In this episode of the show, Corey takes a look at the new PM's cabinet, and is joined by Alexander Brown of the National Citizens Coalition to discuss it. Also, the price of gas has suddenly gone up 20 cents a liter, which Corey calls a coincidence.
00:05:14.340And he had Mike Myers and all the famous endorsements, right?
00:05:18.640Well, he's quietly rolled back six-month tariff exemptions on virtually everything that he said that he was going to tariff in response.
00:05:27.560So we're talking about food and beverage packaging, presumably that's aluminum, items related to health care, public safety and national security.
00:11:44.760uh but uh you know the world's getting a reality check lately though on uh how integrated economies
00:11:52.360are right you know it's funny that president trump's backing off or making deals with china
00:11:57.700now and a lot of the tariff talk and everything else as well is whether he knew that prior or not
00:12:02.680the reality was too i mean you can't drive 10 minutes anywhere in the united states without
00:12:07.940seeing a dollar general store sure go into a dollar general store and you definitely meet
00:12:11.840the pajama people who are trump's voter base right and they're shopping and 90 of the products are
00:12:16.700chinese when you're going to hike the cost up by the amounts that he's talking about with those1.00
00:12:21.640tariffs yeah you've mentioned this before the the dollar store index yes it's it's it's real and
00:12:28.200yeah you've been through you've been through louisiana you know poking at the americans i mean
00:12:34.320especially in tighter times the dollar stores are busy spots and then but they're almost all
00:12:38.420chinese goods absolutely well and major american retailers like walmart uh costco we you know like
00:12:44.880uh costco uh we had to start here the other day uh has emerged as a major retailer of gold
00:12:50.520They've become one of the largest gold brokers in the United States and in North America just by selling these little wafers at wholesale rates.
00:13:23.560I mean, kind of an economic experiment for everybody to remind them.
00:13:26.580And again, I mean, maybe the lesson is to do as he's saying and localize your economy so you aren't just dependent on the external suppliers as much.
00:13:35.880But it's letting everybody know if you want to do that, it's going to come at a pretty good cost to your wallet.
00:14:59.620Yes, that is business and energy. Sean Polzer,
00:15:02.200he knows his stuff. He's digging into it all the time.
00:15:04.660and those stories are constantly going up to the western standards and so i'd like to remind
00:15:08.180everybody before i get to that next guest uh take out your subscriptions 10 bucks a month 100
00:15:13.160dollars for a year well worth it it keeps us rolling keeps our reporters going it keeps this
00:15:18.620studio going get on there westernstandard.news slash subscription if you have already i really
00:15:23.360really do appreciate it keeps us independent not taking that federal money and uh if you haven't
00:15:29.040come on get on there guys it's a it's an investment in yourself you know throw some more cliche crap
00:15:34.380about there. All right, let's talk to Alex Brown of the National Citizens Coalition and get on to
00:15:39.540some federal politics. How you doing? Corey, I'm great. Congratulations on the Amazon sales of your
00:15:46.280book of late. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it took quite a took off. I mean, I really am not that prescient. I
00:15:52.760didn't know what was going to happen a couple of years ahead of writing that thing. But the
00:15:56.320conditions for having a book that's a guidebook to Western independence have made for good book
00:16:01.240sales lately. Well-timed, well-timed. Yeah, well, so, I mean, and as we go, as we look at these
00:16:07.720things, we're a few weeks out from the federal election now. People are starting to, I guess,
00:16:12.880accept that we've got Prime Minister Carney, but now we're getting a picture of what Mr. Carney's
00:16:17.420got to offer, and it's, I mean, I'll let you take off from there. It's not looking that great.
