Western Standard - EXCLUSIVE： Lindsay Wilson of Alberta Proud on Justinflation

00:00:00.080 I'm with Alberta Proud. We're a non-profit advocacy group. We're grassroots-based.

00:00:05.280 We champion all things Alberta, especially our energy sector. We're very proud of our

00:00:08.900 energy sector. We believe everyone needs more of our best in the world. Canadian energy,

00:00:13.300 our Alberta energy. And we take issue with the Ottawa elites and our Prime Minister who

00:00:19.880 want to beat us down for what we have and for fueling this country. And we just don't

00:00:27.020 like that very much. So I want to show you, I brought props. Oh, props are fine. As long as

00:00:31.320 nothing will get us kicked off. Well, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. So I'm going to credit

00:00:34.900 my son for grocery shopping with me two days ago. And we took some photos of just everyday

00:00:40.600 products that most of us would buy. Because I want to show you guys, not that you don't already know,

00:00:46.660 but I want to show you guys how I'm experiencing, as you're experiencing, that we're going to the

00:00:51.240 grocery store and buying everyday products that we all need to cook food for our family. And it's

00:00:55.800 costing twice as much as it was six months ago. And then I'm going to credit my oldest

00:01:00.100 daughter for creating these. So here's your first one here. This is Campbell's cream of

00:01:05.100 chicken soup, $2.79. I can't remember the last time I paid more than a dollar and change for

00:01:11.260 something like this. This one here, here's some just inflation for you. This is chocolate milk,

00:01:17.880 $7.59 for a jug of chocolate milk.

00:01:24.260 Oh, that's my, that's my, that's the best for last. This is a cheese whiz here. This is $13.79.

00:01:29.560 I can't stand that stuff.

00:01:31.260 It's for that price, little boy. Well, no, for a lot of people do love it. I mean,

00:01:34.880 it's a quick snack for families, kids, throw it on celery like some people do.

00:01:39.060 Cheese sauce at the holidays.

00:01:40.360 But yes, it's certainly getting expensive.

00:01:42.140 It really is. Here's, here's one of my favorites. This is dairy land butter, a pound of butter for

00:01:46.720 $7.29. Something that normally we're paying probably three or $4 for. And here's my favorite

00:01:53.140 one. And this segues into something I'm really excited about to talk about today. This is our

00:01:56.640 favorite just inflation here. Here is some ground beef for you, you know, homegrown Alberta beef,

00:02:02.060 right? $16.59 for just under a kg. So that's about eight bucks a pound, which is more than double

00:02:09.740 of what we're, we're used to paying. And so, yeah, that's kind of what a big thing that I

00:02:16.020 wanted to talk about today is a new campaign that we're launching. I'm sure all of you have heard

00:02:19.580 about this week, Health Canada, the federal agency is now wanting to label ground beef to tell you

00:02:26.560 that it's not healthy for you to eat that. So they're, they're, they're wanting, they're saying

00:02:31.720 that this is a, this is a health concern that they want to tell people what's high in sugar and fat

00:02:36.680 saturated fats, but they're, but they're leaving these labels off of chocolate chip cookies and,

00:02:41.580 and dairy and eggs. And they're targeting beef. Ironically, they're targeting one of our

00:02:46.360 most important industries here in Alberta. So once again, we're seeing a case where, you know,

00:02:51.400 it's Ottawa kicking Alberta while we're down. And if you talk to cattlemen's associations,

00:02:56.360 ranchers associations, they can't afford this right now. They're already, input costs are already

00:03:01.300 outpaced profits this year. They're not making extra money at what, what we're seeing in the

00:03:07.820 grocery stores and what we're paying at the till. So that is why we have come up with a new brand

00:03:14.320 that I'm really excited that we're launching. This is going to be our new t-shirts. They're going to be

00:03:18.780 available. I'm hoping in the next week or two, we're going to have these online. You can go to

00:03:22.560 shop.albertaproud.org. And it's just very clearly saying we are so proud of our Alberta brief. And I

