Western Standard - LIVE - Triggered： Exclusive interview with Dr. Leslyn Lewis.

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 good morning everybody it's march 29th 2022 and welcome to triggered i'm cory morgan this is the

00:00:41.960 western standards live daily show we run at 11 30 a.m mountain standard time sharp every day monday

00:00:48.120 to friday i don't do holidays though either way columns comments are welcome all the time i i just

00:00:54.640 like to keep reminding everybody of that i like seeing those comments coming in there i like

00:00:57.980 seeing discussion between the viewers. Throw some things my way sometimes. I don't necessarily read

00:01:02.580 them all out, but I do read them all eventually. And we can get some questions out to guests when

00:01:06.960 we can and such as well. And I got some great guests today. Conservative Party of Canada

00:01:11.340 leadership candidate, Dr. Leslie Lewis. Again, unfortunately, it's hard with these candidates

00:01:15.380 with a live show. We recorded that one, but it was only recorded like 20 minutes ago. So it's

00:01:20.460 as close to live as you can get. You can certainly discuss while that interview runs. We're going to

00:01:24.240 talk to all of them as the leadership campaign goes i mean eventually one of these conservative

00:01:28.480 leaders is going to be our next prime minister so it's important to listen to them i like to

00:01:33.080 think eventually anyways we're also going to check in with matthew horwood he's our parliamentary

00:01:36.620 bureau chief with the western standard and uh he was looking at the protests that are firing up

00:01:41.860 again in ottawa as they did last weekend and he'll give us an update on that and other stories he's

00:01:46.460 working on there crystal whitwrongel she's been on before a couple of times she's with the montreal 0.74

00:01:51.740 Economic Institute. They put out a column and talking about the Bay de Nord oil project. It's

00:01:58.000 a huge one and it's just off the coast of Newfoundland and it's hanging in the air. We don't

00:02:01.800 know if the Liberals are actually going to approve that one or not. It's not just Alberta that is

00:02:05.700 getting hooped by the crazed green government we have right now. So I might as well get on to what's

00:02:12.760 got me ranting this morning and good morning all you guys. I see that Brenda and Gary and Kathy,

00:02:16.760 it's good to see you. I walk to work from my parking space every day and unfortunately sometimes

00:02:22.140 I find inspiration for my daily rant from it. So last week a young woman was randomly attacked and

00:02:28.760 murdered in the Calgary downtown Beltline area and then last weekend another woman was at least

00:02:33.500 allegedly grabbed at knife point while walking through a downtown park in the evening as she

00:02:37.500 escaped being dragged down to the river by her assailant. Crime in the downtown area of Calgary

00:02:42.520 has been on the rise for years. Much of that crime has been of a violent nature. Our political

00:02:47.380 leaders, though, particularly in the municipal realm, and the police forces guided by them,

00:02:51.620 don't like saying crime, though. That's too harsh. They like to say social disorder. Well,

00:02:57.700 31-year-old Vanessa Lettuser wasn't social disordered to death. She was murdered, and it 0.99

00:03:03.480 was part of rising crime in the area. The first step our political leaders need to take in dealing

00:03:09.280 with this is to stop trying to sugarcoat what's going on. The next fluffy term civic leaders like

00:03:14.440 to use is vulnerable persons. You see, the crime's spiking in these areas where they're spiking in

00:03:21.240 the areas where vulnerable persons are known to gather. So let's not beat around the bush

00:03:25.620 and let's get back to calling vulnerable persons what they are, homeless people. And let's quit

00:03:32.060 pretending that homeless people are predominantly folks who've fallen upon some short-term hard

00:03:36.860 times due to the economy or the evils of heartless capitalism. Most of the people we see on the

00:03:41.760 streets and urban centers are there because they're addicts and or they have mental health

00:03:46.120 challenges. I don't want to demonize people with addiction and mental health issues. They're human

00:03:50.480 beings and they need our help. I can't count the number of times I've written on or spoken of the

00:03:55.280 need for availability for more comprehensive treatment centers and resources for the addicted

00:03:59.820 and people with mental health issues. To their credit, Kenny's UCP has made great progress and

00:04:04.680 they've been investing in these areas. The progressive set, however, likes to cloak themselves

00:04:10.120 in this world of denial. They feel if we could just facilitate addicts enough, they would somehow

00:04:14.460 kick the habit. Safe consumption centers have become almost a religious thing to them. Hey,

00:04:20.000 I'm supportive of harm mitigation. We can't treat addicts if they're dead. And if safe consumption

00:04:24.320 centers can prevent some overdoses, that's great. Getting back to reality, though, most of the

00:04:29.160 addicts don't use the safe consumption centers. I took some pictures this morning on my walk. I

00:04:33.960 didn't have to go out of my way to find these. These are discarded syringes. I see them daily

00:04:38.200 and it's only a few blocks from the local supervised consumption center. I don't blame

00:04:43.180 folks for not wanting to do it, but if there's any doubt about how bad it's gotten downtown,

00:04:48.460 just take a walk through a few alleys and look into some of the recessed doorways and the many

00:04:51.700 closed businesses. You'll find no end to the discarded drug consumption paraphernalia and

00:04:56.380 human waste. You could put a supervised consumption site on every block. There still would be a large

00:05:01.580 number of addicts who just don't want to use them. So supervised consumption centers as well,

00:05:06.180 they become a haven and hangout for many addicts. Go walk around the Sheldon Schumer Center,

00:05:10.000 especially on the south side. You see them all sitting out there in the sun and shooting up.

00:05:14.320 Like any other kind of parasite, the drug dealers, of course, follow them and seek out their hosts.

00:05:18.740 Safe consumption centers lead to increased crime, not just social disorder, crime in the

00:05:23.300 neighborhoods where they are placed. That leads me to the next area of denial. Addicts and people

00:05:28.260 with mental health issues aren't necessarily harmless. They can and often are very dangerous.

00:05:34.460 Matthew DeGrood had a mental health problem. He murdered five people. And I know most people with 0.91

00:05:39.500 mental health problems don't murder people, but let's quit pretending it doesn't happen. 1.00

00:05:44.240 Even if an addict is responsibly using a safe consumption site, they still have a very serious

00:05:48.720 problem. They're addicted and need to find ways to feed their addiction. That often means ranging

00:05:52.900 out and stealing from nearby residents. Anybody claiming that Beltline property crime hasn't spiked

00:05:57.260 since the safe consumption site was placed there is either lying again or in some form of denial.

00:06:03.540 Cars are chronically broken into and nothing of value can be left out for a moment without risk

00:06:07.340 of it being stolen. People understandably don't want to confront these thieves as they can

00:06:11.800 quickly become aggressive. While addicts consuming opiates tend to be somewhat sedate when they're

00:06:17.260 impaired, often dead unfortunately, those strung out on meth or crack can be very aggressive and

00:06:22.220 out of control. And like it or not, they can and do often commit acts of violence against each other

00:06:27.060 and other citizens. Calgary's LRT stations have turned into havens for addicts in the last few

00:06:31.700 years. Ridership continues to plummet because citizens are tired of choosing to have to step

00:06:37.100 over passed out people or being accosted by aggressive panhandlers and then sharing train

00:06:41.380 space with a guy with a shopping cart. Homes within walking distance of LRT stations are

00:06:46.220 chronically being hit by thieves, taking everything from bicycles to catalytic converters. So how has

00:06:51.240 the city dealt with this? Well, they closed a number of LRT stations to the public. Taxpayers

00:06:55.740 keep shelling it out into an increasingly expensive transit system that they can't even

00:07:00.280 access indoor train stations in a winter city because the city doesn't want to deal with the

00:07:05.160 root of the problem. The city's also begun checking for train fares now. How controversial. How daring.

00:07:11.720 They're actually asking people to show a ticket. Welcome to the realm of denial. You know, many

00:07:16.320 people weren't choosing to pay their fares. Who'd have thunk it? But again, that's that city of

00:07:21.220 Calgary thing. They just didn't want to deal with it. Calgary's downtown's in an almost dystopian

00:07:25.700 state right now under a decade of foolish city management that won't deal with hard realities.

00:07:30.900 The city continually claims that they want to attract citizens and businesses into the city

00:07:34.640 core, but they won't address one of the primary issues keeping people away from it. It isn't

00:07:38.900 social disorder and it isn't being perpetuated by vulnerable people. Calgary has a major and

00:07:43.800 growing urban crime problem and it's being perpetuated by addicts and people with mental 0.51

00:07:48.280 health issues. Myself, I am a recovering alcoholic. I know about some of these things. There's a lot

00:07:53.620 of wisdom in the 12-step program. Even if it's a little churchy for my liking, there was a lot of

00:07:58.000 wisdom. I gained a lot from it. Step one is you have to admit you have a problem. You have to

00:08:02.840 admit you're not in control. No addict in self-denial can begin recovery without facing

00:08:08.060 those realities. Well, no city can begin to repair and recover from their problems until they're

00:08:12.880 ready to admit the nature of their problem either, or that they've lost control. Until that happens,

00:08:17.940 Calgary and a lot of other urban centers are going to continue to become more unsafe and more

00:08:22.740 depopulated that's what's got me triggered today so let's talk to our news editor dave naylor and

00:08:30.000 get an update on other news today hey there dave how's it going it's going well cory it uh it truly

00:08:37.280 is like being in an episode of the walking dead when you uh walk to and from work here in downtown

00:08:42.880 calgary isn't it oh it is and it's tragic it is but i mean we can't deny it's also discomforting

00:08:48.420 I mean, some of these guys are pretty scary and they're pretty out of control.

00:08:53.120 Yep.

00:08:53.400 You know, some people I know just refuse to ride the LRT anymore or even come downtown for that matter.

00:09:00.200 It's not a good situation for sure.

00:09:03.980 On to the news.

00:09:05.400 Our website is currently leading off with two of our colonists.

00:09:09.600 Linda Slobodian has the latest on the UCP leadership campaign.

00:09:16.340 She says that Jason Kenney likes to pretend there's nobody else in Alberta that can lead the party and unite Conservatives except for him.

00:09:27.300 So Linda says he may be wrong on that one, and she goes into some depth on that.

00:09:32.200 Our military affairs correspondent, Dave Makachuk, has a really interesting look at the F-35s that Canada's in the process of purchasing from Lockheed Martin down in the States.

00:09:46.340 These are like hugely expensive aircraft, but the toys that they come with would make you want to be young again and become a fighter pilot.

00:09:55.880 Speaking of the city of Calgary, Corey, the first poll on Mayor Gondek is out today, done by Think HQ, and her polling numbers are in the tank.

00:10:08.400 And the Think HQ people say this rarely happens in a mayor's first term, and it's got to be worrying for the new mayor.

00:10:19.120 Speaking of polls, we've got a story on a Nanos poll that shows Jean Charest is favored by most Canadians, conservative voting Canadians, as their next leader.

00:10:31.040 He's heavily favoured down in Ontario and Quebec.

00:10:34.860 On the prairies, it's Pierre Paglia, who's already been out here a time or two during the campaign.

