Mayor Yodi Gondek boycotted a menorah lighting in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Why did she boycott the event? And why did she do so in the first place? We talk about that and much more on this episode of the Corey Morgan Show.
00:00:29.980Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show. I am indeed Corey Morgan. This is my weekly opportunity to bend your ear, go on about some issues, talk to some guests, have some news check-ins, all that good stuff. So thanks for tuning in and joining us all today. For you guys, if you are joining live, by all means, use the comments, scroll. That's what it's there for. Talk with each other, send comments my ways, comments to each other. It's all good.
00:00:59.280Just try to keep things civil. I see one just to start out with Jordan Luenz, and he's commenting, and it's about my monologue that's going to be coming up saying, doesn't fault Gondek for not coming to the menorah lighting, doesn't think religious ceremonies should be held at City Hall, period.
00:01:12.500Now, I can agree with that. If there were no religious ceremonies being held at City Hall, but there are religious ceremonies for Christians, for Muslims, for Sikhs, all sorts of other people. The only one the mayor has a problem with is the Jews. So that's where it becomes a problem.
00:01:29.200If they truly make it secular for everybody, hey, then it's not a problem. But as it stands, when the mayor is going to hit some of them, then you hit all of them or none of them.
00:01:38.960Either way, I'll get into that in a moment, as I do my opening monologue here in a bit. But still, I appreciate the comment. I mean, there's different points of view, and that's quite what we're all about to a degree, anyway.
00:01:49.220So I've got Elise Mills coming on. She's been on before, political commentator, strategist, and we're going to talk kind of about a year that was federally in politics and what we got to look forward to in politics, laws to look forward to, I imagine, in things.
00:02:01.880And of course, we'll have our news check-ins with Dave in a moment and some other things as well.
00:02:05.920But let me get going then to talk more about what I was talking about with the comments and talking about mayors.
00:02:11.020Is mayors, you know, they love to dodge responsibility for policies because they always remind people, hey, I only represent one vote on council.
00:02:18.260You know, policy's bad, yeah, I know, but I'm only one of a bunch. That's fair enough.
00:02:22.480But that being the case, what is the special role of a mayor?
00:02:26.380Well, the role of being a mayor is to speak for the city or town represented. They're the representative of the people.
00:02:32.560While a mayor is political by nature, of course, they're elected there and they're going to hold political views.
00:02:37.020They're expected to set the personal politics aside when they're at functions representing constituents.
00:02:43.640Calgary Mayor Yodi Gondek threw all that out the window when she allowed her anti-Semitic views to dominate her actions and boycotted a menorah lighting in Calgary.
00:02:53.820Now, the lighting of the menorah has been a tradition in Calgary City Hall for 35 years.
00:02:59.100Mayors of multiple faiths have diligently attended and respectfully taken part in the joyous Jewish tradition of celebrating light over darkness,
00:03:06.860with the lighting of a menorah, kicks off the observance of Hanukkah, and offers a bonding event for Jews and non-Jews alike.
00:03:14.920But Gondek went and cast darkness over the tradition as she misrepresented what it was about and then boycotted it as publicly as she could.
00:03:22.240She brought shame to the office of mayor and by extension to the city of Calgary.
00:03:27.200Gondek's snub of Calgary's Jewish citizens had the opposite effect she hoped for, though.
00:03:31.520The event enjoyed record attendance as the City Hall atrium was packed and overflowed into the hallways of the building.
00:03:38.960The only complaint I have of the event, I went there myself, was how the uncomfortable heat was generated with a room jammed with so many people.
00:03:45.440And for those who've never attended one, just imagine a menorah lighting is something like a Christmas concert.
00:03:50.020Most, you know, Canadians have been to one of those.
00:03:51.820Yeah, there's a bit of a religious element.
00:03:53.140Most of the affair is focused on community bonding and having a good time.
00:03:57.060There was music, dancing, food, and children's choirs sang traditional songs.
00:04:02.360It wasn't politicized and it certainly wasn't a rally or a hateful event.
00:04:07.060So, why did Gondek go out of her way to discredit herself and embarrass the entire city of Calgary with her attack on the event?
00:04:14.640Well, there was a poster that came out days before the event and it had the words,
00:04:18.140Yes, Jews were supporting their traditional homeland of thousands of years.
00:04:25.520Neither the poster or the event spoke of supporting the war or supporting the government of Israel.
00:05:57.840Sadly, it's going to be two years before Calgarians can do anything about that.
00:06:01.620The day after the menorah lighting, Gondek went on the Calgary radio show.
00:06:04.380And while she was drawing condemnation and ire across the entire country over this by now, rather than just showing a bit of contrition or even just going to carpet, she doubled down.
