CMS： Alberta’s recall process is a waste of time
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Summary
Corey's back from his breakdown in the desert and ready to rant and rave about energy, recall efforts against Calgary Mayor Jody Gondek, and much, much more. Thanks to James Finkbeiner for holding down the fort while I was in the middle of my breakdown, and thanks to Dan McTeague for coming on the show to talk energy.
Transcript
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Oh, I am indeed Corey Morgan. I'm back from my breakdown South. I'm rested. I'm full of piss
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and vinegar. I'm ready to rant, rave, share opinions, interview people, do all that good
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stuff that I do on this show every week at Wednesdays at this time or at different times
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in the evenings on the Cowboy Network and some of your other favorite cable channels out there.
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So I do want to start by thanking James Finkbeiner for holding down the fort for the last few weeks
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while I was hiding out in the desert there. I appreciate it. He did a great job. And of course,
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Nico was supporting him well there as well. So a packed show today as always. I've got
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Dan McTeague coming on from Canadians for affordable energy. We're going to talk about
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energy. There's lots to talk about all the time. Again, I mean, Alberta's energy rich yet. We
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seem to have energy shortages. Alberta's energy rich yet. I paid far less for my fuel while I was
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driving through the States, even after exchange was put into account. Then I pay in Alberta.
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Just talk about some of these things because I don't think we're doing a real good job with
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energy up here. Of course, I'll have my news check-ins and other things going as well. So I
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see some of the commenters there, Tom Hamilton already in there saying, we're going to talk
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about the recall process. And he's saying it was written by politicians for politicians
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to give the appearance of accountability. And he's right. And I agree. And I'm going to talk
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about that a little more in just a moment here. And E-Sharp there throwing a comment in.
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So for those following the show live, yes, throw those comments in there, questions. I see them
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all. I won't necessarily read them all out, but I appreciate them. Just keep things civil.
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So let's talk about recall because it's come up in news in Alberta, quite a bit in Calgary due
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to a new petition to recall Mayor Gondek. I've always been a strong supporter of direct democracy
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through citizens-initiated referenda and accountability through citizen-led recall
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initiatives. Calgary Mayor Jody Gondek is the worst mayor in living memory. She's only halfway
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for her first term in office, and she's that bad. She's a prime candidate for recall. As voters have
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realized, Gondek wasn't who she purported to be when she ran for the job. We're seeing massive
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buyer's remorse as Gondek lurches from one disaster to another, offending people left and
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right while taxes continue to rise. Polls are reflecting a very strong majority of Calgarians
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want the chance to fire Gondek as soon as possible. But with all that said, the current
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recall initiative launched against Jody Gondek is doomed to fail and may actually, unintentionally,
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even help her. I mean, to begin with, the bar to recall a civic politician is impossibly high.
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You need over 514,000 signatures from eligible Calgarian voters and they need to be collected
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in 60 days to invoke the recall. Anybody who actually thinks this is possible has never
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actually done real petitioning. It's a slow process and takes a lot of work. To garner
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half a million signatures in two months would take a massive organizational machine that just
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doesn't exist out there. You've got to remember these signatures required aren't digital. They
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have to be handwritten and witnessed on an official petition sheet with a name, address,
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and phone number of the person signing so the signature can be verified later. A lot of people
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aren't going to be comfortable sharing that information with a petitioner, even if they
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support the cause. Many signatures garnered as well are going to be rejected later because
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the name or the address might not be legible or the person's residency couldn't be confirmed with
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the electors lists. The petitions you see are checked when they're submitted. That means the
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real number required, if you were going to be realistic, would actually be more like 550, 560,000
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signatures. Now, a hardworking, effective petitioner going door to door, a really good
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one, could get perhaps 100 signatures a day. So think about it. It would take nearly 100 people
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working full-time hours seven days a week for two months, assuming all those 500 and some thousand
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are existing out there, to round up the required signatures in time. Coordinating that many workers
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would require management personnel, transportation, some kind of office to ensure they aren't
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overlapping territory. They'd need to track where they've been to do second and third rounds in
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neighborhoods to catch the people who weren't home the first time. Petitioning in public places like
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malls, events, transit stations, it can be effective, but it won't be enough. It has to be
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door-to-door. So to put it in perspective, only 390,000 people even bothered to vote
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in the last mayoral race. Even if 100% of those people were now opposed to Gondek,
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you'd still need more than 100,000 on top of all that to sign the petition
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and you've got to find them to make the recall work.
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The legislation guiding citizen-initiated referenda isn't much better.
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The creation of the Recall Act was the final straw, actually, for me
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when it came to supporting former Premier Jason Kenney.
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but that was a cynical nod to those who voted for him
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based on his campaign of accountability and citizen empowerment.
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Kenney promised recall and referendum legislation to Albertans,
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and he purposely crafted the legislation to make it useless
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and impossible to invoke, as we're seeing today.
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He misled people when he promised that legislation.
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He had no interest in letting citizens hold their elected officials to account.
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But he didn't hesitate to promise that to win the votes in the first place.
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I just, I despise that kind of bait and switch type of politics.
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But to give this garbage legislation to us was a slap in the face of the supporters.
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So the people behind the petition to recall Gondek, I mean, they're well-meaning,
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And I don't doubt I agree with him on almost everything, probably.
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But the efforts would be better spent putting pressure on UCP MLAs to fix the broken recall legislation.
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Once that's done, then they can get to work on a recall.
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Further, when the petition fails, and it will, Gondek and her few supporters are going to claim it's because Calgarians actually support her.
