Western Standard - August 26, 2026


Is Carney’s trade war hurting Canadians more than Trump？


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

173.56

Word count

8,167

Sentence count

384


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Good day, I'm Corey Morgan.
00:00:25.840 I'm a columnist with the Western Standard, sitting in to host in place of Derek Fildebrandt today, and this is The Pipeline.
00:00:32.960 Well, we've got an interesting panel lined up.
00:00:36.520 We've got, I'll start from our distant person dialing in, Alex Zoltan from out in BC.
00:00:42.200 He's put on his best hat for us today.
00:00:44.000 How's it going, Alex?
00:00:45.660 It's going well.
00:00:46.620 How are you?
00:00:47.520 Very good.
00:00:48.260 Good.
00:00:48.540 It's nice to see Canadian flag content on the shows where it's usually, you know, crabby independent supporters like myself.
00:00:55.120 It adds some color to things.
00:00:57.060 Forgive me.
00:00:57.720 I'm doing a renovation, so.
00:01:00.900 Quite all right.
00:01:02.140 And then in studio here on the end, we've got our news editor, Dave Kneeler.
00:01:05.660 Hey, Corey.
00:01:06.180 How's it going?
00:01:06.560 Very good.
00:01:07.760 And again, former opinion editor, still current columnist, Nigel Hannaford.
00:01:12.300 You bet.
00:01:12.720 Nice to be here.
00:01:13.900 Glad we're all gathered here together.
00:01:16.580 I guess I thought you were going to do a land acknowledgement there.
00:01:19.880 Land acknowledgement.
00:01:20.560 but this is forever seeded land under Treaty 7.
00:01:24.660 Chief Crowfoot signed it all away,
00:01:26.600 and we're enjoying it to this day.
00:01:28.560 So thank you, Mr. Crowfoot.
00:01:30.800 And when I get through my trespassing charges
00:01:32.820 for visiting your grave and putting it on video,
00:01:35.000 we'll discuss it further.
00:01:37.220 Yeah, that was one of the spots I got charged for too.
00:01:39.720 All right, so we're acknowledge, we're set.
00:01:42.440 Might as well get right to the meat of things.
00:01:43.660 There's a trade war, I heard.
00:01:45.000 There is.
00:01:46.120 What's going on?
00:01:47.040 uh we well trump uh they they walked away from negotiations prime minister mark carney
00:01:55.020 uh the uh then he imposed equal tariffs yesterday uh tuesday and war of words between uh trump and
00:02:04.960 doug ford and uh pictures out today of uh bald eagles killing uh canadian geese yes
00:02:14.420 I wrote about something like that, I think.
00:02:15.980 Really calming down.
00:02:17.100 Like, Nigel, what happened?
00:02:18.960 I mean, things have been kind of shaky and rough and back and forth for months, you know, and ups and downs.
00:02:23.600 But just this last week, I mean, it's hit the fan.
00:02:26.260 Well, you're not really going to know what's happened until you know the details of the deal that they actually said no to.
00:02:32.260 There's all sort of hints that it was something terrible.
00:02:35.960 There's also hints that maybe the Americans wanted us to walk away so that they could do their own thing.
00:02:41.520 So we really are talking about this in a bit of a vacuum as far as information is concerned.
00:02:48.020 But one thing that I do notice is that Mr. Carney himself must be able to comfort himself with the thought that his polls have never been higher.
00:02:59.060 Canadians generally are reflexively anti-American, especially in eastern Canada.
00:03:04.500 Some people here in Alberta, too.
00:03:06.900 but
00:03:08.740 he's up around 65%
00:03:11.280 in terms of approval ratings
00:03:13.320 and it's based
00:03:14.920 not on any
00:03:16.500 achievement
00:03:17.880 any
00:03:19.240 good thing that he has done that's been
00:03:23.040 announced that's making work for people
00:03:25.060 or anything like that, it's entirely
00:03:27.080 based on the
00:03:29.080 anti-American reaction
00:03:30.400 Mr Carney, you go tell him sir
00:03:33.080 and that is working very well for him
00:03:35.220 at the moment. And that alarms me a little for the future. Well, President Trump has definitely
00:03:39.260 been a political gift for Mark Carney, whether it was intentional or not. I mean, it just gave
00:03:43.580 him that ability to fire forward in the polls because you had a foreign enemy, you had to
00:03:48.420 rally the troops around to, you know, stick with and keep the attention on that. I mean, we can
00:03:53.760 only speculate, but I mean, it crosses my mind a little that he has it in his interest to keep
00:03:59.020 this war flaming. You know, as long as that is going on in there, he remains well up in the
00:04:04.440 polls and he can do whatever the heck his agenda might be.
00:04:07.660 Yeah.
00:04:07.860 I wonder if he's thinking about an early election.
00:04:10.820 You know, he says, polls are never going to go higher.
00:04:14.740 You know, one of the interesting things I thought was he dangled Keystone Pipeline,
00:04:21.220 apparently.
00:04:21.500 And that's been one of Trump's pet projects ever since he came into office.
00:04:26.080 He wants to restore Keystone so then he can go out and say, Sleepy Joe killed it.
00:04:30.900 I've restored it.
00:04:32.000 So apparently Trump dangled that. It's not Trump. Carney dangled that. And then, according to the New York Times, pulled it off the table at the last minute. So that would have got Trump a little upset.
00:04:43.200 you know we're reporting on what the new york times reported yeah i don't know whether they
00:04:50.480 know for sure themselves well we're on rumors and it's difficult yeah so i mean it's it's the
00:04:55.500 headline news everywhere and attitudes are different regionally but uh alex what are you
00:04:59.020 getting on the ground out in bc on this whole thing how are people feeling out there i would
00:05:04.960 describe the mood in bc as fairly anti-trump probably similar to what the mood is in eastern
00:05:10.900 canada bc is set to be struck the hardest by these tariffs um by all metrics especially our
00:05:18.480 softwood lumber industry our forest industry our forestry industry is already taking a beating
00:05:23.960 and yeah so people are pretty anti-trend generally speaking so there isn't really a downside for mr
00:05:33.540 carney in this at the moment because the demand is going to be for support people whose incomes
00:05:40.720 are threatened by the tariffs.
00:05:42.140 They're going to say, well, what are you going to do for us?