00:16:23.020I mean, we talked about this last time, which was, you asked me, like, how's this going to
00:16:27.900start off, and I paused for a while while I gathered my thoughts, and that sort of said
00:16:31.760everything. But it looks like the last 10 years. There's a piece in the Globe, and I won't say the
00:16:40.240writer, just to be respectful. There's a piece in the Globe today in their opinion section, which
00:16:45.220was all in the tank for Carney during the election, that says, oh, we've been had. And it's
00:16:50.940like, speak for yourself. We saw this coming. The Western Standard saw this coming. The
00:16:57.760coverage has been great. I've been very proud to write for The Standard during the election window
00:17:03.300and appear on these shows and taking down the paywall to try to share the concern and where
00:17:11.540this was all headed. I mean, heck, you felt it as early as writing your terrific guidebook a few
00:17:17.220years back. But starting with that Mark Carney, Man of Destiny piece in the National Post many
00:17:22.820years ago. And just from reading what he put out there in his books, it's like this was this was
00:17:28.060all here. He's run by the same team. He's he's rehired the exact same people. I'm hearing from
00:17:34.120sources in Ottawa going, oh, I can't believe it. This is the worst start I've ever seen. And it's
00:17:38.280what the heck did you expect? What the heck did these people expect? Like it's it's they they
00:17:44.360milked these liberal boomer voters for all that they're worth. And now they're they're they're
00:17:49.980already putting them out of their misery well gee thanks a lot if you're out west right now and
00:17:54.360feeling alienated if you're under let's say 45 and you don't see any path to homeownership
00:18:00.480you saw this coming from a mile away and and that brantford boomer middle finger that was given to
00:18:08.780many on the campaign trail that should be pointed right back at this point well yeah and i i was
00:18:14.880talking about that actually at the start of my show before before you got into the lobby i'm not
00:18:19.360as kind and polite as you. I named that columnist. It's Andrew Coyne. Because, you know, I mean,
00:18:25.960I just, come on, man. You were carrying their water for a month. You were looking down your
00:18:32.520nose on anybody who questioned this coming in. I'm not going to sit and respect you being humble
00:18:37.860now to say, oh dear, I was mistaken. No, you contributed to this by, you know, Coyne's not
00:18:46.640a foolish writer he's a he's a smart pundit but he uh just went all in on this and and suddenly
00:18:55.580now that this reversal it's just bizarre to be honest life uh that opinion section i have i have
00:19:02.740i'm not always kind to it i i joked yesterday about some spiritual 71 year old globe editorial
00:19:09.780board member being like yeah we lied to you but we were well-meaning while they barrel towards
00:19:14.160well, they barrel towards the cottage past scenes of squalor. But no, life looks a whole lot
00:19:19.940different in Rosedale or when you can abscond to the cottage or down to Del Boca Vista. It's easy
00:19:29.680to opine on the yobs and the rest of Canada when you're a Gary Mason in Tawasson or you're an0.99
00:19:37.460Andrew Coyne in Rosedale. And the rest of us just have to actually live in the ashes and to live
00:19:44.080with the the consequences of a fat social indulgences and protecting these sort of cocktail
00:19:52.720party class just ideals when it's it's it's business as usual off the jump and that business
00:20:00.800is bad it's it's a continuation of of just housing bullshit it's a continuation of these these non0.78
00:20:08.120answers on justice reform. You have Stephen Guibault already deliberately antagonizing
00:20:13.620the need for more pipelines. He's a walking, talking unity crisis. And so, you know, gee,
00:20:20.200thanks Globe Opinion section and editorial board. Like we knew this was coming. And for these folks
00:20:26.940to turn around and go like, oh, they got all of us. No, they got you. Well, something that, I mean,
00:20:32.680I'm not surprised that we got another bad government knowing who was elected, but I still
00:20:36.940would have thought okay you're gonna you've made so many promises you've made so much radical
00:20:41.760changes then whether it's getting rid of the carbon tax or it's the increased spending i mean
00:20:46.520all sorts of things but we're not getting a budget i i was floored you guys are gonna give
00:20:52.040us a fall economic update but not a budget and i mean i saw i saw some fart catchers making excuses
00:20:58.240oh we always have budgets in spring yeah but we often had elections in fall you know you usually
00:21:02.900will bring out a budget about three, four months after coming in. So you can set the tone. He
00:21:08.140doesn't even have one scheduled. We, it could be a year out. We're talking a country that's got
00:21:12.600some real economic serious issues going on and he won't give us a budget. I don't even know how
00:21:17.060this is legal. Campaigned on a plan and not slogans. Hasn't produced a plan. Campaigned on
00:21:24.660elbows up, elbows are down. It's, it's look, uh, it's kind of my beat on your show at this point.
