Front Burner - Inside Alberta's 'House of Cards' scandal

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

Rachel Notley is expected to declare the date of the provincial election any day now. And within a matter of weeks, voters will cast their ballots to pick the next provincial government of Alberta. At the same time, one of the key parties in this race, the United Conservative Party, is at the center of a mounting political scandal. There are allegations that during the party's leadership race, Jason Kenney's campaign engaged in illegal practices. Over the weekend, Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell, investigative journalists at CBC Edmonton, reported on a cache of documents that show collaboration between Jason Kenney's campaign team and the campaign team for another candidate, Jeff Callaway. Today on Front Burner, Charles Rusnell breaks it down.

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Uncover Bomb on Board. Investigating the biggest unsolved mass murder in Canada. CP Flight 21. Get the Uncover podcast for free on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Available now. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So Alberta's NDP government delivered its throne speech on Monday. It set the stage for an election call that could really come at any time. This is all happening amidst some pretty explosive allegations that have emerged over the last few days. That when Jason Kenney was running to lead the United Conservative Party, his campaign worked

hand in hand with another candidate's campaign to undermine Jason Kenney's rival. People are calling this the kamikaze scandal. I'm joined today by the CBC's Charles Rustnell in Edmonton. He's one of the reporters that broke the story. This is FrontBurner. Hi, Charles. Hi, Jamie. So over the weekend, the deputy premier, Sarah Hoffman, said that this was like an episode of House of Cards, which is one of my favorite shows. It belongs on House of Cards. It belongs on Netflix. It doesn't belong in Alberta politics.

Has Alberta ever seen anything like this? This is crazy. Well, I've been a reporter here since 1995, and I've never seen anything like this. I mean, politics in Alberta are bare knuckle. Internal conservative politics are always very rough and tumble because we had one party in power for 44 years. So there was lots of infighting, lots of subterfuge between campaign teams. Tremendous amounts of money are raised in this province just for individual nomination races. But of course, then in 2015, the NDP's Rachel Notley won the election. This was a huge surprise.

I know that it rocked the conservatives across Alberta. And to understand what's happening now, we have to understand what happened after this massive election upheaval in 2015. massive election upheaval in 2015. So can you take me back to that time and what happened to the Conservative Party after the NDP's big win? The Conservatives were reeling. You know, the electorate had decided, obviously, that they'd had enough of the corruption of successive conservative regimes. Another controversy linked to former Premier Alison Redford.

We obtained documents that show Redford ordered a lavish personal apartment suite to be built at taxpayers' expense on the top floor of a downtown Edmonton high-rise. It wasn't just the electorate that were tired of it. The caucus itself was in revolt. And the Tories brought in Jim Prentiss. He's a very popular federal cabinet minister from Alberta. He brought a very steady hand to the party. He seemed to have righted the ship. This is a viable party with a future. Albertans will see that immediately. And we will re-earn trust and respect one vote at a time. But then we also had the Wild

Rose Party was still in, you know, was in existence. It was a credible alternative to the Tories. And there were worries, as I recall, that the, you know, the Tories and the Wild Rose would split the vote. But pollsters had still predicted the Tories would pull off a win. They thought it might be a minority government, perhaps. But then on election night, it came out. I remember sitting at home in my easy chair watching TV and just being shocked. Take a look at this. Something most Canadians probably never thought they'd see. Not just an NDP government in Alberta, but a strong majority.

It was a bloodbath. You know, one of the worst defeats of a provincial government in Canadian history. And, you know, Rachel Notley swept to power. She was as shocked as anyone. I remember watching her on TV. Friends, I believe that change has finally come to Alberta. And they've got a massive majority.

They had a very strong majority government. And the Wild Rose ended up as the official opposition with Brian Jean as its leader. Not only did we keep our three seats that we had before this election, the three seats, the three incumbents, but we have actually more than four times the amount of seats we started this race with. Four times. Tell me about Brian Jean. Who is he?