00:05:44.220 So he really has license now to borrow and borrow and borrow
00:05:47.840 and present himself and his government as the savior of people,
00:05:54.020 which is, I guess, why I'm really concerned about the way this thing is.
00:05:57.160 He's putting money on my credit cards to get me through this situation,
00:06:00.380 but I can't go much longer here.
00:06:02.180 My grandchildren's grandchildren won't be paying this off.
00:06:05.840 I mean, the standard, that story out, I believe,
00:06:08.600 with Dominic LeBlanc,
00:06:09.560 say it was $7.5 billion.
00:06:10.680 They're estimating for these aid packages
00:06:12.200 for the trade war,
00:06:13.320 but they won't tell us
00:06:14.080 how much their counter tariffs
00:06:15.420 are going to cost.
00:06:16.940 That's the frustrating thing.
00:06:18.020 He's being kept in the dark.
00:06:19.420 Well, it is a frustrating thing
00:06:20.700 because when we place a tariff
00:06:22.180 on American imports,
00:06:23.800 who is it who's paying it?
00:06:25.860 Canadians who want to buy
00:06:27.220 American product.
00:06:29.440 Now, I mean, if it's American wine and liquor,
00:06:32.580 I guess you can switch to something else
00:06:34.880 if you don't like that.
00:06:36.260 But if it is something that you've got to have,
00:06:38.680 and apparently toilet paper is top of the list.
00:06:40.740 Toilet paper is very expensive.
00:06:43.620 You know, next time you go to Costco,
00:06:45.420 it's going to be $30 instead of $25, you know.
00:06:49.860 So that kind of stuff, it really works against Canadian citizens,
00:06:55.100 so it's not a retaliation.
00:06:58.300 You're punching yourself and telling yourself you're punching Trump.
00:07:02.480 That's not working.
00:07:03.200 It's interesting to see the two sides in terms of talking about Alberta oil and whether or not to put tariffs on it.
00:07:12.240 You've got Jason Kenney, you've got Naheed Nenshi, you've got Alison Redford, you've got Doug Ford, all saying that it should be on the table.
00:07:21.660 And you've got Daniel Smith and you've got Scott Moe saying no.
00:07:25.640 and daniel smith on this one seems to be the only adult in the room where she's saying these
00:07:31.220 terrorists will were will do no good whatsoever trump's gonna hammer us come come september he's
00:07:38.020 gonna hammer us and let's get back to the negotiating table mark carney pick up the phone
00:07:42.420 to that point dave in mr carney's statement on saturday morning where he was explaining why
00:07:49.040 things had fallen apart, as he would have
00:07:51.060 us believe. He
00:07:52.880 specifically referenced
00:07:54.460 cultural issues, Quebec,
00:07:57.340 and farm management.
00:07:59.720 So you can't put
00:08:01.040 butter and eggs
00:08:03.100 and cheese
00:08:04.660 into the negotiating pot,
00:08:07.440 but they would all have you
00:08:09.040 believe that Alberta oil, well yeah, of course
00:08:10.720 cut that off. By the
00:08:13.060 way, that's not a terribly
00:08:14.780 useful tool in
00:08:17.000 the bargaining kit, because
00:08:18.120 the angsts are actually exporting oil well so it's threatening to cut ours off doing the oil
00:08:25.640 the thing is we only have one bloody customer yeah you know if we'd have diversified our markets
00:08:30.940 maybe we could say well fine we're going to increase our exports to india or china or europe
00:08:36.300 if we had pipelines but guess who shut those down but i mean i guess getting on to the other things
00:08:41.860 though we talked about toilet paper we talked about softwood uh why is bc so uh awkwardly
00:08:46.740 positioned Alex in that, I mean, I know that the United States is right next door, but you've got
00:08:52.580 a huge port and an export market for a lot of goods all around the world, besides just the
00:08:57.360 United States. You would think that would shield BC a little bit. Well, I think you hit the nail
00:09:01.660 on the head with the pipeline comment. We, this is really BC's decades of failure to create an
00:09:08.840 east to west pipeline coming to fruition. We don't have many trading partners other than the United
00:09:14.580 States. And so B.C. is also very reliant on its forestry industry and sending its product to the
00:09:24.300 U.S. We don't have any refineries, even though they're refining the oil right across the border.
00:09:29.020 And so we're kind of beholden to the United States. And that wasn't an issue until Trump
00:09:33.940 came along. I do want to take aim at Trump a little bit here. And I just want to preface that
00:09:42.160 by saying that just because I criticize Trump doesn't mean that I love Carney. But I do sympathize
00:09:48.680 with Carney slightly, because if you take Trump at his word, and the reasoning behind his tariffs
00:09:54.160 at his word, there is no way for Carney to satisfy him because what Trump wants is a zero sum trading
00:10:00.960 relationship. And that will never happen. There's about a $200 billion trade surplus that Canada
00:10:06.680 has with the United States because of all the energy that we send there. In order to make up
00:10:11.240 the difference, even if we flooded the Canadian market with American dairy, it would require every
00:10:16.140 man, woman, and child to eat a 25 pound industrial bucket of Wisconsin cheddar every week in order to
00:10:23.980 make up the trade difference. So you can't reason somebody out of something that they didn't reason
00:10:29.940 themselves into to begin with. And what Trump wants, which is a balanced trade relationship,
00:10:34.540 is almost technically impossible. Yeah, no, it's difficult all around. And I know
00:10:40.260 viewers get upset with me when I put it out.
00:10:42.520 But again, I've never been a big fan of Trump.
00:10:45.040 The man's full of crap, often.
00:10:46.960 How do you negotiate with a man with such a propensity
00:10:49.440 to lie without hesitation?
00:10:51.800 And I know Carney lied about the Gordie Howe bridge as well.
00:10:55.220 So now we've got two people who are prone to fabricating things,
00:10:59.500 won't share information with the public on what the deal is,
00:11:02.200 and I'm presuming probably aren't sharing good information
00:11:04.260 with each other.
00:11:05.560 This is just a recipe for a bad deal.
00:11:07.320 Well, it is, but it's one of the reasons why I'm able to keep my hair on through the whole thing, because what we forget, we think that the tariffs are on everything, but the actual amount of trade that is affected by this tariff dispute was relatively small.
00:11:26.980 I think it was something like 4% or maybe 5% of our exports are affected by the tariffs that Mr. Trump has put on.