00:21:32.900uh is is crapping on ontario but even doug ford presented a budget yesterday and it's terrible
00:21:41.260and his excuse and it's an excuse considering the fact that these spending habits existed before
00:21:48.180trump and they will exist after him was oh you know folks g g golly elbows up and it's like i
00:21:54.100the elbows were already down and he's running kathleen wind dalton mcginty deficits you know
00:22:00.520ad infinite and there's no path back to balance in the foreseeable future. And let's be honest,
00:22:05.460never, never. They're not interested in it. They're running liberal light and that's just
00:22:10.380who they are. But even they could put out a flaming pile of dog poop on taxpayers' front
00:22:16.640door. And for the federal, let's be honest, their federal liberal counterparts, that they feel like
00:22:23.180they can just skate on this is a continuation of the last 10 years and it is as bad as an early
00:22:30.900warning sign as you'd expect well and i mean it it i don't know as an independent supporter i almost
00:22:39.500you know i feel it's we're getting to the point where we've always been kind of saying things
00:22:42.140got to get bad before they get better well they're going to get bad uh with for geeky you know types
00:22:47.400who look at economies and such, when we have the sort of spending and borrowing going on,
00:22:53.800the only natural consequence, we saw that post-COVID, even though they expressed shock,
00:22:58.360we're going to see devaluation of currency and we're going to see inflation. Like we're going
00:23:04.880to get it hard and soon. And we won't even be able to try and plan or counter for that because
00:23:10.120we don't even have a budget to look at to try and figure out what the heck it's going to be.
00:23:13.440i'm no policy wonk i don't claim to be i'm a communicator by trade i speak populist to people
00:23:22.060and populism and i can see how bad this is and and and and you know joe and jane lunch pail and
00:23:33.560god bless them they're the people in canada that are getting screwed in our entire missing middle
00:23:38.040They can see how bad this is. Like it's those GDP per capita charts. We've all seen them. We've all seen the the immigration charts to the heavens while housing starts are flatlined. Those are really, really bad. We can all see all our productivity metrics, inflation, what have you that that even we sort of yobbs to borrow from Andrew Coyne.
00:24:00.260And if even we can see it, there's no hiding that this country's economy is just a Ponzi scheme at this point.
00:24:10.080And the fact that it's not getting better under this fetid economic genius and that there are early signs that this is only going to get worse.
00:24:18.160If you wanted to create more Western independent sentiment, you couldn't dream up a better scenario to drive that.
00:24:27.620And like, I completely understand why people are looking around people like yourself, just
00:24:31.780going like, Hey guys, uh, if not now, when?
00:24:36.100Yeah, well, so that one of the big issues, one of the ones that was kind of pushing the
00:24:41.500liberals down, I mean, affordability, cost of living, which is going to continue to be
00:24:53.640Unfortunately, a lot of boomers said, well, I got mine and I'm going to jealously protect0.90
00:24:56.780it and you know keep those liberals in there but they've put uh mayor moonbeam there uh what's his
00:25:01.760name gregor robertson uh i mean this was a hard leftist vancouver mayor and they've put him in
00:25:08.860charge of housing and he's already come out of the gate sounding like a twit i uh i can be your boots
00:25:16.600on the ground guy here in vancouver right now and like even crunchy kitzelano granola moms
00:25:23.940at Whole Foods are saying, really, they picked Gregor Robertson? My kids are in this $3,500
00:25:31.480rental. There's no path to any future here. My fiance and I, she has work considerations to be
00:25:41.660close to the developing world hell pit that is downtown Vancouver. Our only path to potential1.00
00:25:49.240homeownership is being at the end of the commuter line in a one and a half bedroom apartment that
00:25:55.960is going to be overpriced beyond belief. And so the fact that they've turned to Gregor Robertson
00:26:00.760where his, without getting anyone here in trouble, his private reputation is even worse than his
00:26:05.960public reputation. This is a man who has some dodgy ties. And what he presided over was like
00:26:12.460110% increase in real estate costs in Vancouver, in the so-called Vancouver model, which is like
00:26:21.120an actual referred to in texts and tomes now on like how to create like a foreign investment scam
00:26:29.440through real estate. We walk through Shaughnessy some nights. It's beautiful. These old manor homes,
00:26:34.700half of them are empty, Corey, because they are somebody else's investment. Housing is not to be
00:26:39.500lived in here. And so if that is going to be stretched nationwide, and it's not as if there
00:26:44.760aren't bright, well-oriented people working on this housing plan, but if that's the guy who's
00:26:52.040going to be calling the shots, that tells you that he was put there for a reason, and it's not good.
