Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - April 15

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00:01:30.000 I know you're a-

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 well hello and good morning welcome to mountain standard time of course i'm your host nathan

00:02:46.820 guida today i'll be speaking to aaron akman who's right next to me here the former secretary

00:02:51.000 treasurer of the bc federation of labor and a little bit later we'll have stewart parker on

00:02:54.940 president of the Los Altos Institute. Do remember to like the Western Standard on Facebook and to

00:03:00.360 be notified in order to be notified when we go live and visit our website and take out a

00:03:04.360 subscription to support us. Today's going to be a little bit different as it'll be the first day

00:03:08.260 of bringing on regular guests to the show. Of course, the big networks do this as well. It's

00:03:12.600 a lot easier to run a show without having to find new guests for every single segment every single

00:03:16.940 week. But it is also important to start to build a coalition that might change things for the

00:03:21.260 better. We're not going to get anywhere without our allies. Aaron and I already have a separate

00:03:25.800 show called Ram and Stag, where we get into the BC political issues in depth. Today, we'll be

00:03:31.220 doing a simple round of what's happening in the news, as well as some interpretation of current

00:03:34.580 events. But more importantly, Aaron represents an odd sounding point of view to some right-wing

00:03:38.980 ears. He's a progressive, even a socialist at times, but pro-resource development, which is not

00:03:44.600 familiar to the Wokies and the far left. That actually has a broad base of support here in BC,

00:03:49.740 And I'm just trying to explain this for the Albertans in the audience, because, of course, sometimes they think all of us BCers don't have a lot of sympathy for development, but that's not true.

00:03:57.780 Lots of people here might have different values that are not as traditional.

00:04:01.640 But the fact of the matter is that a lot of people understand, too, that it might it has to get paid for somehow.

00:04:06.120 Actually, Darcy Reppin the other day made this very clear explaining this.

00:04:09.600 And so just to make that point, right, that the investment in vital infrastructure, as well as the resource spaces, is vital to the carrying on of British Columbia.

00:04:16.240 There isn't going to be a B.C. without there being B.C. trees, B.C. mining and B.C. oil and gas.

00:04:21.380 And then with regards to Mr. Parker, a little bit later today, we have a man whose anti-woke stance is well appreciated on this show.

00:04:27.920 And he can articulate in turn both the left understands and really that the right can understand as well, or at least hear it the first time.

00:04:34.480 Again, one of the biggest issues facing us right now is our inability to communicate across the aisle.

00:04:39.060 And nothing is going to get us to a better future faster than finding hitherto ignored people, cohorts of people who have no stake in the current political malaise and gaining their trust and moving forward.

00:04:50.180 So sit back, relax, and we'll begin to build a coalition for a better future.

00:04:54.700 So welcome to the program again, Aaron.

00:04:56.080 Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. I enjoy it. It's wonderful. I really enjoyed the show yesterday as well, actually.

00:05:00.840 It was good to see Darcy from Telco. He was a wonderful mayor.

00:05:04.140 And I have to admit, I sent them a little bit of money during the election because I was just so happy to see a political party representing Northern Interior interests in particular running in the provincial election.

00:05:16.400 No, I completely agree. I completely agree. Fundamentally, of course, we just need more relevant political parties, period.

00:05:22.720 This has been an ongoing problem in B.C. forever. But we also have dozens of political parties in B.C.

00:05:27.120 i don't know i think there's like 16 alberta independence parties but like in bc it's more

00:05:31.840 like every single river valley has a party to fight over these things and get this stuff people

00:05:36.420 don't realize it but bc's got like probably the largest number of you know for lack of a better

00:05:41.020 term fringe parties yes yes probably any other province and it's i like that i've always liked

00:05:46.440 that a lot of people are sort of annoyed by fringe parties but i remember you know being in high

00:05:50.820 school when you remember in high school when when they would always do the all candidates debates in

00:05:54.860 your gymnasium back when we were allowed to you know sit in the same room together stuff like that

00:05:58.500 and and i remember you know this is digital by the way we're both being digitally imposed we're

00:06:02.240 actually not we're not even the same place room yeah i i'm actually microphone cord needs to be

00:06:06.180 fixed i'm actually in abbotsford but uh but through the miracle of modern technology yeah exactly

00:06:12.580 across the digital divide exactly but no i meant like i remember watching these debates and i you

00:06:17.040 know like the christian heritage guy would always show up every year and i always thought he was

00:06:20.180 pretty pretty interesting uh and then you know like you i remember there was like the flying

00:06:25.440 yoga party or flying yogic party and their whole thing was you know they'd cross their legs and

00:06:29.740 they'd sort of bounce really high and and they would field candidates like they might still be

00:06:34.160 fielding candidates but they would always show up to these things and they would always sit right

00:06:38.400 beside the christian heritage party and and never before would you ever see two parties with more

00:06:42.360 divergent political views so it was always interesting but this week in british columbia

00:06:46.660 was uh was kind of interesting i guess if you like to watch and follow bc politics there was uh

00:06:52.980 we had a throne speech and i don't know i don't know how many people uh pay attention to that

00:06:58.600 but it was uh well they were trying to outline what was going to be in the budget but which

00:07:03.820 we're not going to write apparently like so so there's a list of of gimme's so i don't know if

00:07:07.940 we brought you up to speed on this there's a list of gimme's in the budget a bunch of a whole bunch

00:07:12.780 of things that are going to be in the budget but there's not going to be any details about the

00:07:15.740 actual costs expenditures projected revenues projected everything that's all that's all gone

00:07:20.280 so i so i don't know what this really is anymore more than like a memo it's like okay so these are

00:07:25.360 this is our christmas wish list these are some of the numbers we've used before in the past we

00:07:28.980 have no idea where any of the real numbers are don't ask uh here we go yeah it's like the budget

00:07:35.300 speeches aren't others have said already this week that uh the budgets or sorry not the budget

00:07:40.080 the throne speeches aren't really what they used to be they're they're a lot shorter now and part

00:07:43.460 of the, you know, I heard, I think it was Kay McLean from the Orca who had commented

00:07:50.000 that, you know, the last sort of long throne speeches that he recalls were from Gordon

00:07:54.700 Campbell, where he would deliver these really long speeches that would lay out the, sort

00:07:59.280 of in the BC tradition of what they're supposed to be, it's supposed to lay out the vision

00:08:02.000 of government for that year.

00:08:03.980 And then you compare it to the budget that they've released, so you can take a hard

00:08:07.060 look at what they actually plan to pay for and how they plan to pay for it, which, you

00:08:10.720 doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum you are, how you pay for it is the most important

00:08:14.840 question. And, you know, because we all know that most politicians, they just like to wax on

00:08:20.600 eloquently about what they're going to do. And they make all these aspirational assertions

00:08:26.580 without really backing up. And you need to see the budget to be able to tell. So there's no budget

00:08:31.040 so far. I think it's coming out in a few days. But the big news a few weeks ago was that the

00:08:36.860 finance minister in British Columbia just simply not not done one and and the argument was well we

00:08:41.560 you know it's in the middle of COVID so we just don't know how things are are going to play out

00:08:45.640 and it's like well yeah but also like in the private sector they don't get to just like not

00:08:52.200 do a budget because but just going to balance itself yeah I think that's fine we gotta be fine

00:08:56.760 can you imagine going to a board of directors or if or if you have to go to shareholders or something

00:09:00.240 uh or even just your employees if you're a smaller business and being like well we don't really know

00:09:04.680 what this year is going to look like so we're just not going to we're just not going to budget i mean

00:09:08.220 can you imagine if individuals you know ran their own household that way we used to we used to have

00:09:12.620 a joke about this going backwards right the joke uh the opposite way was from monty python and they

00:09:18.940 had this whole thing where like what did this what did this firm make last year we made a whole half

00:09:23.540 penny right it's like where's the other penny i embezzled it sir you naughty naughty person so

00:09:28.420 like this one accountant gets away with taking one penny out of the net profits which is 50

00:09:33.220 percent of the profits of this firm but the point is that that's the joke back then nowadays the

00:09:38.460 joke is hey did you think about writing a budget are you crazy i'm not writing a budget are you

00:09:43.780 nuts and they might see what we're doing we don't want that so yeah no it was it was just ridiculous

00:09:48.880 uh watching them try to explain to british columbians and the opposition parties why it

00:09:54.260 was totally normal to not submit a budget prior to the prior to the throne speech so then so you've

00:09:59.140 got the lieutenant governor sitting in this chair delivering this speech that of course she didn't

00:10:03.500 write which is par for the course it's always been a bit awkward from my perspective to watch

00:10:07.820 lieutenant governor sort of you know drone on about you know how wonderful the government is

00:10:12.420 and irrespective of which government it is and there's nothing to point to so it's just all of

00:10:18.800 these aspirational sort of targets and it was quite short because you know I guess the new

00:10:23.280 thinking in this communications professional dominated politics is don't put anything of

00:10:28.860 substance in the throne speech because you're just giving material to the opposition parties

00:10:32.220 to criticize so so there were still some substantive things in the in the throne speech

00:10:36.580 here in british columbia there was there was one piece that nobody has covered and it was just and

00:10:41.980 i understand it was it was like you know the 67th paragraph on page three because it wasn't a long

00:10:47.860 speech and uh and it mentioned shipbuilding and and a proposal by by the by the provincial

00:10:55.380 government, which actually I thought was, you know, I, I, I, I'm critical of all governments

00:11:00.280 of all stripes. I've been particularly critical of the, of the BC NDP government on a number of

00:11:04.280 issues. But if any government gets up and says, look, you know, we've got at least one half of

00:11:09.560 the longest coastline of any nation in the, in the world on planet earth. Yeah. Why, why shouldn't

00:11:17.540 we try to reinvigorate our shipbuilding industry? And so there's this little throwaway line in the

00:11:21.900 throne speech saying we're going to not only we're going to try to reinvigorate the uh the

00:11:26.320 shipbuilding industry in british columbia uh but we're going to try to build the arctic we're

00:11:30.100 going to i guess essentially lobby the federal government to build the arctic icebreaker that

00:11:33.980 they need here in british columbia which if there was any meat to that i would i'd be jumping up and

00:11:40.020 down over it i mean that for good reasons i mean happy jumps uh because those are really good uh

00:11:47.000 family supporting jobs that the kind of the kind of jobs which this province is is just screaming

00:11:51.640 out for uh now most of them of course would probably be down in the in the lower mainland

00:11:55.900 i mean there's some argument that we could uh build some capacity up near rupert maybe kitamad

00:11:59.920 etc but um it's uh you know i mean the interesting take on this i suppose is that many will argue

00:12:08.220 that the the reason why the bcndp is so hesitant to sort of get into this is that those who were

00:12:13.220 around during the Glenn Clark government still feel the sting of the BC ferry scandal and the

00:12:18.660 cost overruns on that construction. But I was actually out of the country at the time. I was

00:12:24.300 going to university in Japan. So I was sort of out of the communications bubble when all that was

00:12:27.980 taking place. But I remember looking into BC from afar thinking, well, that's fantastic that they're

00:12:33.040 building ferries at home. And I don't care much if they're spending more money than they budgeted on

00:12:38.360 it uh you know i you know i worked for many years in construction and there i i never worked on a

00:12:43.400 job that that came in under budget i mean like the whole game the whole it's a scam really in

00:12:48.080 construction is that you bid you bid as low as possible plus well yeah i mean yeah you bid you

00:12:53.600 bid as low as you can because you've got 60 other bidders that are trying to get the job so and and

00:12:58.220 generally the the rule of the day is you go with the lowest bidder and then you get them on what

00:13:02.280 they call extras right yeah and and it ends up costing way more so that was always that's almost

00:13:06.140 like we sell cars so i mean if people could say okay well that's fair enough that's a private

00:13:11.060 sector we should be able to do that in the private sector but government should be a bit

00:13:13.860 bit clearer that's that's fine but the important piece in this is despite the cost overruns it's

00:13:18.320 the same reason i didn't criticize the bc liberals when there were much larger cost overruns on the

00:13:23.120 convention center and the replacement of the roof on the on bc place for instance because that money

00:13:28.080 is going to workers in british columbia and they're not putting it in an offshore spending

00:13:31.880 account somewhere. They're spending it on toilet paper and the kind of things that you need for

00:13:38.760 your family at home. So it supports small businesses. It's the kind of economic spinoff

00:13:44.180 that helps communities, especially smaller ones in the interior. So if there's actually a genuine

00:13:50.480 effort to try to rekindle the shipbuilding industry in British Columbia, that's fantastic.

