Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Ottawa attempts to burn Alberta gov't over mismanaged Jasper fire

00:00:00.000 We dig into the federal blame game that's going up in smoke.

00:00:03.800 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:00:23.040 A recently released after-action report into last year's devastating Jasper wildfires

00:00:29.220 making headlines, but not for the reasons you'd expect.

00:00:32.780 Instead of holding the federal government accountable for mismanaging a fire that started

00:00:37.160 in a federally controlled national park, the report tries to hang the Alberta government

00:00:42.660 out to dry.

00:00:44.580 Never mind that Parks Canada has long neglected proper forest management in Jasper National

00:00:49.420 Park.

00:00:50.140 And never mind that it was federal jurisdiction from the get-go.

00:00:54.380 Never mind the feds cut the wildfire budget in the park by 23% in the year of the fire.

00:01:00.720 Never mind the feds installed the wrong fire hydrants in the Jasper Town site.

00:01:07.020 Never mind all of that.

00:01:08.540 Just listen to the agenda.

00:01:10.640 Joining me tonight to cut through the smoke and mirrors is Michelle Sterling from Friends

00:01:14.400 of Science.

00:01:15.380 Michelle has been following the eco-politics behind wildfire policy for years.

00:01:19.740 And she's here to expose how ideological environmentalism, bureaucratic cowardice, and liberal scapegoating

00:01:28.160 are now putting lives, livelihoods, and entire communities at risk.

00:01:33.220 You don't want to miss this one.

00:01:34.920 Let's get right into it.

00:01:36.580 So joining me now is good friend of Rebel News and good friend of science, I think, according

00:01:51.160 to the name of her organization.

00:01:53.400 And I think a good friend to truth and objective reality, Michelle Sterling, the communications

00:01:59.820 director for Friends of Science.

00:02:01.460 And I wanted to have Michelle on because Michelle is really great at just drilling through the 1.00

00:02:08.080 hysteria, the nonsense, and the agenda of the other side of the argument, getting straight

00:02:14.300 to the facts.

00:02:15.400 And as they say, a lie can get around the world before the truth can get its pants on.

00:02:22.260 And some of that has happened this week with the official after-action review of the Jasper

00:02:30.320 wildfire commissioned by the town of Jasper.

00:02:33.740 And although the report says directly, it says, this is not about assigning blame, then

00:02:39.580 they go on to assign blame to the Alberta government, who actually was, for a lot of it, at least

00:02:47.300 for the beginning, bystanders and not decision makers in the Jasper wildfire.

00:02:53.680 Michelle, thanks for coming on the show.

00:02:58.520 This after-action review says that the Alberta government was difficult to work with, and

00:03:08.420 that made the situation in Jasper worse.

00:03:12.040 And when I read that, knowing what I know about what happened during Jasper, that sounds

00:03:17.080 like Alberta was working too hard to fix the problems in Jasper created by the mismanagement

00:03:25.440 of the federal government through their agency, Parks Canada.

00:03:29.220 Well, thanks for having me on the show, first of all.

00:03:35.900 And secondly, I think there's something that people don't realize.

00:03:41.660 You know, there were three levels of government kind of all converging on a very extreme and

00:03:46.880 difficult situation.

00:03:48.540 So we had Parks Canada, which manages Jasper National Park.

00:03:53.220 We have the municipality of Jasper, which is actually an Alberta town site.

00:04:00.460 It's like under Alberta's jurisdiction as a town.

00:04:03.280 And then we have the Alberta government, and the national park is in Alberta.

00:04:09.080 So, but the jurisdiction is really under Parks Canada.

00:04:13.520 And, you know, it notes in the report that Alberta was already fighting 149 wildfires at

00:04:19.620 the time.

00:04:20.120 So on the surface, people might say to themselves, well, yeah, why would they want to get involved

00:04:24.600 in yet another wildfire?

00:04:26.600 But we have a video explainer coming out today that looks at some of these issues.

00:04:32.080 First of all, you have to realize that what goes through Jasper?

00:04:35.860 Well, there's the Trans-Canada Highway, the CNCP Rail Line, and both of those are the main conduits

00:04:47.320 for goods and services going in and out of Alberta, you know, in huge volumes, billions

00:04:53.160 of dollars worth of supplies, equipment, grain shipments, whatever, going in and out.

00:05:00.680 So, you know, that is a critical pathway for, say, Edmonton and all the industries around

00:05:09.000 it.

00:05:09.180 And Edmonton is a gateway to the north.

00:05:11.240 And there's also a very big intermodal inland port for the rail line at Edmonton, a distribution

00:05:18.720 point that goes like all across North America.

00:05:21.480 As well, the Trans Mountain Pipeline goes through Jasper, and there is a transfer station there,

00:05:27.160 a pumping station.

00:05:28.100 So, you know, that's a piece of critical infrastructure.

00:05:31.500 There were, at the time, about 20,000 domestic and international travelers there.

00:05:39.180 So just imagine your Alberta, your Alberta Emergency Management Agency dealing with existing

00:05:46.420 evacuees from other wildfires.

00:05:48.940 Potentially another 20,000, 25,000 people might be evacuated into your province.

00:05:55.580 So you've got to be ready for that.

00:05:57.360 So now, from what I understand, from the letter that was issued by Jasper Municipality on July

00:06:06.240 21st, you know, sort of trying to make things right, where they outlined all the things that

00:06:11.000 Alberta actually did, it looks like, you know, Alberta was on standby, that they had actually

00:06:16.160 moved a lot of potential services to the park boundary or nearby, where, if called upon,

00:06:23.540 they would rush in and help.

