Western Standard - Cory Morgan Show. Hey Premier Smith! Don’t blink!

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.200 Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show. I am Corey Morgan. This is my weekly show with the Western Standard going out to a number of channels out there. Get my opinion on things, run through some news items, maybe a little ranting and raving. And of course, I always have some fantastic guests coming on. So yeah, I've got a good guest coming on today as usual. Her name is Gabrielle Bauer and she's from Toronto.

00:00:57.920 She's a health and medical writer and she put out a book that was published by the Brownstone Institute called Blind Sight is 2020. So she's been looking back on the pandemic policies, social aspects to it. And wow, what worked, if anything, and what failed. And there's plenty of that.

00:01:16.020 So I mean, you know, we can't let that go too far in the rearview mirror. We got to examine what happened and why there. So let's get on to other things, local things. Of course, the election finally ended in Alberta. What a long, ugly, nasty campaign that was.

00:01:30.260 In the end, we do have a UCP government. Daniel Smith pulled it off. But I got stuck with an NDP MLA. Shamefully, in my rural riding, I have an NDP MLA. I'm quite boned about it. But whatever, I guess it could have been worse. We could have had a whole whack more of them.

00:01:45.820 Good to see y'all checking in on the comment scroll, guys. Stuart, Shirley, Jason, all the rest. I appreciate it. Use the comment scroll if you're watching this live. Send questions my way, the guests way.

00:01:56.400 And, you know, converse with each other. Just keep things civil. We can fight on Twitter if we want. Don't need to do it in this comment scroll.

00:02:02.500 All right, I'm going to talk a little bit about that election. Offer my advice, and I'm sure she's getting it from all directions.

00:02:08.220 My advice, though, to Premier Danielle Smith. So, Danielle Smith, I mean, she's gone against all conventional wisdom and political advice. 1.00

00:02:15.960 She's defied and ignored polls, pundits, and academics that all predicted her political demise. 1.00

00:02:22.240 And in dismissing those naysayers, she's found herself elected as Alberta's premier of the majority government at her disposal, albeit a reduced one.

00:02:29.760 Now, the night of the election, Danielle Smith invoked the late Ralph Klein in referencing what was called his miracle on the prairie.

00:02:38.480 And she wasn't drawing an unfair parallel. The similarities between the 1993 general election won by Klein and the 2023 election in Alberta are remarkable when you look at them.

00:02:49.020 When Klein took the reins of the Progressive Conservative Party in the early 1990s, their party was in serious trouble.

00:02:55.180 It was polling down at sometimes as low as 20% against Lawrence Decor's liberals, and many were declaring the PCs as electorally dead in the water.

00:03:04.180 The elites, of course, and the chattering classes dismissed Klein as an uneducated bumpkin who stumbled his way into the premiership and would become a little more than a footnote in political history.

00:03:14.000 Voters, though, they felt otherwise and gave Ralph Klein a reduced majority government on June 15th, 1993.

00:03:19.820 The Alberta establishment, of course, they were aghast, but at least somewhat humbled.

00:03:24.700 Now we come all the way up to 2022, and we've got the governing UCP, and they were polling as low as 22% under the leadership of Jason Kenney.

00:03:32.900 That led to the end of Kenney, and among a number of things.

00:03:35.480 And when Kenney was replaced by Danielle Smith, the usual establishment suspects were all but confident this would be the beginning of the end of the UCP's reign in government.

00:03:43.820 There's no way a leader with such a controversial history as Smith could turn around the fortunes of a party in such trouble, right?

00:03:50.560 Well, Smith proved her detractors wrong and pulled a reduced majority win from what was the most personal and negative provincial campaign in living memory.

00:03:59.960 And while she may have fewer seats than the 1993 PCs did under Klein, she actually has a larger segment of popular support.

00:04:07.140 I mean, Ralph Klein won 44.5% support in 1993.

00:04:11.440 Smith's UCP took 52.6% of the electorate.

00:04:14.960 Her opponents can no longer claim she doesn't have a mandate from Albertans.

00:04:19.820 Now, if Premier Smith wants to continue down a Klein-like path, she needs to take another one of his favorite sayings to heart. 0.95

00:04:27.460 Don't blink.

00:04:29.180 The election might be behind Smith right now, but her opponents are far from gone.

00:04:33.040 Notley's remaining is the leader of the NDP for now, which ensures the negative tone of the opposition against Smith is going to continue.

00:04:40.320 Legacy media is as biased as ever against Smith, and they're going to pan every move she makes.

00:04:45.760 Just the other morning, I listened to a local talk radio station begin its newscast saying,

00:04:50.940 Notley's NDP wins the largest opposition ever.

00:04:54.340 Since when is the second place celebrated in a two-party system?

00:04:58.980 You know, a two-party system.

00:05:00.520 They won't even give Smith a win in headlines when she just had a literal win. 0.98

00:05:04.860 I mean, you mentioned that the NDP won the largest opposition.

00:05:08.080 After you mentioned, the UCP won a majority, but not in the media environment of today.

00:05:14.860 Unions, academics, and media will all oppose Smith's every move, just as they did with Klein.

00:05:20.100 There's going to be people within Smith's own party.

00:05:21.620 They're going to get nervous.

00:05:23.140 And as her opposition to her policy starts mounting, they're going to put pressure on her.

00:05:27.240 But she needs to ignore her opponents and reassure her allies.

00:05:31.460 Most of all, though, or again, she can't blink.

00:05:34.720 Klein was counseled to back down as he put Alberta's finances back in order.

00:05:38.400 He was told by the experts he was moving too far, too fast.

00:05:41.900 He was upsetting the apple cart, and surely he'd be punished at the polls.

00:05:45.720 He didn't blink, though.

00:05:47.140 And political pundits assured us he'd be punished dearly in the next election.

00:05:50.200 Well, in 1997, Ralph Klein increased his majority with another 11 seats on top of that

00:05:54.820 and took 51% of the popular vote.

00:05:57.660 Ignore the experts.

00:05:58.820 Don't blink.

00:05:59.900 Smith has a mandate, and she needs to pursue it.

00:06:02.660 She can't succumb to the temptation to pull the political reform band-aid off slowly through

00:06:07.640 minor incremental policy changes.

00:06:10.460 For one thing, her opponents are going to go wild no matter what she does, 0.94

00:06:13.380 even if they're minor changes.

00:06:14.300 So you've got nothing to lose in going for the big ones.

00:06:16.520 Secondly, that's how Jason Kenney tried to govern.

00:06:18.940 And look how well that turned out.

00:06:20.960 Albertans are willing to embrace positive political changes,

00:06:23.660 even if it comes to the health system and the pension plan.

00:06:27.040 Smith needs to bring about all these reforms quickly and offer no quarter to her opponents 1.00

00:06:30.920 in her work.

00:06:31.920 Changes need to be made in the first two years in power so the results can be measured

00:06:35.680 in the second two years before she faces the electorate again.

00:06:38.460 She can't let the civil servants, union heads, or even her own advisors slow-roll her mandate.

00:06:43.640 Hesitation will be her undoing.

00:06:45.900 Premier Smith isn't showing any indications of being a shrinking violet in office.

00:06:49.880 I don't expect her to tiptoe around with policy.

00:06:52.840 I mean, Smith's historical biggest mistake ever, though,

00:06:54.820 was to crumble under strong headwinds and led the disastrous floor crossing

00:06:59.440 from the Wildrose Party to the Progressive Conservatives with Under Prentice in 2014.

00:07:03.020 The pressure got to her back then, and she sought an escape hatch.

