Western Standard - June 25, 2026


CORY MORGAN： Consultation has broken Canada

Topics
consultation in Canada
Calgary’s woke want to kill cowboy culture The state of “cooperative federalism” @Martyupnorth

Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

186.2

Word count

903

Sentence count

43

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, I talk about the recent ruling by an activist judge in Alberta that blocked a proposed $1.5 billion gold mining project due to a complaint from a self-appointed hereditary chief. I also talk about how the courts have become a de facto veto authority for Indigenous people and their representatives.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 I'm going to go on on the latest thing. You can catch this story in the Western Standard
00:00:08.800 from last week. It just still floored me. So, I mean, you might soon not even be able to erect
00:00:14.440 a garden shed in your backyard without getting consent of indigenous people, perhaps hundreds 1.00
00:00:19.540 of kilometers away. And I mean, does that sound ridiculous? Well, it's no less absurd than any 0.53
00:00:24.640 other consultation requirements imposed by activist judge recently. I mean, in BC, it's
00:00:29.820 illegal to enter certain provincial parks at certain times of the year if you're of the wrong
00:00:33.240 race. Nothing's off the table now. Democracy itself is now secondary to Indigenous consultation.
00:00:40.080 It doesn't matter if hundreds of thousands of citizens call for a referendum on an issue, 0.87
00:00:43.780 they're not allowed to even ask the questions in a democratic exercise without somehow gaining
00:00:48.480 unanimous consent from Indigenous chiefs. And I say unanimous because it appears that if even a few
00:00:54.440 complain about the Democratic vote, as was the case with Alberta's proposed referendum,
00:00:58.840 a Liberal-appointed judge will quickly shut down the process, despite the efforts of hundreds of
00:01:03.200 thousands of citizens, just due to the complaints of a handful. It was the chiefs, not the Indigenous
00:01:08.560 people at large who took issue with allowing Albertans to vote on an issue. And who's a chief
00:01:13.660 anyway? An activist judge in BC just shut down a $1.5 billion gold mining project due to a
00:01:20.840 complaint from a self-appointed hereditary chief only represents a few dozen people at best. One
00:01:26.620 doesn't need to be elected by indigenous people as a representative. One doesn't need to have an 1.00
00:01:30.800 actual historic claim or right to any land. One only needs to claim they're a hereditary chief
00:01:36.100 of a fictional band and they're bestowed with blanket veto authority over any project. Not
00:01:41.960 enough people are covering this, guys, and what this means. The alleged nation that objected to
00:01:46.620 the province isn't recognized by governments on any level. So how on earth is a company
00:01:51.700 or government supposed to identify, find, and consult adequately with these groups as they
00:01:56.480 spawn like dandelions in spring? The answer is that they can't. It really has become impossible
00:02:01.760 to reach the invisible bar of consultation required to do anything of significance in Canada.
00:02:07.060 It's not that the consultation hasn't been done. There's a whole sub-industry worth billions of
00:02:11.540 dollars that's developed over the years specializing in consultation. Companies are willing to meet
00:02:15.700 with every Indigenous person within 200 miles of a project and have spent enough consultation over
00:02:21.200 the years to have done so. The problem, though, is as long as one Indigenous person remains 1.00
00:02:25.040 unsatisfied, an activist judge is going to say there wasn't enough consultation and they will
00:02:29.140 shut things down. Reminder, Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution doesn't call for constitution.
00:02:34.980 It sure as hell doesn't call for consent from Indigenous people. The duty to consult was read
00:02:40.180 into the Constitution in 2004 by Supreme Court justices. And even then, the judges made it clear
00:02:45.540 this didn't offer veto authority to Indigenous bands. Unfortunately, when judges refuse to
00:02:50.620 recognize what the bar for adequate consultation is, the duty to consult has become a de facto
00:02:57.520 veto authority. Not only for Indigenous bands, but for small groups that identify now as bands
00:03:03.040 under the leadership of self-appointed hereditary chiefs. No government nor court has the balls to 0.92
00:03:09.440 finally say enough is enough and push back against this creeping regulatory mire, and it hasn't 0.86
00:03:14.080 served anybody. No matter how much they're indulged, these Indigenous activists and chiefs
00:03:18.540 are only becoming more indignant, more belligerent. Pandering to their insatiable appetite for 1.00
00:03:23.740 pursuing authority over all things has only made them hungrier. Canada's already lost a trillion
00:03:28.300 dollars in potential investment over the last decade due to the terrible regulatory environment
00:03:32.760 it's under. This trend is only going to become worse as layer after layer of consultation
00:03:37.000 requirements are dumped on governments and companies by appointed judges. Who in their
00:03:41.100 bright minds going to invest in a major project in Canada right now when the rug can be pulled out
00:03:45.560 at any moment due to a complaint from a self-styled chief along with a ruling by a judge who wants to
00:03:50.720 make their mark on the judicial system. Getting major projects completed has gone from difficult
00:03:56.260 to impossible in Canada. The blame lands on the governments and the justices who are too cowardly 0.95
00:04:01.520 to do what's right and just finally say no to Indigenous activists for a change. This will do 0.98
00:04:07.640 nothing for that other impossible goal set for reconciliation. Canadians have accepted that some
00:04:14.140 poor practices were done in past centuries, but they're becoming exhausted with being told to
00:04:19.280 apologize for it and endlessly being forced to compensate the descendants of the descendants of
00:04:24.180 the aggrieved as the economy falters further due to these consultation requirements. As democracy
00:04:30.080 is denied by consultation requirements and as people could lose their property due to rulings
00:04:35.160 from activist judges in BC, the attitudes of Canadians is going to change and it's not going
00:04:39.720 to be for the better guys with regards to indigenous relations. The only question is
00:04:43.320 how bad is it going to have to get before the legislature legislators find the courage to do
00:04:47.740 what must be done. And I'm afraid it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.