Western Standard - Are Canadians really falling for Carney？

00:00:00.000 G'day, I'm Derek Filderbrand, publisher of the Western

00:00:29.940 Standard, you're watching The Pipeline. Today is March 25th, 2025. I'm joined by my usual

00:00:37.860 co-hosts, Western Standard Opinion Editor, Nigel Hannaford. Good to see you again. To

00:00:43.100 my left today. And Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist, Cory Morgan. Good afternoon.

00:00:49.100 All right, well, we'll be talking about the first week on the job of Prime Minister Mark

00:00:55.640 Carney. How's he done? What has he done to try and reset the narrative around his liberal

00:01:02.340 government? And how, you know, where are things going? And on the flip side of that coin, we're

00:01:07.600 going to talk about Pierre Polyev and the Conservatives. They've dipped in the polls

00:01:11.580 as the Conservatives, as the Liberals have surged. Can he bounce back? What does he need to do?

00:01:17.440 And we're going to be talking about a very strange move in British Columbia where the BC NDP

00:01:23.220 government has introduced

00:01:25.940 an act that more or less

00:01:29.780 suspends democracy for two years

00:01:31.760 taking most power away from the legislature

00:01:35.660 passing it directly to the executive

00:01:37.500 pretty scary stuff that you normally

00:01:41.820 see on the History Channel

00:01:43.360 not in a Canadian legislature

00:01:46.280 before we get going though I want to thank our sponsor

00:01:49.460 this episode of The Pipeline is sponsored by

00:01:52.420 New World Precious Metals, based right here in Alberta. Years of inflationary money printing

00:01:58.300 and rising debt have decimated the average Canadian's savings. Gold and silver are the

00:02:03.740 only currencies that have held their value for thousands of years. Last year saw 30% gains.

00:02:10.680 New World Precious Metals offers unique platforms to help protect and grow your hard-earned wealth

00:02:15.740 with silver and gold check them out at newworldpm.com uh they're a great sponsor of the

00:02:22.740 western standard so but they're helping us out so if you go help them out you're helping to

00:02:26.980 support the program go to newworldpm.com all right so uh nigel first uh mark carney has been

00:02:35.620 prime minister for a hair over a week now uh he's been trying to set a new tone a new image for the

00:02:43.780 government. Why don't you set it up? So anytime that somebody comes into office without a seat

00:02:51.380 and in the expectation of an election coming soon, first job is to set the tone, try and talk about

00:02:59.620 the way that your administration is going to look. It's interesting that Mr. Carney chose to go

00:03:09.300 to Europe. He went to see the founding nations of Great Britain and France, and then he went

00:03:15.560 up north to Iqaluit to see the founding nations, as he put it. He's making, we've always had this

00:03:22.780 idea that, you know, Canada is based on the English and the French, and he is very specifically

00:03:29.440 drawing a connection with indigenous Canadians. That's not an accident, that's not an afterthought

00:03:35.920 a fortuitous thing. That's very intentional. What is also interesting is that he did not

00:03:42.420 go to see President Trump. He was asked, why not? And he said, I'll go when the time is right. I

00:03:50.140 think the word he used was appropriate. And certainly it didn't go so well when Mr. Trudeau

00:03:55.320 went down there. There could well be a good reason to just let things lay low for a while.

00:04:00.980 while he assembles the alliances that he means to foster in Europe.

00:04:06.640 There was a poll that came out indicating that 40% of Canadians enjoyed joining the European Common Market.

00:04:14.760 I think it said European Union.

00:04:16.480 European Union, well, that's sort of a passe.

00:04:19.560 But, you know, like they have an orientation towards Europe, which is kind of concerning.

00:04:25.220 because if you think back to the speech

00:04:29.200 that Vice President Vance made

00:04:31.420 at the Munich Security Conference recently,

00:04:35.900 Europe has got a lot of problems

00:04:37.400 and they're very good at overlooking democracy

00:04:40.460 when it suits them.

00:04:42.380 European nations have been known to set aside elections

00:04:45.800 that they don't like the result of.

00:04:47.760 So I'm kind of concerned that that feeds the sense

00:04:53.940 we already have of the liberals as being very very interested in top-down control other than

00:05:00.580 that um you know he has booked a zoom call this friday with the with the premiers i presume to

00:05:08.500 talk about a common approach to to mr trump and i would he has also made some significant uh

00:05:16.180 announcements about northern defense.

00:05:21.180 That's what he did up in Iqaluit.

00:05:23.940 He is trying to signal that he is dealing with the things

00:05:28.840 that concerned President Trump when he initially talked about tariffs.

00:05:35.360 He has even come out and said that he thinks fentanyl is a serious problem.

00:05:39.640 So it's kind of interesting how he is conforming to what he thinks is expected of him by an increasingly conservative electorate and one that is absolutely fed up with his predecessor and everything that Mr. Trudeau stood for.

00:05:58.740 Real change attack there.