00:10:42.640 We've got an update on the Saskatoon masking bylaw from our Saskatchewan correspondent, Christopher Oldcorn.

00:10:52.640 He's got the results of last night's meeting on how the city will continue with their mask mandates.

00:10:58.520 What else have we got, Corey? The big emissions today, the big story this afternoon that

00:11:06.420 you'll be talking to Matthew Horwood on is the climate change announcements by

00:11:13.420 radical environment minister, Stéphane Galbault. He's got oil companies have to cut their emissions

00:11:20.880 by 42% over the next eight years to meet targets. So that's certainly something that the patch is

00:11:27.980 going to be have considerable their eye on today. So it's more fun and games in Ottawa and lots of

00:11:35.480 good stuff coming from this afternoon. Right on. Yeah, another full busy news day. At least,

00:11:40.580 you know, a quiet, peaceful, friendly world makes for slow news copy, but it does make for a better

00:11:45.040 living. But I guess we have to report on it, whether it's good or bad. Yep. Hundreds of planes

00:11:50.360 land every day safely, but it's not one that crashes and makes the news. You bet. Well, thanks,

00:11:56.080 Dave. I'll see you after the show and see what else is breaking. Thanks, Corey. So yeah, just

00:12:02.740 that reminder to everybody, all those stories and more are constantly going up on the site.

00:12:07.380 We've been getting so busy lately. It's been great. We've got so many contributors, columnists,

00:12:12.000 the opinion editor. I got a couple more I got to put up this afternoon. I just haven't had time to

00:12:16.120 get them rolling and all kinds of news. And it's thanks to you guys who have been subscribing.

00:12:21.180 That's how we're growing. That's how we can stay independent of the federal government and their

00:12:25.040 control, but we need you guys for it. It's that way we only answer to you. And, uh, it's been

00:12:30.820 great so far and we want to keep you coming. So if you haven't subscribed already, get on there,

00:12:34.920 westernstandardonline.com slash membership. And Hey, everyone likes a good deal. Well,

00:12:40.180 you put in the coupon code triggered. You're going to save another $10 on an annual subscription

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00:12:58.700 weeks realize this is worth the $10 a month or even less if you take advantage of some of those

00:13:02.920 incentives to get that news as it's breaking and clean and not like our mainstream and legacy

00:13:09.680 outlets that unfortunately insist on being beholden to the federal government. This is the future,

00:13:15.140 guys. Get on and subscribe if you haven't already. And again, thanks to those who have.

00:13:19.040 Just look at some of the commenters. I love seeing all those comments. I've seen people all over.

00:13:21.960 is the great thing with new news, you know, being able to reach out all over like this on a new

00:13:26.360 media outlet. We got Ken Schack from Forest Lake, Minnesota. That's a good long haul. Scott in Fort

00:13:32.680 McMurray, Debbie in Saskatchewan, Kathy in Rocky, and yeah, lots of people from all over on this.

00:13:40.540 What's somebody saying? There should be free bars for alcoholics. Yeah, I know. That's what it gets

00:13:43.940 to the point of, right? We talk about addiction and talk about things like that. And I do point

00:13:48.120 out, you know, we've got Beth in Michigan, by the way. Wow, we're getting some good

00:13:52.200 international attendees, and I appreciate that. But, you know, people call me heartless or get

00:13:58.500 upset sometimes when I talk about the addiction problem downtown, and I do. I sympathize. I want

00:14:02.500 these people to recover. I want them to get treatment. I mean, that's the best outcome for

00:14:08.360 everybody. You know, as long as they're addicted, they're going to be going in and out of health

00:14:13.260 facilities. They're costing money. I mean, aside from looking at the humanity and the person

00:14:16.900 themselves. You want to be just a cold, hard capitalist. Well, the costs of having untreated

00:14:23.580 people with mental health issues or addiction are massive. In health care, in prison, the amount of

00:14:28.920 people who are in jail that probably could have avoided it if they'd had treatment of some kind

00:14:33.320 to get off of whatever they're addicted to or whatever their challenges are mentally. I mean,

00:14:37.400 a lot of people can live perfectly functional lives if they have medical treatment and are

00:14:43.760 medicated and keep straightforward. I've talked about that before. We don't want to demonize

00:14:48.140 people with mental health challenges. It's a sickness like anything else. But we also can't 1.00

00:14:53.060 pretend that's the problem. We're pretending that people who are untreated and in that state are

00:14:58.500 harmless and they are not. Downtown Calgary at the city hall, they put this thing up, you know,

00:15:05.800 over the, when the grave sites were found on residential school areas and there was a fenced

00:15:11.100 off area, a bunch of teddy bears and shoes and everything were put up from people expressing

00:15:14.880 concern over the whole thing. And it was a display. It's still there, I believe. They're not sure what

00:15:18.800 to do with it. And they fenced it now because it was getting vandalized. When it first got vandalized,

00:15:22.680 somebody had lit it on fire a couple of times. And there was, of course, outrage expressed. This was

00:15:29.060 about a year ago, maybe a little less. And they were saying, oh, I see it's clearly these white 0.93

00:15:33.120 nationalists and racists going out there and burning this memorial. And then they suddenly 0.91

00:15:37.400 quietly discovered with the video footage, oh, no, it's a, and again, they use their term,

00:15:41.520 vulnerable person who was doing it and actually looked like the person was probably a First

00:15:45.340 Nations heritage. So, again, it's that denial, guys. You know, you just want to point to things

00:15:51.520 you don't like but don't like facing the hard realities, that there's some very distressed

00:15:54.960 people, and it's leading to a bigger problem. And we hear about it in Edmonton, as Claudette's saying,

00:16:00.460 you know, it's good to see Don there from Nova Scotia. We're going to talk some maritime stuff

00:16:04.260 later with Crystal. This is a problem everywhere. This opioid epidemic is everywhere, and it's a

00:16:11.020 big, big problem. I've got two friends now. No, three. Three friends whose sons have died

00:16:18.380 from overdoses or poisoning or whatever way you want to put it. This is awful. This stuff

00:16:24.100 is eating people up, but it doesn't mean they're coming from broken homes or bad environments or

00:16:28.980 anything like that. They get on the wrong crap, particularly that fentanyl and stuff like that. 0.99

00:16:32.340 it just eats them alive but we're never going to get better until we start addressing where the

00:16:38.220 issue is and and we haven't been doing that so far so i'm going to talk about uh before i get

00:16:43.480 to the lesl and lewis interview as well uh one of our sponsors and that's bitcoin well

00:16:47.400 this is the other way we pay our bills of course we advertise we get it out there hey we're good

00:16:51.920 capitalists and you know you guys subscribe the more subscribers we got the more advertising we

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00:16:59.260 people. And if you're interested in sponsoring any content on here, by the way, reach out to me.

00:17:03.680 We'll see if we can't set something up. Either way, Bitcoin Well, these guys have got a great

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00:17:43.240 These guys are there for you every step of the way. So, I mean, if you're curious about

00:17:46.440 digital currencies, you want to safely get involved in them. You want to get your money,

00:17:50.640 some of your money away from the reach of the federal government, which we've seen with recent

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00:18:17.880 them out all right and uh what do we've got uh studies out of lisbon and portugal yeah showing

00:18:23.560 that addicts recover quicker if given a roof over their head first yeah you know there's a lot of

00:18:27.880 uh that's from marianne wilson and uh more decades of work have shown that uh let's see here the

00:18:33.240 connection to trauma uh not teenage recreational use well yeah there's a lot of research and things

00:18:39.960 going on we'll see i mean a a troubled teen is going to be far more likely to experiment in some

00:18:45.160 some of the harder things like fentanyl and so on than others but recreational use is a large part

00:18:48.900 of it uh it's i mean the thing is with some of these powerful things like uh fentanyl and that

00:18:54.880 i mean it doesn't take much to get yourself hooked i mean just a short experimentation time

00:18:59.880 uh the studies out of portugal and that if given the roof over their head you see there's the some

00:19:04.620 of the chicken and egg problem we have with with uh homeless people because yes they're not going

00:19:09.940 to recover if they're out on the streets it's not going to help but at the same time a lot of them

00:19:13.360 aren't in condition to be in a regular house yet. They're out of control. They're in the

00:19:17.600 throes of addiction. They need a treatment center. They need a secure facility to get treated. And

00:19:22.460 even then, with treatment, I believe the odds are about 40% will stay clean for the next two years

00:19:28.020 after that. But I mean, the odds are darn near zero if they don't get treatment. So expanding

00:19:32.120 that treatment. But some people say, you know, we hear that from the progressives a lot. They just

00:19:35.760 need more housing, need more housing. Well, that's an element. That's more of post-treatment. You

00:19:39.380 will need a house. You'll need a home. You won't be able to get into the working market and build

00:19:42.440 a life without a home. But until they're treated, they're not in condition to get into a home. So

00:19:47.740 we've got a big, complicated problem. And part of it makes us squeamish. We're uncomfortable with it.

00:19:53.680 We feel bad about it. We know it's complicated. So we deny it. We hide from it. And that's a lot

00:19:57.660 of what happens. And that's what gets me ranting about our provincial and municipal politicians.

00:20:04.060 Because they just, they throw out other things that, you know, fluffy things and ideas, and then

00:20:09.160 just dodge the issue altogether because it's too complicated, too difficult to cope with,

00:20:13.920 and they'd rather avoid it altogether. And that's not going to solve it. So yeah, that's why I keep

00:20:19.220 going on about it because I get to see it every day when I come downtown and there's no single

00:20:23.700 answer. I mean, addiction treatment's a lot like anything else with people or even with kids in

00:20:27.760 school. If you think not everybody responds the same way to different means of recovery. It's a

00:20:33.500 tough, tough area, but we're all going to do better with the more people we can break away 0.97

00:20:38.040 from that horrible crap that they're consuming all the time. Okay, but enough on that. I'm going 0.95

00:20:43.080 to get on to Dr. Leslyn Lewis. We're going to run that interview. She is, again, definitely one of

00:20:48.060 the leading contenders for the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race coming up here. I spoke

00:20:53.600 to her this morning. It was a fantastic discussion, and I'll let you guys run through it. Talk through

00:20:58.060 the comment section while we're at it, and I'll see you in a little while.

00:21:01.340 thank you very much for joining us today dr lewis we've been uh looking forward to it your uh run

00:21:12.720 for the leadership the last time around while while you didn't win it was very impressive you

00:21:16.780 certainly made a mark and and you're an automatic contender coming into this one so it's going to

00:21:22.440 be very interesting watching this race developing yes it's exciting to be here again yeah

00:21:30.960 Well, you've got your work cut out. This is a very long campaign going on until September. There's going to be a lot of issues to cover. Maybe I'll start on one. And we are a predominantly Western publication here at the Western Standard and an area of big concern for us.

