In this episode of The Cory Morgan Show, I chat with Jay Hill, a former member of Parliament, about his time in the House of Commons. We cover a variety of topics, but mostly focus on the media and government corruption.
00:09:42.740And speaking of Tucker Carlson, we have a story on his third Twitter episode that aired last night talking about the arrest of President Donald Trump and his appearance in the courtroom in Miami yesterday.
00:10:01.740You remember a tweet from The Weekend Quarry on Premier Daniel Smith in her restaurant in High River.
00:10:08.960She was washing dishes there, and that tweet got a lot of attention.
00:10:13.440So I guess she's gone from washing dishes to washing her hands of the restaurant because it's now up for sale.
00:10:21.960So if you want to own your own little restaurant on a rail car, give Premier Daniel Smith a call.
00:10:30.340The other thing worth mentioning this morning, Corey, is you remember that $13 billion taxpayer gift to Volkswagen?
00:10:38.960Well, apparently, according to the parliamentary budget officer, it's already gone up by more than $2 billion, already $2 billion over budget.
00:10:48.900And I think they only announced the thing maybe a month ago.
00:12:30.220Plus, of course, you support us, support this show, and keep us rolling.
00:12:32.840So if you're already a subscriber, thank you very much, guys. You can go to westernstandard.news and get straight through to it. And if you're not a subscriber yet, come on, get on in there, guys. westernstandard.news slash membership. And it helps keep us rolling and keeping these shows going. So yeah, a lot there, you know, and as Dave mentioned, so Bell Media, and this shows the subsidy route, and this kind of gets to the end of the monologue I gave, but I do believe that these large outlets are still going to crumble. It doesn't matter how many tax dollars get poured into them.
00:12:59.940So $122 million poured into Bell Media, and what did they do? They laid off 1,300 people and shut
00:13:06.120down a bunch of radio stations. And they won't adapt. It's similar to what I was talking about
00:13:11.060before. These are AM radio stations. One of the ones they shut down was 1060 in Calgary,
00:13:16.880an AM platform. It had been running the last couple of years just playing comedy clips. It was
00:13:22.680Calgary Funny Radio or something like that that they called it. I couldn't imagine they were
00:13:26.080drawn much for ad revenue. And finally, they just pulled the plug on it. I'm dating myself. I remember
00:13:32.320in the 80s, when I moved to Calgary, that was AM 106. That was the All Hits 106. It was a huge
00:13:37.900radio station in the city back then, very big. But times change. That station probably should
00:13:43.380have disappeared 10 years ago, to be honest. And I'm not celebrating the losses of jobs or the
00:13:47.420people that are in them, but they have to adjust to the changing atmosphere. Who listens to AM
00:13:53.440radio anymore. Well, I do in my car now and then, but I'm one of the last of them going on out there,
00:13:58.580guys. I mean, it's streaming, it's online, it's, you know, people, you see the earbuds in with the
00:14:03.440next generation, they're not listening to radio stations. And if these companies weren't being
00:14:08.240subsidized all this time, then these stations would have adapted perhaps, or these outlets in
00:14:17.060general, and some of those jobs perhaps could have been saved. But as it is now, we gave them the
00:14:22.880money. We got little to nothing of benefit out of it. And yeah, now they're going to centralize
00:14:26.540further, as Dave said, into just CTV. So we're getting fewer and fewer outlets. And none of
00:14:33.000these outlets are really going to want to ever be too critical of their sugar daddy in Ottawa,
00:14:37.500where they might find the pin pulled on their subsidies. Not a good situation. But hey,
00:14:41.520we're still here. And that's what's positive out of this, as are some of the others, Rebel,
00:14:46.260True North, Epoch Times. We're going to spring up like weeds. We won't let them get away with
00:14:51.360stopping the information getting to you. All right. I'm going to get to my guest here. I've
00:14:55.380been looking forward to this. It's been a while since we've had you in studio there, Jay. It's
00:14:59.760good to see you. This is Jay Hill. As I mentioned at the top of the show, a former member of
00:15:03.820parliament, former whip, all around experts in all that's Ottawa. So thanks for coming in and
00:15:10.680talk to us today, Jay. My pleasure, Corey. It's always nice to be on your show. Yeah. And what I
00:15:16.400kind of said in the email, what I want to get to is we've had all of this federal talk. We've had
00:15:19.720all of this political games going on for months we have a federal government that's in a minority
00:15:24.680position but they still it appears to be able to skate on a public inquiry like I'm just wondering
00:15:31.860are there parliamentary things that can be done to address this by the opposition parties or are
00:15:36.860their hands tied well first of all absolutely there are things that can be done I think you're
00:15:43.400well aware that I hold the dubious distinction of having been the only member of parliament in
00:15:49.700the history of our Canadian Parliament to hold the position of caucus or party whip four times.
