Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - June 15, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Hello and good morning.

00:01:54.380 Welcome to Mountain Standard Time.

00:01:56.200 I'm your host, Nathan Gita, and of course, today I'll be speaking with Ellis Ross, the MLA for Skeena,

00:02:02.820 who is going to be speaking to us about, well, what happened in Kamloops and what's been uncovered,

00:02:07.860 as well as what his aspirations are when it comes to the BC leadership as BC begins to reopen.

00:02:13.420 So please stay tuned for that. We're going to have him on around 9.30 until about 10.30.

00:02:17.840 Until then, do remember to like and subscribe to us on Facebook as well as on YouTube to follow us there.

00:02:23.680 And 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.

00:02:32.420 We're going to get on to the opening statement here.

00:02:34.520 If it looks a little janky today, I'm going to try and produce the show myself.

00:02:39.540 So I'm taking the training wheels off.

00:02:41.660 This is going to be a bit of an experiment.

00:02:43.760 We're trying to do a sort of remote-in thing.

00:02:46.480 So every single little piece of it along the way, there might be some moments where things go a little sideways.

00:02:50.980 don't worry the producers waiting in the ring in the wings if necessary but just so that you know

00:02:56.500 we're we're on we're on the glider portion of the air traffic training if uh if you get my drip

00:03:02.820 first let us turn to our bc provincial capital which has decided that celebrating canada day

00:03:07.860 is optional i suppose that calendars produced around the legislature will now have the first

00:03:13.380 of july designated as some kind of mystery day the origin of which is unknown and the purpose of which 0.97

00:03:18.580 is taboo to mention will the idiocy of victoria's city councillors ever cease to amaze i don't know 0.61

00:03:24.980 we'll find out the capital city of british columbia named after our first monarch who reigned during 0.99

00:03:30.580 the founding of canada has become a crime-ridden and drug-addled farce of overpriced housing

00:03:36.420 unintelligent policies and of course woke rent seekers who couldn't care less if their city

00:03:41.620 burns these leaders don't answer for their actions they do not suffer the consequences

00:03:46.580 of their own ideology, and they do not care about the people who live there, clearly.

00:03:51.300 At one point, after winning the election but losing his seat in Ontario,

00:03:54.760 that's to say Kingston, that was his traditional writing,

00:03:57.160 a tradition that's been kept alive in British Columbia over the years,

00:04:00.380 Sir John A. MacDonald actually represented the brand new district of Victoria.

00:04:04.560 Some years ago, when his statue was removed, I mourned and I railed against the iconoclast,

00:04:09.080 but I could never have predicted that they'd come for Canada Day next.

00:04:13.580 There is a bizarre intersectionality going on with all this.

00:04:17.660 The fact is that here at the Western Standard,

00:04:20.780 there's an official policy of either complete secession from Canada

00:04:23.660 for everybody west of Tundur Bay,

00:04:26.160 maybe including Tundur Bay or Lakehead if you prefer,

00:04:29.000 or the total rearrangement of the Canadian political experiment

00:04:31.820 into a form unrecognizable today

00:04:34.360 with equal representation in the Senate

00:04:36.300 and the strict enforcement of separated powers.

00:04:38.780 So essentially a sort of, I don't know if all sovereigns

00:04:42.920 Sovereignists 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.

00:04:57.600 Shouldn'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? 0.56

00:05:05.440 Well, deplatforming and delegitimize Canada is a rose of triumph by any other name for a Sovereignist, one could suspect. 0.66

00:05:12.100 It will further the agenda of all Sovereignists to have, well, quite frankly, to have, yeah, there we go. 0.84

00:05:22.360 It will further the agenda of all Sovereignists to make sure that we have that ability, right, that we have that ability.

00:05:30.500 So, 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.

00:05:53.320 that think that even the founding of canada was legitimate you're playing a dangerous game and

00:05:58.560 the dangerous game is there is that you're linking arms with people who would make their empire and

00:06:03.060 make their their kingdom on the ash heap of what what's left of this country and there's a piece 0.98

00:06:10.280 of me that might allow that in a sense of like well i couldn't do anything about it and i'm

00:06:14.460 retreating and so i'm gonna let i'm gonna let the iconoclast have at her but to join hands with them

00:06:19.320 in burning down what I think is a fundamentally, at least moral idea of a country.

00:06:23.780 I think Canada was founded on a fundamentally moral idea

00:06:26.320 and a fundamentally intelligent set of policies of,

00:06:30.520 well, if we don't want to be America and we do want to be a sovereign nation

00:06:35.120 eventually under Britain and perhaps even separated from Britain or whatever

00:06:38.260 with enough sovereignty to take care of our own affairs,

00:06:42.460 this is doable.

00:06:45.820 But what we've done so far has been very dangerous, and we have to be careful.

00:06:51.960 If you are a sovereignty, if you're somebody who believes in sovereignty,

00:06:54.660 you have to be very careful about what's going on when it comes to these things.

00:06:59.640 We're going to look at a couple of different items here in the news

00:07:04.100 and kind of go through them as we warm up for today.

00:07:07.740 There's a few different things.

00:07:09.040 So, we have, apparently, Victoria Day cancels the celebration of, I'm just going to get rid of this guy.

00:07:19.220 Thanks.

00:07:20.300 Okay.

00:07:21.680 Okay.

00:07:22.600 Yep, there we go.

00:07:23.740 And I'm going to go use my screen share.

00:07:27.260 Share screen.

00:07:28.400 I'm looking for Victoria Day.

00:07:29.860 Window.

00:07:30.660 Chrome tab.

00:07:32.180 Share.

00:07:32.800 There we go.

00:07:34.460 So, Victoria cancels Canada Day.

00:07:39.040 Celebration in the wake of Kamloops' discovery.

00:07:43.000 So, Victoria News.

00:07:45.380 The city of Victoria has decided to cancel its Canada Day celebrations.

00:07:49.280 Mayor Lisa Helps says the city is instead going to explore

00:07:53.560 what it means to be Canadian in light of recent events.

00:07:56.100 Adding a broadcast will be aired later this summer,

00:07:58.220 guided by the local Lekwungen people.

00:08:02.240 I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that.

00:08:03.820 I was not taught how to say that.

00:08:05.380 This 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,

00:08:33.720 That's a rich people problem.

00:08:36.620 If you're going to be rich and racist, you can do that.

00:08:38.840 If you're going to be poor and racist, you don't have time for that. 0.67

00:08:41.380 So that's not arguing whether or not that happened.

00:08:44.820 It's just a simple statement of fact.

00:08:46.840 People are all buried together.

00:08:48.420 Usually they're separated by religion, if anything else, when it comes to Canada.

00:08:51.660 And in Canada that doesn't even happen all the time

00:08:53.360 because there's some places where it's not practical to separate people by religion.

00:08:57.300 So, citing Kamloops last month.

00:08:58.940 Help says, as First Nations mourn, and in light of the challenging moment we are having as a Canadian nation,

00:09:08.160 the Council is taking the time to explore new possibilities.

00:09:13.580 It's interesting, actually, that, well, the guy we're having on in just a few minutes,

00:09:19.340 MLA Ellis Ross, who's a member of the Heisa First Nation, says he's disappointed that a candidate should stay.

00:09:24.480 If we want to do something in relation to, overall, in terms of Aboriginal experiences, maybe we can plan that.

00:09:30.300 But it can be an inclusive event where all those people who want to understand more and learn about it, we can dedicate a day for that.

00:09:36.680 Maybe it's Aboriginal Day. I don't know, he explained.

00:09:38.960 My parents, both of them, went to residential school in Alberta.

00:09:41.640 They went to Canada Day. They went to BC Day. It was a big part of our lives.

00:09:45.380 My mother and dad made sure that we were there.

00:09:47.900 We'd stake the place out on the side of the road for the parade.

00:09:51.120 What's next?

00:09:51.860 Is it B.C. Day?

00:09:52.940 Because B.C. was just as complicit as Canada

00:09:55.060 in terms of what happened to First Nations in the last 150 years.

00:09:58.200 I really appreciate that.

00:09:59.760 I appreciate that Ellis is actually going to make the point

00:10:05.120 of actually trying to stand up for...

00:10:10.580 Again, I understand.

00:10:11.840 This is the sovereignty channel.

00:10:13.340 This is the separatist channel.

00:10:15.160 I mean, I'm not supposed to say the word separatist.

00:10:16.740 I remember being told that by somebody in a staff meeting at some point.

00:10:19.380 But the point is that whether you want to use that word or sovereignty, it doesn't matter.

00:10:24.080 The 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.

00:10:32.060 This is a valid question. This is an extremely valid question.

00:10:35.300 It's something that should be debated. We try to debate it a lot on this show.

00:10:38.380 We 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.

00:10:44.860 That's brilliant.

00:10:45.520 But what's going to be great is, as I just said, our guest today has a real, I think, in-depth and nuanced opinion around this question.

00:10:53.440 Terrible things did happen.

00:10:55.440 There's no denying that.

00:10:57.020 The federal government made some very arrogant choices when it came to the treatment of First Nations.

00:11:04.320 It infantilized them in a lot of ways.

00:11:06.200 It took away their choices, their ability to make choices for themselves, their families, and indeed their nations.

00:11:12.080 This happened.

00:11:12.880 This was wrong.

00:11:13.680 the solution to that is not to somehow one erase the past which is trying to teach us these lessons

00:11:22.280 that taking away anybody's choice doesn't work taking away people's ability to make decisions

00:11:28.440 for their family and their community is a terrible idea it's always a terrible idea

00:11:32.680 and and erasing our past is only going to reinforce that so uh we've got a couple of

00:11:39.380 comments in the wings here we'll uh we'll go to those now pamela's making a good point here

00:11:43.600 pamela's a big fan of the show i'm really happy to have her here it's always great to have a

00:11:47.820 consistent viewership and it doesn't surprise me that lisa helps would do this she spent taxpayer

00:11:52.800 dollars to remove the status of sir john a it's true that's true i mean they they did they did

00:11:58.080 pay they did pay to uh to push john a out of the public sphere and that's a pretty serious decision

00:12:04.680 Like, could you imagine doing that?

00:12:06.000 Like, you're paying money for that, for somebody who founded our country to be removed from the public square.

00:12:11.640 That's some pretty serious stuff, and you've got to think about that.

00:12:14.560 And there's another comment here.

00:12:16.680 But if Canada isn't Canada anymore, can you still leave it or just keep the parts of it in a new sovereign nation?

00:12:21.800 We're a product of our past, can't escape that.

00:12:23.880 Catherine has a brilliant point there, too.

00:12:25.880 You can't just erase the past.

00:12:28.840 The past is part of us.

00:12:30.800 And this is something, whether we're talking about it at a national level or personal level, right?

00:12:33.900 I mean, basic psychology, right?

00:12:35.480 People in denial of their own past.

00:12:37.220 We don't consider that to be a healthy way of living.

00:12:39.380 How can that be healthy as a nation?

00:12:43.320 It can't be.

00:12:44.720 It can't be.

00:12:45.860 We're going to go through some of the other things that we've got up here.

00:12:48.460 It turns out that we've got just this other column here.

00:12:52.460 Well, this other article that's coming to us from our premier.

00:12:55.800 We're going to add this to the stream.

00:12:58.600 Hey.

00:12:59.760 No, that's not the one I wanted.

00:13:01.820 Remove.

00:13:02.180 i'm gonna stop screen i'm gonna share sorry you guys are running through me learning how to do

00:13:09.660 this this is this is uh me just learning this stuff so please be patient i appreciate your help

00:13:15.560 somebody might argue that i should have known how to do this a long time ago i say probably for the

00:13:20.220 most part but honestly i was helpless without my my uh producer i still am pretty much he's he's

00:13:26.020 He's definitely got some remote in-device stuff here

00:13:31.160 to make sure if I get totally lost, he can help me.

00:13:34.200 BC Premier advises against cancelling Canada Day festivities.

00:13:37.840 So, a day after Victoria cancelled its Canada Day celebrations,

00:13:40.920 BC Premier John Horgan says he doesn't want other cities to follow suit.

00:13:44.580 The intent, I can understand, says Horgan.

00:13:47.340 The 21st of June, National Indigenous Peoples Day,

00:13:49.860 would be a more appropriate time for us to collectively focus

00:13:51.780 on how we can redress the wrongs of the past

00:13:53.600 and build a brighter future together.

00:13:55.440 Victoria City Council voted unanimously this week to abandon virtual Canada Day festivities

00:13:59.460 following the discovery of children's bodies on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops.

00:14:04.200 Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps says local Indigenous groups have since pulled out of participating in this year's Canada Day events.

00:14:09.200 Okay, so let's again, let's notice something here.

00:14:13.440 This is very interesting.

00:14:14.340 So this came to us from CTV, and CTV decided to use the words discovery of children's bodies.

00:14:21.860 I'll just highlight that there.

00:14:23.920 I hope you can see that in the stream.

00:14:26.980 But it's interesting that they chose to phrase it that way.

00:14:30.840 And, of course, the other editorial that we were just in, not editorial, it was actually a column.

00:14:35.220 I'll just read it to you. I don't need to look it back up.

00:14:38.140 215 Indigenous children. Remains of 215 Indigenous children.

00:14:41.120 So this is interesting because these are two reports about the exact same thing.

00:14:45.060 And this is not opinion. This is news.

00:14:47.340 These are both news. These are not opinion.

