Western Standard - February 19, 2026


MARTY UP NORTH: The Federal Conservatives are losing Alberta


Episode Stats


Length

59 minutes

Words per minute

178.6613

Word count

10,578

Sentence count

153

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the Marty Up North Show, Marty talks about the Women's World Cup of hockey, the Canadian Women's National Team's Gold Medalist, and why he thinks Alex Poiliev is going to win or lose the election.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
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 Welcome back, folks.
00:00:28.700 hey we're live for my second installment here of the marty up north show here at the western
00:00:34.800 standard uh thanks for joining um you know you got many of you uh saw my show last week i think
00:00:42.380 you you know some of you probably sensed that i was a little bit nervous and i was you know it's
00:00:47.440 a new show for me uh i'm not new i mean i'm not new to talking right i do a lot of talking it's
00:00:52.280 one of the things i love doing a lot of a lot of texting but um this format is new for me especially
00:00:58.600 having a a wonderful producer so i got john in the studio with me and john's coordinating the
00:01:04.760 chats and everything else so um and and i just want to repeat a little bit what we're trying to
00:01:09.800 do right so you guys know me uh i'm not a i'm not a journalist right i'm not a guy who investigates
00:01:15.960 stories i'm a guy who reads a lot of stories all day long i'm retired so that's one of the things
00:01:21.400 i got you know i'm lucky i can do that i get up in the morning and i start reading stories
00:01:25.400 and i like to comment on stories and that's what we're bringing out here for you folks i'm bringing
00:01:31.140 my show out here on the western standard and i and and we're doing it in as an interactive uh
00:01:36.760 show you know i'm going to talk a bunch but i also want to take your guys's calls
00:01:41.300 and uh and and have some dialogue and and on that just specifically um you know again we're we're
00:01:49.120 getting set up with the call-in process and we got a couple of little bugs to work out i didn't know
00:01:54.520 this was happening last week but apparently when you guys call right now it's not like we have a
00:01:59.280 switchboard with 15 numbers that where we can put people on hold and then suddenly they all pop up
00:02:04.240 basically when you guys are calling uh john is putting you in queue but we can only take one
00:02:10.200 call at a time so when i'm done talking with somebody he has to literally pick up the phone
00:02:15.720 so we'll work out those bugs don't don't stress about that too much but you see the number down
00:02:20.120 below uh so so call in um yeah so you know uh happy to be in this slot tough slot to be in today
00:02:29.240 right today uh being on one o'clock in this slot today i'm competing against uh the ladies in uh 0.99
00:02:35.240 hockey the uh women's uh uh gold medal game is going on in italy right now and uh i actually
00:02:42.360 have no idea how it's going last time i looked just before i got into the studio it was one
00:02:46.520 nothing for Canada we had a shorthanded goal so you know go ladies go quick story on that actually
00:02:53.140 I want to tell you a quick story I went to high school in Ontario I graduated in 1985 and when
00:02:59.240 I was a kid in high school I played hockey I played hockey past high school you know I even
00:03:05.920 coached but but in high school I had a phys ed teacher named Marion Covney and she used to teach 0.99
00:03:14.540 as phys ed but she coached my guys hockey team that i was on and she was a phenomenal player 0.94
00:03:20.120 and marion coveney we knew her as as miss coveney she went on to be actually the first captain of
00:03:27.400 canada's um women's national team in international competition so she became the first captain
00:03:34.320 of women of team canada in 1987 so uh just uh just a weird coincidence just wanted to put her
00:03:41.520 out there unfortunately uh ms coveney as i always knew her passed away after about of uh a long a 0.80
00:03:49.520 battle with cancer about three years ago but anyways uh whenever i watch women's hockey i
00:03:54.160 think about her um so you saw the title of the show today definitely want to talk a bit about
00:03:59.680 you know the topics that are current and and for me this week my twitter feed it's all about the
00:04:04.720 floor crossing um and and and you saw the title you know is is poiliev winning or losing alberta
00:04:13.120 uh we and and so let you know let's just dive into that i mean um you know a couple of days
00:04:19.840 ago poiliev was pierre poiliev mr poiliev the leader of the opposition was kind of put on the
00:04:25.920 spot in a scrum and he was asked you know are there any separatists in your party and he clearly
00:04:32.960 articulated that no there are no separatists in his party that his caucus is uh is all pro canada
00:04:41.120 and he himself declared himself as uh you know alberta born strong um canadian and uh so non
00:04:50.560 separatist which was which was an interesting comment um especially you know and it aligns i
00:04:57.520 mean i'm not surprised by it it aligns with uh the fact that he's a federal leader you know
00:05:02.640 I mean, the only federal leader that really can pronounce himself as a separatist, I guess, is the leader of the bloc, Yves Blanchet.
00:05:11.440 So I guess everybody else who's taken an oath to the king has to be pro-Canada and can't really declare themselves as separatist supporters.
00:05:20.060 But I was surprised that he went as far as saying that everybody in his party was totally pro-Canada.
00:05:27.120 and and you know and i think that cost him a little bit of uh popularity here in alberta i
00:05:33.020 mean i did my own little survey online the other day um because as i've told you guys i've actually
00:05:39.360 been canvassing i've been going door to door trying to collect signatures for the uh independence
00:05:43.620 petition so and i get to talk to a lot of people and you know when i ask people why they want out
00:05:49.160 a lot of people say they're just frustrated because our voices aren't heard which is valid
00:05:53.760 And then and then a lot of people have told me they never vote in federal elections, never have, which I find interesting.
00:05:59.840 So I did a poll today and I asked people, you know, if an election were to be held tomorrow and you're conservative leaning, would you vote for Pierre, you know, reluctantly?
00:06:10.900 Would you vote for Pierre happily or would you vote for somebody else like Max Bernier or another party or would you abstain?
00:06:19.980 So I gave, I gave those four choices and the, the pro voting for reluctantly or happily
00:06:27.280 was 60% and then 40% said they would do otherwise.
00:06:30.260 So I found that an interesting, um, that's, that's, that should be alarming for Pierre
00:06:36.380 and the conservatives.
00:06:38.500 And then, and then, uh, and then we just saw what happened yesterday, which was extremely
00:06:43.100 alarming, which also turned off a lot of, uh, Albertans in general.
