CMS： Trudeau government corruption is poised to become much worse
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
139.67395
Summary
In this episode of Western Standard News, host Ryan Henderson sits down with the Calgary Lawyer General, Eric Bouchard, to talk about the state of small business in Alberta. He talks about what it means to be a small business owner in a city that doesn t have a voice in the legislative process, and why it's important to have one.
Transcript
00:13:16.000
journalist Sean Polzer. He prolifically writes and covers a lot of those things you'll see on
00:13:21.560
there. This is the time I like to remind everybody the reason Sean gets his bills paid and the rest
00:13:25.560
of us do and we can have this show is because you guys have subscribed. So we really appreciate
00:13:30.420
that. But this is where I got to nag and remind you, if you're watching this and you haven't
00:13:33.500
subscribed yet, guys, come on, get on board. Westernstandard.news slash subscription, $9.99
00:13:39.040
a month, $100 for a year. Hey, volume discounts. It's a good way to go. I mean, I know people are
00:13:44.880
getting used to new media. Things change and it just seems odd paying for content. But we got to
00:13:49.920
remember it wasn't that long ago. For those of us who are gray enough to remember anyways, we never
00:13:54.280
thought twice about paying to have newspaper subscriptions or things like that. And it was
00:13:58.200
in the price level of what we're talking about now, $10 a month. You get past the paywall. It keeps our
00:14:02.780
reporters running. It keeps this show running and it keeps us as an independent news outlet. We aren't
00:14:08.520
taking subsidies and tax dollars as the other ones are. We proudly keep saying that and it shows. I
00:14:14.400
mean, come on, I'm going to, after I get finished with my next guest, I'm going to talk a little bit
00:14:18.940
about CTV and their latest bit of brilliance and seeing, you know, again, one of these bailout
00:14:23.840
networks and what they do. So if you've subscribed already, thank you very much. We really do appreciate
00:14:29.280
it. And if you haven't subscribed yet, guys, get on there, take one out. It's really appreciated and
00:14:34.140
it really helps us along. Okay. Well, I see our guest is in the lobby already. So if he's ready to
00:14:39.940
rolling and I pull them in and is Eric Bouchard, he's the MLA for Calgary Law Heed. And yeah,
00:14:48.300
we're going to talk a bit about, well, business in Alberta and how it's, well, I guess we're
00:14:54.100
suffering through COVID and is still suffering post COVID. Hi, Mr. Bouchard. How are you doing?
00:14:59.900
Good. How are you, Corey? Thanks for having me.
00:15:02.280
Oh, I really appreciate it. I know you've got some busy times in the legislature. I'll lay off on
00:15:07.600
bothering you with the million of other questions of what you guys are doing up there right now.
00:15:10.840
We'll stay focused on, on the business issue that's going on right now. I guess for people
00:15:16.980
unfamiliar with you, you know, before you came into the legislature a year ago, you were a small
00:15:21.680
business person in Calgary. Indeed. Yes. I was a small business owner. I started a small business in
00:15:28.500
2004, expanded to essentially a cafe to a full service restaurant, expanded in 2010, expanded
00:15:38.840
again, 2015. Our latest expansion was another, a little market on our plus 15 level. We opened in
00:15:47.620
January of 2020 and we had 10 weeks of phenomenal sales. Things were, we're going through the roof
00:15:54.780
after four really difficult years from 2015 to 2019. And then unfortunately forced to shut down as many
00:16:02.900
businesses were. We, you know, suffered the, the pains that, that all small business that were forced
00:16:09.420
to shut down went through. We, we tried to reopen when we were allowed to reopen with being in the
00:16:17.540
downtown core. There were, weren't any people, everyone was working from home. So we didn't really
00:16:22.260
have an option. So we, we stayed closed. And then a couple of years later, yeah, I was, I was done.