00:15:58.080My staff did some research and couldn't find any other time that anybody had been in that position
00:16:02.720twice, let alone four times. And I've also been the House leader, both in opposition for the
00:16:10.460chief opposition, but also for the government, which is a cabinet position, as you know.
00:16:17.760So I'm very well versed in certainly in what can happen and how a government can be held accountable.
00:16:28.140Certainly part of the reason why I decided to try something else other than public life in 2010 was at the time I had reached basically the apex of my political career.
00:16:40.000I was in cabinet. I was sort of sitting on the right hand of the prime minister at the time
00:16:44.020as the government house leader or the leader of the government in the house of commons.
00:16:49.980And as such, in a minority parliament, it's a very, very difficult position normally,
00:16:55.480certainly for a conservative it is, because you have to negotiate with the other parties, Corey,
00:17:01.400bill by bill, motion by motion, daily, sometimes hourly to try and get anything done for the
00:17:07.820government's agenda to get it through parliament. And of course, with conservatives, we don't have
00:17:13.560any natural allies. All the other parties are, shall we say, left of center. And so it was
00:17:20.720immensely stressful for the two minority parliaments that we had from 2006 to 2011 until
00:17:28.260Prime Minister Harper won his one and only majority. So I fully recognize what can be done
00:17:35.440and what can't be done when it comes to negotiating with the other parties.
00:17:40.860Sadly for Canadians, we have an opposition party, the NDP,
00:17:45.360under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh,
00:17:47.520that has given our prime minister free reign to do whatever the hell he wants.
00:17:52.680And that's totally unlike the way we were held accountable,
00:17:56.860Harper Conservatives, in those two minorities that I was a part of.
00:18:01.560Yeah, well, and just the talking out of both sides of his mouth, though,
00:18:04.760where Jamie's saying he's been very critical, rightly so, of this whole scandal. I mean,
00:18:10.820see, we might as well call it that by now, you know, the scandal of the Chinese Communist Party
00:18:14.180interference and the Trudeau government working so hard to block an inquiry by all means. But,
00:18:19.940you know, he's tabling motions, a non-binding motion, a non-binding motion. Well, big deal.
00:18:23.860It's virtue signaling. But are there things that can be done that can force this then without
00:18:29.320bringing down the government? He's saying, okay, we'd have to, it's not worth bringing the
00:18:33.340government down over right now. I mean, not all of us might agree, but fine. But, you know,
00:18:37.540is it opposition day? Is there something they could put in as a bill or something that can
00:18:41.380force this without turning it to a confidence matter? Well, absolutely. I mean, the prime
00:18:47.800minister under our system always holds the Trump card. Corey, I think you're aware of this.
00:18:52.340In so far as that he can declare any motion or any act, any piece of legislation, a confidence
00:19:00.260motion, which means that if that motion is defeated, if it falls, then we're into an
00:19:07.820election. That's what that means. But what we did, what Stephen Harper did when Prime Minister and I
00:19:15.640as both his House Leader and earlier as his government whip, we negotiated on a continual
00:19:21.140basis with the other parties to say, okay, well, how can we work with you to amend this so that
00:19:28.140it doesn't become a confidence measure. In fact, we never played that so-called trump card
00:19:32.900of declaring something a confidence unless we felt very clearly that it was so integral
00:19:40.640to our government agenda for what we were trying to accomplish for Canadians that we had no other
00:19:47.520choice. So that happened very rarely that we would sort of have a showdown. And usually it was behind
00:19:53.800closed doors where you say, you know, face to face, well, this is so much part of our electoral
00:19:59.640promises or whatever, that if you're insistent, other House leaders, other whips, about getting
00:20:08.720your caucuses to vote against it, and we lose this, then we're going to go into an election.