00:06:47.380 but yesterday we had a floor crossing another one which is the third one um and we had uh
00:06:53.940 this gentleman named um uh matt generu who's an mp up in the edmonton area now matt's been a
00:07:02.280 provincial mla and a conservative and a federal mp so he's been in politics for a long time
00:07:09.780 and he's always been a conservative and he's been in a writing that's always been conservative
00:07:14.560 so then for him to suddenly say that he's uh jumping ships that he's had a change of heart
00:07:19.900 he said he had a change of heart because of uh pierre or not pierre because of uh mark carney's
00:07:25.360 speech in davos and uh i'm like well that's interesting because uh you know you'd have a
00:07:32.320 hard time convincing me that that you're in a writing that's been conservative for the last
00:07:36.400 you know 20 years and suddenly you're supposed to represent the people in your writing and you're
00:07:42.640 switching seats so um that was not a popular move yesterday a lot of uh backlash uh from that um
00:07:52.960 and and and so much so that uh people went to the office and it was quite funny because there's a
00:07:58.720 video circulating of somebody standing outside the office and the office is closed and you could just
00:08:03.120 hear the phone ringing inside ringing ringing ringing ringing and no one was answering it
00:08:07.360 which so you know in my opinion um carney is uh or poilier is perhaps losing a bit of support
00:08:15.220 in alberta which is should be very worrisome for conservatives in the rest of the country because
00:08:21.360 as we've said before without the without a strong conservative vote in alberta the the country
00:08:26.900 doesn't have a hope it's always going to be liberal and and and then the other side of the
00:08:32.500 story is that carney now you know he's rebuilding his majority his minority uh call it what you want
00:08:40.180 i mean he's close to a majority you know he needs uh 172 seats in the house of commons right now
00:08:48.900 he's at 169 because he did you know he he never had the majority to start with and he lost uh
00:08:54.420 freeland and um uh bill blair recently you know freeland went to uh in a role in ukraine and bill
00:09:02.260 bill blair is the canada's uh high commissioner to the uk which is basically a diplomatic role
00:09:07.160 so he's lost those seats and then he had a couple of other um departures so right now uh by by right
00:09:16.720 now officially carney has 169 uh seats he needs 172 for a majority and he's got three um by
00:09:25.160 elections over the horizon so in my i honestly think that mark carney is really close to a
00:09:32.520 it is a majority but it's not going to be a very good one because he'll always you know he has to
00:09:36.600 give up one of those seats to the speaker of the house i don't think he'll be happy with just 172
00:09:41.800 seat majority i think he can sense uh smell blood and i he can sense the weakness of the conservatives
00:09:48.520 And I wouldn't be surprised if Carney does something to send us to the polls in the new year.
00:09:56.020 I don't think Carney, he himself, I don't think he's going to go over to the governor general and dissolve parliament.
00:10:01.240 That would be brutally unpopular, especially after all the shenanigans that they've done in the last year, you know, proroguing parliament and him becoming prime minister without having a seat and all that stuff that happened 12 months ago.
00:10:14.480 So I don't think he's conscious of that.
00:10:17.420 so what's his best bet my best bet is that he's going to somehow or other try to uh allow himself
00:10:24.280 to be defeated in an upcoming vote so i think the most likely vote in the new year will be or not
00:10:30.840 new year in the coming months is budget believe it or not we have to you know we just approved
00:10:35.840 the budget but we got to re-approve the budget the budget for 2026 2027 is due right away because
00:10:41.120 fiscal year federally runs from you know april uh first to march 31st so like right away in about
00:10:47.920 six weeks we're done the 2025 2026 year even though we just approved the budget um so yeah
00:10:54.720 so it's been uh you know it's been a fascinating week uh from that point of view watching all of
00:11:01.280 that and uh and uh yeah i i think you know it's a we we're in for we're in for a really really
00:11:10.400 interesting time so i anyways i've spoken quite a bit uh you know that's my intro i mean i think uh
00:11:16.240 i think you guys can sense it i want to talk about uh i want to talk about the possibility of a of an
00:11:21.600 election in the new year i want to i want to hear your guys's thoughts on the floor crossing and uh
00:11:27.920 and poiliev's reaction is it enough is it not enough um things like that so you know john's
00:11:33.680 going to open up the uh the phone lines right now and if you guys want to call in uh please do so
00:11:39.040 and if somebody wants to uh also call in or and let me know um you know the score of the game i'd
00:11:46.560 be uh i'd be happy to know that um so just you know uh while we wait for a couple calls just uh
00:11:55.200 But just on the, if there is no election, if there is no election in the coming year, Carney still has a couple of by-elections that he has to worry about.
00:12:09.380 So he has a couple of people, you know, he still has to refill the seat that belonged to Freeland and the one that belonged to Bill Blair.
00:12:18.180 And then he has another one in Quebec that is vacant that was a real squeaker last year.
00:12:24.380 so you know even even if everything goes right carney still has a challenge to get his uh
00:12:31.180 his uh his majority um so you know uh and and then of course i was talking about
00:12:39.740 things that he's doing to try and uh sabotage himself um because he doesn't like i i don't
00:12:48.060 don't think he wants to you know uh drop the writ and uh launch it or call a snap election he doesn't
00:12:55.180 want to do that so he wants somebody to do that for him and the best way for him that for that
00:12:59.060 to happen is for him to get defeated in the bill and he's got a couple of bills on the table right
00:13:04.220 now that are not popular he's got c9 which is that the bill uh on uh free speech and you know
00:13:11.220 disguising what's it's the hate bill right they're they're inventing this thing they're they're
00:13:16.020 pretend or they're making a big deal out of hate and they're trying to pass laws making it illegal
00:13:22.660 to hate which in and of itself is a an interesting idea right there's nothing it's not illegal to
00:13:27.680 hate you know i i can say i don't like you there's nothing illegal about that if i don't like you and 0.88
00:13:33.740 i do things to uh that can harm you that's illegal but simply saying i don't like you is not uh a
00:13:40.260 crime but the liberals are trying to make that a crime we all know what's going on i mean especially
00:13:43.820 us here that are in, you know, with media or on the periphery, people that are expressing
00:13:49.460 opinions like I am right now, they want to shut down those opinions.
00:13:52.580 They don't like people that have opinions.
00:13:55.220 So the Liberals could try and get defeated on C9, but I think more likely they're going
00:14:00.380 to try and get defeated on the budget, right?
00:14:03.540 Last year's budget was a doozy with $70 billion in deficit.
00:14:10.240 it and and in just in the last three months since it's been announced they they keep piling on the
00:14:16.100 deficits right so the uh that that gst um credit that was relabeled as a um uh it's what do they
00:14:27.300 call it they called it a grocery is essential groceries benefit or something like that right
00:14:31.800 basically food stamps and and when they announced those food stamps a couple of weeks ago basically
00:14:37.180 that's another 12 billion dollar that wasn't budgeted for so you got 70 billion dollar deficit
00:14:43.260 you're adding uh you know the gst uh rebates you know the the the the shenanigans around that they
00:14:51.260 lost the um they were trying to go after uh capital gains right remember when they tried to increase
00:14:58.060 the capital gains uh exemption rate from 50 to 62 percent so uh you know they were doing all those
00:15:05.420 stunts and so i think in in the new year they're going to be hard pressed to uh to have a budget
00:15:10.940 that's on with a deficit of under a hundred billion dollars anyways okay so i got a call
00:15:15.740 on the line uh go ahead please and and state your name and tell me where you're calling from
00:15:22.940 maverro from sudbury ontario how's it going welcome to the show very good how's it going with
00:15:30.460 other than the brutal cold we got hit by mother nature this you know we we all got complacent
00:15:38.900 for a while here we had no snow on the ground and then suddenly she gave us a wallop but
00:15:43.740 But yeah, good otherwise.
