CMS： The NDP leadership race just got interesting.
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Summary
The Calgary Spectator's Peter Demers joins us to talk about the latest news and notes from the past, present and future of the Calgary election, including the latest in the leadership race between Mayor Greg and Mayor Naheed Nenshi and his challenger, Jillian McAllan. We also hear about Wendy's decision to hike their prices in response to an anti-union backlash, and a story about a man who thought he would be good and donated $50 to the Freedom Convoy.
Transcript
00:06:01.400
The Nenshi-McAllen battle won't do the party or Albertans really any favors,
00:06:05.160
but it will offer us some fantastic political drama to observe.
00:06:08.400
I'm looking forward to watching it, kind of like that morbid fascination
00:06:11.300
akin to a kid who just put a couple of bugs into a jar and wants to see them fight.
00:06:15.780
I'll try and give it a little shake now and then when I can.
00:06:19.200
I just want to see how low they're going to go in trying.
00:06:21.420
So the NDP race, which I was indifferent to, has finally become exciting,
00:06:26.120
and I'm looking forward to covering it with all of the zeal I just showed now.
00:06:30.820
All right, let's see what else is going out there in the Big Bad World of News
00:06:33.460
and check in with our news editor, Dave Naylor.
00:06:38.340
The NDP leadership campaign is now a must-watch event for anybody interested in politics.
00:06:44.900
Oh, yeah, those two, I mean, assuming they follow through with their hints and running,
00:06:51.400
No, all we need is Janice Irwin in there, and that'll even make it more interesting.
00:06:58.620
Well, we'll keep trying to twist her arm and get her to throw her hat into the ring.
00:07:05.160
You'll remember the confrontation he had with Arthur Green,
00:07:09.620
who was then our legislature bureau chief, at a protest march.
00:07:13.460
He gave Arthur the middle finger and didn't speak very kindly to him.
00:07:20.540
No, no, but, I mean, that is sort of par for the course for a guy like him
00:07:25.000
who believes intimidation and that sort of thing is what you're supposed to do
00:07:29.960
Yeah, and I don't think former Mayor Nenshi is our biggest fan either,
00:07:34.760
but, you know, that makes the game a lot more fun.
00:07:40.660
Corey, I don't know if you're a fan of Gutfeld on Fox every night.
00:07:46.820
A news comedian, I guess, is the best way to describe him.
00:07:50.240
But holy cow, did he ever take a run at our prime minister last night,
00:07:54.740
Justin Trudeau, and his $4 million mine gender proposal,
00:08:04.740
So our opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford, has a column on that.
00:08:15.060
you can press the link and see what exactly Mr. Gutfeld said about Mr. Trudeau.
00:08:24.880
You remember yesterday that Wendy's announced plans to hold surge pricing.
00:08:29.780
So your baconator will cost you more in heavy use areas.
00:08:37.520
And your ice cream will be costly more in warm days.
00:08:41.320
But it was a pretty big and pretty fast outcry.
00:08:44.600
And it didn't take Wendy's more than 24 hours to back down and change that plan.
00:08:51.760
We have a story from Lee Harding about a Windsor policeman
00:08:55.280
who thought he would be good and donated $50 to the Freedom Convoy.
00:09:02.880
Well, his police department in Windsor wasn't happy with that
00:09:09.440
So he'll be paying for that donation for a while.
00:09:13.160
RCMP are investigating a jailhouse slaying in Drumheller
00:09:16.960
where there was a big fight and ended up killing one inmate.
00:09:24.340
Enbridge slashing hundreds of jobs in Calgary this morning.
00:09:32.280
Western Standard or Western 700 people got layoffs, excuse me,
00:09:41.240
And this is the fun one of the day for me, Corey.
00:09:46.120
Toronto teachers are demanding the day off in April when it's a lunar eclipse.
00:09:53.360
Because I guess they're afraid of what might happen to students and themselves
00:09:57.480
if they happen to stare up at the eclipse during daylight hours.
00:10:04.880
Well, you know, I mean, I think part of their job
00:10:07.120
should be allowing natural selection to take its course.
00:10:11.160
The smart ones will retain their eyesight and let the others cook their eyeballs.
00:10:17.100
I was reminded of it was a President Trump that came out
00:10:19.980
and looked straight up at an eclipse and that caused some hilarity.
