I CAN'T BELIEVE Danielle Smith Made This INSANE MISTAKE! 🤯 UCP Wants Her GONE

Welcome to the Bill Kelly podcast, critical discussions in critical times.Here's your host, Bill Kelly.

Welcome to another edition of the Bill Kelly podcast, critical discussions in these critical times.I'm your host, Bill Kelly.Is this whole Alberta referendum thing rigged?I mean, is the fix in on this whole thing?I know that's not a conspiracy theory.More and more people are starting to think that's exactly what's going on in Alberta these days.

And I want to, I want to start with you.focus on the last 24 hours especially, whether you know what really hit the fan.Let's bring up first of all a CTV article that covered a meeting in the Alberta Legislature.Early press release from UCP caucus stalls forever candidate review committee.This is by Hannah Kavanaugh from CTV News.Page down on here and this is all true, this is all stuff that's happening.

The Alberta government's move to add a potential separation question to a fall referendum was stalled by an apparent UCP media release error that announced a decision before it was actually approved.Let that sink in.UCP caucus press release announced on Wednesday that the bipartisan committee reviewing Thomas Lukasik's forever Canadian petition recommended asking Premier Daniel Smith's government to initiate a province -wide vote on Alberta's status within Canada on October the 19th.The decision, based on a motion proposed by the committee's majority UCP members, was emailed to the media around 3 p .m.But the group, the group that was supposed to be deciding on this, was still debating it.

They had not voted on this.but the press release was already released.Come on, really?It's incredible how these people are handling this or mishandling this, I guess.Lecassic has appeared before the committee composed of two opposition NDP and three UCPL MLAs.Wednesday afternoon, they had this meeting in the legislature to answer and clarify questions about the Forever Canadian citizen petition program.

Now, this preemptive actionpress release drew the frustration of NDP committee members, who said the early decision made a sham of the entire review process and Lechazek's answers.They called for the issue to be brought before the legislators and the Speaker.The entire committee adjourned for the day without approving a referendum.question okay nothing they got nothing they didn't even vote on this ucp member jason nixon agreeing to the release was a mistake but ultimately voted alongside other ucp members against taking the matter any further a ucp caucus spokesperson later clarified that the statement was distributed in error no kidding lacassic took to social media to express his disappointment here's his committee here's his quote rather Here's Lecassic's quote.While the committee is still deliberating on the Forever Canadian petition, government just issued a press release that the committee has already made a decision and recommended a referendum on separation.

Wow!Decision before it was actually made?A gong show!This is the way things have been going on here for the last little while in the province of Alberta.And we've expressed some concerns about this right from day one, that Danielle Smith is trying to stick handle and push this thing through.And it started, by the way, when she lowered the threshold for the separatists to get enough signatures to move this forward.

Remember, there was a threshold.She says, no, no, no, no, it only has to be this number here.So that was the start of this.And now her party is trying to move this thing forward.And don't forget, the reason they're doing this now is because the courts tried to intervene with this first petition, the separation petition, and said it's invalid for a couple of reasons.First of all, they did not consult with indigenous groups.

The government was opposed to the court decision, but also the signatures, those 300 ,000 signatures on that petition have yet to be validated.So we don't even know if it's a legitimate petition.So she's trying to push this thing through anyway, which kind of tells you where her motivation is on this whole thing.AndAnd the fact that they said it was in error that the press release was even released.Who wrote the damn thing?

If they hadn't even had a vote from the committee yet, how did Daniel Smith's government know the outcome of the vote that never actually happened?And the fix is in here.I mean, these guys are trying to manipulate this process to their own benefit.She's been doing this from day one and she got caught red handed doing it yesterday.And the question here is what kind of a price is she going to pay for this, if any?Well, let me focus on another piece that came out that I'm going to get to in a couple of seconds, but maybe to give you some context about just how crazy things were in the legislature.

Here's a report from City News Edmonton.This is the reporter James Dunn, who was covering that meeting yesterday.And here's what his report said.

