In this episode, my guest is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, and we talk about so much, including Keystone XL, but we re also talking about the Liberals' new net zero by 2050 legislation, Bill C-12, which will basically outlaw the majority of Alberta s economy.
00:00:00.960Oh, hello, Rebels. You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
00:00:07.160I'm recording the show, or at least the intro and the podcast intro, on the road today because I'm off on some Fight the Fines cases here in East Central and East Southern Alberta.
00:00:20.540Tonight, my guest is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, and we're talking about so much, including Keystone XL, but we're also talking about the Liberals' new net zero by 2050 legislation, Bill C-12.
00:00:34.800This thing will basically outlaw the majority of the Alberta economy, I guess, the majority of the economy that remains these days.
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00:01:54.000...use the distraction of the coronavirus pandemic to introduce a new law that would basically outlaw Alberta's economy.
00:02:03.900I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and yes, you are watching The Gunn Show.
00:02:08.240Oh, hi, everybody. This is not the normal studio, obviously.
00:02:27.800This is the inside of my Jeep because I've spent the last few weeks working on our largest civil liberties project to date,
00:07:45.480I kind of went along with his view that the courts had tested climate change
00:07:50.300because I read his blog and thought, well, yeah, okay, here he's giving some references.
00:07:54.960But some legal experts pointed out to me that the courts have never tested climate change.
00:08:00.620And what he'd actually been referring to is what's known as obiter dicta or the commentary that surrounds a case,
00:08:09.920meaning that one side might have said, oh, well, you know, these children are suffering because climate change is threatening their lives
00:08:18.120and they're afraid for their future and they're afraid for their future and it's uncontested that this may be an existential threat.
00:08:25.120So that simply means that the lawyers on the other side said, you know what, we're just going to accept what you put there because the case is actually about the constitutionality.
00:08:43.440So when I found that out, I did a video showing that, you know, I'd made a mistake and then in fact, he was misleading the public.
00:08:55.480Now, I think that's pretty serious for a law professor to mislead the public in that way.
00:09:01.560So I hope people will look into that and think about that.
00:09:04.500You know, that's one of the, I think, mistakes that we might make on our side of the debate is sometimes we have the tendency to take the other side at the word,
00:09:16.960that we think that sometimes they're just wrong on the issue, but not purposefully misleading.
00:09:25.200And as it turns out, you trusted that, I'm sorry, his name is Olszczynski, I think is his name, that he was, yeah, Martin Olszczynski, that he was just telling the truth, but he was misleading people on the facts.
00:09:40.100Now, I wanted to talk to you a little, stay on, staying on the topic of the inquiry.
00:09:48.420Seems like Ecojustice wants the whole thing shut down.
00:09:51.260Yes, they're going to court this week, February 11th and 12th, they're going to try and quash it.
00:09:58.160And they claim, they had a webinar last week, which was quite funny, because they claim that they're doing this to protect the fairness and freedoms of speech of people.
00:10:06.720And if you recall, Freedom, Ecojustice is the group that tried to shut us down, have us fine thousands of dollars and thrown in jail for our billboards.
00:10:16.960So yeah, they're really defenders of freedom of speech.
00:10:19.980But yeah, they think that the issue is biased and, you know, it may be biased, but actually the tar sands campaign was biased.
00:10:31.000So, you know, I wrote down some figures here that in the 2009 oil sands developers group forecast that there would be between 2010 and 2035, the oil sands would go from generating 75,000 jobs to 905,000 jobs, almost a million jobs.
00:10:50.000And that it would generate 2.1 trillion in economic stimulus for Canada, and provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue.
00:11:02.560I think that people in Alberta and in Canada deserve to know who was behind these anti-Alberta campaigns, why, and where that money went, and what these actors are up to.
00:11:13.360And I don't think that this kind of thing should go on anymore, because we're broke, we're in serious trouble.
00:11:21.440And these guys are claiming that this is charitable activity.
00:11:24.840So I want to ask you how charitable it is that you're putting people out of work, that you're costing taxpayers billions, trillions of dollars.
00:11:37.140And this idea that the inquiry is biased, I'm sorry, but I'm completely fine with that, because the Alberta government is the marketer and the stewarder of the resource that we all own.
00:11:47.540So they're supposed to be out there defending the resource and finding ways to get it to market, make sure it's profitable, so that the owners of the resource, that's you and I, are getting the best return on our resource when it hits the market.
00:12:03.940So yeah, if it's weighted in favor of the oil and gas industry, well, that's you and me, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
00:12:12.200Well, you know, it's interesting when you look at, say, the Rethink Alberta campaign, they had no shame in saying Rethink Alberta, they tried to smear our tourism industry worldwide, they tried to smear potential businesses coming to set up in Alberta, you know, making them feel like,
00:12:29.500oh, this is a crummy place to set up business, right, you know, they have any environmental standards, you know, that's a fairly serious reputational damage.
