Western Standard - February 29, 2024


CMS: The Alberta NDP leadership race just got interesting


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

193.07736

Word Count

9,256

Sentence Count

641

Misogynist Sentences

17

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The news just keeps coming, hard and heavy. Rarely good news, but there's lots of it, anyway. So since we're the ones who report on and analyze it for you, we have an embarrassment of riches to share with you today as well. As a guest, I have Landon Johnston, the young fellow who started that initiative to recall Mayor Naheed Nenshi in Calgary. We're going to bring him in for an update on that initiative, what the plans are, and just check in on that in general.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Good day, welcome to the Cory Morgan Show. We got yet another good one coming up. Boy,
00:00:19.480 the news just keeps coming hard and heavy. Rarely good news, but there's lots of news anyway. So
00:00:24.620 since we're the ones who report on and analyze it for you, we have an embarrassment of riches
00:00:29.700 to share with you. Let's see here just for today as well. As a guest, I'm going to have Landon
00:00:36.400 Johnston on. For people not familiar with him, he's the young fellow who started that initiative
00:00:40.540 to recall Mayor Gondek in Calgary. We're going to bring him in for an update, see how that's been
00:00:45.380 going, what the plans are, and just check in on that initiative in general. I think it might be
00:00:51.100 almost a month in on it now. We'll see. That clock ticks. They get 30 days to work on that sort of
00:00:56.360 thing. Or is it no, 60 days I get to work on that, I believe. See, these are the things we need
00:01:00.940 Landon here to clarify. As well, guys, I see you checking in. Mr. Stanley, Colin Gunn, Jordan, all
00:01:07.360 on the comment scroll. So if you're tuning in live, yes, absolutely use that. Send your comments my
00:01:13.420 way. Chat with me. Send your ideas, thoughts. And I see them all. I won't necessarily read them all
00:01:18.960 out, but it helps me get the show along and get those onto some of the subjects I might not have
00:01:23.540 thought of covering in the first place. But let's start with what's got me going today,
00:01:28.120 and it's in a good way, kind of. So, I mean, Rachel Notley, she expressed her intention to
00:01:32.800 retire as the NDP leader on January 16th, and since then, the race to replace her has been
00:01:37.700 pretty dull. I mean, there's been four NDP MLAs now under the race, and they've been lobbing
00:01:42.640 softballs at each other and pretty much running lackluster campaigns to date. They haven't been
00:01:48.240 capturing the excitement or really even the casual interest of Albertans. So, for political wonk,
00:01:52.500 I like interesting races.
00:01:54.180 And this has all changed, ironically, due to two men who haven't even formally entered the race yet.
00:02:00.180 Both former Calgary Mayor and the head, Nenshi, and Alberta Federation of Labor, Gil McGowan,
00:02:05.660 have expressed their interest now in pursuing the NDP leadership, and the fireworks are sure to follow.
00:02:11.000 I mean, Nenshi and McGowan, they have much in common in that they both have thin skins and inflated egos.
00:02:17.220 They also have some very serious differences.
00:02:19.060 as McGowan's an in-your-face type of old-school union-pushing socialist.
00:02:24.640 While Nenshi's more of a pragmatic type of leftist,
00:02:27.460 he's going to pander to an assortment of groups to try and gain and maintain power.
00:02:32.220 Now, Nenshi is clearly giving the leadership serious consideration
00:02:34.800 as he suddenly appeared giving fire-and-brimstone-type speeches at leftist rallies.
00:02:39.180 He hasn't denied his interest in the job
00:02:41.020 and has been painting himself as something of a savior for the NDP,
00:02:44.680 and he can bring their party back into prominence, he says.
00:02:47.500 Legacy media outlets, of course, are dutifully giving Ninchy more coverage suddenly with interviews and polls.
00:02:52.320 And there's even a story in the state broadcaster showing his favorite list of books last week.
00:02:57.640 Yes, they certainly come around for Mr. Ninchy fast, don't they?
00:03:00.920 Gil McCowan now. He's been entrenched in the NDP for decades.
00:03:04.620 And he's less than pleased with the prospect of an outsider suddenly appearing on the scene, telling his party it needs to be saved from itself.
00:03:11.360 So he's decided to throw his hat in the ring.
00:03:13.380 And McGowan has kicked off his campaign by taking shots at Stephen Carter, who's long been a compatriot of Nahed Nenshi.
00:03:19.580 And in saying his campaign will not be run by party insiders, these are Gil's words, or self-styled strategy gurus with podcasts who too often look down their noses at ordinary working people and who've never actually run for office themselves.
00:03:34.680 Yes, the shots have already been fired. Gil's going after Carter. I'm sure they'll start shooting back soon.
00:03:40.340 Now McGowan, he's an abrasive sort of brute who's known for verbally assailing media members with
00:03:45.600 profanity-laden rants as he tries to block cameras with his middle finger. He's styling himself as
00:03:51.760 being a worker who could lead a worker's party. He'd love to bring union, thuggery, and intimidation
00:03:57.660 to the prominence it used to enjoy decades ago. He wants to be a modern-day Joe Hill who'll
00:04:02.380 inspire people to bring oppressive capitalists to heel. Nanchy? He's more an opportunist, 0.99
00:04:07.920 willing to wear whatever cloak it takes to win. The Alberta party was his first political choice
00:04:12.020 of vehicle, but his unexpected mayoral win in Calgary put a halt to his provincial ambition.
00:04:18.920 So since leaving the top job in Calgary, Ninchy's been biding his political time to see where to go
00:04:22.900 next. Since there's little indication Trudeau's leaving the federal job anytime soon, the head's
00:04:27.000 turned his eye to the opening at the helm of the NDP. Now, McCowan, he has enough union support to
00:04:32.480 potentially win the NDP leadership, but a loose cannon like him isn't going to win the premiership
00:04:37.400 in a general election. Nenshi, on the other hand, he could bring in new members, and he might win
00:04:41.300 over pragmatic existing members, and might win the NDP leadership, and could conceivably garner
00:04:47.380 more Calgary support for the party, which would be interesting, but it would cause a lot of division
00:04:51.860 among the party loyal, wouldn't it? Both Nenshi and McCowan have already fostered some division
00:04:56.460 with the NDP, as of course, they burst upon the scene and pushed aside four women who've put in
00:05:01.060 their time as party MLAs, and basically what they're saying is, step aside, girls, it's time 1.00
00:05:04.920 for the men to take charge and get things back in order. The feminist wing of the NDP can't be 1.00
00:05:10.140 amused. I'm sure Nancy will close his eyes, look at the ceiling, and explain more clearly to them
00:05:15.160 why they need to embrace his guidance. Maybe he'll tell them to calm down. That always works.
