Western Standard - Feb 24, The Pipeline. Carter's legal threats, charges dropped on rogue restaurant and pastor jailed

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Good day. Today is February 24th, 2021. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western

00:02:42.400 Standard. Joining me today is Corey Morgan, podcast editor and columnist extraordinaire.

00:02:49.380 How are you doing, Corey?

00:02:50.620 Very good. Thanks.

00:02:52.420 You're looking spiffier than me. I'm working from home today. Apologies, but we've got

00:02:57.700 a great show. Very fun stuff. Stephen Carter, the former campaign manager for Alison Redford

00:03:05.580 and Nahid Nenshi, is threatening to sue the Western Standard. Boy, that's going to be

00:03:11.000 fun, but he probably doesn't have the balls to do it. Charges have been dropped against 0.98

00:03:15.920 the Whistlestop, one of the rogue restaurants that participated in the restaurant revolution

00:03:21.980 against the lockdowns in Alberta. The charges have been dropped, and the government has

00:03:27.320 even had to pay their costs. And the Grace Life Church continues to defy the lockdown, even with

00:03:33.680 their pastor in jail. Great stuff ahead of us today. Before we go on, I want to thank all of

00:03:41.260 our current Western Standard members. Our membership has doubled in the last two weeks.

00:03:45.540 Absolutely incredible. Now, you know, people get still 10 free reads a month if you're not a member,

00:03:52.360 but you get unlimited access if you're a member of the Western Standard. Clearly, a lot of people

00:03:56.620 are seeing the value in that, and our membership has doubled. It's been fantastic. So if you're

00:04:01.880 not yet a member, go to westernstandardonline.com slash membership, sign up and support independent

00:04:06.840 bailout free media working for the West. And before we get underway, I have to mention today's

00:04:12.280 sponsor, Kyren's Way.com. Are you stressed out? Got a lot of anxiety during these times? Well,

00:04:19.560 Kyren's Way specializes in natural stress reduction, anxiety reduction plans.

00:04:29.260 Please contact them for information if you're interested.

00:04:32.780 I know I'm stressed out enough.

00:04:34.640 I'm going to consider giving them a call myself.

00:04:37.800 Well, let's start off.

00:04:39.420 Lots of fun.

00:04:40.600 The chief of STIF himself, Stephen Carter.

00:04:43.980 As I said, former campaign manager for Allison Redford and Nahid Nenshi.

00:04:48.240 he has threatened to sue the Western Standard. Long story short, yesterday our

00:04:57.120 news editor Dave Naylor, who's normally with us on the broadcast, put out a story.

00:05:03.600 A former city councillor of Calgary by the name of Joe Connolly has alleged,

00:05:10.200 and I'll say the word alleged many times, that the Jody Gondek campaign, which is

00:05:16.380 being managed by Stephen Carter has played fast and loose with some of the election finance

00:05:22.600 rules as it regards political action committees. I won't get into it. I actually didn't think

00:05:27.140 it was a terribly interesting story because it's just an allegation, but the allegation

00:05:32.320 was filed officially with Elections Alberta, the chief electoral officer, I believe. We

00:05:40.280 obtained a copy of the allegations made and we did a story on it uh that's pretty standard stuff

00:05:46.840 uh anybody who's been watching alberta politics the last three years knows that there's been

00:05:51.240 probably 500 stories about allegations made against jason kenney in the ucp some of which

00:05:56.920 have been correct some of which have at the very least not been proven uh but out official

00:06:02.040 allegations that are made are taken seriously the media have a obligation to report on them if we're

00:06:07.480 if we're doing our jobs and that's exactly what our news division did they reported on it

00:06:12.120 they were clear that these are allegations uh use the term alleged uh or its variations nine

00:06:18.040 times in the article including in the headline uh we even said that uh these allegations are

00:06:22.920 not yet proven this was a simple process story we didn't make any judgment about if these

00:06:27.400 allegations are true or not we gave extensive uh space for uh the jody gondette campaign to

00:06:34.680 uh to make itself heard uh to give comment uh stephen carter her campaign manager used that

00:06:40.600 space extensively to deny uh vociferously any wrongdoing that they've done anything wrong here

00:06:47.320 and even use some space to make personal attacks against the person making the allegation

00:06:52.360 we even printed that we printed them ad nauseum and verbatim uh but uh minutes i believe after

00:06:59.480 the article went up. Stephen Carter called our reporters, threatened to sue them, and we said,

00:07:05.360 go F yourself. Here's the address of our lawyer. Send all future correspondents there.

