Mayor Yodi Gondek boycotted a menorah lighting in the city of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Why did she boycott it? And why did she do it in the first place? We talk about that and much more on this episode of the Corey Morgan Show.
00:11:49.280So Jane and I were looking at places in Exha, actually, a long story, but back with the 2013 floods came along, it wiped out the one house we were looking at.
00:11:57.160So I think we made a good choice with Pritis.
00:13:09.620So if you haven't subscribed yet, get on there.
00:13:12.060westernstandard.news slash membership. And it's $9.99 a month, $100 a year, guys. It's well worth
00:13:18.920it. You know, it's an investment in yourself, just like an old newspaper subscription. We're not
00:13:22.340asking for much, but you can get full unfettered access to all these stories. And of course,
00:13:26.620it supports us and we really appreciate it. So before I get to the guest I'm going to have
00:13:31.860on, I've been looking forward to having Ms. Mills on. It's been a little while.0.89
00:13:37.040Just I see a couple of the comments as well. So, you know, as I was ranting and raving about Jody
00:13:40.520Gondek. Everybody has been for the last couple of weeks. She's certainly earned it. But a good
00:13:45.060question from commenter GB, how do we get more involved in municipal politics aside from rage
00:13:49.880posting? Which, yeah, I rage post for a living. But it has limited productivity to it. The bottom
00:13:55.940line is vote. Pay attention. Get on there. Encourage others to pay attention. Encourage
00:14:01.940others to vote. The turnouts in civic elections, Calgary's not alone. They're terrible. And it's
00:14:07.540it's a mistake we make across the country. We're all guilty of it. You know what? I, you know,
00:14:13.220I don't know who my school board trustees are or were. I never paid attention to it. I probably
00:14:18.280should have. Things like that in these municipal elections, as Jordan's pointing out too, there's
00:14:22.360groups like Common Sense Calgary, and I think they've expanded to a Common Sense Lethbridge,
00:14:26.680Common Sense Red Deer. So there are activist groups trying to get people moving on things, but
00:14:30.740all I can say is we just, we have to get off our butts. We have to nag each other and say, hey,
00:14:34.920get off your butts because yeah calgary is notorious we we don't elect mayors in calgary
00:14:40.200they crown them they're coronations i mean ralph klein could have stayed on as the mayor of calgary
00:14:45.900until his passing if he hadn't moved on to provincial politics al doer bronconnier nenshi
00:14:51.280all of them they all stayed on as long as they felt like but gondek is a little different i mean
00:14:56.260she is really a sour sour person and she actually was the first mayor in a long time she never got0.99
00:15:01.780the post electoral bump. People never really warmed up to her. She, she won on a very big
00:15:07.120vote split in the Cal reelection and a very low turnout. That's what I got to keep telling you
00:15:10.780about. She, as far as mayors go, is actually very vulnerable two years from now, but we got to get
00:15:17.400off our arses. That's the only way she'll be replaced. And if we just keep not paying attention
00:15:22.420to the politics that are closest to us, the unions of the left are going to keep winning it because
00:15:26.560you know what? As much as they drive us nuts, they're good at what they do. All right, let's
00:15:30.060talk to somebody else who's good at what she does and that's elise mills commentator strategist and1.00
00:15:35.660a political watcher she's been on the show before and uh yeah we want to talk about i guess what's
00:15:40.720the year that was in the year that's coming uh hi elise thanks for joining us today hi cory thanks
00:15:45.280for having me what a nice introduction well i like to be nice before i get nasty you know so
00:15:50.100we'll see what you got to say today before i well you gave me quite a task cory because it was the
00:15:58.120year that everything erupted. Everything that domestically we had been pushing to the side or
00:16:04.660the Trudeau government hadn't addressed erupted. It'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
00:16:19.900his government from any accountability. I mean there was this massive eclipse of Trump
00:16:25.560arriving on the stage in that sort of bombastic way that shook up the global order of things,
00:16:32.340the politeness. But then came the pandemic and the variations of that, and then the interprovincial
00:16:39.680differentiations of where we were closing, where we were staying open. And then there was absolute
00:16:45.600chaos, I think, with the federal government in regards to vaccine rollout, what we had for PPE.
00:16:50.960and people were just frightened and scared and they were scared and frightened for many different
00:16:56.900reasons including you know how they were going to raise their kids and still continue to earn a
00:17:01.880living uh this was uncharted territory so it gave the prime minister a political shield like no other
00:17:08.600leader has ever received before and it blinded or eclipsed us or as canadians it eclipsed canadians
00:17:15.280to the reality where it blocked them from the reality of some of the decisions that Mr. Trudeau
00:17:21.760had made. It also blocked him from being accountable to any of the scandals that he was
00:17:26.780carrying forward. And everybody was just sort of focused in on themselves and what they were doing
00:17:32.300and how they were going to get through. And I completely understand it. So the list that I have
00:17:37.700for you today, Corey, originally started at three. Unfortunately, they all glom on together.
