Western Standard - FILDEBRANDT： Canada’s immigration consensus is breaking

00:00:00.000 The left, and even the right, political establishment has shit the bed in Canada 0.99

00:00:29.500 on immigration. And as Canadians begin to fight back, as people in countries right across the 0.98

00:00:39.940 Western world begin to fight back, the establishment and the political left are losing their minds

00:00:47.360 about why people are pushing back. How dare we break this sacred Canadian consensus on mass

00:00:55.260 migration. Well, there is a piece in thenationalobserver.com today. It's a left-wing

00:01:02.740 Canadian news site today that I clicked on. I like to hate read it from time to time.

00:01:11.140 I'm not one of those guys who likes to only read things I agree with. I go out of my way to read

00:01:14.900 things I disagree with. And so there's a column today from Max Fawcett, a guy I've actually had

00:01:22.180 some pretty reasonable debates with. I don't think we agree on the time of day, but I've been able

00:01:27.020 to have some reasonable disagreements with this guy. But I clicked on this piece today, not knowing

00:01:33.180 actually that my name would make a cameo in it, but so I was a bit surprised when I came to that.

00:01:39.080 But I just, the headline just got me to hate click it for a read. And I want to go through

00:01:46.100 it today, because this piece really, I think, neatly encapsulates how a lot of the political

00:01:56.940 left, both in Canada and across the West broadly, views the reaction to their mass migration

00:02:06.380 policies, the populist reaction to the actions that they have taken, especially over the

00:02:14.100 last decade but going back much further than that at a slower but still massive pace for mass

00:02:20.580 migration before that so this this piece is called canada's anti-immigration politics are coming to

00:02:28.300 canada and alberta invited them in so you got my attention i don't know if he wrote the headline

00:02:34.760 or if an editor there did but good job you got my attention to hate read this thing so i'm just

00:02:40.740 going to, uh, I'm going to play it. Uh, they have, they have kind of an AI audio thing on it. That's

00:02:46.040 probably better than my voice reading it. Um, but I'm just going to kind of play piece by piece

00:02:51.220 and stop it and discuss it from time to time. And I, I'd be interested to hear, uh, what you guys

00:02:56.780 think in the comments, uh, about, about this piece and perhaps, uh, you know, some of my rebuttals to

00:03:02.240 it so uh america's anti-immigration politics are coming to canada and alberta invited them in okay

00:03:12.400 here it is alberta's forthcoming referendum on independence is a clear and meaningful threat to

00:03:17.840 canada's safety integrity and prosperity but a few of the other questions on premier danielle

00:03:24.320 smith's democracy-o-rama 10 ballots all to be hand counted with mayhem all but guaranteed at this

00:03:30.880 point might be even more dangerous. That's because they deliberately invite a particular

00:03:36.800 conversation around immigration policy that threatens to further undermine Canada's unique

00:03:42.160 consensus on the issue. Worse, it tries to import American-style nativism in the process.

00:03:48.880 Okay, okay, so they're calling it a provocative conversation around immigration policy that

00:03:56.720 threatens to further undermine canada's unique consensus on the issue worse it tries to import

00:04:04.400 american-style nativism in the process there's a few things to unpack there

00:04:10.320 uh so these referendum questions are mostly around should alberta uh have the ability

00:04:17.920 the alberta government have the ability to deny taxpayer benefits to migrants

00:04:24.000 who are not approved by the alberta government to be here so illegal migrants uh temporary foreign

00:04:33.200 workers that ottawa might send us to you know say staff up two-thirds of tim hortons displacing

00:04:40.240 canadians from their jobs and they might that might be above the quota of immigrants or migrants

00:04:46.240 that we say we need especially temporary foreign workers in this case uh so alberta is saying we

00:04:51.600 We would like the ability to say, no, I think we're pretty good on temporary foreign workers.

00:04:56.360 We've got some unemployed Albertans here that you should see if they want the job first before giving it to someone from BooBooStan. 0.98

00:05:06.340 And if Ottawa won't send them back, we're at least going to deny them services, generous social welfare system services paid for by Alberta taxpayers.

00:05:20.380 So that is this, what he calls the dangerous, the particular conversation that further threatens to undermine Canada's unique consensus on the issue.

00:05:33.800 So what Fawcett is talking here, Canada's unique consensus on the issue, this is a Canadian conceit that we have, that Canada has this pan-partisan consensus on mass migration.

00:05:51.420 that mass migration has an unchecked and undisputed consensus

00:06:01.660 from left to right in Canada, we are a nation of immigrants.

00:06:05.900 Well, they take a grain of truth that Canada was built by people

00:06:11.640 who are not indigenous to the land, and then they extrapolate it out.

00:06:15.860 This is the trope that there is no difference between one of the habitants or cueilleur de bois that set out and mapped the continent and trapped and traded furs down river systems 300 years ago.

00:06:35.980 that that is the same as someone who showed up yesterday and started collecting temporary as a temporary foreign worker at Tim Hortons

00:06:44.360 and starts collecting social welfare benefits, that there's no moral distinction between those people. 0.52

00:06:50.780 There's no distinction between someone who came here 400 years ago, built a mud hut and hacked a living out of a hostile wilderness 0.60

00:07:01.100 and someone who showed up on a student visa to go to a scam diploma mill 0.95

00:07:09.220 and then gets to enjoy our social welfare benefits,

00:07:14.700 that the Canadian consensus says that there's no distinction between those two

00:07:19.120 and that we all broadly agree on only a small, angry, racist, white, right-wing fringe oppose it.

00:07:27.860 And because Canada is not a right-wing country, those views are invalid.

00:07:33.280 Well, this has never actually been true.

00:07:36.700 Canadians have for a very long time in polls consistently said, we're taking in too many migrants.

00:07:42.640 And this goes before the huge explosion in hyper-migration under Justin Trudeau.

00:07:48.780 This goes back for decades.

00:07:52.320 So that's among the populace who have thought that.

00:07:55.140 There was a consensus among the political establishment, however,

00:07:58.340 Immigration hit record levels under Stephen Harper.

00:08:01.200 Say when his immigration minister was Jason Kenney,

00:08:04.480 Jason Kenney at that time bragged that Canada was at all-time record levels of migration.

00:08:10.760 We had never been taking in more.

00:08:12.960 So there was a consensus on the partisan level, but never at the level of the people.

00:08:19.900 But resistance to it was able to be dismissed as a fringe right-wing, angry white guy phenomenon.

00:08:27.860 That ended with hyper-migration under Justin Trudeau when everything just completely broke, when it was just impossible to ignore that from one week to the next, walking down your street felt differently, that your streets were less safer, that the people working at Tim Hortons or Canadian Tire looked completely different, acted completely different, spoke completely different, believed completely different.

00:08:52.420 that we were taking in numbers that could not possibly be assimilated into the mainstream, broad Canadian culture, Anglo and French.

00:09:02.860 So yeah, there's never really been this total consensus on mass migration in Canada.

00:09:11.820 It's just that the paper over partisan consensus has finally snapped,

00:09:16.040 And the Conservative Party is grudgingly being pulled in the direction, both by its voters and members, and also by a few brave souls on the inside at the elected level, I think, who are fighting against the established mass migration policies within the Conservative Party.

00:09:36.040 But further is to undermine Canada's unique consensus on the issue.

00:09:39.820 Also, that's not uniquely Canadian.

00:09:41.660 The political establishment in almost every Western country in the entire post-war era

00:09:47.280 has more or less broadly supported mass migration.

00:09:51.380 Yet the people in most of these countries have opposed it.

00:09:54.680 In the United States, people have opposed mass migration for damn near ever.

00:09:58.000 And the Republican Party was a pro-mass migration party

00:10:02.440 all the way up until the nomination of Donald Trump for the presidential election of 2016.

00:10:09.320 Under George W. Bush, under George H.W. Bush, even Ronald Reagan, guys that I'm pretty sympathetic

00:10:15.340 with. Mitt Romney, John McCain. These were pro-mass migration Republicans. It was the same

00:10:20.980 way. It was that way in Canada. In the United Kingdom, under Boris Johnson, who promised to

00:10:25.620 end mass migration, they still supported it and allowed it. In Germany, a huge majority of people 1.00

00:10:31.960 in their last federal election voted for parties that claimed to one-end mass migration.

00:10:38.580 Only one of them did.

00:10:39.680 And so they continue to get more mass migration, but the people are against it.

00:10:42.600 So this isn't the Canadian thing.

00:10:44.280 It just seems to be in all of our countries, the people, broadly speaking,

00:10:50.160 either if you're talking about European countries,

00:10:53.520 the indigenous peoples of Europe oppose mass migration.

00:10:56.760 And in Canada, the United States, we can call them the founding peoples

00:10:59.400 of Canada, the United States.

00:11:01.300 In Canada, that'd be British, French, and Indigenous people would be the founding people. 0.75

00:11:07.440 They've generally, in the broad strokes, opposed it, but they get it anyway.

