00:11:43.120he made the point that Canada kind of imploded
00:11:46.960or was made a vassal state after, you know,
00:11:49.620Stephen Baker was kicked out by Pearson with the help of the Kennedys.
00:11:53.540I'm interested to hear your take on that.
00:11:55.520Was his idea that the Richard Hooker tradition, again, a kind of a common law tradition or a tradition of deep Toryism through throne and altar,
00:12:04.740was that the answer to where Canadian values were coming from and then it became a liberal state later?
00:16:01.780But other than that, there's where is this happening in Canada?
00:16:04.880Why can't Canada do what's happening in America?
00:16:06.940Maybe we could start with what happened in America and Britain.
00:16:09.080What do you think happened in America?
00:16:11.540Yeah. And before we get into that, I should say briefly, speaking as a political philosopher, that populism is a wild card.
00:16:20.200It can, as you know, it can go to the right and to the left.
00:16:23.800And the main premise of populism, i.e. the people are always right, hence the term populist, coming from the Latin word for people, that's pretty hard to square with conservatism.
00:16:36.820From a traditional conservative point of view, constitutional government or democracy can be a good thing, but it would be naive to assume that the great mass of people are always right.
00:16:51.060the mass of people can go against tradition. They can go against liberty. They can vote their
00:16:58.140liberties away. But you referred to Trump or Trumpism, which I don't think is going to disappear.
00:17:07.680I mean, there were certainly conservative features within the Trump movement, not least of which was
00:17:14.460commitment to nationalism the preservation of uh the nation state but on the social conservative
00:17:21.900side uh the commitment to traditionalism in that vein was not completely coherent uh i mean
00:17:31.820certainly ex-president trump uh opposed abortion and and opposed uh what i earlier called uh social
00:17:41.740libertinism, at least in terms of policy and rhetoric. So there were some conservative
00:17:48.180features, but I think his nationalistic populism is not necessarily the same as traditional
00:17:58.940conservatism, partly because, again, populism is a wild card. So there's nothing wrong from
00:18:06.400a conservative point of view with a populism that is actually conservative, and obviously
00:18:13.780there are many people who thought Trump was a conservative, even though I tended to see
00:18:18.720him as a centrist Democrat, he would have fit quite well into the Democratic Party of
00:19:57.340They didn't want to vote against their own values.
00:19:59.040And I think ultimately that was the lesson of Brexit or that, you know, kind of living after so many years of austerity, particularly in Britain, austerity in Britain has been extremely harsh.
00:20:09.000And, of course, the post-recession reality since 2008, they voted their values and their values were, you know what, the arrangement as it stands, the social contract as we have it today is not helping me.
00:20:20.320I'm out of here. And a lot of people were surprised by that. Were you surprised by that?
00:20:23.720Um, I was surprised that Brexit was successful. Yes. But I think it's worth noting that most Brexit voters were not conservative in the sense that the late Margaret Thatcher was conservative.
00:20:42.960You might recall Thatcher once said that there's no such thing as society.
00:20:49.940And I think what she meant by that is that we're simply individuals, at least outside of our family.
00:20:57.120We should treat each other as individuals, and that's the kind of state that we should want.
00:21:02.480There's certainly merit to that argument.
00:21:04.400I have some respect for that libertarian tradition.
00:21:07.660But at the end of the day, it's not conservative.
00:21:09.940And conservatives definitely believe that there's such a thing as society.
00:21:15.140They're not against all versions of individualism and certainly support a market economy within limits.
00:21:23.900But to say that there's no such thing as society is tantamount to saying that there's no such thing as a nation either,
00:21:31.600a nation with clear traditions and a clear identity.
00:21:35.400And I think many Brexit voters did not accept, could not have accepted, that kind of old libertarian ideal.
00:21:46.620I don't know whether Mrs. Thatcher would have supported Brexit anyway.
00:21:50.420There's a lot of speculation about that.
00:21:52.860But I think Brexit, the Brexit voting base was kind of a synthesis, again, we're back to fusionism, a synthesis of certain features of conservatism with populism.
00:22:06.660Again, whether that can hold is another question, but I would also suggest that conservatism today gets its rocket fuel from populism, too.
00:22:20.660So it would be equally mistaken for conservatives to dismiss populism altogether.
00:22:29.340But again, these tensions, I think, are not going to disappear.
00:22:35.340So coming back to our own country, here we are.
00:22:40.700Obviously, we're a bicultural country, at least.
00:22:44.160I'd say there's more than just two dominant cultures in this country.
00:22:47.320But nonetheless, we are obviously bilingual.
00:22:49.120and of course we have the legacy of new France becoming Quebec and we have upper Canada that's
00:22:54.900Ontario we have Catholicism on the one hand Protestantism on the other of course perhaps
00:22:59.540dwindling forces today but nonetheless that's at least the motif and the founding of our country
00:23:04.060and and so if we're an Anglo power at least to a certain extent everywhere but Quebec and a few
00:23:09.240other areas throughout the country why isn't our Anglo conservative tradition following in the same
00:23:16.480Instead, it's what happened in America and happened in Britain.
00:31:28.420On the question of religious liberty specifically, though, what went wrong here?
00:31:33.460And how did conservatives need to agitate or at least organize in a way or social conservatives?
00:31:38.380Anybody who is religiously minded or values minded, how did they need to make their argument that you couldn't just shut churches and leave Costco open, that this didn't make sense?
00:31:47.900Well, that's exactly what they should have said.
00:31:52.780I mean, there are certainly some voices in the conservative movement who expose the massive
00:31:59.000contradictions in policy that have come out of the BC government and other governments
00:34:46.260But the thing that kind of hits me is that it just, I thought it was people to the left of center for years.
00:34:53.800I thought it was liberals who told us that we needed to be able to talk about anything.
00:34:58.880We needed to be talking about the most garish things.
00:35:00.780We needed to be able to talk about the most controversial things.
00:35:03.700And now it's the liberals saying we can't.