00:21:45.980 course it often focuses around energy and some of the attitudes towards energy from ottawa our

00:21:51.100 environment minister uh stephen gilbo has set and and come out today as well as prime minister

00:21:56.460 trudeau with some some very aggressive emissions reduction targets that are probably going to

00:22:01.580 pressure the alberta oil field very heavily uh what kind of response do you have to that sort

00:22:06.700 of planning and and uh rejection i guess well i think it's very important that any policy that

00:22:13.260 we implement takes into account the regional uniqueness of of the west and just how reliant

00:22:20.700 they that economy is on oil natural gas lng production and so i think that we have to take

00:22:29.100 that into consideration and any any policies that are implemented should also look at what are how

00:22:36.540 much of this product are we importing and if we're not dealing with uh the importation of that

00:22:43.260 then again what we're doing is we're creating policies that's just going to stymie

00:22:47.660 production in certain areas it's going to create alienation exacerbate the already existing

00:22:54.780 alienation because if you look at the policy of the regulation bill c48 and bill c69

00:23:02.220 we know that those regulations favored foreign production and it really crippled our local

00:23:10.940 industries and so we we witnessed corporations fleeing canada going to other places that had

00:23:20.380 more enabling legislation and that's really really problematic and so we have to make

00:23:26.220 sure that our environmental policies are all-encompassing and look at our natural gifts

00:23:32.460 and our natural resources and and our natural endowments such as the accessible oil reserves

00:23:38.940 that we have so uh in getting further with infrastructure because i mean there is quite

00:23:44.460 a demand for oil at this time and gas and and ethically produced canadian products but we're

00:23:49.740 having a very hard time getting it to market our pipelines have been stopped in almost all

00:23:53.900 directions whether keystone to the south or northern gateway to the west or energy east of

00:23:59.100 course to the east would a government under you be examining more ways for canadian products to

00:24:05.180 get to tidewater absolutely i think it's very essential and i look at the environment from

00:24:12.060 a holistic perspective so i look at the entire life cycle of products whether they be electric

00:24:19.100 cars or solar panels or wind generation i look at the entire life cycle from the day it's created

00:24:27.180 to how do we dispose of it after we're done using it and so when you do do that you'll see that

00:24:34.060 um certain things are not as environmentally friendly as we actually think they are and the

00:24:40.860 building pipelines are the most that is the most efficient way to transport um lng and and our our

00:24:49.740 oil and gas it's very very important it's that we build these pipelines it's more efficient than

00:24:56.540 trucking and and um rail transportation and i think it's very important that we get

00:25:02.620 our product to Tidewater because we will be able to offset some of the dependency on Russian oil

00:25:12.300 that we see in Europe. And it will also bring revenues into our country and assist us with some

00:25:18.780 of the issues that we're having with the high rates of unemployment that we're facing post-COVID.

00:25:25.820 Great. And then getting into more governance issues, I guess, and such an area of concern

00:25:30.300 for us has always been equalization we held our referendum on that recently in alberta

00:25:34.860 we do understand it's constitutionally entrenched it's not easy to address but

00:25:38.940 the formula is in within the the ability of the federal government to set and determine

00:25:43.980 a lot of people in the west feel that perhaps the formula hasn't been fairly treating out like

00:25:47.980 provinces would you be looking at reviewing the formula and how equalization has been applied

00:25:52.540 i think it's important that we look at some way of making the formula more equitable and if you

00:25:59.740 take for example what's happened in co with covid you'll see that the current formula there's a

00:26:05.260 three-year lag period and because of this three-year lag period in times of real hardship just

00:26:13.420 that that we've experienced in covet the west have been paying provinces like alberta have been

00:26:20.300 paying uh equalization payments based on days of prosperity and right now it's days of famine

00:26:29.180 basically and and the formula has no mechanism of being altered to account for that current reality

00:26:38.860 so we have to i think even though it is constitutionally entrenched i think canadians

00:26:44.620 are fair and that when they recognize that something is not uh working in the best interest

00:26:51.260 of of say a particular province and that it's unfair in in certain respects i think they will

00:26:58.060 come to the table and find ways to modify the formula so that it's more equitable.

00:27:06.300 Great. Your leadership competitor, Pierre Polyev, the other day put out a release talking about

00:27:12.540 digital currencies and facilitating the expansion of those within the Canadian market. Have you

00:27:19.500 determined a stance or looking at those sorts of things going forward as we have something of a

00:27:23.420 new developing whole kind of industry and and means of uh commerce uh on our hands right now

00:27:30.220 well um many people are concerned about digital identification and just the infrastructure that

00:27:38.380 blockchain will bring in for facilitating that digital id so i think it's um it's very early

00:27:48.380 to to say that that is something that you're going to implement without knowing whether or

00:27:54.140 not this is something that the people want i think it's it's a little bit presumptuous and it's not

00:27:58.700 something that um is in our campaign uh at this present time although we haven't put out fully

00:28:06.540 our our policies yet we will be putting out our policies but we're also very sensitive to the fact

00:28:11.900 that people are very concerned about the digital id and and the um repercussions of of the blockchain

00:28:20.220 on altering how we do things great um something i've been asking each candidate as i get them on

00:28:27.980 something we have a tradition in alberta since the late 80s has been we at least go through the

00:28:32.220 motions of electing senators to nominate and propose towards ottawa and often if we have a

00:28:37.420 favorable government they will appoint the ones we've chosen would you commit to appointing

00:28:41.740 senators of a province should elect them well to be honest with you i i actually like the way that

00:28:47.900 alberta does this because it's not uh patronage it's the people it's grassroots and so the said

00:28:56.540 the uh senator in waiting um campaigns that took place last year i found them very very interesting

00:29:05.740 because the candidates were out meeting with the people engaging seeing what the response was and

00:29:16.060 then the the members were able to vote on who they wanted and so in such a process the the person

00:29:24.700 that is most connected to the community is the one that represents it and and not someone that's

00:29:30.700 handpicked by the government because of past favors or because of of connections so i think

00:29:37.580 that the alberta system is very very good i support it and absolutely if if the people have said that

00:29:45.420 this is who they want to represent them i think that that should be honored by by whichever prime

00:29:51.580 minister is in place great um economically we've got inflation of course has been a a very strong

00:29:59.660 issue all over the world now a lot of it's been related to the pandemic related to overseas

00:30:04.380 conflicts but i mean a lot of it's been probably you know can be directly related to the amount of

00:30:08.940 government spending and borrowing we've done is there a plan to rein in borrowing and spending

00:30:14.620 and some of the the output from the bank of canada i think what's important is that we have to make

00:30:20.620 sure that we bring our supply chains home and that we up our manufacturing production and so we we

00:30:28.780 want to start being more of a production economy where we're producing things we're generating

00:30:35.420 wealth rather than uh the government just basically indebting future generations and

00:30:44.140 creating a debt society so we we want to change that the only way that you could really do that

00:30:50.140 is to bring back confidence in the economy by either incentivizing or promoting and encouraging

00:30:58.380 small and medium-sized businesses who employ over 80 percent of the population to start

00:31:05.020 reinvigorating uh re-employing people and taking chances again and once we are able to get the

00:31:13.420 economy kick-started again up our production then you will see a reduction in inflation because

00:31:21.100 because you'll have real dollars, real dollars, not just debt in our economy.

00:31:30.060 And people will have real money that they can buy products rather than fewer products out there being chased by lots of debt dollars.

00:31:42.180 Another thing that's put pressure on a lot of consumers when it comes to staples like foodstuffs is Canada's supply management system.

00:31:49.440 It's a touchy issue.

00:31:50.740 It always has been, but it's one that certainly comes with a cost.

00:31:54.680 Is there any consideration of possibly reforming or moving away from that system?

00:31:58.740 Well, the problem is that our production, our products that we get from supply management,

00:32:07.340 I actually enjoy the fact that we have a superior production and output.

00:32:13.360 and if you look at some of the the the things that the the enhancements that are used by say

00:32:22.520 in the United States like BST on on their cows and the just the amount of pus that you would get in 1.00

00:32:31.360 milk and I just find that those products are not on the same level as our Canadian products and so

00:32:38.680 you have to pay for quality and when you look at some of the industries worldwide and you ask our

00:32:45.640 smaller producers to compete with them they would be they would be completely overshadowed that we

00:32:52.760 would not have independent industries and so while i am a free market person and i do believe in in

00:33:00.920 free market and i think it's um i would i would still think that we would need supply management

00:33:09.240 to to assist our farmers or else they would be overtaken by foreign production okay i'll pivot

00:33:17.400 a little i mean something that's quite new on the scene for us unfortunately but it's in foreign

00:33:21.800 affairs you know we the world certainly has changed now with the ukraine russia conflict

00:33:26.440 uh it seems to have expedited the prime minister to in finally getting forward to uh buying the

00:33:31.240 the f-35s for for canada that they've sort of shelled for quite some time but where do you

00:33:36.280 land on canada's military spending in force or where would you envision canada's military being

00:33:41.000 in the future well uh it's it's been years since they they should have bought those f-35 jets

00:33:51.240 years ago and it's i'm glad to see that they're making some commitment to do that now um i think

00:33:58.840 that our military has been underfunded and this government has failed to provide for our military

00:34:06.760 and to make sure that they were properly equipped i think that we had a lot of wasted time and there

00:34:12.280 was a lot of vulnerabilities there but when you see the recent acts of russian aggression and

00:34:18.600 you realize that we technically share a border with russia so our arctic our arctic coast um

00:34:26.280 is something that is very very fragile uh and and we we have to make sure that we we have the

00:34:35.160 capacity the military capacity to protect our borders um even beyond that even beyond the jets

00:34:41.640 I think that we, Russia has over 40 icebreakers and we have zero.

00:34:48.860 We need to up our military capacity and invest in making sure that we can defend ourselves.

00:34:56.040 Great. Well, I think we've already, it goes fast.

00:34:58.460 The time we'd allotted to sit down with you, I hope we get more chances before the end of the campaign.

00:35:02.460 But is there more you'd like to add before we let you go, Dr. Lewis?

00:35:05.340 Well, I will be in Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba in the next week. I start my tour on Friday. So I look forward to perhaps popping in if you have a studio or meeting various people out there. So it should be a very good tour. I look forward to meeting the people in that region next week.

00:35:29.960 Great. And well, we did expand actually into a nice larger new studio. So I hope we can

00:35:34.440 get you in here for an extended interview at that time. I look forward to you coming

00:35:37.920 out and wish you the best as the campaign develops. So thank you very much for joining

00:35:42.260 us today, Dr. Lewis, and I hope we can talk again soon.

00:35:44.580 Awesome. It was great. Thank you so much. Take care.

00:35:49.080 Great. So that was Dr. Leslie Lewis, one of the, I would think, leading contenders in

00:35:59.580 the Conservative Party of Canada leadership race. As I said, this is going to be a really long one.

00:36:03.880 They're going all the way till September 10th on this. I believe there's almost 10 people now

00:36:08.420 have declared. The entrance requirements for that race with the party, though, are $300,000.

