Juno News - Alberta separatists face FIRST TEST + B.C. blocks pipelines？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Candice Malcolm Show. I'm Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian

00:00:07.180 Taxpayers Federation. I'm filling in for Candice today on this show. On this show, we're going to

00:00:12.700 get into pipelines, resources, does Mark Carney really mean it, and finish off with the electric

00:00:19.540 vehicle mandate. Don't you want the government telling you what car to buy? No? Well, stay tuned

00:00:24.720 for that, because we've got a rip-roaring conversation with Edmonton Sun columnist Lauren

00:00:29.540 Gunter. But first, a little bit of news here. Okay? So over the weekend, something interesting

00:00:36.120 happened. Remember how BC Premier David Eby had a come-to-Jesus moment over the carbon tax? Yeah,

00:00:43.440 that guy. The one who had his own version of the carbon tax in British Columbia, the one who kept

00:00:48.560 on cranking it up, the one who hasn't met a resource project that he hasn't wanted to strangle,

00:00:53.560 the same guy who's piling on massive amounts of debt in British Columbia, inexplicably. That

00:01:00.060 Premier, remember how he was kind of singing from the Team Canada hymn book for a little while of,

00:01:06.100 oh, let's actually do elbows up. Let's make sure that we can all be in this together. Well, he's kind

00:01:11.840 of squishing on that now. He came out and said, generally speaking, maybe we shouldn't necessarily

00:01:17.940 have pipelines, and it's not such a good idea. And oh, the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which used

00:01:23.500 to be owned by Kinder Morgan, the Trans Mountain Pipeline, not super running at capacity. He got

00:01:29.280 a lot of blowback over that, obviously. But now he's trying to put a little bit of water in his wine.

00:01:35.500 Now he's saying, oh, what I meant was, we don't want public money going into pipelines. Public money,

00:01:42.320 by the way, is taxpayers' money. There's no such thing as government money. He actually went on CTV over

00:01:48.460 the weekend. And he's trying to pedal this backwards now, saying, no public money for pipelines is what

00:01:53.940 I meant. Listen to this. I don't support tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidy for a brand

00:02:00.120 new pipeline across the north, getting rid of the tanker ban off the north coast. There is not a world

00:02:05.860 in which that pipeline across the north happens without significant federal subsidy. If the Premier of

00:02:12.140 Alberta is able to pull that off, I say more power to her. Why do you assume that federal subsidies would 1.00

00:02:17.880 be needed? Because they were needed for the last one. Yeah, they were needed for the last one, but they

00:02:23.460 haven't been needed for everyone. Okay, so here's the thing. Anyone who's been paying attention to this

00:02:28.840 issue in a serious manner, especially for those of us out west, hello, I'm in Lethbridge, Alberta, none of us

00:02:35.860 want taxpayers' money going into pipelines. It's so frustrating when we hear folks, especially the

00:02:42.640 Laurentians and the Eastern media, which are funded largely by the government, say, we bought you a

00:02:47.960 pipeline. Why don't you Westerners sit down and be quiet and be grateful? We didn't want the government 0.95

00:02:54.480 to buy a pipeline. We didn't want the government to build and twin a pipeline next to that existing

00:03:00.340 pipeline. What we wanted was for the government to be reasonable and sensible and to get out of the

00:03:07.320 way. What happened with that pipeline that runs from Edmonton across the Rockies into Burnaby and out

00:03:16.440 to port, okay, what happened there was ridiculous. The original pipeline was owned by a private

00:03:23.720 company, Kinder Morgan. That private company was going to use its own money, its own money to hire a

00:03:33.920 whole bunch of people between Edmonton and Burnaby and to twin its existing pipeline. What that means

00:03:41.200 for anyone who hasn't actually stood near a pipeline, there is a clearing, okay, through the woods. It's

00:03:48.420 literally just like a, looks like a flat piece of meadow that is mowed all the way to Alberta, okay?

00:03:53.800 What they wanted to do is take that existing pipeline that's already there with the land around it,

00:03:59.200 all of the tests have been done, and twin it. That's all they wanted to do. And it was supposed

00:04:04.320 to be a multi-use pipeline, which means they could push things like bitumen or other oil products

00:04:09.780 through it as they wanted to. They got green lights for a long time from the federal government,

00:04:15.740 which is why Kinder Morgan was putting their money into it, okay? And they were going to employ people.

00:04:21.280 They were going to employ people to the extent that these are like mortgage paying jobs. These are

00:04:27.560 serious jobs. To put it this way, the property taxes, property taxes paid by Kinder Morgan back in

00:04:36.100 the day, more than paid for the entire recycling and garbage system for the city of Burnaby.

