Western Standard - LIVE SHOW - Triggered： Electric vehicles to be forced upon us.

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 good morning it's april 4th 2022 and welcome to triggered i'm cory morgan hope you all had a

00:00:39.860 good weekend i had a decent one the spring weather's coming getting that yard work out of the

00:00:43.700 way i can't stand winter i never could learn to like it so i'm happy watching it end and watching

00:00:49.460 every green sprout come up so this is the western standards daily live show we're going to be coming 0.99

00:00:53.980 to you monday to friday at 11 30 a.m mountain standard time except on holidays though we do

00:01:00.520 come on on special events and other times as well uh comments you know being live it's one of the

00:01:05.180 things i like to remind everybody of make use of the comment scroll talk to each other talk to me

00:01:09.960 send comments towards the guests might not get to them all but we see them all and that's what

00:01:14.180 makes this different than you know those recorded shows the things that uh are just put out there

00:01:18.980 from some other people that produce shows and it's just not as interactive and as fun and

00:01:23.880 sometimes we get some great questions and things coming out of there that I hadn't thought of for

00:01:27.500 the guests and and uh you know some discussion points that we can cover just keep it civil though

00:01:32.080 keep it polite and uh we can have a good time together and an informative good show I got a

00:01:36.900 couple of good guests coming on today Mike Baker he was the former president of the Calgary Police

00:01:41.100 Association and of the Alberta Federation of Police Associations he's a 24-year police veteran

00:01:47.280 and he's been speaking out you know of course we've got this controversy over the thin blue

00:01:52.280 line patches in calgary we've had the defund police movements and all of that and it just

00:01:56.420 seems almost as if a lot of police services are getting pretty uh beat on these days so

00:02:00.600 speaking to somebody to give an officer's perspective back on how that's all working out

00:02:05.080 and a former member of parliament carrie de ott's going to be coming on we're just going to talk

00:02:09.740 about that federal leadership race there's another candidate popped up i'll be interviewing him later

00:02:13.740 in the week uh abraham his name is uh so i mean it's 10 or 11 of them so far it's hard to keep

00:02:18.780 track in this race there's a number of front runners obviously but uh you know aside from

00:02:24.300 those front runners it's just a huge race a lot of people running it and trying to keep up with

00:02:28.380 who one may want to vote for who doesn't uh good to see all there lisa meryl and

00:02:33.420 cheryl melissa loads of people in the comments girl speaking up it's good to see thanks for

00:02:38.780 joining in and keeping active so i might as well get on what's got me going today

00:02:43.420 and uh yes i i took the time to read our state broadcasters news scroll today and i saw this

00:02:49.500 from the the cbc and this is in their business section you know so a tax-funded socialist

00:02:54.300 organization is you know telling us what to think about business so you can imagine how good the

00:02:58.940 story was and it says canada may have hit its long-awaited electrical vehicle turning point

00:03:04.940 Despite industry foot dragging, experts say forced sales will transform the market.

00:03:11.000 Forced sales.

00:03:12.340 Physics and economic reality have kept electric vehicles from taking the market by storm,

00:03:17.160 despite governments and activists have been trying to push us in that direction for over a decade now.

00:03:22.660 I mean, there's been bold targets and speculation insisting for the last 10 years

00:03:26.400 that many, if not most of us, would be driving electrical vehicles by now.

00:03:30.000 Incentives and subsidies coupled with carbon fuel taxes

00:03:32.960 still haven't managed to push more than a tiny segment of people into electrical vehicles.

00:03:38.180 Whether we like it or not, electric vehicles remain an expensive, impractical luxury,

00:03:42.400 and they're typically only used as secondary vehicles by well-heeled urban virtue signalers.

00:03:47.400 I mean, EVs don't have a good range in cold weather.

00:03:49.800 They're terribly expensive, despite the subsidies,

00:03:52.280 and they have a rotten resale value to the battery degradation.

00:03:55.160 I mean, we saw one guy, I think he burned his Tesla to the ground

00:03:57.600 because it was going to cost $20,000 to replace the batteries or something.

00:04:01.060 Rather than letting the market deal with this over time, though, the state, in its impatience,

00:04:05.040 has decided to directly intervene and force us to buy these vehicles whether we want to or not.

00:04:11.520 This is a quote from their story. The new federal plan is intended to solve that reluctance,

00:04:16.060 insisting that in order to sell internal combustion vehicles, salespeople must also

00:04:20.900 move a certain percentage of electrical vehicles off the lots as well. This is the equivalent of

00:04:26.900 having government forcing grocery stores to sell a certain percentage of fresh fruits and vegetables

00:04:31.100 before allowing them to sell any other goods. It's a ridiculous plan, and it puts the onus and

00:04:35.700 pressure onto retail lots in order to force the sale of vehicles that consumers don't want, 0.85

00:04:41.800 you know, rather than the government taking the flack themselves. So what will happen if a lot

00:04:44.960 can't sell enough electrical cars? They'll be forced to drop the price of EVs through raising

00:04:49.720 the price of combustion vehicles. That's what the government wants to see, of course. They're trying

00:04:54.300 to force private businesses to fight supply and demand on their behalf. All this is going to

00:04:59.060 manage to do is make an unholy mess of the market and lead to even more spikes in our cost of living

00:05:04.120 and the cost of all vehicles is going to rise. And maybe that's what the ideologues in the

00:05:08.780 government want. I mean, the green cult's been trying to get people to give up their personal 0.93

00:05:12.960 vehicles in favor of everything from taking the bus to riding bicycles. If they can't make people

00:05:18.580 choose to reduce their standard living willingly, they'll make it too expensive to choose otherwise.

00:05:24.300 Canada doesn't have a power infrastructure capable of managing the massive increase in load

00:05:28.320 if indeed we shifted to nothing but electrical vehicles anyways. There's no indication that

00:05:33.620 we're going to be expanding that generation capacity anytime soon either. If we suddenly

00:05:38.140 switch, and it's getting sudden now, I mean, they're talking like 8, 10, 12 years now of

00:05:42.640 forcing everybody into electric vehicles somehow. And if we suddenly switched the 95% and more of

00:05:47.800 combustion engines in Canada currently, our homes would have to move to candle power for light and

00:05:52.100 heat. We don't have anywhere near the electrical capacity to charge that many vehicles. I mean,

00:05:57.920 homes would need power upgrades. Those would cost thousands each. Power lines, substations,

00:06:01.780 they'd all need upgrades costing untold billions. And that's just to move the extra power. The

00:06:06.560 bigger question is, where's this power going to come from? We need to dam dozens and dozens of

00:06:11.220 rivers and build dozens and dozens of nuclear reactors. Right now, as far as I can find,

00:06:15.260 we have two major hydroelectric projects underway in Canada, both of which are massively over budget

00:06:19.900 and being fought tooth and nail by environmentalists.

00:06:23.260 There's no new nuclear plants on the way that I know of.

00:06:26.920 Despite decades of effort and billions in subsidies,

00:06:29.980 solar and wind generation remain expensive, unreliable,

00:06:32.860 and only make up a tiny fraction of our generation capacity.

00:06:36.320 An irony in all of this is that fossil fuels would likely have to be used in order to fill the void.

00:06:40.780 Gas and diesel generators are the fastest that can be brought online in short order.

00:06:45.300 Maybe even coal.

00:06:46.080 I mean, the day might come when electrical vehicles do become affordable enough and practical for consumers to switch en masse towards them.

00:06:53.720 That day, though, is nowhere close to reality today, and the government needs to face that reality.

00:06:59.540 What they are doing right now is the equivalent of having banned horses and wagons in the year 1900,

00:07:05.680 despite efficient combustion engines still being a couple of decades away.

00:07:09.500 Horses and wagons faded from general use because automobiles became more affordable,

00:07:13.320 and the fueling infrastructure was built over decades.

00:07:17.500 The mad rush to electrical vehicles is nothing less than that.

00:07:20.320 It's a mad lapse insanity.

00:07:22.340 While the government wants to force manufacturers to build electrical vehicles

00:07:25.220 and force retailers to sell them,

00:07:27.280 they won't be able to create the demand from the cash-strapped consumers to buy them.

00:07:30.960 Subsidies don't work.

00:07:32.560 I mean, that's still just money taken from consumers

00:07:34.940 and we're already setting inflation records now due to government spending.

00:07:39.960 There's no way the government's going to reach the electrical vehicle targets they're setting.

00:07:44.620 Their efforts to reach those targets, though, are going to cost us, and they're going to cost us all dearly.

00:07:48.140 Remember, the government has no money of their own.

00:07:50.360 They only have the money they take from us.

00:07:52.000 We can't subsidize these vehicles into affordability, and we can't force people to buy something they can't afford.

00:07:57.980 We're all going to pay the price for this haywire push for electrical vehicles, and that price is going to be steep.

00:08:03.580 That's what's got me wound up this morning as we watch as the government's thumping their

00:08:07.540 chests on these goals and regulations they're setting. So let's get on and check in with our

00:08:13.180 news editor, Dave Naylor, and see what else is happening out there today. Hey, Dave, how's it

00:08:16.400 going? It's going good, Cordy. You just spend the weekend at the compound doing chores?

00:08:22.260 Yes, it's just basic house things around the yard and such. I didn't have to cull any animals or

00:08:27.080 anything this week, so it was refreshing. That's good. My weekend was highlighted by a haircut.

00:08:31.680 My mother kept telling me I look like a hobo on your show last week, so I wouldn't go the old short back inside.

00:08:39.500 So hopefully she thinks I look more respectable now.

00:08:42.480 You're looking outright dashing, if you ask me.

00:08:45.340 Oh, thank you, Corey.

00:08:46.700 Anyways, we have some major breaking news on the go at the moment.

00:08:49.980 The head of Alberta Health Services, Dr. Verna Yu, has been ousted from her position and a very well-paid position, more than $700,000, I might add.

00:09:01.280 She was ousted a year before her contract was set to expire.

00:09:06.140 She's been sort of mired in controversy over the last 18 months because it was on AHS orders that places like the Whistle Stop Cafe in Mirror, Alberta, run by Chris Scott, was shut down and raided.

00:09:21.140 It was because of her there were fences built around churches.

00:09:25.880 And because of AHS orders, there were pastors arrested and thrown into jail.

00:09:30.500 So not a very good Monday for Dr. Yu, but I'm sure some of her foes are not displeased to see her go.

00:09:41.060 Other stories we've got at the moment, our friends over at Narwhal have been nominated for a Canadian Journalism Foundation Award for Best Story of the Year on the Wet'suwet'en blockade.

00:09:53.660 This is despite the fact that the story has been basically debunked and stuff that has been written in there was wrong about journalists being arrested and whatnot.

00:10:05.220 So the Norwell stands by their story, but apparently not commenting to us.

00:10:12.060 We've got another sort of waste of taxpayers' money story from Blacklock's reporter.

00:10:17.780 This is $100 million lost on the face masks through the PHAC, Public Health Agency of Canada.

