Shaun Newman Podcast - #408 - David Parker

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Founder of Take Back Alberta and co-host of the Canadian Story podcast we talk all things with the upcoming Alberta election. Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast Let me know what you thinkText me 587-217-8500

This is Tamara Leach. This is Tom Korski. This is Dr. Robert Malone. This is Wayne Peters. This is Kaler Betz. What's up, guys? It's Kid Carson. And you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the podcast, folks. April. April is honest meaning, well, among other things, a new intro, some of the voices you heard, well, all of them were on the podcast this past month. So if you haven't tuned in or maybe you didn't catch them or maybe you missed a couple of those, go back and take a game.

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DatC.A. He's a founder of Takeback Alberta and co-host the Canadian Story podcast. I'm talking about David Parker. So buckle up. Here we go. My name is David John Parker and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by David Parker.

So, sir, how does it go? It's going pretty well. It's been a while since we had a nice chat. You've been on my podcast. It's great to be on yours. I'm really glad for what you're doing. I think the work for the Sean Newman podcast is doing on getting information out there has been one of the most incredible things to come out of the last couple of years.

I don't know how big you are at this point, but I hear about you all the time wherever I go. People are talking about listening to your podcast. So thanks for having me on. Yeah, what a responsibility that is, you know? It's kind of weird to hear that. It's like I'm flattered, but I don't think Sean's really changed that much since day one. So I guess I might be doing my job.

But what a responsibility to try and bring people on to, you know, enlighten the listener. And certainly people here in Alberta and Saskatchewan as I sit right on the border, henceforth me bringing you on. You know, it's a lot. You know, I was thinking about this. The last time you were on was a roundtable about, um, the UCP when they were going to have, you know, a new leader. And I wanted to know the balloting and like just real simple things. And, you know, May 29th feels at times a long way away, you know,

as the cold, you know, snowed here again last thing. And just like, frick, it won't leave us alone. But soon enough, May 29th will be here. And, you know, I've been kind of curious about it. And you kind of listen here back and forth. And the name that comes up a lot is David Parker to have you on. to talk about some of the things you're seeing, some of the things you're paying attention to. And so, you know, if you want to give a little bit of your background, David, fire away.

But I think most people, you know, with Take Back Alberta and, you know, certainly the podcast, Canadian story and different things like that. Like, I think people got a pretty decent feel for you. And saying that, if you want to spend a few minutes on your background and then hop to it, I'm good with it. Yeah, I won't take too long. For those who don't know, I'm a rural Alberta kid. I grew up in kind of common sense, Alberta country here in central Alberta, around the Lacombe area. I was homeschooled, so got a really great education in my mind by reading a lot of the books that kind of define Western civilization. We're talking about, like Milton's Paradise Lost, the brothers Karamazov, a lot of Tolstoy.

We read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, just a lot of reading. So that really kind of set the stage for me being interested, I would say, in leadership, which led to interest in politics, started kind of getting involved in politics around 14 years old. And I haven't really stopped, despite many people I love thinking that maybe it's time for me to go on to something else to keep getting pulled back into this crazy world of politics. I worked for Stephen Harper for a while. I've done about 40 election campaigns now across the country, three last year. Last year, well, I count December 2021. Myself and a few others started an organization called Take Back Alberta, and the purpose of that organization is to educate Albertans on how their political system works

and how they can get outcomes that they want and hold their leaders accountable. So that's been pretty successful organization. We've seen our work in the leadership review, which ended up in Jason Kenney resigning, was quite successful. Then we tried to help as we could without violating any rules, obviously, in the leadership race for the leadership of the United Conservative Party. And then we have been heavily involved in kind of internal party politics. So the way that we describe, take back to Alberta is we're trying to change politics from the inside. and yeah obviously there's a lot more that's happened in my life a lot more that I've done but that's kind of the background very quickly on the politics that I've been engaged in and you forgot to

mention and you'll you'll slowly get this but recently married recently married yes yes I was recently married and very happy about that obviously a great joy to find someone to spend the rest of your life with so well congratulations I think that's like you say a special moment in anyone's life. But, you know, over time, you'll start to lead with that. And I've got a loving wife. She's the most amazing thing. Anyways, I chuckle out of it.

True. I'm a brand new at this, brand new. You know, when you look at the upcoming election, May 29th, you got, you know, I would say it's a two-party, you know, we're going to fight it out. And certainly maybe listeners will disagree with me on that. but I would say the going theory is it's Daniel Smith versus Rachel Notley or the UCP versus the NDP, whichever way you want to slice it. Some people are extremely worried.

Some people are like there's nothing to worry about. And I'm talking from a UCP standpoint. I align with what Daniel Smith says in a lot of points. what have you been like what are you staring at when it comes to this election that you're like I think people need to understand okay so I think there's kind of a little bit of a back story here that we have to get into before we talked about this specific election for those who haven't been paying attention until let's say the pandemic or maybe a little bit before that obviously in 2015 we have I'm raising I'm raising my hand folks

In 2015, we had a split of the right-wing vote between the Wild Rose and the PCs, and that resulted in the NDP forming government in 2015. Now, interestingly, and I share this in a lot of my talks, but I was one of those people that was kind of happy in 2015, because that's how much I hated the PC party. Like, I was a hardcore Wild Rose who really believed in the vision of a smaller government and better fiscal responsibility, more accountability, less corruption, that kind of thing.

