Western Standard - August 16, 2026


MARTY UP NORTH: Can Ottawa strike a tariff deal in time?


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per minute

170.74

Word count

10,630

Sentence count

200

Harmful content

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 all right welcome back happy thursday what is today the 13th holy
00:00:29.920 smokes august 13th what does that mean about another another two like it feels like just
00:00:35.840 yesterday i was talking about stampede which to me is kind of like the start of summer and now i'm
00:00:39.900 already thinking about the fact that kids are going back to school in a couple of weeks i mean
00:00:44.960 my kids are all grown up but uh wow it's no joke right i mean summer in alberta can last about a
00:00:51.320 month and a half some years and i think this is one of those years something something tells me
00:00:56.040 we're going to have a nasty winter. Just my thought. It's raining today. I think hopefully
00:01:02.520 a lot of people are happy about that. I know there's lots of smoke in the air recently. Good
00:01:07.320 to clear the air. Yesterday we had some sun. You know, thoughts out to the people in BC that are
00:01:15.100 affected by these fires. And I'm going to come back to this, right? I mean, I think I'm going
00:01:19.680 to talk a little bit about forest mismanagement today. But before we get too deep in the show,
00:01:25.500 a reminder right we're trying to turn this into a call-in talk show i got a list of topics maybe
00:01:32.220 i'll i'll quickly give you the topics i'd kind of like to talk about today but really this shows
00:01:37.260 a success when you guys call in john's got the number there on the screen and i think maybe
00:01:43.420 maybe today because it's raining here in calgary and most of the province maybe you guys are stuck
00:01:47.500 indoors at your lunch hour instead of going out for a nice walk so maybe it'll be an opportunity
00:01:51.500 to call me. So what do I want to talk about today? You know, I'll do my usual little monologue.
00:01:59.000 Actually, it's going to be monologue bordering on a rant. But I want to talk about, you know,
00:02:06.020 the looming American tariffs. We had another Liberal MP resign. Interesting circumstances
00:02:15.220 there, perhaps. We got a couple of by-elections, three by-elections coming up later this month
00:02:22.820 across Canada there on, I think it's August 29th is when those are happening. We had a spy,
00:02:31.900 a Canadian spy in Europe, and a few other stories, the foreign students protesting here
00:02:38.800 um and and so forth so uh where to start um let me start with uh let me start with telling you
00:02:46.920 where I went last week because it it helps with uh I I discovered a couple of things right you
00:02:52.360 guys know I love to uh leave and go out in the wilderness the name Marty up north is not a
00:02:58.300 coincidence right it's a it's a moniker that I acquired in my years gone by you know I started
00:03:05.440 my oil and gas career living in fox creek alberta so i lived in fox creek for about six or seven
00:03:11.200 years uh if you don't know where fox creek is you know it's kind of like on the highway between
00:03:16.640 edmonton and grand prairie middle of nowhere and then i did a stint in uh in slave lake fort
00:03:24.560 saskatchewan i lived in burstall for a while so i in fact i'd go from the south and then the company
00:03:30.480 because I worked in the oil patch, it transferred me down south and back up north. But the bulk of
00:03:35.340 my career up north in towns like Grand Prairie, Edson, and Fox Creek, that's where I cut my teeth
00:03:42.960 in the oil patch, spent about 20 years there. That's where I acquired the name Marty Up North,
00:03:46.780 and that's where I discovered my passion for the outdoors. And to this day, I love to just
00:03:54.400 disconnect bugger off and go on long hikes in the wilderness and that's what i did last week
00:04:01.000 so and and and there's a two-parter to this so the first thing i did last week is uh i went back 0.55
00:04:07.820 to my hunting camp my hunting camp is up around grand cache and uh i told you guys i i set up the
00:04:14.380 hunting camp me i've been hunting in this area for 35 years with the same six or seven guys
00:04:19.200 and um nowadays we set up our hunting camp in july so that people family friends can enjoy it
00:04:26.760 over and over throughout the summer and then we go in there finally in september and hunt
00:04:31.380 and the area has been um the target of we we've been really affected by the caribou management
00:04:41.600 plan. So in Alberta, Alberta is forced to address caribou management and to try and protect the
00:04:49.820 caribou. And I say Alberta is forced to do this because caribou protection really is animal
00:04:55.420 protection really is a federal jurisdiction. It's one of those things, right? So Ottawa has
00:05:01.340 signed on to protect caribou. And consequently, Ottawa pushes that down onto the provinces.
00:05:08.340 And then in here in Alberta, they almost hold us hostage with this thing. Right. Protect the caribou, do certain things or risk us coming in, us being Ottawa and designated large tracts of land as national parks and things like that. Right.
00:05:24.540 And you saw Carney this week announce more of that.
00:05:27.800 Funny that Carney's able to announce these things while he's in Italy, right?
00:05:30.500 So he announced more protected lands.
00:05:33.540 It's something called, you know, 30% in 2030.
00:05:36.800 They want to protect 30% more lands, make them federal parks as part of this global agenda.
00:05:45.920 And so Alberta has been trying to comply with this.
00:05:48.620 And I'm hunting in an area that's affected dramatically by this.
00:05:51.880 and they've been in our area rolling over cut lines.
00:05:56.180 So cut lines were lines that were cut a long, long time ago by the oil companies.
00:05:59.940 They were cut.
00:06:00.680 They were used to do some seismic.
00:06:02.780 Some of these lines still exist because they're used to access sites.
00:06:06.160 They become temporary winter roads.
00:06:09.660 Some of the cut lines were used for pipelines and so forth and so forth.
00:06:13.160 And in the area where I hunt, the government estimates is there's a handful of caribou,
00:06:17.220 like about 140 caribou.
00:06:18.580 and they're using our area as a test to um they've been testing for for 40 years now they've been
00:06:27.920 testing all these different methods of protecting the caribou right they've gone from like let's
00:06:33.300 shoot all the wolves from the air to hey let's let the wolves prosper but let's take away the
00:06:38.700 wolf's favorite food so let's kill all the moose because if you know if the moot if the if the 0.99
00:06:43.740 wolves are gone. The caribou will do good. That didn't work. Uh, well, let's kill their favorite 0.73
00:06:48.180 food. So if we kill the, their favorite food, the wolves will leave on their own. Cause, and 1.00
00:06:52.680 they even considered building a pen around this thing, like putting a hundred kilometer by a
00:06:57.180 hundred kilometer fence and, and capturing the caribou holding in an area. Anyways, they've been,
00:07:04.240 uh, we, we, we were consulted and we had, uh, they promised us that they weren't doing this
00:07:10.020 to keep us out that they were doing this to protect the caribou i disagree fundamentally i
00:07:16.340 think their method is flawed but they promised in consultation with us because we've been hunting
00:07:21.460 there a long time and some of my buddies that hunt with us are our treaty indians and our metis and
00:07:27.300 so they were consulted and they promised that they would leave us some cut lines unaffected or what
00:07:32.660 they called a modified treatment and that we'd still be able to use those cut lines to access
00:07:37.460 or hunting grounds well i'll tell you real quick uh i do have my own youtube channel called marty
00:07:44.420 up north it's just one word marty up north so i encourage you to go look at a video that i posted
00:07:48.420 because while i was up there we finally got to go see the these these cut lines and what they did
00:07:54.340 during the winter and i was i was shocked i i i don't know how else to say it it's if they consulted
00:08:02.100 with us and if they had they they they their execution was flawed because the cut lines that
00:08:07.940 were supposed to be left open for us are almost inaccessible me and my buddies we spent hours
00:08:13.620 trying to clear one of these cut lines that were supposedly still left open for us and it took us
00:08:19.940 hours of chainsaw work just to advance a couple of kilometers so um you know it's it's for me
00:08:26.580 For me, it's an example of, and by the way, the government of Alberta is spending $55 million to do this, $55 million to reclaim old cut lines.
