In this episode of The Corey Morgan Show, I rant about transit in Canada, and the growing problem of theft from electric vehicle charging stations. I also talk about how we need to take more responsibility for our own safety.
00:00:30.000Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show.
00:00:35.060This is my weekly opportunity to vent and rant and rave and cover some issues of importance, offer my opinion, and talk to interesting guests.
00:00:44.460And this week's episode is, like every other, a good one.
00:00:48.100I'm going to have a lot of transit talk today.
00:00:50.140I know we don't typically talk about that. That sounds pretty boring, but it isn't.
00:00:53.620It's important, actually. We've got some mega transit programs going on across the country, and you're going to pay for them, even if you don't ride transit or even if you live in the country, because there's provincial and federal transfers go to these.
00:01:05.520And we're going to speak a little later with Jim Gray.
00:01:09.640He's a Calgary Energy executive, or he was, and he's with the Ad Hoc Citizens Committee to Rethink the Green Line.
00:01:16.140That's a mouthful, but it's a group coming out saying, hey, we got to second think this project coming in Calgary because it's pretty big, and those numbers are looking pretty scary.
00:01:24.640And we don't know if we need this thing.
00:01:26.700So that's going to be a very interesting conversation coming up.
00:01:30.420Lots of news. I'll be checking in with Dave in a little while as well.
00:01:33.780And, of course, lots of the ranting and raving.
00:01:36.520So make sure to use this. This is a live show, guys. Use that comment area.
00:01:40.200Get in there. Get your questions in. Send things my way.
00:01:43.100Just keep things civil, of course. We can always fight later on out on Twitter.
00:01:47.440And I'm going to remind people more and more at the start and the end of the show.
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00:02:15.520All right. I'm going to start with my rant for the day.
00:02:18.640I'll start with a grumpy statement, as is my want anyways.
00:02:22.420So the common denominator, let's talk about that.
00:02:25.080The common denominator in all your failures is you.
00:02:30.840Few people ever want to face that reality.
00:02:32.880That's why so many people gladly embrace the opportunity to blame somebody or something else for their problems when they can.
00:02:38.720Of course, we have an ever-growing state with governments willing to indulge people when they don't want to take responsibility for or accept the consequences for their actions either.
00:02:58.680Or my ex-wife is the root of all my problems.
00:03:01.540Greedy corporations prevent me from getting ahead.
00:03:03.740The excuses used to dodge and avoid personal responsibility are myriad.
00:03:09.140It's certainly more comforting to direct your eye outwards when things may be going poorly for you than to consider that you may have caused all or part of your current problems.
00:03:17.920Especially when you have a world that's increasingly saying, nothing's your fault.
00:03:23.880There's many areas where we need people to start taking personal responsibility, but I want to focus on crime.
00:03:28.920What got me going this time was a tweet from the Western Standards' Arthur Green.
00:03:32.740It showed an electric vehicle charging station, and the charging cables have been cut off by thieves.
00:03:38.120Now, crooks have realized that the copper in those heavy-duty cables is valuable, and thefts are becoming a problem throughout North America.
00:03:44.420So I searched out and read a few articles.
00:03:47.860Now, those articles offered all sorts of advice in dealing with the issue, ranging from keeping cars in garages to bringing in detachable cables, or to have retractable cables that be hidden when not in use.
00:06:44.240Yeah, we've got big breaking news this morning out of Ottawa, where the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has announced he and his wife, Sophie, are separated.
00:06:55.660They've been married for 18 years and have decided to take a break.
00:07:01.400Not revealing the reasons why, but they are asking for privacy for their children's sake.
00:07:09.360And they're actually off on holiday, I think, next week, and they're going to go together.
00:07:14.780So ironically, the last Prime Minister who separated from his wife when he was in office was Justin's father, Pierre, who split up from Margaret while he was the PM in 1977.
00:07:30.260So it doesn't happen very often, Corey.
00:07:32.480Anyway, we've also got UCP reaction to that blockbuster court announcement yesterday that threw out all of Dr. Dina Hinshaw's health orders.
00:07:43.300Justice Minister Mickey Amory told the Western Standard that they're going to take the 30 days that they're allowed legally whether or not to decide to have an appeal.
00:07:54.880Well, we've got another transgender scandal brewing, so to speak, if you'll pardon the pun, this time at a coffee outlet across England, Costa Coffee.