00:03:28.460 would just be thrilled to see so many people walking around wearing these. That would be more

00:03:32.000 saleable than what I did on the show with the other day with my monologue when I said, get your

00:03:35.660 hands off my meat, which, which made a very valid point. But I don't think a lot of people want to wear

00:03:40.760 that on a t-shirt. Maybe not. So proud of Alberta beef. I can definitely see some merit there. And

00:03:45.780 great. And it's good that we're bringing this up. Like these are staples. As you said, with those

00:03:51.460 associations, I spoke with a gentleman from the Saskatchewan Cattle Association yesterday. And yes,

00:03:56.880 they're livid. I mean, this is ridiculous. It's a perfectly healthy product. They're being targeted. 0.99

00:04:02.380 They're being pulled out. And it's adding fear and expense to people when, as you pointed out,

00:04:07.660 the cost of groceries on every level is going up. This is hard on families. And these are the staples

00:04:12.360 going up. And that butter is outrageous. It is. But why do we keep targeting beef? Why are we

00:04:18.280 labeling Alberta beef as unhealthy? It's high in B12. It's high in iron. It's a great source of protein,

00:04:25.640 particularly when you're eating lean or extra lean ground beef. And this also, from my understanding,

00:04:30.700 I think it applies to ground pork and veal, I believe. Ground pork, for sure. Lamb, I believe

00:04:39.160 it's applying to, too. So it's not just the cattle ranchers that are affected. It's all ranchers

00:04:43.240 producing livestock that are affected.

00:04:45.380 Well, I mean, to be honest, a couple of commenters brought supply management, of course. I mean,

00:04:50.020 just getting it kind of sidetracking a bit. But that's something that affects the dairy and poultry

00:04:53.480 prices very directly. And it's funny, they left chicken alone, of course, and they leave dairy

00:04:59.140 alone with their labeling or things. But we've got to remember, where is all this coming from?

00:05:03.360 Oh, Quebec. I mean, if Quebec was a main cattle producer in Canada, I got a feeling they wouldn't

00:05:08.500 be putting this gross labeling on beef products all of a sudden.

00:05:11.420 Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. And it's just, to us, it's just the height of just inflation.

00:05:15.820 You know, our country, for seven years, we're not building back. We're not building better.

00:05:21.260 What has he done to lead our country? He's just leading us down the wrong path. And I think we

00:05:26.980 are just, things are so good in Alberta right now. Oil is over 120 a barrel. There's investment in

00:05:33.100 agriculture. There's investment in technology. You know, things are looking really promising.

00:05:38.160 And I think we're just, I think the biggest message I want to send home today is, other than

00:05:43.740 supporting our farmers and ranchers and supporting our Alberta energy, is to not be complacent.

00:05:50.340 This next year is very critical. We've got a provincial election that's T minus 11 months

00:05:54.400 away. And I can't even imagine if, if, if we elect an NDP government and anti-resource and

00:06:00.200 anti-energy government to steer us off the course that we're on right now. You know, no government

00:06:05.060 is perfect, certainly, but we need to support these pro-resource politicians and, and ensure

00:06:11.360 that they keep fighting Ottawa and taking Ottawa to task. We're in trouble if we don't.

00:06:15.820 Well, let's say we're being governed by an ideologically driven party right now. I mean,

00:06:19.120 that's the bottom line as well, our coalition of those parties. And I mean, I'm sure there's

00:06:24.420 got to be some wise economists behind closed doors that work for the liberals that are

00:06:28.060 screaming, please guys, cut this out. I mean, we're a country in recovery. We've got interest

00:06:33.340 rates are rising. People are going to be losing houses soon because they're trying to push down

00:06:36.860 the inflation. You've got tools right at your hands to reduce the inflation by getting pressure

00:06:41.120 off of our energy production and, and our food production. And this government just will not

00:06:45.860 back off. They won't stop. Well, it's shocking. Like we're sitting here, we're looking down the

00:06:49.340 barrel of a gun. That's 6.7% inflation. One in four Canadians are skipping meals. One in four Canadians

00:06:56.380 just this week, these reports that one in four Canadians have said, Hey, if you increase the

00:07:01.520 interest rate on my mortgage, I'm out. I can't afford my house. I'm going to lose my house.