00:06:13.660She implied those sneaky Jews had pulled the wool over her eyes with the issuing of that poster.
00:06:18.420The poster was issued well before Gondek's boycott.
00:06:21.820And it was the same notion as nature as posters from years gone by.
00:06:26.000Gondek has been roundly called out by several columnists and others for spreading the old anti-Semitic trope about these sneaky Jews.
00:06:33.080She remains defiant, though, and unapologetic despite having offended Calgary's entire Jewish community and, of course, many people outside of the community during what are very challenging times.
00:06:42.400All Gondek would have had to have done is show up, smile, say some nice words, and move on.
00:06:49.160But her loathing of the Jewish community just wouldn't let her.
00:06:52.180Jews represent less than 2% of Canada's population, yet nearly 70% of the reported hate crimes in Canada are against Jews.
00:06:59.180Jews, as due to the sort of divisive, hateful leadership shown by people such as Jodi Gondek, along with the extreme union leaders and academics that have been out there spreading their garbage.
00:07:09.360There's only one way to hold Gondek accountable, though.
00:07:13.000She has to be fired in the next election, and it has to be done decisively.
00:07:17.960Calgarians are terribly apathetic when it comes to civic elections, and the price of that indifference presents itself in mayors like Gondek.
00:08:28.820We've had a really busy morning, as usual, Corey, here in the newsroom, leading off with a disturbing case of road rage yesterday in Calgary.
00:08:39.060Two vehicles, and their drivers got into it after a collision, a knife was branded, and then in the community of Temple, one driver pulled ahead, got out, kicked the vehicle as it was going by.
00:08:54.420That driver stopped his vehicle, and then reversed into the initial driver, and crushed him against a tree, killing him.
00:09:00.860So, that guy is now charged with manslaughter.
00:09:06.100A sad story out of Northern Alberta, where Imperial has accidentally bulldozed a hibernating bear, and they were clearing some area, and the bear unfortunately had to be euthanized.
00:09:20.260Cop 28 wrapped up this morning over in Dubai.
00:09:24.980Hi, Corey, I know you've been glued to all the coverage out of there.
00:09:29.300Our own Stephen Gilbeau was absolutely giddy with the final results, which 200 nations came out and said they were going to phase out fossil fuel, and he says Canada was right there at the leading edge.
00:09:43.820I know you don't drink, Corey, but we have an interesting new alcohol on the market, courtesy of Doritos.
00:09:51.800They are bringing out a cheese-flavored liqueur, and I think tasting something like that may make me join you on the wagon.
00:10:00.540I was about to say, that doesn't make me miss drinking anymore, that's for sure.
00:10:05.820Our columnist, Dave Makachuk, is saying that the Blue Jays probably dodged a bullet by not getting wonder baseball player Otani to sign.
00:10:17.920In fact, he went to the Dodgers for a billion dollars Canadian to play baseball, but Makachuk's a Tigers fan, so we'll take what he says with a grain of salt.
00:10:28.440Our opinion editor, Nigel, has got another edition of his Nigel Notebook, leading off with some liberals, some fairly high-profile liberals, including former Cabinet Minister Marco Mendocino.
00:10:43.300You remember he used to be the Minister of Lies, turning sort of against Trudeau when Trudeau sided with some countries like Russia and Iran to vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.
00:11:00.000A guy in BC got sentenced to 15 years for a multi-million dollar smuggling operation, but he has fled to India, so now there's a warrant out for him.
00:11:10.060And the Wet'suwet'en, you remember them from a while ago, Corey, when they were blocking railroad tracks?
00:11:16.300They've come out in favor today of Palestine, saying they stand in solidarity with them.
00:13:00.420Just this is when I like to remind everybody all the reason we have that many stories and that Dave Naylor can sit in there and coordinate all those hard work.
00:13:07.040And reporters is because you guys have subscribed.
00:13:09.660So if you haven't subscribed yet, get on there.
00:15:47.920Well, I like to be nice before I get nasty, you know.
00:15:49.840So we'll see if I agree with what you got to say today before I get.
00:15:54.340Well, you gave me quite a task, Corey, because it was the year that everything erupted.
00:15:59.980Everything that domestically we had been pushing to the side or the Trudeau government hadn't addressed erupted.
00:16:08.840It's like Canadians woke up from a long slumber.
00:16:13.060And, you know, there were a lot of things that happened that shielded the prime minister and his government from any accountability.
00:16:22.720I mean, there was this massive eclipse of Trump arriving on the stage in that sort of bombastic way that shook up the global order of things, the politeness.