00:35:05.500The people who used to fund the ACLU and the Canadian versions of it, right, the Civil Liberties Union, are they even around anymore?
00:35:13.080What happened to that movement of liberalism that said, it didn't matter how upset you were by something obscene or whatever, they had the right to express it, and off they went?
00:35:24.880I think it depends on who's in power, because as you know, in the 1950s and 60s, particularly in the United States, there were people on the right who wanted to suppress freedom of speech.
00:35:37.340There were people who, I'm thinking of William F. Buckley, the late editor and creator of National Review magazine, who excluded several voices on the right from writing for his magazine because they didn't support anti-communist crusades with enough fervor or with as much fervor as he wanted.
00:36:05.360There are people on the right who did not believe and still don't believe that America's mission is to interfere with the rest of the world and impose its values on the rest of the world.
00:36:17.700So in a way, the right invented cancel culture, although probably not as severe as what we're facing today.
00:36:24.840So at the time, the left was in favor of freedom of speech and even sounded libertarian because they were out of power in the 50s and most of the 60s.
00:36:37.420But today, of course, many people on the left believe that history is on their side.
00:36:43.340They actually have the support of big corporations.
00:36:49.160Big tech is very left-leaning, but is certainly not libertarian.
00:36:57.120I mean, we have four companies, Amazon and Facebook and Apple and Microsoft, that have as much wealth taken together as the gross domestic product of France.
00:37:11.680But they also have the enormous power to suppress opinions that they don't like.
00:37:19.160and uh many people on the left think that's great they they think that uh big tech and the state
00:37:27.560ought to suppress uh freedom of speech uh especially right-wing freedom of speech so
00:37:34.440you're right there has been quite a reversal there and i think it's partly because uh
00:37:40.680many people in the left feel that the wind is at their back uh that history is on their side
00:37:46.840and it doesn't really matter whether people on the right have freedom.
00:37:53.780They're so dangerous and such reprobates that they should have their freedoms taken away.
00:38:01.560So again, I think conservatives in Canada really need to make that more of an issue
00:38:08.000and uh they they they've got to present themselves as the party of of ordered liberty or freedom
00:38:19.020what might that ordered freedom look like in our time it does appear as you mentioned
00:38:25.080in canada we have always had a more amenable attitude to the state uh to the government
00:38:30.720being in our affairs it was the only thing big enough to build the railway it was the only thing
00:38:36.040big enough to build the dams we have. We don't have the mega corporations that other places have
00:38:40.700to do these things, except maybe in mining and gas exploration. Outside of that, we're just a
00:38:47.800middle power. There's one and a half flavors of everything. There's at least two or three in
00:38:52.160America, but there's maybe one and a half, including political parties, as it turns out,
00:38:55.500in Canada. How does ordered liberty work? What could we possibly do to make sure that we can
00:39:03.140grow our economy, have the values that would sustain our civilization, but at the same
00:39:07.680time, not fall, I guess, into the hands of being a vassal state of someone else, because
00:39:14.020that seems to be where we're headed, perhaps in a vassal state of China.
00:44:22.120So that's another thing that conservatives could emphasize.
00:44:26.140I just yeah I think that I think austerity is a really good way to lose elections you just talk
00:44:32.060about cuts cuts cuts and everybody knows everybody knows that it just isn't going to be their jerk of
00:44:37.340a boss three stories above them that is you know as is one of 12 managers all making six figures
00:44:43.520doing nothing it's not going to be that guy it's going to be three of us down here and that
00:44:48.840and that's just it right and there's more people down here to vote than there are people up there
00:44:52.780votes. So it just creates a very big problem. I think that coming back to the question then
00:44:59.880of Canadian conservatism, it just had such a hard time articulating itself basically after
00:45:04.820Diefenbaker. What are we? I mean, through the 80s, we became pro-free trade, which was never
00:45:10.340a conservative argument for a long time, at least in Canadian conservatism. And then throughout the
00:45:15.96090s, we were kind of lost in the wilderness as populism and reform and then the old stock and
00:45:21.920what was going to be Canadian conservatism. Harper, you know, holds off a miracle, welds the
00:45:27.580party back together, and wins a majority eventually. But even now, it seems like there's a lot of
00:45:33.080division within the conservative movement. What are those divisions based in, and are they valid?
00:45:38.800What way does the Conservative Party have to go to get anywhere?
00:45:43.320Well, of course, one problem which you alluded to is that conservatism fragments along regional
00:45:51.100lines so what is called conservatism in ontario and the maritimes is rhetorically different from
00:46:01.100what it is in western canada so of course there's more populist conservatism in the west
00:46:07.260than there is perhaps in the east although we shouldn't ignore the doug ford movement
00:46:13.660either. But I would think one way around that is for the Conservative Party to present itself as
00:46:24.520a nation-building party. Now, of course, that flies in the face of regionalism at first glance,
00:46:32.360but I would think conservatives need to do a better job of developing economic policies to
00:46:38.980build the nation and i'm not denying that there would be enormous obstacles to that especially in0.86
00:46:45.220quebec it's hard to um convince most quebecers that they need pipelines going through their province
00:46:54.020uh to connect with the maritimes but i i think um something like what randolph churchill called
00:47:02.900tory democracy or uh of course he was the father of winston churchill or or what benjamin disraeli
00:47:11.460called one nation conservatism i i think that's perhaps uh where the future lies now some of my
00:47:18.660conservative friends would probably rebel at me uh saying that because they some do believe that we
00:47:24.820don't even have a nation per se i i don't quite accept that notwithstanding all the doubts that
00:47:32.340George Grant aired over 50 years ago. But I think that in turn is consistent with the use of the
00:47:40.500state as a necessary instrument to build the nation. I think we very much have to preserve
00:47:48.820our nation state. You mentioned China. I mean, from a libertarian or free market point of view,
00:47:54.500there's nothing wrong with Chinese capitalists coming in and buying the oil and gas industry.
