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Episode 3 - Alberta’s left wing podcast all stars team up
64 Plays5 years ago
It’s a team up show with two of Alberta’s best left wing podcasters. Abdul Malik of Kino Lefter is on for a wide ranging chat about the rise of the Christian Right and the culture and films they produce and Kate Jacobson of the Alberta Advantage is on to break down both the terrible Calgary arena deal but also the UCP’s stunning loss in court to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Background
00:00:10
Speaker
friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney, recording here from a dimly lit basement here in Treaty 6 territory, and today we're gonna have a wide ranging chat with Abdul Malik. Abdul is a photographer, videographer, podcaster, really content creator king from here in Edmonton. He does incredible work documenting and chronicling social movements, activists on the picket lines, as well as breaking down movies and culture with a sharp left-wing critique on his podcast, Kino Laughter. Abdul, welcome.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hi, just so you know, videographer is a slur in my profession. Is it? Okay, I'm out of the game. What is the preferred word then? Like shooter, video creator. Videographer implies bankrupt wedding photography is a big part of it, but it's fine. Yeah, lots of shitty wipes. Yeah, stuff like that. There's classes to people who shoot video, and videographer is definitely, I think,
00:01:07
Speaker
You do take moving pictures though. Yeah, not to be classist. People who do videography is a job and like it good for them. I mean, yeah. Okay.
Critique of 'Unplanned' and Evangelical Influence
00:01:18
Speaker
One of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on was that Kino Lefter did just have an incredible episode that I recommend you all listen to on the movie Unplanned.
00:01:27
Speaker
And if you're not familiar with the movie Unplanned, it is, what would you call it? I would call it a work of fiction in more ways than one. It's certainly a movie, you know, it certainly exists. It occupies 24 frames a second, but yeah, you know, it's explicitly anti-abortion film put out by a company called Pure Flix, which is known for creating these sort of
00:01:53
Speaker
You know, like what you would call like almost like filmic chick tracts, right? Um, about God and religion, like, you know, sort of pushing a very like evangelical agenda. And an unplanned is essentially like a two hour, like anti-abortion propaganda, like documentary. Yeah. That's positioned as being based on a true story, right? Which is a wild cause it's clearly not, I don't even think that's like slanderous to say.
00:02:20
Speaker
And like, okay, so this is going to get into, I mean, unplanned and the rise of the religious right and all that. And I feel like I most likely have extended family members who have either seen unplanned or whose pastors told them to go see unplanned. Like I grew up in the Christian Missionary Alliance, which is like a missions based, missions focused, like evangelical Christian organization. It's one of the larger ones.
00:02:41
Speaker
And, um, and like, I don't remember any of the like anti-abortion stuff from when I was a teen or a tween or even a kid, but I have no doubt that that exists. It's weird actually, cause like I'm, I'm, you know, Albertan now, but I was, you know, born raised in like Toronto, right? And it's amazing how often you hear the story. Like I was talking to some people yesterday at a class S teaching, um,
00:03:04
Speaker
about like you know yeah i can't i'm going home to tell my family that i'm part of the environmental movement right or that i'm like anti-pipeline it's like what a strange like you know thing like what a strange like cultural aspect alberta that i have no real relationship to like i grew up in a family of like very middle class like muslim intellectuals you know i mean like
00:03:29
Speaker
Um, and yeah, it's just, it's a very strange, uh, strange thing that like, this is what people like make their build their lives on. Right. So I just have to say like, you are doing like God's work, watching movies, like I'm planned. Like I am never going to watch unplanned. I mean, the, one of the reasons why I like, you know, after is that I can.
00:03:46
Speaker
Hear reactions and funny takedowns of movies that I'm like most likely never gonna see like I'm a dad like I Very little chance to get out to the movie theaters these days, but like I love the recap of like Midsummer, I mean just seems like an interesting I'm probably gonna watch it unplanned is like I mean, I think you guys should get danger pay for for Unplanned but why do you walk us through kind of the very bare-bones kind of script recap?
00:04:10
Speaker
of what Unplanned is. Okay, so one of the things you should probably know about recording podcasts, this is insight for the listeners actually is once you record a podcast, you immediately forget everything you said. I'm sure it's the same with radio or any sort of spoken form.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's about Abby Johnson, who used to be a director of Planned Parenthood, and in the scope of the movie, this isn't what actually happened. She witnesses an abortion and then realizes how cruel it is and starts proselytizing for, I forget which group it is, but some rabid anti-abortion group in the US, right?
00:04:49
Speaker
She goes up against like her old boss as a Planned Parenthood who tells her like you've messed with the great powers of the world George Soros Bill Gates, Jeff. Yeah, I mean like and stuff like that which yeah, it's just a spectacularly ugly film. It was a big discussion actually whether or not we should even record it.
00:05:08
Speaker
because we we try not to be a bad movies podcast there's like a million of them out there like we try to take what's popular but i mean it's incredible that unplanned made as much money as it did still raking in money.
00:05:22
Speaker
Well, I mean, this is, this is one of the funny things about it, right? Is that the, the evangelical Christian movement in this country and this continent really made it at a distinct effort to get their people out to go see this movie in order to juice the box office numbers. Right. And so like unplanned is, is, you know, it's a shitty movie. It's a piece of propaganda against the abortion movement or against the concept of abortion itself. But it's also like, it's also the Christian, right? Like flexing their muscles, right?
00:05:50
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, like there's obviously a lot of money to go around in there. There's obviously a lot of incentive for like, you know, Christian right to invest in like cultural objects that are entirely their own, right? Which I think is something worth sort of considering is that this film is not really made for people who are on the fence about abortion, mostly because A, they won't see it.