00:10:24.260
And Stephen Harper's wife, Lauren, tweeted last night,
00:10:27.920
you know, when she went to school, part of the science was,
00:10:30.740
okay, you'd make a cardboard viewing thing to hold up
00:10:39.580
And Premier Smith is just wrapping up a press conference now
00:10:42.620
on the province's new renewable energy plans and rules.
00:10:47.100
So our energy reporter, Sean Polzer, is listening to that.
00:10:50.500
And he'll have a report up in the breaking news section very soon.
00:10:57.240
I'll let you get back to sorting and sifting through it
00:11:07.280
And as you can hear, yes, the stories are just constantly breaking
00:11:12.620
to the Wendy's cheeseburger scandal going on to, you know,
00:11:17.080
of course, more serious issues and happenings going on with, well,
00:11:21.440
press conferences from Premier Smith or other news items
00:11:27.760
So, guys, the reason we can do that, the reason we're independent,
00:11:29.860
this is the nag, this is where I come in to remind you, is subscribers.
00:11:35.380
The way we can do this is through you paying $9.99 a month,
00:11:42.680
It helps funds guys like Dave, myself, the rest in the newsroom,
00:11:51.440
If you haven't subscribed already, please do, guys.
00:11:54.240
Westernstandard.news slash subscription, as you can see on the bottom.
00:11:58.620
And this is how we can beat that odious legacy media.
00:12:04.240
I got sent this from a viewer, a subscriber, Jennifer.
00:12:12.940
And if you can see on it, this is from 1981, I believe.
00:12:16.760
The picture on the one side, if you look, is actually a caricature of Pierre Trudeau
00:12:22.960
And the one on the right is of Peter Lougheed as a beaver.
00:12:29.160
It kind of reminds me of Derek Smith's The Prime Minister Who Stole Christmas.
00:12:39.660
These guys were a columnist and a cartoonist from back in the 80s,
00:12:46.640
Now, the book's in magnificent condition, and I gave it a read.
00:12:53.880
I'm not trying to sell this book, but the other point that it really drove home,
00:12:56.560
and that's what Jennifer wrote in the note she sent with the book as well,
00:12:59.440
was you could read that book, and most of the issues within it are just like,
00:13:05.980
Even another Trudeau in the Prime Minister's chair.
00:13:14.700
So it brings us back to that circular point all the time.
00:13:18.620
We keep hammering our head on that wall of confederation, and nothing changes.
00:13:23.780
It's been over 40 years since this book came out,
00:13:26.460
and nothing really substantive has happened to make it any better.
00:13:32.280
We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of Pierre Trudeau's famous walk in the snow.
00:13:38.440
You know, it was in February, I think, in 84, when he said,
00:13:42.480
finally to himself, it's time to step aside and move on.
00:13:46.640
Maybe, just maybe, Justin will be inspired by his dada one more time and walk in the snow.
00:13:55.420
He sounds as defiant and stubborn as he's ever been, but we can always hope.
00:14:00.440
Mike from Freedom Honey actually stopped by the Western Standard Studios as well,
00:14:04.500
and he dropped off a fantastic deep dish pie, actually.
00:14:09.360
You know, I'm not like a CBC guy who's making six figures and getting all those perks
00:14:14.540
But hey, you know, if you want to send little books and pies to the Western Standard newsroom,
00:14:19.620
they're more than welcome, of course, or at least just subscribe.
00:14:22.640
So, all right, let's see, we'll get on to what else was going on in the news.
00:14:26.200
Speaking of that, this has been kind of a big one going on.
00:14:29.920
Is, yeah, the RCMP acknowledged it never interviewed Justin Trudeau,
00:14:33.940
never interviewed him when they were supposedly considering investigating into the SNC-Lavalin Group scandal.
00:14:40.420
This just came up in the House of Commons Ethics Commission Committee.
00:14:45.960
Now, they, in the end, decided there wasn't enough there to lay charges,
00:14:51.620
but now we're starting to find out, no, maybe there was enough there to lay charges.
00:14:54.320
But they didn't investigate it if they didn't even interview the prime person involved in the whole scandal,
00:15:04.540
He wasn't even, you know, we're not talking about interrogation.
00:15:08.400
I'm not talking about putting him in cuffs and dragging him aside.
00:15:10.480
But you at least do your job and interview, follow through, try to see what happened,
00:15:15.860
get his version of the story, get an idea of what's up.
00:15:20.720
So basically, Prime Minister Trudeau was declared innocent before the investigation even got started.
00:15:29.340
It's a rigged game in Canada, guys, and it's ugly.