00:13:55.760 It's the kind of thing that a throne speech should actually be built around because the

00:14:00.060 sacrifice and the resources that are going to have to go into rebuilding a shipbuilding industry in

00:14:05.560 British Columbia are immense and this is why I'm a bit skeptical that anything's going to come of

00:14:09.800 this is that I just don't see the provincial government kind of getting behind this initiative

00:14:14.300 as I think they need to I mean we have a skills deficiency I mean that's we shouldn't hide that

00:14:18.920 there's no reason why we should pretend we don't we haven't been building ships for quite a while

00:14:22.620 in British Columbia despite the fact that we really should be even our even our warships we

00:14:27.720 have to go to that small island nation across the Atlantic to still build our warships for us it's

00:14:33.060 just ridiculous we get the longest combined coastline on the planet and and it's a vital

00:14:37.320 it's a vital industry because I mean until until you get dirigibles delivering everything and even

00:14:42.560 then with a strong enough headwind that's not going to work out the fact of the matter is is

00:14:46.680 that ships ships are the way that we have to get places in this country I mean for goodness sakes

00:14:51.320 we used to have little tiny ships they were called canoes and that was how the fur trade ran then we

00:14:55.220 get to the seaway right in the st lawrence the great lakes and slightly bigger ships and then

00:14:58.620 finally out to the sea uh we can't even we can't even keep foreign fishing boats out of our waters

00:15:02.780 no like we don't like our coast guard is unfortunately it's entirely undersupplied

00:15:07.420 like like all the canadian military to be clear yeah it doesn't matter what you're what you're

00:15:11.520 looking at the canadian military it's just it's all undersupplied but but back to the point of

00:15:16.460 bc shipbuilding i i think that this is just a real opportunity for canada in general and for

00:15:23.060 and for bc in particular that we could have a viable domestic industry right at a time when

00:15:30.400 we need more jobs yeah like this like people are devastated right now like it's going really bad

00:15:35.400 out there um and apparently harsher lockdown stuff is coming we'll get to that a little bit later in

00:15:40.320 this program but i think just as kind of an opening thought it's like at least let's think

00:15:44.080 of solutions and one of the solutions is projects that just they just get money out the door you

00:15:50.040 show up you have a job the money goes out the door yes maybe it's government funded but this did

00:15:54.760 this is this has precedence before and it's the way that somebody finally gets into a house it's

00:16:00.140 a way somebody finally pays off massive amount of student debt like it's these stimulus moments

00:16:06.160 that that make all the difference in the world and for people who just have a guaranteed income

00:16:11.840 because they work uh in government or they work in a big institution they never have to worry about

00:16:15.600 being fired and they never think about going without their wanting or being hungry it's things

00:16:21.580 like this that really do shape people's lives they really do take people from a very impoverished

00:16:25.660 place and take them to a better place because they just for that three four five year period

00:16:30.020 they managed to get enough income that they could finally get into property get into something and

00:16:34.740 move forward well there's going to be lots of criticism on this if they actually put any effort

00:16:38.600 behind it you know the the regular critics i think would come out and say well look it costs

00:16:42.700 way more probably twice as much to build a ship in in British Columbia than it would say in the

00:16:46.720 Ukraine where we've had ferries built in the past for instance and at least for the beginning part

00:16:52.360 of this initiative that's absolutely true but again people have to remember what's your goal

00:16:56.240 and you know I made this argument at the outset of the pandemic as well both in the American case

00:17:00.720 and in the and in the Canadian context when everybody at the federal government and the

00:17:05.500 provincial government sort of wringing their hands about how they were going to try to get

00:17:07.960 stimulus money to to regular folks they never really worry about this when they're giving money

00:17:13.400 to big corporations right i mean in the us i mean they're like literally trillions of dollars just

00:17:18.200 just of taxpayer dollars just flying out the doors to private corporations with no condition

00:17:23.080 whatsoever but when they talk about giving money to working folks uh it's all means tested right

00:17:28.840 and so like there's there's all these conditions and if and if you apply for it and then they decide

00:17:33.320 later you didn't qualify for it well then they come back at you for it and and that can be very

00:17:37.240 expensive but what pisses me off so much is the government is quite happy to spend untold millions

00:17:43.560 of dollars on the bureaucracy required to put hoops up for people to jump through to access

00:17:48.840 these programs they don't do the same thing for for big business uh but it totally betrays what

00:17:55.400 their real goal is their goal is not to keep the economy going in a tough time when lockdowns are

00:18:00.360 are stifling all economic activity their goal is just to i mean basically to try to bribe voters

00:18:07.000 i guess because if they were really concerned about keeping money floating through the economy

00:18:11.080 they wouldn't be spending time resources and manpower trying to determine whether you qualify

00:18:16.680 for the amount they just write you know basically universal checks to people uh so that they could

00:18:21.960 spend the money on the things they need and and that's the point it's it's not the goal shouldn't

00:18:26.600 be to try to stop people from falling into poverty because of the pandemic uh on an individual basis

00:18:32.280 uh according to all of these testing yeah like you know if you tick all these boxes you get your

00:18:36.780 1200 check or whatever they're debating in the u.s six months after you needed it oh yeah and then

00:18:41.860 and you know and then a year and a half after that they decide oh well actually you didn't

00:18:45.660 qualify for it so now you got to pay it all back or a portion of it it was just ridiculous they

00:18:49.540 really should have just cut the cut the checks to these folks and so that's that's the same uh

00:18:54.160 challenge with the with the um i think the criticism of of the shipbuilding industry is

00:18:59.700 It's going to cost more.

00:19:01.560 But again, if the goal is to get money to circulate through the economy to try to fire it up again, it's these big, I mean, economists agree on this, whether they're sort of progressive or conservative.

00:19:11.540 And there's more conservative economists, I would argue, than progressive economists, just kind of the way it is in that sector.

00:19:16.300 But they all agree that these big public projects are what gets us out of really tough economic times, like the ones we're going through right now as a result of the pandemic and other things.

00:19:24.200 This is one example, like Site C, like the Massey Tunnel Project that the current government has axed.

00:19:32.880 These are the kind of projects that actually pull the economy out because they get money into the pockets of working people who then spend it locally at small businesses.

00:19:41.300 It's just like it's so simple.

00:19:42.920 It just drives me crazy.

00:19:43.980 But no, we're going to have to spend all this time and resource determining whether you qualify for the money or not.

00:19:48.300 But this is this is the main point.

00:19:49.980 If this government actually put some some effort behind trying to rekindle the shipbuilding industry, we'd have reason to to really get behind them on it, despite the criticism that's going to come from those who are just concerned about how much like to the dollar, how much tax dollars are going out to these kind of projects.

00:20:06.880 So and I mean, it's just a better thing to spend it on.

00:20:09.500 There's a lot of useless things we spend money on all the time as government.

00:20:12.800 Like, why can't we just spend it on something that might actually feed somebody?

00:20:15.560 yeah the only other thing out of the throne speech that was sort of uh interesting to me

00:20:20.700 because the rest of it was just kind of blah uh right after the throne speech as we know uh

00:20:26.280 well i won't ruin it yet but uh right afterwards the speaker of the house he he asks the premier

00:20:31.880 if he had anything else to say after he made his comments following the throne speech and

00:20:35.840 and horgan stands up and he literally and i is a direct quote he says that's all i got man

00:20:39.880 that's it and uh and so raj chohan who's the speaker of the house he sort of looks at him he's

00:20:45.560 he's like he sort of gives him a look and and horgan's sort of looking around the chamber going

00:20:50.280 was there something else i'm supposed to do and then somebody kind of slides him a piece of paper

00:20:53.640 we don't have to clip but you got to go back to watch this and he looks at he goes oh yeah right

00:20:58.040 and he stands up and then he gives like a 20 minutes you know pre-written speech uh commemorating

00:21:03.000 the death of prince philip which he totally forgot right i shouldn't be laughing but i mean

00:21:10.560 Jeremy Corbyn, eat your heart out.

00:21:13.680 That's all I got, man.

00:21:14.860 That's it.

00:21:15.220 What?

00:21:15.560 It was like a Biden moment, right?

00:21:17.860 It was almost like you could just see him falling up the stairs to the plane.

00:21:22.520 It was kind of sad.

00:21:24.200 And then he's got this kind of like, hey, dude, what's going on persona thing?

00:21:28.060 And then he's like very solemn.

00:21:29.280 Well, you know, he was a great man.

00:21:31.160 We're very sorry about his past.

00:21:32.980 We miss that the Queen's concert has gone away and gone to that further shore.

00:21:37.780 Yeah, I mean, there's a way of doing that, I suppose.

00:21:40.120 but um i mentioned there from uh from norman about of the austrian school i mean i i do prefer the

00:21:47.720 austrian school in a lot of ways but i must admit that i am i'm an if i can finally kind of peg down

00:21:52.620 my political beliefs on an economic side of things we talked about this the other day i'm i am an

00:21:57.180 anti-austerity conservative austerity doesn't work loses us votes and all it ever does is ensure that

00:22:03.360 somehow there's always more managers and not enough frontline workers and i'm done with austerity so

00:22:07.260 i'm not saying that means spend everything and uh sell the farm but uh please do better with the

00:22:13.440 revenues you already have as government and don't just hire managers frontline people in any

00:22:17.760 government service is what's required very simple i think it's i don't know i don't know if there's

00:22:21.440 an argument against that is there yeah i mean i like i i get the i get the point norman's making

00:22:25.880 it's uh you know i i kind of come from the old like w i've said this many times it's starting

00:22:31.240 to become a bit of a broken record but i come from the old wac bennett school of how you run a

00:22:35.240 province and for those of our alberton friends who don't know he was probably the most famous

00:22:39.960 socred premier of british columbia ruled for like i don't know it was like 20 years or something and

00:22:43.940 then and then between him and his dad yeah well no wac was the dad and then it was his son brad

00:22:48.660 right that's right um who ruled for you know another i don't know it was over 10 years so

00:22:53.060 it was like this almost 40 year dynasty of of the bennett family and uh you know like he he had this

00:22:59.660 hyper conservative caucus but he he pulled off the most socialistic caper in the history of british

00:23:05.040 Columbia, where he took our private electric company utility and nationalized it and turned

00:23:10.840 it over to British Columbians in the form of BC Hydro. It's a shell of its former self for

00:23:16.620 reasons we won't get into today, but it really sort of created the foundation for economic

00:23:22.200 sustainability for British Columbia, given that it's a resource dependent economy and has been

00:23:26.000 traditionally, which is similar to Alberta. And in fact, what we see happening in Alberta right

00:23:32.260 Now, part of the reason why I've got so much sympathy for our friends in Alberta, despite the fact that most of the people that walk in the political circles I do don't, is that we've gone through the same thing in British Columbia.

00:23:42.600 And I remember even talking to some of my cousins and family members who went out to Alberta saying, you know, I get that oil's kind of humming right now and you're inviting everybody to come work because there's lots of work.

00:23:52.220 But you, you know, both on a personal level, on a provincial level, you have to diversify your economy because if our experience is instructive in any respect, the bottom can fall out of that resource industry like overnight.

00:24:03.140 And it doesn't matter whether, you know, what the environmentalists are saying about the supply is bunk from your perspective.

00:24:09.780 The commodity prices can drop the fact that you haven't got enough refineries, for instance, can be challenging.

00:24:16.280 And that's precisely what happened in British Columbia.

00:24:18.200 So it's part of the reason I think why economists, even those that are really committed to private sector involvement, tend to agree that megaprojects generally don't get started without significant public intervention because most private firms don't have the kind of money required to build the sightsee dam and expose themselves to that kind of risk.

00:24:40.820 So you have to have, but then the other side of that is, uh, once you've built it, who owns it and where does the money, where does the money go? And, and, you know, we can debate that my, my take on it is, well, we're, it should be us. It should be taxpayers.

00:24:53.280 And this is a funny point that I would make is that, you know, for me specifically, when it came to the, is it the Patel bridge? No, not the iron workers bridge. What's the, what's the first bridge coming out of Surrey into Vancouver when you cross the river?

00:25:07.800 oh which is that yeah maybe somebody in the chat can tell us yeah we're definitely we're interior

00:25:13.440 boys yeah we've forgotten what's happening down there the point is that they built the new bridge

00:25:17.780 and they put in a a toll and i oh the portman yeah the portman and i i had a lot of objections

00:25:25.340 to that and the reason i had objections to that like i mean other than it being the queen's highway

00:25:28.860 and lots of other rules about toll roads is that my government underwrote the company that built it

00:25:34.980 There's no way that company could have afforded to build it without the government saying, oh, yeah, no, we will guarantee you, don't worry, we will make sure you have enough slush to get this done.

00:25:44.860 Well, God bless them for building it, but I don't understand why I'm paying a toll on it when clearly I already underwrote you through my tax dollars, through my government, to do it.

00:25:53.360 So that doesn't mean there shouldn't be some kind of revenue capture in some other ways.

00:25:57.080 Maybe it should be the gas tax.

00:25:58.480 I don't know.

00:25:59.340 But the point is that this was nonsense, and I hated paying that toll.

00:26:02.620 No, I diverged from all my lefty friends on this issue big time back when it was being discussed.

00:26:09.600 Because when the NDP came in and removed the tolls off that bridge, it was the left basically that criticized them on it.

00:26:16.220 And you start to ask them about it.

00:26:18.360 And it was like, well, we just think that if you toll the bridge, it discourages people from driving their cars, which is what we want to do because there's too many cars on the road.

00:26:27.520 Do you guys even realize that the majority of people that are coming into Vancouver in the morning are working people that are coming to serve you your coffee at Starbucks every day, but they can't afford to live there, so they have to drive in?

00:26:40.160 Yeah, up to two hours.

00:26:41.740 And it didn't restrict traffic.

00:26:43.740 It just diverted it through New Westminster, which created all sorts of infrastructural costs for that municipality.