00:04:44.000 That's how much money and wealth these private companies produce when they're allowed to do

00:04:49.420 their thing. But that's the catch. They weren't allowed to do their thing. The feds put up roadblock

00:04:55.200 after roadblock. They dragged their heels. They ragged the puck. And in that world, time is money.

00:05:00.840 Like that company sitting there twiddling its thumbs and money is just going out the door

00:05:04.960 and no shovels were in the ground. So that company eventually threw its hand up in frustration and

00:05:10.460 walked away. Now, due to outcry from areas like Alberta, Saskatchewan to an extent, and some areas

00:05:18.400 of British Columbia who do value natural resources, a lot of people got understandably upset. And so then

00:05:24.700 the federal government, the same level that was strangling the pipeline in the first place,

00:05:30.220 decided to swoop into the rescue and build it and twin it themselves. By the time the smoke clears

00:05:37.400 on this thing, the now newly named Trans Mountain Pipeline is going to cost taxpayers around $30 billion-ish

00:05:45.660 dollars. So we went from a private company wanting to spend its own money. They were guesstimating

00:05:52.000 $8 to $10 billion, but it doesn't matter because it was their own money employing people, to taxpayers

00:05:57.520 being on the hook for it and it being about $30 billion. The problem here is this has allowed

00:06:04.180 folks, especially back East, to play cute. They get to play dumb now and say, oh, well, 0.98

00:06:11.340 we bought you a pipeline. What else do you want us to do? And it's super annoying to see the Premier 0.98

00:06:16.880 of British Columbia where I'm from and who knows better to use that talking point. And he knows

00:06:24.380 what he's doing because he's on with VASI. He's on with the CTV Parliamentary Bureau. It's right across

00:06:29.540 the street from Parliament Hill. He knows that that audience could largely just swallow that.

00:06:35.140 But those of us who understand how the resource system works here in Canada, and especially the

00:06:40.180 history behind that pipeline, know what's actually true. So for the record, most Canadian taxpayers

00:06:47.680 don't want the federal government or any government building pipelines. They want governments to get

00:06:54.520 out of the way so that companies can build pipelines. Next up, we're going to find out what Lauren 1.00

00:07:01.120 Gunter thinks of this and also touch on what's really interesting happening right now in central

00:07:06.180 Alberta. I was just in Sundry, Alberta. In central Alberta, right there, we're having a provincial

00:07:12.640 by-election. Usually that might be a bit of a snooze fest. Not this time, because we have some

00:07:19.680 independent-seeking MLAs who are running for seats in the legislature. So let's find out. Joining me now

00:07:27.720 is a good friend of the program, Lauren Gunter. Of course, Mr. Gunter writes columns for the Edmonton

00:07:33.280 Sun. And of course, you see his columns elsewhere in the Sun Media newspaper chain. We're old

00:07:38.220 colleagues from back in the day when Sun News Network used to be on TV. Ms. Lauren, I wanted to

00:07:44.020 get into a few things with you. Right off the top, the kind of newsy element is, of course, the by-election

00:07:49.320 that is happening provincially. Now, I was just at the Sundry Rodeo, and I know that the by-election

00:07:54.960 isn't technically happening in Sundry, but it's in this kind of little shape of the riding that goes

00:08:00.320 around Sundry. Interesting, on the way up, I wanted to raise this with you. I was driving

00:08:06.260 up the 22, beautiful secondary highway, by the way, the Cowboy Trail, and I noticed these

00:08:12.560 big red signs with, you know, this kind of neat-looking white font of the name of the person

00:08:20.600 running there. And like, I'm in the movement. And I had to think hard about, why is there a

00:08:29.320 liberal running? What? And my kids, who were in the pickup truck with me, just said out loud,

00:08:34.720 Mama, why is there so many liberal signs around here? I wanted to get your thoughts on this,

00:08:39.600 on the Republican candidate who picked red for obvious reasons, because that's the colour of

00:08:44.700 the Republican Party in the States. I'm a little bit concerned about the branding on his behalf

00:08:49.780 here. What did you think about this? Yeah, I think there's two problems with it. One is the most

00:08:54.440 obvious, the one that you've mentioned, and that is that the colour scheme and the font look like

00:09:02.940 federal liberal signs. Well, in Alberta, that's not who you want to be associated with. So a casual

00:09:09.300 driver going by on the highway who does live in the riding and will maybe vote on June 23rd in the

00:09:18.900 by-election is very likely to think, there's certainly a good possibility, that person will

00:09:25.140 think that Cameron Davies, who's running for the Alberta Republican Party, not the Liberals,

00:09:31.440 is a Liberal. And the Liberals know that this riding is so bad for them, they didn't run a candidate in

00:09:39.840 the general election in 2023, and they have no candidate in the by-election. So this looks like

