A Canadian dad has been ordered by a court to call his 14-year-old daughter, who he brought into the world and named a boy, a girl. And if he doesn t do so, he will be in contempt of court and will be charged with family violence.
00:05:48.820I've seen it reported in a few places.
00:05:50.460I'm going to read it from Post Media because how the media itself is covering this story is as much a scandal as the story itself, I think.
00:05:58.740Legal dispute between trans child and father takes new turn over freedom of expression.
00:06:05.200That's a pretty straightforward headline.
00:06:06.840That's the fairest thing about this story.
00:06:08.360But let me read it a bit, and you'll immediately notice something's funny here.
00:06:13.160A messy legal dispute between a 14-year-old transgender boy and his father, who rejects the child's gender identity, has expanded into a fight over freedom of expression.
00:06:24.460Okay, just to remind you, it's a girl.
00:06:27.700It's a young teenage girl who says she's a boy, but she is a girl.
00:21:54.140And the estimate from a person I talked to inside the Alberta government is because we supply them with 55% to 70% of their gasoline and diesel in B.C.,
00:22:06.540the price would go to at minimum $2.20 and probably as high as close to $3.
00:22:12.080And, yes, over time they could arrange for some trains to bring in more from the states or more trucks to bring in.
00:22:19.280But for two, four, six weeks, it would be really, really tight in B.C.
00:22:25.760And earlier when they brought a court application against the turn off the taps bill,
00:22:30.840so the NDP introduced it last year, passed it last year, but didn't proclaim it.
00:22:36.720And in that process, B.C. went to court then, and some of the documents they provided then said there would be civil unrest in B.C.
00:22:45.880If Alberta turned out, great, let's have a little civil unrest.
00:24:18.280It's larger than San Francisco or Portland or Seattle.
00:24:20.860It is the largest port on the West Coast for American coal, and it's largely soft coal.
00:24:29.020So it's the dirtiest kind of coal that there is.
00:24:31.500And as those tens of millions of tons come across the line from the United States to the port of Vancouver, they are charged no carbon tax.
00:24:40.740So, you know, here you have the BC government is quite happy to have that going on, but it doesn't want bitumen.
00:24:52.000It's quite happy to have liquid natural gas go along the same tank of roots as our bitumen supplies, because LNG is theirs.
00:26:32.560And so many Canadians drive down to Bellingham to the Costco there, fill up their car with gas.
00:26:37.860It's, you save 30, 40 bucks for making a 15, 20-minute journey into the States.
00:26:42.360So if Canada cut off Vancouver, two things would happen.
00:26:45.980Everyone would go to the States to fill up.
00:26:47.800But you would be punishing ordinary British Columbians, which I'm averse to doing.
00:26:52.620I don't want to hang the sins of John Horgan and the political class around the necks of every British Columbia, most of whom are normal people, aren't even political.
00:27:01.540But what it would do is like a splash of cold water to the face.
00:28:07.100And, you know, I remember one time someone from Reason magazine, which is a libertarian magazine in the United States, went to cover the meeting of the Sierra Club.
00:28:17.220And the first thing that he was struck by was the number of full sized SUVs in the parking lot that had been driven there by directors.
00:29:38.120I hope that there there's some good sense that that overtakes the government because thousands of British Columbians who really have stopped hating Alberta oil and stopped hating the pipeline now need to phone their their BCMLAs and tell them, look, let's get over.
00:29:55.600Let's get this over with before it comes to a shut off.
00:29:58.780But I'm glad that Jason Kenney, as his first act as premier, proclaimed the Turn Off the Taps Act because it has certainly awakened the British Columbia government.
00:30:21.960I don't think he meant it for real, but it was such a useful thought experiment.
00:30:25.220He said, wouldn't it be something if every year or even, frankly, just once in your life, you had to go three days without industrial luxuries, three days without electricity, three days where you had to make your own fire, make your own shelter, get your own food.
00:30:42.940Not long enough that you'd really starve or even die of thirst, but long enough that you would realize what a miracle it is.
00:31:05.200No, but before that, duh, the grocery store.
00:31:07.320And people are so disconnected from where their high industrial lifestyle, especially in Vancouver, which is such a leading edge city, they don't realize it comes from mining and forestry and oil and gas and steel.
00:31:21.460And they should know it because in the center of that city is the mighty port.
00:31:25.800Yeah, you've got that coal terminal off to the side, but all throughout, you see the tankers and the freighters and stuff coming in.
00:31:32.900They should know, they should see by looking at their gleaming towers, the heavy industry, but let them live without their luxuries for three days and they'd never complain about capitalism again.
00:31:44.480Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right.
00:31:46.020And there just is this disconnect, and the grocery store is the one I use all the time, between what we do, how we live, and what sustains that.
00:31:58.000And, you know, it's like Quebecers and equalization payments.
00:32:01.940They have cheap daycare and cheap tuition at universities because of equalization payments.
00:32:08.560And then they scoff and scorn and say, no, no, we're not going to take your oil in a pipeline.
00:32:13.900Where do you think the money comes from?
00:32:22.660I'm always grateful that you give us so much of it.
00:32:24.460But I do want to talk just for a minute, and if I had to choose all the different cabinet positions, we've got Sonia Savage, who's the energy minister, just absolutely brilliant choice.
00:32:35.180She was fighting the anti-pipeline activist for years at a pipeline.
