Ellis Ross, the MLA for Skeena, speaks to us about what happened in Kamloops, and what s been uncovered, as well as what his aspirations are when it comes to the BC leadership as BC begins to reopen.
00:01:56.200I'm your host, Nathan Gita, and of course, today I'll be speaking with Ellis Ross, the MLA for Skeena,
00:02:02.820who is going to be speaking to us about, well, what happened in Kamloops and what's been uncovered,
00:02:07.860as well as what his aspirations are when it comes to the BC leadership as BC begins to reopen.
00:02:13.420So please stay tuned for that. We're going to have him on around 9.30 until about 10.30.
00:02:17.840Until then, do remember to like and subscribe to us on Facebook as well as on YouTube to follow us there.
00:02:23.680And if you want to support independent journalism in the West and the free voice of the West, do take out a subscription at the Western Standard Online.
00:02:32.420We're going to get on to the opening statement here.
00:02:34.520If it looks a little janky today, I'm going to try and produce the show myself.
00:02:39.540So I'm taking the training wheels off.
00:02:41.660This is going to be a bit of an experiment.
00:02:43.760We're trying to do a sort of remote-in thing.
00:02:46.480So every single little piece of it along the way, there might be some moments where things go a little sideways.
00:02:50.980don't worry the producers waiting in the ring in the wings if necessary but just so that you know
00:02:56.500we're we're on we're on the glider portion of the air traffic training if uh if you get my drip
00:03:02.820first let us turn to our bc provincial capital which has decided that celebrating canada day
00:03:07.860is optional i suppose that calendars produced around the legislature will now have the first
00:03:13.380of july designated as some kind of mystery day the origin of which is unknown and the purpose of which
00:03:18.580is taboo to mention will the idiocy of victoria's city councillors ever cease to amaze i don't know
00:03:24.980we'll find out the capital city of british columbia named after our first monarch who reigned during
00:03:30.580the founding of canada has become a crime-ridden and drug-addled farce of overpriced housing
00:03:36.420unintelligent policies and of course woke rent seekers who couldn't care less if their city
00:03:41.620burns these leaders don't answer for their actions they do not suffer the consequences
00:03:46.580of their own ideology, and they do not care about the people who live there, clearly.
00:03:51.300At one point, after winning the election but losing his seat in Ontario,
00:03:54.760that's to say Kingston, that was his traditional writing,
00:03:57.160a tradition that's been kept alive in British Columbia over the years,
00:04:00.380Sir John A. MacDonald actually represented the brand new district of Victoria.
00:04:04.560Some years ago, when his statue was removed, I mourned and I railed against the iconoclast,
00:04:09.080but I could never have predicted that they'd come for Canada Day next.
00:04:13.580There is a bizarre intersectionality going on with all this.
00:04:17.660The fact is that here at the Western Standard,
00:04:20.780there's an official policy of either complete secession from Canada
00:04:34.360with equal representation in the Senate
00:04:36.300and the strict enforcement of separated powers.
00:04:38.780So essentially a sort of, I don't know if all sovereigns
00:04:42.920Sovereignists are necessarily Republicans, with a small r I mean, but nonetheless a very kind of Americanized system with equal effective Senate probably elected, as well as very, very strict separations between federal and provincial governments.
00:04:57.600Shouldn't we be in praise, therefore, of what's going on in Victoria? If you're a Sovereignist, this would be great news. They're cancelling Canada Day. Isn't that good news?
00:05:05.440Well, deplatforming and delegitimize Canada is a rose of triumph by any other name for a Sovereignist, one could suspect.
00:05:12.100It will further the agenda of all Sovereignists to have, well, quite frankly, to have, yeah, there we go.
00:05:22.360It will further the agenda of all Sovereignists to make sure that we have that ability, right, that we have that ability.
00:05:30.500So, but the problem is, if you look at it that way, if you look at it that way, that we would join with the iconoclast and try and, quite frankly, move forward and build a sovereign Canada or separated Canada by joining hands with people who fundamentally disagree with the very idea of statehood, let alone legitimacy of government.