00:09:46.380 Cameron Davies is the Liberal candidate, and I think he's toast. The other problem he has with

00:09:51.100 his branding is this Alberta Republican Party. This is probably one of the parts of the province

00:09:59.000 where Republicans are still reasonably popular. There would still be a fairly strong movement among

00:10:07.820 separatists, not among the general populace in the riding, but among separatists,

00:10:12.620 to quit Canada and become the 51st state. But as you will know from having seen polling for the last

00:10:20.920 three or four months, Donald Trump's taunting of Canada about becoming the 51st state has destroyed

00:10:30.680 conservative Canadians' views of the Republican Party. And so here he is, this is Cameron Davies,

00:10:38.980 who until April 24th was a UCP member, who now has a party called the Republican Party,

00:10:47.280 and has colours like the Liberal Party. I just think that it's really bad branding all around.

00:10:52.500 It is bad branding. I've been in the game for a long time. And again, I had to think hard.

00:10:57.200 I'm like, I was about to tell the children, oh no, honey, that's because it's public land,

00:11:01.380 and anybody can put it by the side. And I'm like, oh no, wait, Cam, of course, is the Republican Party.

00:11:06.020 And to your point, with U.S. President Donald Trump, a lot of people will put what happened

00:11:12.820 during the federal election at his feet. And that is what caused a lot of the kind of strange

00:11:18.480 buzzword, elbows up without any substance behind it nonsense, that happened during the election.

00:11:25.380 Now, the one element the Taxpayers Federation was happy about is that we do have technically

00:11:29.920 the consumer carbon tax down to zero. So, you know, cost of gas is still about 20 cents cheaper at the

00:11:36.140 pumps. That's a good thing. Some folks I've been speaking with are happy-ish with Bill C-5,

00:11:42.120 and they're kind of optimistic. I know Premier Daniel Smith is sounding kind of optimistic

00:11:46.600 when it comes to getting things like pipelines done and natural resources actually on the roll here in

00:11:51.320 Canada. But yeah, I don't want to belabor it because of course, you know, everybody's allowed to run,

00:11:56.120 and I see a lot of support for, I would describe it as Alberta sovereignty, of just standing up for

00:12:02.160 rights of Albertans. You know, the really simple billboard of more Alberta, less Ottawa, that

00:12:08.420 still plays well. But to your point, I'm not sure bright red with white font and the word Republican

00:12:14.240 works. And the other thing, if you look at these Davies posters, and the acknowledgement that it's the

00:12:20.320 Republican Party is very tiny. Like, if you're driving by at highway speeds, you're not going to

00:12:25.560 see it. You'll see it if you're stopped somewhere, and there's a sign, say, in the corner of the gas

00:12:31.040 station lot or something, you'll be able to tell that it's the Republican Party. But I think it's just

00:12:36.180 very, very bad branding. The other problem that they're going to have, and I predict that the

00:12:41.440 separatists will not win. It will not surprise me if they finish ahead of the NDP in second place.

00:12:48.860 But even that seems like a bit of an outside stretch. But the other part of the problem is,

00:12:56.180 is you're talking about Alberta sovereignty rather than necessarily separation. And Smith from the UCP,

00:13:03.020 the premier, gets an awful lot of support for that. She has been a sovereigntist, and I think that

00:13:09.420 buys her some time right now. Now, if there's an outrage that the Ottawa Liberals foist on Alberta, 1.00

00:13:18.100 if there's an NEP2, if they're going to start... There's two big things that the provincial

00:13:23.100 government is worried about Ottawa doing. One is increasing the taxes on oil and gas to pay for

00:13:33.480 the subsidies they want to give manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec because of the American tariffs.

00:13:40.560 If that happens, that to me is an NEP2. I'm going to be unhappy about that. And the other thing they're

00:13:48.520 worried about, and this is the thing I'm really worried about, is that the Liberals are going to,

00:13:53.360 at some point, say, there's no business case. They said there was no business case for LNG.

00:13:59.740 They're going to say, there's no business case for a new pipeline. You know, we would go for a pipeline.

00:14:04.780 Oh, sure, we would. Yes, yes, that's part of our nation building. Yes, we'd love to have a new pipeline.

00:14:10.460 But no private company has stepped forward to put the money up. And, you know, so we're just going

00:14:17.420 to have to go without one. That's exactly what they want to happen in Ottawa. And so they have made it so

00:14:25.540 difficult for a private company to step forward and say, look, we'll risk the 13, 14, 15 billion

00:14:33.260 dollars on a pipeline. They made it so difficult for a company to do that, that there aren't many

00:14:39.980 companies that are prepared to do that. Now, I can see the Alberta government getting involved,

00:14:44.820 adding in money from the Heritage Fund or whatever to help boost this along as a short-term loan to get

00:14:49.620 the project on its feet. But Ottawa is hoping against hope that no one will step forward and

00:14:57.360 say, well, you know, we could. We tried. But the private sector has signal. Market is telling us

00:15:05.020 that there is no market for this. And if they try that, which I think you're right, I think that's

00:15:09.760 the play here. I think because, you know, this guy wrote this book. Okay. This is Mark Carney's book.