00:16:30.800
We, we couldn't, couldn't make it anymore. Gave the keys away. And then yeah, that's what pretty much
00:16:39.140
got me into doing what I'm doing now is the MLA for Calgary Lougheed. I just felt there was no
00:16:45.260
representation for small business. And I think it was in 2020, early, early 2022. I sent out an email
00:16:55.940
to some small business owners trying to mobilize, trying to get together. We essentially, we didn't
00:17:02.080
have a voice in my opinion. So we started off with eight of us the first week. And then I think
00:17:08.820
there's a group of over, it's roughly over 100, 110 guys that still get together on a, on a weekly
00:17:15.920
basis. And they, they asked me in December of 2022, if I would consider, sorry, 2023, no, 2022, if I'd
00:17:24.840
consider running at the point I was at, I had that summer, I was working at a golf course. I was 51
00:17:35.060
years old, did the first resume of my life. And I thought I would continue, you know, working
00:17:40.640
at a golf course until retirement. But two days prior to being asked if I would run, I was served
00:17:47.440
for, by the bank of Montreal for the loan that was outstanding, that I had to pay back and didn't
00:17:55.360
have any way of paying it back anymore, because my business was closed. So I decided why not,
00:18:02.880
why not run? And here I am today. Yeah, well, and it's a valid point, like a lot of people,
00:18:08.460
and I can, I don't blame them for wanting to just not think about the pandemic anymore. And I think
00:18:12.400
it's behind us and it's over. But for a lot of people, it's not over yet. Like there's a lot of
00:18:17.820
businesses, of course, that suffered dearly during the pandemic, really personally leveraged themselves
00:18:22.840
a lot. And they're still either, you know, they've, they've potentially gone broke, or they're still
00:18:27.820
treading water today to try and catch up on the, you know, for the financial beating they took over
00:18:33.440
those few years where they weren't allowed to do, to do business. Correct. No, the, the last week I
00:18:39.420
was home in the constituency, and it's, it's always great to be home and meet with constituents and
00:18:45.340
small business owners, but they're still feeling the effects. And I mean, from our side, all levels
00:18:52.220
of government, you know, we, we haven't done small business justice, in my opinion, and we're,
00:18:59.840
we're making strides, they're slow as, as everything seems to be in government. But I met with one small
00:19:06.580
business owner a week ago, and she switched her beer provider to save a penny a pint. You know,
00:19:15.120
like, put that in perspective, that's, that's how tight the margins are at, at even good times,
00:19:20.240
you know, the, the hospitality industry, the margins are difficult when things are good, but she,
00:19:27.240
she switched to save a penny a pint. And, you know, she can no longer take advantage, the food service
00:19:34.280
companies that deliver, they're fantastic, but they, you know, every cost has to be passed on. So she
00:19:40.940
is relegated to Walmart, Costco, Superstore now to pick up, you know, things that are maybe, you know,
00:19:47.900
five cents a pound cheaper, just to, to keep the doors open.
00:19:51.560
Oh, I know it all too well. I mean, I owned a pub for five years, just prior to the pandemic
00:19:56.680
hitting, I couldn't imagine since. And I mean, there's the whiplash effect of all of these things
00:20:02.300
coming down the line. I mean, our economy has been disrupted, the federal government, well,
00:20:06.180
every level of government started spending and borrowing like mad, which led, of course, to
00:20:10.480
inflation. And then you're forced to raise prices, and people are tight for funds. And one of the
00:20:15.320
first things you cut, if you're on a tight household budget is, well, you, we used to go
00:20:18.820
out for supper once a week, maybe it's going to be once every second week now, because we just can't
00:20:22.100
afford to anymore. And we're, again, businesses are really feeling that today. I mean, the only
00:20:26.800
business I see booming is dollar stores. Boy, they're springing up everywhere. Good on them.
00:20:31.360
But it's because people can't afford to shop anywhere else.
00:20:34.300
No, it's so true. And I've, you know, I feel all levels of government, the people who,
00:20:40.360
who were in charge, I guess, you know, from the advocacy for small business, which should have
00:20:48.420
been there in 2020 and 2021, wasn't there. You know, they, in, in my opinion, you know, I believe
00:20:56.140
it was the, I'll get a direct quote from the president of the chamber, Calgary Chamber of
00:21:01.860
Commerce, you know, they're, they're, they say they exist to help businesses reach their potential.
00:21:07.100
And as an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonpartisan organization, they build their
00:21:12.220
history to serve and advocate for business of all sizes and all sectors across the country.
00:21:17.400
And I'm going back to, would have been 2021, the president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce,
00:21:24.360
you know, her comments were today's announcement on the immediate removal of all pandemic measures
00:21:29.460
and restrictions ignores the importance of consumer confidence in our economy recovery.
00:21:34.900
You know, like put that in perspective, their, their role was to represent businesses, you
00:21:44.620
know, clearly veering out of, out of their lane.
