Western Standard - March 04, 2026


Alberta’s budgetary shame

Topics
war and budget events Human Rights Commissions in Alberta pressure on Alberta budget
Mentioned
Danielle Smith Ralph Klein Colin May Corey Norma Ayatollah Khomeini Kaylin Ford Marty Up North Jacqueline Littler Pierre Poilievre Jeremy Farkas Duncan Kinney Jessica Yaniv Nahid Menchie Jean Chrétien Donald Trump Nate Horner Gil McGowan Mark Carney Gil McAllen and 7 more
Why Iran’s Multi-Front Israel Attack Collapsed Before It Began War： What is it good for？ Alberta’s budget

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

187.33

Word count

8,657

Sentence count

406

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

22

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode of the Cory Morgan Show, I talk about the crazy world events going on around the world, and the Alberta government's latest budget. I also talk about why Alberta needs to cut back on spending.

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 .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Thank you.
00:00:29 and welcome to the Cory Morgan Show.
00:00:32 I guess it doesn't show as well as I hoped or thought it might
00:00:34 in the back camera there, but there's that cold steam coming up
00:00:37 because it's bloody winter outside and all foggy again out in Alberta.
00:00:42 But then it's going to be, I've heard reports as high as 18 degrees
00:00:45 in Calgary on Saturday.
00:00:48 So day by day, who knows what's going on out here.
00:00:50 I guess we get breaks from the winter, which is better than nothing,
00:00:53 but I'm not big on them.
00:00:54 You know, a lot of people got on my case for crossing the border
00:00:57 into the States for my winter escape down in Arizona.
00:00:59 calling me a traitor and all the usual stuff or whatever, or just saying that, you know,
00:01:03 you should try out some of the other tropical spots. Well, how's Mexico, Cuba, or the Middle
00:01:08 East looking these days for a winter break anyways? I'd say driving down to the desert was
00:01:13 probably the safest and best choice I could make. I plan on doing it again this winter.
00:01:17 All right. So yeah, we've got some crazy world events going on and things like that, but I'm
00:01:22 going to start by talking about things a little more locally. The budget came down last week,
00:01:26 provincially in Alberta here. And the UCP government in Alberta, they inadvertently
00:01:31 caught a break as energy prices predictably spiked due to the latest war in the Middle East.
00:01:37 So for every dollar the world price of oil rises, the provincial government garners nearly 700
00:01:42 million in royalties. So if the war in Iran is protracted, it is possible the budgetary deficit
00:01:49 of 9 billion announced in Alberta last week could actually turn into a budget surplus by the end of
00:01:54 the year. The Alberta government should respond to this by cutting spending. We can't allow a fluke
00:02:00 of world oil prices to let the provincial government get off the hook for a deficit that
00:02:04 was built primarily due to irresponsible spending. Alberta's debt is going to reach a hundred billion
00:02:10 dollars and it should be the shame of politicians and voters alike. If the government wants more 0.94
00:02:14 money to play with, then paying down that debt has to be priority number one. It will give them
00:02:19 four billion a year in saved interest payments they can spend without having to hike taxes,
00:02:23 by a penny. People, including finance minister Nate Horner, have been floating the notion of
00:02:29 imposing a sales tax on Albertans. The response from citizens at this concept should be nothing
00:02:33 less than outrage. The government doesn't have a revenue problem. How many times do we got to say
00:02:37 this? It has a spending problem. If they can't get their spending habits under control, revenue from
00:02:43 a sales tax would just be dumped into a growing black hole of spending. Sales taxes, they have a 0.87
00:02:48 declining rate of return as they impact the economy with reduced consumer spending. They raise the
00:02:53 cost of living. And, you know, tourism might choose to spend their vacation dollars elsewhere.
00:02:57 It's not a magical pool of funds to tap into without consequences, as some are trying to frame
00:03:03 it. The UCB government raised the education property tax by nearly half a billion dollars.
00:03:08 These taxes impact the cost of housing for renters and owners alike. They also hike taxes on rental
00:03:13 cars and hotels, which is going to hit our tourism revenue. With massive tax and spending hikes,
00:03:18 The government can't pretend to be fiscally conservative. Yes, mass immigration has put 1.00
00:03:23 pressure on services in general. The 6% increase in health spending and the whopping 30% increase
00:03:28 in education spending addresses that. Most Albertans are okay with increasing spending
00:03:33 within reason, at least on core services such as health and education, but that still leaves a lot
00:03:37 of fat to be cut. Why is the province increasing spending on art? How much ugly, crappy public art
00:03:42 do we need? Why is the cost to paying government employees going up 14% in one year? Why is there 0.92
00:03:50 still a massive expensive program to bring fiber optic internet services to isolated rural homes
00:03:54 when most of them have already gotten Starlink? They got sick of waiting for the government.
00:03:57 The list of things to cut is long when the government finds the will to look for them.
00:04:01 Problem is the government isn't looking. They're taking the lazy NDP style approach to issues by
00:04:05 raising taxes and spending and that's not what Albertans voted for. Did the spending increases
00:04:10 buy any love from the teachers unions or socialized health care activists? Of course not.
00:04:15 They panned the budget and they're still doing everything in their power to bring the UCP down.
00:04:19 The Alberta Federation of Labor with old Gil McGowan there's planning mass protests after
00:04:23 an attempt to bring down the government through recall initiatives. That failed dismally.