00:16:33.680But then came the pandemic and the variations of that and then the interprovincial differentiations of where we were closing, where we were staying open.
00:16:44.040And then there was absolute chaos, I think, with the federal government in regards to vaccine rollout, what we had for PPE.
00:16:51.460And people were just frightened and scared.
00:16:54.460And they were scared and frightened for many different reasons, including, you know, how they were going to raise their kids and still continue to earn a living.
00:17:04.060So it gave the prime minister a political shield like no other leader has ever received before.
00:17:10.680And it blinded or eclipsed us or as Canadians, it eclipsed Canadians to the reality where it blocked them from the reality of some of the decisions that Mr. Trudeau had made.
00:17:22.460It also blocked him from being accountable to any of the scandals that he was carrying forward.
00:17:27.600And everybody was just sort of focused in on themselves and what they were doing and how they were going to get through.
00:19:08.820Foreign investors are, you know, hesitant to get involved with it.
00:19:15.600It's been proven to them that it's difficult to get the job done in Canada, specifically in telecommunications, banking, oil and gas, even clean tech, fintech and other technologies, as maybe Google and some of the other groups have realized.
00:19:31.220It's a bit predatory out there and they, this government sees these, you know, industrial based industries or commercial industries as money grabs.
00:19:40.500And there's always the shifting pillars around the policy.
00:19:45.220What was good on a Friday may not be great or the same thing on a Tuesday.
00:19:49.200And that really has affected foreign investors' confidence.
00:19:53.260And there's a sentiment out there that Canada can't be trusted to follow through on its swing.
00:19:59.540So that's the main chunk of my first point, Corey.
00:20:04.040And I'm sure, and I read your tweets all the time, every day.
00:20:08.600I look for them and I know that you've spoken about this.
00:21:52.640But I am really concerned about productivity because productivity leads to that GDP, leads to the foreign investment, and leads to good-paying jobs.
00:22:01.220And everybody's talking about how there's all these jobs.
00:22:03.680Let's take a look at what these jobs really are.
00:22:07.420A lot of them are gig jobs, part-time jobs.
00:22:09.780There's lots of jobs with the government.
00:22:11.280But you want to be looking at where the economy is growing.
00:22:33.600This gets me in when we talk about spending.
00:22:36.340I think the next top story, and I'd like to shed a lot of light on this, is national defense.
00:22:42.020This, three months ago, the prime minister announced that he'd be cutting a billion dollars from national defense, a billion dollars that he had committed to.
00:22:50.060This is separate to the discussion with world leaders.
00:22:55.860Specifically, it was something that former President Trump brought up, which was making Canada increase its spend in military to 2% of the GDP.
00:23:04.920Well, that's difficult when Canada's GDP is dropping like a stone.
00:23:09.500But this is down to some of the basic necessities, what I call the bricks and mortar, the infrastructure, what keeps our soldiers and military men and women safe.
00:23:20.060And what really concerns me about this is that there hasn't been an overarching military strategy that's the equivalent of where the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., and surprisingly, places like, you know, Holland and Sweden, who surprisingly are leaders in military AI and new technologies.
00:23:45.800So we are not looking forward like our allies, and we're not coming anywhere close to being a good ally and partner to the United States.
00:23:56.060And as you know, world order has changed, and it's going to get a lot scarier out there.
00:24:04.420And I'm very concerned about the men and women of our military, and it's absolutely frightening to see what's going on.
00:24:10.620So that, to me, for me personally, was a big story that didn't get enough attention.
00:24:16.480And I understand why Canadians are having a hard time balancing that grocery bill and, you know, putting, you know, fuel in the car, especially if you're in British Columbia, where you have three fuel taxes, two carbon and one fuel tax.
00:24:29.660So it would, I understand that these issues may not be top of mind, but they should be foreign policy, I think, will play a big part in the upcoming election as it relates to are we prepared as a country.
00:24:41.820Well, and getting on to all of that, I mean, I predicted, actually, I thought Trudeau was going to pack it in by the end of the year.
00:25:12.340They managed to make some amazing comebacks sometimes.
00:25:15.500What have we got to look forward to in the coming year?
00:25:18.220I mean, from the economic and the political point of view.
00:25:20.600Well, I think, you know, much like cats, liberals have nine lives.
00:25:24.880And what conservatives need to understand is, and this may not be, you know, what they want to hear, but they come in to, you know, to do cleanup on aisle six.
00:25:33.120When the country has gone pear-shaped and the money is being squandered and people are scared and unsure, conservative governments come in.
00:25:41.000And they come in more frequently than they did, say, you know, 20, 30 years ago.
00:25:45.880I think we should, I saw those polls today, Corey.
