Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - April 6, 2021

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00:01:00.000 Thank you.

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00:02:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:02:30.000 Well, here we are. I'm just going to introduce the show and then we'll get right into it.

00:02:39.140 Okay, Derek?

00:02:41.440 Well, this is Mountain Standard Time, and I'm your host, Nathan Gita.

00:02:45.240 It's our inaugural show here with the Western, and I'm proud to be here, joined by all of

00:02:50.160 you happy warriors within the Western Canadian milieu and fighting for a fair deal for us.

00:02:55.280 Here in British Columbia, there have always been tensions between us and our sister province, Alberta.

00:03:00.860 And in this inaugural episode, I'm going to speak with Derek Villebrandt, our head honcho over at the West,

00:03:07.080 to give his take on how to bridge those gaps that are often filled between us by the Rockies,

00:03:12.300 demarking Pacific and Mountain Standard Time.

00:03:15.380 For my own part, I'd argue that a divide and conquer mentality from Ottawa is keeping us all down in the West.

00:03:21.640 Indeed, it's keeping us down anywhere that isn't the Laurentian Seaway.

00:03:25.280 And quite frankly, keeping us Westerners divided pays too well.

00:03:30.780 Entire industries are made out of it in the federal capital, from equalization to resource

00:03:35.420 development, from the approval by the Supreme Court or the challenge industry thereof to

00:03:40.100 indigenous affairs.

00:03:42.060 In other words, it pays to be bad in Canada. 0.95

00:03:44.660 The joke being, of course, that we used to have both legal and cultural barriers to such

00:03:48.400 behavior.

00:03:49.360 In the church I follow, we used to call that calumny, where an entire society, institution,

00:03:53.280 or even country has fallen into a state of such corruption that there is no virtue to be found.

00:03:58.280 And such a situation requires redemption or for the most cancerous parts to be cut out and

00:04:03.440 discarded. Indeed, that's the only way to save the rest of any person. Here in BC, we're lucky

00:04:08.700 to have been blessed with an abundant amount of natural resources and a population that is both

00:04:13.940 well-educated and hardworking. We have a large coastline and good infrastructure to get goods

00:04:20.700 from the rest of Canada to the Pacific, and from the international market back into the rest of

00:04:25.120 this dominion. But more development in these capacities has been stymied over the years.

00:04:29.700 The fact of the matter is, this frustrates our sister province, and I understand why. I think

00:04:34.800 it's right to a point. But if I am to earn my spot here at this table, if this show is to be a

00:04:39.460 success, then bridging those gaps in understanding so that proper partnership can occur between the

00:04:45.600 most beautiful place on earth and wild rose country must be our purpose. Things will not

00:04:50.800 get better for Western Canada until BC and Alberta can learn to cooperate. If that teamwork ever

00:04:56.540 manifests, even Ottawa can't stop us. During the show, please feel free to comment and let us know

00:05:03.300 what topics you think need to be discussed in order to create more cohesion in the West

00:05:07.140 so we can get a fair deal for our families. Please also feel free to email myself or the

00:05:12.600 Western Standard, about guests from BC primarily, but also from throughout Western Canada to discuss

00:05:17.680 meaningful topics around sovereignty, partnership, and Western identity, and how we can make life

00:05:22.300 better for Western Canadians. I can't do this alone. Our only hope for a brighter future is to

00:05:27.120 work together. Some of these opening statements will be longer and shorter, depending on the day.

00:05:33.000 Feel free to also comment about the show's format and how that might be improved. But please, please,

00:05:37.280 please be patient we don't have the endless billions of dollars the cbc does for now sit

00:05:42.800 back and relax while i bring on my first guest derek filibrand publisher president and ceo

00:05:47.840 of the western standard welcome to the program boss

00:05:57.360 well there we go there we are early technical difficulties how are you doing nathan i'm doing

00:06:02.640 all right. I'm doing all right. We're on our training wheels today. I think it's going pretty

00:06:09.160 well so far. Thanks so much for stepping up into the role. We're excited to have you, Nathan, as

00:06:16.000 the Western Standard's first BC political columnist. Well, first since the creation of the

00:06:22.040 new Western Standard, I should say. But our BC political columnist and host of Western Standard

00:06:28.320 time. We're really happy to have you. I'm real honored to be on your first show.

00:06:36.620 Derek, I mean, one of the things that perhaps our first set of listeners, but also people who

00:06:40.560 regularly tune into the Western Standard might want to just kind of reiterate or visit again,

00:06:45.160 is how did the Western Standard come to be, both in its new iteration and what happened to the

00:06:49.220 Western Standard we knew from days of yore? Well, I remember the old Western Standard

00:06:54.300 launched while I was still in university.

00:06:57.020 I was going to Carleton University,

00:06:58.480 which is pretty much a Marxist training camp.

00:07:03.360 And there really wasn't a lot of good material to read.

00:07:07.680 I remember I would go around the library

00:07:08.980 and I'd search the database for anything good.

00:07:12.580 And I'd get some Tom Flanagan

00:07:13.840 and Preston Manning here and there,

00:07:15.100 but it really wasn't very much good.

00:07:16.820 And I got a phone call one day from a telemarketer

00:07:19.780 saying, hey, do you hate the CBC?

00:07:23.340 You hate the Globe and Mail?

00:07:24.100 You know, you're sick of the mainstream media.

00:07:26.280 Do you want to sign up to this new thing?

00:07:28.620 And even though I was living in the East at the time, I said, absolutely, sign me up.

00:07:33.600 And so I got in the practice, actually, of eating Mr. Noodles about two weeks a month

00:07:40.120 so I could afford my Western Standard subscription.

00:07:43.020 I'm back to eating them now, funny enough, because working at the Western Standard

00:07:48.080 is an ongoing financial challenge, but getting better.

00:07:52.240 um so we um you know i i signed up uh i was just a reader at the time i remember i'd get my

00:07:59.220 western standard in the mail every week and i'd open up immediately to the back cover and read

00:08:04.440 mark stein i was that was the best part of it and it really hooked me and um you know the western

00:08:10.180 standard uh closed its doors the first western center closed its doors in 2007 um so it only

00:08:16.760 went a few years. It never really made sense to me why, and I never really understood why it closed

00:08:22.500 its doors until I purchased rights to the Western Standard as we got ready to create this Western

00:08:28.380 Standard that we have now. It had a huge subscription. Its advertising and subscription

00:08:34.040 rates were growing about 100% year over year. It had a bit of an expensive editorial budget,

00:08:41.260 but it didn't seem really closed down for financial reasons that made sense to me.

00:08:44.940 I think it really just closed down as, in the background, Sun News Network was preparing to launch.

00:08:51.220 And I can tell you, as a business owner, it's a lot easier to collect a salary than to run a business.

00:08:56.240 So I think some of the folks involved at the time thought Sun News Network was just going to be the big thing.

00:09:03.940 And it's too bad it didn't work out, but Sun News Network was premised on, it's a regulated medium with the CRTC.

00:09:11.340 And I don't think any business model that relies on government approval is a very good business model.

00:09:17.300 And so it largely closed down for reasons outside of financial or subscriptions.

00:09:23.320 But we decided, I sat down with a few folks over the summer of 2019.

00:09:30.100 I was kind of planning my next moves.

00:09:32.540 And I set on doing this.

00:09:36.040 uh it became apparent to me that i actually uh i i knew i didn't really realize at the time but i

00:09:42.280 knew the guy who actually had bought the rights to the old western standard so i uh i acquired that

00:09:47.360 we founded the new company uh which is now called uh western standard new media corporation i

00:09:53.800 couldn't i couldn't just register to western standard media corporation because um the name

00:09:58.420 for that wasn't coming open for about another month uh you know these things go away in the

00:10:03.360 corporate registries. So we founded it. You know, we spent the first 14 months just building the

00:10:09.440 readership, the brand, the credibility of the Western Standard. We wanted it to be something

00:10:13.420 very different from a lot of the other alternative media out there. Don't take this, I don't want

00:10:17.880 anyone to take this as bashing some of the other alternative independent media out there. I love

00:10:22.940 what they're doing. They're playing an important role. But I felt that the alternative media was

00:10:28.060 lacking an outlet that had a clear separation of news and opinion. They tend to often muddy them

00:10:36.220 quite a bit. And I wanted our news side to be genuinely independent, fair, and using kind of

00:10:44.940 those best practices that we at least expect the mainstream media to hold themselves to,

00:10:50.180 even if they very often don't. So we brought in some great people on our news side. We had

00:10:55.100 I think that's exactly kind of the issue is that one of the reasons that everything stays so

00:11:03.200 mainstream in Canada is that that's the only thing that looks professional or supposedly

00:11:08.260 has any legitimacy. I personally think there's of course a lot of fake news that does go through

00:11:12.760 the mainstream media of Canada but nonetheless it looks polished it looks good it's got a perfect

00:11:17.620 website or whatever they got you know billion dollars from the taxpayer or they have such

00:11:21.200 exclusive oligarchic contracts and monopolies that they of course have lots of revenue and so

00:11:25.800 everything looks pretty but but this is the thing for alternative media in Canada is that it has to

00:11:29.860 fight that uphill battle have you have you found that yourself yeah but you know we um we gained

00:11:36.100 the funny thing about the western standard while we're not we are not mainstream media but we have

00:11:41.000 a certain degree of mainstream acceptance that a lot of other alternative media don't um I think

00:11:46.340 it's because our news, we're not the only one, but we're very rare in this that we have a strict

00:11:52.500 separation between our news and opinion. So our news division is led by Dave Naylor, our news

00:11:56.860 editor. You know, he spent 40 years in media, most of it at the Calgary Sun. He was the city editor

00:12:03.340 there for about 20 years. You know, and he brought a large sense of professionalism and credibility.

00:12:11.460 So you're opposite, Mike D'Amour, our brand new BC bureau chief.

00:12:18.600 He heads the news in British Columbia for the Western Standard.

00:12:21.860 He came on the same day formally as you did.

00:12:25.040 He also comes from the mainstream media.

00:12:27.800 What we've been doing is we've been recruiting most of our reporters from the mainstream media who are just kind of sick of the mainstream media.

00:12:36.300 The mainstream media tends to pay better than the alternative media in most cases, not always.

00:12:41.460 But, you know, it has it has a certain stability to it. You're working for big established names that at least one point were highly respected. So what we're doing is we're finding disenfranchised, good, honest reporters in the mainstream media, trying to pull them out and bring them into the Western standard.

00:12:59.480 But we couple that with our opinion side. And I take a more active role in our opinion side. I double up as the opinion editor for the time being. I'm hopeful to hire someone else to take that over in time. But the opinion side, because no one would believe I'm an objective, fair reporter.

00:13:18.740 I think I've been on the record enough to know that I'm not able to write a very fair news story, I think, even if I tried.

00:13:28.880 But the opinion side, we've got some really great, great columnists who are not afraid.

00:13:34.580 They take on the controversial issues that the mainstream media are often too afraid to take on.

00:13:40.000 But, you know, often the Western standard, we found ourselves to be the tail wagging the dog of the mainstream media.

00:13:45.040 Because our writers and our reporters conduct themselves with professionalism, we often break stories that the mainstream media don't really think about, but then they end up picking it up a few days later.

00:13:56.980 So we're extremely pleased with the progress we've had.

00:14:01.140 We began to monetize the Western Standard in February.

00:14:05.340 I know some people don't like the paywall, but there's really kind of two options here.

00:14:09.360 we can take government money and be servants of the state, or we can be genuinely independent

00:14:15.160 media. And that means we ask people to step up and give a couple of bucks a month to fund what

00:14:19.600 we do. And tons and tons of people have. We've been really happy with the reception we've had

00:14:27.080 so far on that. Something that you mentioned earlier was, of course, the fact that it was

00:14:33.600 difficult to see why the Western Standard had to go before. And now that it's back,

00:14:39.000 obviously there's been a lot of maybe the other way to think about it too is that in canada it

00:14:43.880 does feel like there's a bit of a vacuum on well to the right of center part of the spectrum both

00:14:49.080 in our political parties but also in our news media does the western standard kind of fill that

00:14:53.640 role well we certainly do on the opinion side uh the opinion side is i mean uh you you don't

00:15:01.640 need to look too hard to figure out where we're coming from uh we're militantly proud of being

00:15:07.080 Westerners. And there's a spectrum of that. We've got some columnists who are full-on

00:15:13.380 sovereigntists and some who would be firewallers. I mean, if you're just a we-love-Ottawa

00:15:20.140 federalist, well, you've got the mainstream media to write in. So we don't really feel the need

00:15:24.860 to provide much space for that. On the opinion side, though, sorry, on the news side, as I said,

00:15:31.060 we try to make it very fair and right down the middle. But what separates us is we cover stories

00:15:39.540 that the mainstream media often just don't. Sometimes they deliberately ignore it, but

00:15:43.700 sometimes they just don't see why it's an issue until they start seeing a Western Standard story

00:15:50.680 in their social media feeds, getting tons of shares. And then they say, oh, well, crap, 0.99

00:15:56.220 we're missing out on a story. And then they'll pick it up a few days later. 0.94

00:15:58.320 uh sometimes it's just that they don't see it's a story they don't think it's important

00:16:02.740 until that they see it's gaining traction and then they'll pick it up um so we're we're we are

00:16:08.880 filling a void um well and it's also sometimes uh just in the perspective of things i mean the

00:16:15.140 government for example when a government sends out a news release saying um x y minister announces

00:16:21.980 $30 million investment in excellent social program. The media will generally take that

00:16:31.280 news release and reprint it almost word for word. And if it's a conservative government power,

00:16:37.340 then they'll go to someone, say, from the NDP or the liberals, and they'll say,

00:16:41.160 what's your thoughts on this? And then they'll get a quote from them about why it's not enough

00:16:44.860 money. Well, we'll ask for them for quotes too, but we'll go to the other side a lot more. And

00:16:51.260 the language might be different. Governments don't invest money, except in rare cases. In the case

00:16:56.200 of, say, Keystone XL, the Alberta UCP government under Jason Kenney invested quite a bit of money

00:17:01.340 between loan guarantees and stock options, $3 billion. In that case, it was technically an

00:17:08.500 investment. It turned out to be a terrible investment, but it was technically an investment,

00:17:13.340 so we can use the term investment. But when governments spend money, 99% of the time,

00:17:17.400 they're not investments, they're spending. So we won't, it's sometimes just language that we're

00:17:21.860 not, we question the government's own vocabulary on this, because it's spin. And we don't buy

00:17:26.860 government spin from the left or from the so called right. So we'll talk about government

00:17:31.660 spending. We'll talk about how much money the government had to borrow to do this. We'll go

00:17:36.640 and we'll get quotes from my old colleagues, say at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:17:42.140 So we'll get a bit more perspective on this. And we just don't take government news releases

00:17:46.660 at their word. We don't just use their language because they're in an official government news

00:17:51.660 release. Problem is much of the media is just too lazy now. They file one or two stories a day

00:17:57.640 and they think that's a lot of work. Our team are filing individually, each reporter is filing

00:18:04.500 six, seven, eight stories a day, sometimes quite a bit more. Maybe I'm just a very hard boss,

00:18:11.340 but our guys work a lot harder, I think, than most of the journalists in the mainstream media.