00:07:07.240 Now, Daniel Smith's been given a second political life that nobody would have expected of her

00:07:10.960 for her after that catastrophic lapse in judgment in 2014.

00:07:15.620 She's clearly learned a lot since then.

00:07:17.900 Let's hope, though, she's absorbed the most important lesson of all,

00:07:20.880 especially when you're getting tired of swimming upstream.

00:07:23.380 Don't blink.

00:07:25.340 That's all I can offer for Premier Smith right now.

00:07:27.640 And like I said, she's getting advice all over the place from all sorts of quarters.

00:07:31.340 But, you know, stick to your plan.

00:07:34.160 Don't let them push you off it because you won't win.

00:07:37.620 They just see the weakness.

00:07:39.200 They'll smell the blood in the water, and they will keep coming after her.

00:07:42.960 All right, let's see what else is going on in the news

00:07:44.840 and check in with Dave Naylor, our news editor.

00:07:47.060 Hey, Dave, how's it going?

00:07:48.700 I don't know, Corey.

00:07:50.040 I think I'm going to need your help in the next week.

00:07:52.480 I think I'm suffering from PWS.

00:07:57.180 PWS.

00:07:58.380 Pole withdrawal syndrome.

00:08:00.120 We used to get four or five polls a day who was going to win the election,

00:08:05.980 and now for two days we've had none.

00:08:08.520 I can't deal with it, Corey.

00:08:10.420 I mean, where's my polls?

00:08:14.660 Anyways, thank goodness the election's over.

00:08:16.940 Yeah.

00:08:18.120 Thank goodness the election's over.

00:08:20.960 Newswise, busy morning, as always, at the Western Standard.

00:08:24.400 Leading off this side right now is bad news for the oil patch.

00:08:29.980 Massive Norwegian oil company has not pulled the plug,

00:08:34.780 but has delayed the massive Beidou Nord project off the coast of Newfoundland for at least three years.

00:08:42.820 That's a $16 billion project that is now on hold, Corey.

00:08:48.280 Our education columnist, John Hilton O'Brien, has filed a piece on the fact that even though the UCP has won,

00:08:57.640 the parents still need to fight for what's happening in the education system. 0.99

00:09:03.820 I don't know about you, Corey, but when I was growing up, there was nothing I liked more than a Duke of Hazards episode

00:09:09.620 with the, you know, following the tales of Bowen, Luke Duke, and their very Daisy Duke short friend, Daisy.

00:09:20.660 Car chases and whatnot, they were all part of life in the Dukes of Hazards,

00:09:24.380 and there was a real life one recently down in Georgia, which was caught on tape,

00:09:28.780 which some driver flew off the back of a pickup truck and went hundreds of meters or hundreds of feet in the air barrel rolling.

00:09:36.980 So that's a good fund to check out our educational and there's a Nico playing it, playing it there for you now.

00:09:46.780 What else do we have?

00:09:48.600 Our real estate expert, Mike Thomas, has got a piece looking at the June 7th Bank of Canada interest rate.

00:09:58.040 Interestingly, the GDP that is higher than expected could cause the bank to raise the rate on June 7th.

00:10:05.780 And we've got also video of the dramatic incident yesterday involving a Chinese fighter jet,

00:10:14.360 which buzzed right in front of an American aircraft, and that's up there for you to see.

00:10:19.860 And coming up in a few minutes, Corey, we'll have a story.

00:10:22.660 We'll reveal who becomes Hollywood's oldest dad lately,

00:10:27.400 which Hollywood legend has just become a dad at 83 years old.

00:10:31.680 And we'll have that story up in just a couple of minutes.

00:10:35.220 All right.

00:10:36.240 Well, thank you for the updates, Dave.

00:10:38.500 And we're looking forward to the full story on the geriatric breeder there.

00:10:44.060 Yeah.

00:10:44.700 And, you know, if he's doing it at 83,

00:10:47.600 you have any thoughts of maybe, you know, getting back in the baby making game?

00:10:52.100 No, I got neutered back when I was 27, and there's no reversing that for me.

00:10:55.820 But maybe some others might want to take up the challenge later on.

00:10:59.860 There you go.

00:11:00.900 All right.

00:11:01.500 Thanks, Dave.

00:11:02.560 Thanks, Mark.

00:11:02.940 We'll talk to you after the show.

00:11:04.700 That is our news director, Dave Naylor, again, covering everything from the important to the fun and trivial,

00:11:10.280 such as celebrity childbirth and Dukes of Hazzard-style crashes going on.

00:11:17.120 But also, of course, we're covering the election, federal politics, provincial politics, like any good large news site.

00:11:22.360 This is when I remind everybody, get on there and take out a subscription.

00:11:25.860 That's how we stay independent.

00:11:27.000 That's how we pay the bills.

00:11:28.420 That's how, again, most important of all, we aren't beholden to the government for a nickel.

00:11:33.040 We do not take any tax dollars.

00:11:34.980 And that's thanks to you guys who have subscribed, $9.99 a month, $99 a year.

00:11:41.580 You get full access, get beyond the paywall, and see all of those news stories as they come out.

00:11:47.220 But we've got a large news crew across the country here putting stuff out.

00:11:51.040 I mean, it's one of the things that came out recently, you know, where, as we saw during the election,

00:11:57.240 Calgary has next to nothing left with Canada, with the Calgary Sun and the Calgary Herald for newspapers.

00:12:04.960 These were the two heavyweights here.

00:12:06.720 They were here, you know, forever.

00:12:08.940 They couldn't file their stories until quite late because they don't have any copy editors, apparently, out this way.

00:12:16.060 They're down to putting out just about a flyer.

00:12:18.540 I saw somebody on Twitter talking about that today, too.

00:12:21.380 Yesterday's Sun, a post-election Calgary Sun, it was like 24 pages long and had two ads.

00:12:25.380 They're hurting, they're hurting really bad.

00:12:28.000 And, you know, I'm not celebrating, you know, there's a lot of good jobs being lost.

00:12:34.080 We've got a lot of challenges to local coverage going on, actually.

00:12:37.220 We've got, you know, who is going to cover these things.

00:12:40.340 The news is important, but they've got to change how they're doing things rather than trying to keep asking for more and more money to shore up what's a broken, obsolete system.

00:12:51.900 You can't carry the weight of an old traditional style media outlet any longer.

00:12:56.800 I mean, that's why the standard's expanding as well as it is in other independent outlets because we started from scratch and we didn't have to try and carry all that weight and reinvent the wheel.

00:13:05.840 We're working with modern types of technology and layouts and ways to source stories, you know, edit stories and get them out there.

00:13:12.660 And that's why we put on a lot of them and we can put them out fast and they're quality, they're quality.

00:13:17.700 But there was a council, some meeting of, let's see, this is a crisis of local news is a really harsh reality.

00:13:23.200 This was to Canadian media directors at a conference recently that was held.

00:13:28.360 And, you see, they understand it.

00:13:29.740 And they say the decline of local news outlets is deeply concerning.

00:13:32.700 Not only does it disrupt the lives of journalists and industry professionals, but it has far-reaching implications for the communities.

00:13:37.800 And there's truth to it, but, I mean, we've got to remember, do we need that many outlets anymore?

00:13:42.960 Do we need the local ones?

00:13:44.500 I mean, for those of us old enough to remember pre-internet days, you know, if you were living in a small town or a large city, even the local little baseball team, where else could you find out if they won or lost if you weren't at the game yourself?

00:13:56.040 And opening the local paper or what was it with that house fire down the street or any number of these smaller news items.