00:20:13.360That's very rare under most circumstances. The problem is, is that Jagmeet Singh never plays
00:20:19.740that card. He never, I'm sure he never says to the Prime Minister, or maybe behind closed doors,
00:20:25.980the Prime Minister indicates all the time to him, well, you know, if you go against this Jagmeet,
00:20:31.480we're going to be into an election. In other words, he's playing that fear of a confidence
00:20:35.820motion constantly. Because stomping short of that, there's lots that can be done. At committees,
00:20:42.400opposition days, as you say, in the House of Commons, there's a few that are votable,
00:21:13.920want. So it's just really, it comes down to having an extremely weak opposition party led by someone
00:21:24.860that doesn't want to see an election because he fears for himself in his leadership position,
00:21:30.120and he fears for his party's fortunes. Oh yeah, and I understand that. I mean,
00:21:34.920Jagmeet Singh is as close to power as he will ever get. He knows that, you know,
00:21:38.700come the next election, he might not be in such a position again. But I mean,
00:21:42.500it just feels to me that it's a bluff that it can be called. I mean, you know, when you when you
00:21:49.060declare something of confidence matter, that means that you're building a hill for yourself to die
00:21:53.060on. You're saying we're going to stand on this. And really, even Trudeau is as tone deaf as he
00:21:57.900can seem to be to go to Canadians and we're going to call an early election because I don't want to
00:22:03.700go to an inquiry. I can't think of a more politically suicidal platform to go to the
00:22:08.500voters with, I just don't think he would. He would do that. So to answer your question, yes,
00:22:14.260on opposition day, certainly we had tremendous challenges at each and every committee. As you
00:22:20.800know, the Procedure and House Affairs Committee has been studying this issue, if you will. They
00:22:26.720called the, I forget what he's called now, reporter, Mr. Johnston, before them for three
00:22:38.360hour testimony about a week ago, I think a week ago yesterday. And, you know, put him on the hot
00:22:44.640seat asking questions about why his report basically said, well, no, he didn't think a
00:22:50.520public inquiry was necessary. Starting next month, had he stayed in his job before he resigned,
00:22:56.080he was going to start public hearings. Well, public hearings do not have the strength
00:23:01.840and do not have all the tools that a public inquiry have, as I'm sure you're aware.
00:23:07.320For example, a public inquiry is very much like the powers of a standing committee or even a special committee of the House of Commons.
00:23:16.040They have rights very similar to courts where they can subpoena you and say you will show up on this day to give evidence and answer questions.
00:23:26.880Public hearings, which Mr. Johnston allegedly was going to do, you cannot.
00:23:32.160They can request. They can ask you to come. But if you basically say go pound sand, nothing happens.
00:23:41.400So committees have that power. Jagmeet Singh and the NDP have that power.
00:23:47.620They could easily, by dint of working with the other opposition parties, they could easily force those issues at a committee
00:23:56.040and hold basically a full public inquiry or something very similar to that at one of those
00:24:02.720committees. And you'll recall other instances over the last number of years since Trudeau came to
00:24:09.320power in 2015, where a committee started to do that, and then eventually the NDP folded and didn't
00:24:16.720force it to go to its logical conclusion. Okay, so they could start, because I mean, people want
00:24:23.460And the answer is, I mean, we're seeing it's just rare when we see such a dominant thing with polling and Canadians, the lack of faith in everything we've been hearing out of this.
00:24:31.040You know, you're looking at 20 some percent of the people believing anything more out of the Trudeau government when it comes to this issue.
00:24:38.160I mean, still, the numbers supporting the government are higher than that.
