Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - April 7, 2021

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00:06:30.000 Hello, and welcome to Mountain Standard Time. I'm your host, Nathan Gita, and today I'm

00:06:42.220 joined by Sheldon Clare, President of the National Firearms Association. Later, we'll

00:06:45.660 be speaking to Stuart Parker, who of course is the President of the Los Altos Institute.

00:06:50.880 Be sure to like the Western Standards page on Facebook to be notified when we go live

00:06:54.960 and subscribe to our website to support our content. Just before we get into all the rest

00:06:59.640 of this, though, I just want to be clear that as we enter the second year of the pandemic with

00:07:03.780 rolling lockdowns, totally different rules across the country, depending on where you live,

00:07:07.740 you'd think we'd have seen it all. People are wearing visors as if they're about to start

00:07:11.840 grinding metal, returning travelers to Canada have been forced to quarantine in pricey hotels

00:07:15.700 at their own expense without food, and even our lawmakers are meeting via Zoom. But the latest

00:07:20.560 news out of Alberta is that Grace Life Church, whose pastor James Coates was held in jail almost

00:07:25.460 all of last month for refusing to suspend services has been raided by the Mounties and a barricade is

00:07:30.820 being erected to keep people away from the building. I've seen a lot of things and I had

00:07:34.560 a lot of things on my COVID-19 bingo card but cops closed church with razor wire was not one of them.

00:07:41.500 We've been living in this theater of the absurd since the entire pandemic began. Here in BC somehow

00:07:46.460 only churches or houses of worship can spread the virus while Costco and Walmart where thousands

00:07:51.160 more people attend in a day than do churches in a week are allowed to remain open it just doesn't

00:07:55.900 make any sense and the masks are required everywhere except when you sit down to eat in a

00:07:59.340 well not I guess as crowded restaurant anymore certainly our restaurants are closed but the point

00:08:03.180 being that you as if walking into the restaurant with the mask on was effective and then sitting

00:08:08.320 down without it is just as effective it doesn't make any sense with this latest act of aggression

00:08:12.800 by the provincial government of Alberta with regards to Grace Life Church as well as the

00:08:16.000 announcement of far more severe lockdown coming Friday at midnight essentially the same lockdown

00:08:20.200 protocol we're having here in British Columbia, I believe that a boiling point has been reached.

00:08:24.320 Throngs of people are calling for universal non-compliance. There are no words appropriate

00:08:28.560 for this show or for Polite Company to accurately describe how the lockdown has harmed people,

00:08:33.700 and I assert without caveat that when the dust clears, we will find out that the lockdowns

00:08:37.500 actually did far more damage and quite possibly killed more people than the virus ever did.

00:08:42.000 The devastation and how widespread it is remains unprecedented, and it is only growing

00:08:45.880 with each passing day. I stand in solidarity with any and all those who simply cannot take

00:08:50.420 the lockdown measures anymore. I hear you. I empathize with you. We all recall that at one

00:08:55.140 point, somebody said that everybody should storm Area 51. And we all remember that, of course,

00:08:59.000 that was nonsense because civilians storming that complex was not going to end well.

00:09:04.140 But the problem is that when it goes the other way, when all of the enforcement officers try to

00:09:08.600 tell us what to do, the fact is that it is compliance that makes the difference.

00:09:12.040 I'm not calling for any kind of revolution or violence, but the fact of the matter is that if people simply just follow their own precautions and just not listen to the nonsense coming out of the mouths of their provincial health officers and just live their lives, things will probably go pretty smoothly.

00:09:28.300 People might accuse me of it being inflammatory.

00:09:30.560 I was actually raised in a faith that claims pacifism as its fundamental ethic, but nonetheless, the point is that we can't suspend our liberties for any longer.

00:09:38.720 So I say this to Grace Life Community Church, may God speed you on your victory and may you find unlikely allies and may the rest of us stand in solidarity with you and remember that most ancient part of the creed, be not afraid.

00:09:51.940 Well, Sheldon, I mean, we've been through this for a little while and we've, you know, it's not a new thing.

00:09:58.740 The pandemic's been happening for quite some time.

00:10:01.700 What do you think needs to change in order for things to move forward?

00:10:05.440 In the pandemic?

00:10:07.180 Wow, that's a big question right now.

00:10:09.940 The pandemic is really something unprecedented in modern memory.

00:10:15.140 I mean, as a historian, I've looked back at pandemics through history.

00:10:20.360 I mean, the great one that is still in many people's minds is, of course, the World War I ending of 1918 to 1922,

00:10:31.540 the Spanish influenza, which killed 50 million people worldwide.

00:10:35.560 This particular pandemic doesn't appear to be in that kind of a ballpark.

00:10:40.060 It's certainly something that is out there.

00:10:42.400 It's spread, but I don't see that what we've been doing has been effective in actually changing or building a better way of life for most Canadians. 1.00

00:10:56.480 I think what we're at risk of doing here is isolating old people who are at risk from this disease. 0.86

00:11:05.880 But isolation is one of the biggest threats to older people.

00:11:11.580 When you leave them out, you can watch older people deteriorate quite quickly when they have no social contact,

00:11:18.260 they don't interact with family members, and all of those things which are said to help prevent the disease also cause other problems.

00:11:23.860 So I think that this is going to go on for a long time. I don't see the quick solutions or the ease of these various restrictions dropping off anytime soon. And I don't know. I don't have the answers for this one, Nathan. I think it's going to be a very long pull. And one thing is sure that nothing will ever be the same.

00:11:45.920 I think that the most important thing maybe to talk about with respect to how perhaps there's a crossover between, of course, firearms advocacy and what's happening right now is that, quite frankly, you guys have all been here before.

00:12:00.360 If you're a gun advocate, you've seen liberty stripped away for years.

00:12:03.920 This is not something that's new.

00:12:05.640 This is not something that's changed very much.

00:12:07.560 Indeed, this is kind of the future that's predicted by a lot of pro-gun advocates and people who believe in firearms rights.

00:12:13.960 And people always laugh it off as if, oh, this will never happen.

00:12:16.760 What are you talking about?

00:12:17.780 Well, we're living it.

00:12:18.780 What do you have to say to people who are doubters before?

00:12:21.640 Well, we've had well over 50 years of gun control that has had nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with civil disarmament, Nathan.

00:12:30.840 That's really been the essence of what's been going on.

00:12:33.980 I mean, my involvement with firearms rights advocacy goes back to the 1970s legislation, Bill C-51, which was brought in by the Liberals and brought in a mandatory police record check, which was the firearms acquisition certificate, which was done prior to transferring firearms.

00:12:53.840 You had to have this little certificate which cost you a few dollars at the time.

00:12:58.240 And that legislation also prohibited a number of firearms.

00:13:03.580 It brought in the prohibited category for the first time.

00:13:06.680 I remember that well because prior to that, you could buy a firearm at 16 years of age.

00:13:13.460 After that, the age was 18 and people who owned firearms at 16 were caught in the middle in the limbo as I was in those days.

00:13:21.780 and i guess it just became your dad's gun like something like that and and it was it was never

00:13:28.040 it was never ever about a really about public safety it was always about putting the screws

00:13:34.560 down on ordinary people to limit their access to firearms and to put more barriers up in front of

00:13:39.580 people to prevent them from having interest in firearms or from having access to them it never

00:13:45.500 stopped a criminal from getting a gun when they wanted one it never ever did and then you saw

00:13:50.440 restrictions like saying replica firearms were prohibited well you know if someone was going to

00:13:56.280 stick up a 7-eleven I'd rather that they were sticking it up with a gun that didn't work that

00:14:01.140 wasn't a real gun than a real gun because if you make them know it different well the criminal is

00:14:05.720 going to go and try to get a real one over a fake one and I think that makes it more dangerous well

00:14:09.980 there's that and I think this is exactly where people you know it's funny because people always

00:14:13.920 say the quiet part out loud you know the joke is that people are supposed to you know we're supposed

00:14:18.260 to be in this position where hey like we you know we understand that there's a difference between a

00:14:22.820 bb gun and and you know even a 22 as as unpowerful as that is um though quite lethal if you if well

00:14:30.340 hang on a second not all 22s are are that that unlethal 22 is a perfectly efficient and can be a

00:14:38.980 highly effective cartridge and the one of the common calibers for our so-called uh ar-15 the

00:14:46.500 The modern sporting rifle, which has been touted as a big target of the recent Order and Council bans of May 1, 2020, of last year, 2020, was to target the AR-15, which is in 5.56 or .223 Remington, which is basically the same caliber as a .22 long rifle.

00:15:07.380 that's a centerfire cartridge. It's a bit more powerful, but the caliber is the same. It's not

00:15:11.880 a heavy, grand bullet capable of destroying buildings at vast distances or anything,

00:15:16.600 as you sometimes think when a lot of the left liberal speak on this. So it's something to be

00:15:23.200 aware of. No, and that's fair enough. The point being, of course, that again, people said, well,

00:15:28.740 they'll never ban non-lethal weapons. They'll never ban BB guns. They'll never ban the idea

00:15:33.880 that like those are toys for kids nobody's ever going to touch those and and gun advocates have

00:15:38.040 said for years no like they're going to come for these things and then they're going to come for

00:15:40.920 everything well if anyone thinks for a moment that they're not after your hunting rifle or shotgun

00:15:45.480 you just need to look closely at the list of the 1500 types of firearms that are included on the

00:15:50.460 bandwidth as well as firearms capable of producing over 10 000 joules or are of specific calibers

00:15:56.600 that are listed because that list includes both action rifles it includes includes some shotguns

00:16:03.380 It includes firearms that are extremely valuable, used for safaris, hunting, dangerous game, and so on.

00:16:10.380 And the fact of the matter is that this is not about public safety, not in any stretch of the imagination.

00:16:18.360 It's entirely about civil disarmament.

00:16:20.080 That's what the bottom line of this is.

00:16:22.200 And the NFA has taken a very strong role in fighting this.

00:16:27.480 We have been working very diligently on our pre-writ election campaign advertising.

00:16:34.220 We've been looking at very targeted ridings that we're going to be advertising in.

00:16:38.220 We're going to be expending a significant amount of money on this particular project,

00:16:44.120 a lot more than we spent even last election, which was more than any other organization out there in a pro firearms capacity.

00:16:51.420 So we're taking this very seriously.

00:16:53.780 We're trying to focus our money on making sure that liberals get defeated.

00:16:58.940 And it's going to be an uphill fight.

00:17:01.360 I mean, there's an awful lot of things going out there in politics, as you're well aware,

00:17:05.100 that are playing havoc with trying to get the changes that we need made.

00:17:11.520 For example, we've got significant problems with the federal Liberals being popular in broad swaths of Ontario.

00:17:25.560 And I mean, our own analysts have been looking at this very carefully and they're saying between, you know, the Conservatives might take as few as 20 to 30 seats.

00:17:34.480 In all of Ontario.

00:17:36.380 Yeah, and certainly in Southern Ontario.

00:17:38.640 And that's pretty serious.

00:17:40.500 That is pretty serious.

00:17:41.900 And I know there are strategists who are going to be looking at this with a great deal of trepidation.

00:17:48.060 But the fact of the matter is these kinds of analyses and polls are highly, highly reliant upon the current time.

00:18:00.900 And everybody knows that things change quickly in the election cycle.

00:18:04.340 They really do. They really do.

00:18:05.600 There can always be a dropped football.

00:18:07.480 There can always be something that goes just slightly sideways.

00:18:10.500 and uh you just you just don't know what's going to come next right so i think that's what's

00:18:17.600 important there what's important there is just that if if we get to a point where we're into

00:18:24.660 this election yes and you know it's clear that uh the liberals are surging what what then is

00:18:32.840 the strategy how do people in western canada how do people are you know pro-firearm people

00:18:38.700 are pro-freedom, especially with everything that's happened with the lockdowns, how do

00:18:42.300 people move forward and feel that they are able to do the right thing?

00:18:47.940 Well, I think that in order to defeat Liberals, focus is important.

00:18:52.760 And if you don't focus the vote, then you're going to see another Liberal government and

00:18:57.860 you may even see a Liberal majority.

00:18:59.480 And that's a very real possibility.

00:19:02.200 And that's a possibility when we have division over outcomes.

00:19:06.200 We have certainly some very strong and highly motivated people in Western Canada who are very angry at the lack of attention being paid to Western issues by the federal government of all stripes.

00:19:23.620 And they've got some righteous indignation there that is perfectly legitimate.

00:19:27.900 However, if you think it's important to look at the holistic approach and say this is a whole country and we want to be part of Canada, then you need to really look at what's important here.

00:19:42.780 And what's important from our perspective is that the Liberals have to go.

00:19:46.680 The Liberals absolutely have to go.

