Western Standard - LIVE - Triggered： Is the UCP rigging the review？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 good morning it's thursday march 24th 2022 and welcome to triggered i'm cory morgan this is the

00:00:40.160 western standards daily live show we come to you at 11 30 a.m mountain standard time monday to

00:00:45.980 friday and we discuss news issues we bring in guests and of course i get a lot of ranting off

00:00:51.640 my chest being a live show of course we get comments and that they are welcome you know use

00:00:56.920 that comment scroll get in there talk with each other send comments to me good bad or different

00:01:01.700 try to keep things polite though we do always want to stay civil you know it's great to see

00:01:06.440 the ongoing discussions uh in the scroll on the side but sometimes people get a little heated and

00:01:10.940 it's serious business at times it's understandable but we do want to make sure we don't burn any

00:01:16.940 bridges there we can still differ without being too terribly rude to each other i got a couple of

00:01:22.720 great guests coming up today i got daniel smith the schedule's gonna be a little different because

00:01:25.960 we're kind of rushed the news is going crazy out there as we know uh good to see you pamela and

00:01:30.920 gary and uh so i'm gonna have danielle smith probably in a few minutes here she should be 1.00

00:01:35.020 coming on and we're going to talk about the ucp the only word i can use is debacle over the the

00:01:40.980 leadership uh review and the constant changing of the rules now and the infighting and we've got a

00:01:46.660 an mla now of course openly calling for kenny's resignation i suspect more are coming um it's

00:01:53.380 going to be a crazy couple of weeks here yet. Then I'm going to talk a little later while I'm

00:01:59.140 going to have a good rant on my thoughts on Justin Trudeau and his Euro trip there as he's

00:02:04.640 been making his appearance known at the European Parliament. He hasn't exactly been doing Canada

00:02:09.240 terribly proudly over there I'm afraid and he rarely does when he leaves our borders. I mean

00:02:15.180 it's kind of a relief when Justin steps out so we don't have to deal with him for a little while

00:02:18.680 but then he doesn't exactly do the nation any favours on the world scene when he gets out

00:02:22.680 there. So we're going to play some of those responses from members of Parliament with the

00:02:26.600 European Union and discuss a little bit of that. And later on, I'm going to have Jaime Rubenstein.

00:02:31.780 He's a retired professor of anthropology from a university out in Manitoba. And he's written a

00:02:38.560 lot on residential schools. I believe he did some stuff with Tom Flanagan as well. And we'll get

00:02:43.260 into that discussion. I mean, there's just a whole lot to unpack in the whole residential school

00:02:47.760 issue that's, well, it's a heated one. It's an emotional one, but there's also been a lot of,

00:02:52.620 I think, misinformation going around about it. So it'll be a really good discussion with

00:02:56.020 Mr. Rubenstein about that. And we'll check in with Mel Risden on some news items and things

00:03:01.700 as well pretty soon. Maybe I'll hit quickly on one of our sponsors before I get to Daniel Smith,

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00:03:50.040 been a fantastic sponsor and uh we appreciate your going to check them out okay so let's get on i see

00:03:57.000 danielle in the lobby and i really want to bring her in here on this because as you're saying

00:04:01.320 there's been some some flashbacks or ptsd over this whole issue and i i'm looking forward to

00:04:05.960 discussing this hi danielle hey corey we're going to share our collective trauma over mail-in ballots

00:04:12.760 from 2009 i can hardly wait to talk it through with you i mean that experience single-handedly

00:04:19.880 made me uh opposed to to mail-in ballots and so i was a bit surprised to see the party the ucp

00:04:26.200 party embracing them because my goodness do you ever end up with a lot of problems there yeah and

00:04:31.720 i'll give a quick background on that so this is going all the way back to when daniel won the

00:04:35.800 leadership of the wild rose party at that time i think i was vp policy with the party on the

00:04:40.520 executive and my wife jane was the executive director and we had i think about 11 000 members

00:04:46.520 perhaps i can't remember who were eligible so we did a mail-in balloting system and 8 000 of those

00:04:52.200 voted and the amount of work and we had months to get ready for this and still the the logistics of

00:04:58.440 getting that many ballots out uniquely numbered ensuring that there wasn't fraud getting them all

00:05:03.880 back getting them counted it was a nightmare and a lot of people raised a lot of questions about

00:05:09.560 the whole thing it was on the up and up but boy what a mess and that's a fraction of what the

00:05:14.200 ucp is looking to pull off right now you're totally right and i'll just elaborate on that

00:05:18.760 a little bit and you can probably tell me from your perspective what you remember but one of

00:05:22.840 the things that that i remember being a real problem is that a lot of especially rural addresses

00:05:29.800 your actual physical address is very is different than your mailing address most folks in rural have

00:05:35.320 um a p.o box within one of the the towns or or close by in the city and so you can end up with

00:05:42.040 a with a problem of getting the ballot out to a person who is who wants to vote that's number one

00:05:48.200 the second part of the problem is getting that turnaround and so you get the ballot then you

00:05:53.560 have to turn around put it in the mail and um hope that it actually gets there um and we'll talk

00:05:59.480 about that in a minute but the third one is that if you don't receive it in time how do you make

00:06:04.120 sure that you get it you get it returned in time and i recall a couple of of my supporters because

00:06:09.800 we allowed for there to be a single ballot box in edmonton because we wanted members to be there to

00:06:14.440 either vote on site or or have their ballot set in so i remember i had supporters who were driving

00:06:20.040 around picking up ballots so they could drive them up to edmonton to get there in time and then

00:06:24.680 finally you'll recall this too the when we talk about the ptsd afterwards there's always a trickle

00:06:31.160 that come in after the the voting date because they get lost in the mail they turn up all crumpled

00:06:36.440 because clearly they got shoved in behind some storage center in a mail room and then you're

00:06:42.600 constantly worried that is the follow-up um ballots coming in are they going to change the

00:06:48.040 outcome and you always have people questioning did my vote get counted and so people feel

00:06:53.240 disenfranchised the other candidates who are in the race feel like uh they they were suspicious

00:06:59.800 or they raise suspicions about the outcome and whether you can trust it it seems to me like all

00:07:04.760 of those experiences that that just affirmed for me that the only way that you can have integrity

00:07:10.760 in a voting process that is fair to the candidates that's fair to the members that make that everyone

00:07:16.280 feels like it's on the up and up is for it to be in person and that that that to me is um it should

00:07:23.480 have been the conclusion when they when they started seeing all the sdm registrations the

00:07:27.960 special general meeting registrations they have well over a million dollars you could very easily

00:07:34.200 decide that you're going to have in-person ballot stations if maybe not at every all 87 constituencies

00:07:40.760 but at all of them the major centers you could have one in fort mcmurray grand prairie

00:07:45.720 uh edmonton red deer calgary lethbridge medicine hat probably need one in lloydminster as well i

00:07:51.080 just was in lloydminster it's about a six hour round trip to get to where i live so you could

00:07:55.880 put a polling station in the major centers, you have the money to be able to man it and rent the

00:08:01.260 room. And then you can do an in-person ballot. And that would address the issue of the number

00:08:06.760 of people who need to be accommodated. But I just cannot, I'm trying to wrap my head around

00:08:12.840 how they're going to get the ballots printed, mailed out, and turned around by May 18th,

00:08:22.520 I think is the date that they're talking about having not had the experience of

00:08:26.400 doing this before, like maybe they'll need to second Jane and you to give them

00:08:29.840 some advice, Corey, because you guys went through it and knew what the problems are.

00:08:34.520 Well, it's at all.

00:08:35.960 So I don't think they want to hear from us.

00:08:39.340 I mean, we, we did see that, I mean, everything has backfired on them.

00:08:43.320 They truly underestimated how many people were going to sign up.

00:08:45.960 They thought if we're going to make it a hundred dollars a crack and make

00:08:48.480 everybody come out in person, we'll have maybe a couple thousand participants

00:08:51.460 and we can really control that.

00:08:53.080 And we can see that absolutely it was going to be a catastrophe

00:08:55.940 if they tried to get 15,000 people to vote in Red Deer at a hotel

00:08:59.500 over a six-hour period.

00:09:00.760 So they had to do something.

00:09:03.060 But now to defer it, I mean, the other part in deferring it to me,

00:09:06.260 he keeps kicking that can down the road,

00:09:07.960 and I'm sure what they're going to say is, well,

00:09:09.680 this is too late now to change leaders because we've got an election

00:09:12.000 less than a year from now.

00:09:14.000 You know, we need to go into a leadership race and bring somebody else in.

00:09:16.560 Like, we're seeing a lot of ugly political play,

00:09:18.420 And I really think the party's losing a lot of credibility right now.

00:09:22.380 Well, and that's the real problem is that if you want to go through, if the whole purpose of this is to have the members cast a say on whether they want, whether they, this, the actual question on a leadership review ballot is, do you approve of the current leader?

00:09:38.680 yes or no. And the reason why you do that is you want to have a lot of enthusiasm and support

00:09:44.060 demonstrated for your current leader, because that then helps to build the momentum, especially

00:09:48.020 if you're going into an election year. If there's nothing but concern and it's fraught and there's

00:09:53.640 worry and there's people casting doubt on whether the outcome is what they announced, then that's

00:09:59.840 going to have the exact opposite effect. It's going to backfire. And so there is a potential

00:10:05.060 of losing the war after you've won the battle.

00:10:08.260 And I think that that's the concern

00:10:10.240 that the party should have is that,

00:10:12.040 sure, I suppose you could end up

00:10:13.860 doing whatever it is you want, get the outcome.

00:10:16.260 But the integrity of the process

00:10:18.240 is important to get the buy-in.

00:10:20.180 The whole reason you want to do this

00:10:22.180 is because election planning for a political party

00:10:25.040 has to begin very shortly after this.

00:10:27.100 The premier has set May of 2023

00:10:30.160 as the fixed election date.

00:10:32.220 We used to have a fixed election window

00:10:33.660 a few weeks ago, he announced that it was going to be a fixed election date in May. So everybody

00:10:39.200 knows what date they're working towards. But if you end up with a party questioning the outcome,

00:10:44.720 feeling like they haven't had a proper say, feeling like they can't trust the executive,

00:10:48.920 that's not going to bring people together to elect their candidates, to start volunteering,

00:10:53.160 to do the door knocking, to make the phone calls. And that's the army that you need

00:10:57.100 if you're going to go into an election united. That's my greatest fear, is that if you don't

00:11:03.100 handle this process badly, you can create a bunch of unnecessary bad feelings. So you're better

00:11:08.280 off just trying to find a process that everybody feels has integrity. And then you accept the

00:11:14.000 result. If the premier gets a resounding yes, then that is accepted. Everybody can come together and

00:11:18.820 move on. If it's a resounding no, then there's a leadership race that other people can jump into.

