Western Standard - September 10, 2026


25 years after 9⧸11, Canada is a very different country


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per minute

165.79

Word count

10,348

Sentence count

413

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Happy September 10th.
00:00:30.000 everyone welcome back to the show wow I mean it's raining outside it's gloomy it is a gloomy day in
00:00:40.900 more ways than one summer's over I mean what a what a rapid fast lousy summer we had here in
00:00:48.920 Alberta I mean it just went by so fast and it feels like every long weekend and there aren't
00:00:55.600 that many long weekends in the summer right I mean we got May long weekend one in June one in
00:00:59.680 July, one in August and one in September. And it seems that every one of them was just rain, rain,
00:01:04.720 rain. And then here we are today. Actually, I'm trying to, yeah, John has it as the topic on the
00:01:12.800 top there, 25th anniversary of 9-11. But before I get into that, just also another gloomy day today
00:01:20.920 in a sense, it is the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So that was a year
00:01:27.000 ago um i remember when that happened last year i remember the feeling of like shock and and then
00:01:36.020 how people quickly here in calgary in particular we had a beautiful vigil for him like the next
00:01:42.080 day almost and it and how it spontaneously happened uh grassroot down at the city hall
00:01:48.340 um you know just um anyways just want to just want to recognize that uh i mean i want to try
00:01:56.280 And again, it's a call-in show and I want to, you know, I got some gloomy topics today.
00:02:01.480 I got some other ones that are a little more positive, but it is a call-in show.
00:02:04.880 So please, you know, numbers on the bottom there.
00:02:07.720 And maybe I'll ask you a question to facilitate the call-in today.
00:02:11.620 Where were you on September 11th, 2001?
00:02:17.260 And do you remember it, right?
00:02:19.380 Because so tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of that event, which like I was thinking about that the other day.
00:02:26.240 like 25 years ago and not perfectly statistical but 25 years kind of means that like there's a
00:02:35.460 big chunk of the country like there's probably 20 or 30 percent of the people that are living in
00:02:41.420 canada today or around the world that were not born in 2001 you know what i mean so for for for
00:02:48.120 a large percentage of people this has become history now you know 9-11 is something that
00:02:54.780 they learn in school. It's one of those big moments in life. And that I live through, you
00:03:00.440 know, I can think of several big moments that I've lived through in life. I lived through the fall of
00:03:04.060 the Berlin Wall. I lived through 9-11 and the shuttle disaster and, you know, COVID and things
00:03:11.100 like that. I did not live through, you know, World War II or other events in life. Actually, and so
00:03:18.820 So 9-11 is moving into that category now.
00:03:22.600 It's moving into that category of history for so many people.
00:03:27.140 And I want to talk about 9-11 a little bit, and I want to remember it today,
00:03:32.480 but I don't want to politicize 9-11 like exactly why it happened and who caused it, right?
00:03:38.040 That's not what remembrances are, right?
00:03:39.820 When we remember, for instance, when we have November 11th and we remember Fallen,
00:03:44.960 we don't focus on that day on why they went to fight and and so forth we focus on the fallen
00:03:51.460 and so for 9-11 today I just want to focus quickly on um the the victims and the the heroes that the
00:03:59.720 rescuers and and some of that right and so and let me and and and then I will bring it back to
00:04:05.960 something else that's happening today Mark Carney's in in Banff and I think Mark is missing
00:04:12.480 an opportunity by not being in New York tomorrow. So I'll bring it to that and I'll share a sort of
00:04:17.800 my personal story about 9-11. But so what happened on 9-11, in case you don't remember, right?
00:04:23.980 So on 9-11, you know, September 11th, 2001, I was waking up in the morning and I watched the news
00:04:33.140 and I hear that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. And I left and I went to go to work.
00:04:39.020 and then, you know, thinking that it was just a small plane.
00:04:42.440 And then when we get to work half an hour later and I'm listening on the radio
00:04:46.160 and you find out that, no, it wasn't a small plane, it was a big plane.
00:04:50.560 And then I thought, okay, well, that's an unfortunate coincidence.
00:04:54.020 And then there was a second plane and then we knew something was happening.
00:04:57.880 And it caused, you know, it was devastating.
00:05:02.500 I mean, two towers in New York collapsed
00:05:04.580 And over 3,000 Americans that were in those buildings died that day, including a lot of people, like a lot of people from the New York Fire Department and police who had rushed in.
00:05:15.280 When others were evacuating, others were rushing in to do their job, right?
00:05:20.520 And the towers collapsed and killed over 3,000 Americans.
00:05:23.340 And it killed also, you know, 24 Canadians that day.
00:05:27.920 and and and but what i want to and when i remember what i want to remember and what i want to focus
00:05:34.220 on for just for today for tomorrow is is is what happened between our two countries that day right
00:05:40.680 we came like we were the first people to offer assistance to the americans like and i've said
00:05:48.380 this all along right in light of like this insanity that's going on temporarily in our
00:05:52.860 country with this trade war and everything else we like let's remind ourselves like we live
00:05:58.220 we're next door to americans that are fundament like that are almost identical to us culturally
00:06:03.660 like to to to we we have to go out of our way you know if you're traveling in europe and you speak
00:06:10.120 somebody will say are you an amer like are you a canadian are you an american we have to distinguish
00:06:14.260 ourselves we're almost indistinguishable to the rest of the world it's the longest undefended
00:06:19.080 border. We've been neighbors forever. We fought side by side. We fought each other early, early
00:06:24.520 on, like, you know, in the 1700s and the in the 1800s, we had some skirmishes between our two
00:06:29.480 sides, but mostly, mostly it was the British and the French and, and, and, and that happened on
00:06:35.520 this territory. But fundamentally, since the existence of the US and the proper existence of
00:06:40.700 Canada, since 1867, we, since the two have been full nations, we've never fought each other.
00:06:48.100 You know, we were side-by-side in World War I.
00:06:50.700 We were side-by-side in World War II, side-by-side in Korea.
00:06:54.780 An incredible number of us actually went and fought alongside them in Vietnam and 9-11, right?
00:07:01.520 9-11, we offered all the assistance we could on that day.
00:07:05.240 And then there was this other really wonderful story that happened on 9-11, right?
00:07:09.620 Because two planes crashed into the World Trade Center.
00:07:13.160 So then the Americans who control their airspace said, holy smokes, we got to shut down our airspace.
00:07:18.740 So they shut down their airspace.
00:07:21.840 Now, while they do that, there's literally 100 planes flying from Europe on their way to North America, to the U.S.
00:07:30.700 And where did all those planes land on that day?
00:07:33.760 They landed in Gander, Newfoundland.
00:07:35.480 Like, if you've never heard the story of Gander, Newfoundland, look up the story of Gander, Newfoundland.
00:07:39.540 And let me tell you why Gander is important, right?
00:07:42.160 Gander is like a town in the interior of Newfoundland
00:07:45.940 that became really big in the 70s and 80s and 90s
00:07:50.240 because in the early era of jet travel,
00:07:54.820 actually all the way until the 90s, let's say,
00:07:57.340 when a passenger jet left New York or Toronto
00:08:02.580 and flew over to Europe,
00:08:03.700 they couldn't carry enough fuel to get all the way there.