00:05:59.940 uh cory this is i mean our non-alberta listeners and viewers probably won't get this as much but

00:06:07.580 i'm getting real jim prentice vibes from uh mark carney here both in demeanor and presentation you

00:06:15.880 know very button-up businessman like uh you know it's not uh tongue stuck out and silly socks

00:06:23.780 Justin this is a serious man he is business um you know when both came to office their

00:06:31.180 parties were in the absolute doghouse for in the polls um and you know when Jim Prentice came in

00:06:39.880 he he identified some really easy things to do that had pissed the electorate off uh you know

00:06:47.420 he had abusive planes by his predecessor I was in Redford well the planes are sold um

00:06:53.020 carbon tax everyone hates the carbon tax the liberals are not going to get re-elected with

00:06:57.360 the carbon tax he at least claims to have he has a he signed a fake executive order it was a prop

00:07:04.760 uh but canadians don't really know the difference there's no such thing as an executive order in

00:07:08.960 canada the prime minister doesn't sign something and then it happens actually

00:07:11.380 the governor general signs things to actually make something happen but uh you know eliminating that

00:07:17.820 that real uh sliver uh or that sort of the pee under the under the mattress that was upsetting

00:07:25.700 uh upsetting voters i'm seeing a lot of the same thing here jim prent is his big mistake though

00:07:30.320 is he didn't go right away because he brought his party right back up at the polls but then

00:07:34.880 give people enough time to remember oh yeah we still hate the alberta pcs and they went down to

00:07:38.620 historic defeat um mark carney looks like he's going to call an election uh within the week

00:07:46.280 here. So he's probably not going to give, maybe he won't give people enough time to remember

00:07:50.380 that they still hate the Liberals. What do you see

00:07:54.480 in terms of parallels with Prentice or other leaders who have come in

00:07:58.300 in kind of a similar set of circumstances? Yeah, I mean, it's a similar balance, and

00:08:02.280 if it turns out like Prentice, it'll be a curve. And

00:08:06.080 over the course of a campaign, I mean, that's when you really find out who's who and what's going

00:08:10.340 on. I mean, a different factor with Prentice too, though, was

00:08:14.280 the disastrous floor crossing that he arranged that sort of repulsed voters on both the wild

00:08:18.720 rows and the pcs and and just was a catastrophe all around uh but i mean he's got they both have

00:08:26.980 the same thing they have to walk the line to say i'm the leader of this party but we're not that

00:08:31.320 party anymore and you're surrounding yourself with the same people but saying they've learned

00:08:36.400 because i am now in the head i mean you've still got melanie jolie flubbing up international

00:08:41.180 affairs you've still got gilbo in a different cabinet position but he's still there it's

00:08:46.400 retreads so he's really it's working for the short term we'll see if it works for the long

00:08:51.820 term it won't be easy uh he's going to get a lot more scrutiny in a general election than he dealt

00:08:57.940 with with the love end of the liberal leadership race if you want to call it that so so we'll see

00:09:04.080 if he maintains it but you know as i was saying earlier on my show today too part of the strategy

00:09:09.160 though is just keeping him out of sight which isn't a good sign of things i mean it shows that

00:09:14.940 they aren't confident in him i mean right now is when as nigel said he went over to meet with 0.78

00:09:19.220 european leaders and he's been up to a caliber what canadians would kind of like to get to know

00:09:23.860 who the heck you are too because aside from people like ourselves most people don't really

00:09:27.220 know who carney is and uh when the time comes this is going to be the time when people are

00:09:31.700 going to be looking at him and saying do i like this man what he's about what he's standing for

00:09:35.720 and hiding him is just going to foster mistrust, I think.

00:09:38.980 Well, they have hiding him, Nigel.

00:09:41.760 He has extremely, during his leadership campaign

00:09:44.720 and now as prime minister,

00:09:47.520 he generally bans anyone who's not regime media.

00:09:51.560 So if you're not funded by the liberal government,

00:09:53.100 you're not allowed in at all.

00:09:55.200 Even if you are.

00:09:56.740 Even if you are. 0.94

00:09:57.760 You would get shot down.

00:09:58.820 Well, we had, you know what?

00:10:00.340 Actually, let's just play this quick clip

00:10:02.960 of uh mark carney and uh rosemary bardon look inside yourself rosemary i mean you start from

00:10:22.640 You start from a prior of conflict and ill will.

00:10:33.120 I have served in the private sector.

00:10:35.880 I have stood up for Canada.

00:10:37.300 I have left my roles in the private sector

00:10:42.480 at a time of crisis for our country.

00:10:45.220 I'm complying with all the rules.

00:10:48.960 Your line of questioning is trying to invent new rules.

00:10:51.600 I'm complying with the rules that Parliament has laid out

00:10:55.660 and the responsibilities of the Ethics Commissioner.

00:10:59.460 And I will continue to comply with those rules.

00:11:04.000 I mean, Rosemary Barton does not exactly have a reputation 0.90

00:11:08.260 as a fierce conservative partisan media.

00:11:11.920 She is one of the stars of the CBC,

00:11:16.540 loathed for a long time by conservatives

00:11:18.760 as being largely in the pocket for the Liberals.