00:08:39.840 I'm going to stop now because it's going to make me mad to think about it.
00:08:43.540 So just go and look at that and you'll see it's an example of absolute unnecessary work mismanagement.
00:08:51.280 I think, this is my prediction that I made in my video.
00:08:54.460 my prediction is that when they when they do the next survey of caribou in that area the
00:09:00.480 population will go down and i'll and i'll finish it with this in all my years of hunting caribou
00:09:05.020 in that part of the world i would see caribou a couple of times a year usually in the back
00:09:10.060 country so when i'm deep and i'm hunting for moose or i'm scouting i'd see the odd caribou
00:09:14.620 once in a while last year when they started doing this this reclamation to protect the caribou
00:09:20.760 they confuse the caribou and now all of a sudden last year I was we were seeing caribou I won't
00:09:26.240 say everywhere but I saw more caribou last year than I've seen in a long time but the reason I
00:09:30.900 saw more caribou that I've seen in a long time is because they confuse the caribou by destroying
00:09:34.940 these ancestral cut lines and the caribous are now traveling along the dirt roads and the main
00:09:40.760 pipelines they need to get from their feeding ground to their breeding ground to their
00:09:45.480 to their wintering ground they need to transit they need to move around these lines were part
00:09:51.540 of their landscape right to you and me a cut line might be might look man-made but to a caribou
00:09:56.300 who's the sixth or seventh or eighth generation of an animal that you know these cut lines go
00:10:02.100 back to the 1950s and 60s to to a fifth generation caribou if there's such a thing these cut lines
00:10:08.200 are part of their environment and so uh my prediction now and when the animals like this
00:10:13.000 are suddenly on the dirt roads and places like that they're going to get hunted they're going
00:10:16.440 to get slaughtered accidentally intentionally and my my prediction is that um that will backfire on
00:10:22.940 them so um that's my first rant my second quick little rant is that i uh because i was up north
00:10:31.980 and uh after i went and visited the camp i decided to sneak into uh jasper national park i love
00:10:38.800 you know that's one of the things i love the most is i love hiking and so i uh i went down the old
00:10:45.100 coal spur head down towards uh you know i go to hinton you go to cadaman then you go to mountain
00:10:50.420 park if you can ever tour that part of the world i encourage you to do it the old coal branch it's
00:10:55.400 called like there's a lot of history there a lot of really formidable history of of like that
00:11:00.120 explains the province right um when the railroads were being built it was important to have supplies
00:11:06.460 of coal for the railroad and so these all these little towns existed in the 1930s and 40s just to
00:11:13.500 mine coal and it's like it's a part of our heritage right coal mining is truly a part of
00:11:18.140 of alberta's heritage in fact when you go past cadaman the next abandoned town is called mountain
00:11:26.140 park it doesn't exist anymore but as you go by mountain park there's an old cemetery there very
00:11:32.300 well kept very well kept because um because people people who live there in the 1930s and
00:11:39.500 40s that are dying today still request to be buried in mountain park i follow some some groups
00:11:45.500 on facebook and ever so often you see a story about a really old guy or gal uh passing away
00:11:53.100 and requesting to be buried there so when i drive by there i do my pilgrimage go visit the cemetery
00:11:57.980 But but the point of my story is I snuck into the park and I went into Jasper.
00:12:04.100 And again, when the when I when I go to a place like like that and I see that all these amazing places, all these amazing trails that we used to have in the backcountry are becoming inaccessible.
00:12:20.720 these are trails that i've been trying that i've been walking on for uh for a long time you know
00:12:27.760 25 30 years i've been hiking in this region i get a craving for it and i'll head over the cardinal
00:12:32.800 divide and head into uh you know into the cairn pass area and stuff like that which is what i did
00:12:38.000 last week and it's becoming almost impossible to enter that part of the world because parks
00:12:45.120 canada is not maintaining any kind of trails they're just letting everything uh grow in
00:12:52.640 and become inaccessible for us and and i think that's a shame and um and again i'll say one thing
00:13:02.240 apparently they don't have my i i posted this on x apparently they don't have money to maintain
00:13:06.480 the trails and they make us pay like nine bucks i'm supposed to pay nine bucks for a permit to go
00:13:11.760 stay overnight in the back country. So they collect money from me, but they don't have any
00:13:16.280 money to, uh, maintain the trails. But lo and behold, I show up at one of these remote back
00:13:22.640 country sites and it happened twice. There was a sign that had been nailed to one of the trees
00:13:28.100 and official parks, Canada sign that had been nailed to one of the trees. And it said boil
00:13:32.680 water advisory. I, I, I, I, I was like, wow, they got no money, but they got enough money to fly
00:13:39.640 somebody by helicopter to come and put a boil water advisory at these campsites i i would again
00:13:45.440 i'm almost at a loss for words i have no idea why they would do something that silly sometimes i
00:13:50.820 think they do it simply to antagonize people like me and some of us um who you know i i quite
00:13:59.440 honestly sometimes i imagine that it's a civil servant uh from uh from ottawa who's been transferred
00:14:04.740 to alberta who's managing the parks and he's doing these things by the way actually just
00:14:09.620 just the last thing on that topic all those cut lines i talked about earlier in my hunting area
00:14:14.620 that they damaged uh again just to add insult to injury they did put same thing you can see them
00:14:22.020 along the highway where the cut lines start they put signs that say dangerous or sorry warning
00:14:27.600 uneven terrain ahead like uh add insult to injury insult to injury all right i'll leave it at that
00:14:34.500 Happy to be back. It is still as it's too bad that some of my trips end up frustrating me a little bit.
00:14:41.400 But I'd say overwhelmingly, I still prefer to go out in the wilderness.
00:14:45.480 It's rejuvenating for me. It makes me feel good.
00:14:48.880 And I do realize when I'm doing it that that is one of the agendas.
00:14:52.420 They do not want us in the wilderness.