00:18:16.660 And we just question the vocabulary. Whenever I see one of our news stories go out, and it's essentially just using the government's words, I make an angry phone call. I say, that's not good enough for us. We hold ourselves to a higher standard, the Western standard. And we will use language that we believe is fair, not just what the government tells us to do.

00:18:39.600 let's focus on that in itself right so the western standard i mean i'm proud to be here

00:18:48.040 it's great to be the bc columnist and and now of course the host of mountain standard time

00:18:52.280 and of course the other side of it is that you know this is beautiful bc that's what we're doing

00:18:57.100 over here uh bc is a little weird bc is a little different we don't have prairies that connect us

00:19:01.920 with the rest of the west of course you guys have the rockies as well but then the rest of

00:19:07.740 your western neighbors you know it's a it's a decently easy drive i've driven it a couple of

00:19:11.980 times it's not as bumpy as it is over here in bc how do you how do you make sure that that what

00:19:17.360 you're representing isn't just alberta you mentioned this in the release where i was announced

00:19:21.560 that that the western standard could also be the alberta standard uh how do we make sure that it

00:19:26.500 stays the western standard what what's your vision there oh sorry there that a little technical

00:19:35.020 politically uh yeah uh this has been uh an issue we've faced from the uh from the beginning of the

00:19:42.220 second western standard uh is that we're all too often just we're sorry we're all too often just

00:19:50.320 the uh the alberta stand alberta plus standard and that's just because when we started we didn't

00:19:55.340 start with uh a lot of loans i didn't know if this was going to work or not it's working now

00:19:59.640 But when we started, I didn't know if this was going to work.

00:20:02.700 Most new businesses fail.

00:20:04.880 We made a vow never to take a penny from government.

00:20:08.420 And frankly, there wasn't a lot of big businesses who were liking what we're doing.

00:20:13.560 So we really just didn't have many avenues of funding.

00:20:17.500 So we started very small.

00:20:19.120 And we started with people making next to nothing, working on sweat equity.

00:20:24.820 I mean, our original people became owners in the company in exchange for their early work.

00:20:29.380 because we just really couldn't pay them very much.

00:20:33.660 So that meant that our original core team was largely just focused around

00:20:38.600 not just Alberta, but just Calgary.

00:20:41.120 And naturally that meant that our coverage on both news and opinion

00:20:46.680 and broadcast was overwhelmingly Alberta-focused.

00:20:50.960 And so let me tell people from Alberta watching right now,

00:20:54.760 we're not going to take – we're not going to have less Alberta coverage.

00:20:58.500 We're just going to have more British Columbia coverage, more coverage in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, maybe even the territories at some point, because I think they properly belong, at least in a sense, to the West, even though they're kind of their own thing.

00:21:12.580 So now that we've been building up, because we've had a huge number of people decide to become members and subscribe, making small monthly contributions to the Western Standard, and since we've had a real boon in advertising coming in, we now are able to expand and really be the Western Standard.

00:21:35.980 And so our first really big step with that was bringing you, Nathan, on as BC political columnist and host of the Mountain Standard Time show and bringing Mike DeMoore on as our BC bureau chief heading up news in British Columbia.

00:21:51.720 So we needed people on the ground.

00:21:54.420 We tried having people in the Calgary office assigned to BC stories, but we just end up like the Globe and Mail, like the Globe and Mail's Alberta political columnist is Gary Mason.

00:22:05.420 and he's in Vancouver. It's kind of, they have the opposite problem. They got a guy in Vancouver

00:22:09.180 pretending to write about Alberta issues and anybody reading his stuff knows he just doesn't

00:22:14.940 have, doesn't have anything really thoughtful to say. So, you know, we needed people on the ground

00:22:26.280 here, sorry, in British Columbia to do that. And now we are very much aggressively working to do

00:22:32.800 that in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We have a Manitoba political columnist coming very soon

00:22:38.180 who we're going to be announcing. We've got Lee Harding in Saskatchewan doing opinion,

00:22:43.160 but we're really going to make an effort to truly be the Western standard, not the Alberta plus

00:22:47.200 standard. Let's talk about that then. When it comes to BC and Alberta specifically, we are not

00:22:54.400 always the best of neighbours. I think Ottawa has done an incredible job of keeping us divided from

00:22:59.280 one another from the alberta perspective what do you think the reason for that is why why can't

00:23:04.760 alberta and bc just get along well you know i think it's a outside of a province we tend to

00:23:13.180 project monocultures on each province uh albertans project this monoculture that of the left coast

00:23:21.100 uh everybody's sleeping in hemp huts um protesting pipelines and that's obviously not the case

00:23:28.960 of even, I think that's actually a relatively small number of British Columbians. I don't think

00:23:33.540 it's representative. That and the latte sipper working at a high-tech company in downtown 1.00

00:23:39.400 Vancouver for two hours a day. I mean, that's kind of the stereotype that gets projected on BC.

00:23:47.100 The stereotype projected on Alberta is we're all roughnecks and cowboys. There's probably a bit

00:23:53.280 more truth to that, but even that is still missing quite a bit. And so those are different cultures.

00:23:59.920 Saskatchewan, it's flat.

00:24:01.100 Everyone's a farmer.

00:24:04.220 So I think it's also because those stereotypes are conflicting stereotypes.

00:24:10.220 One is the rugged individualist.

00:24:14.700 We all live in the country.

00:24:15.840 None of us actually live in a city.

00:24:17.140 I'm in downtown Calgary right now on the 12th floor here.

00:24:21.780 But I think our stereotypes are different.

00:24:25.140 I think our interests are actually normally quite aligned.

00:24:28.960 I mean, and we've got our radical environmentalists too here. The difference is that

00:24:37.600 they're not really able to block others. I don't know why they don't try to block BC

00:24:44.240 lumber shipments down the Trans-Canada Highway. If our radicals were interested in things,

00:24:51.760 they should be standing in Banff chaining themselves to barricades, stopping lumber

00:24:57.600 from coming through. They're murdering Gaia. So I don't know. But for most, not all, but most of

00:25:08.160 our histories, we've actually been quite aligned. You know, we both are the only two provinces that

00:25:16.720 have had social credit governments and the strange experiment that that was. Both provinces were the

00:25:22.900 core of the Reform Party and then the Canadian Alliance. A lot of people don't understand that

00:25:26.960 The Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance used to normally win more seats in British Columbia than the Conservative Party of Canada did.

00:25:33.520 These were these populist Western regional parties that do better than the so-called more mainstream centrist Conservative Party of Canada.

00:25:46.920 Conservative Party of Canada certainly does better in Ontario and the Atlantic and Quebec than the Reform Party ever did.

00:25:52.440 But in B.C., the Reform Party did better than the Conservative Party most of the time.

00:25:57.100 Certainly the Canadian Alliance did better more than they did.

00:25:59.980 And so we share a very common political culture that is populist, that's anti-establishment in many cases.

00:26:09.180 But something has happened to make us drift more apart over the last probably 15 years.

00:26:16.880 Both have always been different, but they've normally always seen eye to eye.

00:26:19.980 I mean, Ralph Klein and, you know, you went through a spat of NDP premiers in the death throes of that government before Gordon Campbell was elected, but Ralph Klein found common cause with NDP premiers on federal issues.

00:26:39.400 They regularly stood side by side because the B.C. NDP at that time at least still considered itself clearly a Western party.

00:26:48.300 Most of its for most of its history, the NDP was actually a very Western party.

00:26:52.240 Sure, ran everywhere, but most of its seats were traditionally in Western Canada.

00:26:56.140 That ended in 1993 because the Reform Party.

00:26:59.500 Yeah, a lot of people understand the Reform Party killed the PCs in the West, but it also pretty much killed the NDP in the West, too.

00:27:05.920 It just became the Western Party.

00:27:07.280 It took over both.

00:27:09.400 So regardless of the ideology of the government and power in both Alberta and British Columbia, there was normally a common cause actually between all four Western provinces that we really don't see any, I don't think we see any more at all.

00:27:24.360 there are uh secretaries of interprovincial affairs right there are people that are

00:27:33.500 designated between the provinces to speak to one another is it is it that high level that has to

00:27:38.700 change or is it right down to uh the ground floor the average guy walking down the street you or me

00:27:43.780 that needs to change and have things go forward that that it's our connection that will make the

00:27:50.500 west uh well able to kind of make a better a deal for itself in the future

00:27:55.260 uh well the easy answer is it's both um i don't think most british columbians hate albertans i

00:28:04.660 don't think most albertans hate british columbians uh there's obviously some exceptions there uh

00:28:09.940 i mean you know we all know like in the summer you'd get um you know cars trucks with uh alberta

00:28:16.160 plates getting vandalized and the shoe swaps and stuff. But I think that's a very small, nutty

00:28:22.680 fringe. I think it's just a matter of concentrated interests. I mean, at least on natural gas

00:28:31.380 extraction, the BC NDP is quite pro because it's in BC. It's got a direct interest in it.

00:28:39.660 But the Alberta NDP was quite anti-pipeline, quite anti-oil and gas when it was in opposition.

00:28:46.860 But then it came to government, realized, oh, geez, we won an election and now we have to stay in power and we need money to do it.

00:28:53.480 So I think the reason you have, you know, polls consistently show British Columbians support the oil sands.

00:29:04.060 They support pipelines.

00:29:05.520 They support our fundamental industries.

00:29:07.320 but we hear more about those who are opposed to it vehemently because they're radically opposed

00:29:13.200 to it they show up and they protest whereas those who are supportive of it well they just kind of go

00:29:17.720 about their lives like if you're supportive what really can you do not much well okay and really

00:29:24.220 would it change how you vote even even if you support it because it's somebody else's industry

00:29:28.980 I support certain policies of certain governments in Europe but it doesn't change how I vote in

00:29:37.080 canada just because it might align uh so even though a majority of british colombians back

00:29:41.860 pipelines and they back uh natural resource extraction doesn't mean they're necessarily

00:29:46.980 that's going to change their vote because british colombians have their own concerns to uh to worry

00:29:51.120 about um similarly if uh say the site c dam was to have some adverse effects on alberta uh you know

00:30:00.300 that might change how we vote but since it doesn't change it doesn't really affect us it

00:30:05.120 it's it's kind of meaningless to how we vote here so i guess that's exactly it like we're just

00:30:13.280 so siloed from each other in many respects and then of course we have certain opinions of each

00:30:17.080 other if you have a vision for the west uh what is it how how does it look are you are you fully

00:30:23.740 committed to sovereignty or are you just interested in ottawa leaving us alone well it depends on

00:30:30.240 what's possible. You know, my time in politics, I started off as what you might call a hardcore

00:30:39.220 firewaller. You know, I have been in Alberta by choice, not by birth. I came here because it was

00:30:45.460 different. It was special. It lined more with my values. The people were, I think, I fit in with

00:30:52.920 the people here more than I would in much of Ontario. I came from a little pocket of Ontario

00:30:57.800 called the Ottawa Valley, which I consider the most, the eastern most point of Alberta.

00:31:02.460 It's very much shares a lot of its values.

00:31:06.440 So, you know, I'm not one of these people that hates Canada.

00:31:09.960 I think Canada has, you know, for all our wards, which every nation has in different forms,

00:31:16.960 Canada is a great nation.

00:31:18.340 It's done great things.

00:31:19.820 It is a leader in the world in many positive respects.

00:31:23.000 Canada is more often than not a net positive to have on the world stage, and I want Canada to succeed.

00:31:33.200 But I don't believe it's acceptable for Alberta in particular, but the West more broadly, to continue a relationship which is colonial in nature.

00:31:43.980 I mean, BC and Alberta combined have less senators than Nova Scotia, for God's sakes.

00:31:53.000 there's there's clearly something wrong with our constitutional arrangements um confederation

00:31:59.160 happened in 1867 because the four original colonies or technically three upper and lower

00:32:05.160 canada were the united province of canada at the time uh but then nova scotia and new brunswick

00:32:10.520 uh because they needed to form an economic and trade union they needed free trade because the

00:32:15.720 americans had become pretty gone through one of their frequent regurgitations of protectionism

00:32:21.960 It largely closed off the American market, two Canadian producers, and we needed free trade. It was an economic union. It was not as glorious and romantic as the American union, which was a throw off the yoke of British imperialism.

00:32:37.220 some guys with muskets beat one of the biggest armies in the world, and they founded this great

00:32:41.720 mostly but not entirely free republic. Ours was not a romantic story like that. It was guys sat

00:32:47.160 around and said, yeah, we need to trade. And it was a practical union of convenience. But that

00:32:53.100 very foundation for the creation of the Dominion of Canada doesn't even exist anymore. We can't

00:32:59.660 trade across provincial boundaries. Legally, if I was to load up my truck with a little too much

00:33:05.780 beer. It's illegal to produce the damn stuff for anybody else, even in your own province, 0.98

00:33:09.700 let alone transport across provincial borders. I know a guy who's done jail time for that because 0.99

00:33:14.040 he believed he had the right to produce dairy outside of federal government monopoly. So we

00:33:23.080 don't even have free trade in this country. I don't need to rehash, you know, the airing of

00:33:29.020 the grievances as i called it with on another show the canadian story um you know the massive

00:33:35.520 wealth transfers that come out of alberta and the west more broadly to fund the east largely just

00:33:40.480 for vote buying and and both the conservatives and the liberals both engage in it with uh just

00:33:46.120 one seems to be more gleeful about doing it and the other is a little more appreciative about doing

00:33:51.600 it, but they both view it in equal measure, nonetheless. And basic representation, the right

00:33:59.020 to control provincial policy within our provincial jurisdiction. I'd like to see these things fixed,

00:34:04.880 but I don't believe they can be. The last time we tried to fix the Constitution in Canada was

00:34:08.460 a Charlottetown Accord, and it was mostly just an attempt to appease Quebec with special rights,

00:34:12.900 and the West rejected it rightfully so, largely leading to the downfall of the Mulroney government.

