Western Standard - MARTY UP NORTH： Shrinking population, stalled economy and Alberta’s next move

00:00:00.000 All right, we're back.

00:00:28.680 uh i'm not gonna lie to you when i just watching that intro and some of those clips uh they're

00:00:34.220 from my own personal collection some of those clips are from you know you guys know this about

00:00:37.860 me i love to hike spend a lifetime almost a lifetime started hiking when i was 18 but that

00:00:43.420 was like 30 years ago 40 years ago i love the rockies love the mountains crave them and when

00:00:49.540 i see that video intro it makes me think about uh the fact that hiking season is just around the

00:00:54.880 corner thankfully in fact uh what's today today's the 19th which means we got what one more day of

00:01:01.600 this miserable winter and then we can finally enter spring let's see uh let's hope for a good

00:01:07.220 spring um lots to talk about this week what an interesting week right this is something i uh

00:01:13.300 like i said i i totally look forward to this show it is your show somebody just asked me this right

00:01:18.020 now they said uh are you prepared for the show and i'm like i do prepare for the show i you know i

00:01:23.940 I mean, I'm online most days and I'm looking at headlines and what the stories are.

00:01:29.180 But when somebody said, are you prepared for the show?

00:01:31.540 I'm like, I don't need to really prepare because it's up to you guys, right?

00:01:35.140 It's what you want to talk about and what you call in.

00:01:37.980 And then that's the topic for the day.

00:01:40.080 But that said, there are some there have been some interesting topics this week.

00:01:45.440 The headline right now, the one I'm most fascinated about is I do want to talk about the state of the economy and some of the reports that have been coming out.

00:01:53.620 Because, you know, the year ended, the year ends on, you know, December 31st, but it takes like several months for all the data to come in.

00:02:02.120 And so finally, Stats Canada starts to release a lot of data in February, March that that reflects how 2025 was.

00:02:11.160 And so for me, one of the most interesting parts of that for 2025 was the fact that Canada's population went down and not a lot.

00:02:20.100 down about 100,000 people year over year. We've had three quarters in a row of decreasing

00:02:28.260 population, but a full year over year. So on December 31st, the population of Canada,

00:02:34.820 December 31st, 2025 was less than it was in 2024. And that's after a couple of years following

00:02:43.980 COVID of increased growth. But significantly, it's the first time our population has gone down

00:02:49.480 ever, ever, ever, ever. We've never recorded a year-over-year population decrease. So why is

00:02:55.220 that? And well, when you dig into the numbers, there's one real fundamental reason, and that is

00:03:00.340 that Ottawa has basically stopped issuing temporary work visas and temporary student visas. And it's

00:03:07.400 the student visa category that's really making up that 100,000 people difference. So people who

00:03:14.120 were here on on all sorts of visas the visas didn't get renewed and those people are going

00:03:19.640 back to their home countries and um and personally i think that's that's good news i mean i i would

00:03:26.500 like to you know i i'm not happy with the canada at 40 million people i prefer the canada we had

00:03:31.440 at 30 35 million but i also think that not think i know i know that the increase in population in

00:03:39.520 the last couple of years was a failed, it was a liberal attempt to solve a problem that is a

00:03:45.640 bigger problem. We have a really, really big problem in this country. And that is that our

00:03:51.060 productivity has gone down. We were fundamentally a resource extraction nation. And then somewhere

00:03:58.760 along the way, we decided that we needed to diversify a way into other industries like

00:04:04.940 finance and uh and banking and services and the movie industries and other things like that we

00:04:11.820 we we tried to diversify but we diversified into industries that are not really productive

00:04:18.620 and and consequently our um you know our our gdp was suffering but while we were becoming less

00:04:26.740 productive we continue to lavish ourselves some really nice benefits we've been doing that since

00:04:31.020 the 1960s right so it's sure it's great to have a canada pension plan old age security child tax

00:04:37.740 uh support uh cheaper um education health care all those things but we are at the point where

00:04:45.660 we really can't afford those things and our and and we keep paying for those things by debt by

00:04:51.660 borrowing a lot of money so canada is famous for borrowing a lot of money in fact we're one of the

00:04:57.020 We're one of the most resource-blessed nations on earth,

00:05:00.340 but we borrow and borrow and borrow,

00:05:03.060 and the debt load of our government and individual citizens

00:05:06.320 is like top of the chart worldwide.

00:05:09.400 I mean, there's hardly a nation on earth

00:05:11.000 and a people on earth more indebted than us.

00:05:13.580 So we're fundamentally living beyond our means.

00:05:16.480 We're giving ourselves things we can't really afford.

00:05:20.840 And then we have this compounding problem

00:05:23.520 that our cost of living is going up,

00:05:27.020 and we are taxed to death and we're not having children and our population is decreasing

00:05:32.220 naturally by naturally i mean that the number of people born versus the number of people dying

00:05:37.740 is is is uh is less or more and so we the the liberals thought that they could solve part of

00:05:45.500 that problem by importing a lot of people and when you bring in a lot of people sure in principle

00:05:50.700 those people are going to come here and they're going to work they're going to start industries

00:05:54.540 start jobs start businesses but that didn't happen and so the people we brought in we brought them in

00:06:00.220 too rapidly they were unproductive and they created other problems such as uh those people

00:06:06.540 need to be housed and our housing didn't keep up with that so and and i'm pretty sure most of you

00:06:12.220 folks know all of that but so this is a this is a you know the decrease in population is a reversal

00:06:19.100 of a one of the worst policies that the government of canada has implemented in the last couple of

00:06:23.740 of years which was this out of control immigration and and now cost and and and we're going to see

00:06:31.140 things are going to get a little bit worse for for the short term right we got uh all these

00:06:36.620 problems that this out of control immigration caused like the the housing bubble and stuff

00:06:40.880 like that and the inflation are here to stay with us so we have you know this week we saw the bank

00:06:46.900 of canada again announced that inflation is 1.8 percent they're they're they're happy with it

00:06:51.960 they're trying to claim that it's in their target range. Their target range is 1% to 3%. So their

00:06:57.540 target inflation is 2%. So 1.8% is okay. But inflation is not coming down because of things

00:07:04.480 that the government is doing. Inflation is simply coming down because Canadians have no more

00:07:10.460 discretionary income. I mean, for every, you know, if you earn $100,000, you're paying $50,000 in

00:07:16.800 taxes, and then you're paying your mortgage and your utilities and everything else, and you're

00:07:21.420 left with hardly anything so people are not going on vacation they're not buying new shoes they're

00:07:26.380 not they're they're putting off changing the tires on their car and all those things and consequently

00:07:31.100 it appears that inflation is coming down but that's just the supply and demand side balancing

00:07:37.000 itself out and uh and and and so we we got this you know we we got this long-term problem i mean

00:07:45.700 inflation's high and then this week uh yesterday tiff macklin the governor of the bank of canada

00:07:50.720 decided to keep interest rate at 2.25%.

00:07:55.720 And that's good and that's bad news.

00:07:58.880 I mean, it's good news if you're thinking of renewing your mortgage,

00:08:01.800 but fundamentally for the economy with inflation as hot as it is,

00:08:07.280 what the bank would normally do is increase that interest rate

00:08:12.620 and take out some of the money supply in the economy

00:08:17.100 and then hopefully the inflation comes down.

00:08:19.340 But TIF is between a rock and a hard place.

00:08:21.520 He's been that way for about a decade now.

00:08:24.280 You know, the relationship between the Bank of Canada and the government is supposed to be an arm's length relationship, but they're supposed to help each other and work cooperatively.

00:08:33.580 And TIF is trying to control the economy, but he needs help from the government.

00:08:37.820 And then a fundamental help that he needs from the government is for the government to stop this reckless, out of control spending.

