Shaun Newman Podcast - #431 - Rachel Emmanuel

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

She's a political reporter who’s covered government institutions from a variety of levels. A Carleton University journalism graduate, Rachel is the Alberta correspondent for True North based in Edmonton. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 SNP Presents: Luongo & Krainer https://www.showpass.com/snp-presents-luongo-krainer/ Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast

This is Vance Crow. I'm Alex Kraner. My name's David John Parker. This is Alex Epstein. This is Leighton Gray, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday, hump day. Hope everybody's week is moving along.

Poor Oilers. No Oilers. Son of a gun. Well, as the Maple Leafs say, there's always next year, I guess, hey? I mean, if I'm going to poke fun at anyone, it miles will be the Leafs. Sorry, Leafs, fans. Today's episode brought to you by Blaine and Joey Stefan, Guardian Plumbing and Heating.

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and I'm not sure of any other venue, and I could be wrong on that, folks, in Lloyd that does that. And if there are other ones, they're few and far between. Erickson Agro, Inc. Incorporated out of Irma, Alberta, Kent and Tasha Erickson, Family Farm, raising four kids, growing food for their community and in this great country. Of course, have teamed up with the SMP. And if you want to be like the Erickson's and support the podcast, hop on board.

We got spots open Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. I would love to have you a part of what's going on. And all you got to do is shoot me a text in the show notes. And, yeah, we're going to be down in Irma, Alberta for a golf tournament because of Kent, which should be interesting. You know, it's too bad, you know, I'm talking about the Oilers. Mr. Susie playing for the crack, and I was kind of rooting for those boys, you know, after the Oilers knocked out, I'm like, you know,

the way they played and the way he played as well was fun to watch. And anyways, a golf tournament, the reason he comes up, he's going to be there as well. So that should be interesting to sit across and have a couple of conversations with a few different men from that. area. It's going to be a ton of fun. Regardless, if you're looking at team up with the podcast, just fire me off a text in the show notes, well, fire me off a text to the phone line in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. I'm sure there's something we can work out between the,

between us and would love to have you aboard. Final thought before we get into the tale of the tape, SMP presents Luwango and Craneer in Lloydminster, June 10th. Tickets are available in the show notes. There's a link. Just click on that. You can buy tickets. Hope to see all of you here. in Lloydminster. I think that's going to be a fun night. And with those two come to town, I don't think you'll be, well, I don't think you'll be regretting being in town for that night. Either way, click on the show notes, and you can get your tickets there. Let's get on that, a tail of the tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fields, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm,

commercial or oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancockpetroleum.com.ca. She's a seasoned political reporter who's covered government institutions from a variety of levels. She graduated from Carleton University with a degree in journalism and is currently Alberta's correspondent for True North based in Eminton. I'm talking about Rachel Emanuel. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Rachel Emanuel and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Today I'm joined by Rachel Emanuel. So first off, ma'am, thanks for hopping on. Yeah, happy to be here finally. I think we've talked about this before, but I'm glad we could make it work. Well, I've learned long and hard on this side. It'll happen when it's meant to happen. So many times you try and force things in and people's schedules and life and everything else happen. And so I'm just happy we finally get to sit down and have a chat.

Yes, an opportune time. Hopefully I have some interesting information for your viewers. I want to start here. First off, congratulations. You got married here not that long ago. So, hey, that's a big step in anyone's life. And I know I've been very fortunate with Mel on my side on the journey we've had and the kids and everything else. So congrats on that.

I don't know if I'd talk to either one of you since I know I sent David a text on maybe the day or the day after one of the two, but that's an exciting time. And I'm sure it was fun had by all. Yeah, thank you very much. I never planned to have a winter wedding, but it actually turned up to be a really nice day. So got kind of lucky for that. We had it in the mountains, and it ended up being like six degrees, which was a relief because our ceremony was actually outside. So everything turned out okay.

I can imagine the stress was maybe a little bit high, you know, like the stress of having, you know, we were married inside. And the stress that day, for Mel in particular, you know, a guy deals with it probably a little differently. But when you don't have to worry about the elements, you know, rain, wind, et cetera, et cetera, it's one thing. but having to worry about cold. I mean, I don't know. Good on you guys for doing it outside in the winter. I know that in Canada, that's something people do all the time. But I'm like, oh, I mean, what are you doing?

We're in long drones underneath the old dress? I was really against it until we went to the place where we had the ceremony and the reception of the same location. They had the ceremonies sort of, they always do their ceremonies outside. They have like a setup for it. And so when we saw how beautiful it was with a backdrop, the mountains. I was like, and they did have like little heaters in the tents and stuff. So it was definitely doable. I was mostly worried about my Ontario family because Ontarians,