00:12:38.140And for whatever reason, at the time, people didn't respond strongly to it.
00:12:46.220And actually, I think it was with Tammy Nemeth was talking with Danielle Smith the other day and was saying how, you know, over in the UK, where she now lives, she'd run into these people who were anti-Tar Sands activists.
00:13:03.560And she was wondering, like, why, why, why, what are they doing here?
00:13:27.320Well, and I think it's really important for us to know who paid for all of this, because you follow the money, you find the motive.
00:13:32.620And we've seen, I forget who it was at the United Nations, saying that the Russians were paying the anti-fracking movement in the United States.
00:13:46.100And it makes perfect sense when you look at who stands to benefit if fracking collapses in the United States.
00:13:55.140So, I mean, don't we deserve to know at least who is behind all of this?
00:14:02.420And these anti-Alberta movements are very protective of where all that money comes from.
00:14:08.560And also, you know, I think in Canada, probably less than Alberta, but certainly in Canada, because we're geographically removed from other world markets, we really only are aware of the United States.
00:14:20.960We don't realize that Europe has virtually no fossil fuels.
00:14:25.860They get most of their oil and gas from Russia.
00:14:38.740You know, we, this is a very competitive market.
00:14:41.800And if they can just block pipelines, great.
00:14:44.320You know, and if you look back, I think it's a financial post in 2014, said that we had managed to evade the European Fuel Quality Directive, which was trying to label Canadian oil sands oil as dirty oil and unacceptable.
00:15:19.640Now, you have also, I mean, you just don't talk about where the money is coming from to block oil and gas.
00:15:27.520But you, at Friends of Science, you do some pretty serious analysis of proposed green energy projects.
00:15:35.320For example, you have a new analysis of the Carmangay solar farm and how much it costs average people like me who live nowhere near Carmangay.
00:15:45.380And I think it's, this is particularly pertinent given that all of a sudden the city of Edmonton is pursuing this mega solar farm in the River Valley,
00:15:55.040which makes me side with environmentalists who say stuff like, not in my backyard, on the heels of solar projects in Medicine Hat going bankrupt.
00:16:04.720Why do municipalities keep doing this with other people's money?
00:16:09.820Well, you know, they sign up for a power purchase agreement.
00:16:13.440And it's something that's very hard to get rid of once you sign up.
00:16:16.200But it virtually guarantees the success of the project.
00:16:20.780And we have another post on our blog on that, which I can send you the link to.
00:16:27.620But with regard to Carmangay, what's hilarious is that we're paying the 261 citizens of Carmangay a subsidy of $920 each
00:16:42.300to have their solar farm, which they claim gives them net zero.
00:19:30.860There's no consequences for not meeting it.
00:19:33.260And all the other countries in the world are not meeting any of these targets.
00:19:37.940So, you know, this is death to industry.
00:19:41.300It's going to create all kinds of legal issues.
00:19:46.920And, you know, it's just really a waste of time.
00:19:51.140And again, these ENGOs are working for somebody else's agenda.
00:19:56.340And I think that with the Alberta Inquiry, we'll probably find out more about that as well.
00:20:01.480So people should read this report and see what it means for Canadians because it's not good.
00:20:09.420You know, I'm glad you touched on that because nobody seems to be talking about C12 except for Friends of Science, really.
00:20:17.600And it is, as you say, net zero legislation.
00:20:21.340So what they're trying to do is take those Paris target goals that everybody said, don't worry that we're signing on to the Paris Agreement because it's non-binding.
00:20:30.520We've heard that from conservatives saying, oh, you know, it's no big deal if we support the Paris Agreement because it's non-binding.
00:20:37.580Well, now they're trying to take those targets, make them into binding law.
00:20:42.140And when you see something that says net zero, you should, in your mind, translate that into zero growth, zero projects going forward, and zero recovery for Alberta at all.
00:20:57.940Right. And it also may mean, I don't know how it could be translated to individuals, but we know that George Monbiot, out of the UK, has his plan since 2006 was that people would have a personal carbon ration.
00:21:13.920So, you know, you would be accountable for everything that you do, every flight you take, every kilometer you drive.
00:21:19.540If you have stake, you know, you might get charged more, you might have more credits knocked off.
00:21:26.280So, you know, these things can go to extremes that are not anticipated when you first see the legislation.
00:21:34.160And Robert Lyman did another report earlier this year called Ballparking the Decarbonization.
00:21:40.540Decarbonization, and he found that Canadian families, a family of four, would have a million dollars of foregone income due to the net zero program.
00:22:32.700They're clearly misleading the public.
00:22:34.700But there is very little skeptical reporting on all of this, which is why I think the work that Friends of Science does is so critical.
00:22:42.740We've seen, as you guys rightly point out here, that the Canadian Association of Journalists, they fall for this.
00:22:51.72011,000 scientists all agree on this, so it absolutely must be true.
00:22:56.840Journalists are falling for this, and it's not the way that they're reporting it at all, is it?