00:11:12.580 So there's never been this consensus.

00:11:15.760 All right, and then this line here.

00:11:17.780 That's because they deliberately invite a particular conversation around immigration policy

00:11:22.980 that threatens to further undermine Canada's unique consensus on the issue.

00:11:28.240 Worse, it tries to import American-style nativism in the process.

00:11:32.900 Import American-style nativism.

00:11:37.060 Okay, first of all, the idea of nativism is not an American idea. 0.76

00:11:40.700 It's a human idea that people native to a land, people who are either indigenous to it,

00:11:45.660 or the founding people who settled and built it into a state or a country or nation of some kind,

00:11:53.980 that they feel connected to that land.

00:11:56.640 nativism like it's in O Canada our home and native land we are native to it it

00:12:03.420 is our native land and it's not an American concept nativism that we have

00:12:10.440 an affection for our land and the fellow peoples who come from that land and we

00:12:17.220 might be able to welcome others and assimilate them in in certain numbers in

00:12:21.360 time and in certain circumstances and some groups will be more similatable

00:12:24.540 than others obviously that's that's not a that's not a very based radical thing for me to say

00:12:31.480 that's just a very obvious thing uh but American style nativism so it's wrong to bring in something

00:12:39.400 that is American the American boogeyman but what else are we importing I don't know a couple

00:12:46.060 million Indians millions from other cultures around the world of which until recently I don't

00:12:53.580 think most people had a very big problem with because it was it wasn't pretty big numbers but

00:12:59.020 it wasn't radical it wasn't changing the face of our communities the content of our of the crime

00:13:08.200 in the streets um the language that's spoken in the places we go to for business and food etc

00:13:15.560 it wasn't changing things rapidly and so most people most normies were able to stomach it

00:13:20.180 No one likes that. And that is importing things from other countries. We are importing from India. We are importing from China. We are importing from any, from the Middle East. We're importing from all sorts of regions and countries.

00:13:36.060 None of that importing is bad, but you import American nativism.

00:13:41.660 That's the one thing you can't import.

00:13:44.020 But it's not nativism, however you're going to define that term.

00:13:48.200 That is not an American thing to do.

00:13:50.580 That's just the trope to add the word American.

00:13:53.520 Like, it's American healthcare.

00:13:55.760 It's American guns.

00:13:57.640 It's American nativism.

00:13:59.160 All right, we'll move on.

00:14:02.020 The four questions on immigration policy are not, in and of themselves, racist or prejudiced.

00:14:09.040 Smith is a good politician, after all, and she knows how to frame ideas and issues in ways that give her plausible deniability and cover with the general public while still sending the right signals to the far-right base she actually works for.

00:14:22.920 They do not propose banning immigration, targeting certain populations, or forcing newcomers to adhere to a particular standard of dress and comportment.

00:14:32.520 Sorry, what is wrong with requiring that newcomers adhere to certain standards of dress and comportment?

00:14:42.740 What is wrong with that? 0.98

00:14:44.180 if you're coming here blend in i mean you you can wear your your garb and whatnot on your own time

00:14:50.500 and certain things like uh you know oktoberfest just passed and i like to wear my lederhosen

00:14:55.220 while i drink some beer it's a silly thing to do and fine that's my that's my thing and you know

00:14:59.780 if it's diwali you want to wear your your your doo-wop and and that's cool but you know there 1.00

00:15:06.740 are limits to our tolerance on these things you want to put your woman in a burka or a niqab 1.00

00:15:13.380 a hijab you want to cover her up as a piece of property that has to you know so you don't tempt 0.87

00:15:20.900 the other men you know because because men in your culture might not be able to restrain themselves

00:15:28.580 i'm not sure we don't have a right to have some kind of uh which according to a particular

00:15:36.020 standard of dress and comportment what is wrong with having a standard of comportment of the

00:15:43.460 people who come here you know like don't steal don't litter don't rape don't rob don't commit

00:15:55.520 fraud against people businesses or the taxpayer how is this being listed as a pejorative thing

00:16:05.700 How is this being listed as a negative thing? 0.98

00:16:08.000 That how, you know, she's just dog whistling the racists here. 1.00

00:16:12.920 She's dog whistling them.

00:16:13.980 She's not saying anything too crazy like, you know, newcomers have to adhere to a particular standard of dress and comportment.

00:16:25.640 I mean, if that's racist, everybody's racist.

00:16:30.740 almost every reasonable person agrees that our newcomers should agree to certain standards of

00:16:39.020 dress and comportment in fact there's many people who were born here and who have ancestors going

00:16:45.140 back to the original english scottish irish and french and indigenous settlers who could also

00:16:51.500 probably use some standards of dress and comportment applied anyone who's seen the videos

00:16:56.660 of naked men walking down the street during Pride in Toronto, 0.97

00:17:04.540 flashing their junk in front of little children, 0.99

00:17:08.220 they would see that, yeah, there are some white guys here 0.99

00:17:11.140 who could probably use some standards of dress and comportment applied.

00:17:15.920 So it's not a particular racial, ethnic, or identitarian concept

00:17:23.460 that as a society, we do have some basic standards of dress and comportment around here. 0.99

00:17:29.140 And it applies to a pedo flashing his junk in front of a kid during gay pride in Toronto. 0.99

00:17:34.840 And it applies to someone from the Arabian Peninsula who wants to jail his women, 1.00

00:17:41.560 his woman or women, you know, inside of some kind of face or head cover. 0.57

00:17:47.420 You know, the way Quebec's government has been doing for years now.

00:17:51.040 Instead, they ask if Alberta should have more control over immigration, whether new temporary

00:17:57.720 residents should qualify for social support programs, and whether the government should

00:18:02.200 charge them a fee for said services.

00:18:05.340 These are reasonably framed questions.

00:18:07.440 They're also the tip of an anti-immigrant iceberg, and it's one that both the Smith

00:18:12.800 government and her federal conservative allies seem determined to help surface.

00:18:18.380 I'm not sure whether this reflects their shared fascination with U.S.-style grievance politics

00:18:23.160 or simply an ongoing need to keep their base riled up

00:18:26.840 about something the federal government is or isn't doing.

00:18:30.760 I do like this.

00:18:32.420 It's kind of coming back to what I said about American nativism.

00:18:34.660 The Canadian left is obsessed with having America's problems.

00:18:40.360 The Canadian left wishes that we had had late-term chattel slavery.

00:18:47.600 Like they they they wish that we had the racial grievance politics in America that keep white and black Americans divided.

00:18:57.380 You know, they wish that we had the same problems for as long as America had them.

00:19:04.540 Because it just fits their narrative wanting to live in the 60s again, you know, and fight the man being in the million man march on Washington.

00:19:13.400 It's inconvenient for the Canadian left.

00:19:17.600 That one of the very first places in the history of the planet to outlaw slavery was pre-confederation colonial Canada.

00:19:29.160 It was the governor general of British North America following the American Revolution that banned slavery in British North America right after the founding of the United States.

00:19:44.380 Now, Canada didn't have a lot of slavery, like the northern United States.

00:19:48.380 There was some, but not a lot, because it just simply didn't.

00:19:50.760 The economics of that kind of cash crop, like tobacco and then cotton, it didn't work out.

00:19:56.180 So there wasn't a lot of it here, but it was here, and it's obviously a moral blight.

00:20:01.080 But it was ended in Canada before almost anywhere else on the planet.

00:20:06.940 And these guys wished that we still had these problems.

00:20:09.300 They wished that we had Jim Crow.

00:20:11.640 They wished that we had had Jim Crow because it would fit their narrative of grievance politics better.

00:20:19.200 You know, they wished that we were in Vietnam because it would fit that kind of hippie anti-war counterculture better.

00:20:26.240 They wished that we had American problems.

00:20:28.160 They wished that George Floyd had been in Toronto or Windsor or something rather than the United States

00:20:36.640 because they wanted to have Black Lives Matter grievance politics here. 0.90

00:20:41.640 I'm kind of jealous that they couldn't burn down cities like happened in the United States. 0.82

00:20:46.480 The American left wants America's problems here.

00:20:49.060 They want, and there's a lot of nuance to why, and I'm not going to get into it,

00:20:53.840 there's a lot of nuance to why America's got a lot of gun violence.

00:20:57.780 They wish they had the gun violence here,

00:21:00.700 because it would fit their narrative for banning very basic firearms in Canada.

00:21:05.740 You know, the Canadian left is trying to ban very basic hunting rifles,

00:21:10.560 very basic pistols very legitimate non-military firearms but to justify that they try to act like

00:21:19.900 we have all of America's unique sets of problems when we don't so but I'm very sure about one thing

00:21:26.980 if the rest of us don't fight back against it it will poison and pollute our politics in this

00:21:32.800 country it will also undermine one of our greatest competitive advantages as a country 1.00

00:21:37.940 our long and comparatively less troubled history of integrating immigrants,

00:21:42.920 and the sense of civic nationalism it has both engendered and enriched.