00:05:53.320that think that even the founding of canada was legitimate you're playing a dangerous game and
00:05:58.560the dangerous game is there is that you're linking arms with people who would make their empire and
00:06:03.060make their their kingdom on the ash heap of what what's left of this country and there's a piece
00:06:10.280of me that might allow that in a sense of like well i couldn't do anything about it and i'm
00:06:14.460retreating and so i'm gonna let i'm gonna let the iconoclast have at her but to join hands with them
00:06:19.320in burning down what I think is a fundamentally, at least moral idea of a country.
00:06:23.780I think Canada was founded on a fundamentally moral idea
00:06:26.320and a fundamentally intelligent set of policies of,
00:06:30.520well, if we don't want to be America and we do want to be a sovereign nation
00:06:35.120eventually under Britain and perhaps even separated from Britain or whatever
00:06:38.260with enough sovereignty to take care of our own affairs,
00:08:05.380This comes after the discovery of the remains of 215, we're going to say children, because actually we would have to test the genetic material in order to know that all of them are indeed Aboriginal, and we have to remember that non-Aboriginal children went to residential schools as well, and they were also buried in the same graveyards as everyone else, we don't, nobody has time to be so segregationist that they build different graveyards,
00:10:15.160I mean, I'm not supposed to say the word separatist.
00:10:16.740I remember being told that by somebody in a staff meeting at some point.
00:10:19.380But the point is that whether you want to use that word or sovereignty, it doesn't matter.
00:10:24.080The point is that this is supposedly the Western standard that is all built around the idea of whether or not the West should remain in Canada.
00:10:32.060This is a valid question. This is an extremely valid question.
00:10:35.300It's something that should be debated. We try to debate it a lot on this show.
00:10:38.380We bring on people from the left, from the right, who all have different opinions about the question of Canada and how Canada should move forward.
00:21:03.960So the point that I'm trying to draw here, I'm going to punt this from the stream.
00:21:08.860The point that I'm trying to draw here is that in Prince George alone,
00:21:11.400A lot of political correctness surrounds this issue because there are people who are buried and dead in our local city park, the big city park, the park that, funnily enough, is where Canada Day happens and Aboriginal Day and every other big day, I mean, if BC Day was actually celebrated around here.
00:21:28.740The point that I'm trying to draw here is that there are people buried there that undoubtedly there are people buried there because it was right next to the fort and white men were involved with the fort. Europeans were involved with the fort. When people died, they didn't go off into the great nethers and try and find a different place to bury them. They buried them nearby.
00:21:48.900So by that logic, both Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals are buried in the park.
00:22:10.120Simultaneously, the same story is also kind of sideways
00:22:13.280When it comes to this problem of, was the First Nation here pushed off the land?
00:22:22.660And some people like to say that even their homes, the hovels that were around the fort were burned.
00:22:29.880And obviously that was a sign of racism.
00:22:32.540And again, this is a point of contention.
00:22:34.240A lot of people don't seem to understand that there was payment, there was an agreement, people were moved, they were assisted in moving.
00:22:40.960And then, when it came to the actual former residences that were on what is now Claytonay Park versus Fort George, formerly known as Fort George Park, the fact of the matter is that these were old, abandoned places of living, which, as we all know, regardless of where you are in the world, whether you're in the first world or you're in the third or developing world, you know that if you leave a house long enough and you leave any kind of space long enough, no matter how well built it is or insulated, let alone if it's built in a very rudimentary way,
00:23:09.880it becomes a place where either disease or, of course, definitely vermin can live.
