Western Standard - Marcel Latouche on 2020 and what we can look forward to in 2021

00:00:00.000 Hey, well, I'm sitting today with Marcel Latouche. She's the head of the Institute for Public Sector

00:00:06.960 Accountability and the author of a number of books, including Take Back City Hall and Leadership,

00:00:12.540 collaboration in the 21st century. So Marcel likes taking on large, overwhelming, difficult issues

00:00:20.700 such as City Hall and leadership within Canada. So Marcel, it's been quite a year in 2021,

00:00:29.420 and we've got so many challenges in governance and leadership at every level. Maybe give a

00:00:35.200 rundown on what we've dealt with this year before we work on what we're going to try to deal with next

00:00:39.140 year. Well, let's start with the federal government, for instance. I mean, you know, I believe that

00:00:47.040 Trudeau is an imbecile and he's appointed people around him who are greater idiots than he is.

00:00:55.260 The Liberal Party has got a major problem when you have a former drama teacher, and now we have a

00:01:02.800 finance minister who was a media financial reporter. I mean, coming from a background of finance and

00:01:09.760 economics, I just cannot see how this country is going to get better. He has used COVID-19, which

00:01:17.440 is a tragedy, a pandemic that came from China, friends of Trudeau, by the way. He has continuously

00:01:26.280 refused to condemn China. We have two Michaels in China for the past two years, and none of his

00:01:38.840 diplomatic virtues has been able to do anything for these two guys. In the meantime, he's positioning

00:01:46.400 himself to have a reset, a reset that nobody in the public understands, but some of us understand

00:01:54.220 that it is going to be a path towards amazing, disturbing socialist policies based on the ideology

00:02:05.120 of globalism and wealth redistribution. I mean, COVID-19, for instance, has been a mess, as managed

00:02:18.620 by Trudeau. Don't forget, we keep telling us that we should be believing in science and, of course,

00:02:27.200 relying on science. But politicians have not relied on science. They've just used the proverbial

00:02:35.520 cover-your-ass policies. I can understand them. I can understand that they don't want to be wrong

00:02:42.640 and create a problem. But be careful what you do. For instance, let's start with Serb, for instance.

00:02:49.400 The money was given. It's a good idea to help people financially. But what has happened is we've never

00:02:56.560 thought this through very well. We've had people who should never have got the money who've got the

00:03:02.800 money. And now what happens is, oh, these poor people are going to have to return the money.

00:03:08.480 This is bad management again. You know, if you continue to start doing things in the sense of

00:03:16.080 ideology instead of doing things that are going to be good for the people, we're going to be in trouble.

00:03:23.520 So that's the sort of thing that we are getting to the point of where this liberal federal government

00:03:30.240 is going to take us. And it's very scary. We cannot just borrow, borrow money all the time,

00:03:37.360 and then people who don't understand just say, oh, it's going to be our grandchildren who are going to

00:03:43.360 pay for it. Not really. We are going to pay for it immediately within the next year or so. A carbon tax,

00:03:51.440 which does nothing for the climate, is going to be imposed once again. And this is going to be

00:03:57.680 attacking the West, most clearly Alberta. So this is where we are at with the federal government.

00:04:11.360 Okay. Well, let's move down to provincially. Alberta's got a lot of challenges. We've got a

00:04:16.320 hostile federal government. We've got the pandemic as well to deal with. And we do have Jason Kenney,

00:04:23.040 who seems to have been trying to protect business as much as possible, but still the actions and

00:04:29.920 regulations and restrictions are still locking us down. What can he, what has he done and what can he do?

00:04:37.520 Well, once again, I mean, it's extremely difficult for politicians of either stripe to make decisions

00:04:46.800 that are going to be acceptable to everybody. The pandemic is here. What worries me is the lack of

00:04:56.640 information that we get. People just get information about the number of cases. Sure, the number of cases

00:05:04.080 rises rises when you have an increase in testing. I mean, for instance, there are many doctors who are

00:05:11.200 now saying that a rise in cases does not necessarily means a rise in mortality. So put yourself in the

00:05:21.680 place of politicians like, like Jason, who has struggled in protecting the rights of people,

00:05:31.680 the rights of association and the freedoms based on our constitution. But by the same token,

00:05:39.120 he's had to fight a number of fronts. The health profession, the medical profession,

00:05:49.120 who are on the other side saying you should close down everything. But then we make decisions that are

00:05:56.640 totally contrary to what we are supposed to be doing. How, for instance, I'm an athlete. I've been an athlete

00:06:04.400 all my life. I still play competitively. The problem is, how can you say that we are going to have

00:06:12.080 a junior tournament in a bubble, but we cannot allow people to have parents at home?

00:06:23.120 We say that we can have Costco, Walmart and the big places and the big stores open. Granted, they are

00:06:32.320 essential for us to get our food, our consumer goods. It's fine. But then on the other side, you say,

00:06:39.520 well, a restaurant cannot be open. Why is it that a restaurant cannot be open with limited seating?