00:05:19.360 The NDP members were going to have a tough choice to make. Should they go with the unelectable
00:05:23.880 McCowan, who would keep the party true to its roots, or should they accept some personal
00:05:27.960 compromise and choose a party outsider like Nancy to try and win the next election? The race has 0.81
00:05:32.720 become interesting in the future. The NDP is on the line. The Nenshi-McGowan battle won't do the
00:05:37.200 party or Albertans really any favors, but it will offer us some fantastic political drama to observe.
00:05:42.280 I'm looking forward to watching it, kind of like that morbid fascination akin to a kid who just
00:05:46.580 put a couple of bugs into a jar and wants to see them fight. I'll try and give it a little shake
00:05:50.720 now and then when I can. I don't really care who wins. I just want to see how low they're going to
00:05:54.280 go in trying. So the NDP race, which I was indifferent to, has finally become exciting,
00:06:00.100 and I'm looking forward to covering it with all of the zeal I just showed now.
00:06:04.780 All right, let's see what else is going out there in the big bad world of news
00:06:07.420 and check in with our news editor, Dave Naylor.
00:06:09.820 Hey, Dave, how's it going?
00:06:10.880 It's going well, Corey, and you're right.
00:06:12.200 The NDP leadership campaign is now a must-watch event for anybody interested in politics.
00:06:18.900 Oh, yeah, those two, I mean, assuming they follow through with their hints and running,
00:06:23.160 they're not going to be nice to each other.
00:06:25.740 No, all we need is Janice Irwin in there, and that'll even make it more interesting. 1.00
00:06:31.320 It certainly would.
00:06:32.580 Well, we'll keep trying to twist her arm and get her to throw her hat into the ring. 1.00
00:06:36.460 Yeah, now, old Gil certainly doesn't like us.
00:06:39.060 You'll remember the confrontation he had with Arthur Green, who was then our legislature bureau chief, at a protest march.
00:06:48.300 He gave Arthur the middle finger and didn't speak very kindly to him.
00:06:55.020 No, no.
00:06:55.900 But, I mean, that is sort of par for the course for a guy like him
00:06:58.940 who believes intimidation and that sort of thing
00:07:01.360 is what you're supposed to do at a political rally.
00:07:04.120 Yeah, and I don't think former Mayor Nenshi is our biggest fan either.
00:07:08.740 But, you know, that makes the game a lot more fun.
00:07:10.940 It certainly does.
00:07:12.320 As usual, a busy, crazy Wednesday, Corey.
00:07:15.960 I don't know if you're a fan of Gutfeld on Fox every night.
00:07:20.180 A news comedian, I guess, is the best way to describe him.
00:07:24.100 But holy cow, did he ever take a run at our prime minister last night, Justin Trudeau,
00:07:29.460 and his $4 million mine gender proposal, mine clearing gender proposal for the Ukraine.
00:07:39.320 So our opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford, has a column on that.
00:07:43.760 That's leading off our site.
00:07:45.840 And if you go into it, westernstandard.news, you can press a link
00:07:50.280 and see what exactly Mr. Gutfeld said about Mr. Trudeau
00:07:54.360 and it'll make your lunch hour more enjoyable.
00:07:58.920 You remember yesterday that Wendy's announced plans
00:08:01.760 to hold surge pricing.
00:08:04.400 So your Baconator will cost you more
00:08:07.100 in heavy use areas
00:08:11.040 and your ice cream will be costly more in warm days.
00:08:15.260 But it was a pretty big and pretty fast outcry
00:08:18.340 And it didn't take Wendy's more than 24 hours to back down and change that plan.
00:08:23.920 So that's happening.
00:08:25.740 We have a story from Lee Harding about a Windsor policeman who thought he would be good and donated $50 to the Freedom Convoy.
00:08:36.840 Well, his police department in Windsor wasn't happy with that and fined him 80 hours pay.
00:08:43.280 So he'll be paying for that donation for a while.
00:08:47.000 RCMP are investigating a jailhouse slaying in Drumheller where there was a big fight and ended up killing one inmate.
00:08:56.980 What else do we have? Enbridge slashing hundreds of jobs in Calgary this morning.
00:09:02.520 Up to 700 people got jobs.
00:09:06.240 Western Standard or Western 700 people got layoffs, excuse me, layoff notices, according to our sources.
00:09:15.200 and this is the fun one of the day for me, Corey.
00:09:20.080 Toronto teachers are demanding the day off in April
00:09:23.620 when it's a lunar eclipse
00:09:26.360 because I guess they're afraid of what might happen
00:09:29.660 to students and themselves
00:09:31.420 if they happen to stare up at the eclipse
00:09:34.420 during daylight hours.
00:09:36.360 They'll all go blind.
00:09:38.920 Well, you know, I mean, I think part of their job
00:09:41.080 should be allowing natural selection to take its course.
