Western Standard - Liberal⧸NDP bill to ban pro-oil speech

00:00:00.000 Good day. Today is June 5th, 2024.

00:00:27.740 I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:00:32.360 We've got our usual lineup today, Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford.

00:00:37.600 Hello again.

00:00:38.560 Hello.

00:00:39.200 And Western Standard senior Alberta columnist, Corey Morgan.

00:00:42.260 Good evening.

00:00:43.820 It is a good evening.

00:00:45.140 All right.

00:00:46.180 Well, we've got a good show.

00:00:47.360 We're going to talk about a liberal NDP bill making its way through Parliament right now that would ban oil companies, oil and gas companies, not the resource companies, from talking about anything good that they do about the environment.

00:01:05.200 It's possibly the most anti-free speech bill.

00:01:09.880 There's actually, there's been so many of them.

00:01:11.300 I don't know even how they stack up.

00:01:12.760 It's hard to measure which one's the worst.

00:01:13.940 Yeah, but this one's not even using the hurt feelings, woke language.

00:01:18.700 This one is...

00:01:20.100 Power from the top.

00:01:21.520 Yeah, it's just...

00:01:23.600 You can't say this.

00:01:24.340 This one's old school authoritarian.

00:01:25.620 They're not even dressing up in the new school way.

00:01:27.600 It's quite something.

00:01:29.320 We're going to talk about pride inflation.

00:01:32.980 You know, I didn't know a lot of gay people as a younger kid.

00:01:36.740 I came up in a small town.

00:01:38.520 At least I didn't know a lot of openly gay people. 1.00

00:01:40.960 You know, I came around to gay pride.

00:01:42.160 I'm like, okay, I get it.

00:01:43.200 You know, they need to stand up and show themselves, show that they're visible and they're proud of who they are.

00:01:49.220 That's okay, good.

00:01:50.680 And they even had a flag for it.

00:01:52.220 They took over the rainbow.

00:01:53.300 I was like, I like the rainbow.

00:01:54.460 Okay, fine, they can have the rainbow.

00:01:56.260 But now it's not a Gay Pride day.

00:02:01.120 It's not a Gay Pride week.

00:02:03.280 It's not a Gay Pride month.

00:02:04.480 There's a Gay Pride season.

00:02:06.080 And the acronym LGTBQ plus XYZ, it keeps on expanding. The flag changes every week. So we're going to talk about pride inflation. I think we need an economics lesson here in how things work, that the more you just fill something up, the less it's actually worth.

00:02:27.220 And we're going to talk about Ottawa's crackdown on non-smoking alternatives.

00:02:33.200 People like me, who I was smoking since I was a kid in the eighth grade.

00:02:38.320 My father, his father before him, multi-generational smoker.

00:02:42.560 And people like me were able to stop smoking by switching to the incredibly less lethal options like vaping.

00:02:50.860 And the federal liberals in their wisdom are cracking down on trying to stamp it out and move us right back to tobacco.

00:02:59.700 Before we get to these topics, though, I think it's important for us to note that tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.

00:03:09.120 um i've got a mixed background in my family history but uh on my mother's side my my great

00:03:16.100 grandfather uh landed on d-day i think with the princess princess patricia's uh uh light infantry

00:03:22.360 and it was a point of pride of my family very good yeah you know it's um it's been 80 years

00:03:29.100 but you can never stop thinking about this when you look at the pictures we've actually got um

00:03:34.540 an item going in later this afternoon.

00:03:37.720 Later, first thing tomorrow morning,

00:03:39.760 Dave Bakachuk, who's obviously interested

00:03:42.440 in these kinds of commemorations,

00:03:44.880 has got an excellent piece.

00:03:47.900 And Paul Forseth, Member of Parliament,

00:03:51.040 was a Member of Parliament,

00:03:52.420 reflects on the general value of remembrance,

00:03:55.060 but the specific emphasis on D-Day.

00:03:58.580 So it's a really important day

00:04:02.260 for Canadians to remember.

00:04:03.620 June the 6th, 1944, I noticed that D-Day veteran Richard Romer is quite an influential figure,

00:04:16.280 but he was a pilot during the D-Day landings, and he's going over there.

00:04:21.160 He says it'll be the last time, probably it'll be the last decennial celebration for him.

00:04:26.560 Wonderful, though.

00:04:27.380 I can't imagine this being another decennial celebration for any of them.

00:04:30.580 No.

00:04:31.180 I think this has got to be the last.

00:04:32.440 he would do a thing.

00:04:34.160 Yeah, and I read about him as well, and yeah, he's 100 years old, I believe, and said outright.

00:04:40.840 I mean, you can only go so many times.

00:04:42.600 It shows that importance.

00:04:43.900 I think the same thing also said, I mean, among all of the veterans from World War II,

00:04:47.740 there's only about 10,000 left.

00:04:51.560 Just to remind anybody younger, you know, if you get a chance, talk with them.

00:04:55.560 Time passes, and, you know, you'll never learn better than from somebody who actually lived through it.