00:14:54.720 They will they will put aside more land and they'll designate it as parks and they'll make it hard for us to get into those parks
00:15:03.260 because they want us in the cities in their 15 minute cities where they can control us
00:15:08.860 and where we become dependent on the states where we will live in apartments instead of living on
00:15:15.180 land you you've heard this story before and i don't think it's a it's a conspiracy all right
00:15:21.120 so uh come on guys give me a give me a buzz here 8 8 or 8 6 6 4 7 9 9 3 7 8 i mean i know you know
00:15:29.440 can do this i can talk for an hour uh in fact i practice some of my monologues when i'm walking
00:15:34.800 in the wilderness and uh you know i've got to make noise because that's you know if if you don't make
00:15:41.360 noise one of the danger i get asked this all the time are you afraid of bears no i'm not afraid of
00:15:45.760 bears i take precautions like i bring a bear spray and i and i know the environment i look for signs
00:15:50.560 and stuff like that but a bear encounter is a reality and the most likely bear encounter for
00:15:55.920 me in the back country is just the accidental come around the corner on the trail and there's
00:16:01.520 the bear right you just accidentally come around the corner there's noise the bear's eating the
00:16:05.760 water's making noise neither the bear i hear each other and there could be a startling moment
00:16:10.960 i've had many of those over the years they've always turned out okay in every circumstance
00:16:15.440 the bear spooked and turned around i've never had one charge me even though i startled them
00:16:19.920 but uh a good defense i remind myself several times a day a day several times an hour when
00:16:26.080 i'm walking in the wilderness you'll hear me just yell out loud to myself hey bear otherwise i have
00:16:31.780 these monologues sort of like this i talk to myself out loud and i practice ideas it's a it's
00:16:37.040 a crazy thing uh john any any store any i'm just scrolling through anything uh somebody said i saw
00:16:44.940 your video it made me angry and i agree thank you um uh any other good comments here building
00:16:52.620 pipelines my whole life seeing lots of caribou yeah they do exist right and and that's the other
00:16:58.340 thing they exist and i don't see what they're not an endangered species i mean the herd in
00:17:03.180 northwest territories seems to be like hundreds of thousands of individuals strong uh carny can
00:17:10.160 take his 30 land grab and shove it you know where yeah we're not gonna go there i i tend to agree
00:17:16.080 with that uh okay let's move on so i come back out of the wilderness and uh take a day to catch up
00:17:22.720 do my lawn check my tomatoes and then finally i log on to the internet and what are some of the
00:17:29.600 couple of things that show up right away well the title here is uh can ottawa um i'm having a hard
00:17:37.440 time here john said can ottawa strike a tariff deal on time and all right so let's step back
00:17:44.080 you've heard this story before but i'll repeat it right uh donald trump gets elected and donald
00:17:49.680 trump has his own very simple agenda he's gonna do what's good for americans and donald trump has
00:17:55.600 a couple of beefs against canada very reasonable beefs when he gets elected um he does he he
00:18:03.280 doesn't like the trade imbalance which which i donald i'm going to disagree with you on that
00:18:08.080 one i think the trade imbalance is just a fact of life i mean your country is 13 times bigger than
00:18:13.120 ours in terms of an economy so donald has said you know he's equated the trade imbalance as less
00:18:18.720 as us abusing it perhaps i'm sure we've taken advantage of the americans more than they've
00:18:24.160 taken advantage of us but but he's upset about the trade imbalance he's definitely upset about
00:18:28.560 uh canada and many other nations not spending their share on nato defense or u.n spendings or
00:18:37.260 costs like that right so he wants he he he accuses us of taking advantage of him of him and just
00:18:44.200 uh enjoying the protection for divided by the americans which i think is legit right what kind
00:18:48.720 of protections do americans provide i mean if the russians that tried to come over the top of us
00:18:53.920 through the North Pole. Donald Trump would have stopped him on a routine basis. Any Canadian ship
00:19:00.360 that's traveling across the Atlantic or across the Pacific, you know, you cross a ship, a ship in
00:19:05.620 distress in the middle of the ocean, a Canadian ship coming back from Japan or China, bringing
00:19:10.140 goods back to Canada, gets in distress. Who's going to respond? It's the Americans, right?
00:19:14.580 They are, they do that as a favor. And once in a while, I guess Donald was just saying like,
00:19:20.260 hey pay back once in a while so he's upset about the imbalance uh us not meeting our two percent gd
00:19:26.260 or gdp on defense and he's upset about one of the things that was really uh bugged him a lot was the
00:19:33.860 um the the dairy cartel and the poultry cartel so donald trump gets elected starts imposing
00:19:42.420 tariffs start bringing he wants to bring jobs back to uh to the us he's protecting his own interest
00:19:48.580 he's doing what he said he would do and then we we being canadians in general but the liberals are
00:19:55.240 like hey he's attacking us and i've said this before he wasn't attacking us he was doing what's
00:19:59.360 good for them but we got caught off guard and it looked like an attack but in reality it was just
00:20:04.700 a wake-up call and um all right i'll i got a call on the line so i'll finish my story after uh as
00:20:13.520 usual when you call me please uh name where are you calling from what do you want to talk about
00:20:17.560 stay on the line a little bit but sometimes i'll ask you to hang up so we can because we only have
00:20:21.680 one line so go ahead where are you calling from uh good afternoon my name is connie and i'm calling
00:20:28.040 from leduc hi connie how are you i'm pretty good i enjoy listening to you and your shows every week
00:20:35.760 but i just wanted to talk about something a little bit different okay and it's on the carbon capture
00:20:41.920 okay and i had listened to a video that was run about two years ago by robert kennedy on pipeline
00:20:49.140 deception and i just thought you might want to take a listen to it one day on robert kennedy on
00:20:57.360 what sorry what was the topic that robert can robert kennedy on pipeline deception okay and
00:21:05.560 has to do with carbon capture and when things go wrong what can happen where deaths can occur and
00:21:12.920 everything like that it goes back to october of 2024 okay um and i just wanted to bring it
00:21:19.800 to your attention and if you wanted to research it a little bit more and listen to that video
00:21:24.040 that's on youtube and it's very enlightening and i'm just not really for this carbon capture
00:21:29.400 i think it's a waste of money oh it's and i just yeah yeah no uh well if you want to stay on the
00:21:35.800 line stay on the line if not thanks for calling bonnie but no i uh carbon capture is uh you know
00:21:43.560 back to me walking in the forest right i mean when i'm walking in in canadian forest like in
00:21:48.280 northern alberta like most people have no idea just how vast the boreal forest of north america
00:21:56.040 is and most of it is in canada like it's huge and and you go around and you see all this growth and
00:22:01.800 all these trees and what are those trees doing they're capturing carbon and so for for humanity
00:22:07.800 to think for for a small little group of humans to think that we can uh build a facility i don't
00:22:13.720 know where fort saskatchewan or somewhere like that and grab a little bit of carbon that comes
00:22:17.640 off the exhaust of a couple of plants and plants by that i mean manufacturing plants oil plants and
00:22:23.000 and then inject it in the ground, Bonnie, if she's still online, is absolutely right.