And I couldn't have been more wrong at that time. But I think a lot of people were so fed up with the PCs that they thought, oh, we'll just, you know, we'll put the NDP in for a little while, and then they'll get their acts together. And in a way, you could argue that looks like what happened, right, is after the NDP got in, a lot of people got involved. A lot of people who hadn't been involved before that, and they said, we got to do something about this.

We really don't want this ideology being how we're governed politically. And so the two parties came together. A lot of people worked very hard. Obviously, Jason Kenney led that project of bringing the PCs and the Wild Rose together. The two parties merged into the United Conservative Party. There was a leadership race for the leadership of that party. Jason Kenney won that. Many won a large majority in 2019.

And I think a lot of Albertans thought, ah, good, the rights united, we're back to being our Albertan selves. You know, we can have conservative governments again. But, you know, they've hopefully learned their lessons from their four years in the darkness. And, you know, the Wild Rose is now in the PC party because they've merged as equals. Hopefully this can fix things. Obviously, the pandemic had a massive impact on Alberta politics. particularly, but I think the whole world, the global political way we see the world and our worldviews.

So it was very difficult for Jason Kenney to keep that coalition together. And I think a big part of that is there was the libertarian side, which was more in the wild rows. And then there was kind of the more PC, you know, their blue, or the kind of red Tories. But, you know, they care about good fiscal management. They care about the energy industry, but individual freedoms and rights are less important. Whereas I would say on the Wild Rose side, those are kind of one of the most important things. So you saw the party kind of divide again. And what we saw in kind of the fall of 2021 was that the NDP were projected to get 55 seats

and the United Conservative Party was projected to get 22 seats. Right. So we had a very, we had a, we had a, we called it. the United Conservative Party, but it had already divided again. And there was the people who were really mad at Jason Kenney and mad at the United Conservative Party for how they'd handled COVID and for a lot of other things. And then there was smaller but probably more establishment,

let's call it, group of people that were still with the party on the party board. A lot of the MLAs felt like loyalty to Kenny. And so there was this divide. And obviously that culminated in the leadership review that Kenny went through, which then he resigned and there was a leadership race. And Daniel Smith came on the scene and said, look, I want to bring the party back together. I hear your concerns. I see why you're upset.

And I want to go and try to fix this and try to beat the NDP. So now we're at today. And if you look at the polls today, you'll see that it depends on which polling, firm you follow. So think HQ put out a poll, Main Street put out a poll, Angus Reed has put out a poll. Supposedly, there's a poll by Janet Brown out there that is private behind a paywall that most people haven't seen. All of these polls seem to agree that it's close, it's tight. It's somewhere between the NDP leading by 2 to 3% across the province and the UCP leading between 2 to 4%. percent depending on who's doing the polling.

Now, the reason that this is so important is when the polling was happening in 2021, kind of October 2021, the NDP were above 50 percent and the UCP was below 30 percent. So we've seen a huge rise, I would argue, a reunification of the party under Danielle Smith, and now we have a chance of winning. Now, when you look at those top line numbers, and when they say top line, it just means like UCP leading by 3%, or NDP leading by 2%, that doesn't dig into the data. And if you really dig into the data, this is a story of three different elections. Okay, so there's the election at Edmonton, which the NDP feel like they've already won. There are some seats, I think, that are possible to win in Edmonton.

but Emmington is right now kind of a stronghold for the NDP. Then we have what's called the rest of Alberta. Some people include Red Deer and Lethbridge in that. Others take that out and consider those urban seats. But regardless of what you call it, you have between 35 and 41 seats that are outside of Edmonton and Calgary. Now, in those seats, the United Conservative Party is leading by a large market. Some polls have been leading by 20, 30%.

So if you say the NDP are leading by 15 to 20% in Eminton, and the United Conservative Party is leading by 20 to 30% in those 35 to 41 seats in the rest of the province, that leaves Calgary. And Calgary really is the battle ground of this election. Right now, the NDP have three seats in Calgary, and the United Conservative Party has 23 seats in Calgary. That's probably not going to be how things end up at the end of this, but we don't know. It looks like it's very close in Calgary.

So that's kind of the basic overview for those who don't really know what's going on in Alberta provincial politics is think of it as three different elections, right? You've got Edmonton, you've got Calgary, and you've got the rest of Alberta. It looks like in the rural areas, Daniel Smith has got a lot of support. Rachel Knottley's got a lot of support in Edmonton, so it really comes down to Calgary. Okay. None of that really shocks me. I got to be honest.

I don't think anyone's shocked by Eminton. I don't think anyone's shocked by rural. The rural, sorry. I think in Calgary, you go, okay, so what's changed? What's changed from 23 to 3 to where it's even remotely, you know, neck to neck? Like what's been the big change in Calgary? And I don't know if you have the answer to that. Well, I don't have obviously a definitive answer in the sense that I can't say this is the reason.

But I'll give you my thoughts on why it's happened. I think if you look at the last eight years, maybe let's look at the last 12 years of Alberta politics. Right. It's been chaos. Right? We had Redford and Redford got, she resigned. Then we had Prentice. Prince just lost that election.

And we had Notley and a lot of people really didn't like Notley. And then finally someone came along and said, I'm going to break the parties together. I'm going to lead us back into that Alberta advantage. And a lot of us got on board with that and really thought that that was going to be the answer. And now, and then we won one of the biggest majorities, not the biggest, but one of the biggest majorities in Alberta's history with the United Conservative Party. And then COVID hit and the party divided in.

and now that leader who'd won one of the biggest majorities in Alberta's history isn't the leader and there's a new leader. So if you're a regular voter, not someone who pays a lot of attention to politics, but you're going to look at what's happening in Alberta politics, and you're going to be like, this is chaos. Like we just keep changing our leaders. Why can't we pick someone? I just want some stability.

