Juno News - Victoria school’s unpronounceable name draws confusion

00:00:00.480 there's so much going on this week so school must be back because i already have to go pick my kid

00:00:04.800 up because he's sick schools are germ factory petri dishes and then later this week uh we've

00:00:11.280 got canada strong and free but it's the mini version that's happening in calgary so that's

00:00:16.000 going to be super busy and i'm super excited because we just got brand new bumper stickers

00:00:20.560 made and you guys are going to like this it's stop government funded media so yeah chris i'll

00:00:26.560 have to shoot you a text if i'm driving in edmonton and see any of those uh stickers on the back of

00:00:30.640 cars or trucks probably yeah i might be distributing them under windshields windshield wipers in the

00:00:36.640 parking lot like allegedly somebody might do that it doesn't necessarily have to be me

00:00:41.920 uh alex what's happening in your neck of the woods same old crime violence etc yeah everywhere

00:00:51.600 yeah kind of hiding from it yeah speaking of it happening everywhere uh we got a lot to cover

00:00:56.480 on this show so let's get rolling welcome to off the record my name is chris sims i'm the alberta

00:01:05.680 director for the canadian taxpayers federation thank you so much for joining us i'm guest hosting today

00:01:10.800 if you have not done so remember to like and subscribe to this video most importantly share

00:01:16.880 this with your friends who need a big dose of red pills all right joining me now are two of my good

00:01:22.320 friends isaac and alex fellas we got a lot to go over here i wanted to start off the top with the

00:01:27.680 easy stuff from the taxpayers federation one this is a little bit of inside baseball but just bear with

00:01:33.200 me i know the viewers do like a little bit of tea that happens in newsrooms okay so in what i would

00:01:39.280 call normal newsrooms before they started taking government funding okay so like ctv global the newspapers

00:01:46.400 there was this awards gala that happened every year the rtndas okay radio television newspaper etc so

00:01:53.200 it's journalism awards pretty much everybody in the newsroom called them the cbc awards and that's

00:02:00.320 because it was only the cbc that had the time and the money to actually enter this stuff and they almost

00:02:08.960 always won i'll tell you a quick little story when i was one of the national producers at ctv there was a

00:02:14.960 guy who was our long time anchor for decades who was retiring that year and we were all told hey

00:02:21.040 they're actually going to give it to lloyd this year so everybody put in some effort stop the six

00:02:25.760 things that you're doing and and put in effort they still gave it to cbc they still gave the anchor

00:02:32.240 award to the cbc even though they knew the other guy was retiring so the reason i'm jumping on this real

00:02:37.840 quick uh do you have you guys have experience with this stuff happening where you've seen the cbc

00:02:42.800 handing out hardware to itself handing out awards to itself

00:02:48.560 uh not particularly chris but i mean at the end of the day when you get 1.4 billion dollars

00:02:54.560 as an organization how does anyone else compete with you especially organizations like true north

00:03:00.720 like juno that receive zero taxpayer funding zero versus 1.4 billion i mean this is like i guess a

00:03:07.040 good analogy would be baseball historically the yankees are so rich and just have so many millions

00:03:12.640 or billions of dollars versus like small town teams like the athletics which the the show moneyball was

00:03:18.640 made off uh at the very popular film that everyone knows of because they figured out how to use

00:03:24.320 mathematics to to find uh good players instead of uh just paying them 50 million dollars a year but uh

00:03:31.200 yeah no just to touch on this awards chris as you said the cbc spent almost a hundred thousand dollars to

00:03:37.360 to pat itself on the back and give itself awards i mean it's crazy and you know it's just uh really a

00:03:43.520 monopoly of sorts because uh as i said no other news organizations can compete and then and then

00:03:49.120 the cbc says ah you can't compete whatever we'll just give ourselves all these awards and it's on

00:03:53.200 the tax paradigm anyway so who cares yeah exactly now credit where it's due it was my prairie

00:03:58.320 colleague gage haubrick okay he's the prairie director for the taxpayers federation and i'm not

00:04:02.960 going to name her but a little birdie reporter who works for a private newsroom in manitoba said you

00:04:09.440 know what we all call these things the cbc awards i wonder how much money we actually spend on this so

00:04:15.520 gage being the thoughtful young man that he is put in freedom of information requests he got the

00:04:20.880 documents and yeah it's almost a hundred thousand dollars over the last few years that the state