00:21:48.540
Yeah. And just for, for context, that's Deborah Yedlin. And I've written a couple of
00:21:51.740
columns ripping into her for that in particular, I was furious because I mean, no matter where you
00:21:58.560
stand on things, if you know anything about business, that those restrictions were harming
00:22:04.420
businesses, they were slowing people down from coming into them, it was limiting the amount
00:22:08.140
of people who could dine there who could work there that the vaccine passports were reducing
00:22:12.180
your customer base. Again, to come out and say that it would be bad for business to lift those
00:22:17.820
restrictions was completely absurd. And contrary to what any person in business would have told
00:22:22.940
otherwise yet she's still heading that chamber of commerce today. And, and the Western standard,
00:22:28.080
just as a side note, before I let you go, we're a member of the Strathmore chamber of commerce
00:22:32.440
because we just don't want to waste our time and money on the Calgary one. Cause it's just
00:22:37.400
Yeah, no. So, so fair. I appreciate that too. I, yeah, just for another, I used media, corporate
00:22:46.260
media, I believe it was 2017 or 2018 when times were tough, you know, the NDP government, there's
00:22:53.280
oil recession. I used one of the corporate media to get my message out how small businesses
00:22:59.100
were affected. 2020, late 2020, I had reached out to all corporate media and I won't name
00:23:07.800
them all here, but each one responded saying that they weren't interested in telling my story
00:23:14.220
at the time. And I was, you know, wasn't waving the white flag just yet, but there was a tsunami
00:23:22.100
coming of small businesses. And we haven't, we haven't even scratched the surface. I don't think
00:23:27.080
of, you know, bankruptcies, insolvencies. We could go on talking about mental health issues and how,
00:23:35.200
you know, small business owners are proud people as you know, they should be. But, you know, when you,
00:23:42.540
you have to put up this facade for your staff, for your family, and just to keep the sense that
00:23:48.580
everything is okay, you know, and there, that Kai can speak personally to that. There's, there's a
00:23:53.260
mental, mental toll to that. Oh, absolutely. It's exhausting. I mean, you've got a sense of
00:23:58.620
responsibility, as you said to yourself, to your staff, you don't want them to know necessarily
00:24:03.220
how close to the line you might actually be. It's horrifying to have to lay people off if
00:24:08.600
they're dependent on that, that, that income. And it breaks people down. Insolvencies in Canada,
00:24:14.140
I believe in January of this year, went up over 40% in one month. A part of that was all the SIBA
00:24:19.360
loans suddenly were due to be paid in, which was, I guess, I mean, it's just chicken and egg. It was
00:24:24.800
a good program if you could make it through. It's an interest-free loan with a forgivable piece
00:24:29.380
within it. But if the government hadn't shut everybody down in the first place, you wouldn't
00:24:32.820
need it. I agreed. Yeah. And they, you know, the, the SIBA loan, what people fail to really
00:24:39.300
understand, you know, my, my own personal experience, our rent was 17 and a half thousand
00:24:45.080
dollars a month. You know, we borrowed $60,000, but put that in perspective, how there's other
00:24:50.920
costs as well. Like I was under the, I was planning to reopen a summer of 2021. My hot water tank
00:25:00.140
started leaking in the restaurant and we weren't open. And I ended up spending almost $3,500
00:25:06.060
to repair it, even though I didn't have any, there was no, no revenue coming in to look after that.
00:25:13.880
So those are like just one small story of, of the, how many, like how many small business people
00:25:20.420
have suffered and continue to suffer. And those who have made it out, you know, fantastic. And I would
00:25:26.040
encourage anyone, you know, my background on hospitality, obviously, but you know, when you
00:25:31.920
consider where you're spending your dollars, think, think locally first, if, if you really can,
00:25:38.000
you know, it's not a soundbite, it's not advertising. It's, it's something like those
00:25:43.760
dollars that are spent in a community, they stay in the community, you know, two thirds of,
00:25:48.580
of every dollar that's spent goes back into the community. And, you know, if you have to go
00:25:55.260
somewhere else, just, just think of where, where those dollars are going, where the corporate
00:25:59.720
offices are, but yeah, how many, how many local families are being, being served by the money
00:26:07.540
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's a little bit of a things for us to step up and do our part if we
00:26:11.880
can now. So you've stepped up, you're in the legislature. You can add that, that perspective
00:26:16.320
now of, of somebody who's been in the field of a small business. What is being done or what can be
00:26:22.780
done on the legislative level? I, I know this, there's always talk about reducing red tape, but
00:26:27.000
we've been hearing about that talk for, for many, many years now, and the red tape just never seems
00:26:31.040
to quite actually reduce it. Are there initiatives finally underway?
00:26:34.460
There are some initiatives underway. I've talked with many at length with Minister of Red Tape Reduction,
00:26:40.980
Dale Nally. He's, he's, he's very active. I've also talked with Minister Rajon Sahani,
00:26:47.480
Advanced Education and Minister of Jobs, Economy and Trade, Minister Matt Jones. And there are some
00:26:56.620
initiatives. Also, we do have a parliamentary secretary of small business, Tani Yao, and we're,
00:27:02.460
we're just at the, at the beginning stages. And, you know, prior to me getting into government,
00:27:07.220
I don't know how things were, but I'm, I'm hopefully bringing more, more discussions around
00:27:13.860
small business and how we can support small business initiatives and looking forward to,
00:27:18.500
to any put, any input from, from your viewers. Excellent. And then I, I guess further since
00:27:25.280
you're in there, I mean, we're always, it seems just one breakout or one emergency or something
00:27:30.740
away from a, you know, a government being tempted to crack down and, and, and restrict or get in the
00:27:36.980
way of business again. I can only imagine at least hopefully we have more voices in government
00:27:41.580
this time that would speak up and say, whoa, hold your horses. The cure may be worse than the
00:27:46.660
disease if something else comes up in the future. Correct. Yes. And I know not just myself. I mean,
00:27:52.300
that's one of the, the main motivators that got me into the position I am is to stand up for small
00:27:58.680
business and say, no, we won't allow this as a small business people. And I know that the,
00:28:03.900
that our government shares that sentiment. There's also, and I'm stuck. I can't find the correct
00:28:09.540
paperwork right now, but there is a, there's a petition that, that will be going around a private
00:28:18.180
petition to make sure that, you know, small business can, small business people can sign that
00:28:24.040
and put it forward to government and it'll be tabled in the, in the fall legislature.