00:23:02.560No, no, well, that's, that's quite funny, because Josh Thomas of the Spruce Grove Examiner, he also, going back to the Alberta Inquiry, he made, he wrote an op-ed really ripping the Nemeth report apart, especially on the part that journalists were being critiqued.
00:23:23.580And he was saying, you know, journalists have an obligation to report the truth from all sides of the story.
00:23:29.060And it's kind of like, okay, we'd love to see that.
00:23:33.940Because anytime, you can start anytime now, because they're not reporting both sides of the story.
00:23:40.660For the most part, they have become repeaters and not reporters, and we'd like to see that change.
00:23:45.480And obviously, the media are carrying, the mainstream media are carrying along all these narratives, like most of the mainstream media in Canada have signed up for Covering Climate Now, which is with the Columbia Journalism Review, and 400 media outlets reaching 2 billion people, and they're all singing Climate Emergency.
00:24:07.000So, we have two items that people should have a look at, one is Dr. Roy Spencer, NASA award winning scientist, stating that there's no climate emergency, and all the reasons why.
00:24:19.000And Donna LaFramboise, investigative journalist, showing how climate activists are undermining every one of your freedoms.
00:24:26.720So we have these two presentations on our event website, they are $15 tickets, or you can become a member of Friends of Science and your, your,
00:24:37.000your, uh, viewing is included for both.
00:24:39.660So, you know, it's really important that, uh, like, we've sent out press releases on these two events, and the media have not covered it at all in Canada.
00:24:49.000So they're not reporting both sides of the story.
00:24:51.540Well, and, and they're incentivized not to, because if you want some of those Trudeau bailout bucks, you better tow the Liberal Party line.
00:24:59.000And we've seen these failing newspapers and these failing outlets, they get funded specifically for a climate journalist.
00:25:07.000And so they'll get money to have a climate journalist on staff.
00:25:11.440And if, if you're going to close up shop or lay off people or take Justin Trudeau's money for a climate journalist, they are deciding to take money for a climate journalist.
00:25:21.020And so that's why when you are consuming the media and you think, oh, all I'm reading about is climate change.
00:25:27.260Well, that's because they're getting money to do that.
00:25:31.240So, uh, must be a big push for carbon offset trading and all those climate bonds that are worth trillion, trillions of dollars are probably teetering on the edge.
00:25:41.500And so that's why the massive push, even Mark Carney is coming up with even more catastrophe notices about climate change and how it'll be worse than COVID-19.
00:25:51.880Well, you know, you're not a scientist, you're not a climate scientist, Mark, and you're associated with, um, carbon trading companies in your past and renewables companies in your present.
00:26:04.380So I think there's a pretty big conflict of interest there.
00:26:09.020It feels a little bit like insider trading now, doesn't it?
00:26:12.520Um, Michelle, I want to give you an opportunity to tell people how they can find the work that you do and support friends of science because you are just this little, um, organization up against the foreign funded, uh, environmental activists.
00:26:29.100Listen, they get millions of dollars dumped their way and you guys are just, you know, it's a David and Goliath kind of story with what you're doing here.
00:26:36.960So please tell us how we can support you.
00:26:49.160Uh, so, so we're pretty much all over social media.
00:26:52.980So please share our stuff, comment, engage with us.
00:26:56.340You don't have to agree if you'd like to become a member, that's easy to do $40 for one year, 80 for three years.
00:27:03.680And, uh, that will entitle you to receive all of our, uh, press releases are by monthly, uh, cli, sci and extracts, which are roundups of material that you won't see in the mainstream press and our reports.
00:27:17.580And, um, we'd love to have more members.
00:27:20.420We'd love to have your support and, you know, you can do a monthly donation, even a dollar a month would be helpful.
00:27:26.340Uh, more is better, but, uh, we know these are difficult times for everybody.
00:27:30.300So we, we appreciate whatever help you can give.
00:27:33.600And if you can't give financial help, please share our stuff.
00:27:37.900Well, Michelle, I think the work that Friends of Science does is so valuable because you take these big complex ideas where it feels like it's just a tangled ball of yarn.
00:27:48.260And you break it down into digestible pieces that normal people like me can take out into the world and use as arguments against people who truly believe that the sky is falling.
00:27:58.380So I really appreciate the work that you do.
00:28:00.080And I want to thank you for coming on the show.
00:28:02.440Um, and, uh, we'll have you back on again, very, very soon.
00:28:23.200Let's imagine for a moment if the Liberals were mandating an end to the Ontario auto manufacturing sector or the Quebec maple syrup cartel or the entire East Coast fishery.
00:28:34.060Well, that's what Bill C-12 stands to do to the Western natural resource-based economy.
00:28:40.060And if our Western-based politicians could just set aside their own attacks on our civil liberties for just a minute, maybe they could take the fight in defense of whatever jobs remain around here back to Ottawa.
00:28:53.900Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.