Blocked： Charest, Unifor and BC Ferries - The Pipeline, Episode 5
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Summary
This week, we discuss the escalating situation at the Regina Refinery strike, the BC Ferries blockade, and the Harry and Meghan Markle situation. Plus, we get an update on the Tory leadership race. Featuring: Senior reporter Derek Fildebrandt, Senior reporter Deirdre Mitchell-McLean, and Digital Editor Paul Holmes.
Transcript
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You're listening to The Pipeline, the Western Standards National Affairs program recording
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Each week we break down the issues, discuss them in depth, and examine some of the broader
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Featuring from Calgary, the Western Standards publisher, Derek Fildebrandt.
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And from Strathmore, Deirdre Mitchell-McLean, our senior reporter.
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And myself, Paul Holmes, digital editor from the quaint island destination, Victorian British
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This week, we're going to be talking about the Regina refinery strike.
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So the BC Ferries blockade, not as big a news, but news nonetheless.
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We're also going to be talking a little update to the Harry and Meghan situation.
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And finally, some updates with the Tory leadership race that we've learned just this week.
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So why don't we start, first of all, with the Regina refinery strike.
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A little bit of escalation yesterday as the Unifor National and members from Unifor, like
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from many different locals, showed up to take the place of Local 594 at the Regina refinery.
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And the reason that they did that is because back in December, the courts in Regina, or sorry,
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in Saskatchewan actually issued a note, or sorry, an order restricting Local 594 from restricting
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And they restricted that to a maximum of 10 minutes or if people decided they didn't want
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information, then they would have to let them go, whichever came first.
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So that court order came out in December, and it was very specifically to the members
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So yesterday, when the local, or sorry, the national president, that's Jerry Diaz, and others
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were actually stopping traffic from going in and out of the refinery, it technically wasn't
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And yeah, so a little bit of, a little bit of, you know, legal loopholes there, but the
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Regina police were on hand, and they did make arrests.
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There were 14 people arrested, including the national president, Jerry Diaz.
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And he had a, he had a media availability this morning that discussed, you know, he spent
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seven hours in the cell, he has been charged with mischief.
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And, I mean, they're still, they're still out there, they're back again this morning.
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They are calling for a boycott of, you know, refinery products at gas stations and retail stores,
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in Saskatchewan, and basically everywhere in support of, of their picket line at the moment.
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So, with the narrowness of the original court order, were the Regina police out of order
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in, in making those arrests, and interfering in the way that they, they did, or?
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No, a spokesperson for the Regina police did say that even though Unifor has the right
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to protest, and they have the right to picket, they do not have the right to, to restrict
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And so, according to the Regina police, they, you know, there's, there's two sets of rights.
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The business has the right to continue, and the union has a right to strike, or picket,
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but they don't, you know, they can't really go to head, go head to head.
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So, that's, so it doesn't seem like, but, you know, Unifor is definitely saying that they
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want some de-escalation, or de-escalation from the police, who I'm sure would like to see
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a de-escalation from the union, and it goes back and forth.
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I assume that the national president is probably also from Toronto.
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And so, this is a fair, a very significant escalation for what is, is a national union
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You'll never find a greater, greater gathering of scum and villainy than the Unifor headquarters
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So the local, so, so Unifor here have, has been doxing people.
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They've been putting out the pictures with names of what they call scabs, the replacement workers.
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We know that unions do this with the, with the hope of trying to intimidate people, make
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them feel physically unsafe in, in doing what they're doing.
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Um, I mean, it is a moral decision if you want to cross the picket line.
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Uh, but at the same time, you know, there's, these guys are saying to boycott the petroleum
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So are they really calling for people to not heat their homes when we've been in minus
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I mean, these people must be living in Toronto to think that this is a reasonable thing to
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Uh, if the reasons for their strike are legitimate or not, I don't know.
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It's a, it's a local thing in Regina and, and that's between two, two parties, but, uh, but
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And then they doxed, um, this gentleman, uh, I know Deirdre did a story on it.
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They doxed this gentleman, uh, who owned, who was the corner of a liquor store in Regina.
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Happens to have the same name as one of the replacement workers.
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And so all of a sudden he's now being harassed and publicly targeted by these people.
