It's Halloween, which means it's time to talk about the pros and cons of trick or treaters. Plus, a special episode of Off The Record, featuring a special guest, and a story about the longest court case in Canadian history.
00:00:00.000Okay, yeah, well, we have a special episode of Off the Record today, because, of course, it's Halloween, and also the Blue Jays could win the World Series tonight, so we'll see what happens there.
00:00:10.000But, yeah, for the Halloween, I know we talked about ostriches last week, Alex, but you found this clip of an ostrich costume, which certainly had me laughing.
00:00:18.480Yeah, so, I mean, some of these do-it-yourself costumes, it's like, how do people even come up with this? I don't know how that woman came up with creating the costume, because that is, like, I mean, the level of creativity that goes into making something like that is something.
00:00:34.420But, yeah, Alex, imagine someone shows up to your door trick-or-treating, and that's what you open the door to. I mean, would you give them extra candy?
00:00:43.180Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No gentle floss for those kids.
00:00:49.800You guys live in neighborhoods where the kids actually still trick-or-treat? Like, I'm disappointed. Where I live, the kids don't, they just don't trick-or-treat, so they obviously congregate in some other neighborhood, but mine's just not one where they come. I don't know why that is.
00:01:01.360Yeah, I mean, over here in the east side of Ottawa, it's very common where I live, that kids and even teenagers are trick-or-treating, normally starts with the younger ages, goes older as night, matures.
00:01:13.380And I think, frankly, it's less than in years past. When I was young, when I was young, I mean, it was every house next door and in front of our house, you would have candy boxes in front of every porch.
00:01:26.800But now it's, I guess you'd say, one every two or three houses are actually participating in giving the candy, and you have a lot of doors that are being knocked that aren't even prepared.
00:01:36.000So perhaps that might be a cultural demographic shift you're seeing. I mean, I guess Halloween is a tradition more bought into by, you know, Canadians of a longer heritage in the country, whereas a lot of first-time or first-generation immigrants may not participate for different reasons.
00:01:51.980There's just cultural differences, and essentially, what I'm trying to say is that now that, you know, we're much more, we have a lot more newcomers in the neighborhood and community, we have much less participation in Halloween proportionally, although we're in a larger population today for it.
00:02:07.960Yeah, just quick before we start the show, what was your guys' favorite candy to get as kids there?
00:02:35.080It's got to be Kinder Bueno. It's always been my favorite chocolate, always will be, and I think Halloween, if you're really lucky, you might get one of the small mini versions, but pretty Kinder Bueno, and maybe even like a coffee crisp as well.
00:02:46.420Yeah, mine, my favorite might not get enough love, surprisingly, was actually Rockets. You know, the candy, I'm pretty sure they're like 99.9% sugar, and then 0.01 is whatever solidifies it.
00:02:59.940But yeah, obviously, we started off on a fun note here, but just hopping into the show, of course, I'm Isaac Lamu from True North here, joined by my colleagues, Alex Zoltan and Waleed Tam Tam.
00:03:10.460Yeah, so as I was saying, we definitely started off on a fun note, but for our first story here, not fun at all.
00:03:21.500Alex, you've been all over this. Richmond residents, potentially, and even all BC residents, for that matter, potentially looting their land titles.
00:03:31.000I mean, what's going on here, Alex? It just seems too astonishing.
00:03:35.100Yeah, so this story goes back to August. Well, actually, it goes back to like 2017 or 2018. This was regarded as the longest trial in Canadian history.
00:03:48.200It had 518 days of trial court dates, and basically what it is, I actually made a map, if that's helpful. So, this cost $70. I had to go to Staples.
00:04:03.840This is the disputed area, essentially, in Richmond. So, I can't really show it very well on here. This isn't the best camera angle.
00:04:16.800Yeah, yeah, yeah. The map is really big. It was kind of a waste of money, because when I went to the town hall, there was like 20 of these that the city had already made.
00:04:24.300But essentially, like this area is along the northern bank of the Fraser River, and it is owned partially by the city of Richmond, partially by the government at the provincial level.
00:04:37.160But it is also owned by a lot of private homeowners. So, an activist judge in Vancouver, Barbara Young, decided that this land, because the Cowichan tribes, we really want to get into the weeds on this.
00:04:51.580The reason I call them the Cowichan tribes is because it's actually like several different tribes.
00:04:55.420They're the largest First Nations group in British Columbia. They had gone there to fish and also to capture slaves back in the 1850s.
00:05:06.160So, she decided that their aboriginal title was still valid. What does that mean for the people that live there?
00:05:13.700Well, that means that they now have to live under what she deems dual title, which means that you can own it privately, Isaac, before we leave, but the Cowichan tribe also owns it.
00:05:24.480Yeah. So, let's just jump into the lending process, Alex, because, of course, for those who don't know, you have a background in finance, which is very useful here.