00:06:25.980 So you can imagine that, you know, Alberta had a lot of very important things going on,

00:06:34.240 while the park was dealing primarily with the fire there and the specifics of the Jasper

00:06:41.140 evacuation.

00:06:43.960 So, you know, these are competing needs, but they're all equally important.

00:06:49.680 And in such a crisis situation, I'm sure that Alberta wildfire could see this looming catastrophe.

00:06:57.120 And I don't think the public realized that part of the municipality of Jasper had issued a climate

00:07:06.860 change risk analysis report about six months earlier.

00:07:10.840 And I ran across this when I was looking for the after action report, I ran across it on the Jasper website.

00:07:19.100 So I had a look.

00:07:20.360 The Alberta government paid $79,500 for this study.

00:07:24.980 And you can imagine why Alberta wildfire was probably a bit concerned about parks management, because this is what it says in that report,

00:07:36.360 that even though the public cited wildfire, as their greatest fear, parks Canada said that, first of all, they're the sole authority for fire smart program, which is how individuals can protect their homes.

00:07:54.520 And they said that parks Canada expressed the, that the actual risk of fire is less than the public perception.

00:08:06.680 Like, that's just mind blowing.

00:08:09.140 I'm sure that people who are listening to this may not know, but Jasper was sitting in the midst of 150,000 hectares of standing deadwood from the mountain pine beetle.

00:08:20.840 And during that wildfire, I think it's 32,000 hectares of that deadwood went up.

00:08:28.800 And, you know, we did another video explainer last year where our wildfire forestry consultant, Rob Skagel, provided a lot of technical information.

00:08:38.420 But apparently on July 1st, the vapor pressure deficit, it's kind of like a measure of relative humidity, just skyrocketed, skyrocketed.

00:08:52.860 And you can see on the wildfire maps at that time on July the 1st, sort of that area of the province looked kind of blue.

00:08:59.160 But 12 days later, it was all hot red.

00:09:03.280 The risk was extreme.

00:09:04.760 So that combined with this extremely dry atmospheric condition is, that is definitely a huge fire risk.

00:09:12.460 And our wildfire consultant suggested that the park should have been closed at the time.

00:09:19.940 And all the backcountry people brought in no more activity out in the woods.

00:09:25.720 And that didn't happen.

00:09:27.080 So I'm sure that Alberta wildfire, you know, could see this extreme rising risk.

00:09:33.180 And then we had the big winds come up.

00:09:35.660 So, you know, that made it literally impossible to fight the fire.

00:09:39.720 Because you can't use water bombers to any significant extent when there's that kind of condition, the wind and everything else.

00:09:54.260 So, you know, I think that Alberta had very deep concerns, especially when you read the climate change risk report.

00:10:02.600 But it's astonishing that anyone would ever suggest that the wildfire risk in Jasper was lower than the public perception of it.

00:10:14.120 Yeah, I mean, I sort of made a list of the things that I thought the feds did wrong.

00:10:20.660 And that's not, I guess, I mean, I say I thought, but I watched those Environment Committee hearings.

00:10:26.660 And I watched the testimony of Ken Hodges, who said that, and he had been writing letters for the longest time.

00:10:37.900 Same with the local MP, Jim Maglinski.

00:10:40.400 He had been saying for the longest time, they have failed to mechanically clear parts of the forest that were hit by the pine beetle.

00:10:48.780 And one of the reasons Parks Canada said, and this is in documents uncovered by Black Locks, they said, well, you know, it kind of looks ugly.

00:10:56.820 And we have a lot of visitors to the parks.

00:10:58.440 We don't want to do that.

00:11:00.080 The Parks Canada also cut the fire budget in 2023-2024 by nearly a quarter, 23%.

00:11:06.500 We do know through testimony from private firefighters that they were turned away when they went to the staging area.

00:11:17.020 They were hired by one of the resorts there to come in and defend the resort, and they were turned away.

00:11:23.160 I think they were turned away because they didn't want any outsiders to show the mismanagement happening in the fire response.

00:11:29.940 Because they were also, once they were eventually let in, told, okay, you can go defend the resort that you've been hired to by the insurance company to stage near.

00:11:41.440 But you can't get any water from the rivers and the lakes.

00:11:45.380 And as it turns out, they couldn't hook to the municipal fire hydrants because Parks Canada had put the wrong fittings or maybe the right fittings, depending on who you ask.

00:11:56.240 But it meant that outside municipalities, outside of Hinton, which is just up the road to the east, nobody could really connect to those.

00:12:05.200 So you couldn't have this influx of firefighters from across the province converge on Jasper to save this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

00:12:13.720 They couldn't do it because their pumper trucks didn't have the right fittings. 0.97

00:12:17.360 And I think they only have like seven fittings, like adapters to help with the fire response.

00:12:25.860 It was just mismanaged for years in advance.

00:12:29.080 And then when, you know, push came to shove and an emergency was upon everybody, they couldn't even get the outside help that was ready to show up and help.

00:12:38.820 And I know, I know this is a Parks Canada.

00:12:42.040 It was Parks Canada's jurisdiction.

00:12:44.340 But I understand why Alberta wanted to help, because I don't think that we think of Jasper as anything but ours.

00:12:53.660 Well, yeah, it's part of Alberta.

