Western Standard - Carney’s debt-backed wealth fund

00:00:00.000 Good day! Today is April 29th, 2026.

00:00:28.360 I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:00:33.180 I'm joined in the studio here by our usual crew, former opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford.

00:00:39.100 Here I am.

00:00:40.020 Senior Alberta colonist, Corey Morgan.

00:00:42.020 Good day.

00:00:42.720 News editor, Dave Naylor.

00:00:44.380 Hello.

00:00:45.220 And coming to us from Lotusland, left coast, we've got our BC reporter, Alex Zoltan.

00:00:51.500 Thank you for having me.

00:00:53.020 All right.

00:00:53.620 Well, the reason Alex is here is because we're going to be talking about the BC Conservative Party heading into the last weeks of its leadership race.

00:01:02.960 There was a debate just last night. Land acknowledgements at a BC Conservative leadership debate. Interesting stuff.

00:01:12.760 We're going to talk about the state of that race. Maybe we can handicap it at this point. Who are the most likely guys to win? 1.00

00:01:23.620 We're going to talk about the University of Lethbridge

00:01:27.300 going full, woke, authoritarian,

00:01:30.800 arresting Frances Widdowson, a former professor,

00:01:34.580 for showing up on campus.

00:01:36.740 I think she was in the middle of violently

00:01:40.380 and dangerously drinking a coffee when it happened.

00:01:44.260 And then the very kind of limp-wristed response

00:01:47.480 from Alberta's government, kind of equivocating,

00:01:50.160 not taking a strong stance on it,

00:01:51.740 which seems to be a departure from where the UCP was until pretty recently on these kinds of issues.

00:01:57.520 And Mark Carney's mega deficit, just shy of $70 billion.

00:02:03.200 But don't worry, it's smaller than it's supposed to be.

00:02:06.620 It's smaller than expected.

00:02:08.620 As Stephen Harper said, it's just a little wee deficit.

00:02:12.420 Just a little deficit.

00:02:14.400 But a gigantic deficit, just shy of $70 billion.

00:02:19.560 Not in wartime.

00:02:20.540 Oh my goodness, I just threw a pen at Nigel

00:02:22.140 Not at wartime

00:02:23.440 Not even, thank you Nigel

00:02:26.620 Not even at Nigel's pen

00:02:28.440 And not COVID, nothing

00:02:32.440 But the good news is

00:02:34.880 We've also got a sovereign wealth fund

00:02:37.580 But I'm not sure that really counts

00:02:39.860 If we're just borrowing all the money that goes into it

00:02:41.380 That's exactly what we're doing

00:02:43.200 It's like you, if you've got a line of credit

00:02:44.820 And you take some

00:02:46.900 Line of credit

00:02:48.520 it and set up a tax-free savings account. There you go. Well, honey, we've got a tax-free

00:02:58.960 savings account. Well, that's wonderful. Yeah. Well, we borrow it. Now it's not wonderful

00:03:04.900 anymore. And really, so much of this stuff is an exercise in showmanship. And the update

00:03:14.460 that we had yesterday. They call it a Canada Strong Fund, and it's described by the government

00:03:23.160 as a sovereign wealth fund. Well, what we bought in Alberta is a sovereign wealth fund.

00:03:27.260 We take the money that's surplus that we get from oil and natural gas sales, don't spend

00:03:32.380 it all, shunt some of it into a savings account. That is a sovereign wealth fund. I think it's

00:03:37.460 at about, what, $30 billion at the moment, something in that area. In Norway, which has

00:03:43.220 been doing the same thing they measure this in trillions uh alaska's got a sovereign wealth fund

00:03:50.180 same thing they pay a dividend which is a good reason to move to alaska so you know at least

00:03:55.620 there's one that's what a sovereign wealth fund is this is just it sounds good and mr carney uh

00:04:03.700 it does like things that sound good we've had a lot of them in the past year uh but it's not

00:04:10.740 strictly accurate. The fund appears to, well, I mean, it's stated that it's on borrowed money.

00:04:18.180 It's a racket. So theoretically, you know, we've probably had our own financial advisors tell us,

00:04:25.460 you know, when interest rates are really low, hey, you could take out a line of credit,

00:04:30.260 you know, you borrow $20,000 because the expected rate of return on the market

00:04:36.580 is higher than the cost of borrowing. And that might be strictly true sometimes in our personal

00:04:42.920 finances, but in our personal finances we have a clear, if we're doing things right, at least we're

00:04:49.020 invested in it for the long term. Some people don't exactly plan long term in their lives, but

00:04:52.700 we're thinking long term. If I screw this up, I pay the consequences. The worst that happens to

00:04:58.280 a politician is he's out of office in a few years enjoying a pension. The politicians never suffer

00:05:05.140 the consequences of this uh mark carney is a banker a central banker uh the whole point is to

00:05:13.000 lend money and borrow money that's so i don't think he's ever seen a bank he didn't uh think

00:05:19.060 should lend out money or borrow money from um but i think that's his argument is that i'm i'm the

00:05:25.380 genius and i can go and earn a better rate of return but you know that cory norway sovereign

00:05:33.520 Wealth Fund specifically does not invest in Norway. So it kind of insulates it, at least for the most

00:05:40.640 part, from political manipulation, that it can't be hijacked, say, the way Quebec's pension plan

00:05:47.920 is for domestic political things. Hey, we're going to take this pension money and we're going to

00:05:51.520 invest it in this Quebec company and that Quebec company is probably involved in some corrupt deal

00:05:56.620 with the Quebec government. There's some kind of kickback. And then there is concern.

00:06:02.880 around control with

00:06:05.060 Alberta's fund. People have raised

00:06:07.220 concerns that it might be

00:06:09.340 used to de-risk projects.

00:06:12.220 Okay, that might be a worthwhile

00:06:13.380 goal, but it is still

00:06:15.560 an objective that is not

00:06:17.260 purely about earning the

00:06:19.320 best return for the owners of it.

00:06:21.400 There does not appear to be any

00:06:23.300 such

00:06:24.100 protections and firewalls here.