00:14:48.980 This is by Rene Berhard over here on News 1130, and then this one was written by Travis Prasad.

00:15:00.020 So both of them talking about the exact same instance in Kamloops.

00:15:03.340 But it's interesting how quickly that kind of change can happen, eh?

00:15:06.900 It's just amazing, eh? I'm going to scroll past the swimsuits. Pardon me.

00:15:11.360 But the thing is that it's interesting how reporting happens, isn't it?

00:15:16.720 One of them is saying that they know with absolute certainty

00:15:19.540 that every single remain of a child that was found there

00:15:23.060 is indeed the genetic heritage of a First Nations person.

00:15:28.820 And the other one is simply stating for the record that,

00:15:31.060 yes, there are children.

00:15:32.180 Yes, we have evidence of buried children,

00:15:34.520 but we do not have final confirmation

00:15:37.040 that every single child is indeed Aboriginal.

00:15:39.960 This is important.

00:15:41.000 This is important because we don't have that confirmation.

00:15:43.400 And again, this is not about splitting hairs.

00:15:46.140 actually it's something that needs to be brought up about even bc's northern capital so i'm going

00:15:49.500 to go on a bit of a rabbit trail here but this does connect on the question of of the bodies

00:15:53.580 themselves and for the matter uh the cancellation of canada day or not so here in prince george we

00:16:00.060 have a place that's now called uh clearly to name memorial park but it was called fort george for

00:16:06.620 a long time for you know the fort george park because that was the site of the old fort that's

00:16:12.540 where the hudson's bay trading post was that's that that's it that's it's that simple it's right

00:16:17.100 next to the fraser river about at most a mile from the confluence of the nachaco and the fraser two

00:16:24.380 major rivers in this area obviously the phrase that goes all the way to vancouver but then the

00:16:29.900 chaco the nachaco a major tributary that comes out of the west towards stewart lake and what's

00:16:36.780 now the kenny dams out towards vanderhoof the point is that this is where kind of the central

00:16:42.620 hub of trade was in northern british columbia after fort st james right which is on stewart lake

00:16:47.660 west of us uh that that was where the fort was now lots of aboriginals lived near the fort both

00:16:54.780 as the hired help and also as kind of the in-between the people who either seasonally

00:16:59.020 lived there or lived there full-time in order to facilitate trade between quite frankly right

00:17:04.460 non-indigenous or the white man if you want to call it that or europeans or however you want to

00:17:08.460 say it and of course the aboriginal population that was doing most of the hunting and trapping 1.00

00:17:13.260 to get the fur trade going so that's that's a fact and we all know that we've seen a fort like this

00:17:18.780 in saskatchewan in ontario and quebec it doesn't matter we've all seen well it's the fort isn't

00:17:23.020 there anymore i don't even think those are the original palisades but the point is that we've

00:17:26.620 all seen a site like this before we know a nice flat piece of ground that was to defend the fort

00:17:31.500 right to make sure you could have a clear line of sight if you did have to defend the fort from

00:17:34.740 intruders or invaders or raiders and of course lots of areas around it that would have been

00:17:39.940 where people lived either in their wigwams or in well i mean out here they didn't have wigwams

00:17:44.460 but they did have um the carrier built pits actually and they covered them with uh with

00:17:49.920 sticks and brush and stuff in order to keep them rainproof but the point is that you have this

00:17:54.640 this area that you've seen a thousand times in any other small town in canada because most small

00:17:58.760 towns of Canada at one point were a colonial reality right when it comes to trade and the

00:18:02.820 fur trade and that sort of thing so we're all on the same page there we all understand that

00:18:06.460 but there's also a graveyard and so there's two points of contention when it comes to Fort George

00:18:11.380 Park the and now called Clayton A Memorial Park the first point of contention was always quite

00:18:17.460 frankly if you want to use it that old way right the Indian burial ground the there is a burial

00:18:23.060 ground there that is as far as was kind of known or stated popularly in the popular consciousness

00:18:30.880 a almost entirely aboriginal burial ground and that needed to be kept more sacred because it

00:18:38.300 wasn't it wasn't given its prominence and that sort of thing so people decided to change the

00:18:42.780 name of the park that's another point of the debate and the other half of it was that supposedly

00:18:47.900 the carrier that were here, were forced out

00:18:51.760 and unpaid and not given any compensation for leaving

00:18:55.420 the area around what was then Fort George, when the railway appropriated

00:18:59.980 it in order to use it for its own kind of machinations

00:19:04.160 for northern British Columbia, and moved out to Shelley, which is

00:19:08.060 just north and east of town up the Fraser River, so

00:19:11.660 further past the confluence is probably a couple miles, less than five miles past

00:19:15.960 the confluence so that's what prince george deals with okay so there's two points who's buried in

00:19:23.740 the park and were the first nations here forced out the truth of the matter is that as far as we

00:19:30.160 could tell not only did one of the local priests the roman catholic priests help the first nations

00:19:35.080 bargain for a better deal out of the grand trunk railway and out of out of the cpr at the time

00:19:41.080 they they did they fought for that they helped organize the aboriginal so they could agitate

00:19:45.760 for a better deal when they were bought out for this piece of land.

00:19:51.440 And the other thing that happened was an information request

00:19:54.420 through a friend of ours, a friend of ours here who is a historian,

00:19:57.300 a certified historian, tried to get a hold of the information

00:20:01.420 around who exactly was buried there.

00:20:03.140 And the evidence suggested, again, if you want to be rich and racist,

00:20:07.220 I mean, you can be, I guess, in the 19th century,

00:20:09.320 but it costs a lot of money to be rich and racist.

00:20:12.780 So if you were actually going to separate the bodies of people

00:20:15.560 into separate graveyards,

00:20:17.880 it costs a lot of money to have separate graveyards.

00:20:20.040 Again, the only reason people were usually ever separated

00:20:22.660 by graveyard site was, one, can be pandemics,

00:20:26.380 but most often, two, by religion.

00:20:28.440 Religion is really the only reason 1.00

00:20:29.840 people were buried in different places.

00:20:31.920 So, you know, Protestants and Catholics,

00:20:33.520 we saw that all the time with Irish,

00:20:35.220 Protestant-Catholic tensions.

00:20:37.540 You can still see evidence of this in Northern Ireland.

00:20:40.760 We know that, right, just as, you know,

00:20:42.800 what happened with different faiths

00:20:44.560 and how different faiths take care of their debt.

00:20:46.620 That is the only thing that really separates people when it comes to their death.

00:20:51.160 Other than that, you don't have the money to bury people in completely different plots of ground

00:20:55.820 in order to keep up your facade of not caring about people based on their skin color.

00:21:02.480 It makes no sense.

00:21:03.960 So the point that I'm trying to draw here, I'm going to punt this from the stream.

00:21:08.860 The point that I'm trying to draw here is that in Prince George alone,

00:21:11.400 A 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.

00:21:28.740 The 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.

00:21:48.900 So by that logic, both Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals are buried in the park. 1.00

00:21:53.720 That's a statement of fact.

00:21:55.020 We're just looking for the rest of the corroboration.

00:21:57.420 It's a very likely trajectory.

00:21:58.940 There's no holes in that theory.

00:22:01.040 That makes sense.

00:22:02.560 Nobody was going across the river to bury the Europeans somewhere else.

00:22:07.500 They were burying them nearby.

00:22:10.120 Simultaneously, the same story is also kind of sideways

00:22:13.280 When it comes to this problem of, was the First Nation here pushed off the land?

00:22:22.660 And some people like to say that even their homes, the hovels that were around the fort were burned.

00:22:29.880 And obviously that was a sign of racism.

00:22:32.540 And again, this is a point of contention.

00:22:34.240 A lot of people don't seem to understand that there was payment, there was an agreement, people were moved, they were assisted in moving.

00:22:40.960 And 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,

00:23:09.880 it becomes a place where either disease or, of course, definitely vermin can live.

00:23:16.320 And that's what happened.

00:23:17.700 So that's the story.

00:23:19.360 That's what happened here in Prince George.

00:23:21.860 And that story's gotten completely twisted, completely disconnected,

00:23:24.880 to the point where it's become so politicized that if you try to do an FOI request around,

00:23:29.180 I would like to know who's buried, whose remains have been identified.

00:23:32.420 I would like you to know.

00:23:33.360 I would like to do genetic testing to know who we've uncovered.

00:23:36.740 Because they did some digging in the park.

00:23:38.300 They had to build a new palisade or something in the park.

00:23:41.220 Not a palisade, but this new kind of thing for, I don't know, a band shell or something.

00:23:45.440 And they disturbed some bodies.

00:23:46.840 Of course, they have to bring in the archaeologists.

00:23:48.420 The archaeologists have to do their job.

00:23:49.480 That's what happens.

00:23:50.540 Well, where is the information?

00:23:52.280 Who are these people?

00:23:53.540 We need to identify them.

00:23:54.540 We need to know.

00:23:55.000 This is a previously unknown grave site.

00:23:56.760 It's not a mass grave.

00:23:57.580 It's just an unknown area of burial because nobody knows perfectly.

00:24:00.680 If your headstone goes missing back from the 19th century, nobody knows where you're buried

00:24:04.800 because nobody has a perfect plot of it

00:24:06.900 unless you're in a very well-developed city.

00:24:08.760 So all of these things are kind of all over the place.

00:24:12.700 And you're not allowed to talk about them

00:24:15.120 because it's not politically correct to do so.

00:24:17.500 And we need to be very clear about this.

00:24:19.880 If that's the reality that you're in,

00:24:25.580 if you're in this reality where you're not even allowed

00:24:29.080 to discuss something because it's so taboo,

00:24:32.020 you're in deep, deep trouble.

00:24:34.160 Deep trouble.

00:24:35.040 Because what could possibly go wrong?

00:24:36.680 How could it possibly go wrong?

00:24:38.400 If you aren't allowed to discuss what's going on,

00:24:43.600 you are in serious danger of not being able to tell the truth.

00:24:48.760 And if you're not able to tell the truth

00:24:50.180 and relay facts about what's happening around you,

00:24:53.700 then you can't make proper decisions.

00:24:55.500 And eventually your whole life is just going to descend into chaos

00:24:58.580 in a mess of lies.

00:24:59.900 And that's what's happening to our country.

00:25:01.600 That's what's happening when it comes to these issues of Canada Day and what's happening in Victoria right now.

00:25:07.760 Victoria is, you know, you want to use President Trump's terminology, we'll bleep it out here because we're not going to use that.

00:25:14.860 We're not going to use that language on the show, but it is a bleephole city.

00:25:18.020 And it's a bleephole city because of what its city council has allowed to happen to it.

00:25:24.620 It has no control over the poverty that's taken over.

00:25:28.840 where the drug pandemic has claimed more lives than the pandemic has,

00:25:33.000 the viral pandemic.

00:25:34.260 People are, it's lawlessness reigns in entire quarters of Victoria.

00:25:40.620 There's been, I think there was a serial murder.

00:25:43.140 I don't know if I want to call it an outright serial killer,

00:25:44.700 but there was definitely some predator prowling about

00:25:47.440 who's living amongst the homeless population

00:25:49.560 and preying upon them and upon others.

00:25:51.760 There's chop shops for bicycles that have developed inside of Beacon Hill Park.

00:25:55.900 Hopefully we can get Aaron on here at some point.

00:25:58.660 I just sent him a message, actually.

00:26:00.040 I'm hoping that Aaron Gunn can come back on the program

00:26:02.220 and we can talk to him about it because this is his stomping grounds.

00:26:06.120 This city council has lost control of its city.

00:26:09.440 You couldn't pay me to live in Victoria anyways.

00:26:11.320 I remember the time that I dealt with Victoria.

00:26:13.200 I was just passing through, parked my vehicle in a residential area

00:26:16.540 because the apartment that I was visiting couldn't accept a full-size truck into its garages.

00:26:21.960 So I parked it in a residential area on a Saturday night,

00:26:25.500 was going to be back at my vehicle by the time church ended the next day.

00:26:31.020 I already had a ticket, and that had been, you know,

00:26:34.200 somebody had called me in on a weekend.

00:26:36.360 I want to know what kind of traffic Bobby is getting paid overtime

00:26:39.320 to hand out tickets on a weekend for a truck that's been parked there for 15 minutes.

00:26:43.120 It was 15 hours, but it didn't matter.

00:26:45.200 It was a weekend, and nothing was going to go wrong.