00:26:49.980 that were so it was a way for the province to download like road maintenance to the municipality

00:26:53.320 because it was off the highways and into you know through this tiny little bridge in new west it was

00:26:57.580 just create teetering back and forth because these big trucks were going across like it was just

00:27:01.760 ridiculous so yeah anyway we we digress yeah what else happened in the house this week well

00:27:07.760 uh there was a new minister of youth i guess we can go down we can sure let's talk about that now

00:27:13.420 so i think we even have a uh a clip of of the announcement here so britney anderson probably 0.99

00:27:19.420 a name that nobody's heard before and that's understandable nothing against her but she uh 0.99

00:27:23.420 she's a rookie mla out of uh uh nelson creston which is a riding i i have a soft spot for i went

00:27:30.200 to high school in nelson which is part of the reason i ended up as left-wing as i as i am i

00:27:34.460 suppose and she replaces uh michelle mongal who who was an interesting character she came in i

00:27:41.100 think she actually was originally from alberta uh ended up on the city council in in nelson and

00:27:46.500 then became an MLA. She's notable because prior to the 2017 election, amongst the NDP

00:27:54.100 caucus, who was opposition at the time, Michelle Mongole had taken one of the staunchest anti-Saisy

00:27:58.560 stances and was really opposed to mining and that kind of thing. What was so interesting

00:28:03.620 was when the first cabinet appointments after the 2017 election came around, it was fascinating

00:28:12.360 to see that premier horgan the new premier made michelle mongal the minister of mines energy of

00:28:18.280 mine this person who had been a critic totally opposed to sightseeing was now responsible for

00:28:22.120 sightseeing and mines and you know i mean people on the right probably thought oh that's the the

00:28:27.320 clearest indication they're going to try to shut down all the mining and shut down say that's not

00:28:30.360 what it was i think i think it was like you can always tell who the premier likes and who they

00:28:34.840 see as a potential threat or who they find to be annoying because they they make cabinet

00:28:38.680 appointments based on like is this person going to survive this term and so if you take somebody

00:28:44.440 who's been really critical and you know that there's all these clips out out in the wild of

00:28:48.420 them saying you know site c should be cancelled and mining is terrible and then you make them

00:28:52.860 a minister of that like their whole support base is going to fade away and consequently you know

00:28:57.960 I mean I think she's probably got her own reasons but Michelle Mongal is no longer

00:29:00.820 and it's and Nelson Creston's a pretty tight riding so so flash forward Brittany Anderson

00:29:07.200 steps into the role. I guess she's pretty young. She got elected. I don't know how close it was. 0.85

00:29:11.400 I didn't look at it. But I just saw this announcement the other day that she's now

00:29:14.560 the premier's advisor on youth issues or something like that. And the announcement,

00:29:18.860 if you pull it up, it says something to the effect of, you know, seven of the MLAs in caucus

00:29:23.660 are millennials. And like, is it just a coincidence that a week or so after Horgan comes under so

00:29:30.660 much heat for basically blaming the deaths of the pandemic on this generation decides he needs

00:29:36.380 a youth advisor and i just i thought maybe nobody like it didn't get a lot of news because i mean

00:29:41.420 who cares right but it just i was thinking to myself like what are their meetings look like

00:29:45.560 like is horgan sitting around you know at his desk and he calls britney and he's like so

00:29:49.860 you know what like what's up with the youth today what's what are the youths thinking the youths

00:29:55.360 like uh or how could i be more lit uh i like i like i mean did they make this decision because

00:30:03.520 they recognize that this core demographic is uh not too happy with where they're going or

00:30:08.560 like i don't know what she's going to advise them on like is she the prime meme meme advisor i don't

00:30:13.440 know she interprets the memes for him yeah that probably makes sense that in the cat videos i mean

00:30:18.580 like what is a gift is it a gif is it a gift she she helps him with that that's right um you're

00:30:23.400 younger than i am i mean like you're a young person maybe yeah sure maybe you're 31 that's

00:30:27.280 young nowadays right like what are the you might be younger i'm not i'm not sure what her age is

00:30:31.340 But like, like, what are the issues that transcend all the different demographics within youth?

00:30:36.620 Like, what would a youth advisor advise the premier on?

00:30:39.020 The only thing at this point for more skate parks, I don't know.

00:30:41.620 I think the joke is that like, right, right between, you know, well, just younger than you all the way down to basic.

00:30:49.000 Well, I mean, I guess as of 2020, the eldest millennial was 38 as of 2020, because millennials are counted from 1982 forward because they turned 18 on the millennium.

00:31:00.620 that's why they're called millennials right so they're counted from there forward and then

00:31:04.440 you have gen y right behind me or right right in between um which would be which would be people

00:31:12.840 from kind of 94 more like 95 onwards like they were adolescents when the iphone came out so that

00:31:19.420 was 2008 and then you have gen z which has in their sentient life never not known instant

00:31:28.000 communication and and uh and and smartphones well you know this very well i mean you make

00:31:32.720 a great youth advisor there you go maybe they should hire me i mean i i guess i just have to

00:31:36.400 get elected in nelson crescent but it's just it was just clearly surely if she's going to retire

00:31:42.800 soon maybe maybe she needs a replacement i'm sure she'd love to replace herself so i i don't know it

00:31:48.480 was just funny it was clearly just one of those appointments that i you sort of make up because

00:31:53.280 you got to give this person something i don't know i guess there was a recognized need that

00:31:56.960 that they needed to elevate the person in Nelson Creston

00:31:59.440 because it's a tight riding.

00:32:01.260 The Liberals could literally take it, I think, in the election.

00:32:04.820 And it's swung back and forth over the years.

00:32:07.700 So we'll see how she does.

00:32:09.060 Well, that happened with Dan's riding, right?

00:32:10.700 Dan, what am I thinking of?

00:32:12.680 Dan?

00:32:13.060 Davies?

00:32:13.780 Dan Davies.

00:32:14.620 No, that's never moved.

00:32:16.020 No, the guy in the Kooten Institute.

00:32:19.220 Yeah, that one can swing.

00:32:22.880 Oh, that did swing this time, didn't it?

00:32:24.540 No, it stayed here this time.

00:32:26.960 But, I mean, it stayed blue this time.

00:32:28.620 But, I mean, it was in 2017 that it swung, I think.

00:32:33.020 No, I think Ashton's been there the whole time.

00:32:35.320 We can check.

00:32:36.240 Yeah.

00:32:36.720 Well, we'll find that at some point.

00:32:38.240 Our producer's taking a look.

00:32:39.820 Actually, speaking of our producer, he reminded me that next week we're going to be talking to some people about the SoCred movement.

00:32:46.420 So we're going to be talking about social credit.

00:32:48.500 Cool.

00:32:48.660 So we're going to do some recordings over with somebody who knows that really well and can give us some direction on it.

00:32:54.920 So people who are interested in learning more about social credit, we'll be doing a feature on that next week.

00:32:59.360 That's cool. So the other thing's kind of going on in the provincial legislature right now, there's a couple of ministers that are under a disproportionate amount of heat, I guess, because of what's happening.

00:33:09.180 The first is Ravi Calhoun. I think, I can't remember the name of his ministry. It's like the Ministry of Jobs and Training.

00:33:15.440 And I think it was the one that used to be Bruce Ralston's ministry.

00:33:18.060 And so the opposition is really focusing in on what they perceive to be the lack of support that's been given to small businesses.

00:33:26.340 And in particular, the difficulty that a lot of small businesses are facing in trying to access some of the funds that are available because of COVID, etc. to support them.

00:33:35.040 You know, it's interesting because it's predictable, I guess, that the BC Liberals would really hone in on this particular issue.

00:33:44.340 But I think there's a huge missed opportunity here.

00:33:47.340 And this is also related to the air tax, which we'll talk about in a bit.

00:33:50.280 But, you know, I think there's a lot of working people that are hurting.

00:33:54.400 Like the majority of people in British Columbia don't own a business and they're hurting just as bad.

00:33:59.620 And so when you see an opposition party that that's putting all of their eggs into this this particular basket of giving support to small businesses,

00:34:07.640 you sort of miss out on this opportunity of advocating for working people that are having to go through all the same kind of garbage to get any sort of to get to get any sort of support.

00:34:17.340 And so it's interesting to see that play out. Sheila Malcolmson, who's the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, is, I mean, just in question period yesterday, I mean, she's under probably the most fire. And it's, I mean, it's understandable. It's now, I think it was the five year anniversary of BC having declared a state of emergency in relation to the opioid crisis. There is, and so all the numbers came out and it looks like on average in British Columbia, five people die a day of an overdose. I didn't quite realize that.

00:34:44.740 I remember seeing the stats just over, I think, over the previous summer from last year of the number, just as COVID was starting to hit its first wave, the number of opioid deaths just in Prince George outpaced COVID deaths by quite a margin.

00:35:01.160 So so that's sort of the underlying narrative that's been playing out in British Columbia since the pandemic began, which is, you know, we've responded so strongly in terms of lockdowns, et cetera, and and restaurant closures and all sorts of closures.

00:35:15.980 And yet, you know, the opioid crisis is is claiming way more people at five deaths a day is a staggering number for a province the size of British Columbia.

00:35:26.240 And so the opposition, rightfully so, are hammering away at this.

00:35:32.160 And the NDP, you know, I mean, they haven't got much of a response other than, well, you know, it wasn't really any better when you guys were in power.

00:35:39.860 And then just to sort of reiterate that, well, there's more to do.

00:35:42.940 But, you know, like I'm not really sure.

00:35:44.880 This is a tough issue.

00:35:45.720 And I know that across the political divide, people approach this differently.

00:35:51.720 British Columbia and Vancouver in particular has really kind of led the way on safe injection sites.

00:35:56.660 I was listening to the news on the way over, just in Prince George alone,

00:36:00.100 there were two people outside of the closest thing we have to a safe injection site here in Prince George

00:36:05.240 who had overdosed right outside of that place, but not from injected drugs.

00:36:09.760 It was actually from smoking drugs.

00:36:11.320 I'm not sure what they're smoking, but apparently there's this rise in opioid deaths from smoking rather than injecting.

00:36:18.340 So these injection sites are now having to try to take into account whether or not they

00:36:23.780 should be supervising the inhalation of drugs as well, which would be, I don't know how

00:36:28.400 you would do that in a safe environment.

00:36:29.980 Like how, like it's-

00:36:30.760 It would have to be vented.

00:36:31.780 You'd think so, right?

00:36:32.760 Like you'd have to get some kind of ventilation so that the people observing them aren't,

00:36:36.100 aren't inhaling this stuff.

00:36:37.660 But that's one of the challenges that they're now having to face.

00:36:40.300 And of course the, the, in British Columbia in particular, the side that is totally opposed

00:36:45.600 to safe injection sites is probably smaller than in other jurisdictions.

00:36:48.200 I mean, even the like the Vancouver City Police, for instance, were were notably longtime supporters of safe injection sites because they figured it was actually like one way to try to mitigate the challenges of this stuff.

00:36:59.200 And then the number I mean, they're the folks that are literally in, you know, in conjunction with the with the paramedics and the first responders picking these people up off the street and taking them to the morgue.

00:37:09.840 I mean, like it's just this this constant revolving door of folks that are overdosing.

00:37:15.040 um so it's like again it's one of those ministries i was just thinking i was watching uh question

00:37:22.440 period uh yesterday it's it's always been mcfd that's been the ministry that nobody wanted to

00:37:27.500 go into because that was that was the kiss of death right kind of like i was saying at the

00:37:31.100 outset when they put michelle mongal into the energy and minds ministry it was it was probably

00:37:35.360 to ensure that like you know she wasn't going to go anywhere after that right and uh and that was

00:37:40.380 basically what you do with mcfd and and the bc liberals used to do this as well i think i think

00:37:44.280 it's how it's how pollock ended up there i think i think she was seen as a bit of a leadership

00:37:47.860 threat and um and she was put into that ministry and and that kind of ends your leadership

00:37:52.780 aspirations because you can't come out of managing mcfd looking good especially you know i was i was

00:37:58.720 the union rep for uh social workers here in the north at that time and it was rough like you know

00:38:04.300 this is the ministry where the people going to work every day don't know whether they're going

00:38:07.640 of walk into a house and find a dead baby i mean it was it's horrific horrific stuff the numbers

00:38:12.760 never look good but nobody said anything like it uh in when the new government took power in 2017

00:38:17.880 katrine conroy who's now the uh forest minister uh she she was given this ministry and i thought

00:38:22.920 oh goodness i'm a poor woman uh and and she actually like it she she seemed to do pretty

00:38:28.100 good because nobody was really uh going after her big time it might have been a uh deficiency of the

00:38:32.860 opposition i don't know but even now with um uh with the new minister there you don't hear much

00:38:38.480 from them and i think it's because a covet is overshadowing things but mental health and

00:38:42.680 addiction is really overshadowing things so so it's just a way to illustrate that things are so

00:38:47.280 bad in that area that even mcfd is like not been in the news lately um so it's these are the

00:38:53.320 challenges that uh that that we're facing and it's dominating the uh the discussion in uh in

00:38:59.640 house during question period i think and i think validly so i it's one of those difficult things

00:39:05.560 for those of us on the right i think there is a lot of division amongst us around the question

00:39:10.200 of safe injection or safe supply or the legalization of drugs it's it kind of it

00:39:16.280 squares a couple of different things and it and it it bumps up a few different places of value right

00:39:21.640 and it's in in not so many words it's kind of like well nobody nobody would want to see their

00:39:26.760 own child in this position now nobody would also want their child abandoned in that position right

00:39:32.600 you know you know addicted and uh and homeless and everything else and then the question becomes

00:39:39.400 well what's the solution here and that's where there is all this divergence right there are

00:39:43.480 people who think there is a lot more there is a lot more we could do uh or or that you know some

00:39:49.080 of these prescriptions again like safe injection sites or safe supply might be the the magical

00:39:53.880 cure or legalization and more therapy. But then there's also a certain segment of the right that

00:39:59.260 believes that, no, we're just not punishing the right people. Maybe it shouldn't be visited upon

00:40:04.080 just addicts or low-level people. It should be visited upon the kingpins. It should be visited

00:40:09.160 upon people clearly moving this stuff. How do we keep drugs out of this country? We need to figure

00:40:14.840 out border control. So there are these two sides. There's the side that I would say, and it's even

00:40:19.540 within the religious right, I would say, right? Because on the religious right, there is definitely

00:40:22.940 people who think that mercy is the way forward and on the other just like there's definitely

00:40:26.480 people who think that punishment is the way forward and this is a hard it's a hard question

00:40:30.160 it's a really hard question yeah it's uh i mean it's one way to demonstrate sort of how how fiery

00:40:37.740 it is and and how hot button an issue it is i remember during just the 2020 election uh during

00:40:43.340 one of the televised debates of the leaders uh horgan made this statement which most people

00:40:48.400 probably didn't even think twice about which was something to the effect of uh you know the opioid

00:40:54.720 crisis is a pandemic but it's a bit different in the sense that it's self-inflicted uh and

00:40:59.360 immediately like you know after the leadership debates that are televised the leaders will come

00:41:03.120 out and do a bit of a scrum the first thing he said was to apologize for that because you know

00:41:06.640 as soon as he got off the stage his handlers were on him saying oh you can't you can't describe that

00:41:11.280 as self-inflicted right because there is that um and i would say it's probably the predominant view

00:41:16.880 now within sort of the mental health agencies and addiction agencies that they equate it

00:41:23.280 as addictions with mental health issues. So the purpose in doing that is to completely remove

00:41:30.960 sort of any self responsibility for it, I guess, any individual responsibility for it.

00:41:35.200 And so I think that's the point of divergence, especially amongst those on the right.