00:04:27 So why pander to them further? Premier Smith must trust Albertan voters to accept spending
00:04:33 restraint. Albertans have voted for conservative governments for decades because they value
00:04:37 fiscal conservatism. It was the gross overspending of the Stelmac and Redford governments that brought
00:04:42 the progressive conservative dynasty to an end. Smith can rest assured if she doesn't get a handle
00:04:47 on spending soon, an alternative will form on her right, and we'll all remember, we do all remember
00:04:52 what the consequences of vote splitting are. Look, when Ralph Klein balanced the budget, he didn't
00:04:57 wait for better oil prices to do it. He cut spending without apology. Unions and pundits, they went wild
00:05:02 at the time. They predicted the demise of the Klein government and protests flourished. Then Klein
00:05:06 went to the polls and Albertans rewarded him with a bigger majority government.
00:05:10 Klein continued with the austerity governance and union members literally attacked the legislature
00:05:14 with protests and they were trying to kick the doors down. After four years of this, Klein was
00:05:18 rewarded with a bigger majority. In his last term, Klein started to spend heavily again and it led to
00:05:25 reduced support for him. Look, the only thing harder than cutting spending during tough times
00:05:29 is cutting spending during good times, but it must be done. Smith must resist the urge to continue
00:05:34 tossing money at issues even if the high oil prices flood the government coffers. Alberta
00:05:38 doesn't need a larger and more encompassing government. It's hard to maintain the higher
00:05:42 ground when complaining about tax and spend attitudes in Ottawa when Edmonton does the same
00:05:46 bloody thing. For the sake of the economy and future Albertans, the UCP must remember the C 0.85
00:05:51 in their name and become a conservative party and wrestle their spending under control because the
00:05:56 2026 budget is nothing less than an embarrassment. That's all I got. How's it going, Dave?
00:06:01 it's going good cory how are you oh good good i mean you know apart from the budget yeah well
00:06:06 it kind of annoyed me and the war yeah the war is a little distressing as well i uh saw on social
00:06:12 media yesterday that your bees are bringing out their dead yes they are yeah they're enjoying the
00:06:17 good weather they're out in droves uh and yeah that's what they do they drag all the dead ones
00:06:21 out and dump them out in the snow you also see little brown spots all around the yard on the
00:06:26 snow too uh which uh you know they call them cleansing fright flights but all it is the bees
00:06:31 they won't poop in the hive they'll take it out so so how many bees would be dead over winter i don't
00:06:38 know i it's you know they really that's their cycle they really pad it up with you know like
00:06:41 fifty thousand bees by the end of fall really getting ready to go into winter and then they
00:06:46 cluster and probably be down to maybe fifteen thousand by spring so it's just kind of a cycle
00:06:50 and then they they should be starting to lay again now so there you go there you go circle of life
00:06:55 Yeah, so I'll open them up and get the hell stung out of me for the first time in spring, probably another few weeks.
00:06:59 There you go. So, yeah, let's talk about war, Corey.
00:07:04 U.S. and Israel bombing the hell out of Iran.
00:07:10 The Ayatollah is dead.
00:07:12 They're not picking a, or they haven't picked a new one yet. 0.98
00:07:16 All the senior clerics decided stupidly to hold a meeting during daylight hours yesterday in Tehran, 1.00
00:07:23 and Israel dropped a bomb on their head so they're all dead. There was a first time since 1.00
00:07:29 the Second World War a U.S. sub sank a naval ship, sank an Iranian frigate off the coast of
00:07:36 Sri Lanka. So scores of Iranian sailors are dead or treading water or shark food at the moment. So
00:07:45 lots uh lots kicking off all over the place uh diplomatic wise uh uh great britain is in a big
00:07:52 fight with uh with the us for not helping them uh the uh president uh uh donald trump
00:08:00 have badly insulted uh british leader care starmer yesterday by saying he's no winston
00:08:05 churchill and he's right there is no winston churchill uh closer to home uh natural resources
00:08:13 minister tim hudson said hey this war is good for uh good for us it's good for energy and the quote
00:08:19 was we will we see the money yeah well that's a little closer to what i was talking about with
00:08:25 the budget okay yeah so world events have brought in uh funds but not really in the nicest way no
00:08:31 no uh but he says it's an opportunity to get uh safe reliable canadian energy uh out exporting
00:08:38 around the world, and if only there was like a way to do that.
00:08:41 I don't know, you know, blimp maybe, fly it out there or something.
00:08:46 There was plans at some point back in the day of getting dirigibles up there filled
00:08:50 with oil.
00:08:52 What else is going on?
00:08:54 Oh, we got Mark Carney, it continues his never-ending world tour.
00:08:58 He's down in Sydney today, changing his stories about the war. 0.99
00:09:06 former Israeli Prime Minister, called Carney stupid today. 0.95
00:09:11 And we've got Pierre Polyev in Germany giving a speech in Berlin this afternoon. 0.99
00:09:18 We've got a deep dive into that Musqueam Treaty mess that's over in Vancouver. 1.00
00:09:24 I would certainly not move into Vancouver at this point.
00:09:28 No, I mean, I understand.
00:09:30 They say that, oh, this is just a gesture.
00:09:34 It's a symbol.
00:09:34 Don't worry about your real estate prices.
00:09:36 Well, they said that with Richmond, too, and banks refused to refinance, and companies pulled the hell out.
00:09:41 I just, I'm sorry, I don't believe them anymore.
00:09:44 No, no, and it's not going to be the last one, right?
00:09:47 I mean, it's pretty soon they're going to be all over Canada.
00:09:51 Well, I would suggest that productive, hard-working British Columbians sell their houses now while they can,
00:09:57 come to Alberta, make a good living in the land where it was already all permanently ceded in the treaties.
00:10:03 Ah, do we have room, though?
00:10:05 Well, if they're hardworking, productive people, yes.
00:10:08 And we've got a report going to City Council today that because of the infrastructure repair needs that were ignored by Nenshi and Gondek,
00:10:18 we're now facing a $610 million bill to fix up infrastructure.