00:21:47.620 Okay, that's just not true. 1.00

00:21:52.460 Integrating migrants has always been troublesome. 1.00

00:21:56.640 It has often been worth it. 1.00

00:21:58.820 It has often been a good thing for Canada, for the United States, and for some other countries.

00:22:03.860 I think the evidence in Europe is far less where you have indigenous nation states that predate the emergence nations that predate even the emergence of those states in many cases, at least some exceptions for multinational states like Switzerland and Belgium.

00:22:21.460 But for the most part, I think that holds, you know, it was good thing that we took in some migrant groups, even ones that, you know, the Italians kind of stand out, especially in the States.

00:22:32.040 You know, maybe they would be a bit more involved in organized crime and whatnot, but in time, they adapted, they assimilated into the broad American mainstream, and it was a good thing.

00:22:42.660 You know, it wasn't just people who landed on the Mayflower in Massachusetts and people who landed in Jamestown, Virginia.

00:22:49.620 They were able to bring other people into it and assimilate them.

00:22:54.180 But it's always been trouble, including in Canada.

00:23:00.420 It's always been troublesome.

00:23:01.700 I don't think Canada's been some magically easier way to do things.

00:23:07.120 And this paper's over the obvious fact that it is easier to assimilate some groups into the broad Canadian or American mainstream than it is others.

00:23:19.820 you're lying to me and you're lying to yourself if you think it is just as difficult to immigrate

00:23:27.720 someone from essex england as it is someone from bangladesh or the congo or turkey you know there

00:23:42.000 there's a spectrum of people who we might have more in common with than others that doesn't mean

00:23:48.040 we can't have those people, but it means they're obviously more difficult. And we're lying to

00:23:52.480 ourselves when we say it's not. One of the biggest criticisms I have of the Trudeau

00:23:57.020 liberal government is its failure to better protect that advantage. There was, in the post-COVID

00:24:02.920 years, a period of too many people coming into a country whose institutions and systems hadn't 1.00

00:24:08.760 been prepared to handle them. And the Trudeau government did a poor job of explaining why it

00:24:13.820 was happening okay this is my favorite bullshit defense of trudeau and and the left in the left 0.95

00:24:22.080 establishment broadly it's not that they did anything wrong it's just that they didn't 0.99

00:24:26.920 communicate it well communication is all that justin trudeau did he didn't do shit really 1.00

00:24:32.140 our saving grace is that he actually didn't do that much he was an idiot who just liked 1.00

00:24:36.620 to play dress-up prime minister or or black man on television he was mr dress-up all he did was 1.00

00:24:45.080 communicate he didn't actually govern that much thank god thank god he actually did not

00:24:50.820 govern very much all he did was talk communicate is all he did and and so the left when they when

00:24:58.460 they have the they take the failures of the trudeau government that are undeniably unpopular now with

00:25:05.080 people they say ah yeah you know we could probably could have messaged that a little bit better

00:25:11.640 i mean this was the defense of the trudeau government during the whole trudeau government

00:25:15.800 of its acolytes of its supporters um they would they would never say yeah we we that up

00:25:25.720 we really the bed on that and you know what we're going to do better next time we're

00:25:30.120 we're human we make mistakes governments made up of humans governments make mistakes

00:25:34.040 we're going to fix it. They would say, ah, we should have gotten some better consultants to

00:25:38.160 workshop the messaging on that a little bit better. That's what we're going to do. We just

00:25:43.460 need to message it a little bit better. The closest he comes here to actually criticizing

00:25:49.940 Trudeau immigration is that the country's welcoming people into a country whose institutions and

00:25:58.640 systems hadn't been prepared to handle them so it's not a bad thing that we took in millions 0.88

00:26:06.740 of people with completely open borders from parts of the world that are extremely different from 0.99

00:26:14.520 ourselves and not just different from ourselves because we got rid of all standards we were taking 1.00

00:26:20.240 a lot of the bottom of the barrel we weren't taking some of the good indians that you know

00:26:26.580 we've gotten decades past who who have genuinely contributed and made Canada a better place 0.95

00:26:32.200 you know who who we value we were taking the shit no institutions no systems could have 0.94

00:26:43.520 adapted them there's no criticism that we just took all of these people to begin with 0.98

00:26:48.320 the criticism is oh well we just didn't have enough offices to help accommodate them and

00:26:56.460 them signed up for social welfare benefits or something and maybe english as second language

00:27:00.940 training no if you don't speak english you shouldn't get off the boat you don't deboard

00:27:05.180 the plane you speak english before you get here if you're going to quebec you speak francais

00:27:11.420 that's the way it should work you don't speak uh you don't speak the language when you get here

00:27:15.660 i'm sorry it's not like it was uh you know 100 years ago we we no longer have the critical mass

00:27:21.980 of english and french to require you by just sheer social force to learn the language because now you

00:27:29.100 can sit in your little ethnic enclave you can move here from india from bangladesh from eritrea

00:27:35.500 wherever and you can find an ethnic enclave and be able to live a fairly comfortable life there

00:27:41.820 because you can interact with other people who speak just your native language you don't need

00:27:45.900 Is it an advantage to learn English and French? Yeah, but you can get away with not.

00:27:51.560 So there's no actual criticism here of taking in millions of people, huge numbers of which had no reason to ever be here.

00:28:05.480 They were too radically different to be assimilated.

00:28:09.120 Many of them had no skills.

00:28:11.660 Many of them just weren't bringing anything to the table. 1.00

00:28:15.900 the way generations past have at least tried to have some standards with what kind of migrants

00:28:22.120 were coming here. So there's no criticism of that. Only one that, ah, perhaps we didn't have

00:28:28.760 enough government offices set up, these institutions to be able to handle this huge

00:28:33.220 number of people. And yeah, maybe we didn't message this right. Essentially, we didn't

00:28:37.820 propagandize you enough to help you understand how culturally enriching this experience is going

00:28:43.780 be for you um yeah that's the criticism here not that maybe we shouldn't have just thrown open the

00:28:52.180 border and destroyed uh the economic social and demographic makeup of the country

00:29:02.980 but it's the provincial governments who are responsible for administering most of those

00:29:07.140 systems and they share in that failure one they mostly refuse to acknowledge okay who sets the

00:29:15.380 immigration is ottawa the provincial governments have to take them so what he's saying here is ah

00:29:22.820 well the provinces didn't do a good job uh being able to take and all these people but at the same

00:29:28.900 time alberta should not have the right to deny government services to people who it does not

00:29:33.300 want here.

00:29:34.580 Nowhere is that more true than in Alberta, where the government never misses a chance

00:29:39.040 to blame Ottawa for the increased immigration that it literally asked for in a 2024 letter.

00:29:45.360 As Smith told the Calgary Herald's Rick Bell,

00:29:48.140 We were overwhelmed in the last five years.

00:29:50.940 There is a ton of pressure on our schools and our hospitals.

00:29:54.520 That is just straight reality.

00:29:56.620 Ironically, it wasn't that long ago that Smith herself was dreaming about a much, much larger

00:30:02.540 version of Alberta, one with 10 million residents.

00:30:06.780 Given declining birth rates across the country, there was no way this would happen without

00:30:11.240 a significant increase in the province's immigration flows.

00:30:14.980 And that's exactly what Smith demanded of the federal government just two years ago.

00:30:19.540 All right, I'm going to concede Fawcett a point on that one.

00:30:24.700 It's been dogma in Alberta that we want an ever-increasing population because we have

00:30:31.840 growing economy. We want more labor, more labor, the more we can continue to build out. And yeah,

00:30:39.760 Smith was very clearly for that, you know, the idea that we would eventually grow to a 10 million,

00:30:44.720 have 10 million Albertans in time. And she was dead wrong on that one. Now she has admitted that

00:30:50.520 and reverse course pretty radically, which is a good thing. But it does have to be noted she was

00:30:58.140 on the wrong side of that for some time. That being said, Alberta is unique among the Canadian

00:31:04.880 provinces in that traditionally, at least, our biggest source of new Albertans was not

00:31:12.540 far-flung countries on the other sides of oceans. There were other Canadians. There were new fees

00:31:19.340 who, seeing the cod fisheries collapse, went up, worked in Fort Mac, made some money. Sometimes

00:31:26.400 they stayed sometimes they went back i really like the ones who stayed my favorite albertans

00:31:30.160 are new fees they make the best albertans um you know it's uh you know it's young men from uh like

00:31:39.120 i was from ontario who just saw a better cultural fit and better uh better career opportunities

00:31:46.080 and and came to alberta alberta has traditionally had massive inflow of net inter-provincial

00:31:53.040 migration as the single biggest source of migration international migration was always

00:31:59.120 significant it always played a part but uh alberta was unique in canada in that we didn't need

00:32:05.680 someone to come here from pakistan or or or i don't know i was gonna say kazakhstan i think we

00:32:12.880 have to take too many from kazakhstan um but we didn't have to look to the far abroad to bring

00:32:19.600 in huge numbers of migrants from radically different cultures and the more difficult

00:32:25.440 process there is in assimilating those people because we could look to our near abroad it's a 0.99

00:32:31.280 bit easier to assimilate a new fee than it is a mongolian again i don't i don't think we have many

00:32:38.000 mongolians but um you but i think you get my point that we can assimilate someone from nova

00:32:44.160 scotia or ontario a lot easier than we can assimilate someone from uh somalia you know

00:32:53.100 uh but yeah i i think uh there is some fair blame to be placed um on uh smith and kenny before and

00:33:03.440 notley before every alberta premier is generally wanted huge influxes of people because it for the

00:33:09.420 most part, that'd be a good thing for us. But it is conveniently left out here,

00:33:14.940 however, that our biggest source of new Albertans were just other Canadians

00:33:20.460 becoming Albertans, not people from far from places in the world.

