Western Standard - October 30, 2025


Bring on right to work legislation!


Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

189.42815

Word count

8,756

Sentence count

488

Harmful content

Misogyny

9

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Unions have been crippling Canada's economy for years. It's time we had it out with them. Right to work legislation should be introduced in Canada, and I'm here to talk about it. Good day Canada!

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Good day.
00:00:29.480 welcome to the cory morgan show it was nice to be gone but it's good to be back too boy
00:00:34.380 no shortage of news breaking and happening and going on in this uh time that i've been gone
00:00:40.640 funny i only missed one show but it feels like i've been gone forever i am back and thank you
00:00:45.580 very much to lindsey wilson for filling in even though she did dredge up that picture from my 0.99
00:00:50.940 mullet covered history in the past but she did a fantastic job filling in on here i always get a
00:00:56.700 self-conscious when somebody fills in because people look and realize hey maybe maybe we can
00:01:00.760 replace him with somebody better to look at for these shows either way you're still stuck with me
00:01:03.980 for now get over it so yeah we got a packed show as always like i said so much breaking in the news
00:01:09.880 so much going on i've got a guest coming on larry maury's going to be on a little while these people
00:01:15.320 are wondering what the heck were you doing over in israel cory what's going on with that well let's
00:01:18.680 just bring the founder of the exigent foundation on to explain what was going on and why i went
00:01:24.760 over there and what these guys are up to. Because unfortunately, believe it or not, a few of you
00:01:30.400 folks out in my viewership and such are kind of of the conspiracy-minded sort, and I've been hearing
00:01:35.440 some interesting things. You know what? Let's just talk about things in the open and explain it.
00:01:39.080 There's no crazed Zionist conspiracy. It was a fantastic trip. I learned a lot, and we will
00:01:44.300 talk a lot about it. All right, let's start out about more domestic news for now, though. Strikes.
00:01:50.520 They've been crippling Canada for years. You know what? It's time we had it out with the unions.
00:01:54.560 They've become too empowered, arrogant, and greedy
00:01:56.480 thanks to decades of governments pandering to organized labor
00:01:59.240 rather than reasonably and firmly negotiating with it.
00:02:02.620 Canada's productivity has been lagging
00:02:04.120 and it's reflected in the sagging GDP per capita numbers.
00:02:07.300 It's also difficult to draw domestic investment into domestic industries
00:02:10.960 when unions are rampaging unchecked.
00:02:13.560 I mean, the list of damaging labor actions
00:02:15.160 just in the last couple of years is long and ugly.
00:02:17.900 Dock workers, rail workers, airline workers,
00:02:20.040 federal civil servants, postal workers.
00:02:23.240 I see that worker all the time, but they don't work a hell of a lot, it seems.
00:02:26.400 But they've all harmed the Canadian economy,
00:02:28.640 with only the postal workers not managing to garner big settlements for their actions.
00:02:32.220 There isn't much that can be done on the federal front.
00:02:34.580 Carney's averse to taking strong stances in general as he tries to borrow Canada into prosperity.
00:02:39.640 He hasn't the fortitude to battle with labour unions.
00:02:43.000 Legislation brought by the Trudeau government banning replacement workers
00:02:45.720 and federally regulated industries has tipped the power so heavily into the union hands
00:02:49.780 that payouts come hard and heavy once a strike is threatened.
00:02:52.520 In Alberta though we can change the balance of power. This province can follow in the footsteps
00:02:57.260 of 27 American states and embrace right-to-work legislation. The right to organize with a union
00:03:03.080 is an important one. The right to choose not to participate in a union must be entrenched as well
00:03:07.860 though. Closed shops which force people to join a union whether they like it or not are an affront
00:03:12.680 to the right of free association and they empower unions far too much. The stranglehold on some
00:03:17.820 industries and the public sector in general has to be broken. And there's no better way to do that
00:03:23.420 than allow employees to choose. Giving employees the choice with union membership forces unions to
00:03:28.500 become competitive. They'll suddenly have to be accountable to their members who they take dues
00:03:33.200 from and prove that they offer value to those employees. Members tired of seeing a chunk of
00:03:37.740 their wages being taken from by a union to use in woke lobbying and taking political stances
00:03:43.000 unrelated to their workplace can opt out. Regions with right to work legislation see economic
00:03:48.720 benefits on all levels and the American example proves that. Over a 10-year average, states with
00:03:53.180 right to work legislation saw a 10% private sector job growth, while states without it saw a 6.1%
00:03:58.840 growth. Investment moves towards those states and industries not hamstrung by overpowered unions
00:04:04.040 and they were able to expand their operations. Real manufacturing GDP growth in the right to
00:04:08.260 work states was 18.4%. In the non-right-to-work states, it was 12.7%. Ontario, with its ailing
00:04:15.180 manufacturing sector, should be keeping this in mind. After-tax income growth in right-to-work
00:04:21.700 states was 21.3% versus 16.8% in states without it. That's a big one. Unions like to claim
00:04:28.100 raises only come through union pressure, yet in the states where employees have the option to
00:04:31.820 directly negotiate their own compensation, the employees garner more money. Well, at least the
00:04:36.360 competent ones do. The reason they take home more after tax is because the state government can
00:04:40.740 operate more efficiently without being controlled by unions, so they don't need to tax as much.
00:04:45.640 Kansas and Missouri offer a great example. They're right next to each other. The cost of living is
00:04:49.540 similar. The median household income in Kansas, though, where there's right to work legislation,
00:04:54.000 is thousands of dollars a year higher than Missouri, which is right across the river.
00:04:57.440 The poverty rate in Kansas is 11.1%. They're high, but it's still lower than 13.4% in Missouri.
00:05:03.120 The stronger economy fostered through employee empowerment with right-to-work legislation serves everybody.
00:05:09.720 States with right-to-work legislation experience 48% fewer workdays lost due to strikes.
00:05:14.800 Employees make more money while citizens aren't chronically held hostage with strikes.
00:05:19.080 Everybody wins, at least everybody aside from the union executives who profit on labor unrest.
00:05:23.300 So in Alberta, Gil McGowan heads the Alberta Federation of Labor.