I just want things to be normal for a while. And the funny thing is the premier that's lasted the longest in the last 12 years is Rachel Notley. right so there are some people probably the people who don't pay us much attention to politics were like well jason kenny i didn't like him right because of what happened or maybe they didn't like him because of his policies you know who knows why they didn't like him right but they see daniel smith and they're like didn't she cross the floor at one point like you have to remember that your average voter has a very low understanding of of the history of politics. And so they get in their minds that they get in their minds that something's the case.

And then it's the job of political parties to like increase that. So the NDP have been working very hard to say the United Conservative Party is in chaos. You know, Daniel Smith is crazy. That's a line they use all the time. They're constantly saying it. And so I think a lot of people in Calgary are just kind of confused, right? They're like, why does it keep happening? and I think a lot of your listeners would agree with me in terms of freedom of choice in medical issues, but not everyone does. And a lot of people don't. And obviously, Daniel Smith stood up for the unvaccinated and said that they were very discriminated against. And I think a lot of people don't agree with that position.

A lot of people feel that the unvaccinated were selfish. There's a lot of titles that they have for them. And there was a lot of propaganda. We faced a lot of propaganda over the last three years regarding vaccination and the status of the unvaccinated, things like that. So they probably see her as taking that stand as radical. Now, I don't see that stand as radical, but I think a lot of, let's just call them regular voters do. And so they're thinking, well, maybe the NDP is the more stable option. I don't agree with that, but I think that's probably what's happening.

How much has Travis Taves stepping away and, I don't know, I can't remember all the names, but there's been a bunch that are no longer going to run next, you know, Travis comes to mind because obviously in the leadership race, you know, what was it, 52 to 48, you know, in the six ballot, you know, like you get the point. I think the regular listener remembers that it was, it was, closer than I thought it was going to be. And so certainly he had a ton of support and for him to step away is that, you know, are you concerned at all about that?

Are you like, it's just another, you know, that's politics? I'll be, I'll be really honest. I am very concerned that if we don't take this seriously as all burdens, we could end up with another socialist government. I will say that it is the less likely option, right? So if you look at the numbers, there's, like I said, 41 seats outside of Edmonton and Calgary and 46 inside Emmington and Calgary. And most of those 41, the vast majority of them are probably going to go for the United Conservative Party. So the United Conservative Party has kind of a starting point before you even get to Calgary of at least, let's say, 35.

And let's say that the NDP have a starting point before you get to Calgary of 20. Let's give them 22, okay? They have a starting point of 22, 23. Well, that's a big, that's a big gap to overcome. But in the case of someone like Travis Taves leaving, I think when you run for a leader, you've kind of, you've made a decision that you want to be the leader of a party. And not everyone, but a lot of people, when they get it that close,

it's very hard for them. Let's look at what happened with Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, right? They were so close, much closer actually, and on the final ballot than this. last leadership election we had in Alberta. It was very hard for Maxim Bernier to kind of stay in the party with Andrew Shear when it was that close, both for Andrew Shear and for Maxine Bernier. So there's an element of if you run for leader, you kind of want to be a leader.

I think from what I've been told on the issue of Travis Dave's, he wanted to get his four budgets in. He did. He balanced the budget twice. He was proud of what he'd accomplish. and he you know politics is hard and being a politician is not a fun job generally speaking there's tons of scrutiny especially for someone like Travis daves who was you know in jason kenny's inner circle he probably received a lot of backlash from both the left and the

right so i think he probably just decided that he didn't want to keep going in politics that he that he'd had his his fill um this is pretty common it's It's not that we're used to it, but it's pretty common for 10 to 15, sometimes 20% of a caucus to not run in the next election. Whether it's because they've been in there for 10 years, like Godfrey is a great example in Calgary. He used to be the, well, is the MLA right now for Calgary Fish Creek, but he decided he wasn't going to run again. He's been around for over a decade as far as I'm aware. and he's a good MLA. He's pretty respected by his community,

but he just decided he didn't want to go again. And there's a lot of those people, along with some like Travis or Sonia Savage, who've decided that they don't want to run anymore. From what I've heard in the case of Sonia Savage, it's a family health issue. She really wants to be there for her family member who's having health problems.

So, I mean, that's a perfectly legitimate reason to go. In terms of the effect that it will have on the election, I think you'd probably be surprised at how few people even know who the finance minister is, right? Sure. Like most people in when they're paying attention to politics, and I try to explain this to people when they're campaigning all the time, is they don't really even know anyone, but maybe the party leaders, but even that they might not know, right?

they kind of know the brand of the party. So it might have an effect on the margins, right? There's probably going to be a sense in people's minds. Why is the finance minister resigning before the election? But like for the vast majority of people, they're not even paying attention right now. Well, there's a, you can, you can like feel it, you know? Like I think back to 2015, you know, when you're saying, let's go back and tell the story. It's like, Sean wasn't paying attention.

from back then, right? And yet, and yet, I remember the feeling of like, we're going to vote the NDP in to say, fuck you to the conservatives. That was a very, like, I remember that. Like, I can remember the feeling, the sentiment behind it, but not the names, right? I mean, now, now certainly I know the story and more of the names and everything else. And so right now you go, um, for, I would say, you know, for the, when you talk about the rural, you know, 40, 41, correct? 41, but that includes red deer and left bridge, right? So some people argue that it should only be like 36, 37, but yeah.