00:08:06.380 So they always had to stop in Gander and refuel.
00:08:08.840 So Gander has a nice, huge airport that basically for decades was simply a fuel stop, a pit stop, right?
00:08:19.420 But nonetheless, it's a big airport there.
00:08:21.460 And so on 9-11, when the U.S. shuts down their airspace, all these planes are looking for some place to land.
00:08:27.240 They landed in Gander.
00:08:28.900 And, you know, don't quote me, but something like 200 planes landed in Gander.
00:08:32.540 200 planes times 100 people per plane, right?
00:08:34.820 That's like, that's 20,000 people appear in Gander, and Gander's only got 5,000 people living there, if that.
00:08:41.400 And what did the people of Gander do in brotherhood, in friendship?
00:08:45.700 They took in all those people into their homes, and a lot of those people were Americans, right?
00:08:50.460 They took them into their homes.
00:08:52.200 They set up places to feed them, to shelter them, to provide clothing and stuff like that.
00:08:58.780 And it took a long time for all that bottleneck to, you know, for the world to return semi-normal and all those planes to return.
00:09:05.720 And so, and in the years subsequent, in all the years subsequent, every year on 9-11, there's been big celebrations in places like Gander.
00:09:13.400 It's always been recognized.
00:09:14.540 Americans go there to reminisce.
00:09:18.480 Governors have gone there.
00:09:19.460 I think presidents have gone to Gander over the last 20 years to talk about, you know, to thank the people of Gander. 0.95
00:09:26.020 and and unfortunately this year because of the crap that's going on between our two nations
00:09:31.760 the the you know the gander is going to have a celebration but i i'm pretty certain that they 0.63
00:09:37.000 refused they they they said to the americans don't come which i find unfortunate right and and and
00:09:44.000 then the other thing that happened as a result of 9-11 the other way that we came to the to the you
00:09:49.140 know that we showed our our alliance with the americans is you know i don't want to get political
00:09:54.860 but there was a war after that.
00:09:56.700 I mean, it resulted in a war
00:09:58.000 and we ended up sending people to Afghanistan
00:10:01.320 and Canada fought alongside the Americans,
00:10:06.020 fought the Taliban and others in Afghanistan and in places
00:10:09.820 and we fought there from 2001 to 2014.
00:10:13.980 Like some people don't, you know,
00:10:15.160 when you mention wars to Canadians,
00:10:17.220 the first ones that come to mind is probably World War II
00:10:20.480 and World War I and Korea is forgotten.
00:10:23.820 But Afghanistan has the distinction of actually being our longest war.
00:10:29.360 We were in Afghanistan for 13 years, officially in a combat role in a war.
00:10:34.340 And so alongside the Americans, and we took it on the chin there, like so many others.
00:10:39.640 I mean, we had 158 Canadian Armed Forces casualties in Afghanistan during those 13 years.
00:10:45.920 So, and so I really wish, and then today, so today, this week, again, you know, we'll talk a little bit about the ongoing trade war saga, which we're losing, by the way.
00:11:01.240 Let me take a quick chat here, take a sip here.
00:11:04.500 It doesn't take long to get a dry mouth when you do all the talking.
00:11:08.080 Folks, feel free to call in.
00:11:09.620 Like, please, like I said, call in and tell me your 9-11 story.
00:11:14.540 And I'll tell you a good 9-11, my 9-11 story.
00:11:17.780 But, you know, today Carney is in Alberta.
00:11:23.480 So he flew in here yesterday with his cabinet
00:11:27.280 and they're on their way to do their annual or their fall retreat in Banff.
00:11:32.380 And I'm sure he'll make a statement from Banff tomorrow, you know, commemorating 9-11.
00:11:37.680 But I kind of wish that instead of doing that tomorrow, I kind of wish he was in New York.
00:11:41.900 And if he didn't want to be in New York because he can't set aside his differences, he could have at least gone to Gander or someplace like that.
00:11:48.880 So I just find that Carney's misreading the room this week with what's going on in, you know, in the bigger context.
00:12:01.960 Just a quick story about myself in Afghanistan, you know, or not Afghanistan.
00:12:07.100 I wasn't in Afghanistan.
00:12:08.080 then just 9-11 I you know how when you belong to social media like Facebook and stuff like that
00:12:14.200 these old stories pop up well I had an old story pop up on my Facebook and it was a weird reminder
00:12:19.300 so I was working in 2001 I was a young engineer living in Edson Alberta working for Talisman
00:12:27.000 Energy and my family was growing my I had two kids at that point Karen my wife was pregnant
00:12:32.740 with our third. And I was looking for new opportunities. And I got a job offer from
00:12:38.980 Saudi Aramco. I applied for a job as an expat in Saudi Arabia. And I got a job offer from
00:12:45.720 Saudi Aramco on September 1, 2011. And I accepted the offer on September 2, 2011. So I accepted an
00:12:55.400 offer. So I was on my way. I was leaving Canada and I was going to go work in Saudi Arabia.
00:13:01.060 And as part of that, I was getting ready for some onboarding.
00:13:06.400 So Saudi Aramco had scheduled me and my wife for what they called an in-country orientation, but in Houston, Texas.
00:13:20.060 So I was supposed to fly to Houston, Texas on September 14, 2011.
00:13:25.720 And the reason I was going to use them with my wife is we were going to meet representatives from Saudi Aramco, go through some cultural orientation and preparation and stuff like that for the eventual move.
00:13:37.100 Well, needless to say, on September 11th, when I wake up and I see the two planes hitting the world trade, and then within a day or two, we start mentioning the words terrorism and the links to the Middle East and everything else.
00:13:49.840 my wife and i can't just blame this on my wife myself included decided yeah i'm not doing this
00:13:56.640 i'm not up uplift you know i'm not um disrupting my family to move to saudi arabia with this
00:14:03.040 happening so i reneged on the offer i called saudi aramco and i reneged i said i'm not coming
00:14:08.960 and i'll never forget the lady on the phone literally said to me you'll probably be safer
00:14:18.180 here meaning saudi arabia than there and i don't know if that was a freudian slip on her part or
00:14:24.380 whatever but uh that sent a bit of a chill down my spine and i'm like oh so i'm glad i and and the
00:14:31.820 reason i bring up that story is because uh i've brought up that story with a couple of people
00:14:35.760 the company i went to work for a company instead of going to saudi aramco i still left talisman
00:14:41.120 and then i went to work for a company called prime west which is you know one of the best
00:14:44.720 companies i ever worked for and i made some really great lifelong friends after working at
00:14:48.800 at uh at prime west and a lot of people who who saw my story on facebook in the last couple of
00:14:58.180 days made some really cool comment you know they didn't know about what had happened what that i
00:15:03.840 you know turned down the offer but they they reminded me that it was a you know that it
00:15:08.800 turned out for the better that we became friends so i like that way of thinking right that that
00:15:12.880 One tragedy made me reconsider, but we should never dwell on the past too long
00:15:21.280 and look on the bright side.
00:15:22.920 So me not going to Saudi Aramco made me take my career in a different direction
00:15:28.920 and meet different people, and some of those people are still friends of mine to this day.
