Juno News - Liberals cast doubt on reported pipeline deal

00:00:00.000 And welcome to Straight Up. I am your host, Mark Petroni. What a difference a day makes.

00:00:08.960 Just one day after the Kearney government leaked a story to the media suggesting a pipeline

00:00:13.500 construction deal with Alberta was imminent, Liberal MPs have now denied that any such thing

00:00:20.280 is in the works. Yesterday's report suggested an agreement was close, greenlighting a pipeline

00:00:25.920 from Alberta to the northern B.C. coastline. The deal would grant exemptions to the tanker

00:00:33.760 ban that now is in place, allowing the transport of crude to markets in Asia. But now a procession

00:00:40.360 of Liberal climate hardliners is throwing cold water on the news.

00:00:50.180 You've heard the Prime Minister, you've heard Minister LeBlanc say a number of times publicly

00:00:54.660 that for any projects to materialize, those projects will have to be made with the accord,

00:01:01.700 the agreement of provinces.

00:01:04.020 I think the Prime Minister was pretty clear that projects would need the support of the

00:01:08.380 jurisdictions in which they're being built. So I think there's got to be some conversations

00:01:11.360 with the Premier. And in terms of First Nations, I mean, there needs to be significant support.

00:01:17.220 It doesn't necessarily have to be unanimous. It wasn't in the case of Trans Mountain, but

00:01:20.340 there needs to be significant support. And at present time, I don't think there is.

00:01:23.480 And Alberta would, you know, need to do some of the other elements that the government is

00:01:29.480 looking to execute on, including strengthening the carbon price.

00:01:32.980 Do you think there's any openness among your constituents for the federal government to

00:01:36.920 lift or create any exemptions to that oil tanker moratorium?

00:01:40.720 I'd say that what I've heard from constituents is very much in line with what the Premier

00:01:45.080 V has said very publicly about that.

00:01:47.080 There has to be Indigenous consent. The provinces impact activity have to be on board. And those

00:01:52.080 are the conditions. And right now I don't see that. It's all hypothetical right now.

00:01:56.080 But the government's position has been clear that the provinces have to consent and that

00:01:59.080 First Nations have to consent before any project will go ahead. 0.66

00:02:01.080 Till there's a consent from Indigenous people and till there's a province of 0.96

00:02:09.080 Australia online with it, they will be in the back. My industry has been very clear

00:02:15.080 till those conditions are met, they will not be in the back.

00:02:19.080 Paul singing from the same song sheet. Meantime, the Premier of British Columbia, David Evie says,

00:02:25.080 unless the feds use legal means to steamroll the project past the province's objections,

00:02:31.080 there will be no pipeline.

00:02:32.080 I'll point out what is obvious to me and has yet to fully sink in for some individuals,

00:02:40.080 which is that there is no pipeline project across the north. There is no route. There is no proponent.

00:02:48.080 There is no financing. Simply because the Premier of Alberta would like to get rid of the oil tanker ban

00:02:56.080 on the north coast does not mean that anybody wants to build this pipeline.

00:03:00.080 I don't see any prospect of a pipeline unless it is fully taxpayer funded and the federal government forces it through

00:03:07.080 over provincial and Indigenous objections.

00:03:10.080 Okay, so why then is the government leaking stories to the Globe and Mail about an imminent pipeline construction deal with Alberta?

00:03:17.080 Well, that doesn't make any sense, does it?

00:03:19.080 Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev says if the Karni government does push this project forward,

00:03:25.080 it should admit that it was wrong to cancel a similar project nine years ago.

00:03:29.080 June of 2014, the Conservative government approved a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific.

00:03:35.080 November 29th, 2016, this Liberal government cancelled that pipeline ordering the Energy Board to dismiss it.

00:03:42.080 March 27th, 2021, this current Liberal Prime Minister said that he did not, that he supported cancelling the pipeline.