00:04:26.560 broadcaster has spent of your money in order to fly itself to this awards gala they have entry fees

00:04:33.120 for all other stuff and then they get to go sip champagne and hand out trophies to each other

00:04:38.880 on your dime again if this were a private company nobody would care nobody would care like give

00:04:44.560 yourself golden pig statues we don't care but if it's on taxpayers dime this is really gross and

00:04:49.920 i think it's just typical the cbc all right let's jump into we've got electric vehicles on the mind again

00:04:57.680 so as folks know okay the liberal slash carny government is very quickly going to start tightening

00:05:03.600 the noose on the sale of normal gasoline and diesel powered vehicles so people often refer to it as the

00:05:10.000 ev mandate but i think that slips off the narrative table too much what he's going to do is ban the sale

00:05:15.840 of normal cars and trucks that's starting in like five months time in five months time 20 of new sales

00:05:22.400 from dealership lots have got to be battery powered and so here we go the latest is northvolt's

00:05:28.720 electric vehicle plant is going to be getting its funding pulled from the quebec government

00:05:34.720 so this is a really big deal because the government of quebec had already promised it money

00:05:39.840 for this north northvolt battery plant and it was already giving it money so quebec taxpayers are out

00:05:45.920 which is not great now the good news is is as far as we can tell we've put in some research requests

00:05:52.640 as far as we can tell federal taxpayers aren't on the hook yet because they were just promised money

00:06:00.400 apparently the money hadn't gone through yet from ottawa to northvolt i hope that's true but that's a

00:06:06.720 little bit of the silver lining here um either isaac or alex do you guys think this whole ev mandate

00:06:12.320 thing like i think they're going to hit the math wall like isaac just described with baseball like they

00:06:18.240 just can't do this like we don't have the money or the electricity to do this thing yeah i'll touch

00:06:23.040 on evs more broadly chris because i have there's so many problems with this mandate uh mathematically

00:06:29.120 of course we saw the liberals is uh funding program for evs uh end at the start of the year and we saw

00:06:35.440 ev sales plummet while normal gas ice cars uh rose of course quite notably i think it was 35 year over

00:06:42.400 year and evs just plummeted uh and then i mean there's so many problems with this we we see

00:06:48.000 we have a hundred percent tariff on chinese made evs so we don't want cheap evs here but everyone's

00:06:52.880 going to be forced to buy them i i don't understand how those two things could be happening at once and

00:06:57.040 then it gets worse of course then china is tariffing our canola industry i think a 47 billion

00:07:03.280 dollar annual industry in in retaliation to those uh ev tariffs so the the the government can't have

00:07:09.920 these two things be true at once they clearly don't want cheap evs available to canadians or they

00:07:14.160 wouldn't be tariffing them from china who makes a cheap ev we don't make evs in canada generally

00:07:20.160 uh alberta's environment minister rebecca schultz uh last month i think highlighted that

00:07:25.280 uh there was a a very small amount of evs produced in canada it would even cover alberta's portion of

00:07:31.600 the electrical mandate at the 20 threshold which comes in next year let alone the 100 no no new gas

00:07:38.800 cars uh to be sold in 2035. so i mean there's just so many problems and it really feels like

00:07:44.480 none of the liberals's mandates are lining up here and they're not really uh working collaboratively

00:07:49.680 uh except that they all are going to punish canadians financially alex i'll let you jump in on this

00:07:56.480 yeah i'm just confused so um it feels like a bit of a glitch in the matrix to some extent

00:08:01.840 because the canadian government under carney seems very china friendly yeah um so why do we not want

00:08:10.000 chinese electric vehicles if we're both china friendly and we're looking to switch everybody

00:08:14.880 over to electric vehicles does anybody have a good answer to that well if my cynical brain is working

00:08:23.920 it would be something along the lines of this government doesn't care about foreign influence

00:08:30.880 or about uh chinese police stations setting up shop and threatening including like members of

00:08:37.680 parliament so there's that and for folks who haven't heard this element before i'm not the expert

00:08:43.360 go look up sam cooper's work on this like straight up like that guy's been on this issue now

00:08:49.360 of china and its influence in canada at the highest levels for 10 years okay so read sam cooper's books

00:08:57.040 um there's been all sorts of stuff like money laundering through bc casinos with no oversight

00:09:02.400 or accountability from the bc government which then drastically changed the real estate market

00:09:08.880 exactly where you're sitting right now alex in the lower mainland of bc so there's all sorts of that