00:10:24 So that'll raise taxes a little bit.
00:10:27 Well, yeah, Congress back into the if it's yellow, let it metal zone, isn't it again? 0.91
00:10:30 I think so.
00:10:31 I think so. Water rationing coming in on Monday.
00:10:35 So we're all going to go to your place and shower in the morning?
00:10:38 Yeah, I got my own well. I'll charge, you know, a moderate range.
00:10:41 Charge?
00:10:42 Well, you know, bring some cookies or something.
00:10:44 All right, maybe cookies.
00:10:45 I noticed Jeremy Farkas has been on the warpath with Premier Smith,
00:10:49 and I got to admit, he's kind of right.
00:10:51 Like, you know, they went and dumped the tax hike onto the city of Calgary,
00:10:54 but then they're taking the loot.
00:10:56 Yeah, largest tax hike against Calgary in history.
00:11:00 it's more like $355 a household it's outrageous absolutely outrageous then
00:11:06 it's only like a hundred and some per household in Edmonton yes of course we
00:11:11 you know which rather live in Edmonton come on no no exactly so I guess we got
00:11:16 to suck it up and pay it I have to suck it up and pay it you don't know I mean 0.56
00:11:20 there's your county foothills yeah you're not a citizen right there you go
00:11:27 that's all i got at the moment okay well thanks for the update and uh i guess i'll see you in a
00:11:31 while in the pipeline we will right on all right guys that is our news editor dave nabler and uh
00:11:38 this one i like to remind you oh there's a lot of those stories they're breaking fast and heavy on
00:11:42 there the reason dave and his uh cadre of reporters that he's managing can do that is because you've
00:11:48 subscribed so check it out westernstandard.news subscription is ten dollars a month hundred
00:11:53 for a year. This is how we can pay these bills around here and keep ourselves independent and
00:12:00 reporting on those stories that legacy media just won't touch. So yeah, let's see some of you folks
00:12:05 with their comments. You know, we see a quacker saying, hi, vacation destination is nobody's 0.94
00:12:13 business. Well, I didn't ask yours, Norma, so that's okay. Don't worry about it. If you want
00:12:17 to go to Mexico by all means it's it's your your full uh business or if you meant on my end you
00:12:23 know when people got on my case when I I've openly said uh I was going to Arizona and yes it made me
00:12:28 an awful traitor I see what you're talking about there as well and yeah I don't know I I just laugh
00:12:34 about it and yes it is you're just absolutely right anyways it is a person's own business but
00:12:38 that's the life of social media when you want to share things you're inviting the busy bodies of
00:12:42 the world to come in and comment on things or at least I am that's part of the problem when I share
00:12:46 everything on X. I mean, I can't complain when I get vitriolic responses. I'm kind of asking for
00:12:51 it when I stick things out there. I could remain more private, but that's no fun. So let's see.
00:12:59 Yeah. You know that that's the, the issues going on. Yeah. I see that from Norma now. Thanks for
00:13:05 defending me. It's hard to get context on a commentary on there. So I appreciate that Norma.
00:13:10 And for those on here live and that just to bear in mind, we do have an option for live callers in
00:13:15 the final part of the show though nobody's taking me up on it it's because it's they know Corey's
00:13:18 such a grouch and they don't necessarily want to interact with me but honestly if you want to call
00:13:22 in and chat you can see the number at the bottom of the screen 866-479-9378 and the extension 711
00:13:31 you'd be put on hold towards the later part of the show and we could pop you in and have a
00:13:35 conversation about one of these many many issues that are going on right now and there is a lot
00:13:42 happening. All right. But, you know, I see the guest in the lobby and I meant to mention that
00:13:46 at the top of the show. I've been looking forward to this. This is former Alberta Human Rights
00:13:49 Commissioner head there, Colin May. He's also a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre, director
00:13:55 of research with the Free Speech Union of Canada. And he's written many things on the National Post,
00:14:01 the Hub, the Jerusalem Post and the Calgary Herald. And well, you know, the Human Rights
00:14:07 Commissions have been in the news again, and it's rarely in a good way. And it's time to have a
00:14:12 discussion about these, you know, do we need them or can they be improved or, or what purpose do
00:14:16 they serve? So let's bring Mr. May in and have that conversation. Hello, Colin. Thank you very
00:14:20 much for joining us today. Hi, Corey. Thanks for having me. So I guess just to get a bit of a
00:14:26 background, I, I, I remember it from at the time when you were there for, for a short time, you
00:14:31 were the head of the Alberta Human Rights Commission and it's, well, basically you got
00:14:38 cancelled yeah yeah exactly yeah i got cancelled um i think in part it was because i was interested
00:14:45 in making some changes there uh the alberta ndp who knew me personally uh didn't want me to do
00:14:51 that and so they came up with their series of uh smears to get me out but um my you know that was
00:15:00 my goal uh i was in there to make some changes to make some important changes uh and now they
00:15:05 didn't get done. So that's too bad, but happy to talk about what I would see is something that
00:15:12 needs to be done with some of these commissions. Absolutely. So, I mean, you're a lawyer. There
00:15:17 were other things you could have been doing with yourself, but you chose to join the Human Rights
00:15:21 Commission. I can only presume you felt, though, you could do some good. What purpose did you see
00:15:26 then in Human Rights Commissions? What good could they have been providing for the province
00:15:31 when you joined it? Well, I mean, I had a background in some of these similar areas,
00:15:37 complaints, tribunals, that sort of thing. I was involved in trying to reform professional
00:15:42 regulators, which is another topic similar to human rights commissions. And I thought that,
00:15:47 you know, we could do some work with the commission as well to improve procedural
00:15:52 fairness, especially because a lot of the issues that we're seeing, including with the new fellow
00:15:56 case in BC, do come down to whether or not these commissions are actually procedurally fair.