Ontarians, especially when you're from southern Ontario, you, they're a little soft. Oh yeah. We are so soft. You hate winter. You hate the cold. So I was like, I'm going to hear about it from my family. If it's too cold. But it actually ended up being nice. And everyone was like pleasantly surprised. So it worked out. But yeah, everyone's like, the stress of the day was definitely intense. Everyone was like, oh, so like it was the best day of your life, right? And I'm like, dude, I don't even know what happened. I was like in a coma just trying to like get from place to place. I think around like 8 p.m. when the speeches finally started and like we'd gotten through the ceremony and the photos and everything and nothing had like totally gone to crap. At that point, I was like,

oh, this is like kind of fun. Like I'm having a good time now. But when you're the person who's like responsible for planning it because I didn't get a wedding planner, you're just like so stressed making sure that everything goes off according to plan that you have no idea what's going on. Yeah, well, I think every woman can relate. I don't, even if they have a wedding planner, they probably still stress. Like it's, it's one of those days. It's a ton of fun, a ton of stress. You've got a ton of people coming in from all over the place and you're trying to make things work and, you know, look pretty and everything else in your dress and makeup and all that stuff. Anyways, we could talk weddings for an hour and I'd chuckle about it because I'm like,

well, I've lived it, and it's funny to watch women get worked up over, like, really simple things, but I understand. For the listener, they probably know who you are, Rachel, but at the same time, maybe they don't. And I always like to, you know, let the guests kind of give a little bit of their background, and you've mentioned you're from Ontario. You've got a whole list of other things in there. What if, I don't know, tell us a little bit about yourself and we'll get into, you know, some different things with the Alberta election and things like that.

but before we get there, how about a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'll try to keep it short and interesting for the listener. So, yes, I'm from Ontario, born and raised in the Niagara region. I moved to Ottawa for university. I studied journalism at Carlton University. I decided I wanted to be a journalist, a political journalist. That was like my thing.

It's much easier going to university when you have a very clear goal of what you want to do coming out of it. Because when you're like, oh, this is an immense waste of my time, you're like, well, I know where I'm trying to get to. and if I can just get this degree, I think it'll fall into place. And that's pretty much what happened for me. I started kind of working, covering committee meetings, writing reports on them. My last year of university, that gave me a really good experience on Parliament Hill.

So then I actually got an internship at the Globe and Mail for the summer following university. Super great hands-on experience and your resume looks very appetizing to legacy media outlets when you have a global and mail internship on it. So I was able to score a job working for iPolitics. that's a subsidiary of the Toronto Star, although the ownership has changed a little bit in recent years. So I did that for about two and a half years. I really struggled working in the mainstream media during the COVID-19 pandemic because there was so much censorship, as you and your viewers probably have suspected and talked about at times definitely existed. So I just found it a really untenable work environment, and I felt like I was constantly being asked to kind of go against my conscience.

So finally, things sort of reached a breaking point, and I left. I initially moved out to Alberta for a job with the Western Standard covering Alberta politics. And then I've since moved over to True North. And that's where I'm at right now. So pretty much just cover Alberta politics right now. I do a little bit of the federal stuff, do a bit of podcasting. So yeah, it's been super fine. I've been really enjoying getting to know this province and covering politics here.

It's a really great opportunity. I think there's just so much interest here. And people have been really eager. And, you know, conservatives are really excited to have independent media outlets that they can trust and listen to. So it's been a great opportunity. Yeah, well, it's been something we've been short on, you know, independent voices kind of like shining a light on what's going on. And I've enjoyed some of your questions specifically to Rachel Notley. They've been, they've been fun to listen to.

Why politics? You mentioned going to school at Carlton for politics? I'm just, I'm just curious. You know, I've kind of fallen into these conversations. I never once thought it, you know, it wasn't a dream of mine to sit and talk politics. I'm curious, what was it back then in Ottawa? Was it that was the culture or you were just like, you know, like was it something in the family? What drew you to politics early on?

Yeah, I definitely think it stems from my upbringing. I think we can always look at life and you wonder parts of yourself is that my nature or is it nurture, is it my environment? So I think it's probably a bit of a combination of both, but definitely my family was very interested in politics growing up. We had a lot of discussions at the dinner table about things. my brothers are very, very intelligent. They have done amazing things with their lives,

and they always kind of encourage me to really think harder about issues and would question existing beliefs. So I think it was just sort of in my nature. And even when I was in high school, I would kind of write more political-minded pieces for my student paper. And then I took a writer's craft course, actually, in grade 12, and we had to write different types of essays for all the assignments. And I wrote about politics for every single one of them.

Kathleen Wynne was the Premier in Ontario at the time. She was absolutely running our province to the ground. So there was no shortage of material. My classmates hated it because we had to take turns peer editing each other's papers. And nobody wanted to read mine because a lot of 17-year-olds aren't interested in politics. So you're saying nobody wanted to read 17-year-old's papers on politics. No, no one wanted to read them. Everyone thought my papers were like the most boring in the whole class.

So fair enough, you know, they probably were. It was a bit of a niche thing for a 17-year-old to be interested in. but serve me really well. You know, I think there's a lot of space in politics right now, especially for conservative and independent voices. I had really wanted to work in the mainstream media. I was like, there's not a lot of, you know, center-right voices in the mainstream media.

I think I could really carve out a niche for myself there. And then once I actually worked in that environment, I was like, oh, I understand why these voices don't really exist here or exist less and less. It's because there's actually not space for us, and there's sort of structures and systems in place to ensure that our voices aren't heard. So when you say that like there isn't structures in place, what do you mean? Like just kind of paint me a little bit better of a picture.

I, you know, like you said, really early on, we probably talked about this lots, but just from your eyes and your perspective, what was some of the things that went on while you were trying to break into that? Because it seems like a pretty logical goal, you know, like if I'm going to work in media, why not some of the biggest organizations in Canada. What was it that turned you away? Sure. So I guess something worth pointing out is that for reporters, they generally always write about stuff that interest them.