A dramatic day in Alberta politics.The Forever Canadian petition calling for Alberta to remain in Canada was being debated.A UCP -led committee wants to approve it for a referendum this fall.This after hearing from the petition proponent, Thomas Lukasik, who faced questions from committee members.Just as the committee was about to vote on sending it to a referendum, This press release from the UCP caucus was sent to reporters while debate was still going on.In it, it said the committee had already approved the question for a referendum with a quote from the UCP committee chair, Brandon Lunte, supporting the move.

The UCP caucus disregarded the release about 20 minutes later.NDP tried to file a point of privilege on this but was denied.Time ran out on the committee because of the delay forcing it to adjourn until Thursday afternoon.Now the NDP questioning the impartiality of Lunte and says he should be removed.

He does not have the credibility anymore to be the chair of this committee.He made it clear.We've all kind of suspected that this is a sham from the beginning.And now he made it clear that this committee is a sham.Democracy is a sham to the UCP.

Chair Lunte was clear that he did not sign off on any release going forward.I'm sure he'll have some questions for his staff on how that process took place.It's clearly inappropriate, which was acknowledged by the committee today.And again, it doesn't take away from the fact that 400 ,000 Albertans are asking for us to be able to allow them to have a say on whether or not they want to remain in their country.

Lukasik tells reporters he still thinks we are headed to a referendum despite this delay even after he told MLAs it wasn't the intent of the forever Canadian petition.

There is no other way unfortunately of stating that what has happened was a rigged process.It was always abundantly obvious that this government wanted to have a referendum on tearing Canada apart by hook or by crook.

While the co thursday afternoon, we ar in a televised address l So it's not just me sayi is rigged.

I mean, you hea that the fix was in.I me I was involved in politics for a little while.I've been commenting and covering politics for over 50 years.You don't write a press release before the vote is even taken.They had quotes from some of the members of the committee.They probably wrote this thing like an hour and a half before the meeting even started.

The fix is in.Danielle Smith is trying to maneuver this whole process, and she got caught doing it.And now, as a result, it's going to blow up in her face.It certainly seems that way.And by the way, how can you call this a bipartisan committee when the three of the members of three five members on this committee three of them are government members of course they're going to vote with daniel smith on that so i mean the fix is in on that vote right off the bat anyway i mean this was all just window dressing to try to make it look as if they're they're doing something in a democratic manner and clearly they're not so you know what happens and we've seen this happen time and again not just in politics but injust about every other facet of life.

When you're trying to please both sides, you end up pleasing nobody.And now both sides, both the anti -referendum, both the pro -referendum, both the separatists and the people who want to stay in Canada, they're all pissed off at Daniel Smith now.And what's going to happen for that?Well, I want to bring up an article from Global News who were covering this meeting as well.The title of the article, Alberta separatists threatened to oust Premier Danielle Smith over referendum question.And this is a piece that was written by Ken McGilvery, Adam Vicker from Global News.

We're also covering the meeting.So I'm going to read parts of this article.And by the way, I think this article is rather biased, but I'll explain that in just a couple of minutes as we go through it.Political rhetoric is ramping up ahead of a planned fall referendum in Alberta.Our view is Danielle Smith needs to make a decision.Is she going to support Mr. Lukasik or is she going to support her base?

What we are saying is she needs to understand that if she abandons her base or betrays her base, there will likely be political consequences.Now, that's a threat from Jeffrey Rath.We've talked about him before.He's a lawyer with the Alberta Prosperity Project.That's the group that said it collected more than 300 ,000 signatures, rather, on a citizen's petition calling for this referendum on the province's independence from Canada.However, that petition, as we reported in the podcast here, that proposed question, do you agree that the province of Alberta should cease to be part of Canada and become an independent state?

That was recently rejected by the courts over a lack of consultation with First Nations.Of course, Daniel Smith and the separatists disagree with that decision, but that's the way things are.So instead, in an effort to appease the party supporters, many political analysts expect Smith to call a referendum on the question asked in the Forever Canada petition.That petition, which was spearheaded by former Alberta MLA and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszek, asks, do you agree that Alberta should remain within Canada?Different kind of question, really.It's not a question that the separatists want because it's an affirmative question, says Mount Royal political scientist Duane Bratt.