00:09:43.580 I mean, let those kids get up there. 1.00
00:09:45.200 the smart ones will retain their eyesight and let the others cook their eyeballs but i mean i'm
00:09:49.280 pretty harsh that way exactly i was reminded of was a president trump that came out and
00:09:54.400 looked straight up at the eclipse and that caused some hilarity and stephen harper's wife lauren
00:10:00.320 tweeted last night you know when she went to school part of the science was okay you'd make
00:10:05.200 a cardboard viewing thing to hold up and the reflection would would show so yeah it's weird
00:10:12.160 times we live in quarry and uh premier smith is just wrapping up a press conference now on
00:10:16.820 the province's new renewable energy plans and rules so our energy reporter sean polzer is
00:10:23.440 listening to that and he'll have a report up in a breaking news section very soon right on well
00:10:30.240 lots on the go i'll let you get back to sorting and sifting through it and getting it up to the
00:10:34.240 site there dave thanks for checking in and i'll talk to you a little later yeah we'll see you on
00:10:37.780 the pipeline you bet that is our news editor dave naylor and as you can hear yes the stories are
00:10:42.700 just constantly breaking and coming out everything from the the somewhat light you know to the
00:10:46.900 wendy's cheeseburger uh scandal going on to you know of course more serious issues and happenings
00:10:53.540 going on with uh well press conferences from premier smith or other news items that are
00:10:59.960 basically breaking on things so guys the reason we can do that the reason we're independent this
00:11:04.040 is the nag this is where i come in to remind you is subscribers we don't take tax dollars the way 0.87
00:11:09.560 we can do this is through you paying 9.99 a month 100 bucks a year guys you get full access get past
00:11:16.100 the paywall it helps funds guys like dave myself the rest in the newsroom jonathan who's just gone
00:11:21.980 up to edmonton he's working up in the legislature there i'm sure he's gonna do fantastic if you
00:11:25.660 haven't subscribed already please do guys westernstandard.news subscription as you can see
00:11:30.360 in the bottom, and you don't nag other people to get on. This is how we can beat that odious 0.69
00:11:34.760 legacy media. I want to start with something positive. I got sent this from a viewer, a
00:11:40.680 subscriber, Jennifer, and this book is fantastic, okay? So this is called The Birch Bark Caper,
00:11:46.820 and if you can see on it, this is from 1981, I believe. The picture on the one side, if you look,
00:11:52.260 is actually a caricature of Pierre Trudeau as a big, ugly frog, and the one on the right is of
00:11:59.060 Peter Lougheed as a beaver. And, uh, yeah, it was, it's a great book. It kind of reminds me of
00:12:04.120 Derek Smith's, uh, the prime minister who stole, uh, Christmas. Uh, you know, it sort of reads
00:12:10.060 along that line. Some fantastic, uh, uh, cartoons and characters. These guys were a columnist and
00:12:15.580 a, uh, uh, a cartoonist from back in the eighties. And they put this book together back then. Now
00:12:20.600 the book's in magnificent condition and I gave it a read and it was fun and, and, and good to
00:12:27.580 read. I'm not trying to sell this book, but the other point that it really drove home, and that's
00:12:30.760 what Jennifer wrote in the note she sent with the book as well, was you could read that book and
00:12:35.620 most of the issues within it are just like, you know, today nothing's changed. Even another Trudeau
00:12:41.440 in the prime minister's chair, the attacks on Alberta, the attacks on the oil field, the constant
00:12:46.840 battles, the back and forth. So it brings us back to that circular point all the time. We keep
00:12:53.340 hammering our head on that wall of confederation, and nothing changes. It's been over 40 years since
00:12:59.580 this book came out, and nothing really substantive has happened to make it any better. We're coming
00:13:07.000 up on the 40th anniversary of Pierre Trudeau's famous walk in the snow. You know, it was in
00:13:13.000 February, I think, in 84, when he said, finally to himself, it's time to step aside and move on.
00:13:20.380 maybe, just maybe, Justin will be inspired by his dada one more time and walk in the snow. I
00:13:27.960 doubt we should be so lucky. He sounds as defiant and stubborn as he's ever been, but
00:13:32.080 we can always hope. Mike from Freedom Honey actually stopped by the Western Standard Studios
00:13:37.980 as well, and he dropped off a fantastic deep dish pie, actually. So this is getting to be a great
00:13:43.020 gig. You know, I'm not like a CBC guy who's making six figures and getting all those perks and
00:13:47.480 flown all over the world. But hey, you know, if you want to send little books and pies to the
00:13:52.400 Western Standard newsroom, they're more than welcome, of course, or at least just subscribe.
00:13:57.260 So, all right, let's see, we'll get on to what else would go on in the news. Speaking of that,
00:14:00.700 this has been kind of a big one going on is, yeah, the RCMP acknowledged it never
00:14:06.020 interviewed Justin Trudeau, never interviewed him when they were supposedly considering
00:14:11.800 investigating into the SNC-Lavalin Group scandal. This just came up in the House of Commons
00:14:17.400 Ethics Commission Committee. Now, they, in the end, decided there wasn't enough there to
00:14:24.260 lay charges, but now we're starting to find out, no, maybe there was enough there to lay charges.
00:14:29.100 But they didn't investigate it if they didn't even interview the prime person involved in the
00:14:36.120 whole scandal, the one at the top of the heap. He wasn't even, you know, we're not talking about
00:14:40.620 interrogation. I'm not talking about beating him. I'm not talking about putting him in cuffs and
00:14:43.860 drag him aside, but you at least do your job and interview, follow through, try to see what
00:14:49.140 happened, get his version of the story, get an idea of what's up. But they didn't even do that.
00:14:54.680 So basically, Prime Minister Trudeau was declared innocent before the investigation even got
00:15:02.640 started. It's a rigged game in Canada, guys. And it's ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. And now, you know,
00:15:09.520 these admissions come now, as well with the Aga Khan scandal, you know, where Justin and
00:15:14.820 family went to stay on a rich private island resort, you know, the first time. He's done it
00:15:21.340 again since then. We do have two-tiered law. Again, when you take it, you know, people get upset when
00:15:26.860 I call it the Trudeau regime. They get upset when I say Canada is broken. But when there is a
00:15:32.800 political class that isn't held to the same standard of the law that the rest of us are,
00:15:38.420 then the country is indeed broken.
00:15:42.940 There's no getting around that.
00:15:45.840 But, well, we'll just keep pushing on.
00:15:48.720 We've got to get this clan out of here, but I don't know what it takes.
00:15:51.500 I really don't.
00:15:53.100 But what was this, you know, some of the questioning from committee.
00:15:56.700 Why didn't the RCMP exercise its absolute statutory right under the criminal code
00:16:00.340 to obtain a production order to search warrant from justice to, you know, examine cabinet documents?
00:16:05.560 and the commissioner said, we weren't able to obtain enough information or evidence.
00:16:10.380 Well, wait a minute. So they didn't, they couldn't obtain enough evidence to go out and
00:16:15.380 pursue evidence. They're talking in circles. They're stonewalling. So, you know, funny when
00:16:20.240 people talk about things like the Alberta Provincial Police Force, we talk about forming
00:16:24.860 our own out here. It doesn't mean it would be a perfect force or a great force, but boy, when you
00:16:28.940 look at how unfortunately sick and broken the RCMP is, you know, it's time. It's time. I mean,
00:16:35.400 sure there's lots of fine RCMP officers, but that central leadership, that corrupted leadership,
00:16:39.840 clearly beholden again to the party in power that will not hold the federal party in power to
00:16:46.520 account, won't keep them to the same standard of law as the rest of us, then we should get out.
00:16:51.780 Why is it that we're jerks in Alberta when we even talk about it anyways? Ontario's got its
00:16:55.780 own police force. I believe Quebec does. Newfoundland does, I think. Most cities do.
00:17:00.620 But the RCMP in rural areas and most of Alberta is still a prime force.
00:17:04.980 I see it's time to get out, guys.
00:17:06.480 These guys are not doing anybody any favors.
00:17:10.600 Landon appears to be running a little behind, it seems, so we'll just carry on talking about things.
00:17:14.620 I'll talk about another issue sort of related to what he's been working on with holding the city council to account.
00:17:24.120 And there's been more and more talk about political parties possibly getting in on the municipal scene.
00:17:29.220 And of course, people are getting very, very upset with that, particularly, and unsurprisingly, existing municipal politicians.
00:17:36.320 If they won already and got their role and got their seat in the old system, they don't want it to change.
00:17:42.060 The issue we have is that we've got a lot of these municipal politicians, we see the same thing all the time.