00:36:16.320 $100,000 of it's a deposit, but you need another $200,000. I suspect that number is going to get

00:36:21.460 a lot smaller by the time they close off nominations coming in. Not everybody's necessarily

00:36:25.500 going to be able to raise that amount of funding or want to invest that much in pursuing the race

00:36:30.920 but for now there are a lot of contestants and as I said Dr. Lewis is our fourth one

00:36:36.500 and I hope to talk to every one of them tomorrow actually I'm going to have another one Joseph

00:36:41.000 Bourgo he's one of the only ones who's not a member of parliament actually who's making a run

00:36:44.760 for it he's he's from Saskatchewan and he's coming from a different perspective on things

00:36:49.280 very much has established himself on the opposing vaccine mandates and things such as that which we

00:36:55.020 haven't seen a lot of out-of-the-leadership contenders.

00:36:58.200 Though, again, whether Mr. Bogo makes the bar

00:37:01.460 and gets that $200,000 and so on, time will tell.

00:37:06.180 It's very early in the race.

00:37:07.540 I'm going to be talking with our Ottawa Parliamentary Bureau Chief,

00:37:12.000 Matthew Horwood, a little later in the show.

00:37:14.140 And one of the pieces he put out was the polling numbers right now

00:37:16.360 showing that, well, you see, you've got to watch the phrasing

00:37:19.500 with some of these polls.

00:37:21.400 So it's saying Jean Charest, most Canadians feel he can,

00:37:25.020 Now that doesn't mean most members feel they would want to vote for Jean Charest in the leadership, or even that most members feel that he's the one who's going to win it necessarily. It just means most Canadians think he will be the one who could win if he was the leader of the Conservative Party. So we're getting a long way down a road of speculation with that. But I mean, polls are always interesting. They give us a snapshot. Somebody's saying, Roman Babber, yeah, he's an Ontario one. I've reached out multiple times. I've never heard back from him. So if anybody wants Roman to come on the show, I'm trying.

00:37:55.020 plan. Some of these campaigns, I think, are a little more developed than others, but it's going

00:38:00.940 to be a long and well-competed one, which is good. I mean, I like to see competition, whether it's in

00:38:06.640 the private market or whether it's in these races and things like that. If you don't have a number

00:38:11.320 of them with some different points of views coming forward, you're not going to get a better candidate

00:38:15.340 out of it. I mean, it doesn't guarantee you're going to get a good candidate, but it increases

00:38:18.960 the odds. You know, acclimations, coronations, they don't do us any favors whatsoever. Some people

00:38:24.620 have also said, you know, that I've been on some of these interviews a little soft on them. I'm

00:38:30.040 asking very basic questions, mostly Western-focused, regional, because it's an area, of course, for a

00:38:34.540 lot of our viewers, though. I mean, it is national. We've got a lot of people across the country

00:38:38.620 watching. I'm hoping to get them back. You know, that's the thing. We'll settle in, give them the

00:38:44.540 basic questions now. And as I said, this race is going on into the summer months and into fall. 0.93

00:38:49.920 We'll get a lot of these candidates back to talk again. And then perhaps we'll have a little more

00:38:54.020 developed campaigns to be able to take more specific discussion points rather than the broader

00:38:58.600 issues that I keep addressing with them. And I'm asking a lot of them the same questions too,

00:39:03.480 because I want to pin each one down on where their stances are going to be on these things.

00:39:07.820 One I've been disappointed with, with every one of them so far, not a single one is willing to

00:39:12.380 take on supply management, not a one. We haven't had a senior federal Canadian politician really

00:39:21.500 tried to take on supply management since Maxime Bernier when he lost to Scheer in the leadership

00:39:28.000 race by one percent. And a lot of people agree, if they watch that race closely, Canada's dairy

00:39:32.620 lobby is very effective. They're very strong and they get straight to these candidates. There's

00:39:38.060 no getting around that. And Scheer sold his soul to the dairy lobby and Bernier didn't. And that

00:39:45.140 was enough to get that one percent to win. None of these candidates for so far have had the courage

00:39:51.080 to go up against that dairy lobby they're scared to death of them and it's mostly quebec

00:39:54.840 based and it's unfortunate you know because it supply management if you look it up is an odious

00:40:00.120 soviet style policy and it was interesting listening to uh uh dr lewis when she spoke and

00:40:08.040 she talked about the lack of quality in american dairy products versus canadian those are talking

00:40:13.160 points right out of the dairy commission's website and it's not true guys it's not true

00:40:17.480 So look into some of these things, but welcome to the nature of politics. That's why we got to

00:40:23.120 keep asking about these things. And I'll keep hoping somebody can actually take down that

00:40:28.380 odious system. To give the analogy, and a lot of people aren't necessarily familiar with supply

00:40:32.280 management. I've used it over and over, but I'll use it one more time. My wife, Jane, grew up in a

00:40:35.940 small dairy farm in Alberta. They just had a small number of cows. They had a quota where they were

00:40:42.720 allowed to sell some degree of cream, not allowed to sell milk. You milk the cows, you skim the

00:40:47.460 cream, you pour the spare milk down the ditch if you can't feed it to your family or pigs or

00:40:52.400 something, because you're not allowed to, it is illegal to sell that milk. That's why, and I know

00:40:57.700 some people get upset when I use it, Soviet style, because that's exactly what it is. You made it 1.00

00:41:01.360 illegal for a person to sell their product. That's how stupid and ridiculous and regressive and 1.00

00:41:07.340 communist supply management is. And none of our politicians so far to date have the courage to go 1.00

00:41:13.120 against it. And it's very disappointment. So let's talk about a sponsor though. Speaking of,

00:41:19.080 I didn't get to ask Leslyn about that. Darn it. Firearms, Canada Shooting Sports Association. 0.99

00:41:24.500 They've been a great sponsor for us for some time now. And their name sort of says what they are.

00:41:30.360 They're an association for people who enjoy shooting sports, whether it's target shooting,

00:41:34.700 hunting, collecting, whatever. It's your business. You're a legal law-abiding citizen. You have the

00:41:40.340 right to have firearms is not entrenched like it is in the United States, unfortunately, which means

00:41:44.540 our government is coming after your right to enjoy those pieces of property all the time.

00:41:50.140 And we have to keep fighting back, pushing back, or they will take these away. They do not,

00:41:54.420 this is not a government that likes freedom. They don't like free speech. They don't like

00:41:57.680 free association. And I can assure you, they don't like you having the ability to have a firearm.

00:42:01.900 So they're constantly recategorizing them and suddenly turning law-abiding firearm owners

00:42:07.780 into criminals. It's a terrible trend. It's bad for all of us. And they're going to get away with

00:42:12.160 it if we don't push back. So these guys give you the resources. They've got a number of legal

00:42:16.440 challenges out on your behalf, and they're pushing back against the Liberal government. Because if

00:42:21.460 we don't, they win. Check them out. Join them. Take out a membership. They need your help.

00:42:26.680 Canada Shooting Sports Association. And it's not just for the legal pushbacks. They've got other

00:42:30.920 resources, videos on safe utilization of firearms, whether for target shooting and things like that.

00:42:36.320 They got links to trade shows that are going on, and they keep you up to date on lots of other firearms issues.

00:42:43.060 It's an association just like the name sounds like, Canada, Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:42:49.100 I always have trouble with that one.

00:42:50.080 Their URL is cssa-cila.org.

00:42:54.480 Got to stand up for your rights or you're going to lose them, guys.

00:42:57.480 So before we get to our next guest, let's have a look at a few more things here.

00:43:02.560 somebody mentioned earlier, Dave did, yes, with the Jodi Gondek, you know, and her approval

00:43:08.640 ratings in Calgary. So people, I know you're across the country. We've had a new mayor come

00:43:12.980 in. It was Jodi Gondek. She hit the ground really running as a new mayor last October, 0.99

00:43:19.600 declaring a climate emergency and torpedoing the Calgary arena deal and virtue signaling so hard,

00:43:27.260 it was almost painful to watch her perform. And now the numbers are in and she's got an approval

00:43:33.880 rating in a poll of 38%. Like for most politicians, particularly municipally, once they're in,

00:43:41.540 as long as you're being reasonable, you're going to get a good honeymoon period. The public will

00:43:45.420 be easy on you to a degree. They're going to wait and see what you're up to. And some of these

00:43:50.840 numbers are unreal. Like Dave Bronconnier years ago, he had 75% approval at this point.

00:43:58.440 Nenshi, yeah, my buddy Nenshi, at this point in his mayorship, he had 86% approval. And Mayor

00:44:05.660 Gondek right now is mired at 38% saying they approve of it. And that's only five months in

00:44:12.240 office. She has better recalibrate her direction and figure out what she's going to do. In Calgary,

00:44:17.340 it's incredibly rare for an incumbent mayor to be unseated in an election. I think Klein was the

00:44:24.280 last one to do it back in the 80s. But it's not impossible. And Gondek might be the next one to

00:44:29.760 do it. I mean, that's a terrible start. I do think she fixed one of the problems she had, though.

00:44:35.420 And for people, if you're not familiar, then there's a gentleman named Stephen Carter.

00:44:38.900 He's a political, I don't know what you'd call him, strategist sort. Just Google his name,

00:44:43.700 Stephen Carter, and you'll see a long history of political disasters whenever he gets involved.

00:44:49.080 He seems to have quite a talent for getting on with candidates and getting them elected. That

00:44:52.940 part he does all right with. He latched on an inchie and got an inchie elected. He latched on

00:44:57.640 to Alison Redford, and she became premier. But shortly after these roles, he usually gets on

00:45:02.840 as chief of staff, and usually within a few months, he seems to get fired because he is an odious

00:45:07.340 little man. And it's amazing, you know, Gondek's performance actually seems to have improved a

00:45:13.180 great deal since they fired Carter a month or so ago. So I mean, you know, still the responsibility

00:45:20.060 lands on the mayor's lap for her behavior and her governance. But I think she has taken care of one

00:45:27.800 of the larger problems she had to begin with. If you want to find out again how effective Mr. Carter

00:45:33.700 is, ask the people with the Alberta party, which was climbing up and doing quite well and had a

00:45:38.100 popular leader with an elected seat. And under Carter's guidance, they torpedoed their own

00:45:43.440 leader, threw him under the bus, brought in a new leader from Edmonton, went into the provincial

00:45:48.920 election and got completely annihilated. Their bank accounts, of course, have since been drained

00:45:53.260 because they don't get donors anymore. And this party that showed some promise

00:45:57.180 is now in the toilet and Carter is nowhere to be seen. He took off and joined up with

00:46:01.920 Gondex since then. And you know what? He's going to surface with somebody else. I bet you he's

00:46:06.780 attached to one of these conservative leadership campaigns because he just never seems to disappear.