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It'll be actually a public relations win for the mayor who really hasn't earned a win in her entire time in office.
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Also, those who signed or worked on gathering the signatures for the petition,
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they're going to have built up cynicism and apathy, and it's going to entrench it more.
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They're going to feel like it was a wasted effort,
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and they're going to be less inclined to participate in democratic exercises in the future,
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Look, I hate crapping on good grassroots efforts made by citizens.
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We need to see more of it, and I admire the gumption among those
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who have gotten the petition to recall Gondek going.
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and it's an initiative that won't lead to a productive outcome.
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I hope the folks involved redirect their efforts to helping Albertans get the legislation they
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need. Then they can, and I can, get fully behind those recall efforts against those politicians
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that have earned those efforts. Until then, though, they're just wasting good shoe leather
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going out there getting signatures for something that's just not going to change. So either way,
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sorry to poop on the parade, guys, but it's just not going to go anywhere. All right, let's see
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what else is going on out there and check in with Mr. Naylor in the newsroom. Hey, Dave, how's it
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going hey cory good welcome back oh thanks thanks you know what that young thinkbinder guy he did
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a pretty good job i think we had a young star in the making there yeah i think so no i was watching
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it from down south i can only vacation so much i still got to see what's going on up here no james
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did great yeah absolutely um i am a bit perturbed that you uh you abandoned duke the wonder dog
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and you didn't take him on holiday with you i did i mean we were in a fifth wheel for for 25 days
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it's a wonder that jane didn't strangle me over the course of that time with that much proximity
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to each other and a big lazy bulldog if we had that screwy 130 pound duke in there
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it would have been disastrous i'm afraid oh man i don't know if he'll ever forgive you he seems
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to have gotten over it i gave him some cookies when i got home and he forgot about everything
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oh yeah you're the best man so you know what we've had a really busy uh morning out here in
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the newsroom cory we got probably about 15 new stories up uh already right now we're leading
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off with the reaction on the conservative leader pierre poliev has finally commented on the
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transgender policy that alberta is bringing in and he says he is also against giving puberty blockers
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to uh to children says they should wait until they're adults we got some more facts and figures
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from stats can on just the the massive number of people moving to alberta mainly from ontario and
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BC to escape their tax regimes. 45,000 people have moved to Alberta recently. So the province
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is booming. Lots of other stuff. Corey, we've got conservatives trying to fight back against
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a government increase of $450 a month for Canadian military members. And you know what,
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Corey, they don't get paid a lot to begin with. $450 a month rent increase is a horrible thing
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to put them through. We've got our columnist Jaime Rubenstein talking about the ousted
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BC cabinet minister who was forced to quit this week. And we've got a liberal MP, the
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justice minister, a federal justice minister, apologized for calling Pierre Polyev a very,
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very bad word in the House of Commons. We've got that you can check out. And we've got
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But my two favorite stories of the day are already being punched down the list a bit because of all the other stuff.
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All those killer whales trapped in the ice in Japan.
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Some heartbreaking footage yesterday of them all trying to squeeze in this little maybe 10-foot square hole in the ice.
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But it turns out they've managed to escape and now appear to be swimming free.
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And the criminal genius of the year award goes to an alleged Calgary drug dealer who was handing out his business cards with free little baggies of cocaine attached, free samples of cocaine for whoever wanted it.
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Needless to say, it didn't take Calgary police long to investigate and find him with a whole bunch of drugs.
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Yeah, who'd have seen that coming? Well, I mean, you know, points for ambition, I guess.
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I guess, you know, everybody's got to start somewhere.
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You know, handing out, you know, at least better, he was doing it at a casino, downtown casino.
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Yes, and just, I guess, a final little bit of news.
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It looks like Jonathan Bradley might be moving along somewhere else.
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Yes, Jonathan Bradley, our crack young reporter, he's being promoted to our legislature bureau.
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So he's all excited about that, and he'll be up there for the start of the session on February 28th,
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So he's looking forward to it, and I'm looking forward to it, and he's going to do a great job.
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All right, thanks, Dave. I'll talk to you after the show.
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So, yeah, that is our news editor, Dave Naylor.
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This is what I like to remind and nag everybody the reason we can do it,
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the reason we got these stories coming up, the reason we're sending reporters all over the place
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is because you guys have subscribed. We don't take any government cash, guys. We need the
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subscriptions and you've come through. If you subscribed already, thank you very much. If you
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haven't, come on guys, get on there. Westernstandard.news slash subscription. It's 10 bucks a
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month, $100 for a year. You know, just like an old newspaper subscription will get you past the
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paywall and allows us to keep producing these shows and writing those stories that we know the
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legacy media isn't going to give them to you. And yes, it's going to be good to have feet on the
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ground in Edmonton at the legislature. We've got an office actually in there. We are an accredited
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outlet. Arthur Green used to be up there, but he got snatched away. And Jonathan's going to be up
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there. Boy, he's prolific. So there's going to be a lot of fantastic legislative coverage coming out
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of Edmonton, plus our reporters all over the country and columnists. So yeah, quite a bit on
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the go, guys, and lots to keep me busy. So just to get back a bit to that recall again. Yeah,
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the fellow, and I want to give him credit, you know, he's been out there, he's been talking to
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the news, his name's Landon Johnston, and he sounds very genuine, he's, you know, upset with
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Gondek, as pretty much most Calgarians are, and he's making his effort, you know, and hey, you know
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what, if he proves me wrong, and gets hundreds of thousands of signatures, and even manages to,
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you know, come close to invoking the referendum, I'll eat the words, but, you know, there's things
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we could be doing if you want to change things in the meantime. I mean, that legislation needs
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to be fixed. I think email, phone, nag your MLA and Premier Smith, and she's got a lot on her
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plate, but just get her to get out there and fix that legislation because there are formulas that
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are reasonable for recall. Because, you know, you want a balance. You don't want it too easy.