00:12:55.540 It is a national park, but it happens to be in Alberta.

00:12:58.840 And as I mentioned, it's a very important cross point for everything in Alberta, for our economy, for the food security of our people, everything, industry.

00:13:09.720 So, you know, that part can't be ignored.

00:13:13.200 And when you mentioned Ken Hodges, I was just looking at the standing committee from October 9th, I think it is, of 2024.

00:13:23.220 And he's a forester.

00:13:25.840 He said he's a professional forester out of BC.

00:13:29.080 He's not a scientist, but his view of the Parks Canada staff was that they were insufficiently trained in the situation of the beetles

00:13:38.220 and the fire situation that existed in the park at the time.

00:13:42.720 They're park rangers.

00:13:44.080 They're not trained, experienced professional foresters.

00:13:48.500 So, and when you look at the after effect report, you find that there were seven different emergency management plans

00:13:58.480 that they had to navigate in a split second.

00:14:02.020 And, of course, you know, initially the fire began quite far away and they thought they'd have like three or four days to deal with evacuation and such like.

00:14:12.120 Then the wind came up and very rapidly, you know, it was an extreme emergency situation.

00:14:17.500 So, you can imagine if you're trying to navigate all these different emergency plans when you really actually don't have time to read one.

00:14:28.180 You know, you just have to, there should have been like one consolidated plan.

00:14:32.940 Of course, hindsight's always 50-50 and I wasn't there on site.

00:14:37.720 So, some of the things I'm saying may not be fair, but obviously based on the testimony of Ken Hodges, they just, and based on the climate risk report, you know,

00:14:51.440 they just did not realize that the actual worst case scenario, God forbid, is that all exits of the town could have been blocked by wildfire.

00:15:01.920 Everybody could have died.

00:15:03.060 There's only one road in and out through the Trans-Canada and then the Highway 93, the Banff-Janspur Highway, you know,

00:15:13.280 and the fire jumped to the south of the city or of the town.

00:15:17.900 So, that kind of precluded exiting into Alberta and they ended up going to Valemont.

00:15:23.920 But what would have happened had it jumped to the other side as well, you know.

00:15:28.080 And when you look, if you go on Google Maps and you look at pictures from around the town, you're quite right about the whole idea of not wanting things to be ugly.

00:15:37.240 You know, there's lots of still standing deadwood.

00:15:39.580 You look at pictures of beautiful, the entryway to Malign Lake.

00:15:43.880 That's the opening image on our Jasper wildfire explainer from last year.

00:15:50.560 It looks fantastic.

00:15:51.780 There's these beautiful green trees and then there's these interesting, beautiful red conifers.

00:15:58.440 And, you know, they just look like some other type.

00:16:01.180 Well, they're all dead.

00:16:02.240 Those are dead trees.

00:16:03.460 They're firecrackers waiting for somebody to light them up.

00:16:07.420 And yes, it would have looked ugly to go in there and mechanically remove them all.

00:16:11.920 Probably the tourists wouldn't have liked it.

00:16:13.820 But, you know, then perhaps you could do some sort of cosmetic landscaping with some bigger planted trees just to, you know, cover that up and then let the forest renew.

00:16:26.780 You know, in fact, it's kind of interesting because Jasper the bear, you know, the iconic emblem of Jasper, survived the fire.

00:16:37.760 But when Sean Amato was tweeting about it, he said, this is the biggest fire in the park in 100 years.

00:16:44.680 That is precisely the problem, according to our wildfire and forestry consultant, because the trees in the park, they have a lifespan of 40 to 60, maybe 80 years.

00:16:57.900 They need to die.

00:16:59.560 They need to be burnt out. 1.00

00:17:00.880 And then the forest renews itself.

00:17:04.160 And if you look at the landscape of Jasper National Park, going back to, say, 1900s, you find there's lots of deciduous trees, you know, that they don't have the same resin and chemical content that conifers have.

00:17:20.080 So they're less likely to burn.

00:17:22.040 They don't have branches way down to the ground.

00:17:24.840 So you don't get that crowning fire that you do with conifers, where once the fire is at the top, then it just jumps.

00:17:35.760 And if there's a big wind, it goes everywhere.

00:17:39.660 So, you know, the fire suppression in the park over the 100 years is a big part of the problem.

00:17:49.200 Yeah, when I was watching the committee testimony about this, they actually brought in the Forest Products Association, I believe it was, to offer testimony.

00:18:00.060 And they said, we would have come in to the park.

00:18:04.360 But there's this perception that you don't want professional private industry loggers inside the park.

00:18:14.580 That, you know, it just wouldn't, there would be no public buy-in.

00:18:18.580 But now we have 40% of the historic Jasper Town site up in smoke.

00:18:23.660 So what's uglier?

00:18:25.540 You know, having the forest industry come in and do the job that Parks Canada just wasn't trained to do, or, you know, the town in rubble and desolation.

00:18:35.600 Mm-hmm.

00:18:37.100 Well, and I think also something that people, everyone who lives in Canada should be aware of the FireSmart programs in Canada.

00:18:46.160 People who are watching from the States, there's a program called FireWise.

00:18:49.960 So if we're going to look at this as lessons learned, then let's learn a lesson.

00:18:53.940 Look at the FireSmart materials and see what you can do around your house.

00:18:59.240 Because houses don't burn up because of a big wall of flame.

00:19:03.420 They burn up because ember storms, firebrands land on, you know, patches of fallen leaves and grass, stuff like that, by the house, on the roof.