00:06:14
Speaker
Um, and B because it, it just, it doesn't play like that. The film's like construction does not facilitate like a subtle, um, someone who's on the fence, like, you know, subtly leaning towards, oh, I guess abortion is bad now, right? It's just, uh, and this, it's like affirmation of faith and belief really is what these are all about. Um,
Media Bias and Propaganda in Film
00:06:35
Speaker
yeah.
00:06:35
Speaker
Well, I mean, this is ostensibly a media criticism podcast, right? So I do think it's appropriate to bring up an absolute dogshit CBC Edmonton story, literally just about the screening of Unplanned in Edmonton. All right, headline. Headline is, Edmonton moviegoers celebrate Cineplex screening of anti-abortion film.
00:06:55
Speaker
First line, Kimberly Kwasik walked out of the Cineplex Odeon South Edmonton, pleased that she had seen controversial anti-abortion movie unplanned. We also definitely walked out of the theater after watching that movie. We did not pirate it. We are not slinging ads for a Russian betting site that was definitely not on the low quality torrent of the film.
00:07:21
Speaker
I'm not here to judge how you watched Unplanned. I'm just glad, again, you should get Danger Pay for watching it in the first place. Literally, the first four paragraphs of the story are about how the screening was full, how she's very grateful that she got to see it. This article is actually about us watching a movie.
00:07:36
Speaker
Oh, to me, okay, she's quoting, this classic character is getting quoted again. To me, it's very important that all lives matter. Every human being has a right to life as you or I would have. So I'm excited that it's being shown. This person was interviewed before she watched on CBC and then interviewed after she watched it for a CBC online story.
00:07:57
Speaker
Um, yeah, that's, uh, wild actually. Um, you see, it's, it's interesting. Like I, we get into a bit of this on the podcast, but, um, you know, I've had conversations with like Christian socialists and like, I think they're called Tuassians, um, pacifism and stuff like that. Um, who I know who have like very radical left-wing politics, but are rabidly anti-abortion and their sort of method of justifying it is, well, no, under our like sort of abortion paradigm, it's.
00:08:25
Speaker
not allowed, but also there's a guarantee of taking care of people, right? A guarantee of sort of socialist, you know, upbringings and a whole bunch of other stuff, which even that in concept, I don't agree with, like, you know, right to choose the right to choose. But you know, when you start invoking all lives matter, you know, what you're really saying is, you know, you hate the poor, right?
00:08:45
Speaker
Yeah. And I also think it's worth going back to the Abby Johnson story, right? Like the apostate story is one, like the apostate who comes to whatever your particular flavor of religious faith is such an easy narrative for the media to pick up, right? Like the joke on the podcast is that like, you know, we could quit our jobs now and just go become right wing blowhards on like rebel media, right?
00:09:06
Speaker
I would definitely have the easiest time doing it. You know what I mean? Like, uh, you know, like a Muslim anarchist who works in like a left wing circles or whatever, uh, suddenly sees the light becomes like rapidly anti-abortion, anti-communist, you know. You would be a fucking hit on the rebel. Like you could be, you could put out a video a day, the numbers would like.
00:09:24
Speaker
Candace Owens 2.0. That's what I'm saying. We got to iterate. I'm telling you, I mean, it's funny that I haven't, I mean, Patrick Moore is the ultimate example of, right? Like that like Greenpeace co-founder quote heavy quotation marks who like makes a living going around to, you know, chambers of commerce telling rich white people that like actually climate change like isn't happening.
00:09:43
Speaker
But yeah, Abby Johnson seems to have kind of picked up that this is a really easy way to make a living despite however she might feel about it. It's interesting you bring up more because I think there's something about that and I'm sure we'll see it in our own circles like a couple years is that when faced with the existential threat of something like climate change, right?
00:10:04
Speaker
At a certain point, you might just accept that you're not going to win on the environmental liberation front, so you're just like, fuck it, I'm going to take this ride for as long as I can, make it work for me, right? It's just the end of they live. Yeah, I don't think he's necessarily a dumb person. I think that he's very carefully like, oh, the world is going to end, so I'm going to make the most of it because I have literally no morality, right? Same thing with Abby Johnson is like,
00:10:31
Speaker
She was probably in a dead end job and Planned Parenthood is an NGO with all the hallmarks of the NGO industrial complex, not NGO, but you got what I mean, right? Non-profit industrial complex. And I'm sure that she was probably just not a great employee. She probably ate a lot of shit from her boss and was like, what's the best way I can exact revenge on my employer, right? And it just happened to work for her in like a big way, which is also,
00:10:59
Speaker
I mean, yeah, we all hate our bosses, but this is just extremely unethical and proselytizing the worst aspects of humanity as you go about it, right? And now this is her job for the rest of her life, essentially, right? Is to do these speaking gigs and to sign books and to just be like, yes, abortion is terrible, abortion is murder.
00:11:19
Speaker
Please give me money and like right. I mean, we should also probably bring it back to the this trash CBC story, too They do the CBC story does get some quotes from people on the like other side So they do have some quotes from Kathy Dawson a woman who organized a protest as well as a board member with Alberta pro-choice You know, they do have a quote from some like a University of Alberta professor who says that while they didn't see the film it is irresponsible for Cineplex to screen it like this is after they spent
Media Monopolies and Cultural Impact
00:11:45
Speaker
12 paragraphs talking about how all these people saw the movie and that it was awesome. I think it's interesting in the scope of the fact that Cineplex specifically is screening this movie. We in Canada actually have no idea how much of our cultural capital is gate kept by Cineplex and how much of what we consume is gate kept by Cineplex effectively
00:12:07
Speaker
Monopoly on our movie theaters, right? They can choose to screen and not screen whatever the fuck they want and not Really have to be accountable for it because there's no real alternative, right? Like for example, I was just recently in messin hat There's once movie theater in messin hat. It's a galaxy cinema galaxy cinemas are owned by cineplex You know, I could use my scene card get the points all that stuff, right? It's like
00:12:31
Speaker
You know, yeah, it's just like if they start screening stuff like this, it's very telling of like, what sort of like monopolized media landscape we live in Canada, especially when it comes to movies, which we don't ever really consider, right?