00:10:28.480 Things involving, you know, bad contracts and thefts, all sorts of money lost.

00:10:33.700 Of course, nobody cares because it's Ottawa and it's really not their money.

00:10:39.240 We've got a Mike Thomas column up, circle April 13th on your calendar.

00:10:44.920 that's the date when bank of canada is going to likely increase the cost of borrowing by another

00:10:50.680 up to half percent so mortgages credit card payments they're all going to go up so those

00:10:57.320 are the the big stories we've got at the moment corey our rachel emmanuel is in place in edmonton

00:11:03.240 now having got there from from ottawa on the weekend she's attending an ndp press conference

00:11:08.840 as we speak on the doctor you firing we're also going to get lots of reaction from from the

00:11:16.120 government people like brian gene who who were campaigning on aggressive changes at the alberta

00:11:21.960 health services uh and speaking of health uh our reed small will have a story in the next few

00:11:27.800 minutes on bc premier john horgan has had another health setback you remember he was battling throat

00:11:34.680 cancer and has now come down with covid uh so he's not having a good uh good time of it and

00:11:42.040 a conservative uh leadership candidate leslin lewis in moose job today uh our lee harding uh

00:11:49.080 will uh we'll have a story on that uh later on this afternoon so lots of good stuff up lots of

00:11:54.680 good stuff to look forward to corey great well uh thanks for that update david it's gonna be

00:11:59.240 interesting watching that uh you know the ahs story develop i mean there must have been more

00:12:03.560 to it it's not a minor thing i mean among the the civil servants i believe her salary was 0.99

00:12:08.280 six hundred and seventy seven thousand a year when she finished up like that that's the top 1.00

00:12:12.760 of the bunch there it's not a minor thing when you when you fire one of those no and uh with bonuses

00:12:18.200 i guess it pushed it well over uh well over seven hundred thousand so she's one of the biggest uh

00:12:25.480 salary earners under under the government there's no doubt about that and it'd be interesting to

00:12:30.280 see what kind of severance she's going to get. Obviously, another year's pay at least, I would

00:12:36.200 think. The Alberta government has tended to be very, I'm not sure what the right word is, generous

00:12:44.760 in their severance packages to various employees over the years. So we're trying to find out what

00:12:50.520 the dollar figure is there. All right. Well, thanks for the updates, Dave. And we'll talk

00:12:56.760 to you after the show thanks gory great that's our news editor dave naylor and as you can hear yes

00:13:02.520 we got a lot constantly going up on the western standard site so this is a good time to pay our

00:13:07.000 bills and remind everybody get on there and take out a subscription that's how we can do this i

00:13:11.720 mean look at that ridiculous story he was talking about i'll talk a little more about that later

00:13:15.000 with this association of journalists giving an award to a bunch of activists who are pretending

00:13:19.880 to be journalists and they and it's award-worthy it's ridiculous that's where the state of legacy

00:13:25.080 media is these days unfortunately we're not like them guys we are independent we rely on subscriptions

00:13:31.720 on you guys and on sponsors and that's how we can report on what needs to be reported on not on say

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00:14:15.260 haven't already, guys, get on there, take out a subscription, use that coupon code TRIGGERED,

00:14:19.020 and you'll save yourself some bucks. As well, I might as well mention one of our sponsors too,

00:14:24.360 and that is Bitcoin Well. These guys have been sponsoring us for a while. I want to talk a

00:14:29.360 little bit about that federal leadership race to a couple of guests from now. I do want to talk

00:14:33.560 about that digital currency thing. It's really starting to turn into an issue. I never would

00:14:36.820 have thought that we would see digital currencies coming up in a federal election race as an issue

00:14:42.000 in a plank. And this is where we're at. I mean, this is new. It's growing. Whether people like

00:14:45.940 digital currencies, don't like them. They are a real part of the world now. And you don't know

00:14:49.600 which one to get involved with. You don't know how to get into it. I mean, this is new. This is

00:14:53.600 your money. This is what you worked hard for. People a little gray around the muzzle like 0.99

00:14:57.660 myself don't necessarily understand what it's all about. And Bitcoin Well, they're an Alberta

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00:15:28.340 bitcoinwell.com. I'll probably talk a little more about them a bit later as well. They've

00:15:32.280 been a fantastic sponsor. So before we get on to our next guest, I just want to talk a bit about

00:15:38.580 that firing at Alberta Health Services is interesting. I mean, this, as some of the

00:15:42.600 commenters are saying, you know, no great loss. This was a person appointed by Notley. It'll be

00:15:47.800 a big severance package, but sometimes it's worth spending, I guess. I think the severance package

00:15:52.960 of the standard here, if I manage to get myself fired, I'll be able to grab whatever's left in

00:15:57.340 the shared refrigerator in the hallway on my way home. None of that six-figure stuff like those

00:16:01.760 government workers get on their way out the door. We'll see. I don't think I'm that close to getting

00:16:05.860 fired yet. But I hope it's a move towards positive change, like something I've ranted about a lot and

00:16:11.460 over and over again on this show, and then I'll continue. It's with this pandemic, with all this

00:16:16.400 stuff going on, not enough people are talking about the system. Not enough people are talking

00:16:20.720 about how that's what's got to be changed. You know, the Alberta Health Services, lots of people

00:16:24.920 keep talking. It's a bloated, inefficient bureaucracy. It doesn't serve people's health 0.95

00:16:30.180 needs well, it costs a fortune, but nobody's willing to really get in there and start gutting

00:16:36.160 that thing, start working to fix it. It just keeps growing and growing and patient care keeps getting

00:16:41.320 worse and worse. I mean, we've got fantastic health professionals in the hospitals, on the

00:16:45.440 front lines, paramedics, all sorts, but when they're constantly losing budget to that giant

00:16:50.380 bureaucracy, when you can't pivot and change to properly serve people and patients because of

00:16:55.920 that bureaucracy, you've got a big problem. And when we, you know, the justifications for the

00:17:00.340 lockdowns, the restrictions, they keep falling on to saying it's because the health system's

00:17:04.360 getting overwhelmed. Well, we've been spending more and more and more on the health system,

00:17:08.100 and it's still getting overwhelmed. Then we got to start looking at the system. And that starts

00:17:12.520 at the top. And that starts with the head of the system, you know, maybe firing her is the best 0.99

00:17:17.500 way to start towards it. Or maybe they're just going to appoint a government flack, and we're

00:17:22.480 going to have more of the same. I don't know. I mean, I'm hoping for the best and hoping this is

00:17:26.480 a move in the right direction of seeing some real systematic change in our health setup because we

00:17:32.200 really need it. But we will see as those details come out. And as we said, Rachel Emanuel, she's

00:17:38.320 moved out here. She's up in Edmonton now and she's going to be covering the press conference from the

00:17:42.340 NDP and she'll be wandering around the legislature. And I'm sure she'll find more details on that

00:17:46.820 story and other things out of Edmonton as she goes up there and just see what the motivation of that

00:17:52.000 was and what's going on with it. And of course, where the government wants to go next. I mean,

00:17:55.680 I don't know how fast before they'll fill that role and who they'll put in there, but

00:17:58.740 that's really going to indicate what they're planning on doing and why this firing might

00:18:03.680 have happened as well. So I see my next guest in the lobby there, and it's Mike Baker. I've

00:18:08.220 been looking forward to that all weekend. I was ranting about the police forces, the treatment

00:18:13.440 of them in Calgary and a number of things last week. And it's good to speak to somebody who's

00:18:18.640 actually had to deal with all this mike baker is the former vice president of the calgary police

00:18:22.880 association and the alberta federation of police associations and he is uh a veteran i believe of

00:18:29.960 24 years on the force so let's bring him in and have a talk uh i'm going to start about of course

00:18:34.560 that thin blue line patch that's got everybody so upset right now so hey mike how's it going

00:18:39.600 hey cory how you doing today thanks for having me oh it's good to see uh as you mentioned before in

00:18:44.300 that small world sort of thing when we used to have a little hockey group about I don't know

00:18:48.840 10 years ago or so it's when I started trying to learn to skate in my late 30s early 40s it was a

00:18:54.480 pretty sad affair but you guys humor me quite well on the ice out there so I still appreciate that

00:18:59.080 now good times my friend good times yeah so I mean getting to that contemporary thing you know

00:19:05.000 that that hornet's nest you've been active on twitter and speaking up maybe just to start with

00:19:09.980 people what is the blue the thin blue line patch about i mean there's a lot of people making their

00:19:15.340 own interpretations about what this is but what does it stand for as far as police officers are

00:19:19.980 concerned for sure corey well the thin blue line what it means to us is really three things it's

00:19:25.180 a opportunity for us to recognize our um fallen officers um recently we've had uh within the last

00:19:33.740 year we had one of our members killed in the line of duty um that really is important to us we pay

00:19:39.500 respect. And that's how we memorialize our fallen members. Secondly, it's a way for us to pay

00:19:47.160 tribute to one another and show our solidarity. The career is very difficult. You know, it takes

00:19:53.560 its toll on members, both physically, mentally, our relationships. So it's a way for police

00:20:01.580 families to show solidarity and support for one another. And lastly, and probably one of the more

00:20:08.580 common meanings is it's the line between uh us and chaos or or the society falling into anarchy

00:20:17.380 those that would prey on on the the civilians and uh take advantage of our communities

00:20:24.980 yeah and so that's been kind of a voluntarily worn patch by a number of officers for a number

00:20:30.020 of years on different forces for for quite some time now right um i can tell you corey like i've

00:20:35.780 been on the police service for 24 years um it's been here the entire time uh it is something that

00:20:42.100 we take great pride in um it's been there uh um yeah but i can't give you the exact date but i

00:20:49.940 know it goes back into the mid-1900s well and then going that far back i guess that's where

00:20:56.740 uh some of the people i mean are reading in interpretations into it uh i mean the worst of

00:21:02.420 it i saw and that that was from a senior communications bureaucrat in the city of calgary

00:21:07.700 saying outright that a number of officers held white supremacist views and wanted to see a white

00:21:13.700 supremacist eurocentric state it was just absurd and bizarre and and to use that patch as a reason

00:21:20.900 to say that's what it represented i i was just infuriated when i saw that and how must it feel

00:21:25.540 for police officers wearing it well certainly i know it's an attack on officers and i think we've

00:21:31.060 seen that uh over the last few years for sure um those types of rhetorics i mean i don't know how

00:21:37.460 much uh uh juice the public can actually give to stuff like that but uh i i think what we've seen

00:21:43.220 certainly at the calgary municipal level is there's been a lot of activism um you know being

00:21:50.500 played out in the political arena um it doesn't mean any of those things and i think the chief

00:21:56.260 uh chief newfeld did an excellent job last week when he stood up and said he can confidently say

00:22:01.620 that there is not one member of our service that wears these symbols as a as a show of

00:22:08.100 white supremacy or any kind of that foolishness oh and it's just i mean a lot of people are i