00:17:48.920 When they come up as an independent, they don't need to go through a nomination.
00:17:54.540 They don't need, they don't have that first vetting that's going on.
00:17:57.820 People in general don't know who they are. So they know, because if you look provincially and federally, Alberta in general, anyways, tends to vote fairly conservatively. So they campaign conservatively. Ninchy did it. Gondek did it. Others did it. And then they get in and they swing hard left because they can rely on our apathy. And it's our own fault there. There's truth to that. It's our own fault in that front. But they rely on our apathy to just stay in there. And voters don't get off their butts and fire these guys.
00:18:26.160 Now, why would a party change that?
00:18:28.820 That's some of the questions that people might have.
00:18:30.300 But think about it.
00:18:31.020 In Vancouver, they actually knocked off Vancouver, the land of the left,
00:18:33.780 knocked off an incumbent mayor, which is a tough job in any city,
00:18:38.040 but it's because Vancouver has a political party.
00:18:40.620 You see, with a party, as I said, the first thing is it would give some vetting.
00:18:44.880 So somebody, the party presumably would have a set of broad principles.
00:18:50.300 They're going to have things that they all agree on.
00:18:51.780 The candidates agree on, the volunteers agree on, things such as that.
00:18:54.420 So there's going to be people running for nominations to get in on these, and they're going to compete against other people for those nominations.
00:19:01.560 If it turns out it's a closet lefty, it's going to be exposed at the nomination stage, not once they're in office.
00:19:09.540 So you've already got that first level of accountability.
00:19:12.580 The other problem we have is we lose a lot of what could have been potentially very good civic politicians because they didn't know how to campaign.
00:19:23.100 It's a different sort of art form.
00:19:25.400 It's a different sort of skill.
00:19:26.200 They don't teach you how to run in a campaign or manage a campaign or any of that in high school.
00:19:31.260 You might be one of the most well-qualified, you know, individuals in your profession imaginable,
00:19:37.880 but it doesn't mean you know how to run an election or get that across to other people.
00:19:41.380 You might be fantastic in office, but don't know how to campaign.
00:19:45.140 So they run and they lose.
00:19:47.540 Parties provide resources.
00:19:49.460 They provide training.
00:19:50.520 They can provide some consistency to show like your average person looks at you blankly.
00:19:58.360 I mean, I got to watch that language now and then when I use the term GOTV, which is a
00:20:01.820 big part what I want to get to with this municipal races and parties as well.
00:20:05.060 It's a big term that's always used in election races, GOTV, GOTV.
00:20:09.840 Well, what's that?
00:20:10.360 Well, it means get out the vote, especially in tight votes.
00:20:13.500 You see, people will identify one way or another, but it doesn't mean they will get off their
00:20:17.240 butts and actually vote. 1.00
00:20:19.680 So that's why when there's a campaign, they're hammering on your door like crazy.
00:20:23.940 They're phoning your phone like crazy.
00:20:25.020 They're driving you mad.
00:20:25.940 They're annoying you.
00:20:27.360 And most of what they're always asking is, can I count on you for your support?
00:20:31.360 They want to know who you're going to vote for.
00:20:33.940 And the reason for that is so that they can follow up when election day comes or advanced
00:20:37.520 polling comes to start phoning you and nagging you yet again.
00:20:39.740 I know it's annoying, but just say, hey, come on out and vote.
00:20:42.720 Do you need a ride to the poll?
00:20:44.000 We can give you a ride to the poll.
00:20:45.940 You know, get out and vote.
00:20:46.860 let's get you checked off so we can stop nagging you. It works. It works. It can bring out many,
00:20:52.520 many more voters than would have normally done it. If there's a good item on television,
00:20:56.560 they might choose not to vote rather than come out that day. And that's where the apathy wins
00:21:00.220 the day. Parties have mechanisms, databases, training, volunteers to get out that vote.
00:21:08.260 So party candidates will be able to do that. Now in the last Calgary, well, Alberta municipal
00:21:15.300 elections. There was a union-backed group. It always comes down to those public service unions,
00:21:20.180 a union-backed group, and they had a $1.7 million fund. Huge. When you're talking municipal politics
00:21:28.760 to start spreading that around and doing more promotion and things, that's a lot of money.
00:21:33.280 And you can only gather that sort of money as a large organized group. So what did they do?
00:21:39.920 They endorsed loads and loads of candidates, and loads and loads of those candidates won.
00:21:45.300 What did we get to follow? Well, now we got candidates that are beholden to the public service unions. That means the unions are getting more sweet deals. We're getting larger sunshine lists. We're getting more highly paid civil servants and bureaucrats that we don't need. And suddenly Edmonton and Calgary are issuing huge tax hikes as usual, because you got to pay those bills. Why did the unions win? Because they're organized. It's funny. People say, I don't want to see partisan come into our municipal system. Guys, it's already there. It's just informal.
00:22:14.160 It's informal.
00:22:15.240 Bringing in an actual system at least would bring it to the fore.
00:22:18.240 You'll see it.
00:22:18.940 It won't be hidden.
00:22:19.740 It won't be some side group that nobody's heard of that's lobbying and helping out different candidates.
00:22:24.000 It will be parties out in the open.
00:22:26.260 Parties you can scrutinize and choose between because the parties are already there.
00:22:31.140 The only thing, and I say it over and over again, worse than a partisan system in municipal politics is an informal partisan system in municipal politics.
00:22:39.500 Don't try to delude yourself.
00:22:41.360 It's there.
00:22:42.260 These groups are there.
00:22:43.460 have people talked about that? You know, I think I talk a little more about parties in general.