00:03:51.080 We're hoping the Prime Minister will announce that he was wrong and that the Liberal government was wrong to kill the Northern Gateway pipeline that had been approved back in 2014.

00:04:01.080 John Robson has some thoughts on all of this. He'll be joining us a few minutes from now.

00:04:06.080 Well, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada says any hopes of reopening trade talks between the two countries may depend on Canada buying more F-35 fighter jets.

00:04:16.080 Peter Hoekstra has urged Canada to buy up to 88 of the jets from Lockheed Martin instead of switching over to Sweden's Gripen fighter jet.

00:04:26.080 We have a framework, Ambassador, that, you know, the USMC or Kuzma, as we like to call it here.

00:04:31.080 What is your, what's your most optimistic view of what the next iteration of that agreement will look like?

00:04:36.080 Well, on a number of these issues, we are, we're actually waiting to see exactly where the Canadian government is going to come out on this.

00:04:46.080 Like I said, on the F-35, we've got all kinds of people and companies that are involved.

00:04:51.080 We've got to figure out exactly, you know, what is, we don't, we need to know what it means that you're going to build a Canadian defense infrastructure.

00:05:04.080 The Trump administration broke off trade talks with Canada last month when Ontario ran an anti-tariff ad on U.S. network television and upset the Trump administration.

00:05:16.080 A senior government bureaucrat says Prime Minister Carney should not have to sell off his stock investment because the country really needs a guy like him right now.

00:05:27.080 Carney's multi-million dollar investment may put him in a conflict of interest.

00:05:32.080 But Michael Sabia, he's the clerk of the Privy Council, says forcing such a talented man like Carney to do such a thing is complicated.

00:05:40.080 When a person runs for prime minister and is that conflicted, should they not divest themselves of all of the assets to ensure that we can have public confidence, restore public confidence that the person who is holding the highest office in the land is not benefiting from decisions that are being made, whether they're on a general basis, given the policy announcements that have been made.

00:06:06.080 And when you layer it down to the specifics, there is the potential for profit to be made.

00:06:12.080 We need access to the best, the best talent that this country can provide.

00:06:16.080 That, I think, requires careful judgment about striking a balance between, on the one hand, the very legitimate point you make with respect to confidence and accountability and transparency, which is what the screen is all about and why we are being so diligent and so careful about that screen.

00:06:36.080 Because I endorse 100% the importance of those principles in the eyes of Canadians.

00:06:43.080 On the other hand, we also have to be able to get the best talent that we can because Canada needs it.

00:06:48.080 You get a great resume, you don't have to worry about stuff like conflicts of interest.

00:06:53.080 Depending on where and how the government decides to spend billions of tax dollars, Carney stands to enrich himself and his former friends and employer at Brookfield Asset Management to the tune of billions.

00:07:06.080 And we're now joined by John Robson, who's a journalist, historian and documentary filmmaker.

00:07:11.080 John, welcome.

00:07:12.080 Thank you.

00:07:13.080 All right, let's look at what's taken place over the last 48 hours or so.

00:07:18.080 So we've had the Globe and Mail story coming out, you know, got everybody excited.

00:07:23.080 A lot of people in Alberta saying, oh, finally, there's a deal, you know, in the works, a real deal that would mean a pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta, right to the Pacific coast through Northern BC.

00:07:34.080 You know, the government is committed to it today.

00:07:38.080 Very different story.

00:07:39.080 We're seeing a video of, videos of procession of, of liberals coming out.

00:07:44.080 Many of them, you know, are blinders as far as the climate goes, saying no way.

00:07:50.080 I mean, we're not going to push this past opposition in British Columbia.

00:07:54.080 We have to deal with the indigenous communities. 1.00

00:07:57.080 We have to deal with, you know, extra measures that Alberta is going to have to undertake in order to make oil more palatable to the climate zealots.

00:08:07.080 What's going on here?