00:34:19.360 there is no appetite for constitutional change in Canada and I believe Canada does need

00:34:25.160 constitutional change but there's no appetite for it and even if there was an appetite for it

00:34:29.040 it would get immediately hijacked by a specialist of Quebec grievances we'd say well we want an 1.00

00:34:34.780 elected senate they say well we want the right to ban Muslims from wearing headgear 0.98

00:34:38.320 well that's a bit of a different agenda and I'm not sure I want to share a country

00:34:44.060 with governments that believe they can so easily stamp, trample on religious rights. Although

00:34:50.900 I should point out that right now, Alberta is the biggest violator of religious rights,

00:34:56.020 raiding churches and throwing pastors in prison. But I just don't see the prospect of constitutional

00:35:02.520 reform. I think the best path for Alberta and the West broadly is we need to put some hard

00:35:10.380 demands on the table. We need to say here is what we require to remain a part of Canada, that it

00:35:17.920 would be a radically reformed Senate, not just in elections, but in how we allocate seats in the

00:35:24.940 Senate. It means free trade. It means the abolition of equalization and caps on other transfers. A lot

00:35:31.420 of people don't understand that most of the money that comes out of Western provinces towards the

00:35:35.320 East is not equalization. Equalization is just one part of it that we focus on, but we need caps on

00:35:39.700 these things, and we need to guarantee provincial sovereignty within our own jurisdiction.

00:35:46.160 Ottawa's got no more business in health care than British Columbia or Alberta do running the army.

00:35:51.260 They're different areas of jurisdiction, and they should be kept strictly separate.

00:35:54.640 I think we should have put this on the table, put it to a vote, although I'm not optimistic one bit

00:36:01.220 that there really would be much take-up in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, and depending

00:36:06.780 on who's in power, John

00:36:08.820 Horgan would probably not even be in favor

00:36:10.800 of a stronger West in

00:36:12.800 terms of our political relationship with the rest of

00:36:14.740 Canada. And failing that, then I think

00:36:16.740 independence needs to very much

00:36:18.760 be on the table. But I'm not one of these people

00:36:20.720 that believes that independence is

00:36:22.660 good in its own right. I believe it

00:36:24.740 is a necessary evil

00:36:26.660 if a serious and goodwill attempt

00:36:28.760 at reform proves to

00:36:30.700 be impossible.

00:36:32.380 I think something that we could jump off of

00:36:34.720 right there is the fact

00:36:36.680 that it actually does come down to leadership and so what's kind of interesting is that you know

00:36:41.560 you're you're you're putting forward these points about watertight compartments and all the rest of

00:36:45.760 it i of course believe mostly in the watertight compartment argument as well that the sections

00:36:50.260 of constitution should be uh respected and the division of power should be respected and it's

00:36:55.520 incredible to me that they're not respected and that the supreme court affirmed them not being

00:36:59.360 respected it's beyond me but let's let's kind of dive into that for a second when it comes to even

00:37:05.400 In Alberta, you know, Jason Kenney, a man I interned with back in Ottawa, actually, way back in 2012, feels like a million years ago now.

00:37:14.260 I, you know, I had a lot of respect for the minister at that time.

00:37:17.340 He was the man who was meeting with ethnic groups, trying to bring them into the conservative movement.

00:37:24.040 And he was just very good at what he was doing, networking, trying to keep things going.

00:37:28.000 Ever since he became premier, there seems to have been some difficulty and some change, like he's getting bad advice.

00:37:34.440 And it seems like Alberta is losing both ways.

00:37:36.740 Internally, it's losing.

00:37:37.700 It's imposing tighter lockdown restrictions, et cetera.

00:37:40.200 But then also when it comes to Ottawa, Alberta, kind of the champion of the West, if we can

00:37:43.820 use that for now until more of us in the West come together for that argument.

00:37:49.360 How come they're losing on both sides?

00:37:51.700 They seem to be losing the argument at home and losing the argument abroad.

00:37:55.480 I think it's because Jason Kenney is not governing as the premier he campaigned to be.

00:38:00.500 uh alberta is potentially the only province where a government can campaign on the right and govern

00:38:06.820 in the center normally what you do is you campaign in the center if you're the ndp you campaign in

00:38:10.980 the center govern on the left or if you're the ucp you campaign in the center and govern on the

00:38:16.560 right that's not the case though uh people were desperate for very significant reform in alberta

00:38:22.140 they voted uh here's the thing the ndp would accuse the ucp of having this hidden agenda

00:38:27.440 And the UCB said, no, no, no, no, we're, this pretty moderate conservative platform is what we're going to do. 0.99

00:38:34.880 And, but a lot of people on the right said, well, I hope they have a secret agenda because I want them to kick some ass. 0.98

00:38:41.860 I want them to go in there, you know, really cut some spending. 0.98

00:38:45.260 And you'd be shocked by the number of people who believe that Jason Kenney was a secret separatist.

00:38:51.440 People who thought that he was just, he's one of them.

00:38:54.320 and when the right moment comes, he's going to, the mask is going to drop and he's going to call

00:38:59.480 a referendum. You'd be shocked how many people voted for him, believing he would do that.

00:39:04.520 The left often believed he would do that too. It turned out actually, he's pretty much,

00:39:10.020 at least on most things, he's pretty much doing what he said. He is a committed federalist.

00:39:13.900 He is a federalist. There's no question. Yeah. Yeah. He is. He's not, you know, he's not like

00:39:19.260 myself where i'd like to be one but i don't see the prospect of really getting fixed i'm willing

00:39:24.880 to try but i i don't i don't think it'll succeed uh he is an unconditional federalist and um you

00:39:32.800 know we'll just take the budget for example he came to power promising this to magically balance

00:39:38.540 the budget without cutting spending and without raising taxes because there'd be this economic

00:39:43.600 super boom well that economic super boom never came it got worse when oil prices went down a

00:39:48.660 bit to kind of back up now. But it got worse when COVID happened. Obviously, that's going to kill

00:39:52.820 anyone's economy. But even before then, this boom was not materializing. So it was based on a lot

00:39:58.280 of kind of flimsy promises based on very questionable facts and premises. So yeah,

00:40:08.400 and then you get into people expected, well, he's going to get elected, we're going to have

00:40:12.740 a referendum on equalization. And then Jason Kenney is going to go to Ottawa, give Justin

00:40:17.620 true to a noogie on the carpet until he says uncle and changes things. And we're going to get a fair

00:40:22.780 deal. It's going to be great. Nothing, nothing whatsoever has happened. There was a panel called

00:40:27.780 the panel under, I think, pretty political direction, rejected most of the more significant

00:40:34.180 soft sovereignty slash firewall ideas. And even many of the ideas they put forward, Kenny has

00:40:40.840 rejected or just not acted on. And then we get into the lockdowns. Originally, most of us were

00:40:47.500 willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, as most people in most countries and jurisdictions

00:40:51.060 were. We didn't know how bad it would be, so we kind of accepted these lockdowns. Some people are

00:40:55.960 in the comments, I know we're going to say, I never accepted it. No, you probably did early on

00:41:00.480 when everybody believed that when it was coming out of Wuhan, and this was thought to maybe be

00:41:05.900 the next Black Death. You probably accepted it early, early on. Now, some people became more 0.95

00:41:12.820 skeptical over time about the severity of this about how helpful it was for lockdowns and then

00:41:18.580 the guy who was elected who was supposed to be about the campaign slogan was strong and free

00:41:23.580 well we're still not strong and we are much less free than we were when jason kenny came to power

00:41:28.960 we're now throwing pastors in jails we have cops beating up kids for playing hockey we've got uh

00:41:34.760 restaurant owners losing their livelihoods uh i mean this is not this is not a free place right

00:41:42.240 now. And we're making international headlines for it. It's quite something. So I think we've

00:41:48.300 actually lost Nathan for a second. Oh, there he's back. Oh, I'm still here. I'm still here.

00:41:53.120 He just faded to black for a second. So I think it's just a lot of some voters in the center and

00:42:01.820 center left are buying the NDP's message that, oh, this guy is an evil, racist, homophobe, 0.96

00:42:08.640 and he's cutting spending, he's this draconian conservative. 0.95

00:42:14.060 I mean, the NDP has been fairly effective in chipping away a little bit there.

00:42:17.840 But most of the support that Jason Kenney has lost has been very much on the right

00:42:21.340 and in populist circles sometimes, but not always.

00:42:24.280 Those are the same things in Alberta.

00:42:26.580 It's been people who are disappointed that he's not doing what he said he would,

00:42:31.120 or in some cases where they believed he had a hidden agenda and he's not doing that.

00:42:36.420 I actually don't think that's fair.

00:42:37.520 And I knew the guy did. I didn't think the guy had a hidden agenda. I thought the platform was OK. It was a moderate conservative platform, but it wasn't very radical. And he's not been radical. But in some respects, he's not doing what he said. No one would have predicted COVID.

00:42:52.780 But at this point, his actions are his own. And that's why less than half of the people who voted UCP in the last election, 55%, say consistently in polls now that they'll vote for him again. It's now into the low and mid 20s. So they're facing absolute oblivion.

00:43:14.300 And if you're not strong at home, it's hard to be strong abroad. When the government at home here does not have the support of its own people, it's very difficult to carry a big stick and get anything changed elsewhere.

00:43:26.520 That said, I don't think, even if you had the support of people here at home, Ottawa's not going to change because we tell them to. They're going to be forced to change or we have to do something else entirely. Those are really the only two options.

00:43:41.440 I think the whole strategy of we're going to have a referendum on equalization and then go tell Justin Trudeau to change things, it was never going to work.

00:43:49.680 There was a time where I believed it maybe had a chance.

00:43:52.340 But as I've come to understand the federal dynamics of Canada better, there's just no way that that's ever going to result in anything.

00:43:59.800 So I think a lot of people are just disappointed.

00:44:03.740 Absolutely.

00:44:04.700 Well, I understand that you have to go and we have our other guests ready to go on our end.

00:44:09.560 i want to say thank you again derek for being uh in my inaugural show and giving us such a great

00:44:14.760 kind of view of how things are happening but uh thank you so much my pleasure nathan next time

00:44:21.880 ask more questions i'll talk too long if you don't ask questions and cut me off i'm happy to listen

00:44:27.560 but uh thank you for joining us and you have a great rest of your day you too take care absolutely

00:44:32.920 well we're going to do this the old-fashioned way i mean there's uh there's fades there's

00:44:41.520 dissolves but hey this is this is live and we're just going to bring people in the old-fashioned

00:44:46.480 way i'm you know it can just move forward i think the biggest thing with with how we're going to

00:44:52.780 we're going to have to talk about uh all of this is that one of course we have aaron ekman here

00:44:57.980 former Secretary-Treasurer of the BC Federation of Labor. It's an interesting kind of mix. I mean,

00:45:03.320 this is the Western Standard. Obviously, the Western Standard has a rather right-wing view

00:45:07.640 of a lot of things. But the other thing that is important here is that in BC, both the left and

00:45:12.540 the right have to kind of learn to work together if they want to get a better deal out of Ottawa

00:45:16.320 and if they want to get a better deal across the West. And so that's kind of what we're going to

00:45:20.040 focus on here for the next hour. So we're going to move forward and discuss that. Aaron, welcome

00:45:25.220 to the program very excited to uh i'm very excited about this show i'm excited about this publication

00:45:32.500 and and i'm happy to be a token lefty i've even put my hair into a man bun here you're wearing

00:45:37.940 help and everything else i'm not wearing hemp but that's a good idea if you have me on again

00:45:42.420 that's what i'll do but i caught the opening segment with derek and uh and you know as uh

00:45:47.860 as as liberal or left-wing or progressive as someone might call me i found myself agreeing

00:45:52.340 with an enormous number of points

00:45:53.660 that both of you brought up.

00:45:55.940 And again, I didn't get a chance to talk to Derek,

00:45:59.060 but as a lefty out here in British Columbia,

00:46:03.500 just absolutely delighted to see

00:46:05.380 the Western Standard fired up again.

00:46:09.060 And it's just such an important position

00:46:14.240 that I think they're taking and they're advancing.

00:46:16.580 I think the thing is that when it comes to the two sides

00:46:19.620 in any country, let alone ours in Canada, the issue is how do we articulate to the other side

00:46:26.660 something where we could find common cause? So a perfect example is even the question of

00:46:30.780 religious liberty or the ability to have freedom of expression, right? So, I mean, throughout the

00:46:36.240 lockdown and everything else, we've had, you know, gatherings have been made illegal, which actually

00:46:40.460 means that people who are organizing, like yourself or something, that suddenly becomes

00:46:44.860 very difficult. But then specifically to what we're talking about today a little bit when it

00:46:49.100 comes to Western identity and sovereignty, what's the left-wing case for sovereignty? Why do we on

00:46:54.840 the right always think we're just alone in this? We're surprised to hear there might be anybody to

00:46:58.360 the left that's interested in this. Well, yeah, it's a great question. And I think, I mean,

00:47:01.780 the quick answer is there isn't much of a left-wing case for sort of the sovereigntist position or the

00:47:07.760 more independence position out here in the West. I think there is a progressive case, but I find

00:47:12.280 myself having to make it quite often. But it's not too dissimilar from, I think, you know, what

00:47:17.820 we're hearing from more conservative or uh right-wing voices uh in the west and but from my

00:47:23.340 perspective it's uh it's more of it's a discussion like derek had talked about about uh reconceptualizing

00:47:28.900 confederation my take on it and you know you know i you and i have had the the benefit of being able

00:47:33.620 to chat about this in the past and in varying levels of detail but uh i i agree with a lot of

00:47:40.220 folks on the conservative side of the spectrum that uh the west is not being given a fair deal

00:47:44.900 within Confederation. Historically, I viewed Confederation as something that was quite

00:47:49.840 important for British Columbia back when we made that decision to join in the late 1800s. 0.88

00:47:57.080 But it was, as I've said before, we forget that over 50% of the population, at least the white

00:48:05.100 population in British Columbia, when we made that decision, had American citizenship and had sort of

00:48:10.760 Republican values and sympathies across the border.

00:48:14.040 Even our second premier here, Mordekosmos, who's quite famous for a number of different

00:48:18.160 reasons, you know, I mean, he initially was a citizen in California and had to change

00:48:24.260 citizenship.

