Calgary council falls for Trudeau's gold
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Summary
In this week's show, we discuss the Calgary council's decision to block development of multi-unit housing in the city, as well as the federal government's plan to provide $25 billion in federal housing assistance to the city of Vancouver.
Transcript
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good evening and welcome to the pipeline this is the western
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standards weekly panel show where we break down some of the top issues making news for the week
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my name is corey morgan i'm one of the opinion writers at the western standard and for our
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panel lineup today i'll start in my immediate right here with western standards opinion editor
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nigel henneford hello again corey yes on a different angle this week covering
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production okay what do you do with them yeah well we've got it for a treat we've got our news
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editor dave naylor on the end there to looking forward to bloviating with you guys yes
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lots of win the prize you said it first yes bloviation within us to to share with you so uh
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yeah and lots of stories to to cover this week so uh i think i'll get right into it here quickly so
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i mean to start with uh calgary i think some of this has kind of made national news in the sense
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of being such a big, well-attended council marathon session going on.
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And the outcome, Dave, was kind of what everybody expected,
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Can you kind of expand on what's going on over there?
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Well, as our opinion writers have said today, you know, the fix appeared to be in.
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There was a vote last night by council to basically a blanket rezoning of the entire city
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where multi-unit apartments can be built, fourplexes and whatnot.
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And it's all tied in with federal housing money of a quarter billion dollars that the Liberals have promised.
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So it was the largest public meeting in Calgary history.
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I think 700 people addressed the council, 75% of them against it.
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And quite emotional scenes down there, some people crying.
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As per that, though, I mean, was the string that tight with the transfer from the Trudeau government?
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Or if the council had voted otherwise, would they have just given the money to Quebec?
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Or would that money still be coming to Calgary?
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Because if not, then they have just sold their soul for nothing.
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But it is, and I think you may have made this point yourself.
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in one of your writings that nobody voted for this like when the when the last municipal election
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came up nobody said and if elected i will do everything i can to rezone single family
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residential so that people can have fourplexes next door to their back gardens nobody campaigned
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for that, and yet they felt they had the authority, the mandate, to do this. So was it the money?
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Well, yeah, I would say so. It makes sense. But the fact that so many people came out and said,
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no, we don't want this. 75% of the submissions to council were rejecting it. Take that with the
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fact that nobody had campaigned for this, and I actually think the city council has just
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acted outside its authority. This is going to be a national trend, you may depend.
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And I think political suicide is the word I used for it in a tweet last night. So many
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Calgarians are against it, yet the council decided to go against it. Just rather like,
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you know, you talked about them not campaigning on it. It was like Mayor Gondek. She gets elected,
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day one and she's in office, she declares an $80 billion climate emergency.
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Oh, wait, hang on a second, where did that come from?
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So if Calgarians finally get off their butts, which they don't like to do for civic elections,
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and, you know, get out there, this could be a sweeping change to council in a couple of years.
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Well, to your point about where does this come from, she has a very good example at the national level
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of somebody who gets elected and then starts doing a whole bunch of things
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that he never talked about before he was elected.
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It seems like if you can just get in, the current generation of politicians
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thinks that once you have office, you can do what you want.
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In actual fact, what's the point of campaigning on a platform
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if the platform does not describe roughly the direction in which you want to go
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and be a reasonably comprehensive list of the things that can be predicted.
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I mean, obviously, governments have to respond to unforeseen events,
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They've been working on rezoning for many, many years.
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Well, you know, the citizens will make a decision in 18 months' time.
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Let's hope it's not gone too far that they can't pull this back.
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Sorry, Corey. I mean, of the three of us sitting here, the only guys whose property values is going to go up is Corey, because he lives outside of town.
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Oh, yeah. I mean, it makes it more attractive to get the heck out of the city and away from the zoning to acreages and areas like where I live.
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I'd rather not my fellow Calgary had suffered for the sake of my property values.
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This council, I mean, it seems incapable of learning.
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I mean, we saw something different this time around with Mayor Gondek.
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Like, as you said, Calgary has an apathetic voter base, pretty permissive with their mayors.
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I mean, we've been around long enough with Bronconnier or Klein or Dewar.
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I mean, their first two terms, usually, even then she's a shoo-in.
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I mean, once you're in, as long as you don't rock the boat too hard, you get a really nice, comfortable honeymoon period.
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Gondek just pooped in the swimming pool the second she got in there, and her support numbers have shown.