He's very much a strong fiscal and social conservative. He's not a natural politician at all. He's not comfortable with media interviews. He's not a very comfortable public speaker. He's not, I don't think most people would say that he's charismatic, but he's someone that many Albertans can relate to. He's one of them. He speaks, you know, he talks the talk, he drops the G's on when he's talking. And, you know, he was popular within the Wildrose party. We're going to work together with the NDP when we can,

and we're going to work against them if we feel that they're not representing Albertans' interests and not safeguarding the economy as they are supposed to do. Okay, so we've got Brian Jean leading the Wild Rose Party, and then when does Jason Kenney come on the scene in Alberta politics? Well, Jason Kenney comes onto the scene in the summer of 2016. He announces that he's going to seek the leadership of the Tory party in Alberta. After a great deal of reflection, I've come to the conclusion that I can more effectively serve this country that I love and advance the Conservative cause in a different way. And he's parachuted in from Ottawa. You know, he's a long

time Conservative MP. I think it was nearly 20 years. And a cabinet minister. He actually spent very little time in the province because he was a key person in the Harper government. You know, he was seen as a high-profile candidate, but not someone who's really been involved in Alberta politics. And in fact, there's been complaints about him because he often is on social media going after Justin Trudeau and others on the federal scene. And people are saying, why don't you pay attention in Alberta anyway?

Right. For example, he's really championing this opposition to carbon taxes. What's Trudeau hiding? Why won't Justin Trudeau come clean and tell us the cost of his carbon tax? Correct. I mean, so he gets elected PC leader in the spring of 2017. Today, progressive conservatives have said, let us reunite the family. Let us bury the hatchet. Let us come together. Let us focus on what unites us and not what divides us.

And then the Tories in the wild rose. They entered these negotiations, which were acrimonious. And they did merge in the summer of 2017, which set up a race for the leadership of the newly merged party, which was held in the fall of 2017. Right. And this is the United Conservative Party, the UCP. Correct. Okay. So I'm imagining the next step here is a leadership race. Who's going to lead this party? And who are the two main candidates here? Kenny and Jean are the two main candidates in this leadership campaign.

I know that there was a lot going on during this campaign, but for the purposes of this conversation, we want to get to this whole affair around this kamikaze candidate. So can you tell me who Jeff Calloway is? Sure. Jeff Calloway is a Calgary stockbroker, former Wildrose president, a behind-the-scenes guy, you know, known in Tory circles for many years, but not, he didn't really have any sort of public profile. I've spent a lot of time dedicating myself just strictly as a volunteer to trying to get this province back on track. My initial motivation was as an investment

advisor, working with clients, talking about their issues and challenges. Okay, so during the leadership campaign, you start hearing rumors that Callaway is essentially a kamikaze candidate for the Kenny campaign. What are these rumours? Well, everyone in the media had heard them because Callaway spent a lot of time during the campaign attacking Brian Jean. I've got to say, Brian, you know, when you were telling Wildrose members that you were in favour of farms being forced to have WCB, I and many others in the Wild Rose were deeply disappointed. And you actually interpreted our constitution to believe that you actually had

more of the power in the party than the executive. He went after Gene during debates, in media appearances. He got on this hobby horse about the finances of the Wild Rose. And I know Brian, unfortunately, we had a caucus deficit that we're still dealing with today. But the fact is, it's about integrity and what our... He was essentially saying all the things about Brian Jean that Kenny couldn't say, because Kenny wouldn't want to alienate the Wild Rose wing of the party.

Brian Jean was still very popular. So at the same time that Calloway was going after Jean, he was not criticizing Jason Kenney. So these rumors took on more credence when Calloway quit the race and endorsed Kenney. And even in his resignation... I'll just, I have to reiterate, if we're going to build a successful party together, we need everyone to get involved. And I think that's a contrast relative to what we're seeing from at least Brian Jean, who is putting out all of these policies and in essence dictating what he wants this party to stand for. He kept going after Brian Jean. In fact, he accused someone in Jean's campaign of attempting to bully him.

Oh, interesting. And I should say, we're using this word kamikaze candidate today. It's a word that's being used a lot when people are talking about this scandal, essentially, this enveloped the Jason Kenney campaign. My impression of what this means is essentially a candidate that's willing to like self-sacrifice themselves. And am I right there when I say that? Yes. I mean, the allegation is that Calloway had no intention of actively competing to win. competing to win. He was simply in the race to act as a stalking horse for, you know,

Kenny's campaign and to attack Brian Jean. Got it. So there are these rumors during the leadership campaign, although nothing ever comes of these rumors. And then in October 2017, Kenny wins the UCP leadership race, really by a landslide. He beats Brian Jean. Friends, please join with me in thanking Brian Jean and Doug Schweitzer. And I'd like to invite them to come up here. And then meantime, if we fast forward to December of last year, there are other allegations of irregular donations to Calloway's campaign.

