Western Standard - November 26, 2021


MORGAN Don’t give Extinction Rebellion extremists an inch

Topics
coastal gas link protests pipeline protests
Mentioned
Leonardo DiCaprio David Suzuki Kitimat LNG Kinabakh
The Pipeline： Suzuki comments 'blow up,' UCP convention fallout, Smith drops the gauntlet The Cory Morgan Show： Climate Fact vs Weather Fiction

Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

195.02

Word count

1,261

Sentence count

79

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The coastal gas link pipeline is a $6 billion project that will provide natural gas to Kitimat, British Columbia, Canada. But radical activists have been blocking roads and transportation infrastructure in sporadic protests all over the place while making the demand that the project be halted.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The only time it's possible to negotiate with demonstrators or protesters is when there's
00:00:04.320 something negotiable. When it comes to the increasingly aggressive protests against the
00:00:08.080 coastal gas link pipeline that have been springing up across Canada, there's just nothing
00:00:12.180 to negotiate. I mean, radical activists have been blocking roads and transportation infrastructure
00:00:17.780 in sporadic protests all over the place while making the demand that the project be halted.
00:00:22.140 Let's face it, that project is a $6 billion pipeline. It's over half built. It's an essential
00:00:27.460 piece of infrastructure providing natural gas Kitimat LNG terminal. And that terminal is an
00:00:32.960 $18 billion project and it's nearly half built. There's no way we're shutting down those projects
00:00:38.340 now. So we might as well stop all discussion of it. We can't negotiate that. Now the only silver lining
00:00:43.020 can be found in the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in early 2020 was that it brought those anti-coastal
00:00:49.220 gas link blockades to an end. They were blockading all over the place. They were blocking rail lines
00:00:53.300 and they were ostensibly in support of the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs, who by the way don't
00:00:57.900 represent the Wet'suwet'en. And those chiefs opposed the CGL project in BC. Fine. But most of those 1.00
00:01:03.320 blockades were occupied by white career protesters who need a little excuse to interrupt the lives of
00:01:08.160 productive Canadians as they try to find a sense of purpose for themselves. That's really all they're 0.95
00:01:12.300 doing. When people ask, don't they have anything better to do with their time? The answer is no.
00:01:16.660 These guys are hippies and layabouts. They really are. They just want to feel like they're doing
00:01:20.060 something. Governments at all levels are crippled with fear when it comes to dealing with these
00:01:23.500 protesters, particularly if there's any kind of indigenous element involved with them.
00:01:27.840 Politicians cower in fear at the thought of video imagery involving a native protester being roughly
00:01:32.180 arrested by police. They avoid dealing with these protests as long as possible, but that inevitably
00:01:37.440 leads to an escalation of it and there's going to be a confrontation. Unreasonable protests and
00:01:42.600 blockades must be nipped in the bud early or the radicals are going to entrench themselves.
00:01:47.240 It took months to dislodge the Occupy protesters who were squatting in city parks throughout North
00:01:52.400 America in 2011. Negotiations with the squatters were futile because their demands were ridiculous. 0.82
00:01:57.520 And by the time the police finally removed them, the activists had developed a feeling of entitlement
00:02:01.600 in those parks. They'd been there for months. And then there were many violent confrontations
00:02:05.320 that ensued as police were forced to physically get in and dislodge these activists from city parks.
00:02:10.580 This all could have been avoided if the authorities kicked these guys out of the city parks
00:02:14.100 months beforehand instead of trying to negotiate with them. We're in the early stages of what could
00:02:18.860 be another nationwide period of blockades and protests against the coastal gas link project
00:02:23.640 all over again. If governments don't take a zero tolerance approach to illegal blockades and
00:02:28.820 disruptive protests right now, we can be assured these actions are going to spread. Politicians won't
00:02:34.280 be able to count on a pandemic outbreak to save their butts this time, and they better act sooner
00:02:38.160 rather than later. It's not going to get any easier for them for waiting. The embers of a national
00:02:44.980 conflagration of violent protest actions are burning, and activists of profile are fanning them.
00:02:51.020 We can't ignore this. Radicals, like that crazy old man David Suzuki, are using inflammatory language
00:02:58.040 in an effort to incite even more extreme, more violent actions from protesters. Leonardo DiCaprio and
00:03:03.560 other vacuous celebrities are tweeting support for these illegal blockaders as leading to hundreds
00:03:07.580 of thousands of dollars being raised in support for them. In Edmonton, protesters were so bold,
00:03:12.940 they actually set up a propane-fueled fireplace on a bridge as they blocked access and disrupted
00:03:17.960 thousands of commuters. The irony of burning Alberta fossil fuels to stay warm in a protest against
00:03:23.400 Alberta fossil fuels was seemingly lost on them. But again, these protesters usually aren't the brightest
00:03:27.200 sorts of people if you get to meet them. In Calgary, the protesters blocked roads and LRT tracks
00:03:31.940 downtown during the rush hour, leading to traffic snarls and infuriating the commuters. The irony
00:03:36.480 of blocking green mass transit while demanding more green mass transit was, again, lost on them.
00:03:41.960 It has to be understood. What these activists are doing right now is testing the waters.
00:03:46.920 As long as authorities refuse to push back or make arrests when protesters push legal boundaries,
00:03:51.320 the activists are going to continue to escalate their actions. They understand their demands are
00:03:55.700 unreasonable, but they know as long as there's no consequences to their actions, they're going
00:03:59.500 to keep pressuring citizens. We need to start charging and convicting these guys. We have
00:04:04.120 laws for this. The right to protest is an essential one. Nobody's saying that those opposed to the
00:04:09.720 coastal gas link project shouldn't be allowed to demonstrate, but we have to draw the line at
00:04:14.340 illegal disruptions and attacks. Civil disobedience just isn't warranted in this case. There's no civil
00:04:20.060 rights being violated by the pipeline project. It's a legal energy infrastructure project that has been
00:04:25.540 approved by all 20 of the legitimate First Nations chiefs and councils residing near where the pipeline
00:04:31.000 is going to be. Ironically, this coastal gas link pipeline is going to contribute to mitigating world
00:04:36.760 CO2 emissions once it's in operation. Ethically sourced natural gas is going to be exported to states
00:04:41.540 that are currently using coal as a primary fuel source right now. While natural gas isn't emission-free,
00:04:46.220 it has many magnitudes less harmful than using coal as an energy feedstock. From a pragmatic perspective,
00:04:52.380 the CGL line is going to help the world's environment. The CGL line, coastal gas link,
00:04:58.680 and associated Kinabakh liquid natural gas terminal is going to employ hundreds of First Nations people
00:05:03.540 in northern BC. Partnerships and revenue sharing plans are going to ensure that those communities
00:05:07.480 are all going to benefit from the operation of the line and the terminal for generations.
00:05:12.120 Now, these radical activists in opposing this line are actually supporting the continuation of using
00:05:17.260 coal as an energy source in developing nations. They just don't seem to know it.
00:05:20.800 The opponents are also working to put hundreds of First Nations people out of work while costing
00:05:25.980 local communities valuable revenue. Political leaders need to quit hiding from these activists
00:05:30.480 and start pushing back. There's a solid ethical case to be made in requiring that these protests
00:05:36.060 remain within legal bounds. That is, not allowing the disruption or destruction of people and property.
00:05:44.200 More protests are coming, and they're going to become even more extreme. We can anticipate blockades of
00:05:49.500 rail lines, roads, and other means of transportation. People are going to be hindered in their free
00:05:53.880 movement, and legal enterprise is being put at risk. These protests aren't sweeping the nation yet,
00:06:00.180 but they're going to be coming. There's still time to stop this in its tracks. We can't stop the project.
00:06:06.320 It's not going to happen. And we can't let these activists continue with disrupted actions unchecked.
00:06:11.600 It's going to take a demonstration of political courage and will for a change, though. And I'm not
00:06:16.680 terribly confident that we're going to see it. Again, our political leadership are terrified of
00:06:22.080 protesters, and I'm not sure what it's going to take for reality to overwhelm their cowardice when it
00:06:27.200 comes to this issue.