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She's a record low support, and for those reasons you mentioned, she went completely against what she had campaigned on to get in to begin with, but they don't seem to have learned from this yet.
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No, the polls show the entire council is historically low ratings. And you think as a smart politician, you want to maybe stay in your job, but they keep doing things to upset Calgarians. The plastic bag ban and things like that, it's like they're deliberately, it's almost like they're like Prime Minister Trudeau. They know they're going to get defeated, so they're trying to cause as much damage as they possibly can in the time that they have left in office.
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That's right. They're certainly doing a job of that. I mean, it was almost inspiring that we don't see congregants get off their butts like that. There were thousands of submissions that came in, too, that weren't in person. And of those, apparently, 90% of them were opposed to this. What's the point of public engagement when you can see that they spent two weeks sitting there listening to hundreds of people with thousands of submissions, nodding their heads, pretending they care, and then saying, okay, well, to hell with all of you. We're just kidding.
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Yeah, a lot of pictures of Councillor Giancarlo sitting there on his phone while, you know,
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people are weeping as they're talking. You know, the fix was in. The fix was in from the beginning.
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So let's look on the bright side here. We know that City Hall moves at a snail's pace. If you
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were wanting to develop a piece of property within the city limits and you bought it today,
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I don't think you'd have your permits in place in 18 months' time. So there is a possibility
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of pulling this thing back now how they deal with the money they've received from ottawa
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or will receive from ottawa that's another matter but come and get it you know you're not going to
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see apartment towers rising up in pump hill between the mansions quite yet i don't think so
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there is i mean there is a chance to put another city council in place to direct the city
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administration which i think generates and drives a lot of these ideas and put them in their place
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Well, I mean, that kind of leads well into, you know, we get the opportunity every four years in
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a general election, but we're supposed to kind of have the opportunity through the means of recall,
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if we really found that politicians were gone too far, and we feel that we need to pull them
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out of there before their term is finished. Premier Kenny had given us a recall legislation,
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an effort was put together by a land in Johnston to do so and and uh the official
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counting and sorting and whatnot came out on that yesterday was it Dave it was uh Monday before yeah
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on Monday and the official count was uh like 69 000 something people signed the signatures well
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well below the uh 507 000 that was needed I mean it was such a high figure it was never going to
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succeed uh from the beginning uh but you know this one guy took on decided he'd had enough and
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you know got noticed took on city hall and got noticed but to add insult to injury corey the uh
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the city administration ruled that every single signature all 69 000 signatures were invalid
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because they hadn't been included with a petition sheet on every seat sheet of signatures a
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technicality really uh but they were all called invalid so you can imagine those people who spent
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their weekends collecting signatures at the side of the roads and in parking lots saying that their
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their voice was invalid how arrogant how arrogant uh fortunately you know premier smith has agreed
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that uh the uh the jason kenny rules are are too onerous and has promised to look at them well
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It did expose some things. I'll give credit where it's due to the organizers and Mr. Johnston,
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even if that wasn't their intent, but they really exposed how bad the legislation is. I mean, not
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just the bar of numbers. I mean, if Premier Smith had just said, okay, we're going to reevaluate
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and we'll knock that down to 40% of those who turned out in the election or something like that,
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like other provinces or states do. But there's a lot of bureaucratic junk in that bill too,
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which allowed city administration to come up with, oh, we found this questionable, you know,
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oh, you didn't attach this sheet with a notice of recall to every petition sheet, thus it's invalid.
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That stuff needs to be cleared out of there, too.
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I mean, they put in so many poison pills in this legislation.
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You know, if I were Mayor Gondek, I would not be taking any comfort from any of this.
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You pull an administrative click and declare the vote's invalid.
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69,000 people, madam, gave you the middle finger.
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That is nothing to be proud of, nothing that should give you any comfort.
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And for every person who did it, there was probably more,
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three more, you know, rhetoric here, three more, four more, five more.
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There were more people who would have signed it if they could have got to a sheet.
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She must know in her heart that she is not popular.
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So whatever I think is the right, beautiful, woke thing to do, I will do.
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And it'll be up to somebody else to take it apart and, you know, put things back the way they were.
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Two days after the recall vote was announced, she's voting to rezone the city.
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And as you say, she's just trying to create her own utopia now.
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To a little credit, and I don't give Eric Gondek a lot of credit on many things very often at all,
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she hasn't been crowing about it that much, actually.