00:08:44.060 And there's no end to that in sight.

00:08:46.860 So I wanted to talk about that. It's a big problem that to me, all our governments of the last decade, in fact, further back, even Harper, I think failed to address the fundamental problem of Canada, which is we are an unproductive society at this point.

00:09:07.060 You know, we got way too many people working for the government and sectors that don't really contribute to the economy.

00:09:13.000 All right, we got a caller on the line. Just a reminder. Yeah. So we don't have a switchboard. So please call, ask your question. Sometimes if I, I'm not sounding rude. If I say, I hope I don't sound rude. If I say, you know, thanks for the question, then please hang up. The reason I say please hang up is that that way somebody else can call in because we don't have a switchboard per se. And if you don't call in, well, you can't see it right now, but the producers put a tablet on my desk. So if I'm looking down once in a while, it's because I'm looking at my tablet.

00:09:43.000 because some questions can come in on the tablet.

00:09:45.940 All right, caller on the line, name, please.

00:09:48.420 Where are you calling from and what's on your mind?

00:09:51.940 Hi, Marty, such a pleasure.

00:09:53.880 This is Sonya from Redmondson,

00:09:55.820 and there are still a few of us good ones

00:09:57.820 living in the den of vipers here.

00:10:00.240 I have comments and a couple questions.

00:10:02.140 Go for it.

00:10:04.540 Okay, so first off, I just wanna say

00:10:06.460 how much I appreciate what you do,

00:10:08.380 especially for all the independent stuff

00:10:10.280 and keeping us in the know.

00:10:12.340 It's just pretty awesome.

00:10:14.300 And I also want to thank you for articulating that why I don't give a shit about Canada.

00:10:21.740 And it just kind of sunk in when you kind of said that, you know, it's kind of the system.

00:10:28.260 And we just can't get past that.

00:10:30.660 And it's not for our benefit.

00:10:32.680 Anytime a politician comes from the West, they get Ontario washed.

00:10:38.140 As soon as they kind of leave the borders.

00:10:40.400 but anyway just like I said just thanks for everything and my first question is about the

00:10:47.360 Alberta referendum vote is there any way to limit the votes to a maximum three questions

00:10:53.720 the first question of course independence the second one perhaps the time change because that's

00:11:00.060 really annoying and then the third one may be a pension but we don't even need that one because

00:11:06.020 Smith, she can change it all. She doesn't even have to put that on. And my big fear is that

00:11:13.320 they're going to water down the independence vote so that it can be challenged in court because it

00:11:20.960 wasn't clear because of all these other bullshit questions that they put on there. So I'm drafting

00:11:26.780 a letter now, but what is it that we can kind of do with that? And my second question is,

00:11:33.600 had anything become of that crazy old bat shit lady um that attacked you i'm betting the rcmp

00:11:41.040 dropped it so yeah i was just wondering if anything came of any of these uh harassment

00:11:47.960 yeah yeah great question so uh thanks and i'll ask you to to hang up and i'll i'll answer all

00:11:54.100 all your questions and your comments so first to your comment yes i do make fun of thanks yeah you

00:11:58.660 mentioned it it's redmonton i make fun of edmonton i feel bad when i make fun of edmonton because i

00:12:04.640 know i have some of my best friends live in edmonton i'm from northern alberta and i used

00:12:09.280 to hang out edmonton i have a kid who lives there so take it all with a grain of salt i i love people

00:12:14.400 and i recognize that there are some great people in edmonton but you gotta admit with me that

00:12:19.620 generally speaking edmonton is pretty uh left-leaning i guess because i i think one of the

00:12:26.860 fundamental reasons. It's a government town and an academic town. To the referendum question,

00:12:32.620 I think we talked a little bit about this last week. Personally, I don't know what we can do.

00:12:36.880 I think there should only be one question on the referendum in October, and that's either the

00:12:42.560 APP's question or a variation thereof, because there are two groups that want a discussion on

00:12:48.840 independence. Thomas Lukasik's group raised 400,000 signatures, and I think our group will

00:12:53.220 raise four or five hundred thousand signatures so a million albertans want to talk about

00:12:57.380 uh independence in one way or another so i think that should be the only question

00:13:01.720 everything else um can either be addressed directly through legislation because i think

00:13:08.180 danielle has the mandate to do that and and anything where danielle is contemplating opening

00:13:13.900 the constitution that's nonsense and and uh shouldn't be on there is there something we can

00:13:20.160 do no there isn't i mean she's you know they're moving the goalpost danielle has a mandate and

00:13:25.680 she told us that if we want some a referendum question the citizens should request it and i

00:13:30.740 agree i think a referendum should only come from the citizens it should never be proposed by the

00:13:36.060 government so i think she's breaking her own rule by by by doing that and i think she should stick

00:13:41.840 to what you know the initial plan which is uh citizens initiatives are where uh referendums

00:13:48.820 come from in fact she gave a great example last week right somebody talked about um the you know

00:13:54.040 should should alberta have a sales tax or something like that and danielle literally turned and said

00:13:58.720 if can if albertans want a sales tax then they should petition the government so i think she's

00:14:03.660 breaking her own rules there and that's the short answer to that is there's nothing we can do

00:14:07.920 except to keep pleading with her that we only want one question um i don't have an update on the crazy

00:14:14.300 lady i'm not gonna you know i filed my report not i didn't file a report there i filed a statement

00:14:20.860 uh i didn't lay a charge or anything like that i simply filed a statement of what happened and then

00:14:27.540 my statement was taken by um by state free alberta and they did what they want with it as far as i

00:14:33.680 know that lady you know the cops chased her down the highway after she left us and they turned on

00:14:38.280 the sirens and talking to people once the sirens are turned off you're going to get charged with

00:14:42.680 something either uh you know a road violation of some sort so but but i don't know what happened

00:14:49.040 coincidentally um i'm not canvassing on the side of the road today because i'm here

00:14:54.700 but uh the you know i've i got a group of volunteers now that sit where we normally sit

00:15:01.080 and one of them sent me two really unusual pictures so you know maybe we're getting a

00:15:06.060 little bit paranoid but you can never be too uh safe these days so one of the guys who's

00:15:10.560 canvassing at my spot sent me two pictures of two unusual vans parked within about 500 yards

00:15:15.760 and and and his words are they have eyes on us so that kind of means that he's under the

00:15:21.580 impression that somebody is sitting in a van just looking at us uh we're under we're under scrutiny

00:15:26.620 by the way this is an interesting maybe a good segue for this uh i wasn't going and i was going

00:15:32.040 to talk a little bit about this john can you bring up the um the national post headline this was in

00:15:38.300 the national post yesterday and i don't read the whole story i don't care because i'm not a

00:15:41.960 subscriber but you know right there it says canadians opened a negotiation with western

00:15:45.640 separatists as data shows under representation in parliament my god and and look at the line

00:15:51.520 underneath there uh recent data shows alberta remains underrepresented in the house of commons

00:15:55.960 we on a per capita basis folks two two three things about this article first of all uh it

00:16:02.780 It shows that perhaps internal polling in Ottawa and other places are showing that the movement is maybe a little bit bigger because now we're seeing these kinds of pieces, right?

00:16:12.040 There's always, you know, kind of like the five stages of grief kind of thing of the, you know, at first they said the movement was fringed, then they attacked us and then they mocked us.

00:16:22.980 And now maybe they're starting to realize, oh, there is some truth to that.

00:16:26.020 So the fact that there's pieces like this coming out saying Ottawa is perhaps interested in some conversation shows that their internal polling proves that the movement is big.

00:16:38.040 But the funny part was whoever did that article, like, come on, do your research, man.

00:16:41.860 We've been underrepresented in the House of Commons since 1905, like by design.

00:16:47.480 Right. Alberta has like 37 seats.

