Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

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00:01:30.000 hello and good morning welcome to mountain standard time i'm your host nathan gita of course today is

00:01:38.340 thursday every thursday it's the same thing we do every other thursday we've got erin ekman on to

00:01:43.560 tell us about the news roundup for the week and help give us some color commentary uh both for

00:01:48.060 canada and here locally in british columbia and then of course a little bit later on well

00:01:51.220 stewart parker to talk to us a little bit about the whole cancellation of canada day from his

00:01:55.360 perspective and what it really means should sovereigntists be in favor against it who

00:01:59.280 knows we're going to get there when we get there but of course as always make sure that you take

00:02:03.540 out a subscription online with us at the western standard to help support independent journalism

00:02:07.720 and follow us on social media to know when we go live we're going to get right to the news round

00:02:12.680 up it's not going to be a big monologue today but i do owe our sponsors uh their spot and of course

00:02:18.040 i'm happy to have that on our show we have resistance coffee company i'll put them up there

00:02:22.880 right away and of course we start with are you tired of corporations using your dollars for

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00:02:38.120 purchase goes on to help fight for more freedoms for canadians not less be sure to use western

00:02:43.880 standards promo code to get 10 off your first order that of course is resistance coffee company

00:02:49.200 the only coffee company that we support on mountain standard time we're gonna get uh erin

00:02:54.640 into the stream right away here and uh go live to the man on the heart oh sorry i didn't i didn't

00:03:03.160 notice you there i was too busy drinking this wonderful resistance coffee it's uh there it is

00:03:06.940 there it is it's all gone already it's amazing i didn't know they made such good coffee there

00:03:10.680 in saskatchewan you know we like there's a couple of things us british columbians pride ourself on

00:03:15.380 one is you know like the green stuff uh but we also kind of pride ourselves on coffee but the

00:03:21.140 big secret is like we don't roast we don't grow the beans here we sort of import them and then

00:03:25.180 we roast them while they're clearly doing the same thing in Saskatchewan and I tell you it's

00:03:28.440 it's pretty good it's good stuff it's a good sponsor well let's start from the top uh this

00:03:35.080 week was a bit up and down to Canadian politics it definitely some people being woke some people

00:03:39.420 going broke what what is what's the news what's the news Aaron well it was I mean if like if

00:03:46.640 you're perverse enough to watch the legislature feeds and question period etc the uh the week

00:03:52.720 was kind of a it was a bit low-key in british columbia it was there's you know they're still

00:03:57.280 talking about the opposition's really having a tough time kind of finding anything that really

00:04:01.880 sticks they're still pounding the drum on on the cruise ship industry uh and how from their

00:04:07.460 perspective the the premier and the bc government has has bungled this arrangement we had with the

00:04:13.240 United States we talked about that previously and they're still hammering away at them on not

00:04:18.040 not providing similar subsidies to vets that they're also providing to the legion so you know

00:04:23.780 if you're a BC liberal this week I guess those are the two most important things in British

00:04:27.560 Columbia the reality of course is that there's far more important things going on and as as your

00:04:33.400 viewers will probably know quite well the price of lumber especially if anybody's out trying to do

00:04:37.880 any home renos or even just build a patio out out back now that it's June trying to build some

00:04:44.140 garden beds etc it's going to cost you a lot of money to get the wood to do that it's gone up

00:04:48.100 about two or three times my neighbor was just telling me that you know they're building a shed

00:04:52.280 in their backyard and they spent five hundred dollars just on the plywood they only had five

00:04:56.360 sheets that's a hundred bucks a sheet of plywood that's so I had well not only is it insane but I

00:05:01.280 remember you know when when covid first hit back in what march 2020 i was rifling through my closet

00:05:07.660 and i stumbled upon an unopened box of masks back when toilet paper and masks were the were the hot

00:05:13.860 commodity of the of the day and i thought oh my goodness i'm rich well it's the same thing going

00:05:19.240 on with the sheets of plywood sitting in my backyard i mean the joke is i'm going to tear

00:05:22.720 down my house sell the wood so i can buy a bigger house it's it's just ridiculous but what makes

00:05:27.960 people so angry I think certainly makes me angry is that it's British Columbia you know so like

00:05:34.140 a there shouldn't be the kind of fiber shortage that we're experiencing that's driving in part

00:05:41.120 because it's also it's not just the BC product that's going up in price it's actually American

00:05:46.520 housing starts it's really driving the demand for it but it is a fiber shortage and for British

00:05:52.760 columbia not to be positioned so that we can really benefit from this increase in price

00:05:58.120 uh is enraging given that this should be the primary industry in our province and has been

00:06:04.720 for so long and we're now suffering from our own fiber shortages because we've just totally

00:06:09.680 mismanaged the entire industry and our fiber supply and i know you've had a number of guests

00:06:15.420 on in particular uh james steidel who is very active in that stop the spray coalition here in

00:06:21.020 the north uh who have gone over this in great detail and analyze why it is but it's i mean if

00:06:25.920 you so so it requires a bit of analysis in terms of what's happening in the market and what the

00:06:31.740 provincial government is doing about it if anything and of course the big headline that sort of

00:06:36.240 distracts from the underlying economic influences on the price of lumber right now is what's going

00:06:42.220 on in fairy creek and i know you've talked about that a bit here so there's this big

00:06:45.580 basically scrap between uh you could sort of say three parties i suppose there's the provincial

00:06:52.660 government on one hand there's the there's the logging company or companies uh then there's the

00:06:57.640 activists i guess it's kind of four parties there's the activists who are some of them are

00:07:01.160 first nations but it looks like the majority of them are um uh you know white folks that

00:07:07.180 that don't live in the direct area and then then there's the uh the first nations bands that uh

00:07:14.700 that are involved in making sure the project goes ahead and the the call from yeah pat's

00:07:22.500 absolutely correct closing mills closing mills is the problem we'll get to that in a sec um it

00:07:29.060 certainly doesn't help but what's going on in fairy creek that's that's grabbing so many headlines of

00:07:33.240 course is that there's old growth there and you know and i'm not an expert i'm not a forest expert

00:07:39.120 by any stretch but my understanding is that how we define old growth basically constitutes about

00:07:44.140 three percent of the entire timber stock in the province and I'm quite happy to be corrected on

00:07:50.640 that but it's not a huge amount and so if you just if you think about it from a pure economics

00:07:56.180 perspective here's the problem we have in British Columbia. Sure we've been employing tree planters

00:08:01.660 for decades to go out and replant the diminished stocks of wood in the province but they've just

00:08:07.780 been planting monocrops of pine and the problem with that is is that you lose all of the biodiversity

00:08:13.760 in a forest with you know like they wipe out all the aspen as steidel will tell you uh they spray

00:08:19.760 everything and just they don't just i mean they they don't just remove it not replant it they

00:08:24.120 literally kill it to make room for the for the pine monocrops and it doesn't produce anywhere

00:08:29.320 close to the same quality of wood and so they're still despite the fact that we've got you know all

00:08:34.800 of this regrown stock going back decades they're still going after the old old growth stock because

00:08:41.900 it's better wood right um and and of course there's first nations bands that are also included

00:08:48.360 in this uh because they've they sign agreements with the province etc and and in in some respects

00:08:56.200 i mean that's absolutely what they should be but some critics will say you know they're they're

00:09:00.840 also getting ripped off and they're and they're they're not getting the kind of benefit for their

00:09:04.700 communities they're not getting the the percentage of benefit from their community that they should

00:09:08.860 be getting considering how much value is produced there the other problem of course is that going

00:09:14.420 back you know 16 17 years now as pat had referenced earlier uh the most of the mills have been shut

00:09:21.600 down on british columbia to the tune of 40 35 to 40 000 lost forestry jobs in the province over the

00:09:27.360 last 15 years and there's been a consolidation during that time into these mega mills and the

00:09:33.840 Big, you know, West Fraser, Interfor, and Canfor are the three big fish, Canfor being

00:09:38.880 the biggest one.

00:09:40.340 So what really tells the story of what's happening in British Columbia is watching

00:09:44.240 what those three companies are doing.

00:09:47.740 And that's where things get a bit nasty because these have turned into essentially global

00:09:54.440 companies.

00:09:55.960 And so in particular, and I'll just pull this up here.

00:10:00.040 Let me try to share this article.

00:10:01.340 This drove me absolutely crazy.

00:10:03.840 I was searching around as I do on the governor of Louisiana's website because people may

00:10:11.280 not know this but there's this huge investment of basically BC dollars going into into the

00:10:21.420 mill into the into the sector in the southern United States and let me just show you this

00:10:28.200 So can you see this headline?