00:15:34.980
And now, you know, these admissions come now, as well with the Aga Khan scandal,
00:15:40.040
you know, where Justin and family went to stay on a rich private island resort, you know, the first time.
00:15:51.560
Again, when you take it, you know, people get upset when I call it the Trudeau regime.
00:15:57.280
But when there is a political class that isn't held to the same standard of the law that the rest of us are,
00:16:14.720
We've got to get this clan out of here, but I don't know what it takes.
00:16:19.160
But what was this, you know, some of the questioning from committee.
00:16:23.060
Why didn't the RCMP exercise its absolute statutory right under the criminal code
00:16:26.380
to obtain a production order to search warrant from justice to, you know, examine cabinet documents?
00:16:32.420
And the commissioner said, we weren't able to obtain enough information or evidence.
00:16:36.320
Well, wait a minute, so they didn't, they couldn't obtain enough evidence to go out and pursue evidence.
00:16:45.320
So, you know, funny, when people talk about things like the Alberta Provincial Police Force,
00:16:52.140
It doesn't mean it would be a perfect force or a great force.
00:16:54.460
But, boy, when you look at how unfortunately sick and broken the RCMP is, you know, it's time.
00:17:01.040
I mean, sure, there's lots of fine RCMP officers, but that central leadership, that corrupted leadership,
00:17:05.880
clearly beholden again to the party in power that will not hold the federal party in power to account,
00:17:13.100
won't keep them to the same standard of law as the rest of us, then we should get out.
00:17:17.820
Why is it that we're jerks in Alberta when we even talk about it anyways?
00:17:26.880
But the RCMP in rural areas and most of Alberta is still a prime force.
00:17:32.540
These guys are, you know, not doing anybody any favours.
00:17:36.700
Landon appears to be running a little behind, it seems, so we'll just carry on talking about things.
00:17:40.660
I'll talk about another issue sort of related to what he's been working on with holding the city council to account.
00:17:50.160
And there's been more and more talk about political parties possibly getting in on the municipal scene.
00:17:55.380
And, of course, people are getting very, very upset with that, particularly, and unsurprisingly,
00:18:02.360
If they won already and got their role and got their seat in the old system, they don't want it to change.
00:18:08.220
The issue we have is that we've got a lot of these municipal politicians, we see the same thing all the time.
00:18:14.860
When they come up as an independent, they don't need to go through a nomination.
00:18:20.600
They don't need, they don't have that first vetting that's going on.
00:18:25.860
So they know, because if you look provincially and federally, Alberta in general, anyways, tends to vote fairly conservatively.
00:18:36.940
And then they get in and they swing hard left because they can rely on our apathy.
00:18:44.720
But they rely on our apathy to just stay in there.
00:18:47.640
And voters don't get off their butts and fire these guys.
00:18:54.880
That's some of the questions that people might have.
00:18:57.060
In Vancouver, they actually knocked off Vancouver, the land of the left, knocked off an incumbent mayor, which is a tough job in any city.
00:19:04.100
But it's because Vancouver has a political party.
00:19:06.680
You see, with a party, as I said, the first thing is it would give some vetting.
00:19:10.920
So somebody, the party presumably would have a set of broad principles.
00:19:16.340
They're going to have things that they all agree on.
00:19:17.820
The candidates agree on, the volunteers agree on, things such as that.
00:19:20.460
So there's going to be people running for nominations to get in on these.
00:19:24.500
And they're going to compete against other people for those nominations.
00:19:27.620
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.
00:19:35.600
So you've already got that first level of accountability.
00:19:38.360
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.
00:19:52.240
They don't teach you how to run in a campaign or manage a campaign or any of that in high school.
00:19:57.280
You might be one of the most well-qualified individuals in your profession imaginable, but it doesn't mean you know how to run in an election or get that across to other people.
00:20:07.420
You might be fantastic in office but don't know how to campaign.
00:20:17.180
They can provide some consistency to show like your average person looks at you blankly.
00:20:24.400
I mean I got to watch that language now and then when I use the term GOTV, which is a big part what I want to get to with this municipal races and parties as well.
00:20:31.100
It's a big term that's always used in election races.
00:20:36.400
Well, it means get out the vote, especially in tight votes.
00:20:39.540
You see, people will identify one way or another but it doesn't mean they will get off their butts and actually vote.
00:20:45.720
So that's why when there's a campaign, they're hammering on your door like crazy.