00:28:30.620
Great. And I mean, that's an important part. I mean, you got to, you know, as a business owner,
00:28:36.040
I know you're busy, business owners are busy. They got a million things on the go and everything,
00:28:39.280
but they should communicate outwards with their local representative, make sure they've got some,
00:28:43.680
some rapport going on. So if there are problems, I mean, government gets disconnected from people
00:28:48.320
on the ground and that's when things go bad and it can happen, you know, get dome disease and whatnot.
00:28:53.500
So making sure to reach out and remain engaged is really important.
00:28:58.280
I think that's, that's great advice, you know, to, to the small business out there,
00:29:02.860
small business owner out there, who's listening or watching really do get engaged, you know,
00:29:08.400
contact your, at the municipal level, level at the provincial level be involved, you know,
00:29:15.180
attend a constituency association meeting, have your voices heard, you know, send, send an email,
00:29:21.340
send a voicemail, get in contact with your local chamber of commerce. You know, we,
00:29:26.280
what I think happened and this is, you know, small business owners have their head down there,
00:29:33.460
they're in their lane doing what they do. There's, and I can speak to that myself, you know,
00:29:38.080
I was never really involved in any government issues other than showing up and voting every
00:29:43.820
four years, but we collectively, we have a loud voice as small business owners, but, but on our own,
00:29:51.900
you know, as we, we saw, we witnessed for a couple of years, we, we really didn't have a voice.
00:29:56.680
And when we leaned on the people who we expected to advocate for us, that, that voice was,
00:30:05.260
Well, it's good to know we have some government members who are, you know, again, with that
00:30:09.080
experience and willing to speak up if, and when the challenge comes and just that reminder to
00:30:13.220
people, that's really what I wanted to bring you on is don't let people know it's not over for
00:30:17.760
small businesses, not even by a long shot. I mean, it's better than it was a few years ago,
00:30:21.960
but a lot, if they haven't gone broke are still really struggling. So, you know, try to help out
00:30:26.460
your local business. And, and again, I guess, so, you know, support your, your local representatives
00:30:33.820
Yeah, no, I encourage every, every small business owner, please share your stories. I'll be working
00:30:39.740
with some initiatives on some initiatives with, with all of our UCP MLAs too. It's not going to be
00:30:47.460
a small business month, but to encourage, we'll be highlighting, you know, small businesses in
00:30:52.020
each constituency to support as a, you know, because if we, if we don't continue to support
00:30:58.020
small business, we're going to lose small business and we're going to turn around one
00:31:01.640
day and what's left, you know, I, I don't, I don't even want to imagine what that would
00:31:07.820
look like, but, but we, we need to, this is a, a wave that's coming and it, if it's not
00:31:14.940
already here. So I'm sounding the alarm, please go out and support your local small businesses.
00:31:22.120
It's absolutely important. Before I let you go, one of our commenters, Shirley Gervais said,
00:31:25.760
you know, many of us send emails to our elected officials and receive no responses. And, and that
00:31:29.600
varies, you know, depends on who your officials are and so on, but there is a cynicism and, and often
00:31:33.420
a lot of representatives aren't necessarily responsive, but, but you have been fantastically.
00:31:38.680
So where, where can people, I guess, reach you and, and you know, and, and just follow
00:31:45.000
Sure. Yeah. So I'm on all social media, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, a little bit. My direct
00:31:52.620
email, you know, is calgary.lawheed at assembly.ab.ca. And if you have an MLA, regardless of where
00:32:02.000
they are, what, what allegiance they hold, and they're not being responsive, I don't want to
00:32:06.840
take the burden and speak on their behalf, but please forward emails to me and I could forward
00:32:12.620
it to them and maybe, maybe try to try to get a response.
00:32:16.780
Great. Well, much appreciated. I really appreciate you coming in today and then what you're doing in
00:32:21.360
the legislature. Perhaps, you know, we can talk again down the road and see some of the progress,
00:32:26.160
hopefully in improving things for our small businesses in Alberta.
