Western Standard - Hermaphroditical “female” boxing champion suing critics

00:00:00.000 the day today is august 14th 2024 i am derek phildebrand publisher of the western standard

00:00:29.540 and you're watching the pipeline we've got a great show for you today but joining us as usual

00:00:35.220 is western standard opinion editor nigel hannaford good to be here derek always good to have you

00:00:41.700 and uh western standard uh senior alberta columnist corey morgan always a pleasure

00:00:47.940 man we get so much fan mail from uh old ladies that just love you oh you're gonna get some stuff

00:00:52.100 from today's show uh oh yeah won't be so loving oh it'll be fun oh well my my favorite fan mail

00:00:58.740 is always like hate mail like yeah well you're gonna email I like like any one of you who wants

00:01:02.820 to write me a nice email that's great but if you write me like hate mail I love it I love hate

00:01:11.060 mail it's great I understand yeah okay uh well we've got a good show uh we're gonna be talking

00:01:16.420 about uh everybody knows the uh uh for lack of a better term they have hermaphroditical uh

00:01:22.420 female, male, whatever you want to call her, him, boxer who won her his gold medal in weight class

00:01:32.640 at the Olympics. He, she is suing his, her critics. This is really getting annoying,

00:01:41.180 keeping pronouns straight here, or not straight. Suing Elon Musk, J.K. Rowling, maybe soon Donald

00:01:48.600 Trump, essentially the whole plan, you know, the three quarters of the planet that thought that

00:01:52.720 this was not fair sport, suing everyone. So we're gonna be talking about that. And we'll be bringing

00:01:59.560 in the Western Standard's Jed Hodgson for that, who's been covering, doing all of our Olympic

00:02:03.920 coverage here. We're also going to be bringing in a new Western Standard reporter, Jared Yager,

00:02:08.660 our British Columbia reporter on the ground there. We're gonna be talking to him about the

00:02:14.140 election race heating up there. Polls showing the B.C. Conservatives leaving the B.C. United

00:02:20.280 slash B.C. Liberals in the dust, becoming the overwhelming opposition powerhouse to take on

00:02:26.220 the NDP government. Very interesting news coming out that this fall likely will be introduced a

00:02:34.940 new Alberta Bill of Rights beefing up the rights of Albertans, Alberta citizens vis-a-vis for the

00:02:43.720 provincial government. And it's at least has a potential to be a lot spicier than some weak sauce document like the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And one topic near and dear to Corey's heart, the people of Banff have just voted in a referendum on a, you know, not the biggest issue in the world, but a very important issue for them, closing down Banff Avenue and turning it into a pedestrian walkway and how the citizens there 0.50

00:03:13.720 overturned it in a referendum and really kind of a template for how citizens can

00:03:20.920 fight City Hall and win something that's hard to do but quite possible if you put

00:03:24.340 your mind to it okay so we're gonna bring in to begin with Jen Hodgson

00:03:29.500 Western Standard reporter right out of our Calgary newsroom here thanks for

00:03:34.020 joining us Jen you guys thanks for having me on so Jen has been leading the

00:03:39.600 Western standards coverage of all things Olympic. And I mean, try as we might to report on

00:03:46.360 pole vaulters colliding with other poles and funnier stories from the Olympics.

00:03:55.580 The big story that's really dominated the Olympic coverage, at least for the Western

00:04:00.420 standards readers, has been the Algerian hermaphroditical fighter who has won the gold

00:04:07.060 medal in women's boxing in her weight class. Another, we believe, hermaphroditical fighter

00:04:14.440 also winning the gold in his or her weight class at the Olympics as well. So two of the

00:04:22.400 probably four or five different weight classes in the women's all going to people with XY male

00:04:28.660 chromosomes. So Jen, maybe just set it up for us. The Algerian boxer here, not happy with the 1.00

00:04:38.580 criticism he or she has received, and is, I think, suing about half the planet now, right?

00:04:46.240 That's right. So Keyleth, the XY chromosome boxer from Algeria, has this week launched a lawsuit 0.97

00:04:54.460 against an ambiguous X so what that and I'm not talking about the X social media platform 0.86

00:05:01.160 so what that means is that it opens up avenues for French investigators to essentially scour

00:05:09.280 social media to point out anyone who has gone against Keyleth in this way as Keyleth is claiming

00:05:17.320 saying that it's online harassment it's hate speech to be bringing up the topic of this person's

00:05:24.380 gender when it comes to his performance in the paris 2024 olympic women's boxing competitions

00:05:31.980 so he's launched this this lawsuit yes uh rowling musk are named and we have a comment from keyless

00:05:41.900 lawyer saying that donald trump is going to factor into that investigation as well as as you say

00:05:48.940 so could half of social media. Let's start with you, Nigel. I'm not sure where they draw the line

00:05:56.600 in a lawsuit like this. I don't understand the French court's judicial system. It's a very

00:06:00.920 different system than we have. In the British tradition, it's adversarial. In the French

00:06:07.520 tradition, the judge is also kind of a semi-prosecutor in a way, taking part in the

00:06:12.420 proceedings, asking questions. I'm not sure if that extends to the civil or if it's just a criminal,

00:06:17.720 But this sounds odd that it's a lawsuit, but the French government is becoming an active participant in it.