00:05:00.880 There's a factoid for you though, Corey, the oldest Canadian veteran died while Harper was

00:05:05.400 prime minister. He was 115 years old. I was just about to make a joke of questionable taste that

00:05:12.260 the only veterans living in 110 will be the Japanese or fish all that. They're good for 1.00

00:05:16.340 longevity. Japanese have a secret sauce for longevity. Yeah. Okay. Okay. We'll move on to 1.00

00:05:23.860 regular parts of the show here. So we got a bill, you've got a bill C 59. Yes. Now, this actually

00:05:31.060 goes its predecessor, its mother bill was an NDP private members bill from Charlie Angus among the

00:05:37.720 more he's a long standing member of Parliament. And he's among the more radical left members of

00:05:43.760 the NDP, which is saying something. And his was just an outright ban on oil and gas companies,

00:05:54.500 companies like that, talking about their environmental record. C-59, I think, is

00:06:00.000 essentially the same thing, but this is a government-sponsored liberal bill

00:06:05.000 in concert with the NDP. Nigel, why don't you kind of give us the Coles notes on it?

00:06:10.020 Yeah, well, okay, Cole's notes are that this bill has gone through the House of Commons,

00:06:15.600 gone through the first two readings in the, I was about to say the House of Lords,

00:06:21.840 but the Senate, of course.

00:06:24.700 Ours is somehow a bit more impervious.

00:06:26.780 Indeed.

00:06:27.660 So it's in committee in the Senate.

00:06:31.340 No date given on the legis info on when it's coming out.

00:06:36.120 What it does is that it makes it legal for oil and gas companies to claim that they are doing good things for the environment unless their claims stand up to the environmental, social, and ecological causes or effects of climate change based on an adequate and proper test.

00:07:06.120 the proof of which lies on the person making that representation.

00:07:09.500 And by the way, who gets to say what is a good, reliable test?

00:07:15.380 Well, that would be the liberals.

00:07:17.000 No, no, no. It's worse than that.

00:07:18.740 Internationally recognized methodology.

00:07:21.520 So, in other words, the United Nations will tell you,

00:07:25.400 which is kind of interesting because just today we got the further news

00:07:29.580 that UN Secretary General Gutierrez is calling on countries to ban

00:07:35.920 fossil fuel advertising i guess the liberals beat him to it by a few days but it's pretty

00:07:42.260 clear to see where the where the surely there'll be no communication i i find what you know when

00:07:48.520 he said he used exactly the same phrase about uh or the same argument he says there's a blanket

00:07:54.420 ban on advertising for big tobacco we need the same thing for oil that's exactly what the toronto

00:08:01.820 star says, man, this is just going around and around in a little incestuous pool. 0.99

00:08:06.060 Well, that's where I want to go with this. You know, we're gonna be talking about alternatives

00:08:11.500 to tobacco later. Obviously, you know, tobacco companies made some pretty

00:08:17.100 outrageously false claims back in their day about the health, their health claims around tobacco.

00:08:25.580 But then they were outright banned from advertising, period. And I mean, I can see the

00:08:31.260 merit in it but it was a limit on free speech and no one stood up for them because they're not very

00:08:40.620 no one really wants to stand up for them and I and I and I get why but it set a precedent that

00:08:45.260 you could just ban an industry from speech and the sponsors of this bill and its allies in the media

00:08:53.340 Toronto Star the like they compare this to banning big tobacco from advertising well it was pretty

00:08:59.740 matter-of-factly proven I said at least that tobacco had a very high chance of killing you

00:09:06.540 but you know a lot of these companies are doing what the government is telling them to do and

00:09:10.620 reducing their greenhouse gas emissions but that's not enough they this bill would effectively ban

00:09:17.420 them from talking about environmental goals they have accomplished at the direction of the government

00:09:24.220 And then we've got Gillian Stewart. She's unbelievably former publisher, editor, I think,

00:09:29.180 managing editor of the Herald. She's now I guess, the Alberta columnist for the Toronto Star,

00:09:36.540 reporting what's happening out here in the colonies to the mother country. And she compared

00:09:41.980 it to this, and then quite explicitly said that she wants oil to go the way of the tobacco companies.

00:09:48.460 I mean, it's out of business.

00:09:52.320 Corey, is this bill going to have, do you think this is just kind of a bone thrown to the NDP?

00:10:01.560 It's not going to have any chance of passing, a bone thrown to the radical green wing of the Liberal Party.

00:10:07.380 We're not really going to go anywhere.

00:10:08.740 I think this is a bill that doesn't pass.

00:10:10.020 It's a government bill, and they've been pushing it this far.

00:10:12.400 It's probably going to pass.

00:10:13.400 But, you know, Charlie Angus, I mean, he's a Froot Loop.

00:10:16.640 So we expected that out of him, and they quickly called him out for it, but then come up with their own more nuanced version of the same thing.

00:10:22.600 I don't see this surviving in court, and the absurdity of it.

00:10:27.620 I mean, okay, tobacco is one thing, and even then, as you said, that shows why it's so important to protect this free speech,

00:10:34.620 even if it's from a group or a person or an industry you don't like.

00:10:38.380 I mean, if tobacco completely vanished, the world probably wouldn't be much worse of a place.

00:10:43.880 That's the way it goes.

00:10:44.580 You've been reading my call?

00:10:45.960 No.

00:10:46.180 I should. Sorry. I will. But oil and gas has a large measurable benefit. It keeps us from

00:10:52.980 freezing to death. It allows us to get consumer products to each other affordably. It makes the

00:10:58.640 plastics that we use. There's many, many benefits to society that oil and gas brought. And it take

00:11:04.640 an entire industry. And what this is doing is saying you aren't allowed to defend yourself

00:11:09.060 against our ideologues. And they are ideologues. You aren't allowed to point out anything you've

00:11:13.720 done positively, anything that you've changed in your practices, it's quite, quite outrageous.