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That's fair. You don't want the second election is finished. Somebody starting a recall initiative
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And rest assured, as we see from that headline there too,
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should be what you want to do what you could do then if you've got those volunteers get out there
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and do voter ID go door to door and find out who is really strongly determined to replace Jodi Gondek
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and get that and list it and database it you see the recall petition you can't use that for anything
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else you can't take those names and numbers that's what Gondek's already implying she's implying that
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the data is going to be shared because that'll make people scared to sign as well scared to
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commit their name to this initiative and things like that. And, uh, you know, and you're not
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supposed to use it for anything else, which is fair, right? A person didn't sign to be spammed
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by other initiatives or things like that. They, they signed that petition with the intent of
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getting a recall on the go, but you can go, nothing is stopping you from going door to door
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and doing voter ID. As Daryl, one of the commenters saying voter turnout is barely breaking 30 to 50
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percent of eligible voters. Yes. So it's unreasonable. Not only that though, it shows
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how important voter ID is. So if you've gone out and you've gotten thousands and thousands of names
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of identified anti-Gondek voters, you could share that list with a future person who's running
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against Gondek in the next election. It's less than two years away now anyway. And that gives
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them a good base to start with, to get out there and get signs on the ground, to get donations,
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to get, again, just to get out to vote, to encourage them. It's one thing for them to say
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when somebody's coming door to door that they're going to vote for a different mayor. It's another
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for them to actually get around to doing it. So that's where, again, you know, these efforts
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could be much better directed. Some people are saying, and I saw a comment around my column,
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I wrote the column, which is my monologue, you know, saying that same sort of thing. Well,
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I support it. And, and, you know, there's, there's nothing being lost in doing this,
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but that's not true. It's energy, it's time. And if it's not going to accomplish the goal,
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it's being utilized poorly, which could have had a better effect. Either way, we could talk about
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that a lot more, and I'm certain we will. I see my guest has popped into the lobby, and I've been
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looking forward to it. I haven't had him on in a while, and we've got a lot to cover. So let's
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welcome back to the show Mr. Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy. Hi, Dan, how you
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doing? I'm doing fine, Corey. Good to talk to you, and thanks for having me here. Oh, I'm always glad
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to have you on. I just like that reminder as we're getting a little grayer and, you know, longer in
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tooth. But there was a time when Liberal members of Parliament were something that could be
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considered sane, and you were of that era. And, you know, maybe we could get back to a balanced
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Parliament again one day. I would still vote Conservative, but perhaps I could respect those
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Liberals over there again. And we could respect Conservatives on the other side. I think those
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days can and will come back, but it requires a lot of people to get back to basics and reality and
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move away from the utopian fantasies we've been entertaining, especially here in Eastern Canada.
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Yeah, well, I love you calling them out on social media on X and other areas as well.
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You say it like it is, but your specialty is energy issues.
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And boy, you know, there's a lot of them going on.
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I just came back from about 25 days down stateside.
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I was traveling through Idaho, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, quite a bit around.
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And just to tie this in up here, something that's interesting, maybe you could help a little with.
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down there I saw the most in the energy producing states I saw the most windmills I saw the most
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solar farms just like when I know I'm in Alberta I see the most windmills and solar farms even
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though there's the abundance of natural resources yet both Texas and Alberta have been stricken by
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energy shortages when push comes to shove how is it that these jurisdictions are the ones that
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seem to be the most vulnerable when when it comes to needed electricity and power when they should
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be the least. Well, it's ironic that you have a country in a region of the world, both Texas and
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the United States, which are the prowess, the flagships of energy reliability and energy
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development, resource and output and exports. And yet both have found themselves over the years,
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Alberta very recently, last month, Texas two, three years ago, when putting all your eggs in
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one renewable basket doesn't necessarily cut the mustard when you put these things to the test.
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And they were tested. In Alberta's case, had it not been for the ability for the province to secure
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natural gas and to a lesser extent coal, a good number of people would have been adversely affected
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minus 40 or more degree temperatures. In the United States, we do know that there were injuries
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and potentially fatalities in Texas, but those areas that were served by natural gas backups
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where wind power was simply not available, not reliable, we saw that they were far more
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And it's become very clear through analysis in the Texas case, I think it was Texas Railroad
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Commission at the time said, you know, without natural gas backup, the idea of windmills
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And I think that's where we're leading today, because I think a lot of the policies promoted by governments on both sides of the border are leading us to really what I consider the net zero collusion course, in which reality is going to finally hit Canadians and Americans over the head that these things are not ready for prime time.
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Well, and it does get dangerous and frustrating. I watched some of the conversation while Alberta was getting hit so hard. That was just as I was kind of heading down south. And, you know, we're worried when it's minus 30 and you get a power failure. I mean, people could be terribly, terribly harmed. But what I'm hearing from the advocates is saying this is an indication on why we need more renewables because we need to bring more power into the grid. Like they double down. They won't face the reality that we still need this conventional energy base.
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Well, look, you have no wind and it's freezing outside.
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They're still not going to work if there's no wind.
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And if you think your economy can be subject to the vagaries of weather and wind and, you know, whether you have enough sun in the winter,
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which, of course, is not the case in northern parts of this country, you're delusional.
