexico that could reach most of the continental United States. And that's a diversion. That's a bit of a tangent from Bible Bill Eberhart. But whenever I have the opportunity to bring up John Brinkley at a party, I will. But to get back to the back to the Bible radio hour, while the social credit
00:36:44
Speaker
as an ideology, kind of flamed up pretty quickly and no one really gave a shit about it, really after one's kind of earnest man, he took over. It did do, from the bones of social credit, kind of rose modern Prairie Conservatism, right?
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah. So after Abraham dies and Manning takes over in 1943, there's another election in 1944, which is where you really see the pivot from social credit away from some of their crank monetary theories to just more like standard, very socially reactionary business conservatism. So from 1944 right through to the end of the social credit government in 1971, the
00:37:27
Speaker
Main theme every election was red scare red scare red scare. So Manning would constantly harp on about Reds under every bed. There's communists in Alberta The socialists and particularly he means the CCF and later NDP Are like always just about to take over and destroy everything so This theme of like
00:37:54
Speaker
just fanatical anti-communism is like a very, very big part of social credit. And then this also kind of comes through into contemporary Canadian conservatism because Manning was a huge opponent of the expansion of the post-war Canadian welfare state. So Manning deeply opposed public Medicare, but was ultimately outmaneuvered by other provincial governments and the federal government.
00:38:21
Speaker
and he was forced to accept it in Alberta, but they haven't forgotten that defeat. And this sort of deeply religious social conservatism wedded to free market economics comes through from social credit and from the religious beliefs that Manning and Eberhart expressed on the air every week.
Prairie Conservatism's Lasting Impact
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, and if you're keen, I think right now it might not even make sense to just play a clip from Bible Bill and Ernest Manning going back and forth about totalitarianism and democracy. You called Bill Abraham a charismatic speaker, and maybe he was. Not every fucking clip is going to be solid gold records or whatever.
00:39:10
Speaker
This clip is not exactly going to set the world on fire, but I do want to just give a bit of context for the radio and the content that we're talking about. Are you aware, sir, that in the world today, probably more pronounced than in any previous time, there's a struggle between great principles. Foundational ideals in every sphere of life. I think that that is evident to everyone. Well, we do know that the great British principles are being definitely attacked.
00:39:40
Speaker
There is a terrific struggle between the democratic and the totalitarian philosophies of government, autonomous distribution of authority versus centralization of power. And what about religion? Well, in my way of thinking, there is a struggle on between the spirit of Christ and the religion of form. Right you are. One emphasizes life and our relationship to our fellow men. The other holds supreme our creed in our relationship to the church.
00:40:07
Speaker
And what about education? Here the struggle is between the drill for the purpose of impressing a great host of facts upon the memory and the enterprise in which the child learns the science of facts by a wholehearted investigation on his part. One is passive and the other is active. It is quite evident that we live in days when a man's relationship to the great principle is most vital and important. Right you are. Now listen.
00:40:33
Speaker
I was reading the other day the story of Elijah, and they had. They had was king of Israel, and Elijah was the prophet. Yes, that's right. The particular story that I was reading. All right, all right. So like the end, they kind of get into some Bible study stuff with Elijah. Yeah, but it does highlight very well that mix between politics and religion that they're doing, because part of how they
00:40:58
Speaker
see their religion or their idea of Christianity is that salvation is a product of an individual having a personal relationship with God and that individual has to like freely come to this and so society should be set up in such a way that individuals are able to freely choose to do the right thing and their idea of
00:41:21
Speaker
a society where this sort of free choice is available is a laissez-faire capitalist society. And so that basically your relationship with Jesus is the same as your relationship with your landlord entirely mediated by the market.
00:41:39
Speaker
And there's even echoes of like David Staples and his kind of like his education policy crankery here, where it's like the students of today have got to memorize the things that they must memorize, which was very funny to hear. Yeah, I mean, it's like a classic conservative complaint from going back is always the same. It's like kids these days, they just don't. They're not learning proper moral principles like my incredibly reactionary principles that even in the past, people didn't really believe very much.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah, and if you're keen to get into exhaustive detail when it comes to Bible bill and earnest manning and social credit, we will have a link in the show notes to the Abraham Foundation's website where Larry Heather, internet legend Larry Heather has diligently collected gigabytes of old radio recordings and various ephemera from the social credit days.
00:42:28
Speaker
That's where we got the clip from. It is a bit of an artifact. It does remind me of a bit of a Geosities website, but it is just chock-a-block with that shit if you want to go down the rabbit hole of who these people were and what they believed. They did run Alberta for a long ass time and the foundation of modern conservatism because, again, Preston Manning and the Reform Party essentially swallowed up the Conservative Party. This is the genesis. This is the bones that the modern Conservative Party is built on.