00:15:34.020 So I definitely have no regrets about not going over there.
00:15:37.960 I also kind of find it interesting that even I, as a young engineer,
00:15:41.020 was kind of worried about the country and wanted to leave,
00:15:44.860 but then chose to stay in Alberta and Canada.
00:15:49.700 So I got to, you know, that's food for thought, right?
00:15:52.160 That's food for thought.
00:15:53.020 And maybe I guess it ties into the independence movement right now.
00:15:59.560 And maybe there is a good side or a bad side depending on the outcome.
00:16:03.900 And I'll come back to that.
00:16:05.300 So again, folks, if you like, don't be shy, call the number.
00:16:08.100 John's got the number on the screen there, 479-9378.
00:16:11.020 and share your 9-11 story or any other story you want to talk about.
00:16:16.840 I mean, things I got on my list today,
00:16:19.580 I do want to talk a little bit about the trade war.
00:16:24.320 I want to give you a very personal example
00:16:26.380 of the impact of the trade war on a Canadian business.
00:16:31.280 I went to Danielle Smith's town hall meeting.
00:16:35.260 That's one of the great things about Danielle.
00:16:37.400 She goes around and does a lot of town halls.
00:16:38.920 So she had a town hall meeting in Cochrane on Tuesday.
00:16:42.040 I went there and I want to give you a little update on that.
00:16:46.180 Talk a little bit about the Allison inquiry,
00:16:49.380 which I think is getting absolutely no media attention.
00:16:52.460 And I think that's a shame.
00:16:54.420 And I got a few other stories I want to talk about.
00:16:57.660 So, all right.
00:16:59.760 Well, since you guys, where do I go next on this one?
00:17:03.780 let's actually let's let's stay on um let's stay on the trade war for a quick minute here
00:17:11.060 um the tariffs went in effect the counter tariffs went into effect a couple of days ago on the 8th
00:17:18.340 so i think it'll take time for them to work their way through people have inventory and stuff like
00:17:22.820 that so we're not going to see the the the the hits immediately um but then our counter tariffs
00:17:30.180 went into effect and then trump fired back immediately and he's escalated now so it's not
00:17:37.900 just tariffs on alcohol and tariffs on milk products he's gone to outright bans so through
00:17:46.420 an executive order or whatever mechanism they have yesterday or two days ago trump put an
00:17:53.140 outright ban on the importation of canadian alcohol into the u.s and the importation of
00:17:59.620 canadian milk products and cheese and then he put a ban specifically on canadian motorcycles
00:18:08.100 and then he's squeezing bombardier and there's rumors that he's gonna one way he can exempt
00:18:17.380 himself from um get around the the the free trade agreement is he's there's a rumor that he's going
00:18:24.760 to tell American government agencies that they cannot procure Canadian products.
00:18:32.100 So that's not against, that doesn't prevent products from coming into the US, but I guess
00:18:37.080 the American government's a big buyer, right?
00:18:38.760 So that'd be like saying to the American army, you can't buy skidoos for your winter gear.
00:18:46.260 You can't buy, you know, if you're, whatever, some agency that needs, I don't know, hockey
00:18:54.240 equipment or something like that you can't buy that if you're preparing food for the army you
00:18:58.720 can't buy canadian products so the tariffs continue to escalate and and and the more i think about
00:19:08.520 this like who's losing it's it's not the government it's not carny it's not trump it's the person on
00:19:17.000 the ground it's you and me and and so brings us to the story i want to share just a quick story
00:19:23.220 right so we're in this trade war right now and everybody's saying buy canadian buy canadian buy
00:19:28.660 canadian so i ran around my house trying to find a made in canada product okay and i found one
00:19:36.580 bear with me a bit of that so i'm not promoting this but this is this is something called the
00:19:44.020 the the gutter saver pro okay and it's just it's something i have i hate cleaning my gutters and
00:19:49.700 when you you know when you're cleaning your gutters and you lean the ladder against the gutters you're
00:19:53.060 you're kind of bending the gutters.
00:19:54.820 Well, you put this on top, you put your broom handle there,
00:19:58.780 you jack it up in the air, you hang it over your gutters,
00:20:01.340 then you lean your ladder on here.
00:20:04.140 But anyways, that's beside the point.
00:20:05.480 It's not the item that counts.
00:20:07.000 It's the fact that, we can't zoom the camera,
00:20:10.000 but right here, written on here, trust me,
00:20:12.220 it says proudly made in Canada by L&D Tool & Dye, okay?
00:20:17.460 So I got a hold of the people who own this company,
00:20:22.460 lovely lady named Lucy I won't give her last name and I talked to Lucy on the phone yesterday
00:20:27.800 about the impacts of a tariff and I thought I was pretty smart on tariffs and and Lucy gave me a
00:20:36.300 a really amazing lesson and maybe I'll bring her on the show in the coming days or coming weeks or
00:20:42.100 something like that but she so they're in Nova Scotia they they have a patent for this thing
00:20:49.600 they had to source somebody to make a mold making a mold is not easy anymore nobody makes molds it's
00:20:55.400 not like you just show up and get somebody to make a mold they got somebody to make the mold
00:20:58.640 and found somebody who still had the technology to inject this thing and so they they they make
00:21:04.080 the this this this object this this thing and um 90 of their market is in the u.s okay and that's
00:21:15.380 just a reality in Canada. So she's a small business in Canada. She's got a product and her
00:21:21.060 product sells okay in Canada, but the market is small. And plus people don't clean their gutters 1.00
00:21:27.180 in this country for call it a seven months out of the year, eight months, nine months out of the
00:21:32.760 year. So, you know, you buy one of these and it's okay. But if, but in the U S there's places that
00:21:38.160 have a year round need for these things. And she sells 90% of her product in the U S well, the, 1.00
00:21:44.860 The tariffs have demolished her business because I don't want to get into it too, too much.
00:21:51.380 It's but the 50 percent tariff that she that the U.S. imposed on her means that her supplier, let's call it, let's say let's say Home Depot USA used to buy a thousand of these from her every month.
00:22:04.620 Now Home Depot has to pay 50% more for these things.
00:22:10.740 Home Depot is not willing to order them in advance and pay 50% and risk being stuck with the stock.
00:22:18.020 So now Home Depot will say, well, maybe I'll do 10 or 20 or something like that.
00:22:21.560 And then it becomes unprofitable.
00:22:23.680 Then I asked her if she could find her own distributor in the U.S.
00:22:26.420 She's like, if I do, I lose control.
00:22:28.740 Can you find, actually, before I get on tariffs, so the Americans are tariffing her and Canada's tariffing her. 0.98
00:22:34.620 because some of the components that she uses to make this come from the U.S.,
00:22:39.940 the resin or the coloring or the sticky labels or whatever.
00:22:43.040 Not everything is sourced in Canada.
00:22:45.120 So now she's getting, so the cost to make her product is going up,
00:22:49.080 and then the cost of, because the cost of her product goes up,
00:22:52.620 when the invoice she sends to the U.S. is higher,
00:22:55.280 and the U.S. are putting an invoice, a 50% invoice on there.
00:22:58.140 She's out of business, okay?