00:06:27.260 In fact, this seems to be

00:06:28.580 very specifically designed to

00:06:31.200 reinvest back into the Canadian economy,

00:06:33.380 which sounds nice, but

00:06:35.140 seems to be a recipe for corruption.

00:06:36.940 If you want to de-risk projects, get the government 0.99

00:06:39.300 out of the damn way. That's the problem. 0.99

00:06:41.660 That's the hindrance. That's why

00:06:43.100 private markets aren't investing in 0.97

00:06:45.260 Canada. That's what the Alberta government says.

00:06:47.120 They have to de-risk it because the federal government's then involved

00:06:49.380 in creating risk. That's the

00:06:51.280 reason given by the Alberta government.

00:06:53.520 It's not an unreasonable thing to say.

00:06:55.580 They're speaking more on the federal fund.

00:06:57.560 They have more tools at their disposal

00:06:59.600 to actually improve investment in Canada than this.

00:07:03.180 I mean, RBC noted just recently

00:07:05.240 that $1 trillion fled Canada in the last 10 years.

00:07:08.980 I mean, we've got the resources.

00:07:10.580 The prices are high.

00:07:11.540 People want them.

00:07:12.660 The problem is government, but they won't do that.

00:07:15.020 Instead, they're going to borrow money.

00:07:17.180 And what I see is investing then in high-risk projects

00:07:19.980 because if they weren't high-risk,

00:07:21.860 the private market would invest in them.

00:07:23.800 As you said, Norway is quite different.

00:07:25.160 Their mandate is just to get a return on it.

00:07:27.020 And if you look at the breakdown of their fund,

00:07:28.960 they have 0.4% in renewables, for example. So, I mean, they know that renewables are garbage to 0.90

00:07:36.640 invest in. Do you think that Zero Kearney with his decarbonized oil is going to avoid dumping

00:07:41.260 money into some of those or more rocket pads or other domestic investment items that the private

00:07:48.460 market would never touch? He's done the opposite of what Norway's done with this fund. This is a

00:07:52.760 slush fund and I can only see bad things coming out of this. You referred to rocket pads. I think

00:07:58.700 all of us have seen the viral picture of the so-called

00:08:00.720 Canada space.

00:08:02.260 But to be fair to Ottawa, Alberta's

00:08:04.840 had its own bungled space program.

00:08:06.960 I think it's St. Paul that has

00:08:08.800 the UFO landing pad. Well, they haven't landed yet,

00:08:10.960 but it could be any time. It's St. Paul, yes.

00:08:12.820 Yeah!

00:08:15.280 I wouldn't write

00:08:16.860 that investment off yet.

00:08:18.840 St. Paul, those of you

00:08:20.580 not from Alberta who don't know,

00:08:22.380 you can trust Wikipedia

00:08:24.600 or Google on this one. Look up

00:08:25.980 Alberta UFO landing pad.

00:08:28.700 and we'll take you to St. Paul, Alberta.

00:08:31.180 This is a real thing.

00:08:32.760 This is a real thing.

00:08:35.240 Corey, sorry, Dave,

00:08:37.880 as crazy as this is,

00:08:39.880 financial, fiscal policy, monetary policy stories,

00:08:44.020 I think they go over the head of almost everybody,

00:08:46.480 even most people working in the media.

00:08:49.000 I think Carney's sales job on this

00:08:51.660 has been politically successful so far for the most part.

00:08:55.740 I don't think most people are like,

00:08:57.420 Oh, deficit, but we're saving?

00:09:00.100 I don't know, whatever.

00:09:02.340 I'm going to trust the banker guy who looks competent to figure this out.

00:09:06.600 But it looks to me like he's at least had a fairly successful political sales job.

00:09:10.840 The conservative attacks on it, which I think, you know, somewhat similar to what we're saying here, I think.

00:09:16.740 I don't think they've landed.

00:09:18.300 I think people are trusting Carney.

00:09:21.100 He's the money guy.

00:09:22.400 Yep, I think you're right.

00:09:23.780 First of all, I'd just like to put it on the record that you don't pay me enough to have a financial advisor.

00:09:29.480 So when you talk about money stories going over the head, I think you're talking about me.

00:09:34.600 But yeah, he has, you know, people don't know enough about it, Derek, to get upset about it.

00:09:43.160 Oh, a fund to generate wealth.

00:09:45.620 Oh, that sounds good.

00:09:46.400 Yeah, I'll support that.

00:09:47.300 And, you know, maybe once some of the details start coming out on what exactly is going to be what it's all about, maybe there'll be some opposition.

00:09:57.620 But I think it's like Nigel said, it's just a racket.

00:10:01.480 And this has got sponsorship scandal written all over it just to a much, much larger degree.

00:10:08.960 You know, one of the things, Dave, that struck me about this, when you look at where the money is actually going,

00:10:15.840 the amount that's going to pay interest that is now getting large that is uh it's going to be

00:10:24.560 as a you can picture a rowing boat out on the lake it's going to be the kind of it's going to

00:10:30.560 be the thing that's heavy that rolls around and starts to affect the movements of the boat this

00:10:36.320 is this is very serious it was a clever idea to put the word out that we would be getting an 80

00:10:43.040 billion uh a dollar deficit and then come back with one that was smaller there was oh that's

00:10:48.240 good then this is actually huge deficit well the it but alex this isn't the first year you know

00:10:56.320 it's not like just this year's deficit you know i i run a company here and if i have a deficit

00:11:03.920 for one quarter you know that's dave i'm like god holy we're gonna we gotta do something and

00:11:09.840 And we're either cutting expenses or we're working hard and bringing new advertisers, new subscribers.

00:11:14.280 We're doing something to close it.

00:11:17.440 You know, you run a one-year deficit.

00:11:20.020 It's a big deal.

00:11:21.220 We're losing our minds around here to fix it and to end it.

00:11:25.100 We don't like them.

00:11:26.680 But we have run a deficit every single year since Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015.

00:11:33.580 And before that, I know Nigel doesn't like it when I go after the Harper government,

00:11:37.540 But Harper ran a long series, fairly long series of deficits before that.