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She's kind of said, well, that came, it's behind us, it's back there.
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I'm hearing some of the others crowing on it, you know, some political scientists and other pundits.
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They were poorly organized and not a single one
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She hasn't gone out of her way to inflame it further,
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I hope they realize, because I've seen others as well.
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if I just threw it out there within a few hours.
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This is an official petition, this is different.
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The 69,000 people who did it put their physical
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mark and name and address on a piece of paper witnessed like that is a a significant number
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of people to put together and anybody dismissing it it's all is doing their apparel well yeah that
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same kind of you know i was just thinking about the bloke um standing up there outside costco up
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in the northeast up in the northwest there you know cold weather he's got his big coat on and
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he's got his little little platform there for you to write on and everything and uh standing out
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there on his own people just filing up it was awkward it was inconvenient but there were lots
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of people like that hundreds probably all over the city going door to door standing in parking
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lots whatever that's a very serious mass movement like 69 000 people there's a lot of people
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and if if those people who did the work on this are as well organized and as dedicated and as
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determined to get out and help other candidates in the next municipal election you are going to see
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a turnover like that's that's an impressive engagement uh you you know you had a column
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oh it must be a must be seven or eight months ago now talking about the need for calgarians to
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recognize that the rules are made by the people who show up well we don't like what's going on
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time to show up they did there as i i said too and it'll be in a future column i mean
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I think there's a rule for recall. It's obviously not going to apply in this term,
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but we need to have that legislation fixed to maybe put a little bit of fear into these guys
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between their terms or just realizing that we expect you to stay reasonably within your platform.
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They work for us and they don't seem to realize that. I'm already looking forward to October
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2025 for the next election because we'll have slate politics then, won't we? That the UCP is
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going to allow formal ones, slates running. So you'll know whether a certain politician is an
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NDP supporter or UCP supporter. Thing is, in October 2025, we're also going to have the
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federal election, which is going to, I mean, that's going to be a bumper issue. So we shouldn't
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book holidays for that month. Shouldn't book holidays. And, you know, there's a financing
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issue there too. People are trying to get elected to city council. They're going to need money to
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campaign as well at the same time as other candidates are who gets to the who gets to the
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pocketbook first I guess that's going to be an important consideration of anybody doing practical
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politics in 2025. True enough I mean these things your average person doesn't think about but those
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of us worked around around campaigns before I mean there's only so many times you can touch those
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donors before they get fatigued and say hey you know I need to save for my vacation too so they're
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to be worked over pretty hard in that period. I guess something in Calgary though, the conservative
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federal politics in Calgary aren't terribly contested. I mean, this is one of the areas
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where we're quite predictable. Aside from perhaps a couple of writings in the northeast, they're
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going to go conservative. So I mean, I think perhaps some of the nipple ones looking for
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change might do better with fundraising than the conservative ones are considered an issue,
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but we'll see. Especially if Trudeau continues to trail by 20% in the polls.
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and then Edmonton might see a turnover too though we're not you know speaking of that as much but
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so he's not exactly terribly popular up there we haven't seen quite the pushback like we're seeing
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in Calgary but I think we might see a a bit of a reckoning with our municipal politicians that
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Premier Smith certainly loves picking the fights with them so bless her heart yes all right well
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let's turn on to something nice and light COVID facts and statistics we've got more coming to
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light yeah every day something's coming to light uh you know we used to uh call them conspiracy
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theories back in the day that oh that can't be true that can't be true now some of them are
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coming true just in the last 10 days astrazeneca has recalled their vaccines because it was it was
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causing injuries uh labor uh boards are saying like canada post for firing all their remote
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workers for not being vaccinated uh was wrong uh you know lots of uh just lots of stuff is slowly
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starting to creep out uh that you know there's maybe a bit of a huge overreaction and it's going
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to be a drip drip drip of stories constant stories over the next couple of weeks that we can look
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forward yeah it's uh it is a major point of point viewers by the way to the coverage that we've had
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of these things i tried to get a bunch of these together like linked in under one column um
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you know we were always told that the vaccines were safe and effective we very quickly found
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that there were thousands of people who had taken the vaccine who developed covered so
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how effective were they? I mean, the line was, well, sure, you got COVID, we didn't expect that,
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but, you know, it'll be easier for you if you had the vaccine. And there's really no way of knowing
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whether that was true or not. But one thing we did find out was when they said it was effective,
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it was not effective at preventing infection. So then a matter of safety comes up. Now,
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I realize there's a lot of people out there who are deeply concerned about the number of people
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who seem to die suddenly. I also know that there is no authoritative medical science published
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that I am aware of, and if anybody watching is aware of it, please get in touch. But I have
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know of no medical science that links the vaccine to these sudden deaths.
