Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - April 8, 2021

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00:03:30.000 Thank you.

00:04:00.000 Thank you.

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00:05:00.000 pro-life causes and a demographer a little later in the show we should be sure to like the western

00:05:06.300 standards page on facebook to be notified when we go live and subscribe to our website to support

00:05:12.040 our content bringing mr ross onto our show today made me reflect about my own heritage while i am

00:05:18.240 a status first nations person born of an unwed mother through my adoption i became a son of

00:05:23.620 privilege i was raised away from the reality many aboriginal space on and off reserve my perspective

00:05:29.440 is different from most other agitators amongst Indigenous peoples on a range of issues. For my

00:05:35.180 difference of opinion, I have been called a red apple, someone who has internalized their oppression

00:05:40.000 and far worse pejoratives over the years. In short, because I did not suffer the way many of my

00:05:45.320 brothers and sisters did, I'm not a real Indian. That's an accusation I've struggled with in my

00:05:51.000 life for several years. What does my heritage really mean? I'm not sure. My adoptive parents

00:05:56.560 couldn't have children. A series of miracles literally occurred to place me in their hands

00:06:01.520 at birth. My parents, like myself, are people of deep faith, and throughout my life, my father,

00:06:06.100 who's a bit of a mystic, always reminded me of the story of Moses, given that I'd been adopted

00:06:11.280 away from my people. A rather big calling, if one remembers the Bible stories in the various

00:06:15.860 Hollywood versions. But more importantly, the idea that we, the first peoples of Canada,

00:06:20.420 might need to make a way for ourselves to leave institutional slavery behind and create a better

00:06:25.400 future for our children, apart from the victimhood propagated by some organizers or the Supreme

00:06:30.520 Court challenge industry, is something I believe every status, non-status, Inuit, or Métis person

00:06:35.980 can get behind. What might that Canada look like? In my first column for the Western Standard,

00:06:41.260 I stated that Western sovereignty, or a better deal from Ottawa, whichever, could not be achieved

00:06:46.340 without Aboriginal support. In so many words, as we talk about redrawing Canada's boundaries,

00:06:52.220 Perhaps we need to start at home with what we mean by saying on or off reserve as well as traditional territory.

00:06:59.160 We First Peoples of Canada are governed by an entirely different set of laws that give both communal as well as individual rights.

00:07:06.400 Housing, taxation, starting a business, even local festivals will all in some way or other fall under agreements with various governments at various levels.

00:07:15.440 If somehow those rights could be spread to include non-Indigenous or a new social contract

00:07:20.020 could be made, the West would transform.

00:07:22.660 If nothing else, those of us who live west of Lakehead need to learn to cooperate and

00:07:27.160 to forgive each other our trespasses.

00:07:29.360 The divide and conquer strategy from Ottawa has been on full display for over a century

00:07:33.180 when it comes to the classes of Indigenous persons, as well as non-Indigenous versus

00:07:37.840 Indigenous over the fight of resources.

00:07:40.620 The arrangement is sickening and Ottawa should stop it.

00:07:43.860 We have a choice about how to proceed.

00:07:45.860 I have a choice about how to reconcile the two solitudes within my own heritage.

00:07:50.520 Perhaps if I live that out as best I can and ask my neighbors to do the same, we'll have

00:07:54.060 a brighter future for all of our families.

00:07:56.180 I certainly believe such a path is worth a try.

00:08:00.080 Bringing on Ellis Ross right away, welcome to the program, Ellis.

00:08:03.300 Thanks for having me.

00:08:05.300 Well, I think that one of the key things that we're trying to do here at the Western

00:08:09.640 standard is talk about development and talk about what development means in Canada. Obviously,

00:08:16.080 when it comes to British Columbia, you've been at the forefront of this question for a long time.

00:08:20.540 And I think that just as we spoke in a previous interview, I would like to just discuss a little

00:08:25.700 bit how did you come to the place you've come to as a First Nations person? And how do you bridge

00:08:31.920 the gap between what seems to be a lot of anti-development rhetoric on a certain side of

00:08:36.960 the spectrum and the need for us to move forward as a as a people as a nation well uh to be honest

00:08:46.020 in the beginning i actually opposed economic development resource development i opposed

00:08:49.440 everything even though i actually worked most of my life in it because i had never seen uh or

00:08:57.340 actually delved into the social issues that comes with not having an economy and every reserve

00:09:03.620 across canada will tell you they have no economy therefore they're young people they're old people

00:09:08.820 they have nothing to do and so that all they're left with is basically all the social ills that

00:09:14.980 come with living on reserve a lot of what you see in canada right now is 50 percent of aboriginals

00:09:20.580 live off reserve is for that reason they're looking for something and they're looking just

00:09:26.420 to build their own life that's all they're doing there's not many aboriginals out there that are

00:09:30.420 out there protesting every day and you know denouncing uh colonialism or the settlers uh

00:09:38.020 that prisoner is just like everybody else you know they just want to build a life have a family

00:09:44.180 have a future and then when i realized this i started to dig more into what an economy meant

00:09:51.060 how to build an economy and more importantly how a strong economy actually builds a society

00:09:57.380 And that's why I do what I do.

00:10:00.100 In a previous conversation that you and I had, you mentioned that it was actually in looking for funding for your girls' basketball team, I believe,

00:10:08.380 that you realized that something had to change inside of the First Nation community you were in.

00:10:13.020 Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

00:10:15.280 Yeah, I got nominated to be in council in 2003.

00:10:18.140 And like everybody else that gets nominated, I felt I didn't belong there.

00:10:21.360 But I kept my name in because I was a coach of a basketball team, a number of them.

00:10:26.500 and fundraising was always the toughest thing on reserve

00:10:30.160 because nobody has any money.

00:10:32.240 And, you know, we had to raise at least $5,000 to $7,000 every year

00:10:37.440 just to get to our tournaments, and that was a struggle.

00:10:42.140 So I figured I'd leave my name in for nomination for council

00:10:44.600 because I could tap into the council's vast resources

00:10:48.160 and their huge bank account.

00:10:50.780 But when I got into council, it took me about a month or two

00:10:53.360 to realize council had no money.

00:10:55.220 they had nothing they they they were actually in so much debt canada under the indian act was

00:11:02.620 going to come in and shut council down and canada was going to start paying the debts for us

00:11:07.020 so that was a quite the rude awakening for me because i because i believed all the rhetoric

00:11:13.340 right you know about how all the territory and the wealth and the future i used to listen to

00:11:20.500 politicians speeches talking about new relationships and i just got totally disgusted by these speeches

00:11:27.600 after all when i figured out the truth about where we are where we were we in the middle of uh well

00:11:35.400 actually right before the pandemic began last year obviously there was the wet sweat and protests

00:11:40.340 and there had already been agreements about coastal gas link and the pipeline

00:11:45.400 how how does that get negotiated something i talked about with one of my guests not a few

00:11:50.180 day just a few days ago is that people talk about you know western sovereignty and all sorts of

00:11:54.440 other things but they they don't realize I think in the rest of of the west in Alberta and the

00:11:58.700 prairies that BC can have these kind of microcosms of conflict how how do we find solidarity inside

00:12:06.260 of the Aboriginal population in BC or how does everybody get brought to the table to help BC

00:12:10.700 be a better place I don't you can achieve that I mean you can do it in pockets like what we did

00:12:18.440 with the Chevron LNG project.

00:12:21.260 We also did it again loosely for the LNG Canada project.

00:12:25.860 But the thing that you can bring a group of First Nations together

00:12:29.820 in solidarity is, I've tried.

00:12:32.920 It's not possible.

00:12:34.700 But you do have that one goal for all First Nations individually

00:12:38.980 where they want jobs for their people,

00:12:40.860 they want revenues for their own programs.

00:12:43.540 That was the key for us in terms of uniting First Nations

00:12:46.760 from Prince George to Kitimat, but I was fortunate when I was a councillor, my chief councillor was

00:12:54.120 actually the one who proposes the first place on a business case, and he told all the other

00:12:59.480 First Nations, he said, you know what, leave your politics and your lawyers by the door.

00:13:06.120 We'll call the lawyers in once we have the agreement principle and they can figure out

00:13:09.560 the details, but we're not going to let the lawyers negotiate these agreements for us.

00:13:13.920 That was actually the first step in terms of getting these LNG projects across the finish line here in BC.

00:13:20.940 I think that that's exactly something that needs to be talked about as well throughout our time together here,

00:13:26.620 just kind of outlining some issues.

00:13:27.840 We'll visit them again, obviously, before the hour is up.

00:13:30.100 But this is something else that I really appreciate about our original conversation that happened just a little while ago.

00:13:35.380 I'm trying to remember what exact phrase you used on that regard,

00:13:40.060 But I always call it the Supreme Court industrial complex, this challenge system, like this idea that somehow the only reason that lawyers are even talking to the First Nations is that they're going to bring them to the Supreme Court and that's how they're going to retire.

00:13:54.020 How do we change that culture?

00:13:56.320 Or do First Nations know that they're getting used that way?

00:14:00.220 Well, it's an education process and it's a leadership style.

00:14:04.380 It's something that I learned along the way from my previous leaders.

00:14:10.060 And ultimately, when I talk about leadership, leadership has got to understand exactly what you want to achieve.

00:14:16.760 If you want to achieve something, then you've got to get rid of some of the stuff that doesn't actually get you there.

00:14:23.660 By the time I became chief counselor, all I had to do really was put some more depth into our, you know, our strategies.

00:14:34.200 I added more

00:14:36.020 components to it

00:14:38.320 but it was

00:14:39.680 mainly driven by the leadership

00:14:42.060 and that was

00:14:43.640 it was actually a turning point for us

00:14:46.060 because you know

00:14:47.520 what I found when I went

00:14:50.400 around BC when I was talking about

00:14:52.140 LNG, I was talking about forestry, I was talking about how to

00:14:54.260 engage in the economy

00:14:55.440 what I found was a lot of leadership

00:14:58.100 in the First Nation community had the mentality

00:15:00.080 of all or nothing

00:15:00.840 and it was

00:15:02.820 it's a defeatist attitude

00:15:05.000 and at the end of the day

00:15:06.640 if you have this all or nothing attitude

00:15:08.840 well 10% of nothing is nothing

00:15:10.580 what did you really achieve

00:15:12.780 and so I actually

00:15:15.200 learned this from a businessman

00:15:16.780 of all people

00:15:18.560 when I was talking about

00:15:21.220 my frustration about

00:15:22.340 not getting some agreements signed and it actually changed

00:15:25.160 my perspective on

00:15:26.180 what I should be negotiating for

00:15:28.580 because at times I was the all or nothing

00:15:30.820 negotiator as well

00:15:32.160 i think i think that that's maybe even a good place to start just to talk about like how

00:15:38.480 how did you learn this that you know the style that you've taken i i really appreciate your

00:15:43.560 style both in the legislature and and in public and in your statements um i know at times you

00:15:48.780 you told me last time that uh you know there are certain your your temper can get the better of

00:15:54.820 you at times but but i think that just as a starting place like i think i think the thing

00:15:59.300 that really gets to me about your leadership campaign and the fact that you've put your

00:16:04.440 name forward is that you're a real British Columbian. You started with your own two hands

00:16:09.720 and you worked through the system and got to be an elected person, but you have not

00:16:13.760 forgotten the people you came from. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about your

00:16:16.980 background, Ellis?

00:16:19.400 Yeah, I was born and raised on reserve, regardless of the pale color I have, but I was a laborer

00:16:28.060 most of my life all my life actually but anything i get my hands on uh i worked for dfo for a few

00:16:34.800 years i ran a business with my brothers for a few years uh there's actually my father when i became

00:16:40.140 a young man that did not want me to be a fisherman a commercial fisherman which is used to be typical

00:16:45.980 of first nations to get into that profession didn't want did not want me that and he actually

00:16:50.140 encouraged me to go off reserve because back in those days if you wanted a job on reserve you had

00:16:56.680 to go to council that was the only employer in town but he actually encouraged me to go off

00:17:01.080 reserve and look for jobs and so most of my life I spent working off reserve and I had a perspective

00:17:07.060 of what it meant to be out there in a private sector and so that was just my life my dad

00:17:13.840 actually encouraged me to do everything I could sports you know jobs you know just go out and get

00:17:20.540 new experiences and so you know that that lifetime of experience is actually what got me here

00:17:27.600 Eventually, of course, you ended up the chief councillor of the highest of First Nation.

00:17:32.160 What kind of was that experience like?

00:17:35.680 Did you find that you had to change culture around you or did you have to learn from the culture there and then kind of move forward the best way you could?

00:17:43.920 Is the First Nation that you're a part of, was it different than its neighbours in its attitude or in its openness maybe to new ideas?

00:17:52.160 And that's why it's been more successful than some of its neighbours.