00:48:02.260That was an issue during the Harper era that, in fact, many Chinese companies that are completely
00:48:09.460tied to the Communist Party of China wanted to buy up important assets in the oil and gas industry.
00:48:16.500From a libertarian point of view, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just an economic exchange.
00:48:21.620from a conservative point of view there's plenty wrong with that uh because we need industries
00:48:28.340that uh not are not just economically viable but in fact preserve uh the nation's state so
00:48:35.780i i think uh we of course we need to avoid xenophobia uh and and justifying the preservation
00:48:43.220of a nation state but we conservatives uh need to uh advance that argument more so that the nation
00:48:51.940state uh is something we need to conserve something that comes to mind with with that
00:48:59.760question especially of course here at the western standard uh both uh hard firewalls about you know
00:49:06.380transferring payments to ottawa and to the rest of the country to outright sovereignty all these
00:49:12.120things are debated at the western standard quite a bit is there is is there a conservative way
00:49:17.940to look at at sovereignty or is that always kind of a reactionary or or or liberal stance is that
00:49:26.340the same ideas is that everybody's supposed to understand that america is actually a radical
00:49:31.120republic if george grant who is properly listened to because they separated from britain is this the
00:49:36.680same understanding we're supposed to take around the question of sovereignty that actually to leave
00:49:40.840the Canadian heritage behind might be a radical thing to do, or is it a preservation of values?
00:49:46.700This argument goes back and forth all the time. Yeah, and speaking as a native Albertan, I grew
00:49:52.360up in Calgary, so I guess I have a dog in this fight, but I can understand the frustration that
00:50:01.840my fellow Albertans are feeling towards the federal liberals with the carbon tax and a
00:50:09.780general hostility towards the oil and gas industry I hope it doesn't come to a
00:50:17.520separatist version of sovereignty because if Alberta did separate it
00:50:22.560would be even more isolated and it's part of the world I think there'd be
00:50:28.140plenty of anger in BC BC being cut off at that point from the rest of Canada and
00:50:35.160And I'm not sure other Canadian provinces would be more amenable to working with Alberta and getting its resources to market.
00:50:45.760But again, I can understand the frustration. I think we need a new government that, first of all, respects provincial authority over resource issues and powers.
00:51:00.540And we need a government that does not vilify the oil and gas industry.
00:51:08.880And conservatives need to use the argument that green capitalism or a green economy will still require fossil fuels, will still require viable resource-based industries.
00:51:26.580And at the same time, green capitalism, or whatever they want to call it, green economics, is not going to help the middle class a heck of a lot. It's not going to produce the kind of jobs that the oil and gas industry or the steel or manufacturing industries did in their heyday.
00:51:47.800So there has to be an honest conversation about the extent to which Canadians, especially middle class Canadians, really want to foot the bill for this green economy, which I think has very dangerous utopian features.
00:52:06.740I mean, I'm just amazed that governments believe that by increasing the carbon tax at the pump, somehow that will decrease traffic on the road.
00:52:17.660I don't think there's any real evidence for that.
00:52:21.220People will drive their vehicles regardless of how high the carbon tax is.
00:52:32.140The Liberal Party used to have good economists, especially in the time of Prime Minister Paul Martin.
00:52:37.940And nowadays, it seems to me that the Liberal Party is full of economic illiterates who
00:52:46.480do not understand basic things like supply and demand.
00:52:50.920So as boring as it might sound, conservatives need to re-educate the people on economics
00:52:58.380as well, as a way of not just providing jobs, but also preserving our nation state.
00:53:05.960you know uh i thought that the budget would balance itself turns out that that's not true
00:53:11.900it uh it gets you it can't just leave it there and it'll take care of itself hey
00:53:16.560it's it's it's something that it's something that too like we look at just the amount of
00:53:24.280personal debt being carried around by canadians uh and how they keep telling us that people are
00:53:28.520just you know not even their paycheck away less than a percentage of their paycheck away from
00:53:33.480everything falling apart how how did this happen what what what and what do we do as as conservatives
00:53:41.060to help people get out of this situation to make a more sustainable Canada yeah I'm not an economist
00:53:48.440but I would think that uh low interest rates a low interest rate policy uh is is is creating
00:53:59.900some pretty dangerous scenarios or potentially so like a real estate bubble I mean the only
00:54:06.840reason that the real estate market is doing so well right now that despite the pandemic
00:54:12.940is because of low interest rates which will not remain low over time and economists have
00:54:21.980been warning about this business people have been warning about this governments have been silent
00:54:27.900or almost silent on this issue, that at some point the party is going to end,
00:54:33.840the music will stop, and people will be grasping for chairs.
00:54:38.840So the combination of an interest rate hike with massive consumer debt
00:54:46.460that is connected to the real estate market is very dangerous.
00:54:52.920Canada might be setting itself up for a kind of 2008 style real estate meltdown that the American economy incurred.
00:55:04.200So, again, I think conservatives need to educate people on how economics work.
00:55:10.120I really wish that high school students were required to take a couple of courses in economics before they graduate instead of learning about identity politics.
00:55:22.120I would choose economics over that in a heartbeat.
00:55:28.540I'm just going to mention to my producer here just a moment.
00:55:31.380Our next guest is in the wings, but he is going audio only, just so our producer isn't panicking.
00:55:37.980But we have just a couple more minutes here, or perhaps we'll see if that works out.
00:55:44.900I think you're absolutely correct, though, when it comes to the question of low interest rates and everything else.
00:55:48.720I think that we have to be very careful about what's happened to our country and to other places.
00:55:54.420I mean, we all have the lesson of the 1920s and what happened in Germany, but nobody seems to ever learn the lesson.
00:56:00.800Everybody seems to play with the interest rates and see what moves forward there.
00:56:04.380I think perhaps that's a place to kind of bring it all into a conclusion is, you know, Dr. Havers, what happens if conservatives fail to articulate a vision for the country?
00:56:15.980What happens if they fail to make it clear which way we should go and leave it to the other side or just stay in the vacuum?