That obviously makes sense. You're going to be a better reporter if the topic interests you. And a lot of times for reporters, you'll notice a lot of female journalists will write about issues of sexism in the workplace. You don't really see men covering those topics as much. You'll see cultural minorities writing about issues that minorities face. These are obviously, they're kind of coming at it from their own personal experience and wanting to bring light to these issues. So when people say, well, you know, you obviously have conservative leanings.

Maybe you should just avoid covering anything like the conservative party. But that's exactly the opposite of what most reporters do. They're actually coming from a place of this is something that I've noticed and I've noticed it isn't being covered. And so I think I'm going to try to shed light on that. And so I think I was kind of coming from that perspective as a lot of journalists do. So what I would say when I'm saying that there's sort of structures in place to ensure, that those voices aren't heard. I think we're sort of seeing an exclusion of conservative voices from society over the past 20 years. And certainly since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been in

office, those efforts have really ramped up. And we've seen that even on Parliament Hill, with some of the coverage coming out of the press gallery there. You've seen a lot of people leave over the years and tell how it was very exclusionary. And so in my case, what would happen is he came down to a lot of like simple wording. Like I would be haggling with my editors over specific wording choices. For example, I would never use the term pro, I would never use the term anti-abortion to describe someone who's pro-life, but then use the word pro-choice to describe people who are pro-abortion because even in that little bit of word choice, you're showing an implicit bias because why does one group get to be called for something? Another group is called as anti-something. No, it's pro-life

and pro-choice or even pro-abortion, really. And so it would be sort of specific word choices. like this and I remember them at points even when I wanted to write about a pro-life group they would kind of add behind that a group that opposes women's reproductive rights and I was like no I'm not publishing this under my name like this is ridiculous I mean it's just on the

abortion issue what comes up but we just talked about it last night was Kathy Wagontells where you know abortion groups came after and there's nothing about abortion in the bill right like you're like that's I mean it's it that one's an interesting one in general but I totally get what you're what you're talking

about with word choice and how you try and frame any one person right it's I mean all you have to do is look at the well take Daniel Smith right now and see how they're trying to frame her and the UCP party is is really interesting which I guess will lead me into into the election that's exactly why I wanted to bring you on is you know I've done maybe not a point poor job because I've certainly talked about it somewhat. But I've been following several different people who are doing, I think, a great job of trying to keep Albertans up to date with what's going on in the Alberta election.

You're one of them. And so I just thought, well, let's bring you on and let's talk about some of the things you're seeing so the audience can know about it. And I guess get everybody up to speed. So I don't know. It's been an interesting election thus far, especially with the Alberta fires, you know, raging along and really derailing some of the, you know, the ability of certain groups to be able to get out and, you know, kind of canvass their area and everything else. But that on itself,

you know, what has Rachel been seeing and been noticing and what's been sticking out to you? Sure. So I'm having a great time in the campaign trail. I'm hearing from a lot of people that it's a very boring campaign, which maybe is the case, but when you're actually doing it in and out every day and I really enjoy this type of stuff. So I'm having a good time. So I would say that there's some pretty simple issues that we're focusing on in the election campaign, pretty much the economy, public safety, healthcare. Those are the bread and butter issues of the campaign. I know the UCP is hoping that jobs in the economy will be the ballot question on May 29th.

I'm not sure if that is the case. I'm not sure if those policies are really resonating with voters. Usually when you're announcing like a lot of tax credits and things like that, people are like, okay, cool, but it's not like the sexiest issue. what we're seeing right now though is we're actually seeing a lot of similarities between the Alberta NDP and the UCPs platforms again a lot of tax cuts a lot of promises to increase police presence on the streets to increase public safety obviously we're seeing a huge uptick in violent criminal activity in our major cities right now so that's a huge problem and that's atop everyone's

minds but both parties are really looking to appeal to those moderates in swing ridings in calgary and then of course kind of outside edmonton the edmonton dome area and maybe some of the ones once you're heading inside the city. So we're actually seeing very parallel campaigns. And again, Daniel Smith is looking to appeal to the moderates. We're seeing her pivot in what she's talking about since she won the UCP leadership when she was obviously appealing to more social conservatives, libertarians. You know, she was one of the candidates that was considered for this to the right. And of course, with her willingness to really criticize some of the pandemic policies that we saw, we didn't see that near as much from any of the other candidates. She really took a strong stance

against the government overreach that we saw in a way that other people just didn't. Now, she's not talking about those issues now because she's looking to appeal to moderates. And Rachel Notley is also looking to appeal to moderates. So we're seeing her run a fairly center of the line campaign. A lot of people have been confused with stuff that she's saying on the campaign because it disagrees with things that she said in the not so recent past. So I think, again, it's just a campaign that's looking to appeal to those moderates in Calgary. Maybe that's why not a lot of people outside the city centers are getting excited about the

campaigns because you're not really hearing about a lot of stuff. that would impact them. When you talk about Rachel Notley being a little confusing, what exactly are you talking to? So, for example, yesterday Daniel Smith announced that a re-elected UCB government would implement a Compassion Intervention Act, which would essentially force drug addicts who are considered a danger to themselves or to others into treatment. And Rachel Notley has come out against them in the past, and she says it's too punitive and likely wouldn't pass legally. I asked her about it yesterday, and she didn't use that.

those words. She didn't use as strong of words saying it's too punitive. She simply said that she just didn't think it would work. Force treatment doesn't work based on the experts that she's spoken to. She also said that an NDP government isn't going to push for, you know, safe consumption sites and safe supply. She was like, that's not really what we're looking to do. But in the not so recent past, her candidates have advocated for those policies. And they said they want to look at safe supply similar to what we're seeing over in Vancouver. So just issues like those. And yesterday she announced that she would cut the small business tax credit to zero. So we're seeing her really try to pivot to the moderates

and maybe even appeal to some conservatives who aren't sold on Daniel Smith. It's interesting. You being in all the press conferences, that type of thing, do you have much interaction? And you're doing all these different things. So I assume you have lots of interaction, but how much interaction do you have with, you know,

if we're going to deem them the moderates, how much interaction do you have with the moderates? Because if people are voting NDP, I assume we're voting NDP. and the people are voting conservative or voting conservative. So this isn't about them. It's about the people stuck in the middle. Have you been talking to any of them?

