Ethics and supply management： Humane food production under government price-fixing
Episode Stats
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Summary
Corey Morgan of The Western Standard joins me to talk about the calls from Calgary City Council to defund the police, the potential of a GST, and why supply management might not be so great for animal welfare in Canada.
Transcript
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Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
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Tonight my guest is Corey Morgan of the Western Standard and we are talking about a bunch of things
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including the calls from Calgary City Council to defund the police,
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the potential of a GST being floated here in Alberta as Corey describes it, that's blasphemy,
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and the fact that the supply management system here in Canada might not be all that great for animal welfare
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Now if you like listening to the show then I promise you're going to love watching it
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Is supply management detrimental to animal welfare?
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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Canada is one of the few remaining places in the world where we still have supply managed milk.
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Now we do also have supply managed other things too like poultry and eggs.
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And we know that while supply management does protect the wholesale price to the farmer,
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it also artificially inflates the price to the consumer of the most basic foodstuffs.
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And it also limits the ability of new farmers to get into the game.
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Does it, in some instances, end up being bad for animals?
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Then, Calgary City Council has voted to defund the police by $20 million
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at the urging of a small handful of radical activists.
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And still in Calgary, left-wing Mayor Naheed Nenshi has asked Justin Trudeau
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to help him get access to multi-generational quarantine facilities.
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He's a columnist for the Western Standard Online.
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And he joins me in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
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So joining me now from the Western Standard offices in Calgary is Corey Morgan.
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Corey's a columnist with Western Standard and he's also the podcast editor.
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Um, there's so much to talk about in Calgary news.
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Um, but before we get into that, I wanted to talk to you about the swipe that you took
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at the, I guess, it's one of those things that you can't talk about in Canadian conservatism,
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And you have a great article that I really appreciate, um, saying that Canada's Soviet
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style supply management system encourages inhumane factory farms.
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Why don't you give us the premise of your article?
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Like I, I've always been outspoken about supply management just on the economic, economic case
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of it, because Soviet style is the, the best term to describe supply management.
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I mean, the government issues quotas will only allow you to produce a certain amount.
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Uh, my wife grew up on a dairy farm where they had a cream quota and literally they'd
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pour milk in the ditch afterwards because it was illegal for them to sell it.
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And just about every country has gotten out of it.
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They, they like large government controlling, uh, uh, policies, but perhaps, you know, going
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into the animal welfare aspect of it, because that's a valid case as well, that nobody really
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talks about supply management really, you know, pushes to have larger commercial operations,
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great big ones that have bought those quotas up and they're doing a production on economies
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You're getting a cheaper product out to market.
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And I'm not even talking about banning that kind of production, but people like to see
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alternatives sprouting, but they're more expensive and they can't get quotas.
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And I use that premise just because this year, like a lot of, uh, people, we've gotten in
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So we built a chicken coop and brought in a bunch of chickens and it's been fun.
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They leave more eggs than we could ever imagine consuming.
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So we just put a thing out on, you know, social media saying, Hey, we've got a bunch of excess
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And boy, we were sold out in a heartbeat and we've got regular people grabbing those.
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And a lot of the premise is it's, it's not a matter of, I mean, they, they taste great.
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Part of it is people feel more comfortable knowing that these birds at least are raising
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They're living as good a chicken life as a chicken could.
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They get to hop around the yard and chase bugs and stretch their wings out and do chicken
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I don't cuddle them to sleep at night or anything.
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They're birds that produce eggs, but I do feel better knowing that at least, you know,
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I think our responsibility as people who eat meat is to at least humanely raise what we're
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Now, supply management makes it illegal to own more than 300 chickens for purposes of
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And that's just a purposeful way to make sure that it's absolutely impossible, though, for
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a cottage industry to start up to provide these kind of free range things.
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If a person had a quarter section, wanted to raise a few thousand birds and have them
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There's no way that those large producers jealously guard those and the government protects
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Just one more facet for people to put pressure to the government, for conservatives and liberals
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alike who are just terrified of the Quebec dairy cartels to say, let's get rid of this
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odious system and allow more diverse production for the sake of the animals, then, if not just
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for the sake of your wallet, because we pay a lot for the supply managed goods, too.
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Yeah, and I think it stifles diversity in the marketplace.