00:11:24.700 But to create this uncertainty, I think they're going to get the worst of all worlds out of it.

00:11:30.240 Well, yeah, and unfortunately, I mean, Premier Kenney was asked about it, what level would be,

00:11:34.440 you know, where he would feel comfortable staying in. I mean, in a leadership review,

00:11:37.720 usually it's kind of open and shut. There'd be 80%, 90%. He said 50% plus one would be enough.

00:11:42.760 But, you know, if it comes in at 60%, I fear that party is going to rip itself to shreds. We already

00:11:47.960 have members of the legislature. Jason Stephan came out today and has outright demanded Kenney's

00:11:52.020 resignation. A number of them are getting more and more bold and showing their discontent.

00:11:55.980 and I don't think they're going to feel settled after a race unless it was an incredible blowout

00:12:01.060 of support for the premier well and the premier could have the confidence that even in a race

00:12:06.320 that he would be able to win it I mean he's a formidable campaigner and his his record hasn't

00:12:11.760 been all bad when you look at the at the economy and the amount of investment coming into the

00:12:16.460 province this is all very positive I think where he got into trouble obviously was the back and

00:12:22.140 forth on his COVID policy saying we're definitely not going to have vaccine passports and then

00:12:27.940 turning around and having vaccine mandates as well as this restriction exemption program that

00:12:32.140 alienated a lot of people but I think he was facing trouble before that because the because of

00:12:38.800 the Alberta agenda a series of events that took place around the province Drew Barnes obviously

00:12:45.380 was one of the most vocal voices there and there was a pretty strong mandate to start moving and

00:12:49.820 getting tougher with Ottawa. There's a very strong mandate from the people on the equalization

00:12:54.840 referendum as well to start the process of ending equalization in the constitution. And I think the

00:13:00.060 fact that he has not challenged Ottawa and not stepped forward on those, that's a bigger problem

00:13:04.280 for him. But you know what? He could have said, you know, the amount of outpouring of membership

00:13:12.040 support, shouldn't maybe put it that way, membership purchases and the number of people

00:13:17.580 who want to participate in that process, that shows me that there's a question that people

00:13:23.280 want answered. Therefore, we're going to go automatically into a leadership review or

00:13:27.360 leadership vote. I'm going to be on the ballot. I'll take any comers. I'm going to stand up for

00:13:31.980 my record and I'm going to win. He could very easily do that. I think that would actually be

00:13:36.600 a bit more reflective of what it is that members want to see. They want to have a robust race. He

00:13:42.460 still has a certainly a large share of support from his existing members?

00:13:47.800 Is it enough to defeat Rachel Notley in the next election?

00:13:51.040 That's the question.

00:13:51.820 That's why anybody that's why everybody's having that discussion.

00:13:55.180 And if you keep on pushing things down the road and you don't get started on what's

00:14:01.540 what looks to me almost an inevitability that there should be some kind of

00:14:07.340 leadership contest, then do you really want to go into the election saying, well,

00:14:11.440 got to stay with who we've got because we've now run out of time to have that question now you've

00:14:16.160 alienated riding presidents who've been asking for this early you put questions and uh into the

00:14:21.440 judgment of the of the executive committee of the party and people are going to be questioning

00:14:25.920 whether or not they have the interest of members at heart it's a really messy situation for everyone

00:14:31.040 and so i i think the premier really could resolve all of this um he obviously has a uh you know

00:14:36.960 kicking his step again he's feeling very upbeat he's very feeling very happy about the the turnaround

00:14:42.800 and he he may well be able to make the argument that he should he does deserve to have another

00:14:48.480 mandate to to to go into the next election but you're you're not going to have brian gene just

00:14:53.280 decide to stand down he has to deal with the reality that brian gene wants to have another

00:14:58.800 chance to to to take another stab at this and so if if that doesn't get accommodated somehow now

00:15:04.880 now you're looking at once again seeing the the party split apart the movement split apart and

00:15:09.680 if you end up with a with two parties you end up with a brian gene who also has proven electoral

00:15:15.200 success he won 21 seats in 2015 up against uh jason kenney now you've split the vote at least

00:15:22.160 two ways you've got paul hinman as well who is polling at least with 10 to 15 of the support for

00:15:28.160 his wild rose party wild rose independence party when you start seeing that amount of vote divide

00:15:34.400 because this is an unanswered question and people see the process to be unfair

00:15:38.960 i don't know how you can keep all of that together as a cohesive movement to to be able to defeat

00:15:44.720 rachel notley in 2023 so i think i think it's the ball's now really in in the premier's court

00:15:50.320 to to try to suggest a different pathway forward and my suggestion would be that he should just say

00:15:56.800 look i've heard this is um this is what people want they want my my leadership to be contested

00:16:03.360 and i'm quite happy to uh to enter into a race because i think i'm the best candidate i don't

00:16:07.840 know why he doesn't do that and then it would just uh it would just affirm his leadership so that he

00:16:11.600 has the strength going into the next election or if he's wrong then people will have an opportunity

00:16:16.400 to put that forward too yeah that would be a way to go because he seems to be quite backed into a

00:16:21.120 corner i mean a lot of the speculation was moving to this system of uh delegated uh leadership was

00:16:27.200 to favor the the premier and and it turns out obviously clearly they didn't feel comfortable

00:16:32.080 feeling it was going to favor him as well so they've moved to mail-in even though they said

00:16:35.200 recently that that was a terrible way to go but that's no guarantee that he's going to do well

00:16:39.620 out of this either then i mean it's the same number of people are going to be on you know

00:16:44.160 discontent potentially so this may end uh really poorly but i i almost fear the worst outcome would

00:16:50.120 be a slim win for the for premier kenny i think you're right because here's the here's the

00:16:55.160 unfortunate part of it is that you you already have people questioning it well is march 19th

00:17:01.120 going to be the real cutoff? Or are they still selling memberships and not telling anyone? When

00:17:06.880 you have people talking that way and creating that kind of distrust in the process, it's really,

00:17:12.340 really hard to come back from that. There is also another concern, and I don't know the answer to

00:17:17.500 this, but I heard Zane Novak on Rob Breckenridge's show yesterday, and he was saying, what if they

00:17:25.040 allow for membership sales after april the first because that's when the new legislation comes

00:17:31.120 through that allows for people to buy 400 memberships without the knowledge of an individual

00:17:37.520 so you could have an organization sign up 400 of their members and presumably order mail-in ballots

00:17:43.280 and vote on their behalf that's what another that's sort of the other rumor mill that's

00:17:47.520 that's out there is is there going to be some some kind of shenanigans around the ordering

00:17:52.320 and signing up of members without their knowledge we we also saw the cbc report yesterday that

00:17:58.240 shows that you've got a testimony that uh that that premier kenny was involved in the discussion

00:18:04.960 of running jeff calloway as a so-called kamikaze candidate for the sole purpose of of ruining brian

00:18:11.040 jean's chances so all of this is swirling about and the best way to swore to to sweep away some

00:18:17.360 of these kinds of concerns is to have an open fair robust process make sure that you bring in

00:18:23.600 the auditors so that there is integrity to the process that no one can question the outcome

00:18:28.320 have in-person votes so people put their paper ballot into a box with their own eyes and their

00:18:33.440 own hands and feel confident that it's going to be counted that that to me at this stage with

00:18:39.040 all of the the pushback anxiety rumors distrust if this is supposed to be about bringing a party

00:18:45.600 together they've got to take a different approach absolutely well it's it's going to be something to

00:18:50.720 watch with interest i've never been more happy not to have a party membership any longer than i have

00:18:55.120 been this last couple of months i'm glad i'm not on their executive trying to figure out how they're

00:18:59.280 going to deal with this uh as you said we've been through it on a smaller scale before and that's

00:19:03.600 challenging enough no kidding because i think this one as i understand that this is what the

00:19:07.840 difference is is it's not just the people who signed out for that 99 special general meeting

00:19:13.360 registration now i think it's all members so last i heard there was some suggestion that it would be

00:19:19.200 43 000 votes and so wow like just wrap your head around that for a minute about all of the the

00:19:26.720 printing and the labeling and the putting it in the mail and having it turned around 43 and then

00:19:30.800 the counting when it comes back in all through the course of the the six weeks to follow boy it's i

00:19:36.080 don't know if they realize what they've what they've signed themselves up for with the mail-in

00:19:39.920 ballot it's it's not it's not an easy process to do especially for a party that often operates on

00:19:45.760 a bit of a skeleton crew so i think we're all watching it with interest and and seeing whether

00:19:51.040 they're they're going to shift gears there there's a lot of pushback i gather there's some mlas as

00:19:56.800 well as some riding presidents who are uh holding a a press conference this afternoon i don't know

00:20:03.520 if they're going to be asking for a change in process or if they're going to be asking for

00:20:07.440 some for the same thing that uh that jason stefan is but there's just no point in creating this kind

00:20:13.200 of angst on something that is supposed to be a united a uniting effort for a political party

00:20:18.560 that's the thing that we forget is that political parties are supposed to be in during at this

00:20:25.440 stage trying to come together around the leader so that they can choose their candidates and the

00:20:30.720 team that's going to get them into the next election having this unsettled issue just gives

00:20:35.680 his opponents in the in the ndp party the advantage they're totally unified around their

00:20:41.760 leader in fact i don't even know if i've ever heard of a leadership challenge to rachel notley

00:20:46.080 even though she went from being premier to being opposition leader again they are steadily going

00:20:51.120 along and lining up their candidates some high profile ones like drew farrell in calgary as well

00:20:56.640 so um the the the more the longer this remains unsettled and the more infighting that there is

00:21:02.960 it just ends up impairing the party's ability to get ready for for may of 2023 and that's what

00:21:08.880 they need to get resolved they need to get the leadership issue behind them quickly and then

00:21:13.520 they need to move on to to doing the the the candidate selection so that they're ready for

00:21:18.320 what happens a year from now otherwise that that's going to be a bigger problem for everyone

00:21:22.720 yeah the only one smiling right now from ear to ear has got to be rachel notley at this point i

00:21:26.480 mean you know just kick back and let them deal with themselves and then she can uh you know 1.00

00:21:30.480 you know, show stability, you know, to voters versus a party racked with infighting.