00:11:38.100 80% of our goods continue to cross the border duty-free.
00:11:44.100 Can't speak to the other 15 in this equation.
00:11:47.840 But, you know, everybody needs to take a valium on this and just see how this is going to work out.
00:11:54.780 I don't think the last word has been had on this whatsoever, but certainly there is a general misconception that everything is tariffed.
00:12:05.740 Yeah, no, you're right.
00:12:06.780 And it's not.
00:12:07.700 You know, BC is going to be the hardest hit.
00:12:10.080 Alberta gets off quite easy when you look at the facts and fairies.
00:12:13.500 Oh, yeah, we're laughing.
00:12:14.540 We're laughing.
00:12:16.060 Quebec and Ontario, they're going to get hit.
00:12:18.400 They're going to get hit hard, the Ontario auto industry.
00:12:21.140 It's scary to be an auto worker.
00:12:21.880 Oh, if you're an auto worker, you might want to start looking for another career.
00:12:25.660 Aluminum in Quebec is going to be hit hard.
00:12:29.600 So, yeah, depending on where you live, it's going to hurt.
00:12:33.600 But I think we don't have much to worry about here in Alberta.
00:12:36.740 Well, getting back to Alberta, a little more of our domestic politics here
00:12:41.040 before I go into the real, you know, ordered politics of British Columbia
00:12:45.240 where everything's going smoothly throughout the Conservatives.
00:12:47.840 uh nahed nanshi jumping in now saying that we should cancel the referendum in light of this
00:12:54.780 trade dispute what the hell should we postpone elections too whenever the it's just bizarre but
00:13:04.040 they're giving him a lot of air he's just trying to be relevant in any way possible
00:13:09.520 and it's not working no i mean there's no real relation there's not a put it this way if there
00:13:16.620 is a relationship between the trade
00:13:18.360 dispute and the
00:13:20.400 referendum and it's one that takes so much
00:13:22.680 explanation that he would have
00:13:24.560 lost his audience by the time he's got there
00:13:26.500 it was a stupid thing to
00:13:28.600 say
00:13:28.860 what was the other thing that he came out with
00:13:32.140 that
00:13:33.620 Smith was not a good
00:13:36.620 team player because she
00:13:37.780 wouldn't go along and put Alberto Oil
00:13:40.480 on the table well like I said earlier
00:13:42.280 if they don't want to put
00:13:44.280 supply management on the table
00:13:46.400 precious to them. Well, what's the argument that we take something that's
00:13:50.640 precious to us and make that a part of the negotiations?
00:13:56.240 He's the most unconvincing leader of the opposition
00:13:58.700 that we've had. And it's been a gift
00:14:02.720 for Premier Smith, because she's had a hard time with a whole lot of things.
00:14:07.040 But thankfully, Nenshi has been so inconsistent, poorly communicated
00:14:10.700 and unlikable that she's still doing fine, because there's no threat there.
00:14:15.780 But I guess speaking of unlikable,
00:14:18.740 unaffected politicians and everything,
00:14:20.620 there's a tall, morose-looking man
00:14:22.200 in British Columbia named David Eby
00:14:23.900 who's trying his very hardest
00:14:26.520 to make sure the NDP doesn't win the next election,
00:14:29.960 yet the Conservatives seem to be trying
00:14:31.420 their very hardest to make sure
00:14:32.880 he doesn't succeed in that.
00:14:34.880 They won't let him lose.
00:14:36.380 I don't get what's going on.
00:14:37.840 Mr. Zoltan, what the hell are the BC Conservatives doing now?
00:14:40.320 I'm seeing their members dropping like flies.
00:14:42.220 Yeah, it's about one MLA per day is leaving the BC Conservative Caucus. So at that rate,
00:14:49.860 by the end of next month, it will just be Carrie Lynn Finley and her husband left.
00:14:56.420 It's pretty bad. And I can provide a little bit of explanation. I mean, I'm obviously not in the
00:15:01.720 room, but I do have sources within the party. And they have informed me that the main issue is not
00:15:07.760 Kerry Lynn Finley, but in fact, her husband and the new chief of staff, Chris Delaney.
00:15:13.420 Apparently he's not well liked.
00:15:17.340 But I mean, boy, you know, there's lots of people don't like each other within political
00:15:21.820 parties.
00:15:22.380 That's not uncommon.
00:15:25.820 How we're getting to a point though, where they feel we're going to leave and start a
00:15:29.100 caucus of two, which we found again with conservatives, we had that prior departure of
00:15:33.080 two and they had a caucus of two and that only lasted a few weeks before they split
00:15:37.260 up again i mean it's not just the bc it's conservatives we do this to ourselves alex
00:15:42.040 correct me if i'm wrong but i have not heard one mla who has departed giving a specific policy
00:15:48.960 reason as to what they disagreed with uh with finley i disagree with her on this or i disagree
00:15:55.400 with her on that is that right i would describe that as mostly accurate yes and it's the most
00:16:01.460 perplexing part about this development is during the bc conservative leadership race the phrase
00:16:06.100 was repeated many times that all of the candidates were in violent agreement with each other
00:16:10.320 on policy. So it appears that this is mostly personal, if not entirely personal and not
00:16:16.620 political at all. Well, so, you know, Nigel, you've been through the party wars as a journalist
00:16:26.740 or inside parties and watching. I mean, this is nothing new. Stockwell Day dealing with
00:16:32.740 the conservative reform alliance party across the aisle for you know splitting coming together
00:16:38.200 ucp wild rose progressive conservative are we ever going to get through well so in the situation you
00:16:45.760 have just alluded to two things were different one is that the the problem person was prepared
00:16:55.380 to admit that he was the problem when i speak of doc stockwell day um who was a very fine man
00:17:02.220 and i was able to see that he if he wasn't able to do it then he should stand back and let somebody
00:17:10.360 else and that is the second thing there was somebody else namely stephen harper uh there
00:17:16.200 was a leadership review as you know and or a leadership race and other people put their names
00:17:22.720 forward for the job. But in the end, it went to Stephen Harper, and you know what happened after
00:17:28.140 that. So what's different here is, first of all, nothing that I've heard or nothing that
00:17:36.800 Zoltan has said has indicated that there's any acceptance of liability in the party leadership.
