Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Henniford and Publisher Derek Fildebrandt discuss the collapse of the coalition agreement between Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau's New Democrats, as well as the new appointments to the Alberta Senate, and the potential for an early election.
00:00:20.020I always say, oh, we got a good show for you. But today, I really, really mean it.
00:00:25.640We had zero trouble coming up with the topics today.
00:00:28.700In fact, the biggest top story, the main story we're going to lead off at the top, came and just broke as we were cooking, coming up with our agenda for today, Nigel.
00:00:38.960And we'll be starting to show off with Jake Mead and Justin Breakup.
00:00:44.360That's right. The formal coalition agreement between Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party and Jake Mead Singh's NDP is over.
00:00:51.960Huge news. Are we headed to an early election? God, I hope so. We'll discuss.
00:00:58.700And B.C. United. Remember, the B.C. Liberals became B.C. United?
00:01:03.220Well, B.C. is now united, but under the Conservative Party.
00:01:07.980They ran up the white flag, folded like a cheap tent, but ultimately probably did the right thing for British Columbia and the Conservative movement, and very unprecedented, just stood down, stood down, and threw their support behind the B.C. Conservatives.
00:01:26.740Absolute earthquake in B.C. political news that's going to have national ramifications.
00:01:31.840Speaking of national ramifications, Justin Trudeau has appointed two very un-Albertans to represent Alberta in the Senate.
00:01:44.600Christopher Wells, an activist whose time is mostly spent pushing puberty blockers on children and ensuring that men can go into the same washroom as women and play in the same sports league as them.
00:01:56.580He will be representing Alberta in the Senate alongside Daryl Findhandler, who is most notable for donating lots of money to the Liberal Party.
00:02:07.040They will take their spots in the Chamber of Silvers' second thought over the two women, the two Conservative women, who were elected to that position not that long ago.
00:02:18.600And if we have time, we're going to get into a very important thing going on.
00:02:22.240Justin Trudeau's big 100% tariff to protect electronic vehicle manufacturing that is already subsidized by the federal government in Ontario,
00:02:32.020and a 25% tariff against Chinese steel inevitably has drawn a huge backlash from the Chinese, as one would expect.
00:02:45.660They're going after Western canola farmers.
00:02:49.360Almost all the canola in Canada is produced here in the West, and that is where the consequences of this policy designed to protect Eastern EV manufacturing has fallen.
00:02:59.040But I don't know why Justin doesn't call him some favors to his friends.
00:03:04.760I mean, they're happy to help keep him in power.
00:03:07.180They're happy to help send guys to help him win re-election.
00:03:09.580I don't know why they just, you know, just don't sort this out, my gentlemen.
00:23:46.880When you're a new party, you have that luxury.
00:23:49.440And there is something appealing about somebody who gets kicked out of the party because he doesn't follow, you know, the bromide of the day, in this case about global warming.
00:24:00.740And sort of comes back and does a reverse takeover.
00:24:40.660He kicked this guy out for no good reason, and now he is given his abject total political surrender.
00:24:48.460But there's also a part of me that thinks Kevin Falcon did the noble thing here for the first, because, you know, I'm generally like, I like political diversity, where there's actual differences between the parties.
00:25:02.420But the BC, BC United slash BC Liberals exists or existed for one reason and one reason only.
00:25:10.740And that is the traditional role of the British Columbia's stop the Socialist Party.
00:25:16.620And, you know, we've talked, I think we talked about this last, we've talked about this many times before.
00:25:21.740It's taken the form of the Conservatives a long time ago, and then it took the form of Social Credit, and then it took the form of the Liberals.
00:25:27.700And now it's taking the form of the Conservatives again.
00:25:30.480The Conservatives are just a much more robust version of it than, say, the Liberals were.
00:25:34.080This is more in line with maybe the earlier Liberals or versions of Social Credit, Van Der Zand, guys like that.
00:25:40.060So, the BC United Liberal Party existed only for the sole purpose of keeping the NDP out.
00:25:48.680Its continued existence was working to achieve the exact opposite of its stated purpose of existence.
00:25:55.780So, how do you think history is going to look at Kevin Falcon here?
00:26:03.160And let's just say, for argument's sake, the Conservatives do win.