00:11:19.220 And it should be called out as such. But this government doesn't seem to be afraid of just,

00:11:24.020 you know, C-69 and their plastic spans. They don't care if the courts are going to throw their bills 0.60

00:11:28.340 out. They just keep hammering us with them anyways, and they will leave it to the courts to deal with.

00:11:33.520 Well, that's, I think, where we should go with the Alberta reaction to it with the Sovereignty Act.

00:11:37.660 Rebecca Schultz, Premier Smith, saying that if they pass

00:11:41.780 this, they will. Premier Smith wants to be the very first person arrested

00:11:45.740 under the bill, and they will invoke the Sovereignty Act.

00:11:50.340 I think the genius of which is, we don't have to wait

00:11:53.860 three, four years for this to go through the Supreme Court, and that it's already been normalized.

00:11:58.100 This puts the burden on Ottawa, then, to sue Alberta, to require us

00:12:01.740 to enforce these crazy laws. I have to say, Corey, that

00:12:05.780 You've got more faith in the Supreme Court of Canada than I do

00:12:08.800 if you think that this will not withstand a challenge for the Supreme Court.

00:12:14.320 These people are capable of anything.

00:12:16.200 This is not the Supreme Court of Canada that you learned about in high school at all.

00:12:22.320 These people are social warriors themselves.

00:12:27.320 But anyway, you're right.

00:12:29.520 Premier Smith has taken an active approach to it.

00:12:33.260 Quite how that would work.

00:12:34.860 remains to be seen.

00:12:36.800 I guess we should let them know now

00:12:39.600 they're free to advertise their product

00:12:41.220 in the Western Standard.

00:12:43.020 That at least will be defended.

00:12:44.640 Anyone watching in charge of any ad budget

00:12:47.160 in the oil and gas industry,

00:12:49.220 we will take your money.

00:12:50.740 We will run your ads.

00:12:52.540 If it's legal in Ottawa or not, we don't care.

00:12:54.660 And we will tell your story too

00:12:56.860 in a fair and honest, even-handed way.

00:13:01.420 So anyway, that's just a little bit of propaganda

00:13:03.900 for us, obviously, but no, the government that you're speaking of, Derek, has long ago lost any

00:13:11.840 affection for the ideal of free speech. They don't believe in it anymore. I mean, it manifests from

00:13:17.900 the legislation that they bring forward, forever tightening its grip on what you can say here,

00:13:24.420 what you can say there, what you can say in the newspaper, what you can say on the internet.

00:13:28.580 They want complete control. So we said, well, what about free speech? Don't give a damn about

00:13:33.200 free speech. Well, this, you know, this is the liberals fail to ask themselves, and actually

00:13:39.060 conservatives often fail to ask themselves this too, and they pass a law. How would you feel if

00:13:43.940 your opponents use this law against you? So new Democrats and liberals, I don't think they've

00:13:50.660 gone through the thought exercise here that theoretically, Trudeau might not be prime

00:13:55.340 minister someday. Theoretically, people might vote this guy out. And what would how would they feel?

00:14:01.000 How would they react if the conservatives simply amended this bill and said, you know, did a control F and find and replace in the word document here and replaced oil and gas with environmental lobby groups.

00:14:15.580 And so environmental lobby groups are not allowed to speak. So the way this is done is say, well, they can't say it if it's not truthful.

00:14:24.320 And they have to prove it's truthful by this measure that we are saying. We're saying this is truth. This is not truth.

00:14:30.060 And if you say it, and it doesn't fit our definition of truth, it's illegal. So how would they feel if these conservatives came to power and they did a find word and replace and just changed oil and gas industry to environmental group and changed who set the definition of what that truth was.

00:14:46.140 And all of a sudden, we're going to start jailing and people like Stephen Gilbo for speaking their minds and in his mind, what he says is true.

00:14:55.460 And I believe what he thinks and what he says is is true. It's crazy, but he thinks it's true.

00:15:01.300 Perhaps we should throw them in jail. 0.56

00:15:03.560 Well, people should use should use that thought exercise with any empowerment of the government.

00:15:09.940 Always think of it. How would it fare in the hands of the most malevolent person I can think of?

00:15:15.560 That's why you want to limit the power of government whenever possible.

00:15:18.900 Any legislation should be drafted in mind with whoever is in charge at any given time

00:15:23.560 may not be the right person to have that authority.

00:15:27.540 But we don't think that way, unfortunately.

00:15:29.280 It's myopic.

00:15:30.020 It's short term.

00:15:31.100 And I think, again, some of it's just trying to save their hides, I guess.

00:15:35.580 They want to be able to create a demon that they can beat down during the next election,

00:15:41.060 and it'll be the oil and gas companies, and it'll be illegal for them to defend themselves.

00:15:44.140 You know, years ago, before he died, I knew the late, great Doug Christie, and we were talking about things.

00:15:51.260 I imagine you would, yes.

00:15:53.740 Anyway, he put it very succinct.

00:15:55.420 He said, listen, what they forget is this.

00:15:57.060 You're in the saddle today.

00:15:58.760 Tomorrow, you're under the horse's heels.

00:16:00.620 That's what these guys are forgetting.

00:16:03.460 All right.

00:16:05.580 Well, let's turn now to pride inflation.

00:16:10.080 I coined the term this morning, I think.

00:16:11.840 I don't know if anyone else has used it before, but it came to me.