00:05:36.060And on top of that, you talked to a homeowner on the site there at one of the debates or whatever, and he had owned a house there for 50 years, I believe, but he still had a mortgage on it.
00:05:46.700So, maybe he refinanced or something or took a loan out against the house.
00:05:49.760There's plenty of reasons why he would still have a mortgage 50 years after buying the house.
00:05:54.000But, yeah, so the lenders wouldn't, they said they're not renewing his mortgage? Like, what happens there?
00:06:01.480So, people asked the mayor of Richmond that exact question, and he said, well, you'll have to talk to the province, because in Canada, land title acts, I believe, are dealt with provincially.
00:06:12.240So, then I asked three conservative MLAs, BC conservative MLAs, who explained to me that the province has provided these people with no insight on what goes forward from here.
00:06:25.380So, it's highly inconvenient timing as well, because the vast majority of Canadian mortgages are coming up for renewal this year.
00:06:37.520Yeah, has David Eby said anything about this, or has he just been tight-lipped?
00:06:42.280Yeah, so him and Nikki Sharma, she's the Attorney General of BC, they're both seeking a stay of proceedings.
00:06:47.880So, what that means, in other words, is that the ruling that Barbara Young made, that this is subject to dual title, meaning private ownership and aboriginal title, would essentially be stayed.
00:06:58.940It would be, so the ruling is valid, but it's not enforceable until there is an appeal.
00:07:05.440Well, that does little to nothing to assuage lenders, right?
00:07:09.260I think that it's important for people to understand that when it comes to mortgages, if the property is not, if you cannot repossess a property, then the collateral is worthless, right?
00:07:24.280So, if you, for instance, if you borrow a million dollars from me to purchase a factory, I can give you a lower interest rate on the assumption that if you don't pay me back for that money,
00:07:35.700I can repossess the property, I can repossess the property, and therefore, you know, make myself whole, if you're a bad borrower or whatever.
00:07:43.580But in this case, I can't, because I would have to repossess it from both you and the Cowichan tribes, which would be a long, drawn-out legal process.
00:07:51.600The cost of adjudicating that would probably be more than the property is worth.
00:07:57.440So, this is an utter shitshow and a disaster.
00:08:01.040So, but normally, let's say, if you, I don't know, fail to pay your mortgage for X amount of time, like, the bank's going to foreclose on your home.
00:08:10.600So, in this case, if the bank won't lend you money for your mortgage, are they the ones who then repossess your home?
00:08:17.460Like, I don't, I just don't get what happens in the end here.
00:08:20.340I'm not even certain they would know how to repossess the home, because they would have to repossess it from both you and the Cowichan tribes.
00:08:28.700Like, is there any world where the Cowichan tribes take your house from you?
00:08:34.400That's a really good question, actually.
00:08:36.080So, the Cowichan tribes put out a statement, and my impression, and people are maybe going to accuse me of being a liberal on this one, because it is a little bit subjective and whatever.
00:08:46.500But, like, my impression is, is that the Cowichan tribes asked for an inch and got a mile.
00:08:50.860Like, they had no interest in taking away private property owner's property.
00:08:55.800But the judge gave them that ability anyway, because theoretically speaking, if the Cowichan tribes did want to take the property, the judge's decision almost not only allows them to, but almost implores them to, because she says that aboriginal title supersedes, it exceeds the importance of private ownership.
00:09:14.800So, the Cowichan tribes, luckily, are pretty good actors, it would appear at this point, but that, again, does nothing to calm the concerns of lenders, who are really the important part of all of this.
00:09:30.500For people who aren't aware, like, in finance and in economics generally, credit is the lifeblood of any economy.
00:09:39.000Like, if you don't have credit, you have nothing.
00:09:44.000Just everything comes to a complete standstill.
00:09:47.740And contextually, this is very relevant and important.
00:09:50.900120% of BC's land is subject to a land claim from an indigenous tribe.
00:09:57.740So, when I heard that, I was immediately kind of skeptical.
00:10:01.500How could it be 120% that's more land than exists?
00:10:05.120And Theresa Watt, a conservative MLA, explained to me very kindly, she says, that's because there's so many overlapping claims between differing indigenous tribes.
00:10:14.880So, if you were to extrapolate this decision from the BC Supreme Court across the entire province, the whole province is, you can't touch it.
00:10:23.600It's suddenly uninvestable because we don't have private property rights.
00:10:28.960And this all comes downstream from a 2019 decision, if my memory serves me correctly, from the BC government to ratify UNDRIP as an actual policy under BC law.
00:10:40.500UNDRIP is the UN Declaration of Rights for Indigenous People.
00:10:43.220And what they say is that indigenous people who have a claim to the land also have a right to self-determination.
00:12:41.060Do you think that, and I don't know how much this has to do with provincial government, but could this have any backlash on the BC and NDP going forward?