00:14:03.580 But now, you can still find out.

00:14:05.580 It didn't disappear.

00:14:06.460 It's just the local news outlets did.

00:14:09.320 So, you can go on Facebook and you can find these things, you know.

00:14:12.980 You can go on Twitter.

00:14:14.140 I mean, part of the problem, though, and I've said that before, too, we've got more access to quick, ready information than we've ever had in our lives.

00:14:22.680 But at the same time, we've got more access to BS as well.

00:14:25.840 So, that's where we've got to be really, really careful.

00:14:27.740 And, you know, we've got to sift.

00:14:32.200 I mean, some of it puts the responsibility on our laps.

00:14:35.220 So, we do have to take that responsibility and just make the most of it.

00:14:41.140 But, again, I mean, we can't use that as an excuse to shore up unsustainable media models.

00:14:47.720 It's a time of the past.

00:14:48.900 So, we've got to evolve and evolve upwards.

00:14:51.820 So, okay, I see my guest is getting set over there.

00:14:54.800 We're going to have her on deck right away.

00:14:57.500 And, as I said, her name is Gabrielle Bauer.

00:15:00.080 She's a health and medical writer.

00:15:01.860 She's won some awards.

00:15:03.100 She's written a number of books.

00:15:05.200 And we are going to predominantly speak, and I've been looking forward to this, on her recent one on the pandemic and responses to it.

00:15:11.240 It's called Blind Sight is 2020, and it was published by the Brownstone Institute just a few months ago.

00:15:16.640 So, let's bring her in and have a conversation about this. 0.97

00:15:22.240 There we go.

00:15:23.140 Hello, Ms. Bauer.

00:15:24.140 Thank you very much for joining us today.

00:15:25.640 Oh, my pleasure.

00:15:28.220 So, I mean, I guess I'll get right into it.

00:15:31.080 You know, the book is talking about hindsight.

00:15:33.140 It's, I guess, a review.

00:15:34.500 It's looking at what the responses were, how we reacted to the pandemic, how governments reacted, people reacted.

00:15:41.140 And I guess maybe if you could kind of sum up in a nutshell what you're covering in this book.

00:15:45.760 So, okay, it's a little, I've read a lot of pandemic books as part of my research.

00:15:50.820 This one is a little bit different in that it really focuses on the psychological, sociological dimension.

00:15:56.740 So, it's not as much about, you know, data, this fact or that fact, although there certainly are some of those.

00:16:03.920 But it's, you know, why did the world go mad?

00:16:07.060 What happened?

00:16:08.020 You know, why was there this level of fear?

00:16:10.520 Why was there this level of groupthink?

00:16:12.740 Why was there this level of shaming and snitching?

00:16:15.300 And where did that all come from?

00:16:16.520 And so, in order to make my case, I don't just talk about my own views, but I enlist the expertise of people, 46 people from various disciplines, not just science.

00:16:28.140 And that's really important because I think, you know, novelists and artists and lawyers and philosophers, they all have really important things to say about a pandemic.

00:16:37.160 So, I bring together all these people, including scientists, and through them, you know, I make the case for some of what happened and why it did.

00:16:47.260 Yeah, and I mean, it was at 46 dissenting thinkers, I believe is what you've got listed in that book, who have come out.

00:16:52.940 And we can't dismiss the people on the grounds, the musicians, the novelists.

00:16:57.060 I mean, they've traditionally been part of our social fabric.

00:16:59.800 They've put out social trends from their, you know, periods of observation historically.

00:17:05.900 And it's very important to hear what they say, not just the fellow in the lab coat in the back of a room somewhere.

00:17:11.600 And, I mean, as you said, it was almost a temporary madness the world went into.

00:17:16.520 I mean, we'll be studying this for a long, long time.

00:17:19.860 But, I mean, now at least we're allowing some of the voices to come out and even talk about it.

00:17:23.520 I mean, that was part of the trend.

00:17:24.600 Everybody was being shouted down if they swam against the current.

00:17:27.980 I've never seen anything like it.

00:17:29.480 I mean, I'm 66 years old now, so I'm old enough to be a grandma, although I'm not one yet.

00:17:34.620 And I was 63 when this all started.

00:17:37.200 And so, but I never, you know, even though you think I might be in a demographic that wanted to stay home and say, stay safe.

00:17:43.280 No, never.

00:17:43.880 That never made sense to me.

00:17:44.940 And, in fact, I could not understand why my friends and colleagues and family were so on board with this.

00:17:52.480 I could not understand it.

00:17:53.820 And it troubled me mightily.

00:17:55.460 In the first few weeks, I tried to sort of understand this and start some conversations online.

00:18:00.360 And the degree of outrage and vitriol I received, I've never seen anything like it. 0.97

00:18:06.440 I mean, no one had called me a sociopath before, you know, or a mouth-breathing Trump tart or, you know, people telling me to go lick the virus.

00:18:14.220 I mean, it was unbelievably toxic, you know. 0.94

00:18:18.360 And it was damaging, you know.

00:18:20.380 And, I mean, I think everybody's sort of seen it.

00:18:22.960 I hope some are looking back shamefully, but some rifts haven't been healed.

00:18:26.180 I've seen that within some aspects of my extended family, a couple of siblings who couldn't talk with each other over the period of this because they were on different sides of the vaccination and masking issue.

00:18:37.540 Like, we shouldn't have a political issue ripping apart tight family units.

00:18:42.020 Well, it's not a political issue.

00:18:43.120 It shouldn't have turned political.

00:18:44.280 And that's something that's interesting, too, was the left-right divide.

00:18:47.760 I mean, you'd think this was all just based on health and data.

00:18:50.280 But there was a very distinct split between people who were traditionally, I guess, leaned towards conservative views and people who weren't.

00:18:58.800 Well, yeah, absolutely.

00:19:00.180 But I do want to address one thing you said.

00:19:01.640 You'd think it would all be about the science and data.

00:19:03.840 One of the points that has always been important to me and that I make in the book is that managing a pandemic is never just about science and data.

00:19:12.000 No matter which side of the divide you're on, there's always values that go into it.

00:19:17.520 You know, and in a chapter on kids and schools, I talk about that.

00:19:21.560 How important is it to the society for children to go to school?

00:19:25.560 You know, there are no formulas to tell us when to close schools and when not to.

00:19:29.900 It's always going to be a value judgment.

00:19:32.000 I mean, data can inform that value judgment, but it's never just a question of the science, so to speak, no matter how good the science is.

00:19:38.880 So, and yes, as far as the political divide, and that's another issue that I address in the book, you know, about this ridiculous left-right thing,

00:19:47.960 because traditionally the left has really paid attention to the working class and the struggles and the need to earn a living and a dignified living and all that stuff.

00:19:58.400 And that completely went out the window.

00:20:00.100 And there are so many people like myself that I've met through all this that came from perhaps a more left-leaning background

00:20:11.960 and just got thoroughly disillusioned with the left over the past three years and now find ourselves politically homeless.

00:20:22.720 You know, I mean, we've come to appreciate some things from the right, but we still are kind of in this no-man's land.

00:20:28.720 And we disrupted, socially disrupted an entire generation at some of their most formative periods.

00:20:35.260 I mean, the fear and the division and some of the things imprinted upon children when the schools were shut down and so much fear was being spread around.

00:20:43.820 And even when the numbers were coming in, I can understand some panic in the early part of a crisis.

00:20:48.500 Okay, we don't know how this is going to move.

00:20:49.960 We don't know who it's going to hurt.

00:20:51.140 We really don't want to act and see if we can't get under control.