00:16:17.840 You know, you know, Canadians have broadly come to accept the rights of gay, lesbian, et cetera, people, sexual minorities, broadly speaking.

00:16:28.840 But actually, there was an interesting poll just a few weeks ago that support for some of these rights is actually now declining.

00:16:34.840 And that's never happened before. It's been a pretty steady trajectory in the direction of approving.

00:16:40.840 And now what's going down for the first time. And, you know, the Toronto Star Canadian press post media articles, I saw in this, none of them stopped the question. They all said, well, it's misinformation. It's American influence right wing hate groups. No, never. No one stopped to think that perhaps it was the cause by the radical activists themselves. It was, you know, not just celebrating or accepting people for who they are, but that it can be a little too much in your

00:17:10.820 And it seems almost inflationary that that economic term would apply here.

00:17:15.820 You know, we have, you know, start with LG B and then LGTBT.

00:17:22.820 And then that alphabet has just grown to include a ton of the alphabet and even various characters in it.

00:17:30.820 The pride flag was just a rainbow flag at first.

00:17:35.820 first. And it's changed, it's changed, it's changed. And it seems to change every month.

00:17:40.780 I saw a video of Justin Trudeau raising it on Parliament Hill, and I didn't recognize that one.

00:17:45.180 It just changed. I didn't even hear that one changed. And, you know, we're now entering,

00:17:50.540 I guess, Pride season. I didn't know what season until just a few days ago. You know,

00:17:57.420 there was Pride Day and cities would have gay pride parades and, you know, some of them would

00:18:02.220 you just find some of them were maybe a little less than appropriate for families and children

00:18:07.260 but different cities had different ones and there was pride day it was a day 0.99

00:18:10.860 and then with pride week was pride month now pride season now pride season really stops meaning

00:18:18.860 anything you've you've watered it down it's not a day to you say you know we're standing up for

00:18:23.820 our rights anymore it's just watered down cory um do you think that you know the not gay people 0.55

00:18:31.820 obviously but the act the more extreme activist identity politics kind of woke political class

00:18:38.460 uh the claims leadership of the movement at least do you think they're harming themselves by

00:18:42.780 essentially just uh expanding it to a degree where it's just inflated like the value of money now

00:18:48.780 yes they've overplayed it you know as i said earlier there was the goal line they they were

00:18:53.260 pursuing some pretty solid goals fair enough you know sexual orientation wasn't protected

00:18:57.820 as a category for people for employment or education. Likewise, you know, marriage wasn't

00:19:04.000 allowed. These were some solid things to pursue, even if some might still debate whether they

00:19:08.740 should have got them or not, but they got them. And they've run out. They built their identity

00:19:14.040 around being activists, not the cause. So now they have to keep trying to find more things to fight

00:19:19.400 about and more time to push on it. What else are we supposed to accept? What else are we supposed

00:19:24.200 to say? How long am I supposed to wear a rainbow? And it can have a backlash because people just

00:19:29.700 get tired of it. It's unfair to the LGBTQ people who just want to live. I don't think you got the 1.00

00:19:35.220 acronym right. I can't keep up with it. I'm not even going to try. You know, there's a good meme

00:19:39.920 I've seen. Like a lot of memes, there's good ones and bad ones. But one of them showed a cartoon of

00:19:44.140 a kid coming home from school and he's looking at the middle of the mother and says, so what did you

00:19:47.520 learn in school today? The kid bends over and he pukes and a big rainbow blasts all over the floor.

00:19:52.300 because he got so overloaded with it and it loses its meaning it loses its basis and and and

00:20:00.800 unfortunately for the people who are intolerant when you keep pushing and pushing and pushing

00:20:05.180 eventually they get sick of it and they push back and that's when you truly do get a problem well

00:20:09.680 I think even tolerant people who have bought in they're starting to check out what's going on

00:20:15.700 yeah I mean and what's special about it anymore uh you know I I wrote about that I went to a pride

00:20:20.960 parade in the late 90s and actually it influenced me. I thought it was quite something. I didn't

00:20:24.840 really want to go. My girlfriend at the time dragged me because a friend of hers was singing

00:20:28.440 in a choir. Was that a pun? Dragged you? No, it was an unintentional one. Well done. It was a good

00:20:37.060 event actually. It was just hanging with some other people and helping an uncomfortable young

00:20:40.880 guy like me who didn't really know. They're just people. They're doing their thing. But that was a

00:20:45.340 one-day event and it was pretty benign and it was welcoming everybody to come out. Let's meet and

00:20:49.380 greet and barbecue and watch a parade now again yeah it's a whole season and and and some of these

00:20:54.780 events are getting pretty risque they're not just a meet and greet with the local members of the

00:20:58.720 community they're they're getting offensive uh which again with i think activists if you can't

00:21:03.060 grab attention they feel tempted to just get more and more in your face and that's when you see those

00:21:07.820 pictures of you know a guy in a leather thong in front of children or something at these parades

00:21:12.500 or the toronto ones they don't even bother with the leather yeah you're really losing an entire

00:21:17.380 narrative and actually setting things back and that's problematic yeah you know i mean i like

00:21:22.100 beef but i wouldn't want it every day and i think that's part of the problem that you know there was

00:21:26.580 a cliche is that the love that durst not speak its name well the love that durst not speak its name

00:21:34.580 no will not shut up and it's just too much it's beef every day so it's uh you know they're often

00:21:42.660 lauded for being well-funded and capably advised from a PR point of view, but somebody has actually

00:21:48.540 not realized that you can overdo it. Well, it's the shaming almost. You know, I use that analogy

00:21:55.580 if you're a Seinfeld watcher. There was the one with Kramer when it was an AIDS march. Who doesn't 0.93

00:22:00.480 want the watch? Yeah, he wouldn't wear the ribbon, you know, and he just said, I support the Cosner.