00:07:11.520 Now, Stephen Carter fashions himself as a tough guy. He's a very short, tough guy and thinks that

00:07:18.780 he can bully people around. He went to Twitter to say, who should I send this defamation or libel

00:07:25.940 notice too uh essentially trying to get us to back down uh we have no intention of doing so

00:07:33.220 we take defamation level very seriously it is a problem uh but we wanted we were absolutely

00:07:38.260 careful uh to the letter of the law and the spirit of the law here he thought he could get us to back

00:07:43.700 down we lawyered up we have uh retained uh jonathan dennis who's been on this program before former

00:07:49.620 alberta minister of justice and solicitor general uh to represent the western standard and um 0.98

00:07:55.940 My reply to Stephen Carter was, send us your slap suit notice if you've got the balls. 0.88

00:08:04.040 So far, approaching, I think we're about 22 hours after we've published, nothing's been received. 0.97

00:08:11.740 I've sent Stephen Carter a reminder.

00:08:14.000 I said, we still haven't received your slap suit notice.

00:08:17.120 Let us know if you need the address.

00:08:19.040 We still haven't heard anything.

00:08:21.340 Corey, you're familiar with Stephen Carter. 0.88

00:08:25.940 What do you think the chances are that he actually has the balls to follow through? 0.92

00:08:30.180 You keep saying that. I'm just shuddering at the mental image of Stephen Carter's balls. 0.99

00:08:34.600 But either way, it's just, it's as you said, it's a slap suit. And for people not familiar, 0.99

00:08:39.660 that stands for a strategic lawsuit against public participation. It's pushing and bullying

00:08:44.740 to try and scare media or individuals from doing any contrary critique of a campaign or a person

00:08:52.740 or anything like that. There's nothing to it. He pushed. He hoped you'd bend. You didn't. You

00:08:58.420 won't. And I don't think it'll go anywhere. But it really is indicative of what kind of municipal

00:09:04.800 campaign we've got to look forward to here. It's going to be a harsh one. And, you know,

00:09:09.760 I'm going to get out there and speculate right now. I don't believe Nahed Nenshi's running again.

00:09:14.800 I do think that Gondek and Carter probably know that. That's why they chose to run. They don't

00:09:21.220 to run against an incumbent nancy it's too hard but the head's being nice he's staying back and

00:09:25.780 playing coy on this because it keeps other candidates from jumping into the race and

00:09:30.100 carter was a little prickly because i don't know if you remember but about a month ago some guy

00:09:33.620 went and broke the story a week before their announcement that jody gondack is running for

00:09:38.580 mayor and uh that carter was going to be the manager and it kind of uh deflated their press

00:09:43.140 kickoff so he might be a little grumpy about that story but it's just bluster yeah i can't recall

00:09:56.020 but uh that was cory who blew the whole thing open on them yeah well that was on my own blog

00:10:03.460 not the standard so i didn't want to uh you know compete there but uh it's gonna be a long duke it

00:10:10.100 out campaign between Farkas and Gondek. Stephen Carter doesn't play nice. He doesn't play gently.

00:10:16.780 And this is just a sign of how it's going to be for this next, what, five, six months we've got

00:10:21.700 to look forward to here. Yeah. So Dave, as your Dave Naylor is just joining us now, it was Dave

00:10:29.200 who broke the story on the allegations against the Gondek campaign. I've already kind of filled

00:10:35.940 them in on what happened uh well why don't you just tell us about when uh how long was it after

00:10:43.300 uh the story was posted that uh stephen carter uh promised us that he was gonna sue uh sue the

00:10:49.780 pants off the western standard literally minutes there minutes i had uh hit publish and uh it was

00:10:57.060 than sharing it on social media platforms.

00:11:00.960 And almost instantly the note comes in

00:11:05.460 from Carter saying, okay, that's it.

00:11:09.580 You'll be hearing from my lawyer.

00:11:11.560 So he was certainly waiting for the story to come out.

00:11:15.280 Didn't take him long to react whatsoever.

