In this episode of the Western Standard, Corey rants about the Trudeau government's immigration policies and the impact they are having on the housing shortage and homelessness crisis in Canada. He is joined by Michael Binion, the founder of the Modern Miracle Network and founder of Quest Air Energy, to discuss this and much more.
00:03:38.800Are we going to house the immigrants in community halls and gymnasiums?1.00
00:03:42.740That won't be sustainable for terribly long.
00:03:45.420I mean, again, the immigrants aren't necessarily coming in destitute.
00:03:48.380Many have funds, and they're going to be finding homes in the existing market.
00:03:52.120But that, of course, will push rents higher and purchase prices for homes higher.
00:03:56.520And Canada's already experiencing a housing affordability crisis.
00:04:00.860Then there's the health care shortage.
00:04:02.580Everybody's already having a hard time finding a family, doctor.
00:04:05.400the lineups for specialty treatments are, you know, people are suffering, they're long. Well,
00:04:09.720how is bringing millions of new Canadians in going to impact the healthcare availability and
00:04:14.420services in years to come? Now, what it's going to lead to, unfortunately, is tensions between
00:04:18.900current Canadians and new immigrants as citizens find themselves pushed into possibly homelessness
00:04:23.760by the surge in immigration. And that's not fair to the immigrants who are just simply seeking a1.00
00:04:28.500new life or a home, but let's not pretend that this isn't going to happen. The ire, of course,
00:04:32.880should be directed at the legislators who refuse to back down on the ridiculous immigration targets.
00:04:37.920So why is the government so hung up on bringing in millions of people when we clearly don't have
00:04:41.840the infrastructure and services to handle them? Well, the Trudeau government's created a budgetary
00:04:47.760pyramid scheme or even a Ponzi scheme. You see, with the massive increases in deficit spending,
00:04:52.240the government needs to try and pump the economy through your immigration or it's going to crash.1.00
00:04:57.120It's an artificial way to buy prosperity. But like any pyramid scheme, eventually the bottom becomes
00:05:02.400too wide. You can't keep widening it and it won't sustain it and the structure is going to collapse.
00:05:06.920I think most of these top decision makers are hoping and assuming they'll have retreated to
00:05:10.300their retirement destinations before it all falls apart. It's pretty cold comfort for us commoners,
00:05:15.400however. The push, though, when I get back to what I asked to start with, to force citizens to rent
00:05:20.920out rooms in their homes, it will start and it's going to start as a soft sell. In fact, it's
00:05:25.500already begun. In Nova Scotia, their housing minister pointed out that there's 130,000 vacant
00:05:31.760bedrooms across that province that could be rented out to ease the housing crisis.
00:05:37.100Well, that's quite a suggestion. It's troublesome on a couple of fronts. I mean, for one, how does
00:05:41.200he know how many vacant bedrooms the province has? Well, remember all those questions that
00:05:45.760seem so intrusive on the census form when they asked you about how many bathrooms you had and
00:05:50.100such? Well, now you see the sort of thing that information gets used to. You can also see why,
00:05:55.920not just why they wanted to know, but why you probably shouldn't have cooperated with the
00:05:58.680census. The other issue is we have a senior government official looking at those, as for now,
00:06:04.580spare rooms with an eye to compelling people to rent them out. We know the progression of
00:06:09.700government when they do these things. The next step is going to be shaming people. People with
00:06:13.320large houses or empty nesters with spare bedrooms are going to be called selfish if they don't rent
00:06:18.720those rooms out. The politics of envy will come into play and the government's going to demand0.68
00:06:24.340homeowners do their fair share, they love that term, in easing the crisis. And of course, they
00:06:29.660will imply that holdouts are racist. Though, again, immigrants come in all colors, as do the existing
00:06:36.460homeowners and people residing in Canada. It isn't a matter of racism, it's a matter of statistics
00:06:42.160and ability. When the social shaming, though, doesn't work, the government will use its favorite
00:06:46.220tool to compel people to do things. They'll move on to taxes. In the UK, there's already what they
00:06:50.560call an empty bedroom tax. And Canadians on social media are already hinting that that might be a good
00:06:55.440idea here. Let's just call it what it is, though. It's a fine for those daring not to help the
00:06:59.940government with the immigration catastrophe it has created. So even with the social ostracization
00:07:05.720and the extratization, though, there's still people aren't going to comply. If they wanted to rent
00:07:09.160their spare rooms to strangers, they already would have. So then as tensions escalate across the
00:07:14.200nation due to growing homelessness, clashes between immigrants and citizens, the government
00:07:18.140will use its trump card. This will sound familiar. They'll declare a national emergency. Then they
00:07:23.620can suspend civil rights and people can be compelled to open their doors through the
00:07:28.140threat and seizure of things like their bank accounts or possibly even their property itself.