00:17:54.900 well before i became chief i was actually a counselor a paid counselor for eight years

00:18:00.500 so i had a plenty of time to learn and read and and uh and so by the time i came chief counselor

00:18:07.460 i had a pretty good idea of where i wanted to take our people and the bottom line was my message was

00:18:14.740 guys if we want a better future we always talk about we have to change we have to change our

00:18:20.340 attitude our mentality we have to change our structure uh and it took me a while you know

00:18:26.820 to convince my council in fact the first two years of my chief council my council

00:18:31.700 actually disapproved of some of my my initiatives including the structure

00:18:37.700 but the following two years we got a brand new council and you know they were they were open to

00:18:42.980 change and open to talking so that being done i went down to my community and all the different

00:18:48.500 uh off reserve areas as well and told them about the change that i was proposing and ultimately i

00:18:55.300 was asking him you got to trust me i'm going to do some things that have never been done before

00:19:00.500 i'm going to do it on a grand scale but if you trust me you know our future will be will be solid

00:19:06.900 and then that's what that's what uh really that's why the highs are so successful today

00:19:12.340 we went from being one of the poorest bands back in 2003 to probably one of the most wealthiest

00:19:17.940 most progressive i mean we don't go out looking for government money now to build our public works

00:19:24.340 building for instance we don't go out looking for money to repair our soccer field our council

00:19:29.780 just sits down and sets out a budget and they pay for it themselves i mean and they're still

00:19:36.020 continuing and by the way the money's still coming in and this is the truest form of independence i

00:19:41.700 can think of self-governance and i've never was a fan of self-governance but independence yes i

00:19:47.700 I was always a fan, but it took a while.

00:19:51.720 So by the time I resigned as chief councillor,

00:19:53.860 there was a lot of emotion from my people as well as my family and myself

00:20:01.720 because we had progressed so much in six years.

00:20:06.460 It was just amazing.

00:20:09.040 But it took a lot of hard work to change the attitudes.

00:20:12.420 I mean, there's always a 10% of people that will oppose everything you do,

00:20:15.640 no matter what.

00:20:16.180 and they're still there today but the majority of our people you know they're not looking back

00:20:21.660 and they're talking about new things nowadays they're not talking about the welfare list or

00:20:26.700 unemployment or you know the cupboard is bare they're not talking about that you know they're

00:20:31.940 talking about different things may mainly a brighter future you know it's what what blows

00:20:38.100 me away isn't just that of course that's achievable and i always i always believe that

00:20:42.640 was achievable for any person in Canada. I really believe that. But that there's anybody who would

00:20:47.120 try to hold that back. I'm referring, of course, to some of your discussions with people on the

00:20:52.020 other side, on the opposite side, people agitate against this kind of progress or think that only

00:20:57.580 maybe a victim mentality should be used or that we should always use the court system or find it

00:21:03.460 always through government, not through private means. Thinking most specifically, probably,

00:21:07.720 of your interaction with Pam Palmetto on the TV, I think it was, and I really appreciated

00:21:13.620 what you were saying. I'm sure that maybe some other people didn't, but why don't you

00:21:17.760 tell us a little bit about those conflicts where you're trying to convince other people

00:21:21.140 this is the way forward, but they just want to be stuck in the old way.

00:21:25.520 Well, what I learned was learned on the job. And what I learned was being a typical Aboriginal

00:21:31.600 that didn't have a future. And when I got into the leadership position, when I found

00:21:36.000 out that uh you know there's a lot of aboriginals across canada that are facing the same thing

00:21:41.360 you know that got me very angry but it also got me very focused in terms of and this is why i

00:21:46.400 said a few years ago i don't think bc is ready for my kind of leadership because i i get an idea in

00:21:53.200 my head it's it's backed up by principles it's backed up by knowledge it's backed up by history

00:21:59.360 and then i go after it and it's and the only thing that really offends me in terms of talking to the

00:22:05.040 opposition about this is when uh somebody that hasn't lived the same life i have has not had the

00:22:12.560 same learning experiences and and and starts talking in a condescending tone or starts being

00:22:18.640 disrespectful or starts to basically disregard you know your your history and your your knowledge

00:22:26.080 base and just comes up with a high level academic argument that's not even you know proven in the

00:22:32.960 real world, that's what really offends me. But any other kind of conversation, I don't mind.

00:22:40.400 I've never come across any really offensive debates in my lifetime. I mean, a lot of debates

00:22:48.720 you find are steeped in ignorance, for example, which is fine. If you find some debates that are

00:22:55.280 are steeped in deeply held beliefs. That's fine. But don't disrespect the other side,

00:23:03.280 especially if the other side actually has a lived experience.

00:23:11.440 The way I thought about it back then, I still think about today. I've got a very short window

00:23:17.520 to provide a tremendous amount of change, very short window. And I'm not just talking about

00:23:22.800 a politician's life i'm talking about the lifestyle lifetime of a person so i don't have time to waste

00:23:29.280 on these nonsensical debates i don't have time to you know argue the nuances of of why i think the

00:23:37.200 way i think in terms of society or an economy i i believe i have a job to do and i i want to do it as

00:23:44.240 quickly and efficiently as i can one of the things that you know comes to mind about all of all of

00:23:51.760 this economic development that's happening here in the north i know that you've spoken about before

00:23:55.520 is this the idea that there could be a plastics plant coming off of uh one of the one of the

00:24:01.280 pipelines and that we can be producing serious industrial plastics here in british columbia

00:24:06.560 you know so a domestic a domestic manufacturing is is this the way forward for first nations in

00:24:12.640 general and and specifically to this project is what what are the pieces that still have to be

00:24:18.640 put together there for this to become a reality well the idea came from uh the prince george area

00:24:26.400 and initially it was uh in connection with the first nation but my point was really manufacturing

00:24:32.920 if this is what the people want is the way to go for british colombians in general and i've heard

00:24:39.660 about this manufacturing idea we got to get back to manufacturing you know we got to stop sending

00:24:44.760 our resources you know in its raw form to asia we got to get we add value to that product before

00:24:51.080 we send it out i've heard this for years and you know it's really easy for a politician to get up

00:24:56.520 and say this and get a few votes it's another thing to actually do it and this so when i found

00:25:02.840 this uh this person that was proposing is prince george and i found similar projects proposed

00:25:08.360 around bc you know the only thing that i could see was okay there's no political will behind it

00:25:13.800 and there's no government support behind it.

00:25:16.740 There's no incentives.

00:25:18.680 So all this talk about we should get back into manufacturing,

00:25:22.220 that's all hot air.

00:25:23.220 That's nothing.

00:25:24.840 So what I've been trying to do is based on my experience now

00:25:28.700 in terms of reviewing projects,

00:25:30.880 and now I have experience in terms of reviewing legislation,

00:25:35.040 I think this is possible.

00:25:37.400 I think it is really, truly possible.

00:25:39.740 and I it's something I've never heard of before in terms of making plastics out of an LNG pipeline

00:25:45.840 and the guy that's doing this is taking an incredible amount of risk he's putting in a

00:25:51.740 tremendous amount of time and effort and all he needs really is support that's all he needs

00:25:58.760 like he's got a land base and for those that that you know I talk about well you know it's

00:26:05.520 that's just a dream ah it's never gonna work and well you know back in 2004 lng was a dream

00:26:12.720 it was a dream nobody believed in it my band stuck with it from 2004 to today's date and guess what

00:26:20.000 lng canada is probably halfway through building their export facility in kitamat i mean

00:26:26.480 there's ways to take a dream to a vision and reality and you know it's i i see that i understand

00:26:37.200 that and what we've done in kitamat is we've taken that dream to reality on a few different

00:26:42.720 occasions and we're thinking okay what's next and i think this is what bc's got to consider

00:26:50.240 you have so much potential and you talk about that potential but you don't have that crucial

00:26:56.400 next step of converting that dream into reality you don't have that whether it be politics or

00:27:04.640 whether it be your your laws or your policies or regulations for some reason you can't make that

00:27:10.840 next step you've done it in certain occasions with certain products like say pellets which is

00:27:17.160 a great story in bc but if you really truly want to come out of a covid crisis in terms of the

00:27:23.360 economy, or you really want to see the West, you know, build up in terms of strength in

00:27:31.660 their own right, then you got to stop talking and you got to start doing.

00:27:36.740 And this is what I learned over my years in my territory, that doing has tremendous awards

00:27:43.000 for the region and the province and the country.

00:27:47.100 I think that's precisely it.

00:27:48.880 A lot of promises have been made over the years about all sorts of issues, particularly, as you mentioned, the value added question.

00:27:56.740 I think something else that at least for all of our listeners over the Rockies and on the side of the Rockies, that's always a bit of a constant question is the question of regulation.

00:28:05.200 We have various boards and committees at the federal and provincial level that are supposed to try and help us understand whether or not a project is viable or if it's going to be environmentally safe, etc.

00:28:16.380 what's been your experience with some of that as as a member of government does

00:28:20.580 do you think that the best interests are being served there or is there people

00:28:24.240 just trying to put locks up and walls up to keep things from getting done what do

00:28:28.560 you think I think it's a mix it's a mix of politics ideology outdated regulations

00:28:36.840 and I don't think BC is really caught up to the idea that you know the world is

00:28:45.300 leaving us behind the world will take our resources happily and then they'll

00:28:50.940 convert it into some value-added product they'll make a ton of money and BC is

00:28:55.320 always complained about this but we haven't caught up to the idea on how to

00:28:58.800 fix it and the way to fix it is it might be painful in the beginning but if you

00:29:05.280 establish some kind of base for value-added industries here then you

00:29:09.160 know maybe five ten fifteen years that pain has gone away and this just becomes

00:29:13.620 part of your economic fabric part of your social fabric i mean but but you got to make a move

00:29:19.140 sometime you gotta stop talking you gotta stop doing in fact i'll give you an example here in bc

00:29:24.420 uh we talk about clean energy you know but we we we uh cancelled the standing offer program for

00:29:31.860 clean energy program projects in bc cancelled it this government actually proposed buying

00:29:38.340 uh energy off the grid mainly from the united states who still uses coal for power

00:29:44.820 we got the geothermal the geothermal process in terms of getting a process

00:29:49.460 is not clear it's not defined so you can go out and get a permit say that to do explore exploration

00:29:57.380 of oil and gas drilling you can get that quite easily because the process defined the process

00:30:04.500 to go after an exploratory permit for geothermal drilling is not clear. Even the First Nation in

00:30:10.660 BC can't get through the process. In fact, if the minister doesn't feel good about approving

00:30:18.340 or disapproving that project, they won't make that approval. I mean, this is all that talk

00:30:24.980 about clean energy and cutting your emissions, and here you have an opportunity to actually

00:30:29.060 develop a geothermal industry in bc but your regulations are so outdated and so vague and

00:30:35.540 then they're not they're not designed with the idea of getting that permit off quickly

00:30:42.580 it's just i don't know in some cases i think it just boggles my mind in terms of

00:30:47.940 the politics versus the actuality of doing something is just not matching up

00:30:52.260 during your time in government uh have you had any ability to influence that or to try and at

00:31:00.340 least bring the ruling part current ruling party now uh to account and try and ask them hey like

00:31:05.540 let's move forward on this this isn't a political issue this is a bc issue bringing bc british

00:31:10.900 colombians together well you know the legislatures the way they work is is they don't work like that

00:31:18.020 you know out in the open like you see us in the legislature and and you'll see the leaders talk

00:31:24.740 about well let's work together in the legislature you know it doesn't work like that uh and any

00:31:31.220 opposition member will tell you you know they put a private member's bill on the floor for debate

00:31:37.380 and the government actually decides which bills that they'll debate and which ones they'll they'll

00:31:42.180 see through well governments never bring up private member bills from the opposition

00:31:48.020 I mean, even when we're debating a bill that's put forward by the government, the opposition

00:31:53.540 will put in some amendments to that bill during the debate.

00:31:57.080 While government doesn't entertain the idea of an amendment coming from opposition, unless

00:32:02.340 that opposition is actually keeping you in power, like what happened here in BC.

00:32:08.480 The Green Party put their votes toward the NDP, therefore they took government away from

00:32:13.840 the BC Liberals.

00:32:14.840 well the government will entertain their amendments they'll entertain their private

00:32:19.320 members bills because they're supporting them to keep them in the leadership position

00:32:23.560 so it's but what i've done and this was actually suggested to me before uh that uh i work on issues

00:32:31.880 in my writing with the ministers in question and so the ministers i've talked to over the years i

00:32:40.360 said you know look i'm not looking to embarrass you you know i i've got this issue in my writing

00:32:46.440 all i really need is some kind of help to get this issue resolved and if we can work together

00:32:52.680 or even you can resolve on your own i'm good i'm happy i won't go running to a newspaper

00:32:57.560 you know you can take credit that that doesn't bother me so that that's really the kind of

00:33:01.960 cooperation that i look for i don't know if that happens often but that's that's what i found quite

00:33:06.600 effective with with british columbia and and even kind of its sister you know alberta and then of

00:33:14.760 course the rest the west this is this has always been a point of contention too is that somehow

00:33:19.400 you know alberta has all these resources and uh they need to get them to tide water and there's

00:33:24.800 been opposition in bc uh from from both governments at this point that happened under christy clark

00:33:30.500 as well or at least trying to negotiate very strongly and now under the ndp we are building

00:33:35.600 we're still building the pipeline, but we are not building Northern Gateway that has not been

00:33:39.800 resurrected. What needs to change with that? Do the legislators in British Columbia need to,

00:33:47.880 I don't know, have a retreat with their brothers and sisters in Edmonton and learn how to

00:33:53.460 communicate better? Or is it a leadership question? You know, I come from reserve.