00:07:06.160 And which is, it's, it's shocking when you think about that. When you think about those numbers,

00:07:10.540 one in four, that's, that's tremendous. And, and again, it's not luxuries. You know,

00:07:15.020 people say, Oh, just tighten your belt or just do without some things. This is food.

00:07:18.840 This is housing. How can you tighten your belt anymore? It's eight bucks a pound for ground beef.

00:07:23.380 Yeah. One of the staples, one of the most economical meats that you can cook up for your,

00:07:27.960 for, for a family. This isn't filet mignon, which by the way, I have no doubt that Trudeau and the

00:07:33.060 auto elites are enjoying their filet mignon and traveling around on their, on their private jets as well.

00:07:38.420 Well, unfortunately, yes. I mean, this is again, the problem with some of the, it's not just the

00:07:43.420 ideology, but we've got some very disconnected leadership. I mean, Justin Trudeau has never

00:07:47.160 had to worry about paying a grocery bill his entire life. Jagmeet Singh is, you know, as much

00:07:51.640 as he leads the people's party on the left, lives quite a life of privilege on, you know, very,

00:07:56.780 very expensive Ottomans and, you know, with some high-end clothing. Hey, good on you.

00:08:01.220 An $1,100 nursing chair, wasn't that what that was?

00:08:03.460 Yeah, something like that. So, you know, whatever, that's fine. It's the hypocrisy that's galling.

00:08:08.860 But these guys don't understand. They don't, when they bring these policies, they've never 0.67

00:08:12.140 had to feel that pressure. They never had to worry like, how am I going to feed the kids

00:08:15.220 properly before I get them to school while still making the rent, while maybe making a

00:08:19.140 car payment or getting decent clothing. They just don't get it. So they don't care.

00:08:23.400 No, they don't care, Corey. They, these are people that probably don't even grocery shop

00:08:27.440 for themselves, let alone realize, realize the stark contrast in how much groceries have gone

00:08:33.720 up in the last six months. Everybody I know, myself included, we're just shocked every month

00:08:37.280 when our utility bills come in. Every time we fill up at the pump, like we are, we are living,

00:08:43.080 we are living with the consequences of budgets that just balance themselves, right? We are living

00:08:49.320 with the consequences of just printing money. It's this false, like probably the greatest economic

00:08:54.920 myth of our time is that the liberal government wants you to believe everything's fine. We can just

00:08:58.880 keep printing money. Well, it's, it's not okay. It's not okay.

00:09:03.100 Every, again, even a, even a Keynesian economist, economist can understand that you do that,

00:09:10.220 you're going to cause inflation. That's just like the law of gravity. You add more currency into the

00:09:15.100 supply, it's going to devalue the currency. And they use every excuse in the book. Oh no, it's,

00:09:20.340 it's the war in Ukraine. It's international. We can't do anything about it. I mean, 0.74

00:09:23.300 there's some degrees of world commodities they can't control. Sure. But in our domestic policy,

00:09:27.880 yes, you're contributing to it when you keep borrowing. And they won't even consider getting

00:09:31.760 spending under control. So again, it's a frightening outlook we have.

00:09:34.540 Well, I mean, you've got this band of eco radicals, right? You've got Trudeau with uneven

00:09:38.240 Stephen, Stephen Goubeau, our, our environment minister, who's an eco radical, as we all know.