00:06:23.900 I don't understand how that system works, but it seems to me if she's essentially suing people for hurting his or her feelings on Twitter,

00:06:32.900 he or she would have to sue three-quarters or more of planet Earth,

00:06:39.680 who saw someone who was clearly not meant for the female boxing category

00:06:47.300 clobbering women in boxing and very obviously winning the gold medal as a result.

00:06:54.880 I don't know. It seems like a hell of a can of worms to open, 1.00

00:06:57.980 But, you know, where would this person draw the line at people who haven't defended her or therefore should be liable under French law?

00:07:06.060 Hard to say, isn't it? I mean, I don't understand the French legal system either.

00:07:10.240 I stopped at Napoleonic Code, which I gather governs things in Quebec.

00:07:15.660 200 years of history in that.

00:07:18.380 As for where she stops, I dare say that she'll draw the line at people who have deep pockets.

00:07:24.820 You know, clearly there's two things going on here. 0.93

00:07:28.760 One is a financial cash grab.

00:07:32.640 If she can get a judgment against J.K. Rowling or Elon Musk, they certainly have the ability to pay.

00:07:41.620 And the other thing is that what do you do after you have won a gold medal at the Olympics to stay relevant?

00:07:52.000 She's now attached herself to a cause.

00:07:56.140 And I've got to say, I actually had sympathy, and I believe that you did as well.

00:08:00.000 You did have sympathy.

00:08:02.340 This is not a big, beefy guy who put on a dress to go fight women.

00:08:07.220 This is someone in a genuinely regrettable situation.

00:08:11.900 You know, according to the narrative, she was born this way.

00:08:15.280 Well, what's the person supposed to do other than play with the cards they're dealt with?

00:08:19.920 But my sympathy dried up the moment when she said, right, now I'm going to sue the pants of everybody who ever said anything unkind about me, because that's now taking it into a vengeful, punitive attitude and leads me to suspect that there may be an agenda, an ideological agenda behind this, which I had been prepared to conceive maybe wasn't present before.

00:08:49.920 Corey, again, some of these questions are just dealing with the French foreign system, which is foreign to us and more than just the strictly legal sense.

00:09:00.200 But, you know, she's suing non-French citizens.

00:09:04.400 Perhaps French and EU law have, you know, the ability to sue people who have hurt your feelings and or who you disagree with.

00:09:15.180 We have human rights commissions, which semi kind of do that in Canada.

00:09:18.840 they make cash awards to people. But I don't know, how would she even if she was able to win 0.74

00:09:25.340 in court against Elon Musk and JK Rowling's and Donald Trump? How the hell would she get the

00:09:31.220 money? Like, I'm sure that they're not going to cut a check under any circumstance. And I highly

00:09:36.600 doubt that the, you know, maybe the UK will deport JK Rowling's for hurting feelings. But the United

00:09:41.680 States is not. Can you imagine Donald Trump as president of the United States being asked to

00:09:45.860 his own extradition to go to France to pay. Maybe she'll show up at their door and beat the hell out 1.00

00:09:53.060 of them as a collector. I mean, she's a pretty tough gal. He or she's shown the ability to beat 1.00

00:09:58.740 up women. I'd be doubtful she'll be that successful against. I mean, she could beat me up. I don't 0.99

00:10:05.940 think I'd be that tough. She looks like an athletic skilled boxer. The bigger worry, 1.00

00:10:11.700 No, aside from the collections anyways, and you know, the legal aspect, what I'm most concerned about is, it's gagging a conversation that needs to be had. I mean, it's one that we never imagined we'd ever have 20 years ago. But the only, you know, with so many questionable things, Leah Thomas, a clear man going out swimming, wiping women off the course, things like that with a clear male advantage.

00:10:36.420 at least he wasn't beating women

00:10:38.960 and the closest line we can draw

00:10:41.060 is saying well look one thing that's immutable

00:10:42.760 is the chromosomes, there's male

00:10:44.500 and there's female, there's distinctive advantages

00:10:47.000 that come from having male chromosomes 1.00

00:10:48.580 and changes with a woman 1.00

00:10:51.120 and if we're going to wipe that

00:10:53.040 out, if we can't talk about that

00:10:55.320 then there will be

00:10:57.240 outright men, cutting off their

00:10:59.140 nuts and berries even but they still got the

00:11:00.700 X, Y going on 1.00

00:11:03.020 and can go into women's sports and do that

00:11:05.180 we have to, even if it's unfair, if she was born as an unusual, you know, circumstance, 1.00

00:11:11.340 the bottom line is she had male chromosomes. I mean, a person born with a club foot is probably

00:11:16.420 never going to be a top marathon runner either. Just the way you're born sometimes isn't fair.