00:08:09.080 Yeah, well, for my money, journalism in this country could spend more time writing about things that did happen and less time writing about things that insiders say might be going to happen.

00:08:20.080 But if they will insist on doing the latter, they ought to do it with a little more sense of what is actually possible.

00:08:28.080 I mean, this ties into this larger, weird phenomenon of the major projects office.

00:08:34.080 And so we, in Canada, it's very hard to build major projects.

00:08:37.080 So the government creates a major projects office.

00:08:39.080 And if you were naive, you'd assume that what would then happen is that if a firm wanted to engage in a major project, they would go to the major projects office to seek approval.

00:08:50.080 But instead, the prime minister approves things for the major projects office to we know not what.

00:08:55.080 Because the next question is, if the prime minister sends something, blesses it, anoints it, and sends it off to the MPO, do they have the power to make it happen?

00:09:05.080 So suppose that Mark Carney and Danielle Smith were to say, woo, a pipeline shall be built.

00:09:11.080 How does that change the fact that you can't build a pipeline unless you can get through all these regulatory hurdles and the problem that's half regulatory and half sort of political of getting consent from every single Aboriginal group who is or might conceivably be affected by it?

00:09:29.080 Including now we're getting land claims from American Aboriginal groups who claim that their ancestors once did something on this territory.

00:09:36.080 So the idea that if Mark Carney and Danielle Smith said, let there be pipeline, there would be pipeline, was always silly.

00:09:45.080 And then on top of that, you have this problem, as you mentioned about all these liberal MPs marching out to go, whoa, boo, hiss down with fossil fuels, down with pipelines.

00:09:53.080 That the people, especially the federal liberal caucus, are trying to be more sane about climate, energy, and the economy.

00:10:02.080 But their idea of being more sane isn't that they have ideas that don't make sense, so they should change their ideas.

00:10:07.080 What they want to do is have the same ideas, but have them work better.

00:10:10.080 And then, of course, you've got the problem that the BC government doesn't think it's insane on the climate file.

00:10:16.080 So they're just having the same ideas they've always had, which is that oil is bad and energy should fall from the sky.

00:10:23.080 And again, if the media were doing a somewhat better job, they'd be very skeptical of all this stuff.

00:10:28.080 One of the things I really dislike, again, about the way journalism is done in this country, by the legacy media in particular, is the hushed tones in which they discuss everything that some politician babbled as though it were necessarily wise and sensible. 0.99

00:10:42.080 When a lot of it is idiotic. 1.00

00:10:44.080 And if they admitted that the people who govern us are, in substantial measure, actual idiots, then, of course, they'd have to admit that they'd spent their whole lifetime covering idiocy and hadn't noticed it. 1.00

00:10:54.080 They had given it an importance it didn't deserve, and that would be bad on them. 0.99

00:10:58.080 But their job is to tell us what's happening, not what they wish was happening.

00:11:02.080 And so you get a story like Kearney-Smith close to pipeline deal, and almost everything about it is wrong, except the fact that the prime minister is indeed called Kearney and the premier of Alberta is actually called Smith.

00:11:14.080 But if you read those stories, you aren't better informed than people who don't read them.

00:11:18.080 You're worse informed.

00:11:19.080 And that, it seems to me, is a scathing comment on journalism, not to mention, once you look behind the scenes, on the politics of this country, where the prime minister and the premier are trying to reach a deal which, if they did reach it, wouldn't do anything.

00:11:32.080 As for whether Danielle Smith is being played, I mean, the weird thing about her is that she's always actually been in on the climate cult, right?

00:11:39.080 Danielle Smith is like, we've got to get to net zero.

00:11:41.080 You know, we've got a carbon capture storage.

00:11:43.080 And I've had this argument with her.

00:11:45.080 I said, you know, we should debate the science.

00:11:47.080 And she's, John, we lost that argument years ago, when in fact, you never dared to have it.

00:11:52.080 But she believes in this stuff.