00:21:36.260 Well, we'll see.

00:21:36.860 Can I just say one more thing on that, Corey?

00:21:38.420 It's so funny because I remember when I was sitting in the legislature with Rob Anderson

00:21:42.560 and Heather Seforst, I think, Guy Boudelier and the others, when we saw that Alison Redford

00:21:50.000 was really on the ropes, it was, oh, no, we want to actually face her in the next election. 0.98

00:21:54.840 We better cool it.

00:21:55.800 And in point of fact, it was already too late for her, and we ended up facing a more formidable challenger in Jim Prentice, and we all know how that one ended up.

00:22:06.000 But that's got to be what's happening with Rachel Notley as well, because she hasn't said too much when you think about it.

00:22:12.280 She's probably in that frame of mind that when she looks at who she would rather be facing in the debates and who she'd be rather facing in the election,

00:22:21.580 knowing that the premier is fighting off his own party, she's probably thinking this is the perfect

00:22:27.580 contender, that she probably wants to keep Jason Kenney there, which is why she's just biding her 1.00

00:22:32.580 time while the infighting does her work. So you're right, talking about grinning ear to ear,

00:22:38.940 this does nothing but help her in her re-election bid. Yeah, well, we'll be watching with morbid 0.99

00:22:45.900 interest as the party tries to figure out what rules they're going to release, and they better

00:22:49.380 get on it soon because now everybody's speculating which makes it even worse and adds to the mistrust

00:22:54.020 so thank you very much for for coming on to to join me today and i i believe you had some other

00:22:59.380 interviews that are coming out pretty soon as well that uh they're gonna be posted um

00:23:04.900 oh yeah actually if you want to thank you for allowing me to to promote that actually this

00:23:09.380 morning we just interviewed less than lewis and uh jean charret i'm going through a series of

00:23:14.100 interviews with the the leadership candidates so the next one will be pierre polyeth and patrick

00:23:19.060 brown i think those are the big four contenders at the federal level and that's to me really

00:23:22.740 exciting i think that we've got uh there's some very good conservative leadership candidates

00:23:28.180 and so hopefully that'll be a more uniting process than what we're witnessing at alberta right now

00:23:32.580 yeah there is a vigorous race going on there that's for sure all right well thank you very

00:23:36.420 much danielle good to talk to you about this and uh well as i said we'll keep watching with interest

00:23:40.420 as it all unfolds you got it thanks carrie yes that was danielle smith who uh does a number of

00:23:47.380 of things all over with the Alberta Enterprise Group now, and does shows with Uncensored on

00:23:51.880 the Western Standard here occasionally, and of course is very experienced with, well, political

00:23:56.660 infighting and a lot of these sorts of things. This brings back a lot of memories. This is

00:24:02.020 something we conservatives seem to do with ourselves a lot all the time. I'm just looking

00:24:07.900 at some of the commenters and, you know, some people saying, oh, the Western Standard wants

00:24:13.320 not Lee Beck. Yeah, right, guys, come on. And we've posted things, we've posted columns from

00:24:18.440 cabinet ministers in support of Premier Kenney. We take all opinions here and go into them. I mean,

00:24:24.680 they're certainly on the opinion and some people who have their views on it, absolutely. But the

00:24:28.900 publication in itself isn't taking a side in this, though we are a conservative sort of thing.

00:24:34.600 The main question I see from a lot of people, though, is if not Kenney, who? And that is

00:24:38.820 one that's hanging there. It's a tough question because Brian Jean isn't necessarily

00:24:42.580 everybody's favorite to, you know, going forward either. He isn't necessarily who they'd want to

00:24:47.340 see replace Kenny, or they might feel that he's more able to win the next election. As Danielle

00:24:52.100 kept pointing out, the main thing is we're looking a year from now at a general election. So who is

00:24:56.900 going to keep Rachel Notley from getting another term as premier? Who's the best one to do that?

00:25:03.640 But again, I'm seeing this in, it's not just the infighting, but it's the dirty play. It is,

00:25:09.760 It's dirty. Come on. You had a process in place for months, a process that was like pulling teeth

00:25:15.620 to get in. And then you're changing the rules at the last minute. In mid-stride, you're changing

00:25:21.880 how it's going to be done. Talk about ruining trust. And as Danielle and I were saying,

00:25:26.160 so the only way they're going to pull off a mail-in ballot at all, they've got to kick the

00:25:30.720 date farther down. There's no way. When we're looking at just a little over two weeks now from

00:25:34.940 what was the prior date. Those ballots would have had to been printed and mailed out weeks ago. We

00:25:40.580 know how Canada Post works. You're lucky to get something within a week at the best of times.

00:25:45.140 So now if you talk about a giant way of changing the rules, kicking the entire race an extra month 1.00

00:25:50.980 and some, that's a load of crap. That's a load of crap. That's like, my campaign's not doing very 0.99

00:25:54.680 well, so I need to buy another month to work harder on it. It doesn't work that way in general

00:25:57.740 elections, and it shouldn't work that way in something like this. But it's desperation,

00:26:01.880 right this desperation they saw that they're going to lose i mean they're making that excuse oh we

00:26:06.200 wouldn't be able to accommodate everybody in red deer and and that's true that the turnout was so

00:26:10.920 massive that it would have overwhelmed them but as danielle was saying and she's right when you

00:26:14.840 got one and a half million in the bank i mean you had 15 000 people spending 100 bucks each to do

00:26:19.480 this you can set up polling centers all over the province that wouldn't be that hard at all

00:26:25.720 not with that kind of money they didn't want to do that they wanted to change the system

00:26:30.640 Now they haven't released the rules.

00:26:32.380 Now we've got MLAs calling for Premier Kenney's head openly.

00:26:36.640 This is, I don't see how the party's going to recover from this mess.

00:26:40.040 This is a mess.

00:26:41.040 We'll see what comes with that press conference from the, you know, constituency presidents.

00:26:45.660 These are the guys who work on the ground for the party.

00:26:48.220 And we'll see what they put out for rules.

00:26:50.580 So we'll back away from that a little bit.

00:26:52.500 And, you know, our schedule's kind of speaking of, you know, changing the rules and timelines all over the place.

00:26:56.700 normally we do our news check in earlier in the show, but we only had Danielle for that moment 1.00

00:27:01.200 there and we wanted to get her on. So we've pushed poor Mel Risden down the schedule a little bit 0.76

00:27:07.080 there, but we'll bring her in and see what's going on in the newsroom with the Western Standard. So 0.60

00:27:10.700 let's bring Mel in here. How's it going? Good, good. Busy as usual. And speaking of the topic

00:27:20.720 that you are uh speaking with and just finished with with uh danielle smith we have uh we have

00:27:26.880 many articles up on the website right now uh one is exactly what you were just saying we are 16

00:27:32.400 days away uh still no information on uh what's going to happen no uh understanding of any new

00:27:38.800 rules uh so we've got a uh an article up on that another column from jason stefan or jason stefan

00:27:47.360 and UCP MLA for Red Deer South calling for Premier Jason Kenney to actually resign. So you can check

00:27:55.040 that out. There's a stats can report out that shows a large spike in welfare due to immigration

00:28:02.160 laws. 35% of government assisted refugees remain on welfare compared to those that were privately

00:28:11.220 sponsored. They are 23%. So we've got information about that report on the website. Another

00:28:20.600 article on tips that Canada Revenue Agency have been receiving, and we're talking tens of thousands

00:28:27.240 of tips. A lot of people apparently cheating the system, and many of them attributed to federal

00:28:34.460 COVID benefits. So that's on there. Also, a story on the Saskatchewan budget, which has come out,

00:28:40.640 shows record health care spending to help deal with the surgical backlogs that Saskatchewan is

00:28:47.680 facing and has been facing for some time now. Another article on Commons Health Committee

00:28:52.800 hears from lead medical experts across the country saying that Trudeau calling unvaccinated

00:28:59.340 Canadians a fringe minority was uniquely unhelpful. So we've got that. Kenny officials 1.00

00:29:07.060 are defending his move to move to the mail-in ballots for the leadership review, basically

00:29:13.960 saying that many more can now access the vote and less will be feeling disenfranchised. And we've

00:29:22.060 got a column from Mike Thomas, who covered the Premier, sorry, our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau

00:29:30.980 was in the European Union Parliament and he just gets lambasted by a couple of people who

00:29:41.700 do an address and speak at the debate. So that we have up and we have video of that as well so you

00:29:48.980 can hear what other leaders had to say to our Prime Minister. And we've got a new Chronicle

00:29:57.380 cartoon out celebrating the new alliance between the Liberals and NDP that's on the website you

00:30:04.260 can check out as well and coming up we also have a story from our new reporter out east

00:30:09.380 Matt Horwood he is looking into a report that's out now saying there were no firearms found

00:30:16.260 with the truckers that were protesting the freedom convoy in Ottawa. Great yeah you can see that

00:30:24.100 chronicles cartoon there with that stack of outhouses which really uh reflects a great

00:30:28.580 deal and unfortunately canadians at large are in the bottom outhouse very accurate unfortunately

00:30:36.500 it's where we land with things there was a side news note though we saw at the end of the day i

00:30:40.660 you you went out and you purchased vegan shoes i heard yes yeah it was uh it was an interesting

00:30:46.980 exchange i had um i didn't realize that shoes had a particularly diet uh preference but yeah

00:30:53.940 it was interesting i was uh i was buying shoes yesterday and the salesperson had informed me

00:30:59.220 that their entire store was full of vegan product so i am now the owner of a pair of lovely vegan

00:31:07.220 shoes so i i just kind of find it an interesting reference to shoes that are made of basically an

00:31:14.820 oil-based product do they have like a big writing on them or somewhere that says vegan because we

00:31:20.580 know with most vegans i mean they're not in the room for more than a few seconds before they make

00:31:23.940 sure to tell you they're a vegan well yeah you've got to kind of wonder what the what the term is

00:31:30.420 is trying to avoid or trying to suggest um but uh you know non-leather shoes are made of um a

00:31:39.460 byproduct of oil so i guess maybe it's these you know kind of a new woke term that that suggests

00:31:46.900 where you know we're being more environmental i'm not sure but uh i don't know and i guess

00:31:52.020 really when you look at the uh at the idea behind oil and gas i'm fairly certain that was from

00:31:57.700 dinosaurs so can we actually call that vegan well and a good question from one of the viewers uh

00:32:03.780 tony hodges actually said well maybe the shows are shoes are actually made from vegans

00:32:07.540 well that might be a whole other area of research we should probably dig into i'd be a little

00:32:15.780 disturbed if that was the case might make for some some good organic leather for that okay well they

00:32:22.020 are comfortable though i will say my vegan shoes are comfortable so comfortable and functional

00:32:26.820 that's important of course too if you're gonna buy shoes so i'm glad for that and uh you know

00:32:30.980 we discover something new out here every day yes all right well thanks for that update i'll let you

00:32:36.340 get back to cover the news and shopping for more products that may save the world from meat

00:32:40.880 consumption. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Melanie. So that was it, Melanie Riston. And as we saw,

00:32:47.040 yes, the stories, stories, stories, boy, the newsroom is just humming. We are putting out

00:32:51.680 that content. So many things are breaking so fast, we can barely keep up with them.