00:17:46.880 the problem is not us
00:17:48.960 it's those
00:17:50.080 freewheeling guys out there
00:17:52.560 and the other is
00:17:54.180 if not
00:17:55.980 her then who
00:17:58.660 there were other people who ran for
00:18:00.660 the leadership but
00:18:02.820 that was quite recent and they didn't win
00:18:04.760 so
00:18:05.640 there's not a Stephen Harper person
00:18:08.920 out there
00:18:09.460 I mean it's just a great shame
00:18:11.440 shame doesn't do the justice
00:18:13.860 it's a tragedy because BC
00:18:15.600 frankly is circling the drain
00:18:17.640 and the leadership that they have
00:18:20.360 will just accelerate
00:18:22.100 that and the opposition
00:18:24.100 just simply can't get it together
00:18:26.200 I'm so glad I don't live there anymore
00:18:28.400 Look what happened in Alberta
00:18:30.280 when the Conservatives were fighting each other
00:18:32.120 we had Rachel Notley
00:18:33.400 for five years
00:18:35.300 Alex
00:18:36.600 Shirley Finley is not a dumb woman
00:18:40.140 Shirley knows that people are leaving
00:18:42.340 because they don't like certain
00:18:44.340 people around her why doesn't she just get rid of those people the husband well i think that the
00:18:50.980 familial relationship between her and her husband brent chapman makes this somewhat unique it's
00:18:56.640 easier to admit one's own fault publicly than it is to admit the faults of your spouse for obvious
00:19:02.500 reasons and the the rumor going around and i think that it's well established at this point
00:19:07.500 so it's beyond rumor is that brent chapman basically installed his decades-long friend
00:19:13.740 as the chief of staff and so finley would have to go against her own husband essentially
00:19:19.360 and that that's a very awkward thing for anybody to have to do how exalted has obviously never
00:19:25.680 been married because when you said just a moment ago that it's very difficult for a wife to speak
00:19:31.720 ill of her husband we'll bring jane on the show sometime
00:19:36.100 Well, maybe, maybe not in private.
00:19:41.840 Festival of Arizona, get back to us.
00:19:46.120 Well, it is an unusual dynamic.
00:19:48.260 I mean, when you, when you get that, an actual relationship going on and that close within, I mean, you know, talk about closed groups around a premier.
00:19:57.420 I mean, that's a complaint that's often among conservatives is, you know, they'll, they're saying the leader has their own little close circle and they don't speak to anybody outside of it.
00:20:04.780 And when that circle's literally gotten into the bedroom, uh, you could really feel like
00:20:09.520 you're an outsider looking in on, and that frustrates partisan people pretty quickly.
00:20:15.040 Yeah.
00:20:15.500 But what are you there for?
00:20:16.540 Are you there to feel good?
00:20:17.400 Are you there to do a job?
00:20:19.000 And that's, uh, you know, a lot of people take the personal stuff and make that most
00:20:25.760 important.
00:20:26.220 The thing is you're there to resist the NDP, which is driving the province into the ground.
00:20:33.180 forget the other stuff
00:20:36.380 we can sort that out later
00:20:38.380 this is always the problem
00:20:40.300 with conservative parties
00:20:41.380 especially in BC
00:20:42.420 we just seem to let the personalities
00:20:45.480 get in the way
00:20:46.080 if they could get their act together
00:20:47.840 they would win
00:20:48.600 they would beat government
00:20:50.280 in the next election
00:20:51.840 it's just so frustrating
00:20:54.820 that they can't get their act together
00:20:57.420 pragmatism and humility
00:20:58.940 is quite rare
00:21:00.200 as you pointed out with Stockwell Day
00:21:01.340 I mean the other thing with Stockwell
00:21:02.220 that was very unusual as you've left the top position,
00:21:04.700 but still said, no, I'm going to continue on
00:21:06.880 and participate, even if I'm not the top dog
00:21:09.560 any longer, and he became a very effective
00:21:12.340 cabinet minister, actually.
00:21:13.480 He was very good in that position provincially
00:21:16.380 earlier and then federally later, but that's
00:21:19.640 the exception in conservative politics.
00:21:21.620 You know, usually they're out the door and
00:21:22.680 they don't come back.
00:21:23.560 I think it's the exception in politics generally,
00:21:25.760 actually, but maybe we shouldn't draw too much
00:21:28.640 from Staple Day's example, but let it be said,
00:21:31.100 it was a good example.
00:21:31.720 That's a good example.
00:21:32.980 Alex, do you see, is today's the end of it or is there more, more defections coming up?
00:21:39.760 I am quite confident that there will be more defections coming up.
00:21:42.840 I reached out to some of the BC Conservative caucus yesterday by email.
00:21:47.360 I asked them fairly simple questions.
00:21:49.600 They weren't confrontational.
00:21:50.700 They were fairly polite.
00:21:51.660 I said, do you still have confidence in the leadership?
00:21:53.640 Do you have any intentions of leaving?
00:21:55.540 One of the recipients of those emails, Teresa Watt, did not respond to me.
00:21:58.900 She instead left the party this morning before she probably had a chance to read my email, and all of the others responded no comment.
00:22:06.600 So do you get the sense that the defectors could actually establish an alternative group within the legislature, or are they just going to sit there on their own and feel hard done by?
00:22:19.340 uh peter millibar who actually ran against carrie lynn finley in the leadership race he has stated
00:22:25.780 his intention to establish a new centrist party with ian payton who also left this week on monday
00:22:31.680 um that would be the second or the third depending on how you count centrist parties in bc
00:22:37.100 uh there is rumors that rosalind bird could start her own party or she could join them
00:22:42.320 but it's looking like we might end up with a healthy and robust 32 party system by the time
00:22:47.960 we're done.
00:22:50.060 Well, I mean, we've got that here with
00:22:52.340 Pete Guthrie and his centrist party.
00:22:54.660 He had a caucus of two for a little
00:22:56.280 while and that split when one left him
00:22:58.960 and he's just kind of the forgotten
00:23:00.900 member in the corner over there.
00:23:03.180 But when it's one guy, it doesn't hurt
00:23:04.940 the UCP.
00:23:05.780 And when you get the Conservatives, as
00:23:07.660 you said, shattering into dozens of
00:23:10.420 people all over that, that's...
00:23:12.140 No, the happiest man in BC has got to
00:23:14.100 be Mr. Glum himself.