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And I think it's pretty clear that we have to be able to call these folks out because after billions of dollars,
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not just in canada but in europe billions of dollars of investments billions of dollars of
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walking away and shutting down nuclear plants shutting down natural gas turning your back on
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your ability to frack your own and provide your own uh you know uh energy you have to really ask
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the question now that these things have failed now that germany is opening up coal plants now
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that britain is going back to opening up the north sea for natural gas now that italy is going to
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libya's doorstep and asking for more oil if if this has been an abject failure and it's very
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clear that they are walking away from net zero in europe as we speak you'll only have to look at
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the another dimension of the protest that's what farmers are doing and most of the european
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nations across a significant swath if we don't recognize what's happened in europe and we
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continue to ignore at our peril that wind and factors such as extreme weather make
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renewables unreliable, then I think we are definitely courting disaster. And it's irresponsible
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for politicians to go out there and say we can do that and replace hydrocarbons. The fact is
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most of these renewables are complementary. They complement the existing menu of energies you have.
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They're not there to substitute or replace. Nothing short of that will, I think, convince people that the law of thermodynamics, and as you said before, physics must apply here. And it's the great corrector in all this, Corey.
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We need to see our legislators and those who are making decisions on behalf of the country to get with the program and realize these mandates, EV mandates, clean energy regulations, carbon taxes, what's the other one?
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the EV availability standard, all of these things are, you know, wonderful, utopic ideas,
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but when subject to reality, the harsh reality of the climate which we live in, they're not ready,
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and they're fundamentally dangerous to our existence in a very cold and very prohibitive
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country. Yeah, well, we've got an ideologically driven government. I mean, they just won't seem
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to face reality. And when it comes to some of the things in trying to force people to convert
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away from conventional energy sources. I see on Black Knocks reporter today, and they're fantastic.
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Of course, they broke with, you know, we saw the carbon tax exemption that the liberals carved out
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for the Maritimes because they realized they were dropping in support over there. But they said,
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this is because we're going to switch everybody to heat pumps, though. We just need to move them
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over. And they brought in this incentive of a grant of up to $15,000 to move to a heat pump.
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But the numbers came out, and this has been almost a year since they brought in those grants.
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No, they won't back off because it is not something that they really care about because no one's holding their feet to the fire as far as finances and scrutiny.
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And you're looking at, look, Cape Breton buried in 100 centimeters of snow.
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Many of those heat pumps do not work in that kind of circumstance.
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I'm not going to dump on people heat pumps, especially if they're, you know, they got them for a reason because they thought it was freer.
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the government's out there but it's irresponsible to say the least to to assume that uh you can uh
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you can put those heat pumps in and uh and have a great life the reality is that don't take my
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word for it no insurance company in this country is going to give you uh coverage if you only have
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a heat pump as a means of keeping your home more warm you have to have an alternative source
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rather than worrying about the alternative rather than trying to be cute and trendy maybe we stick
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with what works continually improve that we've done so in the case of heating we've done so in
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the case of automotive uh efficiencies i mean the internal combustion engine made it with a hybrid
00:23:53.220
made it with uh uh you know taking away real pollutions we did 50 years ago with the uh with
00:23:59.240
the use of uh uh catalysts on on vehicles catalytic converters these are technologies that are game
00:24:05.620
changers but they will continue to allow us to recognize that fossil fuels are going to be here
00:24:10.060
for a very long time, well past our existence for all of us who are here today and born
00:24:14.200
as of this day forward. Oh, yeah. I mean, the Hyundai I drive today, I mean, the mileage it
00:24:18.480
gets compared to the old Cutlass I used to drive around at the end of the 80s. I mean,
00:24:22.080
you can't even compare the two of them anymore, but it still needs gasoline. I'm not getting
00:24:26.540
around that. It's the most efficient means for me. Kind of getting, bringing things back to a
00:24:30.920
little more. I mean, something you've been helpful with too, and a lot of you did in the past though,
00:24:34.060
So in the short game, I mean, we've had very volatile energy prices in Calgary for whatever reason.
00:24:40.560
I guess just last night, gasoline prices went up 12 cents a liter.
00:24:44.760
It pays for people to shop around, though, and watch for these things.
00:24:48.260
I mean, if you saw that coming, perhaps you could have filled the car up yesterday before this hit.
00:24:52.380
What are the reasons for these spikes going on?
00:24:58.880
It's going to go up 10 cents a litre plus, more or less, because I can't determine how much a gas retailer is going to charge as far as their margin is concerned.
00:25:07.280
But I warn people. I also put it up on gaswizard.ca, the site I operate, and no takers.
00:25:13.480
No, certainly none of the mainstream media took interest in it until it actually happened, at which point I got one and you're the second media that's actually called me on it.
00:25:21.420
I suspect that they probably don't want to hear the fact is that we're paying a lot more than we ought to because the federal government has destroyed the, in many respects, scuppered the value of the Canadian dollar.
00:25:33.760
Of course, the carbon tax at 14.31 cents a litre.
00:25:36.840
So between the two of them, that's an extra 30, 35 cents a litre.
00:25:39.620
I don't think a lot of people would be complaining if we're paying a buck a litre.
00:25:44.100
One of the refineries, the biggest one in the U.S. Midwest, the BP winning plant in Indiana went down with a power failure.
00:25:50.620
They didn't have backup, so they relied on the grid.
00:25:54.980
Electricity went down, caused some damage, and that caused a short temporary supply problem, if you will, on the gasoline side.