00:34:00.280 And I refer to coming from reserve as basically coming from a different country.

00:34:05.600 So when I when I come into this situation, this arena, you know, I was quite surprised at the relationships that provinces have with each other.

00:34:16.000 I mean, it's almost oppositional.

00:34:19.920 You have trade barriers.

00:34:22.320 There's no cooperation.

00:34:24.800 In fact, we'll cooperate at the drop of a hat with the United States first, or the European Union first, before we go out and cooperate with our neighbors.

00:34:35.600 Alberta or Yukon or Saskatchewan it's it's quite mind-boggling with me in fact the other thing I've noticed too is that I don't really sense any high level of pride in being a Canadian I mean I'm proud of being an Aboriginal I'm proud of being a Haisla you know it's and it's it was something I took to the table and said no I'm doing this for

00:35:05.580 the greater good of where i come from for the people i represent and so as mla i just took

00:35:11.740 the same approach i'm going to fight for for what's important to skina but but i don't see

00:35:18.140 this pride like like you go to the united states and you see their tremendous amount of pride

00:35:22.860 uh you you you talk to immigrants that came to canada even if they're second generation

00:35:27.340 or third generation they're really proud of where they came from but try to find a proud canadian

00:35:33.020 You know, try to find them and they're hard to come by.

00:35:39.020 And what I don't understand about is why that pride is not there.

00:35:42.380 Why are people so afraid to be proud of BC or proud of Canada?

00:35:47.420 Because this is really a great place to live.

00:35:51.260 We've got good services, we've got good highways, we've got good medical,

00:35:54.620 regardless of the rhetoric out there.

00:35:56.860 you know, we got great freedoms, right? And this should be the land of opportunity. If you want

00:36:07.180 to work hard, if you want to sacrifice, you know, you can achieve this. So why are we not proud of

00:36:14.500 this? Why are we always beating up on ourselves? And believe in the rhetoric out there that talks

00:36:20.400 about how Canada is actually, you know, somehow we're bad, whether we're talking about our

00:36:26.180 politics or somewhere we're talking about our environmental standards or our ideas on how to

00:36:31.120 build up our economy which in turn helps us build up a society i i don't get it i don't understand

00:36:38.440 it and as it's kind of like uh somebody that came in from the outside and came in here i was actually

00:36:43.820 i'm still surprised to this day and i want to tell canadians that there's there's no reason

00:36:48.900 not to be proud i'm not saying going out there and you know wave the flag and do all that kind

00:36:54.640 up but be proud because this is a great place to come from this is a great place to live

00:37:00.480 i think that's exactly where we have to take off from when it comes to even what we have to do

00:37:05.840 inside of our provinces or inside of our communities when we when we had spoken before

00:37:10.560 something that you made clear to me was that you weren't interested in the divisions that

00:37:14.240 are even within your party or within bc in general you were interested in appealing to

00:37:18.880 all british colombians with a bc centric policy a way for all of us to to figure out how to deal

00:37:25.760 with housing and everything else what what do you think is missing there when it comes to

00:37:31.520 politics of bc there's a lot of politics of division even in our province how do you uh

00:37:36.480 how do you move forward with that well it's gonna be hard because you've got so many different

00:37:41.840 levels of division right you got the political parties uh you got the ideologies you got the

00:37:48.080 different communities that have different interests and different goals it's gonna be really hard but

00:37:53.440 it's uh you know if there's ever time to talk about coming together now's the time because

00:37:59.280 coming out of the covid you know there's two things i think that have to happen uh we have to

00:38:04.800 rebuild our economy and we have to rebuild our society i mean the effects that covid restrictions

00:38:11.840 have had in our society is is heartbreaking it's absolutely heartbreaking i mean it's

00:38:19.200 and by the way we we can't be naive to think that our competitors our neighbors all over the world

00:38:27.920 are going to be thinking the same thing they're going to be thinking about how do we get our

00:38:31.920 economy back what can we do in terms of incentives how can we take business away from you know joe

00:38:39.040 blow in canada and bring it to our to our region so we we can't be naive in thinking this i mean

00:38:46.800 bc canada if you really want to re-establish your economy and therefore reset your society not reset

00:38:53.760 sorry with that but actually rebuild your society you got to think about some really aggressive

00:39:00.640 approaches to rebuilding your economy and yeah talk about the drawbacks talk about the negatives

00:39:07.200 talk about the pauses but ultimately at the end of the day what we're talking about is the well

00:39:12.160 being of canadians i don't i don't want to see canadians you know leave canada for for a job

00:39:20.240 i don't want to see us line up at for for welfare i don't want to see that i want to see people

00:39:26.560 you know build a life i want to see them get a mortgage build a house build a future build a

00:39:31.600 family. And for that, I think we've really got to take a good, long, sobering look at how do we

00:39:38.140 come out of this, given all the competition that we'll be up against. You mentioned before that

00:39:44.880 it wasn't sexy enough. The headline wasn't sexy enough. Young Aboriginal person gets their own

00:39:52.240 job, buys their own house. It just wasn't sexy enough. It made more sense to talk about all the

00:39:59.280 protests and everything else how do we change the narrative well that's a tough one i think it comes

00:40:07.920 down to leadership you know the ideas that i brought to my community in terms of how we get

00:40:12.720 there even faster they weren't they weren't well received but but it was almost it was a commitment

00:40:20.080 to say look you're going to get a job you're going to be able to build your own future you won't have

00:40:25.760 to rely on council you won't have to rely on government and then your kids will see that

00:40:30.960 and then they'll do the same they'll fall in your footsteps but but in terms of trying to

00:40:35.680 change the mentality of all bceers or canadians it's going to be really tough

00:40:41.600 but but i think what's really going to have to happen if canadians and i hope this day doesn't

00:40:46.720 come uh canadians are gonna have to feel some pain before they realize you know that their

00:40:54.240 leadership selections actually mean something. And I've tried to point this out a number of times

00:41:00.000 in terms of learning just by watching and reading what other regions have done.

00:41:06.480 What happened in Venezuela is absolutely unbelievable. What happened to Greece? What

00:41:14.960 happened to detroit uh countries and cities going bankrupt declaring bankruptcy and having no economy

00:41:26.720 venezuela is now printing out their money like million dollar notes and some of the people are

00:41:32.640 starting to go out in the streets and they're starting to make basically origami out of their

00:41:36.720 money because it's worthless this is scary this is scary this is what happens when when all you

00:41:44.800 do is elect politicians instead of electing somebody that takes a really keen interest

00:41:51.840 in governance. There's a difference. You keep electing the politician, the politician all he

00:41:57.920 wants is your vote. That's all that politician wants. They're not concerned about balancing

00:42:03.200 the budget. They're not concerned about building up the economy. They just want that vote.

00:42:09.920 and so i think venezuela i think they had some leadership problems i think places like like you

00:42:17.600 just have to google how many cities in united states went bankrupt that declared bankruptcy

00:42:23.520 and all those workers then have their pensions wiped out you know and then

00:42:29.040 you know because there's no economy there's no jobs you get basically the the

00:42:33.680 the criminal element moves in because there's nothing there.

00:42:40.960 And this is, I could relate because, like I said,

00:42:45.300 every reserve across Canada has got no economy.

00:42:48.160 There's nothing to do.

00:42:49.780 And when you have no economy, you start to see other problems pop up.

00:42:54.060 So I just think that Canadians wake up, you've got tremendous resources,

00:42:59.680 You got tremendous potential, but if you don't elect people that, you know, favor governance over politics, then your future for your kids could be pretty murky.

00:43:15.580 No, absolutely.

00:43:17.060 We're in the middle of the BC leadership race.

00:43:19.920 You are the first contender who announced.

00:43:22.740 And, of course, that's happening as we speak.

00:43:26.680 What are you finding as you speak to people about what happened with the last election,

00:43:32.780 why the minority government happened?

00:43:34.980 What changed people's attitude?

00:43:37.300 Why did the BC Liberals lose power after being in power,

00:43:40.400 what seemed to be indefeatable for several years?

00:43:43.780 I'm not sure.

00:43:45.300 You know, everybody's got their opinions.

00:43:48.260 And in 2017, when I came in, you know, I was listening to those conversations.

00:43:53.800 i was reading those conversations on social media and uh but i was i was pretty busy i was trying

00:44:00.760 to learn you know what does it take to live within the legislature uh what does it take to be an mla

00:44:07.560 in my own writing i understood the issues of course but i didn't understand much of the process

00:44:12.920 much of my time was spent just learning the processes and but the politics

00:44:18.680 i don't know if it's true what they say about us did we lose our way did we lose touch

00:44:26.700 i don't know i'm not sure i don't have an opinion on that because previous to 2017 i had no interest

00:44:34.580 in politics i actually refused to run for office a number of times for the federal government as

00:44:40.420 well as the BC liberals I refused but now that I'm coming in if people truly

00:44:50.740 want that change I think my approach is different I think the way I the way I

00:45:01.180 communicate what I believe in is different and if that's what the people

00:45:07.840 want okay great and i do believe there's a way forward doing this based on what has been done

00:45:15.060 in the last 17 years 18 years in bc there were some really good things done in bc that we could

00:45:23.420 build upon the foundation is there but where do we move now for the next 5 10 15 20 years

00:45:30.760 do we become a venezuela uh do we do we become a detroit or do we become

00:45:38.260 a power in our own right which is hard to do being a western province

00:45:44.560 but but if that's what bcers want sure great that's where i come from that's my background

00:45:50.580 it is a hard thing being a western province uh so far from the centers of power

00:45:56.960 though of course BC is the most populous of the four western provinces and certainly with its

00:46:01.780 coastline has something to say I think that with regards to what's happening even in British

00:46:08.320 Columbia and we're seeing this divide happen everywhere we're seeing it in the states we're

00:46:12.120 seeing it throughout Europe and throughout the west this kind of this crisis of identity and

00:46:16.940 who's going to be in charge of what as we look at the the electoral map from 2020 the fall election

00:46:22.700 in British Columbia that awarded the NDP a majority.

00:46:25.880 We see that there's a lot of rural ridings that stayed blue,

00:46:29.180 stayed BC Liberal, and a lot of urban ridings,

00:46:32.260 even in the Bible Belt, as we call Abbotsford, et cetera,

00:46:35.580 that went orange.

00:46:37.100 What do you think got lost in that messaging,

00:46:39.880 or how do we deliver a message that would bring those ridings

00:46:45.020 back into the fold?

00:46:48.000 I'm not sure.

00:46:49.440 I've looked at this urban-rural divide,

00:46:51.620 And it's a political ploy to talk about the urbans versus rurals.

00:47:00.160 Because I believe that no matter where you come from, you're an aboriginal, you're an immigrant, you're living in Vancouver, you're living up in Smithers.

00:47:12.180 There's some basic things that make us all the same.

00:47:15.940 And I keep repeating it, right?

00:47:18.400 It says people want to just build their lives.

00:47:20.560 They just want to, and they want to have as affordable lives within reason.

00:47:26.260 They want to be independent enough, you know,

00:47:28.740 just to own a chunk of property and raise their family.

00:47:31.880 I mean, a lot of things I talk about as an MLA,

00:47:37.200 the majority of people have no interest in it.

00:47:40.960 I mean, I don't blame them.

00:47:43.520 I didn't, I wasn't interested either, right?

00:47:45.180 When I was, before I became an MLA, I wasn't interested.

00:47:48.340 unless something specific that government did affected me directly then i became interested

00:47:55.860 but it's you know this i i don't believe in the the rural urban i don't believe in the ideologies

00:48:01.860 that keep us separated i think coming out of this covid crisis i think we should think about

00:48:07.620 you know what's near and dear to each of us as individuals

00:48:11.620 and you know how do we sustain that or bring it back you know for the future

00:48:17.540 Because I believe quality of life is really, it's not talked about enough.

00:48:24.900 But I think it's going to be a big issue coming out of COVID if those jobs don't return.

00:48:32.120 If the economy doesn't return.

00:48:34.880 I think it's going to be a big topic.

00:48:36.040 And it might take a while for the pain to set in.

00:48:40.300 But you're already seeing the pain already because of the closure of, say, the tourism industry.

00:48:44.860 uh the restaurants getting shut down you're feeling the pain

00:48:48.580 uh hopefully that's short term but the real question is how do we bring it back

00:48:54.640 i mean the tourism tourism industry alone for example and i learned this

00:48:59.220 years ago when we did a study on tourism and we found out that it was going to take

00:49:05.320 a tremendous amount of money we didn't have to develop a tourism industry in kitab

00:49:10.000 and so i was trying to think of a way you know to get around this report that told us you know

00:49:16.640 we're we're up the creek without a paddle basically so i told i asked the guy he said what

00:49:21.700 what can i do then what there's got to be a way you know to get around this so i can create a

00:49:27.300 tourism industry in kitaman and the guy said well let's put it this way you're competing

00:49:33.480 with Disneyland and Vegas.

00:49:36.860 What are you going to do

00:49:38.240 to get that person

00:49:40.280 that makes $200,000 a year,

00:49:42.680 you know, works 70 hours a week

00:49:44.400 and he has two weeks vacation

00:49:46.000 to be with his family?

00:49:46.960 What are you going to do

00:49:47.560 to attract that person?

00:49:50.440 And wow, yeah, good point.