00:19:49.140 And I think that the biggest problems that we're going to be seeing, and these have not really hit the radar in any big way yet, is what's going to happen to our economy.

00:19:57.900 When we're facing a debt that's over a trillion dollars, the highest debt Canadians have ever seen, and we cannot pay for that.

00:20:07.500 I mean, we're hearing calls for things like a universal basic income, but that's simply nonsensical.

00:20:12.820 We cannot afford such an extravagance when we are trying to service our debt with the majority of our annual budget.

00:20:22.360 We cannot pay for this.

00:20:24.740 And what that is ultimately going to mean is a huge financial collapse.

00:20:28.600 And if people don't understand what a financial collapse means, they need to go back and take a history course.

00:20:34.040 And they need to look at things that happened in Europe in the 1920s.

00:20:37.520 They need to look at what happens at the end of the 1920s in North America and in the rest of the world with the problems of the stock market experience.

00:20:47.680 These are all serious, serious matters that need to be taken with full attention by modern society.

00:20:56.640 If society understands the gravity of the situation we're in, then the reaction is going to be different.

00:21:03.520 And I cannot see why people would support this liberal government, which engaged in several bouts of corrupt behaviors, has embarrassed itself and its country with the examples of its leadership, and has done everything it can to make us a mockery with our friends, allies, and neighbors.

00:21:25.820 And the biggest problem, of course, is going to be what happens to our economy.

00:21:29.240 Our economy is going to be in tatters over this.

00:21:31.680 It's no wonder, from our perspective, why they want to take away people's jobs. 0.79

00:21:35.660 I think that it doesn't just occur to me that possibly, you know, there's no small amount of trepidation, at least on my end, for what could possibly happen if we fail to get things sorted out when it comes to civil disarmament and the rest of it.

00:21:56.880 But a lot of Canadians, I mean, I'm not saying that Canadians don't have a right to firearms at all.

00:22:01.560 I do believe they have a right to firearms.

00:22:03.280 A lot of Canadians feel like they just don't have the same sort of rights as Americans

00:22:07.740 on this question, or that it's just not articulated the same way.

00:22:11.020 So what happened when it came to our constitutional formation, or even as precedent was set down

00:22:16.040 by the Supreme Court and others, why is that still confusing?

00:22:19.520 Why don't Canadians think that they have the same kind of rights that their American cousins

00:22:23.980 do when it comes to arms?

00:22:25.420 Well, our tradition is a bit different.

00:22:27.260 We're children of the same parent, the Americans and us.

00:22:30.180 We evolved our constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system, and the Americans became a republic.

00:22:37.420 And they had a revolution over that.

00:22:39.960 We've had a couple of failed attempts at little wobbles.

00:22:44.980 They've always been a situation where the monarchy has won.

00:22:49.320 The crown always wins, a Canadian example.

00:22:51.960 And that has been the popular outcome ever since. 0.70

00:22:57.540 But in terms of rights, well, despite what our Supreme Court of Canada has said, the right to bear arms predate the American Constitution and are a product of the British Bill of Rights.

00:23:10.360 They're a product of a lot of common law precedent.

00:23:13.880 So we have those rights, but we haven't asserted them.

00:23:17.860 And what we have been seeing has those rights have been eroding through successive governments and activist legislators.

00:23:26.100 what we have been seeing is a bit of a backlash

00:23:28.780 and I'm optimistic

00:23:30.960 that this backlash is going to be

00:23:32.700 something that is going to help us

00:23:34.820 push back against this because none of

00:23:36.840 what has been going on has been

00:23:38.260 acceptable and

00:23:40.220 for our perspective the big

00:23:42.640 objective this next election must be to defeat the

00:23:44.660 Liberals. We must defeat the Liberals.

00:23:46.580 If we do anything that does not

00:23:48.740 serve defeating the Liberals then

00:23:50.640 we are losing and

00:23:51.640 if you think that voting for anything

00:23:54.520 else besides conservative candidates to defeat the liberals is going to somehow help serve that

00:24:00.720 goal, then you might as well pack up your guns, take them down to the police station and hand

00:24:04.360 them in right now. Because I can tell you that what's coming down the pipe, if the liberals win

00:24:09.140 a majority government, is not going to be good. You will see this bill, if there's an election

00:24:13.180 called soon, the current legislation will die in the order paper. And that sounds great,

00:24:19.940 except if they win again it'll come back even harsher and if it comes back harsher you can

00:24:25.020 probably bet we'll see full handgun bans you know it won't be just a partial ban and cities will do

00:24:30.580 this but that's nonsensical and it's not going to fly uh with our constitution the division of powers

00:24:35.580 clearly says municipalities are creatures of the province i've got to hand it to uh premier kenny

00:24:41.260 in Alberta for taking a strong stand in making it clear to municipalities that a municipal

00:24:50.440 handgun ban is not going to fly, and there's pending legislation, I think it's Bill 211

00:24:55.480 in Alberta, which the Alberta government consulted us on, and we're very, very pleased that they're

00:25:02.180 taking a strong stand to clarify that aspect of the Canadian Constitution, the British

00:25:08.040 North America Act, Sections 91 and 92, which clearly say that this is in provincial purview

00:25:15.120 of the municipalities.

00:25:16.440 So the division of powers does matter.

00:25:19.260 And I think one of the things that provinces need to do in asserting themselves is recognize

00:25:24.760 that in the Constitution, provinces and the federal authority have equal status.

00:25:29.500 It's not a subservient relationship.

00:25:31.840 And I think the fact that there's equal status should serve the firearms community and it

00:25:36.220 should serve all Canadians well.

00:25:38.040 I think that's actually a rather interesting take to a point, because the fact of the matter is that, you know,

00:25:47.000 and throughout the Western standard, is this question of Western separation or sovereignty or getting a fair deal.

00:25:55.200 Maybe we can talk a little bit about both how firearms rights are kind of emblematic of that,

00:26:01.200 and that many people might be surprised that firearms rights are actually a really big deal in Quebec, as you've articulated to me before.

00:26:07.420 But another thing that maybe we can explore a little bit over the course of our hour together here is the fact that you were.

00:26:16.400 I did participate in some of the workshops back in 87, 88, in the early part of the reform days.

00:26:22.860 I remember sitting with a fellow and chairing policy workshops at one of the reform conventions.

00:26:28.620 That would be a guy named Stephen Harper who went on to bigger and better things.

00:26:32.320 We were co-chairing because we were the youngest guys in the room.

00:26:35.980 And we were co-chairing the workshops, writing sections that were going to be incorporated into the old reformed blue book.

00:26:42.300 And I remember those days quite fondly.

00:26:44.920 And I think that we made a difference.

00:26:48.020 I disheartened, however, when we had the joining of the parties.

00:26:53.260 I think that did not go well.

00:26:55.740 There was a lot of people who were critical of it.

00:26:57.200 I was one of them.

00:26:58.200 And I'm seeing now that we've been getting this resurgence of a strong red Tory presence.

00:27:04.100 However, despite all of that, the time for doing that division is not right now.

00:27:11.820 And I mean, there is a significant need to make sure that people get involved with politics.

00:27:20.460 And my hat's off to everyone who's involved in politics in any form, because that really is a huge commitment.

00:27:27.820 And it can be acid on one's soul, so to speak, but it's important that we get in politics and we articulate our views clearly and we tell people why we're there so that they understand that this has to be changed.

00:27:45.780 It's essential.

00:27:48.040 So, you know, I hear people saying, well, you know, Western separation.

00:27:52.380 Well, I'm sorry.

00:27:53.200 I'm not a separatist.

00:27:54.460 You're not a separatist.

00:27:55.360 No, I'm a brave man.

00:27:56.900 coming on this show.

00:27:59.220 I'm a Canadian nationalist,

00:28:01.300 right? I've

00:28:02.940 always looked at this

00:28:04.980 and said, you know,

00:28:06.740 we have our issues. You and Bob are

00:28:08.960 going to get into a fight over here.

00:28:12.220 Bob's a

00:28:13.000 good guy. He's got a lot

00:28:14.980 of sensible stuff to say, usually.

00:28:17.640 But

00:28:17.660 anyway,

00:28:19.540 we've

00:28:22.580 got problems.

00:28:24.180 We've got no question about this.

00:28:26.900 And we probably do need to renegotiate some aspects of confederation.

00:28:31.300 That's pretty clear because it's not an even playing field.

00:28:34.280 And the original parties to confederation have managed to achieve what everyone was afraid of,

00:28:41.840 that there would be this strong central control coming out of Quebec and Ontario

00:28:46.140 that would be basically running rush out over the rest of the country.

00:28:50.320 And that's not okay. 0.69

00:28:51.940 That's why we're supposed to have a strong Senate

00:28:54.180 and why the Senate provides regional representation 0.80

00:28:56.660 and a place for that particular concern to be alleviated.

00:29:01.340 Well, the Senate probably needs to be strengthened 0.98

00:29:03.280 rather than weakened if that's going to be the case to fight that.

00:29:07.400 And I mean, if you're, you know, the problem,

00:29:09.680 one of the problems we have and one of the saving graces

00:29:12.000 we have in our constitution is the big changes require unanimous consent.

00:29:16.160 And you're not going to see Prince Edward Island

00:29:18.140 give up its regional representation in the constitution

00:29:20.820 anytime soon.

00:29:23.400 And so when you have provinces, they need to have particular powers to protect their region.

00:29:30.660 And the commons vote is in the commons.

00:29:33.500 That's where that is.

00:29:35.040 And that's where the big populations matter.

00:29:37.020 But populations have been shifting and more people are living in the West now.

00:29:40.740 And we don't have the proportion of seats that we probably should have in order to reflect that change in our population.

00:29:46.780 But the other thing that's disconcerting is we have large numbers of people who are not inclined to vote in a way that would generally support conservative policies.

00:29:58.680 We have basically a large populations of left-leaning voters in a lot of the urban centers where those votes are.

00:30:05.540 So there's a real need to try to get people to understand some basic economics, that you need to have money coming in in order to spend it.

00:30:15.940 and that you can't just print money

00:30:19.400 and expect that that's going to resolve the world's problems

00:30:22.420 because what happens when you start printing money

00:30:24.760 is you get runaway inflation

00:30:26.000 and you're going to have a big mess.

00:30:28.020 And when we have that runaway inflation,

00:30:29.920 you're going to see changes in bank rates.

00:30:31.400 You're going to see problems with mortgages.

00:30:32.840 You're going to see problems

00:30:33.560 with people not being able to afford their homes anymore.

00:30:35.980 We saw something like this happen

00:30:37.940 in the United States recently

00:30:39.120 with their banking crisis.

00:30:41.000 Yeah, in 2008.

00:30:42.420 Exactly.

00:30:42.860 And we could be facing something much more severe than that.

00:30:46.700 Well, we went through state inflation through the late 70s and into the 80s.

00:30:50.200 And there was some very serious corrective measures that had to be made to the range of, what, there was like 18% interest at one point on something?

00:30:59.320 I well remember one of my friend's fathers going down and buying as many Canada savings bonds as he could carry.

00:31:07.600 And he was laughing and saying the government has made a terrible mistake.

00:31:10.920 Well, the government continues to make terrible mistakes, often even with purpose behind them.

00:31:17.060 And we've got to stand up and fight that.

00:31:19.060 And I say, you know, people have got to stand up and they've got to speak up and they have got to make sure that whatever they're doing leading up to the next federal election is going to see the defeat of liberal candidates.

00:31:32.040 That's what we have to do.

00:31:33.100 So I think that something else that needs to be noted here is, again, the idea that there is a unique reality to firearms rights in Canada in that there is a huge base for it in places that maybe, again, people in the West here wouldn't understand it to be.

00:31:52.960 So something you've talked about with me before is that in Quebec, there's actually a great deal of firearms owners.

00:31:57.880 Oh, absolutely. Quebec has one of the largest populations of hunters in North America. Chasse-Pêche magazine is one of the biggest hunting magazines in North America because they have such an avid readership in French Canada, not just Quebec. Of course, there's also New Brunswick and parts of Manitoba and other places in Canada as well. But there are huge numbers of Quebecers who are very, very pro-gun.

00:32:23.260 The problem that you have is the divided nature of the firearms vote.

00:32:28.620 And the firearms vote is not a unanimous vote in any stretch of the imagination.

00:32:33.200 There are people who own firearms and hunt and engage in all those activities who vote for NDP candidates or vote for liberals, as well as voting for conservatives or other parties.

00:32:43.480 And it's a divided vote.

00:32:45.820 And our job is to try to make that vote a bit more focused and cohesive, because if it isn't, you're going to see those particular people losing their rights as well.