00:46:12.380 But I like calling him out and make sure we can document his record in the political realm because

00:46:16.920 perhaps the more people get to know just who Mr. Carter is, the fewer who will have to deal with

00:46:21.980 him in the future. I was on the Wildrose Party Executive Committee back when Stephen Carter

00:46:26.720 came and went twice in the employ of the party. Both times, the first time he left a disgrace

00:46:32.480 over a bunch of bills he'd left, there was a beautiful Calgary Sun cover actually, it's a

00:46:36.360 chief of Stiff and had a picture of him because his organization had left a lot of debt and hanging

00:46:42.240 and he left the Wildrose at that point. Then he came back for a short period of time

00:46:46.380 and he quit on his own after his short visit to suddenly join up with Alison Redford. Of course

00:46:53.940 in that short period of time while he was with the Wildrose party he sure had a lot of access

00:46:57.560 to Wildrose party inside records and information. I'm certain though Mr. Carter didn't take any of

00:47:03.720 that on his way out. Political play. It's no wonder people get apathetic and give up on it

00:47:09.860 sometimes when we see some of the stuff going on. But all we can do is keep reporting on it,

00:47:13.420 encouraging people to fire the ones when they're doing a bad job because we don't get out to vote

00:47:17.020 enough, and just keep exposing them when they're doing so. And sometimes they do a good job. I mean,

00:47:22.060 if we push them the right way, they can occasionally make the right decision. Honest,

00:47:25.060 it happens. It's rare, but it happens. So I'm going to bring in a guest who's been lobbying

00:47:30.100 with the Montreal Economic Institute, which is a great organization. Don't let the name fool you,

00:47:35.080 actually. They're national. She's Calgary-based, and they talk to a lot of energy issues and things

00:47:40.360 like that. They're one of the groups that is pushing for responsible government on a number

00:47:45.920 of fronts, and they put a column out under Mr. Roulette the other day, which was very good,

00:47:50.800 on something, to be honest, I hadn't been paying close attention to either, and it's the Bay de

00:47:55.900 Nord oil project. I might be mispronouncing that. I am Albertan. And it's pending and it may or may

00:48:02.720 not be approved soon. And it's at risk. And this is a huge project. It would be good for all of

00:48:07.080 Canada, including in particular Newfoundland. So let's bring Crystal in to talk a little further

00:48:11.940 about that. Hey, how are you doing? Hi, I'm great. How are you? Very good. Thanks for coming in. I

00:48:17.120 see we got you there. Your name, I always stumble over Crystal Wittvrangel. Or is it Witta? Okay.

00:48:24.860 I know and you've been on before it's great to have you back on I'm just such a brutal person

00:48:30.040 with names because I had a simple one and I never had to explain my own to anybody's

00:48:33.340 so this project uh out in Newfoundland it's coming up for uh federal approval or or being

00:48:40.780 declined in the very near future is it yeah so this project the Beta Nord project it is about

00:48:47.700 500 kilometers east of Newfoundland and Labrador and it is set to be Canada's first deep water oil

00:48:54.380 gas development if all goes well so the project itself is looking at being a 30-year project

00:49:02.380 and it can unearth and extract between 300 million and a billion barrels of oil and first oil can be

00:49:10.300 expected about 2028 and so it has now been delayed twice for federal approval pardon me for federal

00:49:19.820 approval by the federal minister of environment and climate change and we're looking at getting

00:49:24.300 and hopefully a final decision by April 15th now on moving forward with the project.

00:49:30.920 Yeah, on April 15th, that's not very long from now at all.

00:49:34.000 But unfortunately, when we listen to our prime minister and his right-hand man, Stephen Gilboll there,

00:49:39.740 they came out today talking about some very, very aggressive emissions targets to be met by at least the existing energy producers.

00:49:47.280 It doesn't make it sound very promising that they're going to turn around and approve a major conventional oil development,

00:49:52.440 well offshore oil development in Canada in the near future?

00:49:57.960 I mean, well, we've got to also consider that the environmental assessment report

00:50:02.440 was carried out back in August of 2021 by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.

00:50:07.560 And so at the time they said that there is it's not likely to cause significant adverse

00:50:13.800 environmental effects. So we already have that ruling. We know this going in. However,

00:50:19.800 The issue is that this is an ecologically sensitive area, but it is argued that the

00:50:24.760 economic benefits to be had from this project greatly outweigh the risk because we're looking

00:50:30.600 at the creation of thousands of jobs as well as adding 3.5 billion to government revenue.

00:50:37.880 So we're talking about Newfoundland and Labrador here. We are talking about a province who is

00:50:42.680 suffering the worst unemployment rate in Canada, who is facing staggering debt and constantly

00:50:49.400 sort of, you know, hovering near bankruptcy, this has huge potential for that province.

00:50:55.720 They recently saw their revenues in the 2020 to 2021 fiscal year, their oil revenues fell by 40%

00:51:06.120 because of the government restrictions and COVID and all that stuff. So there is a lot to be gained

00:51:11.960 by this province currently, as well as in the future. So, you know, thinking about this report

00:51:18.520 that says it's unlikely to cause significant adverse effects, we need to consider the

00:51:23.960 significant benefits that could be accrued to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador right now,

00:51:29.720 currently. Well, yeah, that's something that's lacking in a lot of politics. You know,

00:51:33.800 in the broader spectrum of things is cost benefit. I mean, there's no such thing as a zero risk

00:51:40.520 energy project of any kind or zero impact. We can only work to mitigate it as much as humanly

00:51:45.080 possible. And then we determine whether it's a worthwhile risk to take or not. And unfortunately,

00:51:50.320 with the images of the incident down in the Gulf of Mexico some years ago, people worry a lot about

00:51:56.620 that. But I mean, realistically, there are thousands and thousands of offshore energy

00:52:00.600 projects that are operating perfectly safely and profitably. Well, exactly. And we know that

00:52:08.540 we're expecting to increase our oil demand by 2045 of about 9 or 10 percent. So this oil is

00:52:16.020 going to come from somewhere. Let it be somewhere with stringent and, you know, pretty restrictive

00:52:21.320 and a lot of oversight on our environmental regulatory frameworks and so on. Let this come

00:52:27.340 from somewhere like us rather than somewhere that doesn't have these frameworks like Saudi Arabia.

00:52:33.520 You know, we have to think about, you know, that cost-benefit analysis like you were mentioning

00:52:37.560 of these global emissions targets that we're looking at,

00:52:41.600 as well as, you know, what's, how do we get there together

00:52:44.520 in the sense of, you know, we all got to give and take

00:52:47.780 and this is where Canada can be, it's continued to be a leader.

00:52:51.560 And, you know, it just, it's a project that has so much benefit

00:52:55.700 and there isn't enough discussion on the safety

00:53:00.160 and the, you know, regulatory mechanisms that are in place

00:53:03.620 to manage these issues as they arise.

00:53:06.960 Well, that's an important point you brought up was, I mean, projected demand for world petrochemical products.

00:53:12.240 I mean, there's an area of delusion, unfortunately, among a lot of people who just seem to, they set these targets and they feel that the world is just going to move beyond using hydrocarbons.

00:53:22.800 And they start acting and enacting policies under the assumption that that's going to happen.

00:53:27.020 But no economist or energy expert worth their salt is saying that we're going to get off of petrochemical usage anytime soon.

00:53:34.360 We're going to need it for some years to come.

00:53:36.320 yeah exactly and i mean we can look at the current situation where um you know energy

00:53:43.360 security in europe and they've been struggling over the past couple of months especially the

00:53:48.480 past couple of weeks as we know you know that the situation with russia and ukraine and everything

00:53:53.840 like that and so we need to think about how we can be displacing some of these more um

00:53:59.840 less friendly oil sources, or in this case, Russian oil. Canadian producers are currently

00:54:06.280 looking to hike their production of oil and gas by about 300,000 barrels per day by the end of

00:54:12.500 the year to start and continue to displace Russian oil products. But this unfortunately

00:54:19.100 is only a small percentage of the Russian oil imports to Europe. But I mean, it's a start. So

00:54:24.840 if we're thinking long term, there's places that also are developing their oil reserves and their

00:54:31.960 oil products that are not doing it as safely, as I mentioned, as us. And so it just, it seems like

00:54:40.000 we're constantly stuck in the same conversation of the negatives that could come from developing

00:54:45.760 it here, when we need to really also bring in that there's so much benefit, not only economically,

00:54:52.120 but you know to our our greater ecosystem um by displacing some of these other countries and their

00:54:59.820 sources yeah and this project looks really interesting like i i spent 20 years in the

00:55:04.840 field and exploration but it was always land-based uh well except when i was on the beaufort it was

00:55:08.860 frozen underneath us so i still couldn't quite compare it with uh with offshore stuff um but

00:55:14.600 this so this would be a ship that is going to bring on oil and even process to a degree and 0.68

00:55:18.660 how does this work? Do tankers, I guess, would nurse off of that site and then they could

00:55:22.860 deliver the product elsewhere? I mean, if that's the case, it's quite ideal for export as well,

00:55:27.420 if not bringing in more domestic supply. Yeah. My understanding is pretty much what you kind

00:55:33.720 of just laid out there. I'm not super in tune with all the technical details that's above my head

00:55:39.640 when it comes to those sorts of things at this stage. But I'm more focused on the policy relevant

00:55:45.660 aspect of this and sort of a greater benefit to Newfoundland and Labrador um and and greater

00:55:52.220 exports as you mentioned as well not just you know the province but to more you know the federal

00:55:57.460 sphere um of the entire country. Well and environmentally I mean something we seem to be

00:56:02.940 yelling into the wind quite often but there are a number of tankers always moving back and forth up

00:56:07.220 the St. Lawrence River delivering oil to eastern Canada well if we're gonna do that anyways let's

00:56:14.220 run it from Newfoundland over rather than all the way from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela

00:56:18.460 from more distant ports. I'd imagine even though the risk is low in shipping oil by tanker,

00:56:23.180 the more you're out there in the middle of the open ocean, the higher your risk. So if we're

00:56:26.220 bringing that domestic supply from nearby, it can only be safer for things in general.