00:11:18.160 And you gave him extensive space to respond

00:11:23.160 respond to the allegations from Joe Connolly's complaint to Elections Alberta, was there

00:11:32.780 anything he said that you left out? I know you gave him some space even for some personal

00:11:36.700 ad hominem attacks against Connolly. Was there anything we left out?

00:11:41.440 No, no, not a thing. And you hit the nail on the head, Derek. They're just allegations.

00:11:47.100 And we made that extremely clear in the story.

00:11:50.700 We put the campaign denial right in the second paragraph and in the subtitle.

00:11:58.960 So, you know, I thought and our lawyers thought it was a very fair and balanced piece.

00:12:07.160 Yeah, we know Stephen Carter is litigious.

00:12:10.740 He loves to sue people.

00:12:12.720 Although, you know, like this is a guy who I don't have the exact number in front of me, but he has defaulted essentially.

00:12:21.140 Yeah, defaulted on court order payments in the past himself when he's been ordered by courts to pay up.

00:12:27.520 Although Allison Redford made nice on that with a nice big six figure cool check from taxpayers for serving roughly six months as chief of staff. 0.92

00:12:38.240 or as the Calgary Sun at the time put it, Chief of Stiff for Alison Redford.

00:12:44.040 So, yeah, we expected that he is litigious, he would threaten something, but he's got absolutely nothing.

00:12:50.340 We told him last night, privately and publicly, fine, send us something. 0.94

00:12:55.880 If you think we've defamed your campaign or libeled, send us something.

00:13:00.920 We didn't receive anything last night.

00:13:02.800 We didn't receive anything by 11.30 today, so I publicly reminded him again.

00:13:08.020 I asked him if he needs our address.

00:13:09.920 Now, we'll see if they follow through.

00:13:12.260 But as I've said, this is an extremely litigious man who loves to try and sue people to get his way, try to threaten people to shut them up.

00:13:22.260 We're obviously not shutting up.

00:13:24.040 So we're asking people to donate to our legal defense fund.

00:13:29.800 There's a link on the website.

00:13:30.980 We'll actually put a link into the comments here.

00:13:32.700 You can make a donation.

00:13:33.600 People already have been.

00:13:35.660 We used this before when the CBC threatened to sue the Western Standard.

00:13:39.520 They got nowhere, but it costs money just to retain lawyers so we can engage in a war of letters back and forth.

00:13:47.660 I will be surprised if they have the guts to come at us, but we still have had to retain a lawyer.

00:13:52.680 That costs money so people can consider generously supporting us.

00:13:59.520 We'd be very grateful.

00:14:02.240 Corey, anything else on this one before we move on?

00:14:04.660 Just that it's an indication, though, of a bigger picture. And we might see more of this in the municipal campaign. Like 20 years ago, Calgary or Alberta municipal politics were kind of a funding free for all. You could donate as much as you wanted. There was no disclosure rules. It was, in my view, actually kind of a legalized bribery system.

00:14:21.980 but over the years it's really cracked down and there's some real hard caps on what a person can

00:14:27.380 contribute now and how much a candidate can spend or raise which you know you're trying to cap a

00:14:33.040 bottle and all that happens is now all these packs start spawning all over the places as different

00:14:38.360 groups and candidates try to find different ways to fund campaigns and it's a convoluted area of

00:14:43.740 what's allowed and what's not allowed I won't speculate as to whether or not anything untoward

00:14:48.840 was done but we're going to see probably more of this popping up as different packs get involved

00:14:53.160 in this campaign uh whether they cross lines or not uh fair enough as i said we're going to be

00:15:02.440 dropping um uh we'll be dropping a link to the uh donate page where you can learn more about uh

00:15:11.640 this uh threatened lawsuit from uh stephen carter and you can make a donation to our legal defense

00:15:18.600 fund uh let's move over to uh more abuse of the law uh charges have been dropped against a rogue

00:15:25.880 restaurant in alberta the whistle stop dave wanted to fill us in yeah you remember the whistle stop

00:15:32.920 made uh headlines uh recently when they defied alberta health services orders to uh to remain

00:15:40.040 shut they're located about 70 kilometers north of red deer and they decided they could no longer

00:15:45.960 afford to keep closed. The bills were coming in and as owner Christopher Scott told me,

00:15:53.080 you can only lose so much money. So the whistle stop did open and they were doing a booming

00:16:00.500 business. The RCMP kept a close eye on them. And a short time later, they were visited by

00:16:08.960 the officials and Alberta Health Services inspectors

00:16:13.840 and handed numerous legal tickets,

00:16:17.820 including a closure order

00:16:20.380 and a couple of breaches of the Public Health Act.