00:42:58
Speaker
Yeah, and if you really want even more, there's some good books on the history of the social credit government. So the social credit phenomenon in Alberta by Alvin Finkel is very good. If you're interested in the religious aspect of it, God's province, evangelical Christianity, political thought and conservatism in Alberta by Clark Bannock, also very good.
00:43:19
Speaker
But even just checking out Larry Heather, who is basically the last social credit supporter in Alberta, his website, it's pretty amazing just for all the wild stuff on there.
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the social credit party has now become like the pro life party, like kind of religious, right? Folks just took it over and renamed it. So like our IP to, you know, the real social credit heads out there. Um, now it's just like, uh, like a forced birth, anti-abortion political party. That's like extremely marginal, but yeah. But I do recommend it if you, if you do want to, if you're a nerd like us and you want to get into those details. So.
00:43:59
Speaker
This bones, this foundational argument, right? I don't think we spend enough time thinking about modern conservatism, right? Because they try and take the history of it back to John A. McDonald and the conservative party of old, but I think that party is well and truly dead. And that reactionary prairie conservatism really is the beating heart of the modern conservatives, conservative party, right?
00:44:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the current conservative party, particularly the federal one, has like a bunch of different lineages, but certainly that connection to Bible bill and social credit is a very, very significant and important one. And perhaps like one of the most dominant ones, because the creation of the modern conservative party was essentially a hostile takeover of the PCs by reform. And reform was very animated by
00:44:53
Speaker
I mean, it was literally led by the son of Ernest Manning. And that sort of social conservatism is a very, very important part of the current Canadian Conservative Party and its coalition.
00:45:11
Speaker
Yeah, so there you go, folks. You get your hot takes on some bad radio with Jason Kenney, as well as your vegetables with some history on Alberta and really Canada's conservative history. Last question here, Rory, and we're going to take it back to the original point of why we got together into this podcast, which is Jason Kenney's bad radio show.
00:45:32
Speaker
Let's be generous and say that Kenny survives this leadership review. Do we really think that Kenny is going to be doing his radio show once a week every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. in like July?
00:45:46
Speaker
Honestly, I don't really see how it would hurt him that much unless he really puts his foot in his mouth a lot, which is not something Kenny usually does. And it's basically free airtime that he gets to talk about all the time, or talk about what he wants to talk about in a very controlled setting. I mean, very unusual for a politician to get like a call in radio show like this. And most politicians would want something like this.
00:46:13
Speaker
And I don't see him giving it up unless something changes. Yeah, I'm more in the line of like, if it does survive, if he is doing it in July, I think it goes back to the old client schedule, which is once a month. I think once a week is pretty punishing and just involves a lot of like,
00:46:33
Speaker
prep and time away from doing things that he would probably want to be doing.
Engagement with The Progress Report
00:46:39
Speaker
So I don't think it's going to survive, but if it does survive into say July and August, I think it's going to be a once a month affair. Yeah. Once a month seems a bit more reasonable. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on the pod. Now is the time of the podcast where people get to plug their pluggables and tell us about how our audience can kind of follow along with the work you're doing.
00:46:58
Speaker
Yeah, so as mentioned at the beginning, I am a member of the Alberta Advantage podcast where we talk about Alberta politics, but more from a deep dive historical stuff to explain why things in this province are so screwed up.
00:47:15
Speaker
incredible insane historical reasons for this that we'd like to get into. So recent episode, we talked about inflation and the sort of politics of inflation, which is something we're all experiencing now with high gas prices and grocery and groceries and a conservative leadership candidate yelling that this is Trudeau causing all this inflation. So if you like kind of deeper like dives into historical political economy, please give the Alberta Advantage a listen.
00:47:45
Speaker
It's a really good podcast. They're also on the harbinger media network. I believe I was the show's very first guest, which, you know, yeah, you were the first person we ever interviewed in like episode three, where we talked about privatizing education. Yeah. And it still holds up. I'm sure. I mean, I have to go back and listen to it, but like all that private school shit hasn't changed since we talked about it like four years ago, five years ago. Um, but yeah, really a podcast really can't recommend the Alberta advantage enough. If you're not, if you're not already familiar.
00:48:12
Speaker
We do, sorry, we also do have a two-part episode from way back about the social credit government. So if you're interested, give it a listen. Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, things you think I screwed up on, I'm very easy to reach. I am on Twitter at, at Duncan Kinney. And you can reach me by email at DuncanKatprogressalberta.ca. Thank you to Jim Story for editing the podcast. Thank you to Cosmic FamU Communist for our amazing theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye. Goodbye.