00:26:46.940 The point that I'm trying to drive home here is that

00:26:49.060 Victoria has lost complete control of its city,

00:26:51.660 and the city council has the audacity to somehow blame the federal government

00:26:56.660 whatever mistreatment of first nations aside not saying that didn't happen

00:27:00.020 but somehow to distract from the fact that the victoria city council

00:27:03.200 has completely lost control of its own town and can't can't put can't put

00:27:08.460 itself together and can't help the average citizen of victoria

00:27:11.440 they're they're distracting from the issue they're distracting from it by

00:27:15.640 removing statues they're distracting from by counseling canada day

00:27:18.140 at what point do you look at your city council and go like well what are you

00:27:21.080 going to do about the poverty and the issues that my city faces and how how are you going to help

00:27:25.740 with affordability and the crisis that we're having victoria and then they start talking about

00:27:29.900 racism again that's not going to solve the issues that victoria is facing today and somebody needs

00:27:34.960 to tell them that we've got ellis ross waiting in the wings here uh i'm i'm just going to give

00:27:41.060 ellis a heads up here that as i bring him on uh we're we're running today with without a producer

00:27:47.100 so hopefully uh hopefully i get this right there we are hey look i pulled that off hey

00:27:52.020 ellis you're back it's great

00:27:53.680 but 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

00:28:02.840 cam loops in no uncertain terms has definitely shocked all of us i know that it shocked you

00:28:07.760 personally very much i follow you on social media you were very clear about how this was affecting

00:28:12.880 you maybe maybe to help the rest of our viewership understand this a bit better you can walk us

00:28:17.600 through what what went through your mind as this revelation came down and what what you think needs

00:28:23.120 to be done moving forward yeah uh well nathan uh 2004 uh because i had really no job description to

00:28:33.520 do for my bank council who hired me on i actually went and did some reading in the archives and i

00:28:39.440 read everything including what had happened to my people that originals in canada over the last 100

00:28:45.600 hundred years i also read some technical reports i read everything i gave my hands on but

00:28:51.120 what what got me was two weeks of reading up on the history of my people that included the indian

00:28:58.160 act the reserve system the exclusion and residential schools actually ended up some years

00:29:06.160 later putting together a pamphlet kind of describing at a very high level all the issues

00:29:09.920 that i discovered over the years but the residential school issue really struck me because

00:29:15.840 when i was about 15 14 years old i think i found out that my parents went to residential school

00:29:21.360 both of them and so when i read all those first-hand accounts and i read of all the

00:29:26.560 documentation reports you know it just it just killed me it just took the breath out of me and

00:29:33.680 i spent a few days in a very dark place and i had really strong feelings of anger and revenge and

00:29:41.360 vindictiveness but after a few days i realized you know you know i i can't come out like i can't come

00:29:46.800 out with anger like people suicide going to jail and kids are going into government care because

00:29:52.880 we're suffering from i can't do that revenge is going to do nothing it's going to be a fist

00:29:58.640 pounding fish-shaking politician that doesn't like to do any issues so very dark time for me

00:30:06.560 and when i heard about the kamloops discovery that just took me back that day sitting in the archives

00:30:12.240 and what i had found out on my own with with regards to what we have in the archives and and

00:30:21.040 working through these questions it has has a lot of that inspired kind of some of your political

00:30:27.280 understanding about how first nations have to move forward again you you have a very unique

00:30:31.700 take it's not it isn't the fist pumping it isn't the political correctness sort of route that a

00:30:37.420 lot of people or the grievance culture the grievance industry that's developed you've

00:30:41.480 tried to make very concrete policies in in your time as as a chief counselor and then as your

00:30:47.000 time as an mla that would address aboriginal issues on this is that is that where a lot of

00:30:51.760 that came from yeah most of it um you know it was learning the other people were telling me about

00:31:00.340 the social issues and how other uh processes have failed to resolve those issues but i was still

00:31:07.140 struggling looking for a way to a way forward in a positive manner and it wasn't until i started

00:31:13.440 reading case law aboriginal rights and title case law that i started to see the answer and uh

00:31:19.080 I thought Aboriginal rights and title was a way to get corporations and government to our table, and it worked.

00:31:25.080 My band is now, you know, we're not talking about poverty anymore. We're talking about welfare.

00:31:31.080 We're talking about different issues and we're building a community.

00:31:34.080 But the other parallel to that, I read what a judge said in terms of reconciliation.

00:31:41.080 And it took me a while to kind of come to terms with what he said.

00:31:46.080 said. But over the years, I figured out, yeah, he's actually right, the judge is right, because

00:31:51.500 none of us are going anywhere. And like it or not, you know, we have been reconciled for quite some

00:31:57.900 time, probably since 2004. But you can't tell me that the two societies haven't really blended

00:32:04.280 over the last 100, 150 years, right from the day when the explorers came to our shores and First

00:32:12.120 nations wanted the beads and the steel that they had and they want the technology and so they

00:32:18.720 started trading and so it's been a process of both societies parallel going together in survival

00:32:26.100 mode now mind you the politics of the residential school and the Indian Act that kind of tore us

00:32:32.860 apart that redirected us but reconciliation means to bring back together and so the whole time that

00:32:40.440 i've been trying to build up my region build up my my communities i always kept the back of my

00:32:45.360 mind i said hey guys we can't make division lines around race we can't do that i mean there's

00:32:53.480 caucasian people in my family there's caucasian people in my community and so and so i couldn't 0.73

00:33:00.480 with a good conscience turn around and say well all the rest of you are settlers and colonialists

00:33:04.640 and you guys should all go back to where you came from i i didn't think that was rational

00:33:09.540 or reasonable or then ultimately didn't fulfill the definition of reconciliation as per case law

00:33:17.980 this is exactly the point though when it comes to what victoria has chosen to do i mean every

00:33:24.800 every mla has two homes they have their home riding where they where they reside the people 0.92

00:33:30.900 they represent and then they have to go and live through victoria now victoria can be a pretty

00:33:35.820 place it's a pretty temperate place it's a little bit overpriced in my opinion but nonetheless it

00:33:40.540 can be a pretty place but as it kind of struggles with all sorts of issues drug use high high cost

00:33:46.680 of housing all sorts of problems the the city council decides in their infinite wisdom that

00:33:52.040 cancelling canada day that'll fix everything i'd like to hear what you have to say about that is

00:33:56.880 cancelling canada day going to somehow like undo all the terrible things that happened in canada's

00:34:02.360 past no and you know it's it's something that i don't really subscribe to in terms of the guilt

00:34:10.240 that canadians are feeling today i don't subscribe to it because the people that are feeling bad

00:34:15.600 about it are standing with first nation and they want to do something they want to action they're

00:34:20.760 not sure what they want to do but they want to support first nations canada day would have been

00:34:26.300 the perfect time to celebrate that the perfect time to come together that's the whole definition

00:34:31.860 of reconciliation and when it comes to the guilt that canadians feel for what happened

00:34:39.620 just recently that's 50 years ago i understand your guilt but it's it's not productive

00:34:47.300 to start tearing down statues and start getting rid of holidays and getting rid of i mean canada

00:34:52.340 is a big place and yeah it's not perfect but we're always continuously trying to do better

00:34:57.300 and then you know I don't I don't really feel guilty for the atrocities that my

00:35:03.420 band actually carried out on my neighboring bands when we go to raid

00:35:08.940 them and then take their woman and steal their food and maybe even kill a few 0.82

00:35:14.160 people on the way it's well known that that's what the culture was on the West

00:35:17.160 Coast I don't feel bad about that that's not that's not me I wasn't around for

00:35:21.680 that yeah you know I'd like to make amends where I can in fact I tried to

00:35:25.920 reconcile two other first nations that had this same problem but did i feel guilty about it that

00:35:32.800 i was a part of that no that was my ancestors so i i really think that uh we could do some really

00:35:41.440 good positive things not only to reconcile the residence school chapter but whole indian act

00:35:47.920 suppression the exclusion of first nations and then you know what for the last 15 years

00:35:55.580 or actually from 2004 to 2017 first nations in bc were slowly getting included in the economy

00:36:02.040 i think that's a huge part of reconciliation given the social issues that the first nations

00:36:08.400 are suffering from so yeah i've had a better part of 15 years to think about this

00:36:14.220 One of the things that's an ongoing question is what that model might look like.

00:36:21.500 So you have the completely politically correct, symbolic, doesn't change anything sort of movement of what happened with the city council in Victoria.

00:36:31.960 And then you have the very innovative, concrete political change that happened with, say, the Nishka agreement.

00:36:37.900 And that's a completely, it's all but almost a certain sovereign territory within Canada, within British Columbia.

00:36:46.360 They have very strong rights around their economic future and their culture.

00:36:51.660 I mean, obviously, one is completely symbolic.

00:36:53.700 The other one's a very complicated way of doing things.

00:36:56.140 It takes a lot of agreements and process.

00:36:58.580 Do we need to move from the symbolic to what maybe the Nishka had?

00:37:02.460 Or is even what the Nishka are doing, it's kind of specific to them?

00:37:05.760 And that's maybe most First Nations won't quite get that same sort of agreement out of the government.

00:37:12.300 No, NISCA did what was good for NISCA.

00:37:15.580 And the two or three bans of B.C., they're all completely different.

00:37:19.180 And there are different stages of where they think they should be heading.

00:37:23.560 Some are saying no to treaty negotiations.

00:37:25.920 They don't want that.

00:37:26.700 They want economic development.

00:37:28.660 Some are basically okay with where they're at.

00:37:32.580 Some are taking advantage of opportunities.

00:37:34.440 some are trying to create development themselves in their own right in their own communities

00:37:39.080 so it's really tough to say that what would happen this can be applied to everybody else but you know

00:37:44.760 the interesting thing that that i see out of this is right now there's confusion there's a lot of

00:37:52.360 sadness from aboriginals and non-aboriginals and i've always got the opinion that you never make 1.00

00:37:59.560 decisions when you're in an emotional state of distress if you're angry sad confused don't make

00:38:06.440 decisions think about it sleep on it and come back to the table thinking clearly about not only what's

00:38:13.400 happening today but what's going to happen in the next five 15 20 years and what happened in Kamloops

00:38:19.080 is pretty significant i think it's a turning point but at the same time i think you know the

00:38:25.640 The return, the repatriation of these remains to 203 bans in BC, even if it's symbolic, could do a lot towards healing.

00:38:39.140 It could do a lot towards bringing First Nations and non-First Nations together.

00:38:43.780 I mean, just think about it.

00:38:45.620 23 bands each individual band on a day when they expect to receive remains coming from

00:38:51.540 Kamloops or Kokolitsa or Port Alberni or wherever these schools were there's a day when there's

00:38:58.260 remains coming into the community can you imagine the amount of aboriginals and non-aboriginals 0.99

00:39:02.100 gathering waiting to welcome and it would be it'd be something on a scale that nobody ever seen

00:39:08.180 before and it would really truly bring people together because i keep coming back this non

00:39:15.380 aboriginals want to help they want to be beside first nations and they don't want necessarily at 0.98

00:39:23.700 home but but they want to be there to kind of help the healing and you know be a part of the first

00:39:31.060 nations uh journey and first nations and the only thing i'm saying is that welcome it

00:39:36.180 welcome it it's it's exactly what we've been asking for for the last how many 50 years

00:39:41.700 we've been asking to be included we've been asked to be taken seriously we've been asked to go to

00:39:47.160 the table well now the tables are turned non-aboriginals want to come to you and then 1.00

00:39:54.340 they just they just don't know how to do it they don't know what to do so the confusion is what

00:39:58.520 you're starting to see in places like vitroia they don't know what to do

00:40:01.780 and indeed they don't know what to do they're they're grasping at straws again politically

00:40:08.940 victoria victoria is a mess uh and and even if you couldn't blame any one person or it's always

00:40:14.540 it's always many hands make for for quick work of any place if they're all helping themselves or

00:40:20.060 they're not solving the real issues or facing the real issues nonetheless that chaos reigns in

00:40:24.480 victoria whether we're talking about beacon hill parker and and any other aspect so perhaps that's

00:40:29.580 the thing you have this symbolic gesture that makes it look like you uh you've done something

00:40:34.500 i i think it's interesting you make the point that of course you shouldn't make decisions in

00:40:38.720 anger and reactionary uh and that you shouldn't you know suddenly get on the phone and start

00:40:42.940 calling 1-800 let's sue the government of course i don't know if you're going to make a lot of

00:40:47.640 friends in the in the legal community or in the grievance industrial complex you keep you keep

00:40:53.680 telling people to actually think through uh not uh making uh unwarranted uh uh calls for uh for

00:41:00.480 i don't know some new kind of grievance against the government well yeah and i've seen that i've

00:41:05.920 been part of the first nation government for the better part of 15 years and you know the one thing

00:41:11.360 i noticed was all we were doing was spending money and wasting time on lawyers on courts on uh

00:41:18.480 political fights. And yet, when I went back to my community, nothing had changed in terms

00:41:24.640 of employment, or the welfare list, or all the other social, nothing had changed. And

00:41:30.240 so I took the definition of reconciliation to the political level. And so we got to

00:41:35.860 understand what government is, and governments got to understand what we are, what we're

00:41:38.780 trying to achieve. And once we got in that little playing field, you know, things were

00:41:43.240 easier i mean ultimately you know i'll go for any cause and i'll look at the the basics of principle

00:41:49.320 of what color it is but if that doesn't actually help people that truly need help and i'm not just

00:41:55.000 talking about business here no as a politician or as a leader if i can't see how a decision

00:42:02.600 trickles down to the average person that's struggling you know that that needs a helping

00:42:07.720 hand then i'm not really interested and i'm definitely not interested in something that

00:42:14.040 tears society apart that causes us to get on each side of a divided line that's that's not

00:42:21.960 province that's not the way to build a country and that's not the way to build a society

00:42:26.280 i mean i'm more of interest of saying look guys yeah we have our differences we have you know

00:42:31.240 different opinions but that doesn't mean we have to take sides here and be oppositional

00:42:37.140 Because at the end of the day, you know, I do appreciate living in Canada.

00:42:41.460 I mean, just compare it to other places in the world where you have no freedoms,

00:42:44.700 you don't have services, you don't have health care,

00:42:47.660 you don't have, you know, good infrastructure.