00:16:53.900 No, I'm not Alberta. Yeah. Anyways, you know, the number of seats we have and Saskatchewan, the last two provinces, compared to our population, compared to Ontario and Quebec, we're completely underrepresented.

00:17:09.140 But even if we were properly represented, it still doesn't matter because we're outnumbered, you know, Ottawa or not Ottawa, Ontario and Quebec outnumber us like three, four to one.

00:17:20.580 So we'll never we'll never get our way. Interesting article just shows that we're we're hitting on the on on some spots there.

00:17:28.280 I mean, I just staying on the topic I do. I did some math this weekend.

00:17:32.840 I finally got my hands on the statistics for our little writing.

00:17:37.160 And I know in our writing, we collected just over forty six hundred signatures so far.

00:17:42.680 And that's between one hundred and twenty people.

00:17:45.400 If you do the math, if our writing is typical of all the other writings in Alberta, there's eighty seven writings.

00:17:50.120 If all 87 ridings got 4,000 signatures, that's 320,000 signatures plus 350.

00:17:56.620 So I think we're already in the 500 range, 4 to 500 range.

00:18:01.440 The weather outside is absolutely gorgeous.

00:18:04.700 I mean, this is all I wore coming out here today.

00:18:07.460 So I think we're going to see a big push on petitions going forward this weekend.

00:18:15.620 All right, folks, don't be shy.

00:18:16.940 like i said bring uh hit the hit that line and give me a buzz i'm trying to go through the

00:18:21.500 comments here see uh i'm just going to pick one couple out here uh alberta whoops how did that

00:18:30.300 work alberta's population is estimated to be over 5 million as of 2025 specifically statistics

00:18:36.860 canada yeah um boy like the alberta that i came to when um uh okay john sorry how do i remove okay

00:18:47.020 it does itself it removes yeah when i um full disclosure right you guys know this i'm not an

00:18:53.180 albertan by birth uh i was born in ontario but i came here looking for work in came here as a

00:19:01.180 student uh with a temporary work term in 1988 was the first time then i came a second time a little

00:19:07.020 bit later to work so i'm living in ontario at the time i was naively when i was younger i thought i

00:19:13.180 might go into the pulp and paper industry or perhaps the auto industry like everybody else

00:19:17.020 does in that province but while i was in school i was open to the idea of uh exploring my options

00:19:23.180 and you know i went to a school where there's there there were um what we did i did a co-op

00:19:28.620 program is called so employers would come on campus and try and recruit and i'm looking at

00:19:33.300 these job postings in like slave lake and places like that and none of my buddies would apply and

00:19:37.760 so i thought not what the heck i'll apply ended up in a small town uh alberta loved it and finished

00:19:44.240 my studies and then came here permanently so um so i was you know i wasn't born here but i married

00:19:51.240 a fifth generation gal from here and i have four adult children that were born here so i'd say i'm

00:19:55.780 pretty much as albertan as they get been here more than half of my life and i do miss the alberta of

00:20:02.380 uh of when i was younger of the 19 late 80s and early 90s the alberta that had about two and a

00:20:08.540 half million people the alberta where um i could go uh golfing anytime i wanted to without having

00:20:16.000 to book a tea time curling was fun restaurants didn't need reservations um camping permits that

00:20:24.220 didn't exist that you know you just showed up in the parks and you went camping pretty much anywhere

00:20:28.800 you wanted and uh fishing everything i i i just missed those days i i'm one i am of the opinion

00:20:37.080 i do not believe in growth for the sake of growth whether it's a business or whether it's the size

00:20:42.340 of a country or anything i think canada should try and find that comfortable spot that you know

00:20:47.380 maybe it's 30 40 million people and then just try and sustain ourselves stay at that level

00:20:52.700 And if at any time the benefits we give ourselves become too expensive and we feel that the solution is not to bring in more people, I think the solution at that point is to either find efficiencies or maybe cut back the benefits.

00:21:12.760 I know that's not a popular thing, but we do it in the real world, right?

00:21:17.100 At home, if I can't afford a second trip, if I can't afford one trip to Mexico in the winter, then I don't go to Mexico.

00:21:24.020 I don't keep piling it on my credit card.

00:21:26.020 And I don't know why we accept that from our government.

00:21:28.220 It's just a problem that we're pushing, kicking down the, you know, kicking the can down the road by constantly borrowing money and doing those things.

00:21:39.440 All right.

00:21:39.940 Well, let's talk about a few other things then.

00:21:41.680 And actually, it's I'll maybe I'll pose some questions for you guys just to see if I can solicit a little bit of debate.

00:21:52.340 What does everybody feel?

00:21:53.920 So one of the things that dominated the airwaves yesterday on X in particular was Pierre Poiliev going down to Texas, which was good.

00:22:02.440 Right. He had a trip. He went and talked to people in West Virginia, I believe, or some other place.

00:22:08.840 And then they ended up in Texas talking to the governor of Texas about oil and stuff like that.

00:22:14.180 And and then and then he ended up on the Joe Rogan podcast.

00:22:17.620 Joe's based out of Austin, Texas.

00:22:20.740 And that seemed to to me, to me, I'm at this point, I mean, I'm I'm pretty much disengaged from the federal politics.

00:22:31.660 Like I'm focused on Alberta independence.

00:22:34.380 I still keep an eye.

00:22:35.580 Would I like Carney to be replaced by somebody like Poiliev?

00:22:39.300 Absolutely.

00:22:40.680 Do I think it's going to happen?

00:22:42.180 Not in the near term.

00:22:43.440 So I find the fact that Pierre went down to Texas now to do this podcast.

00:22:49.180 The timing is interesting.

00:22:50.820 To be honest, I wanted him to do something like this last year during the campaign.

00:22:54.760 I find that he was a little bit too nervous about doing it during the campaign.

00:23:01.200 I got to be careful when I say this.

00:23:02.360 But I don't think Pierre, like a lot of politicians, actually makes his own decisions, which is kind of alarming.

00:23:09.280 You would think that the premier or the leader of a group or the prime minister would make his own decisions, just like I always expect the CEO of a company to make all the decisions.

00:23:26.540 But I find that in political world, a lot of times, leaders don't necessarily lead.

00:23:31.640 They rely on too much on the team of advisors and campaign managers and PR managers and people like that.

00:23:38.940 And they also rely on polls.

00:23:42.000 And I don't like that.

00:23:43.540 I mean, but that's politics.

00:23:45.520 So I think last year we wanted, a lot of people wanted Pierre to be more out there, more personable, get off the main script and go do podcasts.

00:23:53.840 Because, you know, we we we know that a lot of elections are won by by winning over that middle ground people.

00:24:03.420 And in this day and age, it's it's younger people who are watching social media.

00:24:07.740 And so people wanted Joe, not Joe, Pierre to go on podcast last year.

00:24:12.240 He didn't do it. I think he didn't do it because he was poorly advised.

00:24:15.320 But I also think he didn't do it because he was a little bit scared of being associated too closely with the Americans.