00:49:54.320 And so I just think

00:49:55.680 if we're going to bring back

00:49:56.800 our economy,

00:49:57.760 we got to be bold about it.

00:49:59.440 Does that mean?

00:49:59.940 That must have been me.

00:50:01.160 We got to be bold about it.

00:50:03.480 And if we're going to actually have these visions of how we come back, great.

00:50:08.160 Let's have those conversations.

00:50:09.620 But ultimately, you've also got to walk the talk.

00:50:15.760 No, I completely agree.

00:50:17.460 I completely agree.

00:50:19.520 With your leadership bid, then, it's interesting, right?

00:50:22.240 Because both the way that you've, you know, just your background in life, how you've had to fight for your place at the table,

00:50:28.320 and then the way that you've tried to make sure that you bring as many boats up with your own tides,

00:50:33.480 So does that mean that populism has finally come to BC? We finally have a populist candidate in yourself? And then the vision would be that we have these grand projects come back like we had with WAC Bennett and with the way that we built infrastructure in BC before? Is that what you're hopeful for in your campaign if you win the leadership and eventually become premier?

00:50:55.320 well the the legislation and the regulations of bc are gonna basically restrict the amount

00:51:03.400 of development we do in bc so those big projects i doubt it not not under the the current uh

00:51:11.320 regulation scheme and the legislation uh if we're going to want to see those big projects

00:51:16.760 especially linear projects the the regulations and the legislation is going to have to change

00:51:22.280 uh but this is why i'm putting more focus on regional projects and every region of the province

00:51:30.440 has got some potential in terms of project and it's it's you know we go in there we look at it

00:51:36.360 we review it and we we try cut as much red tape as we can because i don't think this government's

00:51:42.440 going to change the legislation any anytime soon or the regulations that actually restrict

00:51:47.240 you know the big development you know we're lucky lng canada got approved before the legislation

00:51:53.880 changed under the current legislation i don't think this project would have been possible

00:52:00.520 so until that legislation gets changed i think we're going to have to stick with the smaller

00:52:04.520 projects and i think that's a perfect opportunity for say a manufacturing plant and by the way

00:52:10.600 ever since I started this

00:52:13.860 I'm getting requests from all over the world

00:52:16.320 investors that want to come in

00:52:17.600 they want to build something in BC

00:52:18.940 they want to build something in Skeena

00:52:21.080 and the world does want

00:52:24.220 our resources but they do understand

00:52:26.100 that BCers now want to see

00:52:28.320 some value added to their products

00:52:29.980 before it leaves

00:52:30.620 so the investors are starting to come in now

00:52:33.000 and say okay we see that we understand that

00:52:34.700 so how can we make this happen

00:52:36.420 because we still need your resource

00:52:38.280 we still need that

00:52:40.600 And so given the fact that we can't build these big multi-billion dollar

00:52:44.600 millennial projects anymore, why don't we focus on these smaller projects

00:52:48.480 and maybe we get up 10 or 15 of these across BC

00:52:52.580 and we start building up the regions. And this could be

00:52:56.060 in Surrey, it could be in Fort St. John, it could be in Skeena, it could be in Prince Rupert.

00:53:02.440 I think this is the way that

00:53:03.960 they get the ball rolling until BC

00:53:08.460 is ready to talk about major projects again.

00:53:10.600 how how has been the reception to your leadership bid um is it been has been positive has it been

00:53:19.240 kind of mixed or has it been uh refreshing for some people again from all parts of the spectrum to

00:53:24.920 to see that we finally have of course someone of first nations descent running for the bc liberals

00:53:29.560 as well as uh somebody who's talking about bc first and a growth policy for bc for bc family

00:53:36.280 well in rural ridings

00:53:39.780 I'm well known I think

00:53:41.900 but I'm not very well known in rural

00:53:43.940 so the support I'm getting

00:53:46.040 is actually grassroots

00:53:47.260 I don't have

00:53:49.440 I don't have any of the high level

00:53:51.880 supporters that normally go with

00:53:56.100 leadership campaign

00:53:56.880 they've all joined other teams

00:54:00.080 already so I don't have that

00:54:02.080 and that's why you don't see anybody

00:54:03.780 any of the big names endorsing me

00:54:06.960 But I'm getting a tremendous amount of support from Facebook, from Twitter.

00:54:14.680 And, you know, a lot of people are sending me messages on Messenger and whatnot.

00:54:19.000 I'm getting a lot of support on LinkedIn.

00:54:21.460 But these are just regular people.

00:54:24.680 You know, they're not people that are typically associated with leadership campaigns.

00:54:30.280 I mean, the slick campaigns that you're going to see there that are well-funded, I don't have that.

00:54:36.180 I don't have those people that know how to put these campaigns together.

00:54:41.180 So my question is, I appreciate all the support coming in from all over BC, from just regular BCers.

00:54:51.180 I really appreciate that. But how do we get that converted into a vote?

00:54:58.180 Which is a question I'm trying to grapple with right now.

00:55:02.180 And I do, a lot of the people that are forwarding their support to me on Messenger are basically saying, yes, you know, I'm 26 years old.

00:55:13.180 I need a future.

00:55:14.880 I can't afford a house.

00:55:16.500 I need a good paying job.

00:55:18.420 So I support what you're saying.

00:55:19.880 Not even getting the older, some of the older crowd coming in and, you know, my age, you know, talking about that, that's great.

00:55:26.480 You know, we've got to get back to values and we've got to get back to principles and, you know, we've got to get back to true leadership.

00:55:33.420 And so it's actually a strange situation for me to be in because I'm not quite sure how this, how a leadership campaign is supposed to be run.

00:55:44.780 But I'm lucky. I've got a few people that understand the mechanics of it and they're helping put it together for me.

00:55:51.840 And this is kind of the quintessential point, right?

00:55:54.740 When it comes to leadership campaigns of any kind, it's funny because in Canada, almost worse than the United States, because, I mean, we've seen insurgent candidates come to the fore in the United States.

00:56:06.000 In Canada, it has become kind of like, well, you have to pay the right lobbyists or the right consultants, and that's how you make your way forward.

00:56:13.480 I really hope that that's not the case here in British Columbia, and I think you stand a real chance from a groundswell.

00:56:19.500 so long as so long as the groundswell isn't just sustainable but they feel like they're getting that

00:56:24.540 feedback and they're part of a movement i think that's a good movement to be a part of well i

00:56:30.060 hope so you know it's it wasn't something i thought up for the campaign right everything

00:56:34.540 i've talked about is just the way i thought for the last 10 years 15 years and it was uh i guess

00:56:43.260 This is just a regular BCer to just understanding, you know, the politics, the lay of the land in terms of the economy and ultimately society.

00:56:54.960 You know, I don't think people understand, you know, how important it is to talk about society when you're talking about an economy or when you're talking about legislation.

00:57:07.660 You know, the society we have here in BC is actually pretty good.

00:57:12.020 it's a

00:57:14.060 caring society

00:57:15.900 it's an independent society

00:57:18.100 but that can go all the way

00:57:20.520 if you

00:57:21.580 don't pay attention to what

00:57:24.400 actually sustains a society

00:57:26.100 and that's

00:57:28.260 really, that's always been my goal

00:57:30.620 to make sure that

00:57:32.480 a person

00:57:33.780 can basically

00:57:35.900 build their own life

00:57:37.600 independent from government

00:57:39.520 you know just just be able to go out there and succeed and the good thing about bc and canada

00:57:46.120 you have the the choice to succeed and you have the choice not to succeed

00:57:50.520 you have the choice and this is this is what i find all across all demographics

00:57:56.760 no matter what your religion is no matter what you're urban rural doesn't matter if you're

00:58:01.700 first nation or not you know you all you all have that choice to work hard and sacrifice

00:58:06.160 and you know that that's the best pathway to success

00:58:11.120 no i mean it's a it's an old message uh it's it's the true one it's always the true principle but

00:58:19.260 it's a reassuring thing to hear it again because i think sometimes especially through what's

00:58:24.020 happened with covid and i'm not saying at all that people didn't need help i needed help i got

00:58:27.520 laid off but the but at the same time it just that the idea that somehow we're just going to

00:58:32.660 throw money at things and that'll all go away and everything will be fine it's the economy is the

00:58:37.160 economy that's what drives the nation um with with kind of as we close here ellis what do you think

00:58:43.660 is the first thing if if tomorrow we finally get out of lockdown or everything finally goes right

00:58:49.640 or we say we get into fall we're past the waves everything's finally evened out what what do we

00:58:55.800 need to see concretely in british columbia for things to just kind of start back up again

00:58:59.920 well i think uh ultimately you got to bring those jobs back you got to bring the economy back i

00:59:12.640 mean for a number of different reasons and and i think this could get uh i had a lot quicker

00:59:21.280 with the investments from government sound investments from government by the way not

00:59:26.000 just money out the door, investments from the private sector. Because the jobs and the economy

00:59:34.480 provide so much, not only for the well-being of a family or an individual, but also revenues

00:59:40.240 to government. And for those that aren't paying attention to what government's doing, deficits

00:59:48.880 are a fact of life now here in Canada, and that's going to lead to debt. And so your government's

00:59:55.040 going to go out and borrow money to offset the deficit. Well, if all you're doing is paying off

01:00:03.120 the interest or just paying off the deficit with no real plan to actually get rid of deficit or

01:00:08.960 actually raise enough revenues to pay down the deficit, then somebody down the line is going to

01:00:14.720 have to pay that deficit off. Somebody. And you're going to pay for it. Millennials most likely are

01:00:21.280 the ones gonna have to pay this stuff set off in terms of programs getting cut or taxes going up

01:00:28.240 but somebody's gonna have to pay and does this does this affect quality of life yeah because

01:00:34.400 some government down the line is gonna have to make some really tough decisions when the deficit

01:00:39.200 becomes unmanageable when when you're credit rating the triple a credit rating when that

01:00:44.720 starts to disappear you start to pay more interest and this is this goes back to what happens when

01:00:53.760 you when you hire too many or elect too many politicians instead of uh electing people that

01:00:59.280 understand the basis of governance understand the basics of budgeting understand the basics of uh

01:01:06.560 revenues versus liabilities and we're heading down this road both the canadian government as

01:01:13.520 as well as the BC government, the proposed projected deficit for BC is $15 billion.

01:01:20.160 And I heard that was a conservative estimate.

01:01:25.920 So I really think the first thing to be thought about is, okay, if you want that deficit to be

01:01:32.960 offset or even some hope that you're going to pay it off somehow, then you got to start thinking

01:01:38.240 about kickstarting your economy even more so that you did if you did at all which i doubt

01:01:44.480 what happened in bc in the last three years you got to think about kickstarting your economy

01:01:48.200 so not only can you bring back those individuals and families paying jobs but you can actually

01:01:54.640 offset your deficits well i think that's as good a place as any to kind of kind of leave it because

01:02:02.420 the truth of the matter is that if we don't face those things we're not going to have a future here

01:02:06.700 in British Columbia, and I appreciate you recognizing that. Again, I've been speaking

01:02:10.500 with Ellis Ross. He is a leadership candidate for the BC Liberal Party here in British Columbia,

01:02:15.680 which is our right of center party for those in the prairies in Alberta that don't know about that.

01:02:20.440 And of course, he is the member for Skeena. Thank you so much for joining us.

01:02:24.900 Thanks a lot, Nathan.

01:02:26.480 Absolutely. Well, we're going to do a quick little transition here. We do have an in-house

01:02:32.020 guest again today. This is a live show and we don't have any commercials. We don't have

01:02:36.240 tucker's money yet we'll get there eventually i'm sure we'll get a crane cam and have things

01:02:40.660 rolling around so please don't leave us as we fade to black for just a minute and rearrange the set

01:02:46.660 slightly bring on our next guest and we'll be underway in just a moment we're bringing on sean

01:02:51.260 olick who is going to be talking to us about pro-life issues as well as demographics when

01:02:55.720 it comes to canada bc and the world

01:02:58.060 Thank you.

01:03:28.060 .

01:03:58.060 all righty so uh that was our quick scene change uh i was in theater briefly as a as a kid so i

01:04:22.880 kind of know a little bit about about the whole blocking thing that happens when it just fades

01:04:26.960 of black. I mean, that's live too. We can all survive that, I think. We'll get commercials

01:04:32.400 at some point. Don't worry. So in any case, I'm here with Sean Ollick. Sean Ollick, of

01:04:37.760 course, is a local guy here in BC's northern capital. Of course, we're broadcasting to

01:04:42.480 you live from Prince George. And today we're going to be talking about pro-life issues

01:04:47.080 as well as just demography. And so how kind of a concrete example of the fact that when

01:04:53.480 it when you look at pro-life issues and the idea of whether or not children are carried to term

01:04:59.280 the fact of the matter is it has real life consequences in british columbia and so uh yeah

01:05:04.640 it's all that's all part of that equation and uh we're gonna we're gonna talk about that a little

01:05:09.100 bit i'm gonna move your microphone just a little bit here sean make sure that it's people can see

01:05:13.680 your face yeah and you'll just speak right into the microphone you'll be ready to ready to roll

01:05:18.140 Okay, that's that's better. Yeah. And just yeah, being brought up. There we go. And so, Sean, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got involved with that kind of a really long, interesting story. I went to the University of British Columbia, and I was in a dorm with a very kind lady named Stephanie Gray. I'm sure many here in British Columbia have heard of her. She's probably been the most prominent pro-life activist.