00:05:27.220 His organization takes a little bite out of the wages of almost every union member in the province,
00:05:31.060 and he has guaranteed spots on the executive of the NDP.
00:05:34.920 Gill's threatening a general strike
00:05:36.560 over the back-to-work legislation
00:05:38.360 the UCP government just imposed on teachers.
00:05:40.160 He wants to punish all Albertans
00:05:41.960 and keep the children from the schools
00:05:43.960 while the strike's going on.
00:05:45.500 McAllen's an old-school union thug.
00:05:48.280 He isn't exactly nuanced or cerebral
00:05:50.080 and he prefers conflict rather than negotiation.
00:05:53.080 So the picture you'll see when my column comes out
00:05:55.760 and we've seen it many times in the Western Standard
00:05:57.300 of him getting in the face of one of our reporters
00:05:58.900 kind of demonstrates his nature.
00:06:00.700 Let's indulge old Gil, though. Dare him to have over 300,000 union members walk off the job in
00:06:06.160 Alberta. Let them show the millions of Albertans who pay their bills just how entitled and
00:06:11.760 belligerent these unions are. That sort of walkout would set the stage perfectly for Premier Smith
00:06:16.500 to table and pass right-to-work legislation. Let those who want to work choose to work. All of
00:06:21.720 Alberta would be better for it, and Gil will suddenly have to serve his members rather than
00:06:25.400 blow dollars with self-serving protests. Business and investment will move to Alberta while entitled
00:06:29.680 union types will flee. I can't think of a better outcome. If the courts feel the legislation isn't
00:06:34.100 constitutional, well, we have the notwithstanding clause and we've shown we're not afraid to use it.
00:06:38.080 So bring it on, Gil. Bring it on. All right. That's my rant. I'm sure that'll keep the union
00:06:42.840 folks happy today. Hey, Dave, how's it going? It's going well. Gil's a beauty, isn't it? Oh,
00:06:46.520 Gil's a piece of work. I love tweaking his tail feathers. Absolutely. So welcome back.
00:06:50.380 Thanks. Israel is a wonderful country. It's incredible. You had Larry and Jeff and Meyer
00:06:55.480 showing you around the length and breadth i did yes so we have a shared experience it sounds like
00:07:00.760 a good consistent uh agenda over there yeah well like i see you got larry ounce later on so uh
00:07:05.800 he'll be able to explain it also yeah it's uh it it's you know you put you right in the middle of
00:07:12.040 everything that's going on over there it makes you think and uh you know it's i just you know
00:07:17.560 we've both spent time in israel this year and we can't come up with any answers can we no no answers
00:07:22.200 but a lot more to think on you can't substitute seeing things with your own eyes i mean i'm a
00:07:26.440 voracious reader i read a lot of books but i mean you can learn more in an eight-day trip
00:07:30.360 than in months of reading i'm certain absolutely so glad you had a good time yes all right leading
00:07:36.280 off the news today is a horrible story in england where a man was out walking his dog and came
00:07:41.720 across a african migrant who was smuggled into england illegally in the back of a truck he went
00:07:48.040 on a stabbing spree for some reason stabbed a 14 year old boy and another guy and this this poor
00:07:53.000 dog walker tried to intervene and got stabbed to death so there's been outrage in england about
00:07:59.000 how this can happen and just an awful awful video of it actually happening that is uh is very
00:08:05.640 disturbing uh canada's shame on the international stage continues with uh with president trump uh
00:08:12.600 had a big dinner uh in uh korea today and uh they sat at the same tables round table but i don't
00:08:18.760 think they spoke much and trump tweeted i didn't come to uh korea to see canada so you know and
00:08:26.600 doug ford is still trying to do a damage control in ontario because it was his ad that caused all
00:08:32.360 the problems and yikes what a mess i'm glad i don't work in the ontario manufacturing industry
00:08:38.760 because they're getting hammered yeah doug isn't doing them any favors well subsidizing all those
00:08:44.280 plants and everything look how that's worked yeah exactly uh bank of canada today lowered their
00:08:48.920 interest rates a quarter point to 2.25 so people with variable mortgages uh have a bit more money
00:08:56.040 to spend and uh liam mushit our uh our reporter uh there's a story out earlier this week about
00:09:03.880 climate alarmism and how like two percent of the population actually suffers from it and then
00:09:09.640 affects their health because they're worried they're going to die uh interestingly bill gates
00:09:14.760 came out yesterday and says he doesn't believe we're going to die anymore changed his mind but
00:09:19.400 leah has interviewed michelle sterling who we know and has been on your show several times she's uh
00:09:24.360 with the friends of science and they talk about all this alarmism about climate change so that's
00:09:29.320 up there now for everybody to watch well i'm not too alarmed i mean i i just came from an
00:09:33.160 environment where it was what 21 22 degrees at night and 28 29 in the days and i'm back to this
00:09:38.360 you know frost on my windshield in the morning i say bring on the global warming i i i'm gonna
00:09:42.760 be nervous if we don't change well for the next six months anyways so uh my mom says thank you
00:09:47.400 for the fridge magnets oh well happy to have picked them up i'm glad if you wanted me to pick
00:09:51.480 something up it was a cost effective and small there you go i'm a i'm an easy shopper all right
00:09:56.440 well thanks steve all right say hi to larry for me will do all right so yes guys lots going on
00:10:02.120 that's coming out of our newsroom from our news editor, Dave Naylor. This is the time I like to
00:10:07.080 remind you all, we rely on you for subscriptions in order to be able to bring that news to you,
00:10:13.200 get on the ground, have those reporters like Leah and the others bringing all that content your way.
00:10:18.680 So get on there, westernstandard.news slash subscription. Take one out. It's 10 bucks a
00:10:23.880 month, $100 for a year. And again, I always use that analogy and I'll use it over and over and
00:10:30.540 make it tiresome, but it's true. We never thought twice of paying for a newspaper subscription in
00:10:34.100 the past. This is just the modern way of things. Subscribe to your news outlets. I know you can't
00:10:38.500 subscribe to them all, but I tell you, we'll give you your value for your dollar for it.
