Western Standard - Alberta Rodeo vs AHS ｜ 1st Day in Court

00:00:00.000 Jason Kenney canning two of his MLAs, that just proved it right there. He doesn't want to hear

00:00:07.600 anything from anybody because he's trying to control everything within our province. And

00:00:13.040 if you step out of line of what Jason Kenney says, he just tries to delete you out of the system.

00:00:20.140 And if you really look back at everything, I think that's believed to be called a dictator.

00:00:30.000 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Western Standard, Nadine Wellwood correspondent. And

00:00:52.640 I am here today speaking with Ty Northcott. And Ty, as you know, was the coordinator and event

00:01:01.100 organizer for the No More Lockdowns Rodeo that happened just outside of Bowdoin on Bullshit

00:01:08.600 Boulevard.

00:01:10.940 Yep.

00:01:12.240 Thought we'd throw that in just for a little bit of fun there.

00:01:16.580 Ty, you were in court this morning and had to issue a plea as you received a summons

00:01:24.580 to appear just last week.

00:01:28.580 Yeah, we got a summons a week ago today, and it was for a court date for today. So

00:01:35.760 with everything that's going on and their social distancing and whatever, it ended up it was a

00:01:43.120 Zoom meeting with the judge and the Crown and my lawyer. So I never actually physically got to

00:01:49.840 attend it. But it was kind of over and done in about 20 minutes. My lawyer put in a plea for us

00:01:56.120 of not guilty and then requested a bunch of information.

00:02:01.120 And so you have another court date set?

00:02:05.120 Yeah, our next day will be June 21st. So it's a few weeks down the road. It really can't come

00:02:11.360 soon enough. We'd like to get this rolling as quick as we can.

00:02:15.440 And so when you started all this, Ty, did you expect that you were going to end up in court?

00:02:23.520 Oh, absolutely. That was our intentions was to take this to court and bust open the BS that our

00:02:29.600 government or AHS is causing our province at the moment.

00:02:33.120 And so you were expected the result that you've gotten. And you know, you've pleaded not guilty

00:02:41.280 to the charges. So where do you go from here?

00:02:45.200 We carry on the fight. My big thing right now is we want to get the other side into the courtroom and

00:02:55.840 get the battle going and see where it goes, see who's right and who's wrong.

00:03:00.720 The government, you're really trying to push their hand to ensure that they, you know, produce the evidence

00:03:07.520 for the measures that they've taken?

00:03:10.400 Oh, absolutely. They need to show some proof why we're locked down like we are right now.

00:03:14.560 There's nobody has been getting any success in the court right now because they prolong it or they

00:03:27.120 just chuck the charges out. And we want to fight this right to the end. We want to see what Dina

00:03:32.080 Hinshaw has in her bag of tricks as to why we seem to have to be locked down. I mean, it's crazy right now.

00:03:39.040 You turn on the TV and watch the Cowboy Channel and there's rodeos happening in Montana, which is less than

00:03:45.120 10 hours from here and full crowds, no masks, no social distancing. It's over. There's 37 states open today,

00:03:53.040 maybe more as of today. But on Friday, it was 37 states and they're rolling. Life's regular.

00:04:02.480 It's none of the stuff that we're going through here right now.

00:04:05.600 And so what is the risk to the Canadian rodeo circuit if we don't get things back on track?

00:04:12.880 Well, it's been devastating for the last year and a half. I mean, we've been shut down since March

00:04:19.840 of last year, like a lot of businesses have been, and we can't sustain another two, three, four months.

00:04:27.920 What's going to happen is, as long as the government keeps controlling everything, like they are with

00:04:33.760 their grants and their casino money and all their, basically their buy-off money, I call it,

00:04:43.440 if they can keep a shutdown until fall, then they can control probably 90%, 95% of the indoor arenas.

00:04:50.000 We won't have no rodeo next fall unless we follow their bogus rules that, you know, they're just,

00:04:58.800 they're totally unjust.