00:22:59.200 in a nutshell she's like i don't i i was i was upset talking to her and i don't even know how
00:23:06.700 you can like the frustration in her voice was incredible and and this is canada we're already
00:23:13.100 in canada being an entrepreneur and a small business owner is already difficult enough
00:23:18.460 like this is not a country that is friendly to entrepreneurs you know she gave me horror stories
00:23:24.660 i won't go into the horror stories um but but i just i just wanted to make that make people
00:23:31.760 understand that the these things are impacting lives so it's her livelihood that's affected
00:23:36.820 and it's uh and it's the people that she hires and the machinists and the injection molders and
00:23:42.740 so forth so there's a cascading event there but there's also another cascading event
00:23:46.680 which is she sells to the US and she explained this brilliantly she's selling to the US and then
00:23:55.180 therefore she's bringing in American money to Canada right so if she sells one of these and
00:23:59.820 she brings in 10 US dollars to Canada that's $10 that Canada did not have before and then with 0.79
00:24:06.440 that $10 she can go to her neighbor who sells chickens or makes picnic tables or sews clothes 0.98
00:24:11.600 or washes windows whatever and use some of that money but now she's out of money she's not bringing 1.00
00:24:17.600 in the dollars she's laying off people and it's having a cascading spill on effect to others in 0.80
00:24:25.120 her community and then i said uh well i heard that carney is offering assistance to businesses right
00:24:31.760 that carney said he's going to take the money he collects as tariffs and use it to offset some of
00:24:37.360 of the hurt of these businesses and she laughed and as soon as I asked the question and she was
00:24:42.320 laughing I was almost apologetic going I'm sorry I even asked that question what a silly question
00:24:47.500 on my part to ask how does a small business like hers take advantage of the the the relief offered
00:24:55.060 by the federal government right the relief offered by the quote-unquote relief offered by the federal
00:25:01.060 government that's for bombardiers that's for virgin mobile or telus or whatever the big companies
00:25:07.440 and and that have big departments that can apply for this it would cost her so much money just to
00:25:14.440 apply to get this assistance that it's hardly worth it and the assistance is a pittance and
00:25:19.740 then she explained some of the assistance and the assistance would be basically to help her
00:25:24.520 you know build a website those so she could attract more business in canada and she's like
00:25:29.440 i've been doing this for 15 years do you not think i've already done that i'm like i get it get it
00:25:35.080 get it and then on top of that she talked about you know the the so it sounds good to say by
00:25:42.740 canadian it's impractical but not only is it impractical she almost went as far as saying
00:25:48.420 that most of her canadian neighbors all of us in general were kind of hypocrites and i'm like i
00:25:55.660 agree i understand where you're going to go next because we say we're going to buy canadian but if
00:26:00.700 you can find this item in the store for a fraction of the cost because it was made in china which one
00:26:08.680 are you going to buy you're going to buy chinese don't don't lie to me you're going to buy chinese
00:26:13.200 so anyways i just i wanted to bring up that example just that story quickly as an example
00:26:19.640 that these tariffs and this war that we're in is,
00:26:24.060 oh, I should have.
00:26:27.620 Sorry about that, folks.
00:26:28.980 I usually turn off my phone here,
00:26:30.720 and I don't know why I forgot to do that today.
00:26:34.100 Anyways, let me just backtrack.
00:26:38.300 So the tariffs affect people,
00:26:40.240 and folks, like, park the rhetoric for a while
00:26:43.940 and ignore what carnies and others are doing
00:26:47.500 and and do pay attention to this like don't don't don't fall for all this noise don't change your
00:26:55.020 don't change your behavior because there are unintended consequences this by canadian sounds
00:27:01.620 good but it's not it's not always good it's not always practical and there's a lot of really good
00:27:07.920 reasons to keep supporting people who do business with the americans and supporting our american
00:27:13.580 neighbors and person to person let's let's not let's continue the relationships we have person
00:27:20.140 to person and let's not get wrapped up in what the politicians are doing that's kind of that's
00:27:24.960 kind of my plea on that one so um all right folks come on 479-9378 i got my usual guys that usually
00:27:34.560 call just from uh from grand prairie and uh and uh spencer and others but uh maybe you guys just
00:27:42.020 want to hear me talk, I'm happy to keep talking. All right. Where do I go from here? Do I talk
00:27:50.020 about Zelensky or do I talk about, let me talk about, okay, let me, let me, let me talk about,
00:27:57.040 let me talk about the meeting with Danielle Smith on, on Tuesday, because it was a good meeting.
00:28:04.800 It was a good meeting. So it's summer, right? And Danielle Smith goes around and does her
00:28:09.520 town hall meetings uh across the province and uh first of all kudos for her doing that okay
00:28:17.900 politicians are elected to be our representatives and a lot of them say that they talk to canadians
00:28:27.920 you hear that all the time right and then she was like i talked to canadians and this is what
00:28:31.200 they've told me but i've never seen him in an event where he's actually talking to people
00:28:35.200 And so when Danielle says, I talked to Albertans, she does. Okay. So on Tuesday, she's in Cochrane and small meeting, like about 120 constituents, UCP members. And it was by invitation only, though, although it's by invitation only, the invitation can leak out. Right. So I get a I get an email as a UCP member in that constituency association. So Marty, come on out for that. But these things aren't secret.
00:29:03.280 so I could have leaked it out
00:29:05.320 or somebody could have leaked it out
00:29:06.560 and almost anybody could show up
00:29:08.340 at one of these events
00:29:09.360 show up
00:29:10.760 there's about 125 of us
00:29:12.740 and it's Danielle Smith
00:29:14.120 and the MLA for Airdrie
00:29:18.900 not the MLA for Cochran
00:29:21.660 I'll come back to that
00:29:22.940 go ahead caller
00:29:23.580 as usual
00:29:24.500 where are you calling from
00:29:25.260 and what's on your mind
00:29:26.340 hello
00:29:30.200 hello
00:29:31.000 hello
00:29:33.040 Go ahead.
00:29:35.980 Hey, this is Chris calling from Calgary.
00:29:38.740 How are you, Chris? What's on your mind?
00:29:42.520 Hey, Jeffingman, bring 9-11 here.
00:29:45.900 I was back in the old country in a log yard, scaling and grading, loading up logs.
00:29:50.480 My brother was living down in Mississippi at the time, and he phoned,
00:29:55.420 and that's when I was made aware of the planes.
00:30:06.920 Four years after, I came to Canada
00:30:09.520 and related to your poll question there on YouTube.
00:30:14.740 Yeah, I haven't been here since 9-11,
00:30:18.020 but only five years, four years after.
00:30:21.420 But I've seen it going down there.
00:30:23.660 Where were you at the time of 9-11?
00:30:25.960 What country were you in?
00:30:28.540 Just around the corner, Romania.
00:30:30.640 Oh, okay. 0.97
00:30:34.640 Yeah.
00:30:36.200 But, yeah, that blessed our brothers.
00:30:40.880 Do you remember sort of, did anything specific go through your mind that day?
00:30:46.460 Did you have a sense that the world was maybe changing?
00:30:51.220 Or what were your thoughts on that day?
00:30:52.680 Do you remember back?
