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It's usually a good idea to tailor your speech to the audience.  So if you're speaking to, say a Chamber of Commerce, keep in mind what the captains of industry would find most interesting.

But in politics, no matter who you are talking to, whatever you say is going to get to a wider audience.

On Oct. 9 United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney made a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.  No doubt it went over well.  He said when his party takes power after next year's election it will freeze minimum wage increases and introduce a lower minimum for youth.

He said his party will repeal the NDP's latest labour legislation which removes the secret ballot from the union certification process and protects employees who need leave for sick family members, among other things.

He promised to have a cabinet minister who would be charged with cutting red tape by 30 per cent to create a better business climate.  And he's considering a commission appointed to figure out a way back to fiscal health for the province without raising taxes.

The province would have an energy "war room" to defend Alberta's resource base at home and abroad.  And he would stop the statutory shutdown of coal.

Talk about playing to the crowd.

He also said he wanted to act fast on all his reforms.

"Speed creates its own momentum.  It also makes it harder for the opponents of reform to obstruct it," he said.

After all he doesn't want his new government to be "bogged down" with public consultation when it takes office.

Instead, the party is working on that consultation now, he said.

The basic sentiment of the speech, delivered to a business crowd in a city likely to vote UCP next May, isn't ground shakingly surprising.  It contained more detail than has been revealed before about the election platform the UCP claims to still be working on.

Media reports in Calgary at the time focused on Kenney's remarks in a scrum after the speech about the Calgary Olympic bid.  One outlet went over Kenney's oft repeated promise to scrap Alberta's carbon tax.

And then, over the weekend of Oct 13-14, enterprising Edmonton Journal legislature reporter Emma Graney wrote a story about the new stuff from the Chamber of Commerce speech, like the graduated minimum wage and the red tape czar and the labour legislation repeal.  And she quoted what Kenney had to say about not wanting to be "bogged down" by public consultation.

And the readers of that story were not necessarily captains of industry.

The social media storm is still raging about the story, about Kenney's revelations, about the tone of the remarks.

Alberta Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said Kenney's "mask has slipped" and his real intent for the province has been revealed.

Critics of the UCP leader are speculating on whether the cutting of red tape will gut environmental regulations and whether repealing labour legislation will expose mothers with cancer-ridden children to the risk of losing their jobs if they take time off.

None of that sort of detail was in the speech.  Exactly what aspects of the labour revamp are on the cutting table and what regulations will be snipped weren't mentioned.

But the critics have landed a blow or two with their backlash.

Kenney's office lost its marbles with a Tweet from Kenney's office account saying "the media only covered the week old speech after the NDP told them to."

Graney's spirited response: "Christ on a bike you're being absolutely absurd.  If you'd bother asking, I'd have told you why I wrote it… I worked on the weekend, and thought I'd catch up on some recent #ableg political speeches."

It's not the first object lesson the UCP has had to learn about how many eyes and ears are trained on their every move as an election approaches.

Last week they faced another storm of controversy after some UCP candidates found themselves (unwittingly they say) smiling happily with the extremist Sons of Odin group.  Kenney and the party stepped in to stamp that brush fire out, but not before the NDP made a little capital off their embarrassment.

Kenney and his party pride themselves on acting as though they are a government in waiting.  The price of that position is that you're just asking to be held up to the same sort of scrutiny as the real governing party.  In a world of indelible recordings and digital reach everything said to one special interest group is heard by the world at large.

Photo Credit: Edmonton Journal

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


It is important that we understand history as it was, and not how some of us wish it would be

The philosopher George Santayana famously wrote in The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This statement makes sense, especially in light of our society's recent trials of history and the accuracy of history being placed on trial.

The first example involves Scott Kelly, a former U.S. astronaut.  He committed a serious offence on social media by having the audacity to quote (wait for it) the late, great British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill.

This bizarre episode started when he tweeted out on Oct. 7: "One of the greatest leaders of modern times, Sir Winston Churchill said, 'in victory, magnanimity.'  I guess those days are over."  Kelly's three-word quote is accurate.  It's taken from Churchill's The Gathering Storm (1948), part of his six-volume series on the Second World War.

Yet it immediately turned several social media users into ballistic creatures.  Some attacked Churchill as a "racist" and "mass murderer" who reportedly viewed non-white communities as inferior.  Others pointed to his apparent indifference toward India and the Bengal famine.

After a few hours, Kelly issued an apologetic second tweet: "Did not mean to offend by quoting Churchill.  My apologies.  I will go and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support.  My point was we need to come together as one nation.  We are all Americans.  That should transcend partisan politics."

It's not only embarrassing that Kelly succumbed to an angry mob of left-wing social justice warriors, but he simply went along with their historical revisionism.

To call Churchill a racist is preposterous.  He was no better or worse than most people in his time, and always treated individuals from different walks of life with respect.  Meanwhile, to claim he was responsible for the Bengal famine remains a disputed fact and, in the view of most historians, a highly inaccurate one.

Churchill was an imperfect beast.  But he was also a great intellect, thinker, writer, orator and, above all, political leader.

The second example involves U.S. President Donald Trump and the claim he praised a Confederate general when, in fact, he didn't.

On Oct. 12, Trump spoke at a large political rally in Ohio.  He praised the state and said, "It also gave you a general who was incredible.  He drank a little bit too much.  You know who I'm talking about right?  So Robert E. Lee was a great general.  And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia.  He couldn't beat Robert E. Lee. … And one day, it was looking really bad.  And Lincoln just said, 'You' hardly knew his name and they said, 'Don't take him.  He's got a drinking problem.'  And Lincoln said, 'I don't care what problem he has, you guys aren't winning.'  And his name was Grant.  Gen. Grant.  And he went in and he knocked the hell out of everyone."

The crowd seemed to know who the president was talking about.  Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio, after all.  Some historians agree Grant drank a bit, others have suggested he may have been an alcoholic and still others aren't sure.

Yet NBC News decided Trump was referring to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and praised him in a state that sided with the Union Army.

Lee was a southerner born in Stratford Hall, Va.  He was never associated with either heavy alcoholism or, by many historical accounts, social drinking.  And yes, he was a great general in military and strategic terms or else the Union and Confederate armies wouldn't have both offered him the same leadership role!

What's clear is NBC missed the break in Trump's speech, and tied his third and fourth sentences together.  After a day of negative press, they finally acknowledged this mistake and issued a correction.  Rest assured the Trump White House will revisit this silly error as often as possible.
It's important that we understand history.  Yet it's even more important we understand history as it was and not how some of us wish it would be.

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.