00:32:28.820
I would love that. No, thanks for the opportunity to give small business a voice.
00:32:34.460
It's a, it's a weird, it's strange for me that I sit up in Edmonton, you know, after being, I still,
00:32:40.440
you know, I had dinner with the premier last night and I was talking to my wife on the way home. I said,
00:32:45.100
you know, just how things changed and I'm happy to be where I am. I'd be just as happy running my
00:32:50.560
business, but I feel that, you know, I'm, I'm here for a purpose. And I thank you for giving me the
00:33:01.500
That's appreciated. Okay. Well, we'll talk again soon.
00:33:05.580
Great. Thank you. So that was again, Calgary Law Heed MLA, Eric Bouchard. It's his first
00:33:10.100
year in office and yeah, he's hard at it. And again, I like that messaging. I know. And I
00:33:16.520
understand what Shirley's saying. It can feel frustrating. You could feel like they aren't
00:33:19.600
listening. It can feel like they're indifferent, you know, and it doesn't matter which, even if you
00:33:24.640
have an NDP MLA or whatnot, often, we can't speak for everyone. Often though, they really do care.
00:33:30.800
They might have a different ideology than you, but they really do want to hear from you. And they are
00:33:36.080
concerned about the businesses. Sometimes you might even actually help them understand things a little
00:33:40.700
better. So try to communicate with your, your representatives as Mr. Bouchard said, on all three
00:33:45.600
levels, municipal, federal, and provincial, it can only help. I mean, the worst that'll happen is they
00:33:50.600
ignore you, but a lot of them pay more attention than people realize. And it's worth reaching out
00:33:55.200
and communicating with them. So I appreciate him coming on because he has small business gets
00:33:58.940
forgotten. Look, big business is important too. Of course, those big corporations, I know people don't
00:34:03.260
like them, but that's how you get economies of scale and you can buy products at Walmart for a good price
00:34:07.100
and so on. But for your local community, plus I believe most Canadians are employed by small
00:34:12.280
business, businesses of under like a hundred employees. That's where the majority of us are
00:34:15.940
working. So, but those are also the ones most vulnerable. They don't have a big capital pool to
00:34:21.620
fall back on. If times get tough, if something happens, it's very difficult. As Mr. Bouchard said,
00:34:26.420
he was in the hospitality industry. And as I said, I owned a pub for five years. I tell you what,
00:34:30.840
when hard times hit and you're in that industry, it doesn't matter how much you think your banker
00:34:35.660
loves you as nice as they are when you got your mortgage and your car loan and all your, you know,
00:34:40.760
your credit cards and everything with the bank. When you mentioned borrowing money for a restaurant or a pub,
00:34:45.680
if you want to see a banker's butt snap shut harder than, you know, to crack walnuts,
00:34:50.740
that's the way to go. They despise lending money to hospitality industry businesses. And it's a high
00:34:56.100
risk. Fair enough, that's business, but you got, that's also why they are so vulnerable. If you hit
00:35:01.080
a low spot, it's not so easy as just going out and taking out a demand loan so you can ride out the
00:35:07.160
tough times. Quite often, you just don't have it. And what happens then is a lot of business owners
00:35:11.960
leverage themselves personally. They might refinance their home. They might cash their
00:35:16.240
RRSPs. But again, it puts them in dire, dire trouble if the business doesn't recover fast
00:35:23.780
enough. And it still could be a viable business, but you know, you get into that hole and you're
00:35:27.260
trying to pay the interest and you're trying to keep up and suddenly it comes down. So just
00:35:31.280
reminding everybody, it's not over yet for a lot of the small businesses out there. The damage done
00:35:37.340
by the bad policies, the restrictions during the pandemic is still being felt by a lot of people.
00:35:44.600
Okay. I mentioned earlier, I wanted to talk a bit about legacy media. Yeah. One of my favorite
00:35:47.920
areas to bash, it's a bit self-serving, but it's important. Something I saw last night on Twitter,
00:35:53.780
it comes out, you know, or X, I should say, CTV. What's out a headline? This is beautiful.
00:35:59.880
Now the headline says, terminally ill Palestinian prisoner dies after 38 years in Israeli custody.