00:26:04.080
We're still going to see another $0.02 wholesale price increase come tomorrow.
00:26:09.820
That jumped $0.05 a litre, which you'll see at most gas stations, eventually passed on, whether you're in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, or BC's interior.
00:26:19.920
so I mean there's that good sense just to let all you viewers and listeners remember you see Dan
00:26:24.280
told you so so keep an eye on him I mean you can't predict everything you can't stop everything but
00:26:29.360
sometimes you can see that coming down the pipe and maybe you can kind of stock up a little and
00:26:32.980
save a few bucks because budgets are tight right now for most people I mean these are not the best
00:26:37.500
of times and that was something frustrating when I crossed the border into the states as well I mean
00:26:42.300
I was driving through Arizona that you know has next to nothing for for oil and gas resources
00:26:49.600
Yet when I even with the bad Canadian dollar, when I would do the conversion, I was still paying a good 20 to 30 cents a liter less for fuel there than I do in Alberta when I can see an oil pump every time I look to the left or the right.
00:27:01.080
Yeah, look, a couple of things to keep in mind, and that's the big one.
00:27:04.620
Because as a country, we've accepted the blocking of pipelines as policies and frustrating our resources from getting to the market.
00:27:11.400
No one wants to buy Canadian dollars, nothing to trade with.
00:27:16.720
of course we're talking about housing and we know that there's a lot of questions now we're
00:27:20.560
emerging as to how the housing bubble occurred but beyond that the real danger in canada is the
00:27:25.120
fact that uh we don't have a lot of uh interest in our in what we have and therefore currency
00:27:30.160
takes a beating 135 pennies to buy us dollar corey i don't want to just talk about gasoline
00:27:35.280
let's talk about every commodity that we use in this country is priced in us dollars whether it's
00:27:41.360
made here or not so when people go around scratching your head saying oh food prices
00:27:45.520
are up or the cost of housing and cut materials up but you know there's a good reason for that
00:27:50.640
it's because by blocking pipelines and making canada an uninteresting place to invest in
00:27:54.880
particular you have a weak canadian dollar then of course you have a carbon tax on top of that
00:27:59.520
and you have other taxes federal and provincial but that makes up the main difference between
00:28:04.240
ourselves the united states and uh very frustrating and to to talk about it my previous job working a
00:28:09.440
few years in the united states with gas buddy i saw the americans building out their pipelines
00:28:13.680
pushing their their their energy sector under the previous administration while canada sat back and
00:28:19.440
allowed a group of international fanatics to basically hogtie our resources and as a result
00:28:24.560
you and i everybody who's complaining about inflation today have really no one to blame but
00:28:29.600
those who thought it was cool and acceptable there is a cost for these things and if people don't
00:28:33.360
want to smarten up well they're going to wind up with uh having to make some choices about whether
00:28:37.840
it's going to be able to eat or heat be able to afford your mortgage much less your rent
00:28:43.680
Well, I mean, it's going to feel like forever, but eventually somehow Justin Trudeau and his
00:28:49.200
henchman Gilbo will be replaced. Either it'll be a new liberal leader in power or a new government
00:28:55.140
with a new party in power. What will that new administration have to do to try and shore up
00:29:01.340
this trend of just high expenses, even though we're a high resource producer?
00:29:06.120
Well, we have to stop spending in certain areas. I mean, gifting and grifting all of these climate
00:29:11.280
organizations that get 30 50 million bucks as the climate institute the canadian climate institute
00:29:16.160
30 million got 20 million a few years ago they don't raise a lot of money their work is to
00:29:20.560
advocate their stuff which is basically go around to governments tell them how to give them more
00:29:24.240
money print more money and give us more money so that we can go and advocate even more damage to
00:29:28.640
the canadian economy without an iota of change to the so-called climate we have to look at the
00:29:34.720
reality that net zero and all of its outshoots, its policies is likely to lead to significant
00:29:45.440
deterioration in our economic outlook. If we don't address that, and I'm not talking about
00:29:51.200
delaying EV mandates and delaying carbon taxes and delaying the clean fuel standard and delaying
00:29:56.480
a cap on only oil and gas, which we know is discriminatory and a cap on production,
00:30:01.120
we need to look at net zero line it up on the 30 yard line and punt it right through the end zone
00:30:07.280
because we don't do it then Canadians are going to have to make a decision about the quality of
00:30:11.040
life that they want if anybody believes for a moment that we can do without oil and gas
00:30:14.780
physically uh and and hydrocarbons good luck with that there isn't a single thing that we use or
00:30:20.400
consume that doesn't have a component of that within it and if we think we can do without 20
00:30:24.460
to 30 billion bucks in revenues for the federal provincial and municipal governments yes the
00:30:29.500
municipal governments cash in on that as well you're dreaming technicolor and the last thing
00:30:33.600
people like that should be is in politics they shouldn't be in the house of commons we need
00:30:37.460
reality back into politics and i'm hoping that at least one leader seems to be showing promise in
00:30:42.300
that area i still have to prod him but i think paul here probably i will make an excellent prime
00:30:46.200
minister but i can tell you to undo the damage that's been done by uh by the cautery of fanatics
00:30:51.620
who've been in there for a long time won't uh won't happen overnight no it is going to take
00:30:55.960
some time. Well, all we can do is keep pushing and studying and trying to inform people and hope
00:31:01.480
we can turn that tide. And that's what you've been doing a lot of. So before I let you go,
00:31:05.400
where can people find what you've been doing, Dan, and what you put out there?