00:20:53.420
And most of what they're always asking is, can I count on you for your support?
00:20:57.440
They want to know who you're going to vote for.
00:21:00.000
And the reason for that is so that they can follow up when election day comes or advanced polling comes to start phoning you and nagging you yet again.
00:21:12.980
Let's get you checked off so we can stop nagging you.
00:21:17.000
It can bring out many, many more voters than would have normally done it.
00:21:20.520
If it's a good item on television, they might choose not to vote rather than come out that day.
00:21:27.080
Parties have mechanisms, databases, training, volunteers to get out that vote.
00:21:38.280
Now, in the last Calgary, well, Alberta municipal elections, there was a union-backed group.
00:21:43.720
It always comes down to those public service unions.
00:21:45.380
A union-backed group, and they had a $1.7 million fund.
00:21:53.260
When you're talking municipal politics to start spreading that around and doing more promotion and things, that's a lot of money.
00:21:59.320
And you can only gather that sort of money as a large, organized group.
00:22:12.800
Oh, well, now we've got candidates that are beholden to the public service unions.
00:22:16.260
That means the unions are getting more sweet deals.
00:22:19.800
We're getting more highly paid civil servants and bureaucrats that we don't need.
00:22:23.720
And suddenly, Edmonton and Calgary are issuing huge tax hikes, as usual, because you've got to pay those bills.
00:22:33.120
People say, I don't want to see partisan come into our municipal system.
00:22:41.280
Bringing in an actual system at least would bring it to the fore.
00:22:45.780
It won't be some side group that nobody's heard of that's lobbying and helping out different candidates.
00:22:52.300
Parties you can scrutinize and choose between because the parties are already there.
00:22:57.180
The only thing that I say it over and over again, worse than a partisan system in municipal politics is an informal partisan system in municipal politics.
00:23:11.820
You know, I think I talk a little more about parties in general.
00:23:16.620
You know, one of the things I hate seeing more than anything else is whipped votes.
00:23:23.840
When you see what should be a contentious vote in a legislature, parliament, or any of those spots, yet each member votes exactly on party lines, none deviate, I despise that.
00:23:35.620
Because you know that a few of them do not agree with how they voted, but they voted that way because the party told them to.
00:23:47.220
Let's say we took parliament and just wiped out parties somehow.
00:23:50.920
Nobody in there was any longer a member of a party.
00:23:54.580
Okay, well, unfortunately, under our system, actually, let's say we even had a republican system.
00:23:58.920
We elected a head of the parliament, a head of state separately.
00:24:02.120
So we do have a president, prime minister, whatever that might be.
00:24:07.460
Members of parliament now that have no party affiliation.
00:24:10.120
They're all in there and they've got no parties.
00:24:16.840
Within hours of this imaginary scenario, you know what they're going to do?
00:24:20.420
They're going to start talking with each other and forming groups, forming alliances.
00:24:24.780
They're going to start doing nose counts and see whose group is larger than which group.
00:24:29.460
Which group agrees more on these principles versus those principles?
00:24:32.860
Maybe we can get this bill done if this group works on that bill and then we all vote together and get that bill through.
00:24:44.800
And I saw, you know, people talk about proportional representation.
00:24:48.620
There's where you get too many parties into the mix and you can really get into dysfunction.
00:24:55.600
I saw a great tweet online where they said, you know, if you want to see what proportional representation would look like,
00:25:02.460
just look at the deal Justin Trudeau just cut for the Pharmacare with the NDP to remain in power, which is exactly right.
00:25:10.860
Unfortunately, if you get into that and you get into all these endless minority governments and a bunch of horse trading going on with a whole bunch of different parties,
00:25:17.200
you can really start getting some terrible policy in.
00:25:20.280
Now, getting back to municipal politics again and what a party can offer is policy formulation.
00:25:26.500
You see, for people who don't watch, and I don't blame you, but if you don't watch municipal politics closely enough,
00:25:33.320
unfortunately, what happens a lot is, again, let's look at the city of Calgary.
00:25:35.860
You know, they're managing over 1.2 million people in this city and their budget is massive.
00:25:41.520
And rather than formulate policy, what they keep doing is asking administration to formulate the policy.
00:25:48.420
Then administration brings it back to the council and mayor and the mayor is usually just accepted as it is.
00:25:53.700
In a party system, the party resources, the staffers, the rest are going to formulate policy.
00:26:00.360
They're going to write the bills and then they will work and debate and amend and fix up those bills.