00:09:13.520 that they either engage in directly or turn a blind eye to and again mainstream law enforcement

00:09:19.120 and mainstream reporters have pointed this out repeatedly it's odd that they've got a tariff on

00:09:25.120 the chinese vehicles but that my my old school government brain would answer with this of it's

00:09:31.520 probably because of some agreement that we have with the americans with auto pack because we have

00:09:36.800 got a two-way company basically it's the same industry that just straddles the great lakes and straddles

00:09:43.440 the border so but literally between windsor and detroit i think the last stat i saw is one car

00:09:49.040 part can cross that border like eight times before it gets installed like it's the same industry it just

00:09:56.400 happens to be straddling a border which brings me to my last point of this is why this will not work

00:10:03.040 because this dude named donald trump i don't know if anybody's heard of him he's the president of the

00:10:07.680 united states or something has cancelled all of this stuff so the whole ev mandate thing that the biden

00:10:14.640 biden white house was doing like all of that is in the garbage can and last time i checked the united

00:10:20.640 states is way bigger than us for market share so again like we're standing up it's like we've it's

00:10:27.360 like canada with this issue has climbed up to the very last little piece of a limb on a tree and we're

00:10:33.440 just twisting in the wind by ourselves right now yeah one more thing i wanted to add chris i covered the

00:10:40.720 financial issues with this but i thought i'd cover the democratic issues too because a recent leger

00:10:46.000 poll found that canadians clearly reject this ev mandate with not up close to 70 saying it's

00:10:52.880 unrealistic and 71 calling it for for it to be repealed so obviously canadians don't want this

00:10:59.520 but uh the liberals seem to be steadfast and i remember the the uh i think the federal environment

00:11:06.240 minister said that this is going forward no matter what so i guess we'll have to wait and see but

00:11:11.680 clearly it's not logical on any front i'm just gonna take off my ctf hat here and put on a political

00:11:18.560 analysis hat and put it this way carney has room to climb down here so i know it seems unlikely because

00:11:27.200 like he's the dude who like wrote this book okay while he was literally the un special envoy on like evs and

00:11:34.400 climate carbon tax blah blah blah um but that was then this is now he's the prime minister he can

00:11:41.520 walk into that house of commons in the next few days when they get started and he can say you know what

00:11:46.560 this was the last guy's plan this wasn't me i'm gonna start a start afresh here's my clean slate

00:11:53.360 he wouldn't get attacked in the even the mainstream media this the press gallery would probably give him a

00:11:58.480 little award of how smart he is and decisive and pragmatic watch mark my words if he does this the

00:12:05.200 the buzzword will be pragmatic but just saying there's anybody watching you know for oppo research

00:12:12.080 here you guys have room to climb down on this you're not gonna have to you know take a whole week of bad

00:12:17.920 media it would be lauded as a sensible fresh start in the wake of what's happening in the states just

00:12:24.000 saying all right did we want to get to the uh we've got quite the interesting story here isaac and

00:12:29.920 it's actually out is this in the victoria area yeah kim it would be best if we could just start with

00:12:35.280 the video chris because otherwise i won't be able to pronounce this and even with the video uh i will

00:12:39.120 i probably won't be able to and you guys will understand what i'm talking about pretty quick here

00:12:42.320 okay just to tee up the story so as far as i understand there is a school i believe it's an

00:12:47.600 elementary school in the victoria area which is being renamed uh with a first nation's name so

00:12:54.080 people can i don't know that renamed is the right verb uh it's being named that that being i i think

00:12:58.960 it's brand new i believe so so it's being named this and so there's an issue here where i would say

00:13:08.800 cultural inclusivity and kindness is running up against practicality of the ability for people to

00:13:14.160 pronounce stuff if i put it nicely let's listen to the tape hi my name is lavina charles um the cianic

00:13:22.720 elder and this the names i'm going to say is going to be the name of the school the name cianic

00:13:34.000 meaning salmon salmon home and children meaning the salmon children

00:13:41.360 the first part is siano siano siano the next one is street

00:13:55.200 street

00:14:05.520 all right isaac yeah so first i just want to shout out to uh former true north journalist lindsay shepherd

00:14:12.720 who actually uh who where i found this news slash video from so shout out to her i'm sure old fans of

00:14:18.480 the show will remember her uh pretty well but um yeah yeah and a sweet book i was just practicing during

