Alberta after the lockdown liars： Cory Morgan of the Western Standard Online
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Summary
Corey Morgan of the Western Standard and Suits and Boots joins me to talk about the hypocrisy of Canadian politicians over the holidays, including those who were advised to cancel all non-essential travel while others were out and about.
Transcript
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Hey Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show,
00:00:05.380
The Gun Show. However, this is the internet so you can listen or for that matter watch
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whenever you feel like. Tonight my guest is Corey Morgan of the Western Standard and
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of Suits and Boots and we're talking about high-flying political hypocrisy over the Christmas
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break. Now, if you like listening to the show then you're going to love watching it but in
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Do as I say, not as I do. High-flying hypocrites and lockdown liars. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're
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You know, someone joked on Twitter late last week that the reason Canadian politicians were advising
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us normals to cancel all of our non-essential travel during the holidays was to prevent us
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from running into the politicians in places like Hawaii or Cancun. In Alberta here, several UCP MLAs,
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including the Minister of Municipal Affairs or former Minister Tracy Allard, took Christmas vacations
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out of the country while the Alberta government advised the rest of us unfortunate regular people
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to, I don't know, shelter in place, remain under house arrest, and cancel all of our
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non-essential travel over the holidays. It took three days of shame and intense public pressure
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before Premier Jason Kenney really understood what was going on here and demoted all of those MLAs.
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Saskatchewan's highways minister, Joe Hargrave, resigned after spending Christmas in Palm Springs to,
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as he describes it, wrap up a real estate deal. Yeah, yeah, okay, sure. Now, as the scandals were breaking,
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Mayor Nahid Nenshi in Calgary was pretty tight-lipped, which is kind of unusual for him until news broke
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late yesterday afternoon. So, after I had recorded my interview with today's show guest, unfortunately,
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that Nenshi's chief of staff had also traveled outside of the country as well. During the pandemic,
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Nahid Nenshi had been calling for stronger lockdown measures to come from the province. I suppose those
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stronger lockdown measures were meant for the rest of us and not for those closest to the big purple
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mayor himself. And it's a great hypocrisy from Calgary's leadership, especially since every single
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weekend people are protesting the lockdown in front of Calgary City Hall, and those same people are
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receiving $1,200 fines for protesting the lockdown. A pastor named Artur Poloski has received at least a
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dozen tickets for what the city of Calgary calls unauthorized gatherings. But in reality, what
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Artur's doing is feeding Calgary's homeless, and we're helping him fight those fines at fightthefines.com.
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It's one rule for me and one rule for thee. Now, joining me now is Corey Morgan of the Western
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Standard and of Suits and Boots. And we recorded our interview before all the Nenshi news broke. So,
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Joining me now from his home in Prittis, I guess, just outside of Calgary, is Corey Morgan of the
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Western Standard and of Suits and Boots. But we'll get back to that towards the end of the
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interview. Corey, thanks for joining me. I wanted to have you on because I would suggest that not
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only have you been a conservative activist for a very long time, but I guess sort of a conservative
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insider from the outside. And I wanted to talk to you about this. It's like a mushroom cloud that is
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set to consume the entire UCP caucus. This out-of-country travel scandal, while the government
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had the rest of us locked down and were openly advising everybody to cancel non-essential travel
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while they were engaged in the most non-essential of all travel, Christmas vacations, I guess.
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Do you know how this story broke? Was it mainstream media politicians or mainstream media journalists
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fishing around for information? Or did it come from disgruntled staffers who leaked it? How did
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this all come to be, if you know? Yeah, I don't know where ground zero of this mushroom cloud
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actually is. It just started. And as soon as even mainstream media and alternative media like ours,
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you know, smelled the blood in the water, we started looking around. And I think the fact
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that none of these guys were even really trying, well, some were making an effort to try and hide
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it, which is what really ticked people off all the more, because they knew they were doing something
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wrong. But it wasn't like they did a really good job of it. So it didn't take a lot of, you know,
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detective work to find out how many of these people were out of the country. And it exploded very
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quickly. Yeah. And it was funny because as this was breaking, I said to my boss, if these people
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were smart, and clearly they're not, they would be telling on themselves and at least taking the air
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out of the CBC bubble. And they didn't. They just kept letting it get broken by the mainstream media.