00:27:53.680but uh no thanks for coming on i mean it's a it's a bit of a glum time i'm sure uh the news out of
00:28:02.840cam loops in no uncertain terms has definitely shocked all of us i know that it shocked you
00:28:07.760personally very much i follow you on social media you were very clear about how this was affecting
00:28:12.880you maybe maybe to help the rest of our viewership understand this a bit better you can walk us
00:28:17.600through what what went through your mind as this revelation came down and what what you think needs
00:28:23.120to be done moving forward yeah uh well nathan uh 2004 uh because i had really no job description to
00:28:33.520do for my bank council who hired me on i actually went and did some reading in the archives and i
00:28:39.440read everything including what had happened to my people that originals in canada over the last 100
00:28:45.600hundred years i also read some technical reports i read everything i gave my hands on but
00:28:51.120what what got me was two weeks of reading up on the history of my people that included the indian
00:28:58.160act the reserve system the exclusion and residential schools actually ended up some years
00:29:06.160later putting together a pamphlet kind of describing at a very high level all the issues
00:29:09.920that i discovered over the years but the residential school issue really struck me because
00:29:15.840when i was about 15 14 years old i think i found out that my parents went to residential school
00:29:21.360both of them and so when i read all those first-hand accounts and i read of all the
00:29:26.560documentation reports you know it just it just killed me it just took the breath out of me and
00:29:33.680i spent a few days in a very dark place and i had really strong feelings of anger and revenge and
00:29:41.360vindictiveness but after a few days i realized you know you know i i can't come out like i can't come
00:29:46.800out with anger like people suicide going to jail and kids are going into government care because
00:29:52.880we're suffering from i can't do that revenge is going to do nothing it's going to be a fist
00:29:58.640pounding fish-shaking politician that doesn't like to do any issues so very dark time for me
00:30:06.560and when i heard about the kamloops discovery that just took me back that day sitting in the archives
00:30:12.240and what i had found out on my own with with regards to what we have in the archives and and
00:30:21.040working through these questions it has has a lot of that inspired kind of some of your political
00:30:27.280understanding about how first nations have to move forward again you you have a very unique
00:30:31.700take it's not it isn't the fist pumping it isn't the political correctness sort of route that a
00:30:37.420lot of people or the grievance culture the grievance industry that's developed you've
00:30:41.480tried to make very concrete policies in in your time as as a chief counselor and then as your
00:30:47.000time as an mla that would address aboriginal issues on this is that is that where a lot of
00:30:51.760that came from yeah most of it um you know it was learning the other people were telling me about
00:31:00.340the social issues and how other uh processes have failed to resolve those issues but i was still
00:31:07.140struggling looking for a way to a way forward in a positive manner and it wasn't until i started
00:31:13.440reading case law aboriginal rights and title case law that i started to see the answer and uh
00:31:19.080I thought Aboriginal rights and title was a way to get corporations and government to our table, and it worked.
00:31:25.080My band is now, you know, we're not talking about poverty anymore. We're talking about welfare.
00:31:31.080We're talking about different issues and we're building a community.
00:31:34.080But the other parallel to that, I read what a judge said in terms of reconciliation.
00:31:41.080And it took me a while to kind of come to terms with what he said.
00:31:46.080said. But over the years, I figured out, yeah, he's actually right, the judge is right, because
00:31:51.500none of us are going anywhere. And like it or not, you know, we have been reconciled for quite some
00:31:57.900time, probably since 2004. But you can't tell me that the two societies haven't really blended
00:32:04.280over the last 100, 150 years, right from the day when the explorers came to our shores and First
00:32:12.120nations wanted the beads and the steel that they had and they want the technology and so they
00:32:18.720started trading and so it's been a process of both societies parallel going together in survival
00:32:26.100mode now mind you the politics of the residential school and the Indian Act that kind of tore us
00:32:32.860apart that redirected us but reconciliation means to bring back together and so the whole time that
00:32:40.440i've been trying to build up my region build up my my communities i always kept the back of my
00:32:45.360mind i said hey guys we can't make division lines around race we can't do that i mean there's
00:32:53.480caucasian people in my family there's caucasian people in my community and so and so i couldn't
00:33:00.480with a good conscience turn around and say well all the rest of you are settlers and colonialists
00:33:04.640and you guys should all go back to where you came from i i didn't think that was rational
00:33:09.540or reasonable or then ultimately didn't fulfill the definition of reconciliation as per case law
00:33:17.980this is exactly the point though when it comes to what victoria has chosen to do i mean every
00:33:24.800every mla has two homes they have their home riding where they where they reside the people