00:15:46.180 What are you thinking?
00:15:47.180 What's your thoughts?
00:15:48.180 Okay, we're good.
00:15:49.180 All right.
00:15:50.180 Well, you're thinking that Army is going to put through something of a bill that is
00:15:59.140 going to tempt the other people, to tempt the opposition into a non-confidence motion.
00:16:09.580 So what I want to know is do you really believe they want that to fail
00:16:13.440 or are they going to use that opportunistically to push their various initiatives
00:16:18.880 because the Conservatives really don't want an election either?
00:16:25.100 Because the way you were talking makes it sound like they're kind of like,
00:16:27.980 yeah, push us into an election.
00:16:29.180 But I really don't believe that's the way they're going with all these,
00:16:32.800 as you said, shenanigans.
00:16:34.020 What do you think?
00:16:35.000 Yeah, no good point.
00:16:36.060 i mean uh you know the all the parties back to do they want an election from a financial point
00:16:41.740 of view all the parties released their full um financial statements from the last election right
00:16:47.740 they both ran uh 30 million dollar uh campaign so they're the parties are broke they have no
00:16:54.060 money in their coffers that said um the they can work together and try and pass bills together
00:17:02.860 under a minority government like they have for the last i mean let's face it right under trudeau
00:17:07.740 we had minority governments and it was kind of stalled and they they didn't advance anything too
00:17:12.620 too useful or controversial but i think honestly i think the liberals at this point they're stomping
00:17:18.620 at the bit right they want to they've been sitting idle they have an agenda and they really haven't
00:17:23.580 been able to push their agenda so i think they're good and they see they like i said they they see
00:17:27.980 an opportunity because the other parties are weak so i think the liberals are gonna are gonna push
00:17:33.820 for an election because going down this path we're gonna be down in a minority for the for
00:17:39.420 the conceivable future because we're gonna win lose a few more floor crossings things like that
00:17:44.380 so deep down i think that the liberals wanna they want an election okay all right you're not sitting
00:17:52.460 on the fence thank you marty yeah yeah no i i rarely sit on the fence that's one thing uh i i
00:17:57.980 usually uh have an opinion on but um yeah and actually that's an interesting thing too we we
00:18:04.540 uh i did go through the the financials not too long ago that you know the election was way back
00:18:09.500 in march april but they and they have um usually the parties have about five months to file their
00:18:15.980 their election spending in this instance for whatever reason the uh elections canada gave
00:18:21.660 them until almost the end of the year so that most of them didn't file until like december 29th
00:18:26.300 and i went and looked through it definitely the liberals and conservatives both went right to the
00:18:30.700 limit like they're allowed to spend 30 million dollars they both spent like right to the limit
00:18:34.700 you know 29 million 993 000 kind of thing uh the ndp were a little bit less uh well a lot less at
00:18:43.180 about uh eight uh eight million dollars which is also another interesting reason why i think
00:18:49.660 the liberals might want an election right now is because the the the ndp still don't have a leader
00:18:55.260 they're doing their uh actually the ndp have a leadership um debate tonight if i remember
00:19:01.420 correctly in uh bc there's a debate tonight and the lead and the leadership for the ndp starts
00:19:06.860 voting in the coming weeks and they'll announce a a leader shortly here but for all intense
00:19:13.020 purposes jagmeet singh completely destroyed that party i mean they they have three seats in the
00:19:17.340 the house of commons and i think they're trending to six right now so we've we've definitely become
00:19:22.700 a it's a two horse race it's the liberals versus the conservatives the bloc are still present uh
00:19:30.220 but um not enough i mean the the polls right now show that if the if well that's the other
00:19:35.900 important important thing right they're reading the polls and if if the conservative if the liberals
00:19:40.060 had an election tomorrow not only are they sensing they could win it they could they're sensing they
00:19:44.700 could win it and have a pretty solid majority so you know so then do you think that try and push
00:19:51.580 through or or take a risk on a more controversial bill right away because of that stance of not
00:19:58.780 of almost encouraging an election yes yes exactly actually i you you i was trying to think of what
00:20:05.420 this yes that's what i that's what i saying i mean they can do it with the budget and they can make
00:20:09.100 the budget unpopular the budget was barely popular remember they needed like to go get
00:20:14.700 um elizabeth may and she you know she she clutched her pearls and it's like i'll reluctantly vote
00:20:20.460 for it but at some point uh it might get so gross that she can't support it and then uh i also i
00:20:27.500 also see um another shenanigan that's happening right look at what they did this week or was it
00:20:33.740 this week or last week where uh carney appointed um let me let me backtrack right so the liberal
00:20:40.140 the the canada u.s mexico trade agreement is signed it's a like it's like a 16-year agreement
00:20:46.940 but it does have it does require a review period so there's so um because neither party neither
00:20:53.660 the mexicans the americans nobody uh you know invoke the uh the clause to get out of the deal
00:21:00.380 it's due for an automatic renewal and and carney this week appointed um some lady uh what was her 1.00
00:21:07.260 name um somebody yeah yeah yeah and and so and that was completely unpopular in it again it
00:21:15.820 looks like he's sabotaging the relationship we have with the us which i think he is because
00:21:21.580 um the worse it gets for us the more he keeps blaming trump and then the better that is for
00:21:29.020 him so carney will you know carney's distancing himself from trudeau and then he keeps blaming
00:21:34.460 trump and keeps portraying himself as the savior okay janice janice charrett there you go thank
00:21:41.220 you yeah and and it's somebody who's very kind of uh supported the uh or advised towards lockdown
00:21:49.840 or or pardon me towards invoking the emergencies act against the freedom convoy yeah so she has
00:21:56.900 this sort of authoritarian bent to her so i don't know what that means as far as negotiation tactics 0.98
00:22:02.800 I don't think that's particularly promising, because if we consider the U.S. any kind of a populist government, and whatever our government is, if you want to call it, well, whatever you want to call it, it's a little more of a technocratic government.
00:22:21.440 I don't know if they're going to get along well, these two individuals, if they ever talk face to face.
00:22:26.620 I think there's going to be some kind of tension, right?