01:05:48.140 to come out of here so she went to the same dorm as i went to and when i was at uvc she had just

01:05:55.600 started up with a little table display you know cute baby let's save the baby you know nothing

01:06:03.920 you could walk down the street nobody would care but um two people um erin kaiser and john

01:06:11.160 chandler at the university of british columbia for her display and that was news at the university

01:06:18.620 of british columbia for weeks it was in all the campus papers and everything so i'm looking for

01:06:24.140 the campus papers and i'm going wow i know this lady they're actually talking about somebody that

01:06:29.620 i know not just somebody on the other side of campus that you know we've never heard about

01:06:33.660 have cared about so um i decided to go and talk with her and ask her well what's the big deal

01:06:42.140 yeah what is the big deal you know why it's just you know these cute babies on the display

01:06:47.080 i had never had any contact experience with any of it nobody had told me nothing about this and

01:06:52.220 here i was going to call her do you think that you're reasonably informed about matters

01:06:56.340 so i asked her and she was kind of quite tired at this point because i'm sure everybody was

01:07:03.440 You know, just media sensation and all that.

01:07:07.640 So she asked me and she said, well, are you willing to follow the truth?

01:07:13.780 Wherever it leads you.

01:07:16.340 And at that point, I wasn't a Christian.

01:07:20.800 I wasn't somebody who was remotely affiliated with anything pro-life.

01:07:26.080 But I thought I was somebody who was an honest observer.

01:07:30.420 somebody willing to challenge my own thoughts and that's why i was at university to learn what

01:07:37.500 other people had to say i'd only i've grown up in prince george i'd never really known

01:07:42.680 much of a life outside of it there's a kind of me stepping out into a larger world different

01:07:51.060 perspectives i said you know what i'm game let's see where this goes and for me

01:07:59.380 that has been a large

01:08:02.000 part of my life, trying to show

01:08:03.800 other people that it's

01:08:05.880 not just about these

01:08:07.320 crazy people in the church, all these

01:08:09.840 Bible thumpets, you know?

01:08:12.120 Because it's a bigger issue.

01:08:14.160 It doesn't just touch

01:08:15.360 the little

01:08:18.020 old lady down in the street, and it's not

01:08:19.960 just about people holding signs,

01:08:22.440 protesting about other

01:08:23.720 hospitals and that.

01:08:25.860 But, you know,

01:08:27.280 one thing I look at this is

01:08:29.280 Have you read Alec Wogg?

01:08:32.000 I have heard of him, but I've not perused him very deeply.

01:08:36.100 Alec Wogg talks about the loss of a generation.

01:08:40.100 He was one of those people like Tolkien and other people who served in the First World War.

01:08:45.880 And he survived it, unlike Siegfried Sassoon and other writers at the time.

01:08:51.500 But his big thing is he lost a generation.

01:08:54.520 The best of our generation was at Vimy, was at Passchendaele, was at Deepest, all of these areas.

01:09:04.300 And that, you know, they felt that they, the survivors, were the cowards.

01:09:09.940 Because all the bravest people out there, you know, they got shot down first.

01:09:16.420 We're in that.

01:09:17.460 There are two million people in Canada alone that are not here.

01:09:24.520 because of abortion since 1988 that's more than we lost in world war one so when we see

01:09:33.900 walk talking about the loss of a generation the loss of all these wonderful people men

01:09:40.800 specifically who would have gone on to be the leaders of society they're gone we're in that

01:09:48.400 today. One of the things that I've heard you talk about before, Sean, is that Canada hasn't had

01:09:54.820 a big graduating class since the 50s, that it's changed, that it may sound, while there are more

01:10:00.540 people in Canada today, the fact of the matter is, demographically speaking, that it's actually

01:10:06.400 still a shrinking population. It's only supplemented by, I think, immigration. If you go to any high

01:10:13.260 school here they will show their graduating classes on the walls the largest cohort in canada was 1956

01:10:23.740 so we are 60 some years past that now so if you go now it's going to be something like um

01:10:32.060 a third quarter uh fewer than they were back in 1956. so this is it's not just us though

01:10:40.140 you know worldwide the largest if you look at graduating classes or cohorts in that of 2007

01:10:47.640 so people don't realize that we are 13 years past if you look at a crest and we keep hearing

01:10:57.920 oh there's overpopulations you know we're going to run out of resources that's not the truth and

01:11:05.160 i have heard very few people talking about that other than maybe the last few years

01:11:09.660 i think something that people need to understand a little bit better when it comes to the whole

01:11:15.260 pro-life issue is is that it it is this slippery slope sort of thing that we've already lived out

01:11:20.740 so right now we obviously have the euthanasia debate which is expanding to include people who

01:11:27.120 have a mental illness and no terminal illness and that's that's a whole nother kind of thing

01:11:32.680 we can get into that in a moment but the fact the matter is is that when whenever any of this

01:11:38.160 legislation comes forward, though admittedly in Canada, there is no legislation, it was simply

01:11:41.600 struck down by the Supreme Court, and people forget that as well, that people say, well, this is a

01:11:47.600 slippery slope. Well, the advocates or those who, well, I mean, we can say radicals, I do bring

01:11:54.000 radicals on this show, so I don't want to really use it too much as a pejorative, and people call

01:11:57.760 me radical as well, so I mean, I have to own this term as much as I can, but nonetheless, I would

01:12:03.900 just say that obviously the people who are at least in favor of these new policies always say

01:12:09.180 well that that this is just pearl clutching by the right by the religious right people on the

01:12:13.760 religious right are just making hay out of nothing uh these are already inherent rights we're just

01:12:19.540 going to codify them and and yet slowly but surely we always seem to wander down a road where things

01:12:26.280 do get more difficult and things do get more inhuman. People used to say safe, legal and

01:12:38.080 rare. Now it's on demand without apology. What is the strategy then inside the pro-life

01:12:46.420 movement and other movements that are at least trying to, regardless of their religious

01:12:50.020 affiliation, just trying to agitate for a more human world where this isn't a choice

01:12:54.200 that anyone has to make or wants to make

01:12:56.140 and possibly even shouldn't be allowed to make.

01:12:59.260 How do pro-life movements articulate that?

01:13:03.160 They lost me 20 years ago.

01:13:06.240 Okay.

01:13:06.920 I'm not the only one out there who's come from that background.

01:13:11.500 I have a very good friend of mine

01:13:13.120 who's coming into the church just this Easter

01:13:16.480 who also comes from a similar background

01:13:19.240 and like your friend Ellis happens to be an Indigenous person.

01:13:24.200 we have a communication issue, and that's a major thing in the media.

01:13:30.040 It's all, you know, you'll see pro-life people portray it a particular way

01:13:33.780 that we all portray a particular stereotype that, you know,

01:13:37.760 they're all, you know, like I said, Bible something, evangelicals,

01:13:40.920 so on and so forth, or, you know, Catholic people for that matter.

01:13:45.140 That's all we ever hear.

01:13:46.500 We never hear the other side of it.

01:13:48.260 We never hear pro-lifers coming out and saying,

01:13:51.460 hey, we have a problem here.

01:13:54.200 we are losing significant portions of our society.

01:14:00.380 Why don't we have someone saying that this is the problem?

01:14:03.620 Someone going out and being the voice in the wilderness, so to speak.

01:14:07.560 That's what I see, at least in the time that I've been there,

01:14:11.320 is that we have a hard time getting past that barrier

01:14:15.640 that we're taking right away from people.

01:14:19.860 That's not what we're doing.

01:14:21.200 All we're doing is saying that everyone deserves an opportunity to live their life.

01:14:28.280 We do not have a right to take that away from anyone.

01:14:32.560 And I think that's also part of the communication message, because we're seeing this as people

01:14:38.180 of no, that no, you can't do this.

01:14:41.160 No, you can't have an abortion.

01:14:42.920 No, you can't go out and do the things that you want to do.

01:14:46.880 But that's not really what we're saying.

01:14:48.760 All we're saying is that with rights come responsibilities.

01:14:53.520 So you do not have a right to go and kill someone, for example, because that takes that person's own rights away.

01:15:02.740 And I don't think we've really articulated that well because it's hard to look at a child in the womb as an individual, as someone who has their own rights.

01:15:13.420 We just see them as some nebulous piece of tissue, the usual nomenclature.

01:15:21.540 I think obviously this is a difficult topic.

01:15:24.640 I mean, we have, you know, people are bigger and lesser fans of this topic.

01:15:30.320 But I think that ultimately it's another thing that's not, I mean, for example, if we want to look at it from a political point of view as to if someone were to ask me, well, why are you even having this discussion?

01:15:41.040 I would the thing that I would probably highlight the most is that most recently it was the pro-life coalition that brought Aaron O'Toole to heel at the Tory leadership convention.

01:15:54.240 Well, not the Tory leadership convention. Sorry, but the Tory convention.

01:15:56.560 So there was a policy being put forward. There are few policies and they failed because the Coalition for Life and others, people who are on the religious right, the social conserved, came together and said no to various policies.

01:16:10.720 Which actually is pretty rare. This was actually noted for those of you who've been tuning in all week. We had Stuart Parker on yesterday. He had a great piece, if you want to find it on his blog, as to what that really meant as being the only party in the modern world, the Canadian Conservative Party, that had its own constituents actually rise up and say no to something.

01:16:32.360 That everywhere else, this is a fait accompli. Whenever you put a policy up, it just gets the proof. Somehow in Canada, of all places, the Tories managed to seize the moment and push back against their own leadership when usually there is no pushback.

01:16:44.960 To this point, though, obviously, it's a powerful coalition within the party. How come they don't seem to be able to get either their people into the leadership class or get a win to elections in the general?

01:16:58.880 I'm going to say a few controversial things about this that are not only controversial

01:17:05.280 among the larger political standpoint, but within pro-life people in general.

01:17:10.940 There's a few people out there.

01:17:11.820 We only have two rules on this show.

01:17:13.460 No swearing and no denying historical facts.

01:17:16.560 We won't do that yet.

01:17:17.940 No.

01:17:18.440 I have my own perspective on it.

01:17:20.700 I think, by and large, pro-life did not have an effective strategy in the leadership race.

01:17:28.300 I feel they needed to back Derek Sloan

01:17:32.560 because also because of his age and his qualifications.

01:17:37.200 You want to get them when they're first term MP,

01:17:42.420 when they're getting out there

01:17:43.580 and they're just getting their feet under them

01:17:45.240 because these are the people that become people like Diefenbaker.

01:17:49.780 Diefenbaker did not start out as party leader.

01:17:52.980 He ran twice, he failed twice.

01:17:54.820 And then on his third chart, even after he thought that his time has passed, that's when his opportunity came.

01:18:03.360 So Sloan was that person for us.

01:18:06.380 And we did not do an effective job of getting Sloan in.

01:18:12.700 From the people that I sit with, this pro-life coalition, the person that we see as our future is Les and Lewis.

01:18:20.840 Now, the issue I have with that is I do not feel that she's an effective communicator,

01:18:28.260 that people are with her because they see her for what the box is that she checks.

01:18:34.660 And I know I'm going to be very harsh about that here,

01:18:37.540 rather than for her ability to convince people to be on board with that.

01:18:42.620 And I think that's the issue also with the V.C. Liberal Party.

01:18:45.880 vander's arm became premier because he was an effective communicator he was able to reach out

01:18:52.880 to people and explain to them why he should be leader was andrew wilkinson no he was not

01:19:00.780 gordon campbell uh well gordon campbell did get what he got is there anybody out there who would

01:19:07.800 talk about his amazing charisma the way they still talk they talk about his drinking and driving

01:19:12.580 from hawaii to be clear that's a real thing that happened right it's like leaders need to lead

01:19:19.620 yes they do no question and do we have is erin o'toole doing that uh not according to me probably

01:19:28.300 i mean it i don't know it's interesting i i guess in my own opinion when it comes to erin o'toole

01:19:34.340 i feel like i feel like he might have been a decent compromise candidate and then uh i think

01:19:39.860 it was in his first press conference.

01:19:41.320 It seemed like he threw the social conserves

01:19:43.280 under the bus pretty hard.

01:19:45.720 Yes, he basically said,

01:19:47.360 we don't need your votes.

01:19:48.920 You are completely locked in our column.

01:19:52.780 So all we have to do is make sure

01:19:54.640 we get enough people in Quebec and Ontario

01:19:57.840 to support the party.

01:19:58.880 And then we're going to return to power

01:20:01.560 and it's going to be happy days again.

01:20:04.340 I don't see that.

01:20:05.980 No, I don't either.

01:20:07.340 He's minus 25 in Saskatchewan.

01:20:09.860 So even though he's not yet underwater there, the party itself is getting 52% of support

01:20:19.100 in Saskatchewan, at the same time that Aaron O'Toole is minus 25 in opinion polls.

01:20:25.920 That's not going to last.

01:20:27.240 Something has to give.

01:20:28.240 Either the people who are supporting the Conservative Party, who have for years and

01:20:32.680 years, say enough is enough, or O'Toole steps down.

01:20:37.120 I think, honestly, the best thing he could do to help us defeat Trudeau this election

01:20:42.360 is to do the honorable thing and say, the people will not vote for me.

01:20:48.940 I mean, that's a hot take, but you're entitled to it on this show.

01:20:53.520 We're not censoring you for that.

01:20:55.380 The thing that kind of comes to me, I guess, is it's funny because we had a mutual colleague

01:21:00.120 of ours, Mr. Clair, on yesterday.

01:21:03.000 And of course, he explained to us in no uncertain terms that there were to be no splits.

01:21:06.820 I believe is that's how the old leader said it. Sir John A., let us have no splits was his way of putting forward that the campaign needed to be as focused as possible and get somewhere good.

01:21:18.720 I think I think that when it comes to conservatism in Canada, maybe we can pivot to this a little bit before and we'll come back to the question of social conservatism in Canada.

01:21:26.120 The thing is that because we're trying to not be the United States, the problem becomes that we have to articulate kind of an old Tory version, a thrown and alter Tory version of conservatism.

01:21:37.900 And a lot of people, now that we all watch movies that are made in the States and shows that are made in the States and consume American media, don't really understand what a thrown and alter Toryism would be.

01:21:49.120 They don't know who Burke is. They don't know who Richard Hooker is. They don't even know who George Grant is. And George Grant only died a couple of years back, at least by the numbers I was using there, compared to the people I was referring to before.

01:22:06.580 And I think that I think that there's just a serious lack of kind of cultural depth to conservatism in Canada outside of kind of sort of little pockets like people who are of Scottish heritage feel a very strong attachment to that part of of kind of a Tory high culture.

01:22:26.540 though admittedly of course scotland is now mostly labor the the other part of it uh that maybe you

01:22:33.080 find it elsewise is if you're in the prairies you know we've got people tuning in from the prairies

01:22:36.760 a lot of the um what i think pat buchanan called white ethnic is basically the best way to say it

01:22:42.780 right so i mean i come from that stock adopted wise my mother is mennonite so there's enclaves

01:22:48.080 right and and ukrainian catholic and ukrainian uh orthodox like this so there's these enclaves

01:22:53.460 all over the place that have fairly conservative ideals as part of religion, part of family life.

01:23:00.420 But how do we articulate it as a cultural movement? Obviously, a lot of it shows up in the

01:23:05.520 pro-life movement itself. But how does that coalesce into a strong solidarity, a strong force

01:23:12.400 in electoral politics in Canada? This is a long topic. I wrote an article on this a while ago,

01:23:18.760 specifically is looking at conservative authors here most people can name maybe one or two

01:23:26.680 and that has been a problem with conservative movement for a long time like somebody like

01:23:33.880 deepened baker would come and talk about it as a problem back then because what happened is they

01:23:39.240 They got swept out after the Great Depression, and they were at a really serious loss of identity.

01:23:49.360 That's why they merged with Bracken and the Perspectives, even though philosophically, they don't really have a lot in common.

01:23:57.060 Ask people today who Bracken is.

01:23:59.800 No one knows who he is.

01:24:00.860 And even people who are educated in the field don't know anything about hubris.

01:24:05.620 I go through the list of people who would have been considered prominent conservative authors in

01:24:11.060 terms of what does Canadian Tories mean, nobody's heard of them. And the reason they're not being

01:24:17.860 heard is because they've been effectively banished from the universities. Nobody wants to hear about

01:24:24.580 Tories from the 19th century or the earlier 20th century because this is not considered to be

01:24:29.860 part of Canada's political identity. And I think for the Conservatives here in Canada,

01:24:38.360 what has happened is we've offloaded our conservative thinking to Americans. But the

01:24:45.200 Republic is not Canada. And Canadian Conservatives have certain features that don't translate

01:24:52.860 well.

01:24:53.860 Like a fundamental idea, say, in the Commonwealth or the common good.

01:24:56.860 Yes, like the commonwealth, like what you talk about, you know, thistle, shamrock, rose entwined.

01:25:04.560 People from Diefenbaker's generation would understand the cultural baggage that comes along with this.

01:25:11.020 And he'd probably be quite amused to see two former Protestants turned Catholics commentating about the state of conservatism in Canada.

01:25:20.100 Because he would probably see that as a significant change in where they were in his day.

01:25:26.860 Yeah. Yes. Because, I mean, of course, just like any other 19th century country, for the most part, if you had a parliamentary or Republican system or electoral system in period, you would see electoral results follow effectively cultural religious lines, all but to a T. A couple of swings here and there, but that was it. That would determine, you know, we all know the way Ireland was going to vote. We all knew the way that Quebec was going to vote.

01:25:51.340 So and to this day, we still see some of that. Right. I think that I think that maybe a way to pivot this back to the pro-life question is that this is another place where people are just kind of woefully ignorant of history.

01:26:06.040 It really wasn't that long ago. 1988, all prohibitions against abortion are struck down in Canada by the Supreme Court, which is literally admitted to later by the justices who were there at that decision.

01:26:19.160 Some of them have fully confessed that they that they had political problems with the law as it stood. And that's why they voted the way they did. And that's you'd think that that was unconscionable for a jurist to not think through just the legal ramifications of that. But but there it is.

01:26:37.940 And so we don't have a law in this country, but we have our health care mandates, I believe, that determine basically when a child, to use the pro-life terms, when a child will be killed, to use more clinical terms, when a unborn fetus will be terminated.

01:26:53.520 And the point is that those are the only things that really limit things in this country are at a provincial level.

01:26:59.020 They have nothing to do with criminality.

01:27:00.720 They're just health care mandates within, and they're kept very under wraps.

01:27:04.760 I want to speak a little bit more about this because there hasn't been a lot said about it.

01:27:10.680 In most provinces, not all, PEI is an exception.

01:27:15.920 Abortion is funded through the medical services plan.

01:27:18.560 Public.

01:27:19.200 So completely public, but it is not transparent.

01:27:24.320 We cannot get accurate abortion statistics in this country.

01:27:29.060 If you just want to ask the question, how many people got an abortion in all of Canada this year?

01:27:34.600 You will not find that information.

01:27:38.020 What we have done, some of us, myself included and others,

01:27:41.580 we have been tracking their number and we have ways of getting this information.

01:27:49.200 But you won't find it.

01:27:50.980 There's not people going on here.

01:27:52.760 You can't look it up on a website and say, well, this is how many abortions we were done.

01:27:56.740 This is despite the fact that every single one of them that are done here in Canada are publicly funded.

01:28:02.500 the public has a right to know they absolutely have a right to know i mean if the government

01:28:07.460 was funding anything else i mean like this was always the thing that i brought up with

01:28:11.140 the people who are kind of the other side of the spectrum right like i'm not pro-war by any means

01:28:15.540 but if the government was fighting a secret war and hide hiding all the money they were spending

01:28:20.580 on the war like i would have a lot of sympathy for that argument right and i i think that's kind of

01:28:25.780 maybe the way the two sides can agree it's like whatever the empire is up to the evil empire that

01:28:30.420 that we all live under in secular society, we would like to know what they're up to.

01:28:35.100 And whether it's funding abortions or funding bombs, we don't agree with that for the most part.

01:28:40.580 So let's do something about it.

01:28:42.820 I think this is a primary example of exactly why accountability is important, Sean.

01:28:48.140 And we need to have an accountability system within our government on this question specifically,

01:28:53.120 but on all questions, because it's very clear that, I mean, why are they hiding it if they're

01:28:57.180 not afraid of it?

01:28:57.920 There's a good question.

01:28:58.780 Well, even something else, for example, another something, let's say this government was funding something like clitorectomies.

01:29:07.560 Yeah.

01:29:08.580 How would somebody go and say that, hey, we don't think this is a good use of public dollars.

01:29:16.820 So this isn't a pro-life issue.

01:29:18.640 This is a transparency issue.

01:29:20.280 And as you said, an accountability issue.

01:29:22.100 If people are paying for it with their taxpayer dollars, they have a right to know how many abortions are done in this country.

01:29:28.580 They should not have to jump through hoops.

01:29:31.280 All they should have to do is look it up when it starts Canada.

01:29:34.780 Yeah, the same way we look up salaries,

01:29:36.940 the same way we look up what was spent on infrastructure, et cetera.

01:29:41.060 So, I mean, that's all kind of some of the context.

01:29:45.400 Conservatism in Canada is still in the wasteland,

01:29:49.500 still wandering basically in its 1930s milieu

01:29:52.320 and with some of its 1980s neoliberalism spiced into it

01:29:56.460 And now with some populism, I guess, coming out of the 21st century in pieces, depending on where you are, but they continue to rule like part of the establishment.

01:30:03.960 Once they get elected, Doug Ford, I think being the primary example, came in looking like big, tough guy.

01:30:08.920 I'm going to be the Canadian Trump, even had a, you know, monosyllable last name and quickly became, you know, as as establishment, as especially through COVID, right?

01:30:18.840 Establishment technocratic as, say, John Tory, the mayor.

01:30:22.260 If you don't have a concrete political philosophy that informs what your actions are going to

01:30:31.420 be, you are not going to produce any coherent political strategy.

01:30:36.760 No.

01:30:37.700 Ever.

01:30:38.400 It doesn't matter.

01:30:39.860 I mean, we can talk about Kim Campbell.

01:30:42.580 Same problem.

01:30:43.260 And we have, you know, even that was a criticism going back to the Mulroney days that you did

01:30:50.240 not have a political philosophy that anybody could hang anything on to so the last person i can really

01:30:59.600 say up here in canada that had a concrete political philosophy is the same person we keep talking

01:31:06.400 about here in british columbia that was bill van der zon he knew what he stood for yeah there's no

01:31:13.040 question he knew what he was knew what he was doing i think that if we're if we're going to try

01:31:18.880 and articulate this

01:31:20.940 when it comes to Canadian

01:31:22.620 conservatism, maybe one

01:31:24.860 of the ways forward there is to

01:31:26.820 kind of try and at least figure out what we aren't.

01:31:28.940 We're trying to not be the Liberals

01:31:30.720 at least, well, let's be

01:31:32.800 clear. Politically right now, we're trying to

01:31:34.800 court who the Liberals court and that's

01:31:36.880 not going to work. So I don't

01:31:38.540 know if Aaron's watching this

01:31:40.720 live stream, but Aaron, that's not going

01:31:42.800 to work. Just a free piece

01:31:44.880 of advice there. But the point

01:31:46.740 being that if we're not supposed to be the

01:31:48.680 Liberal Party, which as far as I can tell, really, I mean, it actually hasn't changed that much. It

01:31:53.420 actually is kind of, it's also, it's not unlike the Democratic Party in the United States in the

01:31:57.840 sense like it's never apologized for any of its mistakes. It'll apologize for the country, but it

01:32:01.760 won't apologize for the absolutely egregious abuses that it's participated in. And finally,

01:32:06.860 like, again, from what, from if we're going to use George Grant, at least as a measuring stick,

01:32:10.680 or even just use the, of course, what happened in 65 and 67, we lost our flag and got this new

01:32:16.740 weird looking maple leaf thing that doesn't you know god bless anybody who's ever been buried

01:32:21.620 under it you know god rest them but i mean that the the actual flag itself is just oh it's just

01:32:26.660 just an emblem it doesn't doesn't have any history or meaning to it and and second of all when of

01:32:32.100 course we kind of refounded this country in 67 and our centennial and decided that we were going to

01:32:37.020 become whatever pearson and trudeau had floating in their heads that day because i guess you know

01:32:42.020 that that was fine for secularists to do that but the fact that we were doing that with augustine

01:32:46.580 and Aquinas at other epochs that's not okay but anyways that's enough of that rant the point being

01:32:52.020 that we had this we had this pivot we had this pivot right and and like but this kind of

01:32:58.460 technocratic party as George Grant called them like we did kind of just give ourselves as American

01:33:02.640 vassal state of technocracy that that hasn't changed they were known as the natural governing

01:33:08.060 party for a reason and you know that was just just true under Mackenzie King as it was under either

01:33:13.740 trudeau they had this sense that they know better than you how to live your life how to govern your

01:33:20.900 life and whatever you have for the last year the same people going out there telling you that

01:33:26.420 they can make your decisions better than you can yourself and and it didn't matter what it was

01:33:32.960 like it doesn't matter what it is like it it's incredible how far like i'm not i'm not a libertarian

01:33:38.860 by any stretch of imagination in fact i think it's something that separates me from some some

01:33:42.540 of my fellow cohort at this platform is I'm not a libertarian. I am a conservative. There are times

01:33:48.700 where I'm an ultramontane radical, but that's a different question altogether. I'm a conservative.

01:33:54.120 And the thing is that I don't, it just still boggles my mind, still from maybe you can use

01:33:58.900 the libertarian perspective, that the government's in everything from the air we breathe to our

01:34:04.320 toilet. It gets everywhere. It gets everywhere. And it's just mind boggling. It's mind boggling.

01:34:08.880 it's multiple layers of government it's like why like who cares like who cares which what they think

01:34:14.240 like run the highway it's better like um for anyone out there who wants a primer i think to

01:34:21.900 get an idea of what books they should be reading i would completely recommend road to system

01:34:26.620 right hayek yeah by hayek because i read that you know five years ago and more true now than then

01:34:34.140 And it's funny to watch the evolution of his own thought when he writes about his book.

01:34:39.200 And he said, he thought his book was rubbish.

01:34:41.780 I mean, he was an economist.

01:34:42.900 He wanted to write more serious work.

01:34:45.680 And then 20 years down the line, he said, this is the best book I've ever written.

01:34:50.440 Yes, yes, yes.

01:34:51.700 I mean, I guess the short version for our viewers and listeners is that, of course, the road to serfdom essentially articulates how you take, you go from a free society back into a completely controlled one.

01:35:02.540 Or outright totalitarian. I mean, different interpretations as to what exactly Hayek was pointing at. But I think the short version is that ultimately, what makes society human, and for progressives, we can reference Albus Huxley here, right? That the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. You can either have a human world or an inhuman one.

01:35:25.060 um the the same thing here is that of course you can either have the spontaneous society the

01:35:32.660 society where a huge amount of liberty is is conceded and therefore people organize themselves

01:35:37.720 and that's where all our culture comes from and our cultural celebrations come from and family life

01:35:42.880 etc and of course our civil society the little platoons as burke called them the intermediaries

01:35:49.380 between the sovereign and the subject, as Alexis Tocqueville called them, that all disappears

01:35:55.480 because the middleman of middle society, all of that goes away. All that makes life rich goes

01:36:01.620 away because life is just regimented and organized, and there's nothing but productivity or whatever,

01:36:07.700 and there's no place for spontaneity and creativity. And I think we see this with COVID

01:36:12.720 especially. I mean, what's happened with COVID is just absolutely egregious with the amount of,

01:36:18.760 with what the lockdowns have done right they've canceled everything they've even canceled the

01:36:22.380 secular versions of these things right like i mean at least you know at least the secularists had

01:36:26.720 you know their their things to do right but it's a great irony right like whatever i'm not i'm not

01:36:31.580 throwing believers or non-believers onto the bus i'm just saying that regardless of whether whether

01:36:36.060 us on the moral right didn't agree with what those celebrations were we probably still mostly agree

01:36:40.660 that you might have the right to have those celebrations and and they're gone all that's

01:36:44.780 Well, just the other day, we have a double-fetched place outside of Grace Church in Alberta.

01:36:52.460 This is in the West.

01:36:54.420 This is supposed to be the free West.

01:36:56.260 Now, one of the people that helped bring me over into Christian faith were some of my Russian Mennonite friends who came over from the Soviet Union.

01:37:07.920 I heard their stories.

01:37:09.520 I heard what they told

01:37:11.660 that the government said

01:37:13.020 and do and told them what they could and could not

01:37:15.800 worship and one of the best

01:37:17.640 things to see on their faces

01:37:19.860 was their just pure

01:37:21.880 joy that they could

01:37:23.840 go to services on Sunday

01:37:25.900 in a free

01:37:27.860 country

01:37:28.240 that was 20 years ago

01:37:31.240 well things have changed in 20 years

01:37:33.880 haven't they I mean that's I think that's something

01:37:35.880 that's very very

01:37:37.660 distinct, very distinct about what's happened throughout the 21st century. I'm trying to

01:37:42.380 imagine, I mean, I don't know how old or young our viewership is or our listeners, but I'm just

01:37:47.620 trying to imagine my own time as, you know, I turned 10 on when the world was supposed to end

01:37:53.900 on Y2K. I'm a New Year's baby. I didn't win the prize. But I turned 10 and I'm trying to think

01:38:01.480 back to, you know, at least what I can remember of the 90s. And I'm looking back and thinking to

01:38:07.320 myself, having been raised in the church my whole life, I'm trying to imagine how my parents would

01:38:11.840 have reacted or I would have reacted even as a child to the idea that I couldn't go to church

01:38:15.420 or that my school was closed. I'm trying to imagine even fathoming that. But somehow through

01:38:21.220 the 21st century, I think starting with September 11th, we've just become a more militarized society

01:38:28.460 that is more controlled. 2008 didn't help with the recession and then new rules that came in

01:38:35.560 through that. Oil crash hasn't helped. Now we have COVID. And so we have this multi-triumphorate

01:38:42.640 system, depending on where you're looking at. The dot-com bust is something that you experienced.

01:38:46.520 You're a little bit older than I am. What does it mean?

01:38:50.520 Yes and no. I would probably disagree with your assessment of 9-11. Now, the idea mostly behind

01:38:56.760 9-11, Mark Stein talked a lot about this as a wake-up call for the West, that there are societies

01:39:03.740 out there that do not like western ways western ideas um western freedoms uh the most liberals

01:39:12.740 will look at it as you know that we everybody should love us everybody should want to do the

01:39:19.400 things that we do and they have a hard time dealing with society that have a very different

01:39:25.120 perspective on human rights and freedom probably the last 20 years and this is going to sound

01:39:31.620 strange from conservative we've gotten away from this liberal perspective that the west has value

01:39:38.500 that freedoms are important and that they are concrete things we've moved the aclu before it

01:39:46.980 got woke is what you're saying yeah defending pornographers yeah so but we're not we are now

01:39:54.740 in a society that your children in your school today can open up the history textbooks and the

01:40:02.240 first thing they know about the founder of this country, Sir John A., that he was a white supremacist.

01:40:09.320 This is not a viable future for this country. If we are teaching children who come here

01:40:16.900 is that they need to hate the country as it was founded.

01:40:23.460 Where are they going to get their ideals from?

01:40:26.760 They're not going to get it from Canada.

01:40:28.760 They're going to get it from everywhere else.

01:40:31.780 And that is what we're seeing.

01:40:34.120 So if we're worried about things from 9-11

01:40:36.560 with certain cultures coming in and saying that,

01:40:39.520 hey, we don't really like these Western freedoms.

01:40:43.060 And now you walk around today

01:40:44.620 and can't find anyone without a mask.

01:40:46.900 No, I think that's something else that has to be pointed out here is quite frankly that not only has there been this lack of Canadian enculturation and a positive way of doing Canadian enculturation, but again, when we look at even just that conservative element in Canada as well, what does it mean to be a conservative in Canada?

01:41:09.780 And for that matter, even on the religious right, we may be able to agree on the creed and on, well, this is the story of Christianity and all the rest of it.

01:41:20.280 But how many of us, even when it comes to the question of abortion, really understand that it comes down to the inherent dignity of every human being?

01:41:29.520 And when two humans come together, they create another human being.

01:41:34.560 They don't create a puppy. They don't create a tree.

01:41:36.520 We have a leader today in the United States who can walk up into the church, who will openly say that abortion is a part of the creed. This is what we're up against.

01:41:50.700 So it's not just people allowing us spaces to do what we need to do to worship or what. Now those people are now telling us, this is what your creed teaches.

01:42:02.040 and for those of us going and saying that no this is wrong this is what the church has always taught

01:42:09.460 we have an obligation to go and say that this is wrong it's always been wrong it's never going to

01:42:16.180 be right there's never going to be a right side of history about any of this you're always going

01:42:21.400 to be on the other side we have uh one one comment here from uh i'm just gonna call her kim for short

01:42:30.520 i think uh but uh conservatives haven't conserved anything uh from punished kim there on uh on

01:42:37.740 youtube i think i think that was actually an interesting point that was made not too long ago

01:42:42.500 by somebody to me that conservatives are just progressives who drive the speed of light

01:42:49.280 exactly they've been that way since back and that hasn't changed and this is and this is kind of a

01:42:55.280 problem inside conservatism because because i think we're not supposed to just be old-fashioned

01:43:00.320 This isn't about just keeping things as if they're still, you know, 1929 or something, right?

01:43:07.040 That's not what's at issue here.

01:43:09.760 It's about that there are these core values and they can only be preserved if certain cultural practices are preserved.

01:43:15.860 And that's what's going by the wayside.

01:43:17.740 These are universals, you know.

01:43:20.180 These are not something that, you know, Victorian-era morality, so to speak.

01:43:27.000 What conservatives need to be able to come up and say that freedoms, you know, are universal.

01:43:33.820 They apply to everyone and everywhere at every time.

01:43:37.440 And when's the last time you heard a conservative come up and say that?

01:43:40.680 Not here in Canada, not for quite some time.

01:43:43.900 In terms of a conservative not conserving anything, that reminds me of a quote from Chesterton.

01:43:49.540 He talks about the dictatorship of the dead, as you put it.

01:43:54.480 And that's a radical notion, that we are not entitled to change the things that have been handed down to us.

01:44:05.540 Yeah, the democracy of the dead.

01:44:07.800 The democracy of the dead, yeah.

01:44:09.040 So we look at things as if they have come down to us, and that we can change them.

01:44:17.260 We can make them, mold them into what we feel they ought to be.

01:44:21.660 But that's not the way it is.

01:44:24.480 Many of these things that have come down to us have been passed down through millennia.

01:44:31.280 We do not have the right to suddenly say, hey, we're not going to do this anymore.

01:44:36.780 We've said we're going to change the world into this brave new world.

01:44:42.060 I think that when it comes to this concept of how things have changed so quickly in such a short amount of time,

01:44:51.880 is ultimately there is a rootlessness.

01:44:56.600 There's a rootlessness.

01:44:57.720 One of the things that I have worked really hard on

01:45:00.660 in the course of my life since I graduated from university

01:45:03.680 was trying to stay here at home, have a sense of home.

01:45:07.780 I did not envy my friends who are far more successful

01:45:10.320 than I financially, career-wise, personally, professionally.

01:45:13.880 They were far more successful than I,

01:45:15.920 but they left their homes and I saw what it did to them.

01:45:19.160 I saw what it did to their souls.

01:45:20.420 I saw how hard it was. I'm not saying there is never a reason to leave. There is. And I also

01:45:27.080 understand that people get forced into very desperate situations. I'm not excusing that.

01:45:30.900 But I think that in something that else has been lost, something else that's been lost,

01:45:37.040 really through modernity in general, but certainly since mass transportation and mass society,

01:45:42.740 and also since the cost of living has started to skyrocket, is the idea that you just have to do

01:45:47.920 whatever you can to make the dollar and that's going to come come at the cost of your family

01:45:52.620 it's going to come at the cost of where you grew up and how can you preserve the values of your

01:45:57.780 of your home and of your home culture even if even your even your ethnic background perhaps

01:46:05.080 right like to participate in the things that matter to your particular background how can

01:46:10.480 you do that if you're being always ripped away from where you were raised and you can't you

01:46:14.720 can't have that belonging that sustainability there it's not a new problem my own family left

01:46:20.220 germany to uh to come to canada before the first world war and thank goodness for that because

01:46:25.980 they were right in the middle of a war but it only was recently that we were able to go back

01:46:33.460 and see the homestead see where my family came from and uh and the only reason that was ever

01:46:42.320 preserved is because they were on the right side of the line. If they were further north near what's

01:46:50.960 now Kaliningrad, everything would have been rubble because that's what Russia did when they came in

01:46:57.680 and they took over everything after the Second World War. So it's only because of the Polish

01:47:03.840 people in Poland that preserved these things from the Germans that we were still able to go back

01:47:11.040 into your family because they had these values that it was important to keep these things

01:47:17.200 do we have those values in canada i don't see it i i see the fruit business everybody comes

01:47:22.080 from all the places that they were from wherever they were and they're here in canada for a while

01:47:27.840 and then they leave they go back to wherever they've been but there's there's never any concrete

01:47:33.680 connection to a place i mean i left myself i went part in the united states came back and

01:47:39.840 i realized that when i came back that yeah it's very different when you're in in far away from

01:47:45.760 home where you grew up where your family's from and i felt the same as you that now i'm back i need to

01:47:52.080 stay and and i think that something that comes to my mind is is another work you know if we're

01:48:01.760 looking for things on conservatism or what conservatism might be regardless if it's

01:48:06.960 Canadian or more colloquial elsewhere is, of course, I'll take my stand. I believe that was

01:48:12.860 written by the Southern Agrarians during the Roaring Twenties, so a century ago. And that was

01:48:19.040 written as an homage to the fact that people were all moving to the city. They were participating

01:48:24.680 in rootlessness. This was the great kind of awakening in the post-Bellum South, as well as

01:48:30.860 after the Great War, and then with the great rise in economics that happened after the war and the

01:48:36.800 burgeoning middle class just before the crash and they write this it was a series of essays by

01:48:42.640 various southern agrarians who had no truck with the idea of slavery and that sort of thing

01:48:46.980 obviously had been gone for over a generation two almost three generations at that point but they

01:48:52.440 but they argued that you know their their grandfather and his grandfather before him

01:48:58.080 had all lived on this land and so they were going to continue to live on this land and they were

01:49:02.220 going to do their best to preserve the land and and be here and be a part of the folk as it were

01:49:07.820 of of this place and of this time and i think that this is always a conflict inside of conservatism

01:49:15.300 i mean we have manchester liberalism right we have the idea of rip and ship the idea of let's

01:49:20.060 build build build and go go go and and then we have of course that more preservationist side

01:49:25.980 of conservatism the conserving part of conservatism and this is these things have been in tension

01:49:30.280 since the 19th century is there a way forward there a way to solve that equation i would love

01:49:35.680 to see something come out from especially from people like ellis who and where he's from and

01:49:40.800 where he's grown and from uh some of the conservatives here when's the last time you

01:49:46.560 heard a conservative extol the virtues of the farm yes in this country so i haven't heard it

01:49:52.520 And it's generally assumed that all these wept and prairie poplicks will be in this column forever.

01:50:03.200 And I think people are really starting to get tired of feeling taken for granted.

01:50:10.480 Well, two parties were born out of that exact question, right?

01:50:13.660 The SoCreds were born out of that question, and so was the CCF, the Commonwealth Federation.

01:50:19.340 I don't think people like Ellis are going to be able to form that connection with these people in there, that heart and soul of the party always have been, unless he's willing to go out and say that this is something that's valuable.

01:50:38.240 We need to preserve this.

01:50:41.200 A lot of times we're so fast to say, hey, well, this is the group we should be going after.

01:50:45.460 We should pivot after, you know, the city folks in Ontario.

01:50:48.680 We've heard it time and time again.

01:50:50.900 But it would be nice to get a little gratitude because these people have voted conservative for 40, 50 years.

01:51:00.400 And when's the last time they got a thank you?

01:51:03.540 Or seem to get anything out of it.

01:51:05.520 I mean, especially considering some of, if we're talking about farming specifically, the corporate interests, the corporate interests kind of come to mind, right?

01:51:14.300 With Monsanto and that sort of thing and the things that have happened in the prairies.

01:51:18.040 And the other thing that comes to mind is that even a divide and conquer mentality surrounds farming.

01:51:25.940 What ranchers get out of farming versus what dairy farmers get out of farming are two very different things.

01:51:30.980 And that's something that has to change as well.

01:51:33.220 I'm sure I could get into trouble on this particular platform sharing some of my harshest opinions when it comes to the dairy lobby.

01:51:42.140 I certainly don't like that it's exclusive and a monopoly.

01:51:47.740 But ultimately, the bigger thing for me is that all farmers need to be given a fair shake.

01:51:53.560 And why hasn't a conservative government done that yet?

01:51:56.320 Why haven't conservative governments done more to ensure that the farmer is taken care of?

01:52:02.860 Here in BC, I mean, if we're going to really, we're really wandering around here today, but that's okay.

01:52:08.260 We're here to do.

01:52:09.440 You have an hour to wander around.

01:52:10.820 It's a live stream.

01:52:12.400 That's what happens.

01:52:14.000 We, you know, in British Columbia, like I was mentioning this the other day, my parents, my parents have a farm and they, they tried to make a secondary residence on the farm and they were given a stop work order.

01:52:28.460 And we're in a fight with the regional district.

01:52:31.960 The regional district wants like $1,500 to discuss this, and it doesn't mean the appeal will be successful.

01:52:39.280 It's at lockup.

01:52:40.500 It's sitting there.

01:52:41.060 It's an empty building, not yet plumbed, not yet electrified.

01:52:45.200 And we're just fighting with the regional district.

01:52:47.600 Meanwhile, you can build a tennis court in an urban area, no problem, or you can put a carriage house over your garage and then call that a mortgage helper.

01:52:57.680 That might be the most insidious term I've ever heard.

01:53:00.060 if you use the word mortgage helper stop not joking don't say that that is that is i'm going

01:53:07.580 to say it's disgusting don't use that term uh yes we had some of our land taken away by ducks

01:53:13.280 unlimited well there you're giving a ticket to leave it off so they could have uh their

01:53:17.640 their wetlands preserved so i'm i'm sure there's there's farmers out there who've had similar

01:53:22.820 experiences over the years dealing with bureaucracy and land ownership and we don't really own our

01:53:28.180 land here. No, we don't. We don't. I think in Alberta, they own the minerals under it. They

01:53:33.200 have rights to that. But other than that, in Canada, we're just all leasing, leasing from the

01:53:39.940 crown, which is being administered by some rather contemptible people. The issue coming back to,

01:53:46.920 again, where does, say, conservatism go from here? Where does even Canada go from here?

01:53:53.040 I think that the fundamental point at hand is there hasn't been a vision for the country in a long time.

01:54:04.680 Not since Stephen Baker.

01:54:06.160 No.

01:54:06.860 Harper didn't really articulate much of a vision.

01:54:09.740 He wasn't a visionary.

01:54:11.080 No, he was an administrator.

01:54:13.060 A good one.

01:54:14.440 A good one.

01:54:15.160 The further we get away from that time period, the more red that government looks to me.

01:54:20.520 I wish they would have cut what they needed to cut or pivoted Canada as they needed to pivot and done what needed to be done.

01:54:27.400 But instead, the Laurentian consensus remained all but unchanged.

01:54:31.120 But in any case, the fact of the matter is that Canada has so much potential.

01:54:38.240 And where is it going?

01:54:40.080 What is it doing?

01:54:41.740 How are we supposed to move forward?

01:54:44.300 Where's the vision for this country?

01:54:46.240 The second largest country in the world.

01:54:47.560 We have abundant natural resources.

01:54:49.020 We have a fairly well-educated population.

01:54:51.260 We have decent infrastructure.

01:54:53.300 It needs to be improved.

01:54:54.500 We have decent infrastructure.

01:54:55.620 How in God's name are we not a world power?

01:54:59.120 There's no reason why Canada couldn't be in the top five

01:55:03.200 based on the natural resources, based on people that they have.

01:55:08.820 If they had a government that had a vision

01:55:12.860 for building something, improving something,

01:55:17.400 rather than just, you know, we all know what the liberals are all about.

01:55:22.280 They've never been about that any period of their history.

01:55:25.120 So they are in there for their own good, for the better good of the liberals.

01:55:31.440 And they've never allowed the West to develop.

01:55:35.240 And that's been a major problem for, I don't know, 70 years.

01:55:38.840 And people seem surprised when, oh, the West might want to kind of run their own show a bit here.

01:55:43.960 How dare they? How dare they?

01:55:46.420 I think a certain young lady kept saying that to everybody.

01:55:50.220 The thing that kind of comes to mind here, too, is that with Canada, if Western separatists

01:56:00.640 or sovereignists, we're supposed to say sovereignists on the show, I'm sorry.

01:56:03.700 Are you supposed to say sovereignists?

01:56:06.180 Sovereignists or sovereignists, that actually is a funny point to debate because I'm pretty

01:56:11.780 sure that the corrections on on all the typing programs like when you're using a word processing

01:56:18.060 i think they take my somberness they want to turn it to sovereigntist but the point is that

01:56:22.300 whatever we're supposed to call ourselves here nonetheless i think that what happens with

01:56:28.720 western canada is that there's that old line right didn't like your old masters how do you like your

01:56:32.760 new one this is this is the thing if if we're on this mission of like we want better better things

01:56:39.620 for Western Canada and we want things, better things for BC, right? Because we're based in BC

01:56:43.240 here. And if we want better things for what's going to happen moving forward, the problem is

01:56:50.340 that, hey, we already have some saviors. There's already people who are supposedly, they're here

01:56:58.160 to save us. That's what they're here to do, apparently. But I mean, if you look at the

01:57:02.720 reaction to Jason Kenney in Alberta right now, I worked for this guy. I worked for him back in

01:57:07.800 Ottawa for a short time. And I was an intern. I shouldn't make it sound like I was running the

01:57:11.680 place. But I got to deal with him a lot. I got to see him quite a bit. I got to see the front

01:57:18.400 lines of what was happening out there. He's not a stupid man. He's not a lazy man. He's a hard

01:57:25.200 working man. And yet, as premier, he's just had one thing go wrong after another. And there's a

01:57:31.420 lot of angry Albertans out there. His party might fracture in the first term of its government.

01:57:37.340 They already have. Half the clock has basically walked out on the idea of a third lockout.

01:57:43.300 But, you know, Kenny, I guess, as premier, Van Der Zalm had the idea that, you know, the buck stops here.

01:57:52.060 Ultimately, Van Der Zalm knew that whatever happened under his administration came back to him.

01:57:57.900 So when things happen, like a church getting locked down with fences put in it, what is Kenny doing?

01:58:05.320 Is Kenny putting his foot down saying, enough, we need to pull back on this?

01:58:09.400 Because the harder we push people on this, the more people are going to push back.

01:58:14.440 So if you want people to comply with these regulations, you would be better off to say, okay, let people have their freedoms.

01:58:22.760 But I haven't seen that leadership from Kenny.

01:58:24.680 And you would know him far better than I do.

01:58:26.680 That was a long time ago.

01:58:28.080 as we kind of wrap up here maybe maybe something to dwell on for just a moment more is again that

01:58:35.080 question of leadership the actually it's funny because we were talking about the pro-life thing

01:58:40.700 at the beginning and that doesn't mean that we were trying to avoid it throughout i think we

01:58:44.140 said some pretty strong things actually throughout it but but to even pivot back to that for just a

01:58:48.580 moment your your kind of departure from some of the movement has been based on the leadership

01:58:54.240 question right that the leadership isn't taking taking taking the steps it needs to take in order

01:58:59.900 to achieve it then we have leaders the problem is is that they live in florida now that speaks

01:59:07.040 volumes as to where the pro-life movement in canada is headed that the people that have led

01:59:14.280 us for many years have done a lot of work and time and effort to build us up as a movement

01:59:21.620 They live in Florida.

01:59:23.360 So what are we doing as Canadians to give these people a platform and a voice so that they can reach out to other Canadians?

01:59:34.000 If I go out on any other media, Western Standard did give me an opportunity to write when we did Canada's Lost Daughters with Andrea Morozik.

01:59:45.680 And God bless your heart, amazing lady.

01:59:47.440 um what are the media options doing what are you know do we hear have people coming on from the

01:59:54.980 pro-life movement talking about hey here's the state of things here's how things are going here's

01:59:58.980 what you can do to help a help us out you know here's people you can donate to this is the next

02:00:05.360 campaign we're doing did we get any of that with this uh you know you mentioned the pro-life

02:00:10.660 stopping erin or tool was there any coordination on the part of any of the media

02:00:17.420 outlets here in canada there was none if anything the media was pretty much universally hostile to

02:00:24.020 pro-lifers doing any kind of work together to god forsake it maybe actually elect a pro-lifer

02:00:30.800 once in a while just once just once again it comes back to to vision comes back to vision

02:00:39.000 and i think if if there's anything that's clearly missing from this country it's vision i think we

02:00:44.520 agree on this point. And even to the sovereignty question, this would probably be where I would

02:00:50.380 put my stake. It's not that I'm unamenable to the idea of the West taking its own route or getting

02:00:55.120 a better deal out of Ottawa by making some very clear threats. Totally fine with that. Quebec got

02:01:00.160 away with it for years. God bless them. We should learn from that. But at the same time, where is

02:01:06.080 it going to take us to? We have to think about where we want to go with that. And it doesn't

02:01:10.940 mean it's all roses on the other side there there are very clear ways forward that go well

02:01:18.580 and there are some ways that go really bad and i think that ellis actually did a good job of

02:01:24.140 articulating this earlier when he said you know venezuela sits on some of the richest wild reserves

02:01:28.500 in the world venezuela is a joke uh and it's a tragedy it's it's sad what's happening to people

02:01:34.460 there and so again it's the same thing here for us we have to have some clear vision clear vision

02:01:40.700 as a country, clear vision as a culture, clear vision as a movement in order to achieve our

02:01:45.580 ends. And if we don't, we are in serious trouble. We are well on the way, Venezuela. And as

02:01:51.860 Westerners, particularly, I think it's important that if we want to retain control of our natural

02:01:59.100 resources and not have what happened in Venezuela, where your refineries go down or you can't have

02:02:04.600 your lights on that we have to take our own steps that's how I see it and you know a lot of people

02:02:12.560 there are quite surprised because they say well that could never happen here well Venezuela was

02:02:18.800 what the third richest country in the western hemisphere at one point and that was the uh was

02:02:25.800 the highest birth rate in the western hemisphere at one point so link those two things together that

02:02:32.220 But I think that exactly encapsulates what's been going wrong in the post-war era in the

02:02:37.600 West.

02:02:38.600 Terzo had his little out there, Sean, those years ago.

02:02:42.340 Yeah, absolutely.

02:02:43.340 Bring back duplices.

02:02:44.340 That's where we'll end it.

02:02:45.340 No.

02:02:46.340 All right.

02:02:47.340 That's enough hot takes from us today.

02:02:49.340 Again, thank you so much for joining us.

02:02:51.280 I've been speaking with Sean Allick, a local guy here in Prince George.

02:02:54.220 We know each other pretty well, very deep into the pro-life movement and obviously ahead

02:02:58.280 for numbers.

02:02:59.280 you can join us regularly at different times to kind of give us a read on numbers, especially

02:03:05.080 if an election looms. We'll be talking about those things in the future.

02:03:10.780 Hot take. Don't don't bat an air.

02:03:12.840 OK, there you go. And also thank you in advance for your analysis. And thank you for being

02:03:18.520 here today. Thank you very much. It's been it's been a great pleasure.

02:03:21.740 Absolutely. Perfect. Perfect. Well, we're going to end her right there. And thank you so much

02:03:26.260 for watching tune in again uh next tuesday same time 9 to 11 we always broadcast live from 9 to

02:03:33.160 11 tuesday wednesday and thursday 9 to 11 pacific that's 10 to 12 mountain standard time

02:03:56.260 You

Western Standard - April 08, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - April 8, 2021

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