Okay, so let's just say 36. You just go, for the 36, you know, Daniel Smith went around to so many of these different communities. For a lot of us, she's spoken more openly before she ever ran. And so we kind of, we kind of get it. So it's like, I can already feel that sentiment of whether or not you believe truly in what Daniel Smith is and could be or just believe in that she's right at a ship of Jason Kenny. Jason Kenny, up until he was out, people were talking again about like, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Like I just, I can't vote for him again. Now he's gone. They can vote for him again. We know the focus is going to be. I mean, you've talked about it here a lot, but, or a little bit maybe, I think it's pretty clear, you know, all the papers are talking about it, all the news cycles are talking about it. Calgary is the focus. Calgary is a focus. Well, what can the NDP do?

What can the UCP do on focusing on one little spot? Is that the smart thing to do? Is that just toss as much time and effort and people and resources into winning Calgary? Or is there something else that goes unlocked? Yeah. So I think when you're looking at campaigns, whether it's federally when we're dealing with like the conservative party, we talk about the GTA, right? The Greater Toronto area,

and we always talk about how that's the area that decides elections, right? And when you're looking at the United States, they have what's called red states, they have blue states, and then they have purple states, right? When you're looking at the UK elections, so in the United Kingdom, you'll always have, you know, safe conservative seats, safe labor seats, and then you'll have the middle.

So whatever we're talking about politics, we're always talking, there's always swing riders. And in the case of Alberta, I would say it's been a very different, right? Because we've had this culture of creating new parties, right? So the Wild Rose would come in and they would be the ones that were taking kind of this other area, the rural area, not the full rural area, but often, I mean, 17 seats sometimes more than that. So we're kind of in a new paradigm where people don't think about it being kind of normal. But to be honest, this is maybe the most politically normal election we've had in Alberta in a long time, right? Because now it's just two parties.

You know, there's no split on the right. And honestly, there's hardly any split on the left. There used to be the Alberta party got a lot like 10% of the vote last election, right? The liberals, the Alberta liberals have often been the. opposition or got a lot of votes. But right now it just seems to be one v. So in a case like that, you're going to campaign across the whole province. You're going to have campaigns in all 87 of the constituencies.

But as the United Conservative Party, you're probably not going to put a lot of effort into Edmonton, Strathcona, which is Rachel Nottley's riding. Right? You're probably think that one's unlikely to be victorious. But you'll probably put a lot more work into like Calgary Pagan, which. is kind of in that area that the NDP need to win. What I would say is it makes a lot of sense for both parties. I mean, you see Rachel Knottley has moved her headquarters from Edmonton for the party headquarters to Calgary.

Why they know that that's the battle. I think it makes sense, not even to spend all of your time on one city, but focused down on to 10 ridings. I think the parties will probably be focused down to 10 to 15 ridings across the province and that's where the election will be decided. And that's just the nature of math. So if I had to say what 15 ridings, I think are going to be the 15 ridings, I would say there's four around Edmonton.

There's Strathcona Sherwood Park. There's Mornville, St. Albert. There's Spruce Stony Plain. Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, or Stony Plains, Strews Grove. I forget the order that they have that in. And then Ladoop Beaumont. Those are the four around Edmont. that the NDP are trying to get.

They probably already have Sherwood Park, although I know there's going to be a fight there, but those are the four they're going to get. They're also going to try to get Casey Maddew's seat in Edmonton. He won by a very small margin. He's fighting hard. I know he's got a lot of volunteers out there, and we'll see what happens there.

But the NDP's path to victory, if they have one, is to pick up a couple of those seats around Edmonton to make it easier for them to not have to pick up. up quite as many in Calgary. Now, if we're talking about Calgary, there's probably 10 seats in Calgary that the UCP have a very strong lock on, right? We're talking about the Calgary Lawheeds, the Calgary Fish Creeks, the Calgary, even probably Calgary Northwest, Calgary West, you know, there's that kind of, if you,

if you imagine Calgary as kind of a square and you got the four quadrants, you know, Calgary Southeast is pretty safe. Calgary Southwest is decently safe. And then you got the northwest and the northeast, and that's probably where the battle is going to be. If you think about it as just a square, the center is going to be where the NDP have the most power, and then they'll spread out from the center.

So when you're thinking about this from a strategic point of view, if you're the NDP, you're going to be focused on that ring around the three seats that they currently have in Calgary. you're going to try to expand that to 15 seats, which means that the UCP could still get 11, but if they get 15 plus 20 in Edmonton, or let's say even 22,

now they're at 37, 38 seats. They're within striking distance if they can get a couple others. Now, a few other battleground ridings that we're going to see in this upcoming election are Banff Canaanascus. Banff has obviously got a more progressive population, like we're talking about the people who like spend their time, I'm skiing, the arts, all that kind of stuff.

So that's going to be a tighter riding. It's gone NDP in 2015, and it came back to the UCP in 2019. And then the city, funnily enough, kind of like, I think the one that should be most spotlighted because it's going to be one of the most interesting is Lethbridge. Because right now, Lethbridge is half NDP, half conservative. It's the only NDP seat in rural Alberta right now is Lethbridge West, and Lethbridge, east. and Lethbridge East is UCP. So I know that the NDP are targeting Leftbridge East to try to pick it up.

They're targeting BAMF, Canaanascus. But really, there's probably, if I'm the NDP, I'm targeting 12 seats in Calgary to try to hit that 15 mark. What does the average person do with what you just laid out? You know? Fair enough, yes. I sit here and I go, I'm going to go vote. I'm going to have David, now, and for the podcast side of things, I'm going to have David, Parker on. I'm going to probably do a few more things that lead up to it, et cetera, et cetera.