00:09:42.640 And, and you've got them just, just raking us with these, with carbon taxes and punishing our energy

00:09:49.400 sector and, and putting barricades up for pipelines to be built. And, and, and then even when it's not up to

00:09:55.200 them, just doing absolutely nothing to facilitate development of pipelines. So, I mean, it's, there's so

00:10:01.960 much more that we can be doing that if we had the right people in charge at the federal level, there's just

00:10:07.500 so much more that we can be doing, where we wouldn't be paying these kinds of prices at the pump, at the

00:10:12.500 tail of the grocery store.

00:10:13.720 That's absurd. Yeah. I mean, we're in Canada where we've got, again, what, I think the third or fourth

00:10:17.920 largest deposits of, of hydrocarbon energy in the world, and some of the largest tracts of

00:10:23.660 agriculturally producing land in the world. And we're paying these kinds of prices. It just doesn't

00:10:28.780 make sense, but we can see that it's, it's bad policy. It's bloody bad policy.

00:10:32.560 And we're living, we're living with the realities of those bad policies and the politicians who've

00:10:36.640 implemented them.

00:10:37.840 So what other initiatives then has Alberta Proud got going? I mean, you're bringing it to light.

00:10:41.680 You've got the, the, the.

00:10:43.500 So we're, yeah, we, we, we're coming up with an email today. So if you're on our email list,

00:10:47.020 that's great. And we'll have these shirts up at shop.albertaproud.org over the next,

00:10:52.860 I would think the next week or two here. Aside from that, we were launching a petition today,

00:10:57.360 and we want to put a petition to the feds to stop this stupid labeling. Like we, we, the farmers, 0.98

00:11:03.980 the ranchers, they can't afford it. It's unnecessary. And it's just so insulting that the federal

00:11:08.940 government thinks the consumer is so stupid that we need them to tell us that they're going to charge 0.99

00:11:13.320 us more. We can pay more for the privilege of them telling us what's healthy and not healthy 1.00

00:11:16.860 to eat. I think most of us can do our own research and we know what to eat, not to eat.

00:11:21.640 And certainly putting a warning label on homegrown proteins is not my version of educating Albertans

00:11:28.500 and educating Canadians on what's healthy to eat. So that petition will be going out on social media

00:11:33.520 today. We're, we're on all social media channels. Our primary one, of course, is Facebook. We have

00:11:38.360 over 200,000 followers. And we use channel most of our advocacy through there. But of course,

00:11:43.880 we're on Twitter, we're on Telegram, we're on Instagram. We're, yeah, we've got everything up

00:11:50.400 and running and LinkedIn too. Yeah, well, we've got lots of means in this. As I was kind of saying

00:11:53.820 earlier, the government, some elements of government have actually been paying a bit of attention

00:11:57.540 lately. They're getting a bit reactive. I mean, as much as it's tempting, and you can see a lot of

00:12:01.480 evidence that they're all indifferent fools in there. There are some who are paying attention. 0.99

00:12:04.940 There are some that are speaking up. And if we keep the pressure up, they can, they do bend

00:12:09.620 sometimes. And the Senate actually knocked down C7 the other day, like, holy crap, or S7, I should

00:12:14.220 say, we wouldn't have seen that coming. So get these petitions going, put the word out. I mean,

00:12:18.640 make these guys realize that they've crossed the line, they've gone too far. Even some liberal ones

00:12:22.720 can hear some reason. I don't think Trudeau ever will. He spent $700,000 to renovate his kitchen there

00:12:27.420 at his cottage tax dollars. And as you know, speaking again of us trying to make the bills, and I doubt

00:12:32.620 he's ever going to cook in it, but his chef will enjoy the renovations. Imagine having $700,000 to

00:12:37.440 renovate a kitchen that's more than most of us will ever pay for a house.