00:12:44
Speaker
Well, they just appear fully formed whole at the movie theater. They're just like, I'm going to go see a movie. What is there to see, right? Yeah, exactly. And this is why I think your podcast is so important in the kind of context of a larger left wing movement, right? Like the popular culture that we consume on a regular basis is just like reproducing society, reproducing capitalism, and that without thinking about it critically, you're just going to end up internalizing the stuff that it's putting out there, right?
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, like our sort of thesis is that every film is a political document, right? And every film in part some sort of political ideology, whether we acknowledge it or not onto the audience and, you know, I guess sound like a douchebag for a second, but like our media literacy is not very good. Our comprehension of film grammar, like even in high school or school in general, you know, you have to take courses that teach you
00:13:37
Speaker
interpretation of like literary analysis of books right for example sometimes you do analysis of music and song we don't have that when it comes to movies media we have none of that right the only reason like I know a bit of it is you know I went to film school my co-hosts both of them
00:13:56
Speaker
It's something that they're knowledgeable about as a function of the work they do and stuff like that. But I think that the average person has no real sense of like, oh, this is imparting a very intensely conservative or liberal or whatever you want to call it, worldview when it comes to media they're watching. Especially when we start getting into Netflix and binging and just people sitting down for four or five hours at a time with their friends as opposed to going out, being in a community, taking care of each other.
00:14:25
Speaker
All they're doing is sitting down with their television friends and not engaging with society or building community in any way. That's a real kind of reductive, go out and turn the TV off, go see your friends and family. Everyone's always looking at their phones these days. Yes, not a phone in sight. But seriously though, if you are going to watch ... I mean, not to say that you shouldn't watch this stuff, because I watch shitty superhero movies just like everyone else.
00:14:49
Speaker
Randy and fables, all of them. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I think we do have to acknowledge that. And I think that is, I mean, as someone who kind of grew up collecting like comic book cards and watching animated television shows, the Marvel cinematic universe, like scratch is a particular itch for me.
00:15:05
Speaker
Oh, it does for me too. Like I hate superheroes. I think we should just get rid of every superhero property in the world in any medium because they're like functionally a cancer on society. But you know, like that's even besides the point, right? Cause I still watch those movies and I still enjoy a lot of them, right? Like it's a weirdly self-hating thing. It's interesting you bring up phones actually, cause the movie theater is a very,
00:15:29
Speaker
like special and interesting place for me, because it's the one place where I'm never tapped out on my phone, right? It's the one place where I'm actually sitting down for two hours, let's say, or however long a movie is, and I am completely tied to the information presented on the screen, right? As opposed to Netflix, which does that in a different way or hanging out with friends or doing anything else. Like I always have access to my phone. I can always get distracted. I tune out often.
00:15:58
Speaker
But in a movie theater, I am zoned in, right? Whatever I'm watching, even if it's a boring movie, it's like, what are my alternatives? Be the jackass on his phone or just keep watching the movie, right? Um, and to me that is frightening in the scope of like, you know, we are able to at the very least distract ourselves from the propaganda we're consuming day to day. But when we're in a movie theater, we really don't have a choice, but to sort of absorb what's being given to us. Right. Um, and very often through an uncritical lens.
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, like what I am watching is fun or interesting or looks cool. And so it is, and it's on a giant screen in front of me. I don't have much else to do, but look at it. Okay. Okay. So I do want to get into, again, I think you're doing God's work, but I do have to know like, what is the, like the worst, most, um, like soul destroy movie you've watched so far as part of your work on, on Kino left?
00:16:48
Speaker
Oh, that's a rough one. I think, well Unplanned doesn't really count because again, we're not a bad movies podcast. It's objectively a bad movie. So Unplanned is like sort of in a quasi league of its own. Green Book I think is definitely high up there. Like Clint Eastwood's The Mule is boring and somewhat entertaining to the same degree, but like really
00:17:13
Speaker
Green Book was a rough watch, right? Um, cause Green Book just, it, it, it is the dialectic. I mean, like it, it presents so much, uh, like a wealth of material and all of it is wrong. Um, and it's just so fucking pleased with itself, right? For everything it's doing and everything it's saying, um, you know, like, yeah, it is, it is the trash can that we are all eating out of, uh, you know, on this blessed day.
00:17:40
Speaker
Okay. So, I mean, one of the ones, one of my favorite episodes of Kino has, was the Stuber episode. Stuber is a close second to Green Book, actually. I completely, again, completely forgot we fucking watched that movie.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, okay. So, I mean, I'm never going to watch Stuber ever. Maybe, I mean, hopefully never. Everyone should watch Stuber. Every single leftist should watch Stuber because it's a vision of our world taken to its like most brutal and terrifying extreme, right? I'm a hundred percent favor of just like Clockwork Orange style eyeballs ripped open. Everyone was strapped into the chair and it's Stuber baby.
00:18:19
Speaker
and see it in a movie theater with all of the divorce dads who are laughing at all of the violence being inflicted. Very divorce dad energy. Unmarginalized people, which is most of the laughs in the movie from what I understand. Yes. A lot of Hispanic people being shot in this movie, a lot of reproduction of colonial violence.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, just to get into it is, I mean, go listen to the episode, but it is a fucking disastrous film and it really is the reason we do the podcast, right?
00:18:53
Speaker
Fair enough. Okay. I mean, I think the fascist critique of it was by your podcast mate was like, what was, what's the theorist's name? The Umberto Echo. I mean, yeah, you could apply that to like almost any like popular media these days. We were talking about that off-pod actually, like to quickly give some context, like Umberto Echo has a, you know, sort of these core tenets of fascism, right? I think it's called or fascism.