00:42:50.860 Yeah, but we're not, I keep saying we're not perfect,

00:42:53.480 but take a step back and see what we got.

00:42:56.640 We got good social system in terms of social assistance.

00:43:01.280 We got unemployment insurance.

00:43:02.740 uh places in the world you get sick or you lose your job you're done there's no help coming

00:43:10.040 i mean i just don't think that we should throw away the idea of canada

00:43:15.540 on this i think we should actually set aside a different day

00:43:19.220 and devote a whole day to what we're talking about in terms of reconciliation

00:43:22.900 and it does look like there might be something coming down at least at the federal level uh

00:43:30.240 something in september might might occur there it seems like a national holiday might be on its way

00:43:36.080 but that's but we can leave that for for a moment i mean aboriginal day is just around the corner

00:43:41.040 here it's a week away i guess indigenous people's day is what they're calling it now um that name's

00:43:47.920 changed a few times even in my lifetime and i haven't been on earth for very long and uh as

00:43:53.520 as we kind of come to that and look and look at the situation in kamloops and what's developed

00:43:58.640 from there what if if if you know you're going to obviously be asked to speak somewhere either in

00:44:06.000 your home your home riding or or at an event somewhere perhaps in victoria about this issue

00:44:11.320 or perhaps somewhere else in the province about about both the fact that aboriginal day is here

00:44:15.980 and now now we've of course got the issue out of of kamloops in this in this revelation we've had

00:44:21.480 what what what's the path of reconciliation you see there what do you say to people as they look

00:44:26.260 towards you and want to know how to feel about this moment as as they feel those two things come

00:44:31.060 together well i i feel your empathy i feel your sympathy and of course as aboriginal i can't talk 0.52

00:44:39.700 about residential schools i've tried over the last 17 years i've tried to talk i couldn't do it

00:44:45.220 i even put together a booklet uh the meaning of reconciliation and the chapter on residential

00:44:50.100 schools i couldn't do it i even tried to make a two-minute statement in the legislature and i

00:44:54.820 i barely got through it i made a speech in terrace and i got the first two words out

00:45:01.460 couldn't say the rest of it so i had to get the moderator to kind of say my speech for me

00:45:05.860 if anything you know i do understand the politicalness of this and government's trying

00:45:12.580 to make some type of signal you know that they're in tune with what's happening this is not going

00:45:17.940 away i mean they're going to find more different i mean different bands are already asking for the

00:45:23.380 same thing at different residential schools around bc if not canada it's not going to go away

00:45:28.980 it's going to last a long time and in terms of what i think is that we should if you're looking

00:45:35.780 to government or if you're looking to politicians to provide a pathway to the healing you're barking

00:45:43.300 up the wrong tree politicians and government are not about human emotion or human nature they're

00:45:49.860 They're not about that.

00:45:52.000 The politician, of course, will do it for votes,

00:45:54.160 say what they can, do land acknowledgments, you know,

00:45:57.640 they'll talk about how much they learned from First Nations.

00:46:01.020 I'm more interested in the healing.

00:46:03.440 Not only the healing between First Nations and non-First Nations, 0.93

00:46:07.680 I'm really interested in the healing of First Nations themselves.

00:46:11.100 And, you know, people keep referring to this as the Kamloops.

00:46:15.000 The Kamloops, yeah, the Kamloops incident.

00:46:18.480 It's not Kamloops.

00:46:19.860 203 bans in B.C. sent kids or got their kids taken away and sent to residential schools all around B.C. and Canada.

00:46:28.300 This issue is actually directly linked to 203 bans in B.C. Directly.

00:46:36.400 I mean, my parents went to Coquelitsa in Port Alberni.

00:46:39.860 Thankfully, they came home and started a good, solid family.

00:46:42.400 but uh i think this is a bc wide issue and i think the conversation we're having

00:46:50.360 has got to include every single one of those bands

00:46:53.840 no and it certainly does and i mean maybe that's kind of way to pivot a little bit here to the

00:47:01.420 question of leadership itself we live in an extremely divisive time uh obviously what was

00:47:06.280 what came to light in kamloops and and the the poor the quite frankly these remains that need

00:47:11.860 to be put to rest and these children need to be laid to rest properly no question at all and

00:47:16.160 hopefully that happens god willing uh expediently and respectfully but but this same this same point

00:47:21.960 is drawn everywhere that that inside of british columbia right now there's an awful lot of division

00:47:26.600 and and as widespread as as the effect kamloops would have had regarding and the residential

00:47:32.340 school there regarding all the first nations in british columbia likewise all the people in british

00:47:36.760 columbia are feeling very divided and and and in a way kind of leaderless under the current

00:47:41.980 government let's talk a little bit of what that leadership would look like properly we're starting

00:47:46.220 to reopen british columbia lumber is finally coming down from being the same price as gold

00:47:52.500 for some reason and and as as things reopen and the kind of economic devastation that happened

00:47:58.520 over the last 15 months kind of comes to light people are really wondering where where they're

00:48:03.480 going to be a couple months from now let alone a year from now what if if you were premier what

00:48:08.880 what would you try to do to help push BC back on track as we get loosened up again and get out of

00:48:14.440 this lockdown mentality well you know in a previous life I was chief and counsel of my

00:48:22.600 community and before I became chief our community fell victim to division politics there's always a

00:48:30.760 faction of people within every First Nations community that wants to get elected and they

00:48:35.960 can't. So they find different routes. And so that's how external groups come in and they

00:48:41.240 find those factions and then they kind of marginalize or ignore the elected leadership.

00:48:46.740 Well, that happened to us. And just as a councillor, overnight, I mean, I saw families break

00:48:54.460 apart. I saw friendships break apart. The community, we're still healing today from

00:48:59.140 what happened but uh that was where i got my lesson on division politics and i swore that i

00:49:04.320 would never be a part of that i would never really take sides in any of these issues because i see

00:49:09.980 what it does to people especially in first nations communities i mean we see what's happening in

00:49:14.480 fairy creek right now and the elected leaders are totally being disrespected ignored martin

00:49:21.960 marginalized i can only imagine what that community is going through right now that bad membership

00:49:27.500 and if you play this across the province in terms of as a whole as a province there's division

00:49:32.940 politics happening all over the place in aboriginal communities non-aboriginal communities

00:49:37.740 you know somebody's right and somebody's wrong i don't i don't play that card i mean

00:49:45.740 us as a first world country you know division politics just seems to be so beneath us

00:49:52.700 I mean it's just think about everything that that BC and Canada has to offer the individual I mean

00:49:59.280 make no mistake about it BC no matter what kind of report you read is a good place to live

00:50:03.640 50,000 people annually are migrating into BC and that's affecting a whole bunch of different

00:50:10.800 factors that are affecting first governments but people are coming for a reason it's an

00:50:16.840 attractive place to come for everything I mentioned because of the infrastructure the

00:50:20.480 freedom, the health care, you name it, there's a way to, but the division politics, you know,

00:50:27.920 I can't, I can't see myself using division politics, you know, or even condoning it for

00:50:35.820 that matter, because I see the damage it does. And it's just, it's hard to fix. And you get into

00:50:44.500 that whose whose ends are you serving it's not your own it's not benefiting you or your family

00:50:50.980 or kids it's benefiting the politician and i can't i can't just sit back and watch bc you know tear

00:50:59.380 itself apart no no we certainly can't and and that's becoming more and more reality no matter

00:51:07.200 where we look at you mentioned fairy creek of course and we see see the same thing with some

00:51:11.840 of the opposition we've had to development in places uh the homeless issue uh and and the

00:51:17.600 unhoused that's been a huge issue especially especially as the fentanyl crisis uh continues

00:51:22.840 in british columbia we're kind of ground zero for for the rest of canada because a lot of it is

00:51:27.140 imported through through the ports in in british columbia as as we kind of try to to reopen here

00:51:34.980 and move forward i think a lot of government a trust in government was was definitely uh worn

00:51:41.640 down by what happened uh throughout the lockdown people were worried about their freedoms eroding

00:51:47.080 especially religious freedom you know costco was open the church was closed it never really made a

00:51:52.480 lot of sense and and i mean when it comes to just in general that the sense that people have as we

00:51:57.940 come out of this time hopefully hopefully we feel uh that more secure in the future but especially

00:52:03.700 with the debt that's being carried by some people as well as by the federal government let alone the

00:52:07.460 provincial government a lot of people are worried about that when it when it comes to say just just

00:52:11.820 the debt especially how how do we need to rethink of the financing of our province and its projects

00:52:17.520 the debt the debt has grown quite large how do we make sure that we're not borrowing against future

00:52:22.700 generations and we're we're leaving them a legacy not a not a credit card statement that they'll

00:52:27.120 to pay off we already are i mean that's that's the whole definition of deficit uh and you got

00:52:36.800 to borrow that money to pay off your deficits and continue the programming and uh so there's no

00:52:43.120 clear plan you know any government that has a four-year return to pay off that debt it's just

00:52:48.160 too big but uh at the very least though you know you you could provide some kind of economic

00:52:55.280 development plan to keep up with it and right now the taxes have gone up in the last four years

00:53:01.520 for businesses for example well businesses just pass that new cost on the consumers which is us

00:53:08.880 so the cost of living goes up and on and on by the way if you don't if government can't

00:53:14.560 handle their debt and the deficit and then they print more money well inflation is on its way

00:53:21.360 and the only thing that i can propose that at some point in the future our kids our grandkids

00:53:28.000 are going to have to cut programs and services because of the debt and deficits or they're

00:53:34.880 going to have to increase taxes i mean the only thing i can offer is like man we got to stop the

00:53:40.660 bleeding and stop this you know this tax increase all on and on we can't do that we can't keep tax

00:53:45.960 with people for what amounts to a government decision but at the same time we can balance that

00:53:52.200 with a strong booming economy in all sectors but for that you have to encourage investment to come

00:53:59.200 back to bc you have all of it including pharma care i believe i believe in value-added products

00:54:06.280 but these guys just they're just too scared to invest in bc this is not a place to invest there's

00:54:11.640 too much bureaucracy is too much politics too much red team i mean that that's basically what

00:54:17.840 i think we should actually match up right now in terms of people worried about debt and their

00:54:23.560 futures you got to build up the economy to match what government's doing in terms of spending

00:54:28.580 it there definitely is a place too for uh i believe it was called the bully pulpit that was

00:54:35.660 what teddy roosevelt called it back at the beginning of the 20th century using use politicians

00:54:40.280 using their authority to try and and tell tell the people in charge elsewhere especially you

00:54:44.860 know lumber barons and that sort of thing barons of industry that you know they needed to do the

00:54:49.100 right thing for the little guy and make sure they were investing in the little guy it's not to throw

00:54:53.080 anyone under the bus but i mean some of the mills remain closed throughout british columbia despite

00:54:58.400 the fact that that wood was worth more than it had ever been worth in the whole history of the

00:55:03.280 world it was it was an incredibly valuable product and there was available fiber not far away and

00:55:07.680 yet those mills remain closed uh maybe the fairy creek question was more was was better said well

00:55:14.180 there's this gigantic uh old growth tree that was hauled through the streets of of uh southern uh

00:55:19.540 the southern island as it was taken to a ship but that's the thing it shouldn't have been taken to

00:55:23.780 a ship it should have been milled on the island how do we how do we address that part of the issue

00:55:29.680 how do we keep those value-added realities here and and make sure that those jobs stay in british

00:55:35.700 columbia it seems like we're shipping a lot of them away no matter what industry it's in

00:55:40.740 yeah and you know it's manufacturing as well

00:55:51.620 that's the bell calling me to the house it's manufacturing as well and you know

00:55:55.780 i think think about it when we're talking about value added whether it be forestry mining

00:55:59.460 uh lng we're talking about value added there are investors out there that want to build stuff at bc

00:56:05.700 And they say, hey, we don't like you selling your export over to Asia either in its raw form.

00:56:12.080 But, man, can we get some help over here in terms of building our plant here

00:56:15.820 to actually build high-grade plastics for the aeronautical industry?

00:56:20.040 Yeah, I'm throwing my support behind that.

00:56:22.620 There's the OSB plants.

00:56:24.500 Can we take some of that waste wood that's in the forest,

00:56:27.000 instead of putting it into burn piles, can we put it into an OSB plant in terrace, mind you,

00:56:33.240 and then ship that product over?

00:56:35.700 I mean, there's a number of people offering up these value opportunities,

00:56:39.280 but we don't have an environment that's conducive to investment.

00:56:45.120 Investment, if they see that they're not wanted,

00:56:47.720 there's too much work or too much red tape, too much taxes,

00:56:51.000 they go to the United States.

00:56:53.900 Simple.

00:56:55.260 I mean, they're even doing with Canadian LNG.

00:56:57.460 We couldn't get LNG exported.

00:56:59.640 So now our LNG, there's a proposal to ship LNG to the United States

00:57:03.280 so the United States could ship LNG to Asia.