00:32:56.540 So make sure, you know, there's that reminder, this is how we can do this. This is how we pay

00:33:00.340 Mel. This is how we pay me, how we pay Nico. We need your subscriptions, guys, and you've been

00:33:04.760 doing fantastic we have a great amount of subscribers it's been going up every month uh

00:33:10.160 you know this keeps us independent so we we aren't uh that federal media it's but people have been

00:33:14.980 talking about with this and i'm going to talk in a minute about trudeau's mess over in europe on

00:33:19.320 how ctv cbc global they're all silent on all that mess going on over there well that's because the

00:33:24.720 federal government subsidizes the media like nobody's business not us we're independent we

00:33:29.680 report on what we need to report we report on what you want us to report because hey you end up

00:33:34.460 serving the person who pays your bills. You guys pay our bills. Keep subscribing. Take one out.

00:33:40.300 Use the coupon code TRIGGERED. You save yourself $10 right off the bat. It's a free trial for two

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00:33:50.220 the breaking stuff, the columns from all sorts of people beyond the paywall. And then it's $10 a

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00:34:00.340 10 bucks with that coupon code triggered. Take out a subscription if you haven't already. And if

00:34:05.020 your neighbor hasn't taken out a subscription yet, nag them, get on their case. Come on, let's make

00:34:08.500 more good, well-read, conservative-minded people out there. So thank you guys who have subscribed

00:34:13.740 and please consider subscribing with us if you haven't already. It's very important. Okay, let's

00:34:21.320 shift gears a little here. And I want to talk about our federal government. One of my favorite

00:34:26.400 people, of course, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And he has gone overseas again, and he is speaking

00:34:33.980 on our behalf again, and he's over in the European Union. So, you know, whenever Justin Trudeau

00:34:40.700 leaves Canada, we get to witness outright how out of depth, out of his depth as a national leader

00:34:48.040 he really is. I mean, this week's disastrously embarrassing Euro trip is no exception. I mean,

00:34:55.000 Eastern Europe is in the grips of a war

00:34:56.680 unlike anything we've seen since World War II.

00:34:59.340 The European Union Parliament is dealing

00:35:01.960 with the most serious of issues.

00:35:04.200 You know, they're usually dealing with trade things,

00:35:06.160 immigration, which are important,

00:35:07.720 but now they're in the midst of a war

00:35:10.020 and they have little time to dedicate 1.00

00:35:11.940 to virtue signaling fools like Justin Trudeau. 1.00

00:35:14.680 And this was more than evident as Trudeau addressed 1.00

00:35:17.440 a nearly empty cavernous room

00:35:20.580 in the European Parliament in Belgium.

00:35:22.560 I mean, check this out.

00:35:23.400 This is the room Trudeau was looking at when he spoke.

00:35:33.400 Look at all those empty seats.

00:35:35.400 Now, when a foreign leader addresses the parliament, typically most of the MPs,

00:35:39.400 we do that in Canada when a foreign dignitary comes or whatever as well.

00:35:42.400 Opposition, governing party, you'll still, you'll all be in attendance,

00:35:45.400 even if you aren't that interested in the subject matter,

00:35:48.400 because it's a gesture of respect for the other nation.

00:35:51.400 And to have the majority of the EU MPs stepping out before Trudeau spoke

00:35:55.280 was an international snubbing that can't be ignored.

00:35:59.300 The elected members of the EU have no respect for Trudeau,

00:36:02.360 and that's how they displayed it.

00:36:04.140 I really can't blame them.

00:36:05.460 I mean, having endured many of Trudeau's vacuous speeches over the course of the last decade,

00:36:09.380 I have to fight the temptation to ram a pencil into my ear when he's about to speak. 0.99

00:36:13.580 I mean, a ruptured eardrum is almost preferable to enduring the auditory assault of that foolish man 0.99

00:36:19.080 with his flaky, breathy, dramatic pauses. 1.00

00:36:23.020 One finds themselves to be dumber 0.99

00:36:25.040 for having listened to Trudeau's mental meanderings. 0.98

00:36:28.020 So the flight of the EU MPs from Trudeau's appearance

00:36:30.820 could be considered an act of self-defense

00:36:32.920 and they could be forgiven for it.

00:36:34.920 I'm sure many Canadian MPs

00:36:36.180 and members of the Ottawa Press Gallery

00:36:37.580 wish they could do the same

00:36:38.980 when Justin's about to speak as well.

00:36:40.900 Of the handful of European MPs

00:36:42.460 who did remain for Trudeau's babbling though,

00:36:44.360 a number of them took the time

00:36:45.940 to actually take the microphone and chasten him. 0.68

00:36:49.080 They didn't feel that simply snubbing him through their absence

00:36:51.700 was an effective enough gesture.

00:36:53.520 Perhaps they wanted to ensure that Trudeau never comes back

00:36:56.240 and insults their collective intelligence again in the future,

00:36:59.360 and they can't be blamed for it.

00:37:00.880 MPs Bernard Zimniok, Christine Anderson, those two are from Germany,

00:37:06.060 Mislav Kalakisis of Croatia, and Christian Teres of Romania

00:37:10.420 all took the time to get up and outright slam Justin Trudeau

00:37:13.980 in terse words as they addressed the Parliament.

00:37:16.380 Not only do they have little respect for Trudeau, they were repulsed with Trudeau's treatment of Canadian citizens over the course of the convoy protests.

00:37:25.800 Check one of these out here.

00:37:26.900 Thank you. Based on Article 195, I found out that it would have been more appropriate for Mr. Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada,

00:37:35.080 to address this house according to article 144, an article which was specifically designed

00:37:42.060 to debate violations of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, which is clearly the case

00:37:48.820 with Mr. Trudeau. Then again, a prime minister who openly admires the Chinese basic dictatorship

00:37:55.360 who tramples on fundamental rights by persecuting and criminalizing his own citizens as terrorists

00:38:01.620 just because they dared to stand up to his perverted concept of democracy

00:38:06.620 should not be allowed to speak in this House at all. 0.98

00:38:10.540 Mr. Trudeau, you are a disgrace for any democracy. 0.97

00:38:15.120 Please spare us your presence. Thank you. 0.99

00:38:21.340 What an embarrassment. What an embarrassment.

00:38:24.680 And that was a member from Germany.

00:38:27.100 I mean, the EU Parliament, they've been addressed

00:38:29.420 by some of the most wretched of authoritarian dictators

00:38:32.080 the world has seen in past decades.

00:38:34.700 And while MPs rarely embrace those guests,

00:38:37.520 they still often at least treat them

00:38:38.780 with a degree of diplomatic respect.

00:38:41.680 Trudeau didn't even warrant that.

00:38:44.060 I'll play one more clip.

00:38:45.800 For the people who are just listening on audio,

00:38:47.540 I'm afraid this is subtitled,

00:38:49.220 so you'll see what was said.

00:38:51.060 I'll sort of summarize that a little bit

00:38:52.540 after the clip is played, though,

00:38:54.040 because he really so effectively goes into Mr. Trudeau.

00:38:57.760 So it's worth playing for everybody viewing.

00:39:27.760 that they can't pay children's schooling, that they can't pay drugs,

00:39:33.760 that they can't pay records for oil and water, that they can't pay rent and credit for their homes.

00:39:41.760 For you, these are maybe liberal methods.

00:39:45.760 However, for many citizens of the world, this is the greatest dictatorship.

00:39:57.760 being a dictator of the worst kind. This is the European Parliament talking this way about him.

00:40:02.980 He brought up the horses trampling women at the protests. He brought up how people's bank

00:40:07.560 accounts were being seized so people couldn't pay their bills and mortgages. Again, it's incredibly

00:40:13.140 rare. It's such a breach of general diplomacy for members to get up and actually rip into a

00:40:20.540 diplomatic guest at that parliament. But, you know, as I said, most of the others were polite

00:40:25.220 enough. They just said, ah, we're going to go elsewhere and we just will, you know, we'll show

00:40:30.240 our dislike of Trudeau in our absence. In this case, though, a number of them also felt compelled

00:40:37.140 to get up and rip into him. What an embarrassment. And every time Justin leaves this country

00:40:43.780 going out and representing us, he embarrasses us. Now, you see, under the cover of Canada's

00:40:49.360 state broadcaster, like the CBC, another media outlet's beholden to the Liberal Party for

00:40:54.280 government subsidies, Trudeau's managed to retain a degree of support within Canada.

00:40:59.360 The mainstream media has managed to polish the turd, essentially, so to speak, and maintaining

00:41:04.340 Trudeau's popularity, at least within central Canada. In other countries, though, the only

00:41:09.240 images they've seen of Trudeau are unvarnished by the Canadian media. They get the raw stuff,

00:41:13.920 guys. It's like the Super Bowl in the States. They can get the full commercials, not this

00:41:17.440 Canadianized version that we're all spoon-fed up here. They see Trudeau for the vindictive,

00:41:22.500 shallow little man that he is. Trudeau's virtue signaling and cute socks won't endear him to 0.91

00:41:28.580 serious world leaders. It repulses them, and it shows. Canada was once a respected international

00:41:35.000 player on the world stage. We punched above our weight in diplomacy, and our leaders were

00:41:41.640 welcomed when overseas. I mean, you never would have seen them rip into Prime Minister Stephen

00:41:46.000 Harper like that. You wouldn't have seen them do that to Chrétien or Mulroney or even Trudeau

00:41:51.240 senior. But this himbo of a prime minister we have right now does not command respect. And by 1.00

00:41:57.620 extension, that means Canada loses respect on the entire world stage. Our prime minister is now

00:42:04.400 greeted with a cold shoulder at best and open contempt at worst when he visits other nations.

