In this week's episode, we're talking about David Eby's cluster muck, Doug Ford's gravy plane, and the Canadian Foreign Legion's record-breaking numbers of new members. Plus, we talk about Canada's new foreign legion.
00:09:59.320They had tremendous problems, people interfering with the pipeline,
00:10:03.740breaking equipment setting things on fire a bunch of people got beat up uh the workers on the site
00:10:10.380you know uh and i i have a sense that all these years when we have been saying well of course you
00:10:18.380know it's nice to be here but we recognize that we're on the traditional territory of the whatever
00:10:23.660uh finally the whatever have said yeah you know you're right there you are so we'd like it back
00:10:30.700and mr eby thought that he was coasting that particular wave and unfortunately even if he
00:10:37.260didn't mean it they did and so this my little solution that yes he can resign it is the
00:10:44.700necessary first step but the fellow who comes along after isn't going to have an easy ride of it well
00:10:50.380i'm not even sure the conservatives are up to it i mean it's a diverse field but and then there is
00:10:55.820There's a lot of talk about UNDRIP and DRIPA and the conservative leadership race, but I'm not sure how far they're really actually willing to go.
00:11:07.520Alex, you're a reporter, but I want you to do your best job putting on your, using your crystal ball here.
00:11:44.340I'm not a lawyer, but the key issue with DRIPA is this language that says that all indigenous tribes have a right to free and informed consent on anything, whether that be, you know, a resource project like a pipeline or many things that are less or more innocuous than that.
00:12:02.740and consent is a very nebulous term it's very broad it's very vague it's not exactly clear
00:12:08.140it's one of the reasons sexual assault conviction the rate of convictions is very very low because
00:12:13.560the concept of consent is difficult to to fully grasp it very rarely do two people or let alone
00:12:19.340two groups agree completely on everything removing a sexual assault element that's a minefield of its
00:12:24.500own you know take for example if you are invited to go to your mother mother-in-law's house for
00:12:29.840the weekend does anybody truly consent to that well you know it's debatable because you may be
00:12:35.940pressured and so this is the issue with tripa right is and then you have another issue which
00:12:41.540is that in bc unlike other provinces we did not fully form treaties 95 of bc sits on what they
00:12:47.920call unceded territory so even if you receive the consent of one tribe to put a pipeline through
00:12:52.820their land another tribe may say that that land is on their overlapping territory and so ultimately
00:12:59.000David Eby's political career is is a very small part of this bc his entire economy is on the line
00:13:05.060Eby's proposal to go ahead okay well I mean yes but let's be realistic David Eby's number one
00:13:14.360concern probably is his political career most politicians have a tendency to conflate what's
00:13:21.480good for the people with what's good for themselves the people need me I am the best guy
00:13:26.280uh therefore if i go down the people go down so they tend to conflate one with the other
00:13:32.360um the obvious solution seems to be like there's a deadlock they've got to deal with it the obvious
00:13:38.780solution seems to be to resign but i'm i'm doubtful that he would see that as probably the best way
00:13:44.480out how short of resigning how could you conceive that david eby navigates his way through this one
00:13:54.240I think that David Eby, if we're remaining completely laser focused purely on his political career and his own self-interest, his best option was to simply put a pause on DRIPA until the next fixed election date, which was, it looked like that that was going to be the avenue that he took, but it appears that he didn't have enough support amongst his own caucus for that.
00:14:15.080So I would say that his political career is pretty much dead in the water at this point. I would agree with you gentlemen on that.
00:18:42.040But at the same time, I think we do need to, Corey, I think we do have this problem in Canada.
00:18:47.74024 Sussex is literally uninhabitable because people don't want to be seen as living high on the hog.
00:18:54.260We don't have to make it the White House and we don't have to make it Air Force One.