00:19:19
Speaker
Um, and I mean, you could take those if, if you're listening, please look them up because they're a fascinating read, but, uh, then go apply them to the latest Spider-Man movie, for example, right? Which also hits all of the tenants, like pretty much bang on, right?
00:19:36
Speaker
And to even bring it all the way back to Unplanned, you have so many right-wing Facebook moms and dads, people who went and go see Unplanned, who freak out about Sharia law, right? Who freak out about a fork in Toy Story making your kids trans, right? Which is a real thing that happened.
00:19:54
Speaker
Exactly. And these like they're telling on themselves, right? Like how many of the people or the elders are the people who go to these churches that are imploring their, um, you know, congregations to go see unplanned would be perfectly happy with a, like a Christian version of Saudi Arabia here in North America. Right.
00:20:09
Speaker
Um, it's, it's accurate. And I also think it speaks to, um, sort of, you know, in Quebec, there's a separate film culture, right? We don't see a majority of films are made in Quebec. They have their own movie industry that people go to. Their own stars, their own like paparazzi. A very powerful star system there. Right. It's like a very nepotistic, nepotistic industry, but by and large, you know, French speaking, uh, Canadians, um, in Quebec, uh, will probably consume mostly Quebec media. That would be my guess. Right.
00:20:38
Speaker
Um, how many evangelicals in Mississippi only watch pure flicks movies, right? How many of them, their media sphere is limited to like Fox news, Breitbart. And when they want to watch like a escapist piece of fiction, it's like Bible, man, right? Or a Dinesh D'Souza documentary.
00:20:55
Speaker
Exactly. Right. Um, or not even documentaries. If I'm talking about like unplanned or God's not dead, right. Or even like a film like, um, waiting for Superman, which is not sort of in that class, but still like upholds a lot of these like free, like right wing, uh, tenants and, and beliefs. Right. Um,
00:21:13
Speaker
Waiting for the brand is an interesting one because it hit both the small L liberal left and the right wing in equal measure.
Media's Role in Political Activism
00:21:22
Speaker
It spoke to both sides in a way I find extremely fascinating, even though the film is literal garbage.
00:21:29
Speaker
Well, I mean, you got to love Bill Gates throwing a bunch of secret money at it too. I mean, I think to wrap up this part, I think it's, I think it's worth kind of coming back to the politics of this, right? And we are in, you know, the 90 day silly season, oncoming rush to a federal election. And like the Christian right is, I mean, I saw some tweet or some like Facebook thing fly by me the other day and it was like, because no one votes, uh, and voting ultimately doesn't, people aren't voting for a variety of reasons, but because the Christian right is so good at voting,
00:21:59
Speaker
You're essentially locking in a majority with a minority worth of people. As the Christian right gets set to contest a federal election, they are lining up behind their dimply boy.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean like that to me is, and films like this seek to activate the part of their brain that makes sure they go vote, right? And I think that's something worth considering in terms of like the way that they're locked off, this sort of like almost cult-like mentality around what you would call like the evangelical right. You know, there's a lot of leftists I know are lapsed Christians or evangelicals, right? Like you could say have been like successfully deprogrammed in a way or they,
00:22:41
Speaker
found a way out but you know it's it's interesting that the sort of actual like socialist left or you know social democratic left or the organized left has a hard time capitalizing on that sort of stuff with its own base not even when it comes to voting but with stuff like organizing right or even capturing media um i'm not going to say that like media is ever going to be a replacement for like shop floor organizing but it does
00:23:07
Speaker
make a difference, right? There's a great story of theater. I believe it's a theater in the States that saw a story to bother you. Um, and they decided to unionize boots. Riley came and helped them do it. Right. And stuff like that, where I'm like, okay, how do we create, um, 500 more, uh, a story to bother us? Right. It's been some good stuff. Like a means TV in the U S is doing some cool stuff, but as far as like a Canadian centered alternative or building that sort of media capacity in Canada, it's proving to be.
00:23:37
Speaker
really difficult, right? I mean, part of it is money. It's not a super, it's a super money intensive process to create stuff like that, but it's also just the fact that like, you know, there is a lot of like, you know, sort of a factionalism and stuff like that, which some of it is earned, but other parts of it are like, you know, dogmatic to the point of being regressive or counterproductive or, you know, counter-revolutionary. And that part is, yeah, it's deeply frustrating to watch, right? Because the one thing you can say about,
00:24:07
Speaker
about the evangelical right is that, oh, they are moving as a block, right? They are a hundred percent, like they're stacking nomination meetings as a block, they're voting as a block, they're organizing and door knocking as a block, right? Whereas like here, it's like, for example, like with the NDP, it's a lot of institutional power trying to protect and reproduce itself, even if that means, in my opinion, sacrificing some votes, right? Sacrificing,
00:24:35
Speaker
popularity, right? Like looking at watching an activist base or whatever, right? Yeah. Look at how difficult it is to get a fucking per actual progressive candidate nominated for the NDP, right? Like we saw Paige Goresock and Edmonton Strathcona. There's been a couple other like really promising candidates who didn't win their nomination like nationwide. Um, and I'm curious to see how many of those seats actually stay NDP. Cause my prediction would be probably not a lot, right?
Calgary Arena Deal Controversy
00:25:09
Speaker
Hello, I'm breaking in here. We have some late breaking news that we had to fit onto this pod. And to break it down with us, we have Kate Jacobson from the very good podcast, The Alberta Advantage. Kate, welcome to The Progress Report. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
00:25:22
Speaker
Okay. So the vote was 11 to four in Calgary city council. They voted to approve this, um, let's not sugar coat it dog shit deal that we'll see roughly $290 million of public taxpayer money go to build a new arena or as they prefer, we call it an event center for the Calgary flames Kate on a scale of one to furious. How mad are you right now about this deal?