00:11:53.080 She thinks we can take carbon out of the air and stick it in a hole in the ground and it will stay there.

00:11:57.080 And she thinks we have to.

00:11:59.080 So in a sense, she's playing herself here.

00:12:01.080 And as usual, that's not going very well.

00:12:04.080 No, but I think that according to the globe, anyway, these were highly placed government sources.

00:12:10.080 And I think our Kearney people who leaked that story to the Globe and Mail knowing full well that they would run it.

00:12:16.080 And that it would then be basically slaughtered the following day by a procession of liberals who say, no way, Jose, nothing's changed.

00:12:27.080 I mean, what you read between the lines here is that the government was prepared to force this pipeline through.

00:12:34.080 You know, past British Columbia's objections.

00:12:38.080 And in fact, Evie said the same things that unless they're prepared to, you know, steamroll this thing, there's going to be no pipeline.

00:12:46.080 But I think if you're going to do a story about the fact that there's a deal imminent, then, you know, the subtext there is that the government is prepared to do whatever it takes to make that pipeline go through.

00:12:58.080 And whether, you know, British Columbia wants it or not.

00:13:02.080 So that's the that's the sense I got that.

00:13:05.080 And that it went on talking about the exemptions to a tanker traffic ban, you know, along the West Coast.

00:13:13.080 So there were aspects about the story enough there that made you think that the government was committed to doing this thing.

00:13:19.080 And that's why it kind of surprised some people and shocked some people when you had liberal MP after liberal MP coming out and saying, no, this is BS.

00:13:28.080 Nothing's changed.

00:13:29.080 We're not going to do it.

00:13:30.080 You know, over the objections of British Columbia, we still have to negotiate some trade deals of some deal with the indigenous people.

00:13:37.080 We still have to force Alberta to up its game as far as, you know, climate, carbon capture and all that sort of thing.

00:13:44.080 So to me, it's a strange thing.

00:13:47.080 You know, there's no leak out of the government to the Globe and Mail that isn't sanctioned from on high.

00:13:52.080 And this was and I'm just trying to figure out exactly what they're on, whether they're gaslighting people, whether they want to make it look like they do want a pipeline.

00:14:00.080 But then, you know, shrug their shoulders after the fact and say, well, we we really can't do it without B.C. going along.

00:14:06.080 To me, they want to have it on both sides because they know a lot of Canadians do want a pipeline.

00:14:11.080 But they understand that this is a question of increasing resource wealth to the country, that that money is going to filter right across the country.

00:14:19.080 But, you know, instead of doing that, I think that playing a duplicitous game, the current government is, I think, on one hand, they want to look like they're pushing this thing.

00:14:27.080 And on the other hand, they don't want to push this thing at all.

00:14:31.080 That's what I think. What would say you?

00:14:34.080 I think that it's a mistake to assume these people are cleverer than they look.

00:14:38.080 I agree with you that this did come from the top, right?

00:14:40.080 These unnamed sources are almost certainly a guy the prime minister told to tell us this thing.

00:14:45.080 But again, one of the things you have to understand about Mark Carney is that he's not a practical measures guy.

00:14:51.080 He's made himself rich, famous and internationally influential by talking in highfalutin abstractions like Davos man rhetoric, these long polysyllabic catalyzing the leverage of the transformation kind of stuff.

00:15:05.080 He hasn't done it by actually accomplishing things.

00:15:08.080 And so to assume that he would know what specifically you'd have to manage to do to get a pipeline built is to give the man too much credit.

00:15:18.080 And by the way, here, some people think I nitpick, but I'm going to say this because it is important.

00:15:23.080 It's not the government. It's the Carney ministry.

00:15:27.080 It's the cabinet, the top of the executive branch saying we want this to happen.

00:15:33.080 But there's a whole government out there. There's legislature, there's a judiciary and there's a bureaucracy.

00:15:39.080 And these people are not obliged to do what the prime minister says.