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However, I thought it was highly significant that AstraZeneca, as they pulled their vaccine
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off the world market, admitted that in rare occasions there was a dangerous side effect.
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Would it have made a difference to the people who took it?
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I think some people would have said, oh, I don't know.
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Maybe I'll go for a different one, maybe not that one.
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And then Pfizer, apparently, and this is according to a Health Canada official,
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didn't reveal to Health Canada that there was a component in their vaccine
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which has been linked to cancer-causing agents.
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Now, if it was that serious, I guess it would be a lot of dead people.
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But can you imagine, Dave, at the height of the season,
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if we had got hold of that information and published it,
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Even if you'd have known it and known it was the truth, you couldn't say that.
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And you couldn't say a lot of other things that you suspected.
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We would get kicked off every channel out there.
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Well, now, years later, starting, well, okay, maybe, yeah, actually there was this, you know.
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So I have personally lost a good deal of confidence in the good word of some of these companies.
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This was a court decision which said that Bonnie Henry went too far
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in requiring vaccination for people who weren't dealing face-to-face
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If the guy's working from home and never sees anybody,
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he probably doesn't need to be vaccinated let him do him whatever same thing with canada post
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canada post mandated vaccines you know they were trying to get the shot then i know lots of people
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who worked for federally regulated agencies wouldn't take it got fired doing something else
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now but the truth of the matter was that it was not necessary for those people who were not
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dealing with the public so so what I'm saying here is there's a whole lot of
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stuff that is coming out we're gonna see more of it because you may depend but
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there's a lot of other groups working people groups who said well you know if
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if it was not good for the post office because they weren't meeting people
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face-to-face maybe maybe it wasn't good for me either I should have been left
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alone so they'll be suing it's gonna be on and on and I think we're gonna see
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some reckoning stuff. Yeah, I can tell you, gentlemen, I've been vaccinated four times. I
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think the first one was AstraZeneca, and the rest were Pfizer. I'm not getting vaccinated anymore.
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You know, I've just read too much stuff about it. I will continue to get the yearly flu shots,
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but that's all COVID is, I think, you know, is just, it's a bad case of the flu. Yeah. And it
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comes around every year and it takes a horrific toll on the elderly and uh it doesn't affect the
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young people just like very lucky you know so uh you know if you're in a you're in a high risk
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group then maybe you would consider getting more vaccinated but it's just a regular flow you know
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there's another thing that we couldn't have published this this would have been like two
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years ago i think that i was digging around in the in the piles and i came up with health canada's
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definition of the flu and on another page i found out their definition of covid they were identical
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except for one thing that with covert i think there was a tendency to nausea other than that
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there were about 10 things 10 things they're all the same and if you had then said well if health
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canada says they're the same thing you would have still got bumped off the facebook or censored or
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something like that this was the insidious thing about that period of time was that there was a mood
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in the country in government that you couldn't talk about it you couldn't say even things you
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knew to be true meanwhile the science i've said this several times i apologize to people who are
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bored with it. But in same COVID disease, same science, in BC they interpreted it as a necessity
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to close the churches and keep the restaurants open. Completely different approach in Alberta,
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keep the churches open, close the restaurants. How could this be following the science?
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The absurdity of the lockdowns and inconsistency and the lack of impact it had now that we have
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the hindsight and seeing infections in areas that were higher or lower. It looks like most of the
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the measures didn't do a bloody thing anyways aside from terribly impact a lot of people's lives
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and livelihoods and businesses but at least hopefully with hindsight we can start seeing
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and learning from this this is what i want meanwhile we'd have somebody who was classified
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as having died of covid well wait a minute they were decapitated in a car accident well yes but
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they had covid thus it goes into the stats like okay let's now rather than trying to pad the
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numbers one way or another actually look at them yeah for two years we had every young athlete
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around the world who died it was immediately thought oh it must be COVID must be COVID
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it wasn't this is the biggest I mean COVID was the biggest overreaction to my world governments that
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I've ever seen and I ever hope to see well that's it and hey there's gonna be more bugs in the
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future there's gonna be other pandemics some maybe hopefully not but maybe more dangerous than COVID
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And we'd better get our stuff together and learn from this,
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to whatever the next big health challenge might be,
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I get out of bed and scowl at the world, you know,
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the bluebird outside my window, and I shoo it off.