00:26:56.860It's a future of these Brookfield Khrushchevkas, of these leaseholds that you don't actually own,0.99
00:27:03.440that runs out of clock. They want forever renters. And there are millions of Canadians
00:27:09.360who already feel like they're forever renters right now. They feel like they are at their
00:27:13.600wits end, like this hamster wheel can't keep going for them. And to signal that right out
00:27:19.780of the jump, if I'm a young person, if I'm entrepreneurial, if I am particularly productive
00:27:26.760and more intelligent and business-minded than myself, I don't want to feel like I have to leave,
00:27:33.160but I am deeply considering it. Well, so I'll kind of go back to cabinet in general. I'd kind
00:27:39.260of hoped and thought you know it seemed like things kind of go up and down uh trends coming
00:27:44.000up and down wokeness uh people were quietly critical of trudeau's gender balancing in cabinet
00:27:50.500but we thought that maybe carney be smart enough to say no we're going to stop that woke quota idea
00:27:56.420to for these top positions i mean there's very there's many well-qualified women in the liberal0.93
00:28:01.900caucus i'm certain but you know the bottom line is we generally want the best person for the job
00:28:06.720And it might not always be the case, especially if you find yourself forced now to pick your choices based on gender rather than capability.
00:28:14.400They're patting themselves on the back over having their 14 women, 14 man cabinet.1.00
00:28:20.020But we're in a pretty tenuous time right now.
00:28:22.740I don't know if this is a good sign for their priorities as they go forward.
00:28:26.920It's not. And I think it's a sign that it's I think people were hoping that with the right, slightly less destructive figurehead at the helm,
00:28:36.340that he could rein in, you know, the exact same group of PMO advisors and staffers, and then
00:28:42.500largely the exact same cabinet. And we're seeing that he either can't or won't, or this was all
00:28:49.240just a temporary expectation to win votes. Because it's, you're already seeing a guy like
00:28:54.580Nate Erskine-Smith, who came back into the liberal fold. There's a story today in Blacklock's
00:29:01.000reporter that like, unlike Carney, he actually like sold out all his assets so he wouldn't be
00:29:05.620in conflict to stay as housing minister because to his credit and limited liberal partisan credit,
00:29:12.640like he actually believed in his file and doing better by young Canadians. And he got the got
00:29:17.000the hook for the Vancouver housing crisis guy. And so and that was largely and supposedly and like
00:29:23.180it might have been because Carney prefers the Vancouver housing crisis guy was because he
00:29:28.200wasn't meeting this balanced, imagined sort of ESG number that he had to hit because he
00:29:35.520didn't have female characteristics.1.00
00:29:37.360And so we've been told that Carney is a more serious, fetid economic genius who's going
00:29:46.440to focus on the real things, but he's going to continue to pay lip service to this crap.
00:29:53.980We'd be fools to expect anything different than what we just saw over the last decade.
00:29:58.200And beyond Carney's economic actions, I mean, in cabinet selections, he put Fraser into justice.
00:30:07.500He sent you, you know, Fraser already screwed up his other files, housing among them.
00:30:11.780And now he's, you know, Vancouver is already dealing with housing crisis.
00:38:29.840You know, the difference in attitude, I've talked about that before.
00:38:33.460I said that at a rebel rally the other night, when Quebec was going, for those of us old enough to remember in the 90s, there were traveling out rallies, there were buses, there were people out there, please Quebec, stay, we love you Quebec, oh, we would be lost without your Putin and your corrupted politicians and draining our equalization payments, please, please, please don't vote to go.