00:07:32.740It'll be for the public good though, of course, right? That's why. Does this all sound far-fetched?
00:07:37.120Well, remember what happened when we were told just two weeks to flatten the curve?
00:07:41.740Authoritarians in power in Canada are capable of anything and they've already proven that.
00:07:45.660We don't need to halt all immigration. That would be bad for the nation. We need to lower the numbers,1.00
00:07:51.360though, to match the housing ability and infrastructure. Otherwise, we are on a collision
00:07:56.360course with a catastrophe. Well, that's kind of what's got me going today. Let's see, you know,
00:08:02.840Stone Lee saying, did you know Israel doesn't accept immigrants, but they shame any other1.00
00:08:07.660country that doesn't? That's not true, Stone Lee. In fact, Israel takes it a lot, though they do0.95
00:08:11.900give a great preference to people who were part of the Jewish diaspora. But that's a separate
00:08:16.880discussion altogether. No sense injecting it into this. Let's see, you know, again,
00:08:22.9601 million new Canadians each year from Flexing saying, you know, helps with Justin's inflation.
00:08:27.440Yes, I mean, it's just supply and demand, but supply and demand is lost a lot in the left when
00:08:31.420it comes to any of these discussions. But all right, let's check in and see what else is
00:08:34.340happening out there and bring in Dave Naylor, our news editor, and see what other news order
00:08:38.520items are topping the scroll today. Hey, Dave, how's it going?
00:08:41.900Good. You got me worried about my empty bedrooms now, Corey. I'm going to have to rent them out, I guess.
00:08:48.540It may come to it, you know, but hey, it's for the public good.
00:08:52.240It is. It is. So, you know, viewers know, Corey, that you tried to get into the bee business, and I think you'll agree it wasn't a great success.
00:09:01.900Your bees have basically all run away, and you're not having, you know, you're not making floods of honey, as you had hoped.
00:09:08.140so i understand you're now you're you're now trying a new business and you're going to try
00:09:12.620and set up the prittis cartel and you're going to manufacture drugs because they just grow freely
00:09:19.260on your property cory like i mean that is a beautiful specimen of a marijuana plant growing
00:09:26.260in your backyard it most certainly is i mean we're economically diversifying uh yeah i shared that
00:09:32.580picture uh that thing did sprout up out of the blue in the backyard i'm glad it's legal these
00:09:37.140days, because I'm sure no enforcement agent would ever believe me if I made that excuse. We have
00:09:42.060a couple of family suspects we think may have played the Johnny Appleseed with the weed in
00:09:47.820the backyard, but boy, that plant sure is doing well, and I can't grow anything else to save my
00:09:52.700life. Well, whenever it's matured, I'm sure Duke the Wonder Dog will have a fun time
00:09:58.520chewing on the leaves. Yeah, I hope. The dogs seem to have ignored it so far, thankfully,
00:10:04.260and they're already a screwy enough, but we'll see what happens.
00:10:08.340Good. Well, I wish you luck in your new cartel. News on the website already. A busy morning as
00:10:14.240always, Corey. You remember all the fallout from Chinese interference in the election and Chinese1.00
00:10:21.220police stations being set up in Toronto and Vancouver. It turns out since the start of the
00:10:26.240year, one quarter of the Chinese diplomats in Toronto have quietly left the country.
00:10:31.940You know, things that make you go, hmm, dramatic scenes in Hawaii today, Corey, where wildfires are running amok over Maui.