00:33:24.000 That's all been memory hold now. In its place is a willingness to use immigrants 0.93

00:33:29.640 as political cannon fodder in the UCP's one-sided war with the federal

00:33:34.080 government, or worse, as scapegoats for the problems they have themselves created.

00:33:39.300 Bruce McAllister, the executive director of Premier Smith's office, let the mask slip when he congratulated Alice Weidel of the AFD, an explicitly anti-immigrant party in Germany, for her victory in recent regional elections.

00:33:53.880 based. I mean, let the mask slip. That requires there to be a mask there. I know, Bruce.

00:34:01.780 I don't think he's had a mask on that he is with probably most Albertans in not wanting

00:34:08.260 unfettered migration and that it pains us to see our homelands in Europe destroyed.

00:34:15.320 Where are we supposed to go after? You know, if we are just this nation of immigrants and even 1.00

00:34:21.340 know i've got family that's been in canada since the original french settlers uh hundreds and 0.71

00:34:26.820 hundreds of years ago um you know i could be displaced from this place you know go home well

00:34:33.440 where am i supposed to go to you know uh the french part of my family that's france you've

00:34:39.580 seen france in the last week it's not france anymore am i supposed to go back to germany

00:34:44.420 well what remains of germany today is not very german and also big parts of the parts of germany

00:34:50.420 I'm my family is from aren't even actually a part of Germany anymore they're a part of Russia and

00:34:55.480 and Poland I have nowhere to go most of you have nowhere to go so I don't have a mask on about how

00:35:04.300 I feel about this stuff and I don't think Bruce does either so it's a bit rich to say you let

00:35:07.760 the mask slip but finally someone on a major stage saying it out loud instead of hiding behind

00:35:14.320 In slogans, he wrote on social media, shout it from the rooftops, please, Alice.

00:35:20.160 This wasn't McAllister's first anti-immigrant rodeo.

00:35:23.760 Back in February, in response to a post about Canada's recent population growth, he wrote

00:35:28.740 that the people orchestrating this reckless, unsustainable mass immigration into Canada

00:35:34.460 fill me with profound disgust.

00:35:37.300 That wasn't all he had to say.

00:35:39.380 Does their contempt for Canada's core values and traditions drive them to flood our borders

00:35:44.060 with millions from societies not built on the same foundations that have made us thrive? 0.86

00:35:49.460 Why import from nations with failed systems when our Judeo-Christian heritage and principles

00:35:54.540 have worked so well here?

00:35:56.300 I don't know.

00:35:57.300 What's the problem?

00:35:58.300 What's the problem with that statement?

00:36:02.480 Like, I think Max, you know, the right of the column, Max here, and those who I think,

00:36:10.820 know he fits with and the progressive left i think they're letting the mask slip here that they they

00:36:17.860 somehow do not share the belief that either do not share the belief that it's easier to assimilate

00:36:25.140 people into the mainstream of our society who share our values share similar cultural backgrounds

00:36:33.940 again you know i think we can we can assimilate an englishman easier than a ukrainian and we can

00:36:39.140 assimilate a ukrainian easier than a turk and a turk easier than a somalian like that's common

00:36:47.540 sense everybody knows it so either they don't believe that or more darkly they do believe that 0.88

00:36:56.820 but they don't want us to do it because they are happy to see western societies nations states

00:37:04.180 undermined because we are inherently evil we can't be trusted with our own countries we can't be

00:37:10.880 treated we can't be trusted with our own peoplehood it's one of those two and they're both

00:37:16.960 dark but what one is one is naive and and one i think is downright evil all right uh this is the

00:37:26.380 part of the column that actually surprised me the most i did when i clicked on this column to hate

00:37:30.860 read it. I actually did not expect a cameo from yours truly, but here we go.

00:37:36.580 He's hardly the only prominent Alberta conservative talking about immigration in

00:37:41.380 decidedly un-Canadian ways. Derek Fildebrandt, the publisher of the

00:37:45.880 Western Standard and a former Wildrose MLA, has repeatedly platformed and

00:37:50.900 promoted the Dominion Society, an explicitly anti-immigration and

00:37:55.260 ethno-nationalist group. Extremism experts routinely describe it as white

00:37:59.920 nationalist i'll just stop right there anti-immigration and ethno-nationalist i i

00:38:07.040 i think that might might actually be fair i think he means them pejoratively but

00:38:11.760 i i don't think they would take that pejoratively i think the dominion society would probably agree

00:38:17.760 with uh being called anti-immigration and ethno-nationalist um but you know who else 0.98

00:38:24.240 is anti-immigration and ethno-nationalist most black south africans right now they are sick 0.90

00:38:30.400 of immigration coming from mozambique they're proud of you know zulu nation and and you know

00:38:37.360 the other black groups that make up south africa they're ethno-nationalist and they're against

00:38:43.040 immigration from neighboring mozambique but that's okay that's okay um you know we can name 0.54

00:38:51.440 frankly almost every single other non-european or western people in the world

00:39:02.980 are anti-immigration in the sense that they want their homelands their native lands to stay

00:39:10.680 the reserve the exclusive preserve or at least dominant maybe not exclusive depending on who we

00:39:16.760 but at least the dominant preserve of their people you know i am filipino and the philippines

00:39:25.800 should be the homeland of the filipinos not american imperialists uh not japanese imperialists

00:39:34.680 the filipinos and that means you would probably oppose mass migration that would fundamentally

00:39:41.480 change that an ethno-nationalist means you're that's almost a contradiction in terms it that

00:39:47.720 is just what a nationalist is you believe in the ethnos of your people you're proud of them you

00:39:51.960 don't necessarily dislike others or hate others you might not even believe yours is better than

00:39:57.000 others but that it is yours it is something you've inherited from your forefathers for your fatherland

00:40:03.240 your motherland you're proud of it and you wish to see it preserved so i don't think the dominion

00:40:08.920 society would disagree with that description of them that was founded in 2025 they might disagree

00:40:15.240 with the white nationalist label but it's funny how we would only say white nationalist we never

00:40:20.280 say for say south africans who are anti-mozambique immigration and ethno-nationalist zulus we wouldn't

00:40:27.080 say they're black nationalists. We wouldn't say that, you know, in, say, Iraq, that the Kurds

00:40:42.660 there are Kurdish nationalists. At least we wouldn't say it as a pejorative term. We might

00:40:47.100 actually say it as a positive thing, that the Kurds believe in self-determination for the Kurdish

00:40:50.160 people. They wish to establish, actually, a Kurdistan in what is, you know, parts of Iraq,

00:40:55.020 Syria, Iran, and Turkey. That we would actually not even say Kurdish nationalism, which in the

00:41:02.860 Kurds are an ethnic group, separate from Persians, separate from Turks, separate from Arabs. We

00:41:08.780 wouldn't say that that is a bad thing, that they have a sense of peoplehood, of nationhood,

00:41:14.780 and that they wish to have a place to express that, a homeland for them.

00:41:18.700 In March, for example, the Western Standard published a piece by Dominion Society founder

00:41:25.220 and former People's Party of Canada executive director Daniel Tyree that essentially argued

00:41:30.720 immigrants from non-European countries weren't true or full Canadians.

00:41:36.060 We are done with half measures and appeasements. Our views are rooted in our history, 1.00

00:41:41.280 and we will not be shamed for defending our heritage and identity, he wrote.

00:41:45.240 okay well look i'll let daniel uh tyree defend his own piece i don't have it in front of me to

00:41:51.100 to reread the whole thing um i don't think that is the point he was making i think he was making

00:41:56.540 the point uh you know it might be a delicate topic but i i do think someone who has been in

00:42:05.200 a place for many generations obviously probably has a greater sense of ownership of that native

00:42:12.520 land um an englishman whose ancestors have been there since the romans got out is going to fear

00:42:22.200 feel purely english whereas a guy who got there arrived there in a blow-up dinghy uh from uh

00:42:31.480 nigeria uh in illegally lands uh on on the shores in england even if they give him social welfare 0.67

00:42:39.560 benefits and uh and citizenship he's at a bare minimum he's not gonna feel a hundred percent

00:42:47.800 english because he's not a hundred percent english and that's okay but you know our sense of identity

00:42:55.400 for humans is multi-generational we're not just creatures of where we are at this particular

00:43:02.280 place in time we live historically we're for the most part most of us are aware of our ancestors

00:43:09.360 And some people take pride in that.