00:16:01 And so I wanted to make some changes there.
00:16:03 I have a lot of background in that.
00:16:05 And that was why I was hoping to do what I was hoping to do there.
00:16:09 So there must be some guidelines, you know, so I'll kind of circle this back to the recent case that's really kind of got a lot of, well, there's a couple recently that got people worked up.
00:16:19 One's in BC, one's in Ontario.
00:16:20 one I'm just talking to the extent of the penalty laid against a person $750,000 which I can only
00:16:30 guess this man is going to appeal this somewhere to a proper court because it just seems beyond
00:16:35 the pale but are there any limitations on these commissions on the possible penalties they could
00:16:39 lay on people? Not really no I mean that's that's the thing and now generally they're in the lower
00:16:45 range um 20 000 10 000 you know i think the highest in alberta when i was chief still was
00:16:53 about 40 50 000 um but there isn't an actually upper an upper limit now the courts reviewing
00:16:59 these can say yeah you've gone way too high here which i'm hoping even if you know whether the
00:17:05 courts uphold you know the the determination on the substance hopefully uh they will review this
00:17:12 and say this award is way out of the range of the plausible,
00:17:18 especially for an individual, because there is a sort of a common law duty
00:17:22 to be fair to the respondent, and this case just isn't.
00:17:26 This is, I mean, they haven't even identified the people
00:17:30 who will be receiving the money yet.
00:17:32 So we don't even have actual complainants who will be receiving the money.
00:17:36 It's just a broad class, which I think is completely inappropriate
00:17:40 for this sort of award.
00:17:42 Yeah. And that's another point that's interesting is that, you know, the complainants can be quite well rewarded if they win through these, though it's not going through the proper channels of a civil action in a regular court. So it really incentivizes people to bring in, you know, concerns when they're not necessarily, I mean, you can't speak for all of them, but not necessarily looking to remedy an injustice. I mean, conceivably, some people are just looking to make a few bucks at times.
00:18:08 oh sure now i mean once they break up this 750 000 that newfound's supposed to get it could not
00:18:15 it might not be that much but they have no idea yet who these people are that they're even going
00:18:19 to give this money to but that's exactly one of the problems with these things is that um you know
00:18:25 the awards in the larger and larger awards incentivize people to use these procedures
00:18:31 certainly and the thing you've got to know about these procedures is as a complainant you have
00:18:37 you have no skin in the game really because you don't have to pay for a lawyer uh that's all
00:18:43 taken care of for you you're represented by these commissions and into a tribunal you don't have a
00:18:48 lawyer and if you lose unless you've done something egregious while you've been a complainant uh you
00:18:54 won't have to pay any costs which is completely different of course from a civil action uh so
00:18:59 the respondent of course has to pay a lawyer has to go through this process and the process takes
00:19:04 years. In Alberta, it was about five years when I became chief just to get to the tribunal to a
00:19:12 hearing. So for a respondent, this is a horrible process to go through. So to play a bit of devil's
00:19:19 advocate, or maybe not even so much, I mean, there could be people who have really experienced a
00:19:24 human rights violation against themselves, and they want to seek remedy. If they are a low-income
00:19:29 person without legal connections and so on, though, I mean, going through the conventional
00:19:33 system could leave them hanging because that could take years as well but cost you know many
00:19:38 thousands of dollars that they presumably don't have. Is that part of the purpose I guess of
00:19:43 having a commission rather than putting people through conventional courts? It is yeah and I
00:19:48 think there's that that's certainly a plausible that was sort of the reason these things started
00:19:53 up. Now what's happened though is you've seen that these commissions most of what they deal
00:20:01 with our employment matters. So often what you'll find is somebody has been fired. They're making a
00:20:06 claim under the Human Rights Commission, but they'll often have a wrongful dismissal suit
00:20:09 going to the courts as well. So we've, you know, do we want to have that sort of this commission
00:20:16 also being running adjacent to civil action? They may be going to employment standards. They may
00:20:23 be going through a grievance process with the union. And of course, the commission now does
00:20:27 have more authority in Alberta to stay their proceedings or to put them on hold but you know
00:20:33 we've kind of moved beyond this basic idea of okay you know so I say you have a gay couple and
00:20:40 they're trying to rent an apartment and they're denied the rental they could go through this
00:20:44 process and say there was you know there was discrimination but we're getting these massive
00:20:50 awards that are would really be more appropriate to be considered in a civil case not in this sort
00:20:56 venue yeah so i mean and then there's the crazy large awards then there's some small awards
00:21:04 but on some really absurd rulings which is one that came out in the last couple of weeks as well
00:21:08 so i believe that was in ontario maybe it was quebec uh it was a non-binary person who was
00:21:14 demanding a non-binary option for haircuts and then this person had the same need for haircuts
00:21:21 that you do. So we aren't even looking at a rational need. This was a bald person demanding
00:21:27 a specific type of haircut option. I mean, you would think a person with even a smidgen of
00:21:32 common sense would tell this complaint and get out of here. We've got better things to do with
00:21:36 our time. But instead, they ruled in favor of this person and fined the place $500.
