The Candice Malcolm Show - June 23, 2025


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


Episode Stats


Length

41 minutes

Words per minute

168.7666

Word count

6,992

Sentence count

471

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Chris Sims fills in for Candice on today's show to talk about pipelines, resources, and the electric vehicle mandate. Plus, a rousing conversation with Edmonton Sun columnist Lorne Gunter on the topic of whether or not we should have public money for pipelines.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Candice Malcolm Show. I'm Chris Sims. I'm the Alberta Director for the Canadian
00:00:07.240 Taxpayers Federation. I'm filling in for Candice today on this show. On this show, we're going to
00:00:12.760 get into pipelines, resources, does Mark Carney really mean it, and finish off with the electric
00:00:19.600 vehicle mandate. Don't you want the government telling you what car to buy? No? Well, stay tuned
00:00:24.780 for that because we've got a rip-roaring conversation with Edmonton Sun columnist
00:00:29.060 Lorne Gunter. But first, a little bit of news here. Okay, so over the weekend, something interesting
00:00:36.180 happened. Remember how B.C. Premier David Eby had a come-to-Jesus moment over the carbon tax? Yeah,
00:00:43.500 that guy. The one who had his own version of the carbon tax in British Columbia. The one who kept
00:00:48.600 on cranking it up. The one who hasn't met a resource project that he hasn't wanted to strangle. The
00:00:54.200 same guy who's piling on massive amounts of debt in British Columbia, inexplicably. That premier,
00:01:01.240 remember how he was kind of singing from the Team Canada hymn book for a little while of, oh, let's
00:01:06.560 actually do elbows up. Let's make sure that we can all be in this together. Well, he's kind of squishing
00:01:12.480 on that now. He came out and said, generally speaking, maybe we shouldn't necessarily have pipelines,
00:01:18.840 and it's not such a good idea. And oh, the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which used to be owned by Kinder
00:01:24.380 Morgan. The Trans Mountain Pipeline, not super running at capacity. He got a lot of blowback over
00:01:30.420 that, obviously. But now he's trying to put a little bit of water in his wine. Now he's saying, oh, what I
00:01:37.460 meant was, we don't want public money going into pipelines. Public money, by the way, is taxpayers' money.
00:01:44.200 There's no such thing as government money. He actually went on CTV over the weekend, and he's
00:01:49.700 trying to peddle this backwards now, saying no public money for pipelines is what I meant. Listen
00:01:54.700 to this. I don't support tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidy for a brand new pipeline across
00:02:01.020 the north, getting rid of the tanker ban off the north coast. There is not a world in which that
00:02:07.000 pipeline across the north happens without significant federal subsidy. If the premier of Alberta is able to
00:02:13.160 pull that off, I say more power to her. Why do you assume that federal subsidies would be needed? 1.00
00:02:20.020 Because they were needed for the last one. Yeah, they were needed for the last one, but they haven't
00:02:23.780 been needed for everyone. Okay, so here's the thing. Anyone who's been paying attention to this issue in
00:02:29.340 a serious manner, especially for those of us out west, hello, I'm in Lethbridge, Alberta, none of us
00:02:35.920 want taxpayers' money going into pipelines. It's so frustrating when we hear folks, especially the
00:02:42.720 Florentians in the eastern media, which are funded largely by the government, say, we bought you a
00:02:48.020 pipeline. Why don't you Westerners sit down and be quiet and be grateful? We didn't want the 1.00
00:02:54.160 government to buy a pipeline. We didn't want the government to build and twin a pipeline next to
00:02:59.840 that existing pipeline. What we wanted was for the government to be reasonable and sensible and to
00:03:06.680 get out of the way. What happened with that pipeline that runs from Edmonton across the Rockies into
00:03:15.040 Burnaby and out to port, okay, what happened there was ridiculous. The original pipeline was owned by a 0.59
00:03:23.320 private company, Kinder Morgan. That private company was going to use its own money, its own money,
00:03:32.680 to hire a whole bunch of people between Edmonton and Burnaby, and to twin its existing pipeline.
00:03:40.420 What that means, for anyone who hasn't actually stood near a pipeline, there is a clearing, okay,
00:03:47.140 through the woods. It's literally just like a, looks like a flat piece of meadow that is mowed all
00:03:52.220 the way to Alberta, okay? What they wanted to do is take that existing pipeline that's already there
00:03:57.940 with the land around it, all of the tests have been done, and twin it. That's all they wanted to do.