00:22:14.100 think upset in general uh the police kind of land in the middle and and uh when people are ticked 0.95

00:22:21.060 off when they're protesting in particular. They'll always be, you know, get pretty grumpy when the

00:22:26.600 police intervene and move in. And it doesn't seem to matter what happens. If the police let the

00:22:30.440 protest go, people scream at them. And if the police intervene in a protest, other people are

00:22:34.580 screaming at them. And that's some of what's kind of going on right now. Well, very difficult

00:22:40.020 position for the police to be in at any time. I mean, we're there really to protect people's

00:22:44.520 charter rights, to make sure that the peace is kept and represent everybody's interest. When

00:22:49.900 you're in the middle when you're sandwiched between two groups of people i mean it's a very

00:22:53.400 delicate line a very delicate line to walk um so i mean i i had one person you know pointing out

00:23:00.800 just as a commenter and fair enough from mike connelly but just saying like with the recent

00:23:04.800 things we saw on the weekend some people getting ticketed for honking their horns uh you know

00:23:08.580 because that's now under an injunction as being illegal but how does that apply does the officer

00:23:13.680 what kind of discretion because i mean if you're honking after a flames game outside it's probably

00:23:17.020 out a problem but if you're honking at a protest suddenly you're going to get an 83 ticket uh how

00:23:21.740 much of that responsibility lands with the officer you know corey i want to be careful in in weighing

00:23:26.780 in on that because i don't have the knowledge uh i wasn't part of the uh enforcement on any

00:23:31.100 of these protests i haven't been down there so i just want to be careful but you know when it

00:23:35.340 comes to officer discretion certainly uh i believe that no officer wants to give anybody a ticket

00:23:40.940 you know what we start with education we go out there and uh advise people as to you know what

00:23:46.140 the standard uh should be and uh sometimes uh people can get upset and maybe talk their way

00:23:52.140 into tickets or or push the the gambit but i think in the most part officers don't want to give

00:23:58.060 tickets to the public no and i mean i there was a an episode uh for example uh when i did a protest

00:24:05.340 down in olympic plaza and i parked my truck there in the middle of a bunch of occupy protesters i

00:24:09.660 don't know if you recall that but uh it took uh before i got my stack of tickets and i got a good

00:24:15.180 good stack of them out of that stunt but I knew what I was getting into but I mean I was given

00:24:19.700 probably half a dozen warnings and opportunities to leave if I wanted to I could have left there

00:24:24.620 without being fined and ticketed I didn't see anybody eager to come down and crack down on

00:24:30.160 me at that point they just wanted to get me out of the way and not have any trouble caused

00:24:33.460 definitely I can believe that I mean let's be honest the police are in a tough position all

00:24:40.240 the time trying to to balance everybody's rights and uh everybody's uh interests but in most

00:24:47.000 situations the police do not want to crack down on people they just want people to go ahead do

00:24:52.260 what they are doing and uh respect you know the community and and what's been laid out so in this

00:24:57.820 situation on the weekend you know i'm sure it was unfortunate and a couple i'm not sure how many

00:25:02.200 people got a ticket but uh you know what i'm sure maybe they had the opportunity to avoid getting

00:25:07.400 that ticket. So getting into the broader thing, I mean, what I'm starting to worry about too is

00:25:13.320 general morale. I mean, it's the constant degradation, the beaking out. I mean, I've

00:25:18.360 got a real rude commenter who keeps going on and he's going to get blocked pretty soon if he keeps

00:25:21.780 it up. I understand people can have different points of view and be upset with the policing

00:25:26.000 and so on, but just the constant barrage that comes from left and right, it seems it's not

00:25:30.800 even a partisan issue so much. We know we need the police, but we just can't seem to be happy

00:25:36.420 with what they're doing and i personally i mean as i said in a recent uh column of mine i i think

00:25:42.260 that's part of what could lead to more police misconduct i mean if morale is low uh if an

00:25:46.580 officer is suffering from from other issues this is how you can hit the breaking points and things

00:25:50.820 can turn out poorly well uh i kind of see it like you cory but uh you know nobody wants to see a

00:25:59.140 police misconduct especially the police i mean we're the we're the first people that stop that

00:26:03.780 we're the first people that call out our our co-workers should we see that i can say in 24

00:26:08.740 years i've seen it less than the number you know less than the number of fingers on one hand

00:26:13.380 um and it's been addressed but that being said where i see things can go wrong is uh the constant

00:26:20.260 barrage of negative attention on the police it affects things like recruiting um we can't fill

00:26:25.300 our classes um when you can't fill your classes i mean we have a responsibility and an obligation

00:26:30.980 to protect the community things are going wrong in this city at a horrible rate and some of that

00:26:36.340 has to do with the number of bodies out there on the street we can't keep up bodies employed and

00:26:41.300 we can't hire bodies to come in there so as we have those pressures to fill the positions more

00:26:48.100 and more leeways are taken in order to bring bodies into the service and that's where i think

00:26:54.260 you can see challenges coming when when you bring somebody in that might not be to the standard that

00:27:00.420 we used to have you know 10 15 years ago so something that's gone on for quite a while now

00:27:06.340 though it has been the uh the defunding movement uh you know that one i always find quite absurd

00:27:13.060 too i mean at the same time i've talked about we spend too much in health we need to fix our

00:27:17.060 systems things like that but it's just that that's the one and only area where anybody

00:27:21.140 seems to talk about the feeling that if we defund it it's going to make the service better and it

00:27:24.900 just seems counterintuitive and again i i'd imagine it's going to be a bit demoralizing

00:27:28.980 You've got, and it's not just, you know, crackpots on Twitter and other such things.

00:27:33.720 These are senior political officials supporting this and calling for this sort of.

00:27:39.680 Yeah, Corey, you know what?

00:27:41.040 It's pretty disheartening.

00:27:43.000 We, if you look at the Calgary Police Employee Satisfaction Survey, over the past three years,

00:27:50.120 we've had declining morale.

00:27:52.040 Some of that has to do with the politicians at City Hall that are calling out and calling

00:27:58.160 for these defunding movements um really i mean if we look at our city right now and things like the

00:28:04.560 um lrt's the problems in the downtown core um our city is not safe anymore we've had i mean all one

00:28:12.800 has to do is turn the tv on or look at the news and see how many shootings have happened uh how

00:28:17.280 much violence is happening we had a a young lady murdered last week i'm i'm sad that these

00:28:25.040 politicians are politicizing um in order to gain votes but really who's suffering it's their

00:28:30.960 constituents and uh that's not how it should be no that's it and i've been highlighting that a

00:28:37.680 lot too as i've been working downtown this last couple of years i mean i come down and i'm watching

00:28:41.440 it degrade anybody down here sees this anybody going to lrt platforms see is it i mean it's

00:28:46.560 and we're not calling for police to come in and start cracking heads but we've got

00:28:50.160 safety issues i don't necessarily feel comfortable when i'm walking on those platforms and i'm a

00:28:53.760 a full-grown middle-aged man how's it got to feel for seniors or some of the you know ladies and

00:28:58.460 such I mean we need a police presence in a preventative sense to feel safer but again

00:29:02.720 people want both ways right they want to feel safer but at the same time want to as little

00:29:07.260 police as possible I guess it's finding that balance is difficult yeah and you know what and

00:29:13.420 I mean I have to look at the politicians and and uh you know we have certain ones that are doing

00:29:19.140 this and i think it's fairly transparent to see why they're doing it they're they're looking to

00:29:24.060 capture um certain audiences and that translates to votes and that translates to power in their

00:29:30.040 situations but ultimately i mean who suffers it's the constituents if we look at uh two of the louder

00:29:35.820 activists on council and on the commission for that matter you know all one has to do is look

00:29:41.000 at their words and look at uh you know the crime that's happening now there the victimization

00:29:45.040 that's happening down there instead of defunding they should be calling for more funding and more

00:29:48.940 action well that's it and i mean there is room for improvement i mean things do happen officers

00:29:55.500 do step out of line at times there's been abuses but assuming say the same funding or more funding

00:30:01.500 what can be done then for you know to address those issues i mean if we do have uh cases with

00:30:06.380 wellness checks that have gone badly things such as that which moves should we do to try and avoid

00:30:12.220 these these these circumstances because that's it is a problem ultimately corey i think though that

00:30:17.420 comes down to education um calgary police they've had uh teams that have consisted between police

00:30:24.300 officers and uh social workers that have been in place for years and years this is not a new idea

00:30:30.060 this is something that's been happening for a long time um but they're only able to be utilized in

00:30:36.140 certain circumstances when there's violence when there's a threat of bodily injury we cannot put

00:30:41.980 those people into those situations uh you know a knife goes into a social worker is as easily as 0.99

00:30:47.580 it does into a police officer and uh we just can't put people into those situations so you're going

00:30:52.060 to get a lot of public outcry when the police are put into positions they utilize all the the

00:30:58.220 de-escalation tactics and it doesn't work out and uh you know it's tragic however these things

00:31:03.660 happen and it doesn't just happen in calgary no no it's it's not alone here by any means so

00:31:09.980 uh with this symbol right now you know with the thin blue line some officers are defying it uh

00:31:16.300 the the association is uh recommending you know that the ones that choose to can defy it how long

00:31:22.300 do you think that standoff will go though we got some very harsh language coming from a certain

00:31:25.900 member of council who's saying it's going to lead to consequences and and uh potential dismissals

00:31:30.940 uh where can this end well corey i mean you know what it's a it's definitely a standoff i think

00:31:37.500 it's uh it's uh was implemented poorly if uh if uh the commission was really so concerned in

00:31:44.700 relation to this um you know their own findings their own citizen um polling uh the polling that

00:31:52.060 the police service did the polling that the police association did um you know upwards around 80

00:31:58.540 of calgarians find it either neutral or support that that symbol and don't find it offensive so

00:32:03.980 So once again, we're kowtowing to a fringe minority in order to address some, whether they be falsities or very loose connections of what that symbol actually means.

00:32:17.240 I think another thing we have to look at is the engagement.

00:32:21.740 There was zero engagement from the commission with the police associations.

00:32:27.420 I know that they engaged the chief.

00:32:28.760 The chief was very solid in his stance that this means a lot to my people, and this is a hill they're going to die on, and it's probably not something you folks want to pick a fight with them in relation to because the men and women, their friends, our colleagues, have fallen in the line of duty, and that's a pretty big sacrifice.

00:32:50.920 We hold that close to our heart.

00:32:53.720 Yeah, and I mean, some others have said, oh, well, this will be an opportunity to create a new symbol.

00:32:58.500 and something else that could represent those without being the past one.

00:33:02.680 But if activists, and as we say, a tiny minority of activists

00:33:06.320 can change what's supposed to be the perception of this symbol,

00:33:09.540 there's nothing to stop them from doing the same thing to the next one.

00:33:12.380 I mean, you defend what you have rather than throwing it out.

00:33:16.520 Well, and Corey, with really what that symbol means

00:33:19.800 and how many men and women have lost their lives

00:33:24.100 or paid the ultimate sacrifice,

00:33:25.460 how many families have lost family members,

00:33:27.540 how many families have suffered consequences of this career yeah it means a lot and you know what

00:33:33.420 engagement that happens uh in the beginning of the process not once uh uh things have fallen

00:33:39.520 apart the commission could have uh taken an approach but instead they they they played

00:33:44.520 activism and came in with a heavy hand and both the police association and the senior officers

00:33:49.200 association said sorry we're not going to adhere to this and we're going to stand tall and stand

00:33:54.760 fast and out of the 2250 members that leaves the senior executive which is only five members so

00:34:01.480 i mean i think you're going to see a huge solidarity piece and uh yeah it's easy to

00:34:05.640 say you know we're going to come in and there's going to be consequences that is in the chief's

00:34:09.320 hands and that's one thing they can't take away from and how the chief deals with that that's up

00:34:13.240 to him now they can hold the chief accountable there and however they choose to do so but

00:34:18.360 that's not going to fix anything if uh if there's going to be a standoff here you have to engage

00:34:23.800 you have to show some leadership and uh that's something that the commission failed to do in the

00:34:27.880 first place yeah well the commission unfortunately i mean it has its ups and downs it's it's a group

00:34:33.160 with a lot of appointed individuals and again there's some some activists among that group

00:34:37.640 and such uh i'm not sure if that's the best i don't know that comes to whole systemic reform

00:34:42.760 but how would we best guide our police forces because i mean we don't want and it's true one

00:34:47.480 thing i'll say is you know city hall can't or shouldn't directly guide policing that's not

00:34:51.720 their role i mean theirs is broader than that and if you start getting politicians directly uh

00:34:57.480 moving into policing that's a line being crossed that's not going to serve any of us any better

00:35:01.560 well and we're really skirting that line corey um i had opportunity after the police commission's

00:35:06.840 employee satisfaction survey was released to uh be in a meeting with the ex or the uh mayor's ex

00:35:12.840 chief of staff and uh the thin blue line then was a point of contention and the push on that

00:35:19.080 and uh the mayor and her staff's uh um dislike of that you know what um again city hall has

00:35:27.800 their own role the commission has a governance role and everybody needs to stay in their lane

00:35:32.200 you know what the chief was hired to run the police service and uh you know let him do that

00:35:37.400 if he needs a little uh guidance here and there the commission can do that but again i think some

00:35:42.440 boundaries have been overstepped and uh there's some problems uh rearing their heads now yeah

00:35:48.040 Well, we'll see how this all irons out. It's interesting to see as it's a bit of a standoff going on. I appreciate you coming on to explain a bit more and just talk from the perspective of an officer. And where can we see more? I know you're active on Twitter and some other areas. Where can people follow you and keep track of what you're doing, Mike?

00:36:04.080 You know what, Corey, I try not to get too involved.

00:36:07.980 I am on Twitter, but you know what, you can follow the CPA president.

00:36:12.600 He's certainly always putting some knowledge and pieces out there.

00:36:18.540 We have our federal Canadian Police Association.

00:36:23.480 They're always putting in good quality information out there.

00:36:27.420 But yeah, you know what, Twitter, some of the social media, Corey, that's probably where you're going to find us.

00:36:32.680 Fair enough, yeah, and I understand.

00:36:34.520 Twitter's the area where I go for my social media abuse,

00:36:36.640 but not everybody wants to dive into it, and I can appreciate it.

00:36:39.140 Yeah, Angry Bird, Angry Bird.

00:36:41.100 All right, well, thanks for coming in to talk to me today.

00:36:43.360 I really do appreciate it.

00:36:44.540 I hope we can talk again down the road if we have more policing issues to discuss.

00:36:48.520 You bet, my friend.

00:36:49.260 Thanks for having me, and stay well.

00:36:51.380 Yeah, thanks.

00:36:51.840 You too.

00:36:52.880 So that was Mike Baker, the former vice president of the Calgary Police Association

00:36:56.200 and the Alberta Federation of Police Associations, and 24 years on the force.

00:37:01.340 Now, yes, the comments grow.

00:37:03.320 Let's get into some stuff, guys.

00:37:05.140 I noticed, okay, I mean, you know, speaking of Twitter and Twitter being a bit of a haywire

00:37:09.540 area where we do get rude with each other and things, when I start the thing off, you

00:37:13.920 know, when they start the show off, I always say they'll keep the comments civil.

00:37:17.360 We can differ on there, absolutely, and I let those go and everything.

00:37:20.780 But when I have somebody like that other gentleman who was on here, comment after comment after

00:37:25.880 comment, berating, berating, berating, swearing, and attacking my guest.

00:37:30.720 Yes, I will block you.

00:37:32.640 Go to Twitter if you want to do that, then.

00:37:34.540 I want polite discourse here.

00:37:36.540 You don't have to agree with my guest, but they are a guest on my show, and I will treat

00:37:41.480 them with a degree of respect.

00:37:42.820 And, you know, his final words, oh, some media organization, dude, you've got free speech.

00:37:48.040 But we don't have to give you a platform.

00:37:50.540 So, you know, just keep things civil in the scroll, guys.

00:37:53.420 I know a lot of you differed with my guests, and that's perfectly fine.

00:37:56.300 But we've got to keep it a little bit within reason, or I've got to bunch you out of there. 0.99

00:37:59.940 particularly when it's an anonymous account you know the gentleman who was whining and he was

00:38:03.460 whining was anonymous go figure you know there's not many people when they have their own names

00:38:08.120 get that belligerent and rude it's always the anonymous ones go see it but i mean you know

00:38:12.400 people have some legitimate beefs of police and that's fair enough too absolutely uh and those

00:38:17.900 are worth questioning in this case i didn't want to get into it so much with mr baker though because

00:38:21.580 we're talking specifically about the police officers and what they're dealing with with

00:38:24.920 morale and things like that. A lot of issues and difficulty we have, and I know people don't like

00:38:31.080 the person saying I was just doing my job, but to a degree, there's some truth with that. The

00:38:35.660 legislation, the enforcement orders, that comes from the judiciary, that comes from the politicians,

00:38:40.600 and these guys have to do as ordered once those laws and injunctions come down, or at least

00:38:45.420 they're supposed to. Doesn't mean they have to be overly rough, things like that, but they get put

00:38:50.060 between a rock and a hard place when it comes to that doesn't always excuse every police action

00:38:55.200 but uh you know they aren't they can't choose not to enforce the law when they've been told to do so

00:39:01.760 the law could be wrong well and then i guess they could choose and people are if you're asking for

00:39:06.340 police to go on strike well then they make that call but it's not going to happen uh somebody was

00:39:10.460 asking about you know asking him what went on in ottawa i didn't feel that would be fair to ask mr

00:39:14.940 baker he's also retired it was only for a couple of years but he's not on the association anymore

00:39:19.220 So it's a larger thing.

00:39:21.380 Somebody's saying, what makes a Calgary cop punch a 12-year-old in the face?

00:39:24.220 Well, Wildrose, there were thousands of other Calgary cops who didn't.

00:39:29.400 You know, I mean, we want to address issues where officers step over the line and get violent, and it does happen.

00:39:38.340 There really are issues of racism among some officers.

00:39:41.140 There really are issues of, you know, poor treatment.

00:39:43.800 We've seen a lot of that in the RCMP.

00:39:45.280 They've got a cultural issue.

00:39:46.260 They have a really hard time with women on their force. 0.88

00:39:48.320 there are some things going on in there. I think some of it is that the type of person who's drawn

00:39:53.500 to being a police officer, it takes a different kind of person and it can be a tougher militarized

00:40:01.300 atmosphere that they're hopefully starting to fade out of a little. And it leads to them being

00:40:05.020 perhaps a little too abusive of women. We saw a lot of women leaving the RCMP broken because the 0.99

00:40:10.620 atmosphere in there wasn't good enough and it needs to be addressed. So, I mean, we could have

00:40:16.820 these discussions, and we need the police. This is part of life, guys, a civilized society. I mean,

00:40:25.400 we want to minimalize the number of laws, but we do need them. When somebody's breaking into your

00:40:31.060 home and, hey, by the way, if we want to go down that road and talking about our abilities to

00:40:36.400 protect ourselves and castle law so we don't need as much police, hey, I'm with you. I'm all for it.

00:40:40.540 I should have the right to fully defend my property and person and with whatever legal

00:40:45.120 tools are at my disposal, including potentially firearms. But for the time being, our first

00:40:51.260 option should be still to call the police. If there's a domestic dispute, it's police officers

00:40:56.980 who have to get in the middle. If it's the cracked out lunatic attacking people on an LRT platform,

00:41:02.240 it's the police officer who has to get in there. We need them to get in there, guys. And it's not

00:41:06.680 an easy job. It's not a nice job. I sure as hell couldn't do it. I wouldn't want to do it.

00:41:10.620 we need to fix it up. If there's problems, we need to fix it up. But constant belittling,

00:41:17.240 berating, complaining, pushing, whether it's from the people on the thin blue line thing

00:41:22.160 or the defund bunch, it's not making it better. This stresses them. This pushes away better

00:41:27.780 officers. It makes them retire early, it leaves stress leave, or it does make them just decide

00:41:33.240 not to get out of their car. I don't know how it works. You know, drive around, sip coffee and not

00:41:37.340 actually enforce the law or not deal with it. We're not going to be any safer for that.

00:41:42.560 But as I said, too, you know, we can get heated discussion and comments as well on Twitter and

00:41:47.840 things such as that. But when I'm seeing it out of senior members of City Hall, I start to get

00:41:52.680 very concerned. I mean, they're hearing it from the top now. I mean, Karra, Giancarlo Karra, I'll

00:41:57.460 say it, you know, Mike Baker was too polite to say it. And weasels like Stephen Carter, who I love

00:42:01.380 calling a weasel on every possible opportunity. These guys have an ideological problem and they

00:42:06.400 are constantly on the attack with police officers and you're not going to make them any better for

00:42:12.020 it. We've got room to improve them. I mean, I call out police when they make mistakes and they do it

00:42:16.880 a lot. I mean, we saw some lunacy with the police down in Leftbridge. They got a special kind of

00:42:22.320 force down there. I don't know if it's the wind or what it is. They were chasing an NDP, you know,

00:42:27.080 kind of following her around an MLA. I'm forgetting her name for the moment. You know, they beat up a

00:42:33.340 stormtrooper outside of a restaurant. There was one running over a deer. Like, they got some

00:42:37.680 serious issues. But defunding and demoralizing and debasing isn't going to make them behave

00:42:44.480 better. And that's that strange disconnect in logic we seem to have with some people who have

00:42:50.000 take issue with with the police forces, and we need to change that out.

00:42:53.920 Let me talk before, you know, I got my next guest on deck in a few minutes yet, though, and

00:42:58.440 another one of our sponsors. And that's, speaking of which, you know, when I was talking about

00:43:03.560 being able to say to defend your property and things like that, the Canadian Shooting Sports

00:43:08.440 Association, these guys have been a great sponsor for us for quite some time now. And their name

00:43:13.320 says what they are, they're an association for people who enjoy firearms, you know, for whatever

00:43:17.460 way you enjoy them, however you like, collector, a target shooter, a hunter, whatever it is, you know,

00:43:23.860 you want to safely utilize firearms, you want to have all the resources you can to utilize firearms.

00:43:27.840 this is an association that has them. They have videos for safe utilization of firearms. They have

00:43:33.300 links to where there's trade shows. I think there's a firearm show coming up in Calgary,

00:43:37.240 actually, in a couple of weeks. It's on the Sutina Reserve. I'm going to be going there

00:43:40.900 representing the Western Standard. I'm pretty sure that's been set up, but I'm not. I'll confirm that

00:43:44.620 a little later. And these guys are a great sponsor. But the other thing is, as well, they have

00:43:49.960 another, they have a number of court challenges on behalf of firearm owners against the Liberal

00:43:56.240 government of Canada right now, because they keep trying to take away your property. They

00:44:00.780 keep recategorizing firearms. It's a cowardly way to do it. You know, their registry from the 90s

00:44:05.240 failed. It went down to the wayside and people have been trying to protect their property. So

00:44:11.020 what they do now is they just keep recategorizing and saying, well, this one's no longer appropriate

00:44:14.980 and this one's no longer appropriate. And suddenly they take your property. You know,

00:44:18.700 they turn a law-abiding firearm owner into a criminal if they hang on to that piece of property

00:44:22.120 that they've been safely keeping for years, perhaps.

00:44:24.580 They just call it an assault-style weapon,

00:44:27.100 and suddenly your hunting rifle is no longer legal.

00:44:30.040 And then they come and steal it from you.

00:44:31.380 And I say steal because even though they'll pay you for it,

00:44:34.620 if you don't have a choice in the matter, it's still theft,

00:44:37.000 even if you're paid for it.

00:44:38.500 So these guys have court challenges.

00:44:40.160 So if you want to protect your firearms,

00:44:41.340 you want to protect those rights, join them.

00:44:43.240 You got to join them because if you don't stand up for yourself,

00:44:45.380 you do lose your rights.

00:44:46.580 And that's the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:44:49.360 Their website is cssa-cila.org.

00:44:53.920 Take out a membership with them.

00:44:55.320 Help protect your rights there, guys.

00:44:58.580 I'm going to go into a little bit on some government waste before we get to our guest tier two.

00:45:02.700 There's one story I wanted to hit.

00:45:03.700 Dave talked about it.

00:45:04.600 So if we want to talk about inefficiency of government, and Mr. Diot's seen a lot of that in his time when he was in there, municipally and federally, I'm sure.

00:45:12.360 This is something else.

00:45:13.220 See, the mask mistakes worth $106 million from the federal public health agency, including, you know, theft and contracting issues and things.

00:45:24.600 Records are showing, you know, with this COVID scramble, taking our money and putting it towards things that are supposedly going to make us safer.

00:45:31.340 This is just one thing.

00:45:32.400 With this hindsight, when this whole pandemic thing is behind us, I don't know how many more years it's going to really take it all to get behind us.

00:45:40.300 But when we see stuff like this, man, we're going to be turning over a lot of rocks and

00:45:44.100 seeing a lot of ugliness.

00:45:45.340 I mean, despite the agency's best efforts in ensuring value for money and minimizing

00:45:48.880 risks, they still managed to lose $105 million?

00:45:53.960 And this is just in masks and stuff?

00:45:56.020 What are their best efforts?

00:45:57.180 That's pretty bloody sad.

00:45:58.600 I'd hate to see what their worst efforts look like.

00:46:01.120 No wonder we're going broke.

00:46:02.740 I mean, the inflation, but nobody, of course, can misappropriate money more efficiently

00:46:09.520 than bureaucracy, and it seems the higher the level you get, the worse they are, so the federal

00:46:13.800 government can manage to mess up $105 million worth of mask supplies. Just staggering. I can't,

00:46:22.580 don't know where to begin, but I see Kerry waiting in the lobby. I'll bring him in a few

00:46:26.020 minutes early if he's ready to roll. He's nodding, so let's bring Kerry Diodd in, and Kerry's got a

00:46:33.280 long history let's pop them in here um politically and journalistically you were writing for a long

00:46:40.240 time you were on the civic politics i believe in edmonton and then federal as a member of

00:46:45.200 parliament and uh now here you are today how's it going gary it's going great i'm glad that

00:46:50.320 you're talking about misappropriating money because i think we know who will handle that

00:46:56.960 very well when he is prime minister that's uh one of my main jobs right now is trying to get pierre

00:47:02.400 Polyev elected as leader of the Conservatives and ultimately Prime Minister and things are going

00:47:08.960 really well. Well and Mr. Polyev is certainly a leading and popular choice. He was the first one

00:47:16.120 we interviewed. I've had a number of candidates on the show actually over the last couple weeks.

00:47:21.300 I'm hoping to get every one of them on. I mean I don't remember the last time we've had quite

00:47:25.680 this many declared candidates for a federal race though. What do we got? We're at 10 now I believe?

00:47:30.180 yeah that's true um my suspicion is that when they realize what the price of pay of of uh playing

00:47:38.980 poker is which is essentially three hundred thousand dollars just to get off the ground

00:47:43.980 i think many will probably come up short because that's just kind of that's the entry fee and

00:47:50.000 that's the sort of the good manners fee that the party is is putting in and then on top of that

00:47:56.880 you've got to talk about travel, you've got to talk about all the other expenses that go with

00:48:01.620 the campaign. So I think it'll be whittled down. And again, I think that it's pretty clear right

00:48:07.620 now that Pierre Polyev is the guy to beat, and he can probably start straightening out that

00:48:12.660 misappropriated money that you were talking about earlier. I think that his message of

00:48:19.520 freedom is really resonating with people. Yeah, well, and he's always been a very effective

00:48:25.440 member in the house of commons and calling the government out and bad actions and things for

00:48:29.540 years uh one thing a lot of people i think if nothing else are looking forward to if uh you

00:48:35.720 know presuming uh mr poly have won the leadership would be watching him go to toe-to-toe with uh

00:48:41.000 prime minister trudeau in a debate it would probably be a quite a spectacle to say the least

00:48:46.260 yeah and i think he's he's certainly shown that already you know what i really like about pierre

00:48:51.120 though he's bringing new people into the conservative movement he really is um i'm sure

00:48:57.440 you've had this conversation with people who don't follow politics very much where they'll say yeah

00:49:02.560 you know i i don't know much about you know politics and all that but there's that that that

00:49:07.840 pierre pierre paulia yeah that guy i like that guy um and i i think he's really reaching out and and

00:49:15.440 getting people because you know what for once we've got somebody who is a leader who already

00:49:22.160 has a following we're not having to pitch and say okay so and so he's probably the best bet for the

00:49:28.800 party like take my word for it look i i know him well and he's smart he's done this he's done that

00:49:35.280 pierre's already got in got that built-in following and that's what's really exciting to me

00:49:40.000 he's uh he's crushing it across the country with the events that he's been holding getting you know

00:49:47.440 a thousand people at times for for these meet and greets these these pop-up rallies and people are

00:49:54.720 excited for once for once they're excited with a conservative leader and we're not having to settle

00:50:00.540 for um you know we're not having to basically sell people on the leadership he's already shown

00:50:08.160 that he's a leader yeah well and he's been certainly catching a lot of attention those

00:50:13.000 rallies have been large of course the the knives have been coming out i'm seeing some of the usual

00:50:17.000 columnists and attack dogs pointing out well that looks just like bernier when he was doing his or

00:50:22.320 even worse of course they'll start using the t word and saying well remember the rallies he brought

00:50:27.040 across this is a dangerous trend and uh but i mean i i don't know that tells me that the establishment

00:50:32.460 is getting a little scared and i'm not sure if that's a bad thing i think it's a great thing

00:50:35.940 Whenever I see the Toronto Star or some of these other outlets, CBC commentators, where they're saying negative things about Pierre, I think that's great.

00:50:45.920 Because you know what? I wouldn't want a leader who the Toronto Star loves because virtually everything the Toronto Star loves is left-wing, liberal, NDP, coalition BS.

00:50:58.540 and if they don't like him I like him even more because we don't need the we don't need the

00:51:05.820 Toronto Star to tell us who's a good conservative and who's who's going to be the best prime

00:51:10.520 minister they've always gotten it wrong they're they're in Trudeau's pocket solidly and it's

00:51:17.520 it's laughable it really is. Yeah well the Red Star has always been a sad institution of 0.99

00:51:24.000 journalism journalism in general though unfortunately you know even there was more

00:51:28.400 principle in it within the past i mean the the star has always been a left-leaning paper but

00:51:33.360 20 years ago it wasn't as directly beholden to the government like it is now like this trend of

00:51:38.160 subsidizing media outlets and having them beholden to uh federal handouts and such i mean we're

00:51:43.520 seeing that happening now i i think who is it the fellow from canadaland uh brown and he's a

00:51:49.200 a left leaning individual, but he's been really calling that out today. I mean, it's good to see

00:51:54.240 alternative media. I'm patting our own back a little, but still like left and right, we're

00:51:59.520 going to do better if we get out of those ugly old institutions like the Toronto Star, because

00:52:03.100 they've prostituted themselves to be blunt. I mean, they can't speak unrestrained any longer

00:52:10.900 because they are fully dependent on government money. Well, Corey, as you mentioned in the lead

00:52:15.640 i was a journalist for 30 years myself i was very active with an organization called the

00:52:21.080 canadian association of journalists i was a national director and i am just appalled at the

00:52:26.440 mainstream legacy media these days i've got to tip my hat to you guys because it's we we need

00:52:33.320 independent media more than ever as you say when when you're when you're beholden by um government

00:52:39.640 handouts that way you can't be trusted it's it's it's just it's just a non-starter when you know

00:52:46.580 that the media is taking direct handouts from the government you're no better than the cbc

00:52:51.860 uh broadcasting corporation then which is fully funded and uh and i think people that's exactly

00:52:58.980 why people are turning off in hordes and they're turning to to folks like you and and other

00:53:04.580 independent media because they know that the uh the mainstream legacy media is is they're liars

00:53:11.860 and and i'm i'm sad to say that having been a journalist 30 years myself the uh the the

00:53:18.580 independent media are the the people that people are turning to and the legacy mainstream media

00:53:25.300 is being turned off in record numbers yeah well and i'm hoping that whoever because a trend has

00:53:31.780 come out and there was a good story on that the other day from somebody in the mainstream,

00:53:34.660 there's still some good columnists and that out there, but talking about the almost obsession

00:53:38.620 that the Trudeau Liberals have with regulating the internet and of course what they're targeting

00:53:43.560 are organizations like the Western Standard or Canada Land. I mean, Canada Land, again, I just

00:53:49.360 like to give kudos to left-wing groups at times because they broke the We Foundation stuff. You

00:53:53.760 know, the Globe didn't do it, the CBC didn't do it, the Star or the National Post, it was Canada

00:53:59.140 land and the standard breaks things out here and the government hates that. They can't stand that.

00:54:04.500 They want to get these alternative media outlets out and it's making this election very important.

00:54:09.540 We can't take many more years of Liberals because they're going to keep controlling our information 0.80

00:54:13.540 and that makes it very hard to change the foundation of anything. Yeah, it's actually

00:54:17.060 terrifying what the Liberals are trying to do at every turn, but particularly when it comes

00:54:24.020 to free speech because you know when they talk about we're trying to protect you,

00:54:29.140 that that's code for they're trying to protect themselves and anybody who starts talking about

00:54:36.180 hate speech and trying to you know improve the internet or do it do it to to help the

00:54:42.820 canadian public i take that with a large grain of salt i don't want the government to regulate what

00:54:48.980 i am saying on on media period we already have laws that cover that we have distinct and and

00:54:56.180 very clear laws in our criminal code against hate speech and we don't need the the liberals to start

00:55:03.220 being arbiters of free speech no no and in the commissions they choose uh i mean it's bad enough

00:55:09.620 that we've seen over the decades with uh some of the human rights commissions have managed to uh

00:55:13.700 do and to see uh again the liberal government getting so directly involved with i mean activists

00:55:18.900 like gilbo and that speaking on these things it's it's it's quite distressing i do believe mr

00:55:22.900 You're probably a good talk about defunding the CBC.

00:55:24.860 So people are, I mean, we've heard that before,

00:55:26.920 but we are, you know, this is a new race.

00:55:28.700 And I think it's because of that.

00:55:29.820 O'Toole said that too.

00:55:30.700 And then he sort of backpedaled on it

00:55:32.600 because we don't need a national broadcaster.

00:55:36.140 Well, there's a place for them.

00:55:38.220 The people who are fans, I'm sure would be willing

00:55:41.240 and able to contribute to fund the CBC.

00:55:44.720 That's how it should be.

00:55:46.580 I contribute to independent media

00:55:48.860 that I that I'm a subscriber to or a participant with and people can do the same it's it's free

00:55:59.720 will and I know one thing is that if you look at CBC's numbers they're certainly not very high but

00:56:05.580 they are dangerous because they're omnipresent and they keep spouting some of these these stories

00:56:13.400 their coverage of the the freedom rally in in ottawa was a was a case in point it was it was

00:56:20.400 abysmal i don't think they talked to more than a half dozen truckers if that they had their

00:56:26.600 narrative and they were spinning and that's very very dangerous and i i think as a as a conservative

00:56:31.920 we've got to stand up and complain when we see that kind of coverage i do and you know what if

00:56:38.220 everybody did that, that would, that would hopefully smarten them up. They have things

00:56:43.680 like ombudsman and ways to complain. We should all complain because it's abysmal. Some of the

00:56:50.300 coverage that I've seen. Well, yeah. And just some direct accountability. I, you know, again,

00:56:55.200 it's self-serving, but I was saying earlier, we rely on subscribers and hey, if we abused our

00:57:00.080 subscribers with bad coverage, with bad stories, they're going to make it clear. I mean, first,

00:57:04.060 they might send emails telling us, Hey, cut it out, you guys. And if we ignore them, well,

00:57:07.040 they're going to unsubscribe. They're going to leave. That makes us accountable. And I can't

00:57:11.960 think of a better way for that. Just get the government out. The better outlets will thrive. 0.97

00:57:17.040 And that's, again, getting back to the leadership race. I think that's what's resonating with

00:57:20.920 people. The freedom notion that Pierre is talking about resonates in many ways,

00:57:29.140 as far as the media goes, as far as financial freedom, as far as freedom of choice. You talked

00:57:36.700 earlier about the uh the liberals mishandling the whole long gun issue that's that's another

00:57:43.280 huge issue canadians just want to be left alone by government we want to keep many of our hard

00:57:51.000 earned dollars and not have to give it out to um redistribution of wealth i mean the liberals have

00:57:58.320 gone so far left and that's why i think for once um we have we have the right tact on this there

00:58:06.080 There have been many people in previous campaigns saying, look, if the conservatives are ever to win, we've got to, you know, kind of soften our message and try to be a little bit more liberal light.

00:58:20.980 Well, it didn't work. It did not work in the last election and it will not work in the next election.

00:58:26.060 And I think that's why Pierre's message is resonating.

00:58:29.280 And he's bringing in followers from all different realms because he, as mentioned, he has his fans.

00:58:38.040 He's got his built-in audience right, left, and center.

00:58:40.960 Here is a guy who can bring in and create a big tent.

00:58:46.680 And he's proving he can do it.

00:58:48.120 And we're really looking forward to him being here on the 13th and 14th in Edmonton.

00:58:53.440 We've got a breakfast that's coming up, and it's selling out fast.

00:58:57.940 anybody wants to get a ticket to that get it now go onto my facebook and you can find links for

00:59:04.380 that we got a big rally coming up and uh i think we're gonna we're gonna have a just a an amazing

00:59:10.700 gathering here for for pierre i think they're going to come out in droves and uh show people

00:59:16.620 that there are no bigger fans than edmontonians for pierre great so getting a little broader in

00:59:23.640 the race in general. One of the things I've been kind of frustrated with, I guess, is a libertarian

00:59:27.760 leaning, very, you know, I've always been an outspoken free market person and a pet peeve of

00:59:32.120 mine since I first heard the words on what that system is, is it's been supply management. And

00:59:36.460 I've asked every one of the candidates and Mr. Polyev isn't alone. Every one of them do not want

00:59:41.220 to touch that. They don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. They won't address what I, you know,

00:59:47.560 it's my own bias, but what I say is a Soviet style system. And I understand politically,

00:59:53.180 it's a soft spot. I mean, there's a lot of producers in Quebec, and they've got a very

00:59:57.500 strong, very effective, credit where to do, they're a very effective lobby. And they were

01:00:02.200 actually a very large part of the leadership race two years ago, or two leaders ago, I should say.

01:00:07.500 And, you know, it led to a bad end. But I just, are our leaders going to keep getting more milk

01:00:14.320 a toaster are they going to take on some core conservative issues sometimes i worry about that

01:00:17.640 well yeah it's it's a concern i think that uh if if you're looking for anybody to take a

01:00:23.520 a freedom issue on on any any one of these these issues of big government or supply chain

01:00:32.320 i think pierre's the guy who will do that i think that uh he's already shown that with uh with

01:00:37.920 bitcoin he's not afraid to shake things up he also don't don't forget he was he's been our finance

01:00:44.800 critic for for many years and uh he's already shown he's certainly already shown how he can

01:00:51.360 take on justin trudeau i think that's why people actually out west in particular love him for that

01:00:58.000 because he's really set trudeau back on his heels many many times i think one of my favorites was

01:01:04.480 when and i i'm paraphrasing here but on wednesdays uh justin trudeau has decided that he'll appear in

01:01:11.680 the house and take all questions i remember one leading question when i was a member of parliament

01:01:16.240 there i believe pierre asked something along the lines of this this is just a crazy issue this i 0.99

01:01:22.400 i cannot believe that that somebody has concocted such a crazy stupid scheme can the person 0.99

01:01:29.280 responsible for this lunacy this this clown would the person responsible for this please stand up 1.00

01:01:36.720 and of course trudeau stood up it was classy yeah no he's he's good for well basically walking 0.94

01:01:44.880 circles around prime minister trudeau and we're looking forward to that i mean when you see that

01:01:49.360 as i said the establishment sweating like that you know that they do fear a new invigorated leader

01:01:55.120 you know, taking them to task. And I think Canadians are ready for one. That's why I'm 1.00

01:01:59.260 hoping for a vigorous conservative race too, though. I mean, that's, it's important, you know,

01:02:02.600 to have as many ideas out there. I mean, put them through that trial of fire. If you're going to

01:02:07.900 find weaknesses in candidates, it's during the leadership race rather than a general election

01:02:11.740 that we'd want to see that. Something I did think it was great out of Polly, of the was, yeah,

01:02:16.640 the digital currencies, that was something I never, you know, if somebody before the race said,

01:02:20.640 okay, we're the top 10 issues, we're going to hear from candidates. I wouldn't have thrown

01:02:23.600 digital currency into that but with it being in there now i think it's fantastic this is something

01:02:28.560 new and it's breaking and it's nothing that uh you would have seen from anybody else i i was

01:02:34.320 it was an interesting move on his part well i agree and uh pierre is uh pierre is a smart guy

01:02:40.240 he is he is very very intelligent you've seen it when when when he's in the house he thinks things

01:02:46.720 through he's uh he's polished he's a great orator he's bilingual like he's he is the full full

01:02:54.240 package he really is and um i think that he the the most exciting thing is the fact that he really

01:03:01.200 is getting more people toward the conservative movement um it's a very uh you'll note that his

01:03:08.000 his uh it's been it's been noted by many people it's pierre paulia for for pm for prime minister

01:03:14.320 he wants to go right for the job and and that's i think very intentional on his part he's reaching

01:03:20.080 out there's no there's no um there's he's just he's just the the real the real deal and i think

01:03:29.120 people see through that and it's really exciting seeing people getting involved in conservative

01:03:34.320 politics i think a lot of people are conservatives out there and they don't even know it and i think

01:03:38.960 that that that's what pierre has has discovered and that's why he's pitching himself that way

01:03:45.080 Well, we'll hope that Pierre and the others, again, you know, really invigorate and get people going throughout this race.

01:03:51.600 It's going to be a long one.

01:03:52.420 I mean, this goes all the way till September 10th.

01:03:55.140 Maybe you'd know offhand, though, when is the membership cut off for people who want to buy?

01:03:58.780 You'd have to check with the Conservative.

01:04:01.160 Go on to conservative.ca.

01:04:02.800 I think it's there.

01:04:04.060 I wouldn't want to go off the top.

01:04:05.220 I think it's a couple of months out from that.

01:04:07.780 But rest assured, there are a lot of people selling memberships and working hard on this.

01:04:16.520 I think that, as I said earlier, I do believe that it'll be probably whittled down to maybe about five contestants, I would think.

01:04:28.060 But who knows? There might be a lot of people who are excited, who want to get involved in campaigns.

01:04:36.060 And I guess the proof is in the pudding because it's a good-sized price tag, as it should

01:04:42.280 be, because otherwise you could end up with two dozen people in the race, and you've got

01:04:46.500 to put your money where your mouth is.

01:04:48.780 Yeah, no, you've got to set your bar realistically.

01:04:50.700 I mean, I know that from even on provincial politics.

01:04:52.800 People get upset with the entrance fee.

01:04:54.780 But I mean, the way to put it, well, whoever wins those races is theoretically going to

01:04:59.300 have to lead that party, and they're going to have to raise millions of dollars if they

01:05:02.560 really want to effectively run, you know, a campaign in a general election. So if they can't

01:05:07.980 raise, whether it's federally 200,000 plus a deposit or provincially, when you get rates as

01:05:13.060 high as 50,000, it makes it hard to believe that they'd be able to be an effective leader at that

01:05:17.540 point. So I mean, I know people say, well, it leaves it only to the elites, but not necessarily

01:05:21.760 a good grassroots organizer. If you really engage and get a lot of people excited, you will get the

01:05:27.500 donors and you can raise that kind of money. I agree. Absolutely. So I appreciate you coming

01:05:33.400 on to talk to me about that today. Kerry, it was good to see you again. Where can we find

01:05:37.360 more information then on where you're up to? And I guess you probably have as well.

01:05:41.860 Yeah. Well, my website is kerrydiott.com. K-E-R-R-Y-D-I-O-T-T-E.com. Pierre's website is

01:05:50.040 pierre number four pm.ca and uh check my facebook and social media for any of those links to the

01:05:58.360 the upcoming pierre um events and uh we'd love to have a packed house for for his events and

01:06:05.800 in edmonton and uh i'm sure he'll he'll pack the house in calgary as well great well that's much

01:06:11.720 appreciated always good to talk to you again carrie and uh have a good one up there in edmonton and

01:06:15.960 talk again probably before this race is through. Yeah, you bet. And keep up the good work with

01:06:19.740 your media outlet. We really need you guys. Much appreciated. Thanks, Gary.

01:06:25.440 All right. So, Kerry Yott, yes. And, well, a member of parliament from Edmonton. And it's,

01:06:30.560 again, a long history as a journalist and a municipal politician. So, this is a person who

01:06:34.860 has dealt with a whole lot of politics for a whole lot of time. And he can certainly speak

01:06:39.740 to those issues. I saw some questions coming. I know I get this every time I talk to every

01:06:45.120 leadership candidate. Where was that? Keith asking about the World Economic Forum. Okay.

01:06:53.040 Others have been asked and so on. Pierre Polyev addressed that with Andrew Lawton very clearly.

01:06:57.680 If you look it up, Andrew Lawton, Pierre Polyev interview, and Pierre Polyev said directly to

01:07:02.440 that question, he has never had any involvement with them. He doesn't support their principles

01:07:06.460 and he has nothing to do with them. That's why I don't keep asking about it because why do we

01:07:10.100 want to keep asking the same question over and over again? If you don't believe him, fine,

01:07:13.440 I mean, so be it, but I believe them.

01:07:16.920 And again, I've spoken on the World Economic Forum.

01:07:19.920 I've spoken on Schwab.

01:07:21.320 If you look that up, I did a rant that went quite viral there on, you know, talking about what that for, you know, the WEF is and what a sick organization they are.

01:07:30.900 But again, I think there's some people who seem to tie it to anybody and everybody they don't like.

01:07:34.420 And guys, they're thankfully not nearly as entrenched into all our politicians as they would like to be, as a lot of people think they are.

01:07:43.440 Uh, just cause Schwab says he wants to control everything doesn't mean he can, he has, or

01:07:48.220 he is, but either way we do ask those questions.

01:07:51.080 We don't hide from them.

01:07:51.920 It's just, there's, there's not much more to be asked on that one in the, in that case

01:07:55.260 with, uh, Mr. Polyev.

01:07:56.680 And, and, uh, so I didn't go there, uh, in that we're just not going to learn more from

01:08:01.920 it at that point, but yeah, it's going to be a long, big race.

01:08:05.620 And as I said, you know, 10 people in, and, and, uh, as Kerry said as well, I, I, I agree.

01:08:10.700 I think at least half of them are going to drop by the wayside.

01:08:13.240 it's one thing to say you're declared and get your name in there and everything. It is another

01:08:16.460 thing to raise that. It's $200,000 to get in, $100,000 deposit. So, I mean, if you do something

01:08:21.320 exceptionally stupid, you could lose the other $100,000 as well. It's a good behavior deposit 0.99

01:08:25.820 sort of thing. And that's before you start campaigning. That's before you start traveling

01:08:31.100 across the country, holding rallies, sending out mail-outs, whatever your campaign form might take

01:08:36.840 advertising. And I suspect a lot of them just aren't going to be able to reach that bar or even

01:08:42.040 if they get close uh they won't feel uh they have enough momentum to stay within the race

01:08:48.060 so we'll see as it develops their cutoffs are going to be coming in a little while and we'll

01:08:52.200 see how many candidates remain but boy it's a lot right now uh throwing their feet forward and as I

01:08:57.140 said people come out of nowhere sometimes you know these are interesting times with uh alternative

01:09:02.400 media with digital media things like that somebody can come theoretically and really engage a lot of

01:09:09.460 people really reach out to them through Facebook, through Twitter, through web pages and build

01:09:16.000 rallies and get on the ground. I mean, it's a lot of work. But I mean, compared to what it would

01:09:19.820 have been 50 years ago, you think of the money you had to have back then. I mean, you could only get

01:09:24.260 into a small number of media outlets. There was no social media. Your volunteers had to physically

01:09:29.740 mail people, physically knock on doors, physically phone them. That's a lot of work, a lot of expense,

01:09:34.300 a lot of time. For a little guy to come from nowhere and rise up in a situation like that

01:09:38.920 was nearly impossible now you can't discount anybody if somebody's got the the right message

01:09:45.200 who's good at it and can engage people you never know they they might spring out of the crowd and

01:09:49.700 really uh take off with things so we'll see how this race progresses over time uh yeah so there

01:09:55.160 is i see uh deco's got my twitter account uh up there cory b morgan and that's good just to remind

01:09:59.720 people so yeah you know if you if we want to get on to more of the the rough and tumble debate and

01:10:03.140 discussion areas the twitter thread's more appropriate for it if you want to take it there

01:10:06.860 I'll certainly, that's my playground where I tend to get a little more engaged and take the gloves

01:10:13.480 off and debate or whatever. I'm more inclined to taking some unvarnished commentary on that sort

01:10:18.780 of thing. Is that, yeah, social media, I mean, we get these opportunities to discuss things with each

01:10:24.520 other. And I think it's cool. It's good for us, you know, and that's where I worry about internet

01:10:28.820 regulation. These are things too. I mean, you've got media members, you've got politicians, you can

01:10:32.920 get to us on social media directly in ways you never were able to in the past. So we are in for

01:10:39.080 some good times. And Mr. Paulyov, of course, is very effective on social media, as most of these

01:10:43.080 candidates are. You can't do well without social media anymore. It's unavoidable. And it's an

01:10:50.380 interesting thing. Before I get into some more news reads here and stories, actually, I'll remind

01:10:54.860 everybody to hit that bell for the alerts and things like that. We had live coverage of the

01:11:00.960 protests on the weekend. Rachel was down there. She was streaming some stuff. We have interviews.

01:11:06.060 We have things popping up. And if you don't hit that, you don't see them when they come. And

01:11:09.720 that's part of us being alternative media. We need to reach you through the social media

01:11:16.600 platforms. Follow us on all of those, you know, YouTube. We're on Rumble. I really want to get

01:11:21.520 more people over there because I don't trust YouTube to always keep us uncanceled at any

01:11:24.920 given time. Facebook is where we do a whole lot of stuff. Just make sure to share and follow all

01:11:30.340 those things. Everybody nags you about that all the time on all those media outlets. There's a

01:11:33.220 reason for it. It helps us. It helps us keep spreading so we can cover these things. So if

01:11:37.440 you haven't already, by all means, follow on all those platforms and share it. I'm going to go

01:11:42.140 further on that journalism excellence. This was that thing I was talking about before. Dave brought

01:11:47.840 it up in one of his stories. Nominated the Canadian Journalism Foundation, which I don't think it's

01:11:54.100 the same as the association that Carrie Diot was talking about. There's a lot of our foundations,

01:11:57.700 associations groups. And they nominated a story for journalism excellence. And this one was one

01:12:03.660 where these guys from the Narwhal, these far left environmental advocates, yeah, they'd gotten

01:12:09.280 CBC grants to do a documentary on the CGL pipeline protests and they embedded all right. They were

01:12:15.300 taking part in it. They locked themselves in a cabin with a bunch of kooky protesters until the

01:12:19.600 police had to cut them out of there with chainsaws. Then suddenly they throw their hands, oh no, we're

01:12:23.680 press, we're pressed, we're not with them. It was terrible. And it was, you know, there's a line

01:12:29.340 that gets crossed. I mean, you want to get in and as a journalist, you know, embed yourself fine,

01:12:34.020 be amongst the crowd. You don't have to be hostile with them. But they've crossed that line into

01:12:38.080 being a part of the story and not reporting on it or documenting it. And this though, this isn't

01:12:45.800 unusual, but to have this foundation say that these guys are worthy of an award at that. I mean, come

01:12:52.420 on. Where are you going with this? You know, there's no excuse for that. The awards committee

01:12:59.120 has confidence in the quality of her journalism, it said. Well, she was arrested after joining the

01:13:03.960 protesters. Again, arrested or detained, I mean, is the way they put it, because they couldn't tell

01:13:09.160 her from the protesters. When you're in there, they can't even tell you from the rest of the

01:13:13.020 protesters. You're not doing good journalism, guys. He said, yeah, connected to her arrest

01:13:20.360 while covering an indigenous anti-pipeline protest with broader police violations of

01:13:23.560 journalists' rights. Well, wait a minute. See, that's what I mean. She was trying to walk both

01:13:27.320 sides of the line. Absolutely. You know, I don't like seeing it when police shove journalists

01:13:31.380 aside or say you can't cover this or do things like that. Free press is very important. But when

01:13:36.340 you're walking both sides, like I said, when you lock yourself into a blockade cabin on a pipeline

01:13:40.840 right-of-way, don't identify yourself as a journalist until the police are actually in

01:13:44.820 there physically arresting you. That's not police abuse. That's being stupid. And that's crossing

01:13:49.480 the line from good journalism way beyond that. Yet, yet, this journalism foundation wants to

01:13:54.940 give them an award for excellence in coverage. This is sick, guys. This is the opposite. They

01:14:01.700 should be getting spanked saying, you've embarrassed your trade. This isn't what you're 1.00

01:14:04.920 about, you guys. Again, there's opinion. There's having a slant. That's what I'm all about. This

01:14:09.660 is an opinion show. We have columnists who do that. But it's all a matter of transparency and

01:14:14.060 identifying yourself. When these guys only identify as journalists when it's convenient,

01:14:18.920 Otherwise, they're right in there, not covering the protests.

01:14:21.860 They were with the protests.

01:14:23.500 And that's a problem.

01:14:24.760 And it's a real problem when these guys are getting an award for it.

01:14:28.680 Here's another side story to hit just while I'm running through the news scroll.

01:14:31.320 A majority of Canadian support cuts to the number of mail delivery days to three days a week if it saves money at the post office.

01:14:36.380 That's interesting.

01:14:37.740 Of course, they spent $4.5 million at the Privy Council office polling to find these things out, it looks like.

01:14:44.340 So, you know, again, leave it to government to spend that kind of much money to find out that people these days, yeah, we probably don't need mail five days a week.

01:14:52.160 Glad you spent that money on that.

01:14:54.200 You know, they spent $2.8 million on a poll in December asking, because they said the Canada Post loses money every year.

01:15:00.500 We need to make significant cuts to break even.

01:15:02.740 So you think they should reduce some of the service?

01:15:06.940 Man, how does a poll cost that much money?

01:15:09.240 What are you guys doing?

01:15:11.280 Again, our tax dollars at work.

01:15:12.740 Yes, I do want to see Polyev and some others get in there and rip into those numbers.

01:15:16.540 But at that, I mean, the Canada Post is another old institution of an organization that it's been replaced.

01:15:23.900 I mean, mail order has taken over.

01:15:26.100 I mean, we're not mailing letters anymore, physical letters, bills, none of that.

01:15:29.540 Very, very few people need that anymore.

01:15:31.520 And on the package and parcel business, they're lagging.

01:15:34.660 Amazon, UPS, all of those private groups now are blowing them out of the water.

01:15:39.640 They've got to restructure and change what they're doing absolutely.

01:15:42.180 And maybe, again, it's time for the government to get out of the delivery business altogether.

01:15:46.820 But Canadians, thanks to millions of dollars, at least for these guys spinning polling, also agree with that.

01:15:52.560 So that's good of them.

01:15:54.480 Let's see more stuff as we look.

01:15:55.980 The Department of Industry, like all of this post-COVID fallout, we're seeing.

01:15:58.800 There's so much investigation we're going to have to do.

01:16:01.160 Looking in these committees as all this stuff starts rising up, we're seeing the numbers.

01:16:05.160 So the federal government guaranteed credit lines over the COVID thing,

01:16:09.720 lines that are assumed to have a higher loss rate than term loans, about 50% higher, the

01:16:15.040 department said. And they gave a pile of these loans out there. We're not going to get that

01:16:19.780 money back. Credited up to $150,000 at prime plus 5% interest repayable within five years.

01:16:27.640 But this is 10-year term loans that they convert to. Guys, the debt we're in and the money the

01:16:33.720 government spent, the trouble we're getting into, these things as we read, we got to keep

01:16:37.360 reporting. We need a good government. We need a good opposition. This kind of demonstrates it.

01:16:41.700 I mean, what's this add up to? You see, when you do the bookkeeping, the government's saying,

01:16:44.280 no, no, these are credits. This is money coming back. This money we loaned out. We're going to

01:16:47.000 get it back. No, a lot of this we're not going to get back. We're not going to get back at all.

01:16:50.880 They loaned it out to high risk, dangerous, or I shouldn't say dangerous, but businesses that

01:16:57.420 don't deserve to get loans. I know it gets frustrating when you can't qualify for credit,

01:17:02.980 but you know, I think when I was in my early twenties, I couldn't get much for credit,

01:17:05.640 But you know what? It's because my credit rating stunk and I deserved it. I mean, I only made a

01:17:10.940 small amount of money back then. I was bad for paying my bills on time. You know what? I worked,

01:17:14.640 I earned, I got better credit and I could borrow more. There's a reason that system goes that way

01:17:19.880 and let the private businesses deal with that. When the government looks like I talk about with

01:17:23.340 anything else, when they get into the market of lending money and pissing around with those

01:17:26.480 things, they're going to screw it up. You know, they're going to screw it up. I think it's Ralph

01:17:30.560 Klein. I'm probably ruining his words and paraphrasing, but when he talks about subsidies

01:17:33.780 and things like that. Governments are terrible at picking winners and losers, but losers are

01:17:37.840 great at picking governments. And just, man, if we really want to save Canadians money in general,

01:17:43.420 get government out of the business of being in business on every level. Speaking of private and

01:17:48.320 free speech, there's some news that's been hitting today. It's been kind of interesting.

01:17:52.020 Elon Musk, what an interesting guy. I mean, the guy, you don't have to agree with everything he

01:17:55.300 says or does. Some of his stuff I really don't like at all. Speaking of subsidies, his businesses

01:17:59.640 have taken in a great deal of them. But he's also a man to talk about a guy who likes just taking the

01:18:06.940 rope and giving it a whip into the establishment, shaking things up. So he put a poll out on Twitter

01:18:13.060 recently. Man, it's got to be something to have this kind of money. And on this poll, over 2

01:18:18.900 million people voted. You know, when I put a Twitter poll out and I get 5,000 people voted,

01:18:22.100 I'm pretty thrilled in it. 2 million people voted. And he was asking whether or not, you know,

01:18:26.520 they felt that Twitter respects free speech. 70% felt they didn't. And he said, this poll's

01:18:31.500 important. And the reason, it turns out, so once he got that result, he turned around and said,

01:18:38.320 okay. And he spent $3 billion and bought 9% of Twitter. Now, 9% sounds like a small number,

01:18:47.940 but that makes him the largest single shareholder in that entire company. And it goes to show how

01:18:55.540 much Twitter's worth too, which is an monstrously scary big amount. But I mean, Twitter has been

01:18:58.860 terrible with suppressing and gagging speech and so on. And Musk is more of a purist when it comes

01:19:04.780 to those sorts of things. So it'll be interesting to see. I mean, these giants, these guys who have

01:19:09.620 a few billion dollars they could throw around to make a political point and perhaps swing on some

01:19:14.040 of these social media giants, because how else do you influence these giants that are worth

01:19:17.560 tens of billions of dollars? Well, he's coming in there with a mandate now to have Twitter

01:19:23.920 respect speech more. I don't see how this could go badly or any worse than it already is with the

01:19:29.340 way Twitter is anyways. So I'm watching that with interest. Like I said, Musk, he's an interesting

01:19:35.300 guy. You know, I don't agree with everything he says, but boy, he's smart and he sure is a

01:19:39.440 disruptor if you want to use that term that gets overused a lot these days. And I'm watching that

01:19:45.400 with interest as it goes. What else we got? I'm going to talk about a sponsor. I'm going to talk

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01:20:31.560 hardware. It stores my Bitcoin safely out of the reach of anybody. And there's a corporate plan.

01:20:37.960 The Western standard has a percentage of my salary every month goes into that. And the

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01:20:46.540 And that way I've invested in a little bit of Bitcoin and I've got that little hedge there for

01:20:50.280 whatever I want to do with it later. These guys help walk companies through it and help walk

01:20:53.920 individuals through it. You want to do that with your own company or get your company to do it for

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01:21:05.460 and they will help you safely get involved in the digital currency world. Okay. So I'll just finish

01:21:12.800 out with this other survey and, you know, talk about government spending money to report on the

01:21:17.300 obvious. There's a survey suggests that Canadians are becoming more divided with some saying issues

01:21:22.080 have led to them to reduce contact with friends and family. So this was a phone survey by the

01:21:27.360 Canadian Hub for Applied and Social Research at the University of Saskatchewan. They asked a thousand

01:21:32.080 people about the issues that divided most. Three out of four said they believe society's become

01:21:36.920 more polarized. I don't think that's a real shocker. You know, that was like asking people

01:21:40.160 if the sky's blue. I mean, look how bad it is these years. And, you know, 72% said the COVID

01:21:46.620 pandemic and the federal election, the two most divisive issues of the last year, I guess, to get

01:21:52.400 that measure. So three quarters of people are paying attention to the world around them. The

01:21:55.820 other third or quarter there, how would you not think things have been divisive lately? But this

01:22:01.840 is sad. I mean, this is sad. 40% of those surveyed said they reduced contact with friends or family

01:22:07.540 over an argument about the pandemic or politics. And I can think of a couple of people who have

01:22:11.960 done that in family circles of me and around them. Just about everybody can. This is a bad,

01:22:17.240 bad place for us to be, guys. We can get upset with politics. We always have. That's as old as

01:22:21.500 I'm sure 200 years ago, people would fight over the table and not talk for a couple of weeks or

01:22:25.160 something. But now, I mean, over vaccination status or lockdowns or the federal election,

01:22:32.640 like we're losing touch with each other. We're dividing, we're splitting. Friends and family,

01:22:37.180 guys, I'll tell you some things. You can get, take politics is a saying I've always had.

01:22:40.740 Take politics seriously. Don't take it personally. Your family is more important than any policy out there, any dispute out there. If you can't get along on what you think with the pandemic or who's in charge or who's the prime minister, just don't talk about those things. Avoid them. I know it's easier said than done, but don't. It's not worth losing relationships over. Brothers, sisters, not talking, families. It's wrong, guys. It's wrong. We're all suffering from that.

01:23:10.200 Learn to get along with each other, even if you're differing.

01:23:13.240 These numbers are scary, and we all see people doing it.

01:23:15.360 And I know it always seems like it's the other person's fault.

01:23:17.160 Well, fine.

01:23:17.600 Let the other person be wrong.

01:23:20.340 You know, let them feel that they're right.

01:23:22.380 Whatever.

01:23:23.560 We can't keep dividing ourselves like this.

01:23:25.220 It's not healthy for any of us, guys.

01:23:27.080 We're all doing worse for it.

01:23:28.520 But they spent some time to poll on it and let us know how bad those numbers really are.

01:23:33.560 So that's just about it for today.

01:23:36.120 Tomorrow, I got a couple of great guests coming in.

01:23:37.960 I've got Andrew Ruland from Integrated Wealth Management.

01:23:40.860 He's going to be coming in studio, and they've got a webinar coming up,

01:23:44.360 and we're going to discuss a lot of broad financial issues and things like that

01:23:47.540 because the finances are important, and we're in a tumultuous world right now

01:23:51.460 with finances in general.

01:23:53.640 Those of us who are starting to think looking ahead for things like retiring

01:23:56.260 or trying to take a break or a breather or paying off some bills,

01:23:59.900 and we don't know what to do.

01:24:01.080 It's getting scary.

01:24:02.020 It'll be a good conversation with him.

01:24:03.900 And then I'm going to talk to a political scientist, Barry Cooper,

01:24:06.380 and we're going to talk about some of that, things like the stacking of seats for Quebec

01:24:11.020 on that recent vote in Parliament. He wrote a big, long article on that recently, and it's

01:24:15.740 going to be a really good discussion with Professor Cooper as well. So thank you all for tuning in

01:24:21.200 today, guys. I really do appreciate it, and I look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow at 11.30

01:24:27.020 a.m. sharp.

01:24:36.380 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - April 05, 2022

LIVE SHOW - Triggered： Electric vehicles to be forced upon us.

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