00:22:27.440 It's a monumental waste of money.
00:22:31.900 Actually, I am still on the line, but I just wanted you to watch this video.
00:22:35.380 It's not very long.
00:22:36.480 And it talks about it happened in Iowa where some of the carbon capture got released
00:22:41.480 and people died.
00:22:42.920 Oh, for sure.
00:22:43.820 For sure.
00:22:45.080 And vehicles stopped moving.
00:22:48.040 Yeah, because they'd be asphyxiated, right?
00:22:50.200 i mean if if you when you get asphyxiated if i remove the air in the room you'll be asphyxiated
00:22:55.720 but if instead of removing the air i fill it with carbon dioxide it's the same thing it'd be like uh
00:23:01.320 it'd be like putting that turning on your car exhaust in your garage with the door closed you'll
00:23:05.480 asphyxiate yourself in no time so a release from a carbon capture facility could be absolutely
00:23:11.160 devastating anyways it's about a 26 minute video and we watched it and i passed it on to a bunch
00:23:18.600 of friends and i just thought if i brought it to your attention maybe some of your viewers
00:23:22.360 can listen to it and it's it's actually quite enlightening and i just wanted to say i really
00:23:27.480 enjoy your show and keep up the good work thanks for calling bonnie you betcha um bye-bye all right
00:23:33.800 bye-bye um yeah i'll i'll uh i'll go take a look at it and um oh you know that's what this is all
00:23:40.360 about that's the thing we want to do we want to have that dialogue between people and uh we've
00:23:45.080 talked a lot about carbon capture um in alberta here the big carbon capture project is called the
00:23:50.920 pathways alliance and it's one of those things again where actually today it wasn't really on
00:23:56.280 my agenda today i'll save that one for another day i wasn't going to go hard on danielle smith
00:24:00.680 danielle's been kind of quiet there's in there's plenty of other politicians to uh to sort of mock
00:24:05.560 this week but let's go back just to the tariff story so so uh trump got elected and then the
00:24:12.440 Liberals turned him into a boogeyman and and and promoted Mark Carney as the option, the best
00:24:19.000 option to protect Canada against Carney and some of against Trump and Carney's initial promises. 0.96
00:24:26.840 Remember how ridiculous they were? Like he was going to make Canada the best performing economy
00:24:32.840 in the G7. We were going to be sort of the leaders of a new world order. He's going to put us in bed
00:24:39.160 with uh china he's gonna double down on the alliance with europe blah blah blah blah blah
00:24:44.840 and uh trump is just sitting there going all right go ahead keep doing what you want to do and i'll
00:24:50.200 i'll do what i'm doing and so initially trump was limited and trump made his beefs known
00:24:57.000 he made his beefs known oh and there was one other big beef at the beginning right um
00:25:03.400 it was also the fentanyl crisis right let's not really let's not forget that trump was upset that
00:25:08.120 a lot of fentanyl was coming over the border from canada even that one surprised me you know when
00:25:13.880 you look into that one i was like oh that seems a little extreme i had a hard time wrapping my
00:25:17.880 head around the fact that more fentanyl was going into can into the u.s from canada than mexico but
00:25:23.400 it turns out that that's the fact our border is like wide open so uh press forward and and and
00:25:31.000 the those kinds of menaces like trump's beefs were big with canada of course because canada
00:25:36.520 is the US's biggest trading partner.
00:25:39.000 So of course he's got a big beef with us,
00:25:41.160 but he had similar beefs with other countries
00:25:43.380 and most other countries saw what was happening,
00:25:47.320 heard the wake up call, dealt with it,
00:25:50.880 but not Canada and not China, right?
00:25:55.540 And Canada in particular, we doubled down.
00:25:58.180 We like, we'll do our own tariffs.
00:25:59.940 We'll take American booze off the table.
00:26:01.920 We'll do this, we'll do that, right?
00:26:03.260 Who can forget the Doug Ford pouring, you know, Crown Royal on the ground and so forth.
00:26:11.160 And so and and then what were we told by the liberals and the people who elected Mark Carney?
00:26:17.000 We were told that Donald Trump is the biggest existential threat to our existence in like 100 years, right?
00:26:24.820 Not World War Two, not the economic crisis of 2007 or four or all the other crisis, not COVID.
00:26:33.260 none of those things the biggest threat to canada's uh sovereignty ever is donald trump
00:26:39.980 so on a threat like that you think well it should be all hands on board and let's be let's put aside
00:26:46.080 partisan politics and let's form a special committee and let's deal with trump but nope 0.99
00:26:51.260 uh canada doubles down does a couple of stupid things and so it's a back and forth we go into 0.99
00:26:56.780 a full out trade war and predictably we're not going to win a trade war okay we're not going to 0.99
00:27:02.020 win a trade war against the US. And the latest salvo from Donald Trump is that on August 19th,
00:27:08.660 a new round of tariffs, he was limited on the tariffs he could impose on us, by the way.
00:27:14.320 And because of Kuzma, because of the free trade deal and whatnot, right? He couldn't impose
00:27:19.280 too many tariffs. There was already a lot of deals. 70% of the trade we do with the US was
00:27:25.460 protected by the free trade agreement. So his ability to impose tariffs was pretty limited.
00:27:31.580 And I remember, like, like, I'm not saying I told you so, you know, many of us have said the same thing. But I remember saying, just don't retaliate, man, because an American tariff is not a hit on us. It's just going to force us to be more efficient. Anyways, he's hitting us next week with a 50% tariff now on an additional $20 billion worth of trade.
00:27:54.780 so he's hitting things that weren't in there and like he's really squeezing us supposedly this is
00:28:00.920 existential and where's carny like if it's existential with this threat looming you'd
00:28:07.700 think carny would be all over this but carny right now is in italy relaxing and uh he's got
00:28:14.160 his best lieutenants on this i don't know who his best lieutenant is on this can you guys tell me
00:28:18.720 who Carney's second in command is because I like nobody, nobody comes to mind. So we got so. So
00:28:26.180 some people are saying that we're capitulating. We're not capitulating. We're facing reality.
00:28:32.440 And I think the reality is that we better start removing some of the we better start doing some
00:28:39.320 of the things that Trump wants us to do. In fact, we don't have to. And they're simple, right?