00:25:47
Speaker
Well, I'm always mad. I'm like the Hulk, but for Alberta politics. So I'm absolutely pissed about this. And the reason it's so galling to me is at the same time council passed this arena deal, they also put forth an austerity package of $60 million in cuts towards public services in Calgary. This is things like 80,000 hours of Calgary transit time cut from our public transit system.
00:26:12
Speaker
So for me to see these things right next to one another, like literally within the same week, is just so incredibly infuriating because it's the city telling me that they would rather use the public money that I foolishly, I suppose, believe should be spent on public services that everyone can access, that improve the quality of life for citizens in Calgary.
00:26:38
Speaker
And instead this money is being spent to underwrite the capital expenses of a hockey team that is owned by billionaires. And it is incredibly, incredibly frustrating to see.
00:26:50
Speaker
It really is a breathtaking grift when you think about it with, with the timing that you're talking about, right? It's like, Oh yeah, we've got to cut $60 million from, you know, libraries and a public transit and affordable housing and the goddamn fire department. But, um, literally the same week they're raiding the couch cushions and magicking up $290 million to hand over to a successful private business, uh, that is owned by billionaires, as you're saying.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I'm not the first person to point this out, but people will always try and draw this distinction by saying that, like, oh, the cuts are from the operating budget. And this money that is being handed to the flames for this event center is from the capital budget. But those things are really an accounting or a bookkeeping distinction that just is a way of financially coding, like the returns you kind of expect on
00:27:40
Speaker
certain expenses over periods of time. It's not like there's two separate pots of money that can only be used for one or the other. So I find that to be a really misleading way to frame it. If there's hundreds of millions of dollars for an arena, there's absolutely $60 million to ensure that the fire department can keep working the way it's supposed to and that we can do something about Calgary's terrible affordable housing weightless.
00:28:06
Speaker
It really is instructive, I think, if, broadly speaking, the left ever gets in any position of power at city council or the province again, to just fucking do the things you want to do. The money is there. The state is able to magic up hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, if necessary, to solve problems. In this case, they've decided that the problem to solve is to give billionaires hundreds of millions of dollars to build an arena. But if we wanted to say, put everyone who doesn't have a house in a house, that's something that we could do.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, and that's one of the things that is so irritating to me about the way that the arena deal is framed for Calgarians. There's all this talk about how, like, we have to enter into this deal, otherwise we can never, like, upgrade a concert venue or we can never redevelop Victoria Park or this land will remain unused.
00:28:52
Speaker
as if the city is not the governing body in this geographic area and can't just do things. Like the city has the ability to build things if it wants, the city can levy taxes, the city can make decisions and carry them out. And what's so irritating about it is that whenever something needs to be cleaned up, whenever a mess that private business and private capital has left behind needs to be dealt with, of course the city can do that. I mean, the city is footing the bill for tearing down the saddle dome, of course,
00:29:20
Speaker
But we never see the city actually act as a proactive player when it comes to something like needing to be built or done. Oh, like obviously we need private capital to do that for three times the cost with non-union labor and to enrich some guy who already has billions of dollars. And it's really, really frustrating to me. This happens on all levels of government. The federal government and the provincial government in the city can just do things.
00:29:47
Speaker
They are the state, like they absolutely have the ability to build the things they want, levy the taxes they want, et cetera, et cetera. Agreed, agreed. Let's break down some of the more infuriating parts and details around this deal. I mean, you know, first up, I think is the compressed and unnecessarily compressed timeline. We were given the city of Calgary, the people of the city of Calgary, the people footing the bill for half this arena were given a week
00:30:15
Speaker
to, uh, to talk about this and complain about this dogshit deal before city council rubber stamped it. I have no idea why the urgency, like there's, when you look at this deal objectively, um, there is no leverage. The only leverage that the Calgary flames have is leaving town and the Calgary flames didn't even play that card. And so like the fact that there was this compressed timeframe makes no sense to me.
00:30:40
Speaker
Oh yeah, it absolutely makes no sense. And you even saw city councilors like Councillor Sutherland from Ward 1 just flat out dismissing the feedback they received that wasn't for the arena by saying it was misinformation or based on misinformation. So I really saw a complete disregard by Calgary City Council for the opinions and the politics of Calgarians.
00:31:03
Speaker
The other thing, what will happen if this project goes over budget, as these things are wanted to do, that's a giant shrug emoji. It's not in the terms of the deal. The expectation is that it will be split 50-50, but again, no guarantees there. A suppressed report that Star Metro Calgary had to essentially scratch and claw to get out before
00:31:23
Speaker
The people even were able to like know about this deal was that an independent report commissioned by the Calgary municipal housing Whatever the the CMLC was that the flames will make 48 million dollars more per year with this deal and with this new arena I mean, I think that's kind of boggling that there's just like you know objective third-party proof that like all this deal does is make rich people even fucking richer and
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, we're underwriting corporate profits with public money. And that to me is just how capitalism works in our current day and age. I think a lot of people want to look at this and see it as an aberration. But ever since really the 1970s in the advent of neoliberalism, we've increasingly seen the reorientation of the state and of governing bodies like cities.
00:32:07
Speaker
as basically what they do is they facilitate the capital accumulation of millionaires and billionaires that is like what so many of the laws and projects and expenses they have are designed to do so here we see the city working unfortunately absolutely as it is currently intended which is to help rich people get even richer.
00:32:28
Speaker
I think we also have to take a minute to shit over the 11 members of Calgary City Council who voted for this deal. There are some incredible quotes from the debate yesterday that I have to bring up. Okay, this first one from Mayor Nahad Nenshi. He says that the $275 million the city is contributing for the arena is both very large and not that large at the same time. The city is large and regularly makes decisions in millions and billions of dollars, says Nenshi.