00:38:57.880now when alberta's looking at it they're saying you're assholes you're not even allowed to have
00:39:03.680the referendum much less leave what wait a minute well we're the ones paying the bills you guys
00:39:10.960and uh uh you know i don't expect you to come begging and groveling but what we need to see
00:39:19.020is a difference in attitude tell us why we shouldn't leave because that's going to have
00:39:24.280much more impact. If you're going to have any impact in stopping the independence movement,
00:39:27.980you've got to tell us why stay. Don't tell me I can't go. That's not up to you. It's up to us
00:39:34.480in a vote. And the vote is going to be coming. It's getting clear. And it's getting interesting,
00:39:40.440some of the polling numbers that was released by the Standard. Premier Smith, with internal
00:39:46.720polling, found that a majority of Albertans now are supporting exiting the Canada pension plan.
00:39:53.560That's not full-out independence, but that's getting a step towards it.
00:39:56.520And independent support is going up too, of course.
00:39:58.880This is one of the things that's going to strike fear down the backs of Laurentian elitist Canadians
00:40:03.600who do have a little bit of understanding of economics.
00:40:07.560Because Albertans hold up, like, I mean, don't hold it back.
00:46:30.880You are kind of required to agree that colonization, which they never quite define colonization, is a very bad thing.
00:46:41.100Decolonization is a good thing, although neither term is clearly defined.
00:46:44.580and along along with that we've got this reconciliation that you're supposed to be
00:46:52.600in favor of that's not quite defined and so it's a very political course that has a particular
00:46:58.900aspect on aboriginal issues aboriginal rights and as a defender of free expression I would
00:47:06.940I would defend to the death anybody's right to promote whatever view they want you know on
00:47:12.140Aboriginal issues or just about anything else. It's a problem, though, when you have the Law1.00
00:47:16.120Society as a government body that is requiring lawyers in Alberta to take this course and agree
00:47:24.140with the assertions in it as a condition of practicing law. If you don't complete the path,
00:47:31.400if you don't take this course and express your agreement with the Law Society's politics,
00:47:37.300well, then you can't practice law, you can't earn a living. So this is an example of what
00:47:43.320the lawyer Roger Song is up against in his lawsuit against the Law Society of Alberta.
00:47:51.580Yeah, well, and I mean, people, I think perhaps your average person just doesn't understand how
00:47:56.620dangerous this is. I mean, we really always, at some point or another, need legal representation.
00:48:01.260We need them to remain as true to the legal ethics that they hold as possible.
00:48:09.260And there's a reason for professional associations or a law society.
00:48:13.120But when they start politicizing, that can become very dangerous for some people who are relying on legal representation when your own lawyer feels like they might not be able to address issues properly.
00:48:23.580Yeah, that's exactly it. Law societies need to, especially law societies, even more so than other bodies or entities, need to respect the charter freedoms of expression, religion, conscience.
00:48:37.940Mr. Song's own personal history is that he was exposed to political indoctrination in communist China. He was previously a law professor in Beijing.
00:48:50.660So he has seen this movie before where the law societies get politicized, which as a side thing, it's also in my book, Corrupted by Fear, I talk about how the law societies in Germany in the 1930s became politicized and they lost sight of the rule of law and protecting the rights and freedoms of German individuals.
00:49:18.500And instead, they got into this ideology. And the law society actually admits to being political and ideological and having these objectives, but they say they're entitled to do that.
00:49:33.180So this court case is going to be very interesting because we are challenging the law society's claimed right to be political.
00:49:43.580Yeah, and I see from your release, you know, Mr. Song was saying the society is advancing policies under vague terms like, I mean, competence and ethics.
00:49:51.240Okay, well, those are things, I guess, that we need a degree of oversight on.
00:50:02.000As a person who needs to be served by legal representation now and then, I just want to be assured that my representation is the best I can potentially find.