00:57:05.700 this is absolutely ludicrous

00:57:08.660 I mean we're okay

00:57:11.040 with sending our oil to the United States so they can

00:57:13.000 export, okay with sending our

00:57:15.000 gas to the USA

00:57:16.820 so they can export it but no

00:57:18.700 we shouldn't export it ourselves

00:57:20.660 I don't see the difference

00:57:22.740 and this is all based

00:57:24.980 on politics and

00:57:25.940 mantras and division but

00:57:28.540 mind you I don't see the same kind of

00:57:30.460 attitudes towards the United States doing this

00:57:32.980 I think we really

00:57:34.800 gotta look inwards and then do what's best for us i better get to the house someone i understand

00:57:41.600 no i understand uh thank you so much for joining us while you could us and uh we look forward to

00:57:46.080 speaking with you again soon thanks a lot absolutely thank you well uh that was a little

00:57:52.800 briefer than i had hoped for but that's not a problem uh we'll continue on with some of the

00:57:56.880 other news that's coming out of the rest of the day here again we're we're talking about a few

00:58:01.760 different things one of the biggest things being recently that a canada day is going to be cancelled

00:58:07.280 when it comes to victoria i'm sorry that uh i'm sorry that we didn't get to your question there

00:58:13.360 uh rose west uh around uh where ellis lands on sovereignty i don't mean to speak for mr ross

00:58:20.000 but as far as i know mr ross is a federalist uh and as i've told you all before i'm gonna we're

00:58:25.920 gonna start on this point again as we kind of turn the hour here i i remain ambivalent about

00:58:31.440 the question of sovereignty and i'm gonna i'm gonna say actually this is probably a perfect

00:58:36.160 place to explain why right now in victoria there is a bunch of people being paid very good salaries

00:58:45.360 to basically dump on the decisions of past people who were paid pretty good salaries and some of

00:58:51.840 whom were weren't let's be clear a lot of those residential schools were being run by people who

00:58:56.080 who are being fed bread and water and the hope of heaven as their reward.

00:59:01.700 They are dumping on people from the past, our current leadership, and getting paid for it.

00:59:08.420 They're getting paid to dump on those past decisions and not make decisions in the present that are helping anybody.

00:59:15.280 It doesn't help anybody to cancel Canada Day.

00:59:17.500 It might help to start figuring out the homeless situation, the unhoused situation in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria.

00:59:24.420 Same 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.

00:59:45.780 not in the droves that some people think it happened

00:59:49.020 and not in an actually willfully genocidal way

00:59:52.140 again I don't agree with that interpretation of history

00:59:54.380 but nonetheless people made decisions and things went wrong

00:59:57.420 and people died

00:59:58.340 that's true, that did happen

01:00:01.000 but at the same time that does nothing to fix the issues of today

01:00:06.380 and waxing philosophical about it or cancelling Canada Day

01:00:10.360 is not going to fix that

01:00:11.960 and people need to be honest about that

01:00:13.820 We all know that.

01:00:15.240 We all know that.

01:00:16.280 But nobody's allowing that to be spoken out loud.

01:00:18.880 So that's where I jump off as being quite upset with all of that.

01:00:25.100 We're going to jump to, we'll use the Times Colonists.

01:00:27.720 I haven't used them in a little while.

01:00:29.760 And apparently the Daily Hive has something.

01:00:32.900 But we'll use the Times Colonists for now.

01:00:34.380 We'll use the share screen.

01:00:35.680 I'm also just kind of learning how to do all this stuff.

01:00:37.580 So as I've said before, hopefully you guys can be patient with me today.

01:00:43.640 Okay, 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.

01:00:52.620 Victoria cancels Canada Day broadcasts as First Nations mourn residential school deaths.

01:00:58.780 Victoria'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.

01:01:11.460 And again, that voted unanimously.

01:01:13.520 That really bugs me.

01:01:14.900 That really bugs me.

01:01:16.060 Voted unanimously.

01:01:19.600 I just, I am, not even one person had the guts to say no.

01:01:27.080 Not even one person had the guts to say, hey, why not, why not be honest about what happened here?

01:01:32.600 because what's happening with our survivors right now

01:01:39.920 is the years of suppressing all those memories

01:01:42.000 it's like the wounds you have opened back up

01:01:43.840 again, I get it, I get it

01:01:49.780 there's some problems here

01:01:50.880 there's some deep issues here

01:01:53.700 and there's some things that have gone very wrong

01:01:55.500 but we need to be honest about the fact

01:02:00.680 very honest about the fact that quite frankly one just as there were good stories that came out of

01:02:08.220 that time for people of aboriginal descent there there are positive memories too and there are

01:02:12.880 abusive memories for people of non-aboriginal descent who were sent to those schools because

01:02:16.560 it's the only school available it's not always so easy as the narrative suggests there's other

01:02:21.620 things with the narrative and we ought to be honest about that if we don't if we don't if we

01:02:26.920 don't allow ourselves to be honest about it we're in we're in deep deep trouble and we're going

01:02:33.180 we're going to end up uh we're going to end up in trouble uh very quickly because we're not we're

01:02:39.840 not being honest about what's happening there's actually something else i'd like to bring up this

01:02:44.780 is let's talk a little bit about homelessness which is directly related because a lot of people

01:02:48.540 say, well, it's said in many areas that basically what happened with residential schools directly

01:02:59.940 impacted First Nations to the point where a lot of the family trauma happened and a

01:03:04.240 lot of abuse happened inside of their families because of what had occurred at residential

01:03:08.360 school.

01:03:09.280 And therefore, that's what's led to so much substance abuse and homelessness and intransigence

01:03:16.340 amongst the Aboriginal population.

01:03:17.820 This is the general theory.

01:03:19.480 This is the general theory.

01:03:21.840 But regardless of how well that holds up, let's talk a little bit about the issue of poverty in Canada.

01:03:30.980 So I'm going to quickly flip over here to another column, or another column, another...

01:03:34.920 I keep saying column when I mean report, but council approves...

01:03:38.820 Sorry, I'm looking at this on my phone.

01:03:40.120 Safe Streets Bylaw PG Citizen.

01:03:46.760 So this is my old stomping grounds.

01:03:49.600 This is where I was before.

01:03:51.880 I'm going to put that into a different tab.

01:03:53.740 I'm going to bring it up this way.

01:03:56.280 Share screen.

01:03:59.640 And cancel proof of the share.

01:04:02.480 Okay.

01:04:04.040 So this is my old stomping grounds, the Prince George Citizen.

01:04:10.060 And I wrote for them for several years as a columnist.

01:04:13.260 And we're going to just take a little bit of a look here.

01:04:15.720 because this directly relates to this whole question of aboriginal issues in our day and age

01:04:20.160 because precisely, and not unlike what's going on in Victoria,

01:04:23.260 this is interesting because this is their solution to the problem.

01:04:25.500 So instead of talking about Canada Day and cancelling that,

01:04:28.300 what they're talking about is whether or not they're going to do something about homelessness in downtown

01:04:33.180 by creating supposedly a bylaw around it.

01:04:35.200 So city council voted in favour of a controversial proposed bylaw

01:04:38.260 that would impose fines for nuisance behaviour like panhandling, open drug use, and camping in public areas.

01:04:43.480 While protesters advocating for the rights of the homeless camped on the lawn of City Hall,

01:04:47.580 a sometimes emotional debate about the Safe Streets by-law was going on inside City Council chambers on Monday night.

01:04:53.200 In a divided vote, so that's interesting, at least it was a divided vote,

01:04:56.260 regardless of where you land on that issue, it wasn't like Victoria Council,

01:05:00.160 where apparently you might as well have one person voting, not ten.

01:05:03.280 In a divided vote, City Council approved the first three readings of the Safe Streets by-law.

01:05:07.560 A final reading of the by-law is expected to come before City Council on June 28th.

01:05:11.800 Under the proposed safe use bylaw, bylawers could issue $100 tickets with a $75 penalty for late payment for a variety of nuisance behavior.

01:05:20.020 Under 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.

01:05:29.700 The 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.

01:05:37.860 after sunset daily,

01:05:42.560 which, of course, doesn't make a difference.

01:05:44.180 Right now, we're right before solstice.

01:05:45.940 It'll still be like 8 o'clock with the sun out

01:05:48.380 throughout summer.

01:05:50.440 They get ticketed for prohibited drugs.

01:05:52.880 Disposing of paranoia on the street

01:05:54.260 would also prohibit open burning

01:05:56.660 on any street or open park.

01:05:58.100 And, of course, voted to reject a proposed amendment

01:06:00.360 to the parks and open spaces

01:06:01.440 to allow homeless people to temporarily camp

01:06:03.300 in designated areas when shelters in the city are full.

01:06:05.440 so this is going to be updated soon okay let's let's get into this for a second

01:06:12.580 let's go uh uh let's go let's go to this question just briefly here so we have this issue and uh

01:06:25.080 it's a growing issue in canada of homelessness uh and uh if you want to use kind of the other

01:06:31.100 talking point they say the unhoused uh you know it's the unhoused i i think that we have to start

01:06:40.160 from the beginning here which is to say that uh poverty while the de facto reality of a person

01:06:48.860 uh say at the beginning of of civilized life you know uh people people are let's put it this way

01:06:59.740 poverty isn't a mystery, prosperity is, in a sense.

01:07:02.800 That's how we need to start, as a purely economic idea.

01:07:05.600 You can go down the road anywhere and see,

01:07:09.500 especially in Canada, and see wilderness.

01:07:11.340 And that wilderness may or may not sustain you

01:07:13.300 if you know how to survive in it.

01:07:14.960 But nine times out of ten, if you didn't know what you were doing,

01:07:17.540 you were stuck in the wilderness in Canada,

01:07:19.120 you would not survive, even in the summer.

01:07:23.000 And so the problem becomes very quickly

01:07:24.820 that poverty is actually our kind of natural state.

01:07:27.940 It 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?

01:07:37.820 That's the economic argument.

01:07:39.780 The economic argument that poverty is like gravity.

01:07:42.480 It's actually the natural inclination of all economic activity because you can always spend more than you have.

01:07:48.340 It'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,

01:07:55.260 especially without proper education and that sort of thing in the times we live in.

01:07:59.800 So that's kind of the typical mainstream argument when it comes to questions of poverty.

01:08:04.180 But for me, I feel like what I've observed in my own lifetime

01:08:09.960 is that on the question of poverty, especially in Canada,

01:08:15.840 you'd think that Canada would be a great place that could kind of fix this for itself.

01:08:20.780 I 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.

01:08:30.200 And 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.

01:08:38.220 And 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.

01:08:46.500 It feels like it's getting a fair deal from its rulers and from its betters,

01:08:51.900 and the general population is pretty well taken care of.

01:08:55.100 I feel that what's gone wrong kind of in Canada and in the West generally

01:09:01.240 is that the idea of just steady work at all is somewhat disappearing.

01:09:07.200 I subscribe to kind of using the language of, it is some kind of left-wing language,

01:09:12.440 but one of the left-wing words that's really kind of come into my mind

01:09:15.720 that I use a lot nowadays, and I think it's actually getting pretty widespread,

01:09:19.240 is the word precariat.

01:09:22.580 Precariat.

01:09:23.140 I kind of wish there was a way for me to kind of type things

01:09:26.580 and put them on the screen, actually.

01:09:28.600 You know what?

01:09:29.440 We're going to turn this into a teaching session.

01:09:31.400 We're going to go off onto the Internet,

01:09:33.580 and we're going to type in the word precariat,

01:09:35.860 and we are going to get a definition of the word precariat.

01:09:42.440 and we're going to share screen that and that way we can all be on the same page as to what

01:09:51.300 is precariat what is that let's go find out okay so define precariat here we go people whose

01:09:58.180 employment and income are insecure especially when considered as a class okay the precariat

01:10:03.860 most of them in the brigade are just trying to create a meaningful life okay that's a terrible

01:10:07.800 sub-definition, but that over-definition is very accurate. So again, people whose employment and

01:10:13.440 income are insecure, especially when they are considered as a class. Now, the reason that I'm

01:10:18.060 bringing this up, the word precariat, is that it really rings true for me, because I was raised

01:10:26.460 in a very well-understood, I guess is what I'm saying, in the popular imagination, not something

01:10:35.620 that's hard to imagine i was raised in the upper middle class my father's a physician my mother

01:10:40.640 stayed home with the kids while we were still all kids kids and then when we became teenagers she

01:10:45.100 went back to school went on to get her counseling m.a which is actually an m.a in ed when it comes

01:10:49.400 to the university here in prince george but the point is that and now she makes you know a pretty

01:10:53.060 decent way she does as a counselor so father's a physician and now she makes an ed and then that 0.99

01:10:58.960 that's that's the way it is but in my own lifetime particularly because i chose to basically exit

01:11:14.560 my class i chose not to stay in the university system for like you know 10 years studying who

01:11:19.360 knows what something nonsensical or practical doesn't matter the point is that you know after

01:11:24.160 enough schooling anybody will start paying you when it comes to the way things work in canada

01:11:28.880 generally but definitely in the west uh instead of doing that i tried to get out of my university

01:11:34.560 i graduated and i tried to just get out there and work and just work i took a trade i took a welding

01:11:40.640 when i graduated and i became a c-level welder i was fully i was i was fully certified in all

01:11:46.960 positions of welding for stick welding and wire and then oil crashed so right at the moment that

01:11:52.000 i was you know at you know as a burgeoning young young trades person nobody wanted to hire even my

01:11:59.360 own indentured masters the people who were to see my apprenticeship they they kind of kept telling

01:12:04.240 me to chase my own work as as a level welders were competing for 20 an hour jobs uh you know which is

01:12:10.400 actually beneath what i should have been paid so and far beneath what they should be paid on and

01:12:14.640 on and on it went right so so for those of you are in alberta the oil crash affected me directly i'm