00:48:25.040 So, British Columbia really could have gone any way.

00:48:29.220 And it really was, at the time, probably the best business decision that we could make,

00:48:35.240 given that we had a number of commodities, et cetera, that had to be shipped across the

00:48:39.080 country.

00:48:39.360 And we were able to negotiate a deal with the federal government for them to build a railroad, which they didn't do right away. And in fact, you know, a year after we joined or a couple of years after we joined, we were already talking about pulling out again because we weren't getting the deal that we'd been promised.

00:48:54.020 And it took that threat of pulling out a confederation right at the very beginning to get the federal government to follow through with the promise they had made that brought us in.

00:49:02.520 And so that's why I have a lot of time for arguments like the ones that have been made by Derek in the first half of the show.

00:49:10.080 That even if you're not a sovereigntist or a separatist, full stop, you have to understand that what Quebec has done has worked very well for the people of Quebec.

00:49:20.260 Worked very well for them.

00:49:20.960 And it is absolutely a card that we should keep in our pocket. And you don't have to be full on separatist or a hater of, you know, the Federalist Project to take that position. And in fact, if we're not going to do that, who is?

00:49:36.520 And so, yeah, there might be some, you know, I mean, there are, of course, there are political differences across the provincial boundary between Alberta and BC.

00:49:43.480 You know, I come from originally terrorist British Columbia, logging town, come from a logging family.

00:49:50.180 Everybody worked in forestry, either driving trucks or they're out in the bush cutting trees.

00:49:54.760 And to the person, they're all in Alberta now, with the exception of my very immediate family who all went down south when, you know, the bottom sort of fell out of forestry here.

00:50:04.500 And so I come from this family that's got these sympathies across the provincial border.

00:50:10.680 And some of those tensions kind of play out around the, you know, prior to COVID or around the dinner table when we're discussing political politics or sort of just politics.

00:50:19.560 And, you know, my family members that have moved to Alberta, it's not to say that they weren't kind of conservative when they were in British Columbia, but they probably became a bit more conservative when they went to Alberta.

00:50:30.260 And then me, I've, you know, spent my whole life here in British Columbia.

00:50:33.400 And so we are products of our surroundings.

00:50:35.680 And so, you know, I tend to be quite a bit more progressive than the rest of the folks in the family.

00:50:40.340 But we do agree on these issues.

00:50:42.580 And so that's why, you know, even people like me, I think, can really get behind a publication like the Western Standard, which I've always had a lot of respect for.

00:50:50.040 And it's history.

00:50:51.100 I was quite excited when I'd sort of read a couple of years ago that Derek was going to rekindle it.

00:50:58.400 And I really like where you guys are going with this.

00:51:02.200 I think that maybe the way to kind of conceptualize it is that even if somebody likes the idea of Canada being Canada and Canada keeping the same borders, right?

00:51:11.620 And I, in many respects, I don't want the borders of Canada to change.

00:51:15.400 I must admit that.

00:51:16.760 But I also want those internal borders to make more sense, which might even mean, in a sense, like redividing the provinces.

00:51:23.520 I think the provinces themselves might agree what some of that there's some lines here that don't really make sense.

00:51:28.200 But that's a different part of that question.

00:51:30.040 in the end it comes about the people uh it comes down to the people where they are feeling that

00:51:35.620 they have a stake in it and i think that's the biggest thing is like we need to have a stake in

00:51:39.860 this country and i think that's where all that western alienation starts so there where is our

00:51:44.980 stake every time we go to ottawa every time we talk to people that are in charge in the federal

00:51:48.820 government it seems like they just don't hear us and it doesn't matter who we elect because i mean

00:51:52.520 i'm on the right we've been electing conserves a long time here how how do we get from where we are

00:51:57.940 to auto-actual listening to us.

00:52:00.240 Yeah, and again, I've managed a number of campaigns

00:52:03.580 for left-wing political parties

00:52:05.380 and both federal elections and provincial elections.

00:52:09.000 And I share your frustration most recently in 2015

00:52:12.640 and then the most recent federal election,

00:52:15.180 watching sort of this wave of red cover the eastern provinces

00:52:18.280 before they even open our ballot boxes out west here.

00:52:21.800 And we used to, Elections Canada used to delay

00:52:25.800 the reporting of the results,

00:52:27.240 But it's, you know, so that we didn't have this feeling of futility watching sort of these Eastern votes just pull us over.

00:52:33.860 And to the point that, you know, by the time we got to like Saskatchewan, it was there were not enough votes left in the country to change the course.

00:52:40.740 And so it did lead to this feeling of futility out West.

00:52:44.040 It didn't didn't matter whether you're on the left of the spectrum or the right of the spectrum.

00:52:47.600 If you didn't want to see liberals get reelected, it was frustrating and it still is frustrating.

00:52:52.260 And now in the age of the Internet, you can't really delay the results anymore.

00:52:55.120 So we see that stuff. But like I said, I'm very, very excited that there is now an organ like the Western Standard that is having these conversations.

00:53:09.080 And I think, you know, I mean, British Columbia, it's kind of a difficult place to have these discussions.

00:53:14.660 I think it's not as, I mean, there isn't the wide basis of support that I think you see in Alberta around conversations, not just of separation, but of sovereignty and trying to create more independence for the West.

00:53:28.600 And part of it is because we are a divided province politically.

00:53:33.020 You guys talked in the opening segment about, you know, some of the political differences in Alberta.

00:53:37.760 You know, Derek described there being, you know, some radical environmentalists, etc., which, of course, we have here in British Columbia.

00:53:43.280 but again I mean even within the environmental movement there's sort of a right left split as

00:53:47.740 well and that's interesting but British Columbia is like one of the most eccentric jurisdictions

00:53:52.840 I think in Canada and sort of proudly so yeah we're sort of like the Portland North like we

00:53:57.880 like to we like to keep it weird on a on a provincial level but what comes with that is

00:54:02.980 sort of a high degree of a desire for autonomy both personal and in terms of personal liberty

00:54:09.520 and freedom. And I don't know whether that's, like, there's a big difference between the folks

00:54:14.560 in, I say the Lower Mainland, but I really mean like Vancouver and Victoria. Lower Mainland isn't

00:54:19.320 an accurate reflection, but there's a total divide, I think, in the understanding of what

00:54:23.300 British Columbian culture is down in that area versus how the rest of us, like the rest of the

00:54:30.100 province, how we understand ourselves to be. And so you and I have had discussions about the vast

00:54:35.320 political differences between like you know the northeast of the province versus the northwest

00:54:39.680 even uh the west coast uh but it's not even that cut and dry um there's there's definitely

00:54:45.660 political divides but what's what i think is is really exciting about about this program

00:54:50.340 is that for the first time in my lifetime i think that i can remember uh there there's there's going

00:54:56.240 to be talented and and articulate commentators like yourself for instance that are going to

00:55:00.940 provoke these debates on what it means to be a British Columbian within confederation in in the

00:55:06.880 modern era and but more than that how can we conceptualize how things might be different and

00:55:12.400 this is tough because people get really attached to this brand that that has been created around

00:55:16.900 Canada which isn't that old I mean we just celebrated our 150th anniversary which in the

00:55:20.360 history of most countries in the world is a blip it's just like it's nothing it's very young

00:55:25.820 very young register uh and so to me it's always been like you know like i i'm i'm kind of with

00:55:31.220 you guys in the sense that i'm not like eagerly flying the flag for separation so i'd like to see

00:55:35.520 it work as well um because there isn't there other than the economic arguments and the fairness

00:55:40.260 arguments there isn't really a compelling reason to leave which is kind of how we got in this

00:55:43.740 in the first place back in 1871 or 72 where you know we just sort of looked at the factors and

00:55:49.800 said well this is the better deal let's try this for a while uh but but why wouldn't we

00:55:54.600 conceptualize what the future might look like differently uh why can't we just have those

00:55:58.660 conversations in a very civilized manner nobody's talking about you know arms insurrection or uh or

00:56:04.920 and you know trying to trying to fight our way out or anything it's it's let's just have the

00:56:09.580 conversations about what canada could look like and if we're not talking about separation or

00:56:14.980 total sovereignty uh then we maybe we could talk about rejigging the borders a little bit um it's

00:56:21.060 always been interesting to me that my friends in the Northeast, like Fort Change, Peace

00:56:25.560 River Country in British Columbia, for instance, were far more culturally closer to Albertans

00:56:31.280 than to the southwest of the province, for instance.

00:56:35.340 If you do that plug here, because this is Mountain Standard Time, they're on Mountain

00:56:39.220 Standard Time.

00:56:39.920 Go figure.

00:56:40.640 That's right.

00:56:41.240 There it is.

00:56:42.000 Yeah, even a different time zone, right?

00:56:44.380 And so I know that the big challenge for Alberta in this conversation, of course, is trying 0.99

00:56:50.240 to get product at Tidewater. That's the huge challenge. So how do you have this conversation

00:56:54.720 about a Western identity and Western unity, et cetera, if you've got this province who's the

00:57:00.240 majority of their economy, not all of it, but the majority of the economy is based on the export of

00:57:03.860 a natural resource. And that export has to take place over a body of water. But they're barred

00:57:11.120 on that Western side by folks that are absolutely opposed to pulling that stuff out of the ground

00:57:16.340 in any respect whatsoever with really no attention paid

00:57:22.400 to what that would mean for the economy of British Columbia

00:57:25.600 and, sorry, of Alberta in particular,

00:57:28.500 but specifically what it would mean for,

00:57:30.920 like if we shut down all that export,

00:57:32.800 what it would mean for the jobs of working people there

00:57:34.940 and then what's the consequence of that?

00:57:36.900 And so that's the frustration that plays out

00:57:38.740 and the tension I think that plays out in British Columbia

00:57:40.660 as a microcosm, probably more so than Alberta,

00:57:43.960 but it's tough to have those conversations

00:57:46.060 about sovereignty or greater independence,

00:57:50.140 greater autonomy sort of along the state structure

00:57:52.780 south of the border

00:57:53.520 without having those discussions

00:57:55.540 about natural resources, et cetera.

00:57:57.660 I think that another aspect of that too

00:57:59.460 is that we British Columbians have to remember

00:58:01.020 just how privileged we are

00:58:02.800 to have the access we have to cheap energy

00:58:05.640 when it comes to hydro.

00:58:07.020 This does not mean that we just need to roll over

00:58:09.240 when it comes to issues around environment

00:58:11.200 or we want our protections to be observed.

00:58:12.860 That's not the question.

00:58:13.780 The question though is that at a deeper level,

00:58:16.060 we we need to acknowledge that part of the reason that we're not as worried about this whole getting

00:58:20.620 oil to tidewater thing apart from the whole environmental question is that quite frankly

00:58:24.540 like we don't fire we don't need to fire up fossil fuels and that sort of thing in british

00:58:28.620 columbia to the respect of just generating our general power like the electrical power we have

00:58:33.340 and we have a huge amount of capacity we can turn up the dams we turn down the dams we we are good

00:58:37.900 to go whereas there are other parts of this country particularly alberta saskatchewan and

00:58:43.020 to Manitoba. Manitoba's got some decent hydro as well. But the point is that the hydro in the rest

00:58:47.980 of the West is not the same thing that we have. We are very lucky and other places have other,

00:58:53.900 they have other things they need to make the means to do the things they want to do.

00:58:58.080 Yeah. And I mean, this is a discussion that makes me rather unpopular in sort of the leftist circles

00:59:02.540 that I walk in is my huge support for public ownership of BC Hydro, but also the expansion

00:59:08.980 of BC Hydro, British Columbia, one of my favorite premiers happens to be a SoCred, quite a conservative

00:59:14.980 fellow by the name of WAC Bennett, or if there's anybody from Alberta watching, they may or may not

00:59:19.940 be familiar with them, but they'd certainly be familiar with the SoCred tradition in Alberta

00:59:23.660 because it was the only place on earth where, well, it was the first place on earth that SoCreds

00:59:28.120 had formed government, even though it was, you know, sort of imported from the UK and actually

00:59:34.180 implemented real social credit, which is very similar to a universal basic income.

00:59:38.480 But, you know, what I've always said about BC Hydro is that British Columbia has got

00:59:43.700 the potential since WAC Bennett was premier and negotiated the Columbia River Power Treaty

00:59:50.640 with the U.S., British Columbia has always had the potential to be a, pardon the pun,

00:59:55.960 but a powerhouse, a literal powerhouse where we can develop energy not just for consumption

01:00:01.800 by British Columbians and our neighbours to the east,

01:00:05.760 but also for industry and for export to the US

01:00:09.940 in a way that generates non-tax-based income

01:00:13.560 for the public sector that lessens the public sector's,

01:00:16.780 the provincial government's reliance on taxation.

01:00:21.500 And that's something that actually can be fixed legislatively.

01:00:26.700 We have to ensure that BC Hydro isn't required

01:00:29.800 to buy power from independent power producers from a price that is higher than what they can

01:00:34.980 sell it for in the open market. Because what you're doing there is you're subsidizing,

01:00:39.420 you're forcing taxpayers to subsidize independent power producers when we've got a fantastic public

01:00:45.300 utility, which we don't have to worry about, you know, paying ridiculous, like millions and

01:00:50.340 millions of dollars to the highest level executives. And we can turn the revenue from

01:00:54.460 that institution back into the public coffers and fund things like health care.

01:01:01.300 Maybe we could have purchased some more vaccines, for instance,

01:01:04.240 without having to rely on the federal government, right?

01:01:07.760 And so that's unpopular in left-wing circles, obviously.

01:01:11.880 And in British Columbia, there's quite a strong lobby against the construction

01:01:15.180 of a hydroelectric dam, which just boggles the mind because it's the same people

01:01:18.580 that will fight like hell to stop Alberta from moving their product to Tidewater.

01:01:24.460 Uh, because they think, you know, because they're opposed to fossil fuel based energy

01:01:28.220 production and export of all kinds.

01:01:30.420 Uh, nevermind the fact that they burned a fair bit of gas on their hot shower this morning.

01:01:34.940 Um, of natural gas, uh, but they're also opposed to a much cleaner form of energy.

01:01:41.360 And, and so, you know, it just begs the question, well, what kind of energy are you in favor

01:01:45.140 of?

01:01:45.300 That's, that's not a left or a right wing question.