Now he expects that Smith is going to announce his plans during a paid province -wide television address on Thursday.However, Alberta's journey toward holding a fall referendum vote on separation took a bizarre turn Wednesday, when a bipartisan committee meeting of MLAs established to review LeCassec's question imploded after the UCP caucus sent out a premature news release announcing that the vote had already taken place and the motion had passed.And it hadn't.They hadn't even put it to a vote yet.This is, this is again, this is trying to move the process along, trying to manipulate the process.Now, for Rath, choosing to put the pro -Canadian question on the referendum ballot amounts to a betrayal of the many Albertans who are separatists but chose to support Smith as leader of the UCP.

They don't want this, do you want to stay in Canada?They want people to be angry.That's what separatism is all about.It's fomenting anger and hatred.That's the base for putting these all sorts of questions together here.He says, I think the people within the UCP, you're sick and tired of being lied to.

Daniel Smith promised that if we jump through the hoops, and if we got all the signatures and did what we were supposed to do, our question would be on that ballot this fall, Rath said on Wednesday.Now, there are some political analysts that are quoted here too, and this is where I think it gets a little dicey.Political analyst, Global News, has spoke to a number of this piece to try to get some opinions on this.And I'm not so sure that these are subjective opinions.One, Phil Snengofsky, who is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alberta.He said that while Smith has done a really good job of managing sometimes conflicting demands of separatists and federalists within the UCP, those issues are now coming to a head.

Boy, I got a pretty good idea of which way this guy is going to vote on the petition.Big fan of Danielle Smith.There aren't too many of those.in Alberta these days.We know that close to a majority, if not a majority, of supporters of the UCP support Alberta becoming an independent country, and the other half does not.according to Signofsky.

I don't know where he gets those numbers from, but anyway.All the public opinion polling that we have available to us suggests that it still remains a minority position among Albertans, and she's facing this tension between trying to stay responsive to the general electorate and the popular will on one hand, and on the other hand, trying to make sure that she retains her job and she stays responsive within her own political party.So that's I think the thrust of this whole thing here.Danielle Smith is trying to play both sides on this whole thing.She knows that the majority of her party are separatists of the UCP party.That's what these guys are all about.

They want to break away.Ottawa stinks.They're terrible.We've never had a good deal in Confederation.We need to get out.But she's got to play middle ground here.

So she's gone, well, we'll entertain the other idea too.And that's when she came up with all this BS about a sovereign Alberta within Canada, yada, yada, yada, yada, to try to split both sides here.So now she's caught in this vice that she's created on her own about exactly which way she's going.The question that this professor states is something worth considering here.And I think it's something that we as observers in this whole process have to understand.As the premier of the province, of any province, you're Daniel Smith, Doug Ford, doesn't matter who you are, is your responsibility to your party base or is it to the people of the province that elected you?

The answer should be obvious.You're supposed to be representing the interests of the people of the province, not just to appeal to your political base, okay?That's not the way things should be.But Daniel Smith is trying to get both ways out of this.She knows that if she decides to stand up for what most Albertans want, which is to stay within Canadian Confederation,that she's going to piss off her UCP separatist base.

And she doesn't want to do that because she wants to keep her job.And there's a precedent for this too.The reason Daniel Smith is even the premier is because this party dumped Jason Kennedy a couple of years ago because he wasn't radical enough for them.So this is the dilemma she's facing, but it's a dilemma that she created herself.And now she's got to try to wiggle away from this, if she probably can.I'm not so sure that's going to be happening.

Anyway, let's go back to the article because I want to talk about some of the other elements that are going on here.Other political observers also agree.It's a pressure cooker and heavy is the head that wears the crown, said Michael Solberg, who is a partner at the New West Public Affairs and admits to being a card -carrying member of the UCP.Again, I don't know which way this guy's going to vote.He says, I think the premier probably wakes up every day with extraordinary new challenges that she has to face from members of her caucus.The opposition, and now certainly the far fringe of her party, which is increasingly becoming the majority of her party, at least per the threats coming from groups like Jeffrey Raff is leading, says, I don't want to discount the risks to the premier that the separatist groups have, especially if they start buying up all the memberships, but the premier is no slouch either, Solberg added.