And is any of this working on either of them? So yeah, that's a great question. I'm actually hoping to get out and do some streeters later this week. That's basically when you just go interview people on the streets. If you can get people to stop and talk to, they usually end up being pretty funny. Because one of the things that you notice when you're so ingrained in politics is like you know so many things.

There's all these Twitter fights breaking out. and then you go talk to someone who's just doing their job every day and coming home and trying to spend time with the family. They're like, oh, there's an election going on. They're like, oh, Daniel Smith, she's premier, right? Like, no clue, no clue. So I'm curious to see what's even really resonating with these voters. That being said, I know that public safety is atop everyone's minds right now. And you're hearing from cities from Toronto to Vancouver, people who have taken public transit to get to work for their whole life,

are suddenly second-guessing those decisions and wondering, is it a good idea for me to take the train into work today because there's so many, there's so many stabbings happening along these transit centers. So I do suspect that public safety is really something people in Calgary are concerned about something that they're thinking about. And that's where some of these policies that both parties are pushing might have a chance to resonate.

Is there any difference between what the NDP is saying they want to do and what the UCP is saying they want to do? Yeah, there's quite a big difference. So they both want to hire more street-level police officers, for one thing, just to increase that sort of police presence and to sort of disper some criminal activity that might be ongoing. The NDP also wants to hire 150 more mental health workers to go alongside the hiring of additional police officers. In contrast, the UCP also want to hire more police officers, but they said that they would be putting ankle monitors on violent

criminals who are let out on bail. Of course, bail reform is something that falls under the federal government, so the province is pretty bootstrapped of what they can do on it, but bail reform is the biggest concern right now because we are seeing violent criminals who are being let out on bail and then they're just turning into repeat offenders and I think it's one of the sickest things when someone is stabbed on the street by someone who was led out on bail that rightfully should have been in jail and now there's an innocent life that we've lost because the system failed and there's so many incidents of this happening and I just can't understand why the federal government isn't making changes when all the provinces are putting pressure on them to make those changes

but Daniel Smith and the UCP understand they're sort of working in those confines so they said we're going to strap ankle monitors onto violent criminals and we're going to hire more police officers to monitor these people. They also want to look at some of the drugs that are coming into the province and see what they can do about that. So those are their main things. And then they also have a really big plan to address the addiction side of things. So when we look at public safety, it's kind of a two-tier thing. One of the issues that we're seeing is bail reform. But the other issue is a lot of the people who are committing these crimes. Sure, they're let out on bail. But they also are struggling with addictions and they've been on drugs for years and that really warps your brain. And so

a lot of these people are just not in their right mind when they are committing these violent acts. And so the UCP government has been really strong on the addictions file. They're prioritizing treatment. They've been building treatment centers all over the province. They're spending probably upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars on this proposal. And they announced yesterday that they were going to continue those investments. They're going to build even more of these what are called recovery communities where essentially you can go and you basically just spend time in detox.

and then you spend time in this recovery community and you learn how to cope with your addictions and you learn some healthy habits alongside other people who have struggled with addictions and lots of counseling and you basically learn how to go through life without that crutch of an addiction and it can be very, very successful for people I've heard a lot of success stories.

So that's something that UCP is prioritizing along with what I mentioned earlier, which is they just announced yesterday. This is a huge announcement from the party, this compassionate intervention act, which would essentially force addicts into treatment. And the forcing people into things, that's an interesting, like, I don't know, what have you heard about it?

What do you think about it as, you know, as you've seen it unveiled? I think it's going to be interesting to see how this resonates to people because coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many people were coerced into getting vaccinated, I sense that it could make a lot of people uncomfortable. And you should rightfully kind of be asking these questions. and be wondering what parameters are in place to ensure that this couldn't be abused later on by a different government. And so I think that those are all great questions for people to be asking and people should really kind of question as to how they feel about this legislation. What I would say is yesterday when the government made the announcement, first of all, they were surrounded by families and individuals who had been touched by addictions that were giving their testimony.