00:26:09.000
But what do you expect to come from city administration when you're getting them to write the legislation all the time?
00:26:14.660
Well, the legislation isn't going to serve Calgarians.
00:26:25.360
We used to see that all the time in the city council.
00:26:30.100
And Head Ninchy used to scream at Sean Chu, for example.
00:26:34.040
I remember one scene where Sean Chu dared to question the numbers put out by a bureaucrat who was hired to build bike lanes.
00:26:41.120
Who gave out a bunch of baloney stats about how many people want to ride bikes.
00:26:46.040
And Ninchy went totally off on Sean Chu about that.
00:26:50.140
You don't question our city staff like that in here.
00:26:54.080
If city council can't question the major city staff, who does?
00:26:57.780
That's exactly what they're supposed to be doing in there.
00:27:05.080
The elected people actually are riding it and not doing the work.
00:27:08.900
But they also don't necessarily have the resources.
00:27:11.220
How much time can one city councilor have to write up a policy, a large policy or a motion?
00:27:17.860
But if they got a party behind them, they could.
00:27:19.980
They could dedicate some people to looking at that.
00:27:23.200
Dedicate the party to actually going on the ground and seeing what people want.
00:27:26.460
If they want that policy or if they don't want that policy.
00:27:29.420
The other people think some opponents have been saying, folks online, say,
00:27:35.280
Everybody will come in and they'll just walk the party line.
00:27:42.040
I mean, we can screw up a party system just as well as an independent system.
00:27:54.080
Plus, the party system coming in, if one comes in,
00:27:56.860
doesn't mean a person can't run as an independent.
00:27:59.000
You can still go out there and run as an independent.
00:28:04.860
Jordan saying, for the city of Calgary, the bureaucracy is basically the Senate.
00:28:07.660
Yeah, kind of in a sense where they're appointed and they have a whole lot of power,
00:28:15.860
Though it's even more so, it'd be as if the Senate was writing the bills for Parliament.
00:28:20.240
I mean, there are Senate bills, but they rarely pass.
00:28:23.060
Jordan saying, could Calgary legally enshrine a constitution?
00:28:26.600
Well, it's getting into a different sort of road.
00:28:28.220
I mean, there's also discussions about having a municipal charter and things like that
00:28:31.560
that would enshrine more rights for municipalities and back and forth.
00:28:38.000
The municipalities are a creature of the provincial government.
00:28:43.100
They're actually somewhat beholden to the provincial government.
00:28:46.640
I don't want to see the province stepping in any more than it has to
00:28:52.560
where they had to fire a mayor and a few councillors
00:28:54.300
because they were just that, that crap crazy and screwed up
00:29:04.080
It looks like I'm guessing Jordan's not going to make it in.
00:29:08.260
So what Jordan, Jordan Landon, I'm getting mixed up.
00:29:17.460
He started the initiative to recall Mayor Jody Gondek.
00:29:24.480
Jason Kenney, when he was premier, before he was premier,
00:29:30.300
He said, when we get in, you know, this was back when the NDP were still in,
00:29:34.120
he was saying, when the UCP gets in, we're going to empower Albertans
00:29:37.760
by giving them the ability to recall politicians
00:29:41.220
and we'll give them the ability to force referendums on issues as well.
00:29:47.040
And after a couple of years in power, he finally gave us that legislation.
00:29:55.300
I was furious because the legislation was crap.
00:29:59.740
What he did was gave us theoretical legislation where you could recall somebody,
00:30:05.380
but set the bar so high that it's impossible to actually do it.
00:30:11.400
And it just, it bugged me just from the deceptiveness of it.
00:30:14.180
I would rather his honesty and saying, I just rather,
00:30:16.140
I don't think it's good legislation and we're not going to do it.
00:30:18.740
But to give us a fake, and that's what it was, a fake recall legislation,
00:30:22.340
a fake referendum legislation is basically just trying to pull the wool over the eyes
00:30:29.740
So what Landon did, though, was he invoked the legislation as per what is on there
00:30:37.820
to see if he could actually get a recall for Gondek.
00:30:40.700
Now, you've got to have a massive amount of signatures
00:30:48.940
So, I mean, Gondek was elected by, I think, 400 and some thousand votes in total
00:30:54.580
And he needs, for Landon to get this initiative through,
00:31:00.460
would need over 500,000 signatures on the paper,
00:31:05.240
more people than voted in the entire election to get the recall going.