00:32:56.400 And when they understand the nature of the changes that are being proposed by their current liberal regime, then they tend to get a little bit concerned about it.

00:33:05.900 And I think we're going to have a very, very interesting federal election, whether it be one in late spring, which is early summer, or more likely, I think, in the fall.

00:33:15.820 How do we bridge that gap then? In the West, again, there's a lot of times where non-Westerners are treated with a lot of suspicion, and there's this fundamental idea that only the Western Canadians are the ones who feel aggrieved, and nobody else is taking up their grievances with us, and therefore we can all tell Ottawa what to do.

00:33:36.560 Well, I think that there's this myth in some parts of the West that everybody in Ontario is a lefty. And I got to tell you, that's simply not true.

00:33:45.820 And when you look at the voting, what you see is a divided country, and it's divided on ideological lines.

00:33:53.280 It just happens that in parts of the West, the shift is slightly more to the right than it is to the left.

00:33:58.540 In places like Ontario or Quebec, you're seeing a considerably different political situation.

00:34:05.580 And you see large numbers of voters in the big centers who are voting in left and must winning seats.

00:34:13.100 But it's certainly not the case that this is a unanimous block of people who are all voting left. And I've heard this over and over again from some folks who think that, well, they're all a bunch of lefties over there. And that's simply not the case. It's certainly simply not the case that everybody in British Columbia is a granola cruncher lefty either. I mean, I've been called many things in my life, but being a lefty isn't one of them.

00:34:37.340 I mean, I think that the other side of what happens with kind of this miscommunication happens within Canada is that honestly, we are stronger together than we are divided.

00:34:45.860 There's plenty of seats and ridings throughout the Maritimes and through Western Canada, a party commanding these heights.

00:34:53.440 And even if it was two separate parties commanding those heights and working together, they could defeat Central Canada's Laurentian consensus.

00:35:01.120 Well, that's difficult because of the numbers.

00:35:03.100 I mean, when you start talking about things like vote splitting, vote splitting on the left works very well for the right.

00:35:08.780 Like if the NDP surges in Quebec, then you're going to see a conservative victory because they take away or tend to take away votes from the liberal left, as I call it.

00:35:18.360 And the liberals have very much claimed the ground on the left.

00:35:22.460 The NDP has claimed the insanity ground, as far as I can tell lately.

00:35:27.180 Some of the proposals for their upcoming convention, or it may be even going on now. 0.87

00:35:33.100 is uh they're just they're just completely crazy and that that's that's great that they're they're

00:35:38.460 talking about such things but if any of the emotions that i've seen opposed to the ndp

00:35:42.700 convention actually passed well they're done as a political party in canada as far as i can tell

00:35:47.260 and the liberals will have occupied that ground and they basically are the social would be the

00:35:51.980 social democratic party in canada where as the conservatives have been pushing further and

00:35:56.780 further to the left which is a problem for a lot of us uh that means that there is a big open space

00:36:02.780 on the right i mean you've got to make sure that that people look at this and do what they can to

00:36:09.420 defeat that left just despite how uncomfortable it may make one feel as the that that laurentian

00:36:17.740 consensus has been touted of recent years is something that's very deep-seated and there's

00:36:23.900 a very big sense of entitlement i mean i've heard pundits refer to the liberals as viewing themselves

00:36:29.420 as the natural governing party.

00:36:31.660 And I think that that cycle

00:36:33.900 needs to be decisively broken.

00:36:37.120 Conservatives under Harper

00:36:38.160 were able to achieve that for a while,

00:36:40.080 but that fell apart for a number of reasons.

00:36:43.180 And I think that part of the issue

00:36:44.780 is parties get arrogant

00:36:46.140 when they're in power for too long.

00:36:47.520 They start to take,

00:36:48.220 they get comfortable in those seats

00:36:49.640 and they think this is where they belong.

00:36:52.120 And then the voters tend to hand them

00:36:54.040 their hats every now and then.

00:36:55.100 And that's probably a helpful thing.

00:36:57.040 But what kind of activism we've seen out of this liberal government is extremely dangerous to this country.

00:37:03.140 And it's a reason that we're seeing a surge in separatist movements and anger, particularly in the West, and division over resource extraction and all of these issues that are so near and dear to a country that has been based on resource extraction for its entire existence.

00:37:20.600 Going all the way back to the fur trade.

00:37:21.880 We're going all the way back to the fur trade.

00:37:23.540 The fur trade is very much a driving resource extraction industry that was completely renewable and has of late been very much pushed down.

00:37:36.220 But we're in the world we're in.

00:37:39.460 We want change.

00:37:41.080 We're going to have to fight for that change.

00:37:42.700 And I mean, on the firearms matter in particular, we're looking at massive noncompliance being part of this.

00:37:49.740 I mean, I've talked to many people, and it's not just talk.

00:37:53.380 People are very serious that they're not going to be giving up their stuff.

00:37:58.060 They're adamant about it.

00:37:59.820 Our court challenge with Cassandra Parker Premack and KKS Tactical versus Canada that we organized and are fully funding is a very focused challenge to the Ordering Council.

00:38:14.540 And coupled with that, we have to work very hard to ensure the defeat of Liberal candidates.

00:38:22.020 Because we can win the challenge in court, but if the Liberals win a majority, all of that work will be for naught,

00:38:27.920 as it will come back to bite us in an even much more aggressive way.

00:38:31.980 And it's going to be essential that we defeat these guys in this next election.

00:38:38.840 i think that's something else that needs to be kind of noted as we as we look at the possible

00:38:46.720 looming election and and you made this point about vote splitting i i you know call me an

00:38:51.700 idealist but i've always thought that there really is you know there really is a methodology to

00:38:55.780 creating a kind of policy platform that could win over 51 of the season 51 of the people like why

00:39:02.460 why do we need the vote split in order to win can't there be a policy that appeals to canadians

00:39:08.480 enough that they really do elect a majority with a majority of votes? Well, I've rarely seen a

00:39:14.720 majority, a policy that attracts a majority vote. It's a divided country. We're not a two-party

00:39:22.400 system, really. We have multiple options out there, and that's been made clear. That's

00:39:28.880 particularly been a feature that's come out of really the 1960s. I think that's where we really

00:39:34.980 started to see Canada become a much more pronounced third-party system. It was before that,

00:39:41.480 but it became very pronounced, particularly when the CCF became the NDP and they made the covenant

00:39:46.860 with labor that they had, which I think was broken in the 80s and it's become confused as to what the

00:39:53.660 NDP stands for. I don't think the NDP's been very clear with it itself since the 1980s when it became

00:39:59.940 confused over the environment and labor. And you saw such scenes as Mo Sahota, for example,

00:40:05.120 standing at Clayquot Sound, trying to decide if he should have his picture taken with the

00:40:09.020 labor loggers or the environmentalist protesters who were protesting the logging. He couldn't

00:40:15.220 decide where he was supposed to stand. And it was clear on his face that he didn't understand that.

00:40:19.560 And I think that's where the NDP has been for the last 40 years. And this is why you see the rise

00:40:24.540 of things like the Green Party, which kind of started off as a kind of a conservative

00:40:29.480 sandal wearing or Birkenstock granola crunching left and right mix and has sort of evolved

00:40:38.780 into another socialist party, which is again a gun grabber party.

00:40:43.860 Then, you know, you've got these strange divisions out there.

00:40:47.480 The left is getting pretty full with different divisions over on it.

00:40:52.200 and the right of the spectrum has become vacant.

00:40:56.620 It's become occupied with nothing

00:41:00.680 because the conservatives have shifted more

00:41:02.700 to be the more centrist party.

00:41:05.820 That's left many SOCONs, for example,

00:41:08.100 social conservatives out in the cold.

00:41:10.380 It's also left people who take a strident view

00:41:13.840 of economics out in the cold.

00:41:15.980 And you're seeing the welfare state

00:41:18.620 that came out of the 50s

00:41:19.680 kind of driving uh modern uh fiscal policy and i think that's a dangerous thing to have had to

00:41:25.520 happen i think when just mentioning some of the splits that are inside of the uh the conservative

00:41:30.900 party i mean something that's that is a problem for us conserves is that it does seem like i'm

00:41:37.080 i'm definitely a social conservative um i know that you have sympathies that way but uh i'd stay

00:41:41.880 more in the fiscal conservatism question and and but the issue for me is that why why does it seem

00:41:47.920 like every time the SOCONs try to put forward policies, even if they're incredibly mild,

00:41:51.820 they're never given a leg to stand on. I think if there's going to be any question of what's

00:41:55.800 going to happen into this next election, it is the social conservatives within the

00:42:00.540 Conservative Party deciding whether or not they're going to go out and vote or support their candidates

00:42:04.860 because they feel left behind. Oh, I agree. I think the biggest danger in this coming up

00:42:12.540 election, and there will be an election at some point, the next election is going to,

00:42:16.820 the biggest danger there is going to be who's going to stay at home and how do

00:42:20.880 you get those people to understand that staying at home is the worst thing they

00:42:24.780 could do. And I mean, if, if you,

00:42:28.040 if you stay at home and you don't vote,

00:42:29.540 what you're doing is you're abdicating your franchise to those who show up and

00:42:33.920 those who show up may be considerably less friendly than what you're staying

00:42:38.740 home to send a message about, right? If you're,

00:42:42.320 if you're angry at the conservatives uh staying home is is not the way to go they what the thing

00:42:48.620 to do is to show up and work on their campaigns and tell them why you're there and if they're

00:42:53.120 uncomfortable with that that's too bad you but you need to tell you need to tell them and you

00:42:57.780 need to make make it clear that when they win that you're going to you're you're going to either

00:43:03.080 support them or not support them uh when they're in there and i i i've uh often looked at the idea

00:43:08.920 that how the Reform Party started

00:43:11.580 when it was angry with Brian Mulrooney

00:43:13.380 and the progressive conservatives

00:43:15.400 and particularly Kim Campbell's little summer job effort,

00:43:20.700 how all of that played a role.

00:43:23.600 People were very angry.

00:43:24.700 They were angry about lies,

00:43:25.580 about things like the goods and services tax.

00:43:27.800 They were angry about the change in free trade.

00:43:30.200 They were angry about a whole bunch of things

00:43:32.040 that they thought were conservative

00:43:33.400 that just seemed to be thrown under the wheels

00:43:36.900 of progressiveness.

00:43:38.920 in the Mulroney era.

00:43:41.240 And that really strongly led to the formation

00:43:45.480 of a political association.

00:43:47.660 And that political association was called

00:43:49.120 the Reform Association of Canada.

00:43:51.400 And when it got to 100,000 members,

00:43:53.780 it called itself a political party and most people stayed.

00:43:57.280 And that is what works.

00:44:01.020 It definitely worked.

00:44:02.880 The issue was, of course, was again, vote splitting.

00:44:06.000 And the attempt to get that particular concentrated effort to win government became the overarching play.

00:44:15.740 And while it influenced, it had a great deal of influence in the early part of this century, it really faded as people wanted power.

00:44:26.260 And when they wanted power, they were prepared to cut deals and they cut deals.

00:44:29.260 And then the next thing you know, it merged.

00:44:31.740 And we had a bit of a good run.

00:44:34.860 I mean, the Conservatives are the only party that rolled back gun control legislation, which is what they did with ending the so-called long gun registry, which was a partial fulfillment of a promise that had been made to repeal Bill C-68.

00:44:49.480 But when they didn't do that, that caused a lot of furore and angst and anger.

00:44:53.940 And, you know, people are still mad about that.

00:44:55.720 I'm not happy about it either, but we're working towards trying to get back to that.

00:45:01.320 But there's an awful lot of bad gun laws out there that need to get repealed.

00:45:04.860 Because they simply aren't about stopping crime.

00:45:08.260 They are not about anything to do with public safety.

00:45:11.680 They're only about civil design.

00:45:13.460 That's it.

00:45:14.360 I think part of the problem is that none of the narrative matches that discussion, right?

00:45:19.580 People, that's the reality on the ground.

00:45:22.280 We have plenty of gun control legislation.

00:45:24.620 We have gun confiscation legislation.

00:45:25.720 Far more than we need.

00:45:27.040 Far more.