00:11:42.800 He had got it down to pretty much zero by the time he left office.

00:11:47.060 But, you know, we racked on a lot of debt in the Harper years.

00:11:50.580 And then we doubled the debt very quickly in the Trudeau decade.

00:11:56.820 And then we're still doing it.

00:11:59.620 Kearney's brand was, well, elbows up.

00:12:03.600 He's going to fight against Trump.

00:12:04.580 But it was also, well, I'm going to do away with the frivolousness of the Trudeau era.

00:12:09.540 He brought a lot of people back to the liberals who were looking at the conservatives

00:12:13.320 because he projected managerial competence.

00:12:17.060 He really just does look like a banker.

00:12:21.360 Like, if I was in central casting, I need a banker.

00:12:26.300 I'd pick Mark Carney, straight out of line.

00:12:30.160 He was going to eliminate the deficit.

00:12:32.940 said we were going to be smart with money again. I don't know. But do you think he gets

00:12:39.700 away with it here? Yes and no. I think the perception is reality. And if people think

00:12:45.080 that he looks like a banker and acts like a banker, then to them, he's a banker. I'm

00:12:48.900 going to get in trouble with with Dave and probably a lot of the viewers. I actually

00:12:52.360 was a financial advisor. I did that for the better part of the last decade. And the sovereign

00:12:57.000 wealth fund story reminds me of two stories, if you'll forgive me for telling them. The

00:13:01.680 first one, I'll leave out some of the details because I don't want to give away who the individual

00:13:04.640 is, but I worked in a retirement community. So I dealt with all kinds of weird financial

00:13:08.620 situations involving people who are doing estate planning. So a woman came in and she wanted to 0.68

00:13:13.700 add her daughter onto the line of credit that was affixed to her home because the daughter was a 1.00

00:13:18.140 co-owner of the home. No problem. I invite the daughter in. I say, I just have to create a 0.99

00:13:22.180 banking profile for you, pull your credit bureau, ask you some questions. What do you do for work?

00:13:26.560 And she said, well, I'm a PhD in economics and I'm a top leading advisor to the government of

00:13:31.320 canada on economic issues i said wow that's amazing i look at the bureau she's from ottawa

00:13:35.980 everything checks out but she has no credit score so i said well you have a zero credit score she

00:13:41.920 says yes i'm i'm borrowing a verse i've never borrowed money before in my life

00:13:46.080 and this is a leading advisor to the government of canada and she can't access credit as an

00:13:53.840 individual i would never be as audacious as pierre polyev he got in a lot of trouble recently

00:13:58.740 for accusing Carney of being somewhat financially illiterate.

00:14:02.500 I think this is actually a really illustrative example

00:14:05.040 of how sometimes a degree,

00:14:07.360 and even in the case of experience,

00:14:08.980 Carney was a central banker.

00:14:10.160 Well, central banker, it sounds like an important position,

00:14:12.580 but your decisions are typically binary.

00:14:14.460 You're either increasing interest rates

00:14:15.800 or you're lowering them.

00:14:17.160 And if you're in a time of economic crisis,

00:14:18.900 you're always lowering them

00:14:19.940 so the decision is made for you.

00:14:21.400 So it doesn't require a particularly intelligent person

00:14:23.900 to do it.

00:14:25.460 And the Sovereign Wealth Fund reminds me of my second story.

00:14:27.920 which is in a retirement community you often had people that came in very well-intentioned people

00:14:33.120 who said i really love my grandchildren i want to leave a legacy to them can i create a trust fund

00:14:37.360 but then you would look at their financial situation and there was no wealth to put in the

00:14:42.520 fund so you it just didn't make any sense and this both of these stories remind me of what

00:14:48.200 the carny government is doing it's it seems like financial illiteracy personified to some extent

00:14:53.140 i i think this is uh this is an excellent example of just the canadian and in particular laurentian

00:15:02.080 or eastern central canadian but the canadian deference to authority and credentialism

00:15:07.760 you know um this person has a resume you know dave how often we gone through found someone 0.79

00:15:16.300 with a great resume who couldn't write a new story for shit yeah and they usually had pronouns 0.93

00:15:22.420 Yeah, well, now we know to filter them out 0.98

00:15:24.560 if they have pronouns, their resume. 0.99

00:15:26.220 Yeah, straight to garbage. 1.00

00:15:27.000 Straight to garbage. 0.97

00:15:27.480 They don't even make it to my desk at this point.

00:15:30.720 Talking about your application, Jessica.

00:15:34.340 Charge number seven. 0.99

00:15:37.000 So, you know, but Canadians have just such a deference to authority.

00:15:42.300 I think it comes from kind of the upper Canadian loyalist Tory tradition.

00:15:48.840 I think it comes from that, but they just, you know, credentials, institutions, resumes, these things count for so much more in the in the East and I think in Canada overall, but in the East in particular, you know, the media says that this guy is competent and therefore and then it just becomes an article of faith.

00:16:10.720 It's why, you know, you have, you know, the Canadian Bar Association issue statements condemning a newspaper for criticizing the decision of a judge as if that undermines confidence in the justice system, not the justice system making ridiculous decisions to put criminals back on the streets because they have a certain race or they're not a citizen or something like that.

00:16:33.580 I think Kearney is just the ultimate emblem of that.

00:16:38.000 You know, I'm actually reflecting on Alex's story about the senior civil servant who didn't have a credit score because she never borrowed money.

00:16:47.380 Where do you find people like that?

00:16:48.900 Could we not have more of them who actually don't launch their campaign saying, well, we're going to come off a balanced budget, go straight into four years of deficits, then we'll think about it.

00:17:01.980 and instead double the amount of money that they said they were going to borrow

00:17:05.540 and take the national debt from $600 billion to $1.2 billion in five years.

00:17:13.260 I mean, I actually kind of like the idea of somebody who has an aversion to debt being in government.

00:17:19.860 The last year Canada ran a circle, was it like 2009?

00:17:22.840 What year was the financial crisis?

00:17:24.060 Well, 2007, 2008.