00:15:17.040 Okay. That he wrote while he was the UN Special Envoy for Climate Something Something. Okay. And

00:15:23.560 all through here, he says things like 80% of oil and gas needs to remain in the ground. He repeats

00:15:30.380 the statement that 90% of the world's energy requirements can be met through wind and solar.

00:15:36.380 He also very interestingly refers to things like gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, natural gas,

00:15:43.560 hot water heaters, things like that as stranded assets for the future, including power plants that

00:15:50.060 run on natural gas, which rang a lot of alarm bells. So what we're dealing with here right now,

00:15:54.920 I find is interesting. We have him now as prime minister saying things like, I'm into nation building,

00:16:01.980 let's make this happen. I can see the optimism, the little glimmer of hope on Daniel Smith's face.

00:16:07.400 Yes, I can. And they're willing to try and believe him. But I think ultimately, it's going to be what

00:16:13.900 you just said. They're going to set it up so that it looks like it's a real thing. And then they're

00:16:18.840 going to try to say with a straight face, oh, you know, there's no business case for oil, as if,

00:16:23.780 you know,

00:16:24.020 Well, you go back to go back to 2017. And he goes, you got the Energy East pipeline,

00:16:31.700 the Trudeau government moves the goalposts on that thing three times, they make it tougher and tougher

00:16:36.660 and tougher, until finally, Trans Canada pipeline TC Energy backs out of the they've spent a billion

00:16:45.700 dollars getting that project approved. And then they back out because the federal liberals keep changing

00:16:52.740 the rules over and over and over again. And then Trudeau has the gall to say, well, it wasn't us.

00:16:59.400 That was a business decision that killed Energy East. No, it wasn't. It was governments jerking

00:17:05.120 around. And governments will jerk around on this. You know, they're not going to, for instance,

00:17:10.320 get rid of the Impact Assessment Act. They're going to say, well, we can suspend the Impact Assessment

00:17:15.360 Act in this case, because Bill C-5, the new nation building project bill, gives us the authority

00:17:22.400 to override our own bills on this. But they're not going to do, they're not going to get rid of the

00:17:32.360 Impact Assessment Act. And so that's a real problem for these guys. But maybe it's not a problem,

00:17:38.540 because maybe that's what they really want, is they want to make it look like they're working hard

00:17:42.200 to please Alberta and the West. And really, what they want to do is make it look like we frustrated

00:17:48.560 ourselves. Albertans see through that, though. And to your point on the sovereignty and separation

00:17:52.720 movement, I've been telling some folks over the phone, they're like, how is it going out there

00:17:57.720 with this movement? I'd say it's kind of simmering right now. But the moment you block something like

00:18:03.820 this, and it's revealed that you're actually going to keep the cap on energy, that you're going to keep

00:18:09.120 blocking pipelines, it's going to hit a rolling boil, like right away. And the first time we go through

00:18:14.580 a winter, where it's minus 48. And they've told us all to get heat pumps. And now we're freezing in our

00:18:21.480 homes. That's also if we haven't left before that, we'll leave after that. There's so many things that

00:18:28.440 this government is unprepared to give up. It's unprepared to give up the net zero power grid mandate

00:18:36.380 that it has. It's unwilling to give up the tanker ban on the West Coast, which if you look at it closely,

00:18:43.380 means a ban on oil, only oil from Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan are covered by that ban.

00:18:51.100 I mean, there's all of these things where they've deliberately set out to demonize the West. And

00:18:58.080 they're not going to give up on those. They're hoping that this new Bill C-5 will allow them to

00:19:04.180 override some of the most egregious parts of their previous bills. But they're not prepared to

00:19:10.140 dismantle those bills. That's the key. And so that ultimately, they can say, you know, we tried,

00:19:18.800 we tried really hard, but nobody stepped forward to do this. Of course, with the Impact Assessment Act,

00:19:24.260 it could under that act take between five and seven years to get approval for a pipeline.

00:19:31.500 It would cost the company that wanted the permits somewhere in the neighborhood of one and a half to two billion dollars

00:19:38.980 just to get the permits. That's when I put, we haven't put an inch of pipe in the ground yet.