00:22:29.420 yeah yeah yeah she's uh she's a career um politic not a career politician she's a career bureaucrat 1.00
00:22:36.780 right she's been in government for 40 years her claim to fame is she was uh president of the privy
00:22:41.820 council and stuff like that but i mean she has no no um no real credentials when it comes to
00:22:47.820 negotiating or or or diplomat or diplomacy with uh foreign governments um yeah yeah yeah no
00:22:56.140 appreciate the call thanks thanks very much marty yeah yeah um actually just on on that um yeah
00:23:05.980 you know he's right uh she was in privy council and she is one of the people who advise um trudeau
00:23:13.500 to invoke the emergency measures act so i mean that alone doesn't make her very popular with
00:23:18.940 uh with me um we got another call on the line uh go ahead
00:23:26.140 what's your name what's your name please yeah go ahead uh it's wayne mark no i live in
00:23:33.340 frazier lake in lovely north central bc in a very depressed uh mining lumber town
00:23:39.260 and i'm just generally really upset you know i'm it's not just albertans that are upset you know
00:23:46.240 like this country the wealth i've seen drawn out of it i was born in grand perry so i'm familiar
00:23:53.160 with some of the areas that you talk about sometimes and my concern today is
00:23:59.340 Tumblr Ridge and suppression of free speech on saying anything. The only guy
00:24:06.040 that had any testinal fortitude was Max Bernier. He called them out and it's okay.
00:24:14.840 Isn't that crazy? Sorry, you said Fraser Lake or how far? I mean you so you've
00:24:20.580 driven through Tumblr Ridge, right? Describe that part of the world for some of the listeners
00:24:26.200 who are not familiar with it. What does it look like?
00:24:30.880 I've never been to Tumblr Ridge, but both of my grandparents were first generation homesteaders.
00:24:41.740 So I'm a third generation of people that Justin Trudeau really hates. I've been to
00:24:48.980 grand prairie many times i spent a couple summers out there on one of my uncle's farms it's a
00:24:54.180 beautiful country they call it god's country like grand prairie and some of the ridges in the
00:25:00.420 mountains like that's like chetland i had a sister live in chetland and a nephew got badly hurt in
00:25:07.460 chetland in a sawmill they are analysts come to alberta to u of a and i think that's the only
00:25:14.260 reason he's alive like you get hurt in bc you go to alberta to get health care it's kind of
00:25:21.460 depressing living in northern bc actually yeah i'm retired and gray i'm a little annoyed about
00:25:27.860 a lot of things okay okay no you know it's not just it's the reverse sector in general that's
00:25:34.580 had the crap beat of it by these progressive agendas like especially that we've taken yeah
00:25:41.540 Yeah. Thanks for that, Wayne. And, you know, yeah, especially that part of the world. I mean, 0.78
00:25:46.540 Tumblr Ridge is mining towns and it got, you know, it got crushed when the green agendas came
00:25:52.900 in and we weren't supposed to produce coal, even though we could produce coal very cleanly and
00:25:57.780 there's technology to clean it up when it's being burnt. And it's a very efficient way to, you know,
00:26:02.100 to make electricity and whatnot. But, you know, Tumblr Ridge was destroyed. But I want to go back
00:26:06.940 your point you brought up your you know your initial point was pretty spot on right uh the
00:26:12.140 events actually i'm kind of surprised that the events at at the as tragic as they were tragic
00:26:17.580 events it was extremely tragic what happened in tumblr ridge i'm surprised it didn't get politicized
00:26:22.140 more so i think uh both sides realized that maybe this wasn't the time to politicize it and it actually
00:26:30.300 fell off the um the uh the news cycle it didn't you know it's it's only been a week and already
00:26:36.060 people aren't talking about tumblr ridge so yeah thanks for calling wayne yeah yeah okay have a
00:26:43.740 good day yeah yeah you too cheers um yeah i i i'm actually yeah back to that i am surprised i i thought
00:26:51.340 for sure they were gonna you know use that to uh keep promoting that that gun ban that i think is 0.84
00:26:57.740 absolutely foolish and a complete and total waste of money i mean let's be real right the the um
00:27:05.180 the country has some real problems the country has some real problems and and they're not 0.98
00:27:10.380 being addressed right now i mean you know let's go back to to the economy and to trade with the
00:27:16.460 u.s and what's and and villainize making uh trump into a villain i i find that absolutely worrisome
00:27:24.620 because um you know we have a 200 and longer than that i mean we have a we we have a 10 000
00:27:32.700 year history with the americans next door if you forget about all the borders and stuff like that
00:27:37.180 but but quite honestly we have a 250 year history with them that's been super peaceful and uh
00:27:43.820 beneficial to both sides and to be antagonizing donald trump like we are right now i i i don't
00:27:50.460 want to go there but i'll i'll come back to that i got another call on the line so go ahead and
00:27:54.300 where are you from and what's your name please
00:27:55.660 it's with me mark dear home from clare's home alberta how's it going mark what's uh what's
00:28:05.020 on your mind bud good um just for a little context um back in the late 90s early 2000s
00:28:13.820 i was policy chair for reform out in crowfoot which is where pierre is right now um in 2009
00:28:21.500 and I came in second to Daniel Smith and Wildrose Rice,
00:28:24.820 just for those of you with political long memories.
00:28:28.660 So two things are happening.
00:28:31.080 I heard someone mention Maxime Bernier
00:28:33.700 way back when he first did his thing.
00:28:36.740 I reached out to his team and said,
00:28:38.960 if you will commit to only running
00:28:41.680 where a vote split will not elect a Trudeau liberal,
00:28:44.780 you will get support in Alberta.
00:28:46.980 So I just want to say that for people
00:28:48.400 that think Maxime's first driven snow,
00:28:51.260 He could have had a balance of power,
00:28:53.140 he could have had Alberta support
00:28:55.280 if he didn't do a threat of what we did as reform
00:28:58.900 by splitting with liberals.
00:29:01.600 Now that being said, Pierre is in Crowfoot,
00:29:06.020 which actually way back was a strong separatist movement.
00:29:12.000 And yeah, Pierre is losing us
00:29:15.720 because he's not standing up for us.
00:29:18.220 And I made a mistake by in any way agreeing to support Jason Kenney.
00:29:23.780 And bottom line, people that are lifelong politicians that haven't worked in the real world,
00:29:28.940 they don't understand what we're going through.
00:29:31.600 And they're making political compromises that are for power and not for the people.
00:29:36.940 Mark, you bring up so many good points, but I just want to ask a quick question.
00:29:40.660 So that writing from a provincial point of view, if I remember correctly, several years ago, like maybe in the 1980s, actually elected an MLA from a separatist party.
00:29:54.760 Is that right? Do you remember that or were you involved in that?
00:29:59.700 I was a little young back then, even though I'm an old guy now.
00:30:03.800 Yes, there was a separatist and I can't speak to exactly when.
00:30:06.800 And I believe it was a by-election process, though.
00:30:10.300 But also, and to be frank, I broke ranks when Jack Ramsey was found guilty of the crime he committed.
00:30:21.020 But he had a history with, I believe it was Western Canada concept or something, and that was federal and reform.
00:30:27.880 For anyone listening, I do not stand by that man with the crime he committed, and I push for the nomination to get rid of him.
00:30:35.000 Okay. Yeah, yeah.