00:24:20.260 and and i think that was a misstep that the fact that he's doing it now is interesting but let me

00:24:26.360 know your thoughts on that um but more interesting to me i haven't seen the podcast so the podcast is

00:24:33.080 going to come out uh probably in full length in the coming days i know they leak not leaked out

00:24:38.780 but i know they've released little bits of the podcast right now little teasers i haven't seen

00:24:44.020 anything in the teasers that's that's too shocking or too revealing um i look forward to the full

00:24:50.260 length podcasting what that does but what what i'm more interested in is not our side's reaction to

00:24:55.400 it but i'm really interested in the left's reaction to it if they have a complete meltdown

00:25:00.780 well then that will have been a success i hope that uh so so i look forward to seeing that uh

00:25:05.900 if you guys have seen something and you want to mention it uh let me know let me check a couple

00:25:12.640 of comments here john do you see any comments worth highlighting um right now i'm i'm uh

00:25:19.680 it's interesting because we can both move up on the thing at the same time

00:25:24.800 marty he makes so much sense yeah don't uh i do yeah um

00:25:32.960 how much taxpayer dollars are they spending on those surveillances yeah um i actually i turned

00:25:39.440 off my phone while i'm here because i don't want my phone ringing but i did reach out to a couple

00:25:44.240 of people and i got some people driving by those vans to go see what's going on isn't it crazy

00:25:49.520 though that i would have that i would feel that way in this day and age that i'm that i'm simply

00:25:54.180 a citizen with no access to the levers of power i don't make policy and and and i'm being spied on

00:26:00.760 and then and i don't think that's a coincidence and i don't think i'm being a that i'm exaggerating

00:26:05.480 I've had too many weird incidences in the last little while to attribute them just to coincidence.

00:26:12.280 I think I am being surveilled.

00:26:15.260 I'm sure if you ask people here, if I ask Corey or if I ask Derek and others here, they feel the same way.

00:26:20.840 In fact, I know Corey feels the same way.

00:26:22.680 And Corey's also one step further.

00:26:25.380 People have threatened Corey.

00:26:27.660 That's not cool.

00:26:29.480 I mean, you know, the crazy lady coming to yell at me, I'm okay with that.

00:26:32.300 But it's when you go to that next step that I draw the line.

00:26:40.860 All right.

00:26:41.500 Well, let's keep talking about a couple of things that are on my mind that made the news this week.

00:26:47.420 Actually, let's talk about oil and Pierre's trip to the U.S.

00:26:54.140 um you know again oil is everybody who's tried to ignore oil in the last 25 years right whether

00:27:04.300 it's the liberals or the ndp any or greta thumberg everybody who's tried to ignore oil i never

00:27:10.740 worried about people that were trying to ignore oil and tell me that oil was done because i'm i'm

00:27:17.520 a pragmatic and I knew I I know how much oil the world consumes I mean I I've been sitting on the

00:27:25.020 side of the road for the last three weeks collecting signatures and I'm sitting literally

00:27:29.240 inside a highway and I see the cars going by all day so I know how much oil the world consumes

00:27:34.300 and and then you have an event like just happened in the Gulf uh you got uh the U.S. attacking Iran

00:27:42.560 and iran putting up more of a fight than i thought they would and suddenly the the strait of hormuz

00:27:49.080 is shut down um john do we have a quick picture of where the strait of hormuz is uh if you get a

00:27:56.920 chance i think most people understand this but let's let's uh put some context to this about

00:28:03.140 you know, about a third to 25% of the world's oil comes from those Gulf states where the war

00:28:12.960 is occurring, right? So you got a Gulf there and on one side is Iran and Iraq and on the other side

00:28:19.600 you got Saudi Arabia and you got Kuwait and you got Qatar and there's so much, there's the picture

00:28:25.580 there, right? So you got Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, all those countries, Kuwait,

00:28:31.780 iraq they all produce oil and uh the bulk of that oil there isn't shipped by pipelines it's shipped

00:28:40.200 by vessels that have to go through that strait of hormuz and so the strait is just a narrow spot

00:28:46.080 in the persian gulf uh it's barely like 20 miles wide so every boat has to go through there and

00:28:52.280 the iranians on their side can reach all the boats that are trying to go through uh with with missiles

00:28:58.580 and then they can mine the straight anyways it's a mess over there i think the americans

00:29:02.520 underestimated the willingness of the or the resilience of the iranians and their willingness

00:29:07.280 to keep on fighting and uh not the iranians but the iranian regime and and the uh iranian army

00:29:14.460 and so consequently the straight is pretty much shut down right now which is having a huge impact

00:29:20.120 on the price of oil all around the world i drove by the gas station here on the way by

00:29:25.100 It's $1.62 for gasoline in Alberta.

00:29:28.820 It's $2 plus in B.C.

00:29:30.900 And the Americans are now complaining that they're going to hit whatever, $3, $4 a gallon.

00:29:36.820 And so suddenly, everybody that hated oil is back on board loving oil.

00:29:41.760 And that's going to be like that for a long time.

00:29:43.800 There's just no replacement for oil in a modern society like ours.

00:29:47.740 Even other sources of energy like nuclear and whatnot, which produce huge quantities of nuclear,

00:29:53.200 they're just not mobile and so the energy we're interested in is the energy that literally goes

00:29:58.060 into a vehicle and that allows you to drive around so the fact that um that uh joe or not joe i keep

00:30:05.040 saying joe i gotta remember it's pierre the fact that pierre chose to go down to texas right now

00:30:10.900 is not a coincidence um you know the americans everybody's going to look to us now to provide

00:30:18.380 oil and and provide some relief in the short term which was another interesting thing that I saw this

00:30:24.280 week so Carney and several of his ministers all went on interviews and I and I laughed at all of

00:30:31.520 the ones who talked about Carney specifically I think used the word strategic reserves so Carney

00:30:37.260 said something like Canada is going to increase you know dump some oil from our strategic reserves

00:30:42.320 into the world market to help ease the problem we don't have any strategic reserves folks like

00:30:47.540 there's no such thing. The Americans have some strategic reserves, but even theirs aren't that

00:30:51.820 big. Closer to home here, Corey Hogan, who's the only Liberal MP in Calgary, was on the national

00:31:01.400 talking in Rosemary Barton, and he said the same kind of things. In Corey's mind, there's this

00:31:08.820 magic tap somewhere in Alberta where we just increase the tap and all of a sudden we start

00:31:12.860 producing more oil there's no such thing there's no tap like that if we want to increase more oil

00:31:17.920 we'd have to do it but again the the bigger picture here is this week is that this just shows

00:31:23.580 the um the failure of the liberal policies of the last decade to anticipate this to me a government

00:31:30.940 in power should be able to anticipate this there should be no shock when there's a gulf that gets

00:31:38.140 shut down like this and the price of oil goes up and everybody wants our oil there should be no

00:31:42.880 shock at that but some a lot of people are suddenly acting as if that is a big revelation um

00:31:50.120 all right so come on folks give me uh let me um so i'm gonna go through a couple of comments here

00:31:59.000 let's see what we got marty don't waste your time on pierre poliev he and the federal conservatives

00:32:07.040 are just a boat anchor designed to keep Alberta tied forever to confederation um yeah I mean

00:32:16.300 thank you for reminding me of that I I I I perhaps spoke about Pierre and Carney a little too much

00:32:23.600 I still talk about them but like I said I I want to focus mostly on uh on stuff that's here closer

00:32:29.740 to home. But I, but I, as much as I want to avoid talking about Ottawa, I still have to talk about

00:32:37.640 Ottawa, unfortunately, until we separate. And even after we separate, I'm still going to talk about

00:32:42.040 Ottawa. So on the topic of Ottawa, there was another big story this week that broke in Ottawa

00:32:48.180 that I think is worth mentioning. And that's the fact that we all know what happened during the

00:32:55.680 trucking convoy right so the trucking convoy occurred there was protests in ottawa they went

00:33:00.080 on for three weeks and finally after three weeks trudeau invoked the emergency measures act

00:33:05.500 and then they managed to clear everybody out of ottawa and coots and other places well and that

00:33:11.660 that uh emergency measures enactment was challenged and and deemed not once but already

00:33:19.640 twice it was deemed by two different courts to have been uh that trudeau acted incorrectly

00:33:26.200 illegally whatever there's there's all sorts of terminology around it but he didn't have the

00:33:31.000 he shouldn't have invoked the emergency measures act we all know that he should have just come out