But I mean, what does the average person do with, I mean, yeah, and Calgary is going to be the battleground. Okay, thanks. We'll go vote and carry on. I assume you look at it from an interesting perspective. What are your thoughts for, you know, voter turnout or just people in general? Like, is there things you think people should be doing? Oh, yeah, definitely. So, So I'm personally, as the executive director of Take Back Alberta, I've committed myself to doing 100 meetings across this province from January until the election. I was hoping to have it done already, but it's a lot harder to do 100 meetings that I initially set out to think that it is. So where we just passed, I think, the 55 mark, which is great, so 45 more to go. And I'm getting people into rooms and I'm telling my story, my place.

political story, which we don't have time for right now, but like all the things that led up to me being where I am today. And I try to say to people, look, like, at the end of the day, if you want your politics to go a certain way, politics is not a spectator sport. Right. So a lot of people get it in their heads that politics is like hockey, right? We cheer for our team. We're a big fan of our team. We hope our team wins. Maybe we even buy a ticket to support our team. or a jersey or something along those lines like think of that as like a political donation and they say okay I'm a UCP fan or I'm an NDP fan and I actually think that's a big big part of the problem that we face as a society is that we become about tribes we've become about teams and and our way of participating is cheering for our team that's not democracy democracy is participating democracy is getting involved so one of the ways that people can get involved that i think is incredibly

important is if you care about your democracy and you're worried about what's happening the very simplest thing you can do is you can get paid by elections alberta to go and monitor the vote yourself right they're desperate for people to do this they're always looking for more people to sign up. So you can literally be paid by Elections, Alberta, to be the person that's there, marking off who's voted, making sure that the ballot boxes are secure, that no one's stuffing ballots into them, making sure that the number of people who said they voted is equal to the number of ballots in the ballot box.

Like, that is a huge thing you can do. You can do that in any riding. So that's a way of participating. right i would i would highly recommend to anyone who cares about the outcome of this election actually start having conversations with people right don't just go vote sit down find out what people are thinking it's like you said a little earlier in the podcast you got the sense that people wanted to punish the the conservatives and vote in the nDP how did you do that probably from conversations right and if a lot of people

have conversations that's going to create the ethos that we exist in politically right that that's just how it works so i would say we have a lot of people who want to affect the outcome and all they care about is this election but really our democracy is sick it's it's not people are not participating in it at the level that they that they should be right particularly if we think about inside the party like We talked about this last time I was on your podcast, about how many people would actually buy memberships and vote to decide who the premier was going to be. Whoever won that leadership election was going to be premier,

and we didn't even have 3% of the Alberta population vote. In America, in a primary, even a Republican primary, you're going to see 25, 30% of voters show up to vote. Right? that's a way bigger number than we have here. So I think instead of saying, oh, how do we get the outcome we want, which is important in elections, we should say, how do we participate more? How do we get involved in our democracy?

Because while this provincial election is incredibly important, arguably one of the most important elections of our lifetime, there are a lot of elections that are going to be happening over the next four years. There's going to be school board elections. There's going to be library board elections. There's going to be municipal elections. There's going to probably be a federal election. And all of these elections are happening with mostly people not paying attention to them. So what I recommend to people is don't just go vote.

Go and start participating in your democracy in any way that you can. Maybe that's going and joining your local campaign and door knocking, phone calling, dropping off literature. Maybe that's joining elections, Alberta, and making sure that the vote is fair. and that this sacred institution of democracy that we've been given is something that we make sure people have faith in. And I know you'd mentioned before we got on that you wanted to talk about electronic voting. And I think electronic voting is very important. A lot of the meetings I do, a lot of the people that come and talk to me, they say, we've got to stop electronic voting.

They're going to cheat. And I think while I understand why they're saying that, and maybe I even agree with them, that cheating is possible and easier. It is easier with electronic voting. I don't even think that's the main problem. The main problem is enough people think that there is cheating with these electric machines that we can't use them. Why would we cause so many people to lose faith in our democracy?

So something that people can do, something that take back Alberta is working on. We've been working on it in the background, but I'll announce it for the first time in this show. I've said it at meetings. We don't want there to ever be electronic voting in this province again. So whether or not you're in a riding that you think is going to maybe go NDP or maybe UCP, I think we should all be saying, look, some of our fellow citizens,

many of our fellow citizens do not trust electronic voting of any kind. And our democracy and people's faith. in our democracy is too important not to just count it by hand. We're not a huge province. We have enough people that will volunteer to go and count these ballots. We should do that in person. So I guess, sorry, that's a bit of a rambling answer to your question, but I'd say there are so many things you can do as a regular citizen to get involved.

How do we, this just came up a couple days ago. how do you get people more interested in politics? Because for Sean, it was probably, if I think about it correctly, children. It was having children and starting to realize how things were affecting me. So it's circumstance in life, I guess. How do we turn Alberta politics and, you know, we, you know, how do we turn it more into cheering for the Emmington Oilers versus Calgary Flames, where you want to be involved in that conversation?