00:11:20.960 She gives him a pretty soft time. And that was not a particularly hard question. That's a question that he would clearly have to see coming. His people must have briefed him on. Here's the potential questions you're going to get. Here's some some answers. And it just gets right under his skin.

00:11:36.840 And, you know, he might be surging in the polls right now, making the Liberal Party at least competitive again.

00:11:44.580 But this is not a man who's ever been exposed to the disinfectant of the sunlight in the media.

00:11:51.920 I mean, if we're going to see a lot of that, I think he'll probably will to the campaign.

00:11:55.940 I think he will.

00:11:58.000 Look into your heart, Mr. Carney.

00:12:00.000 You know, he has been one of life's well-rewarded people, and they're not used to getting questions about what they do, what they think, what they feel.

00:12:09.420 And what, you know, to be very direct, what Rosemary Barton had been asking was about potential conflicts of interest,

00:12:17.680 something that the conservatives have been driving very hard and that actually remains to be thoroughly examined.

00:12:27.000 examined and no doubt the election campaign will bring that out the

00:12:31.520 question that I wish that she had asked and which he would have found extremely

00:12:36.760 hard to answer was this mr. Carney when your predecessor mr. Trudeau told the

00:12:44.640 Germans and told Canada that there was no business case for exporting natural

00:12:50.820 gas were you sir advising him at that point i would love to hear his answer well you know if

00:12:58.000 he would uh not ban western standard reporters from his uh his precipitate media availabilities

00:13:02.840 perhaps uh he could get that kind of question uh yeah he uh you know there was a lot of

00:13:11.160 illuminating in his response there um you know look i came back for the private the way he

00:13:16.880 his tone and the way he put it it sounded like why are you giving me a hard time i'm doing canada

00:13:22.580 favor i mean come on uh this is mark carney this is the the carney and i i'm taking a break from

00:13:30.320 making this money to come back and do canada favor i mean in a sense that should be somewhat

00:13:35.300 of what we're looking for it's public service people who have accomplished things outside of

00:13:38.700 politics that's something he does have over peer polyeth that is that is in the plus column for

00:13:43.060 him people like elon musk you might think yeah uh but elon was very well prepared that he is going 0.97

00:13:49.140 to take some shit kicking yeah when he did when you you step into the political sphere guess what 0.97

00:13:54.800 whenever aura of untouchability you had around yourself that's gone and mark carney cori seems 0.99

00:14:01.980 totally baffled that he no longer has that bubble wrap of being you know the governor of the bank

00:14:08.880 of Canada around him that that he's because you know the governor of the bank of Canada is at

00:14:13.240 least among some people untouchable you're not supposed to criticize the governor uh you know

00:14:18.640 governor Kearney um and it just his response to that sounded like why are you giving me such a

00:14:24.060 hard time I'm doing you guys a favor I'm taking a break from making money to to help you guys out

00:14:28.400 leave me alone yeah that you know budding messiah complex might not resonate well with voters in the

00:14:34.040 course of the next 30 days i mean we expect at least a facade of being humble uh and and just

00:14:41.440 you know you take it as an honor to be able to serve in that not i'm doing you a favor

00:14:46.300 by serving in that role and he's gotten it backwards and he i'm certain there must have

00:14:50.780 been some cringing strategists behind close doors that no no no please don't frame it that way mr

00:14:56.680 carney i i think he's they're gonna try and improve him i think that's part of why they're

00:15:01.480 keeping him hidden because he, he hasn't been through the trenches.

00:15:04.980 He hasn't run through an election and he's going to have to thicken that skin 1.00

00:15:08.700 and, uh, you know, take the critique that's going to come with it.

00:15:12.780 He's clearly not accustomed to it.

00:15:14.060 He's a smart man.

00:15:14.720 He's not, you know, uh, he's experienced with public exposure, but not the same

00:15:20.020 type as when you're standing there in an election campaign, when the, the, the

00:15:24.500 buzzards are swooping them in a combatant. 1.00

00:15:26.300 And, and even he's discovering on media, they can try and kind of get you on a

00:15:31.080 question or two it's just the way it goes and uh it's it doesn't bode well for the beginning of

00:15:36.060 this and and again i'm just wondering how long he's going to keep kicking that election can down

00:15:39.500 the road you know and uh i'll put this to either of you uh other than the carbon half of the car

00:15:46.800 the consumer half of the carbon tax not the industrial half uh i should say third two

00:15:51.460 thirds of it is actually industrial um other than that there really does not appear to have been any

00:15:56.580 significant change to who is, what's actually changed in this government, and most especially

00:16:02.320 the people. All the key advisors around him are Trudeau's guys. His office is staffed by Trudeau's

00:16:10.000 guys. Even his cabinet, the front-facing team he's showing, 97% of Carney's cabinet was in Trudeau's

00:16:19.000 cabinet, and 100% of them are obviously liberal MPs elected under Trudeau, whatever else he's

00:16:27.800 doing to try and set a different tone and image of the government, the people around him have not

00:16:32.080 changed at all. Maybe some of them have moved around chairs. Gilbo was in one, now he's in

00:16:36.540 another. But it's the same team. Absolutely. And that's what the conservatives are going to be

00:16:44.680 reminding the public of whenever the election is called.