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And then it's a scandal as opposed to what, and I hate to say it, I hate to commend the liberals on
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anything. But when the federal liberals are doing this, and they are doing this, they are not pushing
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Justin Trudeau out front to fall on his sword. They are telling on themselves and resigning. And that's
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the end of the story. Whereas with Jason Kenney, he came out, took responsibility, and then it just kept
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growing and growing and growing. Who's managing the media crisis here? Or is anybody?
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I don't know. I mean, it's out of control. I'm guessing maybe all their media communicators are
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out of country too. So they're having a hard time trying to get onto this message. But I mean,
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on Friday, Kenny came out. And again, it's Keystone Coppish or something. I think he didn't know that
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there were more out there. He thought he had it done. So okay, let's put this out on a long weekend
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Friday, tear off the Band-Aid. I'll say I'm sorry, I did something wrong. And we're going to work on
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this in the new year. But of course, over the weekend, then more of them surface. Plus the rage
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just built more because just saying I'm sorry that it happened wasn't enough. People wanted to see some
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sort of sanction. And that's when he had to come out now. But he's chasing it now. So to pull some
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people from cabinet and associate ministers positions and some committee work, some people
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are just not feeling that it's enough. So I'm not sure how much he could do to calm the rage. I mean,
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there's so many of them now. You can't kick six members out of caucus. Well, you can, but it's really
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going to cripple you. I don't know how he's going to put it out. It just gets hotter and hotter. The
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hypocrisy, though, is just so deep. And it's rattled so much trust and confidence. I mean,
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as you said, you know, nobody would think these are elected people. They aren't stupid. Well,
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apparently some of them are. I mean, how did you not see this coming? It really shows that
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disconnect elected officials have with those of us in the real world. Like, they didn't think for a
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second that people who have given up family traditions of meeting and doing things or
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memorials or church services, all sorts of very personal things. And then to have these guys just
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go off and do it on themselves. I mean, they just didn't even know how much that was going to
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outrage us. And well, they're certainly finding out now. Well, I think the two most egregious ones
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were Allard because of her ministerial position and Tanya Furr. And I think the two of those,
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they didn't really understand why everybody was mad. They basically said, well, it was allowed. So we
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did it, which is, I suppose. Well, you're allowed to fart in an elevator, but it's not a good idea.
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Well, I suppose it's an excuse. It's not a good one, especially from an elected official.
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Allard's excuse was, well, it's been a family tradition for 17 years. Well, yeah, a lot of
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people had family traditions going back 17 years that they weren't able to do because of her
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government's rules. And I look at small business owners and I think, well, their family tradition is
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being in business and you put them out of business. And Tanya Furr, you know, she said
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she went to Las Vegas to visit her sister. And she thought that was a reasonable excuse,
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while at the same time, people in Alberta couldn't visit their sister if their sister lived in a
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different household. They basically outlawed that which they flew to Las Vegas to do. And they
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didn't understand the problem with it. It was more like, I'm sorry that I got caught. I'm sorry,
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you're mad. But they couldn't really grasp what they were sorry for. And I think at the beginning,
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Jason Kenney also didn't grasp the problem. And I noticed that when he did his little speech about
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how important the airlines are. Yeah, I agree. Airlines are important. I want everybody to go back
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to traveling and flying and all those things. And WestJet is definitely important for the Western
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economy. But that's not why people were outraged. We weren't mad that they traveled to visit with
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their family. We were mad that they told us that we couldn't do it. Do you think Jason Kenney finally
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gets it? Oh, he's getting something. He's got to be. I mean, that's the thing that's surprising
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people because Kenney's not stupid, whatever he may be. He's smart. So it's somewhere he just
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totally dropped the ball on this. Of course, he's been in Parliament for a long time, but he was
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never in a leader position. Maybe he underestimated just how bad that herd of cats he's trying to
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manage is. I mean, part of his first response was, it's kind of my fault because I didn't explicitly
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tell them not to go. And of course, everybody else's immediate response was, well, you shouldn't
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have had to. He told us not to go. Like it's on a government website. He's recommended. So it's
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just, and it just keeps burning. I think what they're praying for now is some sort of explosive
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issue to happen somewhere else in the world to distract people from it because this thing just