00:04:03.680 And it was supposed to be a multi-use pipeline, which means they could push things like bitumen
00:04:08.480 or other oil products through it as they wanted to. They got green lights for a long time from the
00:04:14.920 federal government, which is why Kinder Morgan was putting their money into it, okay? And they were
00:04:20.180 going to employ people. They were going to employ people to the extent that these are like mortgage-paying
00:04:26.580 jobs. These are serious jobs. To put it this way, the property taxes, property taxes paid by Kinder
00:04:35.360 Morgan back in the day, more than paid for the entire recycling and garbage system for the city of
00:04:42.700 Burnaby. That's how much money and wealth these private companies produce when they're allowed to do
00:04:49.480 their thing. But that's the catch. They weren't allowed to do their thing. The feds put up roadblock
00:04:55.260 after roadblock. They dragged their heels. They ragged the puck. And in that world, time is money.
00:05:01.360 Like that company sitting there twiddling its thumbs and money is just going out the door
00:05:05.000 and no shovels were in the ground. So that company eventually threw its hand up in frustration and
00:05:10.520 walked away. Now, due to outcry from areas like Alberta, Saskatchewan to an extent, and some areas
00:05:18.460 of British Columbia who do value natural resources, a lot of people got understandably upset. And so
00:05:24.460 then the federal government, the same level that was strangling the pipeline in the first place,
00:05:30.280 decided to swoop into the rescue and build it and twin it themselves. By the time the smoke clears on
00:05:37.680 this thing, the now newly named Trans Mountain Pipeline is going to cost taxpayers around 30 billion-ish
00:05:45.720 dollars. So we went from a private company wanting to spend its own money. They were guesstimating
00:05:52.060 eight to 10 billion, but it doesn't matter because it was their own money employing people to taxpayers
00:05:57.560 being on the hook for it and it being about 30 billion dollars. The problem here is this has allowed
00:06:04.260 folks, especially back east, to play cute. They get to play dumb now and say, oh, well, we bought you a
00:06:12.100 pipeline. What else do you want us to do? And it's super annoying to see the premier of British
00:06:17.420 Columbia where I'm from and who knows better to use that talking point. And he knows what he's doing
00:06:25.060 because he's on with VASI. He's on with the CTV Parliamentary Bureau. It's right across the street
00:06:29.880 from Parliament Hill. He knows that that audience could largely just swallow that. But those of us who
00:06:36.220 understand how the resource system works here in Canada, and especially the history behind that
00:06:41.160 pipeline, know what's actually true. So for the record, most Canadian taxpayers don't want the
00:06:48.780 federal government or any government building pipelines. They want governments to get out of
00:06:54.880 the way so that companies can build pipelines. Next up, we're going to find out what Lauren Gunter 0.99
00:07:01.440 thinks of this and also touch on what's really interesting happening right now in central Alberta.
00:07:06.600 I was just in Sundry, Alberta. In central Alberta, right there, we're having a provincial by-election.
00:07:14.320 Usually that might be a bit of a snooze fest. Not this time, because we have some independent-seeking
00:07:21.580 MLAs who are running for seats in the legislature. So let's find out.
00:07:27.220 Joining me now is a good friend of the program, Lauren Gunter. Of course, Mr. Gunter writes columns
00:07:32.080 for the Edmonton Sun. And of course, you see his columns elsewhere in the Sun Media newspaper
00:07:37.160 chain. We're old colleagues from back in the day when Sun News Network used to be on TV.
00:07:42.680 Ms. Lauren, I wanted to get into a few things with you. Right off the top, the kind of newsy element
00:07:47.360 is, of course, the by-election that is happening provincially. Now, I was just at the Sundry rodeo,
00:07:53.480 and I know that the by-election isn't technically happening in Sundry, but it's in this kind of little
00:07:58.380 shape of the riding that goes around Sundry. Interesting, on the way up, I wanted to raise
00:08:04.320 this with you. I was driving up the 22, beautiful secondary highway, by the way, the Cowboy Trail,
00:08:10.520 and I noticed these big red signs with, you know, this kind of neat-looking white font of the name
00:08:19.840 of the person running there. And, like, I'm in the movement, and I had to think hard about,
00:08:28.280 why is there a liberal running? What? And my kids, who were in the pickup truck with me,
00:08:33.560 just said out loud, Mama, why is there so many liberal signs around here? I wanted to get your
00:08:38.780 thoughts on this, on the Republican candidate who picked red for obvious reasons, because that's the
00:08:44.060 color of the Republican Party in the States. I'm a little bit concerned about the branding on his
00:08:49.480 behalf here. What did you think about this? Yeah, I think there's two problems with it. One is the 0.99
00:08:54.240 most obvious, the one that you've mentioned, and that is that the color scheme and the font
00:09:01.280 look like federal liberal signs. Well, in Alberta, that's not who you want to be associated with. So,
00:09:08.460 a casual driver going by on the highway who does live in the riding and will maybe vote on June 23rd
00:09:18.520 in the by-election, is very likely to think, there's certainly a good possibility, that person
00:09:25.020 will think that Cameron Davies, who's running for the Alberta Republican Party, not the Liberals,
00:09:31.520 is a Liberal. And the Liberals know that this riding is so bad for them, they didn't run a candidate in
00:09:39.900 the general election in 2023, and they have no candidate in the by-election. So, this looks like
00:09:46.440 Cameron Davies is the Liberal candidate, and I think he's toast. The other problem he has with his
00:09:51.340 branding is this Alberta Republican Party. This is probably one of the parts of the province where
00:09:59.400 Republicans are still reasonably popular. There would still be a fairly strong movement among
00:10:07.900 separatists, not among the general populace in the riding, but among separatists, to quit Canada
00:10:14.680 and become the 51st state. But as you will know from having seen polling for the last three or four
00:10:21.600 months, Donald Trump's taunting of Canada about becoming the 51st state has destroyed conservative
00:10:31.660 Canadians' views of the Republican Party. And so, here he is, this is Cameron Davies, who until April 24th
00:10:41.600 was a UCP member, who now has a party called the Republican Party and has colors like the Liberal Party.