00:20:53.900 But, I mean, after a year, we had a pretty good idea that, thankfully, children were virtually immune from harm from this virus.

00:21:01.640 But even then, we couldn't get them back into the schools.

00:21:04.740 We had hazard tape going around playgrounds.

00:21:07.340 We wouldn't let them get outdoors and socialize.

00:21:10.200 And that's going to affect them for the rest of their lives.

00:21:13.660 Yes, and to add to that all the guilt that we lay on them, that was another thing that just really disturbed me from the start,

00:21:20.720 is this idea of telling children, well, don't do X, Y, Z, or else you might kill grandma.

00:21:26.060 Well, no.

00:21:26.700 I mean, if you inadvertently transmit a virus to someone, you're not killing anyone.

00:21:31.600 You know, of course, we try to be careful and we don't do these things on purpose.

00:21:35.120 But humans and viruses have coexisted since the beginning of time.

00:21:39.360 You cannot make a child feel guilty for inadvertently doing something that is just biology, you know.

00:21:46.800 So I found that outrageous, and I think that really affected a lot of children.

00:21:52.280 And I'm still hearing about it today, where they just, you know, oh, my God, if I take off my mask, who am I going to kill?

00:21:57.460 You know, it's just crazy stuff.

00:22:00.360 It really was like the world.

00:22:02.400 It's the title of one book that I quote in my own book, The Year the World Went Mad, by an epidemiologist, a mainstream epidemiologist.

00:22:09.960 And that is, in fact, what happened.

00:22:11.300 The world went mad, I believe, for three years.

00:22:13.560 Without doubt, and rationality went out the window and so many things that we can't take back.

00:22:19.040 You know, we had family members who might be passing away of something that is clearly terminal.

00:22:23.480 Nothing is going to save them.

00:22:24.660 The most important thing in the last period of their lives is to try and see some loved ones one more time before they go.

00:22:31.320 And we kept loved ones out.

00:22:32.660 Who cares if you're going to give them an infection of COVID when they're going to die of cancer in a week?

00:22:37.380 They just walk in somebody's hand one more time.

00:22:40.060 And exactly that it just amazed me that people lost sight of that.

00:22:45.160 You know, and that is a theme that I return to a lot in the book.

00:22:47.720 You know, what is what are we here for?

00:22:50.040 You know, and what is what do we want in the last moments of our lives?

00:22:54.100 Do we want to be, you know, protected from humanity?

00:22:58.720 Or do we want to reach out and sort of look over our lives and think and connect and make memories?

00:23:05.260 You know, it just it was such a monolithic response.

00:23:10.080 You know, there's these epidemiologists with their hammer is just looking for this one nail.

00:23:14.660 And that is, you know, probably the central theme in the book is that this is not just an epidemiological problem.

00:23:23.000 It's a human problem that has mental health dimensions, social dimensions, spiritual, philosophical dimensions.

00:23:29.360 And the response just swept all that aside, which really went against all previous pandemic guidance.

00:23:36.640 You know, and that's why I enlist even the the sort of the thoughts of a comedian, some musicians, several novelists.

00:23:45.240 I found that novelists often had the deepest insights about the pandemic.

00:23:49.840 You know, obviously, they can't advise us on virology or transmission patterns, but they can tell us a lot about sort of the philosophy of managing a pandemic and what needs to be done and what shouldn't be done.

00:24:02.340 Well, and these things matter. I mean, the distrust in the entire system and authority in general.

00:24:10.040 I mean, we were ill used or a lot of us certainly feel we were.

00:24:14.160 And if an emergency comes down the road, I imagine there's always another one coming.

00:24:18.860 There's going to be a lot of people resisting, possibly perhaps resisting on the wrong side.

00:24:22.340 But they've just lost so much trust in the authorities and the establishment that they won't listen to them when the time comes that they probably should.

00:24:29.960 Well, that's right.

00:24:30.840 You know, and I didn't see any sense of restraint.

00:24:34.540 It was always, you know, great overreach.

00:24:39.000 I didn't see any sense of restraint.

00:24:40.480 Oh, well, things are looking better.

00:24:41.880 You know, let's pull back now.

00:24:43.060 Let's talk.

00:24:43.680 Let's bring in some expertise from other areas.

00:24:47.960 And of course, we all know, you know, the whole the push, the insane push toward vaccines is the only solution.

00:24:54.580 Now, I'm vaccinated myself.

00:24:55.800 I'm boosted.

00:24:56.420 Like, I personally didn't have an issue with the vaccines.

00:24:59.680 I worried about the vaccines as little as I worried about the virus, which might seem strange to some people.

00:25:05.080 But, you know, it's how I'm built.

00:25:06.560 So it wasn't an issue for me personally.

00:25:08.340 But as the months went on in 2021, 2022, and I just saw how insane the vax wars became, a lot of us remember that cover spread on the Toronto Star with quotes from the people who wanted, you know, the anti-vaxxers to die and go to hell and wanted their children to die.

00:25:26.120 And I mean, like, what is this?

00:25:27.820 That just seemed far, far more harmful to me than any virus.

00:25:31.520 You know, and one thing that I guess I take pride in is that, you know, although I got vaccinated myself, I resolved very early on that I was never going to question or shame anyone for their decision.

00:25:44.440 Because I trust that my friends who decided not to get vaxxed have good reasons for it.

00:25:50.760 And so I never asked them.

00:25:52.080 I never made socializing contingent on it.

00:25:54.680 And it became also clear very soon that the vaccine was not stopping transmission, which really removed any ethical justification for the mandates.

00:26:04.240 So I just didn't get into any of that.

00:26:07.900 You know, so many of my friends, are you vaccinated?

00:26:09.740 Are you not?

00:26:10.280 You know, and I remember meeting a friend who was not vaccinated.

00:26:14.320 And we were walking outside and she burst out crying in the middle of our walk. 0.99

00:26:20.000 I described this episode in the book.

00:26:22.000 And she just said she was so afraid of meeting me because she thought maybe that I wouldn't want to hang out with her once I found out she wasn't vaxxed.

00:26:28.200 We were outside walking, you know.

00:26:30.200 I just thought, wow.

00:26:31.240 Yeah, and then another aspect that turned into almost a bizarre measure of, I think, two degrees virtue signaling maybe began with some medical rationale, but was masking.

00:26:42.900 I think part of it's because you wear a mask, you're showing your visible effort that you're trying to stop this, despite the fact that it was showing that it wasn't doing a heck of a lot to stop anything.

00:26:53.420 But it was annoying the heck out of people.

00:26:55.400 It was dividing people.

00:26:56.440 And again, it just came down to, I think, a symbolic thing of just showing authority and pushing down on people.

00:27:03.920 Absolutely.

00:27:04.480 And as you say, virtue signaling.

00:27:05.800 And I have to admit, I have a little bit of an allergy to that.

00:27:08.280 You know, the holier than thou, look at me.

00:27:10.900 I'm a good person.

00:27:12.080 You know, and that was so much a part of this.

00:27:14.300 So I've written quite a lot about masks.

00:27:16.400 Like, you know, if anyone looks online, they'll find a lot of my articles about masks.

00:27:20.100 Masks, because ultimately it, my most recent, one of my most recent ones was it's really not even so much about the data.

00:27:29.520 You know, you go on Twitter and you're going to see these endless arguments.

00:27:33.440 Masks work.

00:27:34.060 No, they don't.

00:27:34.520 Yes, they do.

00:27:34.960 No, they don't.

00:27:35.480 Yes, they do.

00:27:35.880 No, they don't.