00:16:26.760 The charge of the closure order has now been abandoned

00:16:30.520 because Alberta Health Services says it's no longer needed.

00:16:34.300 They don't need his compliance anymore

00:16:37.300 because the ban on restaurant in seating dining

00:16:41.140 has been lifted.

00:16:42.420 So he's got that legal problem taken care of

00:16:47.220 and he's still got the two others

00:16:49.880 under the Public Health Act.

00:16:51.040 So it's a good start to his legal battle,

00:16:54.820 but they're not over quite yet.

00:16:58.060 Yeah, it was quite something.

00:17:01.880 The whistle stop, I think,

00:17:03.760 was perhaps the first in Alberta.

00:17:05.700 certainly became the most iconic but after they opened up the next day there

00:17:11.280 was half a dozen the next day after that it was a dozen it was kind of catching

00:17:15.480 on like wildfire I think that Cory I'd like your your input on this the

00:17:26.500 whistle stop I think kind of set it off but day by day their numbers seem to

00:17:30.540 multiply by two or three uh times every time uh would do you think it was their uh for lack of a

00:17:41.580 better term rogue opening rogue reopenings that forced the province's hand here or uh did jason

00:17:47.600 kenny just uh announced the kind of slow phased in reopening uh was that was that already his

00:17:55.100 plan at that time or do you think it was the whistle stop and others that forced their hand

00:17:58.660 yeah well and i've speculated on it before my guess is i mean he was starting chris scott took

00:18:05.280 the stand he took the chance and he did get the ball rolling i mean we were definitely seeing a

00:18:09.300 domino effect starting and it really did put a lot of pressure on the provincial government

00:18:13.220 to either get in there and crack down on these restaurants or back off they really had no other

00:18:18.120 middle ground to go with so if i recall it was that friday that a very grouchy premier came out

00:18:23.440 in a press conference and laid out the reopening plan and it sounded like it was fairly well

00:18:27.540 planned out. But my thoughts are, we all know politics. If you've got something good you're

00:18:30.860 going to put out, you do it Monday morning. If you throw it out in a Friday afternoon,

00:18:34.660 it's usually when you're taking out the garbage. In this case, I think they were in a rush. They

00:18:37.900 realized they got to stem the bleeding. And if they don't show an end point on this, more

00:18:42.600 restaurants are just going to keep doing it. So they were rushed. But the other thing that's

00:18:46.660 really interesting is AHS, I guess, is paying the legal bills for the charges that were dropped on

00:18:51.680 behalf of the whistle stop as well. I think HS fears they're going to lose a future lawsuit out

00:18:57.860 of this. Why else would you want to kind of cover your butt by paying Chris Scott's bills while 0.92

00:19:01.880 you're at it? So this story is far from done, I think, because there's a very grouchy Chris Scott 0.88

00:19:08.880 who's not taking anything laying down. So it's been very interesting to watch this develop. But

00:19:12.820 it was good to see a victory for peaceful civil disobedience, which is exactly what this was.

00:19:17.900 This wasn't marching down the street, smashing windows and lighting fires.

00:19:21.080 It was opening a restaurant and serving people burgers.

00:19:24.320 And it affected change.

00:19:25.380 And I really respect and appreciate Mr. Scott for doing it.

00:19:28.800 Yeah, I think they set quite an example there on how to do genuinely peaceful, non-aggression, civil disobedience.

00:19:41.300 And it worked.

00:19:42.440 The government, I think, had really just two options.

00:19:44.900 One was to give in a little bit.

00:19:46.800 They didn't give in completely, but they gave a phased reopening to at least put a light at the end of the tunnel.

00:19:52.200 Their option was to give in or to start or to endure the prospect of throwing small business owners in jail on the nightly news.

00:20:04.680 And that's not a good look for a government whose brand is supposed to be the party of small business, free enterprise and freedom.