00:43:10.840 Some people don't.

00:43:12.600 But we're the products of that.

00:43:15.080 You know, part of my family have been in Canada

00:43:16.600 since the very beginning of colonial settler Canada.

00:43:20.780 And I don't mean those pejorative words.

00:43:22.100 I mean those very positive words, at least in this context.

00:43:26.060 Part of my family is more recent, coming in the 1950s.

00:43:29.600 But even that side of my family,

00:43:30.940 the most recent immigrant side of my family,

00:43:33.360 I'm third-generation Canadian.

00:43:35.140 I feel very Canadian.

00:43:38.520 I wasn't born in Alberta.

00:43:41.540 Much to my shame.

00:43:43.140 I really wish I was.

00:43:44.820 Because I feel very Albertan.

00:43:48.100 But to be honest with myself, I'd probably feel more Albertan if, you know,

00:43:54.300 my great-grandparents had been here.

00:43:56.000 And I had been a product of coming up, being born and raised in Alberta.

00:44:00.160 My father and my mother being born and raised here.

00:44:02.520 My grandparents.

00:44:03.980 Those people are a bit more Albertan than me.

00:44:06.060 And I'm jealous of them.

00:44:07.040 I hate it. I hate it. I wish I was the most Albertan man in the world. I wish I was the

00:44:13.580 meme of the most Albertan man. I wish I was. I feel very Albertan. It is my primary loyalty

00:44:20.700 and identity. But people who are here for many generations, they have a fair claim to be more

00:44:27.400 Albertan than me. In a piece Phil de Brandt wrote for Paul Wells' Substack that was ostensibly

00:44:33.540 representing the pro-separatist view, the mask once again slipped.

00:44:38.320 In his attempt to document the various ways Ottawa has wronged or victimized Alberta,

00:44:43.540 he argued that rapid mass migration dilutes our voting power.

00:44:48.380 Given that federal seats are reallocated every decade on the basis of population growth,

00:44:53.460 and that Alberta has seen some of the most significant inflows of immigrants as a percentage

00:44:57.820 of the provincial population over the last four decades, it's unclear how rapid mass

00:45:03.420 migration could be diluting our voting power.

00:45:07.260 In 2000, for example, the ratio of federal seats in Alberta to Ontario was 0.25, while

00:45:14.140 in the most recent federal election it was 0.30, which means our voting power in Alberta

00:45:20.500 has increased.

00:45:22.060 The effect is even more pronounced when compared to Atlantic Canada, where the ratio went from

00:45:26.740 0.81 to 1.16 over that same period all right i think max is intentionally missing my point here

00:45:36.260 i i think he's a smart guy as i said we don't agree on anything we're totally different ideological

00:45:42.260 worlds but i think he's in i i think he knows what i mean here but is intentionally not getting it

00:45:50.820 i say vote uh diluting our voting power our voting power is not just how many seats alberta

00:46:00.500 has or how many seats uh uh saskatchewan has it is are we adding seats to our representation in

00:46:10.580 parliament that are like-minded to the pre-existing population so if we are you know say alberta has

00:46:21.620 30 uh 30 seats and we add one more is that one more extra seat uh on average voting similarly

00:46:33.700 to the 30 pre-existing seats so you know say for uh you know where i'm getting at here i think 0.68

00:46:43.220 you're watching this you're not stupid you probably get it the

00:46:46.660 The, if Albertans are, say, voting dominantly conservative, 0.92

00:46:52.200 who are, and those are people who have been here for several generations,

00:46:57.280 they're multi-generational Albertans, and they're voting similarly,

00:47:01.080 but then we're adding population.

00:47:04.540 And we get, so we get 31 seats, but that one extra seat votes very differently.

00:47:10.340 Well, that dilutes the voting power of those who have been here for a long time.

00:47:16.660 People who came here from other provinces or multi-generational Albertans.

00:47:20.400 You know, and the same goes.

00:47:21.600 Say all the interprovincial migrants from other parts of Canada to Alberta were coming from Toronto.

00:47:28.880 They're not going to vote in a similar pattern as most mainstream Albertans.

00:47:34.140 They're going to vote significantly more to the progressive left than someone who grew up in, you know, Pitcher Butte or something.

00:47:42.960 They're going to vote differently.

00:47:44.240 And they're allowed to vote differently.

00:47:45.700 But it is diluting the voting power and the voting patterns of those who were here first, who invited these people to come.

00:47:56.100 So if people coming from Toronto have radically different voting patterns than someone from Medicine Hat,

00:48:05.240 then how much more so is this going to be the case when we're reporting millions of people from India, from Somalia,

00:48:12.380 uh you know from any one of these places that are radically different than even toronto and so

00:48:20.400 we're adding those people to the voter pool and the more people you're voting is zero sum you win

00:48:26.760 or you lose the person you vote for wins or the person you vote for loses it's binary that's just

00:48:33.880 the way the system works there's all the way to do it if you have very few voters in a system

00:48:38.920 Every vote counts more.

00:48:40.900 That's why when you have elections with low voter turnout, those who do vote have a lot more say than they otherwise would if a lot of people were voting.

00:48:49.800 So, you know, if there were only, you know, 10 people in a constituency voting, everyone's vote counts for 10% of the vote.

00:48:59.940 That would be an extremely powerful voter.

00:49:01.840 That's why a vote in Prince Edward Island counts several times more than a vote in Alberta, because there's less voters per politician.

00:49:12.660 When you have more voters per politician, every vote counts less.

00:49:18.760 And that's generally not a big problem when you have other similar voters.

00:49:23.780 People of a similar cultural background, similar language, similar economic interests, similar social interests, similar religious and cultural values.

00:49:35.860 It makes less of a difference.

00:49:38.720 But you know, you very well know, I don't, everybody knows this, it doesn't, but we seem to have to explain it and repeat it from time to time.

00:49:47.700 You bring in a bunch of people who are extremely different than you.

00:49:51.520 that will then, that creates more voters and who do not have similarly aligned interests and values.

00:49:59.180 And so if that's the case, if we took a million people from Toronto,

00:50:02.360 imagine how much more so it's the case if we take someone from a completely different civilization from us.

00:50:10.140 Then there are high profile people like Brett Wilson, the Calgary based entrepreneur and former CBC Dragon,

00:50:16.900 who talk about immigration in ways that seem more at home in an American or British conversation than a Canadian one.

00:50:24.120 We are not an open door for anyone, never should have been, and never should be.

00:50:29.400 Immigration is a wonderful way for the world to mingle, to educate, and help others, he wrote on social media recently, not for invasion.

00:50:38.760 Nobody is invading Canada, of course, least of all the people who come here in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

00:50:45.720 so you're making brett wilson to be the right-wing extremist here brett wilson i know brett i mean

00:50:55.160 like i don't know him super well but i i know brett reasonably well and you know and i always tease

00:51:01.800 him that he's too he's soft he's he's a softy he's a nice he's a very nice guy uh philanthropic um

00:51:09.800 dresses nuts um but like he is a pretty moderate guy he is a really moderate guy uh like for

00:51:23.520 instance he's not on side with the independent side in this referendum he's with the federalists

00:51:28.380 much to my chagrin you know he um he's a he is a pretty i i think i mean yeah he's he's very

00:51:37.700 wealthy. He's a very successful entrepreneur. But I think overall his social values, if I was

00:51:44.140 to judge him, I'd say he's pretty middle of the road in Alberta. And so I would take this as an

00:51:49.660 indication to my friends on the left here. I would take it as an indication that, you know, he's

00:51:55.860 saying how immigration can be wonderful, but it shouldn't be an invasion. It shouldn't just be

00:51:59.780 this total open door where anyone can come here and just change the place. And that's being cited

00:52:05.540 here as an example of right-wing extremist white nationalist ethno whatever like if brett wilson

00:52:16.640 is uh kind of the the marker like if if you're brett wilson or right you're on the extremist

00:52:26.340 i mean it's the meme that's just the meme again of how the left has moved so far radically the

00:52:32.520 other way that they're making people in the middle move significantly to the

00:52:37.200 right. Brett Wilson should not be your marker of what is the hard right. If

00:52:41.740 Brett Wilson's your marker of what's the hard right, oh, I got some scary people

00:52:46.200 to introduce you to like me. But we cannot afford to assume that the toxic

00:52:51.540 way in which immigration is now routinely talked about on the right in

00:52:55.080 the United States and Europe cannot happen here. It already is happening here 1.00

00:52:59.940 And it will almost certainly keep happening, too.

00:53:03.500 If the Conservative Party of Canada continues to grow both more distant from power and more 0.65

00:53:09.120 desperate to recapture political relevance, then it may latch onto immigration as a means

00:53:14.300 of retaining and riling its supporter base. 0.93

00:53:17.060 Preach!