00:17:25.700 and okay so it'd be it'd be circa 2007 or 8 would be the last time canada ran a surplus

00:17:33.060 harper had pretty much eliminated the deficit by the time he left office yeah but it was still

00:17:38.460 it's still technically in deficit and then trudeau ramped it up massively and well you know you got

00:17:46.020 remember if you're thinking about why things are the way they are in canada people voted for that

00:17:51.000 He actually said, when we had a balanced budget, we've been talking about balanced budgets and overspending since the early 90s, finally we make it.

00:18:00.160 And he said, oh, I think we'll run deficits for four years.

00:18:03.980 And he said, what a good idea, we should do that, and voted them in.

00:18:07.540 So, you know, the Canadian people, unfortunately, have a certain amount to answer for in this as well.

00:18:13.840 When you look at the statistics on personal debt, yep, they voted for a government that does things the way they do them.

00:18:20.520 Back to the girl who has no credit score. 0.64

00:18:25.280 She should be interviewed.

00:18:26.560 If I'm wrong, let's put it in the comments section as a correction,

00:18:29.040 but I think I'm corrected.

00:18:30.820 Canadians have the highest personal debt on the planet right now.

00:18:34.200 It is crazy, and I suppose if Canadians are all massively personally indebted,

00:18:40.380 then this stands to reason that they'd say,

00:18:41.920 well, I guess the government needs to do it as well.

00:18:45.640 All right.

00:18:46.000 if i get to dad the the story about the um the young lady i find is interesting because it's

00:18:53.900 indicative of a certain level of financial illiteracy amongst the populace and that's

00:18:59.160 bleeding into the bureaucracy this person has never paid off an overdraft and they're advising

00:19:04.520 the government on how to clear a one trillion dollar plus deficit they don't even have a

00:19:09.760 personal credit score so i find that i found it just so incredible okay we're gonna switch it up

00:19:16.880 now uh bring it a little closer to home here uh cory i know you're you're regularly in trouble

00:19:22.980 with the authorities for uh you know making documentaries you know about regularly but

00:19:28.240 yes i'm uh just it just feels like it some days you think charges now so francis widdowson uh so

00:19:35.180 She was a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

00:19:39.120 Calgary's other university.

00:19:42.580 They hate getting told that.

00:19:44.720 But she was a professor there.

00:19:47.100 I think she was fired.

00:19:49.400 I won a wrongful dismissal suit, I think.

00:19:51.700 Because she was fired for her views around the fake graves from...

00:19:59.100 I think it was around that stuff.

00:20:02.560 Or at least something related to it. 1.00

00:20:03.880 but she was fired for her views.

00:20:08.340 And since then, she's just kind of been on the activist and speaking circuit

00:20:13.480 talking about these things.

00:20:15.640 We don't need to re-ash it here.

00:20:17.560 No bodies have been found.

00:20:20.100 The counter is still zero.

00:20:22.580 Here, let's put the counter up.

00:20:24.040 How many bodies have been found?

00:20:26.760 There we go.

00:20:28.780 Yeah, that's genocide.

00:20:31.260 Very bloody.

00:20:31.780 um so she says this and this really bothers people um and then she so she was uh she went

00:20:39.660 to go speak about this or something she was invited by a free speech club or something

00:20:43.460 at the university of lethbridge they issued a warning let's put the warning up on the screen

00:20:48.020 they issued a warning about the this dangerous individual around campus she was told she's not

00:20:53.480 allowed to come and she was arrested yeah and professor widowson has a history she wrote i

00:21:00.900 believe it was called the aboriginal industry disrobed about 15 years ago when she was still

00:21:05.360 a professor and it broke into a lot of the bureaucracy and the corruption and issues

00:21:09.800 going on actually with you know what was called the indian industry we we all know of it you know

00:21:13.920 the the lawyers the bureaucrats the chiefs there's a lot of people get very very wealthy through the

00:21:18.360 status quo of the system and they certainly don't like that critique uh ironically if they hadn't

00:21:24.520 gotten her fired from mount royal she would probably be still more quietly teaching classes 1.00

00:21:29.740 and so on and you wouldn't hear as much but you took this firebrand of a woman and fired her from 1.00

00:21:35.660 the university wrongly she won the suit but now she's had that time on her hands to become an 0.95

00:21:40.380 activist professor rather than just one who was academic and she has it's amazing the courage for

00:21:45.900 as you said this this threat she's reminds me of tamara leach i mean i we've talked to francis

00:21:50.560 another time she's what 110 pounds soaking wet and uh she's not a threat to anybody yet she 0.99

00:21:56.460 wanders into crowds and groups in winnipeg she did it in bc she did it with protesters getting

00:22:01.500 very aggressive very uh uh i'd be afraid to walk into that crowd and i gotta give it to widdowson

00:22:07.160 for her her ballsiness she'll just push right in there and she just calls it like it is she made

00:22:13.280 that cbc uh interviewer uh almost cry that time not by being mean but just being that blunt speaking 0.93

00:22:18.280 woman who just talked mean to her or or straight to her and uh it drives them nuts so she's been

00:22:24.220 outright calling about though this uh of the 15 215 bodies in Kamloops she got kicked off from

00:22:32.540 Lethbridge uh or the protesters drove her out she was invited by another professor to speak that was

00:22:36.940 the first time this happened and there was a bunch of protesters banging drums screaming pushing her

00:22:42.460 around uh and there was a second incident again where she got driven off of the campus and they

00:22:48.780 basically warned her outright she said you are not welcome to come here under any circumstance and

00:22:53.180 being Francis. She said, well, I'm going to arrange something to go on. She did so, and they

00:22:57.160 literally took her away in handcuffs and outcharged her with trespassing.