00:36:06.420
I'm going to tell you about a media term. It's called burying the lead. That's when you take
00:36:11.620
a story and you actually put the most important parts of the story way deep, deep down in the body
00:36:17.980
of the story rather than having them up front and center. If you're writing news copy, you should
00:36:21.260
actually kind of go in a descending order of the most important parts of the story and kind of get
00:36:24.980
down to the details later. But when you bury the lead, you actually take the important part and bury it
00:36:28.560
and then just go on to the fluff and distractions to begin with. So yes, it is true. A terminally ill
00:36:34.560
Palestinian prisoner did die after 38 years in Israeli custody. If you see nothing but that headline,
00:36:39.080
and unfortunately a lot of people only read the headlines, you think that's terrible. Those darned
00:36:43.220
Israelis keeping some poor man in jail for almost 40 years. They died of old age. This is awful. This is
00:36:49.800
awful. You know, the part they forgot to mention is why was this man in custody for 38 years? But
00:36:56.480
instead CTV was going on about Walid Dhaka was the longest imprisoned Palestinian currently in jail in
00:37:03.400
Israel. Oh, those nasty Israelis. Well, let's talk about it. In 1984, this Walid Dhaka kidnapped 19-year-old
00:37:10.180
Moshe Tamim when he got off a bus. And after he kidnapped him, he cut out Moshe's eyes, he castrated
00:37:17.140
him, he slowly mutilated him. He tortured him almost to death before shooting him. That's why that walking
00:37:25.260
piece of feces was in jail for 40 years. CTV neglected to mention that in their headline.
00:37:32.300
Okay? You can be critical of Israel. There's lots of room for it. You can be critical of Netanyahu.
00:37:37.460
There's plenty to be critical. I really wish somebody less corrupt than him was leading Israel
00:37:41.100
right now. But this kind of crap coming from our legacy media, this leading headline, making it sound
00:37:47.740
like, and then I listened to, I tortured myself. I listened to talk radio this morning and they were
00:37:51.340
talking to some guest who's going on about how Israel's holding thousands and thousands of
00:37:55.680
detainees and that's what they won't release in order, you know, with Hamas to swap as a prisoner
00:38:00.680
swap. They're trying to draw a moral equivalence to criminals who are in prison to the young women
00:38:08.920
who were snatched up from a music festival by terrorists and have been raped mercilessly for the
00:38:13.960
last seven months. That's, they're trying to say that's the same thing as the criminals, the murderers,
00:38:19.360
the torturers that Israel has in prison right now. You know what? Israel probably has a few
00:38:23.540
in there that shouldn't be there. Most countries, it seems, do manage to convict a few innocent
00:38:27.660
people, but it's not 9,000 detainees. They're prisoners, they're crooks, they're murderers,
00:38:31.520
they're rapists. Don't try to say that's the same as the hostages that the terrorists, and I'll say
00:38:38.580
terrorists, even if CBC won't, the terrorists that Hamas took from that music festival. It's just
00:38:45.300
sickening. It's sickening. Make a real case, you guys. Don't try to undercut what happened. We see
00:38:49.840
that's not the first time for CTV. If you might remember a while back, there was an activist and
00:38:54.180
she had Canadian ties. Her name was Vivian Silver. She was actually very pro-Hamas. She was very pro-Palestine
00:39:00.780
trying to help them out. Well, she got murdered. She was kidnapped and murdered on October 7th,
00:39:07.420
and CTV came out there with this headline, Vivian Silver has died after being missing. That was their
00:39:12.980
headline. The real headline is Vivian Silver was kidnapped by Hamas and murdered. But instead,
00:39:21.380
no, she died. It may sound like she went for a walk and got missing, maybe had a heart attack or
00:39:25.260
something. Let's get some real coverage going on out there, guys. This is ridiculous. It's absurd.
00:39:34.360
And we've got to be realistic about it. You can't draw these moral equivalences between these things.
00:39:39.280
But the media, the legacy media, guys, that's why, again, self-serving, I know,
00:39:44.120
keep supporting the independent ones. We aren't always necessarily right, but you need balance.
00:39:49.080
You need more going on. And that example, like I said, with burying the lead with CTV,
00:39:53.300
that's the way they can take news items. And they're not exactly giving you misinformation.
00:40:00.020
They're just packaging it in a way so that you don't see the full information.
00:40:04.700
Another one that came up as well, when there was the hostage swap, I can't remember her name
00:40:09.700
offhand, but they showed these terrible pictures of this person released from an Israeli prison,
00:40:15.480
and they're giving back to, you know, to swap for some hostages with Hamas to try and free some of
00:40:19.500
the people that Hamas kidnapped. And there's this woman, and her face is all burned, and she looked
00:40:24.060
like a hot dog that had been on the barbecue way too long. Her fingers were all shriveled up and cooked.
00:40:28.500
And of course, people were freaking, say, look what happened to her in that Israeli prison.
00:40:31.860
And again, context, look a little farther down the story, because people were assuming
00:40:35.700
that she'd been burned and mutilated and tortured in an Israeli prison. No.