00:19:43.200 So that's what I think they're aiming for. And you and I were talking a little bit before we started

00:19:51.960 recording about David Eby in BC. He's doing the same thing. Like he said, you know, oh, I'm not

00:19:59.120 against the pipeline. No, no, no, don't get me wrong. I'm not against the pipeline. I like the idea of

00:20:03.740 pipeline. But there are no private champions for it now. And I just don't want to see a lot of public

00:20:09.000 money go into it. I don't want to see a lot of public money go into it either. I am offended.

00:20:14.400 I'm pleased that the Trans Mountain extension, the expansion got built. But I am offended by the fact

00:20:22.020 that the federal government spent twice as much money as that pipeline cost just to get the rights

00:20:28.860 to it. And then that should have cost them about seven to nine billion to finish the project. And they

00:20:34.200 paid about 32 billion to finish the project. I'm with Eby. I don't want to see that happen again

00:20:40.240 either. But everybody like Eby and Carney and the federal liberals all are acting in ways that people

00:20:51.660 who have to put forward billions of dollars in risk are watching. And they're saying, yeah, these people

00:20:58.380 aren't serious. They don't really want us in there. And so if we went ahead, we would lose our money. And then our

00:21:05.220 shareholders would rightly be unhappy with us. So I think that's what's that's what's on the books or on the

00:21:11.880 burner right now is that they're they're simmering this whole idea that, gee, you know, there's no business

00:21:17.320 case for it. The market has spoken. It doesn't want another pipeline when that's not it at all. If you

00:21:22.440 deregulated, decided there was going to be a big pipeline to the East Coast and another one to the

00:21:28.200 West Coast, those pipelines would be full and busy for probably another 30 years, especially with what's

00:21:35.040 going on overseas, because it looks like they're going to be relying on Alberta oil more than they

00:21:40.080 thought they were going to be. Yes. To your point, you said the word acting. And I think that's exactly

00:21:44.820 the right word. I think this is mostly theater. And eventually that curtain will come down and people

00:21:51.420 the lights will come on and people will be just as mad as they were before, if not more. Lastly,

00:21:56.640 Lauren, I wanted to get into it's totally connected with what we're talking about. You mentioned the

00:22:00.920 electricity grid, you mentioned heat pumps, which of course run off of electricity. And that brings us

00:22:05.520 to the looming ban on the sale of normal gasoline and diesel powered cars and trucks. Now, some folks

00:22:14.300 are like, Oh, that's happening in 10 years. No, it is starting in five and a half months, folks.

00:22:21.540 That is when these restrictions start kicking in. That's when it's going to start really warping

00:22:25.540 the market. In fact, if you call up a car dealership who have to deal with stock and

00:22:30.280 availability of cars and trucks, they're probably running into these restrictions already.

00:22:34.620 What I found interesting, Lauren, is that it isn't just this crazy restriction that is coming down

00:22:40.180 on cars and trucks being sold at dealerships, where if they're going to wind up with a whole bunch

00:22:44.180 of EVs or battery powered cars that people don't want to purchase, they're stacking up. It's that the

00:22:49.220 feds are setting up this weird credit system again, where these car sellers get to earn

00:22:55.180 green credits. And if they don't make their quota of sales for that year, they can use

00:23:01.120 some of the credits. Like it sounds like the mess of the second carbon tax over and over

00:23:08.000 again. And you know, people are just getting rich.

00:23:10.700 I think it's way worse. I think it's way worse. The parliamentary budget officer about two years

00:23:16.400 ago tried to determine what it would cost in order to make the liberals, the Trudeau liberals,

00:23:23.280 EV mandate work by 2035, where you're correct. By next year, we have to be 20% electric. By 2030,

00:23:33.360 we have to be 65% electric. And by 2035, we have to be 100% electric. Well, we are now,

00:23:40.820 now that the federal subsidy ended in January, we are about 8% of cars sold in Canada. And that's

00:23:48.800 light trucks to pickup trucks and delivery bans. About 8.7% of those sold in the first quarter of 2025

00:23:57.240 were electric. We're supposed to be at 20% next year. We were never higher than 14%. And I don't

00:24:05.180 see how, even if you doubled those federal subsidies to car buyers, made them 10,000 instead of 5,000.

00:24:14.920 I still don't think you're going to get to 20%. And the manufacturers have all started to scale back

00:24:21.300 their EV production, which means suddenly you have 20% demand for EVs. You don't have 20% supply

00:24:29.420 for EVs. The practical side of all of this is simply, I mean, it's unavoidable. You cannot get

00:24:37.920 away from it. For instance, the estimate is that we would need about 700,000 charging stations in Canada

00:24:45.260 once 2035 comes around and everything is EV. We'd need about 700,000 charging stations. I think

00:24:52.640 that's actually an underestimate, but let's go with 700,000. We currently have 30,000. And if you figure

00:25:01.680 that backwards over the 10 years from 2035 back to today, that means we would have to double the number

00:25:08.920 we already have this year alone. So on top of the 30,000 we have, we'd have to install 60,000.