01:01:47.920 You know, I come from, I come from what many would probably regard as a, as an old school

01:01:52.620 leftist tradition like you know i'm a fan of like the ccf tommy douglas that kind of thing

01:01:56.820 all people who understood uh in a manner that i think the left wing has forgotten that

01:02:03.140 the public should own these things and the public should benefit first from it and these are

01:02:08.600 essential uh infrastructure that you know i mean it's it's not that you should freeze the private

01:02:14.800 sector out entirely but uh it's when you've got infrastructure like that it's that important for

01:02:21.140 the national or the provincial interest then it's in the it's in the interest of taxpayers to have

01:02:25.980 ownership and control over it um and and so if it's if it's messing up and not doing a good job

01:02:31.320 you know the public's got the ability to turf those folks out and put a new regime in where

01:02:35.480 you don't necessarily have have that same ability uh in in a private model of that like like we saw

01:02:42.500 in texas right with the uh with the disaster that they had there so they don't really have like you

01:02:48.360 know hopefully some heads will roll over what happened down there but the public doesn't have

01:02:52.320 the direct ability by by affecting which government is is sort of in power to to pull the bad you know

01:02:59.560 the incompetence out and replace it competence again and I know many folks and probably many

01:03:03.260 of your viewers would argue vociferously that there's no such thing as competence in the public

01:03:07.680 sector and if that's true we're in trouble but but the thing that I always try to say is look

01:03:13.480 the one thing that is absolutely the same between private and public sector institutions or

01:03:18.660 corporations or crown corporations is that they're both run by humans and humans it doesn't matter

01:03:23.600 sort of which environment you work in we're all prone to corruption we're all prone to occasional

01:03:28.220 bouts of incompetence the importance the important thing is is structuring things in such a way that

01:03:33.300 you can address that incompetence uh which we're able to do once every four years uh with our

01:03:38.120 politicians, and hopefully we can get the incompetence in Ottawa out. But I also like

01:03:43.880 a system where you can have that same direct impact on the leadership of a crown corporation

01:03:49.620 as well. I know a lot of people will disagree with me on that on the right, but I have a lot

01:03:53.660 of disagreement on that on the left as well, just because they don't think these things should be

01:03:57.200 built. The other side of it is it's very difficult for the private sector to build a mega project

01:04:02.660 like a dam, for instance.

01:04:04.580 You have to have taxpayer support for that kind of thing.

01:04:08.340 The benefit of it is once it's done, we own it.

01:04:11.320 It's ours.

01:04:12.700 And unless it's sold off, nobody can take it from us.

01:04:15.900 And that's something that I think when we're talking about British Columbia identity

01:04:19.560 or Albertan identity and sort of the Western identity,

01:04:21.840 we want to be very clear about which taxpayer assets are at our disposal.

01:04:26.900 And we want to be very wary, I think, of letting those taxpayer assets go

01:04:29.840 because once they're gone, it's very difficult to get them back.

01:04:32.660 And so that's sort of why I have the position I do on Site C.

01:04:36.440 Very pro, but I want to keep it public so that we've got control over it.

01:04:39.920 I think that's actually a really interesting segue into the fact that what happens with the West is that actually a lot of the Western, except for BC, actually BC's borders came in intact into confederation.

01:04:52.740 But Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba, they were created by federal statute.

01:04:57.540 And so that's another aspect of what has to be discussed when it comes to this question of Western sovereignty, because the fact of the matter is, is that honestly, if a vote was held tomorrow and let's say that it really was 51 percent, everybody decided they wanted to leave.

01:05:10.280 One of the weird ways that it might all get stymied, just like the Brexit vote, is it might all get litigated in the courts because the courts would have to start weighing into, well, what part of Western Canada are you allowed to take with you?

01:05:22.060 British Columbia, it's pretty much a done deal.

01:05:23.980 British Columbia entered with the borders it had, it can leave with the borders it had,

01:05:27.000 though I'm sure that the Aboriginal sovereignists themselves would have something to say about that.

01:05:32.820 And that's why when my first column for The Standard, I talked about this.

01:05:37.020 I said there was no way forward for Western sovereignty and any kind of deeper independence from Ottawa

01:05:43.100 without, of course, buy-in from the First Peoples of Canada.

01:05:47.080 And I would say the same even for B.C., despite the fact that at least or in spite of the fact

01:05:51.500 that they did have a complete borders when they entered confederation but for the rest of the west

01:05:56.420 the question of borders is actually pretty serious let alone who really owns what and then finally

01:06:01.820 again just back to the even the question of how do how do you administer such a place what you

01:06:07.560 know we we actually do get not i would say not a ton of benefits for the federal government a lot

01:06:12.560 of different counts but there are a certain exchange and then if the west all leaves together

01:06:16.580 they're all going to have to figure out who's going to be in charge of all of them or are they

01:06:19.520 all going to be a separate entity and if that's the case then is it any different than right now

01:06:23.640 because then bc really could cut off alberta but now alberta can't go to ottawa to give to tell them

01:06:28.200 bc to get bc on site this is this is that difficulty with western uh separation in general

01:06:33.560 but with canadian confederation in general is that it doesn't it's a very complicated idea

01:06:38.940 and um and how how that is supposed to work between the provinces and between the various

01:06:44.360 levels of government i'm not exactly sure but i i think that again coming back to the question of

01:06:48.920 how we would make allies out of our, you know, our progressive political opponents on the other

01:06:54.940 side of the spectrum is that I think both of us can say again, whether it's the stake in the

01:06:58.960 country or the fact that Ottawa is just always so incompetently administering our homes and

01:07:03.360 intervening in our lives for no good reason. I think progressives can argue that as well,

01:07:06.980 like shouldn't the people who live here or and even if we're talking about progressive issues

01:07:10.640 around whether we're talking about, you know, poverty or, you know, affordable living and that

01:07:16.060 sort of thing, which I don't think should just be progressive issues. I think they should be

01:07:18.580 right-wing issues too but the point is that if we're going to talk about about you know uh affordable

01:07:23.260 living and uh people having a living wage and that sort of thing like that that there's an

01:07:27.060 economy that provides that i mean that's the right-wing answer to it right so there would

01:07:30.820 be economy to produce that the thing is that there's got to be a way for both the right and

01:07:35.700 the left in the west to agree that we should work towards something better because what we're getting

01:07:39.540 from ottawa right now isn't working yeah well and i i mean my take on uh incompetence i mean i talk

01:07:45.520 about Ottawa incompetence a lot but they're not really incompetent they just don't like they don't

01:07:50.240 care about us as much as they care about themselves that's the truth right people are inherently

01:07:55.200 self-interested and and so we should understand that I mean we shouldn't hide from that reality

01:08:00.800 we should know that you know when you're in a country this large geographically I mean it's vast

01:08:07.080 you're going to have regional preferences and if your capital is the same distance from you

01:08:13.020 as basically Japan is from us,

01:08:16.060 things are going to be culturally quite different out there.

01:08:19.220 And the decisions that they make every day

01:08:21.140 are not necessarily going to put the interests

01:08:22.860 of British Columbians or Albertans or Manitobans

01:08:24.700 or Saskatchewanians first.

01:08:27.360 And so that's, I mean, it doesn't matter

01:08:28.720 if you're left or right.

01:08:29.400 That's something that we should understand.

01:08:31.740 You asked me earlier about the progressive case

01:08:33.480 for sovereignty or independence or separation of the West.

01:08:39.340 And I would say that if there is one,

01:08:41.480 It fundamentally involves the inclusion and hopefully the alliance with Indigenous peoples in British Columbia, many of whom I think, if we're actually, you know, polled on this question, would probably have a very similar opinion in terms of their own feelings of experience within Confederation, probably not from their perspective, very positive.

01:09:02.060 And so, you know, I think the point of unity is to have those discussions and and to realize that even though we might have different opinions about what's wrong with Confederation, we can at least agree that there's something wrong with Confederation and it's not serving all of our interests.

01:09:17.740 And then, of course, there's the political dynamics of British Columbia, which I'm just pulling this out of the air because I don't have any stats, but I would venture a guess that there's probably more concern amongst a majority of British Columbian voters about the opinions of Indigenous people in regards to Confederation than maybe the electorate in Alberta has.

01:09:40.000 I don't know that for sure, but I know that Indigenous opposition to different issues, especially environmental issues in British Columbia, are a huge political sort of yardstick, especially for progressives.

01:09:51.780 So many of them sort of take their lead from where Indigenous voices go on these issues.

01:09:56.380 So if you get into a situation where a majority of indigenous organizations and leaders and speakers are starting to talk about reconceptualizing confederation in alliance with people like us that are also having these discussions, I think it makes it very difficult for people, progressives in British Columbia to really argue against that.

01:10:16.100 It's very difficult, especially for those that have been touting, you know, reconciliation and, you know, expanded treaty rights, etc. for the last 20 years to now turn around and say, well, we don't want to go that far when Indigenous people are saying, well, maybe we should consider this.

01:10:31.220 So that's sort of the, I think that's the piece that, you know, I'd like to see discussed because so far, and this is just for my observance, it's not necessarily reality, but from what I've observed, the conversations around sovereignty and independence and strength, strengthening the West are happening in sort of segregated groups, right?

01:10:51.040 I don't I don't see like I see these conversations taking place within indigenous communities, but not with the same sharpness and sort of clarity or focus that is happening in non-indigenous communities.

01:11:04.120 But I think those those conversations have to be merged. And why wouldn't they? I mean, that's if you're talking about reconceptualizing a nation, you have to talk to everybody that's in it and try to build that base of support amongst the majority, irrespective of whether you agree with them or not on every other issue.

01:11:21.040 Partially why you and I get along so well is because we find and part of the reason why, you know, why I can have a lot of respect and excitement for an organ like the like the Western Standard, even though I'm from from the progressive end of the spectrum politically, because these are issues that I think transcend, you know, the political divide.

01:11:40.220 And so it's just so exciting.

01:11:41.420 I think that's actually it's an interesting segue right there. And again, that's one of the things I'm appreciative of for both you coming on in this inaugural show, but also for the conversations we've had about this over the years and and and hopefully continue to have for much longer to to the success of them, to be clear to the success.

01:11:57.360 the the thing that is interesting about british columbia maybe this is kind of harder for

01:12:02.200 particularly albertans and maybe and maybe all other prairie folk to kind of conceptualize about

01:12:06.460 bc is that speaking of the sovereignty question like this is exactly what happened with the wet

01:12:10.480 sueton kind of thing uh wet sueton sorry i guess it's kind of the right way to accent it um and

01:12:15.680 what happened west of west of here i mean we're broadcasting you from bc's northern capital uh

01:12:20.340 And so just west of us here, out towards, of course, towards the coast and in between there, out west of Smithers, there was, of course, the protest that happened.

01:12:34.300 But this entirely has been swept under the rug now because, of course, we have had COVID for so long.

01:12:40.100 We forgot that anything else happened before COVID.

01:12:42.340 But right in 2020, at the beginning of 2020, of course, there was this huge protest.

01:12:47.540 uh obviously there was all sorts of uh organization that went into it in agitation throughout the

01:12:53.300 country obviously there were things done uh to the rail lines and everything else and we're not

01:12:57.520 going to either excuse that or condone that or whatever's going on like things happened is the

01:13:01.380 point and the interesting thing is like again maybe maybe in the rest of the west that would

01:13:06.740 have been more of even a non-indigenous versus indigenous sort of argument right so the first

01:13:11.320 nations on one side and suppose i mean i don't like to say colonizers but that's what's used

01:13:16.340 nowadays uh on the other that's not that's not how it is in bc to a point there were there was

01:13:22.620 division within the first nation itself sure like that's how how hyper-sovereignist is british

01:13:27.580 columbia there's division within our division right like that's right like i mean and i think

01:13:33.480 this is the thing that's hard for the rest of western canada maybe to understand is that like

01:13:37.680 bc is a bunch of river valleys okay like it's a bunch of little right fjords and and all sorts

01:13:43.020 of other things right and then it's river valleys and there's there's like one or two little prairies

01:13:47.640 that are actually plateaus so they're surrounded by mountains they're not really accessible so the

01:13:51.540 thing is that like for the rest of the west like it needs to be understood that while i you know

01:13:55.620 i've been out to churchill i've been to manitoba like i understand not all the geography is the

01:13:59.480 same i get that but there are places in bc you really can't walk to like you need the in or it's

01:14:06.620 going to be a really long trip it's not the same kind of voyager sort of stuff you could do in

01:14:10.880 yesteryear and days of yore in the prairies and follow a river for 10,000 kilometers and get

01:14:15.680 somewhere. That's not how it works in BC. And so in British Columbia, even our divisions have

01:14:20.080 divisions. Our sovereigntists are sovereigntists against each other. And so I think that maybe

01:14:24.800 that's exactly where that conversation needs to start. And I'm really excited. I hope people are

01:14:28.360 commenting, suggesting guests. I hope people are also giving us ideas of who should come on the

01:14:34.700 show and that sort of thing, because I think what's really important, I think it's super important,

01:14:40.880 for people to just network on this issue to network on this issue of how are we going to

01:14:47.300 kind of clarify what it means to be a Western Canadian particularly a British Columbian in

01:14:51.380 Western Canada and then what is the best way forward throughout all the West but also especially

01:14:55.380 for British Columbia again because it does get this radical the divide right this is why I have

01:15:00.080 Aaron on here for our first show is to make clear from day one that we are here to be an open

01:15:04.720 conversation with with well our political opposites for a lot of people who are you know fans and

01:15:10.880 standard like we're more populist and right wing we have to be in partnership in the sense that we

01:15:15.400 we are not going to get out of confederation you know alone or even if we want to make

01:15:19.940 confederation better we aren't going to be able to do that alone that's not a one-man

01:15:23.320 yeah and i we saw johnny blum's question sorry if i said your name wrong uh johnny but ask the

01:15:28.840 question what type of energy would we like to see and it relates that question's a perfect uh call

01:15:33.500 back to your point on the wet sweat and uh incident that happened here earlier and so

01:15:37.500 So, you know, I mean, this was an extremely divisive issue in British Columbia.

01:15:40.880 It really gets to this question of what kind of energy do we want to see?

01:15:43.240 So that was over the expansion of the coastal link gas line through wet, sweat, and territory.

01:15:47.760 And just to sort of break it down for folks that may not have paid close attention to that.

01:15:51.620 It feels like a million years ago because of COVID.

01:15:53.600 Yeah.

01:15:53.880 So, like, this played out, I think, in January or February of last year, right?