00:28:43.180 fix the border stop the the fentanyl going across there's been efforts to do that but
00:28:49.200 you know i haven't heard too much lately i mean there was a sort of a lot of announcements at
00:28:54.120 the beginning right we had the fentanyl czar we bought a couple of black hawk helicopters but
00:28:58.900 i think donald wants something concrete uh increased military spending from two percent to
00:29:04.680 five percent gdp i'm in favor of that i i love our canadian military it used to be a proud
00:29:11.320 institution has been kind of beat up after afghanistan and they needed some rebuilding
00:29:15.640 and the rebuilding to me that was a no-brainer right um we we needed the equipment we needed
00:29:22.800 to buy it what should we have done we should have just gone told somebody in canada here
00:29:27.220 here's a you know here's 20 billion dollars go on a shopping trip head on down to vegas go to the
00:29:32.740 next defense show in vegas buy buy 20 off the shelf f-16s buy 60 000 new rifles buy two frigates
00:29:41.780 buy um i don't know ten thousand a thousand humvees or whatever the heck it is buy a whole
00:29:48.660 bunch of stuff off the shelf from the us quickly make them happy but instead we're increasing our
00:29:55.060 spending the way we've our military spending the way we've always done it which is we study it
00:29:59.940 study it study it study it bid it out bid it out bid it out like you know and then cancel stuff
00:30:06.660 cancel the f-35s don't know they're back on cancel them so we study it to death we make it
00:30:12.080 ridiculously difficult to bid for the jobs and then when it's time to pick a company we do like
00:30:18.080 we just recently did with the submarines and we go buy submarines from germany we don't need
00:30:23.660 submarines or if we needed submarines we should have bought them from the americans fix the bid
00:30:28.280 so that the americans can win it right so so we're not doing the things that donald wants and
00:30:32.860 we're and and then the last one to me i talked about this last week it is such an easy one
00:30:37.200 we should have lifted the that we should have unprotected the dairy cartel we should have said
00:30:44.380 yeah you're right donald um our our our tariffs on milk and and poultry in your country are
00:30:50.760 ridiculous because they're as high as 400 right the other way around and and i think we've been
00:30:55.980 protecting the dairy cartels in this country and i think they would do just fine on their own 0.73
00:31:01.700 without protection but again i'll encourage you to go look at this what was the first what was
00:31:07.620 one of the first bills passed by uh the liberals when they got elected right so they got elected
00:31:14.240 in april of 2029 and the first bill that they passed wasn't even in a fit like the bills bills
00:31:20.660 usually go like when the government presents a bill it goes with a c and a single digit c1 c2 c3
00:31:27.460 c4 c1's always reserved for just it's just sort of a courtesy bill saying kind of like we're
00:31:34.100 opening parliament so then c2 should be the first official bill wasn't c2 that was passed it wasn't
00:31:40.340 a single digit bill the first bill that was passed in the house of commons in the after in the days
00:31:47.060 following uh the election of the liberals was bill c202 which is a member's bill which usually gets
00:31:55.860 a lower priority but c202 is the first one that passed and c202 is was a bill that literally said
00:32:05.780 anybody who negotiates on behalf of canada with the us or with any country cannot give any
00:32:12.740 concessions that involve the dairy cartel so right off the bat anyways a long story short um
00:32:19.460 so here we are existential threat uh coming down the pipe and um carney is nowhere to be seen and
00:32:28.640 i haven't heard anything that's meaningful except a whole bunch of ranting uh doug ford is still
00:32:36.400 looking like a lunatic i think it's only a matter of time now actually what's going to be what's
00:32:40.760 going to be really interesting here is some of my prediction we will concede we have no choice 0.90
00:32:46.080 we will reverse some of these bad ideas we will put american booze back on the table
00:32:51.400 it's it's back on the shelves and liquor stores that's common sense what's going to be really
00:32:57.160 really interesting is watching the mainstream media and the pundits and the and the and the
00:33:02.900 politicians do all sorts of backflips as to why they won't say they won't say that they failed
00:33:09.720 they'll just they'll just make an excuse and my prediction this is my weird prediction but i
00:33:14.060 haven't you know how donald trump or donald trump how doug ford was pouring whiskey on the on the
00:33:19.000 ground which was a bizarre move i have a feeling donald or donald i gotta stop saying that i have
00:33:24.800 a feeling doug ford we're gonna see doug ford in the next month pouring himself an american bourbon
00:33:30.740 on stage and promoting the americans that's my prediction that's that's that's how far crazy
00:33:36.640 we're getting um just staying quickly so come on guys like it it's a rainy day i know you have a
00:33:45.660 day off or not a day off it's lunchtime no it's past lunchtime give me a call folks don't make
00:33:51.760 me do all the talking give me a call 8 8 6 6 4 7 9 9 3 7 8 uh before i keep going let me go let me
00:34:00.640 go check uh any any comments there john actually i got a bunch of i gotta remove things i got too
00:34:08.240 many uh oh i don't want to do that all right good afternoon from tabor oh hey before i go um i
00:34:21.020 forgot about this i started the show something about tabor just made me think about this
00:34:25.460 A couple of big events coming up in Calgary today
00:34:30.420 and this weekend, tonight.
00:34:33.200 If you can, tonight, big news,
00:34:38.060 no, the Alberta Prosperity Project, right?
00:34:40.440 So the Alberta Prosperity Project,
00:34:42.000 the original group that's been around for five years,
00:34:46.500 they're the ones who really started
00:34:47.840 promoting Alberta independence.
00:34:50.020 Alberta Prosperity Project is the education arm.
00:34:55.460 take or um stay free alberta became the the execution arm there that was the the the website
00:35:03.960 that collected the signatures now that the signatures are collected and counted um uh
00:35:10.420 stay free alberta still exists but it went radio silent and now the alberta prosperity project is
00:35:15.980 back as the educational arm and so uh and and that is mitch sylvester and uh jeff rath and several
00:35:23.740 others they're going to be in airdrie tonight i believe it's at 7 p.m i don't know where um
00:35:30.220 you easy to find right go on the internet and look up alberta prosperity project
00:35:35.420 and look up events on the tab or go on it's being talked about it you shouldn't have a hard time
00:35:40.860 finding it and um so mitch is going to be in airdrie tonight at 7 p.m and he's unveiling the um
00:35:49.820 um the proposed constitution what their idea right this is not the constitution actually i
00:35:56.740 shouldn't even say the proposed constitution it's one proposed constitution right because at this
00:36:02.980 point um you know 30 of the people are determined they want out i'm one of those guys i want out i
00:36:08.600 don't care i don't need to know all the details i just want out and i'll figure out the details
00:36:12.160 later 30 of albertans will never leave there they they want to stay in canada this failed experiment
00:36:18.300 and the 30% in the middle want more details.
00:36:20.900 Tonight is an example of details.
00:36:22.400 And there's a second event.
00:36:23.340 But before I go to the second event, go ahead, caller.
00:36:25.980 Where are you calling from and what's on your mind?
00:36:30.320 Hi, Marty.
00:36:32.300 I'm calling from Texas, USA.
00:36:35.000 Wow.
00:36:35.920 Howdy.
00:36:36.560 How are you?
00:36:37.840 How are you all doing?
00:36:38.960 I'm doing good, Marty.
00:36:39.980 Howdy.
00:36:41.320 I've just got a quick question and then I'll hang up and listen.
00:36:44.200 What exactly does the United States actually gain from any negotiations with Canada as far as trade?