00:24:40.940OK, they don't want to go to election, but they want to get to the bottom of this.
00:24:43.880They want to find out just what the heck is going on.
00:24:46.560I mean, we've had some very direct meddling and it just flabbergasts me.
00:24:51.880I mean, our system isn't working like it should.
00:24:53.640If we can't, in a minority situation, get a real deep dig into something this important, it doesn't bode well for us.
00:25:01.680Well, and I think it really hinges to a large extent.
00:25:04.160And this is, I say this very sort of sadly, that it hinges on the topic you were discussing just as I came into the studio, which is the basic neutering of our national media.
00:25:19.000You know, why aren't they on to Jagmeet? Why aren't they calling bullshit on Jagmeet Singh when he stands up and rants and raves about scandal after scandal and does nothing when he has the power to do that?
00:25:35.240All he has to do is sit down with the conservatives and block and say, okay, let's devise a common strategy of how to get to the bottom of this at whichever committee, ethics committee, procedure and house affairs, pick a committee, doesn't matter.
00:25:48.400They all have the same powers and say, we're going to work together.
00:25:51.680We have the majority of votes on that committee, because it's a minority government, and we're going to force this starting tomorrow, next time that committee meets, and we have the power to have that committee meet all summer, right through the heat of summer.
00:26:07.640You know, it doesn't have to rise when the House rises, you know, next week or whenever it is.
00:26:15.780But the media and the public, you know, it's fine for, you know, the latest poll to say that 80% of Canadians, you know, are opposed to this, the way the government is going on this issue.
00:26:52.040I mean, judging by the way that this prime minister is skated around other issues, whether it's the SNC-Lavalin thing, that should have brought him down.
00:27:01.780I mean, my goodness, the Attorney General and Justice Minister of the country, Jody Wilson-Raybould, resigned over it, wrote a book over it.
00:27:14.900I mean, so when we didn't over that, when we didn't over the we, he skated around that issue of trying to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to the we,
00:27:25.040a company that he was clearly in a conflict with, with his members of his family receiving money
00:27:31.600for speaking engagements from that company, the We Foundation. You know, so it's been one,
00:27:38.300and that's just two that come to mind. I was looking online a few days ago out of curiosity,
00:27:43.580and I challenge your viewers to do this. Go online and just Google Justin Trudeau scandals.
00:27:50.240It's page after page after page. It's almost impossible for journalists to keep up with.
00:27:56.480And the few journalists like yourselves that actually want to dig into it.
00:28:01.020So are we going to get one? You would think that logically he's going to be forced,
00:28:06.740but it's only the media that can force him to do that. I don't understand why his own party is
00:28:12.160letting this go on and on because eventually, and I think we're reaching that point, that tipping
00:28:16.880point, if you will, where his star is going to be so much in decline that it's going to be very
00:28:25.360difficult for the Liberal Party to recover from it. That's where I wanted to go next, actually,
00:28:30.160was just wondering if that's one other area. I mean, there's got to, we know there's principled
00:28:33.520Liberal members of Parliament, and they've got to be, you know, taking the flack from this stuff
00:28:39.260they had nothing to do with, they're embarrassed, their constituents are on their case, and they're
00:28:42.600looking to their own political futures.
00:29:09.940whether it's ours, the conservative party.
00:29:11.660like you say, I think that the record would show that within the Conservative Party, and it's both
00:29:17.620good and bad, that the leadership is held more accountable than what we see in the Liberal Party.
00:29:23.900I mean, most recently, Mr. O'Toole, right? It wasn't the general public or the media that
00:29:31.420eventually held him accountable. It was his own caucus. And we don't see that from the Liberals.
00:29:37.720And as you say, I worked with, well, partly because of the positions I held, I had to work daily, sometimes hourly, as I said, with my counterparts, with the House leaders and the whips of all the other parties.
00:29:50.360And I found most of them were very respectful and, you know, putting forward an alternate point of view, but you could work with them.
00:29:59.880And so there are people in those ranks within the Liberal Party, the Liberal caucus, that should be holding him accountable because they're not profiting.