01:15:57.260 And so, essentially, what happened was, you know, the provincial government had, I mean,

01:16:03.540 the project, of course, predates the NDP government in BC. It was initiated under the BC

01:16:08.500 Liberal government. The BC NDP didn't really have a different take on the project and had

01:16:12.860 continued negotiation with the different ban councils in the area, which are referred to

01:16:17.700 usually in Indigenous circles as Indian Act ban councils. So they were ban councils that were

01:16:22.180 created by the Indian Act. And generally, there's a dispute between them and many of the hereditary

01:16:27.360 chiefs over sort of, not necessarily a dispute, but maybe a debate over whether the jurisdiction

01:16:31.540 of the band councils extends beyond the reserve over the traditional territory or whether the

01:16:37.760 hereditary chiefs maintain that level of authority. And then, of course, there's political divisions

01:16:43.000 even within the chief circles, because some of them are hereditary, not all are hereditary,

01:16:48.680 some are elected, etc. In any case, I had a rather nuanced position on it, which drew

01:16:55.320 ire, I think, probably, again, from the left and the right. So I was actually in favor of the

01:16:59.640 coastal gasoline pipeline coming through. And it's not because I think, you know, we should be solely

01:17:04.480 reliant on fossil fuel based energy, especially in a province where we've got, you know, a comparatively

01:17:09.600 high level of hydroelectric power. But you can't do everything with electricity. I mean, you still

01:17:14.640 have to, you know, I mean, you got to move gas around. And so despite being in favor of that

01:17:20.640 project, as many of the indigenous folks on the band councils were, as they had articulated to

01:17:25.920 the provincial government during negotiations, leaving the provincial government the position

01:17:29.180 of thinking that everybody's basically in favor of this than a group of activists within the

01:17:35.440 Wet'suwet Nation who were not really on the Bank Council, but were more aligned with their,

01:17:40.460 like there were some hereditary chiefs there, et cetera. They set up blockades to try to stop it. 0.99

01:17:45.080 And the reason why I supported their right to do that was not because I was opposed to the gas

01:17:50.360 line coming through. I was opposed to the federal government being able to basically send in the

01:17:54.860 RCMP into sovereign territory, whether you consider the Wet's Wet Nation to be sovereign

01:18:00.540 or whether you consider British Columbia to be sovereign, I didn't like the idea of the RCMP

01:18:05.920 coming in to enforce basically a corporate expansion into sovereign territory, even though

01:18:11.300 I was in favor of that happening. And that's sort of, I think, the nuanced position that we,

01:18:15.240 those kind of nuanced positions are what are important if we're going to bring people on

01:18:18.980 board with this idea that it's possible for us to have more sovereignty and more say over what

01:18:24.120 happens in our own in our own borders it's similar to the question on uh on inter-provincial travel

01:18:29.120 during covid between bc and alberta i i i had to step up i'm not sure if you got into this in the

01:18:34.300 in the opening segment uh but you know i'm i there was a lot of british columbians are calling for a

01:18:40.500 total ban i mean people in my family are like who who who sort of you know they're caught in this

01:18:45.280 tension between bc and alberta the ones that are still in bc they want that border shut right down

01:18:49.800 right and i don't know down the rocky and i don't know if it's because they're worried about covid

01:18:53.280 They just don't want the in-laws visiting as often, right?

01:18:56.780 But whatever, you know, and you get on Twitter and that's all you see on there is people calling for more restrictions on our freedom and more lockdowns and all this kind of stuff.

01:19:07.160 And, you know, people like me and I think people like you at the time were saying, well, hang on a second.

01:19:14.120 Because let me back up when this question was posed to Premier Horgan in B.C., his position was, well, I don't think we really can shut down the border anyway.

01:19:23.000 And we were wondering whether he was referring to a logistical argument or whether he was referring to making a constitutional argument, which are two different things.

01:19:31.060 And when he was asked to clarify it, he sort of fell back to the logistical argument saying, well, it's logistically difficult or impossible to shut down all the entry points between BC and Alberta, which is just hogwash.

01:19:43.000 I mean, there's like four.

01:19:44.220 Yeah.

01:19:44.360 I mean, it's really not that hard if we wanted to do it, but the point is like, you know,

01:19:50.000 there was no evidence that there was this huge influx of COVID infections crossing the

01:19:55.100 border from Alberta.

01:19:56.780 You know, the COVID infections would take place pretty much where you think they would.

01:20:00.280 They'd spark in the old age homes and in places where people are gathering and that kind of

01:20:04.960 thing.

01:20:05.860 So it wasn't an evidence-based call anyway.

01:20:08.640 People, I think they just see Albertan license plates driving around.

01:20:11.120 They don't like it. 1.00

01:20:11.660 And so if they got to come up with some excuse to try to shut that down, but it's just stupid. 0.99

01:20:15.740 I mean, they're coming here, they're spending money and there are sisters and brothers, you know, just over the just over the provincial border. 0.99

01:20:21.680 Like they're they're us. So I don't I don't know what what that was all about.

01:20:26.060 But I was rather concerned for a moment that our premier would take the position that possibly that constitutionally we can't shut the border down. 0.77

01:20:34.160 You damn right we can. And if the federal government disagrees, well, let's just do it anyway. 0.59

01:20:38.640 Well, I mean, it's going to take 50 years to litigate the court case, and by then everyone's going to have forgotten that it happened.

01:20:43.480 That's right. And so if they tell us, you know, you can't do that anymore, okay, well, thanks.

01:20:47.580 We'll remember that until we do it again. 0.95

01:20:49.300 But the point I want to make is you can take that position about having the sovereignty over your own provincial border without advocating to actually shut things down between BC and Alberta, which we're definitely agreed would just be stupid.

01:21:01.400 And so that's another issue where it's just a good example of this question of sort of provincial versus federal sovereignty.

01:21:08.660 And, you know, the points that you and Derek made in the opening segment were absolutely spot on.

01:21:13.320 Most of the political parties out West, whether they're conservative or progressive, and the NDP is no exception in British Columbia in particular, they're all staunchly Federalist parties.

01:21:23.220 So you're never going to get any discussion of this with an NDP government in British Columbia.

01:21:28.500 I mean, the big story at the beginning of the NDP elevation back in 2017 was sort of this burgeoning bromance between Horgan and Trudeau, which, you know, I think a lot of people...

01:21:39.160 It's a little hard to watch.

01:21:40.100 Well, for people like me, it was. It was sickening, actually. It's just like, oh, God, really? Like, you know, why don't we just elect federal liberals then?

01:21:46.540 Which we don't, thankfully, we don't really have in British Columbia. But the consequence of that, of course, is that federal liberals end up sort of infesting the, like there's an infestation in the BC NDP.

01:21:56.660 And then there's also, you know, some of them end up in the more conservative-aligned parties.

01:22:01.020 Certainly, there's lots in the B.C. Liberal Party.

01:22:03.280 And that's a problem.

01:22:04.440 I mean, I think this question needs to be driven right through all of those parties.

01:22:09.080 You know, where do you stand on these issues of provincial independence vis-a-vis the federal government?

01:22:13.520 How willing are you to just contract out all of our sovereignty, provincial sovereignty and authority to Ottawa, which is, like I said, not that much farther away from us than Japan?

01:22:24.200 you know and it doesn't and it certainly doesn't it doesn't seem that way with from the perspective

01:22:29.080 of at least of international trade and internal trade in in canada i think something else that

01:22:33.800 kind of needs to be noted here it's actually uh being brought up by one of our commenters here

01:22:37.400 cindy is saying uh that you should have them on your show uh the chiefs that represent their

01:22:41.080 territories and uh that's i think that is part of it it's like we have to find the stakeholders i

01:22:45.480 mean this is kind of classic canadiana right like so so right from the beginning of confederation

01:22:49.560 Right. We had we had, of course, somebody had to represent the French speaking as well as the Roman Catholic religion.

01:22:56.200 Right. That was found in New France. Now, you know, then Quebec or, you know, lower Canada.

01:23:01.880 And and then, of course, what was going on in Ontario. Right.

01:23:04.720 Which was very strongly, very orange, very Protestant, very proud to not be Catholic.

01:23:10.580 And then how to figure that negotiation out, though, of course, were minorities in both places.

01:23:14.700 then there was the the the absentee landlord issues and the maritimes because people kind

01:23:20.720 of colonized the maritimes the way they'd colonized whales right or at least in the sense that the

01:23:25.540 power being projected by the majority or by the those in power over the people there was that

01:23:31.240 yeah i know you can just be my serfs and it's like well this is the new world like can't we

01:23:35.220 be free and have have our liberty and blah blah blah so i mean like this has always been kind of

01:23:39.980 the thing like when it comes to canadian issues we have to find those we have to find of course

01:23:45.820 it just the stakeholders right we have to find the stakeholders the people who can represent

01:23:49.680 their particular population and then move forward but again this is actually a great place to

01:23:54.060 mention something else that's been brought up between us before which is i think again maybe

01:23:59.460 perhaps it's hard for people throughout the rest of western canada understand just how diverse bc

01:24:04.000 is and that's diversity before we had more immigration okay and i'm not saying i'm against

01:24:08.840 immigration or anything that's fine but i mean that like we have diversity of course since since

01:24:13.840 newer immigration for sure and and the post-war boom and everything else that's happened in bc

01:24:17.700 but there's a huge amount of diversity here too because it goes all the way right back to even

01:24:22.380 our inception as a province there's literally like a firewall between church and state because of how

01:24:27.680 paranoid uh the founders of our province were when it came to questions around uh say you know church

01:24:34.440 to church schools versus uh versus provincial schools and public schools this is not a this

01:24:39.300 is not an old uh or a new problem this is an old problem british columbia and the diversity of

01:24:45.080 those stakeholders is a lot so the idea that you know the r150th is coming down the pipe here in

01:24:50.200 bc obviously it's covid so that's probably not going to help anything but at our 150th how would

01:24:54.660 we even celebrate bc properly it's pretty it's pretty hard like you've got so many different

01:25:00.860 people that would have to represent their particular kind of background and what they

01:25:04.980 bring to BC and then have them come together. And I just, you know, I come from, you know,

01:25:09.380 my mother is a Mennonite and through Vanderhoof and then of course, Swift Current stock. So,

01:25:15.300 you know, low German and everything else coming out of Saskatchewan, of course, like Mennonite,

01:25:19.400 big population in the prairie. But this is a thing in a way, like I understand that belonging

01:25:24.980 better than I understand it as it is out here in BC, because it's not, it's kind of a very

01:25:29.580 important population right where she's from but it's it's rather diverse they're not necessarily

01:25:34.180 all connected in bc even though they do share a similar faith and of course an ethnicity and the

01:25:38.280 food and the family background the tradition like this that's a perfect example the same thing to

01:25:43.240 the point of of the two aboriginal groups being against uh set up against each other on the

01:25:47.440 question of the pipeline there's just a lot of diversity in bc and so the question of sovereignty

01:25:52.000 or independence or getting more from ottawa it's so easy to conquer and divide in bc is kind of

01:25:57.160 the point i'd make there that's a good point i really like this point that uh that we put up

01:26:01.040 western canada had bc alberta saskatchewan and manitoba western canadian license plates only

01:26:08.380 people wouldn't know which province you're from and discrimination would be more difficult

01:26:11.360 that's a great idea the challenge of course is that um you know in bc we have uh there's a public

01:26:17.200 monopoly on uh on auto insurance that's right which i'm very in favor of and you're probably

01:26:22.300 not not in favor of uh but that would you know we'd have to reconcile between the provinces

01:26:26.260 sort of who was issuing the plates and whether it was done through, you know, the evil public

01:26:30.780 monopoly or left to the private sector. Or you could just draw your own. Yeah. So like straight

01:26:35.860 up anarchy, you just make your own, get your own little piece of tin and then like get your little,

01:26:40.220 you know, pound in your numbers from behind. But I just, I love that people are thinking like this

01:26:45.000 because it, you know, the challenge I think we have before us is showing this kind of,

01:26:50.300 you know, on the left, we call it solidarity, but showing this unity of purpose and identity

01:26:54.880 despite our diversity between the provinces, because if we don't engender that kind of unity

01:27:01.260 between the four Western provinces, Ottawa just continues to roll over us. And this is what the

01:27:05.420 Western standard, of course, has been identifying for decades through its various iterations. And

01:27:10.120 I'm really happy to see that that focus hasn't shifted in this newest iteration.

01:27:15.820 But that's the challenge. And we talk a lot about diversity on this show. And even though I'm a

01:27:21.940 progressive, I tend to agree with conservatives on this question of whether diversity is a

01:27:26.720 strength or not. I don't think it's a strength. It doesn't mean that, you know, diversity is a

01:27:32.560 bad thing, but it's a challenge. And you don't have to think too hard about this to understand

01:27:37.800 that it's a challenge. Of course, it's a challenge when you have a whole number of people that have

01:27:41.300 very different backgrounds and different politics and different views of the world and how the world

01:27:46.340 works trying to to create this kind of unity of identity and culture uh in such a young country

01:27:53.020 is is very difficult but it's a task that we we have to undertake in fact that's what the

01:27:58.460 canadian project was absolutely it was and you know now we now we fly the slogans of how diversity

01:28:04.280 is a strength which is actually it's disingenuous it doesn't help us it doesn't help any of us to

01:28:09.140 try to try to pull everybody together um because it it totally ignores the challenges that are

01:28:15.920 posed by diversity and sort of leaves us off the hook in trying to surmount those challenges

01:28:23.540 and build that common unity and political purpose.

01:28:26.160 I think there's an appetite for it across all cultural divides within, especially the

01:28:30.200 West, but certainly across Canada.

01:28:32.800 You talk to anybody, and I think they generally want to see more unity and more agreement,

01:28:38.180 less fighting, and sort of less…

01:28:40.420 And a better country.

01:28:41.260 And a better country, absolutely.

01:28:42.600 People have different ideas of what that looks like.