00:36:53.840 What do we gain?
00:36:58.300 Yeah, well, okay.
00:37:00.900 Stay on the line.
00:37:01.780 i mean it's like we we
00:37:07.940 you what you guys generally buy from us is a bunch of materials you buy materials
00:37:17.140 and and that and the materials you want you want those materials you want uh you want potash you
00:37:23.380 want uh our oil and our minerals and things like that and in return we we we buy from you guys
00:37:32.180 finished goods that's always been the relationship and and what happened i think in the last many
00:37:39.140 years is that we started competing against you unfairly or taking advantage of you and so we
00:37:45.140 We started having car plants.
00:37:47.420 We started subsidizing and using our tax dollars to attract manufacturers to Canada to compete against you.
00:38:00.120 And that didn't make sense.
00:38:02.000 I didn't think it made sense.
00:38:03.080 And it obviously doesn't make sense.
00:38:04.640 And it aggravated your current president.
00:38:07.760 So we started competing against you unfairly in a sense.
00:38:12.000 and and so that's where the trade agreements are important right like if we have truly free trade
00:38:18.720 one of the things we would do is not subsidize our industries directly to compete against you so
00:38:24.800 i i don't know if that answers it but i mean you know we shouldn't be fighting each other
00:38:29.740 we should be complementing each other and and and uh but unfortunately some of them go ahead
00:38:37.260 you know you're right but you know when you listed those things of what we could get from
00:38:44.700 canada that we want from canada the minerals and stuff those are the oil well it comes from
00:38:52.780 alberta yeah the potash the uranium it comes from saskatchewan largely yep
00:38:58.860 what i mean you know nickel or whatever we might get from ontario or quebec or something like that
00:39:08.320 but i mean other than that kind of things what do we really we get from you we can get nickel
00:39:18.040 from other sources there are other sources of the nickel yeah yeah you're speaking my language i
00:39:22.960 mean uh you're spot on so that's why um if if if alberta the u.s in what you're saying the u.s
00:39:34.980 would almost only trade with alberta and saskatchewan and have almost no trade with the
00:39:39.040 other provinces but unfortunately because of the way we're structured as a confederation
00:39:43.740 ottawa forces limits on us they literally hold out back alberta and saskatchewan and limit us
00:39:52.240 how much trade we can do with the americans in order to force some trade with the other provinces
00:39:57.040 if that makes sense so um it's all convoluted what's that yeah absolutely it's it's the things
00:40:06.880 that can't move from say alberta or saskatchewan you know the minerals but everything else if it's
00:40:15.440 manufacturing we don't need it no we can do that here 100 no no we should that's why ontario is
00:40:27.440 is that such a huh yeah yeah if our two countries were uh more mine if my country was managed by
00:40:34.400 reasonable people because the other thing we've been hit by a dose of ideology we've had we've
00:40:39.200 had lots of people that you know they convinced they convinced themselves especially out east that
00:40:44.400 what we were good at, like producing oil, cutting trees, they somehow or other convince themselves
00:40:50.240 that those were bad, right? Those are bad. And we need to do green stuff, better stuff. You know
00:40:56.080 what I mean? So we convinced ourselves that what we were good at was a bad thing and reality is
00:41:04.880 hitting. And we were managed by immature people and immature politicians who drove their agendas
00:41:13.040 versus dealing with reality reality is we have an amazing partner next door a huge market and you
00:41:19.360 guys want raw goods and we should buy finished goods from you guys and if we if we were if the
00:41:24.880 two sides were managed by really um good people we would all benefit you guys luckily continue
00:41:32.480 to benefit because you're so big we shot ourselves in the foot yeah but you know let's say in an
00:41:40.560 independent alberta if they if it were independent um all it would really need to do to sell its
00:41:49.760 resources elsewhere is the refineries do we find it directly there in alberta you can we find it
00:41:58.960 there yeah there's pros and cons how many refineries does alberta or canada have for that matter as a
00:42:09.200 No, it's got to be sent here pretty much to be refined and sent back.
00:42:17.500 No, we have enough refinery to refine what we need.
00:42:23.240 We make a lot of oil, by the way.
00:42:25.420 Texas makes about 2.5 million barrels a day.
00:42:27.740 We make four, so we make a lot of oil.
00:42:31.600 We keep about 500,000 barrels here that we turn into gasoline for our own consumption,
00:42:37.520 and then we just export oil.
00:42:39.200 you're talking about should we export gasoline that'd be a great market but we just don't at
00:42:43.120 this point i mean i i'm trying to but i'm just yeah i'm just saying like in alberta if it
00:42:50.080 you know wanted to become an independent country it could instead of just exporting you know uh
00:42:58.640 you know because you your oil and whatnot took for refining yeah no no we're on the same page
00:43:07.840 so it could build those refineries locally yeah no where i i'm in agreement but at this point i'm
00:43:15.360 just trying to you know one uh oil is is the building a refinery that's a longer term thing
00:43:22.080 i mean well the refineries are very big very complicated i mean i can get i can barely get a
00:43:27.840 you know a a simple thing built here i'm not even trying to get a refinery built that would be that
00:43:33.040 would make heads spin you know you know what i mean like it takes 10 years to get a permit to
00:43:36.800 build something simple so refineries are off the chart but in the future yes the data center but
00:43:45.040 data centers those are simple things yes yes yeah thanks for the call hope uh hope things are good
00:43:51.360 in texas there cheers no great take care marty take care thank you um hey that's i think the
00:43:58.320 first call i got from the u.s that's awesome uh where was i just oh finishing so that so tonight
00:44:04.320 uh mitch sylvester will be in airdrie unveiling his idea stay free alberta's or not stay free
00:44:11.320 alberta alberta prosperity projects idea for a a constitution for an independent alberta i'll be
00:44:19.080 there tonight because i'm honestly i'm i'm very curious to see what kind of uh document he's
00:44:24.660 proposing uh mitch if you're listening i only have one real big hope i hope that the first three
00:44:30.340 words of your document are we the people i don't think we need to overthink this one just look to
00:44:36.340 the us look at the american constitution uh look at the amendments that they've added to it and i
00:44:42.180 think it's a pretty solid document it's one of the better i can't think of a better constitution in
00:44:47.620 the world than the american one so um if you somehow or other think you can improve on that
00:44:52.420 one kudos but i hope it starts with we the people and then the second event uh along those lines
00:44:59.220 Maybe not so much along those lines, more fun, is the Whistle Stop Cafe, Chris Scott, who has Let's Talk Alberta.
00:45:09.820 That's his third-party advertiser, Chris Scott.
00:45:15.180 Again, if you don't know, I'm sure you know who Chris Scott is, right?
00:45:18.240 Just like Mitch Sylvester, a pretty solid businessman who just wanted to be left alone, wanted to run his little restaurant and gas station out in Amir, Alberta and got all screwed over by our government during COVID and then turned him into a bit of an activist and a person who wants to make change.