00:30:53.660 Yeah, I do remember. I was working for an American company down there, and there were Americans and Canadians working for the same company, and we were right away aware, and we had the feeling that things were never going to be the same in the world.
00:31:18.800 Yeah, yeah. Oh, well. Okay, well, great. So, are you doing anything specific tomorrow to remember, or are you just like most people? I mean, you'll pay attention to it, but do you have a tradition on that day, or it's just another day?
00:31:32.400 no we don't it's not just another day it's just uh it is a day it is a day to remember
00:31:39.740 but uh you know living up here in alberta we have to keep plugging away you know
00:31:45.500 the receiver general keeps wanting our money to send it away excellent okay well thanks for calling
00:31:52.740 uh chris thanks for calling cheers my carnage should be down there yeah i agree all right
00:32:00.640 have a great day you as well thank you yeah i had a just just back to 9-11 i had a buddy uh
00:32:09.260 where at the where i was working at that time i had a fellow engineer who was a canadian citizen
00:32:15.700 with a german passport and a um uh an arab last name because his his father was arabic and his
00:32:27.680 mother was German. And boy, in the years after 9-11, his life, you know, he told me horror
00:32:36.080 stories. I mean, going through the border after that with, like I said, Canadian dual 0.98
00:32:39.860 citizenship, passport, German, Arabic, all those things. Poor guy. Going through customs
00:32:45.000 was a nightmare for him. So back to the town hall, Daniel Smith and the MLA for Airdrie.
00:32:54.400 I'm having a memory blank, but just two people.
00:32:57.880 And the reason the MLA for Airdrie was there,
00:33:00.960 because Cochrane right now does not have a UCP MLA.
00:33:05.460 The MLA for Cochrane is Peter Guthrie.
00:33:09.240 He was elected as a UCP MLA,
00:33:12.080 but he got kicked out of caucus and he's now an independent.
00:33:14.880 So Danielle did her town hall there and had to bring somebody with her.
00:33:21.540 Somebody mentioned it in the comments.
00:33:23.100 I'm drawing a complete memory blank.
00:33:25.040 It's a blonde lady is the lady who's the MLA for Airdrie.
00:33:32.260 Anyways, and Danielle did a very quick chat, a very quick update.
00:33:36.500 Like, not much.
00:33:37.620 Her opening statements were not much more than about five or six minutes.
00:33:41.420 You know, talked about things that she's done.
00:33:43.840 You know, proud that Alberta is having its sixth or seventh surplus in a row
00:33:48.260 because of oil prices.
00:33:50.060 talked about some of the progress, some of the changes she's made on on on recent bills, like Bill 25, taking politics out of the school, some progress that they've made on infrastructure, the fact that there's so many schools being built and stuff like that.
00:34:06.220 So she gave it. And then she highlighted statistics like most of the jobs created in Canada in the last year are in Alberta.
00:34:14.860 We lead the country in GDP per capita, GDP traded to the U.S., stuff like that.
00:34:20.740 So very, very high level, good stuff. And I agree with all of it. It's all stuff I've commented on many times.
00:34:27.700 And then she opened up the floor to questions and it was such a small crowd.
00:34:32.560 And I managed to go right to the front and be the first person to ask her a question. 0.97
00:34:37.800 She's got her PR team standing there. 0.95
00:34:39.800 And I know some of her PR team.
00:34:41.200 And I told, you know, Peter is like sort of reluctantly putting the mic in my face.
00:34:45.860 And I said, I'm going to be nice.
00:34:47.360 I'm going to be nice.
00:34:48.420 And I was nice, right?
00:34:49.720 I opened up my comment by thanking Danielle and telling her, you know, I'm willing to be super critical of anybody, any politicians.
00:34:59.940 I don't care.
00:35:00.680 I've told you guys this.
00:35:02.160 I don't care if you're political stripes, just because you're conservative, you don't get a break from me.
00:35:07.040 I'm critical of everyone, but at the same time, I'm also willing to give credit when credit is due.
00:35:13.280 So that's what I said to her. I said, credit, you're taking the province in the right direction, and I applaud you for that.
00:35:19.560 And then I joked, I said, I wish you were moving faster.
00:35:23.680 And then and then I joked one last joke and I said, I wish you were more on board with us as a as an independent, as a separatist.
00:35:32.760 And then I asked her a real question. And my question had to do with something I've talked on here earlier this year about our our tax bills that came in last year and how the bills had gone up and specifically the education component of our tax bill of our municipal tax bill.
00:35:48.820 So I get a municipal tax bill, but it's gone up. And when I look at it closely, it's not the city or the county that's that's increasing costs. It was the province passing on this school levy to the cities and making them take the public relations hit.
00:36:07.880 So I brought that up. She gave me a satisfactory answer. She said that the formula is kind of flawed. They had held it steady for years. Yeah, that's exactly. Thanks, John. That's the picture. I'm probably right off the corner somewhere there. Who's the MLA? I don't know who the other lady is that she's with her. And and I should because I'm a political commentator, but I'm having a real memory blank right now.
00:36:32.660 And so she gave me a satisfactory answer to that. And then other people had questions. People brought up almost everybody who stood up made a statement and a question. And the statements all that was a like that was a pro independence crowd kind of surprised me with a very pro independence crowd.
00:36:53.660 There was an independence component in every question or in every statement, but the questions were good.
00:37:00.520 People brought up things like, you know, our roads are still dangerous and trucks, you know, moving at 130 kilometers an hour, big trucks, how we need to sort of curtail that and bring that under control.
00:37:15.140 People with inside knowledge of Alberta Health are talking about how there's Angela Pitt.
00:37:19.820 Thank you.
00:37:20.340 Thank you.
00:37:20.740 Thank you.
00:37:21.060 people are bringing up issues about Alberta health and how it's still
00:37:25.180 pushing DEI policies and how Alberta health is resisting real change
00:37:31.540 specifically around surgeries and stuff like that.
00:37:36.800 Listen, I'll, I'll, I'll come back to that,
00:37:38.560 but I want to give priority to the callers. So again, a caller, go ahead.
00:37:41.780 Where are you calling from? What's your name and what's on your mind,
00:37:43.860 please?
00:37:46.260 Hey Marty, it's James from Devon calling again.
00:37:48.460 I got a better signal this week.
00:37:50.820 Say that again, a little bit of what?
00:37:54.900 Do I have a better signal this week?
00:37:56.660 Yes, yes, way better signal, yes.
00:37:58.660 So what's on your mind, James?
00:38:00.700 Okay.
00:38:02.140 Well, of course, 9-11, never forget, never, ever, ever.
00:38:09.580 Just to tell my story briefly, why not?
00:38:12.120 I was a kid, I was like eight years old,
00:38:15.020 and my dad listened to talk radio basically religiously.
00:38:19.820 and he had his headphones and he's like something's wrong something's really really wrong there's no
00:38:24.700 signal something's happening and he turned the tv on just in time to see the second plane hit
00:38:32.380 wow yeah and so you remember that so you're you were young but you remember it
00:38:39.740 yeah yeah i was i would have been about eight and then um but what i wanted
00:38:45.180 go ahead no no that yeah you're yeah i was going to say too young or maybe not too young
00:38:51.820 i know too young to have friends who were in uh in the canadian forces or anything like that
00:38:58.460 not really i mean i know some guys who grew up and went in but uh like not at the time okay and
00:39:05.660 so what's your thoughts on carney should he uh should he have picked a different day to
00:39:09.980 to do his retreat in Kananaskis or in Banff?