So Calloway comes up again. So what are these allegations? At this point, he's dropped out of the race, you know, a long time ago. So essentially on the last day of the sitting of the Alberta legislature, a disgruntled former UCP MLA by the name of Prabh Gillies from Calgary, he makes the allegation that there was $40,000 in suspicious donations. Given that it appears that there were more than $40,000 of very suspicious donations made to a UCP leadership candidate who attacked Brian Jean in the UCP leadership race and who ultimately endorsed the leader of the opposition. And given that there are rumors that this money actually came from a PAC associated with the leader of the opposition. Now, I have to stress that none of these allegations have been proven. So at this point, we don't know whether any of it is true or not. But of course, the allegations made by Gill and the legislature, again, rekindled these rumors about the kamikaze campaign or, you know, Callaway running as a stalking horse for Kenny. Got it. So if I could just sum this up, I just want to make sure I understand.

So we've got Kenny and Brian Jean as the frontrunners of the UCP leadership race. These rumors that Jeff Calloway is a kamikaze candidate put there by the Kenny campaign to attack the main rival, Jean. Then long after Kenny wins the party leadership, there are allegations that come forward in the legislature that Calloway's campaign accepted irregular donations from a political action committee that supports the Kenney campaign. And this rekindles all the speculation that Calloway is this kamikaze candidate. Am I right? That's right. That's right. So I want to move forward through this winter. Jason Kenney is the leader of the UCP. There's an election in Alberta. It's now imminent. Rachel Notley could call it any second, really. The context in Alberta is that there's a lot of anger in the province over the loss of jobs in the energy sector, a lack of a pipeline.

Jason Kenney has his sights set on beating Rachel Notley. And then over the weekend, you publish a story with our colleague Jenny Russell. It's like this blockbuster story based on a big cache of leaked documents. So what's in these documents? Well, essentially, it's irrefutable proof that the Kenney campaign not only collaborated with the Callaway campaign to undermine Jean, but they directed it. They were driving the bus that rolled over Brian Jean. And one of Kenney's campaign managers, you can see there's all these emails in there. He's providing strategic political direction to the Callaway campaign.

He's providing media and talking points. They wrote speeches for Callaway. Wow. They produced that. We got videos. They produced these very sophisticated videos, They produced, we got videos. They produced these very sophisticated videos, you know, high production standards. They produced attack advertisements. You see, when I started this two years ago, the unity discussion.

Including memes. And there's also a document there that details how the Kenney campaign recruited Callaway specifically to undermine Gene. But what's most striking is that within these documents, there is a timetable for when Callaway would quit the race after they thought enough damage had been done to the Brian Gene campaign. And it was weeks and weeks before he actually quit, before Callaway actually quit the race. They had already determined when he would quit and what the messaging would be after he quit. And another really striking document in there is that we see that on the day that Callaway resigned, this same Kenney campaign manager even wrote the resignation speech that Callaway would give in which he took more shots at Brian Jean. Wow.

My role was to coordinate the communications and social media strategies for the Jeff Calloway campaign and cooperate with the Jason Kenney communications individuals. Calloway's withdrawal was something that wasn't necessarily negotiable. What is Kenny saying about all of this? He denied recruiting Callaway. He said that they met with Callaway. He said it's normal for campaigns to communicate. The two campaigns communicated on issues and issues management, communications and research and things like that. I think in a way that's

normal for two, you know, if you've run a campaign before where you're hoping to get the second ballot support of a particular candidate, you keep in touch. We have experts saying, no, it's not normal for campaigns to communicate in the way that these two did. But he didn't directly address the issue of the fact that there was written proof of a plan for Callaway to resign and endorse him. I learned about Jeff's decision to withdraw and endorsed me the night before he made that announcement. It's possible that his campaign staff have been talking about that beforehand. There's it's possible that these campaign staff have been talking about that beforehand. I from my impression is that Jeff got into it ultimately with the expectation of going to the end, but with the possibility of pulling up beforehand if he didn't have sufficient support. So essentially they just ignored a lot of the evidence that was in these documents and stuck with some talking points,