00:42:10.400 It's going to be a long climb into world respectability in Canada in the years to come.

00:42:14.640 It's clear that we can't begin our recovery of respect in the eyes of the world until Justin

00:42:19.320 Trudeau is no longer the nation's prime minister. With the deal Trudeau cut with Singh, we may not

00:42:25.260 even be able to begin that recovery for a few years now. Canada has become an international

00:42:28.800 laughingstock under Trudeau. And there's little indication that enough of the country is ready

00:42:33.180 to get rid of him yet. It's just a sad, sad state of affairs, to say the least. And that's all I got

00:42:40.080 to say about that. At least when it comes to Trudeau over there. I mean, just you got to shake

00:42:44.040 your head. Every time that guy leaves our borders, this is what happens. But look at the people he

00:42:49.720 surrounds himself with too. Are you going to send Freeland over there to represent us? Are you going

00:42:55.700 to send Seamus? I mean, he surrounds himself with people as dumb as he is. So we can't send a group 1.00

00:43:03.660 out there to represent our country and gain that respect that so many, I mean, the people in

00:43:08.840 Canada's forces, I mean, yeah, there's pictures of Trudeau and his India trip, his ill-fated India

00:43:13.320 trip where he, you know, played dress up and danced around and again, embarrassed us all over

00:43:18.060 the world scene. It was astounding. I mean, that trip went on for weeks and the headlines from

00:43:22.160 Europe, the headlines from India. I mean, he didn't flatter them by playing dress up in their 1.00

00:43:27.060 traditional clothing. He insulted them. And India is a fantastic trading partner. They're a country

00:43:33.240 that's been, you know, they've got their challenges, but they're growing as a democracy and an economic

00:43:37.760 powerhouse. And in Canada, of course, we have a load of people of Indian descent. I mean,

00:43:43.460 they're fantastic Canadians. And to have that clown go over there and make a laughingstock 0.97

00:43:49.420 of himself, again, on our behalf. I mean, Premier Modi, or Prime Minister Modi, I think it is. 0.97

00:43:55.120 But he traditionally, when world leaders would come, would always greet them at the airport

00:43:59.340 with a hug. Trudeau managed, though, to get snubbed by Modi in that case. Like, he just

00:44:05.800 cannot garner respect when he leaves our country. And again, it ends up embarrassing us in the long

00:44:12.460 run. And it's just a shameful, shameful display. So yeah, politics, you know, I guess in a

00:44:19.840 self-centered way, it serves us well at the Western Standard because we've always got a lot to report

00:44:25.900 on. These guys give us plenty to work with, unfortunately, on the provincial level, on the

00:44:30.320 federal level, even in our civic level, it's hard not to get pretty dejected sometimes when we see

00:44:36.100 the shenanigans of these people that we entrust with leading us, that we pay a great deal of money

00:44:42.020 to represent us. And they do stuff like this. We have Alberta embroiled in a bizarre internal 1.00

00:44:50.660 party leadership race where the rules are getting bounced all over the place. I won't be surprised

00:44:56.080 When I was talking to Daniel Smith about that at the start, that we might have two or three conservative parties forming in our legislature after this leadership debacle is over with.

00:45:08.280 If they manage to keep Premier Kenney in with 55%, 60%, 70% support, look, I mean, some of those guys have already drawn their lines.

00:45:16.660 As we saw, the MLA Jason Steffen today has said he's demanded Kenney resigns.

00:45:24.360 There's no way that Kenny can keep him in his caucus after this leadership review.

00:45:28.200 Can't.

00:45:29.020 And there's going to be other MLAs doing the same.

00:45:31.000 And there's ones that are right on the brink.

00:45:32.560 They've come right near the edge.

00:45:33.840 The MLA for up in Cochran Airdrie, Angela Pitt, Lila here, and of course, Brian Jean.

00:45:40.260 That's enough MLAs all on their own to get official party status in the legislature.

00:45:44.360 And we know that they're all going to get kicked out of the UCP after the leadership race if Kenny manages to win it.

00:45:51.020 And that's just the ones that are in the open with this right now.

00:45:54.240 Meanwhile, while support swirls the drain, we're going to see other MLAs coming out too.

00:45:59.280 I mean, the bottom line is, and I mean, some of the cynicism, I mean, there's a lot of

00:46:02.760 really good elected officials out there.

00:46:04.080 There really are.

00:46:04.740 And most of them get into it because they want to make the world a better place.

00:46:08.240 I know that sounds like sunshine and lollipops, but it's true.

00:46:10.820 It's not an easy route to money.

00:46:12.800 It's not an easy job.

00:46:14.500 It's stressful.

00:46:15.200 It's tough.

00:46:16.280 But they also want to cover their own about, oh, just a minute, Jackie Burton commenter

00:46:21.220 saying, stop slamming Kenny.

00:46:22.240 No, no.

00:46:23.900 Don't tell me who I can slam and who I can't slam to start with.

00:46:26.580 This is an opinion show.

00:46:28.180 You don't have to agree with me, but never tell me what I can or can't say.

00:46:31.360 It's not going to work out well.

00:46:33.300 I was very supportive of Premier Kenney.

00:46:35.560 I was very optimistic of Premier Kenney.

00:46:37.320 That's part of why I am as upset as I am right now with what's going on with this.

00:46:42.160 You know, if it's somebody I never had faith in in the beginning,

00:46:44.900 if it was somebody I expected little of in the beginning,

00:46:47.240 I could shrug my shoulders and say, well, I told you so.

00:46:50.220 This is going to be bad leadership.

00:46:52.700 And no, I really thought Premier Kenney was going to turn things around, do a very good job, and get on with things.

00:46:59.140 And unfortunately, it's turned into an irreparable internal fighting rat's nest that is cutting the faith of all Albertans in that party and in politics in general.

00:47:08.480 We've got a lot of important issues to be addressing right now in our legislature, and unfortunately, it's completely distracted by the infighting going on with all these guys right now.

00:47:18.580 As I said to Danielle at the end of the interview, the only person who's smiling right now is Rachel Notley.

00:47:23.220 She is grinning.

00:47:25.040 The UCP is doing her work for her more effectively than 100 NDP campaigners can.

00:47:31.680 And, you know, to try for a blind loyalty, because that's what gets us into that.

00:47:35.580 Say, don't slam it.

00:47:36.640 You know, don't slam them because their alternative is worse.

00:47:39.420 Just toe the line.

00:47:40.320 Stick to the party.

00:47:41.080 Stick to the team.

00:47:41.800 No.

00:47:42.620 No.

00:47:43.000 You've got to critique the leaders when they're going wrong.

00:47:45.460 That's the only way they can improve.

00:47:47.260 improve. The next guest I've got is coming up, and I'm looking forward to talking to Jaime

00:47:51.760 Rubenstein, is he talks about an issue that people say we're not supposed to talk about as well.

00:47:56.040 He digs into things that people would rather just avoid and brush under the carpet. But what

00:48:00.280 happens when you do that with an issue or a party? It festers. It gets worse. And then it leads to

00:48:06.060 more division. It leads to more upset people. It leads to more bad policy. So no, we have to call

00:48:12.100 them out when they're going the wrong way. You have to, because nothing else will stop them.

00:48:17.260 So please, don't tell me who I can slam or who I can't.

00:48:21.580 And I assure you, I will slam any and all of them when I feel they're going the wrong way.

00:48:25.440 And once in a while, yes, I will compliment them.

00:48:27.720 But this is triggered.

00:48:28.720 This is me raging.

00:48:29.640 This is the nature of the show.

00:48:30.760 I tend to be crabby on here.

00:48:32.200 So I don't give out enough compliments when they're doing things right.

00:48:34.780 I can admit a bit of that.

00:48:36.120 But I will not spare any of them when I see them going wrong.

00:48:41.040 But either way, I should bring in, because I see him in the lobby, and I've been looking for a discussion.

00:48:44.380 I'm going to speak to our sponsor actually really quickly before I bring Mr. Rubenstein in.

00:48:48.780 And that is the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:48:53.440 Speaking of standing up for ourselves and our rights.

00:48:57.780 Firearms, you know, these are something in Canada that our ideologically driven federal government keeps trying to take away.

00:49:04.720 I mean, whether it was the registry back in the 90s with the Liberals,

00:49:07.300 and nowadays when they keep recategorizing firearms and turning law-abiding firearms owners into criminals,

00:49:13.480 this is a problem. The Canadian Fire Shooting Sports Association, I really have a tough time

00:49:18.800 with them sometimes. Their name says what they are. They're an association of people who own

00:49:23.600 and enjoy firearms, whether it's trap shooting, target shooting, hunting, whatever they want to

00:49:26.940 do, collecting. As long as you're legal and not hurting people, you should have them. And it gives

00:49:30.780 you resources, networking with other firearm owners, videos for safe use. But also they have

00:49:35.960 a number of legal challenges on behalf of firearm owners to protect your right and ability to have

00:49:41.540 these firearms and they need you to take out a membership with them so they can continue with

00:49:46.360 that important work. I mean, it's a save it or lose it sort of thing when it comes to these

00:49:50.960 firearms. So join these guys, get on with them. They're standing up for you, but you need to help

00:49:54.520 them do it. It's cssa-cila.org and that's the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Yes, join

00:50:03.880 them. Get them helping you. All right, that's enough of that. Let's bring Mr. Rubenstein in

00:50:10.120 and talk about a column he wrote recently on residential schools, and he's written a great

00:50:13.680 deal on it and done a lot of work on this, and it's very, very important. So I've been looking

00:50:18.200 forward to this discussion. We'll bring him in studio. Hello there, sir. Hello. Should I be

00:50:23.540 pronouncing that Rubenstein or Rubenstein? Rubenstein. Rubenstein, thank you. All the rest of my

00:50:28.720 family, it's Rubenstein, but I'm the Rubenstein. Okay, I'll keep it correct from here, sir. I'm

00:50:34.160 the outlier in everything.

00:50:35.940 Okay.

00:50:37.060 Well, and you've been an outlier in an issue

00:50:39.740 that's really been simmering and huge,

00:50:42.040 which has been the, you've written a couple of columns

00:50:44.140 for us on this, and you've done a lot of work

00:50:45.920 on the residential school issue.