00:19:17.660 And they light a fire there.

00:19:19.540 And then that tiny fire takes your house out.

00:19:22.460 And if you look at the recommendations for how to FireSmart your house, the exclusion zone, where you want to get all of the flammable materials, shrubs, trees, et cetera, you know, meters from your house.

00:19:37.280 And they show you a little plan.

00:19:39.520 And that's in our video that's going up today so that you can see.

00:19:43.220 So everyone can look around their house and say, hey, wait a minute, you know, if there is a wildfire season and there's a wildfire in my area, should I really have these materials on my deck?

00:19:56.140 You know, because if those things on your deck, if you're storing junk on your deck that's flammable, your deck goes up and so does your house.

00:20:04.460 So, and these, most of these are very simple things that people can do that really change the risk ratio for your home.

00:20:13.220 So that's, that's a lesson learned.

00:20:16.000 And it's, it's a hard lesson, but this also goes for urban wildfires.

00:20:22.300 Like last fall, there was a call by the fire chiefs in urban communities.

00:20:27.580 They're concerned about urban wildfires.

00:20:29.620 And remember how Calgary had the big water main break last fall.

00:20:34.280 Well, suddenly lots of people's landscaping was drying up and dying.

00:20:38.280 So what used to be beautiful, lovely neighborhoods, and they got lots of dry grass, dead trees, stuff like that.

00:20:45.720 Well, how are you going to fight that urban wildfire?

00:20:49.020 And especially if people have landscaped their homes with flammable shrubs and such like right up against the house.

00:20:56.560 Or sometimes even, you know, a wooden fence and mulch is an invitation to disaster.

00:21:04.060 People don't think about that, but they have to.

00:21:06.200 Right. I mean, just look at LA, you know, if you want to worry about urban wildfires.

00:21:12.520 And again, some of that was the nonsense of the environmentalist movement.

00:21:16.200 They had these eucalyptus trees that had died.

00:21:19.180 And they had these huge stands of dead eucalyptus trees that were ultimately standing deadfall and incredible fuel load.

00:21:29.840 You know, we don't think enough about urban wildfires.

00:21:32.340 You think that that's something that happens in Slave Lake.

00:21:34.860 But it could happen in Calgary just the same.

00:21:38.360 Any city. Yeah.

00:21:39.380 Any city, depending on the conditions.

00:21:41.540 And, you know, it's interesting that just about the same time as this report came out, Tim Hodgson, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced that they're putting together this G7 Kananaskis wildfire centre to promote resilience.

00:21:59.420 They're going to spend $11.7 million over four years.

00:22:03.980 You know, we already know what to do.

00:22:06.480 We don't need another layer of bureaucracy, another advisory committee.

00:22:10.420 We need practical, real things.

00:22:13.320 And one of the points that we make in the video that goes up today is provincial and federal governments are spending $476 billion on climate change.

00:22:27.320 And they're spending paltry millions on wildfire management.

00:22:31.480 And then when there's a crisis situation like what happened in Jasper, they turn around and say, oh, my gosh, that climate change wildfire cost the insurance industry $1.5 billion.

00:22:45.320 Look at that.

00:22:46.380 Let's spend more money on climate change.

00:22:48.960 You know, and it's like, no, let's spend more money on practical, real things that we can do right now, today, that you can get everybody participating in.

00:22:58.320 But for the benefit of everyone, and let's stop spending these billions of dollars on climate change, which even if Canada met all of its climate commitments, the reduction in global warming would be 0.007 degrees Celsius.

00:23:16.580 That's 7,000th of a degree Celsius by 2100, which is ludicrous because every day, China is emitting more.

00:23:27.780 India is emitting more. 0.71

00:23:29.100 Whatever sacrifice we make will not stop furnishing.

00:23:33.060 And, you know, frankly, if you read the climate declaration on the CLINTEL website, you'll see that really there's no climate emergency, and Mother Nature is the more stronger force than humans.

00:23:50.460 And we see that in Jasper.

00:23:52.660 You know, Mother Nature did her thing, and people were powerless.

00:23:56.520 Let's bump ahead to one of my personal muses, David Suzuki.

00:24:05.020 You guys have a new video out about David Suzuki.

00:24:10.020 He was on Front Burner.

00:24:12.340 You also have Seth Klein on Early Edition.

00:24:14.380 Now, both of them are lamenting the lack of climate action.

00:24:17.860 When they mean climate action, they mean taking money from regular people and giving it to climate schemes.

00:24:23.800 They don't actually mean making your communities more resilient to, well, acts of nature, which is, I was going to say, extreme weather.

00:24:33.880 But, I mean, these are just acts of nature.

00:24:35.460 We don't have more extreme weather anymore than we ever have had.

00:24:39.240 And, in fact, I think we're better equipped to deal with extreme weather than ever before.

00:24:45.780 Fewer people die from extreme weather than ever before.

00:24:48.640 And instead of focusing on things, like you say, like fire-smarting your house, we're just supposed to offer up these tithes to David Suzuki's climate gods.

00:25:01.000 Anyway, I'm just going on in a crazy rant.

00:25:04.320 I'm sorry, you know, this is why, at this point, to everybody who believes that, you know, the systems, the legal, economic, and political systems, they're what have to be changed or altered or refocused.

00:25:20.160 But we can't destroy them.

00:25:21.780 Yeah, well, I did a little video about that because, you know, they really disgust me because Seth Klein has this book called A Good War.