which they keep repeating over and over again. Right. You mentioned before that you have experts who say that this isn't normal for campaigns to coordinate like this. Is it illegal? Well, it depends. We had an expert, a political scientist by the name of Jared Wesley from the University of Alberta. And what he pointed out to us is that under Alberta's Election Act, from the University of Alberta. And what he pointed out to us is that under Alberta's Election Act, if you provide resources, if one campaign provides resources to another campaign, that is legal, but it has to be quantified and disclosed.

If you share professional services with another campaign, that campaign that receives it has to disclose it. And there's no record, at least publicly, that that disclosure has been made by the Callaway campaign. If you're giving them videos, if you're doing advertisements for them, that has to be disclosed. And we checked and the Callaway campaign did not disclose it. OK, so you got these documents that showed evidence of coordination between these two campaigns. But I also want to talk to you about this money and the allegations that there were irregular campaign donations by a political action committee that supported Kenny's campaign, which we talked about earlier. The ones that were made in the legislature.

What's going on with those? What we can say is that there was, there is an investigation or was an investigation by Alberta's Office of the Election Commissioner. And they actually issued a $3,500 fine to a woman for making a donation to the Callaway campaign with money that was not hers. But we don't know where that money came from. We don't know if that is part of the allegation or associated to the allegation made by Prab Gill

back in the legislature in December. We don't know that. Now, last week, I got a document leaked to me that showed that the RCMP were investigating, that they were conducting an investigation. Right, because Pratt Gill has said that he's spoken to the RCMP about this. Correct. So now we know that it may go back, this investigation may go back as far as December. Essentially, what we know today is that over the weekend, a cache of documents have come out that lend truth to the rumors that Jason Kenney's campaign was running a kamikaze candidate during the UCP leadership race. That candidate was Jeff Calloway. And at the same time, we know that the RCMP is now investigating these irregular campaign

donations to Calloway's campaign. That's correct. And we know that there was at least one, according to Alberta's election commissioner, we know that there was at least one irregular political contribution to the Calloway campaign. So what is Jason Kenney or his team saying about these allegations, the money allegations? So, I mean,, Kenny didn't directly respond to the allegations. Instead, they had his leadership campaign manager issued a statement in which he said the Kenny campaign was not involved either directly or indirectly in transferring money to any campaigner, to any individual. This is not about our campaign.

This is about someone else's leadership campaign from 18 months ago. Okay. So here's the thing I'm struggling with. Why would Jason Kenney's team even bother with this? I thought, and I don't live in Alberta, but I thought the leadership race was really his to lose. That's a good question. I was talking to one of Brian Jean's campaign managers, and they are flummoxed by this.

They had polling. They knew that, you know, Kenny, the race was his to lose. I think it's possible, as we've talked about, the Alberta election is imminent, that these attempts to win the leadership race might hurt his chances to become premier of Alberta. I do, because this scandal is not going to go away. It's going to continue to roll on. We know that at least one member from Callaway's campaign is now cooperating not just with the election commissioner, but also the RCMP, that they're providing documents to the RCMP. We also spoke with a political scientist last week who said that we'll continue to hound him. You better believe, I mean, this was manna from heaven for Rachel Notley and the NDP. I mean, they were gleeful. You could almost see them rubbing their hands together. They put up someone within a few hours of our story coming out. They were just, I mean, this is like red meat for them. They're on it. And Mr. Kenney owes Albertans a full accounting, not just empty denials, especially given that this morning we learned that these denials were actually calm, cool, confident lies.

Outright lies. They may be unpopular, but people previously threw out the last government because they were fed up with corruption, and then all this starts coming out on the eve of an election. It couldn't be worse timing for Jason Kenney in the United Conservative Party. Right. I mean, I'm not sure I totally agree with Sarah Hoffman,

the deputy premier, that this is like an episode of House of Cards. It feels like it doesn't quite reach that level, but it is fascinating. And I hope that you will come back and keep us posted on what happens next. Oh, I will. Thank you. That's all for today.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to Frontburner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe.

As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone.

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