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You know, when you see the cheese offerings from other countries compared to the government
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controlled cheese we have here in Canada, not only is our cheese sort of boring, and
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I mean, they're trying to make, you know, they're trying to make profit with what they've
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And, you know, there could be so much more done if the government and this expensive quota
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system got out of the way of small startup entrepreneurs.
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I don't know if many people caught it, but there was actually a cheese smuggling ring
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that got broken up over, I believe it was Quebec or Ontario.
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But Big Cheese was buying up cheese and sneaking it across the border to supply restaurants
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And actually, as a person who owned a pub that sold pizza, I was, and it was small, I was
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And those big restaurants, they actually created a black cheese market, which is just absurd.
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And, you know, aside from the lack of variety, I mean, even some liberals have come out.
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Boy, I shouldn't forget her name, but she was a liberal leadership candidate federally.
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And she's done a great deal of writing against supply management.
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I think she's with the Canada West Foundation now.
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And the politicians are terrified of taking it on.
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And it makes those staples, those dietary staples, so much more expensive for the people on the
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And, you know, there are a lot of people, for example, in the lower mainland of BC, who'd
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probably be more inclined, since they are that sort of people there, to stay a little bit
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Instead, they fled across the border and clean out the Costco down there because milk is just
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And, you know, it's stripping entrepreneurs right out of the marketplace.
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And, again, it shows if the demand is there strong enough, people will find a way, whether
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it's if they're lucky enough to live close enough to a border to get it, they'll go get
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Or even literally the mafia will smuggle cheese if there's good enough margin in it.
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So, yeah, I just thought I'd take another approach to it because there's just so many
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I mean, in modern chicken facilities, those birds live their entire life in a small cage.
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They used to call them battery cages, where the bird was actually on something about a
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And now they said, OK, we're going to end that.
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His grandfather, though, any place that had them before still has them.
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But now they have to be able to allow to spread their wings.
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So now they've got about two square feet to live in for their entire life.
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Again, I'm not talking about banning that and things like that, but I'd feel better buying
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things knowing the bird's been running around a bit.
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You know, same with pork and some other options.
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But we've got to get government out of the way.
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Yeah, I am by no means an animal rights activist.
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But I thought this was a phenomenal way of, I guess, taking some of the ethical oil arguments
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and placing it on top of supply management to make the case that there are just better
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And again, get the government out of the way and let the consumer decide.
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If there is no market for this and if everybody likes supply management, then this will fail.
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And I'm not against people finding things out the hard way.
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Oh, and I wouldn't want to shame people who still get the lower priced regular, because
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Hey, if you've got a family to feed, you know, get those eggs or chicken and so on.
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But there's a lot of people willing to pay a premium.
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I mean, if we're fine with, you know, fair trade coffee, then, you know, and there's
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a niche market for that, then why isn't there a niche market for all other ways of getting
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And I didn't suggest it to you when I was sort of setting up the interview with you, but
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And it is this idea that Finance Minister Taves here in Alberta, Travis Taves, he has
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not ruled out the prospect of a PST to dig us out of this financial hole caused by the
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pandemic and lack of market access for Alberta oil and gas.
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I don't think this is going to sit well, and I think it's already not sitting well with
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This is something that Rachel Notley would propose and conservatives would lose their
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But we're not hearing a lot of anger from true blue Tories over this.
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Yeah, well, and I interviewed Jason Kenney last week for a podcast, actually, and I wish
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this had come up prior to it, because that would have been a question.
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I would have loved to have tossed to him at the time, but I didn't figure it was on the
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You know, as we know, sales tax is blasphemy in Alberta.
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You know, every government seems to at least test the waters for it.
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I mean, if you listen to a number of economists, conservative and non-conservative alike, they'll
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say that consumption taxes are an efficient way to go and they're a better way to tax.
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And I don't think that is so much of the issue.
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The thing is, we don't trust the bloody government.
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I mean, if it's just one more tax, it's not helping us on the ground any.
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If you guys, if we trusted you to make it revenue neutral, like you like claiming, then
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If you got rid of provincial income tax and then replaced it with a sales tax, that might
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They're just looking at one more way to get us.