00:25:31.080 And this works along the same theme as the Climate Emergency Mobilization Unit in the States, which is from Margaret Klein Solomon, who's a clinical psychologist using clinical psychological tactics to scare you into climate compliance.

00:25:47.920 And probably her most famous invention is, our house is on fire.

00:25:52.780 So you can see that all of the climate activists love to jump on the bandwagon.

00:25:57.800 They're doing that with Jasper.

00:25:59.460 They did it last year with Jasper.

00:26:01.780 The Canadian Climate Institute, for instance, just issued a whole bunch of wildfire climate change reports.

00:26:08.980 They often cite Jasper in it.

00:26:11.100 And, of course, the Climate Institute, the Canadian Climate Institute, is funded by the federal government for 79.76% of their budget.

00:26:21.240 So while you're at the food bank, can't pay your bills, here's your tax dollars going to these fear mongers who are conflating wildfires and climate change and trying to force you to agree to the idea of building, I don't know, a 66 gigawatt wind farm off the shore of Nova Scotia or building an east-west power grid, which would put us at risk of national blackouts.

00:26:50.340 So, you know, these guys are bandwagoning all this stuff.

00:26:55.380 In fact, Chris Hatch of the National Observer, which is also government funded, he just wrote kind of an editorial about the wildfires and how he mentioned Catherine Hayhoe and a new report that suggests that, you know, when people face a disaster like the Jasper wildfire,

00:27:20.340 they don't automatically connect it to climate change, but if you in the media, you know, connect it to climate change, then they see it, then they understand, oh, yeah, it was climate change that burnt down Jasper.

00:27:33.800 So, so that's what they're recommending.

00:27:38.000 And you have to realize that there are a number of nudge units that are funded by the federal government here in Canada, also in Britain, I think also in the States.

00:27:46.420 But the whole purpose of these nudge units is to try and come up with psychological tactics that will coerce you into compliance on ridiculous things like climate change.

00:27:59.140 And they're spending billions of dollars on this.

00:28:01.280 So, you know, personally, I wonder if, say, the switch from plastic straws to paper straws was kind of a compliance test.

00:28:10.880 You know, I'd love to foip those groups and find out, OK, which campaign was it that you guys used to test people's climate compliance?

00:28:19.680 And how much of my tax dollars went to, you know, twist the narrative against me and my freedoms?

00:28:27.480 Because basically that's what they're doing.

00:28:29.340 You know, with the David Suzuki and Seth Klein, they want to use World War Two measures.

00:28:36.580 They want to they want the Wartime Measures Act effectively to force you to ration your consumption, perhaps limitations on your movement.

00:28:46.860 This was published also in the journal Metro in September of 2021, actually long before the Freedom Convoy.

00:28:56.480 They were already planning how can we use COVID lockdown tactics and apply them to climate change.

00:29:03.300 So, you know, I'm really opposed to what Suzuki and Klein are doing because my mother was an ATS driver in World War Two.

00:29:14.240 My father was a dispatch rider.

00:29:15.880 My uncle, one uncle was a Halifax bomber pilot who was lost in a raid over Essen and my other uncle was in the tank brigade.

00:29:26.840 So those people fought for our freedoms and Suzuki and Klein are twisting that and twisting the wartime effort to actually try and impose climate tyranny.

00:29:38.420 So they really make me sick, actually.

00:29:40.860 They really disgust me.

00:29:42.640 I can't even tell you how angry it makes me when I think of what they're doing to our heritage of freedom. 0.91

00:29:51.300 You know, really, it's sickening.

00:29:53.420 Well, and, you know, David Suzuki is just so insincere in all of this.

00:30:00.800 The man lives like there's no climate emergency.

00:30:04.700 He wants me to live like there's a climate emergency, but not him.

00:30:07.760 I mean, when he stops buying beachfront property, I might think he's sincere about the oceans rising when he doesn't have to circumnavigate the globe to go to his vacation property.

00:30:21.120 In Australia, I might think that he's sincere in his belief about the impact of a climate footprint.

00:30:29.920 I wouldn't agree with him, but I might think that he holds a sincere view.

00:30:34.120 But, I mean, the man lives larger than almost everybody.

00:30:38.320 How many kids does he have?

00:30:39.540 Five?

00:30:39.840 But, meanwhile, telling the rest of us that humanity is an inherent plague upon the face of the earth.

00:30:47.540 What he means is we're the plague, not him. 0.97

00:30:51.300 Yeah, well, I always remember that famous line that Dr. Willie Soon showed in his presentation to us that David Suzuki said that people are like maggots defecating all over the place. 0.64

00:31:06.600 Yeah.

00:31:07.100 That's what he thinks of you and me.

00:31:08.720 So, what a bizarre anti-human worldview and a perfect synopsis of the radical environmentalist movement.

00:31:19.200 I want to talk to you about one last thing, and that is this use of the courts to advance the climate scare agenda.

00:31:29.380 I know we had a group of kids doing the same thing here in Alberta.

00:31:34.220 And now the nation state of Vanuatu is trying to use the court system, I think, to wring a bunch of money out of the rest of us.

00:31:45.420 Explain this.

00:31:46.060 Right.

00:31:47.560 Well, Vanuatu put forward a motion to the UN General Assembly about probably two years ago to ask if they would then ask the International Court of Justice for an opinion on climate obligations of countries.

00:32:06.480 So, of course, the small island nations make the claim that they're not responsible for climate change.