00:30:36.140 after he was found guilty yeah your your other point you brought up i should have brought that
00:30:40.760 up actually because you know as i said at the start of the show i did that little poll of who
00:30:44.880 would you vote for and and in my little poll which got about 1700 votes uh 10 said they would vote
00:30:51.580 for max or another party which for the time being is max right it's the ppc so this could if there
00:30:57.540 is an election again in the near future there could be a breakthrough for max and i agree i
00:31:03.220 mean i'm not a i'm not you know people who've followed me for a long time no i'm not a huge
00:31:07.900 fan of max bernie i'm just not i like the party i i kind of like what the ppc stands for but i
00:31:13.820 just don't like max himself and um and and i think they could have a breakthrough in a writing like
00:31:20.240 you've described right i i live in one of those writings i mean i live in uh i think it's been
00:31:24.980 renamed now i think i live in uh in cochran airdre is the name of the writing um uh my my mla or my
00:31:30.760 mp is uh blake richards right he's been there for six years and and it's it's um it's a safe
00:31:37.240 conservative writing but it but uh uh the ppc could run in a writing like that and take you
00:31:43.660 know 10 15 of the vote still not flip it but uh actually that's an interesting question anybody
00:31:49.000 got an opinion is there a good writing where would where would max have the best bet of flipping a
00:31:54.400 writing in in Alberta and federal writing yeah appreciate the call mark the
00:32:00.520 bottom line is okay sorry but go ahead bottom line bottom line is that if max
00:32:09.280 comes up and makes it so that we as reformers which is where the root is of
00:32:14.500 grassroots Alberta politics if he says I will not let both splits win then he can
00:32:22.180 getters on board, but without original reformers on board that paid a price for going up against
00:32:28.780 vote splits, it's not going to happen. He will never win in Alberta unless he gets a strategy
00:32:35.300 where we go pay. He's not thinking he can win an election. He's going for a balance of power
00:32:40.960 because most reformers I know actually like the principles of the party, but strategically,
00:32:46.840 he is failing us so he needs to move on or accept a strategy that can be incremental and move us
00:32:53.680 forward very good yeah yeah yeah i appreciate that thank you um yeah if if somebody's got an
00:33:00.440 idea where would what's a good writing or where's a couple of places where max should focus i i mean
00:33:05.600 i found max's strategy in the last few elections a little bit unusual right he uh he showed up in
00:33:11.000 winnipeg uh last federal election or yeah last election he put a lot of effort in manitoba that
00:33:16.720 didn't pay off for him i think he should go after ontario and alberta and uh and focus his effort
00:33:22.900 somewhere but uh so anyways while i while i wait for a call uh i just want to go back to the you
00:33:28.640 know what i was talking about antagonizing the u.s right um like it doesn't like we let's be super
00:33:36.680 super realistic i mean we we do on a monthly basis 65 to 70 billion dollars worth of trade
00:33:42.920 with the us or sorry we do 60 to 70 billion dollars worth of trade internationally with
00:33:48.840 everyone but out of the 60 billion we do like 48 billion is with the us every month like 70
00:33:54.760 of canada's trade is with the us and then and then the next nearest competitor it varies it bounces
00:34:01.480 back and forth once in a while it's it's england and once in a while it's china and even mexico it
00:34:07.080 depends on the month or the year and uh and and the next one is like is dwarfed right we do 48
00:34:12.920 billion dollars with the us and then we do six billion dollars with china or with uh the uk
00:34:19.160 i mean if we lose 10 of our of our uh of our markets to the us we can't replace that with
00:34:24.760 anything rapidly it's impossible i mean the the the all all the other countries we do business
00:34:30.840 with don't match what we do with the u.s so i i'm always i find this idea well let's put it this way
00:34:38.360 i think about politics and i think about a lot of things all the time that's one of the things i do
00:34:43.000 and and when you run out of you know when you exhaust all the options and all the theories
00:34:47.400 and you're only left with one then whatever's remaining is probably the most likely there's
00:34:52.360 some people call that oxen's razor and some people call that the sherlock holm principle or whatever
00:34:57.080 But some days I look at what Carney and the liberals are doing, and I do think they are sabotaging our relationship with the U.S. on purpose.
00:35:08.040 They're breaking things to try and claim that they're then going to fix them and appear as the saviors, which is nonsense.
00:35:15.860 All right.
00:35:16.080 We've got a call on the line.
00:35:17.540 Go ahead and name and where are you from, please.
00:35:21.960 Hey, this is Jeff.
00:35:23.400 I'm from Calgary.
00:35:24.760 Okay.
00:35:26.080 Welcome to the show.
00:35:26.680 Hey, so I want to talk about a couple of things, but mainly about separation and sort of what this floor crossing means for us.
00:35:41.700 I'm obviously an Alberta separatist.
00:35:44.800 I'm actually from where you're from originally, and I wasn't a separatist back there.
00:35:48.520 I don't tell you that.
00:35:49.180 But, yeah, so basically with these four crossings, you know, I'm fully suspecting that the Liberals are going to get their majority one way or another.
00:36:01.340 What I'm really concerned with is bills, like things like Bill C-8, where as things are ramping up and they've got the mainstream media on lockdown,
00:36:11.620 especially that provision about being able to remove internet access to you know anyone for
00:36:18.900 any purpose doesn't need to go through a justice that sort of thing is really scary for the
00:36:24.740 movement and so what I'm wondering is how do we preemptively protect ourselves from that do we
00:36:32.880 go underground do we is there channels that we could start you know being part of or building
00:36:40.800 maybe on you know the onion route or things like that just so that we because i can see it he wants
00:36:45.920 his majority so he can push his stuff through with zero pushback and you know no matter what's being
00:36:51.600 said about privacy and security they'll just push them through so they have the the stick to do that
00:36:57.520 stuff and stop alberta separation right so what's your thoughts yeah a lot to unpack there i mean um
00:37:04.400 yeah i often forget about c8 uh the reality is nothing's passed right now right so that's the
00:37:10.240 the one good thing i mean it is such a minority that uh that nothing's passing but but go back to 0.99
00:37:18.060 you were trying to make a connection to the floor crossing like what what what worries you are you
00:37:23.180 trying to stop the floor crossing or what are you worried about the floor crossing
00:37:26.600 oh sorry um i brought that up because you were talking about the floor crossing originally and
00:37:33.040 what i'm i'm uh you know i'm i'm segwaying into like he's going to get his majority
00:37:38.060 one way or the other. We can see
00:37:40.380 the writing's
00:37:42.480 on the wall, as we say, right?
00:37:44.460 Which, you know, as a
00:37:46.460 fervent separatist, I'm actually,
00:37:48.440 you know, man, I hope he gets it through
00:37:50.140 Crossing so that all the fence sitters
00:37:51.940 jump on board with us.