00:25:17.160 And we would have to install 60,000 every year for 10 years to even come close to the number we're

00:25:24.220 supposed to have when they're all EVs. And then there are other practical problems. I mean, I can

00:25:30.120 go on and on and on about statistics about how people don't want these things. They're not being sold.

00:25:35.440 You take the subsidies away and the market falls by half for these things. But some of the really

00:25:43.120 practical things is, okay, you would need to build probably 12 site sea dam power projects

00:25:51.920 between now and 2035 if we go to fully electric vehicles and they all have to be charged.

00:25:58.400 Well, where are any of those being built? Where is the, they talk about, well, there's, there's no

00:26:05.600 private company stepping forward to build pipelines. There's no private company stepping forward to build

00:26:10.400 their power plants either. And, and so, you know, you're going to have in 10 years, you might have

00:26:17.680 50 or 60% of the fleet in Canada as, as all electric, but where are you going to plug them in? What,

00:26:24.960 where's this, my wife and I decided we have some friends who had their house rewired to 200 amps

00:26:33.200 because you, in order to get to the level two charger, which takes about four and a half or five

00:26:39.200 hours for a car, you have to have 200 in your house. And they went and did it. They don't have

00:26:45.600 an electric, but they thought, you know, the city's only allowing six or eight per neighborhood of these

00:26:50.000 rewirings. So let our house be one of them. So we thought, ah, you know, that makes some sense.

00:26:55.920 We'll do that too. And I, I phoned their electrician and he comes over, he knocks on the door and he's

00:27:02.000 looking at the room and I already tell you now I can't do 200 here. I said, what do you mean you can't?

00:27:08.800 You're all underground power. I can only do 200 if there's, if you're wired above the ground.

00:27:15.040 And he said, so I could put 125 in for you. We got a hundred now, like most houses,

00:27:20.720 I could put 125 in for you, but then I'm going to have to put a regulator on it so that in the middle

00:27:25.920 of the summer, if you're running your air conditioners and you're charging the car,

00:27:29.840 the regulator will shut one of those off. So either you're not going to charge your car or you're going

00:27:35.760 to sweat like a pig in bed because you can't have the air conditioner on. And so I said, okay, well,

00:27:41.040 fine. I don't want to do that, but let's have some fun here. I explained who I was and why I

00:27:46.960 was writing about it. And he said, well, I said, what's this going to cost? He said,

00:27:53.120 about $16,000. Well, who's going to do that? You know, the Transport Canada already came out this

00:28:00.640 morning with this, I guess, well, I guess it actually came out yesterday. It was reported this

00:28:05.360 morning. They have a survey of who would buy electrics as their next vehicle. And no one

00:28:13.120 who makes under about 80,000. And I'm serious when I say no one, 99% of people who make under 80,000

00:28:20.240 would not consider an EV. It is an upper middle class and upper class interest. That's all there is.

00:28:29.120 And you know, everybody we know, we know lots of people have EVs for all of them. It's at very

00:28:35.200 least their second vehicle. And in most cases, it's their third vehicle. And so it's a virtue

00:28:40.160 signal, right? They got some money. It's kind of a fun little gadget. Maybe we'll bomb around town

00:28:47.040 but nobody's taken one into Northern Alberta in January from Edmonton without knowing where

00:28:54.080 they're going to be able to charge or how long it's going to take. I sat next to a guy yesterday,

00:28:59.840 I was in old Didsbury Three Hills, the place where there's going to be a by-elect, one of the three

00:29:05.680 places there's going to be a by-election today. I sat next to a guy who was at a charging station.

00:29:09.920 I was watering my dogs. And I said to you, I said to him, oh, how long have you been here?

00:29:16.960 He said, oh, about 20 minutes. I said, how much longer do you think you're going to be?

00:29:20.160 He said, probably about another 10. And then I'll have the charge that I need to keep on going.

00:29:24.800 I'm not stopping anywhere for half an hour to fill my car. You know, I have three rules about EVs.

00:29:34.480 They have to cost the same to the engine, the power system has to cost the same as an ICE.

00:29:43.440 Right now, they're about $8,000 to $12,000 more expensive than an internal combustion engine.

00:29:49.840 They have to go as far and work as well in the winter. None of them do. And you have to be able

00:29:59.360 to recharge as quickly as I can refuel. And I used to have a truck. It took, you know, about 12 minutes

00:30:05.920 to fill it up and go inside and get some jerky and a Coke and come back out and get in the cab and drive

00:30:12.240 off. I said, our son used to live on the coast. It was an 11 and a half hour drive from our house to

00:30:17.760 his apartment. And I could make one stop with my truck. No, in Blue River.