01:28:44.480 but this is what you know a lot of people on the left who are really talking about trying to ban

01:28:49.360 everybody and all this cancel culture stuff and you get on twitter you say the wrong thing and

01:28:53.120 next thing you know you lost your job and everything i mean all that does is suppress

01:28:56.880 all of that discussion and so it's not like you know the people that they're banning it's not like

01:29:00.880 their their opinions suddenly change or go away and that and that the you know the twitter ready

01:29:06.000 of one uh they still exist it's just that they become further and it makes it it makes diversity

01:29:13.120 even more difficult because people get not just diverse but separated and isolated where the

01:29:18.080 strength of not just the western tradition i don't mean western tradition in the provincial

01:29:21.440 sense but western tradition in the academic sense in the global sense the strength of it is that

01:29:26.800 it's built on this idea that ideas should rub up against each other create friction

01:29:32.080 and the result of that is some greater unity and emerging of those ideas a better idea and a better

01:29:37.840 idea and a better understanding amongst people who don't see the world the same way so that

01:29:43.120 uh you can come to some common understanding and consensus uh i mean i generally hate the

01:29:48.640 word consensus but uh you know it's sort of apt in this i think i think that this but this is

01:29:52.960 exactly it again in this inaugural show this is one of the reasons why we're doing what we're

01:29:56.560 doing here it's important it's not just a symbol it's a it's a living thing an incarnational thing

01:30:01.120 if you want to use a certain christian language the idea is that again like we are so siloed off

01:30:07.920 from each other and i think that's how ottawa kind of continues to keep us under its thumb

01:30:11.360 And the Laurentian consensus continues to keep Canada under just a terrible, a terrible kind of tyranny.

01:30:16.780 Like, you don't have to get far from, it's not like it's just Ontario's fault.

01:30:20.020 I like calling Ontario unterrible just to be that guy.

01:30:23.300 But the truth is that right in the middle of Ontario, right, like right, as soon as you get away from the very small strip of land between Toronto and then, of course, using Lower Canada and Quebec all the way out to Gatsby, that very small strip of land, as soon as you get away from that stuff, 0.97

01:30:38.300 Ontario and Quebec, like rural Ontarians and Quebecers,

01:30:41.040 even middle town, right?

01:30:42.480 Or, you know, larger towns, but not in the beltway, right?

01:30:45.280 They, those people don't agree with what goes on in Toronto

01:30:49.340 and in Quebec City and in Montreal.

01:30:51.820 They don't agree with that.

01:30:52.980 And they want something different.

01:30:54.040 So I think all Canadians, you know, around Canada

01:30:56.620 that are not just in the little beltway

01:30:58.420 are capable of finding agreement

01:31:00.080 and moving forward as a country and getting somewhere.

01:31:03.100 Of course, we focus here on Western Canada,

01:31:05.520 but to your point as well, like we're so siloed off sometimes

01:31:08.300 that that as soon as we hear an opposite idea we immediately attack we can see this all over

01:31:12.240 twitter nowadays we can see it in cancel culture that's something that i think it needs to be

01:31:16.140 stated from the beginning here as well we have no tolerance for cancel culture around here we're

01:31:20.000 going to be talking to people all across the spectrum on the show we are here to hear real

01:31:25.020 ideas from real people we're not here to promote hate like duh that's obvious but but we are here

01:31:31.740 to talk to people who might have some very challenging and controversial things to say

01:31:35.660 well amen we need we need some new ideas because the ideas we're working with right now are

01:31:40.200 you know throwing people out of their houses there's not enough work the jobs aren't paying

01:31:44.620 and we and what we've done with covid and how that's gone that's not worked out well for us

01:31:51.320 so if we're going to go somewhere then we need we need to hear real ideas from different people and

01:31:56.240 it might sound strange at first but we need to have some discussion and as long as everybody

01:32:00.060 can play within the rules and you know be polite there's no reason for there to be any calls for

01:32:04.720 cancellation here i don't have any time for that i don't think you have any time well you know i

01:32:08.040 don't and because you can't like i said earlier you cancel somebody they don't disappear you know

01:32:12.080 there's still a voter so if you're trying to build some kind of a political coalition where people

01:32:17.440 are reconceptualizing what their own identity is and what it means for the future you have to you

01:32:22.220 got to try to build as many uh people into you know pull as many people into that discussion as

01:32:27.280 possible because you got to build that uh that coalition but you know i mean it doesn't mean

01:32:32.120 that you can't have significant disagreements with folks.

01:32:35.920 And certainly, as you start to have these discussions,

01:32:38.000 as I've observed over the last probably decade or so,

01:32:40.900 that I've been exploring the idea

01:32:43.020 of reconceptualizing Confederation,

01:32:45.880 is that people get really, really emotional about this.

01:32:48.160 There are people that are really, really attached

01:32:50.220 to the Canadian brand, which, I mean, I get it.

01:32:52.760 I understand it.

01:32:53.360 People like to be proud of their country.

01:32:56.240 I'm proud of my country.

01:32:57.940 I'm not proud of who leads it,

01:32:59.720 but that's not a reflection of the whole country and it's certainly not a

01:33:03.960 reflection of sort of the diversity from from the center out west but you have

01:33:08.360 to I mean you have to have those discussions within within the province

01:33:14.020 to be able to pull everybody together but but you have to do so knowing that

01:33:18.860 people are gonna get really emotional about it and so this is this is I think

01:33:22.920 the challenge for folks and I've seen it's been interesting to watch people

01:33:27.880 that are having these discussions in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, et cetera, how they

01:33:31.000 respond to sort of the reaction you get, you get back from federalists, for lack of a better

01:33:37.140 term.

01:33:38.380 And it's interesting because the reaction can be quite strong.

01:33:41.360 I think the response from those of us who want to have these discussions needs to be

01:33:45.480 tempered, civil and articulate, because again, we don't want to fight our way out.

01:33:52.800 We don't even necessarily want out.

01:33:54.720 We just want to articulate what the future is, what our own needs are.

01:33:58.680 And we also want to demonstrate, let's be frank,

01:34:00.340 I think the project before us is for the four Western provinces

01:34:04.220 to be able to demonstrate definitively to Ottawa in a way that can't be denied by them,

01:34:10.940 that we can pull our stuff together and we can work in unison

01:34:14.960 and we can do so for Western interests to the point where we can demonstrate

01:34:20.760 that, look, we really can do this on our own if things don't get better.

01:34:26.040 And yeah, maybe they'd finally start paying attention to that.

01:34:27.980 Well, you don't have to fight with people to demonstrate that.

01:34:30.720 You just do it.

01:34:32.180 And so that's why building those linkages between the provinces is so important.

01:34:37.040 Building the economic linkages between the provinces is important.

01:34:39.640 It means that British Columbia, and I know this enrages so many of my environmentalist

01:34:43.780 friends when I say this stuff, but British Columbia has to understand that Alberta needs

01:34:48.000 to get its product to Tidewater.

01:34:49.080 And we have to be partners in that. It doesn't mean that, you know, we don't share in the benefit of it. Absolutely, we should share in the benefit of it. I mean, I think the best way, I think pipelines should all be owned by BC Hydro that go through BC. And BC Hydro should be expanded to be a provincial energy crown corp so that we've got control over the infrastructure in this province that is most vital to our provincial interests.

01:35:12.080 And if there's revenue that's derived from it, if there's wealth that's derived from it, which, of course, there is, it's going to us first.

01:35:18.900 It's not going to people out of province, for instance, either through the way corporations siphon money out of the province or not.

01:35:25.460 It's not to say that I want to freeze the private sector out.

01:35:28.500 One of the functions of a crown corporation is also to contract in private sector contractors to do the work.

01:35:34.360 But the ultimate revenue, the sale of the energy, the transport, the wealth that's generated, that's ours, man.

01:35:40.080 And that's my point.

01:35:41.020 And I think the reason why people on the left get so angry when I say that is because, you know, you just can't say, look, I think we actually should we actually should build pipelines.

01:35:50.300 Now, that's another one of your opinions is probably going to get you in trouble on both sides, because on the other side, it's not on the right side.

01:35:55.780 All I can hear is it's not even I'm not an Albertan, but I could hear it from a chorus somewhere in the back that, you know, that sounds like the national energy program again.

01:36:05.900 Yes, except we're running it.

01:36:07.940 Yeah, we'll call it the Western Energy Project.

01:36:11.640 Perhaps one thing to assuage any of the anger that might be stemming from our brothers and sisters on the other side of the mountains is that it should be noted that, of course, that was also administered from Ottawa, and that's why it didn't work.

01:36:26.440 And maybe the other way to look at it, too, is that when the oil crash came, and I mourned the oil crash, I was right in the middle of getting my welding when the oil crash came.

01:36:35.460 So obviously competing with guys who had their A tickets and 10 years of experience for a job that paid less than $20 an hour after oil crashed was not working for me.

01:36:44.660 So I got to suffer through that milieu as well.

01:36:46.820 But the point is that maybe another way of looking at it is that whatever was going right for Alberta before everything went sideways in 2014, I mean, did those private corps show up after things went sideways?

01:36:59.760 That's a serious question.

01:37:01.340 And so whether we have to call it the banal and very evil name, we all know the National Energy Program or Provincial Energy Program, the BC Energy Program.

01:37:11.060 The thing is that whatever was happening after peak oil, I think that Albertans really been left behind.

01:37:16.900 And I think they've been let down by their own their own people on this or people out of out of province people, international corporations that have kind of let them down.

01:37:24.800 And that that needs to change.

01:37:26.880 So we need to find a way to make things more equitable on all these questions.

01:37:30.820 Whether we're talking about trees or oil or gas or hydro, there needs to be a way forward that definitely keeps that stake in our country, in our province, in our neighborhood.

01:37:40.320 And the wealth from it is generated and brought back home.

01:37:43.040 That's not a question.

01:37:44.100 How we do that is a debate for a different time.

01:37:47.280 We had another Facebook post come up here.

01:37:49.880 Pamela here.

01:37:50.620 Yeah.

01:37:50.980 Yeah.

01:37:51.400 It's a good point.

01:37:52.820 and it's certainly it's a it's a like people people perceive it to be that way and you're

01:37:58.420 talking sort of about the north coast area in British Columbia so you know Prince Rupert

01:38:02.180 Kitimat that kind of thing I would disagree with you Pamela and you know respectfully in a sense

01:38:07.600 that yes there's a high concentrate you're absolutely right there's a high concentration

01:38:10.540 of environmentalists in in that part of our province who are very vocal and concerned about

01:38:16.420 moving energy products around but you know I mean you've had a conversation very recently with a

01:38:21.960 a fellow named Ellis Ross, who is, if folks aren't familiar with him,

01:38:26.540 he's a member of the BC Liberal Caucus,

01:38:28.080 which is currently the opposition party in British Columbia.

01:38:31.560 But it's also sort of the,

01:38:33.480 with the exception of the BC Conservative Party,

01:38:35.500 which doesn't have any, holds no seats.

01:38:37.520 That's sort of the home for, for conservatives in BC.

01:38:40.440 Federal conservatives.

01:38:41.300 Yeah.

01:38:41.600 Ellis Ross is a former Heisla Nation Chief.

01:38:45.500 So an indigenous man.

01:38:47.400 He's actually running for the leadership of the BC Liberal Party.

01:38:49.940 And he's very, he's from, you know, the North Coast, which is where the Heisla Nation is.

01:38:56.080 Yeah, former chief councillor.

01:38:57.540 Yeah, and very pro-development and pro-pipeline and definitely understands sort of how our economy works.

01:39:06.980 You know, he recognizes that, yeah, the majority of jobs in BC are not necessarily resource-based jobs.

01:39:13.440 They are, in fact, like numerically, most jobs are in the service sector.

01:39:16.220 But he understands, as far too few people do in this province, that those service sector jobs depend on the resource sector jobs.

01:39:24.860 Nobody's got any money to spend at the grocery store or a restaurant if those resource jobs don't exist.

01:39:33.040 And we've seen this play out multiple times in British Columbia.

01:39:35.720 Mackenzie is a great example, a real forestry town.

01:39:38.380 And when the bottom sort of fell out of forestry in this province, we're going back now 15 years or so, a number of those jobs departed.

01:39:45.600 a lot of the mills like we had record mills shut down it was like a ghost town and it and to this

01:39:50.380 day i think they have um yeah i mean it's very difficult uh same thing happened to mcbride i

01:39:54.400 think mcbride is down to about 800 people now in the robson valley and uh same kind of thing and

01:39:59.020 so it's it's just it's devastating to those communities and that's what happens when you

01:40:03.300 lose the resource base it's there's this misconception i think you're absolutely

01:40:07.100 correct not just on the north coast amongst those access but it's the predominant view in

01:40:11.180 vancouver and in victoria that we can sustain ourselves on these service sector jobs it's as

01:40:17.040 if like it's this you know for the coffee will make itself man yeah for the for the philosophers

01:40:22.640 amongst you it's like they believe there's just turtles all the way down there's no there's no

01:40:26.080 foundation to any of it doesn't matter and so you know you pose this question to these folks well

01:40:30.260 okay if that's true then you know vancouver should be able to exist as a city-state uh all to all

01:40:35.520 unto itself and just rooftop gardens yeah and the economy will just keep humming along based on the

01:40:40.300 like the restaurant industry it's not to denigrate the restaurant industry it's very important and

01:40:43.640 they're hurting right now as bad or worse as anybody but even the folks that you know i'm a

01:40:48.400 former server for years when i was in college myself i you know i've slung drinks across the

01:40:52.300 bar and uh and and subsisted on on on that industry for a number of years but but i understood as i

01:40:58.600 think most people in that industry understand they understand who's coming in to buy the service and

01:41:02.800 they understand where their money comes from especially if they're in a smaller community

01:41:06.540 And it is frustrating to see in the larger cities like Vancouver, Victoria, etc.

01:41:11.240 They've forgotten that argument.

01:41:12.720 They've forgotten the foundation of the economy.

01:41:14.800 In the North Coast, which you've referenced, Pamela, I think the debates definitely play out.

01:41:20.020 But there is a start, like my uncle, for instance, used to work for BC Ferries

01:41:23.140 and sort of works on the side with the spill cleanup crew.

01:41:28.860 And, you know, a number of folks there sort of in the same milieu, very pro-development.

01:41:33.940 And Kitimat, I mean, that's a pro-development town.

01:41:38.220 There's environmentalist voices there for sure.

01:41:40.700 So it's not quite as cut and dry.

01:41:42.220 There's some hope that, you know, if we were talking about a more independent future,

01:41:47.520 that you can be assured that there's people that agree with you that our friends to the

01:41:53.100 east in Alberta need some assistance in getting their product to Tidewater.

01:41:56.880 And again, I mean, the conversation we haven't really had yet is like, you know, what's the

01:42:00.140 what's the end goal here because it doesn't matter how how supportive you are of fossil fuel energy

01:42:05.820 based industries um or or how long you think that those resources are going to last they are they

01:42:11.500 are actually finite i mean we may not see the end of it for generations but they are finite and and

01:42:16.220 so when something is finite and the supply starts to go down the cost goes up and even if that

01:42:21.020 doesn't happen right away there's other global factors that can drive the cost up uh you know

01:42:24.700 if saudi arabia or russia start to flood the market again the price can go down so low that

01:42:28.780 that it's just too expensive to pull it out of the ground in Alberta or it's not economical.