00:22:47.720 I've taken part in a lot of them. And yeah, it gets frustrating. You know, one of the things I
00:22:51.180 hate seeing more than anything else is whipped votes. And every party does it. Conservative 0.68
00:22:55.680 parties do it. Liberal parties do it. The rest of them do it. When you see what should be a
00:22:59.500 contentious vote in a legislature, parliament, or any of those spots, yet each member votes exactly
00:23:06.180 on party lines, none deviate. I despise that. Because you know that a few of them do not agree
00:23:11.420 with how they voted, but they voted that way because the party told them to. That's the ugly
00:23:15.000 side of partisanship. That's a problem with partisanship. But let's just imagine for a moment,
00:23:21.100 let's say we took parliament and just wiped out parties somehow. Nobody in there was any longer
00:23:26.740 a member of a party. Okay, well, unfortunately, under our system, actually, let's say we even
00:23:32.080 had a Republican system. We elected a head of the parliament, a head of state separately. So we do
00:23:36.500 have a president, prime minister, whatever that might be, but we've also got 308 or whatever it
00:23:40.860 is members of parliament now that have no party affiliation. They're all in there and they got no
00:23:44.960 parties. How are they going to get anything done? What are they going to get done? Nothing. Absolutely
00:23:50.480 nothing. Within hours of this imaginary scenario, know what they're going to do? They're going to
00:23:54.740 start talking with each other and forming groups, forming alliances. They're going to start doing
00:23:59.440 nose counts and see whose group is larger than which group. Which group can get which done? Which
00:24:03.560 group agrees more on these principles versus those principles? Maybe we can get this bill done if
00:24:08.060 this group works on that bill and then we all vote together and get that bill through. Guess
00:24:10.900 what you got now? You got a political party. It'll be back within hours. It'll just be informal
00:24:14.740 because we can't operate without that. And I saw, you know, people talk about proportional
00:24:21.740 representation. There's where you get too many parties into the mix and you can really get into
00:24:25.820 dysfunction. I think it was Tristan Hopper, maybe it was somebody else who pointed out,
00:24:29.540 I saw a great tweet online where they said, you know, if you want to see what proportional
00:24:35.200 representation would look like. Just look at the deal Justin Trudeau just cut for the Pharmacare
00:24:41.100 with the NDP to remain in power, which is exactly right. Unfortunately, if you get into that,
00:24:46.160 you get into all these endless minority governments and a bunch of horse trading 1.00
00:24:49.360 going on with a whole bunch of different parties, you can really start getting some terrible policy
00:24:53.400 in. Now, getting back to municipal politics again and what a party can offer is policy formulation.
00:25:00.440 You see, for people who don't watch, and I don't blame you, but if you don't watch municipal politics closely enough, unfortunately, what happens a lot is, again, let's look at the city of Calgary.
00:25:09.820 You know, they're managing over 1.2 million people in this city, and their budget is massive.
00:25:15.460 And rather than formulate policy, what they keep doing is asking administration to formulate the policy.
00:25:21.300 It's kind of backwards.
00:25:22.380 Then administration brings it back to the council and mayor, and the mayor is usually just to accept it as it is.
00:25:28.320 In a party system, the party resources, the staffers, the rest are going to formulate policy.
00:25:34.320 They're going to write the bills and then they will work and debate and amend and fix up those bills.
00:25:39.480 Does it always make a good bill? No, not necessarily. Of course not.
00:25:42.960 But what do you expect to come from city administration when you're getting them to write the legislation all the time?
00:25:48.620 Well, the legislation isn't going to serve Calgarians. It's going to serve the bureaucrats.
00:25:51.600 It's going to serve the unions. Guess what? Why do you think the budgets are exploding?
00:25:55.220 and they've made it backwards. They've made it backwards. We used to see that all the time
00:26:00.700 in, uh, in the city council and head and then she used to scream at Sean Chu, for example,
00:26:06.860 when Sean Chu dared, I remember one scene where Sean Chu dared to question the numbers put out by a
00:26:11.940 bureaucrat who was hired to build bike lanes, who gave out a bunch of baloney stats about how many
00:26:16.860 people want to ride bikes and Chu dared to call her out. And then she went totally off on Sean 1.00
00:26:22.180 you about that? How dare you question her? You don't question our city staff like that in here. 1.00
00:26:27.300 Well, wait a minute. If city council can't question the major city staff, who does? That's exactly what
00:26:32.700 they're supposed to be doing in there. But the administration bureaucracy is wagging, is the tail
00:26:38.020 wagging the dog. The elected people actually are riding it and not doing the work, but they also
00:26:43.280 don't necessarily have the resources. How much time can one city councillor have to write up a policy,
00:26:49.080 a large policy, or a motion. But if they got a party behind them, they could. They could
00:26:54.500 dedicate some people to looking at that, dedicate the party to actually going on the ground and
00:26:59.300 seeing what people want, if they want that policy or if they don't want that policy.
00:27:03.340 The other people think some opponents have been saying, folks online, say,
00:27:06.920 add partisanship, it'll just ruin everything. Everybody will come in and they'll just, you
00:27:11.060 know, walk the party line. Well, maybe, I don't know. It's up to us as voters again. We have to
00:27:15.240 be engaged. I mean, we can screw up a party system just as well as an independent system.
00:27:20.060 But who's to say it's not screwed up already? You know, it's already a mess. So I don't know
00:27:26.520 if we can make it much worse. Plus, the party system coming in, if one comes in, doesn't mean
00:27:31.220 a person can't run as an independent, you can still go out there and run as an independent.
00:27:35.840 So why not? Jordan saying for the city of Calgary, the bureaucracy is basically the Senate,
00:27:41.520 Yeah, kind of in a sense where they're appointed and they have a whole lot of power, yet they have no accountability.
00:27:47.960 So, yeah, that's sort of a way to put it, though it's even more so it'd be as if the Senate was writing the bills for Parliament.
00:27:54.200 I mean, there are Senate bills, but they rarely pass.
00:27:57.000 Jordan saying, could Calgary legally enshrine a constitution?
00:28:00.560 Well, it's getting into a different sort of road.
00:28:02.240 I mean, there's also discussions about having a municipal charter and things like that that would enshrine more rights for municipalities and back and forth.
00:28:09.180 But I don't know about a constitution.
00:28:10.680 uh the municipalities are a creature of the provincial government they're they're an
00:28:16.220 extension of that they're actually somewhat beholden to the provincial government i like
00:28:19.580 to see more local government i don't want to see the province stepping in any more than it has to
00:28:23.620 when it comes to municipal politics we saw that in chestermere and alberto where they had to fire a
00:28:27.440 mayor and a few counselors because they were just that that crap crazy and screwed up and corrupted
00:28:32.520 by the looks of things they had to actually fire them they had to intervene at least there was a
00:28:36.640 way to do it. It looks like I'm guessing Jordan's not going to make it in. That's unfortunate.
00:28:41.680 Either way. So what Jordan, Jordan Landon, I'm getting mixed up. Sorry, Jordan. Landon Johnson
00:28:50.660 was working on, he started the initiative to recall Mayor Jody Gondek. Now I'll give a little
00:28:57.140 more history on that. Jason Kenney, when he was premier, before he was premier, he promised us
00:29:02.400 direct democracy legislation. He said, when we get in, you know, this was back when the NDP were
00:29:07.760 still in, we were saying, when the UCP gets in, we're going to empower Albertans by giving them
00:29:12.700 the ability to recall politicians, and we'll give them the ability to force referendums on issues
00:29:19.980 as well. And after a couple of years in power, he finally gave us that legislation. And it was crap.
00:29:27.180 I wrote about it multiple times at the time.
00:29:29.320 I was furious because the legislation was crap.
00:29:33.840 What he did was gave us theoretical legislation where you could recall somebody,
00:29:39.340 but set the bar so high that it's impossible to actually do it.