00:45:27.460 And simultaneously, but people are still told like, oh, every time there's a shooting,

00:45:32.440 every time something goes wrong like oh more will help more will help well what's what's happening

00:45:36.500 is that there's an american anti-gun narrative that's driving canadian uh gun grabber groups and

00:45:42.480 canadian federal politics because they keep trying to promote things that american gun

00:45:46.680 grabbers are promoting in the united states that we already have as gun control uh the so-called

00:45:51.500 red flag laws and we've had that for decades and and and and they're they're still pushing this

00:45:56.860 stuff because their american lefty friends down there are telling them this is what they want in

00:46:02.140 the united states and and what they don't get is that there are substantial differences between

00:46:07.240 the legal structures of our countries right it's it's quite a big difference and uh it's not

00:46:13.080 something that one can just so we need oh i've heard people say oh we need a constitution like

00:46:16.700 the americans well really why would you want all your rules limited by a constitution you know

00:46:22.700 that's that that's what that my response to that is and i when you when you have it in the common

00:46:27.420 law, you're not supposed to have those limited. I see Carolee Queen's comment there, every gun

00:46:33.140 owner I've talked to said they will not be giving up their guns. Yeah, that's pretty much the consensus

00:46:37.620 I've got as well, Carolee. That's very, very much the word I've been getting. I haven't heard anyone

00:46:43.580 say that, yeah, I'm willingly going to hand over my, you know, many tens of thousands of dollars

00:46:49.000 worth of property that I've invested in. And I mean, some of the things people need to understand,

00:46:57.000 Some of these rifles they banned cost literally $70,000, $80,000.

00:47:02.260 I had a rifle in my hands that is now prohibited under Canadian law that the purchase price of it was $75,000.

00:47:11.940 It's handmade by Peter Hofer in Austria.

00:47:14.160 It's inlaid with platinum and gold filigree and engravings and handmade tailored to that particular firearms owner.

00:47:22.220 Are someone going to, because it's got more power than the 10,000 joules, does that mean you're going to just willy-nilly hand this over to the federal government and just say that's it?

00:47:32.920 And not to mention the ammunition you purchased, the sight systems you purchased for us, scopes, infrastructure cases, all of that infrastructure.

00:47:41.120 Even an AR-15, the modern sporting rifle, the single most popular firearms platform in North America right now, which they claim they want to ban and they asserted that, you hand-build these.

00:47:56.500 You put specific parts, trigger parts, carrying handles, charging handles, special sights, upgrades to all kinds of aspects of these things.

00:48:07.020 You can be looking at an AR-15, $10,000, $20,000, and then you add in your ammunition and everything else you purchased to have full enjoyment of your property.

00:48:16.480 It's a property rights grab that is unprecedented in Canadian history.

00:48:21.360 It really is.

00:48:22.200 It's outrageous what they think they are going to get away with.

00:48:25.600 Something that's actually been something I want to visit in this show a couple of times through the theme is that, quite frankly, there's, you know, quite frankly, we I know that I know that Canadians are actually they must be arming themselves.

00:48:44.740 Because when I look for when I look for certain rifles that I want to find, or certain ammunition I want to find, there's a bit of a shortage.

00:48:53.180 and so there's this funny weird kind of not duplicity but it's it's completely bifurcated

00:48:58.860 it's like oh canadians you know they're nice unarmed people or whatever this weird projection

00:49:02.700 that comes out of you know the liberal narrative of canada and then you go online and try and

00:49:06.740 purchase a weapon totally legally you have your you have everything you need to do you try to

00:49:10.480 purchase a weapon and they're out and they're sold out everywhere well as you as you well know when

00:49:16.480 you took your serve money and bought yourself a nice fine rifle to go do your job up and up in

00:49:21.000 north where you were protecting people from bear attacks. A lot of Canadians have gone and bought

00:49:27.640 firearms and ammunition in this last year. I saw the shelves in the gun store. I went in there and

00:49:33.560 I talked to some people. One gun shop employee said to me, he said, Sheldon, you wouldn't believe

00:49:39.080 this. Some guy came in here and bought $4,000 worth of ammunition. I said, what caliber did

00:49:44.600 he buy? He said he bought every caliber that he said he needed, but he laid down $4,000. He took

00:49:50.040 And I said, really?

00:49:51.960 And I said, well, fill her up.

00:49:53.900 Exactly.

00:49:54.980 Be ready.

00:49:56.420 I think that's not an extravagant amount of ammunition to have bought in a year for a lot of us.

00:50:03.240 People don't really understand.

00:50:05.020 And I mean, I well remember when I was involved in renegotiating the Explosives Act to better serve the needs of the firearms owning public who store ammunition, hand load ammunition and shoot black powder, do reenactment and so on.

00:50:22.420 That one of the things we did is we took the people from the explosives branch into people's homes and we showed them what exactly people were doing because they didn't understand at all.

00:50:31.160 They didn't realize that a firearms owner might be shooting 10,000 or 20,000 rounds of ammunition in a year, especially if you're a competitive shooter.

00:50:40.220 They didn't understand that when you buy ammunition, you tend to buy it in large lots for consistency, particularly for rifle shooters, but others as well.

00:50:49.540 And when we took them into people's homes, we were saying, okay, look at all this ammunition.

00:50:54.000 How would your rules accommodate this?

00:50:56.420 And they were going, oh, oh, I see what you're saying here.

00:51:00.700 And so they made some changes to the language to allow for people to be able to make use of their ammunition and to store it safely in their homes, as they always had been doing, despite what the Explosives Act had previously said, which was fairly limited.

00:51:17.140 And we managed to get some significant changes for that.

00:51:19.720 I remember the SAMI rep crediting me specifically and saying, Sheldon, if you had not been here, that we would not have gotten those changes.

00:51:26.380 And he said, you know, that's really great that you did that.

00:51:29.200 and you know it's it's been something we've been doing for years and I mean

00:51:34.160 this isn't my day job being an NFA president this is a this is a voluntary

00:51:38.080 position our board of directors are volunteers we all have jobs we do during

00:51:42.940 the day I teach history at a community college that's that's my job as a

00:51:47.920 graduate degree in military history that's when I study conflict I study

00:51:52.820 warfare and I'm looking at what's going on around the world here and I just I'm

00:51:57.920 thinking wow we're we're heading for a war and there's a war that's going to be a clash of

00:52:02.960 ideologies left and right it's division over religion division over territory so much division

00:52:12.120 is going on in the world world right now that it cannot but be avoided and i look at these civil

00:52:17.960 disarmament programs we see in so many countries and they're very clearly uh part of that ideological

00:52:23.860 divide and maybe kind of to pivot into what what can be done here at home people you know this is

00:52:31.140 another thing we try to you know repeat on the show and try to discuss on the show is that there's

00:52:36.620 got to be a way for people to organize and act at a local level if somebody wanted to organize and

00:52:42.580 act at a local level what what should they do when it comes to firearms right well they should join

00:52:47.200 In the National Firearms Association, of course, you know, the shameless plug, NFA.ca, they

00:52:55.700 also need to get involved in their local shooting clubs.

00:52:58.980 They need to get involved at the political level with their local party rioting association.

00:53:04.400 I mean, get in there, be someone who shows up to put up signs and to take them down,

00:53:09.100 be someone who helps go out and do door knocking and distributes pamphlets and do the boots

00:53:13.620 on the ground stuff.

00:53:14.420 And if you can't do that, if you don't have time, show up with some money.

00:53:18.160 It's money or time, folks.

00:53:19.400 That's what it really is.

00:53:20.320 If you want to make a significant difference in politics, you either show up and you do the work or you give the money to people who are.

00:53:27.620 That's it.

00:53:28.320 And that's the way I've approached the NFA is, you know, I put in my time.

00:53:33.680 I put in my money.

00:53:34.800 I've been doing this for a while.

00:53:37.920 I've enjoyed some successes.

00:53:39.280 We've seen some defeats, but we're keeping moving forward.

00:53:43.280 forward and as long as we do that and we take a very strong stance we're not we're not going to

00:53:49.700 be seeing the compliance that everybody is uh is uh expecting from the left liberal left i think

00:53:57.400 they're going to be very very shocked i mean even in occupied france in world war ii the french were

00:54:04.080 told they had to hand in all their guns and the penalty for not doing so was death and you know

00:54:10.000 You know how many people handed in their guns?

00:54:13.280 No, it was about 30%.

00:54:15.280 Oh, really?

00:54:16.060 Yeah.

00:54:16.420 So you get 70% noncompliance, even with a death threat.

00:54:20.720 Okay.

00:54:21.780 I think we can see how that's going to go here.

00:54:24.020 I think we can.

00:54:25.100 I mean, to kind of close things out here, what do you see happening?

00:54:30.780 Are we going to have an election in the spring?

00:54:32.380 Are we going to have it in the fall?

00:54:33.580 And what's going to be the deciding factor of the election?

00:54:35.960 Well, COVID's playing very well for the Liberals,

00:54:39.840 particularly in the big cities.

00:54:41.780 You know, the whole COVID care and stuff,

00:54:46.260 the whole panic-demic thing plays well for them.

00:54:49.240 It doesn't play so well for conservative-minded voters.

00:54:53.520 But the economy is also going to be a huge role for everybody.

00:54:57.940 And I believe that what we're going to see here

00:55:01.380 is Mr. Trudeau making an assessment about whether or not

00:55:05.960 The damage caused by people becoming aware of how bad the economy is going to be is going to be balanced off by some kind of a solution to the pandemic.

00:55:14.540 I think what would happen in Trudeau's nifty campaign is somehow lockdowns and all of this nonsense that are actually provincially driven rather than federally driven.

00:55:26.680 Given the Health Care Act.

00:55:27.680 Yeah, given the Health Care Act.

00:55:28.740 If all of that stuff sort of goes away, people are going to say, well, look at that.

00:55:33.200 The Liberal government will get credit for that, even if it's undeserved.

00:55:38.360 And then that would be the time for him to say, OK, I'm going to call an election.

00:55:43.040 See, we solved the pandemic. It's the only crisis of our time.

00:55:46.560 And if they wait until that, that works for them.

00:55:52.060 However, the problem is, the longer they wait, the worse the economy gets.

00:55:55.400 So you've got this problem with the pandemic juxtaposed against an economy, which is getting worse partially because of a great deal because of what's happening with the pandemic.

00:56:06.580 So it's going to come down to about those two major issues, I think.

00:56:13.600 And everything else is really a supplemental issue to one part of that or the other.

00:56:18.040 So it depends where you're where you see that sitting.

00:56:21.140 So that's what I think is going to happen.

00:56:22.920 So, you know, it has Charlene says it's time for Trudeau to go. Well, okay, then you need to do what you need. Everybody out there needs to do exactly what will make Trudeau go. And that is not to split up any vote on the right that is going to allow liberals to come up.

00:56:42.160 I mean, they still elect liberals in Edmonton.

00:56:45.240 So, you know, it's and I heard a rumor that there was an NDP government in Alberta once upon a time.

00:56:52.300 So, you know, you know, so it's true that that can happen.

00:56:56.680 And if the vote isn't focused, the lessons of history are very, very clear.

00:57:02.280 You end up with something that you don't want.

00:57:06.480 Yeah, at least under our current system of first, fast, and post.

00:57:08.960 But we won't get into electoral reform here.

00:57:12.160 We're still waiting for our next guest to come along here.

00:57:15.340 We're going to check in with him.

00:57:16.720 That's what I've been checking my phone about in case anybody wants it.

00:57:19.120 I'm not trying to be a rude host.

00:57:20.800 We produce things pretty organically here.

00:57:24.780 This is not the CBC.

00:57:26.100 We don't have tens of millions of dollars to pay interns to work like slaves.

00:57:31.280 We don't have that.

00:57:32.320 So we have to kind of run things on our own.

00:57:35.940 But if you'd like to stay out.

00:57:37.040 And you did warn me that you would have to check on that.

00:57:39.640 So I wasn't feeling it.

00:57:40.700 Exactly.