One young woman gave her testimony, her name was Abby Plessa. she basically said I fell into addiction when I was 12 years old. So at just 12 years old, she started suffering from addictions. And four years later at 16, her parents actually obtained a court order, which put her into detox. You go into detox before you can go into basically recovery. And then she went into one of these recovery treatment facilities afterwards. And she basically said, I believe I would be dead if it was not for that plan and for my family

being able to do that. So I think when we look at a policy like this, the main thing is, you would hope that people that are addicts, you know, still have family in their life that loves them and cares about them. And I'm a strong believer in family and I think families should have prominence in your life over the state. So, for example, if my family saw that I had like descended into addiction that I wasn't able to deal with on my own, I would trust my family members to be able to make a decision and say, okay, you know, you need to get into treatment and you're not going to go on your own. So we're going to seek this court order out for me. I wouldn't be comfortable with simply like someone,

government making that decision for me. So what they're really looking at is they're looking at police officers, doctors or psychologists can seek these what are called treatment orders. And the treatment order isn't necessarily going to put you into an addiction center. There's, or a treatment center rather, there's a variety of different mechanisms that they could do. Some of them could be maybe medication or counseling or one of these treatment centers. So there's a variety of things that you're looking at. What I noticed about the testimonies yesterday is most of the people had said, you know, my family sought treatment for me or my son was addicted and I saw. treatment for him. And, you know, I think if you have those relationships in your life, that's

sort of the best thing to lean on. Certainly, I know a lot of addicts who have come out on the other side, talk about how integral their family was and really helping to rescue them. Yeah, well, you need people that care about you. I mean, that's, that's, well, I mean, talked about this an awful lot through COVID, how many families, you know, got very split on a lot of different things. And And when it comes right to it, you know, if you don't have that foundation set, life can be pretty difficult even without a drug addiction, right? Like, I mean, that's an interesting observation, I guess, is what I'm getting at, that the people that it came up and talked, they weren't alone.

They were surrounded. And I think that's, well, I think that's a very astute observation because just to start grabbing people and throwing a man, if you don't. have the love and support of family behind you, and that's what's supporting the decision. You know, you wonder if any of that will work. You wonder if you can fix it at all, to be honest. Yeah, and just something else that I would add about it is a lot of people say, well, if you're going to seek treatment, you need to be ready for treatment. You need to have decided that it's the right thing for you at that time in your life. I would argue that

seeking treatment for an addictions isn't the same thing as seeking mental health treatment for depression or anxiety. Because when you're on these drugs, it is really a disease of the brain and that you only think about when am I going to get my next hit, where am I going to get it from? And so that sort of becomes to rule your life.

And what you'll hear from people who are addicts talk about is they'll say, you know, I wasn't in my right mind. And I would never have been able to make a decision like this for myself because all I could think about was my next hit. All I could think about was my drug use and I hated anyone who got in the way of me

in that drug use. And so I think it's safe to say that most addicts are not in a place and they're not mentally able to make that decision where they would choose treatment for themselves because they're just so set on their next hit. And it's only once they've gone through the detox, once they've gone through the treatment that they look at their life and they say, no, this isn't what I want for myself. And I need to learn how I can make better decisions. I need to learn coping mechanisms. I need to learn better habits. But again, I say that with a level of caution to someone who is very hesitant to give too much power over to the state. And I'm certainly much more comfortable with a program like this when it's say your family or your spouse saying we need to seek treatment for you and you're

not able to make that decision for yourself. Yeah, I agree with where you're coming from on that. There was a UCP had called out the NDP for funding of unions. What have been your thoughts on that and maybe you can share a little bit of what the story is for the people. Just on the the letter sent and kind of the underlying theme there. Yeah, so this is a kind of convoluted story. A little hard to wrap your mind around maybe. So basically, the UCP is accusing three unions of being NDP-affiliated unions like Kupi, Alberta, for example, and the Alberta Teachers Association.

And basically they're saying that these unions are governed as third-party advertisers. Third-party advertisers are a group which have to register with elections, Alberta, and they basically campaign for given policy ideas. Take back Alberta is probably, for example, one of the most popular. Not popular, but in the, it's most in the limelight right now. It's the most infamous right now as it gets slammed everywhere across, which is interesting to watch. Yeah, it's being talked about all the time.

It's, you know, it's very controversial, what sort of how it operates as a third-party advertiser. Arguably, I think it's received some of the tension because it is registered as a third-party advertiser. So basically the United Conservative Party government is arguing that some of these unions are paying to advertise for the elections and they're promoting the Alberta NDP. And they're saying that these unions are not disclosing who their donors are. And third party advertisers have to be very careful with money that's spent and tracking it and who's donating for what causes, things like that. So they're accusing these unions of operating outside the legal threshold.

threshold under Elections Alberta and under Elections Law and they've asked Elections Alberta for an investigation. They've sent two letters on that. I do not believe they've sent a response yet. Elections Alberta has returned a response yet. I'd be surprised. I feel like unions have a lot of leeway with what they're able to do within the country. I know the Alberta Teachers Association responded and said, well, we're not campaigning specifically for one party like the Alberta NDP. We're just pushing for good education policy. That's a nonpartisan issue. So that was their response and of course all the unions are saying no no we're not campaigning for the alberta ndp i have written about in the past people who are members of unions complaining about how their

unions are so set on the alberta nDP and often give a very partisan view of the issues so if viewers are interested they could certainly look up some of that it is an interesting story i mean we're well into the campaign now i didn't get a lot of media attention when it first broke a little a couple stories here and there i don't suspect it's going to be something that's going to dominate the election coverage just because mainstream media outlets aren't picking up on it. And as I mentioned, I think it is just kind of nuanced. Third-party advertisers are pretty confusing. I don't think anyone really thinks both them or really knows what they are.