And certainly in some circles, it is that already. But for a lot of people, they have no time for politics. It's a dirty game, which at times it truly is. I don't think there's any argument there. But how do we engage more of the population? One of the beautiful things about democracy is you get an opportunity to voice your concerns and different things. And as a population,

if we've learned anything over the last three years, is if enough of the population agrees in unison, they can change things really freaking quick. Like, I mean, it is insane how quickly things can change. So how do we engage people to want to, you know, participate to use your term, David? That's a very good question. That is a question that has plagued political organizers.

as long as I've been alive. It's like, how do you get people to care? And I don't have like a clear answer, but I guess my lived answer is you've got to go and do the work, right? Like to go and talk to people and show them that it matters. I've been incredibly blessed by what's happened with Takeback Alberta, right? Most of the people involved in Take Back Alberta

have never been involved in politics before. They didn't know that it was important. important, but what has happened is politics has come and affected them. And you mentioned that it was kind of having kids that got you interested in it. Because now you realize, oh, this matters. Like the future matters, what I'm doing or what the government's doing is going to impact my children. And I care about something outside of myself. And so I want to go out and make sure that the world is a better place.

I think that mindset is the key. is realizing that we're not just islands floating through the universe, that we are a community of people, and that that community is governed by people. And if we want to have a say in how that government is working, then we need to be showing up. But I don't actually know the answer of how we convince people that it matters. I've been trying to convince people that it matters pretty much my whole adult life.

I think it really does matter. but I do understand why people think it's a dirty game and I do understand why people don't want to be involved in it because it can be very discouraging, right? There's a lot of losses that can happen in politics and you can put all your heart and soul into something. I mean, I put my heart and soul into the wild rose a number of times and we did not win government, right?

And that's difficult and that can be discouraging. So I think... I'm curious, I got a thought to throw. right yeah just because it is it happens even now as a as I sit here you know closing in on 37 and uh I'll go listen

to a politician's talk and um they suck like they beyond suck David they they literally don't talk about anything like they do and they don't right and uh you know um one of the things

I assume about your events and I you know I'm just hosting one last night and I hosted another one the week before. And some of it's wrong. Some of it's maybe not bang on point, but it is like you get asked a question, let's talk about it. It's not let's get asked question

and talk about something else. And people see right through that. And when it works and continues to work, I get disengaged. It's just like, well, what's the point? Like, honestly, what is the point? And the problem with that is, though, is then, you know, it's like,

then you become disengaged and you don't see, was actually being played out. And so I'm like, how do we get? I think I already know part of the answer. I just don't know how to get there. What I want out of politicians is I want them to speak truthfully, which means when they get asked a question, they answer it.

Not this like double talk and everything else and deflection and talk about this. And then, oh, the question and period question times over. So they just get to move on. It's like, no, let's solve some issues for some people and get that. Because if all of a sudden you went out to. event and you knew that they're going to have to answer some hard questions. I've seen it, like I saw it at that APP event when it was Ezra Levant and Modri asking questions. That is one of the most fantastic debates I've ever seen in my life because they actually asked what everyone was

thinking and the politicians actually had to answer it. There was nowhere to dodge. I mean, they could try. I might got booed, but they didn't. If you had more of that, all of a sudden, I'm like, it becomes something I want to go be a part of. But I understand in the same breath that if you're, let's just call it the, I don't know, the Alberta principal party, the Alberta Libertarian Party,

as soon as you start talking openly like that, then the opposing side comes in and takes little, and throws that out and says, this is what they're doing, and you fight the, you know, that war for however long. So it's like, I get the trickiness of it. And yet here we sit. And I go, the only way to get to where people are engaged is to go out to their communities like you're doing.

And to speak openly like, I assume you're doing, because that's the events I'm a part of. And that's what I see. It's just people honestly saying things like, I don't know, or addressing some things that they're seeing. And people are like, thank you. Like, it's just nice to have some like open dialogue. That's my rant this morning, but it's a double-edged sword. Oh, yeah. Like, I think, well, okay, so we've maybe talked about this a little bit privately.

I don't know if we've ever talked about it on a podcast. I know you've probably talked about it. But that's why I love podcasts. I don't know, podcast, it's really hard to have a conversation with someone if you're just deflecting and trying not to talk about the things that matter. You have to have kind of an open dialogue for a podcast to work. and I think we're seeing that happen globally. We're seeing that the podcasting space is becoming the biggest space in the media.

It's not there yet, but I think it will be where people are having frank conversations. Look at Dr. Peter McCullough, other people who've come. That's where they've been able to get their word out. That's where... Sorry. That's where the most frank conversations are... I've got to sneeze one second. I don't know why

But that's why Where the most frank conversations are happening, right? Is on podcasts. I think we need to take that, which you've been doing with your, you know, Sean Newman Presents, which I think is awesome. We need to keep doing that.

But let's dig a little bit deeper into the question you ask Because I think there's an underlying thing When you say politicians, you know, they avoid answering questions. Well, that's what they've been taught to do. Right? that's literally how they've been told politics works, right? Well, if you don't have a good answer or it's like you said,

if you think that the NDP are going to be able to trap you in that answer and use it against your party in other places, then you just are going to try not to answer it. But a big reason that that's the case in my mind is because we look at politics like a spectator sport. Right? We think, oh, the politicians are the players, of the sport.