00:32:57
Speaker
It's simultaneously, it's Schrodinger's Arena, right? Like it's simultaneously a lot of money and not a lot of money.
00:33:04
Speaker
Well I mean to me that's just technocratic like techno babble because what is underwriting that statement is just like the idea that oh you a working person who is pissed off because the bus you take to work is going to be cut so whoever the fuck owns the flames can make more money. You're pissed off but oh you just don't really understand how the city works and how city budgets work and how city financial decisions work. So that is a very frustrating attitude that I have seen taken by
00:33:33
Speaker
people who are characterized as progressive who have also been for the media, or people who are characterized as progressive who've also been for the arena. And that's one of the other things that is very frustrating for me is the number of people who, Calgarians and who the Calgarian media certainly would consider to be progressives on City Council. People like Mayor Nenshi, who are voting for this arena deal, which is a handout to the rich, and I think
00:33:58
Speaker
Calgary politics and Calgary city council especially have this real problem with like, BOGRESSIVES where because I don't know, they like bike lanes and small businesses, we think that's enough to make them progressive, but there's absolutely no substance.
00:34:15
Speaker
to giving them that kind of political label and that is very annoying for me as a person who truly does like consider myself progressive to be put in the same camp as someone like Mayor Nenshi who wants the Olympics and the arena deal.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, extremely frustrating. I would agree. Jeff Davidson is a Calgary City Counsellor. He was apparently the lead Calgary City Counsellor on the negotiating team, a former employee of CNRL for 10 years as well, which Murray Edwards and Alan Markin, two of the founders and kind of billionaire dudes who own the flames, they also own CNRL, a giant oil company. Jeff Davidson had this quote during council debate on this matter, business moves at the speed of trust.
00:34:58
Speaker
And I think that that is something that you could literally just put on one of those motivational posters and then frame it and then smash it over someone's head because Jesus Christ.
00:35:08
Speaker
We've also got this quote from Diane Colley Urquhart. Uh, this is not just about hockey. It's about an event center. It says saying that she looks upon this project as an accelerator for all the things Calgary city council is trying to do. Like what this, I mean, an accelerator has become this kind of like, you know, neoliberal buzzword, but I mean, how is a giant hockey arena? A fucking accelerator.
00:35:30
Speaker
Oh yeah, and also she showed up to the vote on this deal wearing like a giant Calvary Flames patch or pin on her jacket. Yeah, it was the classy zip up. She wasn't wearing the jersey. She just had the cardigan or the zip up with the logo on it. She was wondering which way she was going to vote, right? Just ridiculous.
00:35:50
Speaker
I think it's also worthwhile to kind of just run down the city councilors that voted for and against this. It's probably, let's start with the like the four councilors that were actually good and voted against this deal. So we have Evan Woolley who voted no. We have George, I believe is his first name, Chay Hall who voted no, who I'm not familiar with. So like good on him. We had everyone's favorite,
00:36:18
Speaker
You know, kind of Ben Shapiro impersonator, Jeremy Farkas, who voted no. And Drew Farrell, who voted no. Who's my actual favorite city councilor.
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah. She's a beast. She's amazing. And then we've got Maglioca who voted. Yes. We've got Jody Gondek who voted. Yes. We've got Ward Sutherland who voted. Yes. We've got Shane Keating who voted. Yes. We've got Peter DeMong who voted. Yes. We have Sean Chiu who voted. Yes. We have Jeff Davidson who voted. Yes. We have Ray Jones who voted. Yes. We have Gian Carlo Carac. Come on, man. Who voted. Yes. We have Diane Cully Urquhart. Big surprise in the flames zip up who voted. Yes. And then yet, and then finally not had Nancy. He indeed voted for this deal.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, and on this list, I've mentioned this before, but I do really want to hone in on people like Jodie Gondek, like Giancarlo Carra, like Nahe Nenshi, who have this completely unearned reputation as progressive voices on council, while they simultaneously vote for austerity packages and for
00:37:17
Speaker
handouts to billionaires and I'm going to keep harping on this because I think it's one of the major detriments to any kind of progressive or left-wing organizing at the city level in Calgary is that we give people these completely unearned progressive reputations and we also we doorknob for them and we phone bank for them and we support these people and then when they get into office they completely turn around and screw over
00:37:42
Speaker
like working people in this city. And I think there needs to be a very like clean break and very clear lines that we say like, if you do these things, you're not a progressive and like, it is completely like unfair to have you have access to things like volunteers and that kind of media and things like that. And I think that's just a really clean break that needs to happen in citywide political organizing in Calgary.
00:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, it is absolutely time to boycott these people. I think the other thing that doesn't get brought up enough in the context of this deal, and especially even the comparison to Edmonton's own shitty publicly funded arena deal, is that ultimately this feels to me like a real estate play, right? Like the thing that doesn't get brought up is that the city, sorry, the flames
00:38:28
Speaker
Now I have the option to buy two pieces of real estate at below market prices. They have the option to buy at first, write a first refusal lever to buy two nearby parcels of real estate. Not at the prices that would occur if the arena was to be built. These prices are set at kind of pre-arena valuations.
00:38:46
Speaker
And like, again, like Edmonton and Daryl Cates, our local shadowy billionaire who kind of like squeezed the city for a bunch of money. It was a real estate play in Edmonton as well. He purchased a bunch of parcels of land around his arena and he wanted to build this ice district.
00:39:01
Speaker
And essentially it becomes this giant speculative real estate play that's kind of with the linchpin of it being this giant publicly funded hockey arena. It becomes really easy to borrow money and go to investors and financiers and say, give me money for this giant real estate play when it's like, oh yeah, it's all based on this kind of assumption that this hockey arena will bring all sorts of milk and honey to the kind of surrounding area, right?