00:50:49.680 And you're correcting, I guess,

00:50:51.980 a lot of misinformation that's been going around,

00:50:54.160 including from some major media outlets,

00:50:56.760 particularly to start with, I guess,

00:50:58.440 on the number of people who perished

00:51:01.000 potentially while in residential schools, right?

00:51:04.160 Nobody really knows the answer to that except perhaps those who are now in charge of collecting the data.

00:51:12.900 The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has been appointed to do all the follow-up from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that produced a six-volume report and supplementary reports in 2015.

00:51:34.160 but we're not getting the straight goods from them. There's a lot of information that is not

00:51:42.580 being provided to the public, even though their mandate is to communicate to the public

00:51:48.780 the information they receive, given the requirements of confidentiality in terms of

00:51:55.520 protecting innocent people, people who want their names revealed. But the sum total of their findies

00:52:03.660 should be easily given to the people

00:52:08.820 who also want to do some research about this.

00:52:13.300 Well, yeah, we can't, if we're talking about reconciliation,

00:52:16.600 which is a popular word these days,

00:52:18.020 or I would say even just resolution or moving on,

00:52:20.920 we need to have transparency and really get a solid idea

00:52:23.560 of just what happened in that last, you know, 100 years almost

00:52:26.680 and get a reckoning.

00:52:28.900 And then right now we seem to be getting more torqued headlines

00:52:31.440 rather than statistical realities.

00:52:33.660 Let me just give you one example that's come out very recently just in the last few days. The National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, which is located where I'm living just very close to my home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, has on their site said there are 4,100 and something missing children that they have recorded.

00:53:02.020 At least they've recorded their names.

00:53:04.120 Some cases they don't have their names, but they know they're missing.

00:53:08.040 There are children that allegedly went to a school in the morning or not in the morning.

00:53:13.580 They were living at a residential school.

00:53:15.480 They never came home.

00:53:18.100 But if you count the figures on the list that they have supplied to the public, they're only 2,200.

00:53:26.460 So what gives?

00:53:29.440 Yeah, and it's difficult.

00:53:31.000 I mean, well, we've got to look back to those days.

00:53:33.320 I mean, these were people often coming from isolated communities.

00:53:36.500 There might not even have been good record keeping at that time,

00:53:39.260 but we can't presume that any of the people who've gone missing

00:53:41.820 didn't actually just go home and we never heard from them again.

00:53:45.300 Corey, there was excellent record keeping at the time.

00:53:48.880 The archives are full of records.

00:53:51.440 Any time a student went to a school, they had to have an application.

00:53:58.100 They were not seized by the authorities.

00:54:01.000 In most cases, they made an application, their parents made an application on their behalf.

00:54:08.060 Why? Because there had to be a record to follow them from the time they entered the school to the time they left the school.

00:54:15.240 Because funding was provided by the federal government in Ottawa through Indian Affairs, as it was called at the time.

00:54:24.060 And they were pretty stingy.

00:54:25.740 one of the problems with the schools was they were underfunded, as were all schools in Canada

00:54:31.580 at the time. We're talking about the late 19th century when this began. The government first

00:54:36.540 got involved in 1883 with the first industrial schools. And the funding at that time was low

00:54:45.560 because the government, we had a new country with very little funding and lots of expenses.

00:54:52.960 We didn't have income tax yet.

00:54:55.900 Yeah, and there were a lot of challenges.

00:54:58.180 I mean, if you could imagine being on the prairies 120 years ago, managing a school with a lack of funding, a lack of resources, and the harsh environment you're dealing with, it's a difficult circumstance.

00:55:09.920 And not everybody's going to have a pleasant memory of that time, I would imagine.

00:55:12.640 Well, the most unpleasant feature was the fact that many children had a bad experience

00:55:23.520 in the schools because Western education was very alien to them.

00:55:32.200 Traditional Indigenous education was not based on sitting in a classroom, memorizing

00:55:38.200 text, doing times tables. It was based on observation. It was based on participation.

00:55:47.620 It was based on observation. It was a totally different system of learning, a system that was

00:55:55.580 part of our Western tradition, a system that was also alien to many Western children who went into

00:56:02.640 school coming from homes where their parents were illiterate or semi-literate coming to a school

00:56:09.680 was a difficult experience as as many of us can attest to from our own experience in school

00:56:17.520 and we do overlook often i mean some i guess you could call them success stories or non-critical

00:56:22.160 people who came through that system as you mentioned in your story with uh marchand uh

00:56:26.800 he had uh many good things to say about his experience and time there and and he went on

00:56:31.120 to be very a very successful canadian as have many uh students of the school that we don't hear

00:56:37.280 about very much because they're not reported on but a an informal group of people that i've been

00:56:44.640 involved with for several months is is slowly but surely gathering data about about these issues

00:56:50.560 about the missing part of the indian residential school and we're trying to compile a list of

00:56:56.560 successful school participants and Marchant is only one of thousands yes I

00:57:05.800 mean there were definitely you know nobody's saying that everything was done

00:57:09.280 correctly or everything was done right or you know that some of the the

00:57:12.580 initiatives were probably very misguided but again and we just we need to have a

00:57:17.160 narrative that's balanced on on what happened historically if we're gonna

00:57:20.560 learn from this? Well, I wonder how much those who are in control of the narrative want us to

00:57:29.100 learn about it. There's a dark hole there that is only slowly being filled with supplementary data.

00:57:39.760 much of the look it there are hardly any missing children from these schools

00:57:49.720 where these children are buried are in the archives there are no parents looking for

00:57:58.560 children no named parents looking for named children who never came home from the schools

00:58:06.300 not one how could that be so where where are these archives kept then is this in ottawa somewhere

00:58:15.500 they're in ottawa they're online there's tons of stuff some of them are in provincial archives

00:58:21.820 some of them are in church archives uh they're all over the place but they're slowly being gathered

00:58:28.780 and analyzed. The people who have access to most of this data are, as I said, the National Center

00:58:36.300 for Truth and Reconciliation, but they're keeping their cards pretty close to their chest.

00:58:42.460 We have to ask what the motive is. We have to look at the big picture in this regard.

00:58:47.740 What is the function of all of this? Is it to really help Indigenous people? Or is it to

00:58:54.620 satisfy the greed of a small number of people it's not that small in fact of a number of people

00:59:01.580 who've repeatedly been called even by the Toronto Star many years ago the Indian industry a an

00:59:10.060 informal coalition of lawyers activists advisors researchers journalists politicians Indian leaders

00:59:24.620 et cetera, et cetera, who are benefiting from the, from the existing narrative.

00:59:31.460 Yeah.

00:59:31.580 I recall a book, I believe it was called First Nations Second Thoughts.

00:59:34.700 It came out a while back and they went extensively into what they, they called it

00:59:37.760 that time, the Indian industry as well.

00:59:39.480 But it's true there, there is a lot of people who make a very healthy living out

00:59:43.620 of the status quo and in just constantly seeking more and more settlements,

00:59:47.960 more and more compensation, every one of these bureaucrats and lawyers who get in 0.51

00:59:51.500 between, they make sure to get their cut before it even gets to.

00:59:54.500 whoever they're ostensibly speaking for and they have a very strong motivation to make sure to

00:59:59.520 keep things as negative as possible. The National Center for Truth and Reconciliation has over 20

01:00:07.840 full-time employees. On the other hand, one member of this informal group I'm associated,

01:00:16.220 One lone researcher, unpaid, has collected better hard data than they are releasing to the public on the existence of these missing children and showing that they're not missing at all.

01:00:31.700 finding birth certificates for them. I'm sorry, death certificates, finding places where they

01:00:37.580 were buried, and none of them buried in these unknown graveyards in the middle of the night.

01:00:44.740 Nearly all of them buried in the cemeteries on their home reserves.

01:00:51.700 Yeah, there's been a lot of anecdotes that are taken into evidence rather than

01:00:55.480 actual documents when it comes to a lot of the hearings and reconciliation, things such as that.

01:01:01.040 And anecdotal evidence is, unfortunately, I mean, it can certainly be truthful, but it can be very weak as well.

01:01:08.980 The main battle here is between, in terms of the search for truth, is between truth based on emotion and truth based on facts, analysis, and logic.

01:01:27.480 Yes, well, and emotion, unfortunately, is always true.

01:01:31.020 ruling emotion is ruling the day yes and there's so much anger i mean there's this constant state

01:01:36.860 of apology and and uh you know self-humbling again isn't helping it's not bringing anybody

01:01:42.900 together the first nations communities don't seem to be any better off or functional for this this

01:01:47.940 trend lately it's not not a good direction we're moving in i would suggest they're worse off for

01:01:53.300 all of the monies that have been coming in most of it siphoned off by the indianist industry which

01:02:01.220 is not these days uh given a more politically correct term as the aboriginal industry uh but

01:02:08.580 it's all in one in the same uh i wonder if i can i can bore you for a second with a very important

01:02:15.620 list with all the money that's been coming in the billions of dollars here i have to read a little

01:02:21.220 bit because there's too many for me to remember the indigenous people on and off reserve exhibit

01:02:29.940 the highest rates of the following features criminal behavior and incarceration they have

01:02:36.260 the lowest incomes compared to all other canadians the highest rates of unemployment

01:02:42.180 not a non-working population the highest rates of poverty uh the highest welfare dependency and

01:02:49.220 homelessness rates, the most inferior housing, the highest rates of infant mortality, the lowest life

01:02:57.060 expectancy, the highest rates of disease and illness, the highest school dropout rates,

01:03:02.900 the highest rates of child apprehension, fostering and adoption, the highest levels of suicide,

01:03:09.620 the highest rates of sexual abuse, and the highest rates of single motherhood,

01:03:14.980 and the highest rates of murdered and missing women. That's a tragedy. 500 years of contact

01:03:24.740 and Indigenous people are the worst off of Canadians. Yet billions of dollars have been 1.00

01:03:31.700 spent allegedly to improve their life chances. Where's the money going? Why haven't their life

01:03:38.100 chances been improved more than they have? Maybe it's because what has been done is to reinforce

01:03:44.180 the dependency of indigenous people because dependency intergenerational welfare dependency

01:03:52.420 in particular lies at the root of all these adversities i just listed yeah it's been a

01:03:59.060 frustration i wrote on that in the past myself actually because i worked in the oil field for

01:04:03.460 a long time spent a lot of time on or near isolated uh indigenous reserves and and the