00:31:09.220
Yeah, the work that I'm doing can always be found at affordableenergy.ca. That's really
00:31:14.380
the best place to sign up if you can. And I appreciate you asking that. As for gas price
00:31:18.600
predictions, gas price wizard. And of course, if you have some opinions, I don't mind sharing
00:31:22.920
them with UNX, and we may agree or disagree, as long as, of course, you're prepared to tell me
00:31:27.400
who you are, you're not a troll, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but for those out there
00:31:31.940
who want to get in a bit of a battle, no problem, I'll do it, up to a point. Excellent, well, I
00:31:36.900
appreciate the work you do, Dan, and I appreciate you coming on to talk to us again, keep up the
00:31:41.760
good work, and I hope we get to talk again soon. My pleasure, looking forward to that, Corey, take
00:31:45.700
care. Great, thanks, Dan. So, yeah, this is Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy, and
00:31:50.120
said, he's a great resource online and he likes to debate. He's fun on X. It's not necessarily
00:31:55.900
big, deep policy discussions on there, but you can interact and cover some ground. I mean,
00:32:01.100
it's not necessarily a waste when you're on there. So something we talked about, and it's a column
00:32:08.300
I'm going to have coming out a little later in this week. I talked about observational things
00:32:11.900
I see, stuff I saw when I was traveling. And when Dan sort of touched on it, he talked about how
00:32:18.900
the Americans have developed their oil. They've expanded it. While we're in Canada, we're kicking
00:32:24.160
ourselves in the knackers collectively and shutting in our resources, which costs us on
00:32:29.540
every level. It costs on resources for governments at every level. And it costs economically.
00:32:36.520
And the number I looked up just to double check. So when you look at the, and there's a lot of
00:32:40.260
things that contribute to that, but a real measure of a national wealth is the GDP per capita,
00:32:47.140
gross domestic product per capita. You know, how much product, how much activity, what is happening
00:32:51.800
economically per person in that country. And in the United States, the GDP per capita is over $70,000
00:33:00.240
American. It doesn't mean the average income is that. It just means that much, you know, economic
00:33:04.260
generation. In Canada, that number is $52,000 per person American. Way lower, considerably lower.
00:33:14.640
Meanwhile, you can buy a big fine house in an economic powerhouse city like Houston for $200,000 or $300,000.
00:33:24.160
In Canada, in any major city, you can't get anything under $600,000.
00:33:29.060
Or if you're going to be in Toronto or Vancouver, you're looking over a million.
00:33:31.700
So you're getting less money with more expensive consumer products.
00:33:37.820
We're paying more for the fuel, but we have less in our pockets to do so.
00:33:43.880
The difference is just so stark and it's a difference in attitude. It's a difference
00:33:47.720
in culture. And what I wrote about was what I saw. I mean, I put on 4,000 miles. I can still use
00:33:55.140
miles with Jane while we traveled in the fifth wheel. I like driving. I do my long road trips.
00:34:00.280
It's my old oil field past. I don't mind doing it. And I did a lot of American work in the past.
00:34:04.660
And we went all the way down through Northern Idaho and then Utah and Arizona, New Mexico,
00:34:09.660
Texas, all the way back up to Colorado. We covered 10 states in the last few weeks.
00:34:15.620
And we're mostly on interstate highways. The interstate system, I just see it as a symbol
00:34:21.220
of efficient, can-do capitalism on the part, even though it's CCU, we're talking capitalism,
00:34:29.280
we're talking government-built infrastructure, but it's government-built infrastructure
00:34:33.420
to facilitate the trade of goods and services and the movement of private individual people.
00:34:42.160
So Eisenhower had a lot of foresight. I'll give them that post-World War II. They had a lot of
00:34:46.100
soldiers. They needed something to do. They built that system throughout the United States. And it's
00:34:50.620
amazing. I mean, you've got divided highway where you can go as fast as 85 miles an hour in some
00:34:55.580
areas. I couldn't with the fifth wheel, but I mean, if you had a car, you could. It's the rest
00:35:00.300
rest stops, you know, again, you drive to Alberta, you go to a rest drop, it's a garbage can on the
00:35:04.860
side of the highway where four people can park. I went to a rest stop in New Mexico and it was a
00:35:09.520
tourist destination almost with modern sculptures, heated washrooms, spotless, lots of parking,
00:35:16.200
a dog park, you name it. And it's typical because they want to encourage people to travel. They want
00:35:22.860
to encourage and make it easy and cost effective to move around that country. So those interstates
00:35:28.420
crisscross the country all over the place. You don't hit stoplights. I came in from the south
00:35:33.140
on I-15, finally back into Alberta at Coots. And the difference was just stark. I'm still on a
00:35:40.680
divided highway, but then I go into Lethbridge and I got a bunch of traffic lights and I'm going 50
00:35:43.800
kilometers an hour and the truckers are all backed up. There's no truck stocks, no gas stations. It's
00:35:47.600
garbage. And it's like that everywhere. But that's because we don't value commerce. We don't look at
00:35:54.940
that. We don't look at that long-term as to why we should be developing our country. A lot of goods
00:36:00.140
and services, goods anyways, are transported. Truckers actually travel on the interstate
00:36:05.060
south of the border to get across the continent. You know, it could be a Canadian delivery,
00:36:08.760
could hit Vancouver, go south, drive through the states, and then come back up and deliver in
00:36:12.600
Toronto because it's not worth driving that crappy Trans-Canada highway. And it is crappy, guys,
00:36:17.700
when you compare it to an American interstate. There's some nice stretches of the highway,
00:36:20.560
but you're still get stuck in Regina, driving through a business district and go slowing down
00:36:26.520
and stopping. It doesn't have those restaurants. It doesn't have the truck stops. I mean,
00:36:29.800
there was a truck stop we hit in Wyoming that it was like a resort. It had leather chairs with a
00:36:36.920
fireplace where you could sit and drink your coffee. And there were like five different
00:36:40.720
businesses serving food and coffee in this stop. The Americans just have a much better attitude
00:36:47.720
with these things. In Canada, we seem to love mediocrity. Oh, we wouldn't want to do that.