00:57:41.020 I'm just I'm just you know looking at dank memes I'm liking all the yeah of course you are

00:57:47.160 I think I think that if there is if there is kind of a way to meander back to reality here it's um

00:57:54.700 the the problem the problem I think still is that for a lot of people they they feel like the

00:58:01.000 conserves aren't going to campaign as conservatives how how do we push our party to campaign as

00:58:08.500 conservatives. You show up. The world, as this old saying goes, the world is run by those who show

00:58:15.560 up. If you show up, you drive what happens. If you don't show up and you sit and you complain

00:58:20.240 on Facebook, well, then you basically complain on Facebook. It's like yelling at clouds. We'll go

00:58:27.140 outside and yell at the clouds and see if anything changes. And the clouds aren't going to pay

00:58:31.340 attention and they're not going away and they're not going to change. So you need to show up. You

00:58:35.500 need to get involved with the local politics you need to get involved with your local associations

00:58:39.680 and show up like i said boots on the ground that make the difference and if you don't have boots

00:58:44.720 in the ground get money for the people who have their boots on the ground so you can make sure

00:58:48.840 that they keep in good shoe leather and they can keep up the fight you know put ammo in the hopper

00:58:53.340 ammo in the hopper yep absolutely that simple we uh do have our next guest giving uh giving it a

00:59:01.060 click now we'll see when he uh navigates his way inside and then we can do a quick switcheroo here

00:59:06.000 um i'll at least give him an introduction and then i mean again we're doing this live uh and

00:59:11.140 this isn't tucker carlson we don't have that money either i so so there's not going to be a

00:59:15.900 lot of scene changes or a commercial or something i mean i could i could do the whole mike lindell

00:59:20.360 thing if you want but i don't know is that trademark can i say that i don't know probably

00:59:24.280 somebody will come after you on trademark i'm big on that myself it's something yeah yeah i know

00:59:29.060 you've you've been quite uh brand protection thing well i mean you know it's the fundamental

00:59:35.240 thing is that like i'm just appreciative that we have this conversation because because the thing

00:59:40.080 is that what i think that what this platform is for you know if i can be so bold i obviously i'm

00:59:45.100 not in charge around here i'm just a host but i think that if i can be so bold it's again to

00:59:49.740 facilitate these conversations because there are these divisions within the right that need to be

00:59:53.400 discussed they need to be discussed frankly there are these divisions even in the left about the

00:59:58.420 questions around sovereignty as well. That's another thing we're going to be talking about

01:00:01.340 a little bit with Stuart is what are some of those, again, just like yesterday talking with

01:00:04.840 Aaron Ekman about what are some of those reasons to be a sovereignist or separatist, or at least

01:00:12.620 want a fair deal for the West and not think that the federal government is your friend just because

01:00:16.460 you happen to be on the left. And finally, kind of just as we do look at sort of the situation

01:00:22.320 we're in right now um how how do we do this best how do we make sure that people have the

01:00:28.660 the access to to their own liberties and i think that's been the biggest thing with covid

01:00:32.560 is that uh our our liberties are being curtailed in no small amount so we have stewart parker on

01:00:40.400 with us uh we're going to uh segue here as quickly as we can uh stewart sheldon sheldon

01:00:46.480 stewart but thank you for your time sheldon thank you nathan it's always pleasure having

01:00:49.760 All right. Good to meet you. Good to meet you, too. Take care. Absolutely. Well, Stuart, I'm just going to introduce you here and we're going to let us do some shuffling around here and maybe you can tell us a little bit more about yourself.

01:01:02.840 So Stuart Parker is, of course, the president of Los Altos Institute.

01:01:06.260 He is a former president or leader of the Green Party, a leader of the Green Party in British Columbia.

01:01:13.720 And, of course, he is an agitator for all things justice based in his particular milieu.

01:01:19.680 And he likes to get into scraps over very important, important topics, important topics.

01:01:25.100 He fights the good fight. Stuart, welcome to the program.

01:01:28.040 Oh, it's great to be here. And congratulations on the program.

01:01:31.360 i'm yeah i'm i mean i'm still blown away that they're letting me do this but uh we're doing

01:01:37.780 our best to put it all together uh we're we're very thankful again thank you sheldon he's just

01:01:43.060 waving goodbye there and uh but we're thankful to have you here stewart so let's let's just start

01:01:47.780 from the top uh let's just start from the top what uh what what is the fundamental question

01:01:55.100 when it comes to, you know, people who are of the right or of the left, what is the fundamental

01:02:00.960 question for them to think about when it comes to sovereignty, particularly for you on the left?

01:02:05.920 If people are talking about sovereignty, or they're talking about getting more independent

01:02:10.260 from Ottawa, what should that look like? Well, I think there are two pretty distinctive paths.

01:02:16.560 And we, in many ways, British Columbia and Western Canada generally have functioned as colonized colonial regions for a succession of empires.

01:02:30.360 First, the British Empire, then the American Empire.

01:02:34.240 And what's interesting in British Columbia is we exist on this kind of fault line that's developing between the Chinese and the contemporary American Empire.

01:02:42.720 So one of the things we have to recognize is that we have never fully been independent, we've never fully had self-determination, and local democracy here is largely, used to be anyway, about two different groups playing off against each other.

01:03:06.880 a rentier elite whose job it was to extract the natural resources to send to the center of the

01:03:16.060 empire that we were serving. And then various groups have cropped up from time to time that

01:03:23.780 have a different agenda. And I think it's really important to recognize that if your agenda is

01:03:30.120 simply to keep exporting natural resources, whether we're, it doesn't really matter what

01:03:35.360 political formal political identity is we are going to function as the periphery of an empire

01:03:42.400 and whether we're technically an independent country or not will make absolutely no difference

01:03:49.200 if the and the reason that this elite tends to fight for a continuation of us being a deindustrialized

01:03:59.040 extractive place is they know is that they fear real consequences from the empires that we sell

01:04:06.380 our raw materials to they know there are political consequences and if people at the center get

01:04:11.680 annoyed uh then they'll be replaced with people who will send the raw materials and so i think

01:04:21.480 that we really have to look to the history of places in latin america that have functioned like

01:04:27.120 this. And we have to recognize that true independence, as opposed to just a new flag

01:04:34.180 and a continuation of our current status, that true economic independence is going to really

01:04:40.280 ruffle some feathers. It's going to produce enormous confrontations. And we can look to the

01:04:46.880 political history of places like Chile to see how far the various empires go to make sure that we

01:04:55.980 start shipping them their stuff now i'm not from an environmental stamp for on the one hand i'm

01:05:02.540 not a huge fan of glenn clark's overall time as premier uh in the 90s right he this is when i was

01:05:08.460 leader of the green party we were in lots of confrontations we faced off in the newspaper

01:05:14.380 and he did the and he was responsible for the huge surge in the natural gas and fracking sector that

01:05:19.900 goes on to this day but why was he taken out it was taken out because he tried to

01:05:28.380 turn some of our raw materials into finished products here in the form of the fast ferry

01:05:33.820 program now yeah there were some bumps along the way but nowhere near as many bumps as ford or

01:05:39.580 tesla or someone hits when they bring out a whole new line of vehicles never mind starting a whole

01:05:44.780 new industry but the rentier elites of this province the people who profit from shipping

01:05:51.500 unprocessed aluminum out of bc or shipping pop cans out of bc they went nuts because they knew

01:05:58.540 that their job was on the line so what is an what's an environmental independence agenda

01:06:05.820 weirdly enough it's also an industrial agenda it's because if we don't reclaim our economy

01:06:12.140 then um then political independence is meaningless that that's a statement i like that

01:06:20.560 thank you steward for kicking us off so well right there let's talk about the nature of empire i'm

01:06:26.260 certain that people you know that are watching right now they maybe that's not the exact language

01:06:31.220 they would use to conceive of it but they do they can kind of understand like well yeah no ottawa

01:06:35.500 does seem to rule us from very far away and doesn't seem to really care very much and even uh

01:06:41.360 If you are in rural Alberta, maybe you don't think that Calgary or Edmonton cares about you very much.

01:06:45.760 Certainly here in Prince George, a northern capital, I know our rural regions probably don't like how Prince George acts,

01:06:51.260 but certainly we don't like how the Lower Mainland acts sometimes.

01:06:54.840 How do we feel like we have a say, but also like we're not in conflict with all of our brothers and sisters in this country all the time?

01:07:03.540 Well, I think that fundamentally, if you want to make a social change or an economic change or a political change,

01:07:09.680 you need a large consensus of people. And if there was one thing that British Columbia used

01:07:16.540 to be good at that we are terrible at today is that people in British Columbia used to be able

01:07:23.620 to see an elite consensus coming a mile away, right? Moments like the Charlottetown Accord

01:07:30.540 where 70% of us voted on the no side, even though we were outspent 80 to 1 by the yes side.

01:07:40.940 That's a striking moment. And there's a guy who phoned into Rafe Mayer's show in the middle of

01:07:45.980 all this, the late, great Rafe Mayer, in whose shadow shows like this are taking place.

01:07:53.280 And he said, you know what's great about this referendum is I get to vote against the politicians,

01:07:59.000 the unions and the corporations and the media the whole damn lot of you and in the past

01:08:07.160 what we've been able to do here on certain occasions is we've been able to create an

01:08:13.140 anti-elite consensus a consensus of the majority in which people we might call you know rural

01:08:21.540 conservatives and people we might think of as urban lefties come together as part of a larger

01:08:28.540 process of pushing back against the authority that is coming from, you know, Vancouver,

01:08:37.620 Ottawa, D.C., Beijing, wherever, to say that. And I think that, and so I think that we have

01:08:49.580 to go with things that will benefit the majority, regardless of their politics. And one of those

01:08:56.320 things is something that I really, your first column for The Standard really spoke to me,

01:09:03.680 because what it was talking about was what a Marx-informed lefty like me would call land

01:09:11.980 reform. In Latin America, one of the reasons they've been able to build coalitions to retake

01:09:18.120 their economies is because they don't grant rural land to individuals based on either the fact that

01:09:31.680 they're, you know, the son of the Bloedel family or part of a warehouser lineage or one of those

01:09:38.760 big forestry companies, or because they're descended from indigenous aristocrats, right?

01:09:45.120 those are we understand all title to rural land in totally you know aristocratic feudal terms

01:09:53.360 it's just that we had we weren't as good as the kingdom of hawaii we didn't get the deal you know

01:09:59.840 indigenous aristocrats didn't get the deal they got in hawaii to be part of that elite and so we

01:10:05.440 have that problem but the reality is that um if you go to a place like bolivia or mexico where

01:10:13.440 they've actually reformed land tenure the basis of the claim for land is that you need the land

01:10:20.880 and can use it to support yourselves and that you can make something of it and while a

01:10:27.360 disproportionate number of the people who make those claims and get that land are indigenous

01:10:34.000 their neighbors of all extractions have the same rights if they're living the same way

01:10:40.400 one of the hypotheticals that i put in front of people is i said what if bc had quilombos

01:10:47.840 quilombos um were communities of escaped african slaves in the uh brazilian serpau their jungle

01:10:56.960 and also all through uh the tropics in latin america and these escaped slaves formed communities

01:11:05.040 often in like the first generation after slavery began so these communities would have been rural

01:11:11.360 racialized communities since 1550 and the idea that the poor indigenous people 0.94

01:11:19.680 should get the land around them but the poor african people shouldn't is the way british

01:11:26.240 colombians would think because none of the aristocrats of the african people came over 1.00

01:11:32.080 as slaves they have no aristocratic title to the land therefore they don't deserve it

01:11:36.640 when in fact my view is as a socialist everybody who is on the land base who depends on that land

01:11:46.800 should have the right and the opportunity to form into groups that manage that land together

01:11:53.120 and extract its value together and sure they should be within rigorous environmental standards

01:11:59.840 But one of the problems with environmentalism, going back to the very foundation of the Sierra

01:12:05.200 Club, is that environmentalists allied themselves with the railway companies in creating those great

01:12:12.240 big parks. That's seen as an environmental victory. Yellowstone, Banff, Jasper. But what

01:12:17.920 those projects were was a way of paying for the rail line through that area because there were

01:12:24.240 were no minerals under the soil. There were no trees to log. It's alpine. So this is worthless,

01:12:31.500 and this mountain pass costs a fortune to build the railway through. So you know what we're going

01:12:36.360 to do? We're going to put a fence around it. We're going to call it a park. We're going to advertise

01:12:39.920 it as a tourist attraction. The railway company is going to bring this big hotel, and we will

01:12:44.520 march every indigenous person out at gunpoint or shoot them on site. That's how America made 1.00

01:12:51.880 Yellowstone Park. That's how it made Yosemite Park. And so environmentalists from the beginning

01:12:59.220 have been associated with what I call the disinhabitation of rural land. But if you

01:13:06.320 want to look at societies that live effectively and sustainably on the land, there aren't these

01:13:16.480 big bald patches with fences around them the humans are kept out of that you don't see

01:13:23.540 that way of being and so I think environmentalists really need to move past the idea of uninhabited

01:13:35.540 disinhabited land that is an aesthetic product that we sell to the wealthy and we have to

01:13:42.060 start thinking about spreading out onto the land. Because right now, rural British, well,

01:13:48.940 rural people generally, right, we're feeding the cities. The food that's not coming from California

01:13:58.380 is coming the other way. It's coming from the north. This is where your local BC organic beef

01:14:07.100 that is, you know, being served in an eatery on Granville, Iowa, this is where it's being raised.

01:14:14.480 Perhaps one of the reasons why, and I know, I know that you have a lot to speak to on this

01:14:18.300 count as well, Stuart, is that one of the reasons why things happen the way they happen so much now,

01:14:24.240 or people feel so disenfranchised politically, personally, even religiously, they just feel,

01:14:29.940 they feel like they don't have a stake in things. You're talking about having a stake in the land.

01:14:33.260 The biggest prevention of having a stake anywhere politically or physically is that it seems like we live in a democracy.