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keeps feeding itself. People are furious. He's pulled out the magical combination. He's got
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everybody mad, left, right, and center at him. I mean, the pro-lockdown people are furious because,
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well, again, we're pro-lockdown. We want to keep everybody safe from this bug and you guys are
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traveling all over the world. The anti-lockdown people who grudgingly at least accepted that
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we're locked down for now are even more furious because, again, we're doing this crap that we
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never want to do in the first place and you guys aren't. So it's just hypocrisy cuts deeper than
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anything else in politics. It really does. And some people don't understand that. They really
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don't. They're figuring it out. Yeah. I didn't think we would get back to Alison Redford country
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as quickly as we have. Like, this feels a lot like Sky Palace. This also feels a lot like when
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they were using the government airplanes, like they were the family minivan. This feels a lot like
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we're going to live one way and we're going to do one way, things one way, and you're going to live
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a completely different way, you normal people. But, you know, based on some Western Standard
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reporting, a story that broke last night. And again, I say that Western Standard has been doing
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some great work on this. And I think it's I think, you know, you and I were talking off camera. It has
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a lot to do with the relationships that you've built within the UCP caucus. And, you know, that goes back
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quite a ways. But Dave Naylor's story, the premier's staff say he never saw the travel memo from Allard
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saying that she was leaving the country. So maybe Jason Kenney was truly in the dark about whether or not
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she was out of the country. But if that's the case, then you need to clean house with all of your staff
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because they're either incompetent and not telling you information that you need to get out in front
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of or they're colluding with the travelers and, you know, the locker down or hypocrites.
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But, you know, either way, Jason Kenney wears this as a millstone around his neck.
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Yeah, I mean, when you're on top, you're in charge, whether so now they're giving him a shield of
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plausible deniability in it. Well, that still doesn't make people feel comfortable in how much
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in control he might have been in the situation to begin with. And some of it's just hard to
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believe. Now, I can understand he's not paying attention to every backbencher who's popped off
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for a vacation. He's only got so much time. But when his chief of staff sneaks and it was sneaking,
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I mean, he routed it through the states to get past travel bans to go into the COVID hotspot
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of the planet. And this is the chief of staff. This is a person you're typically in communication
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with every day. It's just defies belief that he wouldn't have been aware that he'd gone off to
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the UK in the midst of this. And again, you should have known better. But they're blinded. I'm still
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astounded by this. And I don't know how they're going to get this under control. As I said, only
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something that might distract and push it down the news scroll. But they're going to wear this for a long
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time. I mean, Aloha Allard is going to be wearing that in the next general election, assuming she
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runs in that one. Like, whoever's campaigning against her is going to rub her nose in it.
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Jeremy, Nixon, Tanya, Furr, all of these guys. I mean, political bruises like this last a long,
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long time, if not for the party as a whole, for those individual candidates. So they've really screwed
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up. That's all I can say. Well, how does Kenny get this under control? Does it go away? Do,
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does he sit down and have a caucus meeting and say, okay, everybody tell on yourselves,
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get out in front of this and resign? I don't know what the way out of this is.
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I think that, I guess the first thing is just plug all the holes. I would hope,
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because even now I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't another one hiding out there somewhere.
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So they must be investigating, calling, contacting. Are there absolutely no more out there? I mean,
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you can't go for closure until you're confident there's not going to be another one pop up and throw it
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back on the top of the scroll. Lay down the law. And I honestly don't know. I mean,
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the strategy they're doing now, obviously, is to try and hunker down and just hope that it blows
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over, but it's just blowing up. And if I had the answer on how we could get it under control,
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I could probably apply for some great positions as issues manager with the UCP. Speaking of which,
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which was a funny thing, and it shows our mainstream media, though, that the state broadcaster
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there had to put out a tweet specifically to point out that Matthew Wolf, Matt Wolf,
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went on a traveling trip and visited, but actually he stayed within each and every rule all the way
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around out there. Like, so why do you even report it? I know. It's just, they despise him that much
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that we just want to make sure that maybe a little bit will stick to him while they're out there.
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Yeah. Yeah. I saw that Matt Wolf followed not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of it too.