00:18:59.200But at some point, I think Canadians can be overly curmudgeonly and penny-pinching on this stuff for fear that officials are taking advantage of the system.0.64
00:19:10.440well maybe make the case before handing us the bill i mean it was poorly done too so if you
00:19:17.240start by saying this is a large geographic place here's the list of the places we've had to travel
00:19:21.960to and the importance of it here's an emergency we had to go to quickly so yeah i didn't have time
00:19:27.160to get in a charter plane or a smaller one but it was just kind of well i'm just dropping that on
00:19:33.400you here it is here's the 29 million dollar one like did you shop around did you check around and
00:19:38.440we've seen some other examples where those things have been abused. Allison Redford was the prime1.00
00:19:43.560case in Alberta. The Plain, again, it's a large province. She's a premier. Maybe it's justified
00:19:48.280in getting people. She was using a fly friends to Palm Springs. Yeah. And let's face it, how long1.00
00:19:53.660would it have been before Doug took off to the Bahamas and that thing? He should have played
00:19:59.700better politics with it. There's some truth to it. That's a good point. Like with Sussex and so on.
00:20:03.340I mean, these are leaders. They do need resources. They need to put out an impression of, you know,
00:20:07.600support and strength but at the same time you better be cognizant and respectful of the people
00:20:12.720who pay the bills for all those things and that didn't happen this time well you know it may well
00:20:16.800be that if you were respectful of the people paying the bills and you charted all of the
00:20:23.920air charters that the government of ontario does for various reasons this thing would have been
00:20:30.400defensible as well maybe not the 30 million dollar luxury plane but well it's the luxury you know
00:20:36.720something that did the job yeah yeah a little challenging jet so the prime minister flies
00:20:40.960around and they're not luxury they're actually rather uncomfortable but you know they do the job
00:20:46.000and they're not any 29 million dollars so that probably was the thing but i think i'm guessing
00:20:52.960here and an enterprising reporter for the you know who wants to get quids in with the queen's park
00:20:59.520might just do a a search for information and i think the information would be very quickly
00:21:06.320supplied that would allow him to write a story saying that this would have cost that would save
00:21:10.080the taxpayers millions of dollars in the air and by the way kit it out so it could do medevac and
00:21:15.680then you your hands are clean well and funny thing this is coming at the same time as the ontario
00:21:21.280government is trying to amend its freedom of information laws to exempt the cabinet from
00:21:26.160having to release information and this would have been exempted i mean is it any coincidence i mean
00:25:24.140Yeah, they like to keep them out of France, the metropolitan France, as they would call it.
00:25:30.680And one of the reasons is you don't like the idea of foreign troops, even under your own flag, foreign troops on your own soil.0.92
00:25:40.400The French like to have a revolution every few years.0.59
00:25:42.980And it's important that if the revolution, if the government is going to fire on its citizens, it must be Frenchmen firing at other Frenchmen.0.91
00:25:51.460That there's a sense of blood there and that they'll be a bit more hesitant to shoot.
00:25:56.460Well, it's compliant with their national anthem, actually, that calls upon, you know, the peasants to rise up and let the blood flow.
00:26:03.020And I don't know the literal translation, but it's pretty gory.
00:26:06.140Anyway, you're onto something with that.
00:26:07.520Look, so here's the thing that this is actually a very sad story, because if you're like me, you're aware of the Canadian military contribution over the last hundred years.