00:30:11.180In fact, arguably, as you say, it's their very futures that are in jeopardy because of the way that he acts.
00:30:18.300Every time one of these scandals comes along where he does everything, well, and including, I think, on the one, I don't remember which it was, where he actually launched a lawsuit against the Parliament of Canada to prevent them digging into something.
00:30:36.300I mean, you know, another long shot, I'll throw out my speculation, but it's not impossible to think that maybe at a point Justin's going to take his walk in the snow like his father did and come back.
00:30:45.900I mean, that would be because he was getting the pressure inside to think, you know what, maybe I'll just bail out now, move on, put it to a leadership race.
00:30:52.360We could still kick the inquiry down the road.
00:30:53.960Maybe people will have forgotten about it and I can retire.
00:35:59.380We've got some liberal fart catchers on social media saying, oh, well, you know, it's not the part of the minister to determine who moves to which prison and who doesn't.
00:40:37.740You can't buy our influence for only $200,000.
00:40:40.400Well, were you setting the price, Rosenberg?
00:40:41.940Is that what you were saying with that statement that you put out the other day?
00:40:44.780No, I don't think that's what you're saying.
00:40:46.060But maybe, maybe if you have a high enough price, you'll admit, okay, you can buy our love for that.
00:40:50.360They thought they could buy your love with it.
00:40:53.120And it looks like they almost got away with getting that in without people knowing it happened.
00:40:58.760So, yes, we've got a lot of questions.
00:41:02.360And then, of course, when we have David Johnston, why was it right from the start when he was appointed at this baloney position of special repertoire,
00:41:10.120which is just a fabrication on Trudeau's part. Why do people question his objectivity? Well,
00:41:15.360because he was on the board of the Trudeau Foundation. And then Johnston says, it's
00:41:19.840outrageous you're questioning my credibility. Here's a couple of big names that'll vouch for
00:41:23.700me. And lo and behold, those names were on the Trudeau Foundation as well. Guys, what do you get
00:41:29.080paid to be on the board of the foundation? Seriously, I don't know. A lot of boards are
00:41:34.120volunteer. A lot of boards just give a small honorarium, but I got no idea. We can't audit
00:46:33.400I think it stopped the market from going down.
00:46:35.480We were on a fairly steady downtrend from January until, I think, the end of May.
00:46:42.080The last two weeks, we've seen the markets actually recover maybe just several percent on roughly about $10, $15 per ton.
00:46:53.980Now, there's not a lot more upside to it because the world markets are just simply lower than what our domestic price is.
00:47:05.040So in some aspects, the drought conditions, you could almost say is priced into the market already.
00:47:11.280And I guess this brings a risk of just people getting out of the market altogether.
00:47:15.840You know, cattle producers have been having a rough go for quite some time.
00:47:18.720Things such as that with feed, which would lead to a longer term, it's just bad for consumers and producers altogether.
00:47:26.200Yeah, these things, the long-term effect on it is if cattle producers are unable to either get feed for their cattle or it's really expensive,
00:47:34.540they're going to call their herds and reduce their herd sizes and we're going to feed less cattle.
00:47:39.300And yeah, ultimately it's going to mean, uh, already a very expensive products such as beef
00:47:44.800getting more expensive. And I think we all know how expensive food is already. This is not,
00:47:49.960this is not helpful. Um, it may be a local problem today, but it does affect the consumer
00:47:56.320somewhere down the road. Absolutely. Well, it's, it's a long game. I guess we can, we can hope for
00:48:01.400the weather to turn and, and, uh, you know, other seasons and, uh, this season perhaps to improve a
00:48:06.020little bit yet yeah it's for sure i mean we'll see what what comes out of it and uh it's june
00:48:12.400and things can change yet so we'll we'll still we still can see room for improvement but right now
00:48:18.060it's certainly a large concern and uh and we hope that the rains come sooner than later great well
00:48:24.280i thank you for the update even if it's a little bleak looking but i said the world's not ending
00:48:28.640yet it's just a little distressing so we'll keep an eye on things and then hope for the best all