00:11:21.020 But we have to have this conversation and we can't have her shutting down discussion with this

00:11:25.920 lawsuit. Jen, maybe you want to flesh out the story a bit more. Has there been any response

00:11:33.960 from uh jk rowling's uh and for those who don't know that's she's the author of uh the harry potter

00:11:39.960 uh series uh any response from jk rowling's or elon musk or uh potentially donald trump to uh

00:11:48.280 the algerian boxer's threat to sue them for hurting her feelings so we haven't had any

00:11:53.960 acknowledgement from those three named individuals yet but a couple minutes ago derek you were asking

00:11:59.720 about how this could be allowed transatlantically. So how in the U.S. could there be laws that this

00:12:07.080 actually could even be a legal matter for American individuals being sued by French prosecutors on

00:12:14.780 behalf of an Algerian athlete. So as Variety reported, and that's who did the exclusive

00:12:21.160 interview with Keyliff's lawyer. And so it was reported that actually the U.S. already has

00:12:27.760 offices in place that work in partnership with international offices to combat online hate.

00:12:36.340 So it does look like this, that this lawsuit can go forward based on those grounds that there's

00:12:42.760 a partnership already established. And therefore, as the lawyer said,

00:12:48.420 Keyleth can target personalities overseas. Yeah. It'd be pretty funny if they sued Trump

00:12:54.840 while Trump is president. I would imagine whatever treaties are in place allowing Trump to be sued

00:13:01.020 for hurting an Algerian's feelings while they competed in France, I have a feeling that treaty

00:13:06.440 gets torn up pretty damn quick. That's right. It's quite a bold move to file a lawsuit about

00:13:13.760 online hate speech against someone who is running to be the next president and has already been

00:13:18.480 president. Yeah. Also going after the world's richest man, JK Rowling's arguably the most

00:13:26.260 successful author since Moses. Right. And you know what, Derek? So we actually see these

00:13:32.980 claims made in the lawsuit and it comes following images that surfaced after Keyleth won his medal

00:13:40.020 after the women's boxing match. And Keyleth, an Algerian, right? So coming from a Muslim country

00:13:46.500 where there are extremely strict laws about conduct between men and women and also how a

00:13:53.700 woman presents herself in public, what she wears, her proximity to men, and how she behaves.

00:13:59.540 So there's footage that has been circulating on social media of Keyleth hoisted up on the

00:14:06.040 soldiers or on the shoulders of his trainers. And in that moment, the trainer has his hand

00:14:13.320 all over keeliff's upper thighs we have other trainers coming in and patting keeliff on the

00:14:18.760 waist keeliff is has a bare head where he's wearing a tank top and we don't see that kind of

00:14:25.680 uh gender norm based on someone's sex in a muslim country like algeria what that would require

00:14:33.120 someone who presents as a woman to actually present as a woman then covering up her head

00:14:39.180 And, of course, not being sitting up on a man's shoulders.

00:14:42.860 Yeah, well, you can see from that footage very much at least being treated like one of the boys by some of the boys from a country not known for its less than feminist attitudes towards women.

00:14:57.240 Right. And for contrast, there's another video I've seen on social media of a female Algerian boxer training, and she is wearing a headscarf.

00:15:07.060 she's fully covered in her upper body, and she's training in the gym, and it's juxtaposed with the

00:15:12.980 video of Keyliff training. And Keyliff is just wearing a tank top, he's bareheaded, and it's

00:15:19.280 just not the way that a female Algerian Muslim would present herself. Yeah. All right. Thank 1.00

00:15:25.900 you, Jen. I appreciate all your coverage of this story. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to

00:15:31.760 bring in the Western Standard's Jared Yager now. Jared Yager is a new, very fresh reporter coming

00:15:38.140 to the Western Standard. Comes to us from the post-millennial, based in beautiful Vancouver,

00:15:43.280 British Columbia. Jared, welcome to your first time on the pipeline here. You've got a

00:15:54.820 story out an exclusive poll conducted for the Western Standard, showing that the BC conservatives

00:16:04.600 are continuing to vacuum up whatever crumbs are left of voter support from the BC United

00:16:12.860 slash BC Liberals, as well as some of the other parties. Give us a breakdown of the poll.

00:16:18.240 okay so basically uh that poll it was uh conducted in july and i'm just getting the numbers here

00:16:32.240 yeah among the 804 respondents 37 said they'd vote for the ndp and for the conservatives it

00:16:42.560 wasn't much less than that and that uh that's been mirrored in another poll that just came

00:16:48.640 out a couple days ago from leger where yeah basically the conservatives and ndp are neck

00:16:54.480 and neck so any suggestion that bc united liberals as we have to call them now are in the race at all

00:17:02.880 is just out of the question and you can see they're starting to get desperate you know a couple days

00:17:08.000 ago they brought out the tax cuts and i was talking with uh john rusted about that the

00:17:14.240 conservative leader and he said you know it's easy for a party that's in single digits in the polls

00:17:19.520 to be able to promise all kinds of things they know they'll never have to deliver

00:17:23.760 and so yeah as of right now it's a it's a two-party race and the conservatives

00:17:29.920 just keep on eating up support from from both the ndp and the uh the bc united

00:17:36.400 Well, you know, they changed their name to BC United, Corey, but they've dropped in the poll since. They've lost the right entirely to the BC Conservatives. I think the little pittance of support they have left is kind of in the center.