00:10:43.220 All right, let's cover a couple more things before I get to my guest. It's in Calgary,
00:10:47.000 something that changed by the time I got back. I'd written a column on it already. It was
00:10:50.420 out there. We've got a new mayor, Jeremy Farkas. I've known Jeremy for quite some time. I know
00:10:57.820 people are concerned. Jeremy's an interesting guy. He was very, very small government conservative
00:11:05.280 when he was a councillor, when he was working with the Wild Rose Party. During his four years
00:11:10.520 after losing the last mayoral election, he kind of started leaning into some woke causes and was
00:11:15.000 hanging out with people like Nenshi and saying some things, you know, even I took issue with,
00:11:19.620 a couple of attacks he made on Premier Smith. But whatever it may be, he worked hard, kept at it,
00:11:27.580 and he managed to win the election and he's the mayor. And I know some people are worried that
00:11:30.900 we've got another woke mayor. Well, let's put some of that to ease though, whatever may be up with
00:11:35.460 Jeremy. For one, I mean, come on, nobody can be, well, he never say never, but the likelihood of
00:11:40.880 him being any worse than Jody Gondek is very slim. He's a pragmatic guy. And think of it this way.
00:11:48.080 I mean, one of the worst things we can have is a hardcore ideologue who never does change their
00:11:51.700 views and never does change their minds. And Jeremy is willing to reevaluate his views on
00:11:58.000 things, even if I don't always agree with his conclusions. We've got an interesting council
00:12:02.300 in Calgary right now. We've lost 10 out of 15 of the incumbents in there. So Jeremy's sitting on
00:12:08.240 top with 10 new people sitting in there. And if you look at the political leanings, our own Mike
00:12:12.840 Thomas from the Western Standard sort of broke it down. We've got basically split half and half
00:12:18.500 between people you would identify as being conservative and people you would identify
00:12:21.600 as being left wing. And Jeremy kind of sits there in the center. And we know from his past actions,
00:12:26.120 he can kind of drop either way. What I would suggest rather than getting upset with Jeremy,
00:12:31.160 because I know some people wanted more conservative candidates, he's going to be the
00:12:33.900 mayor for at least the next four years. He's receptive. I mean, because of the fact that he
00:12:39.300 will go different directions on different issues, it tells you, reach out to him, let him know where
00:12:44.880 you stand on things. Let him know where you would like him to land on issues going in the future.
00:12:50.640 He can be influenced. You know, when you've got a true hardcore ideologue, they can't. They won't
00:12:55.280 move. They won't budge. You can basically script what they're going to do and act with. Jeremy,
00:12:59.900 we don't necessarily know. And one thing I'll say for Jeremy, which I think means more than his
00:13:04.980 policy areas and in knowing him, he is a good person. He really is. He's a smart guy. He dwells
00:13:12.580 on things might not always make the right choice, but he's always genuine. I mean, we've had enough
00:13:18.080 of the self-serving of the corrupt and those types, and I've never seen a glimmer of any of
00:13:23.560 that sort of behavior out of Jeremy. So let's maintain optimism. Perhaps your preferred mayoral
00:13:29.780 candidate didn't win the race this time around, but we've got the council we have right now. We
00:13:34.640 got a lot of big issues to deal with in Calgary, and because it's split the way it is, it can turn
00:13:41.220 out to be one of the best councils we've seen in years. I sure hope so. Or it could turn out
00:13:47.220 terrible and dysfunctional and they'll all be fighting with each other as they can be inclined
00:13:50.860 to. Who knows? But we can have an impact. You can have an impact between elections. Just sitting
00:13:55.900 back and watching is ensuring that somebody else gets the mayor's ear and pushes him perhaps in a
00:14:02.800 direction that doesn't represent you or reflect what you're thinking. And that's the price of
00:14:07.180 apathy, guys. We pay it. So look into things, check things out. Council will be sitting and
00:14:13.100 the municipal budget and all that good stuff will be coming soon. All right, so let's get on with
00:14:17.160 other things. As I said earlier, yes, I vanished for a bit. I don't tend to. I had gone to Israel.
00:14:22.400 I was posting a lot of things from there. Some people were wondering what the heck is Corey
00:14:25.400 doing over there? What's going on? What's this about? And well, it was an opportunity that came
00:14:32.000 about, thanks to the Exigent Foundation and Larry Marr. And, you know, I can't think of a better
00:14:36.880 way to explain it than bring Larry on and talk about what those guys do and why they would
00:14:41.880 sponsor to bring a nutcase like me over to Israel to tour around and look at a few things and learn
00:14:47.580 some stuff. So let's bring Larry in and have a conversation there. Hey, Larry, thanks very much
00:14:52.780 for joining me today. Hey, Corey, how are you? Thank you for having me. Oh, very good. Thanks.
00:14:57.080 I've just recovered from the jet lag, so I'm almost awake now.
00:15:02.000 It's been much better.
00:15:03.440 Great.
00:15:04.480 So, I mean, I guess just to begin with, I'll start with the why.
00:15:08.940 You and Vivian were the founders of the Exigent Foundation.
00:15:12.400 Why did you feel compelled to begin this organization?
00:15:17.000 Well, shortly after, as you know, October 7th, I was seeing what was going on in Ontario
00:15:24.600 and Toronto specifically with a lot of the protests happening and I was speaking to friends
00:15:30.700 and family and I realized that this was going to get a lot worse and some people didn't believe me
00:15:36.360 they didn't really understand why so I decided that I would take a small group of journalists
00:15:42.380 to Israel to basically give them a little bit of an education as to the extremism that
00:15:49.820 surrounds Israel in the Middle East and how it's been here for decades in Canada, in North America,
00:15:57.260 and was going to show its ugly face through our institutions, which we're now seeing through
00:16:03.160 universities, through schools, unions, you name it. And that was the purpose of why we started
00:16:11.720 these missions to Israel. Well, and personally, I mean, I thought it was very effective. I already
00:16:18.320 had my views and opinions but still there's only so much i could know and and as i said to dave
00:16:24.260 just before that with the check-in you can't beat having your feet on the ground talking to other
00:16:28.240 people and just seeing for yourself and i mean i want to you know clarify that with some people
00:16:33.380 i mean you guys weren't there to indoctrinate us i wasn't sitting there being grilled with lectures
00:16:37.240 or or uh you know uh told what to do you you just kind of brought us around and gave us a wide
00:16:42.400 variety of things to see over there yeah i mean we went as you know we went down south we went to the
00:16:47.200 the gaza border we went up north to lebanon syria jordan i mean that was all done within
00:16:52.800 four or five days you see how small the country is you had an opportunity to speak to israelis
00:16:57.440 as well as i believe they spoke to a couple palestinians one that used to live in gaza
00:17:01.680 one now in ramallah and one actually a palestinian uh christian that converted from muslim to
00:17:07.680 christianity i know a couple in the group had an opportunity to speak to um so yeah it's um
00:17:14.320 um it's it's uh it's quite the the experience and eye-opener uh and like i like you just
00:17:21.660 mentioned earlier with dave you can read a book you know and books for days and months but the
00:17:28.140 experience of traveling at least for me uh there's nothing beats that no and and part of what you
00:17:34.860 list on the the site and what you kind of alluded to earlier too i mean a lot of what i've heard
00:17:40.440 from other people is, well, what does it matter to me? What does it mean to me? I'm not worried
00:17:45.240 about that. That's over there. That's their problem. And this extremism is spilling over,
00:17:51.680 as you pointed out, into our universities, into our media over here, onto our streets.