00:10:42.240You don't think of the Hawaiian Islands being a tinderbox, but apparently Maui is.
00:10:48.280And the Coast Guard is having to rescue people because the flames have forced them into the ocean.
00:10:53.920So there's some dramatic video for you to look at there.
00:10:58.160We had a tragedy in downtown Calgary this morning, Corey, when a woman was killed by the LRT station crossing at Centre Street.
00:11:08.360Young Jonathan Bradley was sent to the scene, and his report on what happened and what the police are doing about it is there.
00:11:16.880Downtown Calgary, the LRT is going to be shut for several hours as police investigate.
00:11:22.720The TransCanada Pipeline, it looks like the Feds are trying to sell some of it to the local First Nations along the route.
00:11:31.340They're offering them basically free money or risk-free money if they wanted to try and invest.
00:11:37.940And we've got Dr. Barry Cooper, University of Calgary wizard, pitching in his thoughts on the lawsuit last week,
00:11:47.540which ruled that Deanna Hinshaw's public health orders, emergency orders, were invalid.0.98
00:11:54.940So that's an interesting read from Dr. Cooper.
00:11:58.440And just to come, Corey, we've got another story on, you know, mind-numbingly, head-shaking little government waste.
00:12:06.760They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a goose farm on Hudson's Bay.
00:13:06.460And it has just gotten a great deal harder
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00:13:20.280People say, who cares? I didn't want to read my stuff on social media anyways, blah, blah, blah.
00:13:24.540Okay, they're missing the point. You weren't reading the news on Meta or Google. That's
00:13:29.740actually some of the spin that the liberals were wrongly giving it as if they were carrying a full
00:13:34.000news products. They were not. All they carried was a link and it directed traffic to us. It helped
00:13:40.120you find us and other news outlets. It was a funnel. If anything, they were doing us a service.
00:13:46.680Now, unfortunately, due to the failed shakedown of those social media giants through C18, Meta is
00:13:53.720basically teaching the government a lesson and saying, well, we're just not going to share the
00:13:57.700links. You say we were stealing content from media. Well, we'll just stop stealing it. And now the
00:14:03.140flat-footed government doesn't know what to do. The problem is it's independent outlets like us0.92
00:14:07.120that are paying the price for that because we do lose a degree of traffic. That was one of our
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00:15:08.920it through emails to friends, all sorts of ways. That's how we can keep being independent,
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00:15:17.640dollars here at the Western Standard. And that's thanks to you guys who've subscribed into our
00:15:22.040advertisers, of course. So, okay, with that out of the way, and it kind of segues in a nice way,
00:15:26.680I want to talk about subsidies. I want to talk about what I think is a bit of a myth when it
00:15:30.640comes to subsidies, but perhaps we'll get some more clarity on it. Because recently,
00:15:34.300Minister Stephen Gilboa has said he's going to end all the subsidies going to the oil and gas
00:15:40.420industry. You know, they always make it out to sound like Canadians have been shoring up the
00:15:45.600oil and gas industry all this time, you know, particularly Central Canadians, of course.
00:15:49.740But nobody can exactly explain what those subsidies are. So we've got Michael Binion
00:15:54.120coming on the show. As I said, he's the head of Questair Energy and of course the Modern Miracle
00:15:59.240Network. And he's worked on these things in the energy sector for a long time. And hopefully he
00:16:03.880can clarify some of these things for us. So hi, Michael. Thank you very much for joining us today.
00:16:08.600Hi, Corey. Thanks. I appreciate you inviting me.
00:16:11.560Yeah. So you kind of heard in the intro, like where I want to start with this at least anyways.
00:16:17.320I mean, if I don't care for corporate welfare, I don't like seeing the tax dollars going out
00:16:21.880to businesses if they aren't viable but usually you can kind of see it you can say well look here
00:16:26.200here's this many millions went to bombardier or here's this much went over to this agricultural
00:16:31.480facility over there but i can't find these checks that were going to the oil and gas companies
00:16:36.680yeah well when people mention that to me i always say well you just could you just please tell me
00:16:41.000where i could apply because i would love to get one of them if i could you know and and of course
00:16:44.920i don't really mean that because as former head of the canadian tax or chair of the canadian taxpayers
00:16:49.160Federation, I'm completely against this corporate welfare as well. So I'm all for getting rid of
00:16:54.540these subsidies. And I can probably find you a couple of them that do exist, but certainly
00:17:02.540nothing like what they portray and nothing like getting $16 billion to build a battery factory,
00:17:09.280for example, where there's direct checks and production subsidies being given directly.