00:17:52.980 So they've actually kind of more or less reverted to the name BC Liberals, trying to capitalize on some of the anemic federal liberal support left in British Columbia.

00:18:01.800 I think their official name is still BC United, but they've asked BC Elections British Columbia to have them listed on the ballot as BC United slash BC Liberals.

00:18:14.220 If you were advising Kevin Falcon right now, and I got to start, at some point it's like, you know, stop kicking him.

00:18:21.840 He's dead already. But they're still running. They'll be on the ballot with a full slate.

00:18:29.980 I'm willing to bet 20 bucks right now that this is the last election that the B.C. liberals have a full slate of candidates at this point.

00:18:37.200 But if you if you were advising Kevin Falcon, would you advise him to maybe double down on the older B.C. liberal brand to try and maybe recast it as the middle party?

00:18:49.620 and, you know, the federal liberals are on track for zero seats in British Columbia right now.

00:18:56.420 But those are bigger federal ridings.

00:18:58.560 Right now, BC United, BC liberals are on track for zero seats in all probability.

00:19:03.260 Do you think they're better positioned, rebranding themselves as instead of the not NDP party of the broad center and right,

00:19:09.440 recasting themselves, trying as like the moderate center left?

00:19:13.140 I don't think he can try and recast himself.

00:19:15.640 I mean, that's where he buggered up in the first place.

00:19:17.420 You had a brand and it was certainly sinking due to your actions and rebranding only made it worse.

00:19:25.380 But making a third effort just adds to, as Jared was saying, another indication of desperation.

00:19:31.420 Doubling down, I mean, to be honest, I would think they should be at a point where you should be saying fold the tent for the sake of the province and quickly see if you can.

00:19:39.740 I know it's not going to happen.

00:19:40.920 I mean, they'll go down on their pride rather than do such a move.

00:19:44.780 But I don't know what he can do anymore.

00:19:46.400 I mean, you know, all the way back to when they rejected Aaron Gunn's run for the leadership, they lost small-c conservative support.

00:19:54.260 They're not going to get it back.

00:19:57.120 They could corner centrist liberal thinking of the old liberal name, but that's not nearly enough to win a seat anywhere, not in our system.

00:20:04.180 I mean, you know, with first-past-the-post, they're just going to get annihilated everywhere they go.

00:20:08.740 But they could still be a spoiler, and that's what a lot of people are concerned about right now.

00:20:12.500 Well, that's where I want to go with you, Nigel.

00:20:13.980 I forgot who was. There was a professor at one of the universities in British Columbia who wrote an article about this. The BC Liberals, now rebranded BC United, now re-rebranded BC United Liberals, the entire point of the party was that they are the non-NDP coalition.

00:20:35.060 It is, there's the NDP over here, and they are this ultra mega big tent of everybody who's not a hardcore socialist.

00:20:44.060 And so you had moderate federal liberals all the way over to hardcore right wing conservatives in this one giant big tent.

00:20:52.420 That's completely gone.

00:20:54.460 They've lost that to the British, the BC conservatives.

00:20:59.100 The raison d'etre of the party is to keep the NDP from power.

00:21:02.820 That can now be best achieved by dissolving the party.

00:21:08.920 But that requires an admission of defeat and to not even go down swinging.

00:21:19.440 Do you think, I know we're not British Columbians, but, you know, wouldn't that be the logical thing now if the very existence of BC United slash liberals is to keep the NDP from power?

00:21:31.220 they can best serve that now by either dissolving the party or at least throwing in the towel on this election and not running candidates.

00:21:39.620 Your analysis is spot on.

00:21:42.580 I lived in B.C. for 25 years, so I've got a bit of a recollection of how things were.

00:21:48.960 And of course, the B.C. United was the B.C. Liberals and the B.C. Liberals were the social credit party that dominated B.C. politics for something like 40 years.

00:22:00.620 And very successfully, by the way, it was a tightly run ship.

00:22:07.840 There were 20 years of balanced budgets.

00:22:11.860 And, you know, I think people just got tired of them and tired of the same old faces.

00:22:16.840 So they tried the NDP in 1975.

00:22:20.020 That lasted 18 months.

00:22:21.380 They tried them again in the early 1990s.

00:22:24.380 Oh, no, we don't want to do that anymore.

00:22:25.860 and came back, they rebranded as Liberals and came back with Morton Campbell.

00:22:31.500 And that, you know, that went very well.

00:22:33.800 But there's been a lot of demographic changes in B.C.

00:22:39.280 And people always want something for nothing.