00:40:39.460
It turns out she was a suicide bomber. Not a very good one, because she failed on a couple
00:40:44.240
of levels. For one, she survived, so that's not a very good suicide bomber, although she did
00:40:48.280
barbecue herself rather terribly. She was planning to go into the middle of a bunch of people and
00:40:53.180
blow herself up, as suicide bombers are inclined to do. But she prematurely detonated, cooked herself
00:41:01.060
pretty badly, and ended up in an Israeli prison. Quite rightly so. But again, that's way down in
00:41:08.100
the text. That's farther down in the story. Instead, they make it look like Israel was keeping this poor
00:41:13.700
woman and had terribly abused her while she was in prison. Not the case in that case. Either way,
00:41:20.580
CTV is just beyond the pale. It is terrible. All right, let's see. This is some bigger news in Alberta,
00:41:27.540
and it's going to be interesting to watch this. This has been hitting the news a lot, too. And here
00:41:31.060
shows some of the double standard. Again, you know, listening to talk radio, I'm listening to these
00:41:34.180
guys going on, oh, here goes Daniel Smith, just fighting for the sake of fighting, and she's,
00:41:39.060
you know, going to be now stepping on municipal rights by perhaps bringing up a bill that might
00:41:43.700
stop the federal government from bypassing the provincial government and going to municipalities.
00:41:47.860
Well, for one, this is one of my favorite things to keep pointing out to people. Quebec has just such
00:41:55.220
a policy already. Why is it always quite all right when Quebec asserts its provincial authority,
00:42:01.700
but Albertans are always arseholes when they do? Why that double standard? Why is it wrong for
00:42:07.380
Albertans to stand up for themselves against Ottawa, but it's all right for Quebec? There is a double
00:42:13.140
standard Canada, a huge one and a problematic one. And then we got a cynical prime minister
00:42:19.780
who comes into Alberta. He does it to Saskatchewan. He does it in every province.
00:42:22.980
He bypasses the local government that is in charge of that jurisdiction in areas like housing and things
00:42:27.300
like that. He dangles the money for political points in front of municipalities, but he leaves the
00:42:32.660
rest of it to the province. The province has to deal with the administration. The province has to deal
00:42:35.780
with the fallout. And if they complain about it, he calls them all selfish, uncooperative jerks who want to
00:42:41.860
cut off the money from their well-deserving citizens because they're trying to score political points.
00:42:46.260
No, they're trying to stop a prime minister from using our own money to campaign for himself by
00:42:52.100
trying to bribe citizens through the municipalities. So I mean, think about who is upset by this
00:42:57.940
legislation. Jody Gondek, yes, the worst mayor in Calgary in history. She's upset with it. So if Jody's
00:43:05.060
upset with it, Smith's probably on the right track. They're not trying to say no to getting our tax
00:43:11.700
dollars back from the federal government. They're trying to say, well, we need to have our control
00:43:16.100
of how we deal with that money when it gets here. It's not your job, Prime Minister Trudeau,
00:43:22.340
to go directly to these municipalities like this because their money always comes with strings.
00:43:27.860
And we need government out of our face, not getting in. Speaking of which, though, you know,
00:43:33.300
I mean, again, you listen to local media, you listen to activists, you listen to the rest of the
00:43:37.460
snow oak. Alberta's terrible. It's awful. You know, they're abusing trans people or you name
00:43:42.500
it, whatever other garbage. Well, the numbers are really coming in interesting. You know,
00:43:46.100
BC, here we go. Lotus land, land of the woke, beautiful climate, great salmon fishing.
00:43:51.220
You know, it's a good destination. Everybody should be moving to BC, right?
00:43:54.420
Province to province, they'd be going to BC in hordes right now. I mean, Alberta's so intolerant,
00:43:58.500
and we get cold weather and mosquitoes and all that. Well, the numbers are in BC,
00:44:02.100
BC, interprovincial migration-wise, lost 8,600 people. 8,600 people moved out of BC. Said,
00:44:08.740
nah, we're gone. They had net loss. BC is growing, but it's through immigration from outside of the
00:44:13.940
country. Alberta gained 55,000 interprovincial migrants, people moving from other provinces
00:44:20.740
to Alberta. If we're so terrible, why is everybody coming here? You know, we see the same thing
00:44:28.020
down in the United States. It's been very interesting. You look at the hard left states,
00:44:31.860
the blue states down there, the Democrat states. The worst of them, of course, are California
00:44:36.020
and New York. Big centers. You know, they've got a lot of resources. They've got a lot of money in
00:44:42.260
there. They got things going on. Yet guess what? They're losing people. People are moving out of
00:44:48.020
those states like nobody's business. Where are they going? They're going to Texas. They're going to
00:44:53.940
Florida. They're going to Tennessee. They're going to Republican states. They're going to places
00:44:58.580
where you can prosper. They're going to places with smaller government. They're going to places
00:45:03.700
that aren't woke, that aren't ridiculous, that aren't stupid like California, which is just going
00:45:08.340
completely insane. California's raised the minimum wage for their fast food workers to $20 an hour.