00:53:18.180 That's exactly what needs to happen.

00:53:19.820 Max, I'm with you on this.

00:53:21.700 They absolutely need to do it.

00:53:23.700 The Conservative Party of Canada has improved on this issue.

00:53:28.620 I mean, they've got Michelle Rempel in charge of the file, and I think she's definitely pushed the ball in the right direction.

00:53:36.340 But they've got a long way to go.

00:53:39.380 She's been leading on this, and she's obviously got the leader's support to do it, otherwise she wouldn't be allowed to.

00:53:46.880 That's the way our system works.

00:53:48.600 But I don't see Polyev out leading hard on this issue.

00:53:52.660 We don't see Polyev out making mass migration a priority issue. 0.96

00:53:58.620 We need borders again, and we need mass deportations for those who shouldn't be here. 0.99

00:54:04.800 And that's a lot of people. 1.00

00:54:06.300 We've lost track of hundreds of thousands or millions who we've let in, but who are supposed to leave.

00:54:12.640 And we just don't know if they're here or not.

00:54:15.740 The Conservative Party of Canada, and there's several reasons they're not doing so hot right now.

00:54:20.580 A lot of it's just the circumstance around Trump and the trade war and whatnot and the vibes of Carney, whatever.

00:54:27.460 But one of the big ones is that they have not made mass migration a front and center issue.

00:54:34.240 If you look right around the Western world, the right is ascendant where they have made mass migration a front and center issue.

00:54:44.500 It was the issue that put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016.

00:54:49.040 It is the issue that put him back into the White House a second time.

00:54:53.800 It is the issue that has caused the complete collapse of the UK's Conservative Party and the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform Party.

00:55:03.780 It is the issue that has Marie Le Pen's, it used to be called Front National, it's some other French name,

00:55:11.540 but Marie Le Pen that's got her poised to become now the President of the French Republic.

00:55:16.340 It is the issue that Maloney is the Prime Minister's chair in Italy, and it is the issue that has Alice Viedel and the AFD poised to become by far the largest party in Germany's parliament in the next election, and would be the government if there was not some bizarre anti-right-wing de facto rule in the German political system.

00:55:44.720 It is what is driving the rise of the right everywhere across the West. 0.99

00:55:51.260 But our conservatives are too chicken shit. 0.99

00:55:54.660 They're afraid of their own shadow on this because they're afraid of being called names. 1.00

00:55:59.000 But guess what?

00:56:00.620 Your compatriots on the right and all these other examples I've cited and many, many more in less prominent European countries, they get called those names too.

00:56:12.300 Nigel Farage gets called a racist.

00:56:14.060 Donald Trump obviously gets called a racist. 0.90

00:56:15.680 Alice Vidal gets called a racist. 0.93

00:56:17.380 Marie Le Pen gets called a racist.

00:56:18.800 Well, guess what?

00:56:19.540 They're going to call you a racist no matter what you do.

00:56:23.360 They call you a racist now, even though they called Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney racists

00:56:29.060 when they increased migration levels in Canada to record levels.

00:56:32.920 Yet they were still called racists. 1.00

00:56:36.340 So f*** them. 1.00

00:56:37.000 You just have to take that power away from them. 1.00

00:56:39.700 You just don't care about it anymore.

00:56:41.620 If you don't care about it, you know what?

00:56:43.900 Most voters will stop caring about it.

00:56:46.820 Stop seeming so self-conscious about it.

00:56:49.020 Don't be bigoted.

00:56:50.020 Don't treat people poorly or hate people based on their origin.

00:56:57.440 That's obviously a bad thing. 0.98

00:56:59.520 But stop giving a shit about what names your enemies call you. 1.00

00:57:03.900 Racist, homophobe, transphobe, misogynist. 1.00

00:57:06.980 Just f***. 1.00

00:57:08.780 F***. 1.00

00:57:09.840 People will respect you for your strength. 0.99

00:57:12.100 and the Conservatives are still afraid of being called these names.

00:57:18.260 There is no prospective equivalent of the Reform Party in Canada right now

00:57:22.680 to displace the Conservatives nationally.

00:57:25.440 We don't have a system that's open like United States primaries

00:57:28.380 where Donald Trump can come in and completely burn down the Republican establishment.

00:57:32.340 So you can't really do that in the Canadian system.

00:57:35.180 But there's no equivalent of the AFD to displace the CDU in Germany

00:57:38.600 or Marie Le Pen displacing the Republican Party of France.

00:57:45.540 But in all of those cases, the establishment Conservative Party has been burned,

00:57:50.840 or in the case of the United States, conservative establishment faction within the Republicans.

00:57:55.780 They've all been burned to the ground for several reasons, but most prominently this one.

00:58:02.480 This is a warning to the Conservative Party.

00:58:05.360 You don't, there is no huge looming threat of that in an organized fashion right now, but it will come because it has happened in almost every other European country.

00:58:17.180 It has happened in the United States and it's happened right across Britain and continental Europe.

00:58:22.120 I don't think we're going to be sheltered for that much longer and the conservatives will be the casualties of that unless they pick up on it.

00:58:29.300 The conservatives are going to need to get religion on this issue.

00:58:32.500 And, you know, Max Fawcett says it would be for cynical, electoral, and political reasons.

00:58:40.640 You know what? It probably will be good for your politics.

00:58:43.280 But even more importantly, it's necessary for the salvation of Canada, for our civilization,

00:58:50.440 for the existence of Canada being more than a simple geographic box on the upper half of a map in North America.

00:58:59.800 If Canada means more than simply a piece of geography where the government transfers money back and forth,

00:59:05.280 if it's ever going to mean more than that again, this is something you've got to get religion on. 0.83

00:59:12.080 So I hope Max Fawcett is right about this, that the Conservatives are going to get serious on mass migration. 0.87

00:59:19.900 The rest of us have to get to work on rebuilding that consensus around the value and benefits of immigration.

00:59:26.540 We have to remind our...

00:59:27.800 rebuilding the consensus it never existed it only ever existed as i said on the partisan political

00:59:34.440 level but that's not that's not coming back that's not coming back people are too angry

00:59:39.400 we have seen it we have seen our communities change before our eyes and we hate it we don't

00:59:45.320 like this no one likes this no one likes what's happened to our country in the last few years

00:59:50.520 we've lost it we feel like we've lost our country so yeah there never was a consensus and if and

00:59:56.280 And even if there was on the partisan political level, we're not going to let it come back because if the conservatives fall in with that consensus in the next election, we will burn them to the ground.

01:00:06.280 We have to remind our fellow Canadians that immigrants aren't strangers and they haven't come here to deliberately take our resources or prey on our generosity.

01:00:15.920 In many cases, they're the people doing the jobs people born here.

01:00:19.960 You're telling me no one comes here because of the good benefits. 1.00

01:00:24.400 You're telling me people come here from third world countries. 1.00

01:00:29.160 Now, some of them do come here and work and start businesses and are good.

01:00:33.120 But there's always been a significant proportion who do not. 0.97

01:00:37.920 Who are, you know, like the multi-generational old stock Canadian population, 1.00

01:00:43.640 who are also tempted by the lure of free shit. 0.99

01:00:47.800 Of money for nothing. 1.00

01:00:49.500 Benefits for free.

01:00:50.280 you're not of course they're tempted by it people who are 10th generation canadians

01:00:56.620 are tempted by it don't tell me that they're not tempted by it as well

01:00:59.700 you know and some cultures are more tempted by it like

01:01:03.340 i will get in the difference we have the protestant work ethic i don't think there's a big difference

01:01:09.420 between protestants and catholics culturally at this point but there was at a time and that was

01:01:13.680 reflected in work habits during the industrial revolution i'm getting a bit far down that rabbit

01:01:18.000 hole here, but there's obviously going to be some cultural differences. And we could tell that in

01:01:22.600 countries where demographic data is kept on crime by people of different national origins, and

01:01:30.340 welfare recipients by people of different national origins. Denmark has been collecting this data for

01:01:37.480 a few years now. And I encourage you to go look it up for yourself. Go look it up. You will not

01:01:45.160 Don't be surprised.

01:01:46.500 You won't be surprised by one word of what the raw data says.

01:01:51.200 And guess what?

01:01:52.200 It's a left-wing government that has it there.

01:01:54.020 It's just a left-wing government in Denmark that figured out that you can't have socialism 0.99

01:01:58.640 if you try to give free shit to the whole world. 1.00

01:02:00.920 You have to limit your free shit to your own people in Denmark. 1.00

01:02:05.660 Don't want to do themselves, and preventing the demographics of an aging Canadian society 0.99

01:02:10.860 from getting even more challenging.

01:02:13.320 They pay taxes, stimulate economic growth, and fill holes in labor markets that would otherwise remain unfilled.

01:02:20.840 Okay, so this is where they have half a point.

01:02:26.540 Do what jobs no one else wants to do.

01:02:28.800 Sometimes that's true.