00:56:31.340 Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that assessment and I would think that

00:56:35.260 you know, if we're going to talk about risks, like we kind of have been chatting about throughout

00:56:39.820 our talk here we need to consider those risks as well not just the risks that fit a certain narrative

00:56:45.740 the risks overall of all the little moving pieces and the bits of things that maybe don't jive with

00:56:52.860 like i said a certain narrative around the whole thing so is that i i really as i said before i

00:56:58.780 looked at some maps it looks like that's part of a larger field though right would there potentially

00:57:02.700 be more developments surrounding that if this project was a success i'm not entirely sure on

00:57:08.540 that at this time um i haven't heard of any you know slated for um approval or anything like that

00:57:16.140 i mean this project itself has been sort of in the the works for a number of years now

00:57:21.340 trying to even just get the approval uh so it's hard to say whether or not others might arise

00:57:28.540 um but nothing that has you know crossed my radar at this moment that's not to say it it doesn't

00:57:34.540 exist yeah well if there was any time i think that would be most ideal at least as i said we

00:57:39.980 have a federal government that's pretty ideologically opposed to petrochemical development

00:57:44.540 but right now i mean the world has gotten a very hard reality check on how dependent they really

00:57:48.700 are on conventional energy sources still whether they want to be or not due to the russian ukraine

00:57:53.580 conflict between that and our economy and a number of things this might be the time that

00:58:00.220 the government will just say well look we don't like these things but we've just got to approve

00:58:03.740 it because we need it and there's no getting around it well exactly um and and i fully and

00:58:09.660 completely agree with your sentiment there and when we're talking about you know a smaller economy

00:58:15.580 like newfoundland and labrador the oil and gas industry there accounts for 25 of the province's

00:58:21.180 gdp and 41 of its exports over the past 20 years so it's it's not small in the amount of space it

00:58:29.100 takes up for an economy like that and like i mentioned you know they have crushing unemployment

00:58:36.700 uh crushing debt all of these issues that something like this project could really help

00:58:42.780 smooth some of those pieces it doesn't need to be that you know a project like this happens

00:58:47.660 in isolation in the sense of you know it's not all or nothing it's not oh we're going to abandon

00:58:54.300 any other you know renewable energy alternatives or anything like that but we need to see with

00:58:59.980 what what's the best things we can be working with at the present time and what makes the

00:59:04.220 most sense in in a balanced way of of going about it yeah and in chasing that uh what's become a

00:59:11.100 holy grail in alberta of economic diversification one of the things that does help is having a

00:59:16.460 favorable local business climate and an affordable one and a lot of people actually don't realize but

00:59:21.980 Well, Alberta's economy is very diverse. We have a lot of industries. The oil and gas sector,

00:59:26.720 of course, is a great advantage, but we've blossomed into all sorts of things. And it

00:59:30.480 wasn't so much from direct subsidies or government treatment. It was just because thanks to the oil

00:59:34.660 and gas, we've been able to maintain a low cost of operation and taxes. So it's encouraged new

00:59:41.120 businesses to come out. And Newfoundland could have that opportunity if they did it wisely.

00:59:45.640 That's a big if I know with governments, but still, I mean, if they get all those royalty

00:59:49.340 revenues from a good developed energy field, that's where you could bring in new innovative

00:59:54.280 companies, whether even alternative energy generation. Exactly. And I mean, the province

01:00:00.160 of Newfoundland and Labrador is in favor of this project. So it's not that, you know, industry is

01:00:05.760 pushing it and it's meeting some sort of opposition. That's not the case here. It's that

01:00:11.800 this federal decision continues to be delayed, you know, needing more time to decipher the

01:00:17.580 information or, you know, look over these impact assessment results or whatever it might be.

01:00:24.140 But those have been in place and been released since August of 2021. So, you know, buying more

01:00:31.200 time for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be making sense anymore, especially when we're seeing

01:00:38.980 the situation with Russian oil. If anything, that makes this so much more, you know, a powerful

01:00:47.500 reason for this project to move forward, in my opinion.

01:00:51.160 And dragging it out comes at a cost, a big cost, and it harms the whole country. A lot of people

01:00:55.820 don't realize that. I mean, when they step on a project in Western Canada, or if they're delaying

01:01:00.800 on this, it's sending a message to investors for pretty much anything that we're not a safe place

01:01:05.380 to invest in. We can't get our projects done in a timely manner. We can't get an approval or an

01:01:10.900 answer. I mean, it's almost, and I'll only say almost, almost worse when they will sit there

01:01:15.800 not giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down, then a thumbs down, because at least then the investors

01:01:19.660 can move on to something else. But when they keep it dragging out like this, it just shoots the

01:01:23.300 cost through the roof and makes us all look terrible as a place to invest. Exactly. I look

01:01:28.460 at it kind of in comparison to pharmaceutical industry, for example. We in Canada have such

01:01:34.840 lengthy reviews on the regulatory side of things, not safety in terms of clinical trials and that

01:01:40.800 sort of thing. I'm talking just strictly the regulatory approval of, you know, applications

01:01:45.760 and so on. Our regulatory approval is so much slower than other countries. And as a result,

01:01:52.740 we get less innovative medicines that are introduced here first. We have less variety

01:01:59.100 in the medicines and the medical devices that are introduced as a result of this.

01:02:03.800 So, you know, just speaking kind of broadly, this is sort of something that touches a number of

01:02:08.580 sectors in that, you know, it's kind of starting to not look good in a certain number of areas

01:02:14.200 if we continue to, you know, just drag these regulatory processes on, you know, while also

01:02:21.040 still respecting the robust and rigid nature of them at the same time. Yeah, well, and people

01:02:27.020 who haven't been in business for themselves don't necessarily understand just how expensive and

01:02:31.640 odious bureaucracy and red tape is for your operations. I mean, even as a pub owner on the

01:02:37.720 small scale where I was in the past, the amount of hoops I had to jump through to be a licensed

01:02:41.780 operation. And I mean, I understand there's going to be a degree of regulation that's realistic,

01:02:45.500 but I'm dedicating a large percentage, not a huge, but a good percentage of my time and work

01:02:51.480 and funds into just being in compliance with regulation. And that's just a micro scale of it,

01:02:56.940 but it's very real and it has a very real impact. And then we've really got to work on shaving that,

01:03:01.660 particularly when it comes to these mega projects.

01:03:05.620 Exactly.

01:03:06.380 Yeah.

01:03:06.740 And the, the regulatory burden and this red tape that kind of

01:03:10.680 Myers everything in its wake is really holding things down and it's really,

01:03:16.420 you know, pulling down on these mega projects that have so much, sorry,

01:03:20.660 I said mega projects, but I mean, just projects in general, um, that have so

01:03:24.800 much potential and, you know, originally first oil could have been expected in

01:03:29.900 2025 with this Beta Nord project, now we're looking at, you know, 2028 because of these delays.

01:03:36.140 So, you know, it might seem like it's a far ways away, but that's actually just around the corner,

01:03:41.900 but not if we keep pushing it off because we're delaying things and constantly needing to go back

01:03:46.300 over through the same things or, you know, need more time to make a decision about something.

01:03:51.820 So we're hitting a critical point. As you said, Newfoundland's in support of this. Clearly the

01:03:55.580 the Montreal economic institutes in support of it.

01:03:57.860 Uh, but is there any, are there any initiatives going that people could go

01:04:01.040 to petitions or, or things such as that to try and, uh, encourage government

01:04:05.300 to act the right way when the decision day comes in a few weeks here?

01:04:09.520 I have seen, um, I think they're Canada strong and free, I believe is in

01:04:13.400 support of it.

01:04:14.340 Um, I'm not sure if they have any sort of petitions or, um, kind of, uh,

01:04:20.240 setups going, um, but I have seen them, them talking about it and I know they

01:04:24.200 do those sorts of things with other initiatives that are are important to the country as a whole

01:04:28.260 uh so i would suggest to check that out but also um even just through our own website you know you

01:04:33.900 can link through and see you know articles on other energy topics that might link with support

01:04:40.520 for this one as well great yeah i just like to remind people you know it feels futile it feels

01:04:45.220 like you're you're yelling into the wind but you know these these members of parliament do get

01:04:49.280 those emails or at least their assistants do and if there's enough groundswell they do actually

01:04:53.520 move in a direction. I mean, they want to get reelected. If they think this is the way the

01:04:56.640 public's looking, they will act that way. So it's, you know, the time to reach out is now,

01:05:00.960 Neg, particularly your Liberal member, if you have one, and perhaps they'll make the right

01:05:05.860 choice on this. So I appreciate you guys bringing it up, because as I said, I didn't, I wasn't even

01:05:10.020 very well aware of it, even though I'm somewhat energy in tune, I'm on the wrong side of the

01:05:13.400 country. And it's important that we all know about these things going on. So where can we find more

01:05:17.280 information about this project and the Montreal Economic Institute and all the stuff you guys

01:05:21.120 are doing? So our website is www.iedm.org. And that can, you know, link through to a number of

01:05:30.460 different topics and energy is a large one for us. And I would just sort of recommend watching

01:05:36.400 the federal stage for this April 15th deadline of, you know, is it going to in fact be pushed

01:05:42.680 again? Are we going to have some sort of news on this project? And that sort of thing. So we will

01:05:47.440 definitely be watching that closely and putting out something on the 15th to either say, yay,

01:05:53.920 we have a decision or here we are again, waiting again. So we'll have something coming out around

01:06:01.180 then as well. Great. Well, let's hope it's a yay. They did something right. And then you can move

01:06:06.120 on to getting on their case about something else they're doing wrong. I mean, there's always lots

01:06:08.740 to work on. So we'll applaud them when they make the right steps when they do so. Well, thank you

01:06:13.880 much for joining me again today kressel it's always good talking to you and the viewers appreciate it

01:06:18.120 a common sense view coming through to them now and then thank you so much all right we'll talk again

01:06:25.240 so that was that crystal whitwrongel with the montreal economic institute and the bay de nord

01:06:30.440 project and again it's worth reminding your politicians it's it's if we don't speak up

01:06:36.120 loose for sure we we have to stay active on these things i mean this is a great project it's huge

01:06:41.800 it's safe, and it's local. And we unfortunately have, you know, as I've said, an ideologically

01:06:48.200 driven prime minister surrounded himself with fools in our environment minister. 1.00

01:06:53.720 And I could see them very much being inclined to shut this down, as foolish as it is. So 1.00

01:06:59.560 let's make sure people are aware of it anyways. And even if they do shut down,

01:07:02.440 then let's make people aware of what this government just did, what they just shut down,

01:07:06.520 how they're harming this country coast to coast. It's not even a Western thing. I think they got

01:07:11.160 a better chance of getting that approved than some of the western things we have going on because it

01:07:15.080 is you know where they've got a better chance of winning seats as liberals but all the same i mean

01:07:19.000 trudeau wants to make his his green legacy he wants to make his mark he wants to save the world

01:07:24.920 and uh you know reality isn't a large part of his vision unfortunately especially when

01:07:29.560 comes to energy or economics remember he is the man who thinks budgets balance themselves

01:07:35.160 getting on further about a carbon tax talk i just noticed a comment or gorgeous george

01:07:39.240 saying, I'd like to see reporters ask the leaders what the success of the carbon tax has been.

01:07:43.560 I did pitch that a little bit to Sheree, I believe. I'm trying to remember. It was one of those

01:07:47.160 leaders I was interviewing because I knew he was supportive of a carbon tax, but at least I framed

01:07:53.140 it in pointing out, you know, BC has had a carbon tax for a long time and it doesn't work. It just

01:07:58.600 doesn't. It's not a matter of theory. If carbon taxes worked, BC's emissions would have gone down

01:08:04.040 by now. As simple as that. It didn't. Their emissions have not gone down. Their wallets

01:08:08.540 it gotten emptier. It's been effective that way. But when it comes to actually reducing emissions,

01:08:12.880 if that's what it is, if it's the be all and end all is to reduce carbon emissions, if that's

01:08:17.320 really how we're going to save the world and keep all the fluffy bunnies happy and all that good

01:08:21.460 stuff, carbon taxes aren't the way to do it. I think some of it is, it's underhanded and the

01:08:27.640 carbon tax proponents won't admit it. But if we can just castrate the economy hard enough, people

01:08:32.520 will stay home, not spend money, go a little more stone age, put on another sweater, get a smaller

01:08:37.500 house, stop taking vacations, stop driving to work, and then they will theoretically emit less.