00:17:56.760 In Israel, we got to see the worst possible outcome of it when it's actually spilled out
00:18:00.880 in a massive horrific terrorist attack. But we have to be able to point out to people that we
00:18:06.440 aren't insulated from this. That same ideology is over here, even if it's not as immediately vicious.
00:18:12.240 Exactly. I mean, I brought, I mean, now it's about 50 members from Canadian media across Canada,
00:18:18.460 all different, you know, from BC to Quebec, Ontario, yourself from Alberta, a number of
00:18:26.220 people from Alberta, different walks of life. And they're able to apply the extremism,
00:18:31.560 the these situations that they're happening in their own communities and they see how it's it's
00:18:37.080 coming from the middle east this this extremist ideology you can call it it doesn't matter if 0.99
00:18:42.440 it's the far left or the far right they both have these extreme ideologies neither one of
00:18:48.200 them is good and you know the issue that me personally now on a personal level is we don't
00:18:53.720 see very much uh happening in the center and being able to have a dialogue with people on both sides
00:18:58.520 of the aisle it's either it's either one extreme or if you're not on that side it's you're an
00:19:04.440 extremist on on the other side but um you know radical islamists have been for years and um we
00:19:12.360 can look at this as you see through the muslim brotherhood they have been infiltrating our 1.00
00:19:17.080 institutions uh and um people need to start waking up and understand what's going on as i've said
00:19:23.640 before in the middle east the violence is very different than the indoctrination that they're
00:19:28.440 using here in the west they do it in a different way they've learned how to latch on to our
00:19:33.480 our liberal ideas and our our our democracies and use those against us unfortunately yeah and and
00:19:40.840 bringing us over there i think at least helped uh for some who might not know necessarily like just
00:19:46.840 it is a liberal democracy over there i mean it's got challenges but it's uh a welcoming place
00:19:52.920 meeting the people i mean tel aviv was something else and something i noticed while walking down
00:19:57.400 the street was a uh uh well a couple of well everybody's beautiful out there it seems but a
00:20:02.760 a couple of nice looking young men uh quite enamored with each other sitting on a bench
00:20:07.080 having a good time that's fine but that couldn't happen anywhere else in the middle east like this
00:20:12.360 bastion of freedom for some people of oppressed minorities i mean if israel disappeared the
00:20:18.520 Middle East is going to be a much worse place. Yeah. I mean, look, they don't, you can go back 1.00
00:20:24.720 in history. The Arabs don't necessarily all love each other. I mean, if Israel were to disappear
00:20:28.680 tomorrow, there would still be war in the Middle East. As you saw in Syria, it's unstable there.
00:20:36.620 You have Sunnis and Shiites fighting each other. You have ISIS and Al-Qaeda that are fighting each 0.98
00:20:42.920 other. You have factions. You have about 12 different factions, 15 different factions in
00:20:47.740 Gaza that are fighting with each other and with Hamas. I mean, Lebanon is trying to stabilize
00:20:52.800 itself by attempting to disarm Hezbollah. It's just, it's a very, very unstable situation. And
00:21:00.060 you know, Israel, as I mentioned to you before, this is not a mission to
00:21:06.120 talk about politics. You know, every country's got its own issues. You can agree with a government
00:21:13.760 just like our government here or disagree with it.
00:21:16.220 And it's the same for Israel. 0.68
00:21:17.620 There it's about the experience of what Israelis are facing
00:21:21.240 as a democracy in the Middle East.
00:21:24.140 And those challenges that they have are coming over here
00:21:29.440 and they've already come here.
00:21:30.760 And hopefully it's not too late to deal with them.
00:21:33.760 And being able to meet different people and talk with them
00:21:36.520 and get perspectives.
00:21:37.920 God, I'm so terrible with names.
00:21:39.080 I should have written in my notes.
00:21:40.160 The gentleman that took us on the tour of the kibbutz
00:21:42.480 and that got hit so hard.
00:21:43.380 We met him at Vivian's place as well.
00:21:46.900 Elon.
00:21:47.860 There we go.
00:21:48.920 And he was so candid with us, though.
00:21:52.380 I mean, it was a gentleman that clearly still hurt, you know,
00:21:55.780 such a vicious, horrible experience, yet quite blatant just saying it's got to end.
00:22:01.300 Like he doesn't want more war.
00:22:03.340 He's saying we've got to find a way out of this.
00:22:06.420 Like that picture some people are pointing that Israelis are vengeful
00:22:10.880 or want this battle to go on.
00:22:12.600 I mean, I imagine there's a handful that are that way, but I didn't meet that.
00:22:16.200 I saw people who were wounded and just wanted resolution, though nobody can quite see exactly how to get there yet.
00:22:22.560 No, exactly. I mean, look, Ilan, you know, staying in Kafaraza, he that particular kibbutz, 0.63
00:22:28.660 they used to have Palestinians that from Gaza that would work every day on the kibbutz in a variety of different roles.
00:22:34.620 They were they were getting paid to do it. And, you know, to an extent, they were they were friends.