00:21:44 Yeah. And I think that's, again, it's a procedural issue. It shouldn't have gone to that
00:21:50 to that link um the the respondent this salon had offered you know three uh three free haircuts and
00:21:59 as you say i don't know what i saw the person too i'm not sure what he they she whatever needed them
00:22:05 for um i'm not sure what pronouns they use but um you know it then plus they had said they would
00:22:12 remedy on their website so that the problem so that you would have a non-binary option
00:22:20 and so why didn't why wasn't that sufficient that should have stopped the the case there it should
00:22:25 have been accepted but instead the complainant moved it along didn't accept that the commission
00:22:30 should have said no and there are procedures increasingly now with these commissions to say
00:22:34 if you don't accept a reasonable offer then you're done and i think we need more of that and that's
00:22:40 That's why I say, again, we need to focus a lot more on the procedural elements
00:22:43 because the case in Quebec is also ridiculous.
00:22:48 Well, and they're using it as a weapon, some individuals anyways, and activists. 0.52
00:22:52 It reminds me farther back to when same-sex marriage was just starting to become a thing.
00:23:00 And I'm fully supportive of it by all means.
00:23:02 Hey, great.
00:23:03 Good on you.
00:23:04 I hope it works.
00:23:04 Hope you last until retirement and beyond as a married couple, whatever you might be.
00:23:08 But there were couples, I remember one in particular in Vancouver, I think it was, went after a Knights of Columbus hall because they knew darn well it's a Catholic organization and it wouldn't host their reception. Now, if it was the only hall in the world, I could see the problem. But you know, darn well, there was dozens of dozens of halls. Just pick one of those. But they were looking for trouble. And if you're looking for trouble, does that, you know, why should that still entitle you for remedy? That's activism. That's not somebody who's been harmed in a human rights problem.
00:23:36 Right. And one of the concerns, and this was in the Neufeld case out of BC, is there was the mention that human rights issues are now moving more. Discrimination is going more from individuals and complainants to thoughts, to belief systems. And people are discriminating more on the basis of belief systems.
00:24:00 But the problem with going that route is, of course, people argue over belief systems all the time. You know, that's why you go to university or something. You learn other people's ways of doing things, how they think about things, you know, different philosophies, and you argue over them and you disagree and you say some are wrong.
00:24:20 So, you know, we're moving into that range, and I think that's a very scary thing, which is, of course, why a lot of people have said in response to a situation like the Neufeld case is BC, and Alberta would need to do this too, needs to get rid of the provision in their human rights code or statute regarding this hate speech and the publication of hate speech in the same way that the federal government did under Harper, and also Ontario, which does not have this provision in its code.
00:24:48 so um kind of where you know when you when you contacted me and something i've been saying
00:24:54 online i'm kind of at the point of just saying let's just get rid of these commissions i mean
00:24:58 there's nothing they're providing that actually can't be provided in the current court of law
00:25:03 in fact they've morphed into something a quasi-judicial uh layer of bureaucracy that
00:25:09 can really punish people uh but i mean i don't know is it reparable or maybe is it just time
00:25:14 get rid of these and expand our our court ability um i guess i'm i'm sort of either way let's try
00:25:21 something let's just do one or the other you know we i think we could repair them but it's going to
00:25:27 take some serious looking look at the procedural elements that need to be fixed um and i'm kind of
00:25:33 i've been i'm a bit surprised that danielle smith given how she's looked at some of the procedure
00:25:36 elements of uh professional regulators hasn't looked at the human rights commission because
00:25:41 it needs some work a lot of work actually but on the other hand maybe it is time to get rid of them
00:25:45 because you could just create a statutory tort of discrimination and it would go to the courts
00:25:52 now of course the courts don't really want that because they these were small small amounts they
00:25:57 were small claims and they didn't really want to have to deal with them so they sort of liked having
00:26:01 them over at the special commission and they just review the decisions if they're bad but you know
00:26:06 If we're going to get into these large numbers, then absolutely, I think you need to have, the courts need to deal with this because there's a lot, the procedural fairness is much better at the court level.
00:26:18 You have two parties who are both can be, if either one loses, there's costs awarded, but we don't have that yet.
00:26:27 So I think we have to really consider if you're going for some, we maybe do need to get rid of these commissions altogether if we have these higher rewards.
00:26:33 or i'm wondering i mean you're more you know of course the uh expert on legal matters could
00:26:39 another type of court be set up i'm thinking along the lines of you know there's there's drug courts
00:26:43 for example because we didn't want to really choke up our already overburdened criminal courts
00:26:47 with a lot of people who were obviously suffering from addiction problems but you still have to deal
00:26:52 with them so there's some jurisdictions outside of canada that set up drug courts where they at
00:26:56 least then they'll have specialized uh type of it's still a prosecution but it's focused more
00:27:01 on the rehabilitation of the individual and it's a little different and it takes things out of you
00:27:05 know you don't have a murderer sitting next to a person who's just an addict who was in the
00:27:09 got themselves into trouble it could a division of the courts be dedicated still the legal system
00:27:16 still the courts but it would be just dedicated to these human rights things and then you could
00:27:19 still have some of the the same controls as you would in a proper courtroom well sure i think you
00:27:24 could now i'd want to be careful with that because of course one of the other problems is these
00:27:29 tribunals that are set up are all have a mandate so um they tend to skew towards a certain view of
00:27:36 what human rights should be and shouldn't be so that's another problem with them so like say if
00:27:40 we we could certainly put them into the court system and because human rights cases are like
00:27:45 when i was chief uh they were 80 to 85 percent of the cases were about discrimination in employment
00:27:51 so most lawyers who deal with human rights are also employment and labor lawyers so they could
00:27:57 be kind of wrapped into that part of and have sort of a court just specifically dealing with
00:28:03 that and the courts are certainly trying to make some changes to speed up employment and wrongful
00:28:07 dismissal claims so certainly I think that's that would be another possibility and get them out of
00:28:12 this sort of activist approach and of course in the BC case you had they're they're very activist
00:28:18 there they even have a commissioner whose whole role is to push a certain notion of human rights
00:28:23 which is very identity-based, which I would completely get rid of. I don't think that's
00:28:27 legitimate at all, but yeah, I think we could certainly move to the courts.