01:08:44.400 But what, you know, centuries of the industrial revolution, I mean, increasing our lifespans,

01:08:51.020 increasing our comfort, increasing our ability to get out and travel and do these things,

01:08:54.380 bringing travel into the unwashed, they want us to go back away from all that. There's some of

01:09:01.080 the hypocrisy from these people all the time. They love traveling. I like traveling. 0.74

01:09:04.500 But, you know, if you read back, you read those old stories from the Victorian times

01:09:08.200 and things like that, I like reading that, and you'd hear about those, the rich and the

01:09:11.760 elite, how they would take trips, you know, oh, they'll take a sabbatical and spend six

01:09:15.060 months going around the world.

01:09:16.840 It was only the realm of the ultra-rich to be able to travel and experience other cultures

01:09:20.900 and, you know, just for pleasure and doing things like that.

01:09:24.400 And now it is possible for us, you know, a person just to work, save, a middle-class

01:09:29.420 person can get out and see the world and do things.

01:09:31.620 Well, these people want to take away that right. 0.99

01:09:33.260 These are the ones that send thousands of people to environmental summits.

01:09:37.420 These are the ones that stay in the luxury hotels over there while they're at it.

01:09:41.060 They want to make sure they can do it.

01:09:43.320 You know, Trudeau likes illegally vacationing at a Bahamas island of a buddy.

01:09:47.560 He was sanctioned for that.

01:09:49.020 And when he's not doing that, he's flying on government subsidized airlines to go around the world and embarrass himself at European parliamentary functions.

01:09:58.320 And all of these people, there's a giant subgroup of these people.

01:10:01.560 You want to see a lot of where your money gets pissed away by these guys?

01:10:04.480 Look at the groups that go to these international summits.

01:10:07.240 Look at the groups that go to these conventions.

01:10:09.560 Look at the accommodations they stay in.

01:10:11.740 And I assure you, they don't fly squished into coach like you and I do when they go to these places.

01:10:15.760 They're flying first class.

01:10:17.380 They're eating well.

01:10:18.300 They're not staying at the Super 8.

01:10:20.300 Hey, I don't expect them to stay in a tent.

01:10:22.380 We are in the world where they're telling all of us to stay home and do Zoom meetings in case we might get the flu.

01:10:26.280 but they still want to bounce around all over the world on these international junkets on our dime.

01:10:33.100 And yet they claim they're saving the world through the environment.

01:10:37.460 Yeah, right. It's pretty brutal. Let's see what else we've got going on in the comments.

01:10:42.260 Good to see you there again, Brad. Yeah, I know you came on a little late the other day.

01:10:45.900 And June saying, I wish Corey would have some of our political prisoners on,

01:10:51.020 but they're not allowed to talk to the press. And that's absolutely true.

01:10:53.660 I had been in touch with Tamara Leach in the past

01:10:58.200 where she's not allowed to talk publicly on things

01:11:00.760 once she's finished with all of her legal nightmares and things going on

01:11:04.840 I'm certain we will get the chance to talk to her down the road

01:11:07.600 but right now they are locked up and under some very

01:11:10.000 or out on bail at least but some very restrictive conditions

01:11:13.200 and I don't blame them for not coming out and talking

01:11:15.040 they've put in enough, don't need them tossed back in jail

01:11:17.960 because they came out and spoke with us on some things

01:11:20.580 So before I get to Matthew, I'm going to talk quickly about our sponsor one more time, and that is Bitcoin Well.

01:11:27.020 These guys have been a great sponsor.

01:11:28.720 They were the Western Standard's first big sponsor, actually, when we got rolling, when things were getting going.

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01:12:46.600 to get involved. And then that's how you can just set a little side off for yourself. Somebody

01:12:53.320 asking, has the Western Standard ever interviewed either of the two Michaels? No, I don't believe

01:12:56.620 they have, actually. I'm not even sure how I'd reach them, but it would be a fascinating interview.

01:13:00.220 Thanks, Daryl. Let me have a look into that and see if it's possible. Cheryl, how can the RCP

01:13:04.920 justify the arrests of Hillier and no arrests for the coastal link attack? Well, because I think

01:13:09.180 they haven't found the attackers there yet. I hope that's the case. Yeah, I do hope they catch

01:13:14.720 those eco-terrorists soon because it's very disturbing what they did and that they're still

01:13:18.700 out there and about and potentially could be doing more dangerous acts. Okay, let's bring

01:13:24.200 the Western Standard parliamentary, I believe the title is Bureau Chief now. Boy, we're staffing so

01:13:29.160 fast, I can't keep up. Matthew Horwood, he's been on before and boy, he's been writing like crazy,

01:13:33.980 increasing our federal presence with these stories and talk about some of the stuff he's

01:13:38.240 been covering this week so uh we'll be there in a moment there you are hey matthew how's it going

01:13:42.680 pretty good cory good to be with you right on thanks for coming back in i appreciate that

01:13:47.880 as i said i you know before i bring somebody on i like to look and see what they've written

01:13:51.620 recently and holy cow you're just you're just putting out great stories left right and center

01:13:55.160 so it's hard to tell where to begin here but i mean part of the i'll start with some of the

01:13:59.560 older stuff uh there were more protests in ottawa again last weekend there were it was quite a big

01:14:04.860 weekend for the another freedom convoy that rolled through the town a bit of a

01:14:10.480 much smaller one than the original there were about a hundred people that

01:14:14.160 gathered on Parliament Hill around noon to listen to guest speakers they had

01:14:18.960 Bethan Nodwell she's an organizer for Freedom Fighters Canada she spoke a

01:14:22.860 little bit about what was going on she said that they have plans to protest all

01:14:27.900 summer long which would be quite interesting there was also Daniel

01:14:31.920 Bulford. You might remember him as a former RCMP officer who worked very closely with Prime

01:14:37.100 Minister Justin Trudeau. He talked about the intimidation charges that were laid against the

01:14:42.340 organizers of the original Freedom Convoy. He made the point that the biggest offenders of

01:14:47.580 intimidation in Canada are actually the premiers and the Prime Minister, and he said that they all

01:14:52.160 need to go to jail. Very inflammatory language. And then around four o'clock, the convoy rolled

01:14:59.140 through ottawa uh it came from quebec city it was on its way to uh van cleek hill uh it's a small

01:15:05.580 town outside ottawa and um yeah they uh they didn't stop they rolled on through uh they weren't allowed

01:15:12.040 to honk but uh there still was a little bit of noise being made um but yeah it was uh it was

01:15:18.260 quite the scene uh hard hard to miss hard to uh um not hear during the afternoon so so they weren't

01:15:26.180 in violation then of any current injunctions or anything with what they did, or at least not to

01:15:31.040 the point that the local authorities wanted to intervene, they just let them pass through?

01:15:35.180 No, not at all. The Ottawa police said they considered towing them, getting more police

01:15:39.240 forces on the ground, but they wanted to let them roll through in agreement with the Charter

01:15:45.740 of Rights and Freedoms. And they said afterwards there were no issues, they moved on through.

01:15:50.660 Ottawa police actually said they had problems with counter-protesters who were blocking the

01:15:54.560 flow of traffic and and uh causing problems in that way interestingly enough but uh no no

01:16:00.140 incidents of hate no nazi flags none of the stuff that uh um we possibly saw at the last freedom

01:16:06.800 convoy protest yeah it sounds familiar in calgary we've had our weekly protests going on for some

01:16:11.320 time and it really wasn't the problem until a handful of counter protesters came out and

01:16:15.080 a march that used to take 15 minutes uh to go down the street in front of businesses suddenly

01:16:19.020 got turned into an hour because they were being blocked uh but i mean the counter protesters have

01:16:23.620 the right to get out there too that we're in some some weird times absolutely freedom of speech on

01:16:28.860 both both ends yeah i would think eventually these are well it depends it depends on the

01:16:32.880 restrictions i you know but as they drop i would think some degree of interest in protesting is

01:16:37.020 going to drop and and these protests will fade away by the wayside eventually but yeah well

01:16:41.760 that's definitely what we've seen a lot less people were out there but they're you know and

01:16:45.100 people online question well why are they still protesting you know the provincial mandates are

01:16:48.720 gone it seems like we're going back to normal but for a lot of these people you know they've still

01:16:53.140 they lost so much like I spoke to one guy he said he lost his house and his job so just because the

01:16:58.680 mandates are gone there's nothing to go back to for him so why not stay in Ottawa and protest and

01:17:02.860 you know you got talk of a potential spring wave you know they're looking in the wastewater of

01:17:07.720 Ottawa and they're finding more incidents of or traces of COVID so that you know if that were to

01:17:13.820 come back then you definitely see the interest ratchet up for these protests and there was

01:17:17.740 actually one guy he was a former Canadian Forces veteran and he said that there's going to be

01:17:22.080 a motorcycle convoy to come into ottawa uh on in the end of this month actually in the end of april

01:17:29.600 so that will be really interesting to see how large that ends up becoming yeah well that pub

01:17:34.240 i used to own down in prittis we used to get an annual ride uh with a bunch of bikers for a

01:17:38.240 fundraiser and there'd be hundreds of them and boy when you get that many harleys in one spot 0.96

01:17:41.680 they'll really rattle the windows for a little tong a little while that uh some people might

01:17:46.960 miss the honking once those guys are finished coming through oh yeah we'll see which one

01:17:50.400 one would be worse yeah so getting further i guess in some of your other stories uh so there

01:17:55.100 was some discussion with the federal fuel standard they actually realized it might raise the price of

01:18:00.260 gas i i guess it's for most of us that's like saying we knew the sun was warm but in ottawa

01:18:04.680 they do need to study these and discover these things right yeah for sure well that was originally

01:18:08.800 a black locks reporter story but uh it is still as you said not a big surprise that that would

01:18:14.080 raise the raise the costs uh yeah it's really too bad probably not going to make much of a

01:18:20.680 difference on the global scale you know china their emissions are more than every developed 0.95

01:18:25.500 nation combined so what is little old canada if we try to do all these things is that going to

01:18:30.160 make much of a difference in stopping climate change saving the planet i would uh i would

01:18:34.940 think so but i'm not i'm not an expert just a reporter so yeah we'll see i understand and

01:18:41.080 there's been more discussions. Another of your stories was talking about that with the Bank of

01:18:43.800 Canada, and they're finding the lockdowns were a drag on the economy. Again, I don't think it

01:18:48.300 really should have taken a scientist to realize that. But, you know, these are things we need to

01:18:52.800 discuss right now, because they are, as you said, I mean, we're starting to see levels that they're

01:18:56.140 claiming that we might see another wave of COVID coming and the frightened people are ready to dive

01:19:01.360 right back into lockdowns again. And this comes at a big cost. Yeah, once again, who would have

01:19:06.400 guess that that would calm the cause of the economy. We'll have to see. I mean, I think a

01:19:11.180 lot of people are just fed up with it. We've seen a serious return in Omalse yet, here in Ottawa,

01:19:16.200 even, which is a very, people seem to be more scared of COVID than in other smaller towns I've

01:19:21.880 been to. But so yeah, we'll see if people have an appetite for going back into lockdown. I don't

01:19:26.900 think the fear that was initially there at the beginning of the pandemic is even close to as

01:19:31.560 palpable. But we'll have to see. Yeah, well, I think that's something I hope that the powers

01:19:37.440 that be do realize that as the protests fade, though, people are still upset, and they are not

01:19:42.140 going to put up with further lockdowns. I got a feeling that new protests would dwarf what

01:19:47.060 anything we saw before, if they really actually tried to shut us all in as they had in the past.