00:08:06.300It's huge in England, Corey, in every block.
00:08:10.060They put out the latest cup with a transgendered man with scars on his chest after having his breasts removed.
00:08:18.020So I guess they didn't learn from the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, and they're jumping right in, and they're already the subject of a boycott in England.
00:08:28.000The Stanley Cup is making an appearance in small-town Saskatchewan today.
00:08:32.540The town of Davidson, not named after me, is going to host the cup with Golden Ice player McNabb is bringing it to town.
00:08:43.440Every player gets a day with the Stanley Cup, as you know, Corey, and he's decided to spend it in small-town Saskatchewan, his hometown.
00:08:54.180And our Linda Slobodian continues to focus on human trafficking.
00:08:57.780She's got a column on a recent FBI bust that freed more than 200 people who were trapped by human traffickers.
00:09:05.800So all that and more, Corey's already up this morning, and just coming up right now, we're educating our young reporter, Jonathan Bradley, on the Burgess Shale.
00:09:15.600He had never heard of it, and he's writing now about the latest interesting fossil find that they've got out there.
00:19:17.460So, I mean, that one element you were talking about, and we've seen that.
00:19:20.460I mean, they're spending, I believe, $100,000 a day right now.
00:19:22.960And they haven't even laid track on this.
00:19:24.960I mean, it's been over a billion dollars spent on this.
00:19:27.460Well, Corey, they're right at just about a billion.
00:19:32.340And they're spending multiples of $100,000 a day.
00:19:37.100They're spending $200,000 or $300,000 a day.
00:19:40.000And as you say, we haven't laid that much track yet.
00:19:43.740And they say they won't have the final prices till next spring.
00:19:48.640Meanwhile, we're spending $200,000, $300,000 a day and ripping up downtown.
00:19:52.800And so by that time, we will have spent a billion and a half dollars, which is more than the new cancer center, which is way more than the new event center.
00:20:04.940And we still won't know what this thing's going to cost.
00:20:09.680So let's just pause and get it right, because I think we have to understand that this Green Line, 46 kilometers from the north to the south, doesn't go to the health campus, the big new hospital, doesn't go to that big new economic area.
00:21:10.160So I could go on, but we're spending huge amounts of money.
00:21:16.300Phase one is now budgeted at around $5 billion, five or five and a half billion dollars.
00:21:23.000That includes $500 million for financing.
00:21:25.640Clearly, it's going to go to between 8 and 10.
00:21:29.760And there are many people think it will go more than that.
00:21:33.000Phase two, which takes us all the way to Seton, the South Health campus, etc., will be something in the order of $10 to $15 billion.
00:21:41.920So let's understand, Corey, this is the biggest thing Calgary's ever done at $20 to $25 billion.
00:21:50.720And then, I guess, to put that in perspective, a couple of things, and not everybody's from Calgary, too.
00:21:56.440So, yes, what you're talking about is this is going to go through essentially like a large light industrial and sort of reclaimed garbage dump zone.
00:22:03.280So there's not going to be a lot of traffic or need.
00:22:05.380That was one of the factors you were talking about, you know, for the lack of benefit.
00:22:09.000If you don't have the ridership there, why are you building the train?
00:22:11.420But just to put those dollars in perspective, if you're talking $20 billion, $25 billion, assuming there's a million taxpayers in Calgary, that would come up to about $20,000 a person in the city of taxpayers to cover this line.
00:22:25.840That's before they even get to buy a ticket and ride on it.
00:24:54.760But we've only got 30 cars, not 80 cars.
00:24:57.800Look, I don't make any of this personal.
00:24:59.740I will not attack anybody in a personal way because we've got to learn in this to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.
00:25:10.940And it's time that we just paused and tried to save this green line, if it's possible to save it.
00:25:20.440And I don't know whether it is possible to save it.
00:25:22.920But nevertheless, we've got to, and our sensible, affordable alternative is to start on 7th Avenue by City Hall and go all the way to Seton on the surface, no tunnels on the surface or elevated.
00:25:38.200And that's the way we've built every LRT.
00:25:41.880We've started on 7th Avenue and gone out to where the population is.
00:26:11.620And in North Calgary, we've got a wonderful buff system in North Calgary.