00:26:21.460the kind of people who went out and did the job and well take it back to the boer war if you care
00:26:27.460to but at any rate first world war second world war korea uh you know half a century of gallant
00:26:34.260peacekeeping chills bosom was that peaceful and you look at these guys well let's be honest about
00:26:39.780it they were people like us all white guys and uh that's not what the present government has
00:26:48.020been trying to promote in the armed services or anywhere else for that matter since Mr. Trudeau
00:26:54.340came to office in 2015. It had to be about women. It had to be about minorities. It had to be about0.99
00:27:02.500men who would be glad to find a tampon in the washroom. You know, not the warrior culture. It's0.82
00:27:08.820a very, very different attitude. You see in Pete Hegseth down in the United States, the Secretary
00:27:15.140of war not everybody likes pete excess but boy oh boy they put a military together that can do
00:27:20.820what's being done out there in the iran and if somebody gets shot down they can go in and get
00:27:24.820them now not to get too far off point here they cannot find people who want to serve in the
00:27:34.340canadian armed forces insufficient numbers to fill the ranks they want 70 000 people they got about
00:27:42.340sixty thousand if they really were serious about it they would send the recruiting sergeants down
00:27:47.780to new brunswick which is where the you know the basic uh warrior culture exists and they say come
00:27:54.660on boys for you we'll do the old deal and you'll receive honor you know not much wages but we'll
00:28:01.540give you the prestige of being in the canadian armed forces and you won't have to take orders
00:28:06.100from a woman and you won't have to take orders from somebody you don't like you know let's we're
00:28:11.140going to rebuild the the army we had in 1945 and you're going to be part of it then they'd have
00:28:17.540their numbers now that's not what they want to do so where shall we look next well according to dr
00:28:26.580grok the they are looking in some of the right places so places like great britain the netherlands
00:28:34.900u.s five eyes partners i've got a jump on this so when you're if you're picturing a foreign legion0.79
00:28:41.700that looks foreign that that may be an overstretch a bunch of kiwis isn't what i had in mind well
00:28:49.300you don't knock the kiwis mate no i know i'm saying that's not what i imagine as a foreign0.92
00:28:53.860legion yeah well that's uh that just seems like getting the band back together for the empire
00:28:59.780well that would probably work very well if that's but they're talking about recruiting immigrants
00:29:05.140who already become permanent residents so they've gone through one layer of selection rather than
00:29:10.500directly importing large numbers of foreign nationals from you know ukraine or brazil or0.96
00:29:17.460somewhere and therefore like the sort of the nightmare fantasy where you get the somali
00:29:25.540regiment of ottawa sent out to suffield just in case alberta gets restless probably not that likely
00:29:35.300well so far so far so far let's see how many signs um take the king's shilling yeah uh so far uh but
00:29:45.540they've they you know they have said that this is they're making this a path to citizenship
00:29:49.940uh there's only so many kiwis and australians and brits and yanks willing to do it uh
00:29:57.300it a path for citizenship most of the people coming in who wants it
00:30:01.460okay you're a weird you're a weird case i can't really you mess with all sorts of my arguments by
00:30:06.180sitting there but um you know but for the most part i i do think that this inevitably ends in
00:30:12.580the, you know, Her Majesty's Somalian regiment in, you know, in Ottawa, and His Majesty's
00:32:50.560This is, you know, it was not long ago that we had the Emergencies or formerly War Measures Act invoked against a peaceful Canadian protest in Ottawa and on border towns.
00:33:02.480um the military itself was not used but brutal police action was they dragooned uh tow truck
00:33:10.740drivers against their will to uh they essentially conscripted conscripted them into into into
00:33:16.480service uh is it and that was all done at the urging of mark carney justin trudeau did it and
00:33:22.860is ultimately responsible for it but mark carney was very clearly on the record in support of it
00:33:28.080which has now been found repeatedly to be unconstitutional and abuse of power.
00:33:33.700It's not inconceivable that there could be some other kind of emergency, real or perceived.
00:33:40.660You know, Quebec is very possibly headed towards an independence referendum.
00:33:43.860Alberta's headed very likely towards an independence referendum.
00:33:47.760I can conceive of a situation where Ottawa declares it an emergency.
00:33:52.060And I would, in the case of an emergency, I would want the soldiers that we have armed and trained to share something in common with me, that we have grown up in a similar country, that we have similar values, that we have a sense of kinship, brotherhood, that we are a part of a similar people.
00:34:15.060uh, people, um, because if we've armed them and we've trained them and they're being set as an
00:34:21.500adversary against us, it seems to me that they're a lot more likely to fire a whiff of grape shot
00:34:27.420into the crowd if they have very little in common with the people they're pointing the guns at.
00:34:33.360I don't know if I would necessarily agree with that. I think that Dave's anecdote of the first
00:34:39.240generation immigrant coming to Canada and appreciating our freedoms, maybe more than some
00:34:43.680of, you know, Canadians who are third or fourth generation immigrants, I think that that's fairly
00:34:48.880accurate. I think a lot of people who have been in Canada for many, many, many generations maybe
00:34:53.440take for granted the freedoms that they have. It's that old saying, you don't know what you have
00:34:57.280until it's gone. That resonates with me. I'm a first generation immigrant myself, and I would be
00:35:03.960the last person to shoot into a group of people because my family instilled the importance of
00:35:08.980freedom and democracy and personal rights and the right to protest and so on and so forth.