00:22:04.120 I just don't want to wear the ribbon. That's happening to businesses now because you've got

00:22:07.500 activists going to the doors downtown saying, why isn't there a pride sticker on the door of your

00:22:11.240 business why aren't you flying a flag outside like they're getting that in your face and they're

00:22:15.960 getting that pressuring if if you have to twist an arm to get on display you're going to cause

00:22:21.080 resentment yeah you got to give it a gift jen jen hodson our reporter a hand for actually going

00:22:26.120 through the records and finding an example of each of these flags now whether she got them all i

00:22:30.760 don't know but she's got six of them illustrated in the article there i recommend uh recommend to

00:22:36.680 the readers and have a look, you know, it's just not controlled. It's nuts. And, you know,

00:22:42.500 there is always going to be a small group of people who just don't accept these people for

00:22:46.760 who they are. That's always going to be there. But I think they're losing reasonable people who

00:22:52.420 they who they have won over. You know, when when same sex marriage was passed into law, I think

00:22:58.860 circa 2004 or five on the Paul Martin government. It was not broadly supported. Public opinion was

00:23:06.700 changing, but it was not just getting in the 60% maybe at that. It was not dominantly. It was not

00:23:15.580 something we just all said yes to a very significant number of even liberal MPs

00:23:22.140 voted against same sex marriage. Today, it's almost unanimously. There were some people some people were against it because they didn't like gay people. But some people were against it because they thought it was a slippery slope. They had they had concerns. And most of those concerns weren't borne out. It didn't destroy the institution of marriage. Most of the damage done to that was already done by straight people. 0.98

00:23:45.940 So long before we let them into the club, we had burned the place down.

00:23:52.580 Now, it has progressed far beyond gay marriage to, you know, drag queens dancing in front of little kids now,

00:24:00.340 and leather daddies with barely stitching clothing on in front of children.

00:24:05.360 There is some odd stuff, but that's not fair to attribute to most people in that community.

00:24:10.200 But it's the activist class that is hell-bent on shoving it in people's face, 0.87

00:24:15.020 and it's turning people off

00:24:16.520 who they had already won to their cause.

00:24:19.680 That's it.

00:24:20.100 And I think the original activists,

00:24:22.240 perhaps they didn't anticipate,

00:24:23.660 that's not what they were looking for.

00:24:24.900 They just wanted to say,

00:24:25.600 I want to marry my loved one

00:24:26.880 and things like that.

00:24:29.120 I look at it sort of like

00:24:30.100 the medically assisted death.

00:24:31.260 I interviewed one of the lawyers for,

00:24:34.420 what was her name, Shriver?

00:24:36.660 She was the one,

00:24:38.900 she's Fender Robinson again coming up,

00:24:40.520 but wanted assisted suicide

00:24:42.120 way back in the 90s.

00:24:43.060 And I asked him, I said, is this what you were envisioning?

00:24:46.060 He said, no, we were looking at having people who were in a lot of pain and definitely terminal and so on.

00:24:53.060 And they never envisioned that we're going to start doing it for people with a mental health problem or youth or things like that.

00:25:00.060 The early activists had a cause in mind.

00:25:03.060 The later activists, they just have to keep pushing farther.

00:25:06.060 And it's time for people to kind of say, that's enough.

00:25:09.060 You know, get the brakes.

00:25:11.060 All right. Speaking of going too far, that's a good segue into our next topic. So, you know, as I said at the top of the show, I was a smoker from the eighth grade. I remember my first cigarette and I loved it.

00:25:25.220 And I was hooked right away.

00:25:29.900 That's what I spent my allowance on.

00:25:32.680 And then I got a job so I could buy cheap beer and smokes.

00:25:38.280 And, you know, I struggled with quitting my whole life

00:25:43.760 and I just couldn't stick with quitting.

00:25:46.340 I'd always end up back on smoking.

00:25:49.680 And that's the case for a lot of people

00:25:53.600 until alternative products came along.

00:25:56.360 Off the screen here, I've got a vape.

00:26:00.340 And those of you who have seen me around the newsroom

00:26:02.180 puffing on this thing all day.

00:26:04.740 And I'd rather not have it,

00:26:07.660 but I've settled for it as a vastly lesser evil

00:26:11.400 compared to cigarettes.

00:26:13.860 And in addition to not smelling like secondhand smoke all day,

00:26:17.440 I don't cough.

00:26:19.460 I can breathe just fine.

00:26:21.540 it's a well it's probably not positive for your health it is infinitesimally less dangerous and

00:26:30.180 lethal to you to use and places like Britain have embraced it as harm reduction the kind

00:26:37.300 of language liberals use when they're talking about math oh you know heroin things like this

00:26:42.900 they talk about harm reduction we're gonna give you a less harmful version of this and that stuff

00:26:47.820 is only barely less harmful than the stuff they're taking off the streets. The vaping is generally

00:26:52.620 about, considered about 95% less harmful. It's got nicotine in it. Nicotine's addictive, highly

00:26:59.420 addictive, but it doesn't have any of the carcinogens that kill you when you burn it, like with a

00:27:04.800 cigarette. And you've got Mark Holland. The liberals have been kind of backing off their push to crack

00:27:10.560 down on vaping. Then Mark Holland comes in, and he's an old school tobacco active, anti-tobacco

00:27:15.680 activist. But like some other causes, they achieved everything they wanted. You know,

00:27:21.500 they've got insanely high taxes, even though that's driving the black market now in tobacco.