01:04:08.740 standard of living by every measure unfortunately was terrible and I mean how can somebody spend

01:04:14.260 time on those areas and I spent you know a couple of decades in that industry and see how it's

01:04:18.500 degrading and it's getting worse and point to it and say it's sustainable how can you look at that

01:04:22.980 and say the reserve system this isolation based on race this this segregation is working and the

01:04:28.900 people losing the most are the poor people living on these reserves that they're having a terrible

01:04:33.780 time we need a change in direction this change of direction unfortunately is will be very difficult

01:04:44.260 to enact because of constitutional reasons the embedding of uh treaty rights treaty rights in

01:04:51.620 the constitution the indian act and many other uh legal phenomena decisions of judges going well

01:05:01.060 beyond what the law says, and so forth. It's making it very difficult to turn the situation

01:05:07.340 around. Indigenous people have the right that all Canadians have to protect, preserve, and enhance

01:05:16.520 their heritage, regardless of where they come. Normally, in the past, that has been a private

01:05:23.840 a private issue between individuals and their community. The former Trudeau changed all that

01:05:31.920 with his policy of multiculturalism, official multiculturalism, throwing a lot of money at

01:05:39.280 ethnic communities. But the people who have been left off worse by that policy have been indigenous 0.95

01:05:46.320 people. Yes, it's just not a good end. It doesn't seem to be getting better. Something else you've

01:05:52.240 done you'd written an open letter uh for the pope he's going to be coming to visit at some point

01:05:57.200 i'm not sure if he's going to come to visit uh there's talk about that but uh six bishops

01:06:04.160 are part of a delegation which also includes indigenous people and other persons they're

01:06:10.720 going to rome next week to meet with the pope to discuss the some of the issues we've been talking

01:06:15.280 about here, and in particular, to appeal to the Pope, at least the Indigenous part of the

01:06:22.240 delegation will be asking the Pope to come to Canada and make an official apology, which the

01:06:28.100 bishops have already done last year, a very fulsome apology. I don't know what's going to

01:06:35.920 come out of it. One ingredient of the apology is basically to apologize for converting Indigenous 1.00

01:06:43.960 people to christianity or asking them to convert which it to me

01:06:53.080 is beyond any comprehension my comprehension anyway how can a church say we're sorry

01:07:01.080 for telling you to accept our beliefs

01:07:05.080 well it's it's it's been the nature of churches for a long time i mean i'm gonna

01:07:09.560 go out on a limb and assume that you're not Catholic. The Catholics had been pretty strong

01:07:16.200 armed in their attempts to convert people historically over hundreds of years, but

01:07:20.360 those times have stopped. That is the basis of a religion, though, if a person's a true adherent,

01:07:25.560 is you want everybody else to come on board at one point or another.

01:07:29.320 Well, Catholicism, Christianity generally, has not been strong-armed people like some other

01:07:36.840 religions we know about. Nobody will say, you know, accept, do this or you'll be subject to a 0.89

01:07:44.040 beheading. It's always been voluntary, it has to be heartfelt. The children who went to these schools

01:07:51.800 went to schools that their parents belonged to because the Catholics were here with the very 1.00

01:07:58.600 first explorers, the very first traders, their very first merchants. The Catholics are there

01:08:05.240 in the front lines and people accepted christianity all through the new world with some

01:08:13.000 notable exceptions here and there but it was accepted so by the time children were ready to

01:08:18.680 go to this to school they had already been baptized so people saying you know they were

01:08:24.280 forced to accept catholicism or anglicanism or whatever is absolutely false they went to the 0.80

01:08:30.520 schools parents sent your kids to the schools that they belong to yeah and then the religion

01:08:38.040 i mean religious groups were a large part of what what settled the west initially or helped i mean

01:08:42.760 they ran institutions that now we consider traditionally to be government run but i grew

01:08:46.920 up in in banff for example and the mineral springs hospital was still actually uh managed by nuns at

01:08:51.880 that point back in the 70s uh because initially a lot of hospital schools these were things that

01:08:57.160 actually the religious organizations contributed to more than government it wasn't unique just to

01:09:02.520 first nations reserves the catholic church is the largest educator in the world today

01:09:10.840 and it also still has hospitals today it's a medical treatment all over the world

01:09:18.840 yeah so i mean it's uh we got a lot of fingers pointing on a lot of things unfortunately if we

01:09:23.720 are going to talk about truth and reconciliation. Unfortunately, we've been kind of lacking a lot

01:09:27.880 on both. So there's a lot of work to do, a lot more statistics to be dug into and looked at.

01:09:35.560 Where can we find more information on your work? I see you had a Substack account?

01:09:40.360 Yes, I have a Substack account. If you look on Substack and just look for the real

01:09:49.640 indian residential schools newsletter you'll find it or also at hymie.substack.com

01:10:02.760 great well there's only it's a big issue and i appreciate you coming on to talk with us a bit

01:10:06.760 about it today i know in 15 20 minutes there's still only so much we can hit uh perhaps we can

01:10:11.240 talk again further down the road i mean this is still developing and we're still learning

01:10:14.920 and people are still as you said letting emotion dominate uh statistical realities right now

01:10:20.360 so uh well i just uh thank you again mr rubenstein for coming on anything else you'd

01:10:25.240 like to add before going i'm just that this is still an open question it is not we do not have

01:10:31.480 the full answer to what happened at the indian residential schools and we should keep an open

01:10:37.800 mind about it until we get sufficient evidence to make a better decision that has been made

01:10:45.240 so far particularly by the federal government on our behalf all right well thank you very much and

01:10:53.240 you have a good day out there in manitoba and hopefully we'll talk again soon thank you for

01:10:58.040 having me on hey thanks so yes that was a he's a retired professor of anthropology jaime rubinstein

01:11:05.000 he's uh out in manitoba where he was at a university and as you can see he may be

01:11:09.880 retired as a professor but he's still very very active and and busy and digging into these uh

01:11:16.040 statistics and i see i was under a bit of a uh misconception as well i i didn't realize there

01:11:21.880 were quite i knew there were records but i didn't realize they were perhaps quite as as prevalent

01:11:25.880 and and uh able to be found as there are you know so there's archives there's uh church records

01:11:32.120 things like that. Perhaps not all of them are being forthright in sharing them, but we know

01:11:37.400 they're there, then we should be digging into them. I mean, things that have been done wrong,

01:11:40.800 we know that, but let's get the truth of it out there. Let's find out what exactly was done wrong.

01:11:44.780 What was done where? I mean, as he said, emotion is overwhelming things. I mean, some of these

01:11:49.020 things are horrifying to conceive of. I mean, when we see the imagery from mainstream media,

01:11:53.300 we see things like, you know, an unmarked possible cemetery, and we try to put our mind into at least

01:11:59.660 what we're being told of uh children being taken and and then passing away while in a school and

01:12:05.360 you never get the the body returned but do we know that that's exactly what happened in each case like

01:12:09.960 we need to investigate we need to see what happened with these a lot of those cases we're finding out

01:12:14.040 that wasn't the case these were long known cemeteries these were cases again of people call

01:12:20.020 them mass graves they weren't uh this was also a period of time when spanish flu was going through

01:12:26.040 these schools uh tuberculosis is going through these schools uh you know native or not there's

01:12:32.840 some some terrible things people could suffer and pass away with and again it's not to say some

01:12:37.000 things in those schools were all great um we know outside of indigenous schools some some religious

01:12:42.280 based schools that abuse students terribly that that were seen you know in newfoundland and a

01:12:47.080 great number of other areas the bottom line is we need the facts we need to dig in and find out

01:12:52.200 exactly what happened because that's the only way we can learn from it, prevent it, and again,

01:12:57.460 reconcile, try to make up for it. But it's this constant state of mourning and rage isn't serving

01:13:02.920 anybody and it's not making anything any better. I'm going to take another quick ad break before

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01:14:51.760 All right, what else have we got hit in the news? You know, Melanie covered a few of those things.

01:14:56.180 Yeah, I mean, some of the hearings talking about, I mean, if we want to talk about the

01:14:59.280 residential school hindsight and looking into things and studying them,

01:15:04.020 also the investigation more contemporary if we're looking in hindsight is with all of the COVID

01:15:09.820 policies over this last two years and plus you know leading up to and including the invocation

01:15:15.100 of the emergencies act that as we can see our european counterparts realized that it was

01:15:19.340 ludicrous and a terrible violation of civil rights but a lot of canadians haven't figured it out yet

01:15:25.020 and now we're seeing some of the things in commons committees that are coming forward

01:15:29.180 and this was a very interesting one saying there's a limited scientific justification for universal

01:15:34.140 vaccine mandates and that's two medical experts told the public uh the the commons health committee

01:15:39.820 And the Prime Minister's dismissal of unvaccinated Canadians as racist fringe group was uniquely unhelpful, said the president of one medical association.

01:15:49.000 He said it was a uniquely unhelpful thing the Prime Minister did when he said that.

01:15:53.680 And that was Dr. David Jacobs.

01:15:55.200 David Jacobs is actually very outspoken on Twitter and online, by the way.

01:16:00.140 If you look him up, he's very good to listen to and he's interesting.

01:16:03.260 And he wasn't one who, he was very pro-vaccination.

01:16:06.820 He worked in the hospital.

01:16:08.300 he was dealing with a lot of work he posted on twitter a lot you know showing the x-rays of

01:16:12.800 people with their lungs when they were infected with covid some of the people were suffering badly

01:16:16.640 but he was opposed to the mandates he's just looking at it from as a medical professional

01:16:21.320 and he's the president of the ontario association of radiologists and he said it was politically

01:16:26.160 driven it didn't help anyone in the health care industry it did not convince anyone to change

01:16:31.100 their mind this is the sort of stuff we need to follow up on the near from the real professionals

01:16:35.860 the real ones. And if you look back on his tweet lines, like I said, he wasn't some

01:16:39.140 anti-vaccination sort or anything like that, but he was a professional working in the health

01:16:44.840 industry, watching and observing. And all he wants is patients to be better as much as possible.

01:16:50.500 He wanted people to be vaccinated, but he didn't feel having our idiot prime minister calling 0.99

01:16:54.680 people who chose not to be vaccinated racists and extremists. As a doctor, he didn't see how that is 1.00

01:17:00.620 helping get people vaccinated. And of course it isn't. I mean, if you're hesitant on something

01:17:05.900 and somebody gets in your face and insults you, does that make you more likely to do what they're

01:17:10.440 asking? And you know, this is me. I'm a stubborn, crabby bugger. That makes me dig my feet in.