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Go away. Don't brighten my day. I've got to keep my rage up. I'm writing.
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No, this is a bad one. We've got to stay on top of it, but boy, boy, I wish I could develop a sense of humor about it.
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No, it was tough to laugh about, and a lot of things are, but I throw my tasteless humor in now.
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All right, well, let's go on to, you know, another light issue, the Israel-Hamas conflict still ongoing,
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into Canadian and American university reactions as a lot of coddled white bread students have
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decided to set up encampments on their local campuses and non-students it turns out as well.
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It looks like Alberta, of all the jurisdictions in North America, I think had none of it right
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off the bat. Boy, U of C, U of A, Dave. U of C, U of A, you remember we had a, when the
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started happening in the United States, the weather was quite bad here in Calgary and
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burn. It was cold and rainy, but as soon as the sun came out, the tents went up at U of C and at
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the U of A. The U of C said, hey, you're good to protest here, but you can't camp.
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So when the tents went up, Calgary police issued them with trespass notices,
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said you can protest here, but you can't camp. Around 10 o'clock that night, they'd had enough.
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some bottles started to be thrown at police, so they moved in. They, you know, say they looked
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intimidating with their shields and whatnot as they moved forward and continued to be hit with
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objects, including glass bottles, according to Police Chief Neufeld. They used flashbangs,
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they used pepper ball guns, which, you know, would irritate the eyes, and they moved the students out
00:27:25.760
Were they all students? Well, nobody knows. Nobody knows. The same thing happened in Edmonton a
00:27:32.480
couple days later on Saturday. They were warned in the middle of the night, 4 a.m., they were
00:27:39.040
moved in and dispersed. Cue the outrage from the left-wing students union, the horror, the horror,
00:27:48.000
NDP, the horror, the horror, civil libertarian lawyers, the horror, the horror.
00:27:57.680
She probably had to, but, you know, Premier Smith says, okay, well, let's let ACERT take a look at it.
00:28:08.760
I think, Corey, you said in your show today, your mother spanked you more or harder than, you know, what these students got.
00:28:15.420
And like the students, I typically deserved it.
00:28:17.300
Yeah, exactly. And then over the weekend, even funnier, four universities in Halifax have got together and banded in and set up a camp. And they've issued a list of demands, Corey. They want free housing. They want free tuition. And they've got a list of about a dozen outrageous things that they demand before they move their encampments. So we'll see how long that lasts.
00:28:46.040
You know, Dave, I've got a plan for the next time this comes up.
00:28:51.160
Instead of the students or whoever it is, I actually, I'm told that it was by no means all students.
00:28:57.820
And there's a lot of people just looking for trouble.
00:29:00.120
Before you let them go in and put a perimeter around a piece of property,
00:29:05.140
you put the perimeter up first and you control the gate.
00:29:09.240
And anybody who wants to go in there and protest has to answer a simple skill testing question.
00:29:14.100
We show you a map of the world, find Gaza, right?
1.00
00:29:22.260
Because that's the thing, there is an awful lot of lack of knowledge,
00:29:30.040
These people don't even know about what happened to the Jews in the Second World War.
00:29:36.140
If they did, that would temper their feelings about what Gaza did,
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00:29:45.740
You know, nobody likes to see buildings destroyed,
00:29:51.160
people crushed in the rubble, women and children getting killed.
00:29:54.760
But, you know, nobody likes to see whole people led off to destruction either.
00:30:00.780
And nobody likes to see people coming in on ultralights
00:30:04.380
and shooting up people at a rock concert either.
00:30:08.220
And then, I mean, I don't even talk about some of the things they did to individuals.
00:30:18.320
Well, and that aside, I mean, I think the issue isn't even, I mean, they've got the right to protest.
00:30:22.920
You've got the right to protest and support the odious side of Hamas.
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00:30:27.960
It's the encampments where the problem comes in.
00:30:29.880
And that's where I'm getting tired of it with protesters.
00:30:33.760
That's where, and I know I'll get some bad feedback from it, but that's where the truckers convoy,
00:30:38.220
overplayed. They overstayed. They had no exit plan. They had no rational set of demands.