So she's a fighter.There's a lot of institutional strength behind her.And I think the people who underestimate her do so at their own peril.So, Let me wrap up the piece here, and then we'll talk a little bit about exactly what's happening here politically.If Smith does call a referendum on the Forever Canadian Citizens petition, Rath says that separatists are already planning their attempt to oust the Premier, as was done with her predecessor, Jason Kenney.We're asking all the people that signed our petition and all of our canvassers to organize themselves to sell memberships across the province, because if our question is not put on the ballot by the end of the month, we're going to be organizing a special general meeting of the United Conservative Party for August," Rath says.

It's not unlike what they did here, Paul.Now that was a bit of a different circumstance because that leadership review was planned.They do that after every federal election.But what this guy is doing, what Rath is doing, and he's one of the separatist leaders here, is saying if Danielle Smith doesn't jump when we say jump and doesn't put that question on there, we're going to boot her out.We're going to call for a leadership review.We're going to stack the room with people that want her gone, and she will be gone.

And she knows that.notwithstanding what these other political scientists have been quoted in the piece saying, oh she's a fighter, she's made her bed and it's very uncomfortable.But this is what happens when politicians try to play both sides and that's exactly what she's been trying to do here.I think anybody who's been watching this in their heart of hearts understands Danielle Smith is a separatist.She doesn't want to be called a separatist.She's trying to make good, especially with the prime minister now, because of the possibility of pipelines and other help that's going to be coming from the federal government.

But she can't say, hey, this is a great deal for Alberta, because she knows that almost half, if not more than half of her party, can't stand federalism, can't stand Ottawa, can't stand Mark Carney, even though Carney has very positive ratings, even in Alberta.But Smith is playing her own game of politics now, and it's going to burn her if it already hasn't burned her.So it's no wonder, as I said at the beginning of the podcast here, it's no wonder that there's confusion about what's going to be happening.She promised that there was going to be some sort of a referendum, but because of that court decision, they don't know which question to put on their referendum sheets.Remember, she's got about 18 or 19 questions.Is it going to be from the separatists?

Is it going to be theirs, which is a very negative -oriented referendum question?Or is it going to be the one from the Kazakh side that say, hey, do you want to stay in Canada?Or they may not have one at all, because notwithstanding this phony press release that said that they've already made a decision, there has been no decision made about even putting a referendum question on there.And I just mentioned a couple of minutes ago, and I think it bears repeating, thethat are saying, you know, you've got to respect the right that we had over 300 ,000 signatures, those have not been validated.And let's also remember, as we talked about on a podcast just a couple of weeks ago, there was a huge data leak, and we don't know if that had an impact on the way those petitions were handled.

We don't know if those names are phony or not.So there's a lot of work yet to be done before they can actually say, OK, we have established that side and we have established the credibility of both sides.That has not happened yet.So they have a lot of work to do if they even feel like doing that work now, whether or not they want to make this a legitimate process, because it's off the rails.The fix is in.Smith is trying to manipulate this whole process.

And it's come back to bite here right now as to what she's going to pay in the way of a political price.That's yet to be determined, but we're certainly going to continue to follow that story.Anyway, that's the latest update.And there's going to be a lot of changes, even over the next couple of days, of course, as they have to move on this, because you saw the deadline that the separatists have put on here.They've only got another week or so and say, if that's not the question, then we already start the process to get her booted out of office.So it's the political chicanery that's going on in Alberta right now is mind boggling.

And we're going to have to wait a long while before the dust settles and we can see just exactly what's going to happen.That's it for this edition of the podcast.As always, thank you so much for being with us.If you like what we're doing, and we certainly hope that you do, just share it.Just tap hype, of course, on YouTube and get others involved in the discussion, okay?Thank you to everybody for your subscriptions, your support.

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