00:33:30.900they represent and then they have to go and live through victoria now victoria can be a pretty
00:33:35.820place it's a pretty temperate place it's a little bit overpriced in my opinion but nonetheless it
00:33:40.540can be a pretty place but as it kind of struggles with all sorts of issues drug use high high cost
00:33:46.680of housing all sorts of problems the the city council decides in their infinite wisdom that
00:33:52.040cancelling canada day that'll fix everything i'd like to hear what you have to say about that is
00:33:56.880cancelling canada day going to somehow like undo all the terrible things that happened in canada's
00:34:02.360past no and you know it's it's something that i don't really subscribe to in terms of the guilt
00:34:10.240that canadians are feeling today i don't subscribe to it because the people that are feeling bad
00:34:15.600about it are standing with first nation and they want to do something they want to action they're
00:34:20.760not sure what they want to do but they want to support first nations canada day would have been
00:34:26.300the perfect time to celebrate that the perfect time to come together that's the whole definition
00:34:31.860of reconciliation and when it comes to the guilt that canadians feel for what happened
00:34:39.620just recently that's 50 years ago i understand your guilt but it's it's not productive
00:34:47.300to start tearing down statues and start getting rid of holidays and getting rid of i mean canada
00:34:52.340is a big place and yeah it's not perfect but we're always continuously trying to do better
00:34:57.300and then you know I don't I don't really feel guilty for the atrocities that my
00:35:03.420band actually carried out on my neighboring bands when we go to raid
00:35:08.940them and then take their woman and steal their food and maybe even kill a few
00:35:14.160people on the way it's well known that that's what the culture was on the West
00:35:17.160Coast I don't feel bad about that that's not that's not me I wasn't around for
00:35:21.680that yeah you know I'd like to make amends where I can in fact I tried to
00:35:25.920reconcile two other first nations that had this same problem but did i feel guilty about it that
00:35:32.800i was a part of that no that was my ancestors so i i really think that uh we could do some really
00:35:41.440good positive things not only to reconcile the residence school chapter but whole indian act
00:35:47.920suppression the exclusion of first nations and then you know what for the last 15 years
00:35:55.580or actually from 2004 to 2017 first nations in bc were slowly getting included in the economy
00:36:02.040i think that's a huge part of reconciliation given the social issues that the first nations
00:36:08.400are suffering from so yeah i've had a better part of 15 years to think about this
00:36:14.220One of the things that's an ongoing question is what that model might look like.
00:36:21.500So you have the completely politically correct, symbolic, doesn't change anything sort of movement of what happened with the city council in Victoria.
00:36:31.960And then you have the very innovative, concrete political change that happened with, say, the Nishka agreement.
00:36:37.900And that's a completely, it's all but almost a certain sovereign territory within Canada, within British Columbia.
00:36:46.360They have very strong rights around their economic future and their culture.
00:36:51.660I mean, obviously, one is completely symbolic.
00:36:53.700The other one's a very complicated way of doing things.
00:36:56.140It takes a lot of agreements and process.
00:36:58.580Do we need to move from the symbolic to what maybe the Nishka had?
00:37:02.460Or is even what the Nishka are doing, it's kind of specific to them?
00:37:05.760And that's maybe most First Nations won't quite get that same sort of agreement out of the government.
00:37:12.300No, NISCA did what was good for NISCA.
00:37:15.580And the two or three bans of B.C., they're all completely different.
00:37:19.180And there are different stages of where they think they should be heading.
00:37:23.560Some are saying no to treaty negotiations.
00:57:34.800gotta look inwards and then do what's best for us i better get to the house someone i understand
00:57:41.600no i understand uh thank you so much for joining us while you could us and uh we look forward to
00:57:46.080speaking with you again soon thanks a lot absolutely thank you well uh that was a little
00:57:52.800briefer than i had hoped for but that's not a problem uh we'll continue on with some of the
00:57:56.880other news that's coming out of the rest of the day here again we're we're talking about a few
00:58:01.760different things one of the biggest things being recently that a canada day is going to be cancelled
00:58:07.280when it comes to victoria i'm sorry that uh i'm sorry that we didn't get to your question there
00:58:13.360uh rose west uh around uh where ellis lands on sovereignty i don't mean to speak for mr ross
00:58:20.000but as far as i know mr ross is a federalist uh and as i've told you all before i'm gonna we're
00:58:25.920gonna start on this point again as we kind of turn the hour here i i remain ambivalent about
00:58:31.440the question of sovereignty and i'm gonna i'm gonna say actually this is probably a perfect
00:58:36.160place to explain why right now in victoria there is a bunch of people being paid very good salaries
00:58:45.360to basically dump on the decisions of past people who were paid pretty good salaries and some of
00:58:51.840whom were weren't let's be clear a lot of those residential schools were being run by people who
00:58:56.080who are being fed bread and water and the hope of heaven as their reward.