00:10:49.340 I just think that it's really bad branding all around.
00:10:52.580 It is bad branding. I've been in the game for a long time, and again, I had to think hard. I'm like,
00:10:57.600 I was about to tell the children, oh no, honey, that's because it's public land and anybody can
00:11:02.220 put it by the side. And I'm like, oh no, wait, Cam, of course, is the Republican Party. And to your point,
00:11:07.360 with U.S. President Donald Trump, a lot of people will put what happened during the federal election
00:11:14.080 at his feet. And that is what caused a lot of the kind of strange buzzword, elbows up without any
00:11:21.020 substance behind it, nonsense, that happened during the election. Now, the one element the
00:11:26.600 Taxpayers Federation was happy about is that we do have, technically, the consumer carbon tax down to
00:11:32.460 zero. So, you know, cost of gas is still about 20 cents cheaper at the pumps. That's a good thing.
00:11:37.740 Some folks I've been speaking with are happy-ish with Bill C-5, and they're kind of optimistic. I know
00:11:43.980 Premier Daniel Smith is sounding kind of optimistic when it comes to getting things like pipelines done
00:11:49.160 and natural resources actually on the roll here in Canada. But yeah, I don't want to belabor it
00:11:53.820 because, of course, you know, everybody's allowed to run, and I see a lot of support for, I would
00:11:58.760 describe it as Alberta sovereignty, of just standing up for rights of Albertans. You know, the really
00:12:04.740 simple billboard of more Alberta, less Ottawa, that still plays well. But to your point, I'm not sure
00:12:11.420 bright red with white font and the word Republican works. And the other thing, if you look at these
00:12:16.800 Davies posters, and the acknowledgement that it's the Republican Party is very tiny. Like, if you're
00:12:23.460 driving by at highway speeds, you're not going to see it. You'll see it if you're stopped somewhere,
00:12:28.180 and there's a sign, say, in the corner of the gas station lot or something, you'll be able to tell
00:12:33.460 that it's the Republican Party. But I think it's just very, very bad branding. The other problem
00:12:38.000 that they're going to have, and I predict that the separatists will not win. It will not surprise
00:12:45.380 me if they finish ahead of the NDP in second place. But even that seems like a bit of an outside
00:12:52.540 stretch. But the other part of the problem is, is you're talking about Alberta sovereignty rather
00:12:58.360 than necessarily separation. And Smith, from the UCP, the Premier, gets an awful lot of support for
00:13:06.300 that. She has been a sovereigntist, and I think that buys her some time right now. Now, if there's
00:13:13.520 an outrage that the Ottawa Liberals foist on Alberta, if there's an NEP2, if they're going to start, there's
00:13:21.980 two big things that the provincial government is worried about Ottawa doing. One is increasing the
00:13:29.460 taxes on oil and gas to pay for the subsidies they want to give manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec
00:13:37.980 because of the American tariffs. If that happens, that to me is an NEP2. I'm going to be unhappy about
00:13:46.940 that. And the other thing they're worried about, and this is the thing I'm really worried about,
00:13:51.260 is that the Liberals are going to, at some point, say, there's no business case. They said there was
00:13:58.420 no business case for LNG. They're going to say, there's no business case for a new pipeline.
00:14:02.940 You know, we would go for a pipeline. Oh, sure, we would. Yes, yes, that's part of our nation building.
00:14:08.680 Yes, we'd love to have a new pipeline. But no private company has stepped forward to put the money up.