00:31:12.800
At least he's trying, but it's just not going to happen.
00:31:15.780
OK, and people, you've got to remember, this is on paper.
00:31:19.680
This is a petition that has to be witnessed by somebody.
00:31:22.520
It has to have the person's name, phone number, email, contact information, and their address.
00:31:29.260
And not everybody is comfortable sharing that with somebody who shows up at their door
00:31:32.780
or somebody they see at a shopping mall or somebody they see somewhere else.
00:31:36.400
So to think that you're, and they got a two-month timeline, too.
00:31:42.260
But he did really get a lot of people excited about it.
00:31:47.180
And there were a lot of other individuals came out to work on this petition.
00:31:52.980
They're signing, I've been watching online, you know,
00:31:55.860
opportunities for people to sign the petition all over the city at different businesses,
00:32:00.880
And the benefit that I'm seeing that's coming out of this is in multiple levels.
00:32:05.500
Even if it wasn't what the initial attention was.
00:32:07.720
The first thing was that it did expose, as James, the commenter, saying, 500,000.
00:32:13.140
It did expose just how crappy the legislation is.
00:32:16.980
But at least that was a way to drive it home, bring it into the news scroll.
00:32:20.120
Most people didn't even know we had such a legislation.
00:32:22.520
So thank you, Landon, for bringing it into the news scroll
00:32:24.840
so people saw that there is such legislation and that it's crap.
00:32:28.960
And Premier Smith actually did at one point say,
00:32:31.740
though I haven't heard any other further plans to change it,
00:32:33.860
but maybe this is the opening to start pushing for that.
00:32:36.120
She said that this is not workable legislation.
00:32:42.860
And the other part is it got people off their butts.
00:32:45.220
I went to City Hall when they kicked their campaign off a few weeks ago with this.
00:32:49.040
And hundreds of people came out to try and, you know, put their names down and sign on this
00:32:54.660
and to take more petition forms so they can go out and get more signatures.
00:32:58.120
And these are the people, these are the businesses that are getting the signatures,
00:33:02.820
Now, they can't use those signatures for anything else but the recall.
00:33:08.420
I've been watching kind of the Facebook group that's talked about it.
00:33:10.360
Some people were also asking, well, couldn't we photocopy these signatures
00:33:12.700
and contact these people later for the election?
00:33:17.240
That's these people signed for the recall and nothing else.
00:33:20.560
Do not use those names or contact information for anything else.
00:33:27.220
I've noticed a couple of questionable groups, actually, and I wanted to ask about it.
00:33:32.260
But there's some questionable groups saying they're going to help with this.
00:33:34.680
Okay, but remember, those groups thrive on databases and getting names on lists.
00:33:38.320
And if people find out they signed the petition for this
00:33:40.680
and they're suddenly getting phone calls or spams or things from a group
00:33:43.820
that they wanted no part of, they're never going to sign another petition again.
00:33:48.780
Plus, you will have given Mayor Gondek, who implied as much,
00:33:52.620
that people's privacy would be violated through this,
00:34:01.320
But when you've got a lot of volunteers working in a lot of different directions,
00:34:06.200
But what they are doing is they should be networking with each other,
00:34:13.120
The people willing to go out and petition and try and get this done,
00:34:15.720
these are the ones you do want coming out in the next municipal election.
00:34:19.220
Because, yeah, you're not going to recall her this time around,
00:34:21.200
but you sure as heck can make sure she gets fired next time.
00:34:34.640
I hope there's a group that's forming out of all of this
00:34:37.620
that's going to withstand and make it beyond this petition,
00:34:40.220
and then put that effort in on something that will be achievable in the next election,
00:34:44.940
and that is firing Jody Gondek and a whole bunch of those crazy, terrible councillors we got in there.
00:34:52.200
Either way, like I said, I'd hope we'd had the chance to speak with Landon.
00:35:00.140
Now I'll get into my self-serving news, but there's some truth to it.
00:35:03.260
The ongoing federal bailout of money-losing news corporations perpetuates media failure.
00:35:08.900
Journalists told the Commons Heritage Committee yesterday.
00:35:12.560
John Gormley, if you're from Saskatchewan, you're familiar with him,
00:35:15.900
he had a radio show over there forever, and he's fantastic.
00:35:20.860
and it was one of the best talk radio shows you ever saw.
00:35:25.880
And unfortunately, you know, he's retired, and it happens, he gets tired.
