The Canadian government is planning to euthanize 30 beluga whales. What will they do with them? Is it a good idea to put them back in the ocean? Or should they be released in the wild? We talk about the pros and cons of keeping these animals in captivity.
00:21:41.960Maybe they're perhaps a bit more than what he's saying.
00:21:46.220He's also talked about 15% cuts from spending at certain departments or looking for efficiencies.
00:21:52.600In other words, he's looking to cut the bureaucracy to a certain level.
00:21:55.560Where and how and how soon will be a big question that you have to see an answer to November 4th,
00:22:01.280hopefully, when they actually do present their budget.
00:22:03.600So again, we're looking at increased deficits overall.
00:22:06.840If a school situation isn't getting any better,
00:22:08.500and the government really isn't arguing that it will get better.
00:22:12.060It's just simply playing the game of giving you this operational budget rhetoric and sounding better.
00:22:18.200But in terms of the actual paper, it's getting worse.
00:22:20.920So that's what Canadians need to know is language and rhetoric doesn't always reflect very well.
00:22:26.440And on November 4th will be a great day to discover that because, look, budgets themselves are political.
00:22:31.440We're all thinking about this as a technical detail document with a lot of important information.
00:22:35.540What they show you, how much they show you, and where they show you in that big budget is entirely political.
00:22:42.780I mean, if you were guys who had the true era of budgets, you would hear the words investment, investment in Canadian town, future.
00:22:50.300You're looking at this as if this is a liberal party manifesto with a few graphs every once in a while, which are based entirely on government data.
00:22:58.680So it's not like a completely economic document.
00:23:01.840It is a political document selling the public and some stakeholders and donors on exactly where they're going to be throwing around cash.
00:23:09.220What was the last tagline for the last budget?
00:25:04.040There's plenty of people to go around.
00:25:05.200So first of all, whether you think the budget will pass.
00:25:07.660And then next part of that question was, of course, we saw the last Liberal budget under Trudeau's tenure kind of be the nail in the coffin because it was so bad.
00:25:16.800But as we well know, without a shadow of a doubt, this budget will be worse.
00:25:20.340So I'm wondering whether you think even if the budget does pass, whether the Liberals will – whether they'll be able to gaslight themselves through it and basically just say it's the best thing ever when it's in reality not or whether it could actually eventually kind of turn the tides on them and result in an election in the future even if it doesn't when it actually comes to passing the bill.
00:25:40.880No, this budget will go through for sure for several different reasons.
00:25:44.580Number one, I mean, generally speaking, there's no appetite for an election, right?
00:25:48.720So the Bloc aren't going to vote against it.
00:25:51.360The NDP aren't going to vote against it.
00:25:52.760The NDP are also in the midst of a leadership crisis.
00:25:55.380So, you know, they really don't have any feet to stand on, so to speak.
00:26:00.760And the Conservatives, yeah, they'll vote against it.
00:26:04.740But I think everybody else will vote for the budget.
00:26:07.660It will be – I think it will pass just fine.
00:26:09.320Speaking of voting orientation, I think you guys have heard on the news some rumors around Conservative MPs crossing the floors.
00:26:16.620I don't know if you guys have been following that story.
00:26:18.720I'll tell you one thing on the record perhaps against the character of the show, but I think I have a feeling of one possible target if I have to put a Hollywood bet on it.
00:26:28.680I think there was an MP, Joel Godin, he's a Quebec-area MP that said after Pierre won the leadership election that he found some great difference with him.
00:26:39.040He describes himself more as a red Tory, progressive, Conservative kind of guy, which, again, exists in the party both provincially, on terms of the provincial affiliates, and, of course, at the federal level as well, depending on the region you are.
00:26:50.360And Quebec is one of those regions where to be Conservative, you have to be a bit more Liberal in some cases.
00:26:55.100So, I'm looking at that story with a bit of skepticism because, again, it's always going to be, you know, mainstream media going after Pierre and his team and his credibility.
00:27:05.860I mean, I don't think there's a question at all if he's not going to win.
00:27:08.920That leadership review in January is going to be a walk in the park, I think.
00:27:12.300I just don't see any strong alliance around someone else that could take him down.
00:27:18.500I mean, the strongest thing we saw in 2022 was Jean Charest and his cabal of Quebec loyalists that he had, basically, an entire Francophone branch of the party, plus a few red Tory's around the country.