00:30:44.280
There's A, B, and C could be accomplished. We'll all disperse the border blockades. Same thing.
00:30:49.840
Once you entrench, you force the state. You can get out. You can express. You can make noise. You
00:30:55.900
can disrupt the roads. You can block some spots for a little while. But when you entrench, like
00:31:02.020
you're sitting in the Halifax now or the East Coast, you're going to have to act. I mean,
00:31:06.680
the demands are unreasonable. They're not going to happen. It's easier to get rid of them earlier
00:31:11.720
rather than later. I think the UCLA lesson, I'm sure, inspired what happened in Alberta. I mean,
00:31:15.800
they let it go too long, and then it turned into a real mess when they had to get these guys out
00:31:20.880
of there. Yeah, and the University of Toronto, they've had, what, two, three weeks to end camp
00:31:26.060
and get their defenses going. That's going to be a tough one to clear out. And, you know,
00:31:31.880
you saw the right squad of the NYPD go in and haul all the Columbia students out. And you're
00:31:38.320
right, you cannot let them get entrenched, you have to do it quickly. And just to correct too,
00:31:43.240
I mean, I know in Calgary it wasn't confirmed, but I'm pretty sure at least Premier Smith said as
00:31:46.260
much that the police reports in Edmonton, at least with those arrested when they moved there,
00:31:50.820
only 25% were students. So three out of four were, they didn't even belong on campus, much less
00:31:57.360
uh camping on these things but uh the screaming of the the usual suspects on the left you know you're
00:32:05.040
infringing on the right to demonstrate no they can demonstrate if they feel that strongly about
00:32:10.880
it next time there's a provincial election they can campaign on that count they certainly can
00:32:15.200
there we go they're the right to camp on campus and support hummus right and certainly i think
00:32:19.120
there's been a couple of uh online polls the vast majority of calgarians support the calgary police
00:32:24.720
on what they did again it's just the vocal minority trying to cause trouble well that's
00:32:30.240
it and i just get tired i'm saying they're using too much force what do you expect them to do
00:32:33.680
you know walk in they did politely ask a number of times after that eventually you have to walk in
00:32:38.560
this is like the people again i'll throw my own bias on it but you know talking as if israel's
00:32:43.760
been uh overreacting in gaza and committing genocide guys israel could have killed every
0.88
00:32:49.760
person in Gaza 10 times over within the first week if they had the will to do such. I mean,
00:32:55.820
I'm certain they've probably been doing some things wrong. And, you know, everybody has the
00:33:00.180
right to question their actions. But guys, they're not committing genocide, rest assured, if they
00:33:06.020
wanted to. No, it's absolutely ridiculous to use that word. Yes. All right. Well, another area where
00:33:12.920
Genocide is misapplied quite often again, and we're talking the Kamloops alleged graves at the residential school site.
00:33:26.780
I think it'll be three years in a week or so since the big revelation of radar has found anomalies in Kamloops.
00:33:34.880
They got a whole lot of money, and we haven't seen a whole lot of bodies.
00:33:37.720
No, in fact, it was reported this week, or last week actually, $8 million has gone to the local band. What they've done with that $8 million, they're not saying. As far as I know, they haven't done any excavations. They haven't really gone far forward with it at all.
00:34:07.660
possible graves, we've got anomalies in the ground
00:34:26.360
and the things as a country that we've done because of this false claim
00:34:31.140
have been absolutely, you know, it's changed Canadian life for no reason.
00:34:43.880
It isn't, by the way, just the $7.8 million that was delivered to the Kamloops Band.
00:34:50.760
That $7.8 million is part of a $320 million fund.
00:34:56.360
that's available to indigenous groups all over the country if they want to do an excavation and
00:35:02.920
do some kind of investigation at any rate into these stories now the one place there is one
00:35:09.960
place dave that did do an excavation it's a it's a it's in manitoba and it was strongly believed
00:35:16.920
like word of mouth was unanimous that there were bodies of children underneath the roman catholic
00:35:25.160
church on this reserve they excavated underneath the church they found old campsites and animal
00:35:36.600
bones but no human remains you would think that that would settle the matter but the response was
00:35:44.440
well then it must have been somewhere else you know so there is unfortunately some
00:35:55.160
What is it? What's the word I'm looking for? Some people want to believe it, therefore
00:36:02.140
they do believe it, and it's going to be very hard to shake them. But really, until somebody
00:36:08.700
produces the proof, the rest of Canada needs to say, no more.
