Western Standard - September 01, 2023


Guilbeault praises China's green initiatives, ignores slave labour

Mentioned
Steven Guilbeault Charlie Angus Derek Corey
CMS： Time is running out to save addicts before winter sets in Weekend brawl at cultural festival, 'not a protest'

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

147.53

Word count

1,058

Sentence count

83

Harmful content

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Environment Minister Stephen Gilboe has gone to China, where he is meeting with an organ of the Communist Party, which has some environmental policy role, and advising them. He was warned by the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, the Global Times, against being condescending. They told him not to be condescending about China's own carbon neutrality plans, which are set for 2060, a bit later than Canada's of 2030 or 2035.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilboe, gone to China, where he is meeting with an organ of the Communist Party, which I guess has some environmental policy role, and advising them.
00:00:17.000 He, actually, in fact, he was warned by the Chinese Communist Party's mouthpiece, the Global Times, they warned him against being condescending, quote unquote, assuming that translates to Chinese.
00:00:35.600 I hope they got that right. Condescending, they told him not to be condescending discussions to accelerate China's own carbon neutrality plans, which are set for 2060, a bit later than Stephen Gilboe's of 2030 or 2035, whatever that is, which is far below the Paris Accord, and what Gilboe was imposing on Alberta.
00:01:01.880 So we haven't heard him say anything about China's 2060 carbon neutrality plan, but he certainly has words for Alberta saying, no, we're not doing 2035.
00:01:15.800 But then he went after Suncor. So Suncor, obviously big oil sands giant, they're selling their wind farms and solar stuff to concentrate on what makes the money, you know,
00:01:30.400 things that aren't just subsidy machines, but mainly oil sands. And so this is what Stephen Gilboe had to say about Suncor, to see the leader of a great Canadian company say that he basically disengaged from climate change and sustainability,
00:01:45.280 that he's going to focus on short term profits, it's all the wrong answers. If I was convinced before that we what we needed to do was regulate, I'm even more convinced now. So he has convinced himself even more that he is right,
00:02:00.280 that is sign of a good liberal. So he is confounded that a for profit company is prioritizing making a profit something that Mr. Gilboe and the overwhelming majority of liberal cabinet ministers have never actually had to do at any point in their lives.
00:02:20.280 He's confounded that they would actually try to make a profit and focus on the profitable parts of their business.
00:02:27.280 But yeah, he did that where he's out in China with the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, where he is the co chair.
00:02:37.280 And just for clarity, that is an actual organ of the Chinese government and Communist Party. This is not an international organization or China is just there. This is a Chinese Communist.
00:02:48.280 Organization.
00:02:51.280 I don't think anything of any of this is really surprising. The Liberals have a really creepy soft spot for the Chinese Communist Party. 0.70
00:03:00.280 So soft that the Chinese Communist Party is seen it as advantageous to aid them in interfering in elections. 0.91
00:03:07.280 But I don't know, is there anything unusual about Gilboe doing this overseas while in China meeting with the Chinese Communist Party, the biggest polluter on the planet, whose carbon neutrality goals are 2060 and he has apparently not said anything about
00:03:26.280 Is the circumstance of this? Is the circumstance of this a little out for Gilboe?
00:03:31.280 Of course it is. I mean, you pretty much said it all, Derek. It's an outrageous situation.
00:03:36.280 It's outrageous that the man occupies a post in another government.
00:03:42.280 It's one thing to be a member of an international organization.
00:03:46.280 It's another to actually be part of that government, another government.
00:03:52.280 It happens to be China. It wouldn't be any better if it was Monaco. 0.97
00:03:55.280 You know, you just don't, it means split.
00:03:59.280 Loyalty is always the perception of shredded interests.
00:04:04.280 So that's the first thing. But, you know, Mr. Gilboe, frankly, is almost becoming a caricature of himself.
00:04:13.280 His, everything that he does is just slightly crazy.
00:04:17.280 And the idea of going to China...
00:04:19.280 Slightly? You're being very polite today.
00:04:21.280 Well, look, you know, we're going to get to Charlie Angus later.
00:04:24.280 The man is obviously single-minded, obsessive about his chosen passion, which is climate change.
00:04:38.280 And nothing else matters to him.
00:04:40.280 A senior politician and environment minister is senior.
00:04:45.280 A senior politician needs to be able to operate across the spectrum.
00:04:49.280 He can think of nothing else.
00:04:50.280 And go over there and chastise a Canadian company from foreign soil is the height of disloyalty.
00:04:58.280 You don't do that sort of thing.
00:04:59.280 You just keep that within the family.
00:05:02.280 But there it is. 1.00
00:05:04.280 He's nuts. 0.98
00:05:05.280 Corey, I mean, him, Gilboe, not saying anything, at least that we know of so far, 0.98
00:05:11.280 about China's genuinely appalling environmental record.
00:05:16.280 You know, even if you are on the climate train,
00:05:21.280 2060 is a less ambitious goal than even Alberta.
00:05:26.280 We're saying 2050.
00:05:27.280 China's saying 2060.
00:05:29.280 Whatever.
00:05:30.280 Potato, potato.
00:05:31.280 But, you know, less ambitious than even Alberta's goal.
00:05:37.280 Do you think...
00:05:38.280 Are Canadians going to see this in anything other than just Gilboe cares about environment?
00:05:45.280 Is that going to be kind of the main headline coming out of this?
00:05:48.280 Or is the fact that he's attacking a Canadian company for having the audacity to focus on profit,
00:05:54.280 which they have a fiduciary duty to do.
00:05:58.280 Do you think this is going to be anything beyond just the regular headlines of Gilboe hits it company?
00:06:07.280 Does it add to it substantively from average Canadians to think that he's doing this while operating as an arm of the Chinese Communist Party as a part of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development?
00:06:20.280 I think just the fact that he was sitting on that panel alone, I mean, that already made headlines when it was found that he was going to it.
00:06:26.280 And that kind of hit across the country.
00:06:28.280 As far as his fight with Suncor, I think that's just going to be more regional.
00:06:32.280 And he knows it.
00:06:33.280 It's going to infuriate us in the West.
00:06:34.280 They don't care.
00:06:35.280 If anything, it's advantageous to them.
00:06:37.280 And it shows a difference in attitude.
00:06:40.280 I mean, that's why he's so mortified with Suncor.
00:06:42.280 But companies like Suncor would put in the corner.
00:06:45.280 What they're saying is we've gotten no benefit, no thank yous, nothing for this virtue signaling we've done for years.
00:06:51.280 We've tried to play by your rules.
00:06:52.280 We try carbon capture.
00:06:54.280 We buy into the renewables.
00:06:56.280 And still you keep moving the goalposts and saying you're going to shut us down. 0.79
00:06:59.280 Well, to heck with you.
00:07:00.280 We're going to focus on, you know, selling oil.
00:07:04.280 That's what we do and we're not going to apologize for it anymore.
00:07:07.280 And I think it's just the beginnings of a bigger showdown.