01:02:30.460 You know, I can think of, you know, fruit picking.

01:02:33.160 That's hard labor and the economics don't work unless the labor's cheap.

01:02:37.680 The good news, well, I mean, we're all scared about AI replacing us in our jobs.

01:02:43.320 The good news is we could build robots soon to pick the fruit.

01:02:48.000 We'll have AI and enough robots to be able to do this.

01:02:51.740 We're not going to need to do it.

01:02:54.200 But this is obviously, you know, this might be true in a few particular cases.

01:02:59.820 But it's very broadly not true.

01:03:03.840 Tim Hortons has almost entirely replaced their workforce with people from overseas. 0.95

01:03:10.340 And they've gotten rid of the Canadians. 1.00

01:03:13.320 the canadians like growing up there was always a nice old lady working at tim hortons you know 0.83

01:03:18.120 she you know she had gray hair or purple you know uh the blue hair whole people not the blue 0.93

01:03:22.680 haired of like uh a progressive lefty loony lady but you know the blue hair old ladies have you 1.00

01:03:28.520 know when she'd be working there or teenager is working there when's the last time you saw a 1.00

01:03:32.920 teenager or or an old old lady working at uh tim hortons who spoke english been a while i 0.99

01:03:40.120 I did see one the other day.

01:03:41.580 Timor's is kind of panicking at the image problem they've got,

01:03:44.460 and they're trying to add a few Canadians back into the lineup.

01:03:47.120 And they like to put them on the front line so we can see them.

01:03:49.580 But Canadians have been removed from these jobs.

01:03:53.560 The problem is that Canadians expect Canadian wages. 0.94

01:03:59.620 You've got to pay them more.

01:04:01.700 Obviously, a Canadian has a higher wage expectation 0.99

01:04:04.260 than someone from a third world country. 0.84

01:04:06.340 And this is why I don't get why guys like Gil McGowan, the Alberta Federation of Labour, support unrestricted, open borders, mass migration.

01:04:16.040 Mass migration undercuts the wage power, wage negotiating power of low and working class Canadians.

01:04:26.440 if if you are a relatively i mean this term pejorative would be if you're relatively unskilled

01:04:31.740 in canada and you uh you want to work and you're willing to do a job for say twenty dollars an hour

01:04:39.900 you'll you'll work for twenty dollars an hour but uh tim hortons is allowed to bring in someone

01:04:46.920 who's going to work at ten well of course tim hortons is going to take the ten dollar worker

01:04:50.940 you can hire two of them now and maybe they'll even work harder than you i i don't know and as

01:04:56.020 long as the job is not on the front lines and require english you know they put you in the

01:04:59.440 kitchen or mopping floors or something like that they're gonna replace you as a worker

01:05:04.060 it completely undermines your bargaining power uh your wage bargaining power as a worker

01:05:11.220 and that is what's happened here kids aren't working at mcdonald's anymore you know the old

01:05:18.520 lady's not pouring coffee uh at tim horton's anymore they've replaced canadian workers

01:05:24.520 primarily at the lower end we're not just bringing in doctors and engineers anymore

01:05:29.480 we're bringing in basic low-level workers and are these jobs canadians want to do not particularly

01:05:35.100 but most canadians want to work instead what we do is we say um it's good for the economy for us 1.00

01:05:44.100 to have a bunch of these third world workers who will work cheaper than you and we recognize that 1.00

01:05:48.700 in the modern economy, the modern multinational open economy, there's really just not a place for 1.00

01:05:56.280 you anymore. So what we're going to do is we're just going to provide you with a relatively

01:06:00.200 generous welfare state suite of benefits. And you just be happy over here and just accept the

01:06:07.680 generosity of the taxpayer because there's not really a place for you anymore. People at the

01:06:11.920 upper end are still doing well. People at the upper end of the middle class are still doing

01:06:15.560 pretty well people in the lower middle class people in the working class

01:06:20.260 they have a tough time and in a globalized economy they're getting replaced and you know 1.00

01:06:29.700 we can't we can't make them all to death so we're gonna put them on welfare we'll give them a

01:06:36.140 generous social welfare uh suite of uh benefits from the social welfare state to keep them passive

01:06:42.340 and content as their jobs and their communities are replaced. 0.97

01:06:48.180 The only group they actually threaten are the mediocre white men 0.97

01:06:52.740 who used to coast on their privilege and inherited advantages, 0.95

01:06:56.220 which probably helps explain why it's almost always 0.99

01:06:59.580 mediocre white men complaining about them. 0.99

01:07:01.960 And there we go. 1.00

01:07:04.860 That is a mask slipping.

01:07:09.240 That is showing your cards. 1.00

01:07:12.340 the problem is always white men. 0.99

01:07:16.580 Now, isn't it? 0.98

01:07:18.280 What have white men ever do?

01:07:21.600 What did they ever build?

01:07:23.000 What did they ever invent?

01:07:26.040 What did they ever fight for?

01:07:28.760 It is this deeply ingrained belief

01:07:32.260 on the progressive left 0.52

01:07:34.180 that men and white people,

01:07:37.980 and in particular, white men, 1.00

01:07:40.980 are a menace to society, that we are a problem. 1.00

01:07:47.240 And that's why we're the only ones complaining about it. 0.96

01:07:52.960 I'm pretty sure that the women in Cologne that were the victims of a mass rape event 0.97

01:07:59.540 after Angela Merkel opened the borders to mass migration in Europe,

01:08:04.580 I'm pretty sure they're complaining about it.

01:08:06.480 I'm pretty sure that women in communities that now are not safe to walk down the streets in Europe, they're complaining about it.

01:08:18.460 But he's letting the mask drop here. 0.96

01:08:21.700 That the problem is white men. 0.81

01:08:23.680 there's a certain irony a dark one admittedly inherent in Alberta's apparent attempt to stir 0.87

01:08:34.720 up anti-immigrant sentiment in the province as Calgary Chamber of Commerce CEO Deb Yedlin noted

01:08:40.960 recently the major energy projects it keeps demanding get built will require you guessed it

01:08:46.840 more immigration to do many of the jobs they involve many of them in parts of Alberta and

01:08:52.600 B.C., where not enough people currently live. 0.88

01:08:55.460 All right, so Debra Yedlin, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. 0.75

01:09:00.100 She's not exactly a defender of the old Alberta.

01:09:08.100 She's not exactly a defender of free enterprise

01:09:11.660 and the things that made this place great.

01:09:16.560 She is a defender of crony capitalism.

01:09:20.360 The Calgary Chamber of Commerce, under her leadership, has consistently, on virtually any issue I can recall, been on the left side.

01:09:32.780 Not socialism, but in managed and controlled crony capitalism.

01:09:40.480 Capitalism, in one of the old senses of the word that even I'm against, where it is a cartelized economy.

01:09:49.600 where workers are merely a human resource to be used.

01:09:54.900 They're not a part of a symbiotic relationship between labor and capital,

01:09:59.700 working together for common goals, where we have compromise with each other.

01:10:07.480 Anyone will work for a job if you pay them enough.

01:10:11.560 I got a friend who works up in the Northwest Territories,

01:10:14.220 and I mean the far, far Northwest Territories, and sometimes Nunavut.

01:10:19.600 and that's that's tough that's tough i mean working for mcmurray would be tough for me

01:10:26.100 i've got i've gotten a little comfortable down in southern alberta

01:10:28.660 but if you paid me enough i'm sure there is a price eventually at which i'd be willing to go

01:10:35.480 and do the job you know mining in the arctic circle is not my idea of a good time so if you

01:10:42.960 pay someone enough, they will do something. But the answer of crony capitalists is not to pay

01:10:51.900 people more to do a job and get them to relocate to where that job is going to be, say for building

01:10:56.540 a pipeline. The job is to import people, not because Canadians won't do it, but because they

01:11:03.740 won't do it at the low wages that you're willing to pay them. That is not the free market. The free

01:11:10.660 market prices go up and down with supply and demand if you have a low supply of workers

01:11:17.700 but high demand for a job they're going to find an equilibrium that's economics 101 but crony

01:11:24.880 capitalists are even worse than the socialists in some respects they just change the game the

01:11:30.880 socialists want to replace a population for social and political ends crony capitalists want to

01:11:38.260 replace a workforce so that they could underpay them to maximize their profits. And that is

01:11:43.540 exactly what Deborah Yedlin is talking about here. And it is exactly what the heads of many of our

01:11:48.820 big corporations in all sorts of different sectors in the Canadian and American and European economies

01:11:53.840 are talking about. A lot of big business is the enemy of their own nations. They don't see the

01:12:00.240 workers of their own fellow people of their own nation as a part of the same team. It's about

01:12:06.940 profit maximal maximal maximalization and the way you can do that is to replace your workforce

01:12:13.760 and if the cost of that is that we have to have high taxes on the middle class to support 0.76

01:12:19.000 a generous social welfare state to support all of these dispossessed and displaced workers

01:12:25.260 so be it we managed to bring in a lot of cheap labor to do the job 0.96

01:12:30.160 the canadians wouldn't at the wage we were willing to pay them i dusted off a speech that

01:12:36.620 Charlie Fisher gave in 2005 when we were looking to triple oil production to 3 million barrels

01:12:42.440 a day, and he was worried about labour then.

