John Bolton - August 24, 2025


This Week in STEWPID - Canada edition Vol1 Ep3


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

159.9457

Word Count

1,453

Sentence Count

104


Summary

This week's top 3 stupid things in Canada: Scott Adams' terminal cancer diagnosis, Canada's trade deal with the U.S. and why Mark Carney is bad at negotiating, and Canada banning people from hiking in forests.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel 317 AM, Sunday, August the 24th with the big blue
00:00:10.480 mug of coffee. I hope you're having a great weekend so far. I certainly am. I've got a
00:00:14.920 grin on my face right now. It is Sunday. It's an opportunity to reflect on the week that
00:00:20.140 was in the once great country of Canada. Now, some of these things are pretty serious I'm
00:00:24.500 talking about today. But as Joseph Conrad, the writer, said, it's the fascination of
00:00:31.480 the abomination. And we certainly have some abominations to look at this week and we can
00:00:35.540 only laugh. And I laugh from my perch here in my country of Alberta. So we're going to
00:00:41.480 look at the top three things in stupid this week in Canada. Maybe we'll have an honorable
00:00:46.540 mention. There certainly were a lot of things to choose from. But we're going to start this
00:00:51.040 week with the cartoonist Scott Adams, who is known for Dilbert. Now, Scott announced
00:00:57.000 a while back that he's got terminal cancer. He hasn't got long to live, unfortunately.
00:01:03.280 It is a daily podcast, which is just fantastic. Scott proves that his body may be wasting away,
00:01:09.080 but he still has a very keen mind. When he pointed this out that a lot of us missed, when
00:01:15.060 he pointed this out about Canada's master negotiator, Mr. Elbows Up himself, the Prime Minister of
00:01:20.760 Canada, Mark Carney, saying this just the other day.
00:01:24.560 Let's be absolutely clear. Canada currently has the best trade deal with the United States.
00:01:32.880 Another good news, apparently the U.S. and Canada are making progress and getting some kind of a
00:01:38.700 permanent trade deal. Canada and the U.S. are heading toward, it looks like, resolving everything.
00:01:44.940 But what caught my attention was that Carney is bad at negotiating. Here's something that Carney said
00:01:53.760 out loud in public in the context of still negotiating with the United States. He actually
00:02:01.560 said that Canada has the best trade deals in the world with the U.S., and so he'd like to keep that
00:02:08.100 situation. Now, here's some advice. If you're negotiating, you should never say you've already
00:02:17.940 given us the best deal in the world. Why would we give you anything else? If you just told us you had
00:02:26.940 the best deal that anybody had in the whole world, which might be true, by the way, that's not much
00:02:34.100 incentive for us to give up anything else, is it? It's like, let me see. So you've got the best trade
00:02:41.860 deal in the world, is what you're saying, but you're asking for more? Why would we give you any more?
00:02:50.020 You just said you had the best deal in the whole world. The world. Look how many countries there are.
00:02:56.580 Have you counted the number of countries, Carney? It's a bunch. Lots of countries. And you have the best
00:03:02.800 in the world. You're not getting anything else. So, yeah, if you're negotiating, don't start with
00:03:10.560 you've already given us the best deal in the world. Touche to Scott Adams on this. By the way,
00:03:16.820 Donald Trump is a fan of Scott Adams. When Adams announced that he was sick a while back, apparently
00:03:21.660 Trump gave him a call to wish him well. So Donald Trump's fully aware of what the master negotiator,
00:03:26.900 the Prime Minister of Canada, said the other day as well. Now, moving along, let's go back to a few
00:03:32.940 weeks ago when right-minded people, and I mean right-minded in a couple of ways, meaning right
00:03:37.780 on the political spectrum and people who have common sense, when right-minded people pointed out
00:03:42.980 how stupid it was to ban people from hiking in forests. Well, folks, this kind of thing is happening
00:03:47.480 right across the country. And it's happening on the West Coast as well. I'm going to play this
00:03:53.160 news story in its entirety. Watch to the end because the Einstein right at the end of this
00:03:58.520 is your future in Canada. Voltaire said, if you want to know who rules over you,
00:04:05.720 just look for those you are not allowed to criticize. And if I was to say exactly what I