00:17:45.280There's tentacles. And of course, the economy, I think, was really out of the gate where Canadians1.00
00:17:53.340woke up. Interest rates fueled that crisis of confidence for Canadians. And again, it was
00:18:02.020another, I think, a huge shock and became fear driven for many Canadians. It still is. But really
00:18:08.340what was underlying the inflation, and yes, there's inflation in the G7, there's inflation
00:18:13.620everywhere. It's hiding in every crevice and corner. But we in Canada are doing particularly
00:18:19.740terrible with our economy. Productivity slowed to a crawl. We are now ranked, I think, 10th in the
00:18:29.120in the G7, or sorry, in the Western countries for our productivity. We're on par with Greece0.64
00:18:38.000and Turkey and other places, but the US continued to climb. The problem when you have a slow
00:18:44.140productivity, you're going to see GDP per capita come to a grinding halt. And a large part of
00:18:51.060getting GDP going and productivity going is foreign investment. And that gets us to number two,
00:18:58.400The federal government's regulatory environment. It is a swamp, and I don't mean that in the Trump way. It is discombobulated. It's opaque. Foreign investors are, you know, hesitant to get involved with it.
00:19:15.160They've been it'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 it's a bit predatory out there.
00:19:33.080This government sees these industrial-based industries or commercial industries as money grabs, and 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, and that really has affected foreign investors' confidence, and there's a sentiment out there that Canada can't be trusted to follow through on its swing.
00:19:59.020So that's the main chunk of my of my first point, Corey. And I'm sure and I read your tweets all the time. Every day I look for them and I know that you've spoken about this. It's it's asinine what's going on here.
00:20:14.960Well, yeah, I mean, things really seemed to turn around.
00:20:35.400People before, when they thought it could be affordable, hey, you know, saving the climate is great.
00:20:40.620And virtue signaling that way is fantastic.
00:20:42.900but when suddenly you can't make the rent, when you can't pay for the groceries, when you realize
00:20:47.960that you're in some serious economic trouble, nothing else matters anymore. They want somebody
00:20:51.920serious, not a professional virtue signaler like Justin Trudeau. Well, exactly. And I think that,
00:20:57.980you know, the chickens all came home to roost. Again, I think unlike you and me who are watching
00:21:05.140what's happening every single minute of every single day, Canadians are busy raising families,
00:21:10.240getting to work. I know what those days were like having small children. I was a single mom for many,
00:21:16.640many, many years. And you're just hustling from, you know, I think I did business in my car more
00:21:23.920than I ever did in my office, actually. And it's stressful. It's stressful to be a Canadian. And
00:21:29.640the opportunities at the C-suite and above are just not there in this country. And that can be
00:21:35.340directly correlated back to a lack of foreign investment. I mean, on the West Coast where I am
00:21:40.740today, you're not going to see any head offices and we celebrate things like Amazon, you know,
00:21:47.180centers where packaging comes in. I mean, that shouldn't be what we call a tech investment.
00:21:51.700It's just ridiculous. But I am really concerned about productivity because productivity leads to
00:21:57.180that GDP, leads to the foreign investment and leads to good paying jobs. And everybody's talking
00:22:02.060about how there's all these jobs let's take a look at the at what these jobs really are a lot
00:22:07.700of them are gig jobs part-time jobs there's lots of jobs with the government but you want to be
00:22:12.100looking at where the where the economy is growing and it's just not growing it's actually shrinking
00:22:17.300back and we haven't seen this it became particularly bad uh roughly a few years ago but
00:22:24.720again canadians weren't watching and anytime someone like me brought it up everyone said
00:22:29.060shut up it's about the pandemic and let's just keep spending the this gets me in when we talk
00:22:35.400about spending i think the next top story and i'd like to shed a lot of light on this is national
00:22:40.320defense this uh three months ago the prime minister announced that he'd be cutting a billion dollars
00:22:46.820from national defense a billion dollars that he had committed to this is separate to um the
00:22:53.440discussion uh with world leaders specifically it was something that former president trump brought
00:22:58.460up, which was making Canada increase its spend in military to 2% of the GDP. Well, that's difficult
00:23:05.720when Canada's GDP is dropping like a stone. But this is down to some of the basic necessities,
00:23:12.860what I call the bricks and mortar, the infrastructure, what keeps our soldiers
00:23:17.540and military men and women safe. And what really concerns me about this is that there hasn't been
00:23:25.220an overarching military strategy that's the equivalent of where the US, France, Germany,
00:23:32.000the UK, and surprisingly, places like, you know, Holland and Sweden, who surprisingly
00:23:40.140are leaders in military AI and new technologies.