00:37:54.180 I can already see people that
00:37:56.140 were saying before,
00:37:57.320 they weren't going to do it,
00:38:00.100 they're like, no, we're fully on board
00:38:02.040 with separating us. You're going where I would
00:38:04.120 go with it, right? I mean, yeah,
00:38:05.800 think back on the election,
00:38:07.180 uh you know uh nine months ago was i upset on the day of the election sure i was but then
00:38:12.460 instantly i'm like oh well it's a good day for alberta separation so if these shenanigans 0.98
00:38:19.660 here's my point here's my stance on it it's pretty clear right i've i've pretty much given
00:38:23.900 up on canada i mean as far as i'm concerned i see canada as a failed experiment it's it's we brought
00:38:28.940 together 10 provinces with the idea that we were going to trade and and among ourselves and that
00:38:34.300 together we were stronger and it didn't turn out that way i mean you know we're weaker together we
00:38:39.340 get played so ottawa you know as an example i brought it up last week uh a trade delegation
00:38:44.780 goes to china and then and then saskatchewan got played against ontario in this instance
00:38:49.660 saskatchewan win gets uh gets uh uh you know a better canola oil deal but then ontario loses
00:38:55.820 because we import uh cars and and and and saskatchewan and ontario if they'd been separate
00:39:01.740 countries china wouldn't have been able to play us that way and neither would have carney so
00:39:05.980 anyways but you know the whole idea that confederate to me confederations fail it's done
00:39:10.220 it's failed and i don't see uh us repairing it you know meech lake happened uh charlottetown
00:39:16.620 accord the constitution of 82 it's done and even if we fix the things that are supposedly supposed
00:39:23.500 to make it fairly even if we had proportional uh seats in the house of commons and then senate and
00:39:28.220 stuff like that we're going to get outvoted all the time that little triangle between toronto
00:39:33.020 montreal and ottawa with its 27 million people will outvote us all the time so i so when the
00:39:39.820 floor crossings to me i have to view it as just more proof that the system doesn't work for us
00:39:46.140 i mean god if you're an if you're a if you're a citizen of uh if you're a citizen of uh of that
00:39:51.500 writing in edmonton that's been conservative for for 20 years and suddenly you know your
00:39:56.860 representative becomes liberal i mean how much of a rude awakening is it for those guys so
00:40:01.420 i think i think we're probably both on the same page there i i this the floor crossings and some
00:40:05.500 of the other shenanigans helps our movement at this point i'm glass glass half full every time
00:40:11.340 i i i joked about you know that lady that's been appointed to renegotiate on our on on canada's 1.00
00:40:17.500 behalf same thing i'm like well on the plus side when alberta becomes an independent country that's
00:40:22.380 who we're negotiating against right so does that answer the question or are we
00:40:27.660 on the same page there well we're definitely on the same page my main
00:40:32.400 concern was really about like hey it looks like it's gonna push us forward
00:40:36.300 but I feel like he's trying to get his majority so that he can get some of
00:40:41.160 those bills passed yeah through Senate like through through through the House
00:40:45.420 of Commons like C8 so that he can tie boss Alberta separation through a like
00:40:51.780 Like, so that they can start sabotaging.
00:40:53.840 Like, can you say, hey, these guys can't be on the internet anymore because they're a threat to national security, you know, through C8?
00:41:02.280 And we know that they're very loose with their interpretations of laws and bills, right?
00:41:08.980 And think of this, right?
00:41:11.460 If C8 and C9, which I think are very nefarious, contentious bills, if they pass with this kind of minority government, imagine the kind of stuff they're going to try and pass.
00:41:24.120 Like, how bad will it get if Carney ever gets a majority?
00:41:27.100 Like, if Carney got, you know, instead of 169 seats, if Carney had 188 seats in the House of Commons, what kind of stuff is he passing?
00:41:35.240 Well, we know what he's going to pass.
00:41:36.700 He gave us the playbook.
00:41:37.860 He wrote the book, right, value.
00:41:39.080 so we know if he gets his full majority the memorandum with danielle smith out the door
00:41:43.880 who cares there'll never be a pipeline if he gets his full majority full-on net zero full-on electric
00:41:49.560 full-on everything i mean look at what he did this week again quietly this week right nobody talks
00:41:53.880 about this but the um the the five thousand dollar subsidies for electric vehicles came right back on
00:42:00.440 on as of the 16th i think is as of tuesday they're back on they were reduced for a while because they
00:42:05.560 had no money in the budget but now they're right back and and carney can say one thing out of you
00:42:10.200 know i've reconsidered we're not good we're not doing net zero no no no no no yeah so that like
00:42:15.640 that's fearful my god if carney gets re-elected with a majority oh but and and then secondly
00:42:22.200 i'm still i'll ask you this one right i'm still not convinced if you're carney uh do you want
00:42:28.760 alberta to stay or leave because if alberta leaves you will forever have a liberal government in
00:42:34.040 ottawa because that's it right our conservative votes are gone and so you're left with ontario
00:42:38.760 quebec and the maritime so carney stays the liberals stay in power forever so do they want
00:42:43.320 alberta gone so they can stay in power forever or do they somehow want to keep alberta in
00:42:48.040 confederation but with a really tight rein and just keep milking us for our money like what do
00:42:52.600 you what what does carney want all right yeah no he wants to keep us in federation and and
00:42:58.520 you know if i'm going to be honest i i um i think that uh we basically i think that trump sort of
00:43:05.960 pulled the rug from under carney's little wef utopia i'm not going to go too much into that
00:43:11.800 uh but he's seeing it sort of fall apart here and he's sort of grasping at straws to
00:43:16.840 see if he can ever get his uh his agenda 2030 going here but i don't want to go too much into
00:43:22.600 conspiracy but the the reality is they need us for for the money because the moment we leave um
00:43:29.000 the you know part of the canadian dollar value is predicated on alberta resources and you know like
00:43:35.800 and we all know that the the i think that here's what i think i think he doesn't want to go to an
00:43:42.540 election and i think that he wants to get his majority through floor crossings and you know
00:43:47.020 his by-elections for simply for the reason that if he does that he doesn't have to table any bills
00:43:53.560 again right because you know for instance the online arms act was it was the second or third
00:43:58.360 time it was being tabled so if they go to an election then they got to restart a new parliament
00:44:02.740 and you know retable bills if he just gets his majority through floor crossing he can literally
00:44:09.180 say okay we're passing this this and this with all of these clauses that give us all the control we
00:44:14.040 need to do you know exactly what we need to do yeah so yeah yeah spot on no appreciate that Jeff
00:44:20.720 thanks for calling in man yeah thanks man cheers yeah yeah as I was talking to Jeff now you made
00:44:28.420 me think of a of another quick question maybe I'll throw it out there um actually before I
00:44:34.660 throw out that question uh John my producer just wants to remind you guys that we we can still
00:44:39.560 only take one call at a time so while I'm talking to somebody no sense trying to call in you just
00:44:43.940 to get a busy signal like we just don't have a giant switchboard here so as soon as i'm done
00:44:48.500 talking and or as soon as i'm done with the caller and i'm doing what i'm doing now's the perfect