00:06:47.600 I mean, this is ridiculous. You have been in this industry. It's one of the most difficult industries

00:06:56.000 that exist, the restaurant business. You have to buy your food, you have to buy your ingredients.

00:07:04.560 And then what do you do? You close them down, it gets lost. This is a very, very difficult industry.

00:07:12.240 And in my view, they have been the ones who have been the most affected by different policies.

00:07:19.200 And it is totally wrong to start giving money the way that we've been dishing out money, taxpayers'

00:07:26.480 money, by the way, in a way that the small businesses have not been given the fair due that they should be getting.

00:07:37.680 The federal government gave rent assistance, but they gave it to the landlord. If the landlord doesn't

00:07:44.000 pass it to the renter, what is going to happen? The renter is going to go bankrupt anyway.

00:07:49.680 These are the sort of things that we should have been looking at. As far as Alberta is concerned,

00:07:56.000 what is going on now? They say there's an increase in ICU and so on and so forth.

00:08:02.000 I am not a medical expert. I just look at things in a strategic way. What we should have done is,

00:08:08.880 instead of building those so-called portable hospitals, we should have done it a long time ago.

00:08:16.080 This is a pandemic. People should have been isolated. Why put them in hospitals unless

00:08:22.800 they are people who are supposed to go to the ICU? People should have been treated in small,

00:08:28.800 portable hospitals all over the place, and they would have been isolated and kept away from the

00:08:35.040 general public in hospitals. But that's my point.

00:08:39.840 A lot of unique lessons this year. We'll have a lot to look back on and what might have worked and

00:08:45.680 whatnot. And then municipally, so we've got Mayor Nenshi, who you've always been quite outspoken on as

00:08:52.000 well. He was one of the pressures, along with Iverson, really pushing on the provincial government,

00:08:57.200 saying, if you don't shut everybody down, we're going to do it on your behalf, which kind of forced

00:09:02.480 the issue. So it's been quite a year in municipal politics beating on Albertans too.

00:09:06.560 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think those two mayors have put a lot of pressure on Jason

00:09:13.040 Kenney. The problem is these two people are looking over their shoulder because they are

00:09:18.800 going to be out of a job in 2021, at least I hope so. But don't forget they are both liberals,

00:09:24.880 so therefore they are playing the game to get another gig at a higher level once they leave their jobs.

00:09:31.280 Nenshi, unlike Iverson, who has been a little bit more quiet, but Nenshi has got his own PR going on.

00:09:42.000 I mean, he likes to be in front of the camera and everybody will tell you that for the past month or

00:09:47.440 so, he's been on television every day. He has something to say, because don't forget, he's after

00:09:53.520 all the smartest guy in the room. So, of course, so he has to be there every day. He has all the answers.

00:10:01.440 For somebody who cannot have answers for his own city, he's very quick to start telling you what

00:10:08.560 should be done at other levels. The problem with Nenshi right now is that he's taken the little

00:10:14.720 mantle of dictator and interfered with everything. So, he calls a meeting with his council and to ask

00:10:24.560 that the mask bylaw should be imposed until December 2021. December 2021. It's incredible,

00:10:35.280 because now we have a vaccine. Everybody who's in the science are telling you that the vaccine is

00:10:41.600 going to help us or saying that, oh, maybe we are going to go over the hump here. But once again,

00:10:49.440 in a dictatorial way, he gets a bylaw to go in for December 2021. So, we are supposed to be locked up,

00:10:58.080 masked up for a whole year now. There's the real rub here. Nenshi can do this because of the nine

00:11:09.760 other sycophants who continuously support him. This particular bylaw was passed 9-3 because there were

00:11:20.800 other people who were not there. For instance, Jones was not there, I believe, really was not there,

00:11:29.040 and Cully Urquhart was not there, and they didn't vote. So, the vote went down 9-3. So, people should

00:11:36.560 really remember this. 9-3. The only people who did not vote for this bylaw were Farkas, Chu, and Maglioka.

00:11:46.480 So, when we talk about this, and you look about what's happening at City Hall, we have a major

00:11:53.920 problem. Nenshi has got one vote. Without the support of his sycophants, most of the policies

00:12:03.360 cannot pass muster. And we should remember this in 2021. 2021 is going to be a seminal year. I believe

00:12:12.800 it's going to be a watershed year at all three levels of political arena. There's going to be a reset,

00:12:22.160 for sure, at the federal level, with a Biden administration coming in. Our little friend,

00:12:29.360 Mr. Trudeau, is going to have an ally to start doing his globalist kind of issue. And today, I see that

00:12:38.480 the Magdala Lawyer have issued a paper about multi-lateralism. For sure, for us to combat globalism,

00:12:50.320 we need multi-lateralism because there are so many big institutions like the UN, the WHO, and so on and

00:12:58.240 so forth. For us to be able to do that, my point of view is, in the next year, we should start a

00:13:05.680 negotiation with the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the US to form a trade block. Talk about

00:13:17.280 multilateralism. That would be the Western multilateralism block that can stop what is going

00:13:24.720 on today. As far as Alberta is concerned, Jason Kenney will have a year next year to reset, to do things

00:13:36.240 that he was supposed to do, that he was unable to do because of the pandemic. But he must have the courage,

00:13:43.840 in my view, to start doing things in a true, small-c conservative common sense. And what I mean by that

00:13:53.520 is, stop compromising. We cannot compromise any longer with Ottawa, because that has got us nowhere.