00:23:15.360 It doesn't show, but he must be smiling
00:23:17.180 somewhere deep down inside that if he was he was actually pretty happy at his liquor store presser
00:23:22.520 yesterday but i think that the silver lining and the good news for our conservative friends in bc
00:23:27.040 is that the green party could end up eating some of ev's lunch in the next election i think that
00:23:32.840 that's a good possibility and i also think that some of these centrist parties may cannibalize
00:23:37.160 more of the vote share for the ndp than the conservatives because i mean peter millibar he
00:23:43.900 only received 10.5% of the vote on the first ballot in the B.C. Conservative leadership race,
00:23:48.420 so he doesn't seem to have a lot of support within the grassroots of the party.
00:23:53.540 Is there any federalist or federal operatives hanging around? That was one of the things that
00:24:00.360 was kind of unusual in the B.C. race, too. It turned into a bit of a proxy battle for some
00:24:04.600 ambitious federal, you know, strategist types to piss around with and so on, and I imagine that
00:24:11.520 lent itself to a lot of division within the remaining party when the leadership was done.
00:24:16.660 The prevailing conspiracy theory is that those people have fled BC and are likely to never come
00:24:22.260 back. And then it's actually the BC Liberals, or the now defunct and shuttered BC Liberal Party
00:24:28.500 that is attempting to make a resurgence. I don't find that to be a particularly convincing
00:24:32.880 conspiracy theory on account of the fact that Rosalind Byrd, who left yesterday, is not a BC
00:24:39.740 liberal so i think again that this is not necessarily political it appears to be mostly
00:24:44.200 personal and um yeah it's just it's just people not being able to get along it's as simple as
00:24:50.100 that really i need a coalition of concerned conservatives we need aaron gunn to come in
00:24:55.660 from ottawa and say oh yeah he's a uniter i like aaron but he doesn't he's not one to pull a bunch
00:25:02.360 of people together well who knows doesn't seem to be working for family well and i i don't know
00:25:08.140 if it would have worked for elliot either though i think that you may have had the same problem just
00:25:12.100 in different direction because many people saw her as being too liberal as opposed to too conservative
00:25:17.220 and people had personal issues with a lot of her staffers as well right so i don't know if this was
00:25:23.820 maybe inevitable regardless of who won well you've still got a what's the projection for the next
00:25:29.080 general election you guys are facing a couple years now yeah i think it's um if it goes to the
00:25:34.960 end of the full term it'll be about three years when was the last election 2020 it wasn't that
00:25:40.520 long ago it was 2024 so so two more years perhaps i mean maybe they can it gives them some time to
00:25:47.680 rally things or shatter further i guess we'll see well let's move on to more sane politics and that
00:25:52.880 being the the bc teachers federation uh you've been uh attending some courses tell us all about
00:25:59.160 that yeah so i went undercover i've been pretending to be a bc teachers federation union member for
00:26:05.620 months in order to gain access to their anti-racism training program and it's about every bit as crazy
00:26:10.900 as you expect it to be well come on give us some examples some details please sure so actually
00:26:18.380 corey you did a great uh synopsis on the first part of the first module which is that it starts
00:26:23.140 with the Anishinaabe creation myth.
00:26:26.760 And I think that you made a good point.
00:26:28.440 I mean, all creation stories tend to be a little out there.
00:26:31.440 But what the hell does this have to do with racism?
00:26:35.360 I mean, like it starts with religion
00:26:37.160 and then it instructs you to adhere and promote
00:26:42.100 and use your agency to fight for UNDRIP, DRIPA
00:26:46.360 and the Land Back movement,
00:26:47.860 as well as Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution
00:26:50.500 with no information to provide it to teachers on what any of those things are.
00:26:55.620 It also, so I've always been of the assumption that race was, in my opinion, the unfair and
00:27:03.440 unethical prejudgment of others based off of their biological immutable melanin complexion,
00:27:10.100 essentially. I think that you should give everybody a fair chance regardless of what
00:27:14.040 their skin color is. But now I'm not so sure I know what racism is, because the course tells
00:27:19.600 me that that isn't racism instead what it says racism is is a non-scientific social construct
00:27:26.500 that permeates everything well i i don't see color so i must be uh you know are you colorblind no no
00:27:36.120 just just i choose to be you choose to know i i can't tell the difference between a gentleman
00:27:40.680 fresh over from somalia and somebody from sweden i i'm a woke i see your part in woke terms you're
00:27:47.100 part of the problem.
00:27:48.800 I don't know what the hell I am anymore.
00:27:51.000 You know, you are so white
00:27:53.180 that you can't see your own
00:27:54.440 whiteness, your own prejudice.
00:27:57.620 The irony is that you're
00:27:59.220 a Jew.
00:28:01.640 These
00:28:02.120 nightmares they come up with, there's no winning.
00:28:07.160 Right? I mean, they talk about it. I don't know if they
00:28:08.920 covered that in the course. We're inherently racist
00:28:11.120 apparently if you aren't of
00:28:12.540 a certain color to
00:28:15.040 begin with.
00:28:15.660 uh no not necessarily it says that racism and white supremacy is the process of treating white
00:28:22.800 as normal oh and and it says that the the way to the antidote to this and this is not me you know
00:28:31.460 analyzing the course and giving you my own opinion on it this is directly from the course this is
00:28:36.340 verbatim it says that the process of pursuing anti-racism is the redistribution of resources
00:28:43.600 and rights which sounds a lot like marxism to me well it's this always been it seems with a lot of
00:28:51.040 these issues that all roads lead to mr marx i mean it's the same with the environmentalism they don't
00:28:56.340 actually talk about picking up the garbage or stopping things they're just saying if we could
00:28:59.760 have a big enough intrusive government cracking down on capitalism everything will go green
00:29:04.700 it to me it shows that the rot in bc schools caused by the teachers is the same as the rot
00:29:12.120 in Canadian universities you know it's it's just another level of DEI and wokeness that
00:29:20.440 you know that you know if you're a kid in in BC what kind of chance do you have in
00:29:24.980 in the real working world after going through 12 years of that crap but is Alberta's any better
00:29:30.460 we haven't had anybody go undercover in Alberta to find out what they're teaching the Alberta
00:29:34.740 teachers either or Ontario I mean we do hear some of the glimmers of wokeness coming out of our
00:29:38.680 public schools. Yeah, well, I actually, about two years ago, I did an interview with Kaylin Ford,
00:29:45.040 who's gone on to establish her own classical education academy and has a waiting list of
00:29:50.780 thousands. But she was explicit that in the teachers training colleges in Alberta, they use
00:29:58.780 revolutionary tracks, such as the, what is it, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire,
00:30:05.140 the highly articulate and intelligent
00:30:09.260 and completely wrong analysis of society.