00:23:00.560 I did the original stories with Francis about five years ago, right at the start of

00:23:05.160 the standard. And back then, it had nothing to do with bodies. She was just

00:23:08.960 arguing against this genocide theories on

00:23:12.620 residential schools. And that got her kicked out of

00:23:15.940 Mount Royal, still awaiting the results of a tribunal to get 1.00

00:23:21.020 her job back uh but you're right the optics look terrible there's this hundred pound woman 0.99

00:23:25.740 who is dragged literally because she's refusing to walk uh they're they're they're they're dragging 0.97

00:23:31.820 her out uh my problem with it i fear these kind of stunts turn her almost into a a um you know a 0.89

00:23:43.000 victim you know what's the word i'm looking for uh a little bit more like menzies yeah yeah i mean 0.83

00:23:50.320 she knows what's going to happen, she does it 0.96

00:23:52.320 anyways, she gets what she

00:23:54.360 wants, but 1.00

00:23:56.300 she's almost looking like a professional victim 1.00

00:23:58.540 now, so

00:24:00.140 but obviously we still support

00:24:02.460 her 100%

00:24:04.240 and, you know,

00:24:05.920 even when she was kicked

00:24:08.300 out of Montmorel, as I was saying, it was just on

00:24:10.300 the residential school issue itself

00:24:12.440 now she's grabbed these 0.74

00:24:13.960 215 hoax graves and

00:24:16.260 is running with it.

00:24:17.660 If you don't actually

00:24:20.320 step out how do you engage people's intention i mean i understand what you mean about the

00:24:25.360 professional victim here but what would be a what would be a better way of achieving the same end

00:24:31.600 oh no you know i i understand both sides of the argument and people gather around her and they

00:24:37.680 beat their drums because they don't a they don't want to hear the message right when the last time

00:24:42.720 she was arrested she was sitting in a uh a campus food fair at the university of lethbridge and she

00:24:48.160 was calmly talking to a student and then the cops come in and haul her away um so yeah i understand

00:24:54.720 that she has to do stuff to to bring it to uh uh to everybody's attention what we need now is

00:25:01.280 authorities with just enough intestinal fortitude to say well actually we don't like what's happening 1.00

00:25:06.960 to her when she does these things like people who pay for the university bills that's where i want

00:25:13.440 want to go with this, Nigel? Oh. So

00:25:15.520 I think it was, what of our reporters

00:25:19.320 was it? Was it Leah we had on the story for the

00:25:21.240 response here? We had Leah, we had

00:25:23.560 Will. Okay. Team effort.

00:25:25.440 Okay, so we have a few reporters on this

00:25:27.160 and they reached out to

00:25:29.280 Alberta's Minister of Post-Secondary

00:25:31.820 Education, Mr.

00:25:33.560 Minister McDougall.

00:25:35.860 And he issued a

00:25:37.420 pretty equivocating statement.

00:25:39.520 I don't remember it exactly, but here, we'll throw

00:25:41.340 his written statement up on the screen here.

00:25:43.440 so people can see it exactly, but it was kind of equivocating.

00:25:47.700 It was like, oh, well, we have to find the balance between personal safety and free speech. 1.00

00:25:52.260 Personal safety is a hundred pound woman who couldn't knock my dog over is no threat to anyone. 1.00

00:26:02.920 To imply in any way that she is a threat to safety is buying into the words or violence narrative of these nut jobs. 1.00

00:26:10.840 I think the Alberta government and the Minister of Post-Secondary Education in particular is fumbling this one badly.

00:26:20.140 The University of Lethbridge should be getting a letter saying you have one week to apologize, make restitution, put in place a policy to prove this will never happen again.

00:26:30.280 Or a week from now, we are pulling every single tax dollar from the University of Lethbridge.

00:26:36.040 Amen. That is what is required.

00:26:37.840 Of course, you are setting in nothing, the pain, the suffering, the harmed feelings, which are, in the woke world, just as serious as physical injury.

00:26:50.380 In this case, the minister, the UCP minister, gave that credence, balancing personal safety.

00:26:57.020 They use the safety weasel words in all of the universities, though.

00:27:01.160 They often say, well, we can't guarantee the safety of the speaker who's coming in or the guest.

00:27:05.660 Well, that's a fault of the university, then.

00:27:08.300 That means you're not getting your own students in order.

00:27:11.660 But they use that as, we can't guarantee your safety,

00:27:13.700 so for your own sake, we're going to cancel the event.

00:27:16.320 For me, that's an argument that it's up to you to get enough security 0.97

00:27:18.900 and get enough police to beat the shit out of the people 0.96

00:27:21.560 who are trying to violently stop and from taking place 0.99

00:27:25.300 who are trying to use violence and force to stop a speaker.

00:27:29.080 It's incumbent on the university to provide the protection,

00:27:31.600 not to say, hey, we can't do it.

00:27:33.380 No, but that's just their cowardly way out.

00:27:34.880 Well, we're just doing it so nobody gets hurt.

00:27:36.780 Yeah, well, they say they can't afford it.

00:27:38.260 Yeah.

00:27:39.840 Sure, you know what?

00:27:40.960 You expel five or six students and see how fast it changes.

00:27:44.320 Yeah.

00:27:45.080 Yeah, you know, that's a good way to do it.

00:27:46.700 Okay, you know what?

00:27:47.520 We can't hold it today because these guys here,

00:27:50.320 but we are expelling these guys who showed up.

00:27:52.520 We're going to invite you back in a week from now,

00:27:55.440 and we'll see if it works.

00:27:56.360 Yeah.

00:27:56.860 If they want to lose their post-secondary career

00:27:59.400 by acting violently and inappropriately at an event,

00:28:02.920 we never hear of that.

00:28:03.800 Why shouldn't we?

00:28:04.380 If I was in high school, I remember those days, if I'd have gone off on somebody visiting the high school, 0.99

00:28:08.600 that principal would have had my ass kicked out of that school faster than that. 0.92

00:28:11.540 Isn't it actually an established fact that the people protesting were students? 0.99

00:28:15.600 No, and that's the question I was just going to ask.

00:28:17.620 They brought a bunch off the blood reserve, but there were students there too, some of them.

00:28:22.340 But they had a bunch of tokens they brought in for...

00:28:25.020 Yeah, which they did when she was in UBC and a couple other universities across British Columbia.