00:56:25.800Well, I think we'll be in trouble, not least because of the massive debt, the government, but also corporations and individuals are piling up.
00:56:36.460And I understand that in a time of pandemic, you have to borrow more money to fight the effects of the pandemic.
00:56:51.380But I think over time, if the Liberals and the NDP do not develop a sound economic policy, and I'm not holding my breath on that, then not only is our economy going to suffer, our nation state will fragment even further.
00:57:12.920i mean we're both familiar with the effects of the carbon tax on western canada but i also
00:57:21.880worry that many investors many corporations are writing off canada altogether they they
00:57:28.280see it as a a country that is hostile to an investment uh that cannot uh reduce its debt
00:57:36.520effectively that has embraced environmentalist policies that are very draconian i mean it's
00:57:47.680amazing that canada an oil producing nation is being punished for that fact while other oil
00:57:53.320producing nations like norway are booming precisely because they can sell their oil
00:57:58.900So I think if the Liberals continue to stay in power, our economy will continue to suffer and along with that, everything else. So the Conservatives need to up their game and educate people more about what is at stake there.
00:58:18.180absolutely well i think that's as good enough a place to leave it as any and i think it's very
00:58:24.480informative obviously uh canada needs a way forward and uh the sooner we figure that way
00:58:29.880forward out especially as conservatives and maybe we can start building up this nation again i've
00:58:35.020been speaking with dr grant haviers of course he's the chair of the philosophy department at
00:58:39.280trinity western university my alma mater and we've been talking about conservatism in canada and what
00:58:43.960it means today. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Nathan. Good to be here. Absolutely. We're
00:58:49.900going to go right into our next guest. Our next guest, of course, is James Steidl. He is a part
00:58:54.700of, or rather, the lead guy on Stop the Spray in BC. And we're going to have him tell us a little
00:59:00.960bit more about that and what that means. James, welcome to the program. Hello. Thanks for having
00:59:07.160me, Nathan. Just before we get started, can you hear me okay? I'm just out here in the bush and
00:59:10.800We've got ExplorNet for the internet connection.
00:59:15.960Yeah, no, I can hear you loud and clear.
01:02:27.360No, we, so we've got, I mean, we've got an hour and we're here to talk about this and I'm happy to be talking about it because again, like I was telling this to you over the phone the other day when we were meeting up and again, I'll remind everybody who's listening that that's exactly what we do here.
01:02:42.080We bring on everybody and anybody to bring up their point of view. And we're here to be educated, to understand things and to get the real story on things that you're just not going to get on some of the other broadcasters. That's why we do what we do here. So I'm happy. I'm happy to have you, James. This is, this is important to the, to the point of,
01:02:57.360the spray and and for that matter let's even talk about aspen themselves like i mean
01:03:01.680you know uh basically even from little on i never really thought about this kind of
01:03:06.000indoctrination that happens here in bc schools and everything else but we're always taught how
01:03:10.160wonderful the conifers are and everybody treats aspen like whether we're talking about firewood
01:03:14.880anything else everybody always talks about aspen as if it's not valuable wood well is there value
01:03:19.120in the wood itself and and what kind of value is there oh yeah that's that's hilarious you bring
01:03:25.120up firewood because and you know the training that you got in school that's exactly what i
01:03:29.120went through you know like in elementary school we'd go on tours of the tree nurseries in prince
01:03:33.100george we'd go to the pulp mills you know there was tons and tons of indoctrination for school
01:03:38.720kids basically of how wonderful the forest industry is and how everything's so well managed
01:03:43.480nothing ever spoken about aspen i mean i grew up thinking that aspen would literally fall apart in
01:03:49.320your hands as wood you know it's just like complete and utter garbage like you never do
01:03:54.060anything with it. And the point you make about firewood, I mean, that's kind of a good one is
01:03:58.960because if you look at the BTU charts, aspen is actually better firewood than spruce. And a lot
01:04:05.660of people will burn spruce in their fireplaces and they won't touch aspen. But the aspen will
01:04:10.820actually throw out a few BTUs. I mean, it's not the best firewood. The birch is a better firewood.
01:04:15.320That's also coincidentally another species that we spray. But yeah, it's good firewood. I have a
01:04:22.700little wood miser sawmill so i actually mill up aspen and i'm not the first guy to do that a lot
01:04:28.280of people and in the prairies will cut aspen um it's uh there's actually learned all this from a
01:04:33.880guy called pete stoner he's uh lives in stoner bc there between quenelle and prince george and he
01:04:38.860built uh you know walls and his houses are built out of aspen he built a shed out of aspen he's got
01:04:44.92020 foot uh um roof joists that are made out of cottonwood uh he would cut you know they use
01:04:53.000cottonwood as kind of the traditional wood for barn floors and they use it for flatbeds on trucks
01:04:58.940because it doesn't splinter so in a wood shop i would use aspen for rails on my sled on my table
01:05:04.100saw and i did comparisons with fur and the fur would just splinter and get chewed off and it
01:05:09.960like really brittle like the like the bond between the grains lengthwise isn't as good as on aspen
01:05:15.720so the aspen rails are still rock solid like there's no splintering whatsoever so they have
01:05:21.780every wood you know as a woodworker you got to realize that every wood has its advantage and
01:05:25.780every wood has its disadvantage and yeah aspen is actually strength to weight it's basically
01:05:30.960comparable to spruce pine and subalpine fir it has superior risk and resistance to impact bending but
01:05:37.360thing is it's not a high density wood it's a low density wood is very much like western red cedar
01:05:42.080so it's going to be um if you want to have the same strength as a pine two by four you'd have
01:05:46.960to build a bigger stud but the weight of that stud would be the same as the pine stud and you'd have
01:05:52.160the same strength right so um and osb let's not forget uh aspen is used in commercial applications
01:05:59.840all the time so osb is primarily aspen and cottonwood uh you know lp pacific up in fort st john
01:06:07.120like they have mountains of aspen and that's uh anytime you see a new house construction and
01:06:11.760they've got osb siding that's all aspen so aspen already is a commercial wood uh it's just not
01:06:16.960really advertised that much certainly in prince george where we consider it a weed and a lot more
01:06:24.400could be said about birch as well about the commercial applications of birch um so again
01:06:29.520Nathan, cut me off if I'm rambling here, but I will tell you an interesting story about
01:06:34.160the foundation of Canfor and West Fraser in a central interior. I just actually recently
01:06:39.900learned this. There's a really significant bomber from World War II called the Mosquito
01:06:47.120Bomber, and that was almost all wood construction. That's right. No, it was extremely fast.
