Western Standard - February 15, 2024


Guilbeault wants municipalities to stop building roads; urges people to walk...


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

179.74059

Word count

873

Sentence count

63


Summary

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

In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, we take a look at the idea that the federal government is trying to get us to get out of our cars and into our bikes and walk more, and why that s a bad idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.160 So Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo, he says all sorts of funny things.
00:00:06.840 And he gets away with it most of the time, at least outside of Alberta.
00:00:12.300 But he seems to have really stepped in it on this one.
00:00:15.720 He wants the federal government to stop funding.
00:00:20.800 So the federal government collects billions of dollars every year in the gas tax.
00:00:24.520 So that is a tax paid on fuel, presumably mostly by drivers.
00:00:30.000 And it's supposed to be used to be put towards roads for those drivers.
00:00:35.960 And he says, well, we need to stop that.
00:00:38.340 We're not going to stop collecting the gas tax.
00:00:41.140 We're obviously going to keep collecting it.
00:00:42.920 But that money should be used for things that are explicitly not for drivers paying the gas tax.
00:00:48.600 This will encourage people to walk more.
00:00:50.520 He's not incorrect about that.
00:00:51.700 No roads means less driving.
00:00:53.480 And presumably we can walk to Lethbridge from Calgary, if that's really what he wants.
00:01:00.000 Nigel, he seems, actually, you were just telling me before we started, he held a presser just a few hours ago.
00:01:09.780 And he's trying to back away from that position.
00:01:11.920 Well, I would hope he would.
00:01:13.500 I mean, the trouble with Mr. Gilbo, he's one of these very, very sincere people.
00:01:17.900 Oh, you said it right.
00:01:18.400 I've been practicing in front of the mirror.
00:01:22.040 He says he's very sincere.
00:01:25.260 And every now and then, the problem that sincere people have is that they tell you what they honestly really think.
00:01:32.660 And he actually thinks that we should get out of our cars and walk more or ride a bicycle.
00:01:40.900 Now, to some degree, there is a limited argument in favor of that.
00:01:46.540 I think we could all afford to take a walk for the sake of our hearts and our constitutions during the lunchtime.
00:01:53.460 But I live, you know, you live, what, 10 miles from the office?
00:01:57.540 I live 6.2 miles from the office.
00:02:00.000 You come in from Prentice, for heaven's sake.
00:02:02.180 You're dating yourself using miles.
00:02:03.480 It's all I use.
00:02:06.700 I have no idea how many miles I live in the office.
00:02:08.400 Well, 16, and in my case, about nine.
00:02:11.680 But anyway, however you do the maths, it's too far to walk and it's too far to ride a bike unless you're one of these keeners.
00:02:19.460 I have a suspicion, and I think I first had that suspicion when it was one of your columns in about April of last of 2022, when you were speculating this was all about actually getting people to drive less and making having a car a luxury and we're all going to be in our 15-minute cities.
00:02:43.580 We weren't going anywhere.
00:02:44.980 And sure enough, it is now emerging that the electric cars aren't suitable for the environment.
00:02:51.560 There's never going to be enough of them because people won't buy them.
00:02:54.880 There will be less cars, and then he will be happy.
00:02:58.520 So it all makes perfect sense.
00:03:00.440 But I thought you were off on a conspiracy theory there at that time.
00:03:04.060 Well, sometimes I am.
00:03:05.080 Well, you weren't this time, were you?
00:03:06.760 Seems to be proving out a bit.
00:03:08.240 Well, as usual, today's conspiracy theories are tomorrow's government policy, something we saw too often during COVID.
00:03:19.500 Corey, is this, did he give any indication about how much he wants the federal government to act on this?
00:03:26.780 Is this going to be federal policy that the gas tax transfer cannot be used towards roads?
00:03:33.500 Or was he just going to enable-gazing?
00:03:34.800 He didn't give specifics, but I mean, he certainly, you know, the veil dropped for a minute.
00:03:38.300 We see the kind of direction he wants to go.
00:03:40.640 I don't know if he's going rogue or if it's represented in the whole government.
00:03:44.780 It does seem almost as if Justin Trudeau has just kind of given him free reign and environment.
00:03:49.240 And he's, the thing people have to realize at Gilboa, he's the real thing.
00:03:54.140 He's a nutter.
00:03:55.100 He's an environmental extremist.
00:03:57.580 If you might remember a long time back, I doubt Derek would, but there was a,
00:04:01.620 Edmonton experimented with like a graduated ballot sort of thing for their city council.
00:04:05.520 And this fellow named Tucker Gomberg managed to actually get a council position,
00:04:08.660 which never normally ever would have happened.
00:04:11.060 He proposed things like flooding the city streets so people could skate to work.
00:04:15.260 This was an actual council proposal.
00:04:16.840 I remember this.
00:04:17.820 Yeah, I mean, sadly, he was actually quite disturbed and he took his own life at the
00:04:22.500 Confederation Bridge some years later.
00:04:24.680 So, which was tragic.
00:04:25.740 I don't want to jump on the grave of the man, but he was an example of when you take a truly
00:04:29.300 extreme activist and put them into a position with a little bit of authority, but that was
00:04:33.080 still Edmonton city council.
00:04:35.220 Gilboa is like the Gomberg of federal politics and he's in a very position of serious federal
00:04:40.280 authority.
00:04:40.880 And that gets a little more scary because not only would he want to spread the streets with
00:04:46.380 ice perhaps, but he's got the ability to force it.
00:04:48.880 And I think we're seeing a hint of where he'd like to go.