00:15:43.080 In many cases, in fact, the laws say they have to do certain things, even if the prime minister says don't do them.

00:15:49.080 And there are rules about getting pipelines approved.

00:15:53.080 There are all kinds. I mean, as everybody knows, there's this huge tangle of regulations.

00:15:57.080 It's why the prime minister is now off in the UAE trying to get them to invest here because Canadian firms don't want to.

00:16:02.080 Neither do Americans. Neither does anybody who's tried it because it's a nightmare. 1.00

00:16:06.080 And these rules exist, even if Mark Carney says, I do not believe these rules should exist.

00:16:10.080 And when you talk about, you know, do whatever it takes or bulldoze or this or that.

00:16:14.080 But technically, you have to get regulatory agencies to issue rulings.

00:16:19.080 You and then people challenge them in court and then the judges may say, no, it doesn't meet the standards.

00:16:25.080 And if the judge says that, you can't just build it anyway.

00:16:28.080 We do have the rule of law in this country.

00:16:30.080 And again, we have this very sensitive problem that if Aboriginal groups say, boo hoo, you can't do that.

00:16:34.080 This is the land where my great great grandfather fished once.

00:16:37.080 They're not just going to send in the tanks, right?

00:16:41.080 This stops projects, stops them cold.

00:16:44.080 You know, they may send in cops on horseback against the trekkers convoy, but they're not going to do it against Aboriginals out in the wilds of BC.

00:16:52.080 The optics of it and to their own self-understanding of who and what they are, they can't do that.

00:16:58.080 So if Aboriginal groups are opposed to building a pipeline in this country, it won't get built.

00:17:03.080 And there's just there's nothing the Prime Minister can do about that.

00:17:06.080 But this is the key point. He doesn't know that.

00:17:09.080 Mark Carney thinks that if he and his like-minded, noble, august persons say, let it be in such a manner, you know, that it's just that it just happens, right?

00:17:20.080 They spent 20 years flying around the world doing that and came home with $2,000 shoes.

00:17:26.080 He doesn't understand how government works.

00:17:29.080 He's not interested in how government works.

00:17:31.080 And that's a problem.

00:17:32.080 If you look at people who get put in cabinet, you think to yourself, what actually qualifies them to fill the post of minister of whatever they just got parachuted into?

00:17:41.080 How much do they know about the workings of the bureaucracy?

00:17:43.080 How much do they understand the regulatory regime?

00:17:46.080 How experienced are they at drafting and revising legislation?

00:17:49.080 And the toolbox is just empty.

00:17:52.080 And that's why you get a lot of high-flown talk.

00:17:55.080 We've had a 10-year terrible productivity crisis, right?

00:17:59.080 People don't want to invest in this country.

00:18:01.080 They haven't managed to fix it.

00:18:02.080 And I guess in BC, they've only just now noticed that if they impose an EV mandate that's harsher than the rest of the country, then people will buy cars in other provinces.

00:18:11.080 Apparently, this didn't occur to them for the better part of 10 years.

00:18:14.080 And then you've got the federal government pausing their EV mandate in order to think about what?

00:18:21.080 What are they thinking about?

00:18:23.080 It's just baffling to me.

00:18:25.080 What argument had they previously not considered that they now think they better look at or had previously rejected, but now they're revisiting, thinking maybe there was more to it than what was said?

00:18:34.080 You know, they talk again in this pompous, gassy way that they go on and on and on because they've learned this protective rhetorical coding that prevents anybody from asking you what you actually think you're talking about.

00:18:47.080 But what do they actually think they're talking about? Canadians don't want EVs. EVs don't work very well.

00:18:51.080 And again, when the government does manage to dump billions of dollars into subsidizing some factory, the odds are 50-50.

00:18:57.080 They're talking about 100 years from now, and then the thing goes broke in 10 months.

00:19:01.080 They don't know what they're doing. They don't know how anything works.