01:06:52.560The narrative that I heard, oh yeah, it was the fastest aircraft in the war there for a few years.
01:06:59.300And the story I always heard was that it was made out of spruce from the Haida Gwaii.
01:07:03.060That that was what it was made out of in spruce plywood.
01:07:05.460And all the foresters will tell you the same thing. Oh, it was spruce, you know.
01:07:09.300But actually, it was the most of the plywood was birch.
01:07:13.540And half of the entire British birch supply came from Quennell during the war.
01:07:19.140And this is the Quennell archives have a whole write up on this.
01:14:12.080So to answer your question, things are changing and actually the heart of modern forestry
01:14:18.380is changing to the germans so they're they're totally uh adapting to the new scenario and we
01:14:23.980need to do that immediately here in canada like we actually have better reasons to grow aspen
01:14:28.460because of forest fire uh but um it's not quite happening yet as we as we kind of look at these
01:14:37.020different situations and and what what they mean maybe something that we can touch on is again your
01:14:42.060your background how did how did you come to these conclusions what what motivated you to start
01:14:48.220the stop the spray movement in british columbia have you had any success in that area and what
01:14:52.700what are you looking for with with other people to partner with you to move forward
01:15:02.700yeah i i started doing this because they sprayed like my parents have a ranch down in punchaw and
01:15:07.740they sprayed right up to our property line is basically why i started looking at this and
01:15:12.620and i was like well why are you getting rid of these aspen and i've always loved aspen trees
01:15:17.260like I we grew up with aspen all over the place and uh the rangeland which is also something else
01:15:22.560that we could talk about uh our rangeland had an aspen forest on it it's called rosebud mountain
01:15:28.580natural aspen stand it's been there as long as anybody can remember it's 100 aspen and it's
01:15:33.100really good cattle grazing it's like the life in an aspen forest is exponentially greater than life
01:15:37.580in a conifer forest like there's there's and they've studied this for rangeland studies you
01:15:43.040get over a thousand percent more forage understory forage in an aspen forest compared to like a pure
01:15:48.800mature conifer stand so it was just really cattle the moose were always hanging out up there that
01:15:55.160place actually used to be called moose mountain and it was just obvious to me i'm like this is a
01:16:00.220great treat um why are you guys spraying it and the reason they gave me wasn't very good so i just
01:16:06.000thought i'll like look at this as like a journalist and try to like write a speculative piece and shop
01:16:11.720it around so i interviewed a bunch of scientists and nobody wanted to publish the article
01:16:15.100and uh that was disappointing so i'm like well i guess i'll just have to be an activist now and
01:16:21.540dedicate basically this part of my life to to pushing for change in forestry because the more
01:16:29.300you look into it nathan it's it's pretty pernicious you know this idea of conifer forestry
01:16:35.500Like it's everywhere. And like even the universities where they should be talking about all sorts of different attributes of aspen and forests and deciduous forests with respect to mitigating flood risk.
01:16:49.880like they absorb more water they feed beaver which can help with beaver dams that can also
01:16:55.280reduce flood risk uh wildfire prevention um you know nutrient cycling there's all these amazing
01:17:02.280things about aspen and they're being completely overlooked and nobody's advocating for these
01:17:05.900trees it's just and then you look at silviculture so i tree planted on and off for you know 20 years
01:17:10.94023 years i have friends that did brushing and spraying right i know all about silviculture
01:17:17.360it's relentless okay like we we go into every single cut block and if there's an aspen problem
01:17:23.520we get rid of the aspen it's like almost like we're robots in you know with like a program
01:17:28.920that we can't uh we don't even question and so that's my role is to is to question this
01:17:35.740this kind of article of faith basically that we as a nation of foresters and lumber lumber people
01:17:43.680you know are are implementing to great harm to our wildlife and to our forests
01:17:49.600so that's basically the short answer no i i appreciate you sharing uh how you got involved
01:17:57.520with this it's interesting you make the point of can for and west fraser i mean it's it's one of
01:18:02.720these kind of potato potato sort of problems with with the the advent of the amalgamation of the
01:18:09.040the mills i mean this is an interesting point right going back to the 50s and 60s right there
01:18:14.720were there were several dozen mills all over the place and of course classically there were lots
01:18:18.880of mills and of course there weren't the roads to transport lumber everywhere so you had to mill your
01:18:23.820lumber uh closer to home and in your community nest lake had a mill sinclair mills right penny
01:18:29.200all these places had mills and then of course with the amalgamation now we have really big mills and
01:18:35.480course they have to run all day to pay for themselves and then we have really big machines
01:18:39.240they have to run all day to pay for themselves do you think that some of some of what's going on
01:18:44.120here and monoculture and the issues presented by it it's all kind of tied up with the fact
01:18:49.000that there's a lot of sunk capital in it that that's uh that's definitely that's definitely um
01:19:01.960I think what the issue revolves around, it's not jobs. Let's make that clear. I mean,
01:19:08.040the argument that I come up against is that we're spraying for jobs, that we have to maximize the
01:19:13.760land base for these one or two tree species to keep people employed. I mean, that's a complete
01:19:19.800and utter fabrication. It's a lie. It's not about jobs. This is about huge multinational companies
01:19:29.820maximizing our revenue, okay? If you had aspen in your forest, okay, when you would log that forest,
01:19:36.800you'd have, it's more work to do that, right? You'd have to like separate your piles. You'd
01:19:42.320have different trucks going to different mills. That's a cost that these big companies want to
01:19:47.540avoid. If you have a huge endless sea of a single tree species, all the same age, okay, it's all
01:19:54.340going to the same mill. It's way cheaper to do that. It's less jobs, okay? They can fire people
01:19:59.240to do this that this is what it's all about it's about maximizing efficiency for these humongous
01:20:06.680corporations so that they can pay their shareholders and basically you know screw over
01:20:12.580the communities and that's what's happening it's been happening for 30 years i mean today look at
01:20:17.180mckenzie right they've got record lumber prices can't force shut the mill down and uh they've got
01:21:51.320And that technology is basically people are getting canned is what's happening.