01:12:19.520 very aware of what the oil crash was because i was there i was there at ground zero trying

01:12:23.520 to start my life and having it you know upset yet again again again i'm a child of 2008 and

01:12:30.640 the mortgage crisis in the united states and of course the euro crisis in europe

01:12:34.560 that they still haven't recovered from in europe which is the direct reason that brexit happened

01:12:38.960 eight years later in 2016. i'm a child now of covet as well um i mean an adult of covet i turned 30

01:12:45.840 the year covid happened and it looked like things were finally lining up for me i finally had an

01:12:50.080 adult job i i had a i had a place i rented on my own i wasn't living with mom and dad i had

01:12:56.160 a vehicle and then i purchased the vehicle um you know and financed it a few minutes before trump

01:13:00.960 signed the the travel ban from china uh and of course uh i had a i had a decent job i was a

01:13:07.520 sales guy i i sold rico which is which are photocopies so i that was the height of my

01:13:14.800 economic life and it took me out of out of looking at my you know adult life and compared to people

01:13:21.040 just a generation ahead of me it took me if you want to count from the end of university it took

01:13:26.320 me almost twice as long as it took other people with the same amount of education as i had a

01:13:32.240 generation before to get into an economic position where i could reasonably say i am an adult a

01:13:37.680 self-supporting adult who was now ready to explore the possibility of of being with somebody from my

01:13:45.040 faith community and starting a family with her right and getting married starting a family

01:13:49.280 that that took again probably two to three times as long as it took a gener the generation before

01:13:54.720 me and two generations ago into the grandparents generation or into elder boomer generation

01:14:00.080 people again were were 10 years my junior by the time they were already well into well well into

01:14:07.600 at least beginning something that would be a career that they would stay in for probably no

01:14:11.280 less than 10 maybe 20 maybe their whole year whole lives so 10 20 years of their whole life

01:14:16.080 and and already getting on into buying a home and and having children having families that's that's

01:14:22.320 the reality of that so that used to be a reality that you could achieve somewhere between 18 and

01:14:26.360 23 then it became a reality that became you know had be achieved between 23 and 28 and now i'm in

01:14:32.820 the 28 to 33 slash 35 category right or 34 34 18 to 34 i think is kind of the limits they put on that

01:14:40.900 for demographics uh you know the the fact of the matter is and here's rowan rowan telling us some

01:14:48.680 things on his end yep no i i feel you're rowan it here we are here we are at the end of these things

01:14:56.680 So I'm into my 30s, and I'm about to get married.

01:15:00.760 I'm very thankful for that.

01:15:02.420 And luckily for us, it's not that I'm planning on being a bum inside of a relationship,

01:15:07.980 but luckily we understand that marriage is a vocation through and through,

01:15:11.580 at least in our faith, and that's the primary way of looking at it.

01:15:16.240 Everything else is gravy.

01:15:17.440 Everything else is, well, you just make the vocation work.

01:15:20.180 You serve the vocation, not the other way around.

01:15:23.420 You don't just postpone marriage forever because you can't quote-unquote afford it.

01:15:27.680 It has to be something that you pursue, and then hopefully God provides, and you work hard.

01:15:33.240 And you have to also be satisfied maybe with your lot in life a little bit,

01:15:36.640 and that's a very humbling experience for me.

01:15:38.840 But the point is that, kind of coming back to what I'm trying to talk about here

01:15:42.040 when it comes to homelessness and everything else,

01:15:43.720 is that as far as I can tell, things are more impoverished now than they were

01:15:49.220 in my parents' or my grandparents' generation.

01:15:52.480 The great upswing of the post-war era is all but over or crashing.

01:15:59.100 And it's just kind of, if you can get to a slightly less sunken ship in our economic situation, you'll do better.

01:16:06.560 So you're at the top of the Titanic, and you're looking down.

01:16:09.640 You're like, hey, well, I mean, those people are the ones drowning.

01:16:11.580 I'm fine up here.

01:16:12.520 Well, you know, the boat's eventually going to sink.

01:16:15.780 And, of course, the crocodile might eat you last, but it's still going to eat you.

01:16:18.840 And 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.

01:16:38.580 I 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.

01:16:45.260 That's not the argument that's being made here.

01:16:47.240 At the same time, I'm telling you, as somebody who, quote unquote, had every advantage in life, I'm struggling.

01:16:56.560 I'm struggling.

01:16:58.560 And if that's how I'm doing, and I was lucky to have parents that loved me, and I was lucky to not have alcoholic, you know, guardians,

01:17:07.680 I was lucky to be raised the way I was.

01:17:09.980 I was lucky to have a faith that inspired me to work hard.

01:17:13.000 All those pieces of that equation.

01:17:15.100 If that's how I was raised and how lucky I am to be who I am and to be where I'm at,

01:17:22.080 and I still have a lot of ground to make up and a lot of catching up to do,

01:17:27.060 how much more so for people who didn't have those things?

01:17:31.320 That's where I think the empathy and the sympathy has to start.

01:17:34.040 if even people who ought to be quote unquote they ought to be fine they ought to be fine

01:17:38.660 right they ought to be fine uh if even that group of people aren't doing well how much more so for

01:17:44.580 the people who quote unquote don't do well either period or are just on the different place in the

01:17:49.820 bell curve right which means that they're just more susceptible to things going wrong so i think

01:17:55.200 that's the part where we have to start addressing things it's like okay so we understand that things

01:17:59.620 are more impoverished for everyone generally unless you want to become a part of the rent-seeking

01:18:04.740 class or the managerial class or the professional managerial class and i kind of consider it all

01:18:09.120 rent-seeking that was another aspect i'm going to take a little sidebar here and come back around

01:18:13.320 so i really wanted to work in a real job i wanted to be a part of primary wealth creation in this

01:18:21.900 country i thought it was really wrong that we had entire classes of people that did not contribute

01:18:27.900 to the wealth they only took from it and these weren't it's funny that arguments always made

01:18:32.060 about welfare and the least of these and you know all these people having 10 kids who don't you know

01:18:36.540 don't have jobs it's like well let's be let's be honest here there's an there's entire classes of

01:18:41.260 people in canada because of our bureaucracy the size of our civil service and of course the fact

01:18:45.660 that medicine is socialized and education is socialized in canada that that there are huge

01:18:50.940 realms of people that yes they might offer a valuable service but they're still being paid

01:18:57.900 by people who actually break their back for a living right people who actually have to drive

01:19:02.140 for 30 hours and have to do a loader and have to have to dig up something valuable and then turn it

01:19:08.140 into something more valuable and then sell it uh by by people in in retail in business in small

01:19:14.380 business taxpayers is essentially what we're saying first first line taxpayers i don't actually to be

01:19:19.740 honest with you i don't even know why we take taxes off of people who are paid by the government

01:19:24.060 It just seems like they should just be paid their net amount.

01:19:28.380 I don't understand.

01:19:29.200 Why does the government bother recycling money to itself?

01:19:31.740 I've never understood this.

01:19:33.200 If someone could explain that in the comments, please do.

01:19:35.520 I don't understand why we bother dealing with this when it comes to the government.

01:19:44.140 And I just think that people who work for the government, regardless if you're a soldier or you're a postal worker,

01:19:51.120 you should just have your net income sent to you.

01:19:53.660 I don't know why you have your gross income even written on your EI or on your statement or your T4.

01:19:59.020 It makes no sense.

01:19:59.860 Like, you're a ward of the state.

01:20:01.380 Your net income is all that matters.

01:20:03.440 You already work for the government.

01:20:05.560 They're just sending you the money and sending it back.

01:20:08.140 It doesn't make any sense.

01:20:09.700 But 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.

01:20:22.720 And 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.

01:20:31.220 You make a lot more money working for the government pushing a broom than you do pushing a broom anywhere else in this country.

01:20:37.840 And 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?

01:21:00.800 if that's the reality then then i always wanted to be a part of not necessarily supporting that

01:21:08.060 reality i didn't want to support it necessarily but i i wanted to help be a part of primary

01:21:11.760 wealth generation and that's why i got out of school after i graduated and i wanted to try and

01:21:17.260 i tried to become a welder uh and then that fell through you know and it fell through for years

01:21:22.220 and i tried this and i tried that you know i got into this industry in that industry there are a

01:21:26.060 different things i i pursued i always wanted to stay away from government work and i always wanted

01:21:31.900 to to help lead the charge when it came to hey you know what this this country is worth saving

01:21:39.180 again i'm ambivalent about sovereignty right but at least this province is worth saving at least

01:21:42.940 this region is worth saving and we need to do the things necessary to do that which would require

01:21:49.100 primary wealth generation but i've lived as a member of the precariat again i just had that

01:21:53.660 defined for you had that up there my whole adult life um and it's really it's really shaped a lot

01:22:01.260 of the way i view the world because i've just never been secure in it ever economically speaking

01:22:06.300 i've never had economic security in my entire life and that is something that uh i really you know

01:22:18.700 i i really think we need to think about that for a second like i might look like i i i'm not even

01:22:24.940 trying to break your b or b you just go whatever but i just mean like i you know you look you look

01:22:29.100 at me on the screen here and you think to yourself well i mean that just looks like i mean like he

01:22:32.380 kind of looks put together i mean he's his face is clean he's got a you know he's got a shirt on

01:22:36.860 that kind of fits i mean it's actually kind of loose on me i lost some weight but the point is

01:22:39.980 like he he looks kind of put together he's in front of a green screen he's got a camera he's

01:22:43.980 He's got a microphone.

01:22:44.740 He looks like he's kind of got stuff together.

01:22:46.220 No, actually, I might have a number behind my name that tells you how old I am.

01:22:52.140 I'm 31.

01:22:53.620 And supposedly that would be enough, right?

01:22:55.920 Like, I'm an adult, right?

01:22:57.480 Well, no.

01:23:00.620 No.

01:23:01.360 I don't have the adulthood that was accessible 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50, 60 years ago.

01:23:09.400 That adulthood has never been part of my reality.

01:23:12.080 And of my friends, there are some people who are doing pretty okay.

01:23:15.860 Most of them are in protected classes.

01:23:17.620 I went through this the other day.

01:23:18.720 I thought about it.

01:23:20.860 My beloved works for the government.

01:23:25.760 I got a buddy who works for one of the big five financial institutions,

01:23:30.180 one of the big five banks.

01:23:31.340 I got another buddy who works for Northern Health.

01:23:33.740 I got a buddy who's an engineer, which, I mean, that's a third party.

01:23:38.700 It's a private industry, but still, I mean, engineers, you know,

01:23:41.280 They don't have to call the government.

01:23:43.500 The government can call them and other big contractors to get a hold of them.

01:23:48.740 They don't have to chase the work the same way.

01:23:50.720 I'm not saying they don't work hard.

01:23:51.940 I don't think they really have to chase it too much.

01:23:56.340 What else have we got in our friend group?

01:23:58.440 We've got an RCMP guy.

01:24:00.760 As I look through our friend group, there's just a lot.

01:24:04.060 There's a couple of teachers, especially amongst the females.

01:24:08.040 There was one nurse. 0.97

01:24:08.760 she's not both of the nurses have moved off to other places probably for better pay uh but they 0.96

01:24:13.920 uh but yes we had nurses but like is there anybody who's actually in a private um a private job a

01:24:22.120 private like even it's not a primary industry so they don't necessarily like they don't necessarily

01:24:26.020 go harvest trees that the buddy that i'm about to mention actually does both those things both

01:24:29.420 a primary and a tertiary or a semi-secondary industry um they everybody works for either a

01:24:38.400 large institution like the big five banks or something else like that a big legacy institution

01:24:41.820 or in an industry that's a big legacy stuff like engineering right like i mean again you don't

01:24:46.580 chase work work chases you um or they work for the government or in some capacity for the government

01:24:52.220 in another category right so direct civil service or as as education and or as uh as health care

01:25:00.520 there's one guy out of our whole friend group where i can think of there's a bunch of guys who

01:25:06.200 who work kind of, no offense, crappy jobs,

01:25:09.900 jobs that are really low-paying, low-skilled jobs

01:25:12.100 to try to get themselves by.

01:25:14.000 Some of them are students.

01:25:14.780 Some of them aren't students anymore.

01:25:16.200 So now they're in that dangerous zone.

01:25:19.080 I've been in many times in my life, too,

01:25:20.560 where I'm like, well, I mean, how can I be a real man?

01:25:23.040 I don't work a good job.

01:25:24.460 I don't have a good job.

01:25:25.400 I want to work a good job.

01:25:26.320 I want to be paid more.

01:25:27.700 I'll work as hard as I have to,

01:25:29.340 but I'm not in a good industry.

01:25:30.760 I'm not in a job that's going to pay me well

01:25:32.220 or support a family.

01:25:34.740 But how do I get out of here?

01:25:36.200 I 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.

01:25:55.440 Your 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.

01:26:03.860 You're in your 30s, and you're like, hmm, that's interesting.

01:26:08.260 Rowan had a good point here, of course, because the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the ever-expanding bureaucracy.

01:26:15.080 A great quote, of course, and Pamela had a good one here, too.

01:26:18.460 Plus, government employees get great extended balance that many other banks who pay their salaries don't get.

01:26:23.360 that's also true. That's another big deal.

01:26:25.720 So there's quite the big discrepancy between

01:26:27.500 those who work for the state or any kind of

01:26:29.560 state authority, municipal authority, government

01:26:31.420 authority, and those

01:26:33.560 who don't. And those who live in big

01:26:34.980 institutions anyway. So you've got a

01:26:37.020 big, great employer. You're with the big five.