00:29:45.360 And it just, it bugged me just from the deceptiveness of it.
00:29:48.120 I would rather his honesty and saying, I just rather, I don't think it's good legislation
00:29:51.380 and we're not going to do it.
00:29:52.700 But to give us a fake, and that's what it was, a fake recall legislation,
00:29:56.160 a fake referendum legislation, is basically just trying to pull the wool over the eyes that people
00:30:00.800 have put in there. And it really ticked me off, and it still does. So what Landon did, though,
00:30:07.220 was he invoked the legislation as per what is on there to see if he could actually get a recall
00:30:14.000 for Gondek. Now, you've got to have a massive amount of signatures in order to actually initiate
00:30:19.880 the recall. Massive. So, I mean, Gondek was elected by, I think, 400 and some thousand votes in total
00:30:27.520 or something like that. And he needs, for Landon to get this initiative through, would need over
00:30:35.440 500,000 signatures on the paper, more people than voted in the entire election to get the recall
00:30:43.100 going. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous. At least he's trying, but it's just not going to
00:30:49.400 happen. Okay. And people, you got to remember this is on paper. This is a petition that has
00:30:54.640 to be witnessed by somebody. It has to have the person's name, phone number, email, contact
00:31:00.860 information, and their address. It has to be on there. And not everybody is comfortable sharing
00:31:05.380 that with somebody who shows up at their door or somebody they see at a shopping mall or somebody
00:31:08.560 they see somewhere else. So to think that you're, and they got a two month timeline too, they get
00:31:12.780 60 days to do it. It's just not going to happen. But he did really get a lot of people excited
00:31:20.540 about it. And there were a lot of other individuals came out to work on this petition. There's people
00:31:25.500 still working on it right now. They're signing. I've been watching online, you know, opportunities
00:31:30.300 for people to sign the petition all over the city at different businesses, different venues.
00:31:34.820 And the benefit that I'm seeing that's coming out of this is in multiple levels, even if it wasn't
00:31:40.100 what the initial attention was. The first thing was it did expose, as James, the commenter saying,
00:31:45.240 500,000. Yeah, that's crazy. Yes, it is. It did expose just how crappy the legislation is. It's
00:31:50.060 garbage, okay? But at least that was a way to drive it home, bring it into the news scroll.
00:31:54.080 Most people didn't even know we had such a legislation. So thank you, Landon, for bringing
00:31:57.960 it into the news scroll so people saw that there is such legislation and that it's crap. And
00:32:03.300 Premier Smith actually did at one point say, though I haven't heard any other further plans
00:32:07.180 to change it, but maybe this is the opening to start pushing for that. She said that this is not
00:32:11.360 workable legislation. It looks like it's not functional. Something's got to change with it.
00:32:15.600 So I appreciate that. And the other part is it got people off their butts. I went to City Hall
00:32:20.000 when they kicked their campaign off a few weeks ago with this. And hundreds of people came out to
00:32:25.580 try and, you know, put their names down and sign on this and to take more petition forms so they
00:32:30.040 can go out and get more signatures. And these are the people, these are the businesses that are
00:32:35.340 getting the signatures, things around here. Now they can't use those signatures for anything else
00:32:38.980 but the recall. Let me be pretty clear about that. I've been watching kind of the Facebook group
00:32:43.720 that's talked about it. Some people were also asking, well, couldn't we photocopy these signatures
00:32:46.660 and contact these people later for the election? No, no, that's abusing the list. That's these
00:32:51.860 people signed for the recall and nothing else. Do not use those names or contact information for
00:32:58.320 anything else. Don't share it with any other group. I've noticed a couple of questionable
00:33:02.220 groups actually, and I wanted to ask about it. Unfortunately, Landon's not here, but there's
00:33:07.020 some questionable groups saying they're going to help with this. Okay, but remember those groups
00:33:09.460 thrive on databases and getting names on lists. And if people find out they signed the petition
00:33:14.300 for this and they're suddenly getting phone calls or spams or things from a group that they wanted
00:33:18.720 no part of, they're never going to sign another petition again. Never. Plus, you will have given
00:33:23.840 Mayor Gondek, who implied as much that they, you know, that people's privacy would be violated
00:33:28.740 through this, you know, giving her more ammunition. No, no, Landon isn't supporting any of that.
00:33:34.080 Let me make that clear. But when you've got a lot of volunteers working in a lot of different
00:33:37.860 directions, some people can be misguided with it. But what they are doing is they should be
00:33:42.240 networking with each other. And I think they are. Again, these are the workers. These are the people
00:33:46.060 who go out and campaign, the people willing to go out and petition and try and get this done.
00:33:49.680 These are the ones you do want coming out in the next municipal election. Because yeah,
00:33:53.500 you're not going to recall her this time around, but you sure as heck can make sure she gets fired 0.97
00:33:57.460 next time. And you need people on the ground doing that. And right now those people are being
00:34:01.600 gathered. They're learning how to campaign. They're learning how to petition. They're meeting
00:34:05.480 each other. I hope that database is being maintained. I hope there's a group that's
00:34:10.120 forming out of all of this that's going to withstand and make it beyond this petition
00:34:14.160 and then put that effort in on something that will be achievable in the next election. And that is
00:34:19.820 firing Jody Gondek and a whole bunch of those crazy, terrible counselors we got in there. 1.00
00:34:24.720 Either way, like I said, I'd hope we'd had the chance to speak with Landon. He apparently can't
00:34:30.520 make it. So let's talk about some other stuff. This was an interesting one. Now I'll get into
00:34:34.720 my self-serving news, but there's some truth to it. This is the ongoing federal bailout of money
00:34:38.860 losing news corporations perpetuates media failure. Journalists told the commons heritage
00:34:44.940 committee yesterday, John Gormley, if you're from Saskatchewan, you're familiar with him. He had a
00:34:50.260 radio show over there forever. And he's fantastic. He just retired recently from the radio and it was
00:34:55.880 one of the best talk radio shows you ever saw. And unfortunately, you know, he's retired and it
00:35:01.540 happens. He gets tired. But he said legacy and, you know, media lobbying and asking for the more
00:35:08.740 money in bailouts isn't making for better media. No, it's making it worse. When we're bailing out
00:35:14.460 failures, all you're doing is encouraging more failure. And it's good to see that coming out
00:35:19.860 to these committees. Like we've got some hard times coming. I was just curious. I looked at
00:35:25.060 because somebody sent me a link with the stock number for Chorus Entertainment. And Chorus
00:35:30.660 Entertainment is a big one. It owns a whole whack of radio stations, including a lot of talk radio
00:35:34.940 stations. It owns global, you know, global television and a whole bunch of media. They're
00:35:40.420 down to 70 cents a share. That's down 85%, I believe, since 2015. So, I mean, it's plummeting.