00:41:39.600 uh and it's yeah you know i mean like you can tell this is quite a rabbit hole you can go down

00:41:46.040 and and there's there's people especially in vancouver in in uh the downtown east side who

00:41:50.960 this this is what they this is what they do i mean because they they live this every day and

00:41:55.920 literally like the majority of people that are dying every day are are down in that it's like

00:42:00.340 a six block uh area um and they'll tell you that like i mean they'll tell you adamantly the way to

00:42:05.940 get through this is to provide a safe supply of the of the drug which you know is what sort of

00:42:12.040 put BC and Vancouver in particular on the on the opposite side of conservatives especially at the

00:42:17.300 federal level I remember there was always this really weird gray period in Vancouver where the

00:42:22.600 safe injection sites weren't technically legal the dispensaries weren't technically legal but

00:42:26.940 Vancouver's under its own city charter but the federal government under Harper at the time was

00:42:30.260 vehemently opposed to this stuff and so you know if I think in that circumstance if the VPD didn't

00:42:35.840 exist if there had been rcmp in vancouver you wouldn't have seen this stuff come up because i

00:42:40.160 think they would have just rolled through and shut them all down uh so so what you can't really lie

00:42:46.000 with i guess are the stats and and so the people that do this work they will say you know when you

00:42:49.580 have safe injection sites etc uh it's more effective in getting people uh off the addiction

00:42:54.700 um but i don't i don't know like even as a lefty and and like i'm certainly not religious i'm not

00:42:59.640 a faith-based person at all. But I still have a hard time completely removing any individual

00:43:07.120 responsibility from that whole equation. And I get that once you're seized with an addiction,

00:43:13.620 it controls you and it becomes a thing of its own. But at some point, you still have to take

00:43:20.380 ownership of yourself despite the challenges that you face. And when Horgan made that statement,

00:43:24.840 it didn't really strike me as controversial, but boy, he apologized for it fast. And it was just

00:43:29.300 reflective of sort of the divergent views on on this stuff and it's it is literally the pandemic

00:43:34.280 of uh of note in in British Columbia in particular uh even more so than than COVID despite the the

00:43:41.540 difference of attention paid to each so we'll see how that plays out let's try to move on to a

00:43:45.560 slightly uh happier topic uh for some maybe uh and I don't usually like to talk about Vancouver

00:43:51.860 politics but there was something of note uh just yesterday uh the very well-known uh Mark Marison

00:43:58.420 um who when i mentioned his name this morning i think your response was who he uh he announced

00:44:05.180 he announced he's gonna he's gonna throw his name in for mayor of vancouver um which many of you are

00:44:10.400 probably who follow vancouver at all are probably saying well that's that's nothing of note i mean

00:44:16.080 like he and 250 other people have thrown their name in but it's interesting because mark merrison

00:44:21.360 for those who don't know we're gonna put a picture up of him uh i mean if you read his bio it's tough

00:44:26.640 to really tell what he does they tend to describe him as christy clark's ex-husband that's sort of

00:44:31.900 what i've seen that like in the first sentence of most of the descriptions which i mean that's uh

00:44:37.380 at least you're known as something i guess yeah like there it is right there marison the ex-husband

00:44:41.360 of former premier christy clark like fair enough i think if it's just interesting like if it was

00:44:47.840 uh if if you turn the tables if christy clark was a male and marison was a female uh and they had

00:44:55.140 been married and then estranged i don't think you'd see people describe christy clark as mark

00:45:00.480 merrison's ex-wife right you know there's some there's only one-way streets on these things it's

00:45:06.360 like it's like how it's fun like it's funny when it said that uh you know like oh like i i hit you

00:45:12.500 know i i kind of gave my husband a good punch on the shoulder for what he did or whatever you try

00:45:16.980 turning that one around it's like oh yeah i gave my wife a good day even a very light love tap on

00:45:21.300 the shoulder everybody's just like that's not okay it's like and i'm not saying it would be okay i'm

00:45:25.760 just saying that like it's one of those one-way street things it's an asymmetry between the sex

00:45:29.940 well if you ever punch me in the shoulder i'll regard it as a love tap oh there you go that's

00:45:33.340 for sure so anyway mark merrison he's uh like how do you describe him he's he's one of these

00:45:38.060 backroom guys he's a political strategist he's a he's a dealer like a campaign manager and he's

00:45:43.140 one of these guys that's decided and this happens every once in a while like jeff megs on from the

00:45:47.580 NDP did the same thing. He was a backroom guy for years. And then he's not running for leadership

00:45:51.900 of a party, but he ran for Vision City Council, got elected there. And there was always speculation

00:45:57.820 that he also might run for mayor at one point. But he left City Council to go become the chief

00:46:01.880 of staff for the premier currently. It was also, I think, the chief of staff in the final days of

00:46:06.040 the Glenn Clark government as well. But he's one of these rare examples of these backroom guys

00:46:12.520 that actually do well the other example uh on on the left i guess was uh uh i remember i remember

00:46:18.440 somebody else mentioning this was uh brian top was his name from the nbp he ran for leader did

00:46:23.620 horribly uh but marison uh like i think from what i can tell and i don't walk in bc liberal circles

00:46:29.960 but i get the sense that he's a pretty divisive figure even even within bc liberal circles which

00:46:34.860 is probably unavoidable if you're if you're a strategist at that kind of level you you tend to

00:46:39.700 be one of these guys that ends up making decisions that piss people off at some point and so he's

00:46:44.380 probably got a bit of this political baggage but you know just a few weeks ago he he was on the

00:46:49.400 verge of getting into a real fight with uh aaron gunn who's also looks like he's going to run for

00:46:54.620 the leadership of the bc liberal party uh out of victoria uh who doesn't really come from that same

00:47:00.000 bc liberal milieu but he's he's got his own kind of insulated social media following does his own

00:47:05.620 videos and that kind of thing and seems to be able to get himself into uh into fights with with

00:47:11.220 the ndp all on his own i i recall just a couple of racists not so long well it was katrina chen

00:47:15.900 who's the she's like the minister of uh child care uh which you know i mean it sounds like mcfd

00:47:22.520 but it's yeah yeah um i mean the ndp created this ministry because they had a promise they made a

00:47:27.720 promise to create a ten dollar child care which you know i mean they've made some there was a

00:47:33.160 caveat in the province that it was a 10-year plan so i mean that's a lot of terms of government

00:47:37.160 to carry it out but uh it's if they have a 10-year plan in government it generally means it's never

00:47:42.520 going to happen so anyway she she tweeted like three weeks ago like i don't even know what gun 0.51

00:47:46.920 said but it was something to be she her response was i'm just going to say it you're a freaking

00:47:51.280 racist like just straight out and uh it was around the same time that guys like mark marison were

00:47:57.040 making similar comments not about racism but to the effect of like if this guy i will do everything

00:48:02.180 i can't stop this guy from taking over the liberal party and i think aaron gunn's response was uh i

00:48:08.640 don't even know who this guy is and the things that i've asked around about him because he's

00:48:11.660 shit talking me on on uh on social media and nobody says anything good about him but it's just

00:48:17.660 like i i'm never it never ceases to amaze me in vancouver and and vancouver is its own sort of

00:48:24.240 political beast right it is very strange like they've got they've got very they've got some

00:48:28.120 very established uh political parties at the municipal level the mpa has been around for i

00:48:32.320 don't know like over 50 maybe over 100 i don't know how long like forever and uh but then there's

00:48:37.620 other parties that sort of rise and fall based on the the leadership candidate at the time and so

00:48:42.200 it's almost i it always always kind of reminded me of south korea where they don't really have like

00:48:46.060 established parties that that with the exception of the mpa that are around for a long time it's

00:48:50.320 like this charismatic figure will rise like you know the juice guy whatever his name was that was

00:48:55.620 there for years uh and this party will form around them and then once they're gone the party sort of

00:49:00.300 just crumbles away and something else comes so so you've got all of these different parties that

00:49:04.360 are starting to emerge but they but they don't really run candidates like there's this outfit

00:49:09.000 called better city in vancouver and and basically they're they're just looking to like and they want

00:49:14.040 candidates to apply for their endorsement and i'm watching you know their statements on the news i'm

00:49:18.740 like who are you like what like you know if i was a candidate maybe i'd go for the endorsement

00:49:23.840 because all endorsements are great but as a voter like why would I why would I follow your advice

00:49:28.300 um and so it's sort of interesting to see this play out the the larger dynamic of course is that

00:49:33.260 the current mayor didn't come from a party he was kind of a coalition like a loose-knit coalition

00:49:38.680 Kennedy Stewart a former NDP MP out of Burnaby uh and he's been polling in the tank the last

00:49:46.000 little while he's polling at about 30 percent I think which for Vancouver's pretty low for a

00:49:50.500 sitting mayor. Uh, so it looks like, I mean, I mean, if, if the, I think the election is like

00:49:54.740 18 months away yet, but if the election was held tomorrow, it's, and, and there weren't a huge

00:50:00.020 field of candidates to split the vote similar to what happened last time, uh, is a pretty good

00:50:04.680 chance that his incumbency wouldn't help him at all. Um, and so you're, you're seeing all sorts

00:50:09.180 of people come out of the, the woodwork. There was somebody I think who's on council named

00:50:12.360 Nakagawa who announced yesterday, uh, Mark Marison announced, uh, there's a lot of speculation that,

00:50:18.860 um adrian carr who's a counselor from the green party is going to announce uh i've heard some

00:50:24.060 speculation that uh andrea reimer who's um uh sort of a green leaning count former counselor

00:50:30.580 of vancouver but she's i don't think she's really in the green party anymore she might announce as

00:50:33.880 well so it's looking like it's gonna be this big crowded field almost like toronto uh and a guy

00:50:38.380 like mark marison i mean he just i i don't it's just like him deciding that he's going to run is

00:50:43.680 like to me it's this reflection of how divorced the backroom boys in political parties can become

00:50:49.980 from the general electorate like to or the premier of the province you know yeah the other

00:50:55.280 it's it's like if you think that that people want to vote for backroom political hacks i mean i guess

00:51:00.700 we'll see maybe i'll be wrong maybe maybe he'll sweep and do really well i think i think so so

00:51:06.140 this has always been a question actually this is it goes into meta levels of of reflection here

00:51:12.480 right because ultimately for example whether you want to go as far back as the old testament and

00:51:17.940 whether or not like the judges could be in charge of the prophets could be in charge because

00:51:21.740 eventually a king does come about so why is there this separation between the theological sort of

00:51:26.760 leadership and then the political leadership there's a valid question but coming back to even

00:51:31.020 modern times uh if you look at that the people the fixers the people who who do the king making

00:51:36.900 often they can be king makers

00:51:39.500 but somehow they can't be kings themselves

00:51:41.640 it's an interesting dichotomy

00:51:43.860 it's this interesting divergence

00:51:45.740 it's rare when it happens

00:51:46.760 it does happen

00:51:47.940 and at the same time

00:51:49.200 maybe the idea is

00:51:50.840 if you could almost cut out the middle man

00:51:52.620 because in a sense

00:51:53.240 we think of the fixers as the middle men

00:51:56.040 but they see the political candidates

00:51:57.740 that they get involved

00:51:58.560 that they get elected as the middle men

00:52:01.260 so I think maybe one of the ways 0.96

00:52:02.920 that we can understand this

00:52:03.820 is that they're ultimately 0.78

00:52:04.820 just trying to cut out the middle men themselves

00:52:06.620 because they figure that they know enough about the branding they know enough about how to write

00:52:10.060 policy and talking points and and things that are going to catch the eye that how come they

00:52:15.300 couldn't do it right and if they get a little bit of experience they get a little bit of coaching

00:52:18.300 and how to properly like look on the camera and like just do the right things who cares right

00:52:23.480 of course they could do it themselves why do we need these good looking but vapid people you know

00:52:29.320 why should i have to filter my priorities through these uh puppets that's what goes through their

00:52:34.120 his puppets yeah i could just do it myself well i'm the ventriloquist why don't i just do the act

00:52:37.560 yeah exactly exactly yeah it's like what was that show um curb your enthusiasm yeah the guy who used

00:52:43.380 to write for seinfeld i mean apparently it worked for him i never saw that show once but people seem

00:52:46.940 to like him so we'll see if mark marison can reproduce this yeah and i mean this is just it

00:52:51.100 right like we don't know we don't know what's going to come of it all but i i think that that's

00:52:54.420 an interesting it's an interesting move right and it's it's kind of the same thing even with

00:52:58.300 with what's happened with the pandemic where like we have all these unelected bureaucrats making all

00:53:02.120 these decisions of making all these announcements and making all these pronouncements about what's

00:53:05.320 happening and it's like what happened to leadership so it's like it's it's like the

00:53:10.960 elected leaders have also cut out the middle land they're like no no no i know i'm a middle man

00:53:15.020 i know i don't have any expertise and i'm just gonna push this guy in front of me you you take

00:53:19.960 care of it yeah and so where's the leadership where's the decisive i'm in charge i got elected

00:53:24.960 the buck stops here where is it it's gone well and it's it's also from my perspective it's reflective

00:53:29.720 of how our party structure has just sort of dominated the political discourse in the province,

00:53:35.200 but also at the federal level. So in our system, it's like I prefer the American system in the

00:53:39.640 sense that I don't think in Canada we ever could have had somebody like Bernie Sanders or Trump

00:53:44.440 because neither of those guys came through the party ranks as people that were supported.

00:53:50.020 And yet they both did very well despite their lack of support in their own milieu. And basically,

00:53:54.420 in the case of Trump, was able to take over that milieu. That wouldn't happen in Canada.

00:53:59.720 I mean, it just, it just wouldn't because the parties have way too much power and, and, and part of the reason they got power because of guys like Mark Marison, who, who enforced that, that power within the party structure quite strongly from behind the scenes.

00:54:13.140 So you end up with these MLAs on, on all sides that they are kind of like just vacuous, you know, vessels for these, these backroom boys.

00:54:23.320 and and it's just funny when you see them sort of step out of the shadows to try to do it

00:54:27.660 themselves and it's it's satisfying to see them get trounced by the electorate and i kind of hope

00:54:31.800 that's what happens but we'll see i want the shiny one i want the shiny dumb one i don't want the

00:54:36.660 smart cynical one now before we run out of time let's talk about air tax this is the oh the air

00:54:41.020 tax this is the other piece the air tax the opposition's been this has thrown me for a loop

00:54:45.120 uh but uh i i kind of understand it now i i legitimately the first time i heard about this

00:54:50.060 I thought that we were talking about like a refund for all those air Canada

00:54:53.500 flights that got, got wrecked last year because of COVID.