00:35:13.680because they didn't have it no doubt and i you know it's not lost on me that yeah i think the
00:35:19.940people most uh compliant the most deferential to authority the the least vigorous in defense
00:35:26.300of their own freedoms tend to be uh heritage canadians people who are are you know descendants
00:35:32.360of old settlers they take they often very much they often i think disproportionately take it
00:35:37.620for granted um uh and yeah a lot of people who do sign up for this kind of thing they're going to
00:35:42.500want to be a part of it but they're they're not yet they're not yet even citizens they're not even
00:35:50.620paper one of us yet in this case and i i i'm very worried about arming that kind of person and
00:35:58.540giving them an authority over everyone else well you know derek i don't think you can 100 percent
00:36:02.640generalize about that sort of person well i'm not 100 generalizing about anyone i'm generalizing in
00:36:07.940the broad sense here's what to to alex's point um alex as we're sort of introducing you to the
00:36:14.260world here tonight um sultan sounds like not from around here where actually was your family from
00:36:20.640i think the mud there they were from hungary they came in 1956 okay well look so here's the thing
00:36:26.720that we discovered during the covet crisis is that people who came from hungary from czechoslovakia0.86
00:36:37.380from Poland, that whole Eastern Europe cluster that had grown up under communism and had
00:36:47.080learned how to navigate through the system.
00:36:58.000You don't talk about what, like all of the marks of oppression, they were among the first
00:37:05.020to communicate to me we don't like what's going on here and so i actually when when i offered the0.91
00:37:14.380opinion that we had less chance of the what do i what was it i said the first somali dragoons or
00:37:21.880something coming out here and shooting up alberta i actually was saying that's less likely to happen
00:37:26.560But the people who have come from a country where they sort of share a bit of a culture with us, but have a better experience of going through communism or some system of government that has taught them how great it is to be here, where you can say what you want, at least for a year or two yet, they may well be on our side.
00:37:50.100But not everybody comes from that background.
00:37:53.120And if you've got people, I probably better not go through and name the countries, but you don't have to be a genius to think of the way.
00:38:11.70020% of the latest recruits were permanent residents rather than citizens.
00:38:16.220Now, I don't like to envision a Somali unit or a Palestinian unit or even an Irish unit, for that matter.0.90
00:38:23.200If you're bringing 20% in, I would like to see it spread around then and not in...0.73
00:38:28.300I don't think they're actually going to do dedicated units.
00:38:29.800I understand. I don't put it beyond our woke lunatics, though, to say, you know, for the sake of cultural, we should have the Islamic unit over here.
00:38:36.580Well, we used to have... I guess we had Highlander units back in the day. So instead of Kilsia turbans...0.96
00:38:41.320it's like immigration is good. Mass uncontrolled immigration is a problem. And this could be a0.95
00:38:48.540good thing if they do it correctly. That's a big F for the government in a military that is prone
00:38:53.720to incompetence and woke issues. So I just, I'm not wholly opposed to the concept of permanent
00:39:00.720residence, especially it's not a, they've gone through some steps already. They're not fresh
00:39:04.660in as refugees or something, and then given a firearm and put out there. But boy, just,1.00
00:39:10.780just don't let it overwhelm and make sure that you're maintaining that culture again and spreading
00:39:14.800it around instead of having actually uh cultural clusters that that gets a little more frightening
00:39:20.300could i add another could i add another point to this so i canada's military history is epic
00:39:26.980like back in time and even not even that far back in time if you go back to afghanistan
00:39:33.020that fun fact i don't believe canada lost a single battle or skirmish in afghanistan and
00:39:37.540many Taliban leaders wrote that the Canadians were the one group that they were more fearful of than
00:39:41.780any other. So this point that I'm making is not to discount Canada's military history, but I think
00:39:48.020that the need for Canadian hard power military has always been a bit overstated. I mean, we're
00:39:53.280quite blessed in the sense that we already have an amazing defense from two oceans and our only
00:39:58.560major neighbor, the United States, is generally quite friendly to us. I think that maybe we could