01:21:56.520And, you know, being a woodworker and dealing with wood, you realize that you can make a lot of money with not very much technology, not very much investment.
01:22:05.400Like a wood miser and two guys can make a good living.
01:23:38.000Right. So, you know, the folks in Victoria are like, oh, it's a competitive marketplace.
01:23:43.980You know, they're competing on the global marketplace.
01:23:46.000They've got other areas to compete with.
01:23:48.080you know we can't uh there's no monopoly but they're not realizing that a monopoly can take
01:23:54.720you know many forms and a specific term would be a monopsony where you have one buyer and that's
01:23:59.020what we have in these regional marketplaces is a monopsony and we need to start looking at
01:24:03.000monopsony is the same way as a monopoly it's it's negative impact on competitive markets it's not a
01:24:09.640free market and i think that kind of gets to the heart of of the issues that we're facing as a
01:24:14.480society. And it's the same with the oil fields, right? I mean, if they're, they automate and
01:24:18.840there's, you know, bigger and bigger corporations are running that show. And a lot of them are
01:24:23.280foreign owned and like the Canadians even benefit from all these big industrial developments.
01:24:28.000And I think that's a pretty, pretty questionable that they do. We need to step back and start
01:24:33.160developing smaller scale stuff. That's more owned by locals, you know, and for local markets.
01:24:37.980i think enough of shipping wood raw logs overseas and buying the completed furniture back again
01:24:44.640that's ridiculous we should be manufacturing all of our stuff here in canada um and i could go on
01:24:50.600and on about that stuff too but uh no i i think that's actually a good place to kind of pivot
01:24:55.760well i it make my job easier if i don't have to ask as many questions i if you know i mean we can
01:25:03.220go to some of the comment sections here if we want to, but so far we only have the most
01:25:08.600profound one, as usual, always follow the money. Always true. Always follow the money.
01:25:16.020I think when we talk about these large corporations, I mean, in British Columbia with a long legacy
01:25:23.360of kind of oligarchy and the big oligarchs and how that works, of course, a reference
01:25:29.460there to corporatism a corporatocracy i think that let's pretend for a moment that somehow
01:25:38.900the oligarchs come hat in hand and they tell and they tell us you know it look like we all know
01:25:44.660that that we're you know we're in charge we're the big big bruisers in town and that's that's
01:25:49.060what's happening okay fine but but we need to understand that we it's it's the international
01:25:54.260market that's doing this to us, or even if we could do more biodiversity, the problem would be
01:26:00.740that the people that we sell to overseas only want to take our J-grade lumber, which is made
01:26:07.620of conifer, as they're telling us, and sink it in their harbors and then bring it back out when
01:26:12.640lumber goes up in price or whatever they're doing over there. I heard that rumor when I was a kid
01:26:16.400that all our J-grade lumber got bought overseas and sunk in harbors and seawater waiting until
01:26:22.220lumber prices went up. The point is that this is the argument, right? The argument is like,
01:26:27.160well, we have to do what we have to do because we have to do it. And I think that that's a poor set
01:26:32.760of arguments, obviously. How do we respond to that? And how do we, in the same way that people
01:26:38.260talk about trying to move off of fossil fuels, I think this is a fair challenge in the same respect.
01:26:44.340If we're going to try and move away from big employers with big sawmills and things that
01:26:50.820have to pay for themselves and all the industry and all of the heavy equipment. How do we move
01:26:55.280away from that into more of the two man sawmill situation? And how do we know that that's going
01:27:00.100to be a sustainable transition? I think a lot of people might be worried about that, James.
01:27:10.680Well, we're already, I mean, no, we shouldn't be worried about that. We should be worried about
01:27:15.780these big mills, you know, canning entire towns and communities right now, right, happening today.0.71
01:27:22.420Look at McKenzie. I mean, the forest industry just hung them out to dry. I mean, there's, you know,
01:27:29.720Facebook posts of people in McKenzie right now, like who've lost their health coverage, looking
01:27:33.440for advice on how to get affordable coverage that they lost because their mill has arbitrarily
01:27:39.560shut down like nothing to do with environmental policies or you know people like me getting my
01:27:46.600way and saying you know we got to like reduce our cut because we're gonna have more aspen in the
01:27:49.780forests this is entirely to do with these uh with these corporations um basically uh i mean to be
01:27:57.140realistic here what's happening is can for has a huge lumber supply in the u.s south and they're
01:28:02.700playing the the north american lumber market they're getting cheaper logs in the south
01:28:08.880and they make more money wherever they're going to make more money off their logging
01:28:12.240that's where they're going to focus production so they're focusing production right now in the u.s
01:28:15.540south and even though there's lots of wood to be had and and you know like i think i think the the
01:28:24.040debate the focus is on the wrong player here i think we need to be less concerned about
01:28:29.380conservationists like myself or you know some of the people that want to preserve more of these
01:28:33.540irreplaceable thousand-year-old old growth stands on vancouver island and we need to put the focus
01:28:38.100on these corporations that will uh that don't really care about communities that care about
01:28:45.220their bottom line and that that's the bigger issue now as far as like the glyphosate issue
01:28:52.340this is entirely the respray is entirely uh theoretical right it's all about um the theoretical
01:28:58.740production of lumber 60 years down the road the stuff we're spraying today we're never going to
01:29:02.660profit off that log it whatever for 50 years okay so it's all based on this huge string of
01:29:09.440assumptions and if we were to stop and and so these assumptions feed into the amount that we
01:29:14.800can cut today right so if you stop spraying the theory is we'd have to reduce our cut today to
01:29:20.480account for the slightly lower conifer saw log growth in the forest
01:29:28.740And I don't even think that that's realistic because these models don't account for pests.