00:54:57.000 I mean, I lost about 800 bucks in an airplane ticket.

00:54:59.340 I think I, I think West jet's going to give you like a 300 buck credit,

00:55:02.160 but the point is that, you know, like there we are, right.

00:55:05.260 Like I lost some money last year too, and I'm not getting any refunds for that.

00:55:08.760 Well, I, well, my, my,

00:55:10.080 my wife's been trying to get me to go to Cuba for like the last decade and I,

00:55:13.560 I'm not that big on going to Cuba because as you can tell,

00:55:15.360 I burn in like 15 minutes. And so she finally, you know,

00:55:18.680 i didn't have enough other things to do to to get out of it and so we bought this ticket and

00:55:23.100 literally like the day before we were going to go uh the restrictions happened so we still got

00:55:27.880 this flight to cuba that's like a year and a half old been sitting around uh so so i feel your pain

00:55:32.520 brother but fair enough but anyway air tax not that that's not what it is that's not what it is

00:55:37.080 the the opposition's been hammering they've chosen to hammer the the sitting government on

00:55:41.860 this air tax and so what this is as some of you may know i think it was might have been last year

00:55:47.420 might be a couple years into this now, one of the first things the BC NDP government did

00:55:50.860 was bring in what's called a speculation tax, which was quite divisive, especially for those

00:55:57.100 who own property and multiple pieces of property, right? Like this speculation tax is applied to

00:56:02.940 people who have second homes, which are not necessarily their primary residence. So the

00:56:08.140 idea is to try to put some downward pressure on the housing market to make it less lucrative to

00:56:14.360 treat homes like a commodity. And this might be somewhere where you and I diverge and perhaps I

00:56:19.180 see things different than the majority of the viewers. But from my perspective, but just to

00:56:24.160 explain sort of what the air tax is. So you've got all these commercial properties in Vancouver

00:56:29.740 that get converted to residential because it's really profitable to build these huge high-rise

00:56:34.520 condos. And condos are flipped in Vancouver like commodities, like hotcakes. And it's literally

00:56:41.700 what pushes the prices into the stratosphere. It's one of the most expensive jurisdictions on the

00:56:46.000 planet. And you have these huge disparities where people that are working in Vancouver just can't

00:56:51.160 live there. And so what's happened now, in addition to the speculation tax, is that those

00:56:56.780 commercial properties that have all the space above them that's not built yet, they're getting

00:57:01.240 taxed on that because it's residential. So they're trying to ridicule the government by saying,

00:57:06.300 the opposition is, by saying you're literally taxing the air, like there's nothing there yet.

00:57:10.160 But, and some people, you know, especially if you've got a lot of property holdings, you're going to sympathize with that argument.

00:57:16.020 My position on it is homes are homes.

00:57:18.940 Part of the reason we've got a housing crisis in the lower mainland is because they're being treated as commodities.

00:57:24.480 I've never had a lot of sympathy for people that make a living off of flipping houses because of the negative effects it has on the housing market and how difficult it makes it for younger people in particular to get into homeownership.

00:57:35.020 I diverge from a lot of people on the left in this regard because they've sort of, they've given, I think too many people on the left have given up the prospect of, of homeownership. And part of it's because of their, their Marxist ideology, which is, and, and some of them are anarchists and they think that all property is theft, which I fundamentally disagree with.

00:57:50.700 I think one of the ways to ensure that a working person has some level of autonomy from their employer is if they have their own, they have a house that's not owned by a bank so that, you know, if they have to go on strike, for instance, to fight for better conditions with their employer, they don't have this mortgage hanging over their head if they're not getting paid for a few weeks while they're on a picket line.

00:58:08.440 No, I and I agree on that. I actually have to explain this to boomers a lot that houses are houses and they're not commodities. And I'm sorry, but you know, it's, it's more important that maybe your children are able to live in your house or that you can sell it to them like a friendly seller and get a good price for it, but something reasonable they can actually afford. And you just take whatever's left in the equity and maybe that gets passed on for a rainy day to your grandchildren or great grandchildren.

00:58:34.000 the point is that there is things to long for more than this life and selling houses like hot

00:58:39.440 cakes and flipping them around it is i think it's i'm sorry i'll go as far to say it's a sin

00:58:44.300 well yeah i mean if you're if you're buying multiple condos uh and using them as a commodity

00:58:49.180 rather than a home yeah i don't care about your air tax whinging and i never will like i just

00:58:55.500 i'm sorry like if you're treating it like a business then you're gonna have to pay the tax

00:58:59.580 on it because like there's a cost to the taxpayer for that condo going up but what about my little

00:59:04.920 condo uh pets that i put in there the little people that pay all my rents and utilities tax

00:59:09.400 them too i don't i don't have time for that like what are you talking about like this is nonsense

00:59:13.740 i don't people aren't hamsters like you don't treat people that way like just build houses

00:59:18.880 that people can afford and like have a population that has like a stake in the country like this is

00:59:23.720 rocket science no that's right and i and i just you know but it was reflective to me and and i

00:59:27.720 I felt like I should be a bit critical of the opposition here because I've spent a lot of time beating up the BCNDP, but it's reflective of where their priorities are.

00:59:34.500 If you're going to spend all of your time advocating for these big property owners, a lot of them are commercial developers who are moving into the residential market, instead of working folks, you may not get reelected or you may not find yourself in government again.

00:59:50.560 I mean, you really got to focus on where the priorities are and who's hurting and where the most votes are.

00:59:54.700 Just before we leave, can we read this comment by W.C. Bennett?

00:59:56.900 Well, there's that. Yeah, there's a well, we had that one. The market should be manipulated or you afford to have a house, one of the basic necessities. Yeah, there's a there's a conservative line here that absolutely. And to the point of the free market manipulation, you know what the best way is for nothing need to be interfered with with government?

01:00:15.460 grow a conscience very simple grow a conscience act ethically have some semblance of morality fear

01:00:23.140 some kind of divine retribution and walk walk with some humility and if you do that and you

01:00:28.940 help your neighbor do that and that guy and the guy guy and the guy after that uh suddenly the

01:00:33.360 government doesn't have to put its hands on everything because it has an ethical population

01:00:36.840 that doesn't do dumb crap to it there's one thing that before before you kick me off there's one

01:00:41.160 thing i'll just leave people with who make this free market point quite often which i think it's

01:00:44.960 important i mean the free market has a has a role and it should not be restricted uh but uh you can't

01:00:51.400 move in that direction 100 if you like i remind people in washington dc the department of trade

01:00:55.700 building uh right right sort of in the in the national mall there there's this big stone statue

01:01:00.980 outside of it and let's consider the u.s like the bastion of free market uh ideology uh but right

01:01:07.380 outside the department of trade there's this big stone statue that's been there since the inception

01:01:10.180 of a huge horse like a big stallion that's being restrained by this worker because if he doesn't

01:01:15.740 the thing's going to drive off the cliff right and so the whole the point there is and they've

01:01:19.180 understood this in the states and we need to understand this as well is that the free market

01:01:22.820 is a powerful engine capitalism is a powerful engine it creates wealth it concentrates it into

01:01:27.480 into small hands but if there isn't some restraint on it you know that horse is either going to going

01:01:32.640 to fly right off the cliff or it's going to keep eating oats until its stomach explodes i mean there

01:01:36.300 has to be some balance there uh and that's the point i like to leave people with thanks for

01:01:40.420 letting me rant i appreciate it no we appreciate having you on uh we're gonna bring steward into

01:01:45.540 the stream here and uh if you want to stick around you can um however you want to go if you got to

01:01:51.480 go that's fine i don't have to i'd love to but i'll try to keep my mouth shut because this guy

01:01:54.760 is interesting well hey good to see you so we've got steward it's good to see you of course we're

01:02:02.840 going to be chatting a little bit about well not even a little bit uh that that of course what's

01:02:08.300 going on to the left today and what's happening Stuart Parker of course is the president of the

01:02:11.600 Los Altos Institute and he comes to us live from we're actually all in Prince George today so that's

01:02:16.640 great we're all in BC's northern capital hopefully the future capital of of BC when they finally

01:02:22.040 realize that the lower mainland isn't where it's at uh Stuart welcome to the program well it's great

01:02:27.760 to be back you uh you separatists are a fun bunch i'm glad to hang out here

01:02:33.280 starts with the word we're not supposed to use

01:02:38.400 yeah i like it i don't know you just gave me the list of curse words i didn't know that was uh

01:02:44.740 we need a supplemental list i'm very strict about the style guide here no it's it's silly it's i

01:02:49.820 just i mean like look we're all bc boys in the room right now it's it's funny because like over

01:02:54.160 over with with with my and i'm not trying to denigrate my employer or anything it just

01:02:57.820 they they very much is like no we're sovereignists we're not separatists i'm like i don't look man

01:03:01.980 like i just want ottawa to leave me alone i don't know what to say like okay um anyways stewart uh

01:03:09.140 what are we going to talk about today what is going on in the left-wing world that has you

01:03:13.320 enraged today i don't think there's that much new it's it's more just sort of fatigue um did find

01:03:21.360 the um did find myself in a fight uh yesterday because i went on twitter uh uh to do with the um

01:03:30.960 the fairy creek logging road blockade on vancouver island so um one of the things i

01:03:38.080 noticed and i first noticed it on your show on cfis with your panel remember when you know the

01:03:45.360 before covid we were having a crisis about a pipeline and right the different uh parts of

01:03:51.760 the wet sew it and people were taking different sides it was all very complex and your ndp guy

01:03:59.280 was clearly getting like the talking points sent from victoria and one of the one of the things he

01:04:08.400 kept harping about was well this band government has said this and this band government has said

01:04:13.440 this so so how can we really who who thinks what who's to say really i interviewed the mayor of

01:04:20.960 sarnia and he says nafta doesn't apply here so i guess we don't really know whether nafta applies

01:04:27.360 so there's uh one of the things that i've noticed is um the provincial government is leaning heavily

01:04:35.520 on this indigenous people are divided talking point because apparently indigenous people are

01:04:41.520 bees or ants or some kind of hive consciousness right that if indigenous people don't all have

01:04:48.240 the same opinion it's like a crisis so i noticed that they hauled this out with the fairy creek

01:04:54.800 logging road blockade and the provincial government was like well see a banned council has passed a

01:05:00.800 resolution in support of the blockade in support of the logging and the environmentalists come

01:05:07.360 back and their faction on the reserve issues its own statement an elder who backs the environmentalist

01:05:13.120 position and what i found really striking and i'm really seeing this i'll also talk a bit about the

01:05:20.880 uh burnaby north seymour nomination race and how that fits into it but the um so the apologists

01:05:27.520 for the provincial government all come out and they say well the environmentalists have divided

01:05:31.920 the community it's like well i would think a logging road running through the middle of the

01:05:35.760 community might actually more literally divide it but then my and it's like they should have

01:05:41.200 sought prior consent and i said well they're an environmental group they're not a country

01:05:46.800 uh you know we don't have you seem to think that nation to nation relationships are actually

01:05:53.200 person to nation relationships and movement to nation relationships and ngo to nation relationships

01:06:00.640 but they really kept this up and the idea was that if environmentalists had not been

01:06:06.240 near the reserve um the normal hive consciousness of indigenous people would have ensured

01:06:13.440 the total unanimity about the logging of fairy creek and we noticed um and so there's this

01:06:22.560 real sense on the part of i won't call it the ndp i think the ndp exploits it but i don't think the ndp

01:06:29.520 is it at the higher levels but i think a lot of sort of progressive or woke consciousness

01:06:35.520 um is about depriving racialized people of any agency at all of saying well this person's an

01:06:44.480 indian so they must agree with the other indians or this person is an indian they must be at one 0.67

01:06:49.520 with the forest uh and we're seeing this in the fairly surprisingly competitive race for the

01:06:57.120 a federal candidate who will succeed Sven Robinson as the NDP standard bearer in the

01:07:03.240 Burnaby North Seymour riding. And again, so I've been sucked into this race because

01:07:12.000 Mark E. L. Simpson is the perfect identitarian NDP candidate. He is the co-chair of their

01:07:20.660 black indigenous and persons of color committee um which advises some part of the party that

01:07:27.520 doesn't listen to it that then advises the government that doesn't listen the part to the

01:07:31.980 party but the point is people i can tell you that's absolutely true that there's no link

01:07:37.160 between what these committees come up with and what the party actually no and i think i think

01:07:41.680 any intelligent person is aware of that but anyway he's um the co-chair of this committee

01:07:46.880 and he launched his campaign to be the nominee, and I got a call from probably one of the longest

01:07:56.580 term black activists in the party, right? I come from the, you know, I've been doing sort of,

01:08:05.720 you know, black community politics in BC for years. I opened Black History Month for Vancouver

01:08:10.680 in 94 because I'm from the Jerome family, and anyway, long-term activist, been with the party

01:08:16.520 for 50 years said well i read the newspaper story and as far as i can tell his main achievement is

01:08:23.160 being biracial i'm not sure that being biracial is itself an achievement but what pulled me in

01:08:29.800 was the fact that um he'd stated that his political role model was my uncle harry but of course he had

01:08:38.520 never read anything about my uncle harry's political opinions or affiliations because

01:08:44.360 what made him admirable was that he too was a biracial man who lived in north vancouver

01:08:51.000 so i came in first of all because i like spend and these people were giving spend some pretty

01:08:55.800 serious guff and second i said look you should be concerned that an ndp candidate is seeking the

01:09:07.480 nomination because and selling telling you that his role model is the social credit party's

01:09:14.520 multicultural communities organizer from 1972 to 82. the close friend of grace mccarthy the

01:09:22.520 right-wing populist deputy premier and the frequent guest in the home of jerry strongman

01:09:30.120 the socrate health minister from north vancouver um but of course the response was that obviously

01:09:38.440 my blackness is not um inscribed on my body and therefore it doesn't really exist in my blood

01:09:45.880 and so the uh the bipoc twitter brigade from the young identitarians of the ndp

01:09:53.240 decided that their counter argument was that i was not my mother's son

01:09:59.160 it was not maybe mark hill should admire someone who was actually left-wing who didn't like have

01:10:05.480 a personal vendetta against the ndp for the last 10 years of their lives but again the assumption

01:10:11.400 is oh this person's skin is black i guess they must be left-wing i guess i therefore admire them

01:10:16.440 and it's this reduction of any racialized person into a single stereotype or cartoon

01:10:25.080 and yeah it just um anyway for the viewer steward just remind us what was it that sven said that

01:10:32.280 that sort of sparked this off because i i remember reading the twitter comment and it was

01:10:36.280 pretty you know like it was it wasn't a lot it was he basically said look i don't know this guy

01:10:40.440 he endorsed the the other candidate i can't i don't know who he knows jim hansen's a good man

01:10:44.920 And Jim Hansen is exactly the kind of person the NDP should be on its knees in front of.