00:12:39.960 Well, yeah, I know. It's incredible. And I mean, how much time does he spend there? I mean,

00:12:43.720 that's only the time that, you know, between surfing trips and, you know, going overseas and

00:12:47.680 embarrassing us. He's a busy guy. He sure does a good job of that, doesn't he? And speaking further,

00:12:53.220 I mean, Andrea Kettle's asking, yeah, what is this, you know, red labels? So yeah, there's labels

00:12:58.320 though, just to kind of remind everybody what Health Canada is proposing, that they want to make it

00:13:03.000 like cigarettes or liquor and essentially put labeling, mandatory labeling on front of package

00:13:08.220 to show that ground beef products and ground pork and others are unhealthy, to say that they're

00:13:14.100 unhealthy. They want to push people off it. And when I spoke to the fellow from the association

00:13:18.120 yesterday, the Saskatchewan Cattle Association, he also pointed out, this is embarrassing Canada

00:13:22.180 and costing us problems for exports. Like more than half of our beef gets exported.

00:13:26.320 Oh, and we will be the only country in the world to do this.

00:13:29.280 We will be the only one on the planet. And it's competitive. And there's a lot of protectionism.

00:13:32.260 And you know that there's producers in other countries that would love to shut down Canadian

00:13:35.080 meat. And it's, hey, look, even Canada doesn't feel that their own product is healthy. We should

00:13:38.740 stop bringing it in. It is setting such a, you know, the tone always comes from the top. So what

00:13:42.520 are, what message are we sending out to the world by doing this? I think people might think, ah, it's

00:13:46.740 just another label. It's just another warning. No guys, it's, it's, it's so much more than that.

00:13:50.880 And rest assured, you will be paying more for your ground meat products and, and what's next,

00:13:56.600 right? Where, so they'll start with this and then what? Well, and that's part of the bigger principle too.

00:14:00.740 Yeah. Andrea saying, yeah, beef and get, no, isn't labeled. Yeah. This is proposed by health

00:14:03.860 candidates. Not in yet. And that's why the times now to push back and make these, these autocrat

00:14:08.920 busybodies realize you've crossed the line. But as you said, where does it stop? Because it's an

00:14:13.000 indication of how much control these bureaucrats want to have, what they want to do. They want to 1.00

00:14:16.960 tell you what you can eat, what you can't eat. I mean, this is the first step on who knows where

00:14:22.560 they're going to stop. And again, it's, it's crushing us economically. We don't have time and money for this.

00:14:26.760 Yeah. And I hope you guys will go to our social media, check us out Alberta Proud on Facebook or

00:14:31.500 on all the channels and please sign and share that petition. Let's get loud. Let's get rowdy about

00:14:37.080 this one. This is our, one of our core industries and we have to stand up for it. Cause if we don't

00:14:41.560 stand up for it and if we don't push back and if we remain complacent, you know what, what the answer

00:14:46.700 is, it's going to be more of the same and it's only going to get worse. And I don't know about you

00:14:49.720 guys, but I've got three kids at home and it, I struggle to, to go to the grocery store and make

00:14:54.580 sure all my bills are paid to keep feeding them. And I'm sure the same is for most of you out there

00:14:58.280 watching. You have to push back. Well, I appreciate that. And also that, you know, you've pointed out

00:15:03.080 that it's not, everybody's on Facebook, people do different social media platforms and things.

00:15:06.780 That's your main one. If you're really check out Alberta Proud on Facebook, that's a well-populated

00:15:10.560 busy site. When you have a couple of hundred thousand people participating on it, politicians take note,

00:15:14.500 you know, we feel powerless sometimes. We don't necessarily have to use our tools. We can pressure

00:15:19.900 these guys. So, but also, as you said, you're on Instagram, Twitter, all of those other good spots.

00:15:25.700 Well, great. Well, I thank you for coming in and showing off the props and swag and all that good

00:15:31.040 stuff, but, and, and the efforts, of course, again, if we don't, it's like I'll talk about in our

00:15:35.180 sponsor in a moment, but if we don't stand up for ourselves, we'll lose. That's the only way we'll lose.

00:15:40.160 So thanks so much. And thanks to everybody out there listening and, you know,

00:15:43.680 keep on loving and being proud of Alberta beef.

Western Standard - June 15, 2022

EXCLUSIVE： Lindsay Wilson of Alberta Proud on Justinflation

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