00:20:12.380 That's not a good look politically, and certainly their example they were setting was catching

00:20:22.760 on.

00:20:23.760 This wasn't just them.

00:20:24.960 It was multiplying every single day.

00:20:27.640 So unless the government was willing to raid dozens or even a few hundred small businesses

00:20:34.460 and throw their owners in jail, they really had no choice but to give in, and they didn't

00:20:39.000 seem too happy about it.

00:20:41.100 But speaking of throwing people in jail for not abiding by the government's lockdown orders,

00:20:48.800 that is exactly what we're seeing.

00:20:51.380 We've already talked about this before, but this is exactly what we're seeing with the

00:20:54.920 Grace Life Church in the Stony Plain area just west of Edmonton.

00:21:00.780 We know that the pastor there has already been thrown in jail.

00:21:04.940 I believe they've actually emptied the jail of quite a few real criminals because of fears

00:21:11.920 that they would contract COVID, and then quite ironically, they throw a man in jail because

00:21:17.880 of defying COVID lockdown restrictions.

00:21:21.180 Dave, why don't you give us the latest update on what's happening with Pastor Coates and

00:21:27.000 the Grace Life Church?

00:21:29.180 Well, according to reports, Derek, he's even being kept in solitary confinement, believe it or not, for his sins.

00:21:38.440 Grace Life has been warned numerous times since late last year that they're exceeding their fire code.

00:21:45.980 A week ago, they came in again and arranged for him to attend the local RCMP detachment, which he did, I believe, last Tuesday.

00:21:57.600 He was then arrested, handcuffed, put in leg shackles, and thrown in the Hooskow.

00:22:04.600 He was brought before a judge twice, would have been given bail if he had just agreed to stop preaching, and he refused to do that.

00:22:17.600 So there he sits, still behind bars, apparently having, or he will be scheduled to have another court appearance this afternoon.

00:22:26.600 afternoon so stay tuned to the western standard for that we'll cover the results extensively

00:22:33.120 but last sunday they were open again standing room only they had to turn cars away from the

00:22:40.440 parking lot an associate pastor inside read read messages of support from other churches

00:22:48.280 and the rcmp were on scene and they put out a press release later in the day saying

00:22:54.120 uh yep they did again they broke pandemic regulations and we're going to now go back

00:23:00.440 and reassess what we're going to do next and we still haven't heard from the rcmp yet on

00:23:06.280 what they're going to do next but it's certainly a it's a growing movement derek there was a

00:23:11.800 baptist church in calgary the fair few baptist church with all which also opened against

00:23:17.800 health care regulations. And the pastor there says, yeah, I'm a good friend of James Coates.

00:23:23.920 And, you know, I'd be happy to sit in a jail cell next to him. They're not going to give in to

00:23:29.300 these government regulations. Well, yeah, this has obviously created a national stir. I think

00:23:38.140 he's become a national symbol of the anti-lockdown movement. Corey, the jailing of Pastor Coates,

00:23:47.340 because he refuses to meet the bail condition of ceasing to preach.

00:23:53.800 What effect do you think this is going to have?

00:23:56.840 We don't know for sure, but let's assume he's going to stay locked up

00:23:59.960 because he said, the minute you let me out, I'm going to go back to church and keep preaching,

00:24:04.660 which means they would arrest him again.

00:24:07.040 He's been clear that he will, quote, re-offend.

00:24:13.560 Corey, what effect do you think this is going to have on the ability of the government in Alberta

00:24:19.280 and potentially in other provinces to keep the partial lockdown in place, particularly as it regards churches?

00:24:28.640 Well, it's putting them in an even worse rock and a hard place than the restaurant openings did.

00:24:35.200 These are people of faith.

00:24:36.700 They've been staying away from their places of worship for almost a year now.

00:24:40.520 This is, you know, as we've established repeatedly, I am a faithless heathen myself, but I do understand the importance of gatherings and religious gatherings for people who do have faith. That's why we have religious rights entrenched into every developed country here, you know, in their constitution as a human right. It's integral, it's important, and it's being stepped on.