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And Unifor has refused to apologize repeatedly when asked, you know, would you apologize to
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And now they show up and, um, you know, they've got every right to protest.
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They've got every right to picket and, uh, to strike, but they seem to think they have
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the right to block entrance to private property, uh, that they do not own.
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So, uh, yeah, it's, uh, I, I, I really think the Regina police made the right call on this
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I saw the original video when they, they were showing faces and names of all of the replacement
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workers in a video, they call it, you know, the scab expose or something.
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And I was, I was shocked by that because to me, that's, you know, they're not, they're not
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directly calling for violence or anything like that, but it was a super heated situation.
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And, you know, like, can't be hard to find, you know, where these people live and all that
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When I lived in BC, I was forced to be a part of a union for a year.
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And, uh, I would get a mail from the union, uh, advising me to vote for the Marxist Leninist
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Uh, I responded by putting up, uh, right to work posters in my office.
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Um, but they had my address and it made me feel, but not particularly safe knowing that,
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uh, people urging me to vote for the Marxist Leninist party, uh, had my home address.
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Uh, and it's, it's quite intentionally not safe and meant to intimidate.
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The Marxists run Victoria now anyways, people not to cross the picket line.
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I mean, that's, that's their thing, but I don't, I think it's, um, it is, it's just wrong.
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I think to try and intimidate people and to not, uh, into complying with what they want.
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Well, and I, you know, I didn't respond on Twitter and frankly, part of the reason I didn't respond
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on Twitter is because, um, you know, just the, whoever was managing the account was being
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I, if you looked at the tweets that followed, you saw that, um, they were very aggressively
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blocking anybody who had a negative opinion on the video and, um, and who knows what sort
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of list you got added to at that point as well.
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So, uh, but I did ask my followers on my personal Facebook and some of, some of the people that
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I'm friends with that are union organizers responded saying that this is a perfectly acceptable
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tactic because everything else has failed and we have the moral authority to, um, proceed
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Nobody else does, but we do because, you know, we're in the moral right and everybody else's
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So, um, hard to, I would just, I would just like to add actually that the, that a 2013 Supreme
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court decision is what has upheld the right of the unions to dox, uh, replacement workers.
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Well, there's a difference between a constitutional right to do something and something being
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moral or ethical and they often shouldn't be the same thing.
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Uh, I actually think from, uh, from a legal perspective, uh, the court might be correct
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because it's a matter of freedom of expression.
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And I don't particularly like the government policing, what can be put out on videos and
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what cannot be, it should always lean towards, uh, no restriction rather than more restriction.
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Uh, but I think there is a very ethical problem with what they're doing here is very intentionally
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Well, of course they're not allowed to say on the video, go find these people and cut their
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But, um, these guys know what they're doing and they're thugs.
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Perhaps we're, uh, perhaps it's a good time to segue into other people who believe they
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have a, a God given moral right to block things.
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Well, that's an interesting segue Derek, because, uh, in fact, the BC ferries, uh, this
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week were blocked by a group of protestors that, um, were, uh, in support of the Wet'suwet'en
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First Nation, which is a First Nation, uh, way up North that, uh, is, uh, currently, uh,
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I believe that the hereditary chief there is opposed.
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And, um, and so they actually ended up canceling, uh, ferries on Monday morning as a result.
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And, uh, lots of people were inconvenienced and just kind of brought up the whole, uh,
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A lot of, a lot of people were just very unimpressed.
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You know, there's a lot of people that take the first ferry on Monday morning to take their,
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their children with, um, cancer to the BC Children's Hospital.
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Um, but you know, that's the, that's the ferry that they typically take for the week so that
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Um, you know, and it's hard, you know, the, the protestors have, have a valid opinion.
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Um, but you know, the families of course that are affected and of course the other people
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Um, you know, this is not, uh, not super appreciated.
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And I think probably I would say also, um, really ineffective.
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The, um, you know, I think most people will see this kind of problem.
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We'll, we'll see this kind of protest and they'll, they'll just say, well, who are these people?
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And you know, I'm certainly not going to take their side of this is the sort of tactics that they employ.
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So there is definitely a, um, a question around tactics.