00:40:03.900reframe this discussion in the sense that all of these foreign recruits who are interested in
00:40:08.660joining Canada's military offer an incredible opportunity in terms of soft power. If you look
00:40:13.480at the major threats in the world right now, China and India are becoming major threats, and the world0.99
00:40:18.380is looking for intelligence people who speak those languages. Canada has an overabundance of them now.0.91
00:40:24.320I agree with you, Derek, as well, that I don't necessarily trust this government to vet those
00:40:29.980people properly. But that's going to be a problem regardless of who you have working in your
00:40:34.300intelligence service. And so I think that Canada has a unique opportunity right now with the amount
00:40:38.660of immigrants that we have to kind of spin gold out of hay here and maybe become a world leader0.99
00:40:43.480in soft power. You may well be right. Although I would say there's another side of the coin,1.00
00:40:49.260and it's going to be super politically incorrect to say, but say China and India, because those
00:40:54.280are the two examples you mentioned, they would also see the diaspora community here as an
00:40:59.460intelligence opportunity so yeah that's i'm not casting aspersions on anyone who's here but they
00:41:06.240will be seen as another the other uh you know it's a double-edged sword here uh they would be
00:41:12.140seen as an opportunity from from those players um well i mean if they're paying them right they're0.96
00:41:17.600not going to bite the hand that feeds them so if we feed them instead of the chinese or the indians
00:41:21.280feeding them then then they're ours now you know canadians care too much about money uh people from
00:41:26.540other cultures often prize other things and to their credit they prize things that are more0.67
00:41:33.260important than than money okay uh let's go we'll go to go to our parting shots start with uh nigel
00:41:41.820yes well you would mention uh stories that didn't get a lot of attention we at least put the story
00:41:47.580in about canada's spaceports are now a national priority billions will be spent now i actually
00:41:55.980do think that canada should have a robust space program should be able to launch its own satellites
00:42:04.300and not go to somebody else with cash uh it's just that rather as we're not sure that
00:42:10.860this government knows how to get military recruitment right i'm not sure that they have
00:42:16.940that i would want to travel on anything contracted by this government
00:42:21.260we have one we have about three dozen satellites in space they've all been launched by the x they
00:42:27.100take them up five at a time in one of musk's uh rockets and we're going to do better than that
00:42:36.140you know from scratch we have one rocket that's been in production for 50 years it's the black
00:42:40.860brand apparently is a hell of a good rocket if all you want to do is shoot some instruments
00:42:47.980up about 200 000 feet and let them float down and take measurements things utterly reliable
00:42:54.460but you can launch it out of your backyard so i i have a feeling that this is another pipeline
00:43:01.180proposal in the making we're supposed to think oh that's great vote for it and give mr carney
00:43:07.100the credit i'm not we're going to get the gravy rocket out of this doug ford is going to get a
00:43:11.660spaceship. It's not rocket science, Nigel. Apparently not. Corey should have mentioned it.
00:43:16.780Just back into that foreign interference in diaspora populations. Imagine being a Chinese,1.00
00:43:23.180immigrant of Chinese origin. And then, you know, we know they have been strong arming people here
00:43:28.140with their Chinese police stations on Canadian soil and things like that. And then find out our
00:43:32.780RCMP is in partnership and some secretive partnership as the usual RCMP won't tell us
00:43:37.660what the details are about it so even if you're getting pressured from the chinese government
00:43:42.140whilst in canada who on earth do you call because the rcmp is already proudly wearing their chinese
00:43:47.020star on their arms and won't tell you what the partnership is welcome to canada now dave uh
00:43:53.580yesterday would have marked the 100th birthday of the late great queen elizabeth ii uh celebrations
00:44:00.300held throughout england including uh at buckingham palace where the royal family met people who were
00:44:06.380also turning 100 including war veterans and whatnot so it was a day of reflection and how
00:44:12.860we missed that grand old lady you you almost gave me a heart attack for a second because i i was my
00:44:18.300dates weren't exact and i thought you were going memorializing another uh mid-april birthday oh no
00:44:28.860oh this this episode is why would that be top of mind for you derek