00:35:48.740 it's going into the toilet. They're going broke. They're heavily indebted. They suspended their
00:35:53.540 dividends around Christmas time, which means, you know, they just don't even have the money to pay
00:35:57.880 their shareholders anything out of revenues. They are up the creek. How much longer all those stations
00:36:02.960 and television, radio and otherwise are going to make it? I don't know. It's not going to be for
00:36:07.660 much longer. The Red Star is bleeding money like crazy. Jordan Luntz saying Post Media has been
00:36:13.100 doing poorly. That's right. I think the only one that's doing somewhat well is the Globe and Mail
00:36:16.140 because they brought in a subscription system early.
00:36:19.360 You know, the thing is, these media outlets have to change.
00:36:23.200 They've got to find another way to maintain their base
00:36:27.480 because the current route has failed and it's failing
00:36:31.440 and just getting more money to pour into a failed model isn't helping them.
00:36:37.280 And they're going down.
00:36:39.360 So, yeah, I mean, it says Parliament in 2019 approved a $595 million bailout.
00:36:44.420 yeah, including, you know, payroll rebates and all sorts of things. And viewership is going down.
00:36:49.200 You see, I still wouldn't, I wouldn't support these media bailouts if they did work. But boy,
00:36:55.420 at least, you know, if they could work, but they don't work, they're failing, they're not helping.
00:37:00.220 And yeah, you know, here's an interesting one. And that's part of also was pointed out by Gormley.
00:37:04.940 This is a quote from he says, I don't necessarily accept the supposition that Canadian media is in
00:37:07.960 trouble because it's underfunded by government. You know, he said, the government has nothing to
00:37:13.140 do with this. He said the media is in trouble because it did two things. It bet on a modernized
00:37:16.920 definition of journalism that backfired and they lost audiences. Secondly, it whistled past the
00:37:22.780 graveyard as the internet and social media developed technology to mitigate content revenue
00:37:27.560 away from the media, which was always entirely predictable. Anybody looking at things should
00:37:32.060 have seen it coming, but they seem to live in a world of denial. They didn't want to change their
00:37:36.320 ways. They took on bad models and now they're going broke. And no, it's not due to lack of
00:37:41.820 government funding. That's for sure. Absolutely. Let's see. Let's talk about other things that are
00:37:47.960 interesting out there. The House of Commons voted 318 to zero. That's unanimous, guys.
00:37:56.580 Unanimous to give second reading to a bill banning replacement workers in the federally
00:38:01.800 regulated private sector. This is disturbing, guys. This is getting intervention into private
00:38:08.000 businesses now. This is saying if your private business has workers going on strike, you are
00:38:14.900 not allowed to hire anybody to replace them. In other words, you are now immediately over the
00:38:19.260 barrel. You're done. They have a gun to your head. It's wrong. It's wrong. And yet 318 cowards in the
00:38:27.540 House of Commons voted to get that because they're terrified of the unions. I keep talking about
00:38:31.720 unions on here a lot. Well, that's part of the reason is because the unions are at the root of
00:38:35.240 so much of the ugliness we're seeing in politics. And we get the cowardice that comes from our
00:38:40.020 parties and our governments on all levels because every one of them is terrified of having some sort
00:38:45.060 of strike happen just before an election. They never want that. This is different now. This is
00:38:51.040 getting into private sector, federally regulated. Yes, but private sector. The Teamsters, for example,
00:38:56.900 I mean, truckers are federally regulated. Remember when they were forced through vaccinations? How
00:39:01.180 of that all work out anyways. And where were the unions to help those truckers? Where were the
00:39:06.340 Teamsters? I don't know, they're padding their wallets somewhere. The Teamsters aren't exactly
00:39:10.040 known as a honest union, typically, are they? But they're federally regulated. So it would be
00:39:17.020 illegal to hire replacement truckers if there was a strike. I mean, a strike, a strike is a right.
00:39:23.260 And it is something that I don't believe, you know, should be banned. I don't believe unionization
00:39:27.180 should be banned. But if there's going to be a battle between workers and the ownership of a
00:39:32.380 business, you've got to allow them tools both ways. The skilled, experienced help walk out and hold
00:39:37.260 their picket signs, fine. But then the business should have the right to see if they can replace 0.94
00:39:40.520 them. You know what? If the business can replace them that easily, the strikers screwed up. They
00:39:44.980 obviously weren't worth as much as they thought they were. And that's how these things get resolved.
00:39:49.380 And if the business screwed up and found out that they can't replace these workers as easily as they
00:39:53.540 hoped, well, then they better start negotiating with the workers. But when you take away the
00:39:57.720 ability for the business to hire replacement workers, it basically means the business will
00:40:01.540 be shut down the moment these guys go on strike. You've just handed them a loaded gun, the unions
00:40:06.380 and taken away all recourse for the business. This will not do well. Yet, as I said, 318 to zero
00:40:13.940 voted in favor of this. And yeah, it's gonna really screw things up further when things were
00:40:22.540 screwed up enough already. Let's see. Conservative MP Kelly McCauley in Edmonton. Yeah, he got a
00:40:28.320 house order compelling. Those two arrive can arrive scam app witnesses to testify or be taken
00:40:34.340 into custody. So it's going to be interesting to watch this. They got three weeks now to surrender
00:40:38.340 themselves. Surrender. Like I said, there's a warrant out for them. They have to show up.
00:40:44.800 If you know, they've been summoned twice and they've ignored it both times. It's funny, again,
00:40:49.100 And with a little guy like us, if I get summoned or something and don't show up, don't worry, they will come get me.
00:40:54.300 Well, in this case, finally, it took a lot of work, but there is essentially the parliamentary form of a warrant.
00:41:00.160 These guys have to show up and start speaking.
00:41:01.900 Now, the problem is they might come before Parliament and just fire out a bunch of lies or just not answer questions, even though they're standing there.
00:41:07.640 But having them dragged physically in there is showing at least we're following up a bit on these guys who clearly, by all appearances, have been robbing us of our tax dollars.
00:41:17.480 The latest update, you'll see that on the Western Standard.
00:41:20.080 Let's talk about Trans Mountain.
00:41:21.340 Let's talk about Trudeau and his PharmaCare bill, right?
00:41:25.240 He's signed a deal with the devil.
00:41:27.020 Him and Jagmeet Singh are going to bring in this partial PharmaCare thing.
00:41:31.960 They're fighting with the provinces of Quebec and Alberta over it already.
00:41:35.120 They're going to fund insulin for diabetics and birth control for the promiscuous.
00:41:43.380 And, fine, I don't know.