00:28:33 Are these solely provincial jurisdiction, or is this a federally driven sort of thing like
00:28:38 criminal law? It's, well, every province sets up their own, so they're different across
00:28:44 each jurisdiction, but the feds also have a Canadian Human Rights Commission,
00:28:49 um which has had its own issues there's been accusations of racism going on there and their
00:28:56 chief had ran into a problem who he got booted out he came from alberta actually so um yeah i
00:29:02 think you know they're all they're across the country but each one is different too so they
00:29:06 have different approaches all right well that time went fast but it's interesting you know i i see a
00:29:12 commenter saying human rights you know i'd say get rid of them i i'm hoping and i'm thinking the 0.69
00:29:15 person means the commissions, not the human rights and in of themselves, but human rights
00:29:19 are important and the protection of them is important and for people who aren't necessarily
00:29:24 able to defend themselves. So it's going to be an ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, it just seems
00:29:27 we've kind of created a monster in the mechanism that has defeated its initial perhaps goals and
00:29:35 purposes. So before I let you go though, you're quite prolific with your columns and things
00:29:39 online. Where can people find your work and your stuff so they can follow up on what you're doing?
00:29:44 um i have a lot of on my linkedin page i also have a muckrake page actually i didn't set it up
00:29:51 i guess if you're right enough you get one of those uh but uh you know i've got quite a bit
00:29:56 on there on my facebook page uh so you know look at any of those and if anybody's interested you
00:30:01 know send me send me a link to ask me to to chat and i'm happy to to talk about any of the things
00:30:07 that i've written about recently and you still have an active legal practice in the province
00:30:12 as well, I believe, or?
00:30:14 Well, unfortunately, when you're canceled and fired publicly,
00:30:19 it slows your legal practice down.
00:30:21 So my practice is not up to full speed yet.
00:30:24 And, of course, I'm involved in litigation with certain parties.
00:30:28 So, you know, that takes up some time.
00:30:30 But I'm getting back there.
00:30:31 I'm kind of, I'd say, I'd have half of a practice.
00:30:34 All right.
00:30:35 Well, either way, I hope it takes off.
00:30:38 And I do hope you get remedied for, yeah,
00:30:40 it's uh there would be all almost a whole separate interview to talk about the the bs whereas you
00:30:44 ended up getting cancelled uh as i said i remember it happening at the time i think i might have
00:30:47 written a column on it actually back then so uh well thank you very much for the the time you you
00:30:52 gave us today and uh for talking about this and well let's just uh hope if we keep pushing some
00:30:56 common sense will finally come in i mean it doesn't always get there but we got to keep trying
00:31:01 yeah well in these i think with the common sense is what's needed and it's it's not there and
00:31:06 there hasn't been, we just haven't shone enough light on these things. And, but hopefully these
00:31:10 bad decisions will, you know, spur some change. I hope so. I guess when they overshoot the target
00:31:17 far enough, it can actually lead to positive change later. It's just, unfortunately, Mr.
00:31:21 Dufeld's got to suffer some stress until it gets to that point. So thank you again. And I hope we
00:31:26 get to talk again soon. Great. Thanks, Corey. Great. Thank you. So yes, guys, that is Colin
00:31:31 May. And yes, he's done a lot of work out there. And he's, oh, I see that as well. He's completing
00:31:37 a book right now on the future of cancel culture. I wrote on that, actually, that was in a different
00:31:43 publication. I write in multiple places myself, but about the Kaylin Ford case, speaking of
00:31:49 cancel culture. And that's one that just got into, there's Western Standard stories on it.
00:31:53 We're covering that. Got into the courtroom. Speaking of things that take a long time, I think
00:31:57 that was began in 2019. And she's finally getting remedy in the courts there. That's part of how
00:32:04 things unfortunately wear you down when it comes to trying to get justice for yourself. But she's
00:32:12 really been victimized by cancel culture. And she's pushing back and she's fighting back. And
00:32:17 to a degree, she's already been winning. There's been a couple already settled out of court
00:32:21 knobs such as Duncan Kinney, I believe did. And his little, I don't, I can't keep track of them
00:32:29 progress, Alberta or press progress, but look that stuff up because we do have a civil court's
00:32:35 means to deal with things. But as we're seeing too, it can really take a long, painful and
00:32:41 expensive time. So again, hats off for Kaylin. She wasn't giving up and she's been pushing 0.57
00:32:45 and CBC and the Toronto Star and the NDP, all are defendants in this thing.
00:32:53 And yeah, so Jacqueline Littler, setting up more courts for specialized things, 1.00
00:32:57 just kicked the can down the road, saw the results of divorce courts by a friend, disgusting.
00:33:01 Yeah, family court, I mean, law is complicated. It's a mess. 0.77
00:33:05 Of all areas, I wouldn't want to be a lawyer or judge in it if I had to be a lawyer or judge.