00:59:01.700They are dumping on people from the past, our current leadership, and getting paid for it.
00:59:08.420They're getting paid to dump on those past decisions and not make decisions in the present that are helping anybody.
00:59:15.280It doesn't help anybody to cancel Canada Day.
00:59:17.500It might help to start figuring out the homeless situation, the unhoused situation in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria.
00:59:24.420Same thing in downtown Prince George. People can hem and haw and go on and on all they want about the questions of Canada today and the evils or mistakes that Canada made. That's not up for debate. There were mistakes made. There were decisions made by omission and by commission, by will and by ignorance that ended up literally killing people at times.
00:59:45.780not in the droves that some people think it happened
00:59:49.020and not in an actually willfully genocidal way
00:59:52.140again I don't agree with that interpretation of history
00:59:54.380but nonetheless people made decisions and things went wrong
01:00:35.680I'm also just kind of learning how to do all this stuff.
01:00:37.580So as I've said before, hopefully you guys can be patient with me today.
01:00:43.640Okay, so here we go. The Times calling us. I'm pretty sure they're related to the paper I used to work for here in, well, work for, I wrote for in Prince George.
01:00:52.620Victoria cancels Canada Day broadcasts as First Nations mourn residential school deaths.
01:00:58.780Victoria's cancelling its Canada Day broadcasts and instead planning to work with the Songhees and Esquameau and First Nations to create an alternative event at a later date amid nationwide calls to cancel July 1 celebrations.
01:04:04.040So this is my old stomping grounds, the Prince George Citizen.
01:04:10.060And I wrote for them for several years as a columnist.
01:04:13.260And we're going to just take a little bit of a look here.
01:04:15.720because this directly relates to this whole question of aboriginal issues in our day and age
01:04:20.160because precisely, and not unlike what's going on in Victoria,
01:04:23.260this is interesting because this is their solution to the problem.
01:04:25.500So instead of talking about Canada Day and cancelling that,
01:04:28.300what they're talking about is whether or not they're going to do something about homelessness in downtown
01:04:33.180by creating supposedly a bylaw around it.
01:04:35.200So city council voted in favour of a controversial proposed bylaw
01:04:38.260that would impose fines for nuisance behaviour like panhandling, open drug use, and camping in public areas.
01:04:43.480While protesters advocating for the rights of the homeless camped on the lawn of City Hall,
01:04:47.580a sometimes emotional debate about the Safe Streets by-law was going on inside City Council chambers on Monday night.
01:04:53.200In a divided vote, so that's interesting, at least it was a divided vote,
01:04:56.260regardless of where you land on that issue, it wasn't like Victoria Council,
01:05:00.160where apparently you might as well have one person voting, not ten.
01:05:03.280In a divided vote, City Council approved the first three readings of the Safe Streets by-law.
01:05:07.560A final reading of the by-law is expected to come before City Council on June 28th.
01:05:11.800Under the proposed safe use bylaw, bylawers could issue $100 tickets with a $75 penalty for late payment for a variety of nuisance behavior.
01:05:20.020Under the bylaw, it would be prohibited to panhandle within 10 meters of a bank or ATM, bus stop, daycare center, liquor store, cannabis store, restaurant, coffee shop, or convenience store.
01:05:29.700The bylaw would also prohibit panhandling people in vehicles when they are parked, stopped at a traffic light or stoplighting, filling up a gas station, or any other way that obstructs traffic.