00:14:24.160 the video like my luckily my mic was muted but i mean look there's so much to cover here but this

00:14:29.600 is ridiculous so first of all something interesting this video uh that video we just saw was posted two

00:14:34.960 years ago and and the and the school is just opening uh here in september so it might be that it took two

00:14:40.720 years to learn how to pronounce the name but uh this is from some archaic language that only is spoken

00:14:47.200 fluently by seven people uh half of whom i guess were in that video uh and uh i guess there are 103

00:14:54.160 semi-speakers so whatever that means but um yeah langford city councillor mary wagner she celebrated

00:15:00.640 uh the name change but uh i'm guessing most people didn't considering i was looking on the facebook post

00:15:06.800 uh from the school district the youtube videos comments were disabled everywhere so i can only imagine

00:15:11.200 that that parents are reaching out and saying what are you doing and and it gets worse instead of learning

00:15:16.560 mathematics literature all the things we want to teach schools and our students in an elementary

00:15:21.600 school uh i guess the school will have special uh lessons so that these kids can learn how to

00:15:28.960 pronounce this uh this ridiculous name i mean and this is a trend that we've seen uh going on in bc

00:15:35.440 over the last year for example vancouver's trutch street was renamed to some thing i i couldn't ever

00:15:42.560 fathom pronouncing or even reading uh again a language with basically no fluent speakers

00:15:49.760 then we saw in surrey bc uh the bridge there uh the dufferin bridge i think it was uh that was named

00:15:56.560 after a bc premier from the great depression and the second world war so pretty historically relevant

00:16:02.480 name there and that again renamed to some unpronounceable thing in a first nations language

00:16:07.440 and i mean there are so many examples i could go through uh we'd be here all day uh and just in bc

00:16:12.400 this is insane the the virtue signaling we're seeing in bc is crazy but uh shepherd put it a good

00:16:18.800 way so i'll i'll end here with a quote from her she said quote and then the school board trustees who

00:16:23.840 named the school get to act like they have done a beautiful miraculous thing for the community while

00:16:28.800 they let academic outcomes decline uh and i mean you can look at the studies yourself we we know

00:16:34.080 what's happening with academic outcomes not only in bc but across the country

00:16:37.840 uh so instead of yeah and focusing on important things and teaching students things they need to

00:16:43.120 hear this is what people are going to be learning uh kids at an elementary school in victoria bc i mean

00:16:48.960 it's crazy yeah what did do you guys what do you guys think about this i mean this is what people are

00:16:54.400 focusing on it's it's just ridiculous well as somebody who occupies the role in the household as the fun

00:17:00.160 uncle i think there's nothing more cruel and funny than teaching kids words that they can neither read

00:17:05.840 write nor say but it's actually a form of bullying really i will end on the practical note and that is

00:17:17.040 that uh linguistics are a big deal in my house um so we have like countless dictionaries uh of old

00:17:25.600 languages dead languages um including some first nations languages um and so i i come at this from

00:17:33.120 a different angle i would say than a lot of folks um i think language preservation is really important

00:17:41.280 i think when you lose a language you lose kind of a three-dimensional culture and reference to history

00:17:46.960 that goes along with it and that is why it's upsetting to come at it this way the way the school board has

00:17:54.880 and that is if it's causing the division that you're kind of suspecting here isaac and i don't doubt

00:17:59.360 you're wrong this is going to put people off it's going to put people off of learning anything about

00:18:05.680 that language in earnest um i'll give you a personal example so uh back when i lived in british columbia

00:18:11.840 and hope um where i was raised was actually right next to the first nations reserve so i used to go

00:18:18.000 down there and i'd get food salmon from them i went to school with those folks like it was a

00:18:22.080 really important part of my life and later in life i got to have my son go to the same

00:18:27.440 elementary school that i went to there was an elder there who went in every thursday and taught those

00:18:33.680 kids hulkamalem which is a really rare first nations language but it's being revived because of

00:18:40.800 earnest teaching but they didn't change the name of the school to something that a whole bunch of people

00:18:46.960 including newcomers to canada couldn't pronounce and they didn't sow division and so just as a parent

00:18:56.000 and as somebody who who values language and history um i just think that this is the wrong way for the

00:19:04.080 school to have gone about this they could have brought that same elder lady who i'm sure didn't

00:19:08.880 mean to upset people right and here she is right like if she's going to be in the middle of this storm