00:14:14.900 And, you know, so we're just going to have to go without one. That's exactly what they want to
00:14:20.880 happen in Ottawa. And so they have made it so difficult for a private company to step forward
00:14:28.740 and say, look, we'll risk the 13, 14, 15 billion dollars on a pipeline. They made it so difficult
00:14:36.920 for a company to do that, that there aren't many companies that are prepared to do that. Now,
00:14:41.660 I can see the Alberta government getting involved, adding in money from the Heritage Fund or whatever
00:14:46.900 to help boost this along as a short-term loan to get the project on its feet. But Ottawa is hoping
00:14:54.280 against hope that no one will step forward and say, well, you know, you know, we could. We tried.
00:15:01.200 But the private sector has signal. Market is telling us that there is no market for this.
00:15:06.640 And if they try that, which I think you're right, I think that's the play here. I think because,
00:15:11.700 you know, this guy wrote this book. OK, this is Mark Carney's book. OK, that he wrote while he was
00:15:19.100 the UN special envoy for Climate Something Something. OK. And all through here, he says things like 80%
00:15:26.760 of oil and gas needs to remain in the ground. He repeats the statement that 90% of the world's
00:15:33.300 energy requirements can be met through wind and solar. He also very interestingly refers to things
00:15:39.760 like gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, natural gas, hot water heaters, things like that as
00:15:45.600 stranded assets for the future, including power plants that run on natural gas, which rang a lot
00:15:52.280 of alarm bells. So what we're dealing with here right now, I find is interesting. We have him now
00:15:58.020 as prime minister saying things like, I'm into nation building. Let's make this happen. I can see
00:16:04.060 the optimism, the little glimmer of hope on Daniel Smith's face. I can. And they're willing to try and
00:16:10.660 believe him. But I think ultimately it's going to be what you just said. They're going to set it up so
00:16:16.360 that it looks like it's a real thing. And then they're going to try to say with a straight face,
00:16:20.720 oh, you know, there's no business case for oil as if, you know.
00:16:24.140 Well, you go back to go back to 2017. I go, you got the Energy East pipeline. The Trudeau
00:16:32.340 government moves the goalposts on that thing three times. They make it tougher and tougher and tougher
00:16:37.300 until finally Trans-Canada Pipeline, TC Energy backs out of the, they've spent a billion dollars
00:16:46.280 getting that project approved. And then they back out because the federal liberals keep changing the
00:16:53.040 rules over and over and over again. And then Trudeau has the gall to say, well, it wasn't us.
00:16:59.480 That was a business decision that killed Energy East. No, it wasn't. It was governments jerking around.
00:17:06.180 And governments will jerk around on this. You know, they're not going to, for instance, get rid of
00:17:10.960 the Impact Assessment Act. They're going to say, well, we can suspend the Impact Assessment Act in
00:17:15.940 this case because Bill C-5, the new nation building project bill, gives us the authority to override our
00:17:23.780 own bills on this. But they're not going to do, they're not going to get rid of the Impact Assessment
00:17:33.120 Act. And so that's a real problem for these guys. But maybe it's not a problem because maybe that's what
00:17:39.420 they really want, is they want to make it look like they're working hard to please Alberta and the West.
00:17:45.680 And really what they want to do is make it look like we frustrated ourselves.
00:17:49.300 Albertans see through that, though, and to your point on the sovereignty and separation movement,
00:17:53.520 I've been telling some folks over the phone, they're like, how is it going out there with this movement?
00:17:58.860 I'd say it's kind of simmering right now. But the moment you block something like this, and it's revealed
00:18:05.460 that you're actually going to keep the cap on energy, that you're going to keep blocking pipelines,
00:18:10.300 it's going to hit a rolling boil, like right away.
00:18:13.100 And the first time we go through a winter where it's minus 48, and they've told us all to get heat
00:18:18.680 pumps, and now we're freezing in our homes, that's also, if we haven't left before that,
00:18:25.500 we'll leave after that. There's so many things that this government is unprepared to give up.
00:18:31.100 It's unprepared to give up the net zero power grid mandate that it has. It's unwilling to give
00:18:38.720 up the tanker ban on the West Coast, which, if you look at it closely, means a ban on oil. Only oil
00:18:46.700 from Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan are covered by that ban. I mean, there's all of these things
00:18:52.760 where they've deliberately set out to demonize the West, and they're not going to give up on those.