00:23:46.160So we are not looking forward like our allies, and we're not coming anywhere close and being
00:23:51.820a good ally and partner to the United States. And as you know, world order has changed and it's
00:23:58.720going to get a lot scarier out there. And Canada is just not in a position. And I'm very concerned
00:24:05.500about the men and women of our military. And it's absolutely frightening to see what's going on.
00:24:11.140So that to me, for me personally, was a big story that didn't get enough attention. And I understand
00:24:17.160why Canadians are having a hard time balancing that grocery bill and putting fuel in the car,
00:24:24.560especially if you're in British Columbia, where you have three fuel taxes, two carbon and one fuel
00:24:29.240tax. So I understand that these issues may not be top of mind, but they should be. Foreign policy,
00:24:37.040I think, will play a big part in the upcoming election as it relates to are we prepared as a
00:24:41.460country. Well, and getting on to all of that, I mean, I predicted actually, I thought Trudeau was
00:24:49.420going to pack it in by the end of the year. I was wrong. He's hanging in there. He's as stubborn as
00:24:54.340ever. So, I mean, you know, kind of getting to the second half. I mean, I know there's only so
00:24:58.160much we can cover in 15 minutes, but I noticed they've actually seen the first little bump in
00:25:03.100the polls. That was from David Coletto just today. The first time they've shown a little life in
00:25:07.220months. You know, you can't rule those liberals out. I wish we could, but you can't. They managed
00:25:13.260to make some amazing comebacks sometimes. What have we got to look forward to in the coming year?
00:25:18.240I mean, from the economic and the political point of view. Well, I think, you know, much like cats,
00:25:23.560liberals have nine lives. And what conservatives need to understand is, and this may not be,
00:25:28.760you know, what they want to hear, but they come in to, you know, to do cleanup on aisle six when
00:25:33.320the country has gone pear-shaped and the money is being squandered and people are scared and unsure
00:25:39.040conservative governments come in and they come in more frequently than they did say you know 20-30
00:25:44.520years ago. I think we should I saw those polls today Corey I don't buy it because what's brewing
00:25:51.500on the front benches of the liberals today is the division in the caucus over the UN vote and I
00:25:57.740think that's probably the beginning of a larger fissure. I think there's lots of frustration on
00:26:03.060those liberal benches. I think there's blue liberals over there that we might consider to be
00:26:07.760what we used to call progressive conservatives that have watched some terrible fiscal and monetary
00:26:12.420policy or lack thereof float by. There's the scandals around the green slush fund. We're
00:26:19.140watching those committee hearings over the last week. What's come out of that is appalling. There's
00:26:25.100still 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 Housefather or you look at Medellino or any of those guys, they're very vocal today and they're none too pleased.
00:26:53.300No, and yeah, Cooper has done a fantastic job.
00:26:57.760and such a good job before and then he kind of got unsurprisingly i guess punted from his role
00:27:04.260in legacy media but he's just uh carried on and resurfaced uh i can't suggest you know strongly
00:27:09.540suggest enough to people to get out and seek his things out he's he's very good i think viewers
00:27:14.680of your show need to investigate as to why he was punted from his job i think that pretty much
00:27:21.440tells the foreign interference story that really rooted itself and grew over the last 25 to 30
00:27:27.280years in Vancouver. Vancouver's ground zero for why this country looks the way it does and why
00:27:33.280Canadians are house poor, why Canadians are homeless, why middle-class Canadians are sleeping0.82
00:27:38.460in their car. And this to me is a horror show. And quite frankly, I don't understand how we're
00:27:46.400not having committee hearings or any hearings in regards to the responsibility here. If this was
00:27:53.260the United States, you think you'd get away with this? No way. So yeah, Sam Cooper deserves a round
00:27:59.100of applause. And, you know, I know that everyone at the Western Standard is being really supportive
00:28:04.480of him and his work as well. And he's really made a go of it. And I see it as his, I think it's very
00:28:10.220patriotic what he's doing. And I think we should all give him a pat on the back because it's a
00:28:16.100hard, you know, it's a hard road there. You know that, Corey. Yeah, no, there's no easy money in
00:28:22.160independent media. No thanks to the Trudeau government. No thanks to the Trudeau government.