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And CBC reported it as though it were a scandal. And I was like, well, thanks for letting me know
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that there's a couple of good ones left. Appreciate that. They just completely got it wrong.
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It's a whole other disconnected world, that one.
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Now, I wanted to ask you, now you are a contributor with the Western Standard, which is fantastic. And
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I love the work that Western Standard is doing, particularly on this issue, but on many other
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issues. But you are also now in charge of the goings on over at Suits and Boots. And a lot of
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people might not know what Suits and Boots is all about. So why don't you start there?
00:17:37.900
Sure. So Rick Peterson founded Suits and Boots a couple of years ago. It was mostly in a response
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that came about when the Trans Mountain basically went into limbo. And when Kinder Morgan said, you know
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what, we're out. We can't work in this country that's opposed to us, which is the truth of
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it. And he felt that an organization needed to be put together to defend, I mean, our industries,
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our pipelines, and speak up and more actively, a little more in your face. So they did things,
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you know, counter protesting later on with Camp Cloud and, you know, flying a banner around
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Ottawa. So a bit more of an activist, but it was speaking up also for the, it was a great name,
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you know, Suits and Boots, from our petroleum engineers up top to the rig hand down on the
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bottom, to speak for them and defend this industry. Rick then, though, has moved on to,
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things really slowed down in the COVID year. It's just, everything's been on hold. You can't hold
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rallies. You can't get out on the ground. Rick also ran for the Conservative leadership
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and then has been going for a federal nomination. So he's handed it to Rick Grafton, who's another
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very well-known individual in the energy sector. And Grafton held on to it for six months and kind
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of moved it along. But now it's time to kind of reinvigorate. We're going into 2021. So yeah,
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they approached me when, you know, need some fresh energy. And I sold my pub, so I've got some time
00:19:04.300
because we've got a real critical year ahead of us for the energy industry. We've got, you know,
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a president elected in the United States who wants to shut down Keystone. We've got an imbecile in
00:19:16.100
Ottawa who won't say it, but he wants to shut down Keystone. We've got Trans Mountain, which nobody
00:19:21.080
believes is going to be built until we actually see oil coming out of the other end. We've got carbon
00:19:25.680
taxes. We've got fuel standards. I mean, we are embattled here and we need somebody to speak up and
00:19:30.720
push back on this. So yeah, they've approached me. I've taken that on. And that's something I've
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always kind of been as a, as an activist in politics over the years. I'll take it to them.
00:19:40.060
Yeah, you have. I remember when you protested, I think it was Occupy.
00:19:45.120
You visited Occupy back when Occupy was around. And I thought that was great because,
00:19:51.520
you know, there's these squatters just taking up space illegally in a, in a park and nobody had
00:19:58.880
bothered to just do the same to them. And, uh, I still remember that. That's, I think when you
00:20:05.740
first came on my radar was, Hey, that guy's actually doing something back to them. And I'm so
00:20:11.160
because of that, I'm excited to see the direction you take suits and boots. And, um, I'm excited to
00:20:16.980
hear something a little more in your face, um, because bless the folks at CAP, they sure like to
00:20:23.320
keep their hands clean. Well, that's it. And then they are, those are industry associations
00:20:28.720
and a problem the energy sector has had for a long time is that they won't speak up. They, I mean,
00:20:34.920
energy professionals are usually introverted engineers, you know, not to knock them.
00:20:38.200
They're important, hardworking people, but they don't want to get out front and center and make
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noise. Uh, these industry associations, uh, it reminds me of, well, I've been speaking to some
00:20:46.740
degree to Calgary, uh, home builders and developers. They're afraid to speak up for themselves
00:20:50.660
because they feel they're going to get punished further. So somebody relatively bulletproof
00:20:55.760
needs to speak up for these industries. What are you guys going to do? Fire me? Yeah. Good luck.
00:20:59.320
There's nothing else you can do to me. Uh, I'm in alternative media now and in activism,
00:21:04.720
uh, because we need to speak up and push back. I mean, it's speaking again to the UCP, the war room
00:21:09.860
was supposed to speak on behalf of our industry. It was a catastrophe. It's been a joke. It just puts
00:21:14.360
out press releases of fluff. So, uh, suits and boots can fill that role. It will speak up. It'll speak
00:21:20.400
up on our behalf unapologetically, uh, unafraid, uh, you know, uh, you're not going to shut down
00:21:25.800
Morgan Incorporated. So I will happily go out and counter protest and do things like that.