00:22:41.300 So the NDP appeal was very strong.

00:22:45.120 Now, to the point of your question, should they just disband?

00:22:49.980 Because you're right.

00:22:50.860 They were always anybody but the NDP.

00:22:52.800 And that was their card back in the 70s, the 80s, and the 90s, even in the early years of this century.

00:23:00.840 Yes, of course they should.

00:23:02.040 Will they?

00:23:02.520 Of course not, because personal pride gets in the way.

00:23:06.080 And, unfortunately, the danger of them splitting the vote with people who are either sentimentally attached to the old party or who simply haven't really been keeping up and, oh, yeah, well, I have never heard of a conservative party.

00:23:27.880 You know, that's a real danger.

00:23:30.460 Jared, sticking with this topic. So I don't know if you're familiar with the column that ran, I think it ran in the Post Media Papers about, you know, that the BC United Liberals should just throw in the towel on this. I'm not expecting them to.

00:23:47.980 I mean, if the BCU United Liberals stood for something other than keeping the NDP from power, well, then there'd be a good cause for them to run if they were just, you know, the liberals of BC, a traditional liberal party, if they were, say, the, you know, a more moderate version of the NDP.

00:24:08.100 Well, actually, I suppose they are a more moderate version of the NDP, but the raison d'etre isn't ideological.

00:24:13.580 It is purely to keep the NDP from power.

00:24:16.660 The Greens have an ideological raison d'etre for existence, and that's environmental extremism.

00:24:23.640 You know, B.C., I think it's the easiest province in the country to start a political party.

00:24:28.240 B.C.'s got something like 100 odd political parties, at least on paper.

00:24:31.720 But what's been the response of Kevin Falcon and the United Liberals to calls for them to essentially step down and let the Conservatives contest the election in their place?

00:24:47.400 I've pretty much seen no indication that that's even in their minds at all.

00:24:54.000 And yeah, so that's not something I think we're going to see.

00:24:59.500 But there have been increasing calls from the Conservative side for them to do just that.

00:25:04.000 For example, today, Gavin Dew, he was named as the candidate for the BC Conservatives in Kelowna Mission.

00:25:10.940 And he said in his press release that everyone's tired of the drama and it's time to put BC first, not egos or old party allegiances.

00:25:20.540 And I think that's what a lot of people are feeling right now is, Kevin, you know, you're way down in the polls.

00:25:26.680 There's no way to make it up.

00:25:28.620 It's time to just work with John and, you know, fulfill your obligation to get the NDP out of power.

00:25:37.300 I think, Corey, this would be just particularly impossible for Kevin Falcon to do because he's the one who kicked John Rudstad out of caucus.

00:25:48.860 I think what was it over his views on global warming or something.

00:25:52.440 and I mean it's not like John Redstadt was just like some outsider coming in like when Daniel

00:25:58.400 Smith was leading the Wild Rose you know this was a guy who was in his caucus on his team and he

00:26:04.420 kicked them out I mean there's just no way even a very humble man could bring himself to do this

00:26:11.560 there's just no way Falcon can't come into the room with the others I mean at and again he's

00:26:16.440 shown no indication of it but if he said that's it we're done we're backing out I think he would

00:26:20.200 just take his ball and go home. He's not going to get into the same room with Rustad and work

00:26:24.760 together. That's just not not in the cards. Well, Nigel, there was talks to negotiate,

00:26:33.060 if not a merger, at least some kind of non-aggression pact, so they don't split the

00:26:39.220 vote. But the BC Liberal or United Liberal proposal was outrageously naive. It would

00:26:48.560 guarantee the BC Liberals get to keep all of their incumbent seats, which happened to be the most

00:26:54.780 right-leaning conservative seats in BC. The BC Conservatives stand to win every single last

00:27:02.440 current BC United Liberal seat, and they were asking the BC Conservatives to just completely

00:27:07.420 vacate that. I don't think there was ever a way the math would work for them to do this.

00:27:14.720 Those kinds of arrangements always look great to people who are outside politics.

00:27:19.920 If you are inside politics, and that's your seat, well, and it's a terrible idea.

00:27:25.780 Of course it is.

00:27:26.920 Yeah.

00:27:27.460 You know, I obviously wish Mr. Rasta had all success, but he is going to have his hands full if he wins.

00:27:36.480 Because the NDP in the last four years has run up the provincial debt.

00:27:40.760 Maybe Jared has got the exact numbers, but it's an astonishing amount of money that the NDP has borrowed in just four years.

00:27:50.720 And getting the program spending under control, never mind making any serious attempt to bring down that debt,

00:28:01.480 is going to challenge any party that wants to take it on.

00:28:06.740 And by the way, they're all promising to get rid of income tax in B.C. for 60% of B.C. taxpayers.

00:28:15.280 Great idea, but I cannot see how it's going to work.

00:28:18.260 So this could turn out to be a poisoned chalice.

00:28:23.120 Well, Jared, I'll kick it back to you to finish up this segment.