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah I agree and I think also too like it is the worst kept secret in Calgary that developers exercise a massive amount of political influence especially when it comes to city politics and a lot of the land that is wrapped up in this deal is incredibly valuable.
00:39:39
Speaker
Again, just if the city wants to build gentrification Hellworld and do East Village 2.0, they can do that with their own resources and money and capital. They don't have to facilitate it through these
00:39:54
Speaker
private companies that will just derive profit from it. This is just to me an example of P3s or private-public partnerships at the municipal level, and those projects at the federal level are always over budget. They always take longer than expected, and the quality is always worse than if the public sector had just done it itself. So that is very, very frustrating.
00:40:17
Speaker
I think it's worth kind of like counting out and naming the villains in this case too. So like the owners of the flames are just kind of a, if you look at their pictures, it's just a bunch of old white guys in suits, but they do have names and they do have histories. Um, again, we kind of mentioned Murray Edwards and Alan Markin, the two kind of CNRL connections on the cow of the Calgary flames owners. But there's also this dude named Alvin Leiben. We also have this dude named Jeffrey McCabe, who I've never heard of. He runs like the Trimac group of transportation companies, like a logistics thing.
00:40:46
Speaker
But I think their real like hand, they're like the King's hand, if we were to go kind of Game of Thrones for a second, has been Ken King, right? And I think Ken King is worth discussing for a moment too, because he is the like, if you were to take the idea of the professional managerial class and distill it down into kind of one smirking, needlessly overconfident shithead, it would be Ken King.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, fuck you, Ken King. The man has failed upward his entire life. If you look at his time with the Calgary Herald, if you look at his time in his other business ventures, he sucks. He's actually not very good at his job. But then now his career culminates in this, getting the people of the city of Calgary to put more than half the bill for a new arena so that his billionaire bosses can make even more fucking money. Yeah, absolutely. It's just completely ludicrous.
00:41:36
Speaker
I think we're also to start to name and shame villains here. I think the negotiators in the administration with the city of Calgary did a tremendously poor job representing the interests of Calgary. Again, the Calgary Flames had zero leverage unless they were willing to move the Flames out of town, which again, they will never do because they dominate the local media. And the TV deal that they have is extremely generous. It was like $5.6 billion for all the Canadian teams over 12 years.
00:42:04
Speaker
That TV deal is predicated on the team being in Canada. This is something that sports teams say all the time when they want to flee. This is something sports teams say all the time when they want to fleece local municipalities for money and it is always a bluff that should be called. The flames are not going to leave Calgary for all of the reasons that you have just outlined and it is such a clear and obvious threat and
00:42:30
Speaker
When it is discussed, it should be framed in that way. The Flames are trying, when they say that, to extort the people of Calgary for money. That is not a way that a sports team that we consider becoming a part of our local culture and identity or whatever should act. And really what's happening to me here is almost this like,
00:42:50
Speaker
symbolic public ownership where the way we talk about the flames are as if the flames were publicly owned by the people of Calgary and as if the profits that were derived by them being here were a public good that could be used for public services. But that's not true. The flames are a sports team that are, as we've said so many times, owned by very, very rich people who make a lot of money off of everything
00:43:17
Speaker
related to them, and that is how they should be treated unless they are actually really and truly publicly owned. So, gosh, I've said it a million times in this recording, but it is so frustrating to look at this kind of discourse around the Calgary Flames.
00:43:34
Speaker
Yeah, they are not the Green Bay Packers. They are in fact owned by oil billionaires. I think finally on this issue, I think we have to bring up the role that Calgary's shitty corporate media played. They absolutely got the pom-poms out for this deal. Danielle Smith, Lisa Corbella, Chris Nelson, Rick Bell, Dawn Braid. There was just tremendous amounts of class solidarity shown.
00:44:01
Speaker
by the Calgary professional media class with the oil billionaires who run the flames.
00:44:08
Speaker
Oh yeah, and this goes back to your earlier point about how the negotiators for the city did not do a good job of representing the city, and that is because I would argue these people all belong to the same class. All of these overpaid post-media columnists and Ken King and the city negotiators and the oil billionaires and vice presidents and whomever is at the very top of those office towers in Calgary, these people all have the exact same class interests and they know it and they work together to defend those class interests.
00:44:37
Speaker
Yes, it is in fact a tremendous example of class solidarity, and we should all learn from it. There are some incredible quotes from the Leisha Corbella piece that I would be remiss to not just read out loud and have you react to. I do so well at avoiding reading Leisha Corbella, but it is constantly foisted upon me. I know. It is the cross we almost bear as podcasters in Alberta. OK.
00:45:06
Speaker
For whatever reason, and I believe it has something to do with jealousy of sports stars and wealthy business people, building arenas seems to attract all sorts of scrutiny that, say, a new convention center doesn't, even though an arena or stadium does much more to sell a city than a convention center ever does.
00:45:22
Speaker
Oh, this sucks so bad already. I mean, there are, you could, you go across North America and there's like dozens and dozens of shitty crooked convention center deals. Like, like the left, broadly speaking, thinks that those deals are just as shitty as arena deals. There's just a solid criticism of those as like, as, as a billionaire extorting, um, you know, money from a municipality in order to build an arena. Like that doesn't, it's not a coherent criticism.
00:45:48
Speaker
Oh yeah, also such a banal argument to say that we're jealous of...
00:45:53
Speaker
What, Calgary Flames players and rich people? I'm not jealous of them, I just think they shouldn't have that much money and be able to control society and other people's lives. It's a pretty reasonable political position if you think about it for about 10 seconds. It gets better, it gets better. Okay, this is Corbella again. It seems to be a popular pastime online to attack successful and wealthy people, attributing all sorts of nefarious motivations behind every good turn.