00:50:11.860the diversity aspect is ridiculous. Well, these are, these are political things, right? Equity,
00:50:18.360diversity, inclusion. Those are political objectives. And I fully support the right of
00:50:25.840individuals and, and even, and private organizations as well. If you want to pursue
00:50:30.900that as a goal, okay, fine. If you're a private company and without government pressure, you put
00:50:36.860in racial quotas and you've got these policies uh these woke policies to pursue equity diversity
00:50:42.800inclusion if the private company is doing that um you know on its own initiative and then not
00:50:49.840coerced into it by government that that's part of your freedom and so every lawyer in alberta is free
00:50:54.960to advance you know to believe in equity diversity inclusion whatever but when it comes to serving
00:51:01.900clients right the the law society should be monitoring only the competence of lawyers not
00:51:09.620their politics right so there is a disciplinary process if a lawyer steals trust funds or if a
00:51:16.060lawyer fails to show up in court for a client and and gets the client in trouble
00:51:21.520there's a code of ethics and that's fine but what's happening with the law societies across
00:51:28.360Canada is that the code of ethics is being converted into a political instrument where
00:51:34.780adhering to libertarian and conservative opinions and rejecting equity, diversity,
00:51:41.980inclusion is deemed to be unethical. And so you can get in trouble with your law society.
00:51:48.540I know of a case in British Columbia where a lawyer was not allowed to have his own counsel
00:51:55.720present at a disciplinary hearing because his own counsel had not been injected with COVID vaccine.
00:52:02.740So, you know, this is a problem that we have to fight back against in the same way that we need
00:52:09.940to resist the colleges of physicians and surgeons when they repudiate science by aggressively
00:52:16.560threatening the livelihood of doctors who disagree with the government's narrative, right? And that
00:52:22.260that is likewise is a very serious problem. We need the colleges of physicians and surgeons to
00:52:28.360uphold medical ethics. So for example, a doctor is not allowed to have sex with a patient,
00:52:33.840fine, but not to step in there and on ideological grounds, tell doctors how to practice medicine
00:52:43.680and interfere in the doctor patient relationship. So all of these government bodies, law societies,
00:52:48.900colleges of physicians and surgeons, we need to hold them to account and resist their efforts
00:52:55.540to impose woke ideology on the population. Yeah. And I mean, these colleges and professional
00:53:05.300associations and they hold a lot of sway. I mean, they can have a thumbs up or thumbs down on your
00:53:11.460career. Another aspect we saw is with Dr. Jordan Peterson, if he wanted to practice as a psychologist.
00:53:16.460And again, he had to adhere to a political, basically, statement if he wanted to continue practicing.
01:00:42.620And yeah, I've got a personal interest in it in a sense.
01:00:45.840With something earlier, I've got a court challenge going on with the Siksika Nation in Alberta
01:00:53.060over a video I'd taken on the reserve from a public highway, and they've charged me with trespassing.
01:00:58.680And actually, a branch of the JCCF is helping me out on that one as well, and we're challenging that.
01:01:03.720But it's not as dire as some of these other cases. We've got lawyers potentially losing licenses, and people are just some of the absurdity. You know, I'm glad he brought up that Jessica Yaniv case. I mean, it just shows how the woke can suspend reality to the point of causing harm, real, real harm.
01:01:27.400So for those not familiar with that, because this is a case just worth, I think, bringing up again and again, because I think she's surfaced again.
01:01:34.300She's calling herself Indigenous, this crazy person.1.00
01:03:16.020It was not, this was so insane and so stupid and so ridiculous that it should never even have been considered, yet it actually went through the legal system.
01:07:21.860They aren't the same as they were 100 years ago.
01:07:23.460They aren't the same in this part of the country as they are in that part of the country.
01:07:26.400We don't need a central government to define it or tell us how to practice it.
01:07:32.240But that's what his job is he's making six figures and he's a lunatic.
01:07:35.760But then even then, he's no longer the environment minister, but he still got to the microphone and beeped up and said, we're not going to get any more pipelines in Canada.
01:07:43.960Why is the culture minister telling us this?
01:07:46.760Why are you even dipping into that, Gilbo?
01:07:49.660Shouldn't your boss, the prime minister, say, hey, Gilbo, shut the hell up.