00:45:16.420
In California, 20 American dollars an hour, real dollars, not the Canadian peso.
00:45:21.140
Guess what's already been happening? Thousands of fast food workers are getting laid off. Prices are
00:45:25.940
shooting through the roof. Look, if you could end poverty by raising minimum wage, somebody would
00:45:29.780
have done it by now. But people without an understanding of economics think it's a solution.
00:45:33.700
It's a band-aid and it's not a good one. It will help them for a very short time. The people who are
00:45:39.540
at entry level positions, because they'll get a raise from $15 an hour to $20 an hour. But guess what?
00:45:45.220
Only four out of five got that because one out of five got laid off to cover it. And then they find out
00:45:49.700
that as the prices of everything else go up, that $20 an hour doesn't buy what it used to. In fact,
00:45:56.180
it's buying as much or less than the $15 an hour they had before. What you need is a strong economy.
00:46:01.860
You need the natural raising of wages to draw people in to work for you, not an artificial
00:46:08.980
bar that's set through a minimum wage. It doesn't work. And then everybody all the way along the line
00:46:14.260
gets raises. Great. But it just leads to inflation. They just don't seem to understand. It doesn't get
00:46:18.820
rid of the underlying problem with the poverty. The poverty was due to a bad economy. If you want
00:46:23.380
a better economy, you need the government to get out of the bloody way. That's the way to do it,
00:46:26.420
not get in there further. So yes, even though California has that $20 minimum wage, do you think
00:46:31.860
people are all rushing to move out to California to cross-country ski and the poop on the San Francisco
00:46:36.820
streets? Yeah, that's how bad it is there now. No, they're leaving California. They're running as hard
00:46:41.780
as they can to states with much lower minimum wages because anybody with ambition and a work ethic can
00:46:46.020
do a heck of a lot better and they can buy a home a lot cheaper. They can make good money
00:46:50.820
and the government is out of their face and it's not as woke and ridiculous and insane.
00:46:55.860
Another thing with BC, the BC Alberta thing going on and we're watching that and I'm watching with
00:46:59.780
interest is of course the addiction epidemic and it's hitting both provinces and neither province
00:47:04.020
is having a good time trying to get it under control. It's a catastrophe in all ends.
00:47:08.580
Both provinces are dealing with record overdoses. I won't talk about drug toxicity and all that
00:47:13.380
enable us crap trying to make it sound like we don't have an addiction problem and it's just that
00:47:16.980
they aren't getting good enough drugs. They're overdosing. They're overdosing and they're dying
00:47:21.700
in both provinces. But Alberta is really pushing on a treatment focused agenda. So there's the
00:47:29.780
announcement of that Canadian Centre for Recovery Excellence to work on best practices, mental health
00:47:35.940
and addiction services. That's great. We really need treatment spaces. We need better treatment. We need to get
00:47:42.020
addicts into treatment as soon as they're ready. That's the best course we have. I'm not wholly
00:47:47.780
against a degree of safe consumption or harm mitigation. Yes, we need to keep the addicts
00:47:52.740
alive as long as possible to get them into recovery. But it's not an end and the enabalists
00:47:57.540
won't stop at safe consumption. They're a cult. They're loonies. They also say, well, we've also got to
00:48:01.940
give them drugs. We got to let them take the drugs in the hospitals. We got to let them take the drugs in
00:48:04.980
the playgrounds. I wish I was kidding. In BC, it's a constitutional right, a charter right to take drugs
00:48:09.860
in a playground. Again, you can't smoke cigarette there. But you can shoot some heroin. This is wrong.
00:48:17.300
We're going to watch and I don't, I don't, I'm not going to dance for glee if and when I believe the
00:48:22.980
Alberta model succeeds much better than BC and eventually it's going to be a long game. We'll
00:48:27.700
see the addiction and the overdoses going down while BC's continue to rise because BC's will continue to
00:48:32.900
rise and it's still horrible to behold. I just hope that Alberta can turn into an example to show
00:48:37.700
a better path. I mean, it's always, there's no magic bullet. There's, there's no simple way to
00:48:41.220
deal with this, but I think Alberta is going on the right course. And I'm speaking as a recovering
00:48:45.860
alcoholic. I'm familiar with addiction, guys. Not in every asset of it, aspect of it, but I'm familiar.
00:48:51.860
All right. Well, that's filled us up for today, guys. Thank you all for tuning in. Lots to cover,
00:48:57.780
lots we did cover. Be sure to come back again tonight. The pipeline is going to be on. As I said,
00:49:03.460
we're going to break down a few more issues, share these links, take out a subscription. We appreciate
00:49:09.300
it. Let's keep independent media independent so we can keep getting the real truth out there,
00:49:15.940
or at least my version of it. So thanks for tuning in. We will see you all again next week at this time.