00:04:11.300 think of the people in this news clip, I would probably get banned on YouTube. But folks,
00:04:15.820 this is your future in the once great country of Canada.
00:04:23.160 For years, the Lil'wat and N'kwat'kwa nations have been fighting what they say is overuse of
00:04:31.560 Joffrey Lakes Provincial Park, which is in their traditional territories. While Victoria has cut the
00:04:38.080 number of daily visitors in half and established multi-week closures for non-Indigenous visitors,
00:04:44.840 the upcoming month-long closure was only about half of what the nations wanted. And Friday,
00:04:50.680 dozens of demonstrators blocked the access road to the park for a couple of hours to make their
00:04:56.540 point. Our community members do not want to be gawked at or watched as they go and they do their
00:05:03.460 cultural ceremonies. They harvest their food and their medicine. A quick online search can confirm
00:05:11.000 there's likely unlimited demand for Joffrey's crystalline waters and stunning vistas. But one
00:05:18.260 person's selfie backdrop is another sacred ground and the over-tourism feeling rankles many Indigenous
00:05:26.180 people. My first solution was go cut the log out. People don't need to go take a selfie over our
00:05:32.660 animals right to live on the land. BC's Environment Minister acknowledged Friday that the closure fell
00:05:39.380 short of what the nations were asking for, but said Victoria is trying to balance their needs with those of the
00:05:46.100 the wider public. Now the simple fact is this is a public park which belongs to all British Columbians.
00:05:52.500 Scott McInnes is the Conservative Party critic for Indigenous relations and says Friday's roadblock is the
00:05:59.540 result of years of NDP mismanagement of the file. So now it's at the point where we are where we have two
00:06:06.020 nations that are very upset because the expectation has been built up for them that they have unilateral control
00:06:13.060 over access to the public park. So as it stands now the policy continues to displease people on all sides.
00:06:22.340 In a news release the Lilwat Nation said the park doesn't even belong to the province and here's what
00:06:28.740 one member said when asked how many visitors they would be prepared to accept. A lot of our people really
00:06:35.700 truly believe it should be closed. Yeah I'm not sure what else to say about that. Paul Johnson Global News.
00:06:46.500 This small group of people less than five percent of the population is being given more and more control
00:06:51.700 over everything in the country. This type of thing is likely to come to a provincial or national park
00:06:57.620 near you very soon. These are the people who have control over our energy policy.
00:07:02.580 And the people on the screen right now are the ones that are giving them the control. That's the
00:07:08.260 Liberal cabinet. I'm full of quotes this week. Ariel Durant the historian said a country is not conquered
00:07:14.340 from without until it is conquered from within. He probably learned from one of the greatest
00:07:21.780 people of all time who once said a house divided cannot stand. And last on our list in this week in
00:07:28.820 stupid is this one. It says it all folks. Vancouver parents block from teaching their kids to swim
00:07:34.820 in public pools. Can you imagine being in a pool in Vancouver? A public pool.
00:07:41.780 Your child has water wings on. You're in the shallow section and you're trying to teach your child to
00:07:46.580 dog paddle. And some official from the city walks by and says you're not allowed to do it. Only the state
00:07:53.700 can teach your child how to swim. There are people who are perfectly fine with this, I'm sure, defending
00:08:00.660 this policy. After all, the city runs the pools. But folks, it's a public pool owned by the public,
00:08:10.580 paid for by tax dollars, paid for by the public. Here's another quote for you. I've used this one
00:08:18.660 before. The government that is best governs least. And just as a kicker this week, I'm going to give
00:08:24.740 this to you. I'll just show you the headline on this. I mentioned earlier about the hiking ban out
00:08:29.540 on the East Coast. Apparently, if you're on the East Coast and you're walking in the woods and you get
00:08:34.980 stopped because you've been banned from walking in the woods, just simply tell the person who stops you
00:08:40.900 and wants to give you a $25,000 fine that you're homeless.
00:08:46.020 Thanks for watching. I do appreciate it. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up,
00:08:50.100 subscribe to the channel, ring the bell for notifications. I'll see you in the next one.