01:26:39.660 You're with a legacy institution. You're with a

01:26:41.500 bank, period. And again,

01:26:43.540 or your mortgage broker. You're doing these things

01:26:45.780 and you're part of, again, the

01:26:47.460 professional managerial class.

01:26:49.660 And the average taxpayer, the average

01:26:51.700 person whether they're whether they're a fry cook or they are even a trucker or they are even a even

01:26:57.580 a medium small business guy like they might make okay take home if they're even a part of that

01:27:02.780 upper echelon of of non-government employees of any kind non-government non-third party private

01:27:10.520 sector employees or or employers but but they just don't have the security that that somebody works

01:27:17.040 the government does and so going back to the friend group thing as i look as i survey my

01:27:21.860 friend group there is literally only one guy i can think of who's doing well at it but that's

01:27:28.560 because he's a part owner with his brothers in a roofing business in the winter he logs

01:27:32.480 in the summer he roofs and and you sit there and you think about that

01:27:39.060 and that's pretty significant that's a pretty significant discrepancy for the reality of

01:27:49.640 what i invite you to say it in the comments if you're if you're older than me

01:27:54.660 anywhere from 8 to 10 to 20 30 years older than me tell me in the comments how many if you looked

01:28:00.600 around your friend group back then if you looked around your 10 friends how many out of 10 of your

01:28:05.200 friends uh worked for the government or worked in a big legacy institution or worked in a direct

01:28:11.520 third-party provider of always guaranteed employment when it comes to either government

01:28:15.060 contracts or large contracts maybe the simplest way to say it is people who didn't have to chase

01:28:20.100 their work out of out of those 10 people or were in some kind of private industry where

01:28:24.480 they were an employee and they had security as an employee you know and as a low-skilled one or as a

01:28:30.800 as an educated one in a bare minimal sort of way they didn't have an engineering degree they didn't

01:28:35.040 have a professional designation they just went and did their four years at college or they did

01:28:38.020 an associates and they were making a family supporting wage that is slipping away from us

01:28:45.420 as a country and you need to think about that we all need to think about that i would never

01:28:55.200 have thought about this i'm not afraid to say that i'm a son of privilege i'm not afraid to

01:29:00.080 talk about my privileged background because i i i don't live there anymore i'm not a part of that

01:29:06.160 anymore um and and i'm not a part of that anymore because it's not like i don't love my parents or

01:29:12.420 something or i never see them it's just i mean i'm no longer a part of that class of people anymore

01:29:16.840 in an uncaring sense that people are just kind of but you know blindly in their happiness and

01:29:22.880 they just don't think about anyone else i just mean i guess that i've developed empathy

01:29:26.900 I have just been on the wrong side of that for so long.

01:29:30.740 I have very little sympathy for the class of people that I was raised in.

01:29:36.780 And I was lucky to have parents who furnished me with a really strong character

01:29:40.300 because, I mean, they did have some real big suffering,

01:29:42.680 especially at the beginning of their life.

01:29:43.720 My father had cancer their first year of marriage, him and my mother.

01:29:46.640 And so they're real people.

01:29:49.060 They have real stories.

01:29:50.120 They have real things going on in their lives.

01:29:52.100 And 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.

01:30:02.400 It was said well on Twitter during some of the riots that were happening throughout 2020 and in the United States.

01:30:09.200 I 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.

01:30:18.020 um and and whatever happened with mr floyd and whatever else happened down there the point is

01:30:25.660 that people used that whole instance to their advantage and that's an evil wicked craved thing

01:30:29.900 to do and everybody needs to be honest about that need to be completely honest but let's

01:30:33.580 let's leave that aside for a second um i think that when we come down to the poverty question

01:30:39.860 there was this one tweet that came out during some of those riots and it's like to remind people

01:30:43.680 which side of the line they should be on or who they're actually in solidarity with like who is

01:30:47.940 their class or where is their belonging uh they you know remind people that everybody's three

01:30:53.300 months away from losing their house not three months from being a billionaire and i think

01:30:58.680 that's about it i think that's about it it's not it's not that uh the issues of the underclass

01:31:04.200 are the only issues that that can't be true uh you know and we got to be careful about everything

01:31:10.020 from les mis to uh i'm trying to remember what dostoyevsky wrote i don't even remember what it

01:31:15.320 was called uh but well someone remind me in the comments but the point is that we we have to be

01:31:20.140 careful about that because because we don't want to romanticize the underclass in the sense that

01:31:24.940 there's no there's no culpability around the question of if you made decisions that led to

01:31:32.140 economic problems you have nothing to answer for it that's just not true that's not true i you know

01:31:37.960 ten dollars today i spend on a meal at mcdonald's is ten dollars tomorrow i don't get to spend on

01:31:43.420 wedding decorations right like that's that's a reality that's fine we we need to understand

01:31:48.620 there's consequences to decisions that needs to be preached all day and we can't take away agency

01:31:53.260 from people but the the subtle racism the subtle the subtle classism and other things of low

01:31:59.020 expectations that's wrong but simultaneously on the poverty question even in prince george my hometown

01:32:08.540 my you know my better half with a government job and a decent down payment can't afford a house

01:32:16.980 that was built in 1960 and probably has some problems and needs a lot of work she can't afford 1.00

01:32:22.860 like when when even a government employee making a decent wage can't afford basic housing she's not 0.84

01:32:34.680 She's not trying to become an empress of landlords. 1.00

01:32:38.140 She's not trying to become some sort of slumlord. 1.00

01:32:41.420 She and I aren't going and touring apartment blocks

01:32:45.200 to get 10 houses going at once

01:32:47.040 so that we can become the slumlords of Prince George. 0.68

01:32:50.380 We're looking for a home for a future family,

01:32:52.900 and we can't afford it.

01:32:55.640 For something that was built 50, 60 years ago

01:32:58.680 and needs work, needs help.

01:33:01.380 And even those things are the only things in our price range.

01:33:03.380 And they'll get bought out from you.

01:33:04.400 There are people that are outbidding others, especially from Vancouver and elsewhere, and God knows, probably some of them are from China.

01:33:09.500 We're going to get into that topic next week of how money is being laundered through Canada and that sort of thing.

01:33:17.960 There are people being outbid here for, again, things that are not, they're BC bungalows, they're split levels.

01:33:28.540 They were built 50, 60 years ago.

01:33:30.640 I don't even care if they were built 40 years ago.

01:33:32.020 The point is that some of them are well-built, but they still need work.

01:33:34.600 They need to be renovated.

01:33:35.440 They're coming to the end of their initial lifespan.

01:33:37.260 They're getting their halfway lifespan.

01:33:38.700 They need new insulation.

01:33:39.620 They need renovation.

01:33:41.300 They're outbidding people by, I've heard numbers like $50,000, $80,000.

01:33:45.800 I've heard people walking into something that was already overvalued at $420,000, $420,000 for a house.

01:33:52.160 That is not worth that.

01:33:53.520 Assessment-wise, it has it way down at maybe $360,000, $380,000.

01:33:56.660 And actually, with the amount of work it needs, it honestly should be down at $320,000.

01:34:00.460 and they're being outbid

01:34:02.580 when it's being up at $420, they're being outbid

01:34:04.600 by $10, $20, $30, $40, as much as

01:34:06.540 $80,000 I've heard

01:34:08.000 depending on what the property is.

01:34:11.320 That's not sustainable.

01:34:13.400 And that's the kind of thing that

01:34:14.660 leads to the conditions of, yeah, the French

01:34:16.500 Revolution. If people feel like

01:34:18.560 they cannot get ahead, if people feel like they

01:34:20.540 can't get anywhere, they're

01:34:22.560 going to start getting, you know,

01:34:25.420 they're going to start having

01:34:26.500 a seer problem. We have a little message

01:34:28.620 here we've had a couple of comments i'm going to go to them now we have from ilia hart here in

01:34:32.080 nelson selling at a hundred thousand over asking yeah that's that's nuts by the way that's a very

01:34:38.420 pretty picture by the way uh ilia i i i might be wrong but i feel like if you're telling me that

01:34:43.460 you're near nelson and stuff it almost sounds it almost sounds like you're uh near that uh that one

01:34:48.500 lake that's near what's that place called liared that's what i thought it was or is that fort

01:34:53.940 nelson that's up there that's fort nelson isn't it that's my bad point being that's still a very

01:34:59.200 nice picture but uh no hundred thousand dollars over asking no that's not a joke that's that

01:35:05.160 things have gone insane and and for what like here's here's a better question how are you going

01:35:12.860 to get so you got this bc bungalow okay and we all know what i'm talking about right okay what's

01:35:17.360 a split level right i wish is there like a drawing app on this thing like now that i'm producing my

01:35:22.080 own show i almost want i almost wish there was a good drawing app i don't even think i have ms

01:35:25.920 paint on this computer is that does ms paint even exist hey it does that's bizarre i don't know if

01:35:32.560 i want to get into this because that's going to be a whole thing but yeah we're not going to do

01:35:36.800 that today that's getting that's getting a little bit out of there we'll we'll try that another time

01:35:41.440 uh but it but i mean a bc bungalow right so a bc bungalow is what right it's i can't remember how

01:35:50.080 wide right so a house is 40 feet wide at one end and it's it's another 60 80 feet long whatever

01:35:56.400 they're 2400 square feet so 60 by 40 right they're 2400 square feet and they're two stories

01:36:00.800 right and they're split levels right so your basement's three quarters sunk right you got

01:36:05.200 windows in your basement that you can see over i mean this is a green screen so you can't really

01:36:09.040 see anything you can see the light that's behind me though um but you've got i'm in a basement

01:36:14.000 right now and i mean it's three quarters sunk i'm only five foot eight and i can see out the window

01:36:18.720 right so you've got this you've got uh a split level right so you come into the entrance way

01:36:24.240 there's a set of stairs going down instead of stairs going up which will take you essentially

01:36:27.360 the four and a six feet down and the six feet up or ish five feet down five feet up that the house

01:36:33.680 is split on in order to make sure you didn't have to dig another five feet into the earth because

01:36:37.680 we all know that's the most expensive part of construction so and that much more concrete is

01:36:42.960 is more expensive so you got that house you got a it's it's 40 on one end and 60 the other way

01:36:48.820 right ish whatever it's 2400 square feet between two levels right and you sit there and you look

01:36:56.440 at that and you're like okay that that house on a half acre lot or whatever in a small town in

01:37:01.700 canada right a town of 100 000 what is that house worth well i think that most people would think

01:37:07.520 that if it's in a really bad shape,

01:37:09.320 it'd be somewhere in the 280 range.

01:37:11.720 And if it's in really good shape,

01:37:13.540 it's in the 350, 368 range, right?

01:37:17.100 That's what you'd think, right?

01:37:18.400 And maybe you'd change those numbers a little bit.

01:37:20.120 Maybe even in really bad shape in a hot market,

01:37:22.200 it's 300,000.

01:37:23.240 And in really good shape in a hot market,

01:37:25.560 it's 390,000.

01:37:26.920 Maybe even four,

01:37:27.980 if it's in really, really, really good shape

01:37:30.680 and been perfectly renovated

01:37:32.980 and somebody else put in all the sweat labor

01:37:34.720 and it's just immaculate.

01:37:36.380 But if at best, at best, and that's still steep,

01:37:40.680 I'd still say you're still in a more like a 280 to 380 range

01:37:43.660 for kind of your level of housing.

01:37:47.280 There are people getting 450 for that.

01:37:50.720 And it still needs work.

01:37:52.120 And it's not perfectly renovated.

01:37:53.280 There's people getting 380 for houses that need to be renovated,

01:37:56.780 350 for houses that need to be seriously renovated.

01:37:59.560 What are you doing?

01:38:03.740 And how would you ever get that out of it?

01:38:05.600 How 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?

01:38:14.300 That's my question.

01:38:15.840 It doesn't make any sense.

01:38:17.300 It doesn't make any sense at all.

01:38:19.180 And you won't get your money out of it.

01:38:20.840 It's not possible.

01:38:21.700 It's not physically possible to do it unless you're literally just going to continue printing money and inflating prices.

01:38:27.100 Like, it doesn't just keep the money machine printing.

01:38:29.220 It's not possible.

01:38:31.420 So that's what blows my mind.

01:38:34.080 It's like we all know it's a lie.

01:38:35.340 It's like this old Soviet Union, right? 0.96

01:38:37.060 It's like it's an empire of lies.

01:38:38.600 It's not possible that a house that was built that long ago

01:38:43.500 and has problems, has things that need to be changed about it,

01:38:46.700 and who knows where it is in its life cycle

01:38:48.620 and how much maintenance it's going to be

01:38:50.420 and that wet labor in. 1.00

01:38:53.760 What's a reasonable price for that?

01:38:57.420 $3.50 is a perfectly reasonable price,

01:39:00.140 even if it's somebody's nest egg.

01:39:01.580 It's a perfectly reasonable price for a house that's functional.

01:39:04.600 It'll need work, but it's functional and it's decently built.

01:39:08.320 The roof was done 10 years ago.

01:39:10.300 That's a decent price.

01:39:11.720 You downgrade into something else.

01:39:13.360 You retire into a small condo apartment sort of thing.

01:39:16.100 You don't have to do maintenance anymore.

01:39:17.440 You don't have to do...

01:39:18.000 This is the life cycle of housing.

01:39:20.640 For that same thing I'm describing,

01:39:22.400 people are expecting north of 380 into 4, sometimes 420,

01:39:26.220 and getting outbid, still getting outbid.

01:39:29.380 I don't know what to tell you.

01:39:31.260 There's no way that house is worth that, but there we are.

01:39:34.080 So, we've got a few more comments here.

01:39:36.460 The housing market in Hinton AB is down right now.

01:39:38.440 However, in a 97 house, in-house, the basement completely unfinished.

01:39:41.960 A lot of original windows and doors.

01:39:43.440 290-esque, right?

01:39:44.380 It's one of the cheapest houses in town right now.

01:39:46.040 Crazy.

01:39:46.940 So, again, another evidence of things getting out of hand.

01:39:49.640 We've got Susan Bruce.

01:39:51.180 We're going to cancel Canada. 0.70

01:39:52.560 City workers, including the mayor, damn well better work that day at regular bay.

01:39:58.680 That's actually a brilliant point.

01:40:00.060 I'd never really thought about that.

01:40:01.460 That's funny.

01:40:01.880 There's some dorsal fins in there.

01:40:06.040 That's a funny point, Susan Murphy Henderson.

01:40:08.540 I hadn't really thought about that, but it's true. 0.68

01:40:11.800 It's true.

01:40:12.360 If you're going to cancel Canada Day, why do you still get stat pay for Canada Day?

01:40:17.220 I actually used to make this point when it came to atheists and Christmas.

01:40:20.400 Atheists who kept saying, keep the Christ out of Christmas, or say happy holidays instead.

01:40:23.880 I always said, well, I expect you to be there on the 25th and 26th of December,

01:40:28.000 working at regular pay at your job all day.

01:40:30.720 Enjoy yourself.

01:40:31.880 And I think there's a place for that.

01:40:33.880 If you're going to complain about this Christian holiday that gives you two days off, go right ahead. 1.00

01:40:38.780 I expect to see you at work tomorrow at your regular pay.

01:40:41.460 Thank you for covering for everybody who actually isn't a complete nincompoop.

01:40:45.940 No, I appreciate that. Thank you for those comments.

01:40:48.400 We've had a couple of good comments today, actually.

01:40:50.780 We've had one over here with Elaine McNeil.

01:40:53.320 I respect Mr. Ellis, but he also jumped to conclusions about Kamloops.

01:40:56.480 I 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.

01:41:11.580 And so we need to be careful about that.

01:41:12.980 We've all jumped to conclusion.

01:41:16.280 The outrage that's taken place when it comes to Kamloops has become a problem.

01:41:20.420 And so we need to be honest about the fact that, again, it's kind of confusing.

01:41:25.320 There's no way to know for sure what happened.

01:41:29.000 But we need to investigate.

01:41:31.440 And I don't care where you find 215 remains of anybody,

01:41:35.260 regardless of race, class, or creed, or religion, or background.

01:41:38.220 You need to figure out what happened there.

01:41:40.760 If this happened near an ancient site somewhere,

01:41:43.600 we would just call it, you know, an archaeology dig.

01:41:45.820 And so off would go the little archaeology interns,

01:41:48.560 and they would take out their little brushes and start brushing away

01:41:50.920 and using their little trowels and starting to dig up everything.

01:41:54.060 and that would be all it is and nobody there'd be no controversy around it this there ought to be

01:41:59.100 controversy because we kind of we have a clue as to what was going on at the time and we know that

01:42:04.380 the residential schools have a very complicated legacy uh that needs to be told that needs to be

01:42:10.780 told a few other comments we've had here rose west had a couple of uh a couple of points throughout 1.00

01:42:16.460 our show today uh there are hundreds of thousands of mixed race metis who are both light and dark 1.00

01:42:20.620 and the same family political racism only divides us and that's true it's absolutely true we don't

01:42:26.320 need we don't need a politics of divisiveness uh that's not going to help us with anything

01:42:31.640 um actually my producer sent me a message here he's just reminded me that we actually haven't

01:42:38.160 done the resistance coffee uh promo so i gotta go find brand white overlay here we go resistance

01:42:47.140 coffee all right i'm sorry to be tagging this on to the end of the show i don't know if resistance

01:42:52.160 coffee is tuning in right now but i apologize that it was a little bit later than i had hoped

01:42:57.000 but that's okay we're getting we're getting to it now and i i still fully support resistance coffee

01:43:01.280 so resistance coffee company uh is of course based in wayburn and they as saskatchewan to be clear

01:43:06.600 and you can order their coffee online and when you support resistance coffee you're supporting

01:43:10.760 any and all freedom movements in canada movements in canada that increase our freedoms not curtail

01:43:17.120 them and so resistance coffee company has a strong affinity for freedom for liberty for ordered

01:43:23.440 liberty peace order and good government they do not want uh the world to be taken over by the woke 0.98

01:43:29.140 left and they don't want political correctness dictating the way that corporations uh act or

01:43:34.740 or anybody acts it's wrong and that we all know that anybody who's kind of waving a certain

01:43:39.800 colored flag or making certain kneeling gestures to a certain race it doesn't really matter what

01:43:44.580 you're doing the point is that they're still trying to get anybody on the take and they're

01:43:48.640 trying to take money from people so resistance is just not doing that and just saying hey if you

01:43:52.740 give us money we're also for our business for our for our for our product we're also using it

01:43:58.140 to increase the freedoms of canadians because we're tired of these people keep trying to take

01:44:01.680 away the freedoms of canadians so i really respect that so that's resistance coffee company and you

01:44:06.560 can find them online at resistancecoffeecompany.com don't forget to use the promo code western

01:44:11.960 and standard for 10% off your first order.

01:44:16.320 We have that little banner ticking along the bottom there.

01:44:18.400 I'm going to leave the banner up.

01:44:20.200 I'm going to take down the panel.

01:44:24.300 And as we kind of round out the hour here

01:44:26.540 and come back to the comments a little bit,

01:44:28.340 maybe something that needs to be kind of touched on

01:44:34.480 is that

01:44:37.060 I suppose in no uncertain terms

01:44:42.420 again maybe my outlook is kind of bleak

01:44:45.380 maybe it's something that especially people who are right of center

01:44:48.460 because I mean that's definitely what this show is marketed towards

01:44:50.880 and what the Western Standard is marketed towards

01:44:52.620 but people who are right of center are not quite used to as a take

01:44:56.700 and I know that I've said this before on the show

01:44:58.800 we have a lot of people on here

01:45:04.160 And the most consistent people we have on here are, of course, left-wing, Stuart Parker and Aaron Eckman.

01:45:09.620 And we're working on that.

01:45:11.500 I mean, to be completely candid with you, the show needs work.

01:45:15.380 We all know that.

01:45:16.500 We're into week 10, week 12 now, 11, 12, somewhere around there.

01:45:20.900 And we've got some renovating to do, some updating to do.

01:45:25.420 We need to put a shot in the arm of this show. 0.80

01:45:28.080 That sounded like a COVID reference.

01:45:29.700 We're not talking about that.

01:45:31.500 But the flip side of the equation is that one of the reasons why we've explored some of the topics we do on this show

01:45:37.600 is that it's really important for us to look at the real issues.

01:45:42.200 And I would argue that, again, with the sovereignty thing, maybe the reason I'm ambivalent about sovereignty

01:45:46.520 is that it's that old line, right?

01:45:48.240 Didn't like your old masters, how do you like your new ones?

01:45:50.720 We have problems in this country that are not going to change just because you changed the flag that's on the pole.

01:45:57.140 So you might not like that the flagpoles are all at half mass right now because of what happened in Kamloops

01:46:01.400 and that you feel kind of disrespected, that the legacy of this country, the cultural heritage of this country is being disrespected.

01:46:07.240 I can hear you on all those things. 1.00

01:46:09.100 I just don't want to even be in this country anymore because this stupid country is so stupid. 1.00

01:46:12.680 People just destroying it. 1.00

01:46:14.000 Like, let's just make a better country tomorrow.

01:46:15.500 It's like, well, what are we going to do tomorrow?

01:46:19.260 Are the housing prices in Prince George going to come down tomorrow because we separate from Canada?

01:46:24.040 That'd be great.

01:46:24.940 If that happens, that's awesome.

01:46:25.980 I'll do that.

01:46:26.480 that'd be awesome sure i'll vote for separation but at what cost what advantage what is going to

01:46:32.940 change i feel like a lot of the issues we have today politically are all tied up with you know

01:46:39.540 we can get into religious and spiritual issues another time i deeply religious man and those

01:46:43.520 are topics that appeal to me but deeper than that i think that we have to be honest about the fact

01:46:49.460 that there are issues of our society

01:46:54.820 that are leading us to look for all sorts of solutions

01:46:57.820 in places maybe they don't exist.

01:47:01.100 We all want to figure out homelessness better in this country.

01:47:04.080 We all want better medical care.

01:47:06.360 We all want more efficient medical care.

01:47:08.360 We all want people to not feel left behind.

01:47:10.440 We want real economic opportunity.

01:47:12.020 We want less red tape and less people pulling us over

01:47:14.920 on the side of the road for nonsensical reasons

01:47:16.980 while down the street there's a drug dealer

01:47:18.860 who we all know is a drug dealer, with an underage girlfriend 0.76

01:47:21.340 who the cops keep not busting.

01:47:23.540 That gets a little annoying.

01:47:25.580 I don't care that I'm going 10 over the speed limit. 0.54

01:47:27.900 I want you to go bust down the door of the drug dealer 1.00

01:47:31.840 down the street from me.

01:47:32.900 That's who I want you to deal with.

01:47:34.380 I don't care what I'm doing wrong.

01:47:36.280 I care what he's doing wrong.

01:47:37.960 And on and on it goes.

01:47:39.560 It doesn't really matter what it is in this country.

01:47:42.100 There's a lot of things that have gone wrong.

01:47:45.020 And those social issues, we want them solved.

01:47:48.560 We want to meet them. This country lacks confidence. This country can't put together a decent procural for its own army.

01:47:55.880 You 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.

01:48:07.240 You can subsist in America on corn. You know, that's what that's what some of my forebears did. 0.98

01:48:12.700 I'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.

01:48:18.560 and and you can in america you can live you can live for free you can live fine you can live in

01:48:24.000 florida you can live in the southwest united states you're not going to freeze to death

01:48:27.760 in canada you will freeze to death and the point that i'm trying to drive home here is that the

01:48:32.960 can-do attitude of our founding speaking of canada day and wrapping all of this episode up back into

01:48:40.080 this question of canceling canada and everything else like maybe we should cancel canada day in

01:48:45.440 in the sense that the Canada that we live in right now

01:48:47.440 is a cancelled Canada, it doesn't exist.

01:48:49.840 When you can't build a pipeline

01:48:51.360 because of, you know, basically political terrorism

01:48:54.500 being funded by either Americans or the Chinese,

01:48:58.720 when you can't build a pipeline,

01:49:01.080 when you can't build basic infrastructure,

01:49:03.520 when you can't solve very rudimentary problems

01:49:06.220 around what to do with your health care

01:49:08.240 and with your education, etc.,

01:49:09.960 when you can't do that,

01:49:12.180 I don't know what leg you have to stand on anymore.

01:49:15.440 You're not really a country anymore.

01:49:18.680 You're lost.

01:49:20.440 And that's exactly it.

01:49:21.640 Maybe the reason Canada Day is getting cancelled

01:49:23.300 is we don't even know what Canada Day means.

01:49:25.500 There's just a general ignorance in this country

01:49:27.960 of what this country even stands for.

01:49:29.800 There are beautiful things this country did.

01:49:31.620 There are honourable things this country did.

01:49:33.080 This country took Vimy Rich.

01:49:34.700 This country took the beach in Normandy.

01:49:37.840 This country helped defeat tyranny.

01:49:40.920 This country was on the right side of apartheid in South Africa.

01:49:44.080 It'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.

01:49:50.860 This 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.

01:50:02.980 And so the irony is, maybe, coming all the way back around, I'm not saying that they're right to cancel Canada Day,

01:50:09.180 But in a sense, what is there to celebrate on Canada Day if this country can't even have confidence in itself?

01:50:18.700 Either you make your myth, you make your story, or somebody will write it for you.

01:50:22.860 Either you figure out what you want to do, or somebody will employ you to make their dream come true, right?

01:50:27.500 And that's probably where I'm going to end the program today.

01:50:30.240 This country, again, I'm ambivalent about sovereignty.

01:50:33.760 I remain, at least at this point, a situational federalist.

01:50:37.180 Federalist. But the point is that nonetheless, regardless of where you stand on how good or bad

01:50:43.140 Canada is, if you don't have a sense of self, you will fail as a nation. We are failing ourselves

01:50:50.420 as a nation. We're failing our future generations as a nation. Whether it's going to be just your

01:50:56.300 local town that's a little country or the whole of Canada, we're failing ourselves because we don't

01:51:00.800 have a sense of self. And we are in deep trouble if we think that's how we can go on. We're going

01:51:06.560 be on again tomorrow bright and early 9 a.m pacific 10 a.m mountain do tune in and thank

01:51:12.300 you so much for watching i'm going to put up some banners now and see if i can get this done

01:51:16.420 properly and exit this

Western Standard - June 16, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - June 15, 2021

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