00:26:06.620Because I'd say, at this point, I'd favor them to win.
00:26:09.840Not just to play him dunk, but I'm making a bet.
00:26:11.820I'm going to say it's probably Conservatives.
00:26:12.960Is it going to view him as this hapless disaster of a leader who tried to kill their leader and was, you know, had to surrender in humiliation on the way out?
00:26:25.040Or the man who, yeah, maybe screwed up, but did the right thing to help defeat the Socialists?
00:26:31.780How do you think history of BC is going to remember Kevin Falcon?
00:26:34.460I think, for the most part, people won't remember him at all.
00:26:36.420Well, it's not saying he hasn't been in that terribly long.
00:26:48.780I mean, people currently are saying thank you for taking one for the team because this was putting a real risk of putting the NDP back in.
00:26:56.640But realistically, they still kind of in the back of their minds are saying, but you put us here in the first bloody place to begin with.
00:27:02.680So, I noticed he stepped right out, too.
00:27:05.560He said, you know, I'm not running, I'm not doing, I'm gone, I'm done.
00:27:09.400I can imagine there's been some backroom discussions.
00:27:11.920I remember when the Wild Roles and the Alberta Alliance came together and I was on the board back then.
00:27:15.560It took till our donors basically were smacking our heads together saying, look, you're not getting any money, you're not getting any support unless you get it together.
00:27:22.600We're not telling you how to do it, we're just saying do it or you're broke.
00:27:25.580And I'm certain the discussions got to that point in BC.
00:27:28.940It wasn't a point of principle, I think, so much with Falcon to step aside.
00:27:34.060It was a realization that it still would look better doing this now than going into an election, getting obliterated, but being known as the spoiler who put the NDP back in for four more years.
00:27:43.760So, he's, yeah, not to be too cruel, but I think he's going to be viewed as a political blip, you know, a footnote for political wonks like us, but people in general, he just kind of came and went.
00:27:55.360I think in large measure, you're right.
00:27:59.040I mean, he had no choice, but I think to surrender, but to make, to actually do it.
00:28:06.360I've never seen anything like, some people have tried to compare it to Daniel Smith's floor crossing from the Wild Roles of the P season in December 2015, sorry, 2014.
00:28:26.620I mean, what's he going to do, sit as a backbencher in Redstead's caucus after he got kicked, after he kicked Redstead out, he came back and ate him alive?
00:28:34.160I think he did do the right thing, and I think he, he did do it in large measure for the right reasons, but I think he also did it at the end of the road.
00:28:46.620They were looking at zero seats, and he helped, at the very least, save some of his colleagues' seats.
00:28:52.780So part of this, it's not that, the reason I said earlier it was a nearly unconditional surrender is because there does seem to have been some conditions.
00:29:02.000The B.C. Conservatives have reopened their nominations, and that is to allow some of these B.C. United Liberals to come over and sit.
00:29:10.980Well, you still want to keep your incumbents if you can get them.
00:29:12.940Now, they're not taking all of them because some of them are real liberals, real, real liberals that probably don't belong in the B.C. Conservative Party.
00:29:20.600But, you know, some of them, some of them probably do belong in there, and they want to bring them along.
00:29:24.860And that's tough for people who won nominations to be the B.C. Conservative candidate, and all of a sudden, the leader's saying, hey, in the name of the greater good, I'm sorry, you got to go.
00:29:36.860We're making room for the B.C. United Liberal candidate that you were opposed to just 24 hours ago.
00:29:44.200So, you know, the B.C. Conservatives are swallowing some here.
00:29:47.740In order for Kevin Falcon to wear, to be able to say with a straight face, they said they're going to improve their vetting process because, you know,
00:29:54.920they were going after some B.C. Conservative candidates that maybe said some embarrassing things.
00:30:00.480And, you know, Corey and I, we came from wild rows in tough times.
00:30:05.580It's hard to do a thorough vetting of all your candidates.
00:30:08.320So when you're small and you don't have huge resources to put a private investigator to go through the toilet paper of every candidate, I mean, it's, you can end up with some.
00:30:19.680As Nigel said, there's still some room for some eruptions.
00:30:23.160You can imagine there's probably already knowledge on the part of the B.C. NDP, but they're keeping their powder dry.