01:29:35.340They don't account for loss to wildfire.
01:29:38.580So, like I said, they're entirely theoretical.
01:29:41.720And this is why we're going to basically, you know, make moose hunting worse, starve moose, starve beaver, make cattle ranching less profitable.
01:29:50.440We're going to do all this right now into today's timeframe based on something that's going to happen 60 years down the road tomorrow.
01:29:57.540And we don't even know what the market's going to be tomorrow, right?
01:30:00.180Like, we're also assuming that aspen isn't a commercial species 60 years down the road.
01:30:06.220Like, what crystal ball did these guys have that said aspen won't be a valuable species, or birch?
01:30:11.380I mean, 50 years ago, birch was the most valuable species coming out of the central interior, and now it's not.
01:30:17.180So how do you know that won't shift again?
01:30:19.800So that's what I would have to say to that argument, is that I'd say just listen to common sense and listen to rationality.
01:30:27.280And I think a model with like a few factors doesn't account for a lot of things that we need to account for.
01:30:35.200And the simple minded idea that we need to grow our forests like a carrot farm is way too simple.
01:30:40.760And it's a silly idea and it's going to backfire and it's going to it doesn't even make economic sense.
01:30:46.380I mean, there's a lot of guys that could make money off Aspen with a small sawmill.
01:31:47.220So, I don't know, with a little bit of government help, I think you could really open, expand
01:31:53.440um markets like this for a species that the big mills don't want and we might complain about
01:32:00.080subsidization but let's be honest these big mills are subsidized all the time with the with a lot
01:32:06.320of different a lot of different respects you know we we pay for the glyphosate sprain people don't
01:32:11.600realize that that comes off a stumpage we pay for the road building that comes off stumpage
01:32:17.280um tons and tons of things but anyway i'll i'll stop there and shoot me a question if you got it
01:32:23.440Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, I think that articulates things very well. And again, something that was noted the other day to me by Bill Barnes, actually, a guy who did the Value Vote ballot. I had him on the other show that we do here in D.C.'s northern capital, Ramon's Day.
01:32:43.580and we chat a little bit about value vote ballot and that sort of thing.
01:32:49.680But the thing that kind of came up there was that, you know,
01:32:52.140it's medium and small businesses, right, that have, they duplex, right?
01:32:58.220They have multiple people doing the same job
01:33:02.220because everybody needs an accountant, everybody needs a bookkeeper,
01:33:04.740everybody needs somebody in receiving and shipping.
01:33:08.600And if you just build a gigantic Walmart or, you know,
01:33:11.600an amazon center somewhere whatever you just have one of those at the top being paid a decent salary
01:33:15.980and a whole bunch of you know wage slaves down at the bottom unfortunately and that that needs to be
01:33:20.560thought through in in precisely that way mom and pop shops same thing right obviously you know
01:33:27.300often dad is doing the driving if it's a truck driving business and mom is doing the book and
01:33:31.640and that that complementarianism results in there being uh maybe not all the wealth in the world but
01:33:37.600enough wealth to keep a family going maybe something that you could help uh even me actually
01:33:43.620on and i hopefully some of our listeners here and viewers is that i i must admit that i don't
01:33:49.820really even know what an old growth force means like i assume it's old and it's grown uh other
01:33:56.320than that i don't really know much about it i assume that it's never been cut i assume that
01:34:01.800it's it's in its state of nature so it was what it looked like when uh first contact between uh
01:34:08.440my people and uh all non uh first residents of uh of north america came together that would be my
01:34:15.480assumption if somebody asked me what the old growth forest is but what what are we talking
01:34:18.840about in a more kind of specific biological and biosphere sense we're talking about old
01:34:23.400growth forests and why is that important especially with what's going on in vancouver island
01:34:31.800yeah so in in my neck of the woods here in prince george you know between i'm kind of
01:34:41.000more familiar with plateau i call it so it would sort of stretch from maybe like babine lake down
01:34:48.300to clinton and these forests you know we don't really get old forests uh the douglas fans they
01:34:54.560can survive fire so you'll get three four hundred year old douglas fir patches uh very rare on the
01:35:01.280landscape um the further north you go so in prince george there's like 200 year old fur stands are
01:35:08.300like less than one percent of the land base right so i think when it comes to discussions of old
01:35:13.180growth it's like well what is the what is the forest that is there's not very much of and i
01:35:17.840think that's what we need to be worried about so in the interior i'd say it's the old dug fur stands
01:35:22.720uh you get further east of town you get the inland temperate rainforest and you don't get
01:35:27.720disturbance from fire there they they don't uh some areas they don't even have a record of forest
01:35:32.620fire so you get cedar there that are 600 years old you know and spruce can get get uh i don't
01:35:38.660know about that old but they can not sure exactly how old i'd imagine they get about 300 years old
01:35:44.520uh some of the hemlock can get quite old so in those places you know like if if that's how old
01:35:50.140these things are getting then you can't just turn it into a fiber farm on 30 40 50 year rotations
01:35:55.800like you got to respect that that temporal balance of the forest and i think that's kind of the same
01:36:01.240on a lot of the coastal forests so in southern vancouver island like the fairy creek watershed
01:36:07.480that's basically the last watershed on the southern end of vancouver island it's old growth
01:36:11.840other than other than some parks right and i think it gets to the the point i think of forestry in
01:36:19.580in bc is that if it's not a park and if it's not private land it's going to get logged that's the
01:36:24.000plan okay it's all going to be a working forest like everything's going to get logged and you
01:36:30.220look at google earth other than parks you look at google earth like we're almost there right it's
01:36:34.800just clear cut after clear cut now what they're doing is they're going in between the clear cuts
01:36:37.620and hitting the leaf strips and then we're turning all of this into plantations of one or two species
01:36:44.660like it's not the same we're taking something and dramatically changing it and that's going to have
01:36:50.260a big impact on on a lot of things it's going to impact fire resistance it's going to impact
01:36:56.300resiliency it's going to impact what kind of wildlife species can survive there so you know
01:37:02.700I might stop the spray thing it's not really about old growth there's other people that
01:37:07.380advocate for that better than me I kind of feel like our role is to advocate for the 97% of the
01:37:14.100productive forest that is basically going to be serving the lumber industry. So a lot of people
01:37:24.440are making a big stink about a very, very small amount of forest that's left. So there's like
01:37:27.8603% of big tree old growth left, what was once out there. We're not talking like little scraggly,
01:37:33.500you know, ancient trees up in the high Alpine that are never going to be logged. We're talking
01:37:38.860about the big cedar and Douglas fir and the valley bottoms, right? I mean, that's all being logged.