00:30:14.280 But there are teachers who want to teach in Alberta
00:30:17.980 and have to go through a one-year course,
00:30:19.960 and this is part of the course,
00:30:21.580 and they're all invited to consider their white privilege
00:30:24.040 and how the pedagogy of the oppressed
00:30:27.240 applies to their situation in prosperous Alberta.
00:30:32.460 So that kind of meant my disappointment, if I have one, with the Smith government,
00:30:38.340 is that they have not been able to go in and root that stuff out of there.
00:30:44.700 They are aware of it.
00:30:46.960 I think there are things that are being done that are aimed at it,
00:30:50.960 but I have yet to see the torpedo hit and explode.
00:30:55.100 Right now, that's the kind of rubbish that they're still teaching.
00:30:59.180 And in B.C., of course, they give it their own unique B.C. indigenous twist.
00:31:05.820 You know, if you were to go into a classroom and introduce the Christian concept of creation in six days with God saying, let there be light, let there be this, let there be that.
00:31:17.880 Let's make a couple of human beings.
00:31:19.680 People will say, you can't teach kids rubbish like that.
00:31:22.320 What are you talking about?
00:31:24.320 We're a scientific society.
00:31:26.540 Well, what is it?
00:31:28.740 The world island is a gigantic turtle or something, isn't it?
00:31:32.900 You know, and the sky wouldn't...
00:31:34.820 You had some art on this.
00:31:37.340 Yeah, it was all Alex's.
00:31:38.480 Yeah, there was some sort of giant turtle floating around.
00:31:40.620 I didn't quite understand it.
00:31:42.100 It sounds like you paid very careful attention
00:31:44.160 to what you were being told there, Alex.
00:31:46.660 Well, yeah, I mean, I'm trying to approach it
00:31:48.180 with a reasonably open mind and in good faith,
00:31:51.240 but it is honestly quite crazy.
00:31:53.640 A lot of it is pretzel logic, and it is cultural Marxism.
00:31:57.580 It basically says as much without saying it. The redistribution of resources and rights based off
00:32:05.560 of a dialectic conception of the world between the powerful and the powerless, the oppressor
00:32:10.260 and the oppressed is literally Marxism. That's all it is. There's nothing about racism in the
00:32:15.360 course. I've been working on this for months and I haven't received one resource on what to do if
00:32:19.980 I witness one child being racist to another child. So what use of this is to the teachers other than
00:32:25.640 as an indoctrination program into Marxism.
00:32:28.400 It's bizarre.
00:32:29.860 Well, let's get to the source of it too.
00:32:31.880 This is something I've always noted with teachers.
00:32:33.520 They love to deny that their union is a union.
00:32:35.980 That's the BC, you know, Teachers Federation.
00:32:39.460 And Alberta is the Alberta Teachers Association.
00:32:42.100 They're unions.
00:32:43.120 They cloak that though.
00:32:44.340 And part of the problem, I don't know about BC,
00:32:45.980 is there a separate teachers association there?
00:32:48.140 Because in Alberta, the association and the union
00:32:50.240 are one and the same,
00:32:51.620 which is a terrible conflict of interest
00:32:53.460 because I would think a professional association would be looking at curriculum standards and
00:32:58.040 looking a little more out for the outcome of the students. A union's mandate is all around the
00:33:02.800 teacher. And when those instructional things are coming from the union, rather than an organization
00:33:08.620 that's focused on the needs of the children, we're going to get that ideological crap passed down.
00:33:16.800 Okay. Well, Alex, is it a separate that I'm wondering, is there a separate BC Teachers
00:33:21.020 association or do they pack it all into the union like we do here to be honest with you i have no
00:33:25.780 idea i mean full disclosure i actually wanted to be a teacher when i graduated from university
00:33:30.400 and after taking this course i'd now like to stay as far away from the profession as humanly possible
00:33:35.140 well that lends itself though to the things you're talking like with calen ford's one i mean it's
00:33:39.940 part of the solution could be school choice more chartered schools more uh independent schools
00:33:45.000 things like that where they aren't tied in with these.
00:33:50.420 What's your guest that you had on this morning talking about reporting a teacher hotline?
00:33:56.260 You know, that's what's got to be done in BC too.
00:33:58.620 You know, if a parent comes across, you know, inappropriate teachings, report them,
00:34:04.280 you know, and harass the government or the teachers association to investigate.
00:34:08.940 Well, and that's an issue.
00:34:10.060 And yeah, I don't know if you'd caught that, Alex.
00:34:11.280 I had a guy who's known out here, a social media type, a bird of proud dad.
00:34:15.340 His name is Lawrence McGee.
00:34:16.540 But boy, he stirred the pot.
00:34:17.700 He started a site saying report a teacher.
00:34:19.740 And if you saw them going into political conduct and such that they're not supposed to, here's where you can report it and perhaps have it rectified.
00:34:27.940 And wow, they got wound up.
00:34:30.540 But we've seen some pretty awful cases where the union circles the wagons and not just in woke stuff.
00:34:36.820 I mean, we need a mechanism for parents.
00:34:38.720 And I think it's a failure on the part, perhaps, of the government then to not provide it, leaving it to a social media guy to do it.
00:34:44.700 There was that case with the teacher, he ultimately killed himself, but he'd been abusing children inappropriately.
00:34:51.920 I mean, of the worst possible way.
00:34:53.540 Is there an appropriate way to abuse children?
00:34:55.140 Oh, yeah, I guess.
00:34:55.940 I mean, I'd rather verbal abuse than the type of abuse I'm talking about, I guess, if there was to be any.
00:35:01.120 And the teachers' union worked basically to cover it up and to protect that teacher rather than the interests of the students.
00:35:07.820 And it's just horrific.
00:35:09.340 And that one didn't make nearly as much waves as I think it should have.
00:35:13.640 Well, here in BC, the reporting system works the opposite direction.