00:22:39.600 this was going on for years and when you stand there at that gate and you're behind you is the
00:22:45.400 horrors of october 7th and you look straight ahead and you see gaza i mean cory that was your that was
00:22:52.300 your house where he's still not living there he hasn't been living there for two years and you
00:22:57.040 look across i mean there's there's a whole thought i mean even when i look across is how secure is
00:23:04.020 the border right now if I were to move back into my home, into this kibbutz. So I don't know how 1.00
00:23:09.720 you felt when you're, when you, when you see the horror around you and you look across and you see
00:23:14.360 Gaza, you know, that there's, there's a lot of uncertainty. Well, that's it. I mean, we, we've
00:23:21.320 never had to experience that in Canada, not that sort of fear. I mean, I guess some people would
00:23:28.040 feel there was a sense of complacency that allowed things to build up as badly as they did in Gaza
00:23:32.100 until it spilled over in that worst possible way with the horrific activities of October 7th.
00:23:38.400 So you can see why there's support to somehow eliminate the threat, somehow eliminate Hamas. 0.75
00:23:43.640 And yeah, it's easy to say that, but when you've got, it's not like a conventional war.
00:23:48.340 The people you're fighting against are intermixed among some innocent civilians.
00:23:52.520 How do you pick them out of the bunch?
00:23:54.520 But you can't just leave it.
00:23:55.580 How do people move back?
00:23:56.600 How do people relax again until they feel it's been resolved?
00:24:00.200 It's just such a mire.
00:24:02.100 It is. I mean, a great example of what you're just saying right now is when we spoke to Izam, the Palestinian that now lives in Ramallah.
00:24:10.000 And I believe you asked the question, you said, can you name, asking him, can you name any leadership either in Gaza or in the West Bank,
00:24:18.660 if there was complete peace right now that he could name to govern the Palestinians in either Gaza or the West Bank or both?
00:24:30.420 And what was his answer?
00:24:31.340 He didn't have an answer.
00:24:32.420 There's nobody.
00:24:33.540 And so there's a lot of, there's not only infrastructure problems, there's governing
00:24:36.820 problems, there's corruption.
00:24:38.280 It's been going on, it's been going on for decades and decades and decades.
00:24:43.160 So there's a lot of, you know, issues other than rebuilding Gaza and ending this war.
00:24:51.980 But the Palestinians themselves don't have any clear leadership. 0.84
00:24:55.080 I mean, Mahmoud Abbas, he's a terrorist. 0.99
00:25:00.440 He's a pay-for-slay. 0.97
00:25:01.760 His PhD that he wrote was the denial of the Holocaust.
00:25:07.680 And he hasn't called elections in decades.
00:25:11.020 And the second person that the Palestinians are insisting, even Hamas, that could possibly run would be Marwan Barghouti,
00:25:18.360 who's serving, I think, five or six life sentences in Israeli jail right now.
00:25:22.880 so there's a there's an issue um so i don't know what i don't know what the answer is and um you
00:25:31.460 know i don't know maybe you have maybe you have some suggestions no the the term i've been using
00:25:35.920 other people when they ask about is is i'm like an old you know 486 computer i've got all this
00:25:41.320 input and now it's spinning and processing and processing and processing i i haven't figured
00:25:45.560 out how to i i mean hey uh i'd be making far more money you're in a better position if i was smart
00:25:50.020 enough to find a solution for that. But I'm closer to it. I've learned a lot. Something I
00:25:55.600 thought might show a glimmer on where we should start looking maybe when we drove up through
00:26:00.840 Haifa and Jeff pointed aside, here's the town I live in. And right next door, there's another
00:26:05.800 town with minarets. And it's an Arab town. I mean, people again, forget it's not exclusively
00:26:11.660 Jewish country. 18% of the country is Arab. Those towns, I mean, they're not integrated,
00:26:18.380 but they weren't at each other's throats either.
00:26:22.160 There's got to be room for the communities to live next to each other
00:26:24.900 without trying to kill each other.
00:26:26.040 I imagine attitudes between those two towns are different than those
00:26:28.900 between Gaza and Israel itself, but maybe it's some of those relationships
00:26:32.520 we can start looking at and trying to figure out how we can try
00:26:34.920 and make some of these things work.
00:26:36.480 Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I don't know, I know a little bit
00:26:40.040 what's going on in Alberta, but I can tell you in Ontario,
00:26:42.580 on any given day here, we have protests, not in the hundreds anymore,
00:26:46.780 to be in the thousands, pro-Hamas rallies, pro-terrorist rallies, whatever you want to call
00:26:52.540 them. And I believe, someone can correct me if I'm wrong, there has not been one protest in Israel
00:27:01.180 by any pro-Hamas crowd in any Arab village since October 7th. So this is a problem that's happening
00:27:11.760 here in the west because that's not happening in israel um you know arabs and and and israelis
00:27:19.320 and christians are able and jews are able to live uh side by side um you know they they get along
00:27:26.120 and i'll also point out not only there are no protests in israel uh on two different occasions
00:27:32.960 where i've been in israel on one occasion hezbollah had fired i think it was around 20 rockets while
00:27:37.840 we were heading up north. One of the rockets, a couple of them actually landed in the village
00:27:42.620 next to where we were going, an Arab village, killed, I believe he was 21 years old. One of
00:27:48.720 the journalists had said to myself and another person, what would Hezbollah say knowing that
00:27:55.360 they killed an Israeli Arab? And the answer was they don't care. They don't care if you're Arab, 0.56
00:28:01.840 they don't care if you're Christian, they don't care if you're Jewish or what you are, straight, 0.95
00:28:06.120 gay, doesn't matter. And the same thing as when we went up north in Megdal Shams. Hezbollah fired 0.93
00:28:12.440 rockets, landed in a school yard, in a soccer yard that killed 10 or 12 Druze children while
00:28:20.360 they were playing soccer. These are not Jews. They are targeting anything and anybody in Israel, 1.00
00:28:25.560 period. The existence of Israel is not in their vocabulary.