00:36:14.520
We've got to start questioning, and the cowardice when it comes to some of this.
00:36:21.040
was another one actually a capsule hospital site in Edmonton it was an old
00:36:24.580
hospital that had treated a number of indigenous people and again there'd been
00:36:27.940
mythology that there was a bunch of they died in the hospital and they were
00:36:30.700
buried on the grounds this happened a couple years ago they did ground
00:36:33.760
penetrating radar found 32 sites they were confident were graves and this was
00:36:39.260
a private company one development that's why they were doing this so this wasn't
00:36:42.820
on a reserve or at residential school but it was sim issue so the private
00:36:46.360
company spent the money they had indigenous elders they were doing the
0.97
00:36:49.160
chanting and the smoke ceremonies and the whole works as they excavated each and
00:36:53.120
every one of these anomalies and all 32 of them nothing was found. Ground
00:36:58.820
penetrating radar is notoriously unreliable. Even the person who
00:37:03.080
conducted the initial survey in Kamloops and she's a you know questionable as
00:37:08.020
almost an activist said this needs to be verified by excavation. It doesn't take
00:37:14.060
three years to get some people with some shovels to dig a hole. I mean, seriously, that's really
00:37:20.940
what it comes down to. I understand you don't want to just rip in there in case there's certainly
00:37:24.480
there are some remains and you want to be respectful and careful. And but this is ridiculous.
00:37:29.880
I mean, when the allegations are of murdered children, of missing children, that's part of
00:37:33.980
the problem too, is they can't find any reported missing children. This was actually quite well
00:37:38.200
documented at these schools. So where's the families? Where's the people saying, hey, young
00:37:43.020
And Sally disappeared in 64 at the Kamloops school, and we never found what happened to her.
00:37:50.000
But nobody's got the courage to say it, and they've got to start calling it out.
00:37:53.480
We're talking, yes, $300 million, $7.9 million.
00:37:56.160
And aside from the money aspect, this is keeping a lot of wounds open, creating new ones, maybe, with things that didn't happen.
00:38:03.140
Yeah, the stories at the time, three years ago, were horrendous.
00:38:07.700
All nuns throwing babies into fire pits and stuff like that.
1.00
00:38:11.700
And as you say, Corey, nothing's been proven, no evidence of anything.
00:38:29.000
At least dozens have been actually raised right to the ground.
00:38:34.640
There's people that believe these things really happened.
00:38:37.800
And if you really believe it, I can understand why you'd be very outraged,
00:38:40.900
why you can be pushed to violence, why you, you know, hold that against other people.
00:38:46.400
I, you know, yeah, we shouldn't just be letting this go.
00:38:49.700
I mean, we should be demanding now an excavation on this site.
00:38:55.040
And it's, or at least start calling them out, maybe embarrassing them.
00:39:00.160
Start saying, like, you guys are committing fraud now.
00:39:05.700
And what the heck did you do with the $8 million?
00:39:08.860
Do you think there's any politician that will stand up for that?
00:39:12.420
Not a chance, but we'll keep going on about it, you know, because, I mean, this is, this gets farther back, too, to something that the Trudeau government did when they undid some of the stuff that Harper did with lack of accountability with the money going to these First Nations bands.
00:39:27.340
Like, they just toss them the check and say, you know, we trust you to not misappropriate it.
00:39:32.620
And there's still lots of reserves with boil water advisories.
00:39:40.620
You know, there's still lots of reserves that abject poverty, even though they're banned, maybe getting, you know, millions and millions of dollars a year.
00:39:48.620
You know, I wouldn't have said this 10 years ago, but I think there's an appetite in the voting public today for straight talk and authenticity that exists.