And we watch their stats and we watch how they're doing. We're like, okay, I like that politician. I don't like this politician. Hey, where does this politician stand on this? Where does this politician stand on that? I think that politics, this is my argument and take back Alberta meetings,

I think that politics is a participatory sport. It's something that we need to be engaged in individually. We need to stop with this notion that the leaders are what, is important because as I say to like every politician I've ever worked with leaders come and go the people are forever right like if if we are showing up and we are engaged then yeah maybe maybe they can they can come forward and say something like oh you know I'm not going to answer that question and let's talk about this instead but if you're engaged and informed if you're at an event

like that APP event that you described, people are going to boo. They're not going to be happy. They're going to be like, no, we want an answer to that question because the people are engaged. But let's take another note here. A big part of why these politicians have been not answering questions, have been obfuscating, have been, you know,

avoiding the truth, let's call it, is because of what you described. People notice that. They get annoyed by it. it and they disengage. Well, is it easier to run in a country where your population is

engaged or disengaged? Disengaged? It's much easier to control things when people are disengaged. Let's take the example of the special general meeting that was pushed forward by a lot of grassroots people

that Jason Kenny had to call. Now, the party before he uh when he was elected as the leader had at least 120,000, some, some people say 150,000 members, right? At the time where that meeting was called, there were 15,000 members, right? Do you think it's easier to control 15,000 people or 120,000 people? Uh, it's not even, it's not even close. You, as soon as you have more than five people, you, you, you, you, you, you go up a number and it gets more and more difficult and more and more difficult.

Exactly. Especially with conservatives because we're all bullheaded. Like we all, you know, we all think we got the answer. I'm no different. Exactly. And so like when you say you're coming and approaching the problem from a place of genuine care, I would say. And you're saying, I want people to be more engaged.

How do we get more people engaged? but I think the question we have to ask ourselves is, do our politicians want more people to get engaged? And I think if you look at how it works, look at how much the annual general meeting cost to go to. $375 just to attend the meeting for the United Conservative Party. That doesn't include hotels, gas, any of that, right? $100 to go and vote at the special general meeting.

So are you saying, wait, I'm going to, wait, I'm going, I'm going to just take the UCP thing and throw it out the door for a second. You're saying the next SMP presents, Sean should make free. Well, no, I'm not saying that, but I am saying should we, as a party, focus on democracy or should we focus on revenue? Right. I believe that if you get a lot of people engaged, you're going to get the revenue as a political party, which is different than a business. We have to remember political parties. They're under different rules, all that kind of stuff.

Your business, you're providing content to people. You're providing, you're creating something and giving it to people. But in the case of a political party, they are funded largely, like the people there that are MLAs or cabinet ministers, they're funded by the taxpayer. And the parties funded by the donors, right? So that's like when they send out an email and, you know, a couple hundred people throw in 10 bucks. but when we're making the decisions right of who's going to be the people that represent us it's much easier

if less people show up so why wouldn't they put you want more people to come to your event you're looking to price your ticket so that as many people will come as possible right I just I just think if the idea is to engage the reason why you know I'm not saying

that freeze the right way to go but certainly I've live streamed now the last, geez, I don't know what is it, folks, three maybe, because I'm like, if you can't make it, well, I still want, and it goes on the podcast, because I still want you to hear and engage in it. I'm just, it's an interesting, it's like, what do we want? And you're saying, well, we need to get engagement in politics. And how do we, you know, like some of that's just pushing through. And I think, I think a lot of people are pushing through right now, because there's a lot of

roadblocks have been thrown up to try and slow it down, to try and stop. things, blah, blah, blah, and people like, I ain't having this anymore. You're going to answer my email. You're going to answer a phone call. You're going to, you know, like I laugh at, uh, showed to Morley. We had three doctors in Wainwright last night and I got to ask if I'd come host. Yeah, sure. Yeah, you know, I've interviewed two of them.

So yeah, great. And he went around to like all the, you know, the different spots with doctors and chiropractors and physicians and say, hey, you hear you know, I'm like, that wouldn't happen a year ago, let alone, you know, even now. went, hey, I don't know if any of them showed up, but at the same time, that's what's happening. People are getting more and more engaged. So as much as I'm like, how do we get it speed it up? It's like, to me, you've already mentioned the party membership growth when it went from

15,000 to over 100,000. And you just see how many people are getting engaged. It's maybe better days are ahead of us, David, than, you know, behind us. I really, really believe that. So if we go back to the election here, right? Right is it looked pretty bad. It looked like, you know, and obviously I'm very biased. I think that the NDP are not the government that we should have.

Hey, you don't have to say that I'm biased too, you know. I was trying not to be biased, but the truth of the matter is, folks, you know, when it comes to my choices I've made over the last couple years, there's only one person in Canada that I think has been saying the right things. And she wasn't elected at the time, and now she is, right? So to me, everybody knows where my bias sits. Yeah, and obviously I think people know where my bias sits too. But what I would say is what if, like, what if more people got engaged? Like let's look at British Columbia, for example.

Okay. So British Columbia, the premier also resigned in British Columbia. And they also had a leadership race, but theirs was for the NDP. And there were two people that were allowed to run by the party. and one of them was a woman of color from the lower mainland and she sold a lot of memberships like tons. So many that the establishment NDP got scared and they disqualified her and appointed her opponent as the Premier

without a vote, right? That's not bringing people in to get engaged. That's, in my opinion, not democracy. And I think that's what we have to worry about. And part of why we have to worry about it, to be frank, is because people haven't been engaged. But like you said, people are waking up. You weren't involved in politics before. Now you realize that politics matters.

I said over the course of the pandemic, and then when Take Back Alberta started to grow, I said at a lot of meetings, I said the next generation of political organizers is being born right now. These are the people who are going to be showing up and getting engaged and bringing people to events. But it really is ultimately on everyone to realize that our government just doesn't happen. It isn't just a thing that we can't participate in. We have to. Otherwise, the people that want to control our lives, and there are people who want to control other people's lives, they're not going to have any trouble doing that.