00:27:36.600 And both sides just fling data at each other and stats and studies and all that.

00:27:40.880 But underlying all this, I firmly believe and have from the start, is really a difference in world view.

00:27:47.880 You know, and the side that just believes that protection from a certain threat, from a biological threat, trumps everything else in life, that side is going to justify masking.

00:28:03.100 They're going to interpret a 5% reduction as, well, it's worth it, even if it's a 1% reduction, whatever it takes.

00:28:08.880 The side that sees humanity in what I call a more holistic way and sees safety from a biological hazard is only one dimension and who also appreciates human connection and in that holistic way is going to resist the idea of a perma-masked society.

00:28:31.840 And so that's why I've always believed that there are what I call data-agnostic arguments behind all this.

00:28:39.980 You know, there's just two sides that see the world a little differently and that want a different kind of world.

00:28:45.860 And my book sort of argues for side B.

00:28:48.420 You know, this is the kind of world we want, and this is why.

00:28:51.240 Yeah, and the battles, unfortunately, are still going on.

00:28:55.420 But, I mean, part of what we can hope for, the most we can hope for, is that we learn from it and correct some of our past actions the next time we hit a challenge.

00:29:02.280 So, I mean, that's part of, I guess, what you kind of go through and come towards in the book.

00:29:06.320 We've kind of run out of time, but where then, I see the Brownstone Institute, you have plenty of columns there.

00:29:11.120 Where can people find copies of Blindsight is 2020 along with your other books?

00:29:15.380 Well, you can always go on my website, gabriellebauer.com, and all the information is there.

00:29:22.740 Blindsight is 2020.

00:29:24.500 I mean, Brownstone Institute is a non-profit, so the book is available through all Amazon stores on Lulu as well.

00:29:32.880 So, it's very easy to find.

00:29:34.380 You just Google the book, Google my name.

00:29:36.800 You can find ways to order the book.

00:29:39.920 If anyone speaks Spanish, it has also been published in Spanish by a Madrid publisher.

00:29:44.220 So, all that's available on my website and just by Googling my name.

00:29:48.940 Well, excellent.

00:29:49.600 Well, thank you for writing that.

00:29:50.920 We really need to examine what we've done to ourselves and try to do better in the future, and this book's an important part of that.

00:29:57.740 And thank you for coming on today to share part of that with us.

00:30:02.080 Well, I thank you.

00:30:03.840 All right.

00:30:04.300 Well, I hope we get the chance to talk again soon.

00:30:06.240 I'm certain there'll be more to discuss.

00:30:07.960 Okay.

00:30:08.380 Thanks, Corey.

00:30:09.140 Thank you.

00:30:09.620 So, that was Gabrielle Bauer and, or Bauer, I should say.

00:30:14.000 I'm terrible with the reading on there.

00:30:16.240 And the book, again, is hindsight or blindsight is 2020.

00:30:20.740 And, again, yes, it can be found at brownstone.org.

00:30:24.260 There's connections, Amazon, all over.

00:30:27.020 We really need critical discussion of what happened.

00:30:31.560 We need to look in that rearview mirror and scratch our heads.

00:30:35.940 And hopefully, you know, some people are letting some of those shields down a little bit.

00:30:40.560 You know, we've got to watch it, too.

00:30:42.320 What I've hated the most, what I've despised seeing was the social division, the people who got so upset and fought and haven't talked with each other since.

00:30:51.000 Well, it doesn't matter if the other person wanted you to mask or vaccinate.

00:30:57.900 If you can get over it and start talking again, it's worth it.

00:31:00.900 Okay.

00:31:01.320 Let it get behind us.

00:31:02.800 We can discuss the other things.

00:31:03.800 We can fight about other stuff later.

00:31:05.260 But seeing lasting damage, seeing family split, seeing friendships lost, social circles broken.

00:31:11.440 You can't measure these things.

00:31:12.720 And that's part of what was important with this book, with talking to artists, comedians, people, though, who look, observe the social aspects of us.

00:31:20.680 Because you can't clinically measure social damage.

00:31:24.760 There's no easy way to do that.

00:31:27.640 So you can't get a list and see just what happened to that family over there or that sports team or those friends from school.

00:31:36.480 But there was damage a lot and with so little benefit.

00:31:40.580 And that's, I think, a lot of what was lost in this whole thing, too.

00:31:43.960 Gabrielle kind of covered a little of that at the end, talking about, you know, if the masks helped with 1% or 5%.

00:31:50.880 Somebody could come up with some data to say it helps.

00:31:52.940 Okay, fine.

00:31:54.140 Fair enough if you're reducing it a little.

00:31:56.340 But everything comes with a cost.

00:31:58.340 And when it comes to cost-benefit analysis, we threw the cost part out the window.

00:32:02.900 There is a cost to wearing a mask.

00:32:04.780 There's the social aspect.

00:32:07.280 I mean, some of it's just somebody saying, I don't want it on my face.

00:32:09.600 Well, you have to respect a little bit of that.

00:32:11.140 That's important.

00:32:12.540 I myself, and as my wife will remind folks that I'm supposed to have hearing aids, I don't have good hearing.

00:32:17.940 I've really, during the pandemic, discovered just how much I've come to rely on seeing a person's lips move when they speak to me.

00:32:23.840 And when they're behind a mask, I'm asking them to speak up a lot.

00:32:27.240 Now, imagine somebody who was fully hearing impaired.

00:32:29.940 What was that three years like for them?

00:32:32.000 For what benefit?

00:32:33.000 To protect them from a 1% or 5%, you know, a little less of catching, again, a virus which was definitely real and definitely dangerous,

00:32:41.520 but to most people, not so much that perhaps it was worth the cost of imposing the masks.

00:32:47.600 And the other part that was thrown out was any concept of bodily autonomy or individual choice.

00:32:55.220 Yes, you have to respect somebody else's choice, even if you disagree with it.

00:32:59.260 You can even yell at them to disagree, but don't have the state step down and get on them.

00:33:03.760 People got on my case, so I remember that during the show, and it's bad on both sides.

00:33:07.900 I've never hesitated to point out that I got vaccinated twice as well, but I've always supported choice.

00:33:14.920 And yes, I don't see coercion as choice.

00:33:18.840 Because yeah, some people say, well, you never were forced to.

00:33:21.360 Yeah, no, as long as you're willing to lose your job, lose your ability to travel,

00:33:25.220 lose your ability to go to a restaurant, you lose your ability to be on sporting teams, have post-secondary education.

00:33:31.960 It's your choice.

00:33:33.300 That's not a realistic choice for a lot of people.

00:33:35.800 And when we talk about bodily autonomy, and I'll throw in the hand grenade when it comes to it.

00:33:41.520 If it's a choice that really, why can't an employer, say, who has deep-seated feelings about abortion say,

00:33:48.440 well, you know what?

00:33:49.080 I want to have access to the medical records of my employees, and any who have participated in abortion,

00:33:53.220 I want the right to fire them.

00:33:54.220 It was a choice, and there's consequences, right?

00:33:56.040 Choices have consequences.

00:33:57.320 Now, that employer would be brought up in front of a human rights commission so fast,

00:34:02.040 your head would spin if they pulled that.

00:34:03.720 Now, I don't want to see something like that, of course, but that's what I'm talking about,

00:34:09.860 that whole principle is it's very personal.

00:34:13.780 Somebody who strongly, strongly feels that they should not be vaccinated,

00:34:17.740 that's none of the employer's business, particularly once it was clear that it didn't stop transmission.

00:34:22.300 There was no more moral argument anymore.