00:25:49.520I don't buy it because what's brewing on the front benches of the liberals today is a division in the caucus over the UN vote.
00:25:57.480And I think that's probably the beginning of a larger fissure.
00:26:00.720I think there's lots of frustration on those liberal benches.
00:26:04.400I think there's blue liberals over there that we might consider to be what we used to call progressive conservatives that have watched some terrible fiscal and monetary policy or lack thereof float by.
00:26:15.720There's the scandals around the green slush fund.
00:26:18.760We're watching those committee hearings over the last week.
00:26:24.860There's still many, many scandals with the Trudeau government in regards to foreign interference.
00:26:29.060And, you know, there's many great reporters like with the Western Standard and Sam Cooper who have done an incredible job on this.
00:26:38.240And we wouldn't know half of it, but it's very obvious that Trudeau is up to his neck in a lot of this.
00:26:43.800And I think, you know, you look at an Anthony house father or you look at Medellino or any of those guys, they're very vocal today and they're none too pleased.
00:26:52.540No, and yeah, Cooper has done a fantastic job.
00:26:58.320And he's done such a good job before and then he kind of got unsurprisingly, I guess, punted from his role in legacy media, but he's just carried on and resurfaced.
00:27:08.120I can't suggest, you know, strongly suggest enough to people to get out and seek his things out.
00:27:13.360I think viewers of your show need to investigate as to why he was punted from his job.
00:27:19.720I think that pretty much tells the foreign interference story that really rooted itself and grew over the last 25 to 30 years in Vancouver.
00:27:28.420Vancouver's ground zero for why this country looks the way it does and why Canadians are house poor, why Canadians are homeless, why middle class Canadians are sleeping in their car.
00:27:43.520And quite frankly, I don't understand how we're not having, you know, committee hearings or, you know, any hearings in regards to the responsibility here.
00:27:52.840If this was the United States, you think you'd get away with this?
00:28:30.420We're not dining on filet mignon, I wish we were, but we're getting all right anyways.
00:28:37.280So just quickly before we kind of wrap up, the long, long, long awaited, you know, inquiry into the Chinese foreign interference thing is kind of going to get underway in the new year.
00:28:49.660Do you think we're going to see much out of this or is this just going to be another kind of whitewash dragging it out through a bunch of bland testimony?
00:28:55.040Well, I think the Trudeau government has demonstrated what it's capable of, which is a fulsome, you know, response and in trying to bob and weave around this.
00:29:07.000I mean, it's procedural gymnastics that's gone over there.
00:29:10.540You know, we couldn't even get the prime minister, any staff from the prime minister's office.
00:29:17.180We can't hear from the prime minister.
00:29:19.740But the evidence really demonstrates that he was very aware of it.
00:29:23.660He was informed that this was taking place.
00:29:26.260Now, foreign interference, we just should highlight.
00:29:28.360What I referred to in the housing market in British Columbia and in our politics in B.C., we were warned about it here much, much earlier than that, as of 2009.
00:29:41.820And the national media said, no, it's Russia.
00:29:44.920And poor Richard Fadden, the former director of CISA, said, no, it's actually China.
00:29:49.180And so B.C., what happened here is a virus that has spread, which is not no longer just a Chinese problem.
00:30:01.940But foreign interference and money laundering are connected not just to our democracy, but our financial freedoms, our personal freedoms, our ability to own a home.
00:30:12.700It's all in there, and that's why I'm saying there's so many tentacles, as Sam Cooper has done a brilliant job sort of slicing it out and saying, hey, this happened so that this could happen.
00:30:25.320And the political interference is not just to mess with our democracy.
00:30:28.700It is to mess with our economy, and it's made Canadians poor.
00:30:34.060It's put us at a huge disadvantage in our freedoms and our economic freedoms.
00:30:39.180Well, thanks to Sam's work, and hopefully with the inquiry, we get some more information and resolution and start to block some of these holes, because it's just been, it's a giant spider web.
00:30:48.320We'll have to come on and talk about that just all by itself.
00:30:50.600It has to be an RCMP investigation, like Folsom, in a way that you would see, you've seen what the FBI and CIA have done in regards to India and the states.
00:30:59.820I mean, our responses are not comparable to what the UK and the United States does.
00:31:04.880So I just want to say that because I'm incredibly disappointed by the country.
00:33:13.880This is just more crap and politically correct subterfuge when we've been warned that this person's been released and they feel this person's going to re-offend this man.
00:33:24.300And this man was also released in 2019 and re-offended and got put back in jail and released in 2020 and re-offended and got put back in jail.