00:35:17.120 As you're probably aware, we have a fellow named Jim McMurtry who was reported for speaking out of pocket on the Kamloops residential school issue.
00:35:25.780 And he was let go.
00:35:27.740 And, of course, Frances Whittowson is another one, although she's not BC-based.
00:35:32.580 Well, the whole thing is just trying to keep the damn politics out of the classroom whenever possible.
00:35:36.860 I know it's always going to happen.
00:35:38.200 I mean, we've had it on the far other side that was pretty bad.
00:35:40.560 Jim Keekstra was teaching kids some pretty nasty stuff in Alberta in the 80s and early 90s, which ultimately led to his being unemployed.
00:35:50.240 I mean, people can debate his views or his free speech, but you've got a different responsibility when you're teaching kids.
00:35:56.480 Yeah.
00:35:56.620 I mean, we get several stories a year of students who have, you know, everybody carries a cell phone now, and they've taped, you know, teachers going on political rants.
00:36:07.780 And it makes for great stories, but nothing ever happens to those teachers.
00:36:13.040 Nothing.
00:36:14.200 I have a question for you, Alex.
00:36:19.440 The teachers' union is doing what the teachers' union does.
00:36:23.280 You have this anti-racism course.
00:36:25.320 Let's say everybody buys the package and you have this generation of young people coming out and taking seriously the indigenous creation myths and vigorously advocating for the declaration of the rights of indigenous people, the undrip and dripper that you were talking about.
00:36:52.160 who actually is the ultimate beneficiary of all this it won't be the students somebody else is
00:37:02.080 going to have is going to use that as their route to power who are those people i believe that it's
00:37:10.520 probably those who are already in positions of power at the university level i mean a lot of
00:37:16.240 these concepts are extraordinarily complex difficult philosophical concepts to wrap your
00:37:23.320 mind around even if you know you're like myself like i'm in my mid-30s and i can barely do it so
00:37:28.060 i don't know how children are supposed to learn this but basically i i think the intention is to
00:37:33.840 validate the the lessons that are being taught at the university level so that the people who
00:37:40.020 are teaching those lessons can maintain the positions that they have and then they say as
00:37:44.460 much they say it's all about power about what sorry power power okay well the university
00:37:51.440 professors have a certain power but they don't have ultimate power um is this about keeping the
00:37:58.280 ndp in power forever for example i don't know i mean i think that this is not necessarily
00:38:07.020 entirely unique to bc but maybe i'm wrong about that no it's a it isn't entirely about bc but
00:38:14.080 it's the bc teachers federation that is doing this at the moment and so i think i think you're
00:38:22.820 onto something i think you're onto something actually right because it's enforcing the leftist
00:38:27.600 orthodoxy and so all unions seem to support the ndp don't they well it's building a support base
00:38:35.540 for the future if you're looking longer term i mean where better to start than the kids who in
00:38:39.660 you know less than a decade will be voting and uh well if they've been well trained throughout
00:38:45.300 school they might vote the way that the teachers union was preferred this does take us back to
00:38:49.720 that book uh what is it zielinski was his name rules for radicals uh back in the 1960s soul
00:38:56.860 soul alinsky rules for radicals and he leaned all of this out that you work through society
00:39:04.540 As a leftist, you know, you start here and you move into teachers and then you get the kids and then you take over the universities and then eventually you build this structure of common sense.
00:39:19.420 And people, I said common sense, I did not mean that, of common thought.
00:39:25.800 And most of the population doesn't really know what's going on because they're not that interested in theory and concept.
00:39:32.540 But the people who do know what's going on help themselves into the positions of power, and then they are, in a sense, able to set the terms of the debate, and politics generally, wherever they hold power.
00:39:47.780 and what you are looking at in BC
00:39:51.680 where first they take over the universities
00:39:56.100 then they take over the teachers' training colleges
00:39:58.260 and then the indoctrinated teachers take over the classrooms
00:40:02.480 and then finally the product of the classrooms
00:40:05.380 tends to have a certain political point of view
00:40:08.100 that it gets translated into government
00:40:10.160 and Marxism gets voted in.
00:40:12.800 But is that not the, is that, is this a piece of that?
00:40:19.120 I would say that that's a fairly reasonable take.
00:40:23.140 Yes.
00:40:23.900 Yeah, absolutely.
00:40:26.880 Well, and let's just hope for the best for the children of British Columbia, I guess,
00:40:32.400 because I mean, the only remedy is getting the NDP out of power.
00:40:35.300 And as we kind of started earlier, the conservatives are determined not to get themselves into
00:40:39.060 position to do that.
00:40:40.840 So hopefully their official opposition can turn themselves into a government-in-waiting within two years.
00:40:47.300 Or you need to write another book, Rules for Conservatives.
00:40:50.800 If I had all the answers, I'd certainly be wearing better-cut suits than this sport coat I throw.
00:40:56.580 You look fine.
00:40:57.140 Well, thank you.
00:40:58.440 I'll keep that in mind.
00:40:59.920 I've got more answers to figure out.
00:41:01.400 That's why these are good shows, because I've got a lot of questions to go with my own bloviating.
00:41:07.180 Bloviator in chief.
00:41:08.160 Yes.
00:41:08.640 Keep on going.
00:41:09.260 All right.
00:41:10.000 Well, let's get on to some parting shots and see what else is going on out there.
00:41:13.540 I'll start over on our left coast over there with Alex.
00:41:18.060 What do you got to share with us before we wrap this all up?
00:41:22.160 I would say that the main story going on here is the implosion of the B.C.
00:41:26.460 Conservative Party.
00:41:27.560 It's an ongoing thing, and I don't think that it's going to be slowing down
00:41:30.720 anytime soon, so I would encourage people to stay tuned to that.
00:41:34.840 Okay.
00:41:36.160 Dave, my parting shot will be Ms.
00:41:38.800 Parton.
00:41:39.660 We lost Dolly Parton yesterday by all accounts, the nicest woman ever to walk the face of the earth.
00:41:48.200 When I worked at The Sun, we used to send photographers to her concerts in Calgary,
00:41:53.020 and they would all come back and say the exact same thing.
00:41:55.920 She is the nicest celebrity we have ever dealt with.