01:14:42.760 We live in a thing where the technocrats are in charge, the regulations are in charge, people don't feel like they have a say in things.

01:14:50.980 How do we react to that?

01:14:52.700 Your discussion of Bonnie Henry throughout the pandemic has been very helpful on this point.

01:14:57.260 Yeah, I think that one of the tragedies that has happened in B.C. in my lifetime was that both the NDP and Social Credit understood, this is the old NDP, not the current zombie,

01:15:14.100 but the NDP and social credit both understood that the bureaucracy had a class consciousness

01:15:23.840 and an agenda, and that in a democratic system, you have to constantly cut the bureaucracy back

01:15:31.940 in order to prevent it from seizing the democratic power of elected officials.

01:15:38.380 and this was a really when BC was at its most politically volatile and interesting

01:15:47.800 both the right-wing populists and the left-wing populists knew this right there was no party for

01:15:55.820 progressives over in Ontario all the parties were progressive they were all already totally

01:16:03.060 enmeshed with the bureaucrats uh bill davis's tories you know were indistinguishable from

01:16:10.040 stephen lewis's ndp and uh you know the liberals uh in ontario but here um often whenever the

01:16:20.380 government changed hands and often just after an election there would be a mass purge and

01:16:25.840 reorganization of the bureaucracy that would often seem quite inefficient um that was one of the

01:16:32.220 things Glenn Clark tried to bring back was recognizing that there's a way in which legislators

01:16:40.200 and bureaucrats are cooperating to run the state, but inside that cooperation is a war over who

01:16:48.580 controls the state, and both things are going on. It's like the Cold War. People always

01:16:54.380 under-emphasize how much the U.S. and U.S.S.R. cooperated in order to have stuff to fight over,

01:17:00.560 And we see that's really how government worked in B.C., and everybody understood that.

01:17:08.160 And then there's this dramatic shift with the arrival of Mike Harcourt, mayor of Vancouver.

01:17:14.900 And, of course, he comes out of something called commission government, where city councillors are literally the servants of the bureaucrats.

01:17:23.300 I interviewed a city councillor here in Prince George for my show, and that was their thing.

01:17:31.380 It was like, well, you know, I'm going to listen to what they tell me, and I'm going to do what they say, and that's my job.

01:17:40.080 So in BC, we hated that kind of politics until Mike Harcourt came along, and Mike Harcourt really didn't seek to purge the bureaucracy.

01:17:51.580 He sought to build it as being like Ontario's bureaucracy, and that's where we've been heading ever since, to the point where the current government essentially sees itself as an extension of the civil servants, right?

01:18:08.040 And they believe that we will achieve a perfect government when there are no Democratic nomination meetings and parties where every member of the legislature is picked by an HR committee.

01:18:19.460 uh and uh you know it's it's it's that blatant right that's that's the position of um you know

01:18:28.520 uh uh premier horgan's press secretary uh that um you know this is just a job interview

01:18:34.740 and like the fact that this part of the government is elected is sort of an inconvenience

01:18:40.680 so i think we have to get back to that spirit of wac bennett dave barrett bill bennett glenn clark

01:18:48.840 who saw the bureaucracy as an incipient threat to our democratic institutions,

01:18:54.820 a necessary evil, in other words, rather than a trusted partner.

01:19:01.180 And this is precisely it, because it's funny, it networks all the way back into the land reform question that you put forward there,

01:19:07.420 by referencing what I had written about.

01:19:09.960 Because, I mean, my parents have a farm, and dealing with the ALR and dealing with the regional district,

01:19:15.920 And like there's like nine levels of government between Joe Blow just trying to like scratch out a living or just just plant something or just raise some cows or pigs.

01:19:25.840 And like the people he elected to try and help him in this question, it is it is entirely rentierism.

01:19:33.340 And there's no there's no way of navigating the regulations.

01:19:36.540 It's insane.

01:19:38.180 Well, that's because the goal is not to navigate the regulations.

01:19:40.800 What a bureaucratic system wants is universal noncompliance.

01:19:45.920 Because that means that you can punish people with impunity.

01:19:50.720 If nobody can actually, this is how welfare works, right?

01:19:58.720 You know, people used to complain about welfare fraud.

01:20:01.600 But if you weren't committing welfare fraud on welfare, you'd die.

01:20:05.240 So 100% of people were committing welfare fraud.

01:20:08.120 Because welfare fraud included things like begging for change

01:20:12.740 and not giving 80% of it to your social worker at the end of the day. That was welfare fraud.

01:20:19.100 So, you know, and if you counted your pennies wrong, right, like this and that might allow,

01:20:26.420 you know, the state to do any number of things to you. Now, what's interesting, though, in BC

01:20:30.760 is, you know, your parents are people who are used to playing by the rules and are used to having

01:20:38.060 rules that can be played by. The corollary of all this is these are systems with no enforcement.

01:20:46.380 So they disproportionately impact people who see themselves as law-abiding.

01:20:57.020 For instance, there are things the provincial government should be doing like inspecting

01:21:01.340 chickens, going through the slaughterhouse and inspecting the chickens after they have been

01:21:06.220 slaughtered. But, you know, I remember it was like 30 years ago Kim Campbell ran for

01:21:12.460 prime minister and she was like, isn't it disgraceful that we have a federal bureaucracy

01:21:16.700 to inspect the chickens and a provincial bureaucracy to inspect the chickens. And my response was,

01:21:21.580 but between the two of them they only managed to inspect one in every 1.5 million chickens.

01:21:27.100 so uh so but that's how things work in bc and it's one of the curious that changes in our culture

01:21:39.080 one of the reasons i left the southwest of bc in order to continue living in something that

01:21:44.140 approximated bc um because i'm not because there isn't just a technocracy there isn't just a

01:21:53.960 grim law-abiding compliance that your parents have down south there's a worship of these people

01:22:00.360 right there's a worship of the technocrats the fact that like people would say the craziest things

01:22:08.840 about what bonnie henry had said like so i said so so she said that the virus has different

01:22:17.320 properties once it crosses the border that its molecular structure changes inside BC? How can

01:22:24.640 you possibly think that? How did you turn against science, Stuart? Don't you know Bonnie Henry is

01:22:29.600 science? And that's really, you know, where we are in the Southwest. It's just, it's insane.

01:22:37.080 And especially the iconography. Like, there are all these weird Byzantine style paintings.

01:22:44.060 these eastern orthodox paintings with the implied halo around her this is just this is bizarre like

01:22:51.980 I would rather deal with people who were worshipping a blood cult running a sacrifice

01:22:57.420 pyramid though that's more relatable than worshipping a technocrat who manages somehow

01:23:05.840 to deliver the policies of Donald Trump with the voice of Elizabeth Warren you've killed

01:23:13.400 the producer the producer can actually be heard from his end of the room he's he is on the floor

01:23:20.340 crying um and and rightfully so i think that was that that made some of stein's stuff look

01:23:26.640 terrible that was that was a good rant that was beautiful i'm so glad you're here i but this is

01:23:32.860 exactly it it's just nonsense like it really is like people are like i guess bonnie henry's our

01:23:38.160 high priestess and whatever we sacrifice to her she literally can move the sun and the moon

01:23:42.740 And only she can divinate what the virus will do.

01:23:45.920 You know, I was getting my oil change the other day.

01:23:49.180 And the guy who's changing my oil is explaining variants to me.

01:23:52.340 And I'm like, no, I get it.

01:23:53.580 Like, you're totally right.

01:23:55.220 Maybe you should go tell her.

01:23:56.600 Because I don't know what she's even saying anymore.

01:24:01.020 Well, and I mean, the provincial, I mean, this is the kind of smartest guys in the room move that the B.C. government has made.

01:24:09.600 So they investigated Bonnie Henry, and what the SARS report said was that she would risk people's lives to cover up evidence to conceal a pandemic.

01:24:23.960 That was what she did at Sunnybrook Hospital, and that's why after that senior position, she had essentially retired.

01:24:34.180 She was brought out of retirement by this government.

01:24:37.300 She's one of the few, one of their appointees who is not like a holdover from the Christy Clark or Gordon Campbell era.

01:24:45.260 She's all theirs.

01:24:47.040 And I think they were very smart in the way that the NDP is smart because I always made sure Adrian Dix stood behind her at the press conference,

01:24:58.760 that he, that she spoke first, that she was understood to be the authority.

01:25:04.620 and they then spent 60 grand on a PR firm to craft that image with the shoes and the hair

01:25:14.100 and the tone and that anytime a rural person she asks a question she says well first

01:25:21.960 we must be kind you know because rural people ask unkind questions like why did you lift my

01:25:29.200 local quarantine and now my grandmother's dying. So this sort of thing. So she is a creation

01:25:37.680 of this government because I think they understood from the beginning. Either she will pull off

01:25:44.320 whatever bullshit needs to be pulled off or she'll fail and it'll be all on her. And we will then 1.00

01:25:55.260 leave the breadcrumbs back to the SARS report and it will just have been a bad hiring decision

01:26:03.100 which will let Adrian Dix take a ministry that doesn't have such long working hours

01:26:09.340 but largely leave him secure in his position oh well it was really my responsibility I'm going

01:26:15.420 to step down from cabinet right they they I mean look at bow and ma they literally now have a

01:26:20.940 minister for resigning over Sightseek. That's her function in the cabinet. So the old white 0.99

01:26:29.740 men in the premier's office have understood that they can play identity politics at the same time 0.77

01:26:37.340 as they create human shields. That's a damning statement for sure. And just to be clear,

01:26:45.740 that's exactly what we need to hear when it comes to the questions of the BC NDP government.

01:26:50.940 Let's pivot a little bit into Site C. I mean, obviously, Site C is a controversial thing. You've come out strongly against it. Can you explain it from that environmental point of view? Most of us on the right would say, hey, it's water going over a concrete bridge that happens to have no hole underneath it. And then it turns a turbine and that's green, isn't it?

01:27:10.600 That's as rudimentary as it gets for us on the right sometimes, though some of us are also like, well, the empire is coming, and the empire went and took the peace country, and that's not fair, and those poor farmers, et cetera, and so there's that populist right as well.

01:27:25.440 But as a general concept, most of us on the right don't think of dams as being not green.

01:27:29.960 Could you explain that?

01:27:31.780 Well, there's a couple things, right?

01:27:33.840 First of all, you've got to ask, what is the power for?

01:27:42.000 And the energy market forecasts indicate that this power will be sold for 20% the cost of producing it.

01:27:52.240 So we will take an 80% hit on every kilowatt we sell.

01:28:01.480 And it's not rational.

01:28:03.700 Now, at this point, we're going to take a hit on anything, because we've been screwing around in this valley, and we've made a mess of it, and we've wasted a lot of money doing it.

01:28:13.100 But I don't believe in, you know, economists know that the sunk cost fallacy is a real fallacy.

01:28:19.240 It's not true.

01:28:20.880 The issue is, what should we do with the Peace Valley if we woke up tomorrow morning and everything was as it is?

01:28:28.600 you know, that we're in all this debt, we've got all these vehicles there, we've cut all these

01:28:37.040 trees, we've mucked around around the river. And my view is that from the perspective of the

01:28:43.980 things that we need to be self-reliant here, we should stop the construction. We should just stop

01:28:51.400 it and walk away. We've made bigger, dumber mistakes. What do we get in exchange for stopping 1.00

01:28:57.580 that at construction well we get the only place you can grow cantaloupes uh north of 54 on the

01:29:04.460 entire continent right we have one of the most stunningly agricultural productive agricultural

01:29:11.660 valleys and if we are going to make a go of it independently with a variety of climates and

01:29:19.420 having to produce an increasing portion of our own food as climate change knocks out food systems in

01:29:26.060 the global south the most important thing for us we have to we have as much hydro as we can sell

01:29:33.420 and more it's not the thing we're short of energy from dams is not a thing bc

01:29:39.660 is short of what bc is short of is um warm good growing season agricultural land in the north

01:29:49.100 That is our number one need. And I think that's a good idea. In addition to that, Site C would contribute to the larger crisis in the slave Athabasca-McKenzie River system.

01:30:07.580 One of the problems with doing macrohydro is that you have all these trees die, you have all of this soil disturbed, it produces methylmercury concentrations, which makes the fish in your reservoir toxic, you can't get the normal things out of your reservoir, you would get out of a lake.

01:30:29.980 And so we have water with these increasing methylmercury concentrations from the last two reservoirs.

01:30:38.480 We do not need a third to further increase both the duration and the concentration of a chemical that disrupts local food systems.

01:30:51.980 Besides, those rivers have got to go through the tar sands yet.