01:19:51.520 So whatever happens with COVID, I mean, at least in my view, that they're going to have to find a

01:19:54.740 different way to cope with it, because the last methods are not going to be accepted.

01:19:58.400 Absolutely.

01:19:58.900 I would agree with you on that.

01:19:59.900 But, you know, they could come up with a new boogeyman.

01:20:01.940 They could have climate lockdowns, something to do with Russia.

01:20:04.460 I'm just spitballing here, right?

01:20:05.960 Oh, no.

01:20:06.560 And I wish it wasn't realistic, but it wouldn't surprise me any.

01:20:09.880 So getting on to the political scene, your more recent one with the poll on the conservatives.

01:20:14.900 You know, we've got our leadership candidates.

01:20:17.060 I had Leslie Lewis on earlier, and I had spoken to Jean Charest.

01:20:21.720 Most conservatives feel that he might be the man to win the next election.

01:20:24.960 Yeah, it appears so. Jean Charest, it's interesting, you know, obviously he's more left-leaning in the Conservative Party, but I think he might have a better chance on the national scene to win the election.

01:20:42.800 I think Pierre, you know, he would be my candidate of choice, but the question is whether the rest of the Canadian population is going to go for somebody like Pierre, somebody who's more libertarian-minded, who talks about the freedom convoy and is more supportive of, you know, more right-leaning policies.

01:21:01.080 It's a good question.

01:21:02.500 We'll just have to wait and see.

01:21:04.440 Yeah, well, I mean, personally, I think kind of the question is, I mean, you know, Jean Charest is very liberal.

01:21:09.600 I mean, maybe not, you know, to the NDP far left of the liberal spectrum, but he's quite liberal.

01:21:15.240 But people got to ask, well, do we want to forever be in opposition with classical conservatives or do we just continue to liberalize ourselves until we become winnable in, you know, Toronto and Montreal?

01:21:26.020 But I mean, it is possible for a principled conservative to win.

01:21:29.720 I like to think it's possible.

01:21:31.160 In voting for Sherey, I think you're just giving up and voting for the same thing in a smarter package than the current liberal leader anyway.

01:21:37.940 yeah i think so too it's and it's really a battle for the soul of the conservative party what's

01:21:43.200 going on right now um what we'll see what uh direction we end up going in and if it's if we

01:21:49.140 can get uh you know get a winner on the in the next federal election hopefully it's before 2025

01:21:54.120 we will have to see yeah it's going to be an interesting process to watch and it's such a

01:21:58.860 long race so we'll see what develops you know they're all just kind of putting out their 0.99

01:22:01.740 platforms and policies right now i got a feeling they'll start taking some more unique stances

01:22:06.140 That's a frustration I've had in interviewing them so far.

01:22:08.560 I mean, they've been good, but very broad in their answers and not taking many direct

01:22:13.060 stances on things.

01:22:14.080 I think as it develops, we're going to see them trying to differentiate each other and

01:22:17.280 maybe we'll see some more distinction between these candidates.

01:22:20.720 For sure.

01:22:21.060 Definitely keeping very vague so far.

01:22:22.660 We got a long ways to go and I'm sure they don't want to come up with too many really

01:22:27.200 out there policy ideas that are going to throw people off.

01:22:29.500 They're just kind of dipping their toes in the water and seeing what's going to stick

01:22:34.900 with people, what they want.

01:22:36.140 smart moves but as you know frustrating for you i'm sure yeah politically expedient but i do

01:22:40.700 understand it and i'll get them later uh so uh is i guess you know thanks for coming in today's

01:22:46.460 what else are you working on right now or stuff you can update us on before we let you go

01:22:51.660 yeah for sure we got a another story coming up the emissions reduction plan has been released

01:22:57.180 and they plan on reducing oil and gas emissions by 75 percent by 2030 is one of the highlights

01:23:03.900 of the plan. So that's quite interesting. We'll see how that works out. At West, probably not very

01:23:09.820 happy with it, if I had to guess. That's a safe assumption. Well, and with every target they've

01:23:14.960 set, I believe, since the 80s, they have never met one yet, but they can do a heck of a lot of

01:23:19.640 damage trying. Exactly, yeah. And, you know, the first, like during the Colorado Protocol in 2002,

01:23:29.040 the plans were to cut the total emissions by an average of six percent uh that only increased by

01:23:34.300 one percent so you know even if they try to really push it forward it's probably not going to get

01:23:39.320 near the levels they want to well interesting times i'll let you get back to watching that

01:23:44.780 hornet's nest in ottawa then matthew thank you very much for checking in with us and we'll uh

01:23:50.000 see what you got to say uh with more stories in the future here soon sounds good thank you cory

01:23:54.620 have a good one thanks yes that's our parliamentary bureau chief matthew horwood and uh yeah there's

01:23:59.980 lots going on in ottawa and we have him on the ground out there and those stories are coming

01:24:03.420 out you know we've been doing a lot of coverage on federal issues for a long time but having

01:24:07.580 somebody solid on the ground like this now is fantastic and he's been doing great over there so

01:24:13.500 it's you know broadening our audience and our readership and we appreciate matthew's work

01:24:18.780 be sure to subscribe so you can see it so you're not stuck behind the paywall guys westernstandard

01:24:23.340 online.com slash membership. Use that coupon code triggered. And you can see all the Matthew's work

01:24:29.340 plus all the columnists and all the rest of the stuff. What's this Gary Burnett saying? Let this

01:24:34.000 guy know all mandates are not gone. Yeah, I know they're not gone. 99% of them are. It depends on

01:24:38.460 the person. I mean, if you're an unvaccinated person who wants to travel, you're still getting

01:24:41.860 hooped right now. There's private companies that have screwed people who've decided not to get

01:24:46.020 vaccinated. There are some federal pressures. There still are. 99%? No, there's much more than

01:24:52.220 right, less than 99% hanging out there. But unfortunately, a reality with people in general,

01:24:59.420 once it stops impacting them directly, they stop caring. So when the majority of the population

01:25:04.800 is vaccinated and the majority of the restrictions have dropped, interest in taking part in the

01:25:10.020 protests is going to follow up and drop with it. Though I understand some people still have some

01:25:14.180 valid things to protest, and I understand and I support it. But at this time, there's not as much

01:25:20.020 appetite to get the bigger push. I want to see all the restrictions gone. I want to see every

01:25:23.360 bit of it gone. It's done. It's over. And these guys do not want to let it go. So this battle's

01:25:27.180 not finished. Part of what I'm saying as well is just that at least they're setting the precedent.

01:25:32.440 The government has been put on notice. If they try to bring in these things again,

01:25:36.300 it's going to go bad. People are going to get furious. The demonstrations are going to be a

01:25:41.300 lot bigger and a lot worse than they have been so far. So why are people sucking politician 0.92

01:25:49.440 butt. This is from Laurie. Okay. What would you like? I ask polite questions. I respect them when 0.99

01:25:57.740 they come in. They're the people leading us whether we like it or not. It's not necessarily

01:26:01.020 sucking their butts, but we do have to ask what they want to do. We have to get as much of an 0.99

01:26:07.940 informed choice as we can when we run these leadership races and hopefully pick the least

01:26:13.860 bad of the bunch that we can. They're going to run things here for us whether you like it or not.

01:26:19.440 So let's try to control it as much as we can.

01:26:21.900 There's one of the problems in Canada in general.

01:26:24.200 The leadership races are on right now, and they're selling memberships like crazy.

01:26:27.580 Less than 2% of the population holds a membership in any political party.

01:26:32.240 You want to get these guys' ears.

01:26:33.740 You want to get their attention.

01:26:35.320 Join the party and take part in it.

01:26:37.240 It doesn't mean you'll always win, but you'll have a much better chance than standing on

01:26:40.540 the outside and just saying they're all corrupt, they're all bad, they're all the same, it's

01:26:43.020 not any good.

01:26:43.540 If that's the case, give up, stay home.

01:26:45.100 You're never going to win.

01:26:46.920 You've got to try, guys.

01:26:48.200 You've got to try.

01:26:48.800 even if it's tough. But keep the discussions rolling. We do what we can. It's been a good

01:26:57.220 group of people cheering out. And yes, the Alberta Prosperity Project, I did talk to Dr. Modry. I'm

01:27:03.900 going to have him on this Friday. Some people were asking about that. So we're going to have him on.

01:27:06.920 We're going to talk about that. He's got a lot to speak of, of course, and a lot to go.

01:27:10.740 Tomorrow, I'm going to have Alberta MLA, Peter Guthrie. He's one of the ones who's been

01:27:15.000 very critical of the ucp you know again they will speak up and speak uh against their leadership at

01:27:20.860 times when pushed and mr guthrie's going to come on and talk to us a bit about that he's up in

01:27:25.000 edmonton because we have that leadership review going on and and uh some people are very upset

01:27:29.760 with the constant efforts to change the rules and move the goalposts so he's going to be on

01:27:33.760 and i'm going to have joseph borgo coming in he's one of the conservative party of canada

01:27:37.560 candidates he's going to be in person here in studio i believe he's from saskatchewan saskatoon

01:27:42.640 I think. And he's not a member of parliament, but he's making a go for it. And we'll see

01:27:47.220 how he goes there. So it's going to be another packed show tomorrow. Like I said, I do want to

01:27:51.620 get as many candidates on as possible. I'd like to get every one of them if I can. And repeatedly,

01:27:58.660 like I was talking with Matthew, you know, their campaigns are going to evolve, they're going to

01:28:02.520 change, there's gonna be more to talk about as we go along. And as I said, one way or another,

01:28:07.240 one of them is going to be the leader of the Conservative Party, and it's going to impact

01:28:09.760 policies in Canada, whether we like it or not. So make sure again to get on there, join all those

01:28:16.360 social media things. We're on Twitter now. We're broadcasting to that today. That's a first time

01:28:20.860 for us. It's a different thing. And on LinkedIn, we're on Rumble. Make sure to like and share on

01:28:25.780 all of those things, guys. That's how we can get out there and spread the word and beat the

01:28:31.280 mainstream legacy media who will not touch the issues on your behalf. So that's what I've got

01:28:36.700 today guys thank you very much for joining me it was a good full show and i got another one

01:28:40.200 coming tomorrow i will see you then at 11 30 a.m

01:29:06.700 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 30, 2022

LIVE - Triggered： Exclusive interview with Dr. Leslyn Lewis.

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