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And these tax ourselves into prosperity people, you know, always seem to neglect to look at
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So that pool is finite and we're going broke already.
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But yeah, to hear that being floated by the finance ministers discussing, because they know
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darn well how Albertans typically react to a sales tax concept.
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Yet, yet they're still trying to put it out there.
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And yeah, as you said, with some tribalism, some conservatives were afraid to speak up
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I mean, they're in a budgetary crisis, but we're not going to be able to tax our way out
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Yeah, I have some pretty serious concerns with this in that part of the beauty of Alberta,
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I guess, is that we have this tax structure that is attractive to people who want to live
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And really, what sets us apart in the country is that we don't have a PST or an HST.
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So to propose this, I mean, it acts as a scarecrow for business investment and for people who want
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And secondarily, it makes me wonder, you know, are they the conservatives?
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Are they fine with this because they expect us to be fine with it because, well, at least
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And part of the problem with it, again, I talked to Kenny about that last week.
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I was glad to get the chance to talk to him because he's getting no questions from the
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right. When you go to the legislature, it's a two-party system right now.
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So question period is all knotly, all tax more, tax more, spend more, spend more.
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They don't have a voice in there that used to be like the old Wild Rose or even like
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reform federally that at least is giving some balance and pressuring the leadership to say,
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well, wait a minute, there's other ways to deal with our fiscal crisis.
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And they don't necessarily involve taxing everybody more.
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And of course, you look at Twitter and it's just a barrage cesspool that's been taken over
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I almost wonder in their political bubbles if they're forgetting what their roots are
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sometimes because all they hear is just that that blast from one end of the spectrum.
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And I think that happens with all conservative parties is and I think maybe I suppose I try
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And I'm sure you guys try to do that over at the Western Standard also, that all the forces
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are pulling our conservative parties to the left, the media, the Twitter activists, the
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opposition parties, federally it'd be the party in power.
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Everything is pulling them to the left and there needs to be something on the right that
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acts as that gut check that reminds them, no, no, no, no, no.
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This is actually the conservative position on this.
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And the position you're taking is the let's try to make CBC happy position.
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And yeah, so maybe there is some of that, that they end up caught up in this, you know,
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Twitter media bubble and they don't really remember what the conservative position is.
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The unofficial opposition, I guess you could say.
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And one of the things you'd floated in that same sense is City Hall.
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I just thought you mentioned defunding the police.
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But there's an even worse bubble because they don't have an opposition there to hold them
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They seem to listen to nothing but a slanted city administration when it comes to things.
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And again, a media and social media that has a hard left slant.
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So trying to hold those clowns to account is very difficult, particularly with Mayor Nenshi
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And, you know, you see them when they've got some backlash on it, but they say, no, we
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Wherever else you put the money doesn't really matter.
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I mean, if they'd use it on the context of generally trying to get the budget in balance
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and they were cutting all over the place, I could accept that.
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But no, this was pandering to Black Lives Matter.
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This was pandering to those extremist activist groups that have the ear of these politicians.
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And again, nobody critiques them aside from people like us.
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So I think that the people in positions of power and elected authority forget the realities
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out there rather than, you know, what they're hearing.
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That is a really excellent point to make because to be clear, the city of Calgary took
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$20 million out of the city policing budget and they're giving it to social agencies, whatever
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Well, when you need a cop, I'm sorry, you're going to have to call a social worker now.
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You do point out that there really isn't much of a conservative opposition on Calgary City
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I think there's two strong conservatives on the entire council.
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They're doing everything they can, but they don't hold any real power any more than any
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And this was entirely motivated by a handful of obnoxious, loud Black Lives Matter activists
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concerned about a problem that is taking place in some places in the United States.
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None of this had anything to do with the Calgary police, but somehow the Calgary police are paying
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a $20 million, they're paying the $20 million cost of this activism.
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And it's just going to serve to make the citizens of Calgary less safe.
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And the citizens of Calgary, I would suspect, probably didn't want this.
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I don't know if there was any sort of survey that was put to the public as a whole about
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No, and there has been actually some internal city surveys that were done recently, and it
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was shown that the vast majority of the city wanted police funding to stay where it was.
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Actually, there was some of that done, but they disregarded it.
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And I really wonder what kind of bubble they live in.