01:42:33.280 And so we do, and this is what I think the left doesn't give any credit to the right about,

01:42:38.360 is that there is an understanding amongst the pro-development forces that are mainly

01:42:41.960 represented politically on the right end of the spectrum. There's an understanding there that we

01:42:45.520 do have to transition at some point. We have to start working on transitions. And so on the left,

01:42:49.880 you get these calls in the most radical sectors of just shutting it down now because there's a

01:42:53.580 climate crisis and we're all going to die if we don't do this within the next 12 minutes,

01:42:57.040 right which is just a ludicrous argument uh it doesn't matter if like it doesn't matter how much

01:43:01.960 i agree with some of these folks on other issues um but what they refuse to uh see or to agree to

01:43:08.080 or even discuss is is how bad is it for uh civilization in our communities if you shut

01:43:14.820 everything down right now i mean like it's far worse than i think uh you know having having to

01:43:19.880 live through a hurricane or whatever is going to come from climate change i mean that stuff's bad

01:43:23.440 and it's it's dangerous but you can't downplay the economic uh we're seeing this in with covid

01:43:28.500 as well i mean this is this is the grand debate between lockdown versus uh economic sustainability

01:43:33.680 or health safety versus economic sustainability and you just cannot uh take one position over

01:43:39.640 the other you have to recognize that lockdowns have a significant negative impact on our economy

01:43:45.620 and people suffer for that and will suffer for generations if if we if we're if we don't take

01:43:51.100 it into account and we're seeing that so we have to have this conversation about what that transition

01:43:55.820 looks like but it can't involve just turn the tap off in fact i would argue and this is why i'm so

01:44:01.060 in favor of sort of the public approach to to utilities you know through like a crown corporation

01:44:06.600 on power is that you know it's like a corporation is is not going to set aside uh some of the wealth

01:44:14.260 that's derived from that extraction uh to try to fund uh solar power plant public solar power plants

01:44:20.120 in the same jurisdiction they're not going to it's not that they don't do that because they're evil

01:44:23.700 they're just not incentivized to do it their their purpose is to make a profit i mean that's

01:44:27.860 that's what the purpose of a corporation is i don't say that in a negative way that's literally

01:44:31.100 why they're there if they don't do that people are out of jobs i mean that's how it works

01:44:34.840 where if you do it under the public model like bc hydro for instance you can make decisions to

01:44:41.180 siphon off some of that wealth and put it over into expansionary industries to try to to prepare

01:44:48.200 for a transition or to provide a buffer or a fallback if we have a huge commodity spike

01:44:53.140 somehow that is actually sparked for reasons beyond our control because of international

01:44:57.260 factors.

01:44:58.840 And so, you know, having that sort of nuanced conversation is it can be difficult in British

01:45:03.480 Columbia.

01:45:03.840 I don't think it's as difficult in Alberta, although, you know, obviously people like

01:45:08.180 Derek will tell us that, no, no, we have those debates, too.

01:45:10.220 And he's absolutely correct.

01:45:11.400 In British Columbia, I would say it's like it's even more divided.

01:45:14.600 And the pro-development forces and advocates have a more difficult time in British Columbia having that conversation because there is this onslaught that's ever present of people that just, you know, they won't even talk to you if you entertain any continuation of fossil fuel-based industry or energy production.

01:45:33.720 And I think that the biggest thing for me is it's not even a question of like pointing out hypocrisy or whatever else.

01:45:38.860 The single biggest thing for me is that it's like, it's not just the transitional thing, right?

01:45:43.200 you know sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath right like we either we can either live in

01:45:47.520 a more human world or we can live in a more inhuman one i would choose the human one but

01:45:52.000 the flip side of the equation in my mind is that the fact of the matter is even if we were to try

01:45:57.040 to get to the ultimate green stuff they talk about um wind farms and tidal stuff like because even

01:46:02.960 hydro uh for a lot of these environmental people is not if that's not good enough it's still too

01:46:07.520 much it's too uh destructive to the environment that sort of thing and and indeed it does have

01:46:12.480 destructive capabilities environment i'm not acknowledging that but again if we're going to

01:46:16.560 try and put things on the level or get get a hierarchy of of uh what is worse and what is

01:46:23.000 better uh that i think hydro is pretty high up there for for a better kind of use of energy

01:46:27.780 but nonetheless the point is that like we can't just leave people behind i think that's the

01:46:32.080 biggest thing and indeed that's kind of that's again the western alienation thing all wrapped

01:46:35.820 up in one little phrase right people feel left behind they feel like auto was just doing whatever

01:46:39.500 it wants and it doesn't care what they do and coming back to this this issue these debates that

01:46:44.560 we need to have about how we're going to move forward into into a brighter future right and

01:46:49.480 perhaps a greener future whatever that means that transition has to be extremely well managed and

01:46:55.300 and we can't be leaving people behind and and to the covid point as well you know there's that i

01:46:59.920 think it's in uh what is it the big short or whatever there's that line it's like you realize

01:47:03.300 that every single point of uh unemployment is literally 10 000 people killing themselves right

01:47:09.040 Like, I mean, that's the United States numbers and whatever. Right. But I mean, social cost, yeah, the social cost to what has happened. And I think I'm no I'm I believe the virus exists. I don't there's no argument here that COVID-19 is or isn't real. It is real. We know it's real. The issue, though, is that our reaction to it.

01:47:29.060 I really do believe that when we analyze the numbers, whenever we finally get out of this whole pandemic mentality and finally move on, I think when we analyze the numbers, we're going to find that our prescriptions to COVID and using the lockdowns and stuff actually cost, I think that will have ended up costing more lives than COVID took.

01:47:47.040 I really believe that.

01:47:48.000 Yeah. I really like this comment by John Frank here. Let's put it up on the screen. I know that there are a lot of shady things happening in northern BC and the views of the NDP is different to the conservative side. If we turn into a Western country, do you think that the border should leave or stay so that we can think of one as the same as now?

01:48:05.780 I mean, it's interesting, right?

01:48:06.980 This conversation about borders as we get into this conceptualization,

01:48:11.280 those are the most exciting conversations to me, right?

01:48:14.000 And I mean, the interesting piece,

01:48:15.500 I think the entry point in having this discussion with folks in the Lower

01:48:19.680 Mainland or Vancouver, Victoria proper,

01:48:22.420 is to have these discussions about the Cascadian tradition.

01:48:27.500 Because there has always, you know, from my perspective,

01:48:30.360 I think going back even to our parents' generation,

01:48:32.420 sort of this nascent trend of people who have always been inspired by this idea of trying to

01:48:38.100 create a national boundary around the Cascadian biosphere and of course that includes that would

01:48:45.480 have to include the participation of Oregon and Washington and you know some people include

01:48:49.720 maybe bits of Northern California etc but I think you know I mean that's a fascinating conversation

01:48:54.840 to have from a geographic sort of a biosphere perspective it makes a lot of sense but it cuts

01:49:00.660 out you know i mean that you know i have a map of cascading on my wall at home which is quite

01:49:05.260 detailed that i picked up last time i was in portland before all the lockdown and uh you know

01:49:10.280 the first thing i noticed of course is that in most conceptualizations of what this looks like

01:49:13.600 it sort of cuts out everything northeast of prince george right so we're actually not in it you know

01:49:18.800 uh and so but but this is interesting to talk about because you know if you try to have this

01:49:23.180 conversation with with a lot of vancouverites maybe from victoria on the progressive side of

01:49:27.400 things, which there are many down there, they usually, you know, they don't really want to talk

01:49:32.080 about that unless you frame it in terms of like the traditional cascading boundaries. So what does

01:49:39.220 that mean for the rest of British Columbia? Say, you know, if we're just to pretend that like there

01:49:43.020 was actually this movement and it was, you know, there was a potentiality for Portland and Seattle

01:49:48.480 to lead their states out of the federal union in the U.S. Well, you know, then that sort of

01:49:56.920 opens the door, in my mind, to this greater unity between Alberta and the northeast of

01:50:03.860 British Columbia, extending right through to the northwest coast of British Columbia,

01:50:08.460 just in a little space between sort of the top of the Cascadian biosphere and Alaska.

01:50:14.640 So that, I mean, and that provides the corridor that's needed for Alberta to get the product

01:50:19.340 of Tidewater, but also provides sort of that political rationale and conceptualization

01:50:24.960 of the Cascadian biosphere for the Lower Mainland, so to speak.

01:50:31.060 Now, I've oversimplified things, but the question was asked,

01:50:34.560 what do the boundaries look like?

01:50:35.400 Well, those are the kind of interesting things that I think we've got to start

01:50:38.220 drawing out on napkins to take a look at to spark these kind of conversations.

01:50:42.940 Because evidenced by Frank's question here, people are thinking about this.

01:50:46.640 What would it look like?

01:50:47.560 Well, this is the perfect place to talk about it.

01:50:49.780 Well, we're coming to the end of our show here.

01:50:53.140 So maybe we should do some closing statements here, maybe some closing questions from summing up and concluding.

01:50:58.120 I think, again, just from the start, number one, thank you for joining us and thank you for supporting the Western standard.

01:51:03.340 It's extremely important that we have these conversations and that and that we continue to grow this movement,

01:51:09.180 this movement that would see the West either get a fair deal from Ottawa or get away from Ottawa and do what's right for the people who live here,

01:51:17.720 regardless of race, class, creed, colour and background.

01:51:21.480 But further to that, I mean, as a kind of closing question here, what as a progressive would you like to see on the right?

01:51:29.460 And then I'll say what on the right we would like to see at a progressive to help us know that we have an ally there in this question of sovereignty or at least a better life for Western states.

01:51:38.120 I'm more interested in your answer because I think this discussion is well developed on the right.

01:51:43.280 And that's sort of been my attraction to having conversations with a number of conservatives where I wouldn't normally have done that.

01:51:49.780 Because those are the folks that are discussing this and making good points in the debate.

01:51:55.120 And even if I disagree with a number of takes on things, I'm just delighted that people are having this conversation somewhere.

01:52:01.500 And so you have to go where the conversation is taking place.

01:52:04.560 And so, I mean, I could say things like, well, look, I think conservatives in this discussion have to be, you know, you have to make more space for, especially in British Columbia,

01:52:16.040 of opposing views on this with an intention to try to bring those people into the discussion

01:52:20.320 closer so that we can find some basis of unity. And it's difficult in British Columbia, I think,

01:52:24.760 because of those sort of historic tensions, political tensions between

01:52:27.560 BC and some of the other Western provinces because of sort of the higher level of progressivism

01:52:32.080 that exists here. But again, I mean, that could just be my own perception of an incorrect

01:52:36.820 perception of conservatives as a progressive. So I hesitate to sort of give that advice to

01:52:41.000 conservatives because, again, I think you're actually doing a better job of having this

01:52:44.460 discussion which is why i'm here uh but i am i am curious about your your take i think i think

01:52:51.080 maybe as a concluding thought on my end it's that ultimately i think a lot of people on the right

01:52:57.160 just just and we do paint addresses with the same brush but i mean i mean that's kind of what

01:53:01.800 twitter's done to this situation twitter has made it all look like all the blue checks are the same

01:53:06.460 right they're all just going to come and get you and cancel you i think it's kind of true actually

01:53:09.740 so so i mean like but in real life i think the biggest thing is that it just has just as you

01:53:17.140 know uh a conservative might be more pro-gun and a progressive is often more anti-gun or those kind

01:53:22.660 of watershed issues maybe a place to start is that any any kind of issue uh is sought to be

01:53:29.500 solved at the lowest possible level first right which is which is i mean we're gonna keep referencing

01:53:33.980 all these things that's called subsidiarity at least from the tradition i come from in catholic

01:53:38.000 social teachings but the but subsidiarity or the idea that there should be at least solidarity maybe

01:53:42.840 use the left-wing word at the lowest possible level so if i'm going to solve a problem in my

01:53:48.240 neighborhood i don't just start a campaign that i guess will solve all the problems in all the

01:53:52.580 neighborhoods across the country where i need to start some big activist thing it's like no i need

01:53:57.120 to go to my neighbor's house knock on the door i guess we are in covet or whatever maybe i'll send

01:54:01.000 them an email the point is i need to network with my neighbor and my next neighbor and the next guy

01:54:05.960 down the street and then that's how movements can start right at the local level I'm not saying that

01:54:09.800 this doesn't happen on the left organization does happen like this on the left but it needs to

01:54:13.720 happen and even questions around like what are we going to do with this street what are we going to

01:54:18.200 do with garbage collection what are we going to do about about questions of noise complaints or

01:54:22.360 whether or not whether or not we support what this new infrastructure that's coming through

01:54:26.220 because I feel like on the right it just always seems like the left will immediately try and phone

01:54:30.680 Ottawa or Victoria or Calgary or Edmonton or any of the any of the Western

01:54:36.140 provincial capitals right and Regina and Winnipeg and so and so that they'll

01:54:42.740 immediately get on the phone to a higher-up and instead of trying to

01:54:46.700 actually have a conversation yeah someone on the yeah with someone on the

01:54:50.280 level yeah yeah that's absolutely true no that's good advice so we'll see what

01:54:54.560 we can do there you go well again thank you so much for joining us today it's

01:54:59.740 been my pleasure to do this inaugural show i apologize for some of the technical difficulties

01:55:04.540 we experienced during it but thank you for your patience and and thank you for supporting the

01:55:08.460 western standard of course do take out a subscription if you can uh be sure to share

01:55:12.700 this video and like this video and again we're looking for feedback so please put comments on

01:55:18.700 the video or send an email to me via the western you can find me on the western and uh i believe

01:55:23.980 It's just ngita at westernonline, westernstandardonline.com.

01:55:29.080 Though we are doing some stuff to our emails in the next couple of days here.

01:55:32.220 So if I don't get back to you, I'm sorry.

01:55:34.120 But that's kind of it, I guess.

01:55:36.380 We're very thankful for your viewership.

01:55:38.120 We're very thankful for your support.

01:55:39.920 Please tell us how we can do better.

01:55:41.320 And let's all move forward to a brighter future as Western Canadians.

01:55:53.980 Thank you.

Western Standard - April 07, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - April 6, 2021

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