And like, I say this a lot in my meetings, but I think it's important to get it on this podcast as well. Don't forget that freedom is not the natural state of humanity. Right? Like most of Yor and I's ancestors, the vast majority of them, lived in basically slavery, whether they were peasants or slaves or whatever it was.

most of humanity has lived under tyrants for most of human history. And the truth is, most people right now live under tyrants, right now at this very moment in our timeline, let's call it. So it's not natural to be free. It's something you have to fight for. And that's why democracy was created. I argue democracy wasn't created so we can pick the perfect person to be in charge of us, which is often how people view politics.

Democracy was created because of the idea that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And really the purpose of democracy is to hold our politicians accountable and when they get out of step to remove them and put someone else there. And we've got out of that mindset and we've seen politics as my team. And obviously I have a team. And I care about policies. But the truth of the matter is what I care about more than a team.

And I think this is made evident from the fact that I oppose Jason Kenney is I care more about principles. I think if people get away from the team mentality and get into the principle mentality, and then they can engage with their politics and they can see a politician not answering their question, they can be like, ah, he's not answering our question. We better get to the bottom of this, right? Instead of saying, oh, he's not answering our questions, I don't want to be engaged. Yeah, we've all sat in that meeting, you know, it's funny where you're, you're sitting around the table. Something's, something's happened and somebody gives a vague answer and you're just like,

you could hold it accountable, but you're like, oh, let's just move on. I just want to get away from this table and move on with my life, you know, or get on with the day or whatever else. And yet when it comes to politics, we need to be a little more sticklers on things, unlike, that makes, zero sense. Why would we do that? Why would we allow this? Why wouldn't we move on? Why don't we open it up? Some of that is just talking and educating. You know, I continue to learn new things as I go along here. Not only about Alberta politics, but my, just my riding, you know, like I could, you talk about who the premier is. Geez, 2015 back then, I definitely couldn't even told you I had an MLA and an MP and, and, you know, how long city counselors are in for and the library and the school board, I wouldn't have known any of that.

So one of the blessings of the last couple of years is it's brought all of that to the fourth front. And I think a lot of people are talking about it. So that's healthy, healthy things because more and more people are starting to pay attention that and are starting to realize these things really, really matter. And once we start to realize what, you know, I call it, you know, the levers of power in our society are and realize they aren't, you know, certainly their prime minister, Justin Trudeau, but that's just one of the many, many, and it might not even be the strongest one, to be honest,

you know, like obviously he's got a big spot and gets a spotlight, but I think of how many things in your community that actually really matter to you and your kids and everything else day by day. Oh, exactly. And I think we got to get out of this kind of hero worship, politician, elevation,

like individuals or the people that are running everything for us. We got to get out of that mindset. right because that's not actually what happens right it's always just teams one of the things that I say a lot is look at any politician that is an avatar of the group that stands behind them right the people that are supporting that person the staff the MLAs or like in the case of a premier or in the case of an MLA their staff their their constituency association it's every politician that you see is just the representative of a group of people who worked hard to put that person there. And so you can be a part of that group.

It's actually really not hard to get engaged and be involved as much as people think. So, yeah, I really think we've got to get out of this mindset that politicians are the people that, you know, they're just these individuals that are different than us. realistically they're they're literally just trying to hold a coalition of people together and try to push forward ideas that that group of people care about well I appreciate you doing this I'm watching the clock and I know I know you got to get on the road and everything else so thanks for hopping on this morning and and doing this and well we'll wait and see what happens here over the next little bit bit I'm predicting predicting a UCP win I'm also predicting the

Oilers in the Stanley Cup finals. Oh, there we go. There we go. Oh, man. We get the Oilers in the Stanley Cup finals. That would be a real joy. And on a final note, based on your prediction of the UCP, I would say that that is a good prediction. I think that there's a lot of evidence that Albertans are conservative and that when push comes to shove, they're going to choose a conservative government.

But I think we can't be complacent about it. I think if you don't live in a riding that's in that kind of list that I listed that you can always donate to the party. If you don't want to donate to the party, you can go and doork, you can phone call. But really, what we share at Takeback, Alberta, because we're not the party, we're a third party group, is go and talk to 10 of your friends. Go and sit down. You got friends all over the province.

You, of all people, have tons of friends all over this province. And go and just say, hey, what do you care about in terms of policy? Let's get away from how we feel personally about the individuals running and say, do you want free drugs on the street? Because that is a real policy debate that's happening. Now, maybe you do. Maybe people do. I don't know. But that's one policy debate, right?

Do you want freedom of medical choice? There's another policy debate, right? We got to get away from how we feel about the politicians and start talking about the issues like you said that we're facing. Yeah, I think that's well put. But, well, thanks, thanks, David, for doing this and fit me into your busy, busy schedule. And good luck. What did you say? You got 45.

45 more meetings to go. Yep. Yeah. Well, best of luck with that. I don't envy you because I know driving to Wayne Wright last night and doing that and then getting back this last night and then this morning getting up early and everything else. I was war out before we stepped in here.

I was yawning. And then I'm like, time to get a roll in here. So, you know, it's. I know that feeling very well. know that feeling very well. Thanks for having me on. And also, I just like to thank you for doing what you're doing, because I love your show. I know there's tens of thousands of Albertans that love your show. And I think you're literally doing God's work. So thank you very much. Well, I appreciate that. And well, I'm sure at some point here, meet at somebody's a house for

beer and a good chat and everything else. And I think Mr. Weatherhead, he's got to be getting back close to it. He's on his way back, apparently. So I'm really looking forward. to him. Maybe we could do a little roundtable as we get closer to the election. I think that would be great. I think that would be great. Okay. Well, safe travels and look forward to seeing what you boys are up to here in another month's time.

All right. Thank you, my friend. We'll talk soon.