00:33:34.920 and talked to the truckers and and and uh settled it properly but uh his ego got the better of it

00:33:41.240 the thing went on forever and then finally he enacted the emergency measures act and two courts

00:33:46.200 have said that he did it wrongly and and now yesterday was the deadline for the for ottawa

00:33:54.440 to appeal the last decision and they waited waited waited waited waited and finally yesterday they

00:34:01.160 decided that they were going to appeal the decision uh which is normal they wait until

00:34:06.100 the last minute so ottawa is appealing emergency measures uh act decision all the way to the

00:34:12.500 supreme court now so now we're going to let the supreme court decide and i'm okay with that i

00:34:17.160 mean it's a it's kind of a it is a waste of taxpayer dollars but it is unfortunately the

00:34:22.420 way our system works and so it has i'm not surprised that this is happening the courts

00:34:27.820 will have to adjudicate and and then um we'll know once and for all if he was right or wrong

00:34:34.020 i'm still not comfortable i'm still not confident that anybody will ever be held accountable but

00:34:38.640 But the interesting part of this story is that the Supreme Court has nine judges right now, and there's always nine, but one of them in particular, Justice Wagner, I can't remember Justice Wagner's first name, but Justice Wagner immediately, he was very vocal.

00:34:58.080 So he was a judge during the protest, and he was on the record before even the Emergency Measures Act was enacted.

00:35:08.500 He was on the record as saying that we should kick these guys out of there.

00:35:11.900 We should throw the book at all of them.

00:35:14.000 They're seditious.

00:35:15.120 What they're doing is wrong.

00:35:16.660 And so he was very biased.

00:35:18.000 He made some very biased, ugly comments about the protesters.

00:35:24.420 And now he's a Supreme Court judge.

00:35:26.280 So he's the one who's going to have to rule on this. Do you think he's biased? I mean, by all definition, his comments pass the test. So there's already a lot of people asking that he recluse himself, that he step away from from that court hearing and because he's impartial.

00:35:45.180 Well, he hasn't said anything yet.

00:35:46.620 We haven't heard.

00:35:48.260 I don't think, you know, that's another problem with our confederation.

00:35:51.880 I mean, the judges are appointed by Trudeau or the government, but in this case, mostly by Trudeau.

00:35:59.460 Judges are appointed.

00:36:00.880 Senior bureaucrats are appointed.

00:36:02.500 The presidents of crown corporations are appointed.

00:36:05.620 Senators are appointed.

00:36:06.780 like of of all the people in in uh in senior roles in government and in the courts 90 of them

00:36:16.220 have been appointed by trudeau so is this guy gonna do his job impartially i don't think so

00:36:22.500 and that's one of the overall problems with confederation and and one of the reasons so

00:36:26.760 many of us in alberta want to um want to separate so we'll see how that goes um all right let's go

00:36:34.960 through a couple of comments here and derek voice out voice out your comment call the number oh no

00:36:41.160 that's derek saying that yeah yeah please folks come on folks like seriously the number is down

00:36:45.740 on the line there 866-479 what does west spell out uh john i i can't i don't have a phone in front of

00:36:53.260 me but uh yeah call that number please it's not long distance don't do like linda did a couple

00:37:00.040 of weeks ago don't feel like you have to build up the courage to call me um it i'm just a guy

00:37:06.320 all right what's the i'm just going to throw a comment up here then don't blame the american

00:37:10.680 for not wanting to do business with canada who would like to do business with the tyrannical

00:37:15.380 socialist regime that allows communist countries and sleeper cells in okay um

00:37:22.200 Luckily, Americans do do business with us, right?

00:37:30.040 So I posted a tweet about that the other day because it's a common question.

00:37:33.900 Actually, one of the fears that get brought up all the time about an independent Alberta is the fact that we will be landlocked.

00:37:48.420 And by the way, Corey did a great video on this.

00:37:50.220 Corey Morgan did a little video from his house the other day where he listed out his five concerns that he hears while he's been touring, doing his talk on independence.

00:38:01.500 And oh, and so go watch Corey's video and I will come back to that one.

00:38:06.640 I will come back to. OK, I've already lost. I was going to trade with the U.S.

00:38:11.060 OK, trade with the U.S. I'll come back to it, but I've got a caller on the line.

00:38:13.740 So go ahead, caller. Where are you calling from and name, please?

00:38:17.500 Hey, Marty, it's Dwight from Calgary. How are you doing?

00:38:20.220 Good, Dwight. Thanks for being brave.

00:38:25.160 No problem.

00:38:26.860 Listen, Chief Justice Wagner was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

00:38:31.120 when he made those comments about the trucker convoy.

00:38:34.260 So it's probably worse than your thought.

00:38:38.180 I don't have a lot of faith in the justice system of this country

00:38:42.640 to treat those of us that want to get rid of the federal government.

00:38:50.220 very well. But anyway, my question or my comment is, I talked to a lot of people. You know,

00:38:58.440 one of my first questions is, have you signed the petition yet? And I'm getting, I got some

00:39:03.240 feedback that kind of shocked me and maybe shocks you a little bit. Maybe you got this comment

00:39:08.860 somewhere, but they don't, they want to sign, but they're afraid. They're afraid that the

00:39:16.760 government's going to get the list and and use it against us at some point in the future you know

00:39:25.060 if we don't separate or whatever that people that sign the petition are going to be you know

00:39:33.920 targeted have something bad targeted yeah exactly something like that so yeah um i didn't really

00:39:40.480 have a good response to that other than that's exactly why you should sign that uh thanks

00:39:46.660 dwight so um stay on the line for a second but that that's a great response i i've actually had

00:39:52.360 that question only about a handful of times um one lady came and would not sign a canadian lady

00:39:58.320 would not sign no matter how i tried to convince her that uh you know the answer the classic answer

00:40:03.280 is we collect we're going to count and as soon as we're done counting uh they're destroyed and

00:40:07.720 nobody's allowed to gather information from there she wasn't satisfied uh i tried to say

00:40:13.720 almost along the lines of you when i'm like which government are you afraid of right and she's like

00:40:19.320 well ottawa look at what they did to the truckers when they froze their bank accounts and then i

00:40:22.940 like precisely so we're trying to separate from ottawa and alberta wouldn't do the same thing

00:40:29.260 i couldn't win her over uh but but you know one out of whatever 499 people so that's so uh it is

00:40:37.200 a concern then i had uh but but i had it about three times from foreigners people are new newly

00:40:44.480 landed immigrants who two from brazil i i remember very clearly and they said they would never do

00:40:49.840 they they didn't want to sign they came over to to as a show of support but they said you know

00:40:54.580 back home in brazil if we sign this we would be targeted so um yeah there's no there's no perfect

00:41:00.540 answer there's the there's the technical one which says they're not allowed to do it but you know

00:41:06.120 how many things our government's not allowed to do that they still do um the non-technical answer

00:41:12.160 is an independent alberta would hopefully not do what ottawa did yeah thanks dwight um yeah yeah so

00:41:21.480 any uh so you've signed are you a canvasser yourself or no i'm not a canvasser but i did

00:41:28.760 sign i signed actually over where you sit but it was on a thursday when you first started coming

00:41:34.940 out thursdays and you're right there so cool but yeah i signed yeah appreciate that all right

00:41:40.240 can't wait hopefully take care marty bye-bye take care um i was gonna go somewhere with dwight's

00:41:47.940 comments but uh all right well thanks dwight uh so let me just go back to uh cory's uh video which

00:41:54.040 is awesome right cory identified five uh common uh fears um canada or alberta's landlock the

00:42:01.520 treaties, the Canada pension plan? Is it legal? And I can't remember the fourth or the fifth one,

00:42:09.880 but I and I pretty much agree with Corey's assessment. I get the same questions. And I was

00:42:15.600 in the process, you know, as reading one of the comments who said that the Americans don't want

00:42:19.260 to trade with us. Luckily, they want to trade with Alberta more than they want to trade with

00:42:23.720 just about anybody, any other province. Right. So we're in good terms with them because we mostly

00:42:28.860 trade oil and and pragmatically speaking it's the easiest other than their own oil the easiest

00:42:35.260 oil they get is ours so i don't think that relationship is um is uh at risk and and the

00:42:43.300 short answer this was really interesting because i looked into it um we do we do about a hundred

00:42:49.820 alberta alberta does about 160 billion dollars worth of trade with the u.s and does 70 billion

00:42:57.900 dollars worth of trade with other provinces so in terms of being landlocked right there it's

00:43:04.000 irrelevant we we're already landlocked but our number one partner is actually not inter-provincial

00:43:09.680 it is with the u.s we do 160 billion dollars worth of trade with the u.s which is a huge number

00:43:15.580 uh go ahead call her name and where are you calling from hey marty jesse and gp again hey jesse

00:43:22.400 regular on the show.

00:43:24.660 Yeah, yeah, good.

00:43:25.380 I'll say.

00:43:28.220 I want to just speak to something

00:43:30.260 you mentioned early on in the show.

00:43:31.920 I'm actually out on the Huskies

00:43:33.040 collecting signatures right now.

00:43:34.540 So I'm at a low spot right now.

00:43:36.400 So people need to remember,

00:43:39.920 I think that,

00:43:41.200 and a lot of people don't,

00:43:42.500 and hopefully you can repeat this

00:43:43.500 as far and wide as you can, everyone,

00:43:46.120 that the government employees

00:43:47.620 do not contribute to the tax pool.

00:43:50.500 They're net negative

00:43:51.560 on the tax pool.

00:43:52.880 100%.

00:43:53.400 Right, and that's where you had mentioned

00:43:56.760 the resource industry is dwindling

00:43:58.620 and they're basically strangling us

00:44:00.560 when it comes to oil and gas extraction.

00:44:05.100 If we had an extra couple of pipelines,

00:44:06.800 maybe we could get more,

00:44:07.760 but if we have nowhere to put it,

00:44:09.760 then why are we getting more, right?

00:44:11.180 And if the regulations and the emissions charges

00:44:15.680 and all the royalties,

00:44:17.300 it's not feasible for industry

00:44:19.240 to extract any more oil and gas

00:44:21.620 if it's not going to make them profitable.

00:44:25.680 So yeah, I just wanted to make that note.

00:44:28.800 And I'll come back to that,

00:44:30.080 but boy, am I glad you called

00:44:31.560 because I had a weird incident on Sunday last week.

00:44:36.240 So Sunday last week,

00:44:37.500 and hopefully you can answer this.

00:44:39.740 Sunday last week,

00:44:40.380 I'm sitting on the side of the road

00:44:41.500 canvassing with my buddies

00:44:42.800 and I get a phone call and it's unidentified.

00:44:45.680 I don't normally answer an unidentified number,

00:44:47.920 but I answered this one.

00:44:49.240 And it was somebody who identified themselves as a chief firearm or not a chief firearms officer.

00:44:54.580 Somebody who identified themselves as a firearm officer from Grand Prairie.

00:44:58.040 So you guys had a Grand Prairie gun show on Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday.

00:45:02.940 And somebody tried to use a fake PAL with a number that coincided with mine.

00:45:10.160 And so I got a phone number, I got a phone call and I confirmed that I wasn't trying to do a purchase, that I wasn't there and everything else.

00:45:18.760 and um i called back and they and and and the second time an hour later it was the same lady

00:45:25.000 and when i checked her out online she does appear to have been a firearms officer i asked her why

00:45:32.140 she didn't cancel the pal and then she said that that would have impacted me and it's easier to

00:45:38.740 just uh flag that individual as having attempted fraud so i found that interesting does that

00:45:45.380 That's is and is it correct in my understanding that she was attending a gun show and that that's regular for firearms officers to attend gun shows?

00:45:56.460 So I've never heard of a firearms officer attending a gun show.

00:45:59.960 But, you know, now with the new laws and regulations, that could be a very, you know, it could be something that they want to do.

00:46:07.660 But there was a gun show here.

00:46:09.440 Yeah, it was put on by some of the other independent supporters.

00:46:13.280 yeah that is very weird marty i jesse i have so many weird events these days that i went to the

00:46:21.200 rcmp two days ago and i filed a report i i literally said that somebody attempted to commit

00:46:27.160 fraud using my pal uh with as much information as i could provide i i and i put the lady's name

00:46:34.000 anyways i i'm at the point where i'm not taking chances anymore um cool uh jesse uh thanks for

00:46:41.160 the call and I will, if you don't mind, hang up, but I will address your second half of your

00:46:45.520 comment, which is, or your first comment. What Jesse's referring to, I get, people get upset

00:46:51.520 when I say this, but it's a fact, right? When I say that a government employee is a non-contributing,

00:46:57.120 is a financial net non-contributor, it's a fact. Sure, you contribute. If you work for the

00:47:08.800 government and you're uh if you're a nurse you're doing something useful if you're uh if you're a

00:47:14.980 food inspector you're doing something useful that's great a lot of people working for the

00:47:19.240 government as far as i'm concerned are not not doing very useful work but but even if you're

00:47:24.440 doing useful work you are not paying taxes in principle because uh your salary is entirely

00:47:31.740 funded by the government and so let's say you're a nurse and you're paid a hundred thousand dollars

00:47:37.320 a year and you, and they say, well, I pay taxes. Okay. You pay $20,000 in taxes. That means that

00:47:43.680 five people, that means that four other people have to work and pay $20,000 in taxes to cover

00:47:51.600 the salary of the nurse. You see where this goes? And, and, and that's how bad it's getting, right?

00:47:56.800 We, we need about four or five taxpayers paying a pretty hefty amount of taxes just to cover the

00:48:03.900 cost of one public sector employee and and now the that's another problem that's compounding

00:48:11.180 because we have too many public sector employees their salaries are getting out of hand and then

00:48:17.120 the ratio of private sector employees to public sector employees is like below three so for every

00:48:23.420 10 workers in the province seven work for one form of government or seven work in the private sector

00:48:29.040 three work in the government, that's not enough to cover the costs. And that's why we keep having

00:48:35.480 to borrow money. And so people don't like hearing it, especially when they work in the public

00:48:42.880 sector. They don't like hearing that they are not contributing to government. You're not

00:48:47.840 contributing to government. You are, in a sense, contributing to society. Sure, if you have a good

00:48:51.900 job that that is useful but um it's it it's just a reality and then in some provinces those ratios

00:48:59.580 are over the top crazy i mean the you know people don't like the fraser institute they have all

00:49:04.760 sorts of excuses they'll say they're right leaning but the fraser institute still does some pretty

00:49:09.020 good data analysis and though they have lots of reports on that and some provinces out east like

00:49:14.980 nova scotia and new brunswick and pei holy smokes man it's as if almost everybody in those provinces

00:49:20.720 works for the government and uh and that's it so um yeah that's a real problem um am i overreacting

00:49:28.300 on the um on on on all the incidents happening to me in the last little while hopefully uh

00:49:34.740 hopefully i am actually hopefully i am um but uh but i don't think i am all right a couple more

00:49:41.200 things um hey john can you uh sorry to put you on the spot but could you find the video of the train

00:49:49.840 hitting the truck in Tabor.

00:49:52.980 I don't know where you would find that.

00:49:55.460 I was just going to go there.

00:49:56.580 But while John searches for that,

00:49:59.780 I got a couple of things.

00:50:01.800 I had a lot of other things I wanted to talk about.

00:50:03.660 Maybe we'll bring, I'll mention them now

00:50:05.680 and then maybe they're food for thought for next week

00:50:07.600 because they're very fresh.

00:50:09.420 Yesterday, Danielle Smith did a press conference

00:50:12.920 with Mickey Amory where they're talking about

00:50:16.600 Alberta is going to make it harder

00:50:19.560 to qualify for MAID, or maybe not harder to qualify for MAID, but there's going to be,

00:50:25.420 you're going to have to wait a little bit longer. Because remember last week, I shared a statistics

00:50:28.660 that was absolutely alarming, right? Something like, it was a report for one city, I think it

00:50:35.320 was Toronto, but something like 20 or 30% of requests for MAID in that one city, I think it

00:50:41.220 was Toronto, were approved and carried out in the same day. Can you imagine that? Like you just show

00:50:47.740 up at the hospital and you go, hey, I want to commit suicide. And you show up at noon and by

00:50:52.460 five o'clock it's done. I think that's, again, I'm a bit on the fence on MAID, not having experienced

00:50:59.960 it myself, not having any family members that are suffering that much. So I find it a little bit

00:51:05.840 hard to completely comment on that. But some parts of MAID, let me backstep. I think that

00:51:15.240 a lot of policies to me should be studied carefully before they're implemented and then they should

00:51:21.860 be implemented slowly and we should be monitoring for unintended consequences. Okay. So it could be

00:51:27.480 anything. It could be giving drugs on the streets as a treatment. It could be made. It could be

00:51:32.860 whatever, free daycare. I don't care. In my opinion, almost every policy, no matter how

00:51:39.980 well-intentioned can have some unintended consequences or worse. And to me, MAID fits in

00:51:47.200 that one, right? This government-assisted suicide makes me nervous. So I'm, and I'll admit it,

00:51:55.860 I'm on the fence. I haven't decided exactly where I stand on it, but I think it's one of those

00:52:00.780 things where we should perhaps move a little bit more slowly instead of fast. And from what I

00:52:06.640 understand Danielle passed, Edmonton passed a law yesterday or is contemplating a law where

00:52:12.980 it'll be more difficult to qualify for MAID or you'll have to at least wait a little period.

00:52:20.160 And so the idea being that if you're not in, even if you have a life-threatening disease,

00:52:25.660 if you're not an immediate threat, if it's not going to end your life in the next, you know,

00:52:30.540 48 hours, that perhaps you need to wait. So maybe comment on that next week and we can see

00:52:36.620 uh uh where you guys stand on that um you know i just i asked john i don't know how i was going

00:52:43.020 to roll this all into it but i wanted john to i don't know how many of you guys saw this video

00:52:47.180 yesterday or two days ago it it was recorded in taber check this out

00:52:57.980 holy yeah okay full disclosure for youtube and any other platforms nobody was injured in that

00:53:06.620 uh, in that incident that was recorded and nobody was injured, but it's, um, it, uh,

00:53:11.480 I saw that yesterday and I think my reaction was along the same lines. Holy crap. Right.

00:53:17.140 And, and then, uh, a couple of people did some investigating and found out that that truck was

00:53:23.140 sitting on the road at the bad spot, waiting to make a turn and, uh, suddenly got blindsided by

00:53:30.640 that train. To me, getting hit by a train is probably one of the most ridiculous things in

00:53:35.660 the world. I mean, they do move fast, but it should, it, to me, it should be almost a hundred

00:53:39.820 percent avoidable, but I'm just going to, um, uh, relate a story that relates to me. I'm an

00:53:47.840 engineer. I spent a lifetime solving problems. And one of the things I always did as an engineer is

00:53:52.280 you try and take out the, the, the human factor out of your design, or you try and think what's

00:53:58.140 the stupidest thing some humans going to try and do. And then you try and engineer around that.

00:54:03.480 Right. So you you you you have a certain you'll put a guard around a piece of equipment because you're worried that some human will put his hand in there and wreck his finger.

00:54:13.140 So you put a guard and then the guard's not enough. Anyways, long story short, I learned a long time ago that as much as I spend time designing things for dumb humans, there'll be a you know, there's always a human dumber than I anticipated.

00:54:29.740 Not saying that guy was dumb, but a lot of the evidence points to the fact that that truck really shouldn't have been there.

00:54:37.600 And there's a lot of that that was completely preventable.

00:54:41.100 And the reason I'm bringing that up is we've had too many.

00:54:44.420 Again, this is related to this out of control immigration we've had.

00:54:47.900 I'll be blunt. I think we have too many.

00:54:50.060 There's too many weeks that, you know, that go by where there's an incident.

00:54:53.360 There was one like that in Jasper not too long ago.

00:54:56.040 They're all along the Coquihalla. They're everywhere.

00:54:58.280 There's too many incidents of unqualified truck drivers and big trucks, and it's becoming an issue that's got to be addressed.

00:55:06.760 And I think the out-of-control immigration is part of that.

00:55:09.520 These guys are getting their permits.

00:55:10.980 I don't know where they're getting their permits, but we never used to have that many incidents, and suddenly there's this whole peak of incidents like that.

00:55:19.780 And something else led me to believe that is it maybe perhaps even an insurance scam?

00:55:24.120 I don't know.

00:55:24.600 um anyways i i found that one uh quite uh quite interesting um all right well uh let's let's let

00:55:34.440 me go through a couple of comments here see what i got um good afternoon weirdly 139 good afternoon

00:55:48.760 from Tabor Alberta says uh I don't know if it showed up on the screen there uh good afternoon

00:55:55.680 from Tabor Debbie hey Debbie maybe follow-up comment were you anywhere near that or can you

00:56:00.600 describe uh what happened there what why because that truck was turning into a bean plant of some

00:56:06.780 sort now obviously the truck looks empty by the way they got impacted um yeah maybe

00:56:12.620 uh let me go oh let's go to another one we'll always like uh comments to see who's calling

00:56:20.360 from as far as possible we got somebody grace here from uh down here in arizona i've seen and

00:56:25.820 talked to all kinds of albertan seniors who are signing at the pop-up places audit comes up every

00:56:30.960 time that the federal government would punish us for signing freeze bank accounts take pensions

00:56:36.220 and so on. Imagine being that afraid. It's sad, but that is the fact that Canadians have a reason

00:56:44.920 to be afraid of their government. Let me just put it that way. I mean, I'll be blunt. Our government

00:56:49.220 hasn't been exactly nice to us in the last decade. And there's a reason to be that. I mean,

00:56:56.360 getting a bank account frozen is completely debilitating in this day and age. A friend of

00:57:04.960 Well, you guys all know her, Eva Chipyak, Eva had an account frozen.

00:57:08.660 I mean, what a scary thing to wake up to that.

00:57:12.600 Andy Lee that many of you guys know, Andy probably had the bank account frozen.

00:57:17.860 It's something that's terribly difficult to recover from.

00:57:21.740 Everything is so related.

00:57:23.160 I mean, think of the inconvenience of just losing your wallet and losing your driver's license and your bank card and having to replace them.

00:57:31.820 That's inconvenient, but at least it can happen.

00:57:33.780 And if the government freezes your bank account, you're hooped.

00:57:38.320 And those are all, I mean, you know what?

00:57:40.940 We're running out of time, but I'll leave it with this, right?

00:57:44.300 Because I think it is a parting thought.

00:57:47.240 Our government wants to control us.

00:57:49.280 Like there's no ifs, ands, or buts that our governments are constantly doing things to control us.

00:57:53.920 They're doing things to control our speech.

00:57:55.400 They want to go to digital currency because that just makes it easier to shut you off.

00:58:02.100 They want us in electric cars.

00:58:03.400 There's nothing easier than if you're driving an electric car and they can just turn off the, you know, download some software and take control of your car.

00:58:11.920 I mean, you're driving your car. You didn't make a payment. It's on its way back to the dealership.

00:58:16.280 They don't want us in the parks. Oh, by the way, geez, I never even thought of that one.

00:58:20.580 um jeff evely out uh east is right now his remember jeff he's the veteran who um

00:58:27.700 uh walked into the woods last year uh and got fined 28 000 in nova scotia his case is on trial

00:58:35.580 uh closer to home uh we just learned last week that this summer we won't be able to do paddle

00:58:42.460 sports in uh several lakes in bamf lake minnewonka uh moraine lake and i think bow lake

00:58:49.280 So the government's controlling us, doesn't want us having fun, doesn't want us in the wilderness.

00:58:55.520 Anyways, I'm ranting a little bit.

00:58:57.820 I've got one last chance for one last caller online.

00:59:00.620 Go ahead, caller.

00:59:01.360 Where are you calling from and what's on your mind?

00:59:05.100 Hey, good to see you or hear you.

00:59:07.680 It's Tommy Temper from the Tommy Temper show out of Edmonton.

00:59:12.740 By the way, Edmonton is a pretty good place here.

00:59:14.880 I was born here, lived here all my life.

00:59:17.820 and uh actually i live in nenshi's territory here so he's kind of a uh helicoptered in guy

00:59:25.020 from calgary and of course he's not going to do us any good but i'd like to give a shout out and

00:59:31.340 a thanks to uh western standard for doing such a good job supporting the effort and i'd like

00:59:38.540 everyone to support the western standard of course glad to see the year on the show there

00:59:43.740 um i kind of was following you on x and one of the other podcasters there and i really love the

00:59:49.660 stuff that you do on x i i push it out all the time share it out and stuff like that my background

00:59:56.300 is i went on the convoy to ottawa was out milk river and uh i'm a big supporter of uh independence

01:00:03.900 and uh it's uh i love i love what's going on here with uh with the whole thing now the question for

01:00:09.740 you though what's your take and give us a little bit more of an indication of what's happening

01:00:15.820 with the petition and how the the natives got together and they're usually going to use the

01:00:21.900 court system to try and thwart the petition and uh you know the whole thing and what do you think

01:00:28.380 this court system thing is going to happen and um and you guys are supposedly putting the the votes

01:00:36.140 in for the plebiscite early because you think that they're going to try and thwart it with

01:00:41.340 the court system so what's what's going on with that whole thing uh well okay well thanks for

01:00:46.300 calling tommy um and appreciate your support all these uh last few years um listen i'm not you know

01:00:54.680 i think people perceive me as an insider to the app but i'm not right i'm i'm a very vocal

01:01:00.800 uh proponent of independence but i don't sit on the board of app or stay free alberta

01:01:05.960 um i don't have you know direct access to what they're thinking i only hear it like you and i

01:01:12.640 um so so so to the original question of whether uh or how the first nations are trying to slow

01:01:21.300 this down they're simply um requesting an injunction they're they're literally requesting

01:01:27.760 a pause to the signature collection i haven't read their brief i don't know what their what their

01:01:34.000 uh basis of their injunction is other than i'm sure they're claiming it's unconstitutional it

01:01:41.160 has something to do with seated territories and so forth and so forth um i i my my opinion on that

01:01:48.820 is that i can't see how they would have a leg to stand on because the the petition at this point

01:01:54.300 is done under the Citizens Initiative Act.

01:01:56.760 So that's how it's being managed.

01:02:01.160 And all we're doing is collecting signatures.

01:02:03.840 We're petitioning.

01:02:05.000 We're petitioning the government.

01:02:06.200 So I don't know why trying to stop citizens

01:02:09.160 from collecting signatures

01:02:10.820 seems an extreme abuse of a democratic right, right?

01:02:16.460 It's almost like trying to stop me from voting.

01:02:18.760 So I have no idea how the court will adjudicate on this.

01:02:22.540 It's up in April, coming up here, April 6th or 7th.

01:02:26.280 My fear is that a lot of judges don't want to adjudicate and they'll just accept the request,

01:02:37.060 impose an injunction and stop the process and then let an appellate court or another court decide.

01:02:44.980 So honestly, I don't know how they can do it.

01:02:47.000 And even if and even I find that funny, like even if they said, OK, you can't you can't do

01:02:51.980 stay free Alberta you can't collect signatures I could at that point I could literally take my

01:02:58.140 badge from and and throw it in the garbage and say you know what I'm still going to collect

01:03:02.540 signatures I'm going to stop I'm going to stay on the side of the road and collect signatures

01:03:06.160 and what's going to happen then is the court is the court going to send an officer to put me in

01:03:10.640 contempt of court you know what I mean like this whole this is going to be interesting because I

01:03:14.420 don't know how this plays out and I don't know how an injunction would even be enforceable that said

01:03:19.900 I've heard the same rumor that you've heard, which is that Stay Free Alberta or Mitch Sylvester as the petitioner is potentially thinking of of not letting this to even go to trial or not trial to go to court.

01:03:35.820 The hearing is on April 6th.

01:03:37.060 So Mitch could, if he feels that he let's say Mitch has 500,000 signatures in his office right now and it's whatever, March 31st.

01:03:46.360 Should he take all 500,000 and say, yeah, we're done and not and then submit him to elections off Alberta before this can even go to court?

01:03:54.520 I would agree. I would say, yeah, absolutely do that.

01:03:58.180 So we'll see that it's strategic at this point, but I'm I'm I'm I'm not a true insider.

01:04:03.820 Hope that answers the question there, Tommy. Thanks for calling in.

01:04:07.060 I appreciate the answer yeah yeah no I would have to agree with you because that's what

01:04:17.220 we're hearing is that you're wanting to put the petitions in ahead of time before the

01:04:21.320 deadline everyone is saying hey get out there sign now sign now which I would agree sign

01:04:25.400 now in case that does happen we know that the petition itself was thwarted with the

01:04:30.280 court system ahead of time right there was there was a big delay on it and the legislation

01:04:35.780 was changed to prevent that from happening but uh it seems like it's the court system to getting

01:04:41.120 involved again which of course we don't trust those uh liberal uh judges okay thanks a lot

01:04:47.640 marty yeah yeah thanks for and i'll just follow up uh i i think that's you know i called it a stunt

01:04:53.280 when i saw them uh the the chiefs with nancy on the steps of the legislature and i think that

01:04:58.360 stunt backfired on them because we had a boost of i can only speak from personal experience but

01:05:03.280 last week and the week before i had a huge boost and people coming to sign and and citing that

01:05:08.560 example specifically so uh uh perhaps that backfired on them um listen uh tommy did a

01:05:15.520 pretty good sales pitch for us here at the western standard but i'll i'll repeat it i mean the show's

01:05:20.720 coming to an end here uh uh join me again next week folks uh we'll we'll keep doing this and

01:05:26.800 i'll keep bugging you guys to call in i'll keep refining the whole system i mean either either

01:05:32.240 call in or send me comments beforehand you can you know how to reach me you can reach me here

01:05:36.880 you can reach me on x put your comments on there and uh and and don't be shy we'll we'll get this

01:05:43.100 going um if you're not already a member it's ten dollars a month or it's a hundred dollars a year

01:05:50.280 so again organizations independent media like this uh you know depend on on um on collecting

01:05:58.740 fees from the public like you guys unlike cbc that gets there from taxpayers you would do this

01:06:04.740 voluntarily so uh consider joining it's www.westernstandard.news and uh hopefully you'll

01:06:13.260 join me again next week here thursdays at 1 p.m for the marty up north show on the western standard

01:06:18.980 cheers folks

01:06:28.740 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 24, 2026

MARTY UP NORTH： Shrinking population, stalled economy and Alberta’s next move

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