00:25:02.520 so you know church attendees who are tired of waiting uh church leaders i can see this expanding

00:25:09.160 further and further yet if they let them out and say okay everybody can have a large gathering

00:25:12.840 well they're kind of kind of hooped on their their lockdown regulations as well so i'm not sure how

00:25:17.480 this is going to develop because there's no no easy exit for the state now no easy exit for the

00:25:24.680 state that sounds like a title of a good book well uh fascinating stuff um well i know a lot of you

00:25:36.440 uh very much enjoyed the interview we had uh monday night uh danielle smith guest hosting

00:25:44.040 for the western standard we were very uh very happy to have her uh she had interviewed very

00:25:50.280 extensively um a retired lieutenant colonel david redmond uh and the form and he was also the former

00:25:58.440 head of alberta's emergency management this is a man who knows his stuff uh and and he has been

00:26:05.000 in large measure um de-platformed from speaking publicly um he is not some kooky conspiracy

00:26:13.640 theorist uh he is an immensely credible and knowledgeable man about how governments uh

00:26:20.760 handle and should handle emergencies and uh that was a two-hour interview i was skeptical that you

00:26:27.880 guys would hang in there instead we had a huge record audience um you know i'm sure you guys

00:26:35.080 prefer uh uh i i'm not quite as uh good a host cory dave and i are not quite as good a host as uh

00:26:41.880 Danny Hill, so I think that had something to do with it, but it was fascinating. You guys stood

00:26:46.460 through a two-hour interview, roughly half an hour, 40 minutes of which was a PowerPoint

00:26:53.440 presentation. I was shocked with the interest. We've had, so far, between YouTube and Facebook,

00:26:59.740 60,000 people watch that interview, which is two hours long. Absolutely incredible.

00:27:05.640 uh i think over 2 000 comments on it now just absolutely grabbed people's attention and good

00:27:14.420 news we're gonna bring it back and we're gonna do it again we're actually gonna probably do it a

00:27:18.820 few times now uh danielle smith has agreed to hope uh guest host a series of uh covid and

00:27:27.220 lockdown related uh interviews we're going to continue to do long form interviews not little

00:27:32.960 short 15 20 minute interviews that you normally get on the radio because you're pressed for time

00:27:38.000 you're up against commercials we're going to do long form interviews where people can really

00:27:43.580 get their point out it's not just a couple of high level talking points where people are

00:27:49.220 really kind of forced to be very very brief and you don't really get to the meat of it we're going

00:27:55.540 to get into the meat of it we're going to get all the way to the bone of the matter and we're going

00:28:01.080 to go through that and then take questions and answers like we did on Monday. So Danielle

00:28:06.780 Smith is going to be back probably next week. I'm guessing Monday. We'll have a time confirmed

00:28:13.140 soon, but we're going to be back. We're going to have a doctor on, likely as our first next

00:28:18.920 guest, an incredible person who knows about these kinds of things. And we're going to

00:28:23.800 get his perspective. We're going to do a whole series on this with other experts, other doctors.

00:28:29.240 We're looking at a whole long-form episode on de-platformed doctors, bringing on board doctors who have been de-platformed and are not allowed to speak in the mainstream media because they disagreed with the mainstream government narrative that's being pushed here.

00:28:47.700 So we're trying to continue to edge out a space for ourselves between the mainstream media and some of the more far-out stuff, which I think veers into conspiracy land.

00:28:56.980 What we want is bold, controversial, and expert witnesses on this show who you're not going to hear of in the mainstream media.

00:29:09.560 We're going to bring it to you in a series coming up.

00:29:13.020 We'll have the details announced soon, but I know you're all going to be very much wanting to pay attention and watch that.

00:29:20.180 Okay, well, as we wrap up, again, I want to thank all of our Western Standard members for your support.

00:29:26.280 As I said, our membership has exploded in just the last two weeks.

00:29:29.720 If you're not yet a member, go to WesternStandardOnline.com membership, sign up.

00:29:35.180 We greatly appreciate your support for bailout free media.

00:29:39.040 Dave, Corey, thank you very much for joining me today.

00:29:41.940 Pleasure as always.

00:29:43.460 Thank you.

00:29:44.840 Good to be on.

00:29:46.500 Take care.

00:29:47.300 God bless.

00:29:56.280 You

Western Standard - February 25, 2021

Feb 24, The Pipeline. Carter's legal threats, charges dropped on rogue restaurant and pastor jailed

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript