Michelle Stirling on Calgary's climate pathway to poverty
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Summary
In this episode, we are joined by City Councillor and long-time friend of the city of Calgary, Chelle Macleod, to discuss the city's climate emergency plan and the role played by public unions in pushing it through council without public input.
Transcript
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thank you for joining us today michelle always good to have you on thanks cory nice to be here
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yeah lots to discuss on the city oh there sure is it's it's uh as i've you know on twitter again
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the twitter is a mess as i just recently said and so on but i i still like it as a playground
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and i did mean it when i said a little while back holy cow i actually missed the head minchi and
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that's saying a lot yeah it is i mean he was also a climate fanatic oh people have to remember that
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calgary already had a climate plan and there was also sustainability 2020 which promised in 2010
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that by 2020 we would have a prosperous economy and uh full equity for everyone and things would be
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golden but in fact that's not really how it turned out so since that was such a big failure why would
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we embark on yet another similar kind of project that's even more expensive and something that
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these citizens were not consulted about you know obviously the uh current uh pathways to uh net zero
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i call it pathways to poverty obviously this is a plan that was developed before the election i mean
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you can just see how how it's all shaped up it was never an election issue it was never on the platform
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but immediately after the election the climate emergency was declared on what basis
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there's no scientific evidence showing there's a climate emergency the latest ipcc report only
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mentions crisis once and that is in regard to media coverage there's no statement that there's a climate
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emergency so you know and you have to wonder what kind of conniving work was going on in the background
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before this emergency was declared and then this plan basically rammed through council without public input
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well i mean we know seriously if jody gondek had campaigned walking around on the platform saying
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i'm going to declare a climate emergency and commit 87 billion dollars in spending she wouldn't have come
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in 10th in that race uh you know she kept it to herself purely out of political motive it's not
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something she just came up with the day after becoming elected there's no doubt about that
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mm-hmm and i i mean actually i just said that there was not public uh input but i take that back because
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the calgary climate club hub sorry which is a project associated with the vipon family and the vipons are
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often called the the thunbergs of canada um if you like um the this is a very activist group very
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strong grassroots group they work with the uh alliance for the common good calgary alliance for
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the common good i think it's called anyway there are a lot of well-meaning very activist people who
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obviously have bent the ear of council and uh you know calgarians being an energy city calgarians should
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remember that the calgary climate hub has received charitable tax receipts via al gore's climate reality
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and al gore has been a long-term cheerleader for the destruction of keystone and uh of tmx and uh
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kinder morgan's work trying to get a pipeline to the coast so uh you know we have this very activist
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group that's actually been funded by somebody who is completely against the city of calgary's
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fundamental industry and people should be asking a lot of questions about that not to mention some of
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these activist groups have also been funded by unions like cupi and we should be asking why are
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public unions that are paid by taxpayers funding these environmental groups or climate activist groups
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that are blocking jobs uh running up crazy green crony capitalist projects like those in the climate
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plan and um maybe even double or triple dipping because perhaps those union pension funds are invested
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in the very projects that the city is now proposing so you see i see it this way let's say
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you're elected to some city somewhere in the world and just after you're elected someone comes to you and
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says hey you know about the golden pension plan we have well we have huge unfunded liabilities and you
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won't get a pension unless you do this just think about that for a minute and there is some evidence
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uh in an article that i saw recently from the states that that's exactly what's going on
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so i think that there should be a full inquiry into this absolutely i mean we'll get back to that you
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know when you've got 87 billion dollars uh being spent you know the the parasites and opportunists are
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going to come out of the woodworks and the deals are going to start getting cut i mean it's just
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a massive amount in a small market uh but you know some of it we can kind of say it's not like we
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didn't have warning there were canaries in the coal mine for a long time on this and i i dug into that
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a lot in years gone by and i'm sure you're familiar with the old imagine calgary document
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yes and she was one of the people who wrote that and that fairy tale of a document was tax funded
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and the stuff that you read in it it was like a parody it was crazy with these goals and things
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it was setting and uh most of it was laughed off at that time but sustainability calgary which is a
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branch of city hall was modeled after that ludicrous document and it's still out there i got it on my
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own site at corey morgan.com where i broke it down because i mean it is it is nutty but you've got
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people in power you've got a mayor you've got a whole office of the city dedicated to following the the
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the tenets of that uh weird manifesto and that was from from 10 years ago yeah that's right we let
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it slide yeah and we also did a rebuttal report to imagine calgary and uh that we sent to the city
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auditor and to the provincial auditor and to uh naheed nanshi at the time and you know of course we never
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heard back from anyone um but we think that there were uh some very serious breaches of public trust
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in how these things are developed and of course at a municipal level the climate activists have
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much easier access to government and much much much more influence um you know one of the things to
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note is that uh dr vaipon's daughter sadie vaipon is now a climate activist she met with greta tunberg
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when greta and her dad's font were here in calgary and um i think she even gave her her jacket or
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something like that uh and so sadie is suing the canadian government along with a group of other
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kids uh with eco justice so there's more taxpayers dollars that are being totally wasted on ridiculous
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efforts to stop climate change when you know climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years and the best
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thing we could do is to adapt to the real threats like flooding in the river valley like extreme
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weather we should have sufficient winter road clearing equipment you know so that people aren't
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waiting for a chinook so they can get out of their driveway i mean these are the practical things that
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a city is supposed to take care of they're not supposed to be trying to reduce the emissions of calgary
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which are nothing compared to china's which china admits 28 of the world's emissions canada all of
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canada 1.6 of the world's emissions so nothing we do in calgary or in canada will stop global warming
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if that's your concern nothing we do will stop it yeah and then empty virtue signaling well plus they
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they they give this baloney out all the time saying if we don't do it it's going to cost us more they
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never exactly say how but then if they attribute anything and everything to climate change you know
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they might be able to try and make that case oh well there'll be more flooding and it'll cost this or
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there'll be more forest fires and it'll cost this but i boy even with all of the natural events that
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have happened over the last few years nothing is going to add up to 87 billion dollars and nothing we
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do is going to change those events from happening right and a lot of people don't know that calgary
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had uh eight of the worst floods prior to 1933 and two of those floods had higher stream flows than the
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one of 2013. that's long before human influence on climate change was even attributed uh and they also
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make reference to the um fort mcmurray wildfire in their document well you know that was under an
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extreme weather condition and it was poorly managed by the ndp at the time in fact rachel notley remember
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her standing up in the house and mocking brian gene as he was begging her to send water bombers
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well his house burned down a few hours later she was mocking him for fear-mongering so you know it i mean
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just like winter snow storms where you need road clearance equipment we live near the burial forest
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well calgary not so much but edmonton and north and you're going to have wildfires it's a seasonal
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occurrence so be prepared you know and that's what we should be spending the money on is being prepared
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for these real events that will happen every year sometimes greater sometimes lesser but we should be
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prepared and not be spending money on trying to make people ride a bike to to work if they want to
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go ahead but not everyone's going to want to and if you're let's say if you're 75 you're not going
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to want to ride a bike to the grocery store because if you fall off then you'll be in hospital with a
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broken hip you know some of these plans are just totally ludicrous yeah well the event that happened this
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year was uh canada day skiing at sunshine village in the mountains it was cool enough that we could
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ski in july yeah so much for the heat dome and then at the same time uh mayor gondek just does seem
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to love emergencies you know all of those threats for the flood that never was i mean we we poured dirt
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all over the streets and we put the city on edge and we declared another state of emergency for something
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that never even came close i mean i understand being prepared watching and fair enough you know they'll
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catch it if if the river did burst the banks and and nothing had been done but from all reports out
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of that too the reservoirs were still nearly empty the water flow was controlled uh they thrive on
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keeping the population afraid yes well you know i think it probably was prudent to drop the reservoir
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somewhat because the reports coming in the forecast was uh fairly significant rainfall and you never know
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if you'll get that or not i mean i think in the 2013 uh flood initially the reports were that it
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it wouldn't be that much rain and it kind of quickly went from 50 millimeters to 100 to 150 millimeters
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and then people were going oh my god um so you never really know but you know one thing to think about
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uh when you empty a reservoir like that that's a huge body of water you better hope you're going to
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get enough rain and run off after that to refill it because you've got a city of 1.6 million people and
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that's their source of water so you know dropping the reservoir is a plan that you can use to help
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mitigate a flood but it also may have significant consequences unintended consequences down the road
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and i guess we'll have to see this summer i don't know if it's filled up again or not i think there's
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still snowpack up in the hills but but again you know we're spending money in the wrong places we're
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spending it on green crony capitalists we're going along with activists we're not doing a full cost
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benefit analysis um we have a blog post where we have our city of calgary emergency rebuttal report
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we have our two 2017 reports uh which also addressed the climate plans of that time and i'm also going to
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put up um um our rebuttal to katherine hayhoe and now dr hayhoe is a fairly uh well-known science
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climate science communicator i think she was judged to be in the top 100 science communicators by time
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magazine but uh she's hooked on what's called rcp 8.5 which is a catastrophic scenario that's deemed to
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be implausible by the climate science community but that's the one she concentrates on as business
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as usual and she's been a consultant to the city of calgary so we know where this wrong information
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is coming from and so people should read our report it's called facts versus fortune telling and i'll be
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posting it right after the show on the same blog post about our climate emergency rebuttals you know
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i'll ask at the end as well i mean just to remind everybody but yeah the friends of science
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website and blog posts are a fantastic resource always lots of uh information and sources and uh
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and science behind it of course uh going further i mean into the costs i've heard apologists for this
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plan saying look it's not all straight tax dollars we're not just going to raise 87 billion the private
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market's going to fill it and other levels of government are going to fill it that still always
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ends up coming out of our wallet though yeah other levels of government where do you think they get
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their money from they get it from taxpayers that's you you know and i mean people should be aware that
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the city of ottawa is also doing a big climate plan 60 billion dollars so you calgarians will be able
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to help ottawa pay for their 60 billion dollar climate plan while ottawa will be able to help us pay for
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our 87 billion dollar climate plan now to see how that's not going to work out like when are we going to
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run out of money well and some of these costs as well are costs i guess that they're estimating
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because they're going to be imposing retrofitting on existing buildings possibly even personal homes
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uh definitely in the commercial sector even though we can we got over 30 vacancy as it is putting more
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expense on calgary's offices i don't think is going to help uh but but these costs again they're buried
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in a whole number of ways they plan to expend it and uh they you know they try to obfuscate by
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claiming it's going to be coming out of here and coming out of there but again it always comes out
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of us in the end yes and actually the uh one uh one citizen sent us in a letter that they had sent to
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actually the david suzuki foundation which was campaigning for the city and its residents to sign
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on to this deal and uh this person noted that of the tab um that the calgary 2022 net expenditures are
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4.5 billion so if we break down the 87 billion tab by year that would be 3.1 billion a year which is 69
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of the current municipal expenditures so you know what's going to happen to all the ordinary necessary
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things like road maintenance um you know taking trees down when we've had a big windfall running
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our fire department police department these you know these are vital services this is what the
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city should be taking care of as i said you know china emits in one month what canada all of canada
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emits in a year and a half so spending all this money will do absolutely zero to stop climate change
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but it will make a lot of green cronies rich and we should be asking who those people are
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and how they are skimming the public purse because that's what it really amounts to well yeah if we want
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to get to the bottom of it when they bring in a law saying all of these businesses or buildings have
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to be retrofitted i'd like to see who the contractors are we're going to be establishing
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that or even what has to be done or the inspections there's a whole lot of people are going to benefit a
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heck of a lot from this sudden milking of of individuals of their funds and let's not pretend
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we're not going to see some sole source contracts going out there right and i mean all we have to do is
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look at germany right now which has spent trillions of dollars trying to go green and go net zero and go all
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wind and solar their entire industry is on its knees like germany is on the brink of collapse
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because they haven't had thoughtful energy and climate policies they've had ridiculous energy
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and climate policies very similar to those discussed in this 87 billion dollar climate plan we have to ask
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like who are the people who are doing the consulting um you know i'm reading a book by uh jeremy
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rifkin uh called the zero near zero something society and he brags about consulting to merkel
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well he's not an engineer he's a futurist so it's all nice to sit around and dream of how the world
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might be just like the imagine calgary crew did what's it going to look like a hundred years from now
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well my grandmother spent her honeymoon at the calgary stampede the first one in 1912 and she could not
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have ever imagined how calgary would be a hundred years later that's how ridiculous these kinds of
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exercises are and we should not be bankrupting our city and you know allowing people who hate the energy
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industry to drive the agenda that runs our city that's absurd it's self-destructive why are we doing
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it absolutely and there's a lot of goals set out in that document that they don't specify how they're
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going to get to them but things such as that oh 60 of the city or more is going to be either riding
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a bike or taking the bus to work they're not going to use cars anymore and i mean it's clearly ridiculous
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they can't even get people to ride the train today because they're too scared to take on the addicts
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who've taken over the uh transit system but when push comes to shove and they get desperate i can see
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some crazy measures like closing roses roads taxing cars uh all sorts of means to try and force people to
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take uh you know the the crack trains to come downtown to the empty offices but it's just not
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going to happen it's just going to be cost with no benefit well as you say it's going to be an eco
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dictatorship and uh you know if you look at deutsche bank that's their answer to build back better
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is to impose an eco dictatorship on society and one of the examples that deutsche bank gives is uh the idea
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of retrofitting a house that some people may not want to retrofit their house because it might make
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your house look pretty ugly or some people may not have the money or they may simply not want to
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comply well their answer to that in is to simply impose an eco dictatorship so you know there's another
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thing that people should look at on our youtube page and that's um a presentation that donna laframboise
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did for us she's an invest investigative journalist and she's been working on the climate file for many
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years and it's uh about how climate activism is taking away your freedom of choice freedom of
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speech and freedom of thought and that's exactly what we see happening yeah no the trend isn't
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stopping it's getting worse so i appreciate the work you guys have been doing to try and shine a
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light on it you're still working at it and uh uh so i mean just that one last time uh you know where
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can people find as you said you got a youtube page you've got a blog there's a lot of resources
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if we can point people that way to find out more details and what's happening thank you yes we're
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on on our website is friendsofscience.org we have a facebook page we are on linkedin we're on twitter
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we're all over youtube and and we have quite a lot of very popular youtube videos we actually do have a
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youtube rebuttal to the city of calgary plan which is one of the top ones that you'll see in the first
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line of our youtube videos but we've got lots of different scientific presentations for people who
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want that more hard science and we've got more public commentaries and plain language explanations
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so you can also become a member you can also donate to us we're into our 20th year of operation
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even 20 dollars would be helpful so um thank you for giving us a bit of a platform and and let's stop
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this crazy climate nonsense we got to stop it i appreciate the the work you're doing and then
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appreciate you coming on to talk to us it's always a good conversation so thanks michelle i'm sure we'll