00:28:27.840 What's next on the campaign trail?

00:28:30.260 What can we expect from the big campaigns?

00:28:33.880 well i think you're going to see the bc conservatives really doubling down on their

00:28:41.200 successes and the ndp just kind of riding on you know the support they already have i don't think

00:28:46.820 they're going to be uh bringing in any new voters and in that poll that was conducted for the for

00:28:53.500 the western standard it was interesting because the bc conservatives they captured 50 of the voters

00:28:59.880 who voted BC, well, BC Liberals, back in 2020.

00:29:04.020 But they also got 17% of those who voted for the BC NDP

00:29:08.860 and 21% of those who voted for the BC Green Party.

00:29:14.040 So I don't see the other two parties

00:29:17.160 gaining any more support.

00:29:19.500 But the Conservatives,

00:29:20.580 the only direction to go is up from here.

00:29:24.180 All right.

00:29:25.500 Well, Jared, thank you for joining us

00:29:28.580 on the pipeline here today.

00:29:29.880 Get back to work. You're doing good stuff out there.

00:29:33.060 All right. Well, let's bring it a little closer to home here for us at Western Standard World Headquarters.

00:29:40.820 This fall, we are expecting the Alberta's United Conservative Government to introduce an update.

00:29:49.540 It says it's update, but it's pretty much a whole new Alberta Bill of Rights.

00:29:54.280 A lot of people are not quite aware that there's an Alberta Bill of Rights.

00:29:58.820 there is it's largely been subsumed since since the Charter came into effect 1982 alongside the

00:30:07.100 Constitution Act 1982 but it's it's it's reportedly got might include some very spicy elements Jason

00:30:17.880 Marcus off at the CBC Calgary CBC reporting you know there's different groups some called the

00:30:27.800 black hat gang, which is no, no, that's not a cowboy posse, but

00:30:32.540 Southern Alberta, and they wear black hats like one. And some

00:30:35.600 other groups within the UCP are pressing for the inclusion of

00:30:37.880 things. They go well beyond some mushy document like the Charter

00:30:44.000 of Rights and Freedoms to give much more robust rights to

00:30:47.540 Albertans. Nigel, why don't you queue it up?

00:30:51.140 So the thing with the Bill of Rights, obviously, it's an

00:30:55.580 aspirational document anything put out by federal legislation so you can't as a province declare a

00:31:09.580 right to something which is expressly forbidden by federal law however from the point of view

00:31:16.940 of the politics of the province it is a good thing for a leader to reflect prevailing sentiment

00:31:24.220 within the province and a declaration of rights in any document issued by the provincial government

00:31:31.740 passed through the legislature informs a lot of people of things they need to be informed about.

00:31:38.440 For example, judges. If you have a clear statement on stand your ground, which is one of the things

00:31:46.540 that there's speculation around. It's among the rights of self-defense. Yeah, I don't personally

00:31:52.560 see that going the whole distance but the very fact that people are even talking about it in a

00:31:58.880 province where a number of families living in remote areas have suddenly found themselves

00:32:05.640 confronted by people trying to steal their property or even threatening them personally

00:32:10.540 a lot of people are interested in that idea that you should be interested in it so um okay all right

00:32:18.700 so now you have the province coming out and making a statement about standing your ground perhaps

00:32:25.340 i don't know what's in this any more than anybody else then that tells the police and it tells

00:32:32.220 the judiciary that we actually care about people and we are not just automatically going to assume

00:32:40.060 that criminals are going to come first there is a talk for example again about a right to refuse

00:32:47.580 medical treatment well clearly there is a there are a lot of us who were highly skeptical of

00:32:57.580 what the federal government and our own alberta health services were really trying to to do during

00:33:05.260 the covet crisis and it became an extremely personal issue for people who said either you

00:33:12.380 get the jab or you get out the door uh this is and ultimately the people who said you know it's

00:33:21.260 probably not that safe and probably not that effective we don't know about the safety thing

00:33:25.980 completely yet but we certainly found out that was no protection against transmitting or receiving

00:33:32.460 covet so you know people had a right to be skeptical and if the province is going to give

00:33:37.740 people are right to say, I'm skeptical, no, thanks, then that's going to be in the first

00:33:44.860 case, a popular move politically. And secondly, actually, personally, I think that's the right

00:33:51.900 stance to take. So a lot of people don't understand this, but every province has a constitution.

00:33:58.780 Now, the United States state constitutions are are written formal codified documents,

00:34:04.060 like the Canadian federal, Canada has a mixed kind of hybrid constitution, unwritten parts

00:34:10.780 coming from the Westminster tradition, combined with some American parts that are written and

00:34:15.740 codified beginning with the British North America Act 1867, updated several times,

00:34:21.020 most notably 1982 with the Constitution Act. But the provinces also have their own constitutions

00:34:28.940 subject within the federal one as well. But the provincial constitutions are, I believe,

00:34:35.340 all unwritten. Perhaps Quebec's got some exceptions to that.