00:18:59.720 They're hoping that this new Bill C-5 will allow them to override some of the most egregious parts
00:19:06.840 of their previous bills. But they're not prepared to dismantle those bills. That's the key. And so
00:19:13.540 that ultimately, they can say, you know, we tried, we tried really hard, but nobody stepped forward to
00:19:21.380 do this. Of course, with the Impact Assessment Act, it could, under that act, take between five and
00:19:29.300 seven years to get approval for a pipeline. It would cost the company that wanted the permits
00:19:35.500 somewhere in the neighborhood of one and a half to $2 billion just to get the permits. That's when I'm
00:19:40.640 putting, we haven't put an inch of pipe in the ground yet. So that's what I think they're aiming
00:19:49.020 for. And you and I were talking a little bit before we started recording about David Eby in BC. He's
00:19:56.260 doing the same thing. Like he said, you know, oh, I'm not against the pipe. No, no, no, don't get me
00:20:00.960 wrong. I'm not against the pipeline. I like the idea of pipeline, but there are no private champions
00:20:06.560 for it now. And I just don't want to see a lot of public money go into it. I don't want to see a
00:20:11.020 lot of public money go into it either. I am offended. I'm pleased that the Trans Mountain
00:20:16.360 extension, the expansion got built, but I am offended by the fact that the federal government
00:20:23.680 spent twice as much money as that pipeline cost just to get the rights to it. And then that should
00:20:31.200 have cost them about seven to nine billion to finish the project. And they paid about 32 billion to
00:20:36.240 finish the project. I'm with Eby. I don't want to see that happen again either. But everybody like
00:20:42.500 Eby and Carney and the federal liberals all are acting in ways that people who have to put forward
00:20:53.060 billions of dollars in risk are watching. And they're saying, yeah, these people aren't serious.
00:20:59.100 They don't really want us in there. And so if we went ahead, we would lose our money. And then our
00:21:05.280 shareholders would rightly be unhappy with us. So I think that's what's on the books or on the
00:21:11.940 burner right now is that they're simmering this whole idea that, gee, there's no business case
00:21:17.740 for it. The market has spoken. It doesn't want another pipeline. Well, that's not it at all. If
00:21:22.360 you deregulated, decided there was going to be a big pipeline to the East Coast and another one to the
00:21:28.280 West Coast, those pipelines would be full and busy for probably another 30 years.
00:21:33.920 Yeah, especially with what's going on overseas, because it looks like they're going to be relying
00:21:38.300 on Alberta oil more than they thought they were going to be. To your point, you said the word
00:21:43.100 acting. And I think that's exactly the right word. I think this is mostly theater. And eventually that
00:21:49.900 curtain will come down and the lights will come on and people will be just as mad as they were before,
00:21:54.400 if not more. Lastly, Lauren, I wanted to get into, it's totally connected with what we were talking
00:21:59.720 about. You mentioned the electricity grid, you mentioned heat pumps, which of course run off
00:22:03.680 of electricity. And that brings us to the looming ban on the sale of normal gasoline and diesel powered
00:22:11.820 cars and trucks. Now, some folks are like, oh, that's happening in 10 years. No, it is starting
00:22:18.380 in five and a half months, folks. That is when these restrictions start kicking in. That's when
00:22:24.440 it's going to start really warping the market. In fact, if you call up a car dealership who have
00:22:28.840 to deal with stock and availability of cars and trucks, they're probably running into these
00:22:33.200 restrictions already. What I found interesting, Lauren, is that it isn't just this crazy restriction
00:22:39.260 that is coming down on cars and trucks being sold at dealerships, where if they're going to wind up
00:22:43.740 with a whole bunch of EVs or battery powered cars that people don't want to purchase, they're stacking
00:22:47.880 up. It's that the feds are setting up this weird credit system again, where these car sellers get
00:22:54.700 to earn green credits. And if they don't make their quota of sales for that year, they can use some of
00:23:01.520 the credits. Like it sounds like the mess of the second carbon tax over and over again. And you know,
00:23:09.100 people are just getting rich. Actually, it's way worse. I think it's way worse. The parliamentary
00:23:14.140 budget officer about two years ago tried to determine what it would cost in order to make
00:23:20.500 the liberals, the Trudeau liberals, EV mandate work by 2035, where you're correct. By next year,
00:23:29.020 we have to be 20% electric. By 2030, we have to be 65% electric. And by 2035, we have to be 100%
00:23:37.800 electric. Well, we are now, now that the federal subsidy ended in January, we are about 8% of cars
00:23:47.380 sold in Canada. And that's light trucks to pickup trucks and delivery bands. About 8.7% of those sold
00:23:55.700 in the first quarter of 2025 were electric. We're supposed to be at 20% next year. We were never
00:24:02.700 higher than 14%. And I don't see how, even if you doubled those federal subsidies to car buyers,
00:24:12.420 made them 10,000 instead of 5,000. I still don't think you're going to get to 20%. And the manufacturers
00:24:18.840 have all started to scale back their EV production, which means suddenly you have 20% demand for EVs.
00:24:27.400 You don't have 20% supply for EVs. The practical side of all of this, simply, I mean, it's unavoidable.
00:24:37.140 You cannot get away from it. For instance, the estimate is that we would need about 700,000
00:24:43.500 charging stations in Canada. Once 2035 comes around and everything is EV, we'd need about 700,000
00:24:51.480 charging stations. I think that's actually an underestimate, but let's go with 700,000.