00:28:33.060 it was like to rent a demonstrator yeah okay uh we're gonna go to alex in bc here uh i think

00:28:42.340 it was just yesterday there was a uh debate for the leadership race um heading into the final

00:28:50.260 strokes here uh but before we get into you know who you think won who you think lost you know

00:28:56.220 we'll get you to kind of handicap the race here uh before that though let's let's talk about the

00:29:00.640 very weird opening ceremonies of this debate

00:29:04.040 that would seem to be a little ill-fitted for a party

00:29:06.480 that I think everyone's kind of agreeing at this point.

00:29:09.620 Drippa and land acknowledgements,

00:29:12.040 the white guilt and shame industry, it's got to go. 0.57

00:29:17.240 Yeah, as the old joke goes,

00:29:19.020 I showed up to a debate and a land acknowledgement broke out.

00:29:23.020 It was quite bizarre.

00:29:26.200 So the whole thing began with a land acknowledgement,

00:29:28.740 which is extremely ironic,

00:29:29.800 given that in the last B.C. Conservative leadership debate, which was only days earlier,

00:29:34.260 there was a bit of a race to the bottom on this issue of who hated land acknowledgements the most.

00:29:41.320 And then nobody contested when the land acknowledgement opened to the next debate,

00:29:45.100 which I think speaks to the fact that the candidates might not have as much gumption as maybe their campaigns pretend that they do.

00:29:52.700 Yeah, it seemed like a missed opportunity that maybe when they're talking about land acknowledgements,

00:29:58.300 Yes, I'm the most conservative. I'm against this stuff.

00:30:01.300 This stuff is just, you know, a part of guilt and shame culture or the cult of shame that we're all supposed to have in European countries because we're all colonial, genocidal maniacs.

00:30:14.440 This seemed like a missed opportunity for someone to stand up, at least at their first speaking opportunity, not necessarily interrupt them, but be like, hey, I just want to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of British Columbia.

00:30:28.300 I mean, I will offer some forgiveness to them in the sense that in BC, these things are so baked into the cake, socio-culturally and politically.

00:30:37.820 You hear land acknowledgments so often, especially if you're working even in the private sector, in the finance world, that you really become oblivious to it.

00:30:45.260 I had barely noticed the land acknowledgment until others started ranting about it online.

00:30:50.060 It's quite disturbing.

00:30:51.740 Shame on you. We're going to have to splash some cold water on you. 0.99

00:30:54.840 Well, I mean, I've never done one, and I don't intend to, and I don't understand why they happen, but...

00:31:00.520 I'll know you're trying to quit if you do.

00:31:02.280 Yeah, it's just like anything else, right? I mean, you can acclimatize yourself to just about anything.

00:31:07.860 Yeah. Okay, well, kind of give us, just kind of at a high level, you don't have to go through each of them,

00:31:13.540 but, you know, tell us, what were some of the big highlights?

00:31:17.360 Who do you think came out on top and maybe improved their position from this debate?

00:31:21.560 there really were no big highlights it was quite a mundane event so um the highlight was the land

00:31:27.500 acknowledgement and then that von palmer went on like a bit of a grandpa simpson rant at the end

00:31:33.440 that a lot of people thought was a waste of time i thought it was kind of interesting personally

00:31:37.020 it's nice to hear somebody's history in bc politics um i imagine it's a minority opinion

00:31:42.740 uh in terms of who i thought was the best or the worst everybody kind of held their ground

00:31:48.560 um this has really never been when you ask for a high level uh look at this this has never been

00:31:54.740 a particularly high level race in the sense that all of the candidates agree on all of the major

00:31:59.380 issues so it really is just a matter of personality and likability almost at this point

00:32:03.460 it's uh what are the one of the i don't know how to put it um one of the debates uh maybe fault

00:32:13.480 lines i i've noticed in the race is you know some are saying some of the candidates are saying we

00:32:19.000 need to talk less about culture war issues more about you know fiscal management market issues

00:32:24.680 more of the kind of the think of the older bc liberals uh you know late gordon campbell uh

00:32:31.820 where it was just about fiscal probity but he's kind of a return to kind of traditional reaganite

00:32:37.240 economic focus as you know the fiscal conservative thing and that's all important but in 2026 that's

00:32:45.800 not really what's animating people but i know there there is some kind of split in some candidates

00:32:50.360 saying no we should not be emphasizing fight against drippa yeah maybe i'm against drippa but

00:32:55.120 like on purely economic grounds i'm not against i don't want to get into it because i'm i'm sick

00:33:02.340 of white guilt i'm sick of ritual shaming uh i'm only against it because it compromises

00:33:09.140 our our our economic prosperity i think i'm seeing that as kind of a fault line emerging in the race

00:33:15.120 i would disagree so on drippa all of the candidates completely agree they've each said

00:33:20.160 ad nauseum that they intend to repeal it as quickly as possible even david evey just as

00:33:24.400 recently as a few weeks ago was saying that repealing it was non-negotiable

00:33:28.000 so only that the only party in bc and the only political faction that wants to keep drippa is

00:33:33.220 the green party and they say all kinds of crazy things so yeah yeah i know i know there are all

00:33:37.480 the candidates are saying they want they're going to get rid of it but some are it's purely just

00:33:41.800 because this is economically disastrous not for the other side which is that it is also socially

00:33:47.180 and culturally contagious and and and sickening and that you know some of i think uh it's maybe

00:33:53.360 it's Ian Black, who's like, you know, he wants the race to be about physical management and

00:33:59.380 property, economic prosperity, and less about culture wars. Yeah, I would agree with you

00:34:06.840 completely. And whether or not that will resonate with the BC conservative audience is very difficult

00:34:11.100 to know at this time. I do worry, in fact, to Ian Black's point, that what might be occurring with

00:34:17.040 some of the other candidates is a bit of online audience capture, where we're against becoming a

00:34:21.680 bit of a race to the bottom that will make them less electable in the general election against

00:34:25.420 the NDP because BC, as we all know, is fairly left coast. So you can't go so far to the right

00:34:31.600 to win the leadership race that you lose the whole thing. And so he is being to some extent