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And we see this around the world with extinction rebellion and the like.
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You said they were in support of the Wet'suwet'en who opposed the Trans Mountain pipeline.
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These were like, were these like just spoiled college kids looking for crusader?
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I, it's hard to say, uh, you know, I saw some photos and, um, I didn't recognize certainly.
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Um, obviously I don't know anybody from the Wet'suwet'en nation, but not a lot of the people looked like they were first nations.
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It looked like a lot of people, um, who were, you know, just, uh, um, you know.
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There's nothing better than rich, spoiled white liberals being outraged on someone else's behalf.
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And, and it's, uh, yeah, it, you know, again, they have, do they have an opinion that's valid?
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And, you know, that we should be debating these opinions, but, you know, blocking fairies just struck me as kind of a.
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Well, there's a difference between saying whatever you're saying, uh, smartly or not.
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And then blocking property and people's right to go about their business.
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We'll see, we'll see what happens there, but it certainly ties in with, uh, with, uh, the general
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opposition, let's say of the left, um, to energy development and definitely a little closer to
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Speaking of British Columbia, the backwater of Vancouver Island, um, was featured on the
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Uh, actually today they, uh, they sent out a tweet talking all about the, um, how horribly
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backwards Vancouver Island was and why on earth would Harry and Megan want to move there?
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Uh, which of course naturally offended yours truly who took to Twitter to respond.
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Uh, one of the, uh, one of the points that they, uh, that they liked to make.
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Well, cause the person who'd written the article had visited Vancouver Island.
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So they were clearly, they knew what they were talking about and, um, uh, you know, forgot
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that Victoria had the capital city of British Columbia.
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Um, and I think probably the funniest thing that they wrote was that only recently was the highway
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expanded to the North of the Island, the city of the North being Port Hardy, British Columbia.
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So, so this particular right writer, uh, might, might not have been aware of it.
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They also referred to the one major thoroughfare called the, the Island Highway that cuts a curvy swath
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Uh, but that was actually supplemented by the Inland Highway 19 years ago.
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So, uh, so for those of you who are, especially if Harry and Megan are listening, Vancouver Island
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We have highways, we have infrastructure, we have a booming tech sector, and I personally
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will welcome with open arms, uh, our new King and Queen, uh, Harry and Megan.
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So you want to see our beautiful, uh, Twitter, um, discussion on that.
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You can follow me on Twitter at TP Holmes and, uh, and you can, um, also troll me there.
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I would just like to say that I will now be, uh, referring to my birthday or sorry, my birth
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The next time someone asks me my age, I would say, well, I was recently born.
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Before the highway, however, but you know, we're not going to talk about that.
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Well, we are going to talk about, however, is the Tory leadership race.
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And, uh, the very, very latest, uh, our, our very favorite candidate, Jean Charest, Derek,
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Deirdre, you want to set it up and then I'll complain.
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Well, I would love to, Derek, because Jean Charest was actually, to me, a good choice.
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The reason that I liked Jean Charest is number one, because he was, because he's a former
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Now, the other thing is for the last, I don't know how many years he's been a resident here
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So he's got this little bit of the West East thing going on.
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He has, um, he has some solid values that I can really get behind.
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So as a, I, I'm a swing voter, I'm not, I'm not really stuck on a particular party.
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So for me, I thought that he was a fantastic potential leadership candidate.
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And, uh, you know, back in the good old days, he was the political leader in Canada that
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had the great hair, which of course the mantle has been passed along to, uh, our current
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Derek, do you have any thoughts about, uh, Jean Charest?
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I am, you know, uh, well, yeah, yeah, I might have a few.
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Um, for every reason Deirdre says that she finds him appealing, I find him revolting as
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a conservative leader, just absolutely the most terrible ever.
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So he was a progressive conservative first under Brian Mulroney.
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And as a progressive conservative, he was a part of a government that had the F-18 maintenance
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fiasco directly designed to screw the West just to help a Quebec company.
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You had Meach Lake, you had Charlottetown designed, uh, there to forever protect and
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enshrine Quebec's special status in the constitution, the direct expense of the West and lock the
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West place into Confederation down even further than it is.