00:28:30.220 No, and I mean, something that really drove me nuts prior to the trip, and even more so now,
00:28:36.260 is the people even trying to soft sell or deny or undercut the atrocities of what happened on
00:28:42.200 October 7th. You know, you could differ with Israeli policy or even, you know, the existence
00:28:47.640 of Israel even, which, you know, I don't, but I mean, so people could, but to try and even slightly
00:28:52.000 justify what happened that day, and I mean, boy, you guys didn't sugarcoat it for us, but we needed
00:28:57.920 to see that for anybody who's seen that horrific video and see the sites, the music festival,
00:29:04.940 the kibbutz. It should change anybody's perspective if they're human. And I think just we need more 1.00
00:29:12.780 outreach to people to understand whatever the solution is to this, actions like that can never
00:29:17.360 be accepted. And it's never be a course of action for changing a state. I agree with you 100%. I
00:29:23.140 I mean, Israel is a sovereign state.
00:29:26.180 It's a nation.
00:29:27.000 It's been around since 1948.
00:29:30.180 And it was invaded by a government of Hamas.
00:29:35.360 They sent thousands of people in and invaded a sovereign state.
00:29:40.920 They didn't hold them hostage in Israel.
00:29:42.780 They brought them back across their border, and they've held them hostage even until today, dead or alive.
00:29:48.880 you know any other country in the world that's ever I don't even that's had an invasion like
00:29:55.420 this and people been taken back across the border as a hostage any other country go back and get
00:30:00.000 their citizens they they would do it immediately I mean I don't want to discuss you know the timing
00:30:06.040 of going into Gaza and all that sort of thing but the fact is I mean if Canada went into Buffalo
00:30:11.220 and October 7th happened in Buffalo you can be sure that the United States within seconds would
00:30:17.760 be back over here and collect every last U.S. citizen no matter what happens. And the same for 0.86
00:30:23.120 most countries around the world. So this whole narrative that's going on right now to me is
00:30:28.780 absolutely ridiculous, and I don't even entertain it. No, and it's maddening. Thankfully, at least 0.94
00:30:34.380 the living hostages are back as horrible as what they had to endure, and hopefully the last of the
00:30:38.820 remains come in. Just a lot of people might not realize just how sacred the remains are for Jewish
00:30:43.860 people as well. I mean, it's sacred for everybody with their family members, but even more so in
00:30:48.240 that case. But either way, I've run up the segment. I appreciate you taking the time. I really
00:30:53.600 appreciate you bringing myself and Dave out there. It was enlightening. I feel I'm better. I don't
00:30:59.420 have the answers, but I'm a little bit closer to it than I had been prior to going. Before I let
00:31:04.520 you go, where can people find information on the foundation to find out more about it or support it
00:31:08.680 anything of that sort they can go to exigentfoundation.org and they will find the
00:31:13.880 information on there and you can send us emails donations whatever they like all right well
00:31:21.400 excellent thank you very much again larry uh hope we get to talk again sometime soon and please keep
00:31:26.040 up that good work for sure thanks cory appreciate it great thank you all right talk to you all right
00:31:31.800 guys yeah just one more time that was larry marr and it's the exigent foundation and you know
00:31:37.320 Now, as I said, some of the feedback, oh, look at that, Corey's been bought off by Netanyahu or he's going to be indoctrinated or he's paid off.
00:31:45.360 Oh, guys, guys, I wouldn't be driving a Hyundai if all that money was really coming in from Israel. 0.87
00:31:50.160 No, there was no payment to me, though it was a sponsored trip.
00:31:54.460 I didn't have to pay to go.
00:31:56.620 And I think, you know, this is one of the best ways to deal with things.
00:32:00.760 It's not fighting with media.
00:32:02.280 It's not bitching about unfair coverage.
00:32:05.480 It's not trying to create coverage or create an opinion.
00:32:09.640 It's just saying, look, here, we're giving you a chance.
00:32:12.620 You can come over.
00:32:13.820 We'll take you over to these spots to have a look, to talk to some people and come to
00:32:18.080 your own conclusions.
00:32:21.200 Theoretically, we can only be better for having more information before we write on these
00:32:26.280 things.
00:32:26.580 So as social media influencers, media members, people like myself, this is a good way to
00:32:32.980 do it. Was the group pro-Israel slanted and inclined? Yeah, there's no doubt about that. I
00:32:39.780 mean, I was that way before I went as well, but it doesn't mean I was shielded from other aspects
00:32:45.760 of seeing things. I wasn't controlled about where I could go. I think I've mentioned on this show
00:32:49.960 before, I went to the Soviet Union back in the late 80s when it was still communist. And on that
00:32:54.520 trip, I tell you, that was shielded. That was having a couple of people next to you for every
00:32:57.940 part of the trip. You didn't get to go wandering out on your own, checking things out, speaking
00:33:02.240 to people without your conversations being tightly controlled. This, again, our itinerary was very
00:33:08.740 packed, but we were our own people and we could speak to others candidly. And something that
00:33:15.060 struck me a lot, as I said, talking to other people was just, I mean, these are people that
00:33:20.600 have been so attacked, so violated, and they're hurt. But I didn't see the bitterness I thought
00:33:27.760 I would. I didn't see quite the anger I thought I would or the appetite. Like I said, I didn't see
00:33:33.460 an appetite for vengeance. If anything, maybe just tired. I think they understand it's not over,
00:33:40.740 but at least this chapter is. We came at an interesting time. The last of the living
00:33:44.940 hostages had been returned. We went out to Tel Aviv on the streets that night. And what a vibrant
00:33:49.980 place. You know, this is a nation that's been on and off at war for, you know, since I was born
00:33:55.360 and more recently, even worse. And people are out enjoying themselves, enjoying each other. Maybe
00:34:02.720 it's a terrible way to get it, but maybe people get a better appreciation of life when you've had
00:34:06.900 it threatened so much. But, you know, I'm not seeing a culture that wants violence or wants
00:34:14.600 war, at least not on the Israeli side. I don't want to blanket things. I suspect many, many people
00:34:19.520 in Gaza and other areas want to see an end to this too. They're not exactly having a good time
00:34:23.500 out of this. But that ideology is spawning a heck of a lot more violence and a heck of a lot more
00:34:28.860 intolerance than what we're seeing on the other. There's no clear answer, but seeing the horrors
00:34:36.380 directly, just knowing that this is unacceptable, the world's moving ahead, we're supposed to be
00:34:41.340 getting better, and that chunk is still sorting it out. Remember, we talk about pluralism, we talk
00:34:48.400 about living together and trying to do those things. Well, that's ground zero, guys. That's
00:34:53.320 where the major religions all share a holy spot. And yeah, that's also the spot where there's going
00:34:59.880 to be the most fighting because you're all sharing these holy spots. But if we're going to find
00:35:03.620 solutions, those solutions are going to start over there. And the amount of misinformation,
00:35:09.100 of ignorance, of gross bias, whether it's on university campuses or in legacy media,
00:35:17.220 has just been too much. It's got to be countered. I mean, I'll bring you an example. CTV has been
00:35:23.100 beyond the pale lately on this issue. They've been something else. And even quite a while back,
00:35:28.920 if you're not familiar with the name Vivian Silver, she was very highly regarded out there,
00:35:33.980 was a peace activist from Canada who was out in Israel in a kibbutz. And she was taking 0.85
00:35:39.800 Gazans in for medical care to help them out in Israel and things like that. They're very
00:35:45.800 peaceful. I mean, you got to remember the people attacked in these commits and were usually lefties.