00:27:26.260 They banned it from anywhere. You have to go stand like a hobo in the alley if you want to

00:27:30.120 have a cigarette, keep it in the middle of the winter. They want everything. They got everything

00:27:34.400 they wanted. And they're out of things to fight about. And so now they go after the miracle

00:27:40.820 product that has finally gotten the last holdout, people like me, off of tobacco, and they want to

00:27:47.940 ban flavors because it's just too damn good. Nigel, we've had some columns come out on this

00:27:57.540 that you've overseen here, and the evidence is just overwhelming that this is just going to

00:28:01.940 lead people to either getting, we're still going to have flavored vapes just from the black market,

00:28:08.500 which is generally a lot less safe than the stuff that's regulated and taxed or people are just going

00:28:13.540 to go back to tobacco well you know isn't it interesting derek that the same people who don't

00:28:19.300 want you to be able to say what you think about oil and gas don't want you to be able to have

00:28:24.580 your choice of recreational harmless relatively harmless tobacco substitute there is this appetite

00:28:32.180 for control within the liberal government the true liberal government that um it's almost as

00:28:39.620 if they have to be making a headline with something and one of these days i'm going to

00:28:43.860 find a politician who says if elected i promise to do nothing and i will vote for that man even

00:28:49.940 if it's a member of a party even if he's representing a party that i currently don't

00:28:54.820 support nevertheless to your specific point the the issue that we had in a column this week

00:29:02.740 was that they're going after flavored what do you call what do you put in vape juice

00:29:09.940 vape juice all right so apparently there are different flavors you should probably be talking

00:29:15.060 talking uh more about this because i think i smell most of them but around the office but at any rate

00:29:20.980 You know, the idea is that if you can be satisfied with that, you're less likely to go out, get a pack of Benson and Hedges and pollute your throat.

00:29:32.340 Let me just say, as a non-smoker, I do recognize that whatever the health detriments to smoking there have been, far more people have had far more pleasure out of smoking tobacco since Sir Walter Raleigh first loaded a pipe and his servant thought he would set himself on fire with all the smoke and doused him with water.

00:30:00.680 From that day forward, there have been far more people who've had far more pleasure out of tobacco than have ever had satisfaction out of anything this liberal government has done.

00:30:11.620 And certainly, I'd have to say that, I don't know, some of them probably would say it was worth it, even if it did.

00:30:18.660 I just want to unpackage what you said there.

00:30:20.640 Are you saying that the liberals are worse for your health than tobacco?

00:30:24.880 Actually, on a broad scale of comparison, I am.

00:30:28.440 I would disagree.

00:30:29.480 Corey, we've seen this before. So Quebec actually has already banned flavored vapes, but it's still everywhere. You still get it. It's just, you know, Quebec has a particularly thriving organized crime scene, and they've just, they've taken it over. There is still flavored vape everywhere. You want to get it in Quebec? You can get it in Quebec. It's easy. It's very easy.

00:30:56.180 but officially there's none sold. There's not a single dollar brought in from the taxes on this

00:31:05.720 stuff. They're just going to push it straight into the black market or even worse, right back

00:31:11.720 to tobacco probably. Well, or I mean, if you actually start getting it from black market

00:31:16.480 sources, that's when you start getting somebody say, you know, gee, I found an internet recipe

00:31:20.220 and I can make this stuff at home. You could actually start getting some vape juices that

00:31:24.040 are harmful and dangerous because they won't necessarily be produced in a controlled environment

00:31:28.740 and you're getting something more dangerous out there. You hit it on the head at the start. It's

00:31:33.780 when the activists, again, we keep hitting that. They've achieved all their goals. They can't stop

00:31:38.380 themselves anymore. They've got to keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And we saw that in Calgary.

00:31:43.620 They were trying to ban vaping in city parks. Why? You're outdoors. You're in a park. There's

00:31:49.240 no second-hand vape health issues. It could only not even really smell the thing. It's harm

00:31:54.580 mitigation, but they just can't stop themselves. I was a heavy, heavy smoker throughout my 20s and

00:32:00.760 30s, and when I used to survey... You were a rig pick. Well, yeah, when I was a surveyor, I'd always

00:32:06.300 smoke with a cigarette, stick it out the side of my mouth, so I wouldn't mash it into my transit

00:32:09.220 when I go ahead. When I get home, I'd drive my ex-wife crazy, because I'd still smoke like this

00:32:12.460 for a while, until I got used to being in the civilized world again. So that's where it all

00:32:16.780 came apart was it well there was a number of things but that was a contributing factor and

00:32:21.380 but I quit and it took I used the patch and actually I spoke so much I had to put multiple

00:32:27.220 patches on and it did help me though it took the edge off it was a months of misery I mean there's

00:32:32.360 a few failed efforts but I finally finally quit smoking and it was terrible I don't think I would

00:32:37.960 have managed it without the patch that was a nicotine replacement route vaping wasn't around

00:32:42.660 yet, maybe I would have gone that route. But I'm very happy I quit, but I needed help to quit.