00:33:10 I think I want to stay away from the divorces for all I'm worth. But of course, somebody has to do
00:33:15 it. Somebody has to be the mediator. Somebody has to sit in the middle. Look, there are some cases
00:33:21 of over, you know, too much intolerance. And they're to the point where it gets where somebody
00:33:27 should be perhaps, you know, I guess, punished, discouraged. I don't know. And we need a rational
00:33:34 discussion on it, though. Not when some he, them, whatever the heck it is, nutcase, wants to
00:33:39 demand a haircut when they have no hair or, uh, that, uh, Jessica Yaniv deal out in BC, 1.00
00:33:46 you might remember, uh, that guy was out there demanding that, uh, uh, uh, minorities in, in, 0.97
00:33:53 in, uh, aesthetics places wax his nuts. You know, we all remember that. And then of course it was
00:33:59 just an extortion scheme really, because he would take it to the human rights commission. Cause of
00:34:03 course, they will take every case, at least to consider every case, and it would freak out
00:34:10 those people and he would hope for a settlement outside of that. And why people like that are
00:34:16 taken seriously and able to abuse that system? You know, we've got to stop that idiocy. So 1.00
00:34:22 let's get more into BC. We've got some crazy stuff going on, that Musqueam decision, which 1.00
00:34:28 nobody quite seems to know what it means yet but I mean some of the stuff uh at first they
00:34:34 wouldn't put the agreement out of the federal government and and uh the Musqueam and British
00:34:40 Columbia what's going on like is this land given control over is it not and they wouldn't give the
00:34:45 text to the agreement so they did release the text and uh one of the things in it says it does not
00:34:50 create title and does not constitute a treaty or land claims agreement. Okay. Uh, but then they
00:34:58 could also potentially seek that through the courts. The Cowichan did that and, uh, this opens
00:35:04 the door. So some of the people are kind of, I think, overreacting at least on the immediate
00:35:10 consequences of what's going on with that, that settlement or the agreement or whatever the heck
00:35:14 it is, but they are not wrong in being freaked out and concerned about what this is going to turn
00:35:21 into farther down the road. This never stops. This never stops. Here's where I get on the case of
00:35:29 truth and reconciliation commissions and endless settlements and payouts and so on. When does it
00:35:36 end? How many more generations? Are we going to have to get 500 years away from when Canada became
00:35:43 a country or Alberta became a, uh, a province before we finally say, okay, we've paid back
00:35:49 enough. No, it won't end because there's a whole pile of lawyers making a whole pile of money out
00:35:55 of this, not to mention a whole lot of claimants, um, constantly reaching their hands out and
00:36:03 getting settlements. I talked about that recently, of course, with the, the, the grifters, I'll say
00:36:07 of the fraudsters and the Kamloops band who took $12 million to exhume and dig holes and never did
00:36:15 it. And where's the responsibility? If it had been in the business world, you either would have been
00:36:20 charged with fraud or at the very least taken to court and would have a lien put on your house
00:36:25 until you pay the money back. Nothing though, nothing. What did they do? They gave them another
00:36:29 $12 million so they could build a healing lodge for the bodies they never found. This endless
00:36:36 This irresponsibility, this endless settlement of something that can never be settled, apparently, this compensating generationally for things that happened hundreds of years ago, not only all of that, but it's not working.
00:36:52 It's not working.
00:36:52 Go on to any reserve and look at the conditions.
00:36:56 Look at any of the statistics for Indigenous Canadians, any of them, health, economic, education, any of them.
00:37:04 and they're lagging on all of them and getting worse all the time,
00:37:08 despite more and more and more and more money being pumped at them.
00:37:11 Maybe it's time to stop because it's not working.
00:37:14 If it was working, maybe we'd have something to say.
00:37:18 Harmony, balance, health, safety.
00:37:19 So what is working properly?
00:37:20 And even in Alberta, I imagine you meet with the Human Rights Commissions.
00:37:25 I think in Alberta, we aren't hearing about them.
00:37:27 As Colin said, these are things that are provincially, I guess, at least administered.
00:37:31 So perhaps the Smith government hasn't, you know, hasn't put the ideological lunatics at the head of the Alberta one.
00:37:38 I imagine the complaints have been going forward.
00:37:40 But if this commission has been showing some common sense and actually vetting these and saying these are nuts, maybe that would work.
00:37:47 You know, that's that's part of it, I guess.
00:37:50 You really just why is it so hard?
00:37:52 Why is it so hard to get somebody heading these things who can't just look at some of these frivolous cases and just say, no, no, we're not going to spend our time on that.
00:38:01 We're not going to go after somebody on that.
00:38:03 You are being unreasonable and we aren't going to let you take up any more of our time.
00:38:08 But they don't, or at least, well, we never see the ones they say no to.
00:38:12 But when we see some of the crazy ones they say yes to, it doesn't seem that they turn down too many.
00:38:18 Speaking of insanity, Brampton, Ontario, really turning into one of the hubs for, you know, Canada in its bad examples.
00:38:27 And they hosted a memorial for the Ayatollah Khomeini following his death, a memorial, the man who killed 30,000 protesters in five days.
00:38:39 You know, the double standards in this world, 30,000 protesters, just protesters of his own people in five days.
00:38:49 And he didn't get a fraction. 0.98
00:38:51 Well, actually, the crap caught up with him now, didn't it? 0.96
00:38:53 uh, but of the world condemnation, condemning, yeah, whatever. You know what I mean? The world 0.98
00:39:00 didn't get on his case like they do every time an errant action happens from Israel, do they? 0.99
00:39:05 The man's a monster. I mean, you see the quote going around with that man. He's the one who was 0.60
00:39:09 saying before they sentenced women to death, and by the way, Iran routinely sentenced his woman 0.98
00:39:13 to death for the crime of being raped. But there's other crimes, you know, not listening to their
00:39:19 husband, things like that. And if it's some sort of crime a woman has allegedly committed,
00:39:23 maybe she hasn't been raped because she's still a virgin, but they're going to put her to death 1.00
00:39:27 because that's what they like to do over there. He's the one who said, make sure she is 0.99
00:39:31 raped before she is put to death so there's no chance she can get 1.00
00:39:35 into heaven in the afterlife. Can you get any more 0.99
00:39:39 evil and vile than that?