00:21:31.500
And, uh, I guess like a lot of other things, you know, the industry professionals can certainly send
00:21:36.360
us information and we will be the, the, the loudspeaker for it. Yeah, I think that's great.
00:21:41.240
Um, I think that sometimes the corporate interests tend to be a little bit more, um, politically
00:21:48.760
cautious, I guess they don't want to make, uh, Justin Trudeau bad. We saw that with, you know,
00:21:55.400
the CEOs who sort of, well, not sort of, they absolutely did suck up to Rachel Notley over
00:22:00.300
the carbon tax. In the meantime, round after round of layoffs were happening in their own
00:22:05.960
companies because of the policies of Rachel Notley. And so I am happy to see that suits and
00:22:11.700
boots will have that more, um, worker boots on the ground to, you know, engineers to geologists
00:22:18.000
sort of focus, um, outside of, you know, that the corporate silo, it'll be more about the
00:22:23.980
workers. So I'm, I'm very happy to hear that. And I think you're probably just the exact right
00:22:29.440
guy for the job. Um, I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah. Corey, where else can people find
00:22:35.020
the work that you're doing? So I've mentioned the Western standard online, which is great,
00:22:38.840
um, suits and boots. I'm excited to find out where that goes and what happens next,
00:22:43.060
but where else can people find you? And for that matter, support the work that you're doing.
00:22:47.540
Absolutely. Well, again, the suits and boots, I mean, please, you know, go on to the website. It's,
00:22:51.760
it's simple to find, just Google it. And, uh, you can sign up for the newsletters and
00:22:56.340
information to keep up to date on what we're doing. Uh, of course, my favorite playground is
00:23:00.760
Twitter, uh, Corey B Morgan. If you, if you really want some interaction and, and we call
00:23:04.960
your names and such, that's where to do it. Uh, and Corey Morgan.com is just my own site where I,
00:23:10.260
I tend to promote other things, of course, whatever I might be involved in groups or,
00:23:14.340
or, uh, alternative media and things such as that. So that's it. Podcast. Podcast. Well,
00:23:21.980
I've got the podcast. I figure if you get to all those other things, you'll find some of the other
00:23:25.040
stuff. I've got my, my toes dipped into the water. I have a weekly show with the post-millennial
00:23:29.160
as well, actually, uh, called the Western Voice. Uh, and yes, I do my own podcast, which would
00:23:34.860
always be posted on CoreyMorgan.com as well. So. Corey, you got to get better at shameless
00:23:40.020
self-promotion, friend. Although I know, as you see, I've got my hands in so many different things
00:23:46.140
too. I don't want to take up a quarter of this valuable time by just going into all the crazy
00:23:50.240
stuff I'm into. Uh, suits and boots will be taking up a larger part of all of that. It's a much more
00:23:54.760
important task. So. Great. And Corey, thanks so much for coming on the show. I know, obviously,
00:23:59.220
you just listed everything you're doing. So you're a very busy guy. Uh, thanks for being
00:24:02.780
generous with your time. Um, and I can't wait to see what you do next. Hey, thanks. Always happy
00:24:09.340
to talk to you, Sheila. Thanks. It's one of those rare times where I really have to hand it to the
00:24:21.600
Liberals. They are handling the scandals of their politicians traveling outside of the country over
00:24:27.520
Christmas a lot better than we are on the conservative side of the aisle. The Liberals
00:24:32.520
are not trotting out their mental lightweight leader, Justin Trudeau, to fall on his sword.
00:24:38.420
Instead, they're telling on themselves and resigning before public pressure turns into a firestorm. In
00:24:44.720
fact, the Liberals are just smothering the firestorm with a wet blanket before he gets out of control.
00:24:49.540
And that's definitely not at all what's been happening on the conservative benches. No,
00:24:55.620
is it? And it's pretty out of touch for the conservative leadership to let these things
00:25:01.260
fester when so many of us are conservatives because we believe in personal responsibility
00:25:07.840
and personal accountability for our choices. Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you
00:25:13.060
so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week. And
00:25:18.440
remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.