00:31:08.600Well, let's, speaking of elections, let's talk about some of the only politicians in the civilized world who were not elected in what are nominally a democracy.
00:31:21.680So just the other week, Justin Trudeau appointed the very nonpartisan, totally not anti-conservative liberal Charles Adler to the Senate to represent Manitoba.
00:31:34.760Well, Manitoba does not hold Senate elections, so whatever.
00:31:42.280You know, but it just sticks, I think, under all of our claws a bit that Justin Trudeau has the gall to call these people independent, that they're not anything but his servants.
00:31:50.660But, boy, he really went out of his way in Alberta.
00:31:57.360He appointed people who could not get elected dog catcher in Alberta.
00:34:00.760So, this guy, I mean, unfortunately, like many people in this area, went well beyond the perfectly reasonable demands of the gay rights movement for equality.
00:34:57.460The legacy mainstream media paid for by Justin Trudeau, quote him ad nauseum, anytime anything comes up, quoting him with extreme reverence.
00:35:08.980When Daniel Smith announced that Alberta is going to restrict the use of puberty blockers for young children, and that men will not be allowed to play on women's sports teams.
00:35:18.960He came out, and I forget, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but I think, I'm not going on a limb to say, he said, this is going to kill people.
00:35:27.600You're going to kill, you're trying to kill LGTBQ plus ABCXY youth.
00:35:35.780This man is an extremist, and Justin Trudeau found him perfectly suitable to be appointed to the Senate.
00:35:40.900He is also the author of a book, How to Form a Gay-Straight Alliance, which has been endorsed and issued by the Alberta Teachers Association, which seems to very much reflect his views in these matters.
00:35:58.400Well, I don't even really care much about Gay-Straight Alliance's, they're a kid's club.
00:36:05.380My only problem there was the obsessive need for secrecy, to hide everything from parents, which, you know, once upon a time, I was sympathetic to the argument that, okay, well, some kids might not be welcome at home if they come out as gay or something.
00:36:19.860But then the obsession with secrecy around this stuff just started to get a little too fishy for me now, and I just don't trust activists like this.
00:36:31.740Nigel, you called this a very deliberate insult to Albertan's disappointment.
00:36:36.660Well, I did, and the reason that I did so was that Premier Smith has taken what I think is a widely supported position with regard to gender transition.
00:36:48.040She has said that children 17 years old and under will not be able to do this.
00:37:00.980And that recognizes that when they are adults, if that's what they want to do, they can do it.
00:37:10.900But as she said when she made the original announcement, that period of life is one when people often are quite confused and mixed up, and the job is to get them through it later, if they are determined, then they can do it.
00:37:26.960So this, of course, is anathema to people who think in the manner of Dr. Wells.
00:37:34.440They feel and have been actively pursuing, and that's a little bit part where these gay-straight alliances led to,
00:37:43.260the idea that there was a secret life that a child could have and that the parents didn't have a right to know
00:37:50.400and that the state could become in place of the parents and permit and allow these surgeries and these puberty blockers to be issued.
00:40:29.700You guys are all wasting your time on this election.
00:40:32.360This is just another opportunity for him to do like his father did,
00:40:35.340and give the finger to the West, and that's what this is.
00:40:37.280He's using the Senate to basically say, up yours, I don't care what you think,
00:40:40.800and I can just show you how I don't care what you think,
00:40:43.440by picking senators who are truly the opposite of what the majority of your province wants to see representing you.
00:40:50.300So, I mean, Eric, Maruti didn't seem surprised at all by this.
00:40:54.020I mean, they go into it knowing their chances of being appointed by a liberal government are pretty much slim to none.
00:41:01.780The other thing that was noteworthy, though, is that those seats had been vacant for years.
00:41:05.800This isn't something that he needed to do.
00:41:08.280Well, that adds another element to it.
00:41:10.880Maybe he is worried about the security of his government when he's starting to fill these seats,
00:41:14.560when he's taken years leaving them vacant.
00:41:16.200Well, one of the biggest mistakes of Stephen Harper was leaving so many vacancies at the end of his prime ministership to be filled by Justin Trudeau.
00:41:23.920The Senate is just such a sick and abused institution from many governments, not just the liberals, actually,