00:14:03.760 I always say, and I have written in my books, compromise on process, but never compromise your

00:14:11.520 principles. If Kenny wants to bring back the Alberta advantage, he has to stop compromising any of the

00:14:21.520 conservative principles we have. We must fight Ottawa, because otherwise we are going to have

00:14:28.080 a certain portion of Albertans who are going to start calling again for a major rethink about our position

00:14:37.520 in the confederation. People are going to start talking about separation. Personally, I don't

00:14:43.280 believe in separation, but I believe in talking about separation as a strategy to get what we are

00:14:49.200 supposed to get. And municipal? Well, I'll leave it to Calgarians. We are going to see what happens.

00:14:58.400 We are going to look at a number of candidates. I'm prepared to, you know, start looking at

00:15:04.720 candidates, vetting them, see what they stand for, because we have a number of political action

00:15:11.440 committees coming up. And most of them are being backed by the union's big money. The rules have

00:15:19.360 changed. We are going to have to change ourselves in the way we do politics at the municipal level. Who

00:15:26.640 we support, who we looked at. We must be able to vet these people who call themselves conservatives

00:15:33.440 every time to get elected. And then once they get elected, they act as the biggest liberal there is

00:15:39.760 out there. And we've got to be very, very careful.

00:15:45.760 Well, that's it. And yes, with an election year coming, we kind of keep repeating that same cycle.

00:15:50.880 And hopefully, I mean, maybe something good can come out of tough times and maybe voters will be a

00:15:56.720 little more informed and, you know, looking more carefully on who they choose. Because as you said,

00:16:02.160 with any luck, it could be a watershed year and in a good way. So how can people get involved to

00:16:08.720 improve things in this 2021 year, municipally and so on? And how can they find more information about

00:16:14.080 the work you're doing, Marcel? Well, I mean, you know, we are going to start trying to look at how we are

00:16:21.920 going to do things. On the second week of January, we are looking at a number of things to do here.

00:16:29.360 So by the mid of January, we will have a more, how should I say, concrete and more defined strategy of

00:16:38.800 what we are going to do, how we are going to get involved. It is complex. There are other people

00:16:45.200 who have already started campaigning out there. Some people have announced where they are going.

00:16:50.080 We are going to look at this very seriously. We are going to start interviewing candidates in the

00:16:56.880 new year and finding who they are, making sure they know who they are and making sure certainly

00:17:03.440 that Calvaryans know who they are. Because coming from the background and the work we've done,

00:17:10.320 we know exactly what a conservative should look like and should sound like. We don't want somebody

00:17:15.680 who walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and he's a duck. So we want a conservative who's going to

00:17:21.200 be a conservative and not a so-called conservative who goes and votes as a liberal once he gets in there.

00:17:29.200 There are so many of those. I've been very disappointed about some of them on council today.

00:17:34.720 We supported some of them and they said they were conservative and their vote certainly has not

00:17:41.920 been conservative on issue of taxes. The problem that we have is they go in there and it scratch

00:17:50.240 my back and I scratch yours. There are too many others. This is very simple. Let me give you a

00:17:56.320 little anecdote here. Some years ago, Councillor Cara brought a policy called the Charette. It is a

00:18:04.560 policy whereby you involve the community and so on and so forth. And the council will tell you,

00:18:11.040 oh, we engage. We are always engaged with the people. So they are so engaged that when the people

00:18:16.640 say something, afterwards they don't do anything that people say. By the way, Charette is a word

00:18:24.720 translated in English means cart. And the problem in council is they've been putting the cart before

00:18:32.800 the horse on many issues. They get involved in too many things, things outside of their jurisdiction.

00:18:39.680 And when it matters in their jurisdiction, they cannot make a good decision because you scratch my back

00:18:47.360 and I scratch yours. And we don't want that. People are supposed to get voted in to represent their

00:18:52.560 constituents, not to represent each other, to get big pensions and continue with their big pensions.

00:18:59.360 That is going to be the big issue for 2021 at the municipal level, in my view.

00:19:05.760 Great. Well, thank you very much, Marcel. We'll definitely have to check in with you again

00:19:11.360 into 2021 and then see how things are shaping up within the next couple of months. It's

00:19:15.760 going to be an active year, if nothing else. So thanks again and we'll talk soon.

00:19:22.720 Corey, always a pleasure. Merry Christmas to your listeners and a Happy New Year to us all because

00:19:28.720 we will do the happier year in 2021. Thank you, Corey.

00:19:32.560 Great. Thanks.

00:19:34.560 We'll see you next time.

Western Standard - December 24, 2020

Marcel Latouche on 2020 and what we can look forward to in 2021

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