00:36:52.660
We wouldn't want to divide it. Then more people would drive. Yes. You know what they would drive
00:36:56.460
besides their vehicles? They would drive the economy. And we would get tourists, more tourists
00:37:01.720
because people don't want to endure the slow stop and start expensive travel that we have right now.
00:37:07.220
But if it was nice and smooth like that, yeah, they'd be more inclined to do it. More truckers
00:37:10.920
would be inclined to stay up here. The goods and services would move faster. They would burn
00:37:15.020
less fuel. Your costs of those goods and services would go down. We can't do that here. That's not
00:37:21.940
the Canadian way. We spend our money instead on, you know, social justice initiatives and
00:37:27.260
giving money to other countries and things like that. LC saying no more foreigners, you know,
00:37:32.520
that's getting a little too broad. I understand it. So we do have another issue that's going on
00:37:36.980
in Canada. It's a big one and not enough people are talking about, but some are starting. We are
00:37:40.400
bringing in way too many immigrants. Now, going to zero, that's just stupid. If you want to castrate
1.00
00:37:45.840
the economy and really harm Canada, drop immigration to zero. That's not reasonable,
00:37:52.980
it's not smart, and it's not a good idea. But we also don't want to be bringing in over a million
00:37:58.440
people a year the way we are as it is. As, you know, said, yes, you know, way too many. We've
00:38:04.060
got to get it down to a reasonable level. When you get back to that GDP per capita I was talking
00:38:08.280
about. That's part of why we are falling in that. Even though the Americans, again, they've got a
00:38:13.160
lot of challenges. It's not a perfect country by any means. And they've got masses of illegal
1.00
00:38:17.400
immigrants coming, of course, across the Mexican border. But even then, their GDP per capita is
00:38:22.440
far outpacing ours. And as we bring more people in, we split the resources we have among more
00:38:29.740
people. I mean, and they contribute. Immigrants contribute. They work. They come in. They bring
00:38:34.480
funds with them. They aren't all coming in broke. They bring in education. They bring in skilled
00:38:38.840
labor. It's good for the country, but you can only bring them in at a speed with which you can absorb
00:38:43.860
and integrate properly. And we're not doing that. We've gone beyond that. We don't have enough
00:38:48.460
healthcare access right now. We don't have enough housing, of course, right now. And finally,
00:38:54.620
some people are just facing that reality to start talking about at least tapping the brakes. We're
00:38:59.540
not talking about ending immigration or coming down on those who are coming here. Hey, good for
1.00
00:39:04.260
them. I appreciate it. They're coming here to work, and they're doing us a lot of good, but we've got
00:39:09.600
to get the numbers into reality, and reality just doesn't seem to be a priority of this government.
00:39:14.160
It just has not been, and that's what Dan was talking about. And it's going to take, even if
00:39:18.460
we change the government, and even if Polyev turns out to be as good as we all hope he is,
00:39:22.340
it's going to take him some time to undo the terrible damage that years of this ideologically
00:39:27.780
driven government have done. And yeah, I mean, Polyev, you know, speaking of watching him
00:39:33.440
battling with the media. Again, today they're screaming at him and getting on his case because
00:39:37.660
yeah, he was being a bit belligerent and answering their questions with questions because of course
00:39:41.240
they're always trying to play gotcha with him. The legacy media outlets are activist media outlets
00:39:46.320
because they're all beholden on government dollars. Trudeau bought the media. Let's just face it.
00:39:52.120
They're all so subsidy dependent that they want to do the bidding of the prime minister so they
00:40:00.120
can keep getting those dollars, even if unconsciously. So they're on Polyev's case.
00:40:05.100
It's funny, when they get upset with Polyev because he'll eat an apple when somebody's
00:40:09.440
trying a loaded, stupid question at him, or he'll call out at a reporter when they throw
00:40:13.840
a loaded, stupid question at him, and they do all the time. Do they ever call out Justin
00:40:18.960
when he feeds them word salad? When they ask a direct question and he gives platitudes?
00:40:25.680
When the prime minister is asked about something straightforward that just needed a yes or no,
00:40:29.740
and he answers with something that isn't even related to what they ask,
00:40:32.760
but they don't get on his case like they do with Polly F.
00:40:37.860
Talk about the media, if it's going to take on some role,
00:40:40.640
some ideological role as reporters, not necessarily take on a bias,
00:40:45.480
but a mandate to feel like you're holding the government
00:40:50.640
That's what a lot of reporters pride themselves.
00:40:53.480
I'm holding these public officials accountable.
00:40:57.560
Well, right now, they seem to be all focused on holding the official opposition accountable
00:41:01.540
and giving a pass to the Prime Minister Dingbat,
00:41:06.900
who has a lot of things he needs to be held accountable for.
00:41:10.020
Yesterday, he only made it 11 minutes in the House of Commons
00:41:13.180
before he scrambled out of there fast as hell
0.78
00:41:15.400
because the questions were getting too hot for him.
00:41:18.120
Because he can't think on his feet. We know that.