00:24:56.940 We currently have 30,000. And if you figure that backwards over the 10 years from 2035 back to
00:25:05.820 today, that means we would have to double the number we already have this year alone. So on top
00:25:13.220 of the 30,000 we have, we'd have to install 60,000. And we would have to install 60,000 every year for 10
00:25:21.320 years to even come close to the number we're supposed to have when they're all EVs. And then
00:25:26.940 there are other practical problems. I mean, I can go on and on and on about statistics, about how people
00:25:33.480 don't want these things. They're not being sold. You take the subsidies away and the market falls
00:25:40.060 by half for these things. But some of the really practical things is, okay, you would need to build
00:25:45.940 probably 12 site sea dam power projects between now and 2035 if we go to fully electric vehicles
00:25:56.680 and they all have to be charged. Well, where are any of those being built? Where is the, they talk
00:26:04.560 about, well, there's no private company stepping forward to build pipelines. There's no private
00:26:09.240 companies stepping forward to build their power plants either. And, and so, you know, you're going
00:26:13.640 to have in 10 years, you might have 50 or 60% of the fleet in Canada as, as all electric, but where
00:26:24.020 are you going to plug them in? What, where this, my wife and I decided we have some friends who had
00:26:30.420 their house rewired to 200 amps because you, in order to get to the level two charger, which takes about
00:26:38.280 four and a half or five hours for a car, you have to have 200 in your house. And they went and did it.
00:26:45.380 They don't have an electric, but they thought, you know, the city's only allowing six or eight per
00:26:49.160 neighborhood of these rewirings. So let our house be one of them. So we thought, ah, you know, that 0.99
00:26:55.480 makes some sense. We'll do that too. And I phoned their electrician and he comes over, he knocks on
00:27:01.400 the door and he's looking around. I already tell you now I can't do 200 here. I said, what do you
00:27:07.520 mean you can't? He said, you're all underground power. I can only do 200 if there's, if you're
00:27:13.160 wired above the ground. And he said, so I could put 125 in for you. We got a hundred now, like most
00:27:20.040 houses, I could put 125 in for you, but then I'm going to have to put a regulator on it so that in
00:27:25.700 the middle of the summer, if you're running your air conditioners and you're charging the car,
00:27:29.540 the regulator will shut one of those off. So either you're not going to charge your car or
00:27:35.700 you're going to sweat like a pig in bed because you can't have the air conditioner on. And so I
00:27:40.520 said, okay, well, fine. I don't want to do that, but let's have some fun here. I explained who I was
00:27:46.660 and why I was writing about, and he said, well, I said, what's this going to cost? He said, about
00:27:53.540 $16,000. Well, who's going to do that? You know, Transport Canada already came out this morning with
00:28:01.280 this, I guess, well, I guess it actually came out yesterday. It was reported this morning.
00:28:06.280 They have a survey of who would buy electrics as their next vehicle. And no one who makes under
00:28:14.180 about $80,000. And I'm serious when I say no one. 99% of people who make under $80,000 would not
00:28:21.060 consider an EV. It is an upper middle class and upper class interest. That's all there is. And
00:28:29.480 you know, everybody we know, we know lots of people have EVs. For all of them, it's at very least their
00:28:35.800 second vehicle. And in most cases, it's their third vehicle. And so it's a virtue signal, right?
00:28:40.880 They got some money. It's kind of a fun little gadget. Maybe we'll bomb around town in it for
00:28:46.700 all. But nobody's taken one into Northern Alberta in January from Edmonton without knowing where
00:28:54.220 they're going to be able to charge or how long it's going to take. I sat next to a guy yesterday. I was
00:29:00.240 in old Didsbury Three Hills, the place where there's going to be a by-election, one of the three places
00:29:06.100 there's going to be a by-election today. I sat next to a guy who was at a charging station. I was
00:29:10.400 watering my dogs. And I said to you, I said to him, oh, how long have you been here? He said,
00:29:17.440 oh, about 20 minutes. I said, how much longer do you think you're going to be? He said, probably
00:29:21.080 about another 10. And then I'll have the charge that I need to keep on going. I'm not stopping
00:29:25.820 anywhere for half an hour to fill my car. You know, I have three rules about EVs. They have to
00:29:35.440 cost the same to the engine. The power system has to cost the same as an ICE. Right now, they're about
00:29:44.400 $8,000 to $12,000 more expensive than an internal combustion engine. They have to go as far
00:29:52.520 and work as well in the winter. None of them do. And you have to be able to recharge as quickly as I
00:30:01.340 can refuel. And I used to have a truck took, you know, about 12 minutes to fill it up and go inside
00:30:08.100 and get some jerky and a Coke and come back out and get in the cab and drive off. I said, our son used
00:30:14.700 to live on the coast. It was an 11 and a half hour drive from our house to his apartment. And I could
00:30:19.580 make one stop with my truck. No, in Blue River. So in the middle of interior BC, I'd stop there.