00:34:23.900 He wasn't going to make coworkers sick by not being vaccinated, wasn't putting anybody at risk.

00:34:29.120 Why do you still have the gun to that person's head?

00:34:31.340 And there's still some places doing that.

00:34:33.060 It's absurd.

00:34:33.820 It's wrong.

00:34:34.720 And I know people are almost sick of hearing of it.

00:34:37.060 It was a horrible period of time for everybody, and we don't want to talk about it.

00:34:40.980 We can't forget about it.

00:34:43.040 We can't stop talking about it because, as I said, there's going to be another crisis.

00:34:47.280 There always is.

00:34:48.740 So all we can do is hope that we do better in the next one.

00:34:51.720 So let's learn from the last one.

00:34:53.200 What did we do wrong?

00:34:55.200 Let's not repeat those mistakes.

00:34:56.460 We can make a whole bunch of new mistakes when the next crisis comes.

00:34:59.860 But we've got to study these things, and we can't let them go.

00:35:03.880 All right, I'm going to move on to some other news items to cover some things.

00:35:07.400 As I said, I can only handle so much COVID talk after so many years.

00:35:10.360 It's so important, but I can only take on so much per session.

00:35:14.900 Let's sort of lighten things up.

00:35:16.480 But interesting, when it comes to individual choice, this ties in.

00:35:18.940 We had a plebiscite that was held during the Alberta election down in southern Alberta in the town of Cardston.

00:35:26.840 Now, people not familiar with Alberta, we have a very strong Mormon population in a lot of those southern towns.

00:35:33.240 Cardston, McGrath, Raymond.

00:35:36.640 Predominantly Mormon individuals living down there.

00:35:39.260 Cardston has not allowed liquor sales for over 100 years in that town.

00:35:44.080 So they finally, yeah, you can't get a drink anywhere.

00:35:48.040 You can't go to a bar.

00:35:49.440 You couldn't get a, go to a liquor store because they could use the ability of, you know, local business licenses.

00:35:56.640 So booze wasn't banned, but you had to go elsewhere to get it.

00:35:59.520 You couldn't get anywhere.

00:36:00.820 And it was still close.

00:36:04.420 491 people voted, 53% of them, to say yes, we should allow some liquor sales to 441 who voted no.

00:36:10.840 So we'll see.

00:36:12.400 It depends on who's on the town council and whether they'll drag their feet and still allowing and giving licenses.

00:36:16.660 But this again comes down to why, guys?

00:36:20.540 Why?

00:36:20.900 It's a legal product.

00:36:21.880 It's a, if you're not into it, your faith says you shouldn't drink it.

00:36:25.480 So on, then don't.

00:36:27.480 But don't use the arm of the law, the state, to stop other people from having that choice. 0.86

00:36:35.580 It's ridiculous.

00:36:36.800 And even to this day, it gets too far. 0.90

00:36:39.520 I mean, you know, go door to door.

00:36:42.460 We know the Latter-day Saints certainly have no shyness about that.

00:36:46.960 Try to create converts and get people to choose not to drink.

00:36:50.780 I'm not one who's saying that, you know, excess booze use and liquor is a good idea.

00:36:56.080 I've had my challenges with alcohol.

00:36:57.940 I haven't had a drink in years.

00:36:58.940 But it's not good for everybody, that's for sure.

00:37:02.020 But I don't begrudge somebody else from responsibly enjoying it.

00:37:06.040 If you can go out and enjoy a drink or a few or even, you know, go on a bender now and then have some fun with it, go to town responsibly.

00:37:13.140 It's not for me, that's all.

00:37:15.400 But we as a society, we've got to get better at that, don't we?

00:37:19.280 We've got to get better at being able to say, I'm not into this.

00:37:22.320 If this other person's into this, I just won't do it with them.

00:37:26.580 I'm okay with it, though.

00:37:27.360 I don't have to stop them.

00:37:28.700 I don't have to intervene on them.

00:37:30.280 It gets back to the libertarian principles.

00:37:31.460 If it's not hurting somebody else, stay out of it.

00:37:36.060 Particularly the state.

00:37:38.420 Particularly the state.

00:37:39.420 Now, some people, and fair enough.

00:37:41.860 I'm going to go on one of my sidetrackings, because that's what I do.

00:37:44.980 When we talk about decriminalization of hard drugs, fair enough.

00:37:51.020 You know, if you're saying that that way, Corey, why are you on the case of it, you know, so much as it's happening in Vancouver?

00:37:58.000 Well, that's a fair question.

00:37:59.900 Very much a fair one.

00:38:02.460 Part of the problem, and I do believe to a degree in decriminalizing, going after the ground-level consumers of drugs, even the hard ones,

00:38:09.940 what point, what point in arresting and fining a heroin or a fentanyl junkie that has no money, that are really at bottom already, and going after them?

00:38:20.960 You're not doing them any good.

00:38:22.100 You're not doing the state any good.

00:38:23.560 You're not stopping the dealers.

00:38:25.000 You're not stopping the mayhem that the drugs are causing.

00:38:28.740 The problem I have is with the enablement.

00:38:31.620 With the trying to say that you can functionally live and exist on drugs.

00:38:37.040 Because drugs, those drugs aren't directly comparable to alcohol.

00:38:40.760 Now, alcohol, as I know, can be very, very dangerous.

00:38:42.940 It can be abused.

00:38:43.700 It's ruined millions and millions of lives for some people who can't responsibly consume it.

00:38:47.640 But there's no responsible way to be a recreational consumer of fentanyl.

00:38:51.740 Way too powerful.

00:38:52.900 Way too addictive.

00:38:53.700 Way too damaging.

00:38:54.760 There is no safe amount of methamphetamines you can take.

00:38:59.200 Meth is not safe.

00:39:01.160 You know, putting a rail to blow up your nose is never a good, healthy idea.

00:39:06.760 Should it be illegalized, though?

00:39:07.880 You know, that's not necessarily the route to deal with it.

00:39:10.060 But what we need is treatment.

00:39:12.520 What we need is intervention.

00:39:14.560 And that gets into another area that, you know, people can say is a double standard.

00:39:18.240 I've talked about that.

00:39:19.480 We need to, when people have hit that point.

00:39:21.780 I mean, we do have that.

00:39:23.240 And I talked about it with a family member I had to deal with recently.

00:39:25.480 When a person is clearly in a position where they may harm themselves or others,

00:39:30.420 we can intervene.

00:39:31.120 And that's typically, that's under the Mental Health Act.

00:39:33.280 Every province has one.

00:39:35.060 When a person is taking fentanyl to the point that they're scrawny and have sores all over

00:39:39.620 them and have lost bowel control and are passing out behind dumpsters, I don't think it should

00:39:43.600 be that hard to be making the case that they're going to harm themselves if we just leave them

00:39:47.180 as they are.

00:39:48.840 It's one of those rare cases where infringing on individual liberty, I think, is a social

00:39:53.360 obligation on our part.

00:39:54.440 We have to be careful with it.

00:39:55.660 You don't, you know, want to do it frivolously, but we can see enough of the zombies on the

00:39:59.920 streets.

00:40:00.220 Those are somebody's children's cousins, brothers, sisters.

00:40:04.520 I mean, somebody put it in the most crude of ways in some of the online discussions with

00:40:08.040 someone saying, you can't take their liberty.

00:40:10.020 What if it's your daughter out there who's servicing men to get her next fix? 1.00

00:40:15.440 Would you as a family member want some sort of intervention to get her off there?