00:27:37.720And that's Pierre with 68.5, I believe, and the rest split up with Lesley Lewis and Robin Beiber, who you know are more Pierre guys than they are Charest guys.
00:27:47.140So, again, I don't see there's an appetite within the Conservative Party, and that's what matters the most.
00:27:51.260You know, liberals don't have to like Pierre, and Pierre can still become the prime minister, and he can obviously retain the leadership position he has of the party because, again, party membership supports him.
00:28:17.100You'd want the NDP to be stronger if you were the Conservatives for an election because, of course, they generally lost the last election because the NDP were so weak.
00:28:24.140So, the liberals took in all those voters, which is how they lost despite getting such good numbers, right?
00:28:30.220But we can stick with the Conservatives for our next story in a way.
00:28:33.980We'll move over to BC from the Federal Conservatives, but moving over to the BC Conservatives, because, again, Alex, you were all over this, I think.
00:28:41.960The BC Conservative Party is in absolute turmoil, as we well know, and some of the board members are calling on the leader, John Rustad, to resign.
00:28:53.040But, as far as I understand, Alex, he's saying he doesn't plan to do that despite, it looks like we talked about, or Waleed just talked about, perhaps there not being an appetite for Pierre to be replaced.
00:29:04.200But there does seem to be quite an appetite in BC to replace John Rustad because, from my understanding, it seems like the Conservative Party is pretty strong, but their leadership just might not be strong as well, right?
00:29:16.480Oh, I don't know, man. BC politics is so different. It's just such a hodgepodge.
00:29:23.640So, the BC Conservative Party is basically a patchwork version of what used to be the BC United Party, which used to be the Liberal Party.
00:29:34.820So, BC has a very strange set of political, I don't even know how you would describe it, camps.
00:29:42.260So, you tend to have, like, one group in the Lower Mainland that is very radically left, and then you have another camp that is a very wide tent of kind of libertarian hippies and, like, old farmers and basically Alberta people, you know, for lack of a better term.
00:30:01.360So, any party that, like, has to compete with these liberal radical leftists in the city has to have this giant tent, right, full of just crazy people, frankly.
00:30:13.120I'm not trying to be rude or anything. I really like them. That's why I live here.
00:30:16.580But they're just, they're a little eccentric and a little weird, and they tend to have very, very wide-ranging opinions on a whole bunch of different things.
00:30:22.860And so, this is what's happening, I think. That's kind of a top-down perspective on what's happening with the BC Conservative Party.
00:30:28.520For some people in the party, it is too liberal.
00:30:32.400That's why Dallas Brody and Tara Armstrong, I believe is their name, left the party to create the one BC party.
00:30:39.440And for some people, it's too conservative.
00:30:41.500That would probably characterize Amelia Bolte and Eleanor Sturko.
00:30:44.880These are two members that are now sitting as independents.
00:30:46.980Now everybody wants John Rustad to step down.
00:30:51.880John Rustad called Amelia Bolte mentally ill, which is kind of ridiculous, frankly.
00:31:00.040I'm curious to get your guys' opinion on that.
00:31:02.780No, I was just going to ask, because tell me just a bit more about, like, so is the whole board of, like, the party asking him to step down, or is it a bunch of...
00:31:10.800Yeah, seven or eight members have asked him to step down.
00:31:14.100He only has one member on the board that's still supporting him, as I understand it currently.
00:31:19.040And what power do they actually have to push him out?
00:31:22.140Could they force him to step down, or can he kind of just say, I'm not stepping down, like, screw off?
00:31:27.180I feel like because this party was kind of formed out of the ashes as a last-minute thing right before the last provincial election between, like, two other parties,
00:31:36.300that it's not exactly clear what, like, is going on here.
00:31:38.860It's, like, as lawless as Richmond with the Cowichan tribes thing, right?
00:31:43.520I mean, in BC, there's, like, no rules, basically.
00:31:45.600They don't even have property right there.
00:31:54.820Yeah, well, Lee, do you think there's any chance Rustad will step down?
00:31:58.040And as a second prong to that question, if he did, do you think the BC Conservatives would have a better likelihood of actually winning the next provincial election?
00:32:07.660For the first question, I think that definitely there is a strong chance he could resign.
00:32:11.480And I'm thinking about this because I'm looking at provincial politics, and I think third parties or the break-off parties are much more strong, usually speaking.