00:05:02.000 And so what do you think of Jason Kenney's comments around the allowing the Cowboys in for Stampede,

00:05:09.760 and some of the proposals that he's put forth to allow Stampede to proceed?

00:05:18.560 He's, I would like to see it happen. Don't get me wrong. I want to see all rodeo go. I don't care

00:05:25.280 how they go or what goes, but there's no reason for Stampede to be shut down at all. It's a very viable

00:05:32.320 operation. And I don't believe that there's no reason the Calgary Stampede can't happen as it normally

00:05:40.400 has, like say in 2019. We have a total, total safe society to live in right now. The only thing unsafe

00:05:49.600 about our society right now is our political system.

00:05:53.280 And so, having said that, what do you hope is going to be the outcome for, you know,

00:06:05.520 you've taken quite a big step here. You've risked, you knew that potentially you could see jail time

00:06:11.040 or a pretty hefty fine, and you did it anyway. Was it worth it? What's...

00:06:17.920 Well, it's a sacrifice, and somebody has to make the sacrifice. And I was willing to step up and do

00:06:28.320 it. I really wish there would be more people step up behind me or beside me and start putting rodeos 0.94

00:06:34.800 on. There is absolutely no reason that we shouldn't be putting rodeos on. The only thing standing in our

00:06:40.960 way right now is politics and bad politics, not even good politics. Last week, Jason Kenney canning two of

00:06:51.280 his MLAs, that just proved it right there. He doesn't want to hear anything from anybody because he's trying

00:06:57.760 to control everything within our province. And if you step out of line of what Jason Kenney says,

00:07:04.240 he just tries to delete you out of the system. And if you really look back at everything, I think that's

00:07:11.920 believed to be called a dictator. And that's exactly what Jason Kenney is, is a dictator.

00:07:17.520 And so now, AHS is, you know, came out with even more strict restrictions as a result of what some

00:07:25.440 people would say, almost a little bit vengeful of a response to the Bowdoin, just your rodeo. And

00:07:34.080 what do you say to the folks that go, you know what, just follow along, you know, comply with the

00:07:38.400 rules and this will all go away? Look at where it's got us in 14 months, just going along. It's got us

00:07:44.720 nowhere. And you don't see an end? Not carrying on the way that we're carrying on. You know, we may have

00:07:55.600 what some people want to call rodeo, it'll be without people in stands. And a lot of these rodeos are going 0.99

00:08:01.840 to drain their budgets because there's no income from sponsors, spectators, or vendors,

00:08:06.880 or anything like that. I mean, some of these rodeos can carry on for this year, but what are

00:08:12.240 they going to do for 2022 if it doesn't have some kind of change to it? Take away the government grants,

00:08:18.640 the government money that a lot of these rodeos are being funded with right now that claim they're

00:08:24.720 going to go this year. And their pocket of money that they had left over from years to pass,

00:08:30.880 they're going to burn through it this year. What's going to be there in 2022? Nothing.

00:08:34.720 So if you had a statement that you wanted to deliver to the people of Alberta, what would it be?

00:08:41.840 Open up, take the masks off, open up, resume your life, quit living in fear. The fear is caused by the

00:08:51.040 mainstream media and our government. And they're all connected. I don't know what the whole reason for

00:08:57.120 it all is quite yet, but we're working on that. But take the mask off, start getting out and doing

00:09:04.560 things. Quit hiding in your house. Now, I know AHS had put out a statement last week that there had

00:09:11.520 been no recorded COVID cases that were a result of the No More Lockdowns rodeo. I know you have a story

00:09:21.840 that you wanted to share about that. I had a lady send me a message last week on Thursday that she'd

00:09:29.040 went into a couple different medical facilities that were three to four hours away from Bowdoin.