00:32:13.100 It's all the large emitting industrial Western nations who are rich, therefore give us money.

00:32:17.920 So, they're claiming, you know, that sea levels are rising.

00:32:23.840 And, like, in one of the articles that came out today, they said that sea levels are rising six millimeters a year.

00:32:32.420 So, you know, like that much.

00:32:37.220 Right?

00:32:37.620 Okay.

00:32:38.260 So, don't be scared.

00:32:39.540 Anyway, but they're talking about Vanuatu was also sitting on a tectonic plate.

00:32:43.820 There was a 7.3 earthquake there, which affected how it sits in the water.

00:32:49.380 Dr. John D. Harper, who was one of our consultants, in an interview with him, he said, you know, a lot of these small island nations that are on corals are actually growing.

00:33:00.960 But the ones that seem to feel that their island is sinking, typically these places are eroding, you know, and to someone who lives there, it looks like the sea level is rising.

00:33:18.740 But, in fact, the land is eroding, and that's simply from the motion of the sea.

00:33:22.840 And, in fact, sometimes some of the things they've done to supposedly prevent the erosion has actually, you know, changed the motion of the sea and increased it in some places.

00:33:35.280 You know, you have to wonder what's going on there because Vanuatu, while claiming that the West is responsible for this sea level rise, they run a marine registry.

00:33:45.880 You know, and marine ships are big polluters and big users of oil and of marine diesel.

00:33:55.920 Also, the Marshall Islands, as I think the second or third largest marine registry in the world, same thing.

00:34:02.580 And they also, they were the ones who gave Catherine McKenna that little palm frond.

00:34:08.480 Right.

00:34:08.860 And when she came back from, what was it, COP 21, saying, oh, you know, we need 1.5 to stay alive.

00:34:15.740 These little islands, they're actually sinking.

00:34:18.660 Well, they're sinking because of tectonic plate movement.

00:34:21.620 Nothing to do with us.

00:34:22.680 But the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, is going to be issuing or reviewing the Vanuatu case.

00:34:31.140 And interestingly enough, if you look at our report, Manufacturing a Climate Crisis, the West Coast Environmental Law Association, the charity, has been working with Vanuatu.

00:34:46.800 So, I suspect that we have the hand of the Tar Sands campaign floating through the background of the Vanuatu case.

00:34:56.360 Because, you know, if you're a child on an island, a young person, I think the person who made the application was like 16, I don't think you wake up one morning and go, I know.

00:35:07.260 Right.

00:35:07.820 I'm going to take the rest of the industrial world to court.

00:35:12.420 Right.

00:35:12.860 You know, I think someone helps you come up with that idea.

00:35:14.980 I could be wrong.

00:35:17.020 I could be wrong.

00:35:18.200 No, I think you're exactly right.

00:35:20.940 And if people want an example of this, you know, ocean erosion being falsely linked to climate change, we don't have to go to more exotic locales of the world.

00:35:33.680 We've got a little island here closer to home.

00:35:37.280 Sable Island.

00:35:38.400 Just go onto the CBC website.

00:35:41.160 Google Sable Island.

00:35:42.200 And they will tell you that it is linked to your SUV and climate change, which is causing the shoreline of Sable Island to change and erode.

00:35:55.800 But in the same article, they always accurately describe Sable Island as not really an island, but a sandbar, which would be eroded by the changing tides of the ocean.

00:36:09.840 And it has always eroded and changed.

00:36:13.940 And apparently, it's my SUV, what done it, according to the CBC.

00:36:19.180 Yeah, so you should pay.

00:36:21.080 Well, for people who want to counter those things, you know, people should get our book.

00:36:25.320 We're doing a new campaign, The Race from Net Zero.

00:36:29.060 And so if you want to counter all these crazy arguments in a simple little book, here it is.

00:36:34.900 You can order it on our website.

00:36:37.120 It's $15 a copy plus shipping.

00:36:40.020 And lots of people are buying, you know, four or five copies and sharing them with family members or other people who are influencers.

00:36:48.400 You know, it's straightforward, just the facts and really refreshing.

00:36:53.840 So very popular book.

00:36:56.360 Yeah, and not purposefully complicated, because I think that's what the other side of this dispute does, is they purposefully complicate ideas so that normal people are like, you know what, I just throw my hands up and assume the other side is smarter than you.

00:37:12.300 And really, it's not all that complicated.

00:37:15.460 Taxes don't change the weather. 0.94

00:37:16.760 The big burning ball of gas in the sky is more responsible for the changing weather than you are.

00:37:22.380 And you can't even accurately measure the average temperature of the surface of the earth, because you can't accurately measure the weather in your own backyard.

00:37:35.000 Just try it.

00:37:35.780 Michelle's got a video where she tries it.

00:37:38.320 And you should throw a clip of that video in.

00:37:40.820 It is really funny, though.

00:37:41.900 You know, if you just put a whole bunch of thermometers around in your backyard in different locations, you'll find there's like 20 degree difference in temperature from one location to the next sometimes.

00:37:54.600 And then they want you to be worried about 1.5 to stay alive.

00:37:59.760 Yeah.

00:38:00.580 Yeah.

00:38:00.820 I saw an article today saying we've got three years left to fight climate change.

00:38:05.940 Oh, yeah.

00:38:07.120 It was like, I think it was four years, seven years ago.

00:38:10.580 Like, I don't know.

00:38:13.240 Am I dead?

00:38:14.220 Are we dead?