00:40:20.220 Even if treatment is difficult and doesn't have the highest success rate, you know that

00:40:25.680 leaving on the streets has pretty much a zero success rate.

00:40:29.380 Wouldn't you want to intervene if it's your son who's out there who's putting his life

00:40:32.680 at risk, stealing from people to get his next fix, you know, pacing up and down the roads,

00:40:37.060 begging on street corners.

00:40:39.340 So, yes, yes, that's compassionate conservatism.

00:40:43.480 We've got to be careful with it.

00:40:45.260 You know, and others have pointed out, yes, these addicts aren't, they don't have personal

00:40:48.660 liberty.

00:40:48.980 They don't have freedom.

00:40:49.540 They are slaves to the addiction.

00:40:52.020 They're slaves to the drugs. 0.59

00:40:53.220 They don't have the liberty already.

00:40:55.840 So this is one of the things I'm very excited about with Premier Smith because she didn't

00:41:00.900 back down on that.

00:41:01.580 And that's part of what I said at the start of it when she was talking about bringing

00:41:04.340 in treatment systems where we're going to directly intervene and get them in.

00:41:08.420 And I've seen some experts and others are saying, oh, there's only a 20% success rate

00:41:11.760 if you force treatment, 50% if they come in willingly.

00:41:14.140 The bottom line is treatment's essential.

00:41:15.900 When you're in the late stages of addiction, not just trying it out, when you're one of

00:41:20.040 those, again, when you're on the streets, when you're a meth addict, a fentanyl addict,

00:41:23.660 a heroin addict, your odds of surviving without treatment are very, very low.

00:41:29.040 So even 20% is a hell of a lot better than what you had.

00:41:32.380 And I want to try it.

00:41:34.340 People point to Portugal.

00:41:35.340 Look at them.

00:41:36.080 They've decriminalized the drugs and everything.

00:41:37.880 Yes, they have.

00:41:38.600 But they overlook the other part.

00:41:40.000 Portugal has a very, very advanced, and I would say, yes, almost coercive treatment system.

00:41:45.760 You want to get in and get access to some of that clean supply.

00:41:50.600 Yes.

00:41:50.820 But they also say this is also the first step on your road to getting treatment and getting 0.99

00:41:54.820 off the crap. 0.98

00:41:55.520 It's not saying you can live and just keep consuming it. 1.00

00:41:58.980 It's a disease that needs to be treated, not something that needs to be enabled.

00:42:04.620 So, you know, as others have been pointing out with the Aaron Gunn's documentary, Canada

00:42:10.780 is Dying.

00:42:11.340 Yes, I think it's well worth watching.

00:42:12.960 We have our own Arthur Green, who's always putting pictures up of addicts in rough states

00:42:17.020 and in difficulty on the streets.

00:42:18.360 And people get upset with that.

00:42:19.740 And they should.

00:42:20.840 That's the point.

00:42:21.600 We want you to get upset.

00:42:22.800 But it's not just to get you upset.

00:42:25.260 It's to make people realize how ugly it's getting out there, how bad it is, how much

00:42:29.180 worse it is.

00:42:29.840 Because most people don't go downtown.

00:42:32.660 Most people don't ride public transit.

00:42:35.460 So most people don't understand just how awful it's gotten.

00:42:38.740 And this is happening in every city and also in the smaller towns and areas across the entire

00:42:42.660 country.

00:42:43.500 Fentanyl.

00:42:44.180 It's like something we've never seen before.

00:42:46.640 It's so much, it's prevalent, it's relatively cheap, it's incredibly powerful, very, very

00:42:54.580 dangerous.

00:42:56.140 And we didn't have to deal with that.

00:42:57.800 You know, in the 80s, the 90s, we had addicts, you had your drunkards, you always had that

00:43:02.180 part of town.

00:43:03.180 But you didn't have this wave of zombies that's killing people like this.

00:43:07.360 And we have to do something about it.

00:43:10.300 Enabling isn't working.

00:43:12.920 And again, you know, it's just down to responsible or not.

00:43:15.100 It's not a good recreational drug.

00:43:19.160 When I, as many pointed out, shared too much when talking about my colonoscopy.

00:43:23.960 For example, part of what they gave me is the mix to knock it out, to make it a less unpleasant

00:43:28.360 experience was fentanyl.

00:43:29.860 There is a medical use for it.

00:43:31.640 But it doesn't mean that a person can take it themselves in a safe manner in any sort of

00:43:36.680 way.

00:43:36.840 And it certainly gave me an impression of just how powerful that stuff is.

00:43:40.440 Because yeah, you know, the little bit injected into me, and I barely remembered anything.

00:43:44.880 And they're wheeling me out of the room, a little more humbled, and a little tender in

00:43:50.040 the backside, but no worse for wear.

00:43:53.080 All right, well, enough of that.

00:43:54.900 Let's turn the page onto something quite different.

00:43:58.360 And talk to Jim Buzicom of Marketplace Commodities and get some updates on things.

00:44:05.320 We're starting to see a drought starting to intensify, and people are starting to get

00:44:09.380 concerned.

00:44:10.900 Before the last time I talked to Jim, Jim, there you are.

00:44:13.860 You were saying, you know, producers shouldn't be sweating the weather patterns quite yet.

00:44:17.840 But now it's a, is it starting to entrench a bit?

00:44:21.000 Yeah.

00:44:21.200 So we're roughly about one month into the North America growing season.

00:44:25.100 That's both here in Western Canada and most of the United States.

00:44:30.280 So while some areas have been getting more or less regular precipitation, we've also seen

00:44:37.460 areas like Southern Alberta, Eastern side of Alberta, you know, actually become drier.

00:44:45.180 The conditions when they were planting the crops was good.

00:44:49.120 They had, you know, plenty of moisture to germinate the crops.

00:44:52.900 But now that those crops are growing, they require more moisture to mature properly to

00:44:59.080 produce the seeds.

00:45:01.340 And yeah, we're starting to hear some rumbles about, you know, production issues if this

00:45:09.000 weather keeps up the way it is.

00:45:10.460 So it's very common.

00:45:12.720 I mean, we do go through most growing seasons where it's, there's always imperfections.

00:45:19.100 There's always issues and these things affect the markets.

00:45:22.740 So what we have seen though, is that we had really high prices in 21, 22, and even the

00:45:32.880 start of 23, and these markets are actually continuing to go down.

00:45:36.840 So one might ask, well, what's going on?

00:45:39.220 Like usually if you have a drought situation and you have potential production issues, you

00:45:44.280 should actually see prices start to react to that and go up.

00:45:47.860 Well, I think the issue is today, it's still too localized.

00:45:53.240 The trade, as you might want to call it, or those that are speculating on the markets

00:45:56.860 are saying, look, we're not, we're not buying it yet.

00:46:01.100 It's still too small of a drought.

00:46:03.380 So it depends what happens for sure as we go into the next two weeks.

00:46:08.920 By the middle of June, it'll, it'll set some ground as to where it's going to be.

00:46:13.560 Yeah.

00:46:14.560 So, I mean, a producer, of course, can't control the weather, but, but I guess watching those

00:46:18.400 trends can really impact how a producer, what they're going to, going to produce or, or plan

00:46:23.240 for seed, or I guess in finances.

00:46:25.380 Yeah.

00:46:26.380 Yeah.

00:46:27.380 So I think what a producer needs to do in this situation is, uh, understand that there's

00:46:34.340 two markets out there.

00:46:35.240 So the futures market is more forward thinking.

00:46:38.580 It sees the overall whole market, not just your localized area or even one province.