01:10:51.660 He has really, I mean, he's somebody the party should be working hard to hold on to because they really hurt him on bringing in no-fault auto insurance.

01:11:02.460 Jim fought against that for years. 0.51

01:11:03.800 But what happened was Mark Hill's supporters, the young black candidate, they said, I can't believe Sven Robinson isn't supporting Mark Hill, that he's supporting, like, a cisgender heterosexual white man.

01:11:23.360 And, you know, this just shows that, like, the old, old white men of the NDP are all in this together.

01:11:29.980 It's like, no, Sven Robinson was a political prisoner of the Harcourt government.

01:11:34.220 Thank you very much.

01:11:35.220 I don't think they're all in it together.

01:11:37.640 But they then said, so, Sven, why?

01:11:41.480 You've told us why you like Jim.

01:11:43.220 Why aren't you supporting Mark Hill?

01:11:45.280 And then Sven said, well, he's never come to a meeting.

01:11:49.060 He's been a member of the party for two years.

01:11:50.940 And when I ran in this writing as the candidate last time, he neither donated nor worked on my campaign.

01:11:56.680 and the response was how dare you criticize him how dare you say don't you know he's only 26 years

01:12:03.700 old like like don't don't you know that he's just like a young man starting out and sven's like i

01:12:10.440 won a competitive nomination for a winnable seat when i was 25 that's that's how my career started

01:12:17.780 wasn't it yeah now i was surprised because i expected that sven was going to apologize right

01:12:24.460 away because that's sort of how this stuff plays out if you're going to survive uh in in wokeness

01:12:29.440 and and you know like i mean sven's been around a long time i got i got some respect for him in

01:12:33.880 terms of what he's achieved i i don't have the same i don't revere him to the same degree i think

01:12:37.820 that you do i've disagreed with him on a number of things uh like i'm not i was never elite

01:12:42.180 manifesto guy uh i always thought the what was the name of the um sort of the second waffle that

01:12:48.160 him and libby were involved in the new politics initiative even i split with him on that one

01:12:52.560 that was a dumb plan yeah i just you know and kind of unrealistic but but those aside i mean

01:12:58.600 you have to respect that you know the guy was sort of a human rights icon in bc was

01:13:02.640 it's my to my knowledge the first openly gay uh man to be elected in the commonwealth in the

01:13:08.860 commonwealth yeah so i mean like so i mean he's he's then there was a whole incident in the ring

01:13:13.320 and stuff which we won't talk about i mean like i didn't really hold that against him people

01:13:16.400 people f up but uh but i but i thought you know if you've sort of put yourself into this

01:13:22.420 environment and then this happens which it inevitably does because you know as everybody

01:13:27.120 knows like um i mean just before you came on we were talking about this better city coalition in

01:13:33.180 vancouver which is sort of like a political party but they're just inviting mayoral candidates to

01:13:38.080 endorse them and i just saw this one representative from it who got on on the tube it didn't say

01:13:43.060 really what his name was he just identified himself as a as a proud gay man and and sort of

01:13:47.660 said like this is what i like about better cities because guys like me get to get to present the

01:13:51.660 stuff and i'm thinking haven't you got the memo man like you know white gay guys are way too low

01:13:56.140 on the on the on the hierarchy of oppression now like you're you're in the same boat as me bud like 0.55

01:14:01.440 like nobody nobody cares anymore so i i kind of thought you know like all of sven robinson's

01:14:06.820 achievements in the past sort of faded away so in order to survive i figured he was going to have

01:14:11.440 to apologize and prostrate himself in front of everybody i'm proud to see that he hasn't done

01:14:15.680 that like unless he never does it's he's not that kind of man that's why that's why a lot of people

01:14:21.420 who did not agree with him voted for him and trusted him because they knew that he was willing

01:14:27.520 to make extraordinary sacrifices to keep telling the truth uh that there was no price and you know

01:14:35.120 that's why he had a, you know, he represented a very Christian riding when he was the only openly

01:14:42.720 gay MP. And it got more Christian as the proportion of Korean immigrants moving in.

01:14:50.580 And he, you know, pulled those people on side. So I knew that Sven wouldn't apologize. It's one of 0.97

01:14:57.020 the reasons I was so glad when he got back here, because I could see that his collision with the

01:15:02.140 present-day NDP was inevitable. Some people think that the present-day NDP is like epitomized in

01:15:08.740 Sven Robinson, but it's really not because Sven might have been mainly a social issues activist

01:15:16.960 in terms of the issues he took on and not as much of an economic issues guy, but the point was it

01:15:23.540 all came down to a physical reality for him, right? When it's time to pursue Rodriguez to use the

01:15:29.920 assisted suicide thing he was there to get hassled by the police when it was time to oppose logging

01:15:36.240 and clackwood sound he was there getting himself arrested put in prison so spend i think really

01:15:42.240 understands that there's like a real world a real physical world in which events actually take place

01:15:49.440 and that's the side he's going to come down on not a lot of very strange nonsense rhetoric

01:15:56.080 yeah yeah i mean twitter is becoming this world right where where supposedly i guess you can get

01:16:02.700 canceled like if people can come find you and attack you and get your job ticket do you know

01:16:07.000 anything about this steward like uh yeah i've actually finally my employer just revealed in

01:16:12.700 the negotiations last week that um they uh it was like no we're not taking stewart parker back his

01:16:20.300 you know i mean sure he had a breakdown but that's not what this is really about and my lawyer's like

01:16:25.040 what is it really about? What Stewart says on Twitter. So, I mean, I think that's a pretty

01:16:32.500 stupid, bald-faced admission to make to a person like me because I'm not totally unlike Sven. I

01:16:39.520 haven't exactly had the successes that he's had, but I can't bear to let that argument go,

01:16:45.180 that remark go unreported. But the thing is, what this remark also points out is that Twitter by

01:16:50.940 itself can do nothing cancellation comes from the intersection of powerful social media platforms

01:17:00.060 with big hr and the values of wokeness right the belief that gender is a consumer choice

01:17:10.460 but race is inevitable indelible and inherited all these strange ideas they don't come out of

01:17:17.980 like the weirdo left i mean the weird left has come up with some weird stuff

01:17:22.140 they come out of hr the ideas the central values um if you want to see where they show up first

01:17:29.740 in writing they show up in uh documents produced by harvard school of business high level managers

01:17:39.180 in large firms. And so you've got to recognize you don't just need Twitter. Twitter can strike

01:17:49.860 the match. It can light the flame. But we live in a society in which everybody has an implied

01:17:59.000 morals clause in their contract now. And the people who actually do the counseling are your boss

01:18:06.920 or the judge controlling your custody of your kids or you know it's the people who can actually

01:18:14.360 bring down the hammer the fact that bringing down the hammer on people can now be legitimated

01:18:20.420 simply by like anonymous 16 year olds saying mean things on twitter that's insane but that's what

01:18:28.100 the hr industry uh that's been its agenda for the past 30 years and that agenda is just proceeding

01:18:35.920 A lot of people, you know, of course, do this work, and they think of it as social justice activism, right?

01:18:43.960 The big wokester on the UNBC faculty, he's out there during these negotiations calling me a misogynist on social media if I say I like too many books written by men or, you know, whatever it is.

01:18:58.320 And what I finally had to say to this guy is, like, there was a word for people who maintained employee blacklist for the bosses, who circulated rumors for the boss, who colluded with the boss to fire co-workers they didn't like.

01:19:14.960 And that word is scab.

01:19:16.360 I've heard that before. 1.00

01:19:17.300 These people are scabs. 0.97

01:19:19.100 And the idea, and somehow wokeness is about turning scabbing into social justice activism. 0.72

01:19:25.020 Well, I mean, it's confirming to hear you say some of this stuff. Look, I negotiated collective agreements both in the private sector and the public sector for years. And, you know, the one thing that I've thought about recently when I was sort of reviewing that history is whenever we were like, you know, the issues when you're at a bargaining table that the employer is going to oppose, right?

01:19:48.120 it's always wage increases, obviously, because it costs money. The stuff they never opposed,

01:19:53.460 and in fact, often would propose, would be the diversity stuff, the anti-bullying stuff.

01:20:01.580 And from the union perspective, and I have to take responsibility for this because I was involved in

01:20:06.120 it as anybody was, we always invited those kinds of things. We always wanted the anti-bullying

01:20:11.040 language that brought in all different other ways that the employer could basically

01:20:17.240 whack an employee over the head with the contract.

01:20:20.860 So the collective agreement started to become

01:20:22.660 this punitive instrument against workers

01:20:29.400 that it was supposed to defend.

01:20:32.280 And we figured out far too late.

01:20:35.960 And to be honest with you,

01:20:37.100 I think the labor movement still hasn't,

01:20:38.520 like I don't think unions have figured this out yet.

01:20:41.560 This is definitely a tool that employers use,

01:20:44.200 not only as a bat against employees,

01:20:48.120 but they use it as a bat

01:20:50.200 with which employees can beat each other

01:20:51.880 over the heads with.

01:20:52.640 And so in my time working for unions,

01:20:54.980 I noticed this big shift

01:20:56.240 between having to defend workers

01:20:58.680 against charges from unions,

01:21:00.920 or sorry, against charges from the employer

01:21:02.380 to this new role where we had to defend workers

01:21:05.240 against charges from other union members.

01:21:07.940 And so the union becomes sort of

01:21:09.240 this intermediary piece

01:21:11.920 trying to mediate through this stuff

01:21:13.560 because employers are all too happy to just sort of step aside and be like you know i mean you guys

01:21:17.140 fight it out amongst yourselves internal division oh yeah no and that's exactly how it's been used

01:21:21.560 because and and this is the effect that identitarianism has either on the left or the

01:21:25.680 right is it's a it's an insidious uh infestation that teaches people to be racist and i like you

01:21:33.180 know i like the the point you made at the outset that you know the big the big defense that

01:21:37.420 identitarians had against those of us who would would call them racist was well there's no such

01:21:41.040 thing is reverse racism yeah i get that we we didn't come up with that term actually like the

01:21:45.960 left identitarians came up with it and they had to come up with this idea of reverse racism because

01:21:51.000 they had to deal with this contradiction that emerged as soon as they uh established that

01:21:55.980 you could make determinations uh about people based on the color of their skin and where they

01:22:00.720 come from and their identity uh and it's actually not white people that i think they're racist

01:22:05.600 against it's people of color that they're racist against precisely because of what you said at the

01:22:10.140 outset which is they reduce people of color first nations people black people uh south south asian

01:22:15.840 folks in in british columbia they reduce them all to this common denominator and assume they're all

01:22:20.300 the same you hear this in the states where a lot where they talk about the black vote for instance

01:22:24.180 right and totally you know disregard the the record number of black voters for trump this last

01:22:29.560 this last election i mean it still wasn't a majority but it's increasing huge numbers of uh

01:22:35.340 latino voters for trump for instance right so but there's like it just doesn't compute because they

01:22:40.780 think well if you're not white then you must be this type of person that i think you are

01:22:46.620 and they really reduce them to this common denominator and it's bloody racist it is

01:22:50.700 absolutely racist uh thomas king had that great uh start to one of his books um the uh

01:22:58.300 it's just entitled the indian you had in mind right because he's like i am not the indian you

01:23:03.660 had in mind uh but i think that um we've got to remember what um that there's been a lot of churn

01:23:11.980 right in what we think of as the left like the left is mostly like a developmental stage of

01:23:18.860 children of the privileged it's like we didn't used to think that kids at brown university were

01:23:25.100 the left just because they had a lot of time on their hands and like protesting things like

01:23:30.300 we used to think that there was something material about it and one of the things that um is a common

01:23:37.660 way of showing power there are some ways that white people since the enlightenment have used to

01:23:45.660 show white supremacy one is sensitivity right the more sensitive you are the more uh that redounds

01:23:55.020 to your glory, right? Justin Trudeau's big debate coup when he pulled ahead in the 2015 election

01:24:02.940 was a coup achieved by telling Tom Mulcair that Mulcair had hurt his feelings because he talked

01:24:10.860 about how his dad had handled the FLQ crisis. And so that's like, oh, no, I guess we can't talk

01:24:17.820 about like a major military operation because we might hurt this man's feelings over here.