00:30:27.280 So in the middle of interior BC, I'd stop there. I go in. First, I fill up, I go in, I get my snack

00:30:36.320 and my beverage. And I'd be back on the road in under 15 minutes. Well, you can't do that with not yet.

00:30:43.360 Will there be better batteries come along? I am confident of that. The technology will improve.

00:30:48.000 But then you can talk to me about doing this. You can't tell me now that this is a good idea.

00:30:53.760 And what you just described there is called supply and demand. This is the demand. So people's lives,

00:31:02.960 as Dr. Jordan Peterson has pointed out the obvious, are infinitely complex. You have a million reasons

00:31:10.320 to drive the vehicle that you drove in the past and to drive the vehicle that you're driving now.

00:31:14.800 And how many Canadians do we have that own their own personal vehicles and what they use them for?

00:31:20.000 And the idea that the government, which is made up of individuals who have their own problems,

00:31:25.120 okay, can turn around and start doing this visionary utopia dream program and start dictating how people

00:31:33.920 drive and what energy they use in order to drive is nuts. To your point, just on the energy requirements,

00:31:41.440 Lauren, I sat there and did the raw math. Just the personally owned private vehicles. I'm not talking

00:31:48.640 trucks, forget about delivery vans, privately owned vehicles parked in people's garages right now or

00:31:53.520 your driveway. We would need 14 can-do reactors tomorrow to charge those things. Not talking about

00:32:01.760 transmission lines, charging stations, nothing else. That's all more. 14. Each of those suckers costs

00:32:07.440 around $13 billion to build and 10 years each. So like, we do not have the power. You or I are here

00:32:15.280 in Alberta. And in the wintertime, we get warnings on our phone saying there's going to be a grid outage.

00:32:20.880 Don't use your hairdryer, unplug your toaster. Like, do you think? And that is because we've moved

00:32:28.960 substantially away from coal to natural gas. We could accommodate the demand with natural gas,

00:32:37.680 but now we also have to use wind and solar. And there was a time a year and a half ago in January

00:32:43.920 when it was minus 48 in much of Alberta. And you have to turn the wind turbines off because the

00:32:51.280 blades will freeze and then they'll break off and it causes no end of expense and repair. And of course,

00:32:59.760 it's cold. The sun is kind of sort of out in January, but not really. And it's only out for

00:33:05.760 about eight hours. So you just, you can't do it. Like it's not an ideological thing. It's a practical

00:33:14.240 thing. It's pragmatic. And so that's where we end up. But getting back to the ED mandate for,

00:33:20.560 just imagine, just imagine the federal government saying, we know you want a house,

00:33:28.000 but for the good of mankind and for the planet, everybody really should live in small condos.

00:33:36.080 That's the best way for us to manage our resources and reduce the footprint of people's living

00:33:42.400 experiences. So we're going to deny you a house and insist the only thing you can buy is a condo.

00:33:51.200 It's the same with vehicles. We know you drive 700 kilometers into far Northern Alberta or Northern

00:34:00.800 Ontario, Northern Quebec. And that would make it much easier to have diesel or gasoline powered

00:34:07.920 engines. But for the good of the planet, we don't think you should have a truck to start with. So we

00:34:12.960 think you should buy a small electric vehicle and that's all you're going to be able to buy.

00:34:19.440 Quebec has gone even further than the feds have. Quebec have said that after 2035, you will be unable

00:34:26.240 to buy parts for ICE, for internal combustion engine cars. So you might have one and you're trying to

00:34:34.160 milk it for as many years as you can before you actually have to go and buy an electric.

00:34:38.400 No, no, no. You're going to be unable to buy the replacement parts. So what does that mean? It

00:34:46.160 means everybody in Quebec's going to drive to Ontario or New Brunswick to buy the parts that they need.

00:34:51.520 But nonetheless, it's the mentality of it that says you must do as the government says. And you know

00:34:59.520 what? In a free country, that's pretty damn bold of the government to decide that it can tell us what

00:35:05.600 kind of vehicles we're going to do. You said a mouthful there within a free country. We're just

00:35:08.960 going to wrap up here soon, Lauren. But I just wanted to go over a little bit of your personal

00:35:12.560 anecdote, which is excellent. That personal experience is excellent. So to be clear, you got

00:35:18.000 an electrician over to your house. He said even if he could do it, it would cost about 15 grand.

00:35:23.520 And your stuff's all underground, so no soup for you. And if he did put it in, he would need a regulator

00:35:29.840 put on that thing so that you would get to choose between being able to be mobile to move around in

00:35:35.440 your vehicle, charging it, or air conditioning. Okay. Folks, multiply that across all these millions

00:35:45.200 of Canadians who own private vehicles and their own personal circumstances and lives. This is why

00:35:50.960 the government should never tell you what kind of vehicle you are able to purchase and to drive.