00:46:45.260 It sees basically all of Western Canada.

00:46:47.540 It's really sees the whole world.

00:46:49.700 And at any given time, when that market is open, whatever the bias is of that moment,

00:46:54.920 that is priced into the market.

00:46:57.200 Whereas in the cash markets where we're buying from a farmer, selling to a feedlot as a, just

00:47:02.920 the easiest example, um, you may have a bias on that market, but I think we tend to forget

00:47:08.680 that that's priced in almost immediately.

00:47:11.060 That's how efficient the market is.

00:47:12.800 It prices in the bullish news, the bearish news right away.

00:47:16.820 So that's where it's at today.

00:47:18.860 All right.

00:47:19.640 Well, thanks for the update.

00:47:21.540 It's appreciated.

00:47:22.640 And, uh, we'll talk again soon then, Jim.

00:47:25.220 Thanks.

00:47:25.780 Thanks, Corey.

00:47:26.280 You take care.

00:47:27.060 Hey, thanks.

00:47:28.360 So that is Jim Buzicom of Marketplace Commodities.

00:47:30.920 Yes.

00:47:31.160 So for producers, I mean, it is, uh, the old days of a, uh, small facility and production

00:47:36.060 are, are gone.

00:47:36.900 You know, it's, it takes a lot of skill, business planning and, uh,

00:47:41.060 work to make sure that you can maximize what you're doing.

00:47:43.600 So check them out at marketplacecommodities.com.

00:47:46.180 And, uh, there's certainly a lot they can offer there in the end of what's obviously a

00:47:49.940 fluid sort of market and, and, uh, business world.

00:47:53.500 All right.

00:47:54.280 Well, let's see what else we're going to get onto. 0.55

00:47:56.420 I, you know, I'm going to drop the bomb.

00:47:58.140 I expect you to go to the Western standard to get the details.

00:48:00.940 Of course.

00:48:01.800 But Dave talked about that.

00:48:03.080 Who was this celebrity at 83 who has knocked up a young lady?

00:48:07.940 It's Al Pacino.

00:48:09.400 And, uh, yes, uh, his 28 year old girlfriend is eight months pregnant.

00:48:13.760 I guess he's kept it secret for quite some time.

00:48:16.160 So, uh, you know, speaking of some of the advantages of pharmaceuticals, I very much doubt

00:48:20.660 that, uh, Mr. Pacino at that point, but who knows, maybe he's got some super virility,

00:48:24.800 uh, managed to pull that off without some sort of blue pill or something along the lines.

00:48:29.380 And, uh, you know, it's, it's along with his friend there, uh, De Niro, I think he's 79

00:48:33.260 and he's got, uh, his young girlfriend with a bun in the oven as well.

00:48:37.280 I'm sort of mixed with that, especially guys like De Niro likes taking the, the big compassionate

00:48:41.340 left-wing caring thing and so on. 1.00

00:48:43.440 And now the rest of us are, are all uncaring jerks. 0.99

00:48:46.340 Well, whilst he's, uh, out there at, you know, the age of pushing 80 and producing children, 0.99

00:48:52.820 you know, good on you, I guess, if you're getting the young ladies at that age, but how fair 0.99

00:48:56.620 is it to the kid when your father, uh, if they managed to live until your graduation

00:49:02.800 is going to be pushing a hundred, there's not going to be playing any ball in the backyard

00:49:06.640 or, uh, you know, experiencing much, uh, uh, we've already got a society that's already

00:49:11.940 suffering a lot from, from families that, uh, don't necessarily have parents.

00:49:15.800 I mean, I guess these guys will certainly be able to pay the bills for them, but will

00:49:19.060 they be able to present themselves as, as the father figures, you know, maybe, uh, just

00:49:23.260 add a little to that blue pill and then, uh, throw a little something on the tip of that

00:49:26.980 old thing before, uh, making more kids guys, but, uh, whatever is their business, their

00:49:31.860 bodies, their choices.

00:49:33.140 And, uh, that's, uh, what those fellas did. 1.00

00:49:37.700 I like, uh, Lisa Webster, say hello to my little offspring. 0.99

00:49:41.600 Ah, nice.

00:49:42.560 Uh, so yes, if, uh, folks remember, uh, Scarface, that, uh, is a play on, on that, uh, portion

00:49:49.580 there, uh, from that movie.

00:49:51.320 Okay.

00:49:51.680 So, uh, let's see what else we've got going on.

00:49:54.460 It's not too, too much to cover.

00:49:55.880 There's a lot more that I can't get into because it's just too big.

00:49:58.640 We can't forget.

00:49:59.480 It's getting bigger and bigger with O'Toole now, the leader of the opposition.

00:50:02.800 It's been confirmed that it seems that the, the Chinese communist party was most stuff

00:50:08.460 we already knew in a sense, directly trying to interfere, make him lose the election.

00:50:13.120 Uh, again, Trudeau and his, uh, little lapdog Johnson are trying to whitewash this and

00:50:17.800 covered up, we just couldn't talk enough about it, uh, with what's left in the show

00:50:22.480 today.

00:50:23.240 I'll work on that a little more next week because this is a huge issue in Canada, a massive

00:50:27.240 one.

00:50:27.500 We can't let it get forgotten over the summer.

00:50:30.080 Of course, there'll be lots more to cover and, uh, updates and things next week as well.

00:50:34.780 So thank you all for tuning in today, guys.

00:50:37.820 And, uh, yeah, we can finally start talking about stuff other than the provincial election

00:50:41.220 for a while, but it'll still be a bunch of politics and me ranting and raving in future

00:50:44.620 shows.

00:50:44.920 So come in again next week at this time, and we will do it all over again.

00:50:49.400 Thanks.

00:50:52.940 Here's an update on commodity prices in Lethbridge for today.

00:50:56.080 Cash barley is down $2 at $4.03.

00:50:58.920 Feed wheat is down $2 at $4.04 and corn is down $3 at $3.93 for metric tonne.

00:51:04.740 In the milling wheat markets, July Minneapolis futures are lower 11 and three quarter cents at

00:51:09.740 $7.81 per bushel, with local hard red spring bid for May movement at $10.47.

00:51:15.840 Looking at canola, nearby futures drop $7.60 at $6.50.60 per tonne, with delivered values

00:51:22.780 for June movement at $14.97 per bushel.

00:51:25.700 In the pulse markets, nearby red lentil prices are trading at $0.33 per pound, and yellow peas

00:51:31.020 are holding at $11.25 per bushel.

00:51:33.500 And in the cattle markets, August live cattle added $0.17.5 at $1.67.35 per hundred weight.

00:51:39.720 For more information on pricing or picked-up options, give me a call at 403-394-1711.

00:51:46.980 I'm Matt Busiekum at Marketplace Commodities, accurate real-time marketing information and

00:51:51.580 pricing options.

00:51:53.200 Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:51:55.400 Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.

00:51:59.960 These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms, regulations

00:52:05.680 and legislation in Canada, and more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns

00:52:11.300 out of the hands of the wrong people.

00:52:12.960 To become a member, it's absolutely worth every penny.

00:52:35.680 Thank you.

00:52:43.360 Thank you.

00:52:43.600 Thank you.

00:52:44.840 Thank you.

00:52:45.020 Thank you.

00:52:45.260 Thank you.

00:52:46.800 Thank you.

00:52:48.480 Thank you.

00:52:48.980 You and you and you.

00:52:50.460 Thank you.

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00:52:52.840 Thank you.

Western Standard - May 31, 2023

Cory Morgan Show. Hey Premier Smith! Don’t blink!

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