00:38:14.960 I don't know.

00:38:16.420 Yeah, I think it was 10 years in 1989.

00:38:19.740 So.

00:38:21.240 You know what?

00:38:21.820 Climate change will get us one day, apparently.

00:38:24.240 Well, you know, our most recent press release also shows that there are two opinion polls showing that the public are really done with climate change.

00:38:35.820 And so one is in the States.

00:38:37.960 And only 40% of the people are interested in climate change anymore.

00:38:43.240 It's like way down the list.

00:38:44.360 I think it's 15 out of 18.

00:38:46.360 And in Canada, only 14% of the public listed climate change as one of the top three priorities.

00:38:53.300 And it's also way down the list.

00:38:56.040 It's, I think it's, I don't know, eight out of 10 or something like that.

00:39:00.540 I can't remember off the top of my head.

00:39:02.360 So that press release is also on our website and also on our blog.

00:39:06.220 So you can see those polls.

00:39:08.460 People are done with it.

00:39:09.720 They're sick and tired of it.

00:39:11.000 They want practical things.

00:39:12.340 And again, going back to the Jasper wildfire, practical, on-the-ground things, real things that will make a real difference.

00:39:20.000 That's what we have to concentrate on.

00:39:21.600 You know, that 40% number in the United States seems high to me.

00:39:25.840 But if those people had to pay a carbon tax for a couple of years, it would drop down to Canadian levels of not caring about climate change.

00:39:34.120 They just haven't had to pay for the effects of the climate ideas yet.

00:39:38.880 And hopefully never, by the way.

00:39:40.980 Michelle, tell people how they can get involved in supporting the very important work that Friends of Science does.

00:39:47.360 Sure, you can become a member.

00:39:50.280 So it's $40 for one year or $80 for three.

00:39:54.900 And you'll get our email newsletters like Extracts and CliSci.

00:40:00.720 Extracts deals with sort of more the political aspects of climate action around the world.

00:40:07.460 And many of these policies that are popping up in other countries eventually end up here.

00:40:13.100 So, you know, it's kind of an early warning system, if you like.

00:40:16.700 Most of the issues covered in extracts are not covered in the mainstream press.

00:40:22.260 And CliSci is a review of recent climate papers or gray papers and studies.

00:40:30.400 So it summarizes some of the recent findings.

00:40:33.940 They're both part of your package.

00:40:36.200 When you become a member, we have newsletters four times a year.

00:40:40.180 You get a member discount on our events.

00:40:42.820 And we're going to be having an event this fall, actually.

00:40:45.720 We haven't publicized it yet, but it's going to be a good one in Calgary.

00:40:49.960 So keep your eyes open for that.

00:40:52.760 So, yes, you can do that.

00:40:54.140 You can donate.

00:40:54.780 And if you, you know, are not financially able to donate, you can share our material.

00:41:02.060 But even a small donation helps.

00:41:03.800 We've been doing this for 23 years.

00:41:05.940 We are a small nonprofit.

00:41:07.820 We operate on about $150,000 a year from our members.

00:41:11.600 And our board is all volunteer.

00:41:15.580 You know, we operate on a shoestring budget.

00:41:18.380 And yet we pump out reports, videos, interviews, press releases.

00:41:24.420 We try to inform the public.

00:41:26.540 Our entire purpose, really, is to advocate for open civil debate on climate and energy policies

00:41:34.540 and full cost benefit analysis, preferably before the policies are made into law.

00:41:41.360 So that's what we're trying to do for you.

00:41:44.520 So if you can help us do that, that would be great.

00:41:47.640 Thank you.

00:41:48.380 23 bucks for 23 years, I think, is a fair donation from the public to our friends at

00:41:55.400 Friends of Science.

00:41:56.720 And I mean, your YouTube channel is just a wealth of information.

00:42:00.660 It's short rants.

00:42:02.800 There's stuff to, you know, encourage kids to chill out about climate change instead of

00:42:07.600 having the education system induced climate anxiety.

00:42:11.660 And then larger PowerPoint presentations that take big topics and break them down for the

00:42:17.800 normals of the world.

00:42:18.680 So anyways, this is my recommendation from me to my viewers.

00:42:23.980 Please support our friends at Friends of Science.

00:42:25.860 Thank you very much.

00:42:28.420 Thanks, Michelle.

00:42:29.960 Thank you.

00:42:30.900 Have a good one.

00:42:31.560 All right.

00:42:40.700 As always, I turn the last segment of the show over to you because without you, there is

00:42:45.220 no rebel news for 10 years.

00:42:47.280 I was going to say 10 long years, but it actually seems really quick.

00:42:50.520 We have been kept alive only through the support of our viewers at home.

00:42:57.080 We all never take a penny from any level of government to do the work that we do to bring

00:43:02.680 you the truth and to hold the government to account on behalf of you.

00:43:08.060 So without you, there's no rebel news.

00:43:10.120 So of course I let you have your say.

00:43:12.160 That's why I give you my email address right now.

00:43:14.460 It's Sheila at rebelnews.com.

00:43:16.380 Put gun show letters in the subject line.

00:43:18.360 So I know why you're emailing me.

00:43:20.600 But also if you are watching a free clip of the show, leave a comment.

00:43:26.040 It does two things.

00:43:27.080 It lets me know what you think, but it also helps us get up on the YouTube and or Rumble

00:43:33.620 algorithms.

00:43:34.900 If you engage with our work, the platform serves our work up to more people.