00:30:32.140 I'd go in. First, I'd fill up. I'd go in. I'd get my snack and my beverage. And I'd be back on the road
00:30:38.980 in under 15 minutes. Well, you can't do that with, not yet. Will there be better batteries come
00:30:45.060 along? I am confident of that. The technology will improve. But then you can talk to me about
00:30:50.520 doing this. You can't tell me now that this is a good idea. And what you just described there
00:30:55.680 is called supply and demand. This is the demand. So people's lives, as Dr. Jordan Peterson has pointed
00:31:04.920 out the obvious, are infinitely complex. You have a million reasons to drive the vehicle that you
00:31:11.740 drove in the past and to drive the vehicle that you're driving now. And how many Canadians do we
00:31:16.460 have that own their own personal vehicles and what they use them for? And the idea that the government,
00:31:22.500 which is made up of individuals who have their own problems, okay, can turn around and start doing
00:31:27.920 this visionary utopia dream program and start dictating how people drive and what energy they
00:31:36.000 use in order to drive is nuts. To your point, just on the energy requirements, Lauren, I sat there and
00:31:42.820 did the raw math. Just the personally owned private vehicles. I'm not talking trucks. Forget about
00:31:49.920 delivery vans. Privately owned vehicles parked in people's garages right now or your driveway. We would
00:31:55.520 need 14 can-do reactors tomorrow to charge those things. Not talking about transmission lines,
00:32:02.820 charging stations, nothing else. That's all more. 14. Each of those suckers costs around $13 billion
00:32:09.080 to build and 10 years each. So like we do not have the power. You or I are here in Alberta and in the
00:32:16.820 wintertime we get warnings on our phone saying there's going to be a grid outage. Don't use your
00:32:21.660 hairdryer. Unplug your toaster. Like do you think? And that is because we've moved substantially away
00:32:30.980 from coal to natural gas. We could accommodate the demand with natural gas, but now we also have to
00:32:38.660 use wind and solar. And there was a time a year and a half ago in January when it was minus 48 in much
00:32:46.920 of Alberta. And you have to turn the wind turbines off because the blades will freeze and then they'll break
00:32:53.300 off and it causes no end of expense and repair. And of course, it's cold. The sun is kind of sort of out in
00:33:03.800 January, but not really. And it's only out for about eight hours. So you just, you can't do it. Like it's not a
00:33:11.840 ideological thing. It's a practical thing. It's pragmatic. And, and so that's, that's where we're
00:33:18.600 at. But getting back to the ED mandate for, I mean, just imagine, just imagine the federal government
00:33:24.240 saying, we know you want a house, but for the good of mankind and for the planet, everybody really should
00:33:34.160 live in small condos. That's the best way for us to manage our resources and reduce the footprint of
00:33:41.620 people's living experiences. So we're going to deny you a house and insist the only thing you can buy is
00:33:50.180 a condo. It's the same with, with vehicles. We know you drive 700 kilometers into far Northern Alberta
00:33:59.700 or Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec. And that would, that, that would make it much easier to have
00:34:05.900 diesel or gasoline powered engines. But for the good of the planet, we don't think you should have
00:34:11.740 a truck to start with. So we think you should buy a small electric vehicle and that's all you're going
00:34:18.120 to be able to buy. Right. Quebec has done even further than the feds have. Quebec have said that after
00:34:23.240 2035, you will be unable to buy parts for ICE, for internal combustion engine cars. So you might
00:34:32.740 have one and you're trying to milk it for as many years as you can before you actually have to go and
00:34:37.740 buy an electric. No, no, no. You're going to be unable to buy the replacement parts. So what does
00:34:45.820 that mean? It means everybody in Quebec is going to drive to Ontario or New Brunswick to buy the parts
00:34:50.620 that they need. But nonetheless, it's the mentality of it that says you must do as the government says.
00:34:59.000 And you know what? In a free country, that's pretty damn bold of the government to decide that it can
00:35:05.020 tell us what kind of vehicles we're going to buy. You said a mouthful there within a free country.
00:35:08.880 We're just going to wrap up here soon, Lauren. But I just wanted to go over a little bit of your
00:35:12.280 personal anecdote, which is excellent. That personal experience is excellent. So to be clear,
00:35:17.000 you got an electrician over to your house, he said even if he could do it, it would cost about 15
00:35:22.760 grand. And your stuff's all underground. So no soup for you. And if he did put it in, he would need a
00:35:29.480 regulator put on that thing so that you would get to choose between being able to be mobile to move
00:35:35.140 around in your vehicle, charging it, or air conditioning. Okay, folks, multiply that across all these
00:35:44.940 millions of Canadians who own private vehicles, and their own personal circumstances and lives.