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I watched Shane Keating, for people who are familiar with Calgary councillors anyways,
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who was the one saying, oh, we didn't defund, we reallocated.
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Ward Sutherland, there's another creature in there, going on saying he was expressing
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shock because, of course, the police commission said, well, they're hiring freezing because
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Well, what did you think they were going to do, you clown?
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I mean, they can only write so many speeding tickets.
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You know, that is also probably the unintended consequence in all of this, is that you're going to see
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police try to make up that difference on their own through speeding tickets and other fine
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enforcements because they do, they still have work to do, and they have to raise money somehow.
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I wanted to ask you, this just sort of came out over the last 24 hours.
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Nenshi, Mayor Nahid Nenshi, is calling for multi-generational quarantine and special isolation facilities for Calgary families.
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These, whatever you think about COVID-19, it's not a multi-generational problem.
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And so I'm not sure why they need to lock up entire families, three generations of them,
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and why Mayor Nahid Nenshi wants Justin Trudeau to provide these things to him because it's pretty clear.
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He's angry that Jason Kenney isn't cracking down hard enough or locking down Albertans fast enough for his liking.
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And so now he's just gone around, Premier Kenney, and reached out to Justin Trudeau.
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There's a very good chance, and he's all pride.
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There's a very good chance he's going to be voted out next year, assuming he runs again.
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I mean, he's kind of in a rock and a hard place.
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If he announces he's not going to run again, people like me are going to tease, oh, so Farkas scared you away.
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And if he does run again and actually loses, of course, that would just brutalize him.
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I feel if Kenney had done, like, Ford and done a heavy crackdown and locked Alberta down,
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he would be out there as the champion for small business talking about how evil Kenney is destroying businesses out here.
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He's going to take whatever side can position him as the great defender against the great conservative provincial government.
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And then she's been talking directly to Trudeau.
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I'm almost wondering, too, if he's looking to negotiate his soft landing if he leaves the mayoral chair,
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perhaps a Senate appointment or even an ambassadorship or something.
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And when it comes to something that really is a pandemic that's harming and scaring people economically and physically,
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some people are still being killed by this bug, is repugnant.
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And that's all that she's doing is playing pure politics.
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I mean, and he did it on CTV's question period.
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So he told The Nation that he wants Justin Trudeau to provide multi-generational quarantine facilities.
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There have been, I think the numbers are from yesterday, roughly 407 deaths from the virus.
00:24:24.800
And, you know, this idea that he needs the federal government to allow him to lock up entire families,
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I want to give you a chance to let all of my Rebel viewers know where they can find you over at the Western Standard
00:24:57.240
Yeah, well, there's the westernstandardonline.com.
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We do, you know, video stories, much like Rebel.
00:25:05.660
And, of course, for more of my direct ranting and raving comes at coreymorgan.com.
00:25:11.140
And, yeah, we cover western issues from a conservative perspective that, as we both agree,
00:25:25.560
So it's called Core's Notes with the apostrophe.
00:25:32.700
So if you guys have to listen to download and listen to one of our video productions,
00:25:39.760
There's a real deficit on the right as far as news delivery and news coverage and commentary here in Canada.
00:25:49.860
You know, I look at the United States and see just how many small startups and conservative companies are making a go of it in the media landscape.
00:26:00.040
And there's, what, four of us, five of us here in this country.
00:26:08.960
And I'm really actually looking a little enthusiastically forward to that, seeing, you know, post-millennia and true north and rebel and such.
00:26:19.820
The mainstream media doesn't know how to stop us.
00:26:22.440
It is, until Justin Trudeau tries to stop us with his internet censorship laws that are barreling at us.
00:26:30.480
But I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
00:26:32.980
Corey, on that frightening note, thank you so much for coming on the show.
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I think it was far too long in between appearances with you.
00:26:52.440
You know, with regard to the idea that a PST is being floated here in Alberta, I'm old enough to remember when conservatives were outraged,
00:27:01.400
when they absolutely flipped their lids, that the NDP installed a tax on everything that the NDP never campaigned on.
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Jason Kenney's government here in Alberta never campaigned on a PST.
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And I am sure they will face the wrath of angry conservatives should they try to bring one in.
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We'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
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And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.
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We'll see everybody back here in the same time.