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He supported the carbon tax, uh, a long list of things, each one of which disqualifies
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Uh, not to mention he's under very serious criminal investigation for massive, uh, corruption
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charges, which is to be fair, just kind of par for the course for Quebec politicians for the most part.
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Um, there, there is a strange logic that if you are just done with trying to work within the current
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federal party system and you wanna, you wanna really shake it up either through full independence
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or seeking a Western, uh, Western kind of block party to represent the West because you don't
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think it's very effective within the conservative party, uh, this would be the guy to do it.
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Um, this would be the guy to probably break the West away.
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So the West will probably come down to, he'll get one vote in the West and it'll be Deirdre.
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And, uh, the conservatives would be just utterly decimated in the West as they were in 1993,
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when he was one of only two progressive conservatives elected in the entire country.
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Technically he was the only one to retain his seat because the other one was a new MP.
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So technically he was the only MP to retain his seat.
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Um, out of 150 odd, uh, MPs the PCs had that year in a majority government.
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And I don't think you can blame Jean Charest for that.
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In fact, if anything, he rose above what was going on and, and retained his seat, right?
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Uh, but he was a part of the whole crew and, uh, you know, Meech Lake and Charlottetown
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were probably the big things that led to the total collapse of the PCs, both, uh, to the
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And he was fully supportive of Meech Lake and Charlottetown and everything that went on.
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But, uh, he is the worst possible guy they could have had.
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It is notable that all of the, um, what it looks like will be the candidates for the conservative
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Not a single Western candidate, even a token Western candidate, uh, will be on the ballot.
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Chere at least would have been a token Western candidate.
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Quebec Liberal Premier cannot be a token Westerner.
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The only token Westerner I will accept from Quebec is Maxine Bernier.
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Well, I, for one, I'm happy that he's out of the race because now you two can be friends
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We would have potentially voted for him, just for radically different reasons.
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I would have voted for him to blow the whole thing up.
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Uh, so, so it does leave, uh, Peter McKay and Pierre Polyev, who seem to be the frontrunners.
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Uh, are we going to see any other serious, uh, candidates or is this what it's going to
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Uh, there's another lady, uh, she's in the story.
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I thought you were saying glad you mentioned it.
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I mean, there were too many candidates last time, but they didn't, um, there's ways to
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You can do like they do in the United States and have early voting, staged voting in different.
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Um, so, you know, make Prince Edward Island, like the Iowa votes early.
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It's not many votes, but it kind of cuts the field down a bit.
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They just made sure you had to pay up some obscene amount of money to get in and meet
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Having just a few candidates is fine, but you have a few candidates by the end at the
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It doesn't matter if you have a dozen or more, but they made it an exclusive club.
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And I, I guess even though, uh, the powerhouses of the party are in the West, I'm
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guessing they, uh, they look, they surveyed the landscape and they said, as we've discussed
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before, Westerner is probably not allowed to be the leader this time because it's been
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And Deirdre, your final thoughts on the conservative leadership race.
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So my final thoughts would be that I'm still hoping for, I'm hoping for a leader that can
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I am hoping for a leader who is going to try and bring the CPC into the modern world.
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I'm hoping that we will get someone that swing voters like myself can get behind because I
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think that having a strong opposition and a potential winner for the next election gives
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us both better government this time and next time.
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So I, I want someone very strong and I'm not sure we have that just yet.
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Well, if Deirdre gets her wish, the Tories can count on not having my vote.
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But I'm a particularly strange voter to please in any case.
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Well, and it, I mean, it does raise a very interesting divide, right?
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There is definitely, um, two, two competing factions on the conservative, uh, well, there's
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a few, I suppose, competing factions in the conservative camp.
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And, uh, uh, I don't, I don't see a unifier that's going to bring all of those people together.
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And maybe that person will, but, um, I'm not sure.
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It's $200,000 for their entry fee, $100,000 for the compliance fee, which is probably not
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I mean, it is an issue for normal people, but it's probably not as much of an issue as the
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People who have been members for at least 21 days.