00:41:59.480 So as somebody on Twitter said yesterday, this is the last person in the world that everybody loved from all sides of the coin,
00:42:08.100 and she's passed, so
00:42:09.780 R.I.P. Dolly
00:42:11.040 I agree with you, Dave
00:42:12.980 back in the days when I was trucking on the
00:42:16.140 Alaska Highway and everybody had an 8-track
00:42:18.080 player, that's all you would hear
00:42:20.040 was Dolly Parton, so
00:42:21.280 it takes me back, it feels
00:42:23.500 what I was going to actually use for a parting shot
00:42:25.960 is what we got to earlier when we were talking about
00:42:28.080 the, you know, the things that
00:42:30.020 get put on the table, and I was just going to remark
00:42:32.180 but the
00:42:33.440 the rest of Canada
00:42:35.760 thinks that Alberta's oil
00:42:37.520 should be part of the
00:42:38.600 negotiating tool
00:42:41.480 but somehow or other
00:42:43.200 he couldn't possibly, anything that dealt with
00:42:45.660 the French language or anything that dealt with
00:42:47.540 the dairy industry
00:42:49.500 no, no, that's sacrosanct
00:42:50.940 put a fence around that
00:42:52.680 I don't know whether they actually
00:42:55.600 realized that if we got
00:42:57.180 nasty with oil
00:42:58.480 all they have to do is
00:43:00.760 give the governor of the state of Michigan
00:43:03.500 permission to shut line 5
00:43:05.560 and we're going to be looking for a half a million barrels of oil
00:43:08.680 in eastern Canada, like in two weeks.
00:43:12.920 Everybody needs to just back off on Alberta oil.
00:43:15.720 That's good.
00:43:16.300 They better understand how integrated it is.
00:43:18.200 With the Trans Mountain, with what goes to the coast,
00:43:20.220 what a lot of people don't realize is most of what goes there goes,
00:43:23.120 Alex referenced it, to refineries in Washington.
00:43:26.100 And that's where the jet fuel for B.C. and the airports
00:43:28.960 and everything comes back from.
00:43:30.680 If we had a war where oil isn't moving down there,
00:43:34.800 It's going to cripple Vancouver within weeks, as well as I think the diesel to fuel the
00:43:40.180 ships and everything else as well.
00:43:41.840 Like we cross border all over the place.
00:43:43.880 It's not so simple as flipping a switch or turning on a tap.
00:43:47.620 I guess for my own parting shot, I'm going to be self-serving and I didn't get to it
00:43:52.320 much on my show, but just with the trial of the century yesterday on the Siksika Reserve
00:43:56.720 where I had the good fortune of Justice Karen, yes, Karen Crowshoe.
00:44:04.800 And a bizarre hearing.
00:44:06.380 I'd never been, aside from some traffic tickets once a long time ago, in a court as a defendant anyway.
00:44:12.380 And she started it right out with saying, we're not accepting constitutional arguments in this case.
00:44:20.900 And the prosecution was taken aback.
00:44:24.200 My own lawyers who were all there were taken aback.
00:44:28.200 She was obstinate about it.
00:44:30.220 Finally, we went to a recess so we could discuss it.
00:44:32.160 And all the lawyers discussed it.
00:44:33.080 And they came back and cited a bunch of cases.
00:44:34.880 Yes, indeed, you're, you know, justice, you are obligated to hear these.
00:44:40.300 She said, no, I'm not.
00:44:40.940 And I won't.
00:44:42.740 And, uh, yes, we sent our poor reporter down there to cover it.
00:44:45.600 Because in the end, we came to an impasse and left having accomplished nothing.
00:44:49.260 We'll have another hearing on Tuesday to try and sort out how a judge can say she refuses to hear constitutional defenses in a case.
00:44:55.900 Doesn't bode well for my being found not guilty, I think, at this point.
00:45:00.340 She's the hanging judge of the Siksika.
00:45:02.560 So either way, I did say to the audiences, I'm going to keep them up to date on this, this ongoing.
00:45:08.120 It's obviously going to be ongoing for a long time.
00:45:11.200 The longest trespassing case known to man, but very strange.
00:45:16.080 I'll update as things happen on that.
00:45:18.140 But if we can't defend ourselves with the Constitution Charter, what have we got?
00:45:20.940 Are you in provincial court?
00:45:22.740 This is provincial with the Siksika.
00:45:24.820 She's a circuit judge for the Siksika Provincial Court.
00:45:29.240 What looks like will have to happen is I'll have to go in and be found guilty.
00:45:32.180 as it appears to be predetermined, and then we'll have to appeal it to a better court.
00:45:36.960 So you're saying that if you want to be a justice in an Indigenous court, you have to
00:45:43.680 be an Indigenous person?
00:45:44.840 No, I don't believe so.
00:45:45.860 She just happens to be that circuit judge.
00:45:47.320 There's a separate issue going on with that too, where apparently she applied and wanted
00:45:50.240 this particular case for some reason, which is very unusual and unprecedented too.
00:45:54.160 But I don't want to go too far into those things because I've still got to sit before
00:45:57.160 that judge in the future.
00:45:58.780 But it's very strange so far.
00:46:00.480 So keep an eye on it.
00:46:02.800 I think it just is a legal thing.
00:46:04.420 Leave it to me to find something that's unprecedented and weird that'll probably get written in the books.
00:46:08.220 Hopefully in a good way in the end.
00:46:10.280 May the force be with you.
00:46:11.380 Yeah, thanks.
00:46:12.280 I'm looking forward to your prison memoirs.
00:46:16.260 Don't keep me out there.
00:46:17.400 I'm not popular out that way.
00:46:19.700 All right.
00:46:20.260 Well, thanks for joining us today, Alex and Dave and Nigel.
00:46:25.240 Another episode of The Pipeline Down.
00:46:26.640 folks be sure to continue to support the western standard by the way we are a subscribe subscription
00:46:32.300 sort of service you know get past that paywall dave put out what 18 stories just this morning
00:46:37.740 from the newsroom like we are the place to find the news as it breaks and as it's getting written
00:46:42.120 and in detail not to mention the opinion stuff i put out there to tell you how to think about it
00:46:45.960 so check it out westernstandard.news slash subscription take one out take one out for
00:46:50.360 your liberal uncle help support us keep us independent and be sure to tune in and like
00:46:55.780 and share all of these shows guys thanks for tuning in this week and uh i think derek will
00:46:59.900 be back to bend your ear on the next one so thanks again see you then