00:09:34.320 And with her going in there, they asked her if she had attended Banff, I think it was Peace River

00:09:42.800 or Peace River area and Bowdoin. So AHS is on a witch hunt right now trying to find somebody that got

00:09:50.000 sick from coming to our rodeo rally and apparently they haven't found anybody. And I don't expect

00:09:59.760 they will because it's the end of flu season. We're done. It's gone. Now you have, was it James

00:10:10.320 Kitchen that represented you today in court or was it Dan Harder? Yeah, Dan Harder at Oles represented us.

00:10:17.520 He's working with James. They're good friends and they decided to work on this together and

00:10:24.560 I'm grateful to both of them. And so you're happy with the representation that you've

00:10:30.720 received from the Justice Centre? Absolutely. If anybody is wanting to get involved with what's going

00:10:41.200 on in the world, our world right now here in Alberta, even across Canada, the Justice Centre is,

00:10:48.240 they're pushing the envelope everywhere they can and every issue they can.

00:10:52.960 Donate if it's $5, $10, $20, $100, whatever you can afford, donate. It just helps the fight in all

00:11:00.160 this. It takes lawyers time and it's going to take a lot of money to get through this, you know,

00:11:07.440 with this fight. So we need to contribute wherever we can. Some people don't want to be on the front

00:11:13.360 line of the fight and I'm okay with that. I'll go to the front line if I have to. But if you want to

00:11:20.240 get involved, send some money to the JCCF. There's a couple other outfits out there fighting all of this,

00:11:26.800 fight the fines and wherever you can get involved, just get involved.

00:11:32.960 And so do you have any more rodeos planned?

00:11:36.960 Yeah, we're on the burner right now. We're cooking. So it's everything right at this point

00:11:44.480 is short notice when we do it all. So, you know, if people can follow my Facebook page or the Northcott

00:11:51.360 Rodeo Inc. Facebook page, and we've got a couple other ones coming out here right away, follow the both

00:11:56.080 of them as much as you can. I can't friend everybody, but I try to friend who I can when I,

00:12:02.560 I can't keep up with social media these days. It's crazy. But follow us what we're doing. We've got

00:12:09.040 another event that's going to come out. It's very similar possibly to what the first one was. So we're

00:12:18.000 just talking with our legal counsel, seeing where we can go with it.

00:12:20.960 And so I just want to end, Ty, with some people think that this is just purely in defiance of

00:12:28.720 COVID restrictions, which it sounds like there is a little bit of that. But there's a real personal

00:12:34.560 aspect to this as well. I mean, this is heritage. This is intergenerational family, land, tradition.

00:12:41.440 It's also, personally, how you put the, it's bread and butter, how you put food on the table. And I

00:12:47.920 know at the No More Lockdowns Rodeo, you did give a rather heartfelt speech to the audience

00:12:56.720 about that. And so today, when we're talking, you know, what's, what is the significance to you

00:13:04.800 personally, if all this goes away? Well, this is our livelihood, it's been my livelihood since I grew up.

00:13:18.240 You know, for some people that are spectators, and a few of the competitors, it's, it's,

00:13:25.680 we're in the entertainment business. And for them, they're being entertained. And for us, it's our living,

00:13:31.280 it's no different than the guy that, you know, has a herd of two, 300 cows or more, or the guy that

00:13:36.800 picks up a hammer and builds a house every day of the week. This is our livelihood. And we entertain

00:13:43.680 people. And that's where people think that they miss the fact that people actually make a living

00:13:51.120 putting rodeos on. It's, it's a family thing that I've been involved with for well over 50 years. And I

00:13:59.120 got lots of families still involved. And, and I'm, I just want people to know, I'm not the only,

00:14:05.120 my family isn't the only family suffering from this. There's, there's hundreds of families across

00:14:11.200 Canada, that this is major, and I'm just talking stock contractors. When we get into people that are

00:14:21.200 in our production teams, like announcers and judges and secretaries and bullfighters and picket

00:14:26.640 man. And like, to put a rodeo on, it takes 50 to 100 people. And they're all losing their incomes