01:07:14.960But nine times out of ten, if you didn't know what you were doing,
01:07:17.540you were stuck in the wilderness in Canada,
01:07:19.120you would not survive, even in the summer.
01:07:23.000And so the problem becomes very quickly
01:07:24.820that poverty is actually our kind of natural state.
01:07:27.940It takes a lot of work to get to survival, and it takes a lot of work to get to maybe even thriving or doing all right, and then finally into prosperity, which is excess wealth, right?
01:07:39.780The economic argument that poverty is like gravity.
01:07:42.480It's actually the natural inclination of all economic activity because you can always spend more than you have.
01:07:48.340It's always easier to spend than to save, and quite frankly, it's harder to get ahead, and it gets harder and harder to get ahead,
01:07:55.260especially without proper education and that sort of thing in the times we live in.
01:07:59.800So that's kind of the typical mainstream argument when it comes to questions of poverty.
01:08:04.180But for me, I feel like what I've observed in my own lifetime
01:08:09.960is that on the question of poverty, especially in Canada,
01:08:15.840you'd think that Canada would be a great place that could kind of fix this for itself.
01:08:20.780I mean, even Mr. Ross was just on a moment ago telling us about, oh, well, you know, we have EI and we have universal health care and all this stuff like these are great things.
01:08:30.200And he's kind of got a populist position on that, this kind of, you know, for the people sort of position of, well, we have these entitlements and these entitlements are good.
01:08:38.220And these entitlements help us and government services help us stay a healthy, happy population that doesn't feel like it's getting, you know, the raw end of the stick all the time.
01:08:46.500It feels like it's getting a fair deal from its rulers and from its betters,
01:08:51.900and the general population is pretty well taken care of.
01:08:55.100I feel that what's gone wrong kind of in Canada and in the West generally
01:09:01.240is that the idea of just steady work at all is somewhat disappearing.
01:09:07.200I subscribe to kind of using the language of, it is some kind of left-wing language,
01:09:12.440but one of the left-wing words that's really kind of come into my mind
01:09:15.720that I use a lot nowadays, and I think it's actually getting pretty widespread,
01:16:12.520Well, you know, the boat's eventually going to sink.
01:16:15.780And, of course, the crocodile might eat you last, but it's still going to eat you.
01:16:18.840And so the point that I guess I'm driving home here is back to the question of poverty and homelessness. Something tells me that we're looking at this wrong. I'm not saying that people who are impoverished or are living unhoused and or are transient populations do not have to take responsibility for their own life whatsoever. That's not the argument.
01:16:38.580I don't see, I don't think that people are pure victims, that they have no agency, that they have no free will and free choice.
01:16:45.260That's not the argument that's being made here.
01:16:47.240At the same time, I'm telling you, as somebody who, quote unquote, had every advantage in life, I'm struggling.
01:20:09.700But I guess to the point that I'm trying to draw here is that we have large swaths of this population that depend on the government as employer, not just as entitlement giver, but employer.
01:20:22.720And let's be clear, being an employee of the government is a good gig, especially at the lower levels compared to lower level employment elsewhere.
01:20:31.220You make a lot more money working for the government pushing a broom than you do pushing a broom anywhere else in this country.
01:20:37.840And so the issue is that if that's reality, if we have entire swaths of people that are employed by the government or directly related to the government as medicine is, right, as either doctors, as contractors or nurses, of course, as employees of the health authorities, and then finally in education, right, of all levels, right?