00:45:43.140 I love when that happens I love when that happens I love when people get royally pissed off I'm on
00:45:49.500 that fence I'm on that fence right people saw the video of me getting pissed off at the cut lines
00:45:55.040 and stuff and people keep saying like Marty when are you going to run for politics I'm on that
00:45:59.000 fence and so at the whistle stop on Saturday more of a thank you not a campaign event but more of a
00:46:06.700 thank you an afternoon of barbecues and drinking pop and maybe a couple of beers I don't know
00:46:14.320 and some concert and sort of a thank you for people in the movement people thank you for
00:46:20.300 volunteers canvassers and things like that and I'm going to be at that event as well so two
00:46:25.300 two fun events coming I just thought I'd mention that all right well I got the hour just goes by
00:46:32.780 so fast and i have stories here i have so many stories i'm trying to figure out which one i want
00:46:37.000 to do next i'm going to hit them in super rapid succession i guess and see if they pique anybody's
00:46:42.640 interest so the other news this week i come out of the wood and the other news that was interesting
00:46:47.320 is there was a liberal mp from scarborough ontario named sean chen who resigned and uh interestingly
00:46:57.800 enough you know last uh last mp the resign was a conservative and when uh when uh that was the
00:47:07.160 seventh one in the last sort of year and everybody was like oh um uh poiliev is losing uh control of
00:47:15.000 his party blah blah blah well uh guess what sean chen resigning is the seventh mp since um
00:47:22.760 um Carney came into power so they're tied seven seven and I think Carney's had some pretty
00:47:29.100 spectacular departures like Stephen Gilbeau and uh this one was interesting for several reasons
00:47:36.580 the first one is that nobody had ever heard of Sean his pictures on the screen there I could
00:47:41.640 put Sean you could have put Sean in a in a police lineup and nobody would have pointed him out
00:47:46.940 including other MPs there was MPs on the record saying I've been in the House of Commons for years
00:47:52.160 and i've never seen this guy and um 11 years okay 11 years sean was in the house of commons
00:48:00.800 representing scarborough and and people you can go and see like sort of the voting patterns and
00:48:06.800 bills that they've introduced and how many times they've spoken to the house comment that's all
00:48:10.320 public data like easy easy easy to find this guy's never introduced a bill in the house of commons
00:48:16.160 hardly ever showed up for work in the house of commons spoke once in recent years um so basically
00:48:24.560 kind of like a nobody and then he gives this excuse that uh it's not an excuse i think there's
00:48:30.800 some validity to it he says i got in his departure letter he says i got injured in a car accident a
00:48:36.600 year ago and it's increasingly difficult for me to travel from scarborough which is like toronto
00:48:42.560 to ottawa you could drive there in about four hours five hours right you don't need to fly
00:48:47.680 and uh so he resigns but then people get suspicious of that including our very own
00:48:53.760 andy lee sa very own she's not western standard but andy lee's a darling of the alberta um
00:49:00.160 independent media scene andy does some phenomenal investigation into um chinese interference in
00:49:08.880 canadian politics and so andy starts just revealing like video after video after video
00:49:15.600 and story after story after story from china and it's like it's like this guy is almost uh it's
00:49:21.280 like this guy's almost an mp in china like he does more promotion for chinese the chinese
00:49:26.400 communist party than he does for his constituents in ontario and so the the rumor now is or not the
00:49:34.240 rumor the prevailing theory is that this guy was one of those um uh people identified in the
00:49:42.320 ensacop report a couple years ago he has been compromised by the chinese he is uh maybe
00:49:49.600 overly compromised and and the theory is that ccis finally you know called an emergency meeting with 0.99
00:49:58.560 the Prime Minister and said, Mr. Carney, this guy is a big risk. He's on the list and you need to
00:50:06.160 get rid of him or something else. And so that's the deal. The deal was that he was given an exit
00:50:12.800 strategy and he announced his departure. I think there's more to the story. We'll see more.
00:50:18.640 The reaction of some of the Liberal pundits defending him seemed over the top. You know
00:50:25.840 You know what I mean? And when when somebody goes over the top, like when somebody when Andy, when others said, you know, he looks suspicious and people go over the top and say, oh, no, no, he's clean.
00:50:36.400 He's a really, really good guy. And I get suspicious. So more there.
00:50:41.940 But the interesting thing is, again, this frees up another seat in the House of Commons.
00:50:47.180 So the the juggling is going on. Right. We have three by elections coming up on August.
00:50:52.360 um when are the three elections august 31st end of this month right we're two weeks away from
00:50:58.280 three by elections one in uh beaches east york and one in north vancouver those two are currently
00:51:04.720 liberal they'll stay liberal i'm pretty sure and then the one is shikudami is the one where
00:51:08.780 there's going to be some lots of fighting it's currently a uh a block seat and uh maybe the
00:51:16.180 block want to give it up and let the conservatives win there we'll see then uh i so that wouldn't be
00:51:22.060 enough to change the balance of power but then there's also one seat vacant here in Calgary
00:51:29.420 Shaw that hasn't the by-election hasn't been declared and then now we'll have this one in
00:51:34.280 Scarborough so a lot of I think Carney's minority government might stay a minority for a while
00:51:41.540 longer now along those lines the other interesting story that broke last week and nobody's talking
00:51:47.940 about this one online or sorry on the mainstream media we're talking about it i think the western
00:51:53.620 standard talked about it specifically there was a canadian intern somebody um and an intern can be
00:52:04.940 almost anything right an intern is somebody who's uh who's generally younger working inside one of
00:52:11.100 the departments, not in an official role.
00:52:13.740 So let's say you're you're a diplomat at at your Canadian diplomat and you work and you
00:52:21.060 know, you're in the Swiss embassy.
00:52:22.800 Well, there's a whole bunch of staff there that are interns.
00:52:25.200 Those are people that are working sort of accumulating hours, hoping to get an official
00:52:30.420 role. But most of their role on a day to day basis is just is being secretaries to other
00:52:36.960 staff. So a Canadian intern of Chinese origin identified as.