01:24:23.740 so that cultivation of sensitivity is one important thing but one of the um you know how

01:24:31.260 so canadian immigration starting in the 20s like the rest of the world cut off non-white immigration

01:24:39.100 in 1926 most countries in the uh global north did and only let white people in and by the 1950s

01:24:49.980 canada was one of the first countries to change that policy but they did it in a very targeted

01:24:54.940 way they created nanny visas the nanny visa comes out of the 1950s and it was a visa was that was

01:25:02.380 demanded by the wealthy laurentian elite and it was because there weren't enough black people in

01:25:10.780 canada to fill all of the public domestic service jobs in a really big house and part of showing 0.62

01:25:19.580 your status as a white person is your ability to put exotic looking non-white bodies around you 0.59

01:25:27.900 in a subservient position it's like an art form it's like look at this exotic looking person here 0.87

01:25:34.940 look at this exotic looking person here that's what the photos are coming out of the identitarian

01:25:40.860 left this is about white people curating um who is around them like it's an art project

01:25:51.180 uh and they're trying to make this beautiful picture and your power right in a racist society

01:25:58.860 as a white person is primarily demonstrated by your ability to control non-white bodies

01:26:04.780 and where they go and what they do. And I don't really see this as very different. One of the 0.98

01:26:10.780 features of not punching down is that when a person of lower status in the grand progressive

01:26:18.060 calculus of relative oppression, the neoliberal chain of being where we're not sure what to put

01:26:25.740 higher, or cetaceans or Mexicans, we, you know, it's like, are dolphins better than Mexicans? I

01:26:33.260 just don't know who's more oppressed uh so um when when they're doing that it's punching down

01:26:41.660 to disagree with or talk back to a non-white person if you're white so what this effectively

01:26:49.660 means is that non-white people can say whatever they want but only white people have the privilege

01:26:57.100 of being answered so it's a clever thing right um you know uh chris rock put it very well very 0.67

01:27:08.180 crudely in the 90s you know sure i'm allowed to say the n-word all day and you're allowed

01:27:15.100 to raise interest rates want to trade no and and that's a very fair point the question of

01:27:23.300 actual empowerment or what or who and who actually has a stake in the political say of the country

01:27:29.400 how the how the country's supposed to progress i think coming back to what's going on to uh to

01:27:36.000 to the fairy creek situation is there is something i think that has to kind of be discussed and it's

01:27:41.880 almost the elephant in the room that we that we're all kind of dancing around even at this moment is

01:27:46.020 that as far as i know and i don't know a lot about it there are there are people on either side

01:27:51.740 that are you know obviously i have a status card some of the people there would have a status card

01:27:56.540 some of them wouldn't have a status card but they would have it in their blood that doesn't matter

01:27:59.420 the point is that there are people on both sides of this issue we're supposedly you know of of

01:28:05.100 indigenous descent or a status indian like myself if you want to use the word indian

01:28:08.960 and the point is that with with that kind of division and with the amount of politicization

01:28:14.460 that's happened around race in this country and it's happened around every everything else

01:28:18.440 how are we supposed to move forward and and how are people supposed to settle these disputes if

01:28:25.240 everything's already captured in that way if race is already captured if the lawyers already have

01:28:30.280 you on speed dial if the supreme court's going to weigh in before you have a chance to say go

01:28:34.100 how how do you allow for regardless of even the environmental question though we can get there

01:28:39.360 in a moment to it i promise it how do you allow for this group of people who we've said now have

01:28:46.020 the freedom and the autonomy to do what they will economically, etc. How do we take that group of

01:28:52.300 people and just let them be and let them argue this out themselves without it suddenly becoming

01:28:57.540 a huge political rigmarole? Yeah, I don't think there's a way. I think that we have to recognize

01:29:07.620 that we live in systems that intersect and there's no way out of that there is no easy way

01:29:16.180 out of the fact that we live in systems that intersect i think that you know i think there

01:29:23.700 um i i think that that it wouldn't matter right if you were in any part of the world where there

01:29:30.280 a consequential ecological or fossil fuel development issue, money moves around internationally

01:29:39.480 and money and advocates are going to show up in your community. And I think the key thing is

01:29:48.440 right now we have an asymmetry with the advent of benefits agreements. And I think what we need to

01:29:56.440 do is address that asymmetry we can't insulate indigenous communities any more than we can

01:30:03.320 insulate our own communities from global debates that always have local manifestations

01:30:09.880 what we can do is put communities in a situation where they're not so economically precarious and

01:30:15.960 economically insecure that they are not really making um they're making a choice under duress

01:30:25.800 uh there's a lot of accepting benefits agreements that are sold within an indigenous nation not as 0.66

01:30:33.400 hey here's the great project we've decided to approve but hey this thing is going through

01:30:38.120 anyway so we tried to get a cut i think that sense that the project will proceed no matter what and

01:30:45.640 all you can do is try and get a cut that it debases our debates and it points to a larger

01:30:52.120 material problem which is that um and we all know this that as long as um on reserve indigenous

01:31:02.920 communities are primarily supported through block grants from the federal government

01:31:07.560 and not from the community control of the resources around them um people are going to

01:31:13.240 operate in a climate of intimidation and uh it is it would be far better to turn that money

01:31:21.400 into extensions of reserve boundaries and extensions of the mineral rights under those

01:31:26.840 reserve boundaries and the timber rights above above the surface communities will feel

01:31:34.280 communities will have an easier time making big decisions uh when they're economically secure and

01:31:39.880 we know that uh from anywhere so i mean this is a dynamic that exists outside of first nations

01:31:46.920 communities as well sort of an age-old dynamic uh in in smaller communities in particular uh

01:31:52.680 but i wonder you know like viewers from alberta for instance i mean you know i pose this question

01:31:57.320 to them um you know are jobs derived from a project enough you know that's sort of the

01:32:03.560 question because this is always the argument in favor of of these projects many of which i agree

01:32:07.880 with but but are like that they're going to generate family supporting jobs etc but but

01:32:12.600 the jobs only exist uh in in the large form during the construction phase uh and then there's many

01:32:18.680 you know depending on the project like site c for example just not as many people required to

01:32:23.160 uh to run site c as there are to build it it's the same with a pipeline for sure

01:32:27.720 so like what what else should should the taxpayer who's who's having to you know fund any subsidies

01:32:35.320 that are going towards that project uh in the case of pipelines you know we now we now own one

01:32:40.600 federally uh so we've taken on liability for that but are the jobs derived from that project enough

01:32:45.560 like what other way should a should a community be able to benefit and i like this example you've

01:32:50.200 you've posed of what's happening in first nations communities wet sweat and uh incident was a

01:32:55.240 perfect example where you had this real uh uh difference between the sort of the elected um

01:33:02.280 indian act uh council versus some of the not all but some of the hereditary leadership who

01:33:08.120 were vehemently opposed to it uh and you know i've said before um you know for for what i

01:33:13.880 would regard as rather nuanced reasons and probably quite different from from your own

01:33:17.400 stewart i was in support of the coastal gasoline pipeline but not in support of it being imposed on

01:33:25.640 the leadership of of that area of the hereditary leadership of that area which has jurisdiction

01:33:30.200 traditional jurisdiction outside of the outside of the reserve essentially and so there uh and part

01:33:35.640 of the reason you know i think that they were opposed to it was i mean there were environmental

01:33:40.200 concerns which drove their opposition but part of their opposition i think was also like you know

01:33:45.800 getting a cut of the proceeds is not necessarily enough like if this thing's going to go through

01:33:51.240 our land like why can't we own it and i think we've got good examples of that from the columbia

01:33:56.520 river treaty right uh if we look at west kootenai power that was created through the uh when they

01:34:02.120 did the columbia river dams um right that administers uh that generates that's local power

01:34:10.040 controlled by local communities and it also generates columbia basin trust money that goes

01:34:16.680 all over the region that um uh that does these things so normally if there's something that's

01:34:23.000 producing an annuity right effectively because it's doing the same thing every year whether

01:34:28.680 you're running water through a dam or gas through a pipeline or whatever um the columbia basin

01:34:35.400 agreements really show pretty solid models for how communities are cut in not just during the

01:34:43.320 construction phase but every year that the utility operates and i think that we don't have to reinvent

01:34:50.920 the wheel there what we have to do is look at well there was some extraordinary leadership that was

01:34:57.560 highly um i mean it was i would i would say it was wac bennett at his most nationalist

01:35:06.120 certainly glenn clark ran a very nationalist government an economically nationalist government

01:35:11.320 at least in its rhetoric didn't always follow through on the ground but when he renegotiated

01:35:15.720 the columbia basin uh treaties um those things were all souped up uh and i think that that we

01:35:24.360 can have forward-looking leadership on things like that i mean i think that fundamentally what people

01:35:31.640 want is some level of stability in their economy the ability to know that a job is going to be

01:35:37.080 there and the trapping jobs that were disrupted uh by cgl are an example of how we cash in long-term

01:35:47.320 jobs for short-term jobs that when we clear cut on a slope when we do these things that produce

01:35:54.600 these temporary windfalls they do them they do that at the expense of a long-term sustainable job

01:36:02.840 and british colombians are having trouble learning how to hold on to things it's not a thing we have

01:36:10.280 any practice with we were a province that was founded to extract raw materials from

01:36:15.720 we've been shipping out logs um from uh from bc overseas since 1843 on the commercial market and

01:36:25.480 since the 1790s within the british imperial navy's market and we will make these stabs at thinking

01:36:36.440 about long-term economic security and then they'll go out the window when the next big windfall

01:36:42.440 appears yeah so so in that case i guess and i know that you've noted this before at least

01:36:49.400 to me privately that something that appeals to you about the scandinavian model is is the idea

01:36:54.520 that they have heritage funds and they have, of course, large sovereign funds to try and keep

01:36:58.860 their economies stable in times of crisis. Is that essentially what would have to happen then

01:37:04.640 in British Columbia? And then as a segue there, such sovereign funds are such, you know, like

01:37:10.120 having heritage funds. And is that a way for the West to conceive of itself? It's like, well,

01:37:14.880 we're going to actually create an equitable place for our own citizens. It's not just,

01:37:18.060 we're not just being exploited by Ottawa. Our citizens are being exploited in the systems we

01:37:22.620 have, how do we make a more equitable system moving forward? Well, I think the first thing

01:37:28.040 you'd want to know is how did Alberta blow its heritage fund, right? Because that was created

01:37:36.240 by Peter Lockheed during the second oil boom, money flowed in, and they managed to not just

01:37:45.240 empty it, but for a while, use it as an instrument to borrow more money in order to further in-depth

01:37:50.360 themselves so i i don't trust a lot of i mean i think we'd need to see a real change in our

01:37:59.960 political system before i would want to trust a long-term succession of provincial governments

01:38:05.400 with managing funds like that that's why i often point to the mexican land reform model where you

01:38:12.360 decentralize this and that is what the columbia basin uh treaties did right it pulled um these

01:38:21.800 communities like brilliant along the kootenai river out of bc hydro and it created wealth there

01:38:28.920 and then the community could defend it whereas right now i feel like a government could get in

01:38:35.480 by a landslide here you know be in for five years really start to screw up i might be describing

01:38:43.160 the current one and uh and then try and buy its way out at the end and uh those funds um there's

01:38:53.320 there's very little legal way to protect them from the uh from an irresponsible government

01:38:58.120 except to never give it to that government in the first place that sounds pretty conservative you

01:39:03.800 stewart oh it's original green party i'm reverting to like my my pre-1993 politics or something i

01:39:12.140 don't know well this is also the i mean this is the reality of british colombian politics i think

01:39:17.800 in other jurisdictions they sort of described as the realignment but it it's it's always kind of

01:39:22.280 been the way here where it's tough to sort of identify whether somebody's a conservative a

01:39:26.280 green or a socialist or otherwise uh because we don't necessarily look like those archetypes in

01:39:32.020 in different jurisdictions.

01:39:33.140 And I think the three of us probably individually

01:39:36.760 all exemplify that to some degree.

01:39:38.480 And something I'll boff on there, Stuart too,

01:39:41.440 is that going back to that other,

01:39:43.520 I host a bunch of shows now,

01:39:45.200 this is all getting out of hand.

01:39:47.320 Going back to what happens on the local radio here,

01:39:49.780 that was one of the things that really blew me away.

01:39:51.440 Our token curmudgeon, conservative,

01:39:53.720 somewhat Archie Bunker type was talking

01:39:56.300 about reconciliation and needing to speak to the people

01:40:00.860 and trying to find a way forward

01:40:02.020 wet sweat and and meanwhile the two social democrats were like second the army it totally

01:40:08.820 was and all of the like all the stereotyping we kept expecting out of your pro-trump conservative

01:40:15.860 ended up coming out of the new democrat and the liberal it was very very telling and i've got to

01:40:22.740 say eric allen went even further than that like eric allen was like uh like the conservatives

01:40:28.740 BEFORE THEY WERE CONSERVATIVES. WE MADE AN AGREEMENT IN 1763. WE DIDN'T

01:40:33.700 KEEP OUR WORD. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO SIGN A

01:40:35.940 TREATY. WE SCREWED OURSELVES HERE. IT'S THEIRS.

01:40:40.980 IT'S LIKE WE SCREWED UP. WE DIDN'T FOLLOW OUR OWN RULES AND WE

01:40:44.180 DIDN'T KEEP OUR OWN AGREEMENTS. SO THAT WAS, IT WAS VERY INTERESTING

01:40:48.580 BECAUSE WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT IN A FUNNY WAY THAT I DO FIND MYSELF

01:40:53.380 identifying with my uncle's social credit politics, but also with Sven Robinson's politics,

01:40:59.960 is that he was operating from a theory of honor, that he was using like honor as his master

01:41:07.700 sort of structure for how he talked about what should happen politically. And it's jarring,

01:41:14.980 right? It's jarring to hear people say, well, yeah, you should keep your promises and help

01:41:23.800 your friends and like all these things that we think are human virtues. And yet mysteriously,

01:41:30.980 we don't esteem them as political virtues. And it should hardly surprise us when there's that

01:41:37.120 incongruence. You know, maybe switching gears a little bit, but there's something I've been

01:41:42.060 meaning to ask you i heard your show uh i think it was earlier this week uh or maybe it was an

01:41:47.680 interview you did with uh smithy down in vancouver but you ended up oh yeah which was good i thought

01:41:52.780 but it made the case that what ultimately brought the glenn clark government down was his uh decision

01:41:58.320 to try to essentially do what we were talking about in the opening session try to rekindle the

01:42:02.960 shipbuilding industry in british columbia but you were also you were active at a time when clackwood

01:42:08.360 sound was also really you know becoming a major issue and sort of a defining issue for the green

01:42:14.520 movement in british columbia and in particular in opposition to the ndp government so i wonder

01:42:19.080 you know is that gonna is that gonna sort of is that head gonna come out again as a as a major

01:42:24.600 problem for the ndp government you think it's going to be something that's going to rekindle

01:42:27.480 unity amongst no green uh to the same extent that it did no way no i think that the identitarianism

01:42:34.600 that has been unleashed among politically troublemakers, right? Troublemakers have been

01:42:41.800 targeted with identitarian ideologies. They've been piped into people's minds through social media.