00:28:30.780We're not dying on filial, I wish we were, but we're getting all right anyways. So just quickly
00:28:38.600before we kind of wrap up, the long, long, long awaited inquiry into the Chinese foreign
00:28:46.540interference thing is kind of going to get underway in the new year. Do you think we're
00:28:50.140going to see much out of this, or is this just going to be another kind of whitewash dragging
00:28:53.780it out through a bunch of bland testimony? Well, I think the Trudeau government has
00:28:57.620demonstrated what it's capable of, which is a fulsome response in trying to bob and weave
00:29:06.220around this. I mean, it's procedural gymnastics that's gone over there. We couldn't even get
00:29:13.740the prime minister, any staff from the prime minister's office. We can't hear from the prime
00:29:18.240Minister, he's denied all of it. But the evidence really demonstrates that he was very aware that
00:29:23.360he was informed that this was taking place. Now, 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 BC,
00:29:34.880we were warned about it here much, much earlier than that, as of 2009. And the national media
00:29:43.400said, no, it's Russia. And poor Richard Fadden, the former director of CISA said, no, it's actually
00:29:48.700China. And so BC, what happened here is a virus that has spread, which is no longer just a Chinese0.97
00:29:57.080problem. It's a Russian problem. It's manifested. But foreign interference and money laundering
00:30:05.440are connected not just to our democracy, but our financial freedoms, our personal freedoms,
00:30:11.260our ability to own a home, it's all in there. And that's why I'm saying there's so many tentacles
00:30:16.060as Sam Cooper has done a brilliant job sort of, you know, slicing it out and saying, hey,
00:30:22.660this happened so that this could happen. And the political interference is not just to mess with
00:30:27.960our democracy, it is to mess with our economy. And it's made Canadians poor. It's put us at a
00:30:35.040huge disadvantage in our freedoms and our economic freedoms. Absolutely. Well, thanks to Sam's work
00:30:40.620And 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.
00:30:48.340We'll have to come on and talk about that just all by itself.
00:30:50.620It 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.
00:31:04.980So I just want to say that because I'm incredibly disappointed by the country.
00:31:38.140and hopefully you'll find me back here sitting or standing across from Corey Morgan relatively soon.
00:31:46.420We'll have you on again soon. It's always great to have you in. Thanks, Elise, and we'll talk
00:31:51.520again soon. Thank you, Corey. Take care. Bye. Yes, that is Elise Mills, and yes, she's prolific0.59
00:31:56.760online. You can see her commentary and stuff everywhere. Shamefully, she was with the CBC
00:32:01.120for a while, but we won't hold that against her. It was a better institution at a different time.
00:32:05.480so yeah lots going on federally and again you know 15 minutes here just not enough to cover
00:32:09.960but at least to kind of get in a nutshell what's been going on this year and the amount of things
00:32:13.020that are building and that's what's going on is they're building and we'll see what blows up in
00:32:17.520the new year i see a couple other commenters coming in shauna vism and it says vision from
00:32:21.920atlanta canada i like when i see people on the other coast i like seeing people local like gordon
00:32:25.400from brooks as well checking in and and uh uh angela in alaska just reminds me you know we're
00:32:31.120talking to a whole lot of people here, getting a whole lot of views. I'm going to speak to something
00:32:36.320a little more local, but it talks to a broader issue. This is something that's just disturbing.
00:32:40.480I'm seeing the news. It's on the Western Standard site, but it's on other news sites as well and
00:32:43.680everything. So a man, and I'm going to say a man named Laverne Waska Hat is a repeat pervert1.00
00:32:52.680baby raper. Literal, literal. This person has been convicted of creating child porn with infants
00:33:01.080Not even just children. I mean, it's horrible anybody under 18. We're talking under three years old. And this man now identifies as a she. I don't care. This 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.1.00
00:33:24.000And 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.
00:43:52.440I guess if they can recover a bit of money from that other company from Italy or whatever, good luck to you.
00:43:57.180But that wasn't the root of the problem.
00:43:58.540The 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.
00:44:11.040I mean, it was regulated nearly to death.
00:44:13.360Speaking of housing, I mean, getting back to something that's been announced recently.
00:44:16.600The government's talking about going back to a World War II policy of, you know, bringing in some pre-designed houses and saying they can speed the process because these are already, you know, designed and approved and they can build them faster.
00:44:28.340Okay, why do we need the federal government to do that?
00:44:30.720What they are addressing is, yes, they're right and yes, they're wrong.
00:44:34.600We need more housing and we need to speed it up.