00:46:18
Speaker
Just as I've never really comprehended why people idolize famous actors or musicians, I've also never understood the derision people feel towards those who, usually through a lot of hard work, and luck by virtue of being born with good brains, business acumen, and a strong worth ethic, have found ways to get rich and stay that way, even as they give lots of their money away, like these four men she's referring to the Calgary Flames owners regularly do. Jesus fucking Christ.
00:46:45
Speaker
This is, again, the class solidarity I'm talking about. This is incredible. Calgary's billionaire capitalist class have people like Leisha Corbella out there running this interference with a massive platform, right? What can I say, Leisha? Everyone needs hobbies, and mine happens to be telling rich people to go fuck themselves on Twitter.com.
00:47:06
Speaker
All right. Well, there you go. I think that's a fantastic way to end our extremely depressing Calgary Flames Arena segment.
Legal Battles Against Alberta's Bill 9
00:47:13
Speaker
Now let's get to something a little cheerier. Kate, I'm sure you've heard about this. A judge is granted an injunction against the UCP government's Bill 9. The background here is that the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees had negotiated contracts with the past government that was run by the Alberta NDP.
00:47:30
Speaker
that had a wage re-opener clause in them that essentially the members of the AEP would take two years of zeros on wages for the chance to reopen wage talks in the third year and if they weren't able to come to an agreement on those wage talks that they would go to an arbitrator who would decide yay or nay whether they'd get some more money.
00:47:48
Speaker
The UCP came in and said, absolutely not. And they tried to get around the contract that the government had signed with the AUPE with legislation. That's what Bill 9 is. And that's essentially what the judge slapped down today. The ruling essentially consists of the judge pointing at the contract, like slapping it and saying, respect this goddamn contract. I've got a quote from the decision here.
00:48:10
Speaker
It is in the long-term public interest for the public to see that its government cannot unilaterally change its contractual obligations through legislation that may interfere with charter rights. Kate, this seems to be a frequent feature of kind of conservative governments losing court cases. Is this kind of one of kind of many future times this is going to happen both in Alberta and kind of across the country?
00:48:34
Speaker
God willing, this is the first of many defeats for Jason Kenney's government at the hands of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees and other unions in Alberta.
00:48:41
Speaker
preach. Exactly. I mean, I think one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about was there was kind of tremendous organized labor backlash to this bill and that there was, you know, a huge, there were pickets all over the province outside of hospitals and outside of government and AUPE facilities, facilities where AUPE workers work. Can you talk about the information picket in Calgary?
00:49:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I had the privilege of attending a Bill 9 information picket at Foothills Hospital. It's pretty close to my work, so I was able to go on my lunch break. And it was absolutely incredible. It was probably the most workers I've ever seen on a picket line in Calgary since I moved into the city about five years ago. And yeah, we're literally talking about 350, 400 workers outside there. And what I think was so incredible about being there is
00:49:27
Speaker
So many people that I spoke to just when I was chatting with them, getting pizza, handing out chance sheets, so many people were saying like, this is my first picket line. This is the first time I've ever been to something like this or seen something like this. And that was really, really incredible to hear and to see how workers in Alberta are mobilizing themselves and also being mobilized by the resources and organizers within Alberta's unions.
00:49:53
Speaker
I think this is really incredible. I think the AUPE has done a great job here at taking on the burden of filing this injunction on behalf of many, many public sector workers in Alberta, many of whom took this wage arbitration deal. I think this is a really, really good sign of
00:50:12
Speaker
what is ahead and paths that we have to resist Jason Kenney and ultimately not only to just resist Jason Kenney and to register our dissent to what he is doing, but to stop what he is doing and to win real material gains for working people in Alberta.
00:50:29
Speaker
I mean, exactly. The hilarious thing about Bill nine is that not only is it like extremely, like largely unnecessary and Kenny is likely to continue losing, um, you know, fights like this in court, but it also brings together a labor movement in Alberta that was not necessarily a United front. This, this was two months into Kenny's mandate and he immediately forced every union in the province to get its shit together and get people out on a picket line. And that has tremendous solidarity building effect amongst, uh, you know, working class people in Alberta.
00:50:59
Speaker
Oh yeah, when I was on that picket line, it wasn't only AUPE workers. You saw the United Nurses of Alberta were bringing people in, walking off on their lunch breaks. You saw HSAA employees. So I think really creating this common front of solidarity between unions, particularly in the public sector, which we know Jason Kenney has his eye on, is incredibly important. And I think he did overplay his hand a little bit here.
00:51:23
Speaker
That said, Bill 9 isn't totally dead. Unions have got to keep fighting and keep organizing their members, and we have to keep fighting and keep organizing until Bill 9 is completely dead and in the grave.
00:51:34
Speaker
Exactly. The Alberta government does a plan to appeal the decision and the fight is not over. Okay, I think that's it for Bill 9 and that's it for this episode of The Progress Report. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please take a minute to leave a review, a five-star review of course, and a very generous blurb. This really does help us pick up new subscribers. If you have any notes, thoughts, or comments you think I need to hear about,
00:51:55
Speaker
I am on Twitter at Duncan Kinney, and you can get ahold of me on email at DuncanK at Progress Alberta.ca. I can't always respond, but I will at the very least glance at it and read it. Kate, what's the best way for people to find you online? You can find me on Twitter. I am at Kate L. Jacobson, J-A-C-O-B-S-O-N. And I would also recommend listening to the podcast that I host and sound engineer, The Alberta Advantage. If you like left-wing prairie history and politics, I think you should give it a listen.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yes, please go out and listen to The Albert Advantage. I am a regular listener and patron. It is a fantastic piece of content. Well, that's everything for this week. Thanks to Cosmic Fama Communist for the amazing theme. Goodbye.