00:34:08.240The other thing they won't talk about, the police don't talk about with their release.
00:34:11.640But as you can see from the picture, it is a man of First Nations origin.
00:34:15.280I'm not saying that every First Nations person is a pervert, not by any means, but it's another descriptor that is important when you're watching out for somebody.
00:34:24.140It's not saying watch out for every First Nations person, but it helps you when looking out and watching out and making sure this pervert doesn't get near your kids.
00:34:33.220Unfortunately, unfortunately, he's going to do it again.
00:34:39.200I don't know who the poor victim or victims are going to be, but this is where the political correct, the woke, the crazed garbage, this gender identity crap crosses a different line.
00:36:19.960Not when it's self-administered, not when it's bought in the street, or even when it comes from a dispensary.
00:36:25.320They're street drugs, and they're abused, and they're dangerous.
00:36:28.460But this particular fentanyl, I guess, now, it's going around Swift Current and Moose Jaw, is even worse, because apparently it doesn't even respond to naloxone, which has been very effective on pulling people out of an overdose.
00:36:39.180It doesn't always save them, but has a better chance of it.
00:36:41.960And just a heads up, guys, this is going around now.
00:36:45.380Again, this kind of puts a bit of lie, too, to the safe supply, the enablist crowd, and those people and such that, you know, you're playing whack-a-mole here, guys.
00:37:46.120At a local hardware store, there's a shed, you know, a display shed.
00:37:52.740You know, if you were going to build a shed in your yard or whatever, you see them all in the parking lots of those stores.
00:37:56.820It turns out a number of homeless people have been living in that shed for quite a while, actually, already.
00:38:01.000That's one of the things, too, is the company, of course, I'm just going to guess, but they look the other way because they just don't want the public relations grief of evicting them.
00:38:38.420And when they were zonked out on that, whatever they had for heating in there, whether it was candles or a propane stove, or maybe it was just a lighter, they were using to light their pipe, and they dropped it on the floor when they gnawed it out.
00:39:17.340You see, we got this, again, the enablers, they just don't want to admit the problems with addiction and the problems with kicking everybody out of our mental health institutions as well.
00:39:27.880Well, they try to say the people around the street because we don't have enough houses.
00:39:31.480And it's true, we don't have enough houses.
00:39:33.900But seriously, seriously, when you see the one zoned out, nodding off at a bus stop, do you think that person's ready for a home, a regular home yet?
00:39:42.480The reason the person's like that was because they couldn't find an apartment somewhere?
00:40:15.680I think Daniel Smith, Premier of Alberta, has been saying the right thing.
00:40:18.640He's saying we've got to get in there and intervene even if against their own will and take them off the streets because they're going to die there.
00:40:27.000And I understand that forced intervention doesn't have a big success rate with drug treatment.
00:41:47.800They suck, but they're better than the fuzzy-headed enablement cult thinking that we can just keep feeding them free drugs and just keep saying it just needs housing and refusing to address the underlying issues of untreated mental health issues and a serious, serious addiction problem.
00:42:21.740That's the one that Dave mentioned earlier, the Wet'suwet'en, which is a split First Nations band that's out in Interior, BC, that they have elected people who support the pipe.
00:42:31.620But the environmentalists pulled up all these fake chiefs, and I'll call them fake.
00:42:35.120They're hereditary chiefs who they feel should be able to override the pipeline and stop the construction.
00:42:40.620It'd be like having Prince Charles come out to Calgary, or sorry, King Charles.
00:42:43.640I'm still getting used to that, and tell us how we're going to run our business out here.
00:43:12.380Either way, now, TC Energy is filing a suit against the Pacific Atlantic Pipeline Construction Company for $1.2 billion, claiming a poor performance in constructing it.
00:43:25.700I don't know if they'll get the money.
00:43:26.680The bottom line is, if anybody should be sued, it should be the government who didn't get in and stop the bloody protests who kept hindering and holding up and slowing the construction of that thing over and over again.
00:43:37.320Likewise, with the Trans Mountain line, the idiots have blown the budget on that thing by, what, you know, over $20 billion government-run and delays and delays and delays.
00:43:46.620There's another delay now or some easement change they wanted to make.
00:43:52.140I guess if they can recover a bit of money from that other company from Italy or whatever, good luck to you.
00:43:57.160But that wasn't the root of the problem.
00:43:58.480The root of the problem was that this thing was held up by protesters constantly in a government that's too cowardly to actually tell them to go to hell and say, this thing is going ahead.
00:46:22.380So civic politicians are going to get the courage to stand up to some of those people and provincial and federal or our housing is not going to grow.
00:46:30.520It's not going to keep up and it's not getting any better.