00:35:57.200 Furthermore, the cost alone, if you don't believe me, look, this is Natural Resources Canada. Okay.

00:36:03.680 Go check that out. It's their own website. They're estimating, Lauren, I know you've read the same

00:36:08.800 stuff. They're estimating it's going to cost upwards of $300 billion. Yep. I hate to put, go ahead.

00:36:18.800 And then they commit to that as though it's deciding between having chocolate milk or lemonade at lunch.

00:36:25.840 Like there's no real consequences because it's not their money. They're spending other people's money.

00:36:34.320 And so of course it makes no difference to them and it makes them feel good about themselves. That's

00:36:39.280 the problem with progressives all the time is that they will make the rest of us do stuff so that they

00:36:45.600 can feel good about themselves. They've done the right thing. They're morally superior. They're

00:36:51.760 intellectually more sophisticated than the rest of us. And so they feel entitled to tell us. Well,

00:36:57.440 if they want to go join their own commune in the mountains of the Kootenays, seriously, and grow their

00:37:03.440 own food and go solar, like go barefoot. I grew up on Vancouver Island. Okay. I was around a lot of folks

00:37:09.040 who were living off the land. Go fill your boots. Don't tell other people how to live, especially when

00:37:14.720 we can't afford this. I need to point this out. We have un-money right now. Un-money. We are more

00:37:20.400 than a trillion dollars in debt. The interest we are paying alone on the debt is more than the line

00:37:26.800 item that we spend on national defense. That's how deep we are in debt. And it will within the next two

00:37:34.560 or three years surpass what we spend on health. Yeah. It's a billion dollars a week, folks.

00:37:38.960 Picture a brand new hospital, ready to go, burning down every week. That's how much we're spending on

00:37:47.040 interest on the debt. And these jokers are thinking we're going to be able to throw 300 billion dollars

00:37:52.080 at a project nobody wants. Lauren, lastly, I'm going to get you to make a call here. I think that

00:37:58.160 Carney's just going to run up against darkness in the winter and math here. I think he's going to have

00:38:04.400 to throw this overboard and say, yeah, that was the last guy's plan. We're not doing this anymore,

00:38:08.640 despite all that stuff he wrote in that book. If you read that book, he's more extreme than Guibo.

00:38:14.400 But I think he's just going to have to cut line on this. What do you think is going to happen at this?

00:38:18.720 Well, eventually they will. De Bruzen, Julia De Bruzen, who's the new environment minister,

00:38:24.880 said about 10 days ago that, well, there is some flexibility inside the EV mandate law.

00:38:31.520 I didn't see it when I looked in there, but what they're signaling is that maybe in the next few

00:38:39.920 years we're going to have to scale this back a bit or make some alterations, make some changes.

00:38:44.320 But she has said, De Bruzen said last week, that they're going to come back with their $5,000

00:38:50.480 a vehicle subsidy for buyers of EVs. That's because the federal government has put about $33 or $34

00:38:59.040 billion into EV plants. Ontario and Quebec have put about another $20 billion in there and they have

00:39:05.200 to save that investment. That was a bad gamble is what that was. It was nothing but gambling. It had

00:39:13.360 no investment end to it at all. They're chasing their gambling losses and they're going to try and force

00:39:20.720 us to buy cars that we don't want, EVs, with our own money. It staggers me. This would have been a

00:39:31.600 very, very good way to say, hey, we're different from the Trudeau guys. We've thought these things

00:39:36.480 through. We understand the practical problems, but no, they haven't done that. They're clinging to this

00:39:42.000 for now. And I think why they're clinging to this is they want someone to step forward and get them

00:39:50.080 a pipeline. They wouldn't mind really doing the pipeline as long as they don't have to put money

00:39:54.720 into it. So that's going to make their environmental base angry. So they're going to be able to say,

00:40:00.080 oh, yes, but look, we're doing this whole EV thing. And isn't that wonderful? You like the EV,

00:40:05.920 you like the impact assessment, you like the net zero grid. And they're hoping it'll all sort of

00:40:11.600 balance out in the end with their base. It's ridiculous. I want to go back to the 80s where 0.98

00:40:16.480 we were worried about endangered species, Lorne. Thank you so much for your time today.

00:40:20.880 Okay. That's Lorne Gunter, of course, a guest, a friend here on the Candace Malcolm show and

00:40:26.720 columnist for the Edmonton Sun. Go check out his recent writing where he also talks about this

00:40:31.600 ridiculous battery powered car mandate that is a non-starter. Thank you so much for watching the show.

00:40:36.800 We'll catch you next time.

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Juno News - June 23, 2025

Alberta separatists face FIRST TEST + B.C. blocks pipelines？

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