00:17:13.860So I think what I said about the Stephen Gilboa announcement was it's literally trying to kill a dead horse.
00:17:21.320Like we got rid of the subsidies and we're just going to announce over and over again that we're getting rid of the subsidies.
00:17:27.480And great, you're successful every time because you got rid of them years ago, right?
00:17:32.160I think the other thing that gets missed from that conversation is just the net tax and royalty revenues that the industry is giving into governments, which as well should when you're making money.
00:17:46.320But this idea that somehow it's a subsidized industry, when in fact, the industry is the main net provider of foreign exchange to the country, and we're one of the largest providers of government revenue.
00:18:04.700I mean, so with these subsidies having vanished, we didn't see a flood of oil companies suddenly going under or fleeing the country because they weren't getting them in the first place.
00:18:14.960Yeah. And if you want to get into sort of some details, I mean, I'm sure, well, the worst example is one report that said, you know, having to send out police or security to the site of a protest, you know, at a pipeline or whatever.
00:18:34.520well that's a subsidy you know because uh the government's having to pay to protect your asset
00:18:39.280was the was was the line so there there's the there's a type of example like where these
00:18:43.400subsidies come from um it's it's really by redefining the word and you know and and i don't
00:18:50.560think that the average person would think that um you know police protection of property would be
00:18:56.560considered to be a subsidy um and and by the way it's not like the police don't protect other
00:19:01.240people's property too so it feels like that would be a level playing field um i'm sure people will
00:19:06.200i've seen a lot of people talk about that the tmx pipeline is an example of the government
00:19:10.300subsidizing the industry i mean i i personally find that so objectionable because the last thing
00:19:18.260most not all people but certainly most people in the industry the last thing we wanted to see was
00:19:23.740the government take over the management of constructing that pipeline um but you know their
00:19:28.400their own policies chased away the private sector proponent and i think the government felt they
00:19:34.120had no choice but to step in um because there was there was nobody nobody nobody to run it but but
00:19:39.560that that you know unfair to me to call that a subsidy when nobody wanted it right um the other
00:19:46.040one the other one that i think is that that i would say is that there are growing subsidies
00:19:50.800and of interest, Stephen Gilboa noted that, you know,
00:19:54.980we continue to support projects that create Indigenous involvement.
00:20:02.960So there's a, you know, I think we can probably all agree
00:20:06.660that First Nations poverty is a major social issue in this country
00:20:11.680and the government continues or even adds to programs
00:24:37.920So during that time, the government was saying, hey, like every other industry that you're
00:24:43.720giving all these supports to the airline industry and others could we have some support for the oil
00:24:48.420and gas industry and what they were what we were mainly asking for was just some liquidity support
00:24:53.300to make sure that our banks didn't call our lines in the middle of the of the of the of the crisis
00:24:59.080what the government gave instead and this was i think more a federal government decision not a
00:25:05.780alberta government request said well we'll give you some money for well reclamation we think we
00:25:10.320can justify that um i uh that's that's not really what we needed uh by the time that by the time the
00:25:17.160money came through for well reclamation our liquidity crisis was over so it it didn't come
00:25:22.360in time it didn't help the problem we were looking for and in the end uh i i think for for my and i
00:25:29.280and i won't not everybody in the industry is going to agree with me on this point but but i i think
00:25:35.000that it is bad for our you know our reputation as an industry as responsible as a responsible
00:25:41.240industry responsible companies i i don't think we should take any subsidies to clean up our wells
00:25:47.480and to the extent companies go bankrupt we have a industry funded orphan well program and i think
00:25:52.920the industry needs to be responsible to keep it funded so that that's that's my that's my strong
00:25:57.880view not everybody agrees with me as you can imagine but so i guess i would say from my
00:26:02.360perspective i think there was a subsidy there it wasn't what we asked it wasn't what i asked for