00:44:52.500 time to call which uh let's go with the call i was going to say i had a commentary but let's
00:44:56.980 go with the caller go ahead caller uh name please and where are you calling from
00:45:00.660 hello hello go ahead oh wait how are you good good what's your name where are you calling from
00:45:15.440 Alan McCroy from Calgary okay go ahead Alan
00:45:20.260 uh just uh great great to see your new show congratulations and uh my my biggest uh problem
00:45:30.340 is is talking to my family and uh just the the negative uh non non-talkative response that i'm
00:45:40.160 getting from them and you know every time you know you mean you want to talk to and like just
00:45:44.680 bringing up a soft topic about what's going on is the fact that they just clam up and they get
00:45:52.200 argumentative and then they shut down the conversation like right away. Which is why
00:46:01.200 they always say, you know, no religion and politics around the table. Is there, so what
00:46:07.500 topic are they, what topic do you sort of try to bring up that they shut down? What's the least
00:46:12.620 popular one it's just mainly the sentimental value is trying to get around that corner yeah that yeah
00:46:25.520 that's a tough one so I assume you're talking you know separation in general right what what gives
00:46:30.800 them the fear of yeah yeah yeah there's no easy way around that one I I encountered that many
00:46:37.640 times as a canvasser, it's a common one, right? People, let me put it this way. The best answer
00:46:46.980 to that one is truly the fact that Canada, that they will always be Canadians, right? Some people
00:46:53.320 have a nice nostalgia for Canada. I mean, for those people, a lot of times I challenge them,
00:46:57.960 I'm like, what do you still like about Canada, right? A lot of those people, I'll get them to
00:47:02.920 admit that they're kind of stuck in the past. You're stuck in the 1970s, you know, they'll bring
00:47:06.680 up oh we used to be great peacekeepers or this or that you know some will go as far back as world
00:47:11.260 war ii sure we punched above our weight class for for a good part of the last century but but i ask
00:47:17.440 those people like what do you still love about canada and that that's where i get you know then
00:47:24.000 then the nos then they have to forget the nostalgia or they have to admit that they're just
00:47:27.800 fond of of a time past so then i'll bring them up and say well what about alberta right like let's
00:47:34.880 make our own alberta great you can do that you know either or but the other one that's effective
00:47:39.060 i find is um you tell those people you know i don't say well move to canada no no i just say
00:47:45.000 you're not you're never going to lose your can you're still going to be a canadian i mean canada
00:47:48.660 recognizes dual citizenship so if you're born in alberta in you know in the last century and we
00:47:54.900 become an independent country you're still going to keep your canadian passport so you're still a 0.92
00:47:58.680 canadian so that nostalgia is not gone and you're an albertan so then you know going forward you'll
00:48:04.580 year for team canada for team alberta at the olympics so that's how i mean it's yeah emotional
00:48:10.020 is tough and uh my my my way of i've had to you know um negotiate deals and help and get people
00:48:18.740 on board with projects and things like that over the years and a lot of times it's emotional and
00:48:23.060 my secret for emotional is to try and take it out of the equation and just be factual but yeah i mean
00:48:28.980 yeah i i i get it some people love canada does that help uh oh yeah yeah oh yeah i mean i've
00:48:37.060 used actually some of your uh your your like asking them basically just just the one question
00:48:42.580 what what is it that you know like you you want uh what is it that it's holding you there other
00:48:48.660 than like nostalgia what is it you know what give the one reason why you know uh canada so like what
00:48:57.940 What does Canada have to offer that Alberta can't basically have on its own
00:49:03.580 and can't do better than basically what is being offered from Canada?
00:49:10.520 And that's the one thing is they just can't seem to even answer the one question
00:49:16.120 or give one valid excuse other than nostalgia.
00:49:19.740 Yeah, yeah.
00:49:20.120 No, I'm actively trying to find somebody from the rest of Canada
00:49:24.980 who wants to come on one of my shows, even this show,
00:49:27.240 they want to come on here and have a a debate or a chat about it i actually i think i have somebody
00:49:33.080 lined up i won't say who it is but i got somebody who's not entirely he's not against alberta
00:49:38.040 separation but he could he's a but he's an ontarian who can articulate why we should stay
00:49:44.920 he actually supports us leaving but he can articulate in a pretty good way why we should
00:49:49.800 stay and so maybe i'll bring him on this yeah i want to give you props i want to give you props
00:49:56.280 because that one debate you had, I think it was Dave,
00:50:00.880 and he was on Rebel News yesterday with Stockwell Bay,
00:50:04.260 and he has actually came way further to the Separatist side,
00:50:11.560 and he is actually, from what I was gathering in the Rebel News with Stockwell Bay,
00:50:19.960 is that he was on the side of Alberta independence.
00:50:23.040 kind of and i just was like wow you know i mean that one debate he had with you you you you got
00:50:29.620 him thinking you got him basically like okay you know what you know maybe maybe what i was thinking
00:50:34.720 maybe maybe i am wrong and like i gotta give you the props and like good job thank you yeah
00:50:40.460 and that's thank you thank you for everything you do appreciate that no that's a question i've been
00:50:45.120 asked many times too like do you at marty do you ever change your opinion i'm like absolutely i
00:50:49.220 changed my opinion I mean I spent the you guys are going to hear this all the time right I'm
00:50:54.060 going to reference the fact that I'm an engineer I spent 35 years as an engineer as an engineer I
00:50:58.980 had to I learned a long long time ago you know if somebody asked me a question and I didn't know
00:51:03.780 the answer I learned that I had to say I don't know the answer boss I'll get back to you right
00:51:07.640 don't pretend but the other thing I learned as an engineer is I can't be stubborn on my ideas
00:51:13.440 you know if my boss says I want this car to go faster and I make a change and the car goes slower
00:51:19.040 well i can't insist on well my idea must be right no it's not right it's making the car go slower
00:51:24.440 so by so practically i had to learn long long time ago to be open to ideas and actually even
00:51:33.860 before choosing how to make the car go faster if there's two three guys to get together we have to
00:51:38.180 debate and pick an idea so for me the con i find it strange that some people are absolutely
00:51:43.380 unwilling to change their opinions especially when presenting with some pretty solid evidence right
00:51:48.120 uh just because i i guess in my personal life i practice uh what i'm preaching which is you know
00:51:56.220 presented with the evidence you have to change which is one of my number one criticism of
00:52:00.100 governments in general in the last 20 or 30 years all governments are i think are guilty of doing
00:52:05.920 this they move in a certain direction they have something that doesn't work and and they governments
00:52:11.100 in particular don't want to admit that something they tried failed you know like um i don't know
00:52:15.700 like is giving drugs on the to and and and having whatever safe consumption site positive or negative
00:52:22.100 if it's negative it's almost yeah oh yeah but it's almost like uh counter like counter uh you know
00:52:31.460 i mean you're like you're trying to you're trying to stop addicts by feeding them drugs like you
00:52:37.300 know like that how does that make any logical sense like you know and you know what i mean
00:52:43.060 You can just see what Vancouver has become.