And so I just don't see it resonating with voters. It is interesting that Notley's husband partner is, you know, associated with one of the unions, right? I mean, it's an interesting little tie there and everything else. beside, but I'm not sure people really give two hoots about it. That's, that's what you're trying to basically, or that's basically not what you're trying to say. That's basically what you're saying is the reason nobody's picking up on it is because they don't think anybody can understand it even if you wanted to. It's like, yeah, unions kind of get to do what they want. Yeah, and I think it's something that, like, Notley's husband being a prominent member of, I believe it's Kupy,

Alberta, but I could be mistaken on which union it is. It's, it's Kupy. It is Kupy. Okay, yeah, like her husband being prominent there. That's something that really partisan conservatives care about. I know on some of the Facebook groups I'm seeing they've sent complaints to elections Alberta regarding this. But as somebody who is like in politics and has a husband that also works in politics, it's kind of just like from my perspective, I'm like, okay, so we're one of them supposed to quit their jobs? Like, okay, sure, maybe we can look at the relationship between the unions and the Alberta NDP and make sure that everything there is, is functioning up to par. And, you know, maybe currently it is everything is operating legally,

but maybe we still think it's unfair. We want to change the laws later on so how they can operate that. I think those questions are totally valid, and I think those questions are totally fair and should be asked and should be examined. But I'm not going to say that Rachel Notley can't be leader of the Alberta NDP because her husband has a prominent position in the union because I would be a hypocrite. Yeah, that's, that's fair. How about you, you have an interesting seat to notice that Rachel Notley

and I don't know, maybe you can tell me if Daniel Smith does this too, but with different journalists and shutting them down, you know, it's been interesting. When it comes to the counter signal, Keenan, he's had his interesting moments where he's brought it upon himself, if you will, at times. And other times, though you're like, at the same point, I mean, he's a journalist who should be able to ask his questions and everything else. You sit in there watching this all play out. you get a front row seat, shed some light on it for us all, and maybe just explain what's been going on if the listener hasn't been paying attention. It's been really bizarre,

and it's hard to even really understand what the NDP's policy is on independent media because it's been pretty all over the place. So for starters, I, the Alberta NDP do not respond to media requests from True North. That has been their policy since I started with them. Basically, I started with True North. I sent a media request to Benjamin.

been Aldrette, he's a spokesperson for the party, and he was like... Before you, for me, break it down even a little bit further if you don't mind. Why would you send them a media request? What's the purpose of such a thing? And then maybe that'll even give us a little bit more background on it. For sure. So, I mean, the purpose of sending a party a media request is when, like, let's say the UCP is attacking the NDP.

You need to always make sure that you give the other side fair and equal space to air out their own concerns or their response to the complaints. That's something that's actually been hard to do in independent media because we have so many people on the left who just won't respond to us. They sort of written this off as being a conservative outlet, it's not going to be useful for them to respond to us because their audience, their base isn't reading us anyways. But it makes it hard for us to do our jobs and we do want to give both sides of the story and we want to let the other side sort of air their own complaints or error their concerns. So let's say I was writing a story about the United Conservative Party government attacking the Alberta NDP for something,

I would reach out to spokesperson Benjamin Aldrich for a comment. And the very first time I did this as an employee of True North, he just said, oh, you moved over. We don't take media inquiries or we don't have dealings with True North, which was so silly because I was like, well, I used to always take my media request. Like, it's still me. So I just thought that was a little bit funny. And I've never really been able to. And do you know the history of it?

Like, what happened? doesn't that seem a little lot? Sure North was pretty confused when I mentioned that to them. They were like, oh, you know, that's kind of bizarre, try to maybe find out why, and we were never really able to get a clear answer from them on this. It's not the federal NDPs policy. It's just a specific Alberta NDP policy.

So I think the provinces kind of make that decision. The NDP provincial parties make the decision on a case-by-case basis with outlets that they're dealing with. So that was almost a year ago now, And I would say that in the last year, we've seen the Alberta NDP kind of continually push back on media. So, for example, they used to take media inquiries from Western Standard. And then a couple months ago, they removed Western Standard from their press release email list and stopped responding to them for inquiries. And, you know, Rebel News arguably has always had a hard time getting responses from the Alberta NDP as well.

So basically, now we're in an election campaign and I'm showing up at all these events in person. So what happened is I went to my first event about a week ago last week, Monday, and I was there with a Western Standard Reporter. They basically went through after the press conference, they started going through questions. Myself and Jonathan Bradley, Western Standard Reporter, were at the end of the line. Once they got to me, the communication staffer was handing everyone kind of the mic to ask their questions and he would take it back in between. He said, okay, we're going to go to the phones now. And I was like, oh, yeah, I bet you are. So I just yelled out my question because I was like, no, like I drove all the way here.

I want to get my question in. And it was a pretty small room. Like they obviously couldn't miss the fact that I had asked a question. And it was also being broadcast live. So Rachel Notley did, to her credit, answer my question. I asked my follow up. She answered it. And then they were like, okay, we're done now.

And then they just kind of ended the press conference. So Rachel Notley shed a little further clarity on this issue yesterday. So yesterday at an NDP press conference. he and Bexie, editor-in-chief of the counter signal, showed up, and he walked in the room and everything seemed to be fine, and then they basically came up to him and asked him to leave. He didn't leave. The business owner asked him to leave.