00:12:50.920Like, say, in the next provincial election, could this be something that would potentially bring them down?
00:12:56.280So, an Angus Reid poll actually came out prior.
00:12:59.540Well, it came out yesterday, but the poll was conducted prior to this town hall meeting when we weren't really sure if it was a nothing burger or a something burger.
00:13:06.260And even amongst those 1,000 people who were surveyed before this meeting, 60% of them, so more than half, thought that this would harm rather than help reconciliation, the concept of reconciliation.
00:13:20.700And two out of five people in British Columbia thought that the province was spending too much time on reconciliation.
00:13:33.020So, of course, the Conservative Party of BC is also in shambles on their own accord.
00:13:39.720So, there's also a change of government.
00:14:01.400Sticking with the West sort of, but also now including the East, this was a very interesting development, let's say, over the week where Ontario has launched a feasibility study for a potential new pipeline project that could connect Western oil with the East.
00:14:20.620Because, as we know, there is no cross-Canada pipeline.
00:14:24.860I always go to the Alberta separatist events, and a common hit that they have is Jeff Rath's always smack-talking Doug Ford because, of course, he didn't know that his oil has to go through the United States to get to him.
00:14:41.380Because he was saying, oh, we'll just cut off the U.S. oil.
00:14:46.680The oil you get in eastern Canada goes through line 45 through the U.S.
00:14:51.080Like, there is no cross-Canada pipeline.
00:14:54.080And, of course, we've been talking about this for what seems like generations because it really is a never-ending topic, this cross-Canada pipeline.
00:15:03.600But this could be good because Ontario is getting involved now, and, of course, the premiers have been talking about this for months.
00:15:10.880Alberta, Saskatchewan, they've all been kind of united on getting this to the forefront.
00:15:18.100They, for example, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in July, I think.
00:15:21.260That's Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario to strengthen energy in Canada.
00:15:30.360And, I mean, again, you have to get all premiers on board, so it feels very complicated because Manitoba Premier Wob Canu didn't sign that Memorandum of Understanding.
00:15:42.260So I don't really know how they could get this done without everyone being on board, which is tough, especially because we know the federal government isn't necessarily on board yet either because Mark Carney's first list of major projects, of course, did not include a pipeline.
00:15:56.540And Smith's been pushing for one for the next major projects list, which will be at the Grey Cup announced.
00:16:03.880And that's just for a West Coast pipeline, though.
00:16:06.240So that's between Alberta and B.C., and we've seen so much back and forth in that, too, because David Eby really doesn't want to get on board with Smith there.
00:16:14.140But as for this, interestingly enough, Juno News did some exclusive polling, which found that 98.5% of Canadians support building more pipelines.
00:16:22.260So pretty much everyone wants to build more pipelines.
00:16:25.520Unsurprisingly, of course, building pipelines in Canada would do nothing but strengthen our economy, make the country richer, make every single person in the country richer, make us less reliant on the United States.
00:16:35.720I mean, I could probably talk for five minutes just listing the pros from this project.
00:16:41.400But, yeah, I wanted to ask you guys, especially because we talk so much about Ford, do you think this is just him kind of saying something that will make his approval rise or make him liked, but not actually going to commit to anything real?
00:17:01.180I think it has to do with what I call the early Carney days, where Carney hosted a number of first ministers' meetings, and then, of course, for Ford, that was his opportunity to expand his national coverage, frankly.
00:17:13.860I mean, if you don't know him very well from Ontario, you started to get to know Doug Ford once he attended those first ministers' meetings and went off on speeches, praising Carney, rolling the red carpet, and, you know, that fireside chat they had for hours overnight.
00:17:30.400I mean, it was just kind of a high school kind of crush situation between Carney and Ford.
00:17:36.760But I would go back to a very interesting point about the lack of the, you know, Canada-wide pipeline or east-west pipeline in this case.
00:17:46.440You know, one of the greatest infrastructure symbols of nationalism or Canadian patriotism was, you know, the railway, right?
00:17:56.200And, of course, VRL, having effectively this cross-country monopoly, you know, they received some funding to improve, expand, lower prices for a cross-Canada pass.
00:18:09.360This is one of the things that Carney announced over the summer in July.
00:18:13.040Speaking of July, not only did he have the July 21st deadline of getting a deal with the U.S. that he didn't meet,
00:18:17.620but he also, if you guys remember, he had a July 1st deadline of removing, effectively, most trade barriers between provinces,
00:18:23.680which is still something that has not been realized.
00:18:25.600And, of course, I spoke to trade experts and lawyers who have covered cases like the Freedom Beer case
00:18:29.780when that man from Atlantic Canada was, you know, fined by the RSMP and got into some legal issues
00:18:35.520for simply taking a couple of cases of beer across the borders of two provinces,
00:18:40.720I think in the case of Wysnobu, Scotia and Quebec, if I remember correctly.