00:14:33.840 out of this. And that's just one rodeo. I mean, we got hundreds of them across Canada,

00:14:39.440 right from the west coast of BC, all the way over into Quebec. You know, this just isn't an Alberta

00:14:46.240 thing. But we're fighting in Alberta right now, because if we can make a difference here,

00:14:50.240 hopefully we can make a difference in some of the other provinces. Like last night,

00:14:55.840 I got a message from a person in Ontario wanting to know how they can put some rodeos on and

00:15:01.120 do what we're doing. I've had that same call out of BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba,

00:15:07.120 like, we're not the only ones trying to fight this right now. But

00:15:10.960 we're going to try and do our best to push this rodeo thing as far ahead as we can. And

00:15:19.760 my hopes in the whole deal is, it's not just for rodeo. It's for every sport out there for the kids

00:15:26.000 in school. It's for every business out there that's been shut down. We just want our province back

00:15:33.280 to the government that we originally voted in two years ago.

00:15:36.800 We went from being conservative to I have no idea what the hell you want to call it today. But it

00:15:43.680 sure is not a conservative government. It's probably the farthest thing I've ever seen from a conservative

00:15:48.880 government in North America right now. So there seems to be a real divide,

00:15:55.200 Ty, though, between what is happening in our cities and what people are demanding the governments do in

00:16:04.000 response to COVID, vice what's happening in the rural communities. And do you feel like you've

00:16:09.600 maybe gotten caught in the middle of some of that?

00:16:14.000 Well, I'm sure I've been caught in the middle of some of it. And I'm okay with that.

00:16:20.560 I don't know this for sure. But what I feel is rural people tend to get out, they have the land,

00:16:25.920 they have the area, they have the things where they can go do things and get out and talk to people,

00:16:30.720 they know what's going on. The majority of them do. But when you get into the city and you're crammed,

00:16:35.200 and you got tattletales here, tattletales there, telling on you if you have a barbecue in your

00:16:40.320 backyard. And like people got to quit that crap. That's child of school bullying, is all it is.

00:16:50.240 You got to get back to being friends and neighbors. This is what the government wants. They want to divide

00:16:54.960 us. They don't want us talking and telling the neighbor or anybody else what's really going on in the

00:16:59.840 world. And you can call it whatever kind of a conspiracy or whatever you want. But

00:17:06.720 there's a lot of crap going on that people don't understand and don't know. And they're creating

00:17:13.200 that through the fear like shut your TV off and get away from the mainstream media. And it's amazing

00:17:20.880 how much your life will change. Maybe you need to get out of the city or whatever if you're a city

00:17:25.920 person. The country people seem to be not buying into the BS anymore like they were two weeks,

00:17:32.080 three weeks ago kind of deal. The country is waking up. And Jason Kenney thinks he's still

00:17:38.240 got a thumb on everybody. But they're not that stupid anymore. We maybe were all stupid in March

00:17:44.480 last year, but we're not all stupid today. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak

00:17:50.160 with us. Any last final comments you'd like to share? Yeah, if you see any kind of rodeo out there,

00:17:57.120 go support it and don't be a tattletale if there's something going on. If you see a soccer game,

00:18:01.760 a ball game or whatever, enjoy it. Go be involved, whether you're a spectator, competitor or whatever.

00:18:07.760 Get out and start doing things. Get back in touch with our society because we've got a government

00:18:15.120 and a health service outfit that definitely aren't in touch with it anymore. Fantastic. Thank you so

00:18:21.920 much for taking the time to speak with us today. And we'll follow you along here as you get closer,

00:18:28.480 I guess, to the June 21st. Excellent. Really appreciate coming on today. Thank you very much.

00:18:34.240 You're very welcome, Ty. Talk to you soon.

Western Standard - May 18, 2021

Alberta Rodeo vs AHS ｜ 1st Day in Court

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