00:39:44 Yet, here's some evil, vile
00:39:47 individuals holding a memorial for that man. 0.97
00:39:49 Yeah, the world is an ugly, ugly thing. I talked a little, mentioned a little earlier on my thing. Yeah, we've got the Alreda Federation of Labor. That's headed by Gil McAllen. He's been there a long time. You know, you get in those labor positions, they're almost as good as being an indigenous chief for getting the money, eh? Job security. 0.98
00:40:14 He won't admit it, but the reality is that whole recall attempt that's falling apart chronically.
00:40:22 They were supposed to petition.
00:40:24 They were supposed to unseat the Smith government.
00:40:27 Oh, yeah, Legacy Media was reporting on it in hushed tones.
00:40:29 Oh, no, Daniel Smith's in trouble.
00:40:32 These recalls might knock her majority down to the minority and she'll lose government. 1.00
00:40:36 No, in fact, they totally flopped.
00:40:41 So now he's saying he's going to launch a big campaign to fight for Alberta's silent majority.
00:40:47 They're really silent, Gil, aren't they?
00:40:49 So this ought to be fun to watch, fun to watch.
00:40:52 It's the only thing, there's one of the things, I guess, because like I said, I'm trying to be constructively critical of the Smith government.
00:40:58 Because for the most part, I like them.
00:40:59 And I certainly appreciate Daniel Smith in general.
00:41:03 We're very close to each other ideologically, and I think she wants to do the right things.
00:41:07 but there's that temptation of just going with the flow or going with whatever way you're pushed
00:41:16 from the opposition. And the only opposition we have right now is coming from the left. So that's
00:41:21 when they're throwing money at issues rather than solving them because that's a left-wing approach
00:41:28 to it. But look at the opposition. Nahed Menchie, he's failing brutally, brutally. People still
00:41:36 don't even really know who he is. He's not grabbing the imagination of Albertans. The NDP
00:41:40 is sinking in the polls, which again, kind of worries me a little because we've got to make
00:41:46 sure to keep a little fire under the government, whether it's a government you like or not.
00:41:50 And he's not doing that. He's failing. He's a terrible leader of the opposition.
00:41:55 Max Fawcett, if you really want to see leftist knobs, he's a special sort of example of one,
00:42:02 But even he has been coming out now, and this is fun to kind of watch in a morbid sort of way.
00:42:07 They're starting to call for Nenshi to get out.
00:42:10 They're saying it's time you failed.
00:42:12 He didn't even get two years in the leadership, I think, yet.
00:42:14 And the NDP is already saying, yeah, this isn't going to work.
00:42:17 That's fine.
00:42:18 Let's watch the scrapping keep happening there. 0.96
00:42:22 But also at the same time, we need some pressure, constructive pressure, real opposition,
00:42:28 not just that constant, we just oppose everything you're doing.
00:42:32 pressure we need a good opposition that's what i would like to think a free media can provide
00:42:39 and uh something i said to a friend recently i've said this multiple times i think the most
00:42:44 conservative federal government we ever had in canada was jean chretien and how so well it's
00:42:51 because the reform party was breathing down his neck and it was pressuring him to get spending
00:42:59 under control and uh that forced him to balance the budget but you see they will respond to where
00:43:06 their pressure is coming from and uh let's see we do have a call on the line finally somebody's
00:43:12 giving me a call my feelings were getting hurt there so let's wrap up the show with a quick chat
00:43:16 with whoever we got on the line there and and uh see what else is happening hello who we got here
00:43:21 uh it's christian hey christian how you doing hello yeah good how are you good good we just
00:43:27 got a couple minutes left but i appreciate the call what you got to see i have a question like
00:43:33 um because albera government went like nine billion into the deficit how are they planning on
00:43:40 or like paying that off or like what is like is there even a plan or are they kind of just going
00:43:46 to keep deal with ottawa doesn't just constantly kick the can down the road and just raise deficit
00:43:51 and be like not our problem type deal do you know anything about that yeah well i mean i can't i'm
00:43:57 not inside their rooms but it's a very good question and there's truth to it because we're
00:44:01 supposed to be better i think the plan was to kick it down the road and hope that oil prices rise
00:44:05 and they kind of got their wish so the oil prices went up but that's why that's part of why i was
00:44:11 saying you people like you people like me have got to keep the pressure on them and not let them
00:44:15 get lazy when the oil prices are high so that we don't have these later but it's a very good
00:44:19 question i i they're acting just like ottawa and i think they're kicking it down the road
00:44:22 okay yeah i don't think i would say this even if well i don't think all prices stay long from
00:44:29 too much longer because like every war comes in at some point so hopefully sooner or later but
00:44:36 yeah okay thank you no thank you i appreciate it and you're right you know eventually the prices
00:44:41 will come down somebody pointed that out not too long ago i saw oil prices actually when they spike
00:44:46 like this often will have a big crash later. So they shouldn't budget hoping that the prices are
00:44:52 going to stay up. You see, we're getting wisdom from the callers here. I wish Christian was sitting
00:44:57 in the room with the premier and pointing out that true common sense of just guys, we're Albertans,
00:45:04 we're supposed to be doing better. So let's keep that opposition up, as I was saying, because we
00:45:08 don't really have it coming from the right. We don't have the pressure telling them, hey guys,
00:45:12 get your spending under control. Okay. I think that's the time we got for today. I appreciate
00:45:18 the calls. I appreciate the comments coming in the scroll. And again, be sure to subscribe and
00:45:23 watch the pipeline tonight. It will be on. And as well, you know, Marty Up North and other shows
00:45:29 that are coming on stream, subscribe to those things, like, share all of that good stuff.
00:45:34 And we'll make Alberta a better place yet. Thank you. See you on the next one.
00:45:42 Transcription by CastingWords