00:32:40.460Just so, she knows that file, a tremendous mastery of it.
00:32:46.000There's some really great picks there, but can I focus on just one?
00:32:49.580And I think it's because I've never heard of this before, but there is a minister for red tape reduction.
00:32:59.640He's from Tabor Warner, which is about as right-wing as you get in the world.
00:33:06.320I think you were saying before we turned on the camera that you're familiar with him.
00:33:08.820What can you tell us about Grant Hunter, the minister for red tape reduction?
00:33:11.640He's a solid guy, very down to earth, old wild roser, and he just doesn't – he won't take any prisoners.
00:33:19.660They're going to find ways to speed up the approval for new wells that you want to drill.
00:33:25.640They're going to find ways to cut down on all of the inspections that you're going to need, many of which are redundant and some of which are probably unnecessary.
00:33:37.620When you're starting a new business, you need a permit, you're going to get it.
00:33:41.000And that change in mentality more than anything else – his task is to reduce red tape by a third.
00:33:48.140I'm not sure he's going to be able to do that.
00:33:49.700But just the idea that red tape is in the way and we acknowledge that and we want to be business friendly is going to be a huge change from the outgoing government.
00:33:57.940And even a huge change from, say, the Redford Tories who were in before the NDP.
00:34:02.480You know, here in Ontario, Doug Ford has taken a red tape reduction approach and he makes little micro announcements that are so small.
00:34:11.360But if you actually listen to him, like he says, okay, truckers no longer have to do this, this, and this.
00:34:17.000And like he'll eliminate 10 little things and this will save a million and that will save 5 million.
00:34:23.680Like we're not talking billions, but you just say, really?
00:34:26.620We were forcing truckers to do those 22 things all the time just because – and I'm sure every one of them had some rationale.
00:34:34.720But altogether, it's like scraping barnacles off a ship.
00:34:38.660You can't believe how many they were on it.
00:34:40.700I think those little things is going to make the difference.
00:35:20.520I think it's going to be a very interesting time here in Alberta.
00:35:23.320Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for your time and your views.
00:35:26.600Another time, we'll have to go through more of the very interesting list of cabinet.
00:35:30.880I'm sure that they'll start weighing in right away.
00:35:33.560Let me ask, let me throw one more question.
00:35:35.100Let me steal one more question from you.
00:35:38.400I believe that the first hundred days are so important for Kenney and his team to show not only that they have a plan and are ready to go,
00:35:48.040but that they meant it, not only to keep the promise, but to put their opponents on the back foot so that their opponents don't know, don't have time to,
00:35:57.980even their opponents within the bureaucracy still.
00:36:00.960I think they've got to do more in the next hundred days than, frankly, they've got to start more in the next hundred days than in the rest of their term combined if they're serious about winning.
00:36:11.940And I think then they have to stick with their plan as they get closer and closer to the next election.
00:36:17.440There is, of course, going to be the same voices that we heard in this election wailing and moaning and crying about how awful the Kenney government has been.
00:36:28.140And there's always a temptation among politicians to listen to their opponents more than to their own – the voices in their own heads or to their own friends.
00:37:21.640So I believe it's up to Alberta patriots like you and conservative activists like us to say things, to criticize in good faith where the other guys won't.
00:37:31.840On the other side from Mark Cameron, and Mark Cameron's a decent guy, but he got caught up in that whole consumption taxes, carbon taxes are better than income taxes thing.
00:37:46.460But on the other side, Kenney has brought back a guy named Grant Sprague as the deputy minister of energy.
00:37:52.720Now, Grant was a very good deputy minister of energy.
00:37:55.460He warned the New Democrats that their climate leadership plan would kick in all of these power purchase agreements, would force all these big utilities to return the contracts.
00:38:07.000And that would cost the taxpayers – it would end up costing taxpayers about $3 billion.
00:38:10.780And he warned them about that, and they wouldn't listen to him, and they pushed him aside.
00:38:17.460And he was on Kenney's transition team, and he's now back in as deputy minister of energy, which means somebody who understands the energy industry is now the deputy minister again.
00:39:42.520You know that Rachel Notley's handpicked election commissioner in Alberta, Notley's gone, but the commissioner is still there, is prosecuting us in a whole manner of ways because we put up a billboard, which is our right to do so as journalists.
00:39:57.680But thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of illegal donations, not only not prosecuted, kept secret.
00:40:34.020He talked about we're helping the middle class.
00:40:36.720So like he just started playing his old message tracks and he said, thank you for your donation.
00:40:41.820What's funny about that, if I, so there's several layers of, of note here.
00:40:46.720But one is when he was done that speech and started going through the crowd, do you doubt he said those exact same words to his friends?
00:40:55.780Thank you for your donation, Liberal Party.
00:40:57.960You know, yes, we're going to work on the middle class.
00:41:00.060Yes, like, so what he said as an insult with a sneer is no different from what he says to the people he likes, because the whole thing's a con.
00:41:11.020As his ex-boyfriend Paul Wells says, he's an imposter.
00:41:15.740On the Trudeau family filling sandbags, because that's what you do when you've got a six-year-old.
00:41:19.880You take him to a crisis flood zone to fill sandbags, because he's going to be more help than harm.
00:41:25.080Kathleen writes, it was the height of sexist discrimination that young Ella Grasse was not helping fill sandbags.