00:35:50.500 This is why the government should never tell you what kind of vehicle you are able to purchase and
00:35:56.460 to drive. Furthermore, the cost alone, if you don't believe me, look, this is Natural Resources Canada.
00:36:03.120 Okay, go check that out. It's their own website. They're estimating, Lauren, I know you've read the
00:36:08.720 same stuff. They're estimating it's going to cost upwards of $300 billion. I hate to put...
00:36:17.800 And they commit to that as though it's deciding between having chocolate milk or lemonade at lunch,
00:36:26.060 like there's no real consequences, because it's not their money. They're spending other people's
00:36:33.700 money. And so of course, it makes no difference to them. And it makes them feel good about themselves.
00:36:39.220 That's the problem with progressives all the time, is that they will make the rest of us do stuff so
00:36:45.240 that they can feel good about themselves. They've done the right thing. They're morally superior.
00:36:51.580 They're intellectually more sophisticated than the rest of us. And so they feel entitled to tell us.
00:36:57.480 If they want to go join their own commune in the mountains of the Kootenays, seriously, and grow
00:37:03.400 their own food and go solar, like go barefoot. I grew up on Vancouver Island, okay? I was around a lot
00:37:08.920 of folks who were living off the land. Go fill your boots. Don't tell other people how to live, 0.94
00:37:13.780 especially when we can't afford this. I need to point this out. We have un-money right now. Un-money.
00:37:20.020 We are more than a trillion dollars in debt. The interest we are paying alone on the debt
00:37:25.320 is more than the line item that we spend on national defense. That's how deep we are in debt.
00:37:33.040 And it will, within the next two or three years, surpass what we spend on health.
00:37:36.680 Yeah. It's a billion dollars a week, folks. Picture a brand new hospital, ready to go,
00:37:42.960 burning down every week. That's how much we're spending on interest on the debt. And these jokers
00:37:49.200 are thinking we're going to be able to throw $300 billion at a project nobody wants.
00:37:53.540 Yes. Lorne, lastly, I'm going to get you to make a call here. I think that Carney's just going to
00:37:59.220 run up against darkness in the winter and math here. I think he's going to have to throw this
00:38:05.120 overboard and say, yeah, that was the last guy's plan. We're not doing this anymore. Despite all
00:38:09.320 that stuff he wrote in that book. If you read that book, he's more extreme than Guibo. But I think
00:38:15.120 he's just going to have to cut line on this. What do you think is going to happen at this?
00:38:18.220 Well, eventually they will. DeBruzan, Julia DeBruzan, who's the new environment minister,
00:38:25.100 said about 10 days ago that, well, there is some flexibility inside the EV mandate law.
00:38:32.960 I didn't see it when I looked in there, but what they're signaling is that maybe in the next few
00:38:40.040 years, we're going to have to scale this back a bit or make some alterations, make some changes.
00:38:44.180 But she has said, DeBruzan said last week, that they're going to come back with their
00:38:49.360 $5,000 a vehicle subsidy for buyers of EVs. That's because the federal government has put
00:38:57.700 about $33 or $34 billion into EV plants. Ontario and Quebec have put about another $20 billion in
00:39:04.620 there and they have to save that investment. That was a bad gamble is what that was. It was
00:39:11.260 nothing but gambling. It had no investment end to it at all. They're chasing their gambling losses
00:39:18.800 and they're going to try and force us to buy cars that we don't want, EVs, with our own money.
00:39:29.260 It just staggers me. This would have been a very, very good way to say, hey, we're different from
00:39:34.240 the Trudeau guys. We've thought these things through. We understand the practical problems,
00:39:38.400 but no, they haven't done that. They're clinging to this for now. I think why they're clinging to
00:39:44.380 this is they want someone to step forward and get them a pipeline. They wouldn't mind really doing
00:39:53.320 the pipeline as long as they don't have to put money into it. That's going to make their
00:39:57.520 environmental base angry. They're going to be able to say, oh, yes, but look, we're doing this whole
00:40:02.080 EV thing. And isn't that wonderful? You like that, you like the EV, you like the impact assessment,
00:40:07.460 you like the net zero grid. And they're hoping it'll all sort of balance out in the end with
00:40:13.000 their base. It's ridiculous. I want to go back to the 80s where we were worried about endangered
00:40:17.780 species, Lorne. Thank you so much for your time today. Okay. That's Lorne Gunter, of course,
00:40:23.300 guest, a friend here on the Candace Malcolm Show and columnist for the Edmonton Sun. Go check out
00:40:29.340 his recent writing where he also talks about this ridiculous battery-powered car mandate
00:40:33.520 that is a non-starter. Thank you so much for watching the show. We'll catch you next time.
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