00:19:04.080 They are good at politics, or at least they're better than their rivals, but they're not good at governing because it's the only profession, right?

00:19:11.080 You know, how do you get to be a plumber? By proving that you know how to plumb, right?

00:19:15.080 How do you get to be a doctor? By proving that you know how to do medicine.

00:19:18.080 How do you get to govern? By proving that you know how to do politics.

00:19:22.080 And they're very different skills. Politics involves making wildly implausible promises in ways that sound good and hide the fact that you don't know how to do it.

00:19:31.080 Governance consists of actually getting results. It's a completely different skill set.

00:19:36.080 And government in Canada is broken. It's just amazing, right?

00:19:39.080 There was this latest thing about these patrol boats that have to be retired because they were terrible.

00:19:43.080 And, you know, there was some other procurement story. I'm sorry.

00:19:46.080 The details allude me that just broke where, again, they just utterly bungled it and didn't know what they were doing.

00:19:51.080 You know, nothing works really in this country with terrible waiting lists and every election, oh, we're going to get rid of waiting lists.

00:19:58.080 And then it's like, oh, they're still there. Well, what was your plan for getting rid of them?

00:20:01.080 Well, it was to say we're going to get rid of waiting lists.

00:20:04.080 They didn't. They don't like we talk about Canada's health system. Oh, it's not like those awful Americans.

00:20:09.080 But if you ask a politician who's a defender of our system, why don't we do it more like Switzerland or Australia?

00:20:16.080 What you will discover is they haven't got a clue what Switzerland does.

00:20:20.080 They haven't got a clue what Australia does. 0.50

00:20:22.080 People can be on the health care file in this country for a decade and be a go to source for the media.

00:20:27.080 And they have no idea what is being done in other advanced countries where they have universal coverage, but they don't have waiting lists because they allow private insurance.

00:20:37.080 It's so simple, but it's not that they disagree with it. They don't know about it.

00:20:42.080 And we just, we need to stop pretending our politicians know things because it's giving us this incredibly feeble and infuriating system of government or like the CRA, right?

00:20:53.080 Where they, the largest expansion of any part of the bureaucracy, almost 50% more people than when Trudeau came into office and they still can't answer the phone.

00:21:02.080 That's so true. Since you brought up the issue of procurement rather, I might as well ask you about the F-35 issue.

00:21:10.080 Now we've had the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, come out and basically tie the reopening of trade talks, which of course have been off until, since October 23rd, with the procurement of F-35s.

00:21:27.080 Now it's out that, you know, we're kicking the tires on this Swedish aircraft, this fighter jet, the Gripen.

00:21:34.080 And Hoekstra says, oh, by the way, you know, you should buy the 88 that you originally committed to buying or looked at buying from Lockheed Martin.

00:21:45.080 I think we're on the hook for 16, but not the rest. And so he's, he's tying the two in. I mean, I've saw, I've seen some of the reaction from people who say this is a kind of rigmanship.

00:21:58.080 This is extortion and we're, you know, they're blackmailing us into buying their planes.

00:22:04.080 But I think, you know, we'll buy the best planes. I mean, how do you see this issue playing out?

00:22:10.080 In all the usual idiotic ways, we will eventually end up buying F-35s because, oh, we're committed to and we've annoyed the United States quite enough.

00:22:20.300 But you remember the idea here was that these things would be our go-to fighter aircraft for 40 years. 0.73

00:22:26.160 And so this is like forming a plan in 1918 to have biplanes in the Battle of Britain, except that technology is moving faster these days.

00:22:38.020 It's clear from what's happening in Ukraine that the future of warfare, including aerial warfare, is unmanned drones.

00:22:44.220 Manned fighter aircraft are the past. They're not the future. 0.99

00:22:48.580 And by the time we actually get these planes, you know, A, the Chinese will have invaded Taiwan and will have gone, oh, oh, isn't it awful? 1.00

00:22:55.880 And they'll be obsolete. It's ridiculous that we've been thinking of buying them.