00:40:01.620
exists today because people are fed up with being knowing they're being lied to and yet people
00:40:09.700
looking them straight in the eye and telling them everything's fine i'm not so sure that
00:40:15.700
there isn't a politician who could take that up if they wanted to
00:40:20.100
surveys suggest that two-thirds of the people are not woke one-third are and they're the one-third
00:40:27.220
in the universities the institutions and in politics and journalism which is unfortunate
00:40:33.220
but two to one against if our readership on this is anything to go by you know just the sheer amount
00:40:41.540
of interest that these this story is called has generated which by the way i i have yet to see
00:40:48.900
any note of this in the mainstream press no no touch it as you know nigel it blew up our site
1.00
00:40:55.620
this week by far it was the most popular uh uh story we've had all week and all year in fact and
00:41:02.580
it's there is a lot of interest out there for sure i think there's a i think there's a constituency
00:41:07.700
for dealing with this let's hope so nobody likes misappropriation of funds it's not and there's
00:41:12.820
there's some of the we know the reality it's the fear of the big r word you just don't want to be
00:41:16.340
called racist but it's not racist to ask for accountability we i hate every race has been
0.94
00:41:21.780
found occasionally to have people who are unprincipled who misuse funds there's been white
00:41:27.140
politicians and business people and indian ones from india and first nations ones it's not
00:41:33.700
unreasonable to say hey what the heck did you do with that money that really needs to be asked i
00:41:39.300
mean sounds like you should run for office oh god the world deserves better than that
00:41:45.220
i deserve better i wouldn't want that job oh i thought i did once but no not a chance you
00:41:52.080
Well, I did, but they rejected me, and it hurt.
00:41:54.020
I don't know if I could take such rejection again.
00:42:00.380
Well, finishing, I mean, I guess, just talking about some contemporary news.
00:42:03.060
Hopefully, maybe by next week, this won't even be in our news scroll.
00:42:06.320
But the fire season's happened again, and Fort McMurray is threatened again.
00:42:13.260
Boy, it must go eight years since the last bad one.
00:42:15.700
And the fire season started early in Alberta, out of control one now,
00:42:19.520
bearing down on Fort McMurray, which has sort of left the roads out of town, jam-packed with
00:42:25.840
people leaving. Premier Smith and all the officials held a press conference today and
00:42:31.600
basically said they're throwing everything they've got at it. They got helicopters with
00:42:36.380
night vision flying at night and, you know, hopefully they can bring this under control,
00:42:42.260
but they've already prepared help for people who are being evacuated in terms of
00:42:48.840
grants and money to to pay for hotels and stuff like that city of edmonton has set up a reception
00:42:55.320
center and uh you know story changes hour by hour and that's uh let's hope that it works out for the
00:43:01.240
best that was a great uh very little scoop by our friend and colleague jonathan bradley getting the
00:43:07.640
guy on the phone talking about it as he was driving out of yeah great pictures and he expressed
00:43:13.880
frustration that the roads were jammed because a lot of people left town without filling up their
00:43:18.120
gas tanks and they ran out of gas on the road and blocked the highway for forever until you can push
00:43:23.880
them out yeah you gotta you gotta be prepared you gotta have your car filled you gotta have your
00:43:28.520
overnight bag packed and uh yeah jonathan had a uh ripping account of a guy as the as the fire
00:43:34.840
closed in and gave us some great pictures and um yeah it was it was a good story so when you go to
00:43:40.120
our website and you click on news that's still fairly near the top had a lot of news today but
00:43:46.200
you know you'll find it yeah great story and we'll close off with that uh you know i can remind
00:43:52.220
everybody yes we've got reporters out there on the ground jonathan out there working jen lots of
00:43:56.920
others coming up with lots of stories as they break we really have a newsroom on the go here
00:44:01.620
those aren't a common thing anymore and the reason we can do it is because of you guys we are
00:44:06.100
subscription-based, not tax subsidy-based. So for $9.99 a month, $100 a year, guys,
00:44:11.080
westernstandard.news slash subscription. This is how we can keep doing it. This is how we can keep
00:44:15.580
those stories going and be sure to keep checking back because the new ones are coming up all the
00:44:20.300
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0.98
00:44:24.360
to do it too. It's cheaper than newspaper subscription used to be. And if you've already
00:44:27.940
subscribed, thank you. We really, really do appreciate it. We appreciate your readership
00:44:32.040
and your subscription so that kind of covers us for this week maybe hopefully
00:44:35.960
good bloviating guys the bloviating guys hopefully next week we're talking about how the fire suddenly
00:44:40.920
was contained and everybody caught home safely heroic firefighters and we certainly hope for
00:44:46.520
the best for everybody up in fort mack that's going to be more all being evacuated like that
00:44:50.200
so thank you dave and nigel and chatting with you thank you all out there and uh yes be sure
00:44:56.680
to tune in again next week and we will cover whatever's on top of the story scroll at that time
00:45:02.040
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