00:39:15.520 Of course he should have,
00:39:16.740 but I honestly think he's doing this deliberately.
00:39:19.520 I think he's doing every little thing he can 0.99
00:39:22.080 to stick a finger in Donald Trump's butt. 0.99
00:39:24.280 Every little thing he can do to annoy the Americans, 1.00
00:39:27.620 every tiny little dig he can take at them,
00:39:30.540 and I'm sick of it.
00:39:31.740 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:39:34.100 Yeah, including what he did today, right?
00:39:36.620 I mean, what a slap.
00:39:37.720 again today he invited uh um zelinski zelinski's in calgary and zelinski's going to speak at his
00:39:45.560 conference tomorrow like that's like that's that that's a slap in the face to the americans again
00:39:51.880 wow yeah okay no the timing isn't coincidental um if i could switch topics if you got the moment
00:40:01.160 sure quickly i wanted to talk about uh our federal uh mps who have uh created this group
00:40:12.200 to uh remain to keep alberta in canada it's on my list of topics my comments on it
00:40:18.920 yeah go ahead give me your comments on it real quick my comment brief
00:40:24.760 what better indication do you need that canada's elections objectively do not work
00:40:31.160 than a federal party desperately trying to cling on to a specific province
00:40:35.900 because they know for an abject fact they can't win without us.
00:40:40.440 Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth.
00:40:42.180 That's almost what's written on my sheet of paper.
00:40:44.500 It was last on my list.
00:40:46.220 I didn't even know if I was going to get to it.
00:40:47.920 So thanks for bringing it up, James.
00:40:49.280 Have a great day, bud.
00:40:52.280 Thanks, you too.
00:40:53.200 Have a good one.
00:40:53.780 Cheers.
00:40:55.960 I'm looking at the clock.
00:40:57.420 Again, this show some days goes by so fast.
00:40:59.780 So I just I got to. All right. Sorry if I rush it. So Danielle opened up the floor. Tons of people brought up questions, issues, great things. She wrote them all down. But the topic of independence kept coming up, coming up, coming up, coming up.
00:41:14.500 And this is where, for me, it got really interesting because as she was responding to concerns, other people in the crowd were speaking up.
00:41:23.600 And then all of a sudden it started to look almost like a little bit of a dialogue back and forth, which is so rare.
00:41:28.980 And it was refreshing.
00:41:30.800 And it was a real insight into Danielle.
00:41:33.660 And now I'm starting to really – so she brought up – I'm going to paraphrase and I'm going to simplify it.
00:41:39.520 But she basically, in her mind, she is actually she she she pleaded with everyone, please vote.
00:41:47.020 OK, please vote in the upcoming referendum.
00:41:48.900 And she's basically saying vote yes to the first nine questions and vote no to the last one.
00:41:56.140 And in her mind, if we vote yes to the first nine, that gives us the leverage to negotiate with Ottawa.
00:42:04.940 And we don't need the last one. And I'm like, wow, no, it's the other way around.
00:42:08.760 I mean, voting, voting that, hey, we want to open the discussions on immigration.
00:42:13.580 That's not leverage. OK, that's not leverage. Voting that we want to leave.
00:42:18.740 That's leverage. That's a real message to to to Ottawa.
00:42:23.020 So I thought I thought clearly I thought that that was a paradox or she was misreading that, like her telling us to vote for the first nine.
00:42:30.360 Yes and no on independence. I thought, no, you got it around backwards.
00:42:33.760 backwards if you want leverage don't worry about the other things vote for independence and then
00:42:40.380 and then the the discussion came around she she talked about how in her mind uh she's voting to
00:42:47.820 stay she repeated that she believes in a stronger alberta a sovereign alberta within a united canada
00:42:54.380 she repeated that and i've often thought that she was naive on that but she gave she really talked
00:43:00.060 about her reasons. I mean, she said that in her opinion, there's only two options, Alberta within
00:43:07.260 Canada or Alberta within the United States. Like she's just said that the sphere of influence of
00:43:12.400 the two countries are too big and Alberta is like orbiting one or the other. And she said that she
00:43:18.780 thinks that Alberta within Canada is better than Alberta within the United States. And then she
00:43:25.960 gave the example that confederation has worked in the last 159 years confederation has worked
00:43:34.720 when conservatives were in power i had the opportunity to say my god conservatives have
00:43:40.540 been in power for what like 30 percent of the last hundred uh of of the of the time so we have
00:43:47.400 a system that only works 30 percent of the time when one group is in power and then it doesn't
00:43:52.380 work the other 70 percent of the time i'm like and she specifically mentioned you know mulrooney
00:43:57.120 and harper saying the confederation worked for them i'm like wow so like that's a pretty flawed
00:44:02.980 system if it only works 30 percent of the time and on top of that i don't think conservatives
00:44:07.460 will ever run rule in ottawa ever again so on that theory she's off and then and then she repeated
00:44:15.420 that she doesn't think that an independent alberta has its chance on its own and again 0.76
00:44:21.300 almost the boos and the and the pushback from the crowd like i was trying to watch her body language
00:44:26.720 and and she got an earful right like people said what about norway what about the fact you know
00:44:31.740 she's like well you we're landlocked and everybody like three people yelled so are 50 percent of the
00:44:36.980 countries in europe and she's you know oh yeah but they have different cultures and they
00:44:41.640 corroborate with each other i'm like okay so her her arguments fall on their face all the time and
00:44:49.520 And but I don't I mean, that that's that's interesting in and of itself.
00:44:53.060 But for me, it was an eye opener. It was an eye opener.
00:44:55.320 She really believes that that that Confederation can be fixed.
00:45:00.900 She brought up the example of Carney, you know, saying like that, that the last the 10 years under Trudor were terrible and that there's been some noticeable improvements under Carney.
00:45:12.100 And even when she mentions that and when she says there's been an improvement under Carney, she gets like a boo, like the whole crowd goes boo.
00:45:19.520 like we don't see it that way danielle we don't see it that way premier like an mou and a promise
00:45:24.640 to build a pipeline that's nothing that that that you know and even today carney threw another
00:45:29.840 carrot our way right like he he modified uh bill c69 is a really annoying piece of legislation
00:45:36.000 right that's the one we call the no new pipelines act that came in under trudeau and today or
00:45:41.440 yesterday carney said that um he he's limiting the scope of bill c69 and and bill c69 won't apply to
00:45:49.520 uh heavy oil projects and won't apply to uh power plants in alberta in the heavy oil sector okay so
00:45:56.860 a very narrow reduction of the scope of bill c69 but i mean you still got carney is still got the
00:46:05.980 tanker ban he still has uh emission caps he still has uh carbon taxes he's still pushing net zero
00:46:14.060 and he still has this ace up his sleeve he doesn't have to kill a pipeline or anything else carney
00:46:19.160 He can be the good guy and say, look, I tried my best to have it happen, but he can let the First Nations take it on the chin because he's still granting them basic veto powers over all these projects.