00:52:41.100 uh by way zhang also known as claire z was arrested uh end of july 2026 by belgian authorities
00:52:49.220 on suspicion of spying for a third country i wonder which third country that might be
00:52:54.020 while working at nato's supreme headquarters allied powers in europe uh in mons so that's
00:53:01.760 big news man that's uh that's basically somebody being arrested and and being um charged as a spy
00:53:09.620 and uh there's the picture on the screen uh doesn't uh doesn't make the news okay so that
00:53:16.660 yeah john confirms that western standard did break that story sorry if i to my colleagues uh
00:53:21.440 i missed a few stories last week usually by the way like you know i usually say it at the end of
00:53:27.720 the show but i'll say it right now like you've got to get you like you will not beat the kinds
00:53:33.600 of stories that these even I'm impressed by the my by my colleagues by the staff here at the
00:53:39.600 stories that they managed to break like it's so awesome and you won't get that you won't get these
00:53:46.360 these kinds of investigative stories from just the CBC or CTV or global in fact they poach stories
00:53:54.880 from the western standard so get your subscription it's ten dollars a month um you know and or a
00:54:02.600 hundred dollars a year John will put it on the screen again I usually use that as a closing I'm
00:54:07.500 not ready to close yet but but that story was interesting listen I got to rush through the
00:54:11.580 last couple of stories I think I got about uh what have I got about uh seven eight nine minutes
00:54:17.140 something like that a couple of things going on um all right I'll go with uh did I mention at the
00:54:25.220 beginning of you know at the beginning of the day I mentioned um that uh my wishes were going out to
00:54:32.140 the people in uh in bc looks like it's their turn to face the forest fires right we had them last
00:54:38.180 year this year terrible fires in bc 20 000 people evacuated out of uh penticton this or the penticton
00:54:46.620 area this week and uh but meanwhile you go across the border and uh you can go look this up you the
00:54:54.200 alberta government has an amazing website just google just search you know um alberta uh fire
00:55:00.380 wildfire just that word and the monitoring site will come up you can go to a government of Alberta
00:55:08.580 website where all the stats are there and everything that's going on guess how many fires
00:55:12.420 are going on in Alberta right now three there's three active forest fires in Alberta and they're
00:55:19.280 all under control meaning they're all miniature it's crazy what I'd say Alberta really improved
00:55:25.180 it's it's uh not it's forest management we're still lagging on forest management i don't like
00:55:31.120 the forest management that's going on but at least we're compensating by bringing back some good
00:55:36.980 uh firefighting capabilities right we're reactivating the helicopter guys the first
00:55:42.540 attack guys we're putting people back into the uh fire lookout towers like we have a whole network
00:55:48.340 of fire to lookout towers across the province across the north and they were all empty now
00:55:54.680 there's guys in him again uh i just happened to be by the huck by the way i was by the huckleberry
00:56:00.000 tower fire lookout uh a couple of two last week when i was visiting my hunting camp and uh ross
00:56:08.440 if uh some guy some guy was broken down on his truck happened upon that guy and gave him a boost
00:56:14.540 i think he was so happy to see somebody on one of these weird backcountry roads he was out there
00:56:19.800 scouting for uh for elk anyways when i take off my helmet he's like holy it's marty
00:56:25.320 so uh ross i never got your name or how you got to know me but uh find me and say hi somehow or
00:56:32.840 other i just want to make sure you got out okay um so all right forest fires going through the
00:56:39.880 stories real quick uh back to school next week and something really cool happening back to school
00:56:46.040 next week or a couple of weeks from now i think the kids go around september 5th or whatever
00:56:51.400 and here in alberta that is when bill 25 goes into effect so very proud of that bill that's
00:56:57.240 the one called an act to remove politics and ideology from classrooms and amend the education
00:57:02.680 act so that was a bill passed a little while ago and by the smith government and that's the act
00:57:11.800 that brings back a sort of neutrality in the schools right so schools should be focused on
00:57:20.040 the math curriculum and some history and and science and things like that in literature
00:57:26.680 but it shouldn't be focused on uh it shouldn't be overly focused on sexuality and stuff like that
00:57:33.240 and then absolutely should avoid ideology so you can debate stuff but you can't present some things
00:57:41.000 as facts when they're you know and so one of the things no more pride flags in the schools no more
00:57:47.480 um whatever it's it's schools now are all about uh the alberta flag the canadian flags you can
00:57:54.360 put other flags if you're talking about you know flags of the world somebody said what about hockey
00:58:00.280 teams i don't think we're that ridiculous right i think if you're at a school in northern alberta
00:58:05.400 and it's hockey playoffs and the oilers are doing okay i'm pretty sure nobody's gonna get
00:58:10.040 get bent out of shape for an Oilers flag.
00:58:13.140 But, hey, if we want to be absolutely across the board,
00:58:16.760 then I'm fine with that.
00:58:18.160 I mean, then keep it to very, very pragmatically speaking,
00:58:21.480 the Alberta flag, the Canadian flag, and whatever town you're in.
00:58:25.740 I'm okay with just three flags in the schoolroom.
00:58:28.000 I don't need other flags.
00:58:29.840 And so that act goes into effect next week.
00:58:35.640 And then I want to bring up this one because I got a couple of minutes.
00:58:40.040 um right now because it's summer uh the carney liberals have given us a break
00:58:47.100 and they took away the gasoline excise tax right so back in uh june they announced this so like
00:58:54.060 starting the end of june until about september 5th um the the carney liberals brought the excise
00:59:02.380 tax on gasoline down to zero it used to be 10 cents a liter but it's set to go back to 10 cents
00:59:08.580 a liter on September 5th. So imagine that right now, I think gasoline today was like $1.80. So
00:59:15.620 without that, with that tax, it would be right back up to $1.90. So it goes up quickly. A survey
00:59:20.800 was done a couple of weeks ago saying, are you in favor of the Liberals permanently removing this
00:59:27.540 tax? And I was shocked. 39% of Canadians want the tax to come back. I'm like, why would you want
00:59:36.200 that tax to come back. And the number one reason people want that tax to come back is because
00:59:40.600 people still think that monies from certain places, like money from gasoline, people still
00:59:47.400 think that money from the gasoline tax goes into a special pool and it gets used only to
00:59:55.160 fix roads or do something like that. If that's your reason for wanting to keep that tax,
01:00:00.080 that's interesting. I'd still rather there were less tax. But let me tell you something.
01:00:04.560 There aren't separate buckets. When our governments collect money, it all goes into one big giant pool and then it gets used for whatever projects they want. So as far as I'm concerned, this tax should just remain off the books all the time because it's just an added cost that contributes to inflation and other things.
01:00:25.840 taxing the gasoline that's used to transport goods plus personally right for leisure and stuff like
01:00:32.860 that so i anyways i just wanted to put that out there i was shocked that people still want to be
01:00:37.100 taxed listen we're running out of time a show went by super quick you guys made me talk too much
01:00:43.220 please let's like do i need to change the time to a different time to accommodate more i don't know
01:00:49.180 So as I said earlier, please really consider getting a subscription so that my colleagues here can continue that good investigative journalism that brings you stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
01:01:03.520 There's the website.
01:01:04.720 I know you guys know this.
01:01:06.340 Do me a quick personal favor.
01:01:07.880 Go check out Marty Up North on YouTube.
01:01:10.080 I have my own channel.
01:01:11.060 I haven't been very active on it lately, but I'm trying to become a little more active.
01:01:15.600 uh go see that video where i was uh not happy about the um the cut lines and uh i'll see you
01:01:23.080 hopefully i'll see some of you tonight in airdrie some of you this weekend on saturday
01:01:27.360 in mirror if not i'll see you back here on thursday next week cheers folks
01:01:45.600 We'll be right back.