01:42:48.440 So whether it's like white grievance politics on the right or whether it's a, you know,

01:42:54.440 um diversity identitarianism on the left the point is that um i think our social movements are in

01:43:04.200 dire straits they don't have the capacity to operate in solidarity with any extended for

01:43:11.880 any extended period of time and i think we have to acknowledge that a bunch of work has been done on

01:43:17.320 us i don't know why we thought that it was in the financial interest of silicon valley billionaires

01:43:23.800 that we'd be able to organize effectively against their system like why would we ever have thought

01:43:29.560 that so social media has amplified and accelerated pre-existing trends that have fractured all these

01:43:37.800 coalitions and i think if new coalitions come forward they will look unlike anything in the

01:43:45.720 past i don't think there's any way to go back to the past and have the urban cultural left

01:43:53.000 siding with the rural labor left again i think that's done um what we have to do now

01:43:59.720 is forge coalitions of people who do have a critique who do um who are capable of that so

01:44:07.320 i think the other thing is we have to remember what ndp governments are for what third way

01:44:12.920 governments are for whether it's tony blair bill clinton mike harcourt whoever the reason

01:44:20.200 capital looks the other way and lets its newspapers give favorable coverage to these

01:44:28.320 parties and lets its lobbyists be nice to these parties is because they've been trying to get

01:44:35.720 something done and the local right-wing toadies haven't been able to deliver it but then christy

01:44:43.580 clark couldn't deliver lng canada for royal dutch shell it took a premier who had once publicly

01:44:52.540 boycotted royal dutch shell in order to uh give royal dutch shell enough money to make them show

01:45:00.300 up here and so the the reasons when you see a jurisdiction and you see the mainstream press

01:45:09.980 like being nice to social democrats it's because they figure the social democrats are only the

01:45:17.020 only ones who could actually deliver the results they want so then i keep those people in office

01:45:22.140 until those results are delivered and you know then they'll hammer them back into the dust later

01:45:28.860 it's a tried and true system yeah no we see this dynamic sort of at a microcosm level play out in

01:45:33.740 the in the labor movement over and over again i remember growing up watching my parents go to

01:45:38.540 union meetings i've still got this i think i've even uh told you about this in the past i've

01:45:42.620 still got this old video from i think 99 or something um or whenever just before uh dosange

01:45:49.660 uh got decimated and the ndp was knocked down to two seats uh there's this old uh convention video

01:45:56.460 of um uh oh geez i've just blanked on his name now he passed away uh shields john shields who was the

01:46:02.940 president for years of of the biggest public sector union of bc the bcgeu delivering this

01:46:08.540 scathing critique of glenn clark saying you know if you don't have our support you're going to lose

01:46:13.180 the election and and by the way you don't have our support and it was just a scathing critique

01:46:17.260 the likes of which you didn't see from labor um and and it was interesting watching that because

01:46:22.620 my parents who were you know big fans of that particular individual within that milieu they

01:46:28.060 were they didn't vote for the ndp in that election either even though they'd sort of been lifelong

01:46:31.740 ndp supporters and part of their complaint was that you know by the second term uh that unions

01:46:40.700 had sort of fallen back on their on their role of criticizing uh government to the benefit of

01:46:46.380 working people because there was kind of this this uh formal and unholy alliance between unions and

01:46:53.500 the ndp that once they got in power it was very difficult to criticize them and i'm starting to

01:46:58.460 see you know I mean that this history repeats itself obviously and now that

01:47:02.360 we're in the second second term of the NDP government you're starting to see

01:47:05.220 lots of evidence of that percolating around it's easier to identify now

01:47:08.240 because you know back in those days there were there were internet forms but

01:47:11.660 unions didn't didn't run official internet forms and there was no Twitter

01:47:14.540 and there was no Facebook and now you can I mean you can hear what comes out

01:47:18.200 of the mouth of a union leader and then you can go to Twitter or Facebook and

01:47:21.740 you can see what union members actually think and it's usually quite a bit

01:47:24.320 different especially when it comes to support for a for a politician and you

01:47:28.400 seeing all sorts of criticism especially out of the teachers union right now the bctf we were

01:47:33.240 talking in the in the opening segment about how sometimes in the in the cabinet um uh assignments

01:47:39.560 for a new government whoever gets a certain ministry you can tell that that was the person

01:47:43.960 that the the premier didn't like very much and usually it was whoever got mcfd and whoever got

01:47:48.860 education uh it was somebody that you know they saw the threat for instance oh yeah the ministry

01:47:53.440 of dead kids and the ministry of living kids that's right and so you know you look at uh uh

01:48:00.000 rob fleming for instance who um you know at one point was quite a quite an up-and-comer in the

01:48:06.440 in the bcndp milieu i think it would be very difficult now for him to ever launch a leadership

01:48:11.180 bid say if horgan doesn't run again because he's got this you know he had the education ministry

01:48:15.760 for his lot for a term and it's very difficult to uh you know to sort of come out of that when

01:48:21.020 you've got one of the biggest, there's 60,000 teachers in British Columbia who are all members

01:48:24.880 of this union. Most of them have on average like 6,000 Twitter followers, I've noticed.

01:48:29.400 They're very active. And they've just been beating this guy up for a long time. So

01:48:33.700 it's interesting. And their main complaint is, even with their own leadership at points,

01:48:40.200 you have to be able to criticize this government. We don't care if there's a link. And this is a

01:48:43.460 union that doesn't have a direct link to the NDP. They're not affiliated, for instance.

01:48:47.220 So you start to see that come up again. And it'd be interesting to see in this age of social media

01:48:50.680 where you can see what workers are saying directly,

01:48:54.280 how the NDP is going to sort of deal with that

01:48:57.000 and whether it's going to knock them off course at all

01:48:58.680 because it hasn't in the past to their detriment.

01:49:00.340 And I would argue that, again,

01:49:03.100 we'll see just a shadow of what we saw in the 90s.

01:49:07.920 And the reason is that in the 90s,

01:49:11.980 a bunch of things were just getting going

01:49:13.920 that have now finished happening.

01:49:15.680 and one has to do with this this new kind of i would call it like a social justice manager class

01:49:25.520 it's a kind of professional who sometimes is the vice president of a trade union

01:49:31.860 sometimes is writing a report for kpmg sometimes is um a major pr firm uh consultant

01:49:44.540 and is sometimes a deputy minister and is sometimes, and this is the crucial part,

01:49:52.560 the executive director of a blue chip environmental or social justice organization.

01:49:58.340 So you have to recognize these characters like George Heyman, they rotate through all of these

01:50:03.420 things representing the same class interests, which is in silencing actual effective dissent.

01:50:13.160 so we didn't that class was something that mike harcourt was you know just you know this is before

01:50:19.720 tony blair's even elected we haven't spun off enough government services to be delivered by

01:50:25.160 the non-profit and charitable sector yet for those executive director packages to start looking

01:50:30.520 really good but pretty soon um you know you're gonna have all of these you know decent six

01:50:40.280 figure senior jobs in the non-profit sector as well as these other sectors and i think that um

01:50:50.360 it's the people who are outside of that system of control who are going to be able to effectively

01:50:55.720 push back against this government uh i think that the term captured is a very useful one

01:51:01.960 and i would argue that like mainstream political parties most major trade unions and most major

01:51:08.680 civil society organizations are captured by this class at this time yeah that's an interesting

01:51:16.280 insight i i was astounded you know after 2017 watching the ndp come to come to power again

01:51:21.500 how many people that you know had been these social justice activists in various capacities

01:51:26.700 suddenly got got plumb jobs as lobbyists for firms that we had previously reviled

01:51:32.760 and there was this big hiring spree because suddenly you know all these lobbying firms

01:51:37.680 They had no NDP representatives and they didn't predict that there was going to be an NDP government necessarily.

01:51:44.580 So they had to start hiring all these social justice activists and they did.

01:51:48.140 And, you know, so you're, you know, like I was living in Vancouver at the time.

01:51:51.820 So you'd be going out to brunch with these folks and suddenly they're lobbyists all of a sudden.

01:51:56.600 And so like that changes the conversation somewhat.

01:51:58.780 and it's it's just amazing to see how they just move in and out of these these different milieus

01:52:03.880 with with like no detriment to their to their conscience whatsoever and and they just don't

01:52:09.840 see the irony and they don't understand why why suddenly people are are criticizing them i this

01:52:15.320 is probably the second time i've um uh mentioned mclean k he's gonna have to sponsor us here at

01:52:20.760 some point he you know he's the chief editor of the orca he was having this off the record

01:52:25.000 conversation with an ndp staffer in some ministry just the other day and he promised not to mention

01:52:30.280 their name and and nor should he but they you know they were angry about this uh cbus memes

01:52:36.360 uh guy that's making all these funny memes he hasn't been for quite a while and and they were

01:52:40.680 angry that they were all directed and really scathing of the ndp government and they just

01:52:44.600 didn't understand why he was going after after them instead of uh uh you know the green party

01:52:51.240 or the bc liberal opposition and and okay okay kind of looked at them and he's like because

01:52:56.120 your government like you just don't like folks are good at clapia but there's just there's

01:53:01.640 just cognitive dissonance they just don't you're the man man well i think that for many uh who

01:53:09.080 join a certain kind of uncritical social justice politics uh they develop this idea very early

01:53:17.000 that there are two groups of people in the world the people who are responsible for things and the

01:53:21.640 people who hold others responsible for things and uh they're the people who hold others responsible

01:53:29.320 for things which means they can't be responsible for anything because they're not that kind of

01:53:35.080 person who's responsible for things i uh i i i watched that play out in the coalition of

01:53:41.960 progressive electors when no one would resign over the fact that the party solicited and

01:53:47.400 received donations from real estate developers under the table during one election and they

01:53:52.440 were just baffled because all of them were at each other trying to find the villain not

01:53:58.520 understanding that the people who had made the decision were the villain they were on this like

01:54:04.280 search for themselves uh that was just not going to succeed so i think that um

01:54:12.200 there's a larger problem again it's a cross-partisan problem so much uh you know so much

01:54:19.160 of what we hear in conservatism now is about people not being able to control themselves or

01:54:27.000 people you know not being responsible for something they benefited from uh and it's like

01:54:34.280 well no you didn't do the thing you just benefited from it that's what we mean by responsible so you

01:54:38.440 know pay it back deal with it or you know this um this uh so i i really think that it's a it's

01:54:45.960 a society-wide malaise that um uh people just um we can now expect that every apology will be

01:54:54.680 insincere we haven't reduced the number of apologies we've increased the number of apologies

01:55:01.160 but i don't think anybody's sincerely apologizing for anything uh i mean i'll never forget that

01:55:07.160 moment when uh the the uh that commentator said to justin truda so are you going to be

01:55:12.600 apologizing to jody wilson raybold today and he said no but i do have an inuit apology scheduled

01:55:18.440 for 4 p.m. It's all the same. It'll all work out in the end. I think I think kind of as maybe a

01:55:27.760 way to cap it all off here, Stuart, is this is this idea of honor and bringing that back. It

01:55:33.420 was interesting because somebody had commented not so long ago about about this. The idea that

01:55:39.500 I had put for there that growing a conscience was somehow altruistic or even even somehow I don't

01:55:44.280 know, castigating me as being left wing or something. I, I just kind of sat there. I was

01:55:48.580 like, I think growing a conscience is kind of a fundamental human responsibility. Um, you know,

01:55:54.760 and, and so having, having a, having a conscience and having a sense of honor and, and for that

01:55:59.920 matter, uh, I think that, uh, it's not just about empathy versus competency. I think that morality

01:56:06.000 is competency. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, um, it's one of the things that the term social

01:56:14.000 justice deprived us of it was a there are some words that just carry a tremendous amount of

01:56:20.800 damage inside them because social justice everybody believes in social justice nobody thinks that

01:56:28.320 they want unjust things everybody thinks that their theory of justice is correct for society

01:56:35.520 and what the term social justice does is it causes people on the left to lose imaginative empathy

01:56:42.800 because they never have to ask how is the person i'm fighting good according to themselves why do

01:56:50.880 the why does the person think i'm fighting think that they're the good guy and sim and on the right

01:56:58.720 the reaction has been well this is an insult i'm not even getting into this debate you're suggesting 0.51

01:57:06.320 that i that i believe in injustice so screw you conversation over and uh i think that um

01:57:15.760 we can we can actually have rational arguments about which theory of justice is better once upon

01:57:22.560 a time that's what politics was it wasn't like announcing strange bullet point lists of things

01:57:28.480 that no one everyone knows aren't gonna happen um and then wander around firing different minor

01:57:35.840 campaign officials all day for you know the latest uh off message thing they said like

01:57:41.520 that's an election now here's my brainstorm bullet point list now let's see how few firings

01:57:48.320 i'll have to perform no it's a fair point it's a fair point oh we're coming to the end of our time

01:57:55.440 here i want to say thank you again stuart for coming on it's really good to have you here i

01:58:00.000 hope you remain a constant on our thursdays to help us see things from that other perspective

01:58:04.720 and help us build a coalition for change in this province in this region uh and for the communities

01:58:10.880 at large that uh that need a benefit need to see things improve so thank you for being with us

01:58:14.960 today steward it was my pleasure i'll have better curtains next time later as long as it's not

01:58:21.440 curtains for you very and we should also thank all of the viewers who have been quite active

01:58:27.280 uh we've we've had this uh comment stream going sorry we can't post them all but um all really

01:58:31.760 good stuff and and it's just great to great to see everybody so active and and yeah absolutely

01:58:36.000 again we're thankful to have comments and uh every now and again we can address them as as uh

01:58:41.380 strongly as we can sometimes we kind of get into the middle of what we're doing in here so

01:58:44.760 we'll do our best through uh throughout this time but again thank you for watching the show and being

01:58:49.180 a part of the program and uh thank you for being on this thursday great great of course we're not

01:58:53.620 back uh that is to say mountain standard time isn't back until next tuesday we are always on

01:58:58.800 tuesday wednesday and thursdays from 9 to 11 pacific standard time we call ourselves mountain

01:59:03.260 standard time but it's pacific standard time is our timings or of course 10 to 12 tuesday wednesday

01:59:10.160 and thursday uh in mountain standard time in alberta so thank you so much for tuning in

01:59:15.140 we'll see you next week

01:59:28.800 You

Western Standard - April 16, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - April 15

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