00:34:38.280 the adult in the room by encouraging restraint. All right. If you had to handicap the race right

00:34:45.840 now uh you know carolyn elliott seems to be the name that comes up the most uh has she got it in

00:34:53.000 the bag or is this going to be a multi-ballot uh vote my impression is that she does not have it in

00:35:00.440 the bag but she is the front runner and i would put millibar second after her carolyn finley third

00:35:05.880 ian black fourth and i think fulmer's campaign is is um it's in trouble because the details

00:35:13.980 related to the mou with the one bc thing have never been ironed out and um so it's not even

00:35:19.520 clear if the mechanics of the party would allow why don't you suss that out a bit i don't think

00:35:23.740 people outside of alberta outside of british colombia know that much about it tell us about

00:35:29.180 this mou one bc sure so uh the conservative party would be the right-leaning right of center party

00:35:35.160 in bc one bc would be something to the right of that it would be the equivalent to the ppc let's

00:35:40.280 say. So in order to not divide the vote on the right and to avoid vote splitting, an agreement

00:35:46.960 was made between Yuri Fulmer, who was really the last place candidate at the time, to stand down

00:35:52.340 in five ridings out of, I can't remember off the top of my head, 93 ridings in BC. And that way,

00:35:58.740 they would ensure that they could have five 1BC candidates elected that would work in tandem with

00:36:04.380 the Conservative Party. Now, there's a whole bunch of details about this that don't really make

00:36:07.840 sense. Number one, there's no conditions for the supply and confidence agreement. There's no lines

00:36:12.040 in the sand. So why even have two parties at that point? Secondly, we haven't identified which five

00:36:17.980 ridings would run 1BC candidates. And so there are five writing associations, hypothetically

00:36:23.080 speaking, that haven't been told that they need to stand down. Would they agree to that? We don't

00:36:27.440 know. And if they were told that they were to stand down and they declined, then the board of

00:36:34.560 the Conservative Party would be put into the precarious position of either kicking them off,

00:36:39.180 the writing association, or I don't know. So the whole thing is actually quite dysfunctional

00:36:46.980 when you break it down to its inner mechanics. It doesn't actually make sense. Then you also

00:36:51.560 have the issue too, where the 1BC party is not actually a party, officially speaking. There's

00:36:55.340 only one MLA. There was originally two, but they had some dysfunction, and so they had to split up.

00:36:59.760 And so it becomes very, very hard to believe that a one B.C. party of five candidates would act in perfect unity with the B.C. Conservative Party when the same political entity couldn't keep a caucus of two unified for a particularly long period of time.

00:37:16.320 That's why it's two B.C.

00:37:20.200 All right. Any of you got anything to say?

00:37:23.600 i have to say that after living in bc for 25 years and living the politics down there i was

00:37:33.240 sure glad to get to alberta people were people said to me when i arrived in alberta get ready

00:37:39.580 for a rough ride albertans are kind of crazy you just can't fool them things are better here

00:37:46.160 For those of you in B.C. worrying about your mortgages, get to Alberta.

00:37:52.160 Yeah, my mom says Findlay, so there's that.

00:37:56.160 All right.

00:37:57.160 It's a lesson though, I think, for Conservatives in general.

00:37:59.160 I mean, we can see it. 0.99

00:38:00.160 EB is handing the government to a new party, you know, on a platter if they can just get their crap together. 0.99

00:38:08.160 But Conservatives are their own worst enemies. 0.99

00:38:10.160 and the only thing that could potentially

00:38:12.560 save Evie's hide

00:38:14.540 is conservatives ripping themselves 1.00

00:38:16.720 apart.

00:38:18.240 They've not had

00:38:20.120 a particularly

00:38:22.860 harmonious time since the last

00:38:24.800 election. And that's not uniquely BC.

00:38:26.780 That's Alberta conservatives.

00:38:28.280 We love fighting with each other.

00:38:30.240 Yeah, but the BC

00:38:32.240 was particularly, it happened particularly

00:38:34.240 free. Remember, you had

00:38:35.720 a majority of the caucus had voted

00:38:38.060 the leader out and the leader says,

00:38:39.860 I'm not leaving. And then you had, like,

00:38:41.820 a showdown in the legislature. Who gets to sit

00:38:43.700 in the opposition leader's chair? I mean,

00:38:45.860 it... That was pretty good.

00:38:47.760 Yeah. Now, behind the scenes,

00:38:49.840 I haven't said too much on this publicly, behind the

00:38:51.800 scenes, the Wild Rose came perilously

00:38:54.000 close to similar things at its time.

00:38:57.960 Held to... There was times

00:38:59.800 where it didn't hold together, obviously. Well,

00:39:01.460 I was there. It did, but it

00:39:03.520 came within an inch.

00:39:07.120 But yeah, BC.

00:39:08.700 Alex, what actually are the fault lines in the Conservative Party?

00:39:13.460 In BC? I assume. I don't think there are many, to be frank. I think that people are splitting hairs. A great example would be land acknowledgments. So some individuals think that land acknowledgments should be banned in the public service, something that they should be strongly discouraged. Others think that they should be allowed to continue.

00:39:32.320 You know, at the end of the day, I mean, if somebody does a land acknowledgement takes 15 seconds out of the meeting, you know, it's annoying.

00:39:38.160 And I think that it does have legal consequences way downstream.

00:39:41.500 I see both arguments, but but these are really not make or break issues for the conservative party of B.C.

00:39:48.660 And I see there's a litmus test.

00:39:51.700 Anyone who engages in land acknowledgements to me is selling out their people, their land, their their heritage, posterity.