00:19:14.160 they could have brought some of those elders and those language speakers into the classroom

00:19:18.080 make it a regular part of the curriculum but keep the school something named that

00:19:23.040 most people can recognize and otherwise blow up i don't know am i

00:19:28.960 i completely agree with you chris on all accounts so yes like also language is dying is very very sad

00:19:35.120 but at a certain point because i've also covered the story a little bit you reach a critical mass where

00:19:39.760 people just not enough people speak it the language is going to die i think in this particular case the

00:19:44.800 language is only spoken maybe semi-fluently by i think seven people wow which means that if all of

00:19:51.040 those it was it was fluently by seven semi semi-fluently by 103 alex so if all the people that speak the

00:19:57.360 language fluently were in that video that's more than half wow that's a that's that's a lot that's a lot

00:20:03.360 that's a life support type situation and again it's too bad because now people are going to hear

00:20:09.760 the name and they're going to see this as being forced on them and i as always blame the government

00:20:15.200 because the government and the school board and the school district and the trustees involved with

00:20:19.520 this decision they should have made smarter decisions about this they should have been wiser about

00:20:24.480 this it's virtue signaling at the expense of children's education i will point out as a practical

00:20:30.400 solution to this from the taxpayers perspective something that we totally advocate for and that

00:20:35.600 is uh elections at the school board level for trustees that goes along with recall legislation

00:20:42.240 okay so having recall legislation at the provincial municipal and school trustee level here in alberta

00:20:49.040 doesn't make things perfect but i notice a much higher degree of accountability here if you can get

00:20:55.120 called to the carpet at any moment and have a by-election on you maybe your entire school board

00:21:00.240 and parents can hold you to account if they don't like how you're teaching their kids

00:21:04.480 i find there's a lot fewer shenanigans there's there's still some shenanigans isaac sitting there

00:21:10.560 in edmonton saying i disagree there's still some shenanigans isaac i'll leave leave the last word to

00:21:16.960 you yeah you find it's more accountable here in that way because we have the ability to recall at the

00:21:21.760 school board level i i want to say yes but at the same time we see the mayoral uh the mayoral electees

00:21:30.560 and the city councillors that get elected and i mean it's just ridiculous they're they're not at all

00:21:34.800 to the standard i would hope for personally but uh and even from a candidate's perspective i mean uh i i

00:21:40.560 wish there were stronger candidates running and that's just a personal thing but i mean what can you

00:21:45.600 do i did want to highlight one silver lining here which is naming the school uh so ridiculously it

00:21:51.360 isn't as bad i i guess as the street uh name in vancouver there because we saw that tick tock i think

00:21:57.920 a lot of people would have seen it blow up that was that that guy he he calls 911 and they're like

00:22:01.840 where are you and he's like like i don't know he's reading this indigenous language which has letters

00:22:07.200 you couldn't even understand because it's not part of our english alphabet so it's like where are you and

00:22:12.160 it's like i have no idea like what are you going to say that that that first nation street like you

00:22:16.880 know it and that i mean there could be some weird niche anecdotes that that could occur similarly at

00:22:23.440 the school but other than that i mean it's it's not the end of the world i'll say that i'm guessing

00:22:28.320 parents will probably all agree to call it the salmon children school because that's the easy or even

00:22:34.240 by the cute name for a school i don't hate that name salmon yeah that's kind of cute and salmon's

00:22:41.040 awesome and so we're yeah the the school um the school name that we had in hope it's called it's

00:22:49.360 it means laughing river oh that's cool too i like that as well yeah so there's lots of really cool

00:22:54.400 things it's interesting actually not to get too far into the weeds of linguistics um here in alberta

00:22:58.960 they it's translated a lot earlier whereas i find when those areas of the of the coast there's just

00:23:05.520 a different approach to it so now you're hearing these languages that you know it's more it's much

00:23:11.360 more challenging for people to incorporate i just really wish they'd gone about this in a better way

00:23:15.520 because then they might be able to at least keep some remnants of it with these kids and have them

00:23:21.360 have a good good approach to it my son can still count to 12 and poke mail i'm like it's cool all

00:23:26.560 right guys thank you so much for watching remember to like and subscribe to this show be sure to leave

00:23:32.000 your comments in the comments i'm sure plenty of you have comments about what we just chatted about

00:23:37.280 and remember everything is off the record

Juno News - September 06, 2025

Victoria school’s unpronounceable name draws confusion

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