00:32:18.620I mean, you know, we've only had two parties govern at the federal level, but at the provincial level, we've, you know, the Conservative side for itself has made its face off the Liberal Party, the old Liberal Party that was supposed to fill up for the Conservatives, plus the old resurrected Conservative Party that used to exist, that never really had enough success.
00:32:34.060So, now you have the 1BC party, you have some, you know, former figures, you have all these defectors from his caucus, staff members.
00:32:42.460So, I think what I'm trying to say is the credibility of the breakaway folks, so the amount of them, what positions they previously held, will judge exactly how strong the resistance is against that particular leader.
00:32:56.140I don't think this is a complete rejection of the Conservative Party as it could be.
00:33:00.520I think it's mostly a rejection of Rustad's leadership.
00:33:04.060Again, they haven't taken the Bernier speech yet, where they said the party is too morally and intellectually corrupt to be reformed.
00:33:11.860The party barely existed, so I guess they might still be open-minded in terms of bringing those members and voters and those, you know, supporters back into the Conservative Party fold, which I think is good for the Conservative Party overall.
00:33:23.720They don't want to defy themselves too much, because as you know, BC itself already has a large, strong, loyal, liberal or NDP progressive base.
00:33:31.720I think it's the Conservatives that have to manage themselves a bit better in order to get a half good result against the NDP, which they almost got.
00:33:39.540So, I mean, I think right now, given Kimir Ebi's weakness nationally, his view domestically, I think a lot of people are not thinking about Rustad being the only one that can actually defeat Ebi.
00:33:52.980I think they're open to new leadership.
00:33:55.180I think those that are breaking away have representation.
00:34:00.840There's a lot of outgoing and public resistance to him.
00:34:05.960So, I guess you could say there's an appetite for it, because the politicians themselves are chasing after the appetite in the form of a third party or the form of, you know, sitting as an independent for a while.
00:34:16.480Well, you had Doug Ford deal with something similar, and then you had the Ontario New Blue Party and the Ontario Party.
00:34:23.020But again, those never took out much ground.
00:34:26.280So, therefore, I don't think you have a great resistance internally.
00:34:29.120But in the case of, you know, like let's say the CAC party in Quebec that actually governs the province as well, you have a lot of resistance and defectors there.
00:34:38.280And, of course, that party is saying very low.
00:34:41.900So, I guess you have to look at the indicators of the polling of the party of where the leader sets and how his opponents or his new opponents, his defectors, are doing themselves and how much they represent.
00:34:56.220And I think that the big failure of John Rustad is that the reason that I gave that top-down perspective on BC politics earlier is to establish the fact that if you're going to have an alternative to the NDP or the leftist party in BC, you have to have a very wide tent and a very opening tent to everybody.
00:35:13.680And what he did is he was muzzling people because he didn't like what they said, or he was kicking them out of caucus because he didn't agree with their politics.
00:35:20.840I mean, you're just not going to win that way.
00:35:22.460And so, if you were to run as the leader, it's a fool's errand.
00:35:27.000So, when you say a wide tent, Alex, do you mean in a way that, for example, you couldn't be a big C, strong, right, conservative party?
00:35:34.900You'd kind of have to be in the middle so that you're more on the middle ground so you can kind of take in people that are a bit on the left, take in people that are better on the right and kind of just find that middle ground?
00:39:38.040That's like having a goalie who can score goals.
00:39:40.080I don't know that Torontonians would love him because he leveraged Toronto more or less because he was negotiating with us when he was negotiating with the Dodgers.
00:39:47.520And basically just, in my opinion, used Toronto to leverage his deal and never actually planned to sign here.
00:40:09.080Obviously, this starts on Friday, guys.
00:40:11.080And it'll be pretty good, especially because the Blue Jays, their best hitter and one of the best hitters in the league, if not the second best hitter in the league, I think, had the second most hits.
00:41:02.780Yeah, they had more wins, so they get the advantage.
00:41:05.080But we saw Pierre Palliev at the games already against the Yankees there.
00:41:08.240So it'll be interesting to see if he goes to another game and if he's just in the crowd again.
00:41:12.300Because imagine, guys, you go to the ball game and there's Pierre.
00:41:14.860But one other thing I'll mention is Kearney is apparently going to one of the Jays' practice, which is very, very, very, very bad because of the Kearney curse.
00:41:23.520I don't know if you guys know what happened in Edmonton last year.