00:34:40.460 They certainly behave as though they have their own constitution.

00:34:47.500 They have made it clear how they view the world, and that's the message to the rest of Canada.

00:34:52.460 So most, if not all, provinces do have their own bills of rights, but they all

00:34:57.340 kind of took a back burner to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the Constitution Act 1982

00:35:02.380 and Pierre Trudeau. But that, you know, the charter leaves out, Corey, some very notable rights.

00:35:10.540 Freedom of speech is not as robust as in the United States, it's freedom of expression,

00:35:15.900 but you know, using nearly mouth Canadian language like within reasonable grounds in a

00:35:21.980 freedom democratic society, which, you know, leaves a pretty big hole to drive a truck through

00:35:26.620 violating all sorts of free speech rights. You know, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness

00:35:32.320 gives a lot more protections arguably around bodily autonomy. Certainly the Second Amendment,

00:35:39.160 the right to bear arms. And I'll be surprised. I want your input on this, Corey. I'll be surprised

00:35:45.800 if that makes it, but there is a lot of movement to include a right to bear arms and to protect

00:35:49.860 yourself and your property in the new Bill of Rights. Now, that would be positively revolutionary

00:35:56.600 by Canadian terms. I mean, if we were to have an Alberta Bill of Rights, and also the right

00:36:03.780 against excessive taxation, that can be read different ways. But I would imagine that between

00:36:08.440 your income tax, your sales tax, property taxes, maybe we cap it all at 50% of your income,

00:36:15.020 which I think people would say, that should be enough.

00:36:18.780 God asked for 10%.

00:36:19.840 The government should be happy with 50.

00:36:23.640 I mean, these things would be positively revolutionary.

00:36:26.680 What do you think the chances are some of these,

00:36:28.160 I think we're going to get the right to refuse medical,

00:36:31.140 around vaccines and medical treatments,

00:36:35.320 firearms, self-defense, excessive taxation.

00:36:39.480 What do you think the chances are that they would do something that,

00:36:42.560 for lack of a better term, ballsy?

00:36:45.020 It's hard to say. They might put in property rights. That's another one that the charter is

00:36:48.680 quite weak on the enjoyment of property. And when you get into property rights, then maybe we can

00:36:53.980 expand a little further on how far is your right to defend that property. But as we said, it's

00:36:59.240 aspirational. I mean, this is drawing lines in the sand is what it is. And saying this is what

00:37:03.720 we would like to see in Alberta. But we also know this won't last any farther than the first federal

00:37:09.420 court challenge. Well, not necessarily. It's applicable to provincial statute, not to federal

00:37:14.540 law, but to provincial statute, it would be applicable. So this would have real world

00:37:19.860 implication, not nearly as real world as if say this was amending the federal charter of rights

00:37:24.780 and freedoms. But this would have real world application within provincial statute within

00:37:28.660 provincial statute. But again, it depends on where you're going with it. You know, if you said

00:37:32.100 there's a stand your ground law, that's fine. But I think it's going to be a flimsy defense when you

00:37:36.500 get pulled in front of the federal court afterwards. But at least it's showing where the province came

00:37:41.280 from on it. And it says we are different. We want to stand up for our own rights that way. I mean,

00:37:47.760 realistically, we know a lot of this is to make sure that some of those factions within the party

00:37:52.160 feel they're being represented, that their voices are being heard, and that the province is taking

00:37:56.660 it seriously. Even if it might not withstand a federal, you know, challenge all the way to the

00:38:02.100 final end of things, it's showing the province is doing everything in their power to protect their

00:38:06.220 right to avoid being coerced into a medical procedure they don't feel comfortable with

00:38:10.680 or feel that they shouldn't have any right to defend themselves or property.

00:38:14.820 So it'll be interesting to see how far they want to go. I think the party's probably doing

00:38:18.320 internals like crazy to see how little they can get away with without poking into hornet's nests,

00:38:23.440 but how much they're going to need to do to keep the floor of the convention happy.

00:38:27.060 So property rights will be a very popular one. I mean, before she was ever in politics,

00:38:32.420 Danielle Smith was property rights. 0.99

00:38:34.680 Well, which issue with like Alberta Property Rights Association or something.

00:38:37.460 I don't know the exact name.

00:38:38.400 It certainly is. 0.98

00:38:39.240 That was her thing.

00:38:39.980 Yes.

00:38:40.560 And that was kind of early Wild Rose parties, you know, kind of as it was taking off when she was coming in, succeeding Paul Henry.

00:38:47.600 And, you know, with a right to firearm ownership, it may not withstand the ultimate federal assault, but it's certainly like a tank obstacle in an advance.

00:38:57.420 You know, you've got to get around it first.

00:38:59.020 We're going to make them work for it.

00:39:00.300 Yeah, it makes them work for it.