00:52:46.320 It's just a cesspool of – it's like walking down the town of The Walking Dead,
00:52:53.600 like zombies.
00:52:55.880 Appreciate it.
00:52:56.600 Hey, listen, I'm watching at the clock, man.
00:52:59.020 Thanks for the call.
00:53:00.640 Thank you.
00:53:01.100 Thank you for what you're doing.
00:53:02.940 Yeah, yeah, thank you.
00:53:03.900 I wish we had more time.
00:53:05.480 Wow, I'm just blown away at how fast this hour went by.
00:53:09.860 I came prepared.
00:53:10.680 I got a little list here and I got a few topics for next week.
00:53:13.420 I guess we'll save next week.
00:53:17.240 Well, we'll see what Danielle Smith has to say in her address later this afternoon.
00:53:21.320 I think it'll have to do with immigration, which is something I wanted to talk about.
00:53:25.080 But we'll talk about immigration next week and we'll talk about popular names in Alberta.
00:53:31.860 Maybe somebody else talked about it on an earlier show.
00:53:34.600 I just want to finish one quick thing and I should have talked about it right off the bat.
00:53:39.060 But, you know, when I'm speaking of hockey, I just wanted to talk about Don Cherry, right?
00:53:45.180 Don Cherry, always been a great commentator.
00:53:48.000 Don Cherry's like 92, just turned 92 a couple of weeks ago.
00:53:51.080 And I always find it a shame that Don's never been given the Order of Canada.
00:53:56.720 But I learned last week that he's getting the Order of Ontario.
00:54:02.340 So, you know, I always credit where credit is due.
00:54:05.500 So if Ontario is willing to recognize the great Don Cherry as a proud Canadian, proud
00:54:11.280 Ontarian and give him the order, that's fantastic.
00:54:15.060 John's telling me I can take one more call.
00:54:17.020 So let's go ahead and let's take one more call, folks.
00:54:19.480 Go ahead.
00:54:20.020 Name and where are you calling from, please?
00:54:23.080 Hello.
00:54:23.560 Yes, I'm Timothy calling from Edmonton.
00:54:26.300 Nice to get on the show here with you.
00:54:29.040 Edmonton.
00:54:30.000 How's it going up in Edmonton?
00:54:31.700 Yeah, well, quite the news, obviously, from what occurred here just yesterday.
00:54:39.420 I think it just exhibits a little bit more clearly how much of a mess federal politics
00:54:44.500 is right now, that this guy that wasn't even nominated by conservatives in his writing,
00:54:49.740 but was selected by Pierre Polyev, then would flip, join the liberals, and now we now have
00:54:55.580 the liberal in a writing which has only voted conservative.
00:54:58.300 yeah like to me that just shows how absolutely absurd our system is yeah and then to top it off
00:55:04.600 I mean obviously Pierre Polyevs himself has his major problem of uh abandoning Albertans as well
00:55:11.040 like he came here just to gain a seat after he lost his own Ottawa and then immediately abandoned
00:55:16.140 us and said he's gonna run elsewhere next time so on the one hand we have the liberals with uh
00:55:23.080 multiple people hating Alberta, essentially, like Trudeau himself and Gilbo, who've explicitly
00:55:29.040 said that they hate our main industry. And Albertans running the country, as Stephen
00:55:37.140 Harper said, Trudeau said he hated that. But then we vote for conservatives, but then they
00:55:43.620 just take us for granted. And you have the PPC, you could vote for the PPC, but right
00:55:49.540 now, it's a little more than a podcast, essentially. Like the organization of the party itself
00:55:55.460 has been falling apart. And Maxime Bernier himself, he had opportunities. He could have
00:56:00.340 won his seat if he just put a little bit of effort into winning his seat. What was it,
00:56:04.600 two elections ago? He actually was within spitting distance of winning his seat. But
00:56:09.600 instead, he spread his resources across Canada and then just didn't win anything at all.
00:56:13.920 So there's no great option federally.
00:56:19.100 So I think, yeah, our focus and priority, as you've been saying,
00:56:21.960 has to be on Alberta independence and just getting us out of this
00:56:25.600 same system of Canada.
00:56:28.580 Yeah, yeah.
00:56:29.800 Yeah, thanks for that.
00:56:30.960 I mean, yeah, you know, I'm not surprised.
00:56:34.180 Most of the people who call here are going to be on the same page as I am.
00:56:38.180 Now, one of the things I keep reminding myself of and others, right,
00:56:42.980 is um we have to make sure when alberta becomes independent i'm going to use it in a positive
00:56:49.260 term alberta is becoming independent that we are not just going to be a little version of canada
00:56:54.300 so when alberta becomes independent some of these problems that we have have to be addressed right i
00:56:58.860 want i think i i want i want um a republic style country you know we the people i love those first
00:57:07.280 words of the american constitution we the people and i want recall legislation and things like that
00:57:11.940 to prevent this garbage from happening i mean one of the things i'd love to do i i think every every
00:57:17.300 no matter what every writing should have a primary a race because you brought it up right like the 0.78
00:57:23.140 the um pierre installed a candidate boy imagine how bad the liberal candidate feels on that on
00:57:30.340 his side right that the liberal runs a race so and and then he loses to somebody installed by
00:57:35.700 the conservatives my god like i you know it's it's hard to imagine a more convoluted system
00:57:40.500 but no appreciate the call thanks for that yeah yeah all right cheers um okay yeah you
00:57:48.100 too have a good day so so we'll we'll talk immigration next week we'll see what danielle 0.77
00:57:52.100 smith has to say this afternoon i i think she's gonna i think she's gonna talk about immigration
00:57:56.820 i'm also thinking she might be trying to you know in in uh in political terms she might throw some uh 1.00
00:58:03.700 raw red meat at the uh separatists in this province try and please us with something we'll see what 0.65
00:58:09.540 she has to say um otherwise uh hope thanks for joining us again uh this week uh hope you guys
00:58:17.060 enjoyed the show i think we're definitely working out the bugs uh i i like the format hope you like
00:58:21.700 the format definitely check out the western standard right it's uh www.westernstandard.ca
00:58:29.300 make sure you get a membership membership is like ten dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year
00:58:33.940 i mean we're you know this these platforms um they they don't exist uh on charity we're not
00:58:41.940 you know this is not the cbc getting 1.6 billion dollars a year by the way did you guys see that
00:58:47.300 on the cbc rosemary barton's uh hot mic moment saying it's all make-believe it's not make-believe
00:58:53.620 you might not agree with me but i'm not make-believe uh i have an opinion and it is my opinion and i
00:58:58.820 don't mind being challenged on my opinion so uh yeah check uh so hope and so hopefully you'll be
00:59:04.580 back here next week uh same time one o'clock on thursday for the marty up north segment on
00:59:10.660 Western Standard. Cheers, folks.