00:46:30.600 So to me, that was a fascinating town hall. And that's what I, you know, I've been I've been trying all along to decide whether Danielle was really just, you know, a lot of people said, give her the benefit of the doubt.
00:46:44.280 She's just checking off every box so that nobody can ever say you didn't try this and you didn't try that.
00:46:51.280 Right. You didn't try like I, you know, I even had a chance to say to her, like, we've been trying what you're proposing for 60 years and it doesn't work.
00:46:58.800 so i i think i i got some clarity i i'm i'm she is uh she is truly a federalist who thinks that
00:47:10.900 she's the person who's going to keep alberta within confederation and get us a better deal 0.69
00:47:15.940 and i think that's absolutely naive but she's going to go down that path fighting unless
00:47:22.120 something dramatic unless carney does something to really betray her uh go ahead call her name
00:47:28.220 and where are you calling from and what's on your mind?
00:47:31.720 Hey, Marty, this is Timothy calling from Edmonton here.
00:47:34.780 How are you, Tim?
00:47:35.380 Yeah, I just thought that was very fascinating,
00:47:37.740 the chat that you had there with Daniel Smith
00:47:40.520 and her response to the crowd at that event.
00:47:45.100 To me, I'm amazed at what she's saying, though,
00:47:48.380 because do you think that, like, how can she lie so overtly?
00:47:53.040 Because she knows the facts.
00:47:56.240 He knows the history of Canada and Alberta within Canada.
00:48:01.340 Like, for example, what you're saying that the first question would provide enough leverage in dealing with Ottawa.
00:48:07.000 I mean, surely she remembers the equalization referendum, what was it, four years or five years ago, which ended in absolutely nothing.
00:48:15.920 The federal government just completely ignored it.
00:48:18.380 All the premiers completely ignored it.
00:48:20.880 I'm having a hard time hearing you.
00:48:23.320 John, can you give me a thumbs up?
00:48:24.840 like can can the audience hear more okay audience can is this tom is this tom who was sitting beside
00:48:31.100 behind me uh this is timothy calling here oh okay i just took off uh took off my earbuds there you
00:48:38.380 go okay um yeah so what am i so are you reading it the same way i'm reading it
00:48:47.580 well i didn't quite catch the last minute there i was on hold when you were chatting there so
00:48:54.820 So, yeah, I just am struggling to understand what her reasoning is, how she can claim ignorance of history of Canada and Alberta within Canada and how we've been repeatedly ignored on the federal front.
00:49:08.440 Like, yeah, most recently with the equalization referendum, we sent a signal that we wanted equalization abolished, actually, not even just reformed, but abolished, and was completely ignored at every level of government, both by the premiers and by the federal government.
00:49:23.840 And now she's claiming that some additional referendum questions similar to that one would actually make a difference.
00:49:30.060 Like, why would she think that these questions would result in anything different than the last one?
00:49:34.580 Yeah, well, and OK, cool, actually.
00:49:37.920 And we're kind of on the same page, which now you're bringing up another doubt in my mind because I'm saying she's genuinely naive.
00:49:47.380 But now now you got me thinking, is she pretending to be naive?
00:49:50.580 Because you can tell, right? 0.97
00:49:52.000 Like, we'd challenge her on some questions, and she'd sort of play dumb, which is not like her, right? 0.97
00:49:57.840 She's not dumb. 0.99
00:49:58.700 So she was purposely biting her tongue and playing dumb. 0.99
00:50:02.480 Is that a possibility? 0.99
00:50:04.700 I don't know. 0.97
00:50:05.800 I think that's a strong possibility, yeah, that she's playing dumb in order to try to gin up, you know, federalist support,
00:50:12.820 kind of maintain her connections federally, you know, potentially for some sort of federal role in the future 0.54
00:50:18.820 once she's finished as Premier of Alberta.
00:50:20.780 I think there's a strong chance of that because if you listen to the way that she talked when she was a talk show host, you know, even at Western Standard before becoming premier, she knew all this history.
00:50:32.960 She knew how futile Alberta's attempts have been to reform things within Canada.
00:50:39.140 And yet now she's pretending as if she doesn't know that or pretending as if, yeah, like you said, getting a conservative government in Ottawa would make all the difference when clearly we know that's not the case.
00:50:48.780 OK, so now. All right. Well, thanks for doing that. So I thought I had clarity this morning. Now I'm back to being confused.
00:50:57.660 I didn't mean to make it difficult for you. But, you know, like on the federal side, like she claims that Mulroney or Stephen Harper are cases in point of Canada working.
00:51:07.360 Well, does she realize that that was only what two majority governments, for example, in my lifetime?
00:51:13.680 Exactly.
00:51:13.980 Two majority conservative governments.
00:51:15.440 And during those two majority federal conservative governments,
00:51:19.600 what was the lasting impact that benefited Alberta?
00:51:23.320 Like Stephen Harper, almost everything that he did was overturned
00:51:26.900 within Trudeau's first term in office.
00:51:29.180 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:51:30.760 No, she knows that.
00:51:31.680 You're absolutely right.
00:51:32.820 And weirdly, I left my phone at home that day, and I couldn't record it.
00:51:37.720 I should have recorded it.
00:51:39.080 All right.
00:51:39.860 That would have been awesome.
00:51:41.360 Thanks for calling.
00:51:42.200 I'm running out of time.
00:51:43.040 i want to cover a couple more stories so have a great day bud oh good yeah have a good day
00:51:48.280 okay well i have about two stories that i wanted to cover one caller uh chris or james touched on
00:51:55.880 one right the conservative mps uh last week the alberta conservative mps so i don't know how many
00:52:02.840 there are i think there's 21 conservative mps in alberta maybe more maybe 34 something like that
00:52:07.700 So the Alberta Conservative MPs federally formed their own little group last week and call Conservatives for Canada, calling for a stronger Alberta within a united Canada.
00:52:21.880 And their pitch is Alberta's problem is Ottawa policy, not Canada itself.
00:52:27.980 And again, so here's a group saying here's a group basically saying Canada will work if the Conservatives are elected.
00:52:36.220 okay and that's like excuse me but i don't want a solution that depends on who's elected i want a
00:52:45.260 solution that that works regardless and so i i do think that to me canada's broken in a very
00:52:52.100 fundamental way which is even if you balance the seats it doesn't matter the country is just too
00:52:57.400 big and and ottawa is interfering too much in jurisdiction outside of its affairs like look
00:53:04.920 at what happened in Edmonton this week or last week, right?
00:53:08.840 Ottawa is sending us a check for housing.
00:53:12.880 They sent the first two or three installments,
00:53:15.000 and then they sent a letter to Jeremy Farkas and saying,
00:53:18.940 hey, if you don't adjust the zoning, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:53:21.900 and reverse what just happened, you're not getting the check.
00:53:25.720 So money from Ottawa comes with strings attached in an area
00:53:28.940 that's not part of their jurisdiction, out of their mandate.
00:53:32.080 Anyways, it goes on and on.
00:53:33.000 So I and so this this this group of conservatives banding together, a first of all, what they're proposing is bizarre.