00:39:01.600 so well god bless them if they uh if they're willing to go out this far i mean i mean it

00:39:07.440 politicians tend to be pretty i should say successful politicians are risk averse

00:39:12.160 uh but yeah it's um it's something we'll see okay uh in the tongue we've got left here we're gonna

00:39:18.960 get uh something you wrote about cory uh so town of banff uh just was it yesterday monday a couple

00:39:27.360 days ago yeah okay just the other day had a referendum uh on the issue of turning banff

00:39:34.080 anyone watching who's been to banff you maybe didn't even know it's called banff avenue but

00:39:37.760 the main road straight through banff i mean it's it's worse traffic than downtown calgary or

00:39:43.280 edmonton it's it's it's pretty terrible to get through sometimes but um you know that beautiful

00:39:48.720 street uh the i guess the the mayor and council wanted to turn it into a permanent pedestrian road

00:39:56.160 I don't live there. So but as someone who likes to visit from time to time, I like being able to drive. But anyway, there was a referendum on it, Corey, and you wrote a column, almost like a how to guide you using Banff as an example, but how citizens can rebel against mayors and councils that get out of their lane.

00:40:19.740 yeah and it was a good effort like part of this was Banff citizens determining their destiny not

00:40:25.440 the local media not the tourists even I mean if you go to it it's kind of nice you can walk down

00:40:29.660 the street you can hit the stores there's the patios I grew up in Banff though and you got

00:40:33.620 to remember the citizens have a different outlook and if you don't know that town Banff Avenue even

00:40:38.660 if it was congested while open was two lanes on each side and it's the main order it's the

00:40:43.260 only avenue to get to the south end of town yeah when they closed it if you go to the side streets

00:40:48.620 on the side, they're narrow, they're residential, they're terrible. And anybody trying to get the

00:40:53.260 best way to tell the administration offices, anything, we're forced on to that it was it was

00:40:57.980 putting possible, it was putting locals through misery. But what's great is, you know, the mayor

00:41:03.500 and council is often is or offside with the locals, the locals utilize the means they have in the

00:41:08.700 municipal government act, it's buried in there. And it's dry, you can petition, you get 10% of

00:41:15.180 of the voters signing that petition, they have two choices,

00:41:18.660 repeal the bylaw, or put it to a vote. And the guy that local

00:41:23.040 government still fought it, they forced it all the way to the

00:41:25.180 local vote. And the citizen said, that's it, it's out. And

00:41:28.740 now they have no choice, they have to get rid of that bylaw.

00:41:31.380 But Albertans should be paying attention, any town can do this,

00:41:34.860 every town can do this. There's limitations. And it's a really

00:41:38.800 boring section of the Municipal Governments Act, you can't get

00:41:42.120 rid of every tax increase or every rezoning, but there are a lot of bylaws you could conceivably

00:41:49.100 get rid of with just 10% of the vote. Like Calgary's bag bylaw, for example, if the council

00:41:54.100 had still been fighting that and everything, actually the citizens could have gotten that

00:41:57.580 through perhaps and taken it out. It's more reasonable in small towns though. 10% is reasonable

00:42:02.240 enough to get in Banff. I mean, you and a dozen buddies can go out for a weekend, you get 10%.

00:42:07.380 To do that in Calgary, that's over 100,000 people.

00:42:11.040 Yes, so the logistics aren't there.

00:42:12.940 But it certainly can put some of those elected municipal officials on notice that, hey, you've got to be responsible to us between elections, too.

00:42:19.940 And I just think it's fantastic, and I hope to see more towns doing that when it's stupid laws.

00:42:25.780 There are so many.

00:42:27.040 Nigel, lessons for, I'm not sure what the municipal government acts are like outside of Alberta,

00:42:31.920 but I think certainly lessons for people outside of Banff across the rest of Alberta

00:42:36.300 when municipalities get out of their lane like this.

00:42:38.360 And they do.

00:42:39.100 The problem with, there's a couple of problems.

00:42:41.700 People who like to interfere with things are the ones who usually put themselves forward

00:42:46.220 for your municipal office.

00:42:47.720 Everybody thinks, oh, that's a public service.

00:42:50.320 And for some, perhaps it is.

00:42:53.060 More, however, are people who have a thing.

00:42:56.460 They want bicycle lanes, or they want more flowerpots, or they want people to not have paper bags, or they want to close Banff Avenue.

00:43:06.640 They're cause people, and when they are elected, they never tell you the whole agenda.

00:43:10.900 They just tell you what they want you to hear, and let them go do it.

00:43:15.560 But the rules are made by the people who show up.

00:43:18.000 And this mechanism, the plebiscite, is what the citizen has to have.

00:43:28.240 It's a last resort after you've left it too late to really examine the candidates

00:43:32.540 and you're stuck with somebody you don't like.

00:43:34.180 At least you can do that.

00:43:36.100 All right.

00:43:36.960 Well, we're going to put a pen in it there, gentlemen.

00:43:41.160 Thank you.

00:43:41.800 And thank all of you for joining us today in the middle of our beautiful Western summer.

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Western Standard - August 15, 2024

Hermaphroditical “female” boxing champion suing critics

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