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Very small window they had though, uh, from the time they released the forms and these
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So it can only be someone who's already got a significant average, uh, organizational capacity
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But there's also no room for kind of a dark horse anti-establishment candidate unless they've
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Well, and I would, I would add to that a little bit that there is there, there, you know, we,
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we, we look at, um, uh, Bernier last time coming so close to winning without, with what, did
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More MLAs in Alberta endorse them than federal MPs.
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And, and so you look at it, you know, I, I thought, I assumed that the signature, uh, thing, you know,
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with the dates and stuff had more to do with, um, with, you know, making sure you have somebody
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that's, that's friendlier to the establishment in Ottawa, basically.
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Oh, I believe that's, that, that is what this is.
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Having, uh, the, the signature requirements, you know, having some signature requirements
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is not unusual, but these high ones and in such a short period of time and the high entry
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fee, uh, I think there's a very explicitly designed to have this be, uh, both a smaller
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number of candidates compared to last time, but also try to keep the field to, uh, more
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Well, and, and, and a slap to the Bernier supporters as well.
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Cause many of them, of course, packed up and left canceled their memberships.
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Uh, they certainly could have, um, rejoined the party if, uh, if they, if they, to, to vote,
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They, they, they, if they so decided, I'm not sure how many will, but if they decided
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Uh, I think what they're saying is to be able to, to, to, to be able to, to, to, to
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sign the petition, uh, into the race, you got to be a member already.
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I said, I think if, uh, if a former Bernier, the Bernier supporter from the last race or
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his PPC now, whatever they are, they could still sign up, uh, for whenever the vote is,
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Signatures aren't actually due until March, March 25th, I believe.
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So I could become a member today and still sign somebody's nomination forms.
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And it is, it is tough because it's mostly the partisans who will get involved, who will
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But as I said, I think that, I think a strong opposition gets us good government today and
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So I really want to see, you know, people should get in there.
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If a guy like Sheree was the Tory leader, he would probably not even be the leader of
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I like the Tories would fall apart into a heaping pile of shit very, very quickly.
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There is absolutely no way he would ever become prime minister because the whole base of the
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But you, but you do realize that Maxine Bernier, who had so much support during the leadership
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race, absolutely tanked it during the election.
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You need to, you need to be someone who is palatable to the majority, not the minority.
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Well, actually, governments almost never get a majority of voters.
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We, in our first past the post system, 38% is often enough to claim yourself have a majority
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I think actually most conservative voters, if we're just talking, we did kind of the blind
00:28:44.520
I think most conservative voters would actually prefer Bernie's policies.
00:28:46.520
But we know that people are more like, much more likely to vote against what they really
00:28:51.520
hate and who's got the best chance of defeating who that is, in this case, the Tories against
00:28:58.520
If we, so if we did kind of an ideological blind taste test, I bet actually what Bernie
00:29:02.520
was running on is much more popular with most conservatives.
00:29:09.520
I don't think it was necessarily a good litmus test how everything went down too.
00:29:14.520
I dare say if he had become leader of the conservative party, he would have done better than 3%.
00:29:23.520
Whether or not it would have been enough to win an election.
00:29:26.520
So that's your premise, Deirdre, that if Bernier had been Tory leader, they would have gotten
00:29:35.520
See, because as long as you have the right sign, it doesn't matter what your policies are.
00:29:42.520
And on that fantastic note, we have given the last word to Deirdre.
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Thank you so much for joining us this week on the pipeline from Calgary.
00:29:56.520
Again, the Western standards publisher, Derek Bilderbrand.
00:30:00.520
And from Strathmore, Deirdre Mitchell-McLean, our senior reporter.
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And myself here in the backwater of Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
00:30:12.520
You look like you're in a backwater with your Guantanamo Bay studio.
00:30:16.520
Coming to you live from a cave in Vancouver Island, digital editor Paul Holmes.
00:30:24.520
And we'll see you again next week, assuming that the coronavirus doesn't wipe us all out.
00:30:35.520
As soon as we get into this, we'll see if you get into this, it's the climax.
00:30:36.520
We are then invited here back to your radio channel of Calgary.
00:30:42.520
For the bad Run on a cooler so that we force you to give you like each other skill
00:30:46.520
as possible forrispacks cover this language from?
00:30:49.520
Probably when things like most seeing your attention through this, but sometimes you're