He said, I'm here for a press conference. And then they actually called the police on him. And as soon as the police came, he just, he left with the police, you know, it wasn't like a big deal or anything. But they delayed the press conference about an hour to deal with the situation. Having a journalist they didn't want to talk to, just so I'm clear. Yeah, exactly. And then once the press conference,

conference started and one of the legacy media reporters kind of asked Rachel Nottley, you know, would it have been better to deal with this in another way? This press conference has been delayed an hour. There's been similar issues because he showed up at other press conference and the exact same thing happened while the other press conference that actually had private security remove him and a rebel news reporter. So I thought that was an interesting question because it just seemed like kind of an all over the place policy because I'm getting questions in now and my independent media colleagues aren't. sometimes security asks some independent media reporters to leave but not everybody so like none of us really know what the policy is or what's going on and then rachel notley basically proceeded to call

kean a just a protester um she didn't call him a journalist she said he's a protester and she also said that he quote has affiliations with white supremacy views and quote you know he doesn't um that was not true um so she said we will not take questions from him and we like she basically said no, like we dealt with that in the appropriate capacity. And then for Western Standard, they published a column a while ago. They believe they ended up deleting it and the columnist apologized for it. But it was very critical of an Alberta NDP candidate. And the NDP are saying that it was hateful and I believe homophobic. So they are refusing to take questions from Western Standard until Western Standard apologizes for publishing that column, which they'll never do.

So Western Standard is able to show up to the events. but they don't get their questions in. And then Rebel News, one time the security was called on a Rebel News reporter and they were asked to leave. But I've also seen them at other events and they're able to cover the events, but then they don't get their questions in. So as of right now, True North is the only independent media that's able to get their questions in. We've kind of been, like I've been asking, like my colleagues, like, why do you think we get our questions in? And I'm like, well, maybe it's just because I know I'm going to yell them out otherwise. But my one colleague said, I think it's like a better look for them if they allow at least one conservative

outlet to ask a question because then they can say, well, the others are just too fringy or they're associated with white supremacy and we don't want to have dealings with them. But look, we are still willing to take questions from some conservative media outlets and then they'll take my questions. So maybe that's the thinking behind the discrepancy there. You've been around journalism now for, I don't know. How long have you been in this field, Rachel? About five years. Okay. So in your five years, you're watching. You're watching, all this play out, is this absolutely the strangest thing, or at times you're like, no, this kind of makes sense why they're doing what they're doing. I am young enough to have grown up in this

sort of environment where conservative voices are being excluded from society and we're being told that our views are unacceptable. So I am not surprised by this in the way that some older reporters would say this is outrageous. Do I think it's outrageous? Yes, absolutely. It doesn't surprise me in the least, just because I never knew anything outside of this society where we were constantly being told that we're unacceptable and not worth speaking to. So no, it doesn't surprise me. I know that it's wrong. It's wrong to exclude voices in the case of Kean. He has a whole audience of people that are reading his work, and you've just told that whole audience that they're not worth your time, that you're not even worth asking a question to the opposition leader. So certainly I understand that this

is very problematic. I think it's very concerning and indicative. of the direction that we're headed in in society right now. But I just can't say that I'm surprised because this is really all I've ever known. You know, my hat's off to that guy because one of the things that I do admire is you watch the videos him, you know, and then the cops show up. And it's just like, really? Like this is a bit absurd, you know? And he seems to find, he's got a giant old target on his back, doesn't he, Rachel?

Everywhere he goes, it seems to follow him. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been in the conservative media space for just a little over a year now. And it was a bit of adjustment at first when I was like, oh, wow, people really don't like me just because I'm a conservative journalist. And for the questions that I asked. And that was a little bit of like, oh, like, what's going on? Shock to the system. But he's been doing it a lot longer and he handles the pressure really well, a lot better than I would be able to do.

I don't know what I would have done if they had sort of asked me to leave. I think I might have just left. I don't know if I would have stayed and waited for the police to call me. I just don't know if I could have like handled the tension in the room. Like you could honestly hear a pin drop. It was super awkward. And I think something I've also been asking myself is, you know, in other times when this has happened in the past, like years ago, all of the other journalists would basically take a stand and say, well, if you're not going to let one of us access the space, we're just simply not going to have the press conference. Now, I know that my mainstream media colleagues are not going to do that.

They're going to so proceed with their press conference. They don't care that Keyin and Western Standard and Rebel News aren't allowed to ask their questions. So I guess something I've been asking myself, is it still appropriate that I'm asking questions, or should I just sort of leave the press conference as well out of respect for my other independent media colleagues who aren't being given an opportunity? And that is something I've kind of questioned, but it's also like if I'm the only independent reporter and conservative reporter getting their questions in, is it really like a victory just to say, well, we're not going to? Maybe it is. Maybe it is.

But I'm like, well, I'm the only one who's getting questions in right now and we're in an election period. So it is something I think about. It's an extremely sad and unnerving thing that you just said, you know, like when you think about all the, you know, there's a huge portion of the population that listens to all the places you just listed off, right? Including True North, you know, that that's where they gather their their information from and they're being excluded from the table, so to speak, which is like really, you know, for somebody who is in the running to win the next. leader of Alberta, you're like, oh man, you want to talk about all the different things coming in federally, folks, you know, when it comes to censorship and different things like that, you're watching it play out in an election that to me, it's just, it's just wild. We got some, before I get you, you know, I want to make sure I'm cognizant of the time here

for you. There's some live debates coming up here this week, correct? the 18th is the first one. Am I wrong on my dates or do I got that right? No, you have that right. And that's, how many of those are there, Rachel, between the two leaders? There's just the one. There's just the one.

Yeah. That's it? Yeah, that's the only one. I mean, unless they're planning another one, I'm pretty sure there's just the one debate happening. And I guess that would be Thursday. Thursday. So for the listener, that's, I guess, tomorrow night as we record this a day before it's released.