00:35:29.800
But he said legacy and, you know, media lobbying and asking for more money in bailouts
00:35:39.360
When we're bailing out failures, all you're doing is encouraging more failure.
00:35:44.300
And it's good to see that coming out to these committees.
00:35:50.780
I looked at it because somebody sent me a link with the stock number for Chorus Entertainment.
00:35:57.620
It owns a whole whack of radio stations, including a lot of talk radio stations.
00:36:01.720
It owns global, you know, global television, and a whole bunch of media.
00:36:18.540
They suspended their dividends around Christmastime, which means, you know,
00:36:22.600
they just don't even have the money to pay their shareholders anything out of revenues.
00:36:27.300
How much longer all those stations, television, radio, and otherwise are going to make it?
00:36:37.640
Jordan Lunt's saying Post Media has been doing poorly.
00:36:39.980
I think the only one that's doing somewhat well is the Globe and Mail because they brought in
00:36:44.540
You know, the thing is, these media outlets have to change.
00:36:49.260
They've got to find another way to maintain their base because the current route has failed,
00:36:56.560
and it's failing, and just getting more money to pour into a failed model isn't helping them,
00:37:04.260
So, yeah, I mean, it says Parliament in 2019 approved a $595 million bailout, yeah,
00:37:10.720
including, you know, payroll rebates and all sorts of things, and viewership is going down.
00:37:15.240
You see, I still wouldn't support these media bailouts if they did work, but, boy,
00:37:21.460
at least, you know, if they could work, but they don't work.
00:37:24.900
And, yeah, you know, here's an interesting one, and that's part of also was pointed out
00:37:31.640
He says, I don't necessarily accept the supposition that Canadian media is in trouble because it's
00:37:36.580
You know, he said the government has nothing to do with this.
00:37:39.640
He said the media is in trouble because it did two things.
00:37:41.880
It bet on a modernized definition of journalism that backfired, and they lost audiences.
00:37:47.800
Secondly, it whistled past the graveyard as the internet and social media developed technology
00:37:51.580
to mitigate content revenue away from the media, which was always entirely predictable.
00:37:56.500
Anybody looking at things should have seen it coming, but they seem to live in a world
00:38:03.200
They took on bad models, and now they're going broke.
00:38:06.500
And, no, it's not due to lack of government funding.
00:38:12.580
Let's talk about other things that are interesting out there.
00:38:22.580
Unanimous to give second reading to a bill banning replacement workers in the federally
00:38:32.360
This is getting intervention into private businesses now.
00:38:35.040
This is saying if your private business has workers going on strike, you are not allowed
00:38:43.220
In other words, you are now immediately over the barrel.
00:38:51.200
And yet, 318 cowards in the House of Commons voted to get that because they're terrified
00:38:58.660
Well, that's part of the reason is because the unions are at the root of so much of the
00:39:03.520
And we get the cowardice that comes from our parties and our governments on all levels because
00:39:08.800
every one of them is terrified of having some sort of strike happen just before an election.
00:39:25.400
Remember when they were forced through vaccinations?
00:39:29.440
And where were the unions to help those truckers?
00:39:35.080
The Teamsters aren't exactly known as an honest union, typically, are they?
00:39:42.420
So it would be illegal to hire replacement truckers if there was a strike.
00:39:49.380
And it is something that I don't believe should be banned.
00:39:54.900
But if there's going to be a battle between workers and the ownership of a business,
00:40:01.480
The skilled, experienced help walk out and hold their picket signs, fine.
00:40:04.480
But then the business should have the right to see if they can replace them.
00:40:07.040
If the business can replace them that easily, the strikers screwed up.
00:40:10.840
They obviously weren't worth as much as they thought they were.
00:40:15.440
And if the business screwed up and found out that they can't replace these workers as easily as they hoped,
00:40:20.280
well, then they'd better start negotiating with the workers.
00:40:22.780
But when you take away the ability for the business to hire replacement workers,
00:40:25.920
it basically means the business will be shut down the moment these guys go on strike.
00:40:30.000
You've just handed them a loaded gun, the unions, and taken away all recourse for the business.
00:40:36.060
So, yet, as I said, 318 to 0 voted in favor of this.
00:40:42.520
And, yeah, it's going to really screw things up further when things were screwed up enough already.
00:40:55.560
Those two arrive can, arrive scam app witnesses, to testify or be taken into custody.
00:41:00.960
So, it's going to be interesting to watch this.