01:12:45.400 Twenty years later, we're still talking about labour," Yedlin said in an interview with

01:12:50.300 Canada's National Observer.

01:12:51.940 We have to look seriously at how we bring people here to help us build this infrastructure.

01:12:57.940 Instead, Alberta's current leadership seems determined to continue looking at how we drive

01:13:03.380 people away from the province.

01:13:05.420 You've seen the streets in the last few years?

01:13:07.920 Maybe we could do with driving a few people out of the province right now.

01:13:11.060 Couldn't you? Don't you agree?

01:13:13.220 One wonders how long it will be until someone in Smith's orbit starts talking about remigration,

01:13:19.400 the euphemism for ethnic cleansing that's now popular with conservative anti-immigration voices in Trump's America and beyond.

01:13:26.840 Okay. I love that word, remigration. 1.00

01:13:29.460 In fact, I've interviewed on a few occasions Martin Sellner. He is an Austrian who runs the European Center for Remigration. I believe he actually coined the term remigration.

01:13:45.300 And there was a debate in the German parliament on this just in the last few weeks

01:13:49.180 when the AfD won a huge record vote share,

01:13:54.520 and it was by far the biggest party in a regional state election in Sachsen-Anhalt.

01:13:58.980 That's a small province or state, if you will,

01:14:02.620 just west of Berlin in parts of former East Germany.

01:14:07.440 And they were debating this in the German parliament, the Bundestag.

01:14:11.160 and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who is ostensibly a conservative and ran against mass migration,

01:14:18.320 ran for shutting down the border, and then literally hours after the polls closed

01:14:22.640 and he was going to form a coalition government with a left-wing Social Democratic Party,

01:14:29.100 he was debating with Alice Viedel, the head of the AFD, the victorious party here,

01:14:34.920 and he said that re-migration, so sending people who shouldn't be in your country

01:14:39.380 back to their own countries, back to their own homes,

01:14:42.880 that is ethnic cleansing.

01:14:48.020 Because he said, to change the government policy that changes, 0.81

01:14:53.640 and what he was saying in here, I'll paraphrase him,

01:14:56.940 but I think I'm paraphrasing him fairly,

01:14:59.120 was that government policy that seeks to change the demographic makeup of the country

01:15:03.100 is ethnic cleansing.

01:15:04.560 well how then is the opposite of remigration not ethnic cleansing if it is the intentional

01:15:11.880 government policy to change the demographic makeup of canada of america of the united

01:15:19.460 kingdom of france of poland of italy if it is the if it is the intentional government policy to

01:15:25.760 change the demographic makeup to make it reflect less the indigenous peoples in europe or the 0.69

01:15:31.600 founding peoples in America and Canada, how is that not ethnic cleansing? If one is ethnic 0.95

01:15:37.420 cleansing, the other is most certainly ethnic cleansing. Christopher Rufo, the anti-DEI

01:15:44.180 activist that Smith has shared a stage with in the past, now seems intent on mainstreaming

01:15:49.380 anti-Indian racism in the United States. There's no telling where the bottom might be here,

01:15:54.780 and it would be nice if Alberta wasn't being run by a government that seems open to finding it. 1.00

01:15:59.780 I don't know who that Rufio guy, Rufo, Christopher Rufo, I don't know.

01:16:05.400 Maybe I've probably seen him and whatnot, but I can't comment on him.

01:16:09.900 I've not seen any of his stuff that I'm aware of, at least.

01:16:12.540 Defeating its four immigration questions and denying Smith a mandate to continue pursuing them would be a good step in that direction.

01:16:20.040 All right, so that's it.

01:16:22.160 They want you to vote against the four immigration-related questions in the October 19th referendum.

01:16:28.280 them that'll they'll be take place along some kind of pointless constitutional amendment uh

01:16:34.240 referendum questions that there's a zero percent chance the rest of Canada will take us up on

01:16:39.480 you know Saskatchewan might play ball with us but that's probably about it maybe bc maybe bc if they

01:16:45.000 have a conservative government at the end of their election but we're going to get nowhere close to

01:16:48.180 what's necessary especially because Quebec has a veto and I mean they've I doubt the pq's coming

01:16:54.020 with us on this road. But, you know, I always thought it was silly that Smith put these four

01:17:03.340 questions to a referendum. I used to be a believer in Swiss-style mass direct democracy. I'm not

01:17:11.020 anymore. The roots of that probably go back to when we had the referendum on equalization during

01:17:18.100 Jason Kenney's premiership. And some of you will recall that at the same time, we had a parallel

01:17:23.940 referendum on the same ballot about changing daylight savings time and i think most of us

01:17:30.660 agreed yeah the system's not working well we should change it but had two different options

01:17:35.060 and i i didn't know which was best and i i think of myself as a very well-informed person i'm up

01:17:42.180 on the issues i run a news company for god's sakes and i know i don't like the way we did daylight

01:17:46.500 savings time but i didn't know which of these two options were best that's what we hired the

01:17:50.900 the politicians for sit in a room and figure it out and if we don't like it that's what the direct

01:17:56.680 democracy is for we can either elect a new government at the next election or if it's an

01:18:00.960 issue that the political class collectively is too cowardly to address or too politically afraid

01:18:07.140 to address then we should have the tool of direct democracy that is citizens initiative to force an

01:18:13.580 issue onto the ballot that is effectively how we got the referendum coming up october 19th on

01:18:18.480 alberta independence now in that case the courts were playing silly bugger and trying not to allow

01:18:23.800 it and so smith just put it on the ballot herself directly in the kind of convoluted

01:18:28.440 referendum to have a referendum form that it is but she she went around them but it was supposed

01:18:34.020 to be through the citizens initiative process that's that's where i think we should have direct

01:18:39.200 democracy i don't think or for major major things like constitutional amendments you know like

01:18:44.800 1991, 1992, the Charlottetown Accord,

01:18:48.700 every Canadian province voted on a huge package of constitutional amendments.

01:18:53.980 Something of that magnitude should be put directly to the people.

01:18:57.160 But daylight savings time?

01:19:00.540 These immigration policies, most Albertans support it,

01:19:04.700 including many people who are well-assimilated immigrants,

01:19:08.080 first and second and third generation.

01:19:09.920 They often support it, because a lot of them don't like being swamped 1.00

01:19:13.420 by third worlders the way we are there's already broad social consensus for this so i don't know 1.00

01:19:19.040 why we why why this was put on to uh a referendum to begin with just pass the damn policy and if 0.52

01:19:26.020 the left doesn't like it they can use the citizens initiative uh process to put it on the ballot and 0.86

01:19:31.560 get rid of it or they can wait just to the next election and wait till net uh they and they can

01:19:35.300 try to make nenshi and the ndp the government and premier and get rid of it that way that you know

01:19:41.160 So citizenization should be used to essentially stop government policies that none of the major contending political parties have the courage to deal with.

01:19:51.220 That's what direct democracy should be for.

01:19:53.260 It shouldn't be for just, we feel like holding consultative votes on everything.

01:19:59.340 People got busy lives.

01:20:00.440 They barely have time to think about who they should vote for as a candidate for parliament or for the Alberta legislature.

01:20:06.240 They certainly don't have time to go through 10 different, often convoluted questions.

01:20:11.900 So anyway, yeah, I had to hate read this piece.

01:20:19.340 Canada's National Observer, this dot com, they're good for that.

01:20:23.940 Same reason I read the Toronto Star and some of the Globe and Mail.

01:20:27.300 And I'm sure the Western Standard, I actually know for a fact, because I can see who subscribes to us.

01:20:32.540 I know we serve the same function to the other side sometimes.

01:20:35.860 People hate, not everyone who subscribes to us loves us and agrees with everything we say.

01:20:41.900 So people definitely hate read us and are willing to pay to hate read us.

01:20:45.940 And that's okay.

01:20:47.600 I'm guilty of it on the other side.

01:20:50.760 But I thought this piece really just did a good job of encapsulating the way the modern progressive left,

01:21:00.720 particularly self-hating people in the West who see the West, who see, as Max puts it,

01:21:09.980 white men as a threat that has to be neutralized somehow. I thought it was a very revealing piece.

01:21:22.060 And so I thought we just got to go through line by line like this and dissect it. I haven't really

01:21:28.140 done this much before. But if you liked it, if you found this informative, I know we've gone on

01:21:33.060 a long time, but if you found this informative, if you found it educational, maybe even entertaining,

01:21:41.260 let me know. Maybe we'll do more of this in the future. That's it for me right now.

01:21:45.700 Thank you very much, and God bless.

Western Standard - October 10, 2026

FILDEBRANDT： Canada’s immigration consensus is breaking

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