00:16:49.380 And it's going to be very hard for the Liberals to dodge

00:16:51.680 because as they campaign, to the degree that they are known at all,

00:16:56.040 people will recognize them.

00:16:57.740 And the only difference is Mr. Carney

00:17:00.040 with a very different kind of message,

00:17:05.500 yet one that is not really believable.

00:17:09.820 Everybody who is at all interested knows

00:17:13.020 that Mark Carney is the ultimate Davos man.

00:17:18.680 He is utterly committed and has been all his life,

00:17:22.300 all his public life anyway, to fighting global warming,

00:17:27.320 to reducing carbon emissions.

00:17:30.000 And all of a sudden, this signature policy of a carbon tax,

00:17:34.960 oh, you don't like that?

00:17:36.180 That's electorally unpopular?

00:17:37.880 Well, we can get rid of that then.

00:17:39.120 Up until now, that's been a key plank in the liberal approach.

00:17:43.020 to discourage carbon use by making it more expensive so i think people are really going to

00:17:48.380 have a struggle with the new look carny well you know and then people have said you know

00:17:54.940 the liberals have said this isn't just uh a policy preference of you know

00:17:59.340 which of the marginal tax may be carbon tax is life or death remember mark holland you know

00:18:05.740 you know um carney trudeau holland gilbo they've all said the same thing

00:18:10.380 no carbon tax the world ends literally that's and it is burning we're all gonna die we're gonna burn

00:18:16.700 to death i mean if if unless you guys were lying to us then you should stick with your unpopular

00:18:24.380 policy because the world will end shouldn't you at least go down on the point of principle go down

00:18:28.540 to an honorable defeat on the point of principle that will stop the earth from from from burning

00:18:33.420 up so you really say i told you so when it's all done that's what conservatives will do they'll go

00:18:37.660 down to their deaths on a point of principle these people don't do that i know what you mean

00:18:43.620 um all right uh so we're gonna switch it to the other side here because there's no sense in really

00:18:50.020 even talking about the ndp anymore they're done they're out they're out of the race they're just

00:18:54.280 dead they've they have um transitioned to themselves out of competitiveness um pauliev

00:19:02.020 Poliev still, I mean, the best polls have him with a small lead now.

00:19:08.020 We're not going to talk about ECOS because ECOS is drunk, possibly more than one way.

00:19:13.900 But, you know, even other non-ECOS polls that are a bit more credible, many of them have the Liberals leading, even in potentially majority government territory.

00:19:24.800 Corey, why don't you kind of set it up, you know, where's Poliev right now and what's he got to do?

00:19:30.100 he's got a rebranded pivot they've spent six months building an election on two things

00:19:35.940 one was the chinese election interference thing that the liberals ragged the puck long enough on

00:19:41.020 the canadians just got sick of it and it's just considered unresolved but they don't want to hear

00:19:45.080 about it anymore and the carbon tax that bullet was taken out of his yeah months they've been

00:19:49.500 they've been building this for three years oh certainly i'm just saying when they're starting

00:19:53.100 to think you're getting up towards election tickets i've seen some of the recent ads and

00:19:55.820 they're still on the carbon tax because hey we've already paid for it we made the film

00:19:59.100 we might as well get them out right now because it's done but they've got to find a new corner

00:20:04.400 and i know people are already saying well yes but carney's going to increase the industrial

00:20:07.980 emitters tax oh we know from campaigning if you're going to spend three minutes on the doorstep to

00:20:12.160 explain how he's shuffled it you've already made their eyes glaze over and they're indifferent

00:20:16.060 they see the price of the pump they see the price on their heating bill and carney has said he's

00:20:20.560 going to take that away that's it's no longer a good wedge to hit them with i mean he's gonna have

00:20:27.940 to expose Carney for who he is carefully that's the thing can you trust Carney to do the things

00:20:34.300 he's saying he's going to do can you trust the pivot from these liberals and do you really

00:20:38.580 believe them as I said and plus if they were married to their policies what kind of principles

00:20:43.620 are that when they just throw them away when it's not politically expedient those sorts of points

00:20:46.800 but those are hard to get out to Canadians in a short bite so I'm certain their strategists are

00:20:52.020 just hammering down trying to figure out where can we really get them I think they've really got

00:20:56.560 target Kearney. And the other factor, of course, is the Trump factor, which there's not much you

00:21:02.260 can do about with it. You just try to weather it the best you can and move forward.

00:21:06.780 Nigel, I'm going to borrow from Matt Gurney at the line here, who put the liberal surge in the

00:21:12.800 polls. He described it as a sugar high. It's an artificial, people are kind of just projecting

00:21:19.960 onto Kearney, very possibly. I'm not saying it's not possible that they could win if the sugar

00:21:26.340 high could last throughout a five-week campaign and maybe it gets the liberals government again

00:21:29.720 uh but but he's described it as a sugar high that it's you know it's gonna crash it's not um

00:21:35.440 you know it's not it's not it's it's built on a very weak foundation uh what are your thoughts

00:21:41.720 about how sustainable the liberal surge has been here i'm reminded of the 2011 campaign with

00:21:47.920 michael okneshev who has certain things in common with mr carney that he is a public intellectual

00:21:54.080 He's a man who's very seldom faced any significant professional pushback,

00:21:58.560 unlike a politician.

00:22:01.180 And, yes, the new man comes, is installed.

00:22:06.180 Oh, good, no more Mr. Trudeau.

00:22:08.440 Now we can vote liberal again.

00:22:11.260 Then they listen to Mr. Carney.

00:22:14.500 And he's already made his first blunder.

00:22:16.460 We spoke about the Rosemary Barton incident before.

00:22:18.920 it's not it's not a killer but it it certainly sets the wrong tone especially with women but as 1.00

00:22:26.200 he gets out onto the trail and he says what he really thinks if he is allowed to say what he

00:22:33.240 really thinks the gloss is going to wear off very quickly and most importantly it will wear off in

00:22:39.640 the in the spontaneous reactions when he's asked a question and he gives an answer that he wishes

00:22:48.180 he hadn't later. So I think, Corey, you made a sort of a waving motion that it'll go like that

00:22:55.860 and start to fall off. I think that was prophetic. That's what awaits Mr. Carney. I'm not saying he

00:23:00.860 won't win, but I do say that whatever the support that he seems to command right now, he shouldn't

00:23:07.080 rely on it, but it'll be with him through thick and thin. It's his to lose. Well, that's something

00:23:11.620 to be said with polls too. I mean, the electorate is volatile right now. I mean, you rarely see

00:23:16.520 pulls spike or drop the way they have and if they've jumped quickly never seen like this and

00:23:22.020 if they popped up that quickly that's not strong slowly built stable support that's not a foundation

00:23:27.940 that's people who are being reactive and they can react just as quickly the other way so that this

00:23:33.320 game is far from done and the other thing cory is poliev has not yet begun to fight if you would

00:23:41.060 if you think about it why would you be going out with your key announcements right now when you

00:23:44.880 don't know for sure whether the election will be in a week or in six months. Obviously, you're going

00:23:51.260 to hold back the best you've got until at the right time to deploy it. And so people who say,

00:23:58.620 oh, look, the polls are off for Mr. Poliev. Well, I mean, yes, they are, but that doesn't mean

00:24:04.540 they're going to stay that way. An election is not decided before it's even been called.

00:24:10.460 No, certainly not. And as you said, yeah, they've got to be keeping their powder dry. And you don't

00:24:14.520 have your best bombshells at the start

00:24:16.620 of the campaign. You want to make sure it's shortly

00:24:18.580 before people are going to start into the advance polls.

00:24:20.460 You mark my words, Corey.

00:24:21.680 The research department in the Conservative

00:24:24.300 Party has got stuff on

00:24:26.440 Carney that they haven't even hinted

00:24:28.680 that they have yet. And when that comes out,

00:24:31.020 it'll make it that much more difficult

00:24:32.520 for Mr. Carney to hang on to whatever

00:24:34.580 lead he may presently have.

00:24:36.540 We'll see. I mean, they held on to blackface 0.99

00:24:38.440 for a while with Trudeau, and it still didn't seem to

00:24:40.460 knock them out. No, those conservatives didn't have that.

00:24:42.660 That's right, the media said on it.

00:24:43.840 that was a u.s yes that was u.s media even the canadian media didn't fight mid-election it's

00:24:47.860 just it just seems hard to dislodge but again that's different then i mean the liberals were

00:24:51.020 still at a stable trajectory we've not this bizarre spike that we're at and yes he could

00:24:56.660 be knocked off his perch pretty quick new office pool what are the chances that uh

00:25:00.860 mark connie did blackface pretty zero out here i wouldn't have bet on just the truth i wouldn't

00:25:08.740 have been on anybody doing it before like i grew up in small towns where we literally didn't have

00:25:14.620 other people and we all knew you don't do black there's different personalities and people have

00:25:19.580 less restraint i mean you just now i've never done it thankfully but i mean i had i had my

00:25:25.460 it's what you said and i had my interview but i had my partying weirdness throughout the 90s and

00:25:29.960 many other events that thankfully the internet wasn't around for yet any of our viewers can

00:25:35.980 provide documentary evidence so you see the bounty on uh racy cory photos right now uh

00:25:43.480 the dance floor is for a good photo of cory and the chances of those steps from a man like me

00:25:47.400 though are a little higher somebody like mark carney it was kind of been in the the more

00:25:53.440 cloistered world and is a man who just seems a little more composed or a lot less likely never

00:25:58.000 impossible you never know i mean it's always as they seem he seems so normal you know and then

00:26:02.640 the pictures of them in the lederhosen whip and somebody with sweat spaghetti or something pop

00:26:07.420 out and it changes everything well that was an on place to go i heard it somewhere it's on a

00:26:14.180 bathroom wall or something maybe it was scottfeld but it must be it i uh i'm gonna have to uh i'm

00:26:19.760 gonna have to transition the topic real quickly here before uh this turns against me uh we're

00:26:25.500 going to uh turn to british columbia now and bring in uh western standards uh the western

00:26:31.180 standards bc bureau chief and uh managing editor of west coast standard jared yager from uh beautiful

00:26:37.500 vancouver uh jared the uh the bc ndp government which is i i think it's technically in a quasi

00:26:46.220 minority position it's relying on ndp support but um they're uh they're bringing forward a bill now

00:26:52.640 essentially to neuter the legislature and concentrate all power emergency powers in the

00:26:57.860 executive for two years. Why don't you just describe the situation a little bit more?

00:27:02.740 Okay, so yeah, it's Bill 7. And it was proposed, you know, to deal with the threats from Trump

00:27:10.060 and the United States. But it's been described by the BC conservatives as the most undemocratic

00:27:15.540 power grabbing legislation in BC history. And it's pretty far reaching, deals with opening

00:27:22.920 interprovincial trade barriers uh government procurement and essentially uh anything to do

00:27:28.600 with the tariff response and the big thing to note is that it gives members of the bc ndp cabinet

00:27:37.720 the ability to introduce measures to the to the legislature and with the bc ndp's

00:27:46.520 majority with the help of the greens they're almost sure to be passed and so it's got a lot

00:27:54.500 of people worried here in bc not just conservatives but anyone worried about uh you know authoritarianism

00:28:01.060 and what that could mean for future governments um you know that that it just rings such a good

00:28:09.780 uh it rings a bill i think we've seen this i i've seen this one before where have we seen this one

00:28:15.900 before uh here there's a little clip we want to play here i love democracy i love the republic

00:28:23.120 uh we'll play the full clip but uh i don't expect that the ndp in bc is planning to abolish the

00:28:32.100 legislature and build a death star or or open uh camps of any kind but it it is it's disturbing

00:28:41.420 It's very, very odd. And one of the oddest things to me about this to me, Jared, is that the BCND, why don't you talk about the role of the Greens here? Because the Greens have some leverage right now because of the very narrow seat count, the extremely narrow seat count in the BC legislature.

00:29:00.620 That gives them leverage, but it only gives them leverage with confidence votes in the legislature. Why would the BC, where are the BC Greens at with this?

00:29:10.940 That's quite a really good question, and I haven't seen too much from them.

00:29:15.080 But the bill, it's only at first reading right now, and the legislature is on spring break.

00:29:20.540 So I'm sure when they come back, the Greens will have something to say.

00:29:25.180 So we haven't heard anything from them?

00:29:27.560 Not that I've seen, no.

00:29:29.180 This is, I mean, speaking of, I've seen this one before.

00:29:33.220 The V.C. Greens, in a very similar situation under John Horgan, they propped him up, and he screwed them.

00:29:43.720 He cut their throats at the first opportunity.

00:29:46.520 During COVID, his numbers went up because enough people liked the authoritarian measures he was imposing on British Columbians.

00:29:53.200 And he saw an opportunity for majority government.

00:29:55.760 He ripped up his deal with the Greens.

00:29:58.380 Andy P liked to rip up the deal.

00:30:00.320 That's their line.

00:30:01.240 he ripped up their deal and called a snap election and greens lost i think one of the three seats and

00:30:07.860 they lost all their leverage in the in the legislature and in the government why on earth

00:30:12.660 would these guys do this to themselves again and actually then even weaken their own hand further

00:30:17.900 by uh why would they even consider why would they contemplate supporting this like this legislation

00:30:25.600 I can't imagine that David Eby has brought this bill forward without first making sure he's got the support of the NDP to do it.

00:30:33.720 I'm actually just saying here now, the VC Greens, they said they want amendments to make sure there's guardrails in place to make sure the NDP doesn't override too much.

00:30:44.900 But yeah, they didn't say what the amendments would be, and those will be tabled once the legislature comes back in session.

00:30:54.420 but nigel why the the bc greens have serious leverage here the bc ndp essentially need them

00:31:02.180 to go to govern why the hell would they give away their chips i don't think they have i think they

00:31:09.140 have used their leverage the provisions uh this this was a writer in the western standard just

00:31:15.780 yesterday, made the point that although Bill 7 would provide for cabinet override on just

00:31:24.180 about all legislation, even down to the level of imposing tolls on roads, the thing that

00:31:30.820 it does not do is to in any way allow the province to push ahead on the big resource

00:31:39.880 developments, which are, of course, the hope of more revenues for B.C. and more jobs and a

00:31:47.600 stronger Canada. We're here having a discussion about, Mr. Carney, you need to build more

00:31:53.280 pipelines. In B.C., Bill 7 is justified as a means to protect the economy, but the natural

00:32:00.660 resource sector is still excluded from that. So, you know, what our writer said, this contract

00:32:09.660 the purpose of the massive new powers of Bill 7 and adds to the threats posed to BC's own LNG

00:32:16.920 industry that are already emerging in Alaska. Hesitating to support the resource sector at

00:32:26.100 this moment squanders an opportunity. So I think that the discussion has already been had between

00:32:32.580 the NDP and the Greens, and they have said something like, we'll back you up, but don't

00:32:38.040 you use this to boost the economy especially on the green issues we care about maybe so but in

00:32:47.160 terms of political leverage gory the the ndp's leverage is in its ability to keep it in the

00:32:54.900 government in power or voted out of power non-confidence and if the legislature isn't

00:33:01.080 required to sit very much because most power is just now hyper concentrated in the executive the

00:33:07.000 cabinet and the premier uh that seems to undermine uh what the but you know the leverage the greens

00:33:14.140 have here because they're not at a formal coalition they're not in the cabinet but uh i don't know

00:33:19.440 what's the greens play here oh as nigel said there might have been a deal already made i mean okay

00:33:25.740 fine you're gonna do your thing but we'll do it back there i mean they're fresh out of an election

00:33:30.400 the greens they're much like the ndp federally they've got very concentrated support the best

00:33:36.400 they can hope for actually in achieving power is being a king maker in a minority government and

00:33:40.960 they're sitting there so if they get they've let themselves out of that by giving all the power

00:33:45.080 to the bringer well as nigel said they haven't given all of it to them at this point and you

00:33:50.760 know the greens particularly the modern greens i mean all over the world they're sort of different

00:33:54.760 but the ones in canada tend to be extreme left they are authoritarians they aren't uh you know

00:34:00.860 instinctively getting their backs up when they hear of these things like a libertarian like me

00:34:04.560 would i mean i wouldn't i couldn't stand it if a conservative government did something like this

00:34:07.880 but greens they're they're not far removed from the ndp they just have more of an environmental

00:34:12.560 fixation i don't know uh authoritarians of different stripes have one thing in common

00:34:17.660 or a few things in common but one of the things they have in common is that they're only okay

00:34:21.660 with authoritarianism for themselves in power not a different party and this is the greens

00:34:26.980 supporting authoritarianism for an ideologically like-minded party like the ndp but it's a different

00:34:32.980 party it's not themselves benefiting at least that i see out of this i don't know so there is

00:34:38.520 a sunset clause on this jared is a 2027 uh it's may 2027 yeah yeah which is well into maybe they

00:34:48.480 live without sorry what were you saying it's well into ev's third term so it's not uh

00:34:54.260 too soon huh yeah okay well we're gonna rest that's all right well we're gonna wrap the bc

00:35:02.100 discussion there uh thank you jared and uh we're going to turn to our parting shots nigel well you

00:35:08.520 know as an old space fan from star trek forward through nasa and moon landings and all the rest

00:35:13.880 of it i've watched with peculiar interest as the as the spacex company retrieved the stranded

00:35:23.220 astronauts watched it splash down had great satisfaction from seeing that so musk has kind

00:35:30.020 stepped in to save nasa from an awkward situation the original planet collapsed spacex to the resco

00:35:35.940 elon musk is a hero and i've found it absolutely amazing that a u.s senator who is a democrat

00:35:42.820 but more to the point is the kind of person i tend to respect a former navy captain

00:35:47.300 a former astronaut himself a frequent visitor to the international space station

00:35:52.020 took that moment to post a video in which he pointed the the camera at himself with the tesla

00:36:01.060 car that he owned in the background and said i'm getting rid of this because i don't i think elon

00:36:07.220 musk is an unworthy person and i don't want to drive a car made by an unworthy person we'll 1.00

00:36:14.180 He'll play the years about Henry Ford.

00:36:17.060 So then he went and bought a Chevrolet Tahoe, which I would have thought he would have bought for his wife.

00:36:23.660 So anyway, the long and the short of it is that there is something like this is this is a man I could have respected.

00:36:30.400 I could have followed into the trenches.

00:36:32.260 The Democrat Party has got hold of him and they've done something to his brain.

00:36:36.600 And now basically, I think he's what he called Elon Musk.

00:36:42.780 You'll see from the clip.

00:36:44.180 Don't we want to show it?

00:36:45.740 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

00:36:46.920 Let's run the clock.

00:36:48.620 Every time I get in this car in the last 60 days or so,

00:36:53.860 it reminds me of just how much damage Elon Musk and Donald Trump is doing to our country.

00:37:00.180 Talking about slashing Social Security, cutting health care benefits for poor people, for seniors.

00:37:07.760 It's one bad thing after the next.

00:37:10.780 He's firing veterans. I'm a veteran.

00:37:12.780 and so i have a really hard time driving around in this thing what matters is um you know doing

00:37:18.460 the right thing i think it's time to get rid of it you know elon musk kind of turned out to be an 0.99

00:37:23.020 asshole and uh i don't want to be driving the car built and designed by an asshole well that narrows 0.99

00:37:31.180 it a lot because a lot of car designers historically have been assholes i recommend he gets a volkswagen 1.00

00:37:35.900 and if he doesn't like that he can go for a ford all right cory i got a whole lot of rosie 0.93

00:37:46.160 uh you know it's just been very fascinating to watch this this pile on with rosemary barton

00:37:53.640 i mean she's been well known to be quite enamored with justin trudeau years of of her shallowly

00:38:01.440 hiding just her admiration of him during interviews or even when she would speak of

00:38:05.440 I mean, she was on the brink of tears when he announced he was going to resign.

00:38:09.740 There was the big huzzah she put out when they were leading in the polls once years ago. 0.52

00:38:15.680 And, okay, I think she's trying to reestablish herself.

00:38:20.520 Maybe that's why she wanted to make sure to be a little pointed and critical at a news conference with Kearney to show,

00:38:25.300 look, I can hold liberals to account.

00:38:27.080 I can ask some tougher questions.

00:38:30.200 But it wasn't so much that on her part, but the response, and not even just Kearney.

00:38:34.860 okay politicians get a little crabby you've had a bad day you've been getting picked at and so on

00:38:38.880 and he's not one used to that either okay that was pretty condescending and did show a bad attitude

00:38:43.460 towards a a woman journalist but the enraged reaction from the truanon from the liberal 0.91

00:38:50.860 types online there's petitions to have her fired they are furious they believe she is unfit for 0.98

00:38:57.200 the cbc the hysteric and it is hysteric reaction to one question this this woman's been in there 1.00

00:39:03.640 patting the Liberals for 10 years and she asked one question and you nutcases are now screaming 0.93

00:39:09.760 for her to be torn from her role. It also shows how entitled Liberals are, feeling that they are

00:39:15.480 above critique, above being questioned. It's just fascinating to watch. It really is. I mean,

00:39:20.500 they can't even write that off as a one-off. They believe she should be ripped out of the crown, 0.99

00:39:24.160 you know, mother corp and forever stricken from the roles of journalism. It's just unreal to watch.

00:39:28.500 You know, it's so bad that I think the Liberals should support defunding the CBC.

00:39:32.620 That's what I said online, too.

00:39:34.360 You better just wipe the whole bunch.

00:39:36.000 Yeah, you can't fix it.

00:39:37.520 There's too many Rosemary Bartons.

00:39:38.740 You're going to have to just defund the whole thing, guys.

00:39:41.300 All right, mine.

00:39:43.260 I mean, I'm going to get some pushback from some of you guys.

00:39:46.200 I think it's time that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith calls the by-election in Edmonton Strathcona to allow NDP leader and former Calgary mayor, Nahid Benji, to run and then almost certainly win his seat and enter the legislature.

00:40:02.620 Uh, for reasons I just don't really understand, the United Conservative Party in Alberta is just not calling this by-election.

00:40:09.680 That was Rachel Notley's old seat.

00:40:11.320 There is a 100% chance the NDP are going to win it.

00:40:16.240 Uh, you know, the Conservatives could run Mother Teresa, and, uh, you know, the NDP could run Lenin.

00:40:23.380 Actually, that might improve their vote in that writing.

00:40:25.340 But, you know, they could run Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin, and the NDP is going to win that seat.

00:40:31.040 the conservatives have no hope of winning it and i mean he's the duly elected leader of the ndp but

00:40:37.020 he's not yet the duly elected leader of the opposition he has to be a member of the legislative

00:40:41.100 assembly to do that um you know the conservatives were i think rightfully taunting him that he

00:40:47.400 couldn't get a member of his party to to resign and open up a seat for him for some time well

00:40:51.340 that's finally done the conservatives are dragging their heels on on this i think it would show a 0.99

00:40:56.960 a little bit of class and statesmanship on the part of the Conservatives to call the damn 0.98

00:41:01.160 by-election. He's going to win it anyway. Let him get into the legislature and then have at it. I 0.99

00:41:05.340 want to see Ninchy and Smith go toe-to-toe. Let's get on with it already. So Alberta Conservatives

00:41:11.000 watching, snap, snap, call the by-election. All right, well, that's it for today's show.

00:41:18.540 Remember, if you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, stop freeloading. You need

00:41:22.200 to be right now, go to westernstandard.news, click on subscribe. It's only $10 a month or $100 a year

00:41:27.940 for unlimited access to all Western Standard content. You'll get past the pesky paywall and

00:41:32.980 you'll be supporting one of the very few media left in Canada that is not taking Justin Trudeau

00:41:39.120 and Mark Carney's federal media bailout money. Thank you very much for joining us today and God bless.

00:41:46.120 What does success mean to you? Peace of mind, financial freedom, generational wealth,

00:41:51.760 what do you see in your future investing in gold and silver can help you get there

00:41:56.980 through our trading partners new world precious metals offers safe affordable secure international

00:42:02.860 accounts to help you meet your unique financial goals connect with one of our experienced team

00:42:08.920 members invest in gold and silver today

00:42:21.760 We'll see you next time.

Western Standard - March 20, 2025

Are Canadians really falling for Carney？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript