Western Standard - LIVE - Triggered： Ding, dong, the masks are gone!

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 is anybody hearing me yet nobody's hearing me yet uh still getting nothing to comment

00:01:18.560 saying no sound melanie's hearing me okay we've got sound there's a little bit of a delay so

00:01:22.800 getting back to what i was saying earlier this is a live show as we could tell when the sound issues

00:01:26.880 pop up like that uh typically at the very start but uh it'll go good from there they always throw

00:01:32.800 me off on my opening rant so thank you all for joining getting in there and thank you

00:01:36.560 for commenters for keeping me up to date on what our sound status is i'll try to keep you guys up

00:01:41.120 to date on the news and issues uh as they come about now too so again as i was saying earlier

00:01:47.680 this is a monday to friday show 11 30 a.m mountain standard time and we are on rumble youtube and

00:01:54.720 Facebook. So again, as I said earlier, you're clearly on one of them. I really want to try and

00:02:00.520 recommend people pick up and go to our Rumble thing. The only problem is the comments, but

00:02:03.860 that's coming soon. And in case somehow we get canceled, you'll still be able to find us. Good

00:02:09.800 to see you all checking in there in the comment scroll. And like I said, the comments are welcome.

00:02:12.860 If we keep it civil with each other and civil with me, I'll pass along questions to the guests

00:02:17.100 when I can and address them when I can. And I do see them all. I don't necessarily address them all.

00:02:21.500 So today I got a couple of guests on. Of course, I got Colin Krieger of the Maverick Party. He's

00:02:27.060 going to be running for the leadership of it. And we'll be finding out what he wants to do with it,

00:02:34.040 where he's going with it, and how that campaign's been going. And then I got Landon King. He's going

00:02:38.240 to be coming in studio and he's with Colliers. And they're a real estate company. They deal

00:02:42.120 with commercial real estate and things like that. And we've still got that vacancy issue going on

00:02:47.520 in Alberta right now with nothing but, what, 40% probably close to downtown office vacancies.

00:02:55.340 It's going to be interesting talking about that in other areas.

00:02:58.320 So I'm going to start, though, with sending my condolences to the City of Edmonton,

00:03:03.240 particularly those who own small businesses,

00:03:09.340 which are going to lose revenue to competitors outside of city limits.

00:03:12.480 I feel for our neighboring provinces as well, and I hope they follow Alberta's lead soon.

00:03:18.140 Because Alberta's restrictions and mandates are pretty much all gone.

00:03:21.040 We can breathe again, smile again, scowl again.

00:03:23.920 We no longer have to put on a chin diaper in order to go to the washroom in a restaurant.

00:03:28.140 Bars will no longer have to close three hours early during the prime sales and drinking times.

00:03:33.460 Limits on social gatherings are being limited, or lifted, I should say.

00:03:37.860 And large venues for sports and concerts can fill up again.

00:03:41.140 Work from home orders have been lifted.

00:03:43.140 Most of us have forgotten they were even there, but they are gone now. 0.99

00:03:46.040 Did I mention those damn masks are going to be gone? 0.99

00:03:47.860 Oh, God. 0.99

00:03:49.080 Aside from public transit, taxis, and care homes, at least.

00:03:52.380 Hopefully, they're going to be gone in most of those as well soon, too.

00:03:56.120 If the prospect of having these restrictions lifted frightens you, all I can say is too damn bad.

00:04:01.180 Your fear is not my problem.

00:04:02.740 We're trying to make it so.

00:04:04.420 There's nothing to stop the fearful from wearing masks wherever they please.

00:04:08.340 They can choose to find work they can do from home,

00:04:10.960 and they can get all their products delivered.

00:04:12.220 Become an introvert.

00:04:13.380 Hell, you can wear a deep-sea diving helmet for all I care. 0.64

00:04:16.940 It's up to you.

00:04:18.240 It's your problem.

00:04:19.900 We're never going to live in a zero-risk world.

00:04:21.840 There's always something out there that could kill us the second we step out the door.

00:04:24.800 No matter how hard the government may try,

00:04:27.500 they're never going to be able to eliminate those risks.

00:04:29.760 They can only eliminate our freedoms, and they're very good at that.

00:04:32.880 All efforts around the world from every country to eliminate COVID-19 has failed.

00:04:37.000 Every one of them.

00:04:37.820 No matter how hard some nations have locked themselves down, the virus continues to exist

00:04:42.280 and spread. We can mitigate, but we can't stop this thing. We need to face the reality that we

00:04:47.260 can't govern ourselves out of a disease. Governments can't do the most simple of tasks

00:04:52.620 efficiently and effectively. Why on earth did anybody think they could quell a pandemic?

00:04:57.020 All of those who've chosen to be vaccinated have done so now. Leave those who've chosen not to

00:05:02.080 alone. Quit chasing them around, messing with their lives and demonizing them. It's not making

00:05:05.860 anybody safer and it's only dragging out our already agonizingly slow return to some form of

00:05:11.420 social normalcy. Ignore the bloody mainstream media news. Not only because I want you all

00:05:17.000 subscribing to us here at the Western Standard, but because it's better for your mental health

00:05:20.280 and sense of safety. The mainstream media will continue to headline whatever the most frightening

00:05:24.280 and negative stats are for the day every day. If deaths went down, the news will report on

00:05:29.380 infections going up. If infections went down, the news will report on the higher positivity rates

00:05:34.120 and testing. If all the stats went down, the news will find an expert who found a lone case of COVID-19

00:05:39.080 in a rodent in Botswana and will express concern that this strain shall surely lead to mass impotence

00:05:43.720 in young men if indeed it breaks free from the Botswana rat world. Thus, we must lock down in 0.96

00:05:48.640 Alberta. They refuse to report positive news on COVID and you're never going to lose your fear

00:05:54.220 of it if you keep listening to them. Doctors like NDP Joe Vipond will continue to get airtime and

00:06:00.000 he's going to continue to fear-monger. They have no power, though, if you don't listen to them.

00:06:04.240 We've got to remain on guard, though. Not for the virus. That's never going away.

00:06:08.060 We just have to live with it. We have to watch for the moves on the government's part to go

00:06:12.060 back into restrictions. Remember, we sang all these celebratory tunes less than a year ago

00:06:16.720 as we entered the best summer ever, only to be locked down again by fall. They can and will do

00:06:22.240 it again if given a chance. The protests, they helped, even if no authorities will admit it.

00:06:27.500 I hope they understand the protests will be back with a vengeance if the restrictions return.

00:06:33.540 For now though, let's enjoy that breath of freedom. We've been long overdue to draw it in.

00:06:37.560 And at the same time, remember that freedom could be fleeting. We can lose it quickly if

00:06:40.520 we don't remain on guard. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The battle of the last

00:06:44.540 two years has never been about health. It's been about control. Citizens have regained some

00:06:48.680 personal control. Be sure to guard it carefully and jealously because it can be fleeting, as I

00:06:55.900 said okay let's get on to ongoing news we've been reporting on that in the uh jason kenney's press

00:07:01.500 conference and other such goodness and we'll check in with our melanie risden in the newsroom and see

00:07:09.100 good good busy busy yes absolutely busy's good and bad i guess yes busy is always good especially in

00:07:16.940 a newsroom so yeah we have uh got some new stories up today to uh definitely check out uh we of

00:07:22.860 course in the province have moved to step two of the reopening plan so we've got details there as

00:07:29.100 to what's been lifted what remains really it sounds like the majority of uh of the restrictions

00:07:36.060 have been lifted there are a few uh restrictions some masking in certain circumstances and

00:07:43.180 facilities so uh you can check that out on our website ucp is uh said to be planning to drop

00:07:48.620 the vaccine passports for AHS employees as well. That sounds like it's coming down as of March 15.

00:07:57.020 We didn't get a definitive for sure confirmation of that, but that was some information that was

00:08:05.020 sort of leaked a little bit. And it sounds like they are going to be moving that way.

00:08:09.900 Kenny did make the statement that the vaccine passports at this stage, the mandates and the

00:08:17.740 proof of vaccination are really not proving to be all that effective in the, you know, the control

00:08:25.020 and the spread of COVID-19 at this point. So all of those details on the website. We've also got

00:08:30.940 a story up. UCP MLA Peter Guthrie has spoken out again. So he's spoken out from day one on

00:08:40.220 Premier Kenney's vaccine mandates. So he's calling Kenney out again, saying Alberta's COVID response

00:08:46.380 needs to have some sort of a judicial review just again going on about the hypocrisy involved with

00:08:54.860 that mandate. Also calling on the Prime Minister as well to lift the vaccine mandate for travel,

00:09:03.820 so for international travel. Another story on our website about reports showing Canada has among

00:09:12.300 the highest pandemic spending in the world. We were the fifth largest spender across the world.

00:09:20.780 And according to the Canadian Taxpayer Federation, it did not pay off for Canadians. We didn't see

00:09:27.260 better health or economic results due to all that spending. So you can get a few more details on the

00:09:33.740 website for that one. We have a letter to the editor from a Red Deer couple who are fully

00:09:39.260 vaccinated, just got back from a trip. They are a retired couple and they needed to spend an

00:09:45.740 additional $2,400 for all of their testing and additional COVID expenses for their travel. So

00:09:54.180 again, fully vaccinated, very frustrated that they had to incur that much expense over and above

00:10:02.080 all of their other travel expenses. So that's definitely a frustration for many, I'm sure.

00:10:09.260 We have a column from Dave Makacheck, the dark shadow of a nuclear war looms over the world. You can check that out. Let's see here. We've got coming up, we're actually going to be looking at Canadian Bankers Association and the World Economic Forum have a framework coming out for a global digital ID.

00:10:34.520 So this is something that people have been talking about as a conspiracy theory for a very long time, but it looks like there is some real framework starting to be put in place for this global digital ID.

00:10:51.720 Well, lots and lots to cover indeed, as you're saying. I do get concerned about that digital ID. As you said, so many past conspiracies turned into today's realities.

00:11:00.580 A lot of past conspiracies still remain absolute lunacy as well.

00:11:04.500 I mean, I do believe the moon landing did happen and a number of other things.

00:11:08.620 But, you know, things like the World Economic Forum, it's not even a conspiracy.

00:11:11.340 It's right there in front of you.

00:11:12.500 And coming up with something with modern digital technology, having a national centralized form of identification doesn't sound at all impossible to be done.

00:11:21.680 We could see why they'd want to do it.

00:11:23.360 But, boy, I could sure see a lot of reasons why we wouldn't want to take part in it.

00:11:27.440 Absolutely.

00:11:27.800 We also do have a story up as well. Canadian financial institutions banned from engaging in transactions with Russian central bank. And we've got a lot of media outlets that are sort of starting to chime in about how they are also lining up to pull their business or pull their service from Russian airwaves and whatnot.

00:11:53.480 So you can check that out on our website as well.

00:11:56.660 We've got a lot of tweets from these different media outlets as far as their stance on it

00:12:03.320 and how far they plan to go in restricting their services.

00:12:08.680 Excellent. Well, thank you for the update.

00:12:10.460 I'll let you get back to work on it.

00:12:11.760 I know there's a lot more stories to post and yeah, just keep up the good work.

00:12:15.220 I'll see you after the show.

00:12:16.540 Sounds good. Thank you.

00:12:18.240 Great. Thanks, Melanie.

00:12:19.020 As you can see, the news is just coming great guns and we've been hiring.

00:12:22.760 We've got more people in the newsroom, and we are putting those stories up as fast as they can be edited, sourced, fact-checked, and all that stuff.

00:12:30.720 We don't do cut and paste, you know, of just news releases and things like that like some alternative media outlets do.

00:12:36.880 I mean, it's hard on a budget to get real reporters and keep them rolling, but it's important.

00:12:41.620 That's how you write proper news.

00:12:43.000 Dave Naylor, our news editor, is a professional who's been at it for decades.

00:12:46.500 As Mel Riston's been at it, and we've got so many other people putting it in there, we're putting good stuff out.

00:12:51.960 And the stories keep coming.

00:12:53.720 So just that reminder to everybody, if you haven't subscribed already, that, you know, we're independent.

00:12:57.140 We don't get tax dollars.

00:12:58.480 We won't take tax dollars.

00:13:00.100 We rely on subscriptions and advertisers.

00:13:02.200 And the subscriptions are really critical.

00:13:04.020 So check it out.

00:13:05.220 You go to westernstandardonline.com.

00:13:06.900 You can hear all the stories mail listed.

00:13:08.240 That's just this morning.

00:13:09.060 And they're going to keep coming.

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00:13:33.140 yeah, I'm going to keep up with this. It's worth my $10 a month. And it allows us to keep making

00:13:38.360 that news, well, making the news, reporting the news. We make the opinions sometimes. That's part

00:13:43.600 of what this shows about in the columns I write. Melanie was talking a lot about the Russian

00:13:47.620 situation and how countries are pushing back on sanctions. I got a column coming out on that,

00:13:51.600 that I'll be putting up this afternoon, more on the energy half of it, and I'll be ranting about

00:13:56.120 that tomorrow as well. So yeah, you know, and as others are pointing out, the restrictions aren't

00:14:01.160 all gone, not by a long shot. I'm celebrating the ones that are, the visible ones, the masking,

00:14:05.480 the vaccine mandates. I mean, that's come down for civil servants in Alberta, and hopefully the

00:14:10.680 dominoes are falling. You know, that's the important part. Like this puts pressure on

00:14:14.700 neighboring provinces. This puts pressure on those goofballs in city council in Edmonton to say, 0.94

00:14:19.900 okay, we've got to back off. We've got to stop. It hopefully puts pressure on our federal government 0.96

00:14:25.000 with those mandates and travel. I mean, they've reduced some of the testing requirements for

00:14:29.360 people who travel, but as Melanie talked about, there was a letter that came in from a couple who

00:14:33.780 traveled down south and it cost them in the end because of a positive test and the rigmarole they

00:14:38.000 had to go through and back and forth. It came into the thousands and it's killing. It's just killing

00:14:42.520 our tourist industry. It's really harming us. And people don't seem to realize that. I mean,

00:14:46.780 it's more than just an inconvenience. People are saying to hell with it. I'm not going to travel

00:14:49.740 to Canada because I don't want to deal with all that. I don't blame them. I mean, getting your

00:14:53.520 skull tickled by one of those tests is not pleasant. It's expensive. And if it tests positive

00:14:58.180 for, you know, because again, this disease is so bad, you don't even know you have it.

00:15:01.840 And suddenly you're stuck on a quarantine or you're in other issues going on. We've got to

00:15:06.120 drop that crap. Jane and I at home, we run a B&B. You know, we've had a lot of international 1.00

00:15:12.400 travelers. It used to be predominantly Americans and even Europeans coming out to stay all the

00:15:17.460 time. That's turned around and we're actually still doing okay, but it's a lot of Canadian 1.00

00:15:21.300 travelers. You know, they're staying close to home and they're staying in local facilities,

00:15:24.920 but it reflects on the difference in travel. People are not coming to Canada. And I mean,

00:15:30.400 tourism is a massive part of our economy. It's a very important one. In fact, it's one of the

00:15:34.400 best ones. If you want to think of a great thing to bring into a country, somebody's going to bring

00:15:38.300 their dollars and resources from somewhere else into your country totally from outside and spend

00:15:43.580 it and they're going to employ local people they're going to stay in local facilities they're

00:15:47.140 going to buy souvenirs they're going to purchase fuel the works we're not getting them right now

00:15:52.120 they're down in the toilet my father is a retailer in canmore same thing i know the tourism industry

00:15:56.600 well and it is in the hole and a lot of it is do people want to come up here we've got these

00:16:01.400 mountains we've got you know a fantastic safe place to travel but people don't want to deal

00:16:05.700 with all that headache of the mandates, the testings, the harassment, I would call it,

00:16:11.040 to try and cross the border to get into Canada for a visit. So we still got to keep the pressure up.

00:16:16.540 It's far from done. You know, it's just that I go into my rants and I'm quite negative all the

00:16:19.960 time. I did want to be positive because I'm thrilled with seeing a lot of these mandates

00:16:23.400 come. The work from home order. I mean, most of us, well, we never bothered with that here at

00:16:27.800 the standard. They can threaten us with whatever they like, but you know, people were supposed to

00:16:33.120 be working from home if they could. Again, I said most people forgot it because most places weren't

00:16:36.940 doing it. And obviously a lot were though, because the traffic when I drove in downtown today was

00:16:43.540 way up. All of us were talking about that in the newsroom. There are a heck of a lot more people

00:16:47.080 coming down. And that is good too. I mean, that's going to take some pressure off of these downtown

00:16:52.660 businesses, those that are still managing to stay within business in these tough times.

00:16:58.720 you know they're going to get some traffic back here in these downtown areas and downtown Calgary

00:17:03.320 I'm going to be talking to my next guest very soon about that is a virtual ghost town with the

00:17:07.980 vacancies commercially whether it's for office space or retail or any of those things we've got

00:17:13.060 a big disaster and COVID-19 has directly contributed to that disaster in a massive way or at least not

00:17:19.980 so much COVID itself but the government responses to it so again I know people are upset with the

00:17:26.320 county government, they don't like them, the UCP, a lot of things, but give them credit when it's due

00:17:30.660 because if you're going to do nothing but get on their case, no matter what they do, they don't

00:17:34.280 have much incentive to keep moving in the right direction. So I'm going to give the thumbs up

00:17:37.620 when they're moving the right way. And don't worry, as we know on this show, I'll certainly

00:17:40.620 give the thumbs down without much hesitation whatsoever when they go the wrong way. I'm going

00:17:46.240 to speak to another sponsor quickly here and our guest will be coming in soon. It's the Shooting

00:17:50.020 Sports Association, actually, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. These guys have

00:17:56.300 been a sponsor for us for quite some time. And their name kind of says it all. They're an

00:17:59.620 association for people who want to use and enjoy firearms. They're a resource for it. They're an

00:18:04.700 association. It's where you can network and gather with other people who enjoy firearms like yourself.

00:18:09.620 And they'll provide resources. As you can see from that cover there, they've also got three

00:18:13.760 legal challenges on the go against the federal government right now on behalf of firearm owners

00:18:18.480 to protect your rights as a firearm owner. Whether you want to hunt or collect or target shoot,

00:18:22.840 It doesn't really matter. It's your business. You can see they also have a little bit of political

00:18:26.520 stuff, you know, pictures of Trudeau at his best. And they also have like videos for good

00:18:31.440 resources for safe firearm practices, things like that. And all of these things we've got to keep,

00:18:37.460 as I keep saying over and over, we got to stand up for ourselves because nobody else is going to do

00:18:40.980 it for us. These guys will do it on your behalf, but you have to help them. Get on there, check

00:18:45.200 them out. Canada Shooting Sports Association. Take out a membership. If you own firearms,

00:18:49.480 you need to protect them. Take out a membership of these guys. It helps them stand up for your

00:18:53.900 rights so you can continue to keep legally owning those firearms. So, and that's a cssa-cila.org.

00:19:01.600 I think it's a French translation thing that leads to that, which is funny. You know, I'm

00:19:09.220 going to talk about one of the stories that came up here to fill a moment here. This was a story

00:19:14.120 that came up. It says, the majority of English-speaking Canadians can't carry on a conversation in

00:19:17.780 French despite 53 years of official bilingualism. This was federal research, you know, in-house

00:19:23.400 research. Cabinet is going to, though, reintroduce a bill mandating the use of French in the

00:19:29.640 federally regulated private sector. So their own information is saying most Canadians can't speak

00:19:34.280 it, even though 53 years they've been trying to kind of force it down our throats. You've had to

00:19:38.340 take it in public school. You've, you know, had French on your cereal boxes and everywhere else 0.99

00:19:43.000 they can to try and promote it. We didn't pick it up. I mean, I grew up being forced to take 1.00

00:19:47.240 French in school, and due to traveling to Mexico a number of times and working in South Texas,

00:19:51.140 my Spanish is more fluent than my French, and my Spanish isn't all that great. But this is the

00:19:55.940 logic of our government, that it doesn't matter if people actually use it or need it, they're going

00:20:00.500 to mandate it, and you're going to have to have it. This is one of the areas with the federal

00:20:04.100 imbalance that we've got, things that you don't see. People say, oh, the equalization, there's

00:20:13.100 the term, you know, is, oh, people don't understand how that works, it's not ripping off Alberta the

00:20:16.780 way people say it is. Well, for one, yes, it is. And yeah, I know we don't write a direct checkout

00:20:20.220 for it and things like that to bring it in, but it is ripping us off. But another area that's

00:20:25.020 more subtle, when you force bilingualism throughout regulated private sector and

00:20:31.540 federally mandated or federally controlled areas of commerce, you get, of course, a dominance of

00:20:38.540 French workers. This is money that gets poured towards those people from a minority within the 0.58

00:20:45.020 country. It adds to that imbalance. It puts the rest of the nation at a disadvantage.

00:20:51.460 And it's subtle, and it's the way the government won't back off on these things.

00:20:55.480 So the research was intended to inform the Office of the Languages Commissioner and

00:20:59.980 stakeholders about the public's attitudes and perceptions of languages and bilingualism. But

00:21:05.240 of course, the government is just going to ignore it. They said they're going to be a particular

00:21:09.440 use for understanding a state of public opinion. But again, I don't know. It doesn't seem to

00:21:14.960 matter. So, I mean, I remember a story a little while back with, I believe it was in southern

00:21:19.680 Saskatchewan, out near Shonovan, there was a postal outlet, and they'd had a person who'd been

00:21:23.920 grandfathered in for a long time, who'd been running the postal outlet down there in that town

00:21:27.580 for a period of time. She was retiring, they needed a new postmaster. Well, the postmaster 0.97

00:21:33.080 had to be bilingual. Never mind that nobody in that entire area spoke French. The postmaster

00:21:37.540 had to be bilingual, and they couldn't get one, because nobody there spoke French, and nobody who

00:21:41.260 who spoke French wanted to move there.

00:21:43.340 So they were hung up on this ridiculous regulation.

00:21:46.360 You know, we gotta get realistic.

00:21:48.100 I believe in accommodating people with different languages,

00:21:50.620 but let's target it and be realistic about it.

00:21:52.400 I mean, there's areas where a great deal,

00:21:54.700 many more languages are more commonly spoken than French.

00:21:57.960 So let's accommodate those people where we need to.

00:22:00.880 So, okay, my guest is just about to pop in

00:22:02.600 and speak with us here.

00:22:04.020 So we're just gonna run another quick ad

00:22:06.000 and do our video magic so that he can come in

00:22:08.200 and sit down and we'll get on to the next subject.

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00:22:57.200 it's growing increasingly so uh in today's world with uh instability and insanity but uh we'll move

00:23:03.360 on from the international insanity move on to some domestic insanity we got going on so i've got

00:23:07.840 got Landon King of Colliers is the way it's called? Colliers International. Okay, so you specialize in

00:23:12.560 commercial real estate. Yes, yeah, downtown office leasing specifically. Yeah, so you've got, boy, I

00:23:18.340 mean, there's a unique environment going on right now in Calgary, and I'm sure it's happening

00:23:21.640 actually in cities all over the place with this void, I mean, this vacancy rate, particularly in

00:23:26.620 Calgary downtown, it's causing a hell of a problem, is it? Yeah, it's, I kind of want to, yeah, paint a

00:23:31.960 picture because it's definitely the highest vacancy rate we've seen in any city in North America

00:23:37.680 uh ever like it's except for last quarter yeah last quarter is a little higher um but yeah it's

00:23:44.640 basically what happened was you know we're cowboys out out in calgary and we we built on spec when

00:23:50.640 oil was booming and you know 2014 rolls around and oil crashes and they built you know 13 million

00:23:58.080 square feet of office space or we're planning to um which you know ended up not being the smart play

00:24:06.000 No, I mean, we got quite a surplus. I mean, there's been a number of factors and the collapse of the

00:24:09.920 energy industry first really kind of nailed it. Now with COVID-19, I mean, the whole world has

00:24:15.040 changed. A lot of people have gone home to work and some of them aren't coming back.

00:24:18.880 So even though they're allowed to come back to these offices, companies have shifted and they're

00:24:21.760 going to say, you know what, maybe we only need you one day a week or so on. So that's added

00:24:26.720 even more pressure on top of that. Yeah, energy prices crashing was the biggest thing.

00:24:31.840 it started to kind of come back 2019 and then pandemic hits and everyone kind of stopped and

00:24:36.800 said what are we going to do with our office space at the beginning of the pandemic a lot of it was

00:24:40.960 you know do we need office space at all like can we work remotely forever it's kind of working

00:24:45.760 but what we kind of found was a lot of that was just people wanting to stay busy because they

00:24:50.400 wanted to keep their jobs they were worried they didn't know what to do so the remote worked for a

00:24:55.680 a little bit but after you know six nine months a year now two years almost people kind of had that

00:25:01.840 zoom fatigue and they couldn't really you know make the connections they used to be able to you

00:25:06.960 know onboarding was tough with with younger people and they realized that you know each company is

00:25:12.720 different too each industry is different so a lot of the tech firms are still kind of looking to work

00:25:18.640 from home but traditional oil and gas seems like they're still still trying to come into the office

00:25:24.000 and i guess march 1st today so we'll see mandates are lifted so we'll see uh see how many people

00:25:28.480 come back most likely on a hybrid model it's it's purely anecdotal but i mean i was watching for it

00:25:33.280 this morning as i drove downtown and traffic was most definitely up the parking lot i normally use

00:25:37.840 had far more traffic in it than it has for months so i mean it is a sign that a lot more people have

00:25:41.920 been returning but the returning just still was already a a downtown that had a high vacancy yeah

00:25:46.960 so getting accurate numbers though of what the vacancy rate is i we we hear in the 30 range but

00:25:52.000 but then there's a lot of it that's leased as well and it's just not being utilized so it doesn't

00:25:55.420 necessarily factor in. Yeah so 32% overall vacancy rate right now downtown Calgary but that doesn't

00:26:02.500 include ghost vacancies which is essentially you know people coming in leasing up space but then

00:26:08.340 they have a couple floors that no one comes into because you know they're working from home. So

00:26:12.640 that rate increases a little bit you know height of the pandemic it was you know 70-80%. We'll have

00:26:19.080 see what it is like when people come back to work but it's also a bit of a tale of two markets as

00:26:24.120 well west end so west of fifth street you know vacancies are a lot higher than they are center

00:26:31.320 core and double a class a class buildings are a lot lower vacancies than bc class buildings okay

00:26:37.720 and i said a realty special specialist on before too and i mean part of the problem too is it's

00:26:43.000 it's pandemic related but it's going to last longer it's just market demand like workers in

00:26:46.680 general aren't as inclined and this is happening to every city to live in a densely packed core they

00:26:51.160 kind of want to move out if they possibly can and those who can have and they're not as uh

00:26:57.000 you know eager to get back into a downtown centric workplace at this time so that's going to be

00:27:01.560 addressed over the longer term too yeah it is tough um but one thing in calgary is that you

00:27:07.640 know compares to toronto or vancouver the commute time is just a lot shorter as well so if i was in

00:27:12.600 in toronto and i had to like drive or take the bus an hour and a half to get to work i wouldn't want

00:27:17.200 to be coming to work either but it is a little easier in calgary um just with a shorter commute

00:27:21.280 time to get downtown but yeah it is there are people still wanting to work from home um even

00:27:26.300 after people are coming back yeah here's that reminder i mean we got good infrastructure the

00:27:30.520 ring roads almost done when that opened up that was a blessing for me i live in prittis so i can

00:27:34.260 22 and i can still from that far out get downtown in what i feel to be a reasonable time so with

00:27:39.460 that vacancy though I mean that the big question then becomes what to do with it

00:27:42.460 I mean I can see there's being an opportunity we've got the space I mean

00:27:45.460 boy you know it's modern good space it's a decent place to commute to or a

00:27:49.420 relatively safe stable country yeah what can we do to fill it though it's tough

00:27:54.820 and that's the big question I think everyone's asking I think there's kind

00:27:57.580 of two sides to it the supply and the demand side so this inventory right now

00:28:02.620 is I think we're at 44 million square feet downtown if you want to shrink that

00:28:07.260 conversions is one thing that the city's doing so the downtown greater plan they

00:28:11.880 have 250 million dollars that they're investing into kind of revitalizing

00:28:15.480 downtown increasing the energy I was 45 million originally but looks like it's

00:28:19.440 now a hundred million that they're investing into conversion so I think

00:28:23.760 there's 11 buildings that applied to this conversion subsidy so I think of

00:28:28.860 $75 a square foot that the government would give for an old C-class building

00:28:33.660 that's vacant to turn into either residential like hotels affordable housing seems to be the

00:28:40.300 biggest driver right now so right across the street here see our place turning into affordable housing

00:28:45.540 snc sounds like they they're converting into affordable housing as well there's a couple

00:28:53.020 other buildings that are in the process of of changing that office space into more of a

00:28:58.240 residential space yeah so i mean you've got to try something particularly with the dated

00:29:01.880 buildings but that's still uh maybe it's outside of your turf but we see a whole lot of new condos

00:29:06.340 have been built or it's still in progress of being built right now what's the thing it's

00:29:09.260 like in those is there much are people filling those spaces very much right now in the affordable

00:29:13.200 housing or no in the new ones actually i mean you know so many other condos that are springing up

00:29:18.100 all over the place nice looking designs actually yeah it's kind of cool looking but are they having

00:29:22.580 how are they doing filling that i think there's a lot of pre-leasing going on i know the residential

00:29:26.360 markets i think is more for single unit housing um is on fire right now um but yeah more i'm more

00:29:32.680 on the commercial side so not 100 sure how how vacant and absorbed those uh those new condos are

00:29:37.880 okay it just ties together that's all yeah if we got a even a younger workforce moving into those

00:29:42.040 single yes uh those are people that can come to downtown opportunities yeah business is opening

00:29:46.760 so i mean it does help totally if we can bring that population there's a risk when you're converting

00:29:51.160 with a lot of lower income people i mean it's great to get low income housing but if you get

00:29:55.720 too many low-income people in one area it can lead to degradation of the neighborhood i don't

00:30:00.200 want to i'm not trying to beat on low income yeah people need their their moment to get a start and

00:30:04.440 a lot of them are going to move in and get to work and then they'll move on to a better place as they

00:30:08.040 as they get going but at the same time you can't have too dense amount of that in a single area

00:30:12.120 or it could cause a peripheral issues if you're not careful yeah well i think the reason it's

00:30:15.960 it's affordable housing is what they're converting it to mostly is just the the stature of the the

00:30:20.440 the building itself. So the floor plates, you know, they're smaller floor plates. It's kind of

00:30:25.360 deep and there's no balconies really either if you're converting it. So it's tough to lease a

00:30:31.000 luxury condo building when there's no balcony. And it's, you know, it takes, say, $250 a square

00:30:39.240 foot to convert that building. It's pretty similar to build a new building as well. So a lot of the

00:30:45.240 finances make more sense to kind of convert it to more of the affordable housing and, you know,

00:30:50.380 landlords and owners aren't willing to to invest in a property they don't think is going to lease

00:30:54.620 up. Yeah, well, it's not gonna be a better sitting in disrepair and empty either. So, you know,

00:30:58.540 it's just a delicate balance with proposed solutions. A lot, of course, the holy grail,

00:31:04.060 it seems to grab for new businesses is the tech sector. Everybody talks about the tech sector.

00:31:09.100 Unfortunately, if there's any sector that lends itself a lot to remote working,

00:31:12.700 it's also the tech sector. So they don't necessarily have the human resource intensive

00:31:16.300 sort of needs that some other industries would but it's yeah it's a market we're really trying

00:31:20.220 to tap into how's that been going like uh filling these spots it's been it's been picking up for

00:31:24.380 sure i know calgary is becoming more of a tech center um people are coming downtown i know neo

00:31:29.580 financial was uh east village now they're leasing up more space uh downtown taking over the old we

00:31:34.700 work space and then um in hudson's bay near there um so it's tough because technology is definitely

00:31:42.380 the future and there's there's a lot of growing tech companies but to take over the oil and gas

00:31:47.660 industry from a tech side it's you're going to need a lot a lot more of these startups um you

00:31:53.260 know in the city yeah well a lot start with you know a dozen employees or 50 i mean we've got

00:31:58.140 voids left of thousands but i mean everything kind of counts and helps and we need some creativity

00:32:03.820 the energy sector has changed as well they're just not going to need those you know floors

00:32:07.260 and floors of production accounting and things like that they used to so yeah we've got to deal

00:32:11.260 with it's just a unique challenge that we're concerned about i mean it's a it's a cool

00:32:14.540 downtown but it's kind of going downhill these days you know i imagine increasing the perception

00:32:19.580 of public safety downtown has got to be something that's on the city side but we've had a real

00:32:23.820 addiction problem and a lot of issues down that way i i would imagine if we could clean

00:32:29.660 cleaning up such a i don't insult people but you know what i mean people have been down here uh

00:32:34.140 if they're checking a spot out they're thinking relocating whether it's a business there's

00:32:36.780 individual they want to feel safe they want to know that it's a problem and that's been a challenge

00:32:41.660 down here these days as well and i think they are trying to address that and get more security out

00:32:47.100 and i'm hoping with you know right on the c train line right in front of this building even um there

00:32:52.300 was a lot of people were who are concerned about safety i'm hoping with the new affordable housing

00:32:57.980 it it has more families and and a coffee shop and just i think people in and around the area will

00:33:04.060 deter people, you know, people who make people feel unsafe away from just a vacant building.

00:33:11.420 Yeah, and it's a fair point. Again, I don't want to dump on the lower income people. Lower income 0.99

00:33:15.260 doesn't mean a homeless shelter. No, and that's what I think a lot of people. These are people

00:33:18.380 coming down to work and they just, they can't afford to buy in the suburbs or get a larger

00:33:22.940 place. I mean, I lived downtown in a rental apartment when I was 19, 20 years old. It takes

00:33:26.940 a while. Yeah. And it's an interesting way to put it. I mean, if you've got a residential

00:33:29.900 population and it's concerned, I mean, you've got more impetus, especially at nighttime,

00:33:32.940 you know the offices are gone at night but yeah living down here then they're going to be saying

00:33:36.220 well you know we need we need some yeah a good neighborhood as well so increased lighting and

00:33:41.660 and maybe security around i know yeah it's it is an issue that the city's looking into so

00:33:47.500 and it's complicated i know there's not so much use i mean a lot of it comes down to mental health

00:33:51.100 supports and addiction treatment and bigger issues like that but i'm just trying to look at that

00:33:55.500 whole picture and the challenges of filling this downtown that's so much just laying waste right

00:34:00.060 now and it's frustrating to watch it have rents come down commercial rents in general at least

00:34:04.460 then uh yeah over the last yeah since you know 2014 they've decreased substantially um i feel

00:34:10.380 like they're kind of at the bottom now uh you know you can get space out in the west end for

00:34:15.500 op costs only or operating costs only so you're not paying any any net rent um so landlords

00:34:20.380 basically just want you to keep the lights on um we're actually like with that flight to quality

00:34:25.500 which is a big thing we're seeing is a lot of people in the west end bc class buildings moving

00:34:29.500 into the center core you know a double a class buildings the bc class buildings in the west end

00:34:35.040 are still maintaining that low rate but we're starting to like starting now to see upward

00:34:40.720 pressure on some of the high right space in the double a building so i think a lot of people are

00:34:45.220 saying if we're if we want to get our workforce back we kind of have to have a nice quality

00:34:49.380 building and even if we shrink our square footage a little bit we'd rather have a smaller space

00:34:54.640 um that people want to come to rather than you know somewhere that they kind of feel unsafe

00:34:59.840 so if you want a cheap deal and good rates west end bc class but um a lot of people are kind of

00:35:05.200 moving towards the center core yeah well it's good to see them moving in though because that's

00:35:08.480 where we got to avoid right sort of talk about opportunity if somebody has a notion an idea

00:35:12.720 startup you know a smaller company if they can sign into a lower end lease initially you know

00:35:18.160 till you get their feet under them at least you know when you try to start something up in a

00:35:21.120 booming market. It's great to have a booming market, but now you've got this giant overhead

00:35:24.900 of a monthly cost. Yeah. And it is expensive. Yeah. So, you know, these are ways we can look

00:35:30.660 ahead, perhaps, and solve some of this and get some creative ideas, you know, whether

00:35:33.580 pharmaceuticals, I, you know, lots of things people have thrown out there. Yeah. But we've

00:35:38.540 got to get them into the space. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, the supply side, so kind of getting rid

00:35:43.200 of some of that excess inventory. But there's also the demand side. So attracting people

00:35:47.480 downtown and attracting new tenants from either outside the city or outside the country.

00:35:51.120 through either incentives on business tax or low rates or culture I think is a big one too if they

00:35:57.300 can get you know places where people want to be around after you know nine to five I think that

00:36:03.600 will incentivize people to to come back town but it it will be a long time before we fill downtown

00:36:08.800 completely yeah well in the ground level businesses the evening culture that's always been a challenge

00:36:13.200 even in good times in Calgary our downtown has always been you know you come down with your suit

00:36:17.480 and tie and then you leave downtown for the night you don't come back and the restaurants and the

00:36:20.660 bars are slow and not much of a nightlife going on yeah uh how you can develop that over time is

00:36:25.320 difficult to determine i mean part of it though is at least filling those buildings getting some

00:36:28.120 traffic and and people have some money to support those businesses but how are things looking on the

00:36:32.860 retail front down there uh these days is it picking up it's yeah it's a retail definitely

00:36:37.500 got hit hard you know when people don't come into the office um there's no one to purchase their

00:36:42.440 products so i think retail definitely had a had one of the biggest hits um they did get help from

00:36:47.860 the government to kind of stay alive and um but you know yeah the retail got hit hard there was

00:36:52.720 a group we were talking to um who owns a lot of major chain restaurants here here in calgary and

00:36:58.880 in canada and he said if it wasn't for us being public like we would have been bankrupt and we

00:37:03.800 would have been closing up shop a long time ago so i think it's it's a chain of events if we can

00:37:09.740 get people downtown there'll be more people to to help out these retailers and and if they've

00:37:13.720 survive this long hopefully they can get things going again here soon yeah well it's a long game

00:37:18.320 and hopefully we're moving into a period of recovery i mean we desperately need it and

00:37:21.520 it's as i said it frustrates me because it's just it is a beautiful downtown i've traveled a lot and

00:37:26.340 you know there's a lot of opportunity and things going on and if we just find the right creative

00:37:30.680 persons to come up with those ideas to fill those spaces it can happen so yeah all right well thanks

00:37:34.860 for coming in to address a bunch of that with me today you know there's a lot of questions on it

00:37:38.100 where can we find more information about yourself and what you guys are doing um colliers international

00:37:42.160 on online you know we can find me on LinkedIn I guess I don't know if my

00:37:47.680 information is anywhere on the line there yet we help tenants lease office

00:37:53.200 space so if you're looking for office space or have any questions about

00:37:55.900 commercial vacancies or rates or whether your startup or an established company

00:38:00.520 you know we were happy to help great yes I know you guys are out there trying to

00:38:03.960 fill that void if only for yourselves but for things in general so it's great

00:38:06.880 and I appreciate that filling us in on some of that today so no worries thank

00:38:11.220 for having me and yeah it was a great time yeah i look forward to chatting again soon so uh and

00:38:16.020 before you take off we're going to run another video just in the transition i just want to turn

00:38:19.700 the page we're going to go on to a little bit more of a international theme i'm going to talk

00:38:23.380 a little more later about the downtown recovery and things uh such as that as well but i just want

00:38:27.860 to show a video with a press conference that demonstrates just the gravity of the scene in

00:38:34.180 in ukraine right now uh a woman uh from uh my team is now in villa and she is there with two kids

00:38:43.780 and uh russian military is over there and she's so much afraid that she will be shut

00:38:50.500 harkiv the city where i was studying was bombarded today fully the downtown square

00:38:55.940 so you're talking about the stoicism of ukrainian people but ukrainian women and ukrainian children

00:39:01.380 are in deep fear because of bombs and missiles which are going from the sky and ukrainian people

00:39:07.460 are desperately asking for the west to protect our sky we are asking for the no-fly zone we

00:39:13.620 are saying response that it will trigger world war three but what is the alternative mr prime

00:39:17.460 minister to observe how our children are instead of instead of planes are protecting nato from the

00:39:26.100 missiles and bombs what's the alternative for the no-fly zone we have planes here we have air

00:39:32.100 defense system in poland in romania nato has this air defense at least this air defense could shield 1.00

00:39:38.420 the western ukraine so this these children with women could come to the border it's impossible 1.00

00:39:44.500 now to cross the border there are 30 kilometers of lines imagine crossing the border with a baby 1.00

00:39:50.180 or with two children. I'm so glad that Samantha Power is coming here to the border from the Polish 1.00

00:39:56.580 side. Let her come to the border from Ukrainian side and see that. Britain guaranteed our security 1.00

00:40:03.140 under Budapest memorandum. So you're coming to Poland. You're not coming to Kiev, Prime Minister. 0.79

00:40:07.940 You're not coming to Lviv. Because you are afraid. Because NATO is not willing to defend. Because

00:40:14.580 NATO is afraid of the World War III. But it is already started. And these are Ukrainian children

00:40:19.140 who are there taking the heat you're talking about more sanctions prime minister but roman

00:40:24.180 abramovich is not sanctioned he's in london his children are not in the bombardments his children

00:40:30.020 are there in london putin's children are in netherlands in germany in mansions where all

00:40:38.740 these mansions seized i don't see that i see that my family members that my team members are saying

00:40:46.100 that we are crying you don't care what's wrong this is what is happening prime minister well thank

00:40:54.980 so yeah that was quite a you know a strong moment at a conference out there and i want to humanize

00:41:01.220 the realities of what's going on over there because we've got a whole pile of armchair quarterbacks

00:41:05.940 who are going on about you know this is a liberation of ukraine or bs like that guys

00:41:10.660 it's an invasion. People are suffering. Their families are suffering. They're trapped there. 0.61

00:41:17.900 As she said, you can't just run across a border to a neighboring country easily when you've got

00:41:22.660 children, when there's landmines, when there's an armed action going on. And I know it's one

00:41:30.040 of those areas that's outside of my ability to fully come up with solutions. I'm a know-it-all

00:41:33.960 in many ways. That's the reason I do this show and I'm often wrong in a lot of things. And

00:41:38.700 something as sensitive and important as what's going on over there in Eastern Europe right now,

00:41:45.340 we've got to really carefully think about our responses and what we're talking about

00:41:49.500 and what's happening over there. But I see those clips from people, again, to show the emotion,

00:41:55.220 show what the real concerns are. We've seen that in Alberta with thousands of Ukrainians. We have

00:42:02.540 a lot of people of Ukrainian descent in Alberta, and they're worried about their family members

00:42:06.360 back home. They're worried about other things. And I'm tired of that. Oh, they're coming in to

00:42:09.680 get rid of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. Come on. Lay off. B.S. It's an expansionist move on Russia's

00:42:16.700 part. If you've got a problem with your neighbor, you bring it up in a lot of other ways. You don't 0.76

00:42:20.520 take over the country. It's not good enough. And, you know, Fergus is saying if Russia were to

00:42:28.160 face a U.S. confrontation, they would retreat. I don't know. I mean, yeah, you know, Fergus,

00:42:32.740 a nice great guy, Fergus Hodgson. I got to get you on the show again soon sometime. I don't know

00:42:36.800 if I agree with you so much on that one. I worry about the escalation of it. You know, some

00:42:40.940 differences between Fergus and I, like I said, he's great. We've had some great talks on economics and

00:42:44.740 that, but he didn't live through the Cold War. He's fortunate enough to be a young fellow. And I tell

00:42:48.680 you, that tension of

00:42:50.360 having a potential large, sure, I'm silly, Fergus, but we'll

00:42:56.820 discuss that another time. The potential of having a large war breakout is

00:43:00.560 something we all really want to avoid though. But the situation currently is untenable too,

00:43:06.660 and it's causing a lot of suffering. I'm going to go into the energy sanctions and a lot of

00:43:13.040 things tomorrow on the show, and I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to open it up with my

00:43:16.140 opening rant, I guess you could say in a way. Justin Trudeau got up yesterday and announced

00:43:21.680 he's not going to bring in any more Russian crude oil. And I put a thumbs up on that. I thought,

00:43:25.060 that's great. And then, you know, once we look at it a little more deeply and realize that we

00:43:27.860 haven't even imported any Russian crude oil in a couple of years, but we do bring in a bunch of

00:43:32.060 refined products. It might only have been virtue signaling, which isn't that shocking out of him,

00:43:36.700 but I still, even putting the message out doesn't hurt. And I think the way at least the countries

00:43:41.900 can push back is we don't have the means right now. We don't have the ability to push Russia 0.96

00:43:46.380 back. They've got hundreds of thousands of armed soldiers out there. Getting into a full-out

00:43:52.760 conflict is not going to end well for anybody, but we're seeing some impact when they're getting

00:43:57.440 cut off from their money, when countries are turning away their exports, turning away their

00:44:03.300 oil, banning their traffic in air spaces. You know, we can do these things through pushing that.

00:44:09.240 So, I mean, Trudeau even did say in his conference, and look, I don't give Trudeau

00:44:13.600 breaks off and you know that, but he is in a tough position in this case. There's only so much he can

00:44:17.440 do. We are a small country with limited impact. He said that the ban on the oil sends a powerful

00:44:22.500 message, maybe not as powerful as something, but it says we are willing to at least take on some

00:44:26.780 fiscal pressure of our own to put fiscal pressure on them. And when we get dozens and dozens or

00:44:30.880 perhaps hundreds of nations doing that, we can perhaps push the internal pressure. I don't think

00:44:35.120 Putin cares, but a lot of people living within Russia care, a lot of people, you know, living

00:44:40.420 in the periphery and of course in Eastern Europe care, and they can put pressure on Putin. And

00:44:46.060 yeah, you know, I mean, the energy sector is a third of Russian revenue. And I'm going to write

00:44:51.080 about that tomorrow too, though. We've got the means to reduce world dependency on Russian 0.93

00:44:55.320 and produced energy products if we would just allow ourselves to. And there's an area where

00:44:59.040 Trudeau has been screwing us and the world. So I'm definitely going to go into that at length

00:45:02.700 tomorrow. But right now, sanctions, pressures, condemnations, do what we can. You know,

00:45:09.380 the United Nations is a joke. I mean, they haven't even decided whether or not to kick

00:45:12.600 Russia off the Security Council yet, I think. But what does it matter if they did? I mean,

00:45:16.780 it's dominated by other dictators and authoritarians and lunatics anyways. The United 0.98

00:45:21.860 nations is pathetic. NATO, you know, it had its purpose. It was a strong force. It was important 1.00

00:45:29.060 during the Cold War, and it appears to be getting somewhat important now. Here's some of the irony

00:45:32.960 I was talking to Dave about the other day. You know, NATO had actually been pretty,

00:45:36.460 as much as people saying, oh, it was building up and pressuring Russia. Yeah, perhaps in a sense,

00:45:41.740 but most countries hadn't been filling their obligations. That was an underfunded force. It

00:45:46.700 was getting smaller and smaller as time went, even if most of where they were at was in Eastern

00:45:50.760 Europe. And now what they've done is countries are pouring more money into NATO than they have

00:45:54.760 in 30 years. This is going to rejuvenate the entire organization. It's going to have the

00:45:59.440 complete opposite effect of getting them off of Russia's border, if indeed that was the intention

00:46:04.680 of what Putin was getting at when he went into Ukraine. So we've got a very complicated

00:46:10.680 international scene going on right now. And yeah, you know, I'm a libertarian-minded pacifist sort.

00:46:17.340 I want to see ways that we can stop these conflicts without sending people over there

00:46:22.280 to take up arms and get into a war and shooting each other. Humanity never does itself any

00:46:30.340 favors when we get into that kind of circumstance. So looking at these sanctions and things that we

00:46:34.920 could possibly do is important. And I want to see nuanced discussion. I don't want us to be

00:46:40.400 knee-jerk. I want more people to admit, like I do, that I still don't know enough about what's

00:46:44.560 going on over there. It's complicated. It is. I mean, there is a large number of people in

00:46:50.040 Eastern Ukraine who would rather be Russian, but that doesn't justify having the entire nation

00:46:56.160 take it over. As I said yesterday, I believe, I mean, I tend to support Western independence,

00:47:00.820 but does that mean if Alberta say the support for it got up to 60% even, and Trudeau was telling us

00:47:06.580 to get stuffed or whoever the next liberal prime minister is, does that mean the Americans could

00:47:11.280 come in and liberate us, that wouldn't be the way to go, guys. It has to work from within.

00:47:17.080 And Putin isn't liberating anybody. He's taking it over. So let's not beat around that bush. And

00:47:23.000 let's watch this carefully. Obviously, we can't sit on our hands forever dwelling and humming and

00:47:28.200 hawing. I mean, this is going on as we speak. But we've just got a lot of bad takes and responses

00:47:35.760 coming up onto that. Speaking of our lack of leadership in the federal front, this will help

00:47:40.300 segue into my next guest a little bit. Anyways, just that reminder, uh, there's a, um, a couple

00:47:44.460 of leadership races going on. Another one besides the Maverick, which I'm going to be speaking to

00:47:48.400 in a moment is the conservative party of Canada. I don't know if people have forgotten that that's

00:47:52.400 happening. I don't know if this is just going to be a coronation for your, for Pierre Polyevin.

00:47:56.780 I like Pierre, but I don't think it's healthy. You know, what's going on? I mean, uh, we're also

00:48:02.740 hearing is the alternative, if any is Jean Charest. Boy, that's a blast from the past. And for good

00:48:08.580 reason. I think Charest's time came and went. I don't know if we need another red French Tory in

00:48:13.560 there leading the Conservative Party. A lot of things that the Conservatives are going to have 0.87

00:48:17.820 to examine as they go into this race too. It's not to say Polyev is unwinnable, but the rationale 0.95

00:48:23.700 being put out to support somebody like Charest, for example, is saying anybody who's really

00:48:29.040 displaying true blue Conservative roots can't win in Canada. That's what they're saying. They're

00:48:32.660 saying it's impossible. So the only way to have a Conservative Prime Minister again is to water

00:48:37.480 them down to the point where they're indistinguishable from the liberal leader, and then they might

00:48:41.660 win. Well, they might win, but we'll lose. The West will lose. They always do. But that's a

00:48:47.600 factor of confederation being broken more than anything else, and that's a much bigger picture.

00:48:52.220 But it makes it hard to get excited about the conservative race. I want to see appetite. If

00:48:55.860 you want to see unity in Canada, show that it is possible for somebody who's not, and I'm not

00:49:03.340 talking about classical liberals, you know, who support individual liberty and freedoms,

00:49:07.960 I'm saying show that somebody who's not a current federal liberal Canadian can become a prime

00:49:14.480 minister. You will get more unity in this country. You'll get less people saying that's it. The

00:49:17.900 system's broken. We got to get out. I'm not holding my breath on that. Look what we saw with Scheer,

00:49:23.760 O'Toole. O'Toole, I mean, he threw out his principles so fast. I mean, the ballots hadn't

00:49:28.240 even dried yet from his being elected as the leader. You know, he flip-flopped on the carbon

00:49:33.300 tax. He flip-flopped on backing, you know, pushing on firearms. He backbenched and pushed aside

00:49:38.880 contenders who seemed to be classically conservative. And how did that work? He lost.

00:49:45.260 The election lost. You know, at least he might justify saying he could win by doing that,

00:49:49.280 but he didn't. He still lost. So you might as well lose on principle rather than lose without

00:49:53.140 principle. I'd rather not lose at all. I got a feeling there's no winning within this existing

00:49:57.500 system anyways. We're going to keep pushing, but we'll see how that goes. So I'm segwaying into

00:50:02.940 somebody who's looking at a different approach to it though. Let's bring in Colin Krieger. He's

00:50:06.380 running for the leadership of the Maverick Party of Canada right now and have a chat about that.

00:50:11.400 Hey Colin, how are you doing? I'm doing really well. Can you hear me fine? Yeah, you're coming

00:50:16.100 in good. So maybe I'll start with, I've already kind of framed it. You're running for the Maverick

00:50:20.400 Party of Canada. I've talked to Jay. He's been on the show a number of times actually, and we've

00:50:25.100 known him for quite a bit of time since he was you know with the reform party and such even

00:50:28.220 um you're up in value yeah that's right oh when talking about jay if you look at my phone i call

00:50:35.660 him my maverick aristocracy actually because i respect him i respect him and what he's done

00:50:41.180 for western canadians in establishing the maverick party he's he's excellent i sure appreciate the

00:50:45.880 man yeah no jay certainly put in his time and and uh again i like talking to him he's lent a lot of

00:50:51.980 perspective of all that time he did spend in Parliament, even if it was frustrating,

00:50:56.880 you know, it gains, it offers a lot of valuable insight and realistic experience. And on the

00:51:02.280 same front, I mean, with the Reform Party, that was always in the building and organizational

00:51:05.800 sort of stage. So I'm sure he's getting a lot of deja vu as he works at the Maverick Party right

00:51:09.820 now. I suppose you bet. So maybe we'll kind of lay out what's the timeline of the race going on?

00:51:16.340 I should have written my notes, but I believe it's May when you guys are going to be formally

00:51:19.660 holding your leadership that's right the middle of may you bet is when the uh the election for

00:51:25.360 the leadership will will commence yeah okay and uh it's going to be a one member one vote sort

00:51:31.880 of system like pretty straightforward you have a membership uh you can cast it is there a cutoff

00:51:36.280 uh the cutoff for membership i do believe is right around the beginning of may and you know i

00:51:43.820 That's one thing I haven't actually paid attention to because I'm just running extremely hard right now.

00:51:50.700 I am working my best just to meet as many people in Western Canada as possible.

00:51:58.980 I am actually just returned from Ottawa.

00:52:01.580 I was in Ottawa for a while during the trucker protests and on my way back through I made a few stops.

00:52:08.340 I was recently in Calgary.

00:52:09.700 I've just been extremely busy.

00:52:10.960 So trying to reach as many Western Canadians as possible. 0.85

00:52:16.180 Yeah, no, building that base is very important.

00:52:19.740 So maybe I'll get you to address your vision for the Maverick,

00:52:22.360 because there has been, I guess, confusion, or I wouldn't call it confusion.

00:52:24.640 There's different visions.

00:52:25.600 Like some people feel it should take up a fully independent style platform and mandate.

00:52:31.320 Others feel it should be similar to the reform where it'll still be there,

00:52:34.940 but it'll be unapologetically a Western-based party and lobby in Ottawa from there.

00:52:40.960 I mean, it began as a Wexit sort of base and then began and Jay brought in a reform sort of temperament to it.

00:52:48.960 What vision do you have for the Maverick going forward right now?

00:52:52.700 Well, of course, we are running across the entire Western Canadian spectrum from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and our Northern Territories.

00:53:03.220 And the one thing that we can say unites them all, especially, is that we need to work to decrease federal overreach.

00:53:14.700 And how we do that is we increase provincial autonomy.

00:53:20.220 If you were going to put it in a nutshell, that's what we would do.

00:53:24.020 We would work towards making sure that each province is working towards individual autonomy.

00:53:30.360 And, you know, some people call us strictly a separatist party. I would firmly disagree with that. But that is maybe in the distant future, as the provinces determine, that may be a possibility that we would support. But for now, we would work towards provincial autonomy, working to strengthen their position within Canadian Confederation.

00:53:53.360 confederation okay so i outside of the the regional approach uh presuming you have a number

00:54:00.320 of members of parliament in there that they'd be in opposition because as a western party you can't

00:54:05.040 form a majority but as we can well i was going to say we can see the ndp could show influence

00:54:09.440 in a minority position but not really that you know that thing is just sort of trudeau's little

00:54:13.200 mini me but aside from that i mean an opposition party can be strongly influential in parliament

00:54:19.280 particularly in minority situations, but even majority. I've said many a time,

00:54:23.500 one of the best government we ever saw in Canada was Prétien with the Reform Party breathing down

00:54:28.840 his neck in the past. Where would the Maverick Party land though on federal issues outside of

00:54:33.440 regional and not autonomy ones? I mean, you would still vote as members of parliament

00:54:36.380 on all sorts of things, whether it's budgets or international affairs or, you know, every other

00:54:41.360 kind of federal issue. Where, you know, we can't go through issue by issue, but I guess I'm just

00:54:45.860 trying to get a feel of the temperament of the party. Right. Of course, there's so many classical

00:54:51.700 conservative ideals that we would absolutely support. And we've seen those things in regards

00:54:57.920 to, well, obviously, and for instance, would be fiscal management. You know, you talked just as

00:55:03.960 we were segwaying into our conversation here in regards to the conservative leadership race. And,

00:55:09.840 you know, whoever they pick in the end, if it was Pierre, you know, I would absolutely wish him

00:55:15.180 the absolute, my best wishes, and I would hope that he would do very well in Eastern Canada.

00:55:22.080 For the Maverick Party, that would be something that we would desire to have as a strong

00:55:27.720 partner in Central and Eastern Canada that we could work with from a Western perspective.

00:55:34.500 We, of course, the Maverick Party being a Western regional party that wants to be a strong voice

00:55:41.720 for Western Canada, we would look to have this natural partner in the eastern portions of the

00:55:51.780 country that we could work with on all of those issues, you know, but there would be issues that

00:55:57.540 we would strongly disagree on. And then we would be able to take those voices to Ottawa, you know,

00:56:06.720 in regards to, say, the carbon tax. And we would also advocate for autonomy on things like

00:56:15.600 each individual province collecting their own taxes, for instance. We have other provinces

00:56:21.880 in the country, namely Quebec, that are doing those types of things already. And we believe

00:56:27.940 that we should also be doing those things. What about some of the party governance models and

00:56:33.720 things such as that, like free votes. Something that really disappointed me a lot, actually,

00:56:39.020 when I watched the Conservatives, where every single one of them voted against the Emergencies

00:56:43.040 Act, I was almost as disappointed with every single one of the Liberals voting, you know,

00:56:47.980 for the Emergencies Act. Like, what I want to see is some free thought in caucuses. I imagine

00:56:52.500 there's probably a few red Tories who would have supported the Emergencies Act. I wouldn't agree

00:56:56.200 with them, but, you know, they're representing their constituents. And we know darn well,

00:56:59.460 there were a number of Liberals and even NDP members who did not support the imposition of

00:57:03.240 but they all voted along party lines and i just i see that as a complete waste of time of parliament

00:57:08.360 if you're going to do that you might as well just have the the three or four leaders sitting in

00:57:11.400 there because the members don't mean anything uh you're uh you're 100 right you hit that nail right

00:57:16.920 on the head um i guess my personal thought on that is boils down to the fact that uh a politician

00:57:26.200 is employed by his constituents. He is subject to them. And that is a key component of how I

00:57:36.000 would approach government. And be it true that way, I guess, if I'm going to say that,

00:57:42.160 I am also going to say the fact that inside of the Maverick Party, every vote would be a free vote

00:57:49.260 for every Maverick MP. He would be allowed to and encouraged to vote on the wishes of his

00:57:57.600 constituents. Now, of course, within caucus, we would have vigorous debates. We would be talking

00:58:02.560 and trying to make sure that every angle is analyzed. But when it comes time to make the

00:58:09.580 vote, they get to vote, and it would be without any type of influence from the leadership of the

00:58:17.800 party if it's me then there would be absolutely none yeah so it will get on to that then you know

00:58:24.300 if it's you let's let's presume you've won it you've still got a heck of a lot of work to do

00:58:28.360 a lot of ground organization so what are the priorities going to be in getting that party

00:58:32.960 structure together in order to strongly contest the next election which unfortunately in a minority

00:58:38.060 situation could be very soon yeah i i'm i must admit i'm conflicted on that i i'd like to get

00:58:45.180 to that right away, but I know that the more time that we have, the stronger that we can build,

00:58:49.980 and we can work to meet with our constituents and show them what type of options that they

00:58:55.980 actually have. You asked what my priorities would be, and they're actually quite simple,

00:59:01.420 and I address them when I'm speaking to people almost every time. Of course, the first one would

00:59:07.500 be membership if if we are going to uh build a support we are going to do it through membership

00:59:18.060 lots of people say it's a new age uh they're going to say that uh you know likes on facebook

00:59:23.900 and followers on twitter and the like are the are the metric that we need to have but

00:59:30.940 But as everybody knows, there's trolls on those platforms, and they follow as well.

00:59:38.520 But only a member will pay a nominal amount of money.

00:59:41.060 It's small.

00:59:41.560 It's like $10 per year to actually support a party.

00:59:45.540 And when you have that type of membership, and you know what type of support that you

00:59:52.100 have, and you can use that to move into the future, and you know what your members are

00:59:58.420 looking for.

00:59:59.580 the second thing that we would be looking for of course is volunteers and i'm going to say this to

01:00:03.740 everybody if you're in if you're interested in maverick party i would encourage you to go to the

01:00:08.380 uh maverick party website which is maverickparty.ca and uh you would be able there you go thank you

01:00:14.620 sir and you would be able to um find out more about our platform and and if you like it they're

01:00:21.820 right on that same place you can see you can find out where to become a member you can also sign up

01:00:30.380 to volunteer we need volunteers all over the place and ultimately we would ask if you would support

01:00:36.620 us financially because as a new party if we are going to be able to work diligently and efficiently

01:00:47.660 to combat narratives that may not be true such as vote splitting everybody's heard about oh don't do

01:00:54.300 don't vote for them it's just a vote split it's a wasted vote that's not true um our our goal would

01:01:02.380 be to uh give you a chance to vote for something you like rather than just something to vote against

01:01:07.980 and so as we proceed that we would ask everybody to to look at those tabs of uh of becoming a

01:01:17.660 member or volunteering or even donating yeah and you cover a little bit i guess in the sense of

01:01:23.280 you know every vote counting no matter how you look with the vote splitting but i mean it's a

01:01:26.280 question you're going to face a lot and a commenter paul vickers i see is a couple of things are you

01:01:30.540 doing canada the only minority governments then or or do we wish canada become another italy and

01:01:34.640 just to expand on what he's talking about, Italy has kind of what's called a pizza parliament in

01:01:39.280 a sense. They got a whole pile of parties coming in there. I kind of like that though. It's hard

01:01:43.620 to function with that many. And they've turned over, I don't know how many leaders in the last

01:01:48.000 couple of decades. It's been crazy. I don't believe we have to go that route, but it's still,

01:01:54.480 it's a question you're going to hear at the doors a lot. So how would you answer that one?

01:01:57.900 In regards to vote split?

01:02:00.320 In regards to never having a majority government again, potentially.

01:02:03.240 I see. Interesting.

01:02:04.640 Right. And I guess when I'm speaking to Western Canadians, and, you know, primarily who we're talking to today, I suppose, but when was the last time that you felt, I would ask them directly, when was the last time that you felt your voice was truly heard in Ottawa anyway?

01:02:21.600 You know, you voted overwhelmingly in the last federal election for Erin O'Toole and the Conservatives.

01:02:28.020 You were betrayed time and time again in issues that were near and dear to your heart.

01:02:34.020 You know, issues like property rights, which is what firearms is about, actually.

01:02:40.940 In regards to the carbon tax, do you felt like your voice was heard when you heard Erin O'Toole stand in front of a Quebec audience and say,

01:02:49.400 don't worry guys, Energy East is off of the table, which is what he said in front of that Quebec

01:02:55.800 audience. Do you think that he was talking to Western Canadians when he said that? Of course

01:03:00.960 he wasn't. He was trying to garner votes in Eastern Canada and Quebec. And he was also

01:03:09.020 quite blunt when he told Canadians, Western Canadians, that you need to start updating

01:03:15.600 your beliefs to more accurately reflect the principles of the current conservative party

01:03:22.000 and to me that's entirely backwards how is that even possible we should be our our parties should

01:03:28.080 represent the people not the other way around and so our goal would be to just represent western

01:03:34.640 canadians because they haven't had that voice anyway okay yeah i mean you can't not you know

01:03:40.400 nobody can deny that the bloc quebecois to a degree hasn't been influential uh on behalf of

01:03:44.880 of Quebecers for this long, even if they've, you know, because they don't have to worry about what

01:03:49.080 the rest of the country thinks. They don't care. They speak for Quebec. Correct. So with the Maverick

01:03:53.500 Party, it goes as far as Manitoba, but doesn't go into Ontario at this point. Is that where it's

01:03:58.120 the line's drawn? That's correct. We feel that we can learn from history. And when you look at the

01:04:07.800 Reform Party and the Reform, excuse me, their model, that is indeed where they kind of went wrong.

01:04:14.480 They, of course, their goal in those days was to, the West wants in, and the West did get in, achieve a large amount of seats in Western Canada, and then they were somewhat wooed by other Conservative areas of the country, and they decided to go national.

01:04:33.360 and of course in those days they did that they changed in the canadian alliance then they became

01:04:40.120 and merged with what in those days were the dregs of the conservative party the conservative party

01:04:45.600 and here we are 30 years later we've made a complete circle and so the maverick party has

01:04:52.840 had to draw that line at the manitoba ontario border and we will not go east of that and it's

01:05:00.220 not that there aren't great conservatively minded people in Ontario. I met some of them. In fact,

01:05:06.280 when I was coming home from Ottawa, I stopped at a hotel in Wawa, Ontario, and had a great

01:05:12.560 conversation with the gentleman. And he was intrigued by the idea of the Maverick Party

01:05:18.200 and asked if it was something that he could join. And, you know, I had to explain to him that

01:05:23.920 we're here to represent Western Canadians. And he seemed somewhat disappointed. And I guess I

01:05:31.520 can understand that because their voice is lost as well. But we have to be true to our constituency.

01:05:40.700 And I'm glad you remember and recognize that. Like, I remember it very well. There was a group

01:05:45.780 called Guardians United Against Reform's Demise that was very active in Alberta. Bruce Stubbs was

01:05:51.180 running it and something of an irony is daughter shannon is is now a conservative member of

01:05:55.400 parliament uh but i mean it was a big battle on whether or not to step outside of the west and

01:06:01.840 go into ontario or not people who said that this will bring about an end to the principles of the

01:06:06.780 reform party i think we can say with hindsight we're absolutely right the reform was done it

01:06:11.400 was lost the moment they went into ontario like you said there's a lot of great ontarian

01:06:15.240 conservatives but the party cannot maintain those conservative roots if they cross that line

01:06:19.400 yeah exactly yep so yeah that was just kind of getting on to the next question i was going to

01:06:25.640 ask you know how do you resist that temptation because you know the pressure will come if the

01:06:28.680 party does well if you get a number of seats people are going to say well well you got to go

01:06:31.840 further you got to go you know east more and if you can keep referencing that example you know

01:06:37.600 it's already been done it didn't work yeah i i had a i had a very interesting conversation

01:06:42.580 with a gentleman in the last federal election and uh we were speaking for the very first time

01:06:48.560 about the Maverick party with him. And he was asking me that exact question. And I said that

01:06:55.180 we will never go across that border. And he, referencing the Reform Party, leaned in a little

01:07:01.720 bit and quite pointedly said, never is a very long time, Colin. And I said, well, in my own

01:07:13.760 defense and in the party's defense, it's part of our policies and our guidelines. And he says,

01:07:17.240 those can change colin and he's absolutely right and my answer to that would be that we are a

01:07:23.800 grassroots party and i told that gentleman the only way that we can really make sure that that

01:07:29.240 never happens is through a strong membership a principled membership of western canadians

01:07:36.680 that make sure that we stay on the right track and that's why i keep i keep asking people to

01:07:43.080 to go onto the website and become members because this is the way of the future for western canadians

01:07:50.680 grassroots great okay well in closing then uh i'll just give you no one more opportunity to

01:07:56.440 let us know where can people find information about yourself your campaign and the maverick

01:08:00.360 party in general uh so i am on facebook i am increasing my social media platform but

01:08:07.320 if you go to colin krieger-maverick party you find me on facebook uh i had a large amount

01:08:14.920 of videos that we did just very uh informal videos from the time when i was in ottawa

01:08:22.520 also of course on the maverick party website maverickparty.ca where you can find all of our

01:08:28.840 policies and and uh i would ask that you would uh reach out to me uh via facebook or uh my webs uh

01:08:38.120 pardon me my email which is uh colin uh underscore oh shoot now now i'm all making sure i see it so

01:08:47.800 i don't see it myself so often but it is uh oh man terrible my my apologies i'm gonna have to make

01:08:55.880 sure i don't want to mess it up but you can find me on on my facebook page and we can go from there

01:09:00.840 um and i guess if i was going to say anything else uh we just uh want to represent the west

01:09:09.480 that is our goal of the maverick and uh i'm looking forward to be involved in this leadership

01:09:15.000 race as we go forward great well thank you very much for joining me today and good luck in the

01:09:20.920 the race and we'll check in with you down the road. Alrighty. Thanks, Corey. Thanks, Colin.

01:09:28.400 Yeah, sorry, Ashley. I see that question coming up about the WEF and Klaus Schwab, but we kind of

01:09:33.400 ran out of time there and that is a big and important issue. You know, I talked about that

01:09:37.340 on the show yesterday. It's one of the conspiracies come true sort of things in a lot of ways. Perhaps

01:09:42.820 we'll get a chance to talk with Colin about those down the road. At this point, I kind of wanted to

01:09:46.260 stay focused on the party and the race at that point. I mean, there's many, many things we

01:09:50.660 political-minded people can talk about and go down the road. A couple of people, you know,

01:09:55.440 pure independent supporters, it sounds like with Cheryl asking about how to get it on a referendum

01:10:00.220 ballot for Alberta to go, and Brenda Marie asking if Alberta can go. Now it sounds like, and I don't

01:10:07.500 want to read in on behalf of, you know, their part of your things, but they're trying to take

01:10:13.260 that soft independence approach. You know, they're not ruling it out, which still makes it a heck of

01:10:17.080 lot stronger than the pure federalists who just say never, no matter what, when you ask about it.

01:10:23.400 But it's not their full focus. When it comes to a referendum, as far as I'm concerned, and you know,

01:10:30.840 it's certainly a subject of interest with me, there's only one way out and the province has to

01:10:35.000 initiate it. And it has to be a clear question on a referendum. And that's not just my opinion,

01:10:39.640 that's what's in the Clarity Act. And I've always sort of laughed about that, you know,

01:10:43.080 Chrétien scared the crap out of himself back in 95 when Quebec held a referendum and the government

01:10:50.520 was overconfident in Canada's unity and they were over arrogant in their leadership. They came but

01:10:55.640 1% away from Quebec actually voting to leave Canada. And they thought, and I still don't

01:11:03.360 believe them, they convinced themselves that the only reason Quebec came that close is because

01:11:07.440 they didn't understand the question. They just, those foolish Quebecers didn't realize they were 1.00

01:11:11.980 voting on actual independence. They thought it was just a vote to, you know, look, the campaign 1.00

01:11:18.180 went on for months. Everybody knew exactly what a yes vote meant and what it didn't mean. And if

01:11:24.280 they had voted yes, they would have started moving towards secession. There's no denying that. And

01:11:31.060 but either way, the government and their arrogance, they couldn't convince themselves of that. So they

01:11:34.820 formed the Clarity Act. They said, okay, the question, if there's going to be one held again,

01:11:38.500 it has to be clear. Yes or no, stay or go. That's fine. I can agree with that.

01:11:43.820 But it also laid out the framework because it also, that act says a government has to start

01:11:47.700 negotiating in good faith the moment a province votes on a clear question to leave Confederation.

01:11:55.100 They have to start negotiating. They're obliged to. So they gave the mechanism for a province

01:11:59.560 to get out. They gave us the means. And unfortunately, they said clear majority has to vote.

01:12:05.860 That's an ambiguous term.

01:12:07.420 Is that 50% plus one?

01:12:08.580 Is that 60%?

01:12:10.140 I think if a province is going to vote to go, and I think they eventually will, it has

01:12:15.860 to be clear, though.

01:12:16.480 I never want to see a province vote with 51% to get out.

01:12:19.680 Oh, what a recipe for ongoing endless negotiations, possibly even civil war, though I don't think

01:12:25.100 we're of that mind in this country.

01:12:26.840 But all the same, the turmoil that would be caused by a close, close vote would be terrible.

01:12:30.820 So when the time comes to go, if it comes to go, I think, you know, people have to be ready.

01:12:37.120 So people are calling for a referendum. We want it right now. Well, no. If you want to set

01:12:40.980 independence back, hold one right now. Get out there and lose the vote. Come in with a 20, 25,

01:12:46.300 30% support on a referendum. You're not going to get another chance for a decade. You know,

01:12:51.200 people won't have an appetite to go back into it. And that's why Quebec hasn't held another one

01:12:55.160 since. Because they want out, a lot of them do, but they're not going to pull the trigger on a

01:13:00.220 referendum until they're sure they can win it. So we have to build that framework first. If you want

01:13:06.360 the West to go, every province has to build their own framework. Getting back to what Cheryl was

01:13:10.980 asking about, how do you initiate a referendum? That takes some provincial lobbying. That's in 0.99

01:13:15.600 the hands of the government provincially. Jason Kenney, it's one of the areas I've been most

01:13:19.760 upset with him about, you know, and I've tried to be supportive of him. I've been back and forth

01:13:23.620 with Kenney and liking some of the things he does and not with others. One I didn't like was the

01:13:28.740 the fake referendum legislation he gave us. And I'll call it fake because he's given it to us

01:13:34.080 and he hasn't even brought it fully into legislation, the recall and referendum yet.

01:13:38.400 So they've talked about it. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Yeah, the UCP is getting really

01:13:42.000 known for that. And I think it's going to cost them his leadership. But, you know, with the

01:13:46.180 fair deal panel and all of that, and then they gave recall legislation, but they won't impose

01:13:49.740 it, of course, because they're worried that it'll be turned against themselves. Same with referenda.

01:13:53.760 They don't want to put it in the hands of Albertans directly. So what they've done is set

01:13:57.220 the petition bar so high to invoke one that it's never going to happen. It's not going to happen.

01:14:03.680 And people need to understand how hard petitioning really is. So people said, oh, you know, 10,000,

01:14:09.460 100,000, whatever votes on a petition, because that's what you need. Hundreds of thousands with

01:14:12.700 his referendum legislation to invoke one, to invoke a referendum. That's under a timeline that I don't

01:14:18.920 remember what it is, 60 days or something. You'd have to have it on a formal piece of government

01:14:22.540 paper. You can't do an internet petition. You have to go in person, person to person, get their

01:14:28.020 signature, their address, and their phone number. Because if they aren't confirmed signatures,

01:14:31.580 they'll be stricken off the list. A lot of people don't want to share their information these days,

01:14:35.880 and you can understand why. It is not easy to petition. It is very difficult. Anybody who's

01:14:41.080 run for election before knows that. You know, to get into the race, what you have to do is get a

01:14:44.700 formal petition, go door to door, and federally, I think it's 100 signatures. Provincially, it's

01:14:48.740 like 30 or 40. Even then, that's a few days work for a federal one if it's just one person. It's

01:14:54.440 not easy. So he gave a false means of giving a referendum. So your first step, if you want to

01:15:00.480 get one, you've got to get the government to fix that legislation so citizens can actually initiate

01:15:04.840 it. So citizens can actually petition with a realistic bar set and invoke a binding. Don't

01:15:10.940 forget that word as well, binding referendum. That legislation has to say that the government

01:15:14.400 is obligated to follow the will of the people on the vote of that referendum. That's the step.

01:15:19.240 Alberta has to do it, Saskatchewan, BC, Manitoba. Anybody who wants to move towards independence,

01:15:23.820 we need that ability. And you need the ability in the hands of the citizens. Otherwise, the

01:15:29.040 government has to invoke the referendum. And that just depends on what their mood is at the time.

01:15:34.700 I mean, you might get a premier who's independence-minded who will give that referendum

01:15:38.000 to Albertans or people in Saskatchewan or BC. But the best way, though, is to put the power

01:15:46.220 into the hands of the citizens. And there has to be a bar. I understand that. You can't just

01:15:50.600 have 100 signatures and you can invoke a referendum. Well, every election, we're going

01:15:54.200 to have a ballot that's 35 feet long, whereas everybody with their pet peeve, whether it's

01:15:58.860 their neighbor's dog crapping on their lawn or the number of seats in parliament, whatever it

01:16:03.460 might be, that is going to want a question on the ballot. You've got to make sure there's a degree

01:16:06.980 of public support that's realistic, making it worth bringing it to the polls and making every

01:16:11.660 Albertan discuss or any province and vote on it. But for now, yeah, let's get the legislation. We've

01:16:20.180 got to get the framework in place and we've got to get the environment in place. Fergus is saying

01:16:23.820 as well, yeah, a referendum tomorrow would fail. However, all efforts need to go towards achieving

01:16:28.420 that support. We've got to build that basis. One of the things I've always said too is we've got

01:16:33.760 to clean up our own backyard. I mean, would you vote to go when you look at the basket case we

01:16:39.300 have in Edmonton as a government right now? Do you want to actually see, think of these two words,

01:16:45.480 I think they're the most chilling words you can think of. President Notley. Not impossible. She

01:16:51.080 won a majority in Alberta in a provincial referendum. So if Alberta was independent,

01:16:55.100 but we hadn't fixed our own domestic mess, Notley could be actually more powerful than she ever was.

01:17:01.120 she could be the leader of a country. You really want that? What are the things we're upset with 0.98

01:17:06.840 Ottawa about? Anti-democratic activities, overspending. Well, we can fix those here. In

01:17:12.780 fact, we have to, because we can't pretend that we're better than them until we demonstrate

01:17:18.740 through our own actions that we are. We haven't done that yet. So I'm not really going to

01:17:23.700 independence by any means. I'm just saying we got our work cut out for us before we get to the

01:17:26.720 point where it might be a realistic thing. I'm going to move on from that. And yes,

01:17:31.200 as Nico has been putting the comments up there to remind everybody, use that coupon code,

01:17:34.820 Triggered, and take out a subscription with us, guys. That's how we can keep touching these

01:17:38.740 subjects. You know, when it comes to independence, when it comes to parties pushing a different point

01:17:42.100 of view, the mainstream media won't cover this stuff. They won't talk about this sort of stuff.

01:17:45.820 That's what we're here for. And we're growing and we're doing great. We've got a fantastic

01:17:49.440 members base and it's growing and we still need more. This is how we can push past the government

01:17:55.100 propaganda, the corrupted legacy media, which it really is. I mean, there's some great members

01:17:59.660 within it, but their institution has gotten rotten to the core. And we've got some great

01:18:04.440 former mainstream media taking part, former within the Western Standard. The ones with

01:18:09.180 principle, they're leaving or they're getting canceled and kicked out. But we need members to

01:18:13.440 be able to keep paying for and doing these things. So check it out. You can get a free trial for 15

01:18:17.640 days. It doesn't take any risk. You'll save 10 bucks if you use that triggered code when you

01:18:23.080 check it out. And then for 10 bucks a month after that, it's, uh, or $99 a year. Some of the best

01:18:28.480 media you're going to get, and it helps support us and it helps bring in those advertisers. So

01:18:31.460 appreciate that. And again, if you aren't following us already on YouTube, Facebook,

01:18:35.200 Twitter, all of that, do so please. This helps spread the word and it helps us bypass that

01:18:39.900 mainstream thing. So speaking of which, I'll finish up with a little more news here. Federal

01:18:43.940 regulators, uh, uh, wouldn't commit to a parliamentary ban on, uh, foreign propaganda

01:18:49.740 by the Chinese state TV. The House Commons did vote unanimously for a ban targeting the Kremlin

01:18:57.000 financed Russia Today, which is a propaganda arm of them. I mean, Russia's always done that with

01:19:01.780 Pravda and so on. Even when the communist regime left, they knew about the importance of trying to

01:19:05.920 control information. But it's funny with their priorities in parliament. Now, suddenly, the

01:19:11.000 Russian one's bad, but the Chinese one's still okay. We'll let that one go. If you really want 1.00

01:19:15.520 a trashy one, shut down the CBC. We don't need a state broadcaster. We don't need Canada's version 0.67

01:19:22.580 of Pravda. We don't need an institution beholden to the government like that and funded by tax

01:19:30.020 dollars. They need to be independent. And that's why we're here. We can support the next best thing

01:19:36.100 to defunding the CBC is just nobody watching it. Not many people are anymore anyways. But still,

01:19:40.420 I'd rather it gone altogether. But in the meantime, hey, keep coming to the Western Standard.

01:19:44.420 This is how we're going to be able to fix things and get past that.

01:19:49.680 What else have I got going on?

01:19:51.420 Yes, there are convoys moving towards, somebody was a little upset with some coverage of that

01:19:55.660 from Thomas.

01:19:56.880 There are some convoys moving towards Washington.

01:19:59.260 One arrived, but it was, I guess, pretty small.

01:20:01.760 And some others are moving across the country. 0.99

01:20:03.760 I don't know how big it's going to get, but I mean, we couldn't tell with the Canadian

01:20:09.440 one either.

01:20:10.080 But the Canadian one, we could see the steam growing.

01:20:13.080 We could see along the roads, more people on the bridges, more flags being waved.

01:20:16.620 And it just started small and sort of snowballed, literally rolling a ball down the hill, just

01:20:20.240 kept getting bigger and bigger before it got to Ottawa.

01:20:21.960 We saw a lot of, you know, exaggerated reports thinking, people saying, oh, there's going

01:20:24.920 to be 50,000 trucking, very significant, obviously, by the time it got there.

01:20:29.080 But on the state side, it doesn't seem to quite have that sort of momentum.

01:20:33.580 I talked to an American guest, it was Cohen and Spike Cohen, there we go.

01:20:40.340 he's an american he was the libertarian candidate for president vice president candidate down there

01:20:44.820 but he he did break down why it doesn't work as easily i mean canada we have one trans canada

01:20:48.500 highway we kind of focus all of that into one spot and have a demonstration the states is very

01:20:53.700 diverse it's spread out you got all those interstates you've got all these cities you

01:20:56.580 got these centers it's difficult to make a a single large uh confluence of those sorts of

01:21:04.100 things for a protest like that it's a different situation in canada so we'll see we'll see if

01:21:08.180 if that pressure comes up. American truckers are getting hooped by those bans as well and those

01:21:11.560 vaccine mandates, but I don't hold up too much hope that it's going to go too far. Cheryl Dawn,

01:21:16.980 again, bringing up the C11, how it's going to impact and affect independent media. We're pretty

01:21:22.360 worried about it, guys. C11 is an anti-speech bill. It's an anti-independent media bill.

01:21:27.340 It wants to control the streamers, the broadcasters, the things like that, where we're

01:21:31.560 bypassing their messaging. So yeah, I'm very worried about it. Again, that's why I want

01:21:36.200 everybody to keep getting on to rumble keep getting on to those other platforms because we

01:21:39.700 never know what the government's going to do or the big social media giants will do but we do know

01:21:43.480 some of those platforms are not inclined to cancel people and we'll be much safer there so we can

01:21:48.000 keep bringing that to you so get on to those speaking of cancelling so I'm going to talk

01:21:52.960 about what's coming up tomorrow and it's an interesting show it's going to be a little

01:21:55.400 different I am going to start out again talking about energy and a few things and I got a column

01:21:59.020 coming up that I'll essentially be reading to kick off the show tomorrow so you can get that

01:22:02.880 Cory Morgan delivery, though you can read most of the text if you want as well.

01:22:06.860 And then, yeah, you can email me at cmorgan at westernstandardonline.com if you want to

01:22:12.020 send guest ideas and things like that. I'm going to have a lawyer, Derek Fromm, on. People have

01:22:15.900 probably seen him from other interviews now. He's usually working on court cases and independence

01:22:19.420 and freedom-minded things, not independence, individual freedoms. He's also part of a heavy

01:22:24.420 metal band. And yeah, they got canceled by some of the social media giants for having a video out

01:22:29.480 that was favorable of the trucker's convoy.

01:22:31.660 Yeah, apparently heavy metal can't go into anything controversial.

01:22:36.140 He's also going to talk a little about a court ruling

01:22:37.860 where a judge just eviscerated.

01:22:40.460 I mean, the ruling text was something else

01:22:42.280 and worth reading on parents and parental rights

01:22:45.620 on who gets to choose whether their kids get vaccinated or not.

01:22:48.380 Then I'm going to have a former Vancouver radio DJ,

01:22:50.260 Kid Carson, on.

01:22:51.980 And he got canceled, essentially.

01:22:54.020 It sounds like I listened to his, you know,

01:22:55.800 in talking about it.

01:22:56.880 he's on good terms with the former radio station. You know, it wasn't throwing him out the door

01:23:02.100 with a microphone, you know, embedded in his head or anything like that. But he wanted to talk

01:23:05.960 openly about issues and mainstream media bias. And people got upset with that. And they just

01:23:10.380 basically mutually agreed, you know what, you're not going to represent our radio station any longer.

01:23:14.100 And he's been out of there. He's been podcasting and speaking independently, openly,

01:23:18.340 and trying to set up his new base. And he's going to have a lot of insight to offer on what's

01:23:22.080 happening with media and things such as that. So that'll be a very interesting talk to have

01:23:26.520 tomorrow. So that's what we got on deck tomorrow. Thank you all for tuning in today, guys.

01:23:31.980 And we will see you all tomorrow morning at 1130 AM.

01:23:52.080 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 02, 2022

LIVE - Triggered： Ding, dong, the masks are gone!

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