00:32:47.300 These sorts of lunatics, I could see them going after the patch too. Well, it's just another

00:32:51.140 nicotine delivery system. You know, this is... Well, that is the language they're using,

00:32:54.740 is that nicotine is what's bad. Nicotine is an addictive agent, but it's not

00:33:01.780 harmful to your health in and of itself. It's not as the tar and everything else that comes

00:33:05.460 with conventional syndrome. It's that it's in with all the carcinogens and tobacco that when

00:33:08.580 combusted that's what's bad for your health the the the nicotine itself is a

00:33:13.980 million addictive agent not otherwise significantly bad for you but now

00:33:18.600 they're not talking about tobacco anymore they're talking about just

00:33:21.080 nicotine and this is you know this is where the anti-smoking lobby should have

00:33:26.880 claimed their greatest victory by doing what we've done we have forced the

00:33:32.100 market to innovate and create this alternative and this is the final nail

00:33:37.940 coffin of cigarettes people always going to have you know the occasional celebratory cigar or pipe or something you know on the occasional side.

00:33:44.940 But this they should have celebrated and embraced as their greatest achievement that their work incentivize the creation of this which is will finally end cigarettes.

00:33:54.940 But instead they haven't because there's still these organizations sitting around and they've got payroll to meet they've got pensions they've got organizations with power and

00:34:04.940 and prestige to maintain and they have to fight about something. So they pick something that is

00:34:09.380 that should be their ally. I wonder how many people in Canada realize that the payroll you

00:34:14.380 just mentioned is largely met by federal grants. Yeah, it's not even donors. It's just government

00:34:20.000 money. Typically is, yeah, health grants and these activist groups. And again, isn't harm

00:34:25.020 mitigation supposed to be the goal? But no, they throw it out the window and it clashes with their

00:34:29.100 your ideology and that's what reason goes out the window um let's uh maybe just uh we'll check in

00:34:37.980 just do a quick update on uh where the ndp leadership ndp alberta ndp leadership race is

00:34:43.660 that we talked about it last week we're really getting down to the wire now i think we're what

00:34:47.740 june 22nd is that the date yeah yeah june uh june 22nd so voting is actually underway

00:34:53.500 right now. Is there last debate? I think tomorrow? I'm not sure. I can only see so much of those.

00:35:08.060 I have to take my socialism in small doses. I can't end the whole NDP season. I can deal with

00:35:13.980 NDP day, maybe even NDP week, but NDP season is a bit much. Just another 18 days. Yeah.

00:35:18.300 We're headed there. It's been, I mean, compared to what we're used to with conservative leadership races in Alberta, such a polite and tame affair.

00:35:29.480 Are lefties just generally more polite in these things?

00:35:36.080 Is it that, Nigel, do you think they're maybe pulling their punches a bit

00:35:41.240 because it seems so inevitable so quickly once Nenshi entered that he was going to win

00:35:45.100 and that it may be a bad career move to burn it to the ground so hard

00:35:50.460 if this guy was inevitably going to win anyway?

00:35:52.820 Yeah, I think that's pretty largely it.

00:35:55.120 And so they very much regret the passing of those days because Danielle Smith, whether you like her or don't like her, certainly has ideas.

00:36:06.020 And she's driven by those ideas and not by the meeting of interests within the party to nearly the same degree.

00:36:15.320 So there's some genuine bad feelings there because people's, I guess, their contracts were upset by the change.

00:36:22.820 In the NDP, the only real divide is between the unions, which have their clear interest in the outcome, and the ideologues, who still believe in some kind of socialist, communist, well, let's just say socialist outcome for Alberta.

00:36:47.640 Well, as you say, it looks like Menchie, who is pragmatic, at least in that debate, is going to take it.

00:36:58.780 So why ruin your chances of becoming health minister and then quietly doing what you wanted to do anyway?

00:37:07.280 Or education minister, which is where the real worry is.

00:37:11.040 Corey, I think there also might be something just to a different culture.

00:37:15.260 The lefties, I think, in Alberta especially, but maybe even more broadly, they look out for each other.

00:37:20.860 They take care of their own, like conservatives don't.

00:37:22.920 If they're going to fight, they'll keep it behind closed doors.

00:37:25.260 They won't go screaming, it's a public like a conservative.

00:37:28.220 They take care of their own when, you know, if their MLA or MPs are defeated, they're going to find them a job over here.

00:37:35.240 They're going to put them in this board or agency or something.

00:37:37.720 Now, all parties do that to some extent, but I think the NDP just has a longer tradition, a better record, not just in Alberta, because they only have one term in Alberta, but as a culture of keeping the real nastiness behind doors as much as possible and kind of just taking care of their own when the dust settles.

00:37:58.980 Whereas conservatives, we just love ripping each other's heads off.

00:38:03.080 We love blood on the floor.

00:38:06.220 And there's good to that.

00:38:07.360 There's also consequences to it.

00:38:09.540 Well, and just conservatives aren't good followers.

00:38:12.340 You're talking about people with an individualist bent to them.

00:38:14.800 They're people who don't like being told what to do.

00:38:17.920 It's just kind of a bit of it in your nature.

00:38:19.860 And when you are in something of a top-down, centralized sort of party,

00:38:23.480 like the left tends to have, you're a person who follows.

00:38:27.380 So you might not agree with the leader at all the time, but you just, this is your role.

00:38:31.460 You will follow the leader, talk behind closed doors if you want to change things, but you're

00:38:35.220 not going to burn the thing to the ground to get rid of your own leader.