00:41:46.340 I don't want to go into that, but they're going to, they're going to mismanage the hell out of it.
00:41:50.160 There's the problem. If you want to take a commodity and make it hard to get and make it
00:41:54.800 expensive and limited and rarefied, let the government manage it. Just look at it with
00:42:00.420 healthcare in general. How easy is it to get in to see a specialist? How fast can you get in through
00:42:06.560 an emergency room? How long does it take an ambulance to get you to a hospital? How many
00:42:10.200 people need a family doctor. Oh, but it's free. Yes, it's free to die waiting. So now when you
00:42:16.840 get government now taking over pharmaceuticals, get ready for supply to be screwed up. Look,
00:42:25.860 think of it all the way back and you can make comparisons to the Soviet Union.
00:42:30.680 They ran out of toilet paper. They ran out of ridiculous things because the government was
00:42:35.720 trying to manage it. The government can't manage those things well. Wildrose is saying, why is
00:42:41.860 Alberta opting out? I'm missing on something on the surface. It seems good. Well, part of it is
00:42:46.440 part of it. I mean, to be fair to the federal government, we haven't seen the full bill yet,
00:42:50.260 so we can't see for sure. The part of it is it's not their bloody jurisdiction. This is provincial.
00:42:55.280 If the government wants to do this, they got to be working with the provinces because the provinces
00:42:59.540 are the ones who are supposed to administer the delivery of health care. And that includes
00:43:03.280 pharmaceutical goods if the government's going to get involved in the first place.
00:43:07.060 The other thing is another one of those federal programs saying either you take it or we take
00:43:11.000 the money away.
00:43:12.200 Well, wait a minute.
00:43:12.880 It's our money.
00:43:13.700 All the province is saying, give it to us and we'll deal with it.
00:43:16.660 Whether or not the governments deal with it better or not, I don't know.
00:43:18.920 But it's more government overreach.
00:43:20.340 That's part of the problem.
00:43:21.500 And it gives a poison pill because, of course, yes, then they can say, oh, look at those
00:43:25.140 mean, nasty, you know, provincial politicians want to make diabetics keep paying for their
00:43:30.420 insulin.
00:43:30.740 No, that one always has bothered me.
00:43:32.200 It is a bad one.
00:43:33.180 And that's why they chose that one, where they want a bunch of, you know, unplanned pregnancies happening and flooding the hospitals and, you know, abortuaries and everything else. 0.83
00:43:45.340 It's politics.
00:43:47.060 It's not making people better.
00:43:48.240 It's not saving money on health care. 0.82
00:43:50.060 So to go back to that point, the latest news on the Trans Mountain Pipeline, the pipeline that Trudeau regulated out of existence and then had to buy with our own money because he finally backed himself into a corner because he'd shut down every other possible pipeline in the country already, has turned into a disaster.
00:44:06.900 Of course, it started at $4.5 billion.
00:44:08.360 It was supposed to be worth it.
00:44:09.080 It's up to $40 billion.
00:44:11.120 It just went up yet again in estimates by 10%.
00:44:15.120 And it's also, of course, going to be delayed by some more months.
00:44:21.140 This thing was supposed to be done years ago.
00:44:23.100 Delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed.
00:44:24.360 Why?
00:44:24.760 Because government is running it. 0.96
00:44:26.700 So again, you want efficient pharmaceutical delivery.
00:44:30.880 You want things like that.
00:44:32.480 Trust me, having the government do it is not going to be the way
00:44:35.760 to make those services better or more accessible.
00:44:39.400 I mean, I think we can be finding ways
00:44:40.780 to make sure people don't fall by the wayside.
00:44:42.240 I hate to think of a diabetic person
00:44:43.740 who can't make the bills
00:44:44.720 because they're paying for insulin or things like that.
00:44:46.720 But again, getting government in,
00:44:49.440 guys, it's not going to make it better.
00:44:51.100 Speaking of which,
00:44:52.020 let's wrap up with a couple other quick little things
00:44:54.180 in government stupidity.
00:44:55.300 Ottawa is looking at banning electric heaters.
00:44:57.120 Yes, portable electric heaters.
00:44:58.260 They're going to ban them. 1.00
00:44:59.580 Apparently they decided they're unsafe.
00:45:01.380 So when your heat pump fails,
00:45:02.980 after you got rid of your natural gas
00:45:04.440 and your backup was an electric heater,
00:45:06.480 I guess you're just going to freeze.
00:45:07.960 What I suggest is, I don't know,
00:45:10.580 tearing the wood out of your local member of parliament's office,
00:45:13.240 bring it to your house and start a fire to make yourself warm
00:45:15.520 because they've banned every other bloody way to do it.
00:45:18.500 We're a winter country
00:45:19.120 and they're actually considering banning electric heaters now.
00:45:22.240 Speaking of government overreach,
00:45:24.100 speaking of government just going well and beyond,
00:45:27.320 but that's how insane this government's gotten.
00:45:29.940 Now it needs to be reined in.
00:45:32.360 Wendy's, one more thing.
00:45:33.380 yes, I guess you're going to have to, uh, the surge pricing went by the wayside. I was all
00:45:37.140 looking forward to see that experiment go a little farther. Uh, people get upset when their
00:45:41.700 cheeseburgers might go up, but the thing people forget as well with capitalism, when they get to
00:45:45.140 do things, if they'd had that surge pricing in, it can help them maintain lower pricing during the
00:45:49.720 slower hours. Like people forget that other half of it. They lost it as if it's your right. It's
00:45:55.060 your intrinsic right to have access to cost-effective fast food. Guys, it's Wendy's.
00:46:00.840 I can't believe how much you lost it. The sense of entitlement you have. Don't like it shop
00:46:03.980 somewhere else, but that's not the view of things. Either way, they did speak up. Wendy's backed off
00:46:07.800 and we're back to your normal greasy burgers. They'll probably just raise the price on all of
00:46:12.080 them now. I'm not sure if that's a better outcome. Oh, well, such is life. Okay, guys, that's what
00:46:18.600 I've got for you today. Thank you very much for tuning in. Keep an eye on things and we will be
00:46:25.540 updating them. The pipeline will be on a little later. We're going to break down a few more
00:46:29.220 issues. And yes, there's always lots on the go. Be sure to go to the westernstandard.news,
00:46:34.140 take out a subscription, watch for those things as they break. We have it going all the time
00:46:37.960 and get your subscription. Thanks guys for tuning in. We'll see you again next week at this time.
00:46:45.580 Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken
00:46:50.240 long, long ago. These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent
00:46:56.380 firearms, regulations, and legislation in Canada, and more importantly, educating the public about
00:47:02.440 how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. To become a member, it's absolutely worth
00:47:07.320 every penny.
00:47:26.380 We'll be right back.