01:30:55.520 they're in they're going to be in terrible shape by the time they hit the northwest territories

01:30:59.840 anyway and so the other thing we shouldn't be doing is we shouldn't be taking a system that's

01:31:04.400 in crisis and making it worse and that is what unesco has said to us about site c that they'll

01:31:13.040 have to withdraw the world heritage status from wood buffalo national park uh because um

01:31:19.360 We keep expanding the tar sands, we keep increasing plants to increase methylmercury levels, this

01:31:26.860 is not going to be an ecosystem that should be part of an international park system.

01:31:34.000 So that's also another issue, which is we have industries that I'm sorry, Nathan, please

01:31:49.360 yeah it's not a problem steward um yeah i think kind of reflecting a little bit on what uh what

01:31:57.400 steward said say if i'm allowed to think out loud for a moment is uh and we'll bring him back as

01:32:02.900 soon as we can i think i think one of the things that comes to my mind at least is that well no

01:32:07.680 steward has come back to us you're good i'm sorry federal express decided to descend on my home i'll

01:32:13.960 just be another two minutes my sincere apologies not a problem no i mean this is a lot right and

01:32:22.280 as i've told you guys a couple a couple of times i mean i mike i might might agree with you more

01:32:28.600 than stewart does on that question i i can sympathize with that to a certain extent for sure

01:32:33.960 uh and i do happen to hold the opinion that the oil sands are very well taken care of and much

01:32:39.000 more ethical than what we get out of saudi arabia but again we uh we're doing our best to try and

01:32:44.920 make sure this is a free expression platform so there are going to be people on this platform

01:32:49.640 that not everybody agrees with that's okay and we're just trying to keep it within the bounds of

01:32:54.200 not denying certain political facts around uh history and bad things that happened in history

01:32:59.640 and uh keeping the language under control so that's kind of what we're trying to do

01:33:03.320 on those counts so i hope that everybody can abide by those rules and nobody tries to

01:33:06.840 get anybody canceled for something silly but i mean with to the point of what is green and and

01:33:14.600 what isn't green and all that or or at least to the point of like what should energy be used for

01:33:19.800 how should energy be made i think that for us british colombians we do need to take a serious

01:33:24.920 uh look at just what what do we want that power to go towards that's very important i think

01:33:31.720 um very important especially considering that we sell so much of it to uh to the united states so

01:33:37.500 Stuart's back with us, so we'll bring him back on.

01:33:40.920 Yeah, I'm very sorry about that.

01:33:42.640 I thought the delivery people had already come.

01:33:45.100 That's not a problem.

01:33:46.020 This is a live show, and it's not Tucker Carlson.

01:33:48.980 So here you go.

01:33:50.800 I used to like Stuart, not so much Royals and Strong.

01:33:54.540 It is what it is.

01:33:56.400 I just explained to our audience that this is, of course, a free speech platform, and

01:33:59.920 we're trying to make sure that – well, I don't see a way forward with sovereignty

01:34:04.160 or any kind of more independence from Ottawa

01:34:05.840 without having serious conversations like this?

01:34:07.960 Because the fact of the matter is,

01:34:08.920 if we do leave tomorrow,

01:34:09.940 I have to live with you still, right?

01:34:12.180 So we need to have serious conversations about this.

01:34:15.180 Yeah, and I think that's right.

01:34:16.820 That's what I was saying.

01:34:17.880 Charlottetown was about.

01:34:20.160 The original Reform Party was about.

01:34:23.380 The CCF was about social credit.

01:34:26.340 This understanding that if, you know,

01:34:32.300 So if socialists and environmentalists don't come together with people of faith and, you know, other rural folks, then we're not going to be making that.

01:34:50.460 we won't have these decisions to debate because these decisions will be made in boardrooms far

01:34:56.260 away or they'll be made by parties captured by interests in the southwest of the province and

01:35:05.560 interests offshore and by a progressive culture that is increasingly a culture people don't want

01:35:13.800 to be in, one that has turned in really upsetting directions in recent years. Not to say that,

01:35:21.860 you know, mainstream conservative culture has had a great time either, but I think we have to

01:35:27.740 recognize that sometimes we do have to enter into these grand coalitions against a greater evil.

01:35:33.940 Absolutely. And let's talk about that for at least a moment or two. You are actually the

01:35:39.940 first canceled person that I've brought on to this show. I'm honored to have you here because

01:35:45.280 because you did get canceled by by a certain group of people. And maybe that you can explain

01:35:51.680 that a little bit what happened there in the political in the political world of the BC

01:35:56.360 election last fall. Well, I was just a crazy time. So there. So the way I think in some ways,

01:36:09.100 the term cancel culture is trivializing because it suggests that while it is true that society

01:36:17.740 as a whole is growing more frightened of teenagers on twitter um teenagers on twitter are not in and

01:36:24.620 of themselves particularly dangerous um teenagers on twitter only become dangerous um when they

01:36:33.980 when they're freaked out about something is something that can be used by powerful interests

01:36:42.600 to silence someone. And the term for that is McCarthyism. A lot of people don't understand

01:36:52.880 how the original McCarthyism worked, and that's why I think that people don't often use the term

01:36:58.460 neo-McCarthyism to talk about what's going on in our society now. Because we often think

01:37:07.960 of Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch hunts and J. Edgar Hoover and his communist

01:37:14.540 witch hunts as being McCarthyism. That this state-directed program of making lists, holding

01:37:22.220 hearings and, you know, you know, punishing people was the story. But of course, the real story is

01:37:33.440 that right at the edge of the state, there are much more powerful things like the Hollywood

01:37:38.880 blacklist. And most of the people who were blacklisted during McCarthyism are people of

01:37:45.400 whom the American government was never even aware.

01:37:49.080 Most people who were blacklisted were blacklisted because they said a thing

01:37:55.280 that indicated they were a threat, and then a private company or their union

01:38:02.420 or their in-laws or whomever began pulling things away from them,

01:38:09.300 like their family, their job, their place in church, things like that.

01:38:18.160 And that part of McCarthyism was done by volunteers.

01:38:21.580 It was done by volunteers with no state direction at all.

01:38:26.000 And even when you think of the most authoritarian states,

01:38:28.980 like Cold War East Germany or Cold War Brazil,

01:38:33.100 still, most of the work in those states of finding dissidents and punishing dissidents

01:38:41.180 was done by volunteers. It was not a top-down effort. And so what cancel culture really

01:38:47.980 is then, it's the equivalent. There are certain things that are the equivalent of being a

01:38:54.440 member of the international communist conspiracy, as in the 50s. And one of those things happens

01:39:02.500 to be being seen as a transphobe. That if you can tar someone with the accusation that

01:39:12.080 they're transphobic, then we're off to the races. But of course, what do you have to

01:39:20.660 say to be revealed as a transphobe? Well, just like in McCarthyism, the most dangerous

01:39:26.780 thing to say is that other person over there that you're persecuting they're not a communist or

01:39:33.580 they're not a transphobe and that's what happened to me judy graves um the legendary uh homelessness

01:39:41.820 activist in vancouver dedicated her whole life to uh helping people find housing uh judy

01:39:50.540 among her close friends was Jamie Lee Hamilton, who for many years was the leader of the trans

01:39:57.600 community in Vancouver. And Jamie Lee, you know, is somebody I've worked with, I've fought with,

01:40:06.060 I respected her. And I'm saying her, right? This is not typical transphobe mode of operation.

01:40:13.120 so jamie lee got cancer and it was not caught for the longest time and the reason it wasn't

01:40:22.460 caught is that it's a type of cancer that only afflicts male bodies so jamie lee's doctor felt

01:40:32.280 there was a danger of being accused of transphobia and therefore didn't send her for the test she

01:40:41.100 needed when they were needed and didn't respond to pressure uh from outside so the cancer was

01:40:48.260 not caught until judy caught it and then judy provided all the palliative care for jamie lee

01:40:54.420 for the rest of her life pretty much and at her memorial judy is upset and she says you know

01:41:02.840 If only the doctors had understood that Jamie had a male body, she'd be with us today. 0.88

01:41:19.340 So saying that Jamie Lee Hamilton had a male body in front of people then caused Judy Graves to be tarred as a transphobe. 1.00

01:41:30.340 And great pressure was exerted by the charitable sector on the United Church to drum her out of all offices she held in that church and make, you know, and push her to the margins of a society.

01:41:47.960 And so a few months later, I was on Facebook and the Green Party's main trans rights spokesperson, Nicholas Sperling, was writing about how we really had to do something about Maureen Bork and Judy Graves.

01:42:08.700 and you know because they said that jk rowling was not you know transphobic right again that's

01:42:17.340 what proves you're transphobe is that you say someone else isn't a transphobe the way you say

01:42:23.260 i am a communist in mccarthyism is that guy over there is not a communist i know him and that's

01:42:30.220 what goes on here if you do not denounce um an innocent person then you're thrown to the wolves

01:42:40.060 with them so instead i said you know what judy and i are long-term supporters of trans rights

01:42:47.100 we worked on jamie lee hamilton's first campaign in 1996 um i know that you disagree on a couple

01:42:56.380 of small points, but I really think that if instead of attacking her, you talk to her,

01:43:05.980 people like her and me and Maureen, we've been on your side for longer than you've been

01:43:10.860 politically conscious. Please don't do this. So because I had said not just that Judy Graves

01:43:20.220 was innocent but the JK Rowling was innocent, that meant I was transphobic. So for instance,

01:43:26.700 Bob Mackin and the breaker described this as an angry incoherent rant about Parker's worship of

01:43:34.300 JK Rowling. Right? That's what that is. You will notice that whenever someone is accused of having

01:43:41.340 made a transphobic statement, they will never quote the statement. You just have to keep saying

01:43:48.220 what did they say what did they say what did they actually say and it uh and so um

01:43:58.300 now nicholas spurling was a candidate for a competing party in the election so um uh when 0.63

01:44:05.660 she attacked me publicly i just went well you know this is just politics this is this is silly

01:44:13.500 and then mariam haddad who was running for the leadership of the green party at the time

01:44:20.300 came along she had endorsed the party i was leading the eco-socialists and mariam came along

01:44:27.900 and uh and said uh um you know i've endorsed the eco-socialist you're going to destroy my

01:44:35.340 leadership campaign if you don't resign and i said i'm not going to resign i don't even know who you

01:44:39.500 are. I'm not a Green Party member. And so then she got her campaign manager to phone

01:44:47.500 me at 10-minute intervals and just scream, resign, resign, resign into my phone. So that

01:44:53.600 went on for an evening. And then, of course, the tie-ee got into the business. They wrote

01:45:04.100 a nice hatchet job piece um i'm shocked i'm shocked their whole gotcha thing in the time 0.54

01:45:12.980 no their whole gotcha thing in the tie was that i had said that they were trying to prevent judy

01:45:18.100 from getting work which they were but um they went judy graves is retired so you see that it's all

01:45:25.540 lies right uh because nobody's ever worked after they retired no um so so this is uh so what

01:45:35.300 happened then is that i was um so then to my surprise um people in my party started losing

01:45:44.980 their nerve because of course every hour that goes by they're being asked to denounce me and

01:45:50.580 if they don't denounce me personally then um and they also have to say like the the incantation 0.70

01:45:57.860 which is after you denounce somebody you have to say trans women are women sex work is work

01:46:02.580 and that that reaffir that liturgically reaffirms your membership in the mainstream uh because we

01:46:10.100 just decided to slide in um people who believe that sex trafficking is a myth perpetrated by big

01:46:18.260 feminism and the cops uh so anyway we're um uh so i pretty and so i thought well and i said to the

01:46:29.940 party look um you know i understand uh what's going on here we just have to weather this because

01:46:39.620 these people cannot be appeased no matter what you do they will just smell more blood in the water

01:46:46.500 and uh but the party's communications committee wouldn't back me and i didn't feel like

01:46:53.580 reconvening a meeting of the board to sack the communications committee in the middle of the

01:46:57.680 election during this elaborating crisis uh so eventually i said look you know they've they've

01:47:08.780 sent you know trans activists have sent uh i think it's over 20 000 public rape threats to jk rowling

01:47:15.960 probably an additional 50,000 private rape threats.

01:47:21.100 And I said, look, these people are talking about J.K. Rowling now.

01:47:24.780 The Kill Turfs hashtag is up.

01:47:28.560 And so I think that you've got to realize that unless we offer to rape J.K. Rowling ourselves,

01:47:36.780 you're not getting out from under this.

01:47:38.420 You're just going to have to weather it.

01:47:40.660 But they didn't go that way, so I turned in my resignation.

01:47:45.720 and then the party became a hilarious game of survivor as the party kept making new decisions

01:47:54.760 to appease the lobby and new threats were then uh were then made against uh every member of the

01:48:05.640 board every time they bulked at making a new concession so what finally happened was that

01:48:13.800 the party the party went through I think two leaders after me in the space of a

01:48:20.920 week and if they'd managed to get it down to two candidates Chris Chapman and

01:48:28.920 Jonathan Sheps were still willing to run and walk through the storm but what

01:48:36.300 then happened was uh the guy who had paid to create the party jeff burner a former friend of

01:48:45.020 mine um put up a message on his facebook page that he had the name and contact information of

01:48:51.420 every person on the board who had not voted to personally denounce me and that they were to be

01:48:57.980 hounded all day, every day until they issued a press release denouncing me as a bad person

01:49:05.780 and a bigot. So all but three members of the board resigned. And those are the ones that

01:49:14.020 Jeff Berner didn't have contact information for. So the party pulled out of the election.

01:49:20.600 It was an absolute fiasco. And it was really largely my fault because I wasn't thinking

01:49:26.820 about the coalitions that are possible i was thinking about the coalitions that were possible

01:49:32.340 because you know all kinds of chumps like me supported barack obama in 2008 and 0.53

01:49:41.060 law and the vast majority of gay americans it was 89 supported him in 2008 despite his 0.95

01:49:47.300 opposition to gay marriage that the the people on the left used to be able to form coalitions

01:49:55.780 with people with whom they disagreed about a social issue but now as my friend jeff ranger says

01:50:02.660 everything has to be about everything else all the time or it will be stopped

01:50:10.340 and that i think that's exactly what we find sometimes even on the right to do it if i was

01:50:14.500 to be completely candid is that you know a lot of things with whether whether whether we're talking

01:50:19.380 about you know the more independent question or sovereignist question because i think there's

01:50:22.260 smaller questions that fit into that larger question but then you got to try and put your

01:50:25.980 talking points in there all the time and even further to the rest of Canada and what's happening

01:50:30.520 or the fact that the Liberal Party never talks about China in a negative light like these are

01:50:34.680 all things where just the truth is covered and I think that I think what I really respect about

01:50:40.380 you personally and of course this story that you're telling is that you you try to live out

01:50:45.500 the truth and uh and you got you you know you got kiboshed for it and that that takes integrity and

01:50:50.620 A lot of people don't have that integrity these days, especially in the political world.

01:50:54.880 Yeah, and I think that that's not like – there's an element of kinds of people,

01:51:03.060 kinds of political activists, kinds of honor that are fading from the world.

01:51:08.480 But I think in the case of what we're talking about here,

01:51:12.680 about people who will tell the truth and people who won't,

01:51:16.120 But I think that we are reaching the greatest appetite we've ever had as a society for people who tell the truth, because institutions in our society have been captured to prevent those people systematically from having a voice.

01:51:36.360 and canada has done special things to do that that makes it diverge from the history

01:51:42.680 of every other commonwealth country we began changing our election legislation from 1993 to

01:51:50.120 2003 in that 10-year period we change we changed the system from a system that was it was not a

01:52:00.840 a bottom-up system like America, but it was a system of mutual agreement. The top and the

01:52:08.120 bottom had to agree. Both the party leader and the riding association had to agree on who the

01:52:13.600 candidate was, and if they didn't agree, there couldn't be a candidate, right? That the caucus

01:52:19.880 determined who was a member of the caucus. That was a flat vote. Who's in, who's out.

01:52:28.440 and prime ministers served at the pleasure of their caucus there are these other but that

01:52:36.880 doesn't happen anymore why because the nomination of candidates has both become a right held solely

01:52:45.340 by one individual the registered leader of a party until he or she is deposed that one individual

01:52:53.780 holds that right but they have delegated that right to vetting committees which are committees

01:53:03.140 within political parties whose criteria for selecting candidates are unpublished and the

01:53:09.540 names of whose members are unknown sometimes a member of the vetting committee one will reveal

01:53:15.700 themselves if they have to justify a really outrageous decision. So, you know, where's

01:53:22.560 Canada's Donald Trump? Well, Donald Trump obviously would have been de-vetted by the

01:53:30.280 vetting committee for the Tory leadership race. There would have been no way he could

01:53:34.940 have inserted himself into that. Ditto Bernie Sanders. You know, would Bernie Sanders have

01:53:41.320 been allowed into an NDP leadership race in this country? No way. And that's why I find voters

01:53:49.880 across the spectrum increasingly, there's an appetite for voting for anyone who's telling

01:53:55.300 the truth, whether or not you even agree with them. It's like cheering for an animal that got

01:54:00.240 loose in a slaughterhouse or something. And that's changed not just within my lifetime,

01:54:06.800 but within yours. Corky Evans was the minister of force in BC in 2001 and he came out of cabinet

01:54:16.720 meetings and they would say how did it go? Well, what we are doing now is stupid but it's not as 0.98

01:54:22.880 stupid as the last policy. You had characters like Garth Turner standing up criticizing his 1.00

01:54:31.360 leader in parliament and of course my old pal svend robinson these these are like real people

01:54:39.360 who existed at the start of this century who are unimaginable today the only time somebody like you

01:54:48.480 or me is allowed to run for public office is for a fringe party that will be systematically

01:54:55.040 deplatformed throughout the election. I think a lot of that has to do obviously with the media

01:55:02.180 we have in Canada. It's one of the reasons I'm proud to be with the standard is that it gives

01:55:07.460 me a platform to tell the truth within some very, I think, very reasonable parameters and to have

01:55:13.600 people on from all across the spectrum. That's again, it's one of the reasons why we're speaking

01:55:18.240 today. Again, my own personal respect for you and the fact you have great things to say and to give

01:55:22.060 us an idea of what what that might look like for western canada from uh your point of view but also

01:55:26.880 the fact that i mean we are able to have this conversation on this platform i don't know if

01:55:30.760 you're going to get the same call from cbc no um i got uh i got pushed down some stairs by the cbc

01:55:37.680 once uh no i've uh my my interactions with the cbc are um i was shoelace tackled by a producer i've

01:55:46.900 I've run the full gambit of our national public broadcaster and ways of experiencing them.

01:55:53.040 You know, they really, if a black woman meets the criteria for getting in a CBC-sponsored debate,

01:56:02.900 that's happened twice in campaigns I've been in.

01:56:06.720 It's amazing watching them just change the rules and not even tell you, not even, you know, sugarcoat the thing.

01:56:13.720 uh so yeah i think our um i think one of the big problems in western canada though

01:56:19.760 is now ontario i've said some bad things about them i'll continue to say bad things about them

01:56:25.840 it'll be another part of our basis of unity here uh but one thing about going to ontario and quebec

01:56:32.360 manitoba even um is that there is an old newspaper culture there there are newspapers

01:56:43.580 papers where the media understood themselves to be the fourth estate, they were a professionalized

01:56:49.980 group, and papers had different ideological bents, and they had both reactionary and thoughtful

01:56:58.560 pieces that were in dialogue with each other, right, the Post and the Star arguing with

01:57:04.000 each other, the Star and the Globe arguing with each other, all based around this ethos

01:57:09.620 of objective journalism. We've never, never had that here. The sorry state of BC media

01:57:20.760 is really not much sorrier than it was in my youth. Like the Sun and Province were the

01:57:26.800 same company starting in like 1908 and the big forest companies would just take turns

01:57:34.420 as to whose job it was to run the sun and province at a loss on behalf of the industry.

01:57:40.280 And same with the legislative press gallery, right?

01:57:43.980 There is no pretense of inclusion or objectivity.

01:57:50.180 The things that communists said about the private liberal press

01:57:57.420 were an exaggeration in most of North America,

01:58:03.300 but they've been literally true here for the moment we started printing.

01:58:09.940 Maybe that's a way to kind of pivot here and come to more of a resolution. We have a few

01:58:15.300 minutes left here, but if we were to look at kind of the state of the West today, especially with

01:58:20.260 the federal election looming, what do we need to be thinking about? What is clear to us that's

01:58:26.740 going to change or what needs to change in the West, right or left, in order for there to be a

01:58:31.300 move forward to gain to gain more autonomy and and a stake for the people in this country this part of

01:58:36.820 the country well uh i i think that uh people who care about that are going to be stuck voting for

01:58:44.820 fringe parties um or uh they're gonna be um uh or you know they're they're gonna sit the election

01:58:53.780 out because the mainstream parliamentary parties are captured parties that are not democratic

01:59:02.820 and have no interest in reflecting regular folks' views. Now, depending upon which, I mean, I could

01:59:09.300 offer you two voting strategies. One, of course, is for the party that this station likes most,

01:59:17.060 the western separatist party from tory dissidents but i'd ask folks to consider voting um

01:59:26.900 also consider that another way to express that is through a vote for the communists because

01:59:31.700 they do support import substitution industrialization they have an economic

01:59:36.820 independence agenda that i think is i haven't seen out of the movement on the right yet it's a

01:59:42.820 it's culturally framed because finally the right's winning the culture war so why wouldn't you frame

01:59:48.420 it that way after being on the back foot for 40 to 50 years. So I think that one is going to vote

01:59:56.980 for a fringe party and one is going to recognize that this election is not about us and what we

02:00:06.340 have to focus on doing is making our own local institutions robust what i'm interested in are

02:00:13.780 the 2022 municipal and school board elections in bc what we need to do is start at home

02:00:23.700 throwing out commission government pulling school boards out of province-wide bargaining

02:00:29.220 and using the tools that we have forgotten we can even pick up here and recognizing that

02:00:38.800 the courts are like dice. So if a senior level of government says you can't do it,

02:00:44.660 well, let's roll the dice in court. So that's where my organizing interest is really pointing.

02:00:52.120 I think that until there are major law reforms to restructure federal political parties,

02:00:59.220 Um, a federal election is not the time to do the organizing and build the broad coalitions we need to, to actually shape our destiny.

02:01:12.620 And, and I must admit that, that, I mean, I can say amen to all of that. I, again, you know, there's, there's plenty of places where we differ, uh, and that's fine.

02:01:21.720 I mean, again, that's one of the things I've been trying to emphasize from day one that I've been here and I hope to emphasize every day until I'm finally canceled or, you know, I get to retire into the sunset.

02:01:32.040 If there's such a thing as retirement in the late capitalist world we're entering, something I gave up on way back in 2008, I think most of my generation did.

02:01:42.200 But the point is that, again, from the very beginning, it has always been clear to me that there is no way forward without these conversations where we just, whatever we disagree on and wherever we agree on, the coalition builds, the movement builds, and we're able to move forward towards people having a stake, land reform, people having a sense of belonging in their own home.

02:02:04.160 yeah i think that that is exactly it and one of the things for those who haven't tried it

02:02:11.120 one of the things you'll discover that's really lovely if you reach across to the other extremists

02:02:17.860 that you've been fighting on the logging road or at the abortion clinic or wherever it was

02:02:23.120 um you discovered that it's actually way easier to come up with strategy make agreements get along

02:02:31.040 and even make friends with people you have one thing in common with than with people you're

02:02:37.160 trying to have everything in common with. So it's just a great exercise for, even if we fail

02:02:44.440 politically, broadening our own social horizons and reminding ourselves that contrary to what

02:02:51.220 most people seem to think these days, our neighbors deserve to stay alive, stay in their homes,

02:02:59.440 whatever their private thoughts are, whatever their public pronouncements are,

02:03:04.480 that having a job, having a home, getting to have a family,

02:03:08.320 these are universal things that we should want for our enemies, too.

02:03:13.020 And I think that that's, if we don't recapture that, everything else is on the line.

02:03:19.920 I completely agree.

02:03:21.560 Couldn't agree more.

02:03:22.700 Stuart, where can people find you to follow you and to hear more of your thoughts?

02:03:26.940 So I got two things on the web, stuartparker.ca and losaltos.ca, L-O-S-A-L-T-O-S dot C-A.

02:03:40.780 I'm pretty findable on Twitter, but again, just look through the organization's account and I'm findable there.

02:03:50.600 and yeah it's good to be in touch we're gonna be teaching some courses this

02:03:56.000 summer to part of what we do is we try and arm people with more arguments more

02:04:02.240 history more knowledge more equipment to take into whatever their political

02:04:06.620 struggle is so got some reading groups got some courses if people want to

02:04:11.420 continue this conversation that's excellent again Stuart thank you so much

02:04:15.740 for being with us today and we look forward to having again in the future

02:04:19.760 Wonderful. Looking forward.

02:04:21.920 Goodbye, Stu.

02:04:37.680 Yes, and that's the end of our show for today.

02:04:40.620 Again, thank you so much for tuning in.

02:04:42.200 Be sure to like and subscribe, as well as, well,

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02:05:07.400 Again, thank you so much for watching

02:05:08.620 and keep on trucking.

Western Standard - April 07, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - April 7, 2021

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