00:38:38.600 The party of the lemming. 1.00

00:38:39.720 Yes.

00:38:40.180 And I think it's the left's biggest strength and their biggest weakness at the same time,

00:38:44.100 because yes, the leader could lead them right off a cliff, but it can also lead them to

00:38:47.820 victory because they aren't all busy trying to rip each other's throats out when, you

00:38:51.300 know, conservative parties are doing that, when they should be focusing on an election.

00:38:55.240 But it'll be interesting, one of the bigger things, too, with Nenshi, he is a pragmatist, but he's hinted at it, but he hasn't set out right with it.

00:39:02.420 One of his biggest weaknesses, and you know the UCP is going to hit him with it, is they are tied and subservient to the federal party.

00:39:10.160 And they're going to twist that knife on Nenshi, and will he try to decouple, like, formally, the provincial party from the federal entity?

00:39:19.600 And that would really put a lot of pressure on the ideologues.

00:39:22.280 Do you want to stick true to your NDP,

00:39:24.340 centralized roots as a branch outlet of the federal party?

00:39:28.480 Or do you want to have a better,

00:39:30.180 because they would be more electable if they were separate.

00:39:32.080 It'd be a smart move for them, I think.

00:39:34.180 That could be a real test for their party

00:39:36.940 if he tries to go that route.

00:39:37.940 So it'll be an interesting watch.

00:39:42.120 Just a little bit of time we got left here.

00:39:45.640 We're gonna start some week.

00:39:47.040 We haven't had a good battle on the show in a while.

00:39:50.680 I guess I got two.

00:39:52.280 Probability that someone whose name is not Nenshi can win.

00:39:56.380 The two other biggest candidates, I think most indications are Sarah Hoffman, former health minister, and Kathleen Ganley, former minister of justice, attorney general.

00:40:05.960 If it is not Nenshi, it's going to be one of those two.

00:40:11.080 I think we all agree it's not likely to be anyone but Nenshi.

00:40:14.800 But I'll start with you, Nigel.

00:40:16.860 Probability that someone besides Nenshi could win.

00:40:20.400 Very low.

00:40:21.000 But if it was somebody other than Nenshi, my bet would be Kathleen Ganley.

00:40:28.960 I think one of the things that we didn't mention was the very heavy enrollment in the NDP here in Calgary.

00:40:37.820 And that's got to have an effect upon the outcome in this thing.

00:40:42.640 It's going to have an effect, I think, on the way that the NDP handles itself in the future.

00:40:48.180 Yeah. And, Corey, chances, probability that anyone whose name is not Nenshi, whose name doesn't end with Spenshi, can win.

00:40:57.060 It's not impossible, but I'd put it at 10%.

00:41:00.520 I think Ganley, I didn't see a strong ground team organization going on.

00:41:08.260 That spike in Calgary memberships, the bulk of it has to be attributed to Nenshi's organizational capabilities.

00:41:14.740 And, of course, he's gotten some within Edmonton and others, so it makes it really difficult to defeat.

00:41:19.560 If in anything but Ninchy movement is building behind the scenes, though, I think they would, my guess would be they would gravitate around Hoffman, in my view, rather than Gantley.

00:41:29.580 Hoffman was more well-known in the party. She was deputy premier.

00:41:32.020 And a solid Edmonton roots going on. So we get a regional battle. But, again, could she get enough together to overwhelm the Ninchy vote? I really don't.

00:41:40.180 I don't see it. And, you know, I mean, the vote was tougher for Smith than us. And I think most others had predicted. A lot of people are thinking it was gonna be a first ballot. It went down right to the bitter end. You know, but there were so many more candidates. There was close to a dozen candidates. And I mean, I think four or five of them got less than 1% of the vote. They were non-entities.

00:42:07.500 So that kind of artificially maybe kind of drove up how many ballots it would have to go through.

00:42:12.840 But, you know, I'm just not seeing the big anybody but NG movement in the NDP. 0.89

00:42:18.740 I haven't seen that kind of campaign.

00:42:20.240 And it's significant.

00:42:21.600 If it is significant in any way, it can't be kept that far behind closed doors because at some point the people casting ballots have to know about the movement.

00:42:29.040 So, yeah, so I don't see it.

00:42:31.400 I mean, there'd have to be a rift to start to bubble up and surface.

00:42:33.780 And since the voting has already started, I don't see it.

00:42:36.720 It's probably not that.

00:42:39.280 Well, we're calling the results right now.

00:42:42.300 Nenshi, first ballot, declared winner of the NDP.

00:42:45.360 Put the graphic right up.

00:42:46.760 Calling it for Nenshi right now.

00:42:47.880 And I got to say, it pains me terribly because I really haven't missed him,

00:42:52.100 even in the slightest since he left the mayor's chair and his patronizing voice

00:42:56.520 and knowing that we're going to have to listen to a whole heck of a lot of them.

00:42:59.500 You know what?

00:43:00.320 Alberta politics has been kind of boring for a little bit.

00:43:04.780 I want it to be exciting.

00:43:06.140 Well, that's why I want a Gildewin.

00:43:07.720 Now that would make it exciting.

00:43:11.260 You can have too much of a good thing, Corey.

00:43:14.220 All right, gentlemen, thank you very much.

00:43:16.000 Thank you.

00:43:16.580 I thank all of you for joining us today.

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00:43:57.660 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - June 06, 2024

Liberal⧸NDP bill to ban pro-oil speech

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