So it's, there's only one debate. Really? Once again, I come at this from a different purview where I'm, you know, I watch probably more of the election election, more of the U.S. election coverage than I ever would federally or provincially of Canadian. And that's been something that's changed for me over the last couple years, certainly. Do you wish there was more than one? Do you even care?

Well, I assume you care. But, I mean, it's like, that's the only time we're going to see Smith versus Notley. No, I don't care that there's only one debate. I used to get really excited about these types of events, but the reality is it's not even going to be a debate. There's going to be no actual discourse. There's going to be no, all right, let's really break down the policy and try to discuss which idea is better than the others. It's going to be typically what these things always evolve into, which is two leaders making cheap shots at each other and repeating their talking points about their policies. So it's usually not very useful. It's usually not very interesting. I think it speaks to how debate in society has really just descended. you know, Daniel Smith is really strong on the policy side of stuff. And so maybe this will be a good opportunity for her to be seen as someone who is strong on those policy ideas and does know what she's talking about. But I find usually I watch these things and I think I didn't get anything out of that. I don't really know what to write about it.

And I can't imagine that anyone who's finished watching that feels rejuvenated or excited about their product's future. It's funny you say that because I think I went to, you know, there was a couple when the UCP was on its road and all the seven candidates were doing their debates and certainly I went to the Western Standard and I went to the APP one and then I hosted one, you know, and there was just so much, I enjoyed a few of those because there was just so much going on and every host or facilitator handled it in a different way. But there was a couple, mainly the ones that were put on by the actual party, they were just like, I don't know if I'm

learning anything tonight. Like they're just regurgitating the same. same thing. So when you put it that way, it's like, yeah, you're probably right. It's probably going to be one of those things. To me, it's like, so what, I guess maybe the question is, Rachel, if you had control of it and you're like, man, just give me one night and Rachel will put on a show that nobody's ever seen, what would you do? Would you sit them down face to face? How would, how would you structure it differently? Yeah, that's a really good question. I haven't thought about that mostly just because I assume no one would ever ask me to host a debate, but maybe that's something I should start pushing for.

I think maybe one thing that could help. In fairness to you, I never thought I would be on stage with five of the seven candidates to UCP either. And I would never thought I'd be like, well, I don't want a debate. I want a conversation. And although I don't think it was a smashing success, some people thought it was great. Some people, you know, thought whatever. It was a learning lesson.

So regardless, you never know. You never know. Maybe in a years or, well, in a couple of years' time, I guess, from now, Rachel will have her own, you know, because if there's only one, it's like, why aren't we, why aren't we trying to find, now they'd have to both agree to it, obviously, and they'd both, they'd have to find, think that there was something they could win out of it. But can you imagine if, if you had something that people were like, this would be a ton of fun to sit and listen to, I think it's a huge opportunity. Anyways, that's, that's my thoughts. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean,

I think your point about maybe giving the candidates, having them sit face to face, but also giving them more time to actually discuss their ideas. Nowadays, it's like, like, okay, you've got one minute to give your answer and then you got like a 30 second rebuttal. So it's like even the way the debates are formatted are often not really conducive to having an actual discussion because you're just trying to quickly get your points out quickly and concisely because you have such a small amount of time. And then often the questions that are asked or the topics they discuss are just like super tedious and boring.

So I don't know. Like I think maybe it would be even interesting just to have like an hour long debate on the topic of public safety and addictions. like how the two parties would approach that differently. Like you could discuss that easily for an hour. Yeah, that would be, well, I think like you, you know, they're going to talk about a bunch of things and it's just going to be like, oh, this is going to be, you know, and I look at it and I go, man,

I've been waiting for Smith, notly to like get across from each other because, like, to me that's, that, that'll be interesting. To me that we're going to decide who the leader, you know, here they are. Okay, this is what's going to look at the, you know, leading the province for the next four years. that would be interesting to me. I've had many a thought of getting them in the studio, not that either one would probably agree at this point, but having them sit across from each other

and just facilitating, you know, like, let's go for an hour. Let's go for two hours. I don't really care. Let's just sit back and forth. But I highly doubt that would happen. But you never know. You put things like that out into the universe. You just never know what comes back.

Before I let you out of here, as we close in on time, Crude Master final question is, if you're going to stand behind a cause, stand behind it absolutely. one thing Rachel stands behind. Pro-life. I believe that human life begins at conception, and I am absolutely against abortion.

I think it's very difficult when we're now deciding when human life begins. So I think being pro-life is something that I will absolutely stand behind, and that's one of the reasons that I'm grateful to work in independent media, because we actually have some standard of truth that we hold ourselves to, at least as a reporter, you're able to determine what those standards of truths are, whereas in the mainstream media you're so often just saying, well, this is what the side is saying and this is what this side is saying and sort of this moral relativism that we have as society is ascended to rules.

So, yeah, that is an issue that I absolutely stand behind 110%. I tell you what, that's one way to leave in. Now I'm going to have to have you back on because I would love to talk about that a little more in depth. Regardless, I want to get you out of here on time. So I just appreciate you giving me some time this morning and I'm sure people will be following along with your, election coverage as we near May 29th. And once again, just thanks for hopping on.

Yes, thanks so much. Enjoy the rest of the election campaign. I hope the debate is everything you want it to be and more. Let's hope.