00:35:50.400 And what did she get in reward for that? She was slaughtered. She was murdered. Just like the rest
00:35:56.360 when they crossed that border. It was kind of like Larry was talking about. They don't, the ones on
00:35:59.740 that extreme end of the ideology don't care. They just are lashing out. I don't even know if they
00:36:05.920 know what their end might be. But CTV reported that when the remains of Vivian Silver were found
00:36:13.020 and confirmed. And their headline said, Vivian Silver, Canadian peace activist or something,
00:36:19.440 died in Gaza recently. Like, no, she was kidnapped and murdered. They made it sound like she passed
00:36:27.760 away of old age, or she had the flu, or tripped and hit her head. Say it like it is, but they won't.
00:36:35.540 So yeah, I appreciate that somebody at least is trying to bring more out there to see it for
00:36:42.000 themselves. That's all. You know, somebody who should be dragged out there, though, I wouldn't
00:36:45.640 want to be on that trip. Rachel Gilmore. Drag that ditz out there, fly her across, maybe, maybe 1.00
00:36:52.220 somewhere behind those vacuous eyes. A little bit will drive home. I mean, just, you don't have to 0.97
00:36:58.860 tell her what to think or tell her what to do, but just let her actually see it and quit reading the
00:37:03.700 pap that she regurgitates on her thing. People say we should ignore the Rachel Gilmores. I wish I
00:37:09.240 could. I don't trust. I don't tune into her show, but you still see dribs and drabs. And you got to 1.00
00:37:14.060 remember, she has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people watching this drivel she's 0.97
00:37:19.660 putting out. So it does have an impact. It does have an influence. And we can't ban others from
00:37:26.360 speaking. That doesn't make us any better than anybody else. But hopefully we can impact and
00:37:30.580 bring about more truth, more rationality in what's a massively irrational situation.
00:37:40.560 All right. I think bring things a little back home again. There's, like I said, so much been
00:37:43.840 going on. I got a backlog going on. We've got a teacher strike. We got the teachers were forced
00:37:47.560 back to school today by Premier Smith with back to work legislation. And then she's taken off to 0.95
00:37:53.920 Saudi Arabia. Now look, this trip was scheduled probably a year ago for Premier Smith because
00:37:58.760 people are saying, oh, look at that. She lobs a turd into the punch bowl and then takes off 1.00
00:38:02.300 overseas. Well, there's not much more she can do over here, but boy, it's all hitting the fan right
00:38:08.740 now. As I said in my opening, the unions here are going bananas. They're threatening a general
00:38:14.340 strike. There's supposed to be a press conference at 1.30 this afternoon. We'll see what happens.
00:38:21.540 I mean, will this happen? Alberta's never had a general strike before. As I said in my monologue,
00:38:27.720 I don't know. I'm not totally averse to this because maybe it's time to talk about people
00:38:31.080 realizing some hard realities, finding some truth. Premier Smith, my main criticism of her since
00:38:36.020 she's become premier has been that she hasn't cut the civil servants enough. She hasn't brought 1.00
00:38:41.320 the budget closer to being under control. We're running a deficit in Alberta. We're supposed to
00:38:44.860 be better than that. Well, maybe if these civil servants walk out and people realize just how
00:38:50.440 little they were bloody well doing, there's going to be a lot more public appetite to say, you know
00:38:54.160 what? I bet we can shave 10% out of there or 15 or 20. They're not going to make themselves more
00:39:00.780 popular with the citizens of Alberta by doing this. We've got a larger culture war going on here. 0.62
00:39:07.200 This strike with the teachers because people are scratching their heads and I'm seeing that from
00:39:11.180 Albertans because they were offered a lot of what they claimed they were asking for. They were
00:39:16.620 offered a 12% raise. It would have made them the highest paid teachers in Western Canada. Six
00:39:20.760 figure incomes, summer off, fall off, Christmas off, spring break off. Like I said, you know,
00:39:27.380 Ethel Merman's birthday, you get that off. The teachers seem to get every bloody day off, 1.00
00:39:30.920 less and less days they're working every year, more money, huge pension, a commitment to hire
00:39:35.920 3,000 more teachers, a commitment to hire 500 more educational assistants a year, and they turned it
00:39:41.260 down. Why? Well, we're seeing that because what their real fight is, what they're most upset about
00:39:49.420 is the expansion of alternative education,
00:39:53.560 charter schools, private schools.
00:39:55.900 That's where their beef is. 0.95
00:39:57.420 They want a monopoly.
00:39:58.600 They want it all.
00:40:00.280 They want the ability to have full control
00:40:02.220 over your children
00:40:03.540 because that's where you start, right?
00:40:05.960 If you can get them when they're being educated,
00:40:08.000 you can impose the ideology.
00:40:09.880 And let's talk about ideological battles, right?
00:40:12.260 What's been going on with this Israel situation,
00:40:14.540 things like that, people on either side of it.
00:40:16.740 Let parents choose.
00:40:17.980 And if a school's being too biased, let them move to a different school.
00:40:23.600 Commenter rucking around, yes.