00:41:20.000
He's not exactly a luminary, guys. He's got nice hair.
00:41:24.240
So the media should try and hold him accountable.
00:41:29.020
And why did he go running, hightailing out of the parliament?
00:41:33.140
Well, because the questions were coming around about, yes, we're getting all the way back
00:41:36.000
to last fall's brilliant, international, embarrassing Canadian issue where those pecker
0.99
00:41:41.300
heads brought a literal Nazi, a literal Nazi.
0.75
00:41:44.360
Everybody calls everybody a Nazi all the time all over the place.
00:41:46.520
No, this was a guy who served in the Waffen-SS with Ukraine and welcomed him to the House
00:41:52.480
of Commons applauded him, an SS member. And then they threw the speaker under the bus when it was
0.93
00:41:59.640
discovered. You know, of course, because we look like fools. So the speaker lost his job. He's out.
00:42:06.180
But now the news just broke. Well, no. Actually, it was the prime minister's office was very tied
00:42:12.640
into this whole thing. Justin doesn't want to answer those questions. And you know what? No,
00:42:18.780
I doubt Trudeau himself invited that Nazi, though who knows, who knows if he did.
00:42:24.280
The thing is, I could give him the credit of the ignorance because we know, again, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
00:42:30.900
Unless World War II was laid out in a pop-up coloring book, he wouldn't have the intellectual depth and knowledge of history to know that if somebody was fighting in the war in Ukraine in that time period against the Soviets,
00:43:01.200
Even if he was ignorant of what the office did,
00:43:18.220
and he was never all out with it to start with.
00:43:22.680
Again, well, who's paying a lot of their bills, right?
00:43:34.840
Attorney General Arif Varani apologized, I guess,
00:43:38.680
because he shouted things in the House of Commons with some swears.
00:43:44.560
I think he called Polly have an effing tool.
1.00
00:43:46.640
you know i don't know i i it's unparliamentary parliamentarian it's it's it's not dignified
00:43:55.220
it's not a good uh example of presenting yourself in the in a legislature or house of commons
00:44:00.440
that's not the end of the world either this stuff's been going on you know people always
00:44:04.840
talk about oh this is the worst ever oh it's so adversarial guys it's always been that way
00:44:09.460
always read your history look at even some of the exchanges from sir john a mcdonald uh you know you
00:44:14.880
can look up some of those things. He was drunk half the time, not saying that we should always
00:44:18.980
give a pass to vulgarity and things like that. He's not doing himself any favors this minister
00:44:23.700
when he did that, and he had to apologize. But I mean, I can't get on a high horse. Anybody who
00:44:27.920
reads my Twitter feed knows that I'm far from avoiding expletives to drive my points home on
00:44:34.300
a regular basis. This isn't the biggest story of the year, but it's still worth noting and I guess
00:44:38.280
someone's laughing about in a sense. But it's, you know, just another thing going on. If you
00:44:46.680
remember back when Ralph Klein was in office in Alberta, the parliament was full of fireworks all
00:44:52.700
the time. And it was back when Kretchen and Mulroney were going to. It was never civil.
00:44:57.200
That's why these places, I mean, it's an adversarial environment. They're facing each
00:45:00.980
other. They're across from each other. They get lathered and worked up. And the irony is,
00:45:04.680
if you actually get to one of these legislatures, after all that performance and theater,
00:45:08.280
they'll often share the same tables at the cafeteria and chat with each other.
00:45:11.760
Often they are also at each other's throats as much as it would sound like,
00:45:15.280
but it's not the biggest, you know, affair of the year.
00:45:20.380
And yeah, finally, you know, speaking of capitalism,
00:45:22.740
I said that guy walking around Calgary at a casino giving out samples of his cocaine.
00:45:25.820
You know what, funny, I just started watching a series, I think it was Griselda,
00:45:28.960
talk, you know, and it shows it's about a Coke dealer way back in the late 70s, early 80s,
00:45:34.060
who was starting to break into the market of the rich by getting,
00:45:36.520
giving them all free, free Coke, getting them to learn to like it and then becoming good customers
00:45:40.420
later. I'm wondering if that's what happened to inspire this dingbat. Uh, don't, uh, get too wound
00:45:45.580
up and watching Netflix. Hammerhead, uh, it's still illegal to distribute cocaine. And, uh,
00:45:51.560
when you're giving it out for free, people will catch up and get you, but whatever,
00:45:54.720
at least, you know, criminals don't tend to be the smartest ones. That's why they end up getting
00:45:59.660
elected office instead. All right. Well, that's what I've got for this week, guys. We covered a
00:46:04.860
bit of ground, lots of stuff breaking, lots of stuff going on. Be sure to follow us on those
00:46:09.080
channels. You know, do all the like and follow, share us. We can beat the legacy media guys.
00:46:13.040
We can outperform them. So I appreciate your support in doing that. You know, follow me on
00:46:17.840
xCoryBMorgan. You can interact with me there. Watch the pipeline. That's going to be coming
00:46:23.080
out tonight with a few of us breaking down some more of those issues and be sure to go to the
00:46:26.780
westernstandard.news to get all your news as it's breaking. Thank you very much for joining me. I'm
00:46:31.620
happy to be back from my vacation, and I will see you all again next week at this time.
00:46:37.220
Canadian Shooting Sports Association, without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken
00:46:41.920
long, long ago. These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms
00:46:48.760
regulations and legislation in Canada, and more importantly, educating the public about how we
00:46:54.740
keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. We've become a member, it's absolutely worth every penny.