The Candice Malcolm Show - Alberta separatists face FIRST TEST + B.C. blocks pipelines？

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 0.98

00:06:12.100 pipeline. What else do you want us to do? And it's super annoying to see the premier of British 0.98

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 0.98

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.

00:40:40.460 You're watching Juno News, Canada's fastest growing independent news network.

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The Candice Malcolm Show - June 23, 2025

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

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