00:22:59.900 We should be going with drones. That's where things are going.

00:23:04.660 They can do all kinds of things that manned fighter aircraft can't do because one thing, you don't have to protect the pilot against all the G-forces. 0.97

00:23:11.520 We're completely in the wrong market. And we can't make a decision.

00:23:19.180 How long has this been going on for? Decades. Decades. And where are the airplanes?

00:23:26.000 They're nowhere. That's what you're talking about government in this country being broken.

00:23:28.900 The people who run this country know how to talk. They know how to leak to the Globe and Mail.

00:23:32.240 They know how to sound pompous. They don't know how to buy an airplane. 0.77

00:23:36.480 And we've been through this on procurement after procurement. It's not just bad luck on this one or the politics of it.

00:23:43.060 Over and over and over again, it takes us decades. Look at our frigates.

00:23:46.620 Our frigates are decades old. They're rusted out. We bought used diesel submarines from the UK.

00:23:53.460 Recently, D&D put out this press release about how this one they'd managed to cobble together.

00:23:57.060 It's the best submarine in our fleet. It's the only submarine in our fleet.

00:24:01.740 And they're not embarrassed. They put this kind of thing in a press release and they don't get called out on it.

00:24:07.420 But what they can't do is get us submarines. Right?

00:24:10.940 Our Navy has no ships. Our Air Force has no planes.

00:24:14.820 Our Army has no soldiers. And if it did have soldiers, it couldn't give them weapons.

00:24:19.540 If there was a major conflict, Canada could not put a thousand people in the field able to fight.

00:24:26.260 We literally could not. 1.00

00:24:27.820 And yet, the national debate about defense never focuses on the fact that our military capability has collapsed because it's in the hands of idiots. 1.00

00:24:37.900 And that is a cross party. Stephen Harper was no better. 1.00

00:24:41.600 You know, Jack Ranassene wrote a who killed the Canadian military.

00:24:43.940 It feels like it was 30 years ago now.

00:24:45.780 And the Canadian military has been dead ever since.

00:24:47.880 And so what have we got now?

00:24:49.120 They're going to give public servants a week of training in firearms, truck handling, and there was something else.

00:24:55.500 I even drone. I think it was, I was managing drones.

00:24:58.060 And then we would add 400,000 people to the reserve.

00:25:01.060 Really? You're going to go to war with people who've had a week's training in three different areas?

00:25:06.980 It's laughable.

00:25:07.900 But they get away with it because they don't get called out on the citizens, but let them do it.

00:25:11.920 The mainstream media lets them do it.

00:25:13.560 And now the elbows-up crowd says we should buy the Swedish planes in order to stick it to Trump.

00:25:20.240 I mean, that's their logic for going with the Saab plane.

00:25:24.840 You know, we want to do that because Trump.

00:25:27.500 It's just bizarre.

00:25:29.080 Yeah, the purpose of defense policy isn't to create jobs, and it's not to poke the American president in the eye.

00:25:34.140 It's to defend the realm of Canada.

00:25:37.660 Yep, absolutely.

00:25:38.500 John, how do people consume your content online and beyond?

00:25:43.720 Well, the main thing is the Climate Discussion Nexus.

00:25:47.400 That's climatediscussionnexus.com.

00:25:49.640 That's obviously on climate.

00:25:51.340 And for the rest of it, my website is johnrobson.ca.

00:25:55.720 Fantastic.

00:25:56.300 Thank you so much for coming on the show, John.

00:25:58.100 We appreciate it.

00:25:58.740 Always a pleasure.

00:26:01.140 And that is it for this edition of Straight Up.

00:26:03.280 Appreciate you tuning in, my friends.

00:26:04.680 Let's do it again soon, shall we?

00:26:06.360 Bye-bye for now.

00:26:08.500 Bye-bye.

Juno News - November 20, 2025

Liberals cast doubt on reported pipeline deal

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