00:10:33.320 I can, yeah.

00:10:34.700 Yeah, so Southern loggers are pushing wood production to a 13-year high.

00:10:37.860 So why is the price of lumber up 288%?

00:10:40.600 So that's, I mean, that's a good question.

00:10:42.360 This is on Fortune Magazine.

00:10:44.000 Well, here's the real story.

00:10:45.600 Let me just flip through here for you.

00:10:47.220 So West Fraser, set to invest $150 million in five U.S. South lumber mills.

00:10:55.380 And so they're mostly, I think, in Georgia.

00:10:58.200 Interfor, $30 million on top of an existing $108 million investment already, also in Southern

00:11:09.600 U.S. mills.

00:11:11.520 Okay, we keep moving along here and it doesn't look like I've got the Canfor story, but Canfor

00:11:20.920 is also putting in 160 million dollars in into they're the ones putting it investing into

00:11:29.420 Louisiana so here let me just stop this here so this is this is what's happening so all of this

00:11:38.720 BC investment money from these BC companies isn't going into building mills in British Columbia

00:11:45.100 they're going they're putting hundreds of millions of dollars literally and for canfor alone this

00:11:51.360 constitutes 130 sorry 175 construction jobs for the new mill alone after the construction job is

00:11:58.440 done it's 130 new direct jobs with an average annual salary of 60 000 just under 60 000 us

00:12:05.740 dollars and then an additional 386 new indirect jobs uh related to the mill so you know like

00:12:14.980 the the story of british columbia is that after you know basically 15 years of outsourcing our

00:12:23.080 mills overseas to china and and to the southern united states not by just take like allowing

00:12:29.840 foreign uh foreign companies do this but british columbian companies actually uprooting mills here

00:12:34.920 and moving them uh outside of the our border and then pumping tons of money into those mills well

00:12:41.000 why are they doing it they do it so that when the commodity prices start to shift

00:12:45.680 like they do if it becomes more profitable was to start cutting the

00:12:49.280 yellow pine down in Louisiana and milling it there then that's what they're

00:12:54.080 going to do and if it's more profitable to cut it up here then they do it up

00:12:57.200 here but the other dark side of it is it may be more profitable and in fact it

00:13:03.320 has been more profitable to cut the fiber in British Columbia and instead of

00:13:06.880 milling it here start shipping it down the coast to those mills down in the southern u.s and to

00:13:12.500 ship them across over to china and that's where all of the value is that's where all of the jobs

00:13:17.700 are that's where all of the tax base comes from and so you know i mean this um uh like this this

00:13:26.460 piece by the louisiana governor governor i mean he's he's just over the moon happy about what's

00:13:30.840 going on here and why wouldn't he be uh i'm trying to bring this thing up again but of course it's

00:13:36.460 uh uh where is that no i don't even have it anyway um i mean these guys are over the moon

00:13:46.460 because they're getting all this foreign investment uh but that's all investment that's

00:13:50.240 ours and so the the the challenge of course oh and the other reason of course is that wages in

00:13:55.420 this in the southern united states are quite a bit lower not just in what's in british columbia but

00:13:59.220 in the rest of the united states as well so you know interfor for instance i don't know what

00:14:04.460 they're paying their folks in British Columbia. It's probably, you know, upwards of 30 bucks an

00:14:08.340 hour or more. They're hiring workers at $16 an hour. Now that's US. So that's a bit more, you

00:14:14.040 know, I mean, but it's still cheaper. I mean, minimum wage here is 15, 20, I think now as of

00:14:20.220 the other day. So, so you can see, you know, economically speaking, why they're doing it.

00:14:24.540 They're doing it because there's a cheaper labor force in China. There's a cheaper labor force in

00:14:29.040 the southern you know the lower u.s states and it's cheaper because there's essentially no unions

00:14:35.760 down there whatsoever i think the private sector union base in georgia and in you know south north

00:14:41.300 carolina alabama mississippi arkansas they're hovering around two percent density which means

00:14:46.820 two percent of the private sector workforce is unionized which basically means there's no unions

00:14:53.160 whatsoever and some people can say well that's great because i don't like unions and uh you

00:14:57.280 know unions are terrible or whatever but statistically speaking again it doesn't matter

00:15:01.600 sort of what your values of it are i i look at the statistics and i look at the economics of it

00:