00:43:41.300 So I know if you're watching this right now, you are a premium subscriber.

00:43:47.100 But if you do come across a free clip of the show, this show, leave a comment because I'll

00:43:53.360 go looking over there too for your ideas and your viewer feedback.

00:43:58.580 Now, today's viewer feedback does come from the mailbag and it is from someone I correspond

00:44:05.840 with almost all the time.

00:44:09.400 He sends me feedback all the time on whatever show that I'm doing.

00:44:14.140 Regular viewers of the show will know that it is Bruce in beautiful downtown Radway, Alberta.

00:44:20.220 Bruce is a loyal viewer and supporter from very nearly the beginning.

00:44:25.740 He and his cat Delta, and he always sends me viewer feedback and I appreciate it.

00:44:31.460 So I, I always read it and I frequently will talk about it on air.

00:44:37.440 So this is on my interview, I believe with Jeffrey Rath from the Alberta Prosperity Project

00:44:43.780 on the tax savings that Albertans would receive personally if they were independent of Ottawa.

00:44:58.620 And, uh, it, it was enormous.

00:45:01.300 And so anyway, that was a very engaged show that I had with Jeffrey Rath.

00:45:07.060 He's a constitutional lawyer.

00:45:08.740 He helped get the COVID mandates, uh, ruled illegal here in Alberta.

00:45:15.400 And, uh, the clips of the free clips of the show that we put out did exceedingly well.

00:45:22.140 People enjoyed them.

00:45:22.900 They had lots of fun and interesting things to say, but this comes to me by way of Bruce

00:45:28.360 in the mailbag.

00:45:29.080 And he says, hi, Sheila, I wish I could convince my senior friends about how good it would be

00:45:34.380 to live in an independent Alberta.

00:45:36.860 I'll have to get one of those books about the amazing amount Ottawa takes from us.

00:45:41.940 You can get it actually on the Alberta Prosperity Project website.

00:45:45.360 It's not a book.

00:45:46.000 It's a document.

00:45:48.000 And take that out into the world because the Alberta Prosperity Project, they didn't come

00:45:52.880 up with their own numbers.

00:45:53.760 They actually took the government's numbers and then worked those, um, in such a way that

00:46:01.320 it, you know, if we didn't have to give a bunch of money to the feds, this is how much

00:46:04.340 we could keep closer to home while still maintaining the services, uh, that we expect.

00:46:11.820 Um, but I was going to say the, the services we enjoy, but we definitely don't enjoy the services

00:46:16.580 that we pay for in this province.

00:46:18.640 Because if you have tried to use the healthcare system lately, you know that you're, uh, hardly

00:46:25.580 using it, right?

00:46:26.620 Like you wait times out of control, uh, access to a physician out of control, uh, you pay

00:46:33.940 a lot for very little in return.

00:46:36.220 And that would change according to the Alberta Prosperity Project, if Alberta were free and

00:46:41.600 independent.

00:46:42.060 And I know, and I'm glad that Bruce brings this up because a lot of senior citizens think,

00:46:49.080 oh, well, what's going to happen to my pension?

00:46:51.300 You paid into your pension.

00:46:52.820 You think they'll, you think the feds are going to steal your pension?

00:46:56.200 Good luck to them on that.

00:46:57.900 Um, you know, a lot of people live in other parts of the world, but receive their Canadian

00:47:06.080 pension that they paid into.

00:47:08.040 Why would Albertans be treated any different?

00:47:10.040 And I mean, if you're an aging Albertan and you want to use the healthcare system, wouldn't

00:47:16.260 you like to have a fully functioning healthcare system that is not bound by the constraints

00:47:21.240 of, uh, Canada's Soviet style health laws?

00:47:28.620 Even if they don't believe it, Bruce writes, at least they'll read the truth.

00:47:32.060 Our legacy media is so biased against the West.

00:47:34.920 I'm old enough to remember Pierre Trudeau and how he despised the West, even in the seventies.

00:47:40.040 But it wasn't until the eighties that he implemented the national energy policy, which decimated our

00:47:45.420 economy.

00:47:45.980 Yeah.

00:47:46.200 He, he hated us.

00:47:48.700 Well, since always, I think the Laurentians do hate us because our power doesn't come from

00:47:54.980 legacy.

00:47:55.420 It comes from hard work.

00:47:56.660 And it's a lot of times, uh, the Laurentian elites and actually earn their power and wealth.

00:48:03.920 We earned our power and we, we will earn our wealth.

00:48:08.660 We are earning our wealth.

00:48:11.660 Your faithful viewer and correspondent, Bruce.

00:48:15.680 So it's true.

00:48:18.620 If you have, uh, aging relatives who are concerned about their pension, show them that APP document.

00:48:27.000 If you have aging relatives that are concerned about access to healthcare, show them that

00:48:32.960 APP document, because wouldn't you want to actually have a healthcare system that you could

00:48:36.740 use where you, where you pay into it and then actually have a family doctor.

00:48:43.240 Wouldn't that be great?

00:48:45.560 Wouldn't that be great?

00:48:47.200 Instead, we have universal access to wait lists instead of universal access to care.

00:48:53.820 Okay.

00:48:54.700 Everybody, that's the show for today.

00:48:55.960 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:48:57.080 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, the same place next week.

00:48:59.980 And as always, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:49:06.740 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - July 24, 2025

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Ottawa attempts to burn Alberta gov't over mismanaged Jasper fire

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