00:40:27.840 What's my vision of a streamlined government for an independent Alberta?
00:40:30.580 Well, you know, I had Bruce Party on before.
00:40:33.760 He's a law professor from Queen's University, and he's talked a lot about that.
00:40:38.740 He put out a proposed constitution, say, for an independent Alberta,
00:40:42.960 which is probably it would only be a few pages if you printed the whole thing out.
00:40:46.440 very, very limited. He would like to see an absolute minimalist government and then any
00:40:53.820 extra thing the government should do, it should be the reverse order. They have to make the case
00:40:57.580 to us as to why the government should take these things on rather than, you know, we have to have
00:41:02.960 this bloated government and try to beg and fight and scrap to reduce the amount of reach and bloat
00:41:07.480 and expense that they're providing us. I envision maybe nothing quite as stripped down
00:41:12.700 as what Mr. Party is proposing, but yeah, I think we can get away with a heck of a lot less than
00:41:18.880 what we have. I've talked about that before. You know, there's different systems out there. We've
00:41:22.480 got to examine different systems. Canada's system we know is imperfect, far from it, and we can't
00:41:26.980 change the constitution. We know that. We talk about Charlottetown, Meach Lake. Those are modest
00:41:31.560 changes. We failed. So the best chance we have is going independent, and if we go independent,
00:41:37.860 we've got to bring in a system that's new, that's better than whatever we left.
00:41:40.340 One of the main words I would want to use for a new, you know, theoretical fantasy, whatever you want to call it, government for an independent Alberta, the word I want to use, decentralized, decentralized.
00:41:53.780 So even if Edmonton remained the capital, break it all up into Switzerland is a system I like to bring up a lot and compare with.
00:42:03.300 26 cantons, very independent. The federal government of Switzerland does very, very little,
00:42:08.000 very little in the impact on people's lives. It has the military, you know, interstate, you know,
00:42:14.100 intercanton transport, the postal service, currency, just things that must be done by a
00:42:20.040 federal government. Other than that, healthcare, education, housing, all of that stuff, that's all
00:42:26.240 down at the local level. So people with different views in different areas can have things the way
00:42:32.280 they want. There's four languages in Switzerland. We can't even manage to get along with two 0.99
00:42:36.760 official languages in Canada, but in Switzerland, they're doing it. Why? Because, okay, well, you
00:42:40.620 can have your language over there, but I have my language over here. And guess what? We don't have
00:42:43.700 to fight over it because you're not trying to make me speak yours and I won't try to make you
00:42:46.280 speak mine. What a crazy concept, eh? This canton over here is a little more socialist. This one
00:42:51.140 over here is a little more capitalist. It doesn't matter. There's no separatist movement going on
00:42:54.620 in Switzerland. Why? Because you're allowing the regional differences. That's one of the areas
00:42:58.380 we're talking about Indigenous needs too. You know, we can address that then. Let's offer
00:43:05.340 essentially cantons to the Indigenous groups, to the reserves in Alberta. Have real self-government,
00:43:12.360 try to move them more towards actual independence. The problem is we're giving them right now a whole
00:43:16.980 lot of authority on these reserves, but we're not imposing the responsibility. With a new system,
00:43:22.200 we could potentially do that, but make the government local. Bring it right down. Now,
00:43:26.760 of the things that disappointed me as I said with the municipal election turnout I didn't say that
00:43:31.400 yet I said that a different interview I was on a thing earlier today uh but I was talking about
00:43:34.840 the municipal election one of these disappointed me was the low low turnout 40 came out this was
00:43:39.960 a turnover of a mayor we turned over a whole lot of people in the civic government in Calgary but
00:43:44.920 fewer than half bothered to come out and do it so if we had uh a new independent Alberta and
00:43:52.440 and a decentralized government and that sort of local thing.
00:43:55.360 One thing, though, the only way it's going to work 0.99
00:43:58.200 is it means you've got to get off your ass and take part in it, right? 0.99
00:44:00.840 You've got to vote. 0.99
00:44:02.420 You've got to take part in policy discussions.
00:44:05.320 You've got to work on these things.
00:44:08.140 And it doesn't instill confidence in me that we would
00:44:10.860 if we can't get up and take part in civic elections in a city
00:44:13.840 as large as Calgary that it had such a terrible mayor to go out.
00:44:18.420 All right, I'll finish off with speaking of all of that.
00:44:20.040 But Fabio Lukasik, yes, Thomas Lukasik, hey, credit where it's due.
00:44:24.380 They pulled it off.
00:44:25.360 They organized well.
00:44:26.400 Who knows where the money and such came from, but they did it.
00:44:28.680 Hundreds of thousands of signatures they presented for their nothing burger,
00:44:32.780 we want to stay in Canada referendum.
00:44:37.920 And now he's saying, well, I don't really want a referendum.
00:44:39.780 I just want to vote in the legislature.
00:44:41.160 But some people have said, well, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:44:43.080 You're going to invoke a referendum.
00:44:45.940 So it will be an independence referendum in a way.
00:44:47.880 It wouldn't be constitutionally binding necessarily, but it would be an independence
00:44:51.740 referendum. He might've gotten what he thought he was fighting. It'll be interesting to see how that
00:44:56.960 all turns out. Problem is though, it wouldn't be binding and it would also be a reverse onus. I
00:45:02.560 think it's harder to campaign on that because those who want independence would actually have
00:45:05.620 to vote no. I think if there's a chance for independence, we have to vote yes, not just,
00:45:11.640 I mean, not yes on his petitioner and his, his referendum, but yes to go. Things have to look
00:45:16.340 positive. We have to be building something better, something new, something that's going to improve
00:45:20.640 things for us. And when you're voting on a no, that's hard to campaign on. It's psychological,
00:45:24.040 but it's a reality to it. But we'll watch that closely and see what's up. Keep an eye on the
00:45:27.960 news. Watch for the pipeline coming up. We're going to be breaking down some more issues with
00:45:32.080 our panel and keep an eye on the Western Standard. As I said, there's some press conferences coming
00:45:36.720 out and things breaking today, and we will have that coverage as soon as it comes out. So thank
00:45:41.400 you for tuning in today guys it's great to be back and i will see you all again next week at this time
00:46:11.400 You