01:21:00.800if that's the reality then then i always wanted to be a part of not necessarily supporting that
01:21:08.060reality i didn't want to support it necessarily but i i wanted to help be a part of primary
01:21:11.760wealth generation and that's why i got out of school after i graduated and i wanted to try and
01:21:17.260i tried to become a welder uh and then that fell through you know and it fell through for years
01:21:22.220and i tried this and i tried that you know i got into this industry in that industry there are a
01:21:26.060different things i i pursued i always wanted to stay away from government work and i always wanted
01:21:31.900to to help lead the charge when it came to hey you know what this this country is worth saving
01:21:39.180again i'm ambivalent about sovereignty right but at least this province is worth saving at least
01:21:42.940this region is worth saving and we need to do the things necessary to do that which would require
01:21:49.100primary wealth generation but i've lived as a member of the precariat again i just had that
01:21:53.660defined for you had that up there my whole adult life um and it's really it's really shaped a lot
01:22:01.260of the way i view the world because i've just never been secure in it ever economically speaking
01:22:06.300i've never had economic security in my entire life and that is something that uh i really you know
01:22:18.700i i really think we need to think about that for a second like i might look like i i i'm not even
01:22:24.940trying to break your b or b you just go whatever but i just mean like i you know you look you look
01:22:29.100at me on the screen here and you think to yourself well i mean that just looks like i mean like he
01:22:32.380kind of looks put together i mean he's his face is clean he's got a you know he's got a shirt on
01:22:36.860that kind of fits i mean it's actually kind of loose on me i lost some weight but the point is
01:22:39.980like he he looks kind of put together he's in front of a green screen he's got a camera he's
01:25:36.200I don't know if I can afford more school, or even if I could afford more school, that's time away, and I've got to deal with that, and it's a real predicament, you know, you're getting towards 30, I am 30, I'm past 30, and you're still not, you're still not sure what's happening, and you're still really confused about which way you're supposed to go here.
01:25:55.440Your parents told you that, they didn't say even everything would be fine, but they told you, well, by this age or by that age, your grandparents, oh, I remember when I was this age and I already owned a house.
01:26:03.860You're in your 30s, and you're like, hmm, that's interesting.
01:26:08.260Rowan had a good point here, of course, because the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the ever-expanding bureaucracy.
01:26:15.080A great quote, of course, and Pamela had a good one here, too.
01:26:18.460Plus, government employees get great extended balance that many other banks who pay their salaries don't get.
01:26:23.360that's also true. That's another big deal.
01:26:25.720So there's quite the big discrepancy between
01:26:27.500those who work for the state or any kind of
01:26:29.560state authority, municipal authority, government
01:29:50.120They have real things going on in their lives.
01:29:52.100And I think that's just kind of maybe a place to start of just kind of when we come back to this question of poverty.
01:30:02.400It was said well on Twitter during some of the riots that were happening throughout 2020 and in the United States.
01:30:09.200I didn't have I obviously I had no time for a lot of the racial discussion that was going on because I thought that was all gaslighting and it was it wasn't real.
01:30:18.020um and and whatever happened with mr floyd and whatever else happened down there the point is
01:30:25.660that people used that whole instance to their advantage and that's an evil wicked craved thing
01:30:29.900to do and everybody needs to be honest about that need to be completely honest but let's
01:30:33.580let's leave that aside for a second um i think that when we come down to the poverty question
01:30:39.860there was this one tweet that came out during some of those riots and it's like to remind people
01:30:43.680which side of the line they should be on or who they're actually in solidarity with like who is
01:30:47.940their class or where is their belonging uh they you know remind people that everybody's three
01:30:53.300months away from losing their house not three months from being a billionaire and i think
01:30:58.680that's about it i think that's about it it's not it's not that uh the issues of the underclass
01:31:04.200are the only issues that that can't be true uh you know and we got to be careful about everything
01:31:10.020from les mis to uh i'm trying to remember what dostoyevsky wrote i don't even remember what it
01:31:15.320was called uh but well someone remind me in the comments but the point is that we we have to be
01:31:20.140careful about that because because we don't want to romanticize the underclass in the sense that
01:31:24.940there's no there's no culpability around the question of if you made decisions that led to
01:31:32.140economic problems you have nothing to answer for it that's just not true that's not true i you know
01:31:37.960ten dollars today i spend on a meal at mcdonald's is ten dollars tomorrow i don't get to spend on
01:31:43.420wedding decorations right like that's that's a reality that's fine we we need to understand
01:31:48.620there's consequences to decisions that needs to be preached all day and we can't take away agency
01:31:53.260from people but the the subtle racism the subtle the subtle classism and other things of low
01:31:59.020expectations that's wrong but simultaneously on the poverty question even in prince george my hometown
01:32:08.540my you know my better half with a government job and a decent down payment can't afford a house
01:32:16.980that was built in 1960 and probably has some problems and needs a lot of work she can't afford
01:32:22.860like when when even a government employee making a decent wage can't afford basic housing she's not
01:32:34.680She's not trying to become an empress of landlords.