00:26:17.020But it picks up people all over the area and then comes down on three lines over Center Street and deposits them right downtown and then picks them up and takes them back home.
00:27:02.660So it doesn't necessarily mean scrapping the line.
00:27:04.260But crime has been a serious, serious problem on transit.
00:27:06.860And it's pushing people from wanting to utilize the transit.
00:27:11.280And people have been shifting more to the outer areas of the city rather than the inner.
00:27:15.160And it's, again, not necessarily saying that the project isn't viable.
00:27:18.060But maybe we should be focusing on getting people to use transit more again first before building more infrastructure for what's right now a declining demand.
00:27:28.240Well, there's a fundamental issue that you just touched on, Corey.
00:27:31.720The danger of stations underground in tunnels is measurably higher than the danger of surface or elevated stations that are open up, that have windows, that are open.
00:27:47.140And so we have to be very careful in that the hesitancy in using these facilities.
00:27:53.700We run a high risk of that escalating with stations buried underground in tunnels.
00:28:00.520We've got to forget this business of tunnels.
00:28:04.740I remember when the CPR was going to build a tunnel for their main line under Calgary in Rod Sykes' day so that they could monetize all their land.
00:28:13.920And they said they did the studies and they said, no way.
00:28:17.440We're not building tunnels under Calgary.
00:28:20.380Well, if I recall, there is a built, sitting, gathering dust, little LRT station they put under the new city hall in anticipation.
00:28:29.760It's still sitting there thinking they were going to put an LRT line under there at some time or another.
00:28:34.780You see, when you build a tunnel, you only need 5 or 10 or 15 feet of water-saturated sandstones or conglomerates or whatever, full of water, to ruin the whole system.
00:28:51.180So just because you've got 100 feet or 100 yards of tunnel doesn't mean anything.
00:33:28.440But don't pretend that you're tightening your belt like the rest of us.
00:33:31.820And then she went on a rant to say she doesn't have a car and she rides a bike where she has to.
00:33:37.560And she takes transit or taxis where she has to go and got quite upset when she got called on it.
00:33:42.920Well, turns out that, yes, her chauffeur, and she has a chauffeur, claimed expenses for meals and other costs over 28 days just in Toronto where she lives.
00:33:52.340I mean, there's been other areas where she's traveled, she's used, you know, chauffeured vehicles as well.
00:33:56.980Look, she's a federal cabinet minister.
00:34:29.540So, I mean, with this whole affair starting to hit the news and be a problem and everything else, coincidentally, suddenly, a photo starts going around from a Toronto outlet.
00:36:19.180A Chilean older woman was riding the Edmonton Transit, and she got assaulted.
00:36:25.080Edmonton's getting known as Stabmonton.
00:36:27.480But that's happening everywhere, the crime on these transit systems.
00:36:31.520And in wintertime, it gets even worse.
00:36:33.140And in Edmonton, they talked about that.
00:36:34.820It was tweeted out, basically saying we're going to allow the transit lines to be a de facto shelter for the homeless people when it gets cold.
00:36:43.520But it just really, yeah, it does get under my skin when you see poses like that from that clown Trudeau, pretending that, you know, how I understand.
00:37:20.120And they're probably finding that, no, no doubt about it, they are finding, of course, that, yeah, they're 10 points behind the conservatives now.
00:37:27.020And the scary thing is, who are they losing?
00:38:28.920And we saw that with Climate Barbie, who used to be in cabinet, another one of theirs, who was riding her bike in a big pose on Ottawa Hill and she was wearing high heels.
00:38:36.960Now, I don't ride bicycles a lot and I never wear high heels.
00:38:40.960I mean, it's just, you know, not a fear of trans thing.
00:38:44.800It's just they don't have the right ankles for that sort of get up.
00:38:47.260But I'm pretty sure the two don't go together well on bicycles if you're really actually going to ride one.
00:39:07.280And again, when it's a little easier to feel comfortable, I guess, when you're riding on an LRT loaded with attics and people, you know, freaking out and tweaking when you're in your 20s and strong and fit and confident.
00:39:21.120But once you're getting into the senior years, you're a little more uncomfortable riding amongst that mass.
00:40:53.420I mean, I still find his voice to be like nails on chalkboard.
00:40:55.760But you remember eight, nine years ago, even when he's leader of the opposition, the ums and ahs and stammering and stuttering, driving bananas.