00:53:40.560 But secondly, like the caller said, it does show they're supposed to represent us.
00:53:46.260 And I don't have my conservative MP then come and ask me, like, how do you feel about independence and this and this and that?
00:53:52.440 He just jumped on this bandwagon and his and he published a letter alongside everybody else saying,
00:53:57.800 i'm a federal conservative mp and i'm in favor of alberta staying uh in confederation so when i
00:54:05.560 see that i see that as self-serving i see that as just representing the party lines and i see that
00:54:11.880 as really self-serving because conservatives federally know this if alberta leaves there
00:54:17.540 will never be a federal government in ottawa ever again so anyways i'll maybe i'll maybe we'll have
00:54:22.160 more to chat on that unfortunately i'm running out of time i really wanted to talk about the
00:54:26.060 allison inquiry i'll talk about that next week but i'll just you guys know what's going on right
00:54:30.400 oh the clock's running five minutes fast sorry john okay all right so i can slow down i don't
00:54:35.260 need to rush um okay let me slow down so let's talk about the allison inquiry which is an amazing
00:54:42.360 thing happening in ottawa so allison inquiry uh allison is dean allison is an mp and um he called
00:54:51.800 an inquiry now it's not formal uh i think it's being called an inquiry but i'd you know it's
00:54:57.800 not really technically an inquiry what dean has done which is great is he's given people who were
00:55:04.300 negatively affected by covid and the mandates and specifically the vaccine he's giving them
00:55:11.060 an opportunity to come to something like a committee uh you know a house of commons committee
00:55:16.380 and they can tell their story and their story is on record right that's one of the wonderful things
00:55:21.420 I mean, when you go to court and you tell your story, when you go to a committee in Parliament or in the House of Commons or a commission and things like that, your words are recorded.
00:55:33.560 So even though the testimony and things like that, it's structured as a testimony, it's structured as a committee with somebody asking questions and witnesses being invited to speak, I don't think it has teeth.
00:55:47.660 I might be wrong. If it has teeth, it might not have teeth in the legal sense, but it'll certainly have teeth in the social sense and then in the community sense.
00:55:59.880 But more importantly, people are invited to talk and they can share their stories.
00:56:03.860 And I knew some of these stories. I mean, I've been following Kerry Sakamoto and others, you know, and I thought I knew their stories.
00:56:11.620 But when you listen here and you and I was intimate with COVID, I mean, I talked that length of about COVID, you know, during 2020, 21, 22.
00:56:22.720 And and I'm one of those people who thinks that it was that COVID was a gross injustice in our lives.
00:56:30.600 and that some of the people who perpetrated those injustices
00:56:36.120 who imposed these draconian mandates, who trampled our rights,
00:56:40.020 I think some of these people need to be held accountable
00:56:42.320 for what they did someday, and I don't think they will.
00:56:47.520 That's a story in and of itself.
00:56:49.080 But I'm glad the inquiry is going on.
00:56:52.860 I mean, we had a similar, we had a report here in Alberta.
00:56:56.040 We've also had the NCI inquiry or the national, I think NCI is National Citizens Initiative, whatever.
00:57:03.920 We've had inquiries like this.
00:57:06.700 This one is federal and the testimonies are now on the record, which is great.
00:57:12.240 But there is still a shameful side of this story, which is thank you for the MP, for Dean Allison for doing this.
00:57:21.060 I guess maybe two or three MPs from the Conservative side has showed up.
00:57:26.520 As far as I can tell, no Liberal, no NDP, no Bloc Québécois MP has come and sat and just hear the testimonies.
00:57:35.440 Pierre Poilievre hasn't sat down.
00:57:37.340 Mark Carney hasn't sat down.
00:57:38.960 I don't think some of these people, I don't think anybody who was in power or in power.
00:57:44.200 I don't think anybody who was a sitting MP during COVID would have the courage to come and sit down and watch this because it would be kind of an admission or they'd have to hear their victims.
00:57:59.260 OK, that's kind of what I'm thinking.
00:58:00.840 They'd have to hear their victims and they're too cowardly to do that.
00:58:05.340 So that's the first shameful thing is that there aren't more MPs that are listening.
00:58:09.560 CPAC's not even covering it, right?
00:58:11.280 Like CPAC would normally have a camera for any committee in the House of Commons.
00:58:18.380 It would be recorded and it would be there.
00:58:20.360 So this will be recorded in writing, but it's not being recorded by video by the official organizations.
00:58:26.040 But there is thankfully dozens of independent media people, people like Jasmine Lane and Jason Levine and Unscrew the News, others.
00:58:40.560 lots of people there i forget some forgive me if i do but thank you for doing a great job of
00:58:44.960 doing that and shame on the mainstream media cbc is is 300 yards away across the street and there
00:58:52.720 are no cbc reporters there no ctv reporters it's not on any news whatsoever like and and this is
00:59:01.520 literally 300 victims 300 people 200 300 people who have terrible stories of of injuries from
00:59:08.640 from from from covid and so forth and that's newsworthy but it's being totally brushed under
00:59:15.500 the carpet nobody wants to talk about it so if you can go find some of these independent groups
00:59:21.200 and go listen to the testimonies and try not to get all choked up when you hear some of the
00:59:26.520 testimonies because some of the stories are absolutely absolutely devastating um okay now
00:59:32.260 i think i'm kind of really running out of time uh i gotta i'm gonna have to read this i haven't
00:59:37.400 memorize it but i you know my usual closing statement is always along the lines of um please
00:59:43.400 support independent media like the western standard if you can you know uh we depend on um
00:59:50.380 on subscriptions to bring you my show all these shows journalists that break great stories it's
00:59:58.800 ten dollars a month for a subscription uh they'll you write on the screen there a hundred dollars if
01:00:04.060 you do a year. But Derek wanted me to announce this. I'll read the script because Western
01:00:09.460 Standard took an additional step sort of in a certification, right? Because people always
01:00:14.520 say, oh, you're a private media and you're not scrutinized and not organized. And that's
01:00:20.940 not the case, right? So the Western Standard is proudly Alberta certified. So that's kind
01:00:25.540 of a local accreditation. It's a new standard to verify who really is local. That means
01:00:31.200 that we are independently verified majority alberta owned and operated business many companies fake
01:00:37.700 it being an alberta certified company adds us to their online directory that's the alberta certified
01:00:43.280 is the online directory and the alberta certified badge on our website oh there it is uh okay so
01:00:49.680 look for that uh in in the western standard and other medias and businesses i think it applies
01:00:55.500 to businesses so and the alberta certified badge on our website tell subscribers and advertisers
01:01:01.340 that we are verified proud local business the western standard only recommends businesses that
01:01:07.320 it can stand behind and that's why we're proud to partner with albertacertified.ca down on the
01:01:13.280 screen there if you're a business owner in alberta take advantage of their launch promotion to receive
01:01:18.100 15 off membership before september 14th activate your competitive advantage all right there you go
01:01:25.020 that was uh um another great show um thanks for calling in thanks for watching uh let's remember
01:01:34.940 the victims tomorrow and the heroic uh first responders and uh hope to see you here next week
01:01:44.080 same time uh next thursday thanks for watching folks
01:01:55.020 We'll be right back.