01:37:44.100So, yeah, we can fight for that last 3%, but I kind of feel like it's almost more important0.99
01:37:49.300that we make sure that that other 97% is being sustainably dealt with, and that we're not
01:37:54.820just doing these glyphosate sprayed, and not everything is glyphosate sprayed on average.
01:37:59.520It's about 7% to 10% of everything logged province-wide gets sprayed, and that number
01:38:05.320obviously is way higher in Prince George, where 90% of the spraying is.
01:38:09.080And so, you know, I think we need to just make sure that the stuff that we're growing for timber is more diverse.
01:38:17.500And, like, I don't want to see a situation where we get that last 3% of old growth protected in exchange for sacrificing the other 97% to fiber farms.
01:38:29.760You know, I don't want to see that happen.
01:38:31.140I want to see some old trees left in these stands.
01:44:54.900We don't use the natural system anymore because it supposedly takes too long.
01:44:57.980I think for anybody worth their salt within any kind of milieu, but certainly within my milieu of kind of conservatism, maybe some populism in there, but certainly a kind of very, very concrete understanding of reality and the way things work and values, deep values.
01:45:16.900I think that this is something that's important.
01:45:19.940And with respect to what you're talking about, James, I value it a great deal.
01:45:25.380What do you think is kind of the, I don't know if I want to say political philosophy,
01:45:29.340but certainly kind of the life philosophy that needs to be articulated there in order
01:45:33.580for us to move forward in such a way to a more sustainable future on this count in a
01:46:09.400Okay. I have a few little funny anecdotes to tell you about the technology, but I'll first say, like, I think the solution is just there's some really simple things that we could do to get smaller people going in forestry.
01:46:29.960I think one of the easiest things we could do is with regards to commercial firewood. So a lot of people don't know this, but you can't legally sell firewood in this province.
01:46:39.400You can cut it for your own use. But if you want to sell it, and I've looked into this,
01:46:43.180I've gone to the forestry ministry there and asked what I need. You need tenure. You need
01:46:47.460some kind of legal right to crown land. So you could do that. The most realistic way to do that
01:46:53.080is a small scale salvage. And you would probably have to hire a forester to do that. It's a lot of
01:47:02.880work to get a small scale salvage. You would have to, or you could maybe get a permit to get slash
01:47:08.620pile you wouldn't have to get a forester in that case you'd still need a permit and the company
01:47:12.840would probably need to give you you'd have to some kind of legal waiver because it's their
01:47:16.940slash pile full of good firewood that they're just going to burn
01:47:22.040and then if you did pull it out of the slash pile even though they never the companies never
01:47:27.360got charged stumpage for that waste they consider it waste as soon as anybody adds value to waste
01:47:32.320you get charged stumpage on it you have to pay stumpage so you would actually have to scale that
01:47:36.660wood and pay stumpage to the government
01:47:38.800before you can sell it to someone else.
01:47:40.780That's how the rule works. You might think that
01:47:42.660sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure, 100%
01:54:57.980Okay, we're just a little town that, you know, we could we could do all this stuff would have zero impact on them. It would have tons of benefits for us. But it doesn't happen because they don't care. Okay, so this is this is where you need the people that are impacted by a policy. The most need to be in control of that policy.
01:55:17.360so let's go back to the aspen thing and on the landscape and like why we spray aspen well that
01:55:23.120was an arbitrary rule that somebody in victoria came up with and it's totally disrespectful of
01:55:28.240our ecosystem like uh for instance in the bobtail lake area southwest of town they did a study that
01:55:34.48020 of the forest is aspen the rule says it's got to be you're only allowed at most five percent
01:55:40.320aspen in the regenerating cut blocks and preferably it would be zero percent that's
01:55:45.040literally how the rule is written okay and this is like somebody in victoria wrote this
01:55:49.520and we have zero control over that and i can rant and rave and you know we got 120 000 signatures on
01:55:55.360our petition you know a whole bunch we get tons of shares on our posts doesn't matter because they
01:56:00.800don't care so we need we need to take back the power from victoria and these metropolitan areas
01:56:06.480and and gain it for ourselves up here uh and yeah i think i think having a regional district with a
01:56:13.440a more powerful regional board of directors is a way to do that and instead of like being so focused
01:56:19.080on electing mps and mlas who don't do anything for us they can't do anything for us we need to
01:56:25.820have powerful regional directors that have control over things like you know how forest
01:56:31.600standards are implemented who gets the wood you know like these big mega corps with head offices
01:56:38.380down in vancouver they get all the wood and nobody in prince george gets it you know we need
01:56:43.280to take that control back from these metropolitan areas and reclaim it for ourselves.
01:56:48.680So I'm not sure how that's going to happen, but that's the idea.
01:56:51.960You know, you spread an idea far enough and wide enough, maybe it catches on at some point.