00:41:02.340
They've got three weeks now to surrender themselves.
00:41:09.840
If, you know, they've been summoned twice and they've ignored it both times.
00:41:14.580
It's funny, again, 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.
00:41:20.320
Well, in this case, finally, it took a lot of work.
00:41:22.540
But there is essentially the parliamentary form of a warrant.
00:41:27.960
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.
00:41:33.680
But having them dragged physically in there is showing you at least we're following up a bit on these guys who clearly, by all appearances, been robbing us of our tax dollars.
00:41:43.540
The latest update, you'll see that on the Western Standard.
00:41:47.400
Let's talk about Trudeau and his PharmaCare bill, right?
00:41:53.200
Him and Jagmeet Singh are going to bring in this partial PharmaCare thing.
00:41:57.980
They're fighting with the provinces of Quebec and Alberta over it already.
00:42:01.220
They're going to fund insulin for diabetics and birth control for the promiscuous.
00:42:13.080
But they're going to mismanage the hell out of it.
00:42:17.240
If you want to take a commodity and make it hard to get and make it expensive and limited and rarefied, let the government manage it.
00:42:31.300
How fast can you get in through an emergency room?
00:42:33.600
How long does it take an ambulance to get you to a hospital?
00:42:41.400
So now when you get government now taking over pharmaceuticals, get ready for supply to be screwed up.
00:42:51.580
Look, think of it all the way back and you can make comparisons to the Soviet Union.
00:42:58.260
They ran out of ridiculous things because the government was trying to manage it.
00:43:11.000
Well, part of it is, part of it, I mean, to be fair to the federal government, we haven't seen the full bill yet, so we can't see for sure.
00:43:18.160
Part of it is, it's not their bloody jurisdiction.
00:43:21.340
If the government wants to do this, they've got to be working with the provinces because the provinces are the ones that are supposed to administer the delivery of health care, and that includes pharmaceutical goods, if the government's going to get involved in the first place.
00:43:33.180
The other thing is, it's another one of those federal programs saying, either you take it or we take the money away.
00:43:39.660
All the provinces are saying, give it to us, and we'll deal with it.
00:43:42.740
Whether or not the provinces deal with it better or not, I don't know, but it's more government overreach.
00:43:47.520
And it gives a poison pill because, of course, yes, then they can say, oh, look at those mean, nasty, you know, provincial politicians want to make diabetics keep paying for their insulin.
00:43:58.160
It is a bad one, 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.
00:44:16.100
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's finally backed himself into a corner because he'd shut down every other possible pipeline in the country already.
00:44:41.140
And it's also, of course, going to be delayed by some more months.
00:44:52.760
So, again, you want efficient pharmaceutical delivery.
00:44:58.160
But trust me, having the government do it is not going to be the way to make those services better or more accessible.
00:45:05.460
I mean, I think we can be finding ways to make sure people don't fall by the wayside.
00:45:08.280
I hate to think of a diabetic person who can't make the bills because they're paying for insulin or things like that.
00:45:12.780
But, again, getting government in, guys, it's not going to make it better.
00:45:17.160
Speaking of which, let's wrap up with a couple other quick little things in government stupidity.
00:45:26.760
So, when your heat pump fails, after you got rid of your natural gas and your backup was an electric heater, I guess you're just going to freeze.
00:45:34.000
What I suggest is, I don't know, tearing the wood out of your local member of parliament's office.
00:45:39.280
Bring it to your house and start a fire to make yourself warm.
00:45:42.200
Because they banned every other bloody way to do it.
00:45:44.500
We're a winter country and they're actually considering banning electric heaters now.
00:45:48.140
Now, speaking of government overreach, speaking of government just going well and beyond.
00:45:53.380
But that's how insane this government's gotten.
00:45:59.540
Yes, I guess you're going to have to, the surge pricing went by the wayside.
00:46:02.920
I was looking forward to see that experiment go a little farther.
00:46:04.940
People get upset when their cheeseburgers might go up.
00:46:08.700
But the thing people forget as well with capitalism, when they get to do things, if they'd have had that surge pricing in, it can help them maintain lower pricing during the slower hours.
00:46:20.900
It's your intrinsic right to have access to cost-effective fast food.
00:46:36.620
They'll probably just raise the price on all of them now.
00:47:13.520
Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.
00:47:18.340
These guys are on the front lines helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms, regulations, and legislation in Canada.
00:47:25.560
And, more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people who become a member.
00:47:58.760
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