01:17:15.520 That just makes me worse. So if you really actually wanted to get people vaccinated,

01:17:20.120 you have to reason with them. You have to ask them. And of course, you never,

01:17:23.420 never have to force them. And these are the things we are following up on now. You know,

01:17:28.660 we were never 100% forcing people to get vaccinated in Canada, but we were coercing them heavily,

01:17:35.320 strongly, still are with some. There's still some people unemployed, still some people who can't

01:17:39.300 travel, still some people who can't cross the border because of these vaccine mandates. And

01:17:44.800 it's not making anybody any healthier. It's just dividing us and harming us. And how can you sit

01:17:51.520 and say we had a free and democratic society when we're talking about something as intrusive as

01:17:57.640 putting a needle into somebody's arm and injecting something. I know it stirs up a few of yous every

01:18:02.180 time I talk about it. I'm pro-vaccine. I got vaccinated. I might even get my booster yet.

01:18:07.080 That's my choice. The main thing is it has to be a choice. And when you take a person's ability to

01:18:13.860 work away, when you take away their ability to move and travel, when you demonize them,

01:18:18.800 you split up their families, you get them fighting with each other, you call them these things. Is

01:18:24.540 this not this you're getting this close to forcing them and it's extremely strong coercion

01:18:31.240 and that is very very troubling this is not uh the way a government should be going so we're

01:18:39.260 hearing that in these committees the committees are following up you know maybe that's why

01:18:42.900 Justin Trudeau thought it'd be a smarter idea to go off and hide in Europe right now because he

01:18:47.080 doesn't want to deal with all of these follow-ups in these committees as they're realizing that his

01:18:51.780 government has been horrible throughout this entire thing. But it didn't help him any going

01:18:57.760 over there either, because the European Union politicians aren't fools, whilst our Prime 0.95

01:19:03.300 Minister is, unfortunately. And we're starting to really see in hindsight what's gone on with a lot

01:19:09.040 of these things. Plus, you know, a lot of the justifications, as we mentioned the other day,

01:19:12.980 that fake arson story that was attributed to the convoyers in Ottawa, media members were tweeting

01:19:18.600 that. Others were going on about it. Complete baloney. It was complete BS. It had nothing to

01:19:23.480 do with the convoy. Sounds like it was one lone idiot. And the details of the story totally stunk. 1.00

01:19:28.800 But we're finding this out after the fact. After the fact. We should have found these out during

01:19:34.340 the fact. But it's still better to go into hindsight, dig into these things and find out

01:19:38.680 what's happening. On a semi-good news story, Union Unifor President Jerry Diaz, former Unifor

01:19:44.780 Unifor president. And that's a big union. That's the union that actually covers a whole lot of

01:19:50.280 journalists and such. And they stink. And he was the founding president. It sounds like he accepted 0.99

01:19:56.760 a secret $50,000 commission from a COVID supplier whose test kits he promoted to employers and union

01:20:02.980 executives. He just suddenly quit as the head of the union recently. I suspect this might have

01:20:08.820 something to do with it. So it's funny because his last appearance at a parliamentary committee,

01:20:14.080 he was going on about the lack of corporate ethics in Canada. He says, we love this union,

01:20:18.820 you know, or this is what the treasurer said. It's their life's work. And they are following

01:20:25.680 up on this, of course. The hypocrisy, but unions and hypocrisy very often go hand in hand. So he 0.92

01:20:32.220 resigned Mr. Diaz suddenly March 11th. It looked good on him. He claimed medical leave at first,

01:20:38.540 but obviously there's much more to the story. It sounds like he ruptured his wallet. And with

01:20:44.060 union dues. So look for the union label, guys. Yeah, those dues you put in there, which in

01:20:49.040 Alberta is mandatory. Your dues will go to the Alberta Federation of Labor to a degree, and

01:20:53.720 they'll end up in the NDP's pockets because the NDP is constitutionally tied to the Alberta

01:20:59.100 Federation of Labor. Just that reminder for you. And that reminder when we talk about Rachel

01:21:03.080 Notley's NDP, the NDP, if you read into political wonky stuff, they're unique among parties in that

01:21:08.860 they're formally tied. The provincial one and the federal one, it's all one party. They aren't

01:21:12.800 separate ones. You can't just buy a membership for the Alberta NDP and not be a member of Jagmeet's

01:21:17.240 party. No, it's all one. Once you buy one, you're a member of all of them. And in their constitution,

01:21:22.040 if there's ever a dispute over policy, the federal NDP wins. They override the provincial one. So the

01:21:29.680 provincial ones are supposed to be independent and they are nominally, but if it ever comes to

01:21:33.380 a dispute between the two, say over pipeline, carbon tax, the federal one can override the

01:21:39.400 provincial one. So keep that in mind when people are considering Rachel Notley as a premier again.

01:21:43.860 You'll get more Jerry Diaz types, more Gil McCowan types, and you'll also be getting more Jagmeet 1.00

01:21:51.560 Singh types because he has the authority over her constitutionally. You can look it up. They go wild 0.98

01:21:57.740 every time I bring that up on Twitter or elsewhere because they don't like people knowing that.

01:22:01.860 But you see, they're a socialist party. Socialism is all about central leadership, not diverse

01:22:06.720 regional leadership. It's all about command and control in the center. Moscow, Cuba. You don't

01:22:14.080 let diverse views go outside. So no, provincial wings of the NDP, that's all they are, is wings

01:22:19.440 of the federal party. In Canada, if you're a member of the conservatives provincially, it's

01:22:25.360 totally separate from the federal party. I mean, there's a lot of people who hold memberships in

01:22:28.800 both, but they are not formally tied. The NDP are. So I just like to periodically remind people of

01:22:34.320 of those things. And again, still, as Nico pulled up, there's still no rules out for Kenny's

01:22:39.300 leadership review. We're watching with that. Speaking of incompetence and interplay and such,

01:22:44.160 as much as I'm firing my shots at the unions and the NDP, the UCP hasn't exactly been performing in

01:22:51.520 a very admirable and up and up sort of way lately as well as we just got this gong show going on

01:22:58.060 with the review that's pending for who knows when. They're changing the rules faster than we can

01:23:04.100 keep up with right now. So we're going to be watching that. We're going to be reporting on

01:23:08.780 it as fast and as hard as we can. And as I said, you know, and Danielle was on earlier,

01:23:13.740 this is mail-in ballot systems have been used in Alberta not too long ago. Both Danielle and I

01:23:18.380 were very immersed in that nightmare. And that was a much smaller logistical sort of endeavor

01:23:23.760 that we had to do with only 11 or 12,000, including my wife, Jane. She was the executive

01:23:29.360 director back then. Uh, okay. We're thinking as many as 40,000 conservative memberships that

01:23:35.940 might qualify now. And this is, I don't know. I just, they still managed to take the words out

01:23:42.200 of my mouth now. And then as you guys know, as well as anybody, it's rare that my mouth is empty

01:23:46.760 of words. So, uh, let's see, I'm going to get set up for tomorrow. And of course we'll have more to

01:23:51.800 report. We'll see what happens, which there's going to be a press conference, I believe with

01:23:55.020 some constituency associations. I suspect we're going to see more MLAs coming out. Jason Steffen

01:23:59.840 came right out and called for Kenny's resignation. I think we're going to see more of that as

01:24:03.860 everything swirls. It's just a hornet's nest right now. I'm going to introduce you to

01:24:08.080 Western Standards, new Saskatchewan reporter, Christopher Oldcorn. That's going to be a good

01:24:15.620 conversation. It's great. As we've said many a time, we're expanding. We're doing really well

01:24:20.040 and we're getting new journalists all over the country. And Saskatchewan, we've got some folks

01:24:24.960 out there, but we haven't covered them quite as well as we should. Well, now that's changed.

01:24:29.140 We've got Christopher Oldcorn down there on the ground and he's going to be putting out a lot of

01:24:32.600 great news copies. So we're going to talk to him tomorrow on the show.

01:24:36.640 And after that, I will talk to Tom Braid. People in Edmonton might be familiar with him. He's a

01:24:41.940 journalist and a photojournalist on a number of things. And he started a whole new initiative

01:24:46.140 actually to battle cancel culture. He's actually looking to push back on them. Maybe I'll leave

01:24:52.280 with one more note on it with our counterpart in Edmonton, Mr. Ryan Jesperson, who I've been

01:24:56.680 watching with what's going on with that whole chamazel up there fighting within themselves.

01:25:02.800 He showed up, surfaced, threw out a quick tweet, and I'm paraphrasing. I can't remember exactly

01:25:07.300 what the words were, but he was saying along the lines of recalibrating the show, I think,

01:25:11.100 or something like that, just saying to people, hang tough, we're recalibrating, and we're taking

01:25:14.460 a vacation. We'll be back. And the first thing is some people come tweeting back at him. Oh,

01:25:18.900 I'm so disappointed. Recalibrating, you should be rebuilding relationships in this and that.

01:25:22.520 You've learned nothing. As much as he's apologized, as much as he dynamited his own show that he's

01:25:27.580 put a year into trying to build, as much as he's been groveling, the swarm is after him. They smell

01:25:34.360 blood. His apologies empowered them. And nothing he says will ever be enough. We saw that right

01:25:40.260 there. A simple tweet. First thing he said since his show imploded last Friday. And that's how his

01:25:46.120 following comes back at them. They are an angry little swarm of hornets, though he did build that

01:25:51.540 nest. So there's still only so much sympathy you can give him. But it shows the ugliness, the mob

01:25:56.800 mentality, the swarming of the cancel culture. I mean, these were guys that liked each other.

01:26:02.060 These were guys that, you know, felt they were on the same team. And this is what happens. They

01:26:07.680 turn on them and eat their own so fast and so unforgivingly. You know, it's brutal. And I

01:26:14.740 almost, almost feel sorry for Jesperson if he hadn't participated in cancel culture so much

01:26:19.560 himself prior. And in that case, you kind of reap a bit of what you sow. But it's an ugly

01:26:24.960 circumstance to watch. So we'll keep updating on that and many, many more things. Thank you all

01:26:29.960 for tuning in today. I think that was a really good show, a really full one. And I will see you

01:26:33.780 all tomorrow morning at 1130.

01:26:44.740 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 25, 2022

LIVE - Triggered： Is the UCP rigging the review？

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