01:32:38.140She's not trying to become some sort of slumlord.
01:32:41.420She and I aren't going and touring apartment blocks
01:38:03.740And how would you ever get that out of it?
01:38:05.600How are you going to get $500,000 out of a house that wasn't worth $420,000 that you paid for it five years ago, if we go five years in the future?
01:40:33.880If you're going to complain about this Christian holiday that gives you two days off, go right ahead.
01:40:38.780I expect to see you at work tomorrow at your regular pay.
01:40:41.460Thank you for covering for everybody who actually isn't a complete nincompoop.
01:40:45.940No, I appreciate that. Thank you for those comments.
01:40:48.400We've had a couple of good comments today, actually.
01:40:50.780We've had one over here with Elaine McNeil.
01:40:53.320I respect Mr. Ellis, but he also jumped to conclusions about Kamloops.
01:40:56.480I think we've all jumped to questions about Kamloops because the issue at hand is that, of course, we don't know everything about what happened in Kamloops.
01:41:11.580And so we need to be careful about that.
01:47:39.560It doesn't really matter what it is in this country.
01:47:42.100There's a lot of things that have gone wrong.
01:47:45.020And those social issues, we want them solved.
01:47:48.560We want to meet them. This country lacks confidence. This country can't put together a decent procural for its own army.
01:47:55.880You know, we can't build jets. We can't build ships. We can't. We are a nation of can't do, which is really weird because the only way that we became a nation is a can do attitude.
01:48:07.240You can subsist in America on corn. You know, that's what that's what some of my forebears did.
01:48:12.700I'm part of the Sioux Nation. They chase buffalo. But I mean, not so far away from us for people eating corn for a living.
01:48:18.560and and you can in america you can live you can live for free you can live fine you can live in
01:48:24.000florida you can live in the southwest united states you're not going to freeze to death
01:48:27.760in canada you will freeze to death and the point that i'm trying to drive home here is that the
01:48:32.960can-do attitude of our founding speaking of canada day and wrapping all of this episode up back into
01:48:40.080this question of canceling canada and everything else like maybe we should cancel canada day in
01:48:45.440in the sense that the Canada that we live in right now
01:48:47.440is a cancelled Canada, it doesn't exist.
01:49:40.920This country was on the right side of apartheid in South Africa.
01:49:44.080It's on the right side of some of those racial questions in the United States when they were having their problems in the 60s, trying to figure out where they were going to go as a nation.
01:49:50.860This country has been on the right side of a lot of things, but somehow, somewhere along the way, it has lost a sense of itself, and it can't build anything.
01:50:02.980And so the irony is, maybe, coming all the way back around, I'm not saying that they're right to cancel Canada Day,
01:50:09.180But in a sense, what is there to celebrate on Canada Day if this country can't even have confidence in itself?
01:50:18.700Either you make your myth, you make your story, or somebody will write it for you.
01:50:22.860Either you figure out what you want to do, or somebody will employ you to make their dream come true, right?
01:50:27.500And that's probably where I'm going to end the program today.
01:50:30.240This country, again, I'm ambivalent about sovereignty.
01:50:33.760I remain, at least at this point, a situational federalist.
01:50:37.180Federalist. But the point is that nonetheless, regardless of where you stand on how good or bad
01:50:43.140Canada is, if you don't have a sense of self, you will fail as a nation. We are failing ourselves
01:50:50.420as a nation. We're failing our future generations as a nation. Whether it's going to be just your
01:50:56.300local town that's a little country or the whole of Canada, we're failing ourselves because we don't
01:51:00.800have a sense of self. And we are in deep trouble if we think that's how we can go on. We're going
01:51:06.560be on again tomorrow bright and early 9 a.m pacific 10 a.m mountain do tune in and thank
01:51:12.300you so much for watching i'm going to put up some banners now and see if i can get this done