00:40:00.940 they're selling out their own posterity uh you know for me it's i i i i'm not interested in the

00:40:05.960 rest of your platform at that point it's uh you could be you'd be great on economics and foreign

00:40:10.280 policy oh but i want to trans your kids well i'm sorry at that point you're also like it's a

00:40:14.220 disqualifying thing i i i put land acknowledgments in that in that in that basket i think the real

00:40:20.260 wild card that you know it's always the story you're at least paying attention to that becomes

00:40:23.800 the most important and the biggest fault line not in the conservative party of bc but in bc

00:40:28.320 politics generally is the Green Party. A lot of leftists in BC have gravitated towards a more

00:40:36.300 radical left than they already adhere to, which is hard to believe. There's room on the left side

00:40:42.460 of the political spectrum from the BC NDP. But I believe that the Green Party may split the vote

00:40:47.360 on the left, which would likely result in a healthy conservative majority. All right. We'll

00:40:56.200 a plug in it there uh alex you're uh oh no we'll come to you next uh we'll start with uh nodular

00:41:02.440 your parting shot yeah sure so the uh the news came out that a pipeline had been approved in

00:41:09.960 in british columbia actually it runs from chat went down to the down to the us border 300 million

00:41:16.360 cubic feet a day it's only been two years in the in the planning and there's going to be another

00:41:22.840 two years before it's done and our federal energy minister speaks up and says this is what being an

00:41:30.200 energy superpower looks like the actual amount of gas coming through alberta and bc something like

00:41:39.160 11 billion cubic feet a day and through an extra 300 million makes you an energy superpower i just

00:41:46.920 found the i just found his remarks unbecoming from somebody who does actually have a good personal

00:41:54.200 knowledge of working in the industry corey uh just a rare little bit of a tip of the hat to

00:42:00.600 the state broadcaster somebody dug deeply enough into the economic update onto page 145 and found

00:42:08.760 that buried in there was a note to make it legal for the rcmp to come in and enter and wrap up and

00:42:15.880 check your mail through canada post without warrant it's bizarre it's authoritarian and

00:42:21.880 why on earth are you burying it in a fiscal update uh keep your eye on whatever the heck

00:42:27.640 they're up to i mean the police have the ability to check your mail with a warrant if they feel

00:42:31.080 there's criminal activity or something this is a note to give warrantless access to your physical

00:42:36.040 mail what on earth is this government pursuing and why would they stick it in it it's the same

00:42:40.520 thing with the internet as well that's what they want yeah dave uh good week to be british as you

00:42:47.160 watch the prince or king charles do a royal tour de force in washington uh two great speeches a

00:42:56.360 brilliant gift of a ship ship's bell from the uh royal navy submarine uh uh hmcs trump uh left uh

00:43:05.880 there's an hmcs trump there was like an old submarine called trump no way and then they

00:43:14.680 and they gave him uh they gave him the bell they know how to speak to their audience here oh

00:43:19.240 absolutely bling loud fits uh fits nicely into the oval office so uh british u.s relations have been

00:43:27.800 very sour lately and i think his visit will go uh go a long way to fixing them up so god save the

00:43:34.120 king you know that's two weeks in a row where you've done uh your party shop's been uh royal

00:43:39.800 a royal job there you go okay doing a good job alex yeah this just shows how laser focused i am

00:43:47.160 on the bc conservative leadership race i noticed that the seating configuration yesterday was

00:43:52.600 really really tight and yuri fulmer um there's nothing funny about people getting sick of course

00:43:57.320 but he said and was visibly under the weather that he was sick and coughed all over ian black

00:44:02.280 and then they went for martinis after and so my prediction is that everybody at the next debate

00:44:07.240 in a couple of days is going to have the sniffles super spreader event there we go yeah rodeo um

00:44:17.400 you know what i i was going to talk about doug ford being down in the polls but i'm scratching

00:44:21.400 that because there was actually a little piece i forgot from our discussion about the francis 0.98

00:44:25.320 Liddowson thing uh you know she has um she she you know she's in trouble here because she

00:44:33.720 calls the Kamloops body hoax a hoax which it now most definitively is um and the CBC uh not very

00:44:44.200 long ago was forced uh through its legislative process to issue a correction about yeah that

00:44:50.840 being a hoax that no no bodies have been found there is no mass graves etc they were forced to

00:44:57.920 issue some corrections very quietly they slipped it under the you know they did it uh so the cbc

00:45:03.620 is on the record now that it's essentially a hoax um but in the story about francis widdowson

00:45:10.020 they uh they don't acknowledge that she's right by their own admission and their forced corrections

00:45:18.180 that they now, at least on paper, agree with Francis Widdowson about the Kamloops grave hoax.

00:45:26.620 They do the story and it's, oh, you know, she's this controversial speaker,

00:45:32.880 you know, residential schools denier, all this stuff.

00:45:37.740 But they don't mention, not a word, that, oh yeah, and as we were forced to do previously, 1.00

00:45:44.880 she is right. Not a word.

00:45:47.340 so well that would uh that had to make a list so i forgot it from my segment all right nothing on

00:45:53.660 jessica uh jessica we're stuck at seven if i could if i could add something about the francis

00:46:02.460 widowson case i spoke to her something about jessica okay no no no i do not engage as i said

00:46:08.720 in my most recent headline about jessica but as far as francis widowson is concerned my

00:46:14.220 understanding and i don't want to put words in her mouth is that this is more or less an

00:46:18.060 epistemological exercise it is not up for her to say whether the bodies are a hoax or not it is a

00:46:24.600 case of he who makes the claim in this case the government that the bodies are there are required

00:46:29.240 to prove it it's not up to her to prove that the bodies are there or aren't there or that it is a

00:46:34.780 hoax or it isn't a hoax because she didn't make the initial claim and i think this is something

00:46:38.780 that gets very misunderstood about the position that she's taken on the topic yeah

00:46:43.820 uh all right uh well i don't have anything really rich i'll add other than uh

00:46:50.520 here let me talk to this camera here jessica you're still a man

00:46:55.720 all right uh that's it for today uh nigel cory dave alex thank you and thank you john running

00:47:05.500 the studio here doing a great job as always and thank all of you for joining us on the pipeline

00:47:10.140 today remember we need your support to continue the work we're doing at the western standard to

00:47:15.140 get unlimited access to all our content go to westernstandard.news click on subscribe it's only

00:47:20.220 ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year uh thank you very much for your time today and god

00:47:25.320 bless

00:47:40.140 We'll see you next time.

Western Standard - April 30, 2026

Carney’s debt-backed wealth fund

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