00:26:08.600my company and it didn't come in time to help me yeah and again it's certainly if you're gonna look
00:26:13.480at the scale of subsidies or what's going on i mean it doesn't equate a 15 billion dollar battery
00:26:17.640plant or or something like that that that subsidy i'm just saying it could fairly be called such i
00:26:22.920guess was still pretty minor in the in the scheme of things it was one yeah it was one it was 1.5
00:26:28.280million dollars i think relative to the industry size and the economy the industry got less than
00:26:35.320less than you know proportionately less than a lot if not most industries got during the
00:26:40.360covet crisis and as i said it didn't even come it didn't even come in time to help us with the
00:26:45.160covet crisis well with a lot of i mean the issues of the energy sector it's not a matter of them
00:26:50.200needing capital or needing subsidies they just need a government to get out of the darn way
00:26:53.880but but that's something this government doesn't seem to be interested in i mean that's the
00:26:57.880the catastrophe with the Trans Mountain. That could have been completed, I think, by private
00:27:02.480dollars if the government had just lightened up on regulation. But they would rather, at this point,
00:27:07.860it looks like getting up to $30 billion and climbing, turn it into a compounding mess than
00:27:13.000admit that maybe some deregulation was in order. Yeah, it's a shame. And I do feel that there's a
00:27:18.900little bit of a misdirection going on here. I mean, if you want to look, step back and look,
00:27:22.900I mean, all the way back to the McKenzie Delta pipeline, where private sector was willing to put up billions of dollars, 8 billion of those dollars.
00:27:31.160So that's going to be 20, 30 billion in today's dollars to open up.
00:27:35.600Like America has opened up, Alaska would have opened up our Canadian north to oil and gas.
00:29:06.520Our organization, Modern Miracle Network, is to remind people, but it's also literally
00:29:11.500had, you know, created the miracle of modern society.
00:29:15.360And so let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
00:29:20.900We can reduce the impacts of our industry with new technology, and we are.
00:29:26.900So why give away these benefits that have been such enormous impacts on life expectancy and infant mortality and education and equality and leisure time, all the things that we just take for granted today?
00:29:42.020let's keep those benefits but but but work on the impacts and and and by the way i'm a i'm a big
00:29:47.880proponent wind solar alternatives we we need all of our energy choices it doesn't make any sense
00:29:53.540at all as a society to put all our energy like why would you ever put everything in one basket
00:29:57.660you've seen what happens in germany you you can you you know you can be at you're at risk you put
00:30:02.820your society at risk doing that um but let's not forget that these other energy uh sources well
00:30:08.820you know they have enormous impacts and you know i say that wind and solar have had better work on
00:30:14.900their problems with land you know too much land use too much materials use and they better fix
00:30:19.780those problems too because we're going to need those energy sources in the future yeah well and
00:30:24.620again i mean it's unfortunately turned a lot into an either or discussion when it comes to those
00:30:28.780energy sources and it really shouldn't be i mean they can complement each other absolutely but we
00:30:33.340need all of our energy sources and we should be applying like we just got to get away from these
00:30:39.26020th century ideas that you know moratoriums and taxes and subsidies are you know with big
00:30:45.380government central planning is going to fix anything we need to do what united states is0.52
00:30:49.240doing turn your climate uh you know carbon pricing into it into carrots more carrots and not so many
00:30:56.640sticks turn carbon into a business opportunity and let the private unleash the private sector
00:31:31.920They've gone and said, well, let's let's let the market find the best solutions and let the best solutions win as opposed to pick them.
00:31:39.800Great. Well, I thank you very much for filling in some of those blanks, because not everybody watches the energy industry necessarily as closely as even myself and certainly not as yourself.
00:31:49.140So, you know, good to counter some of those, I think, incorrect points that have been thrown around out there.
00:31:54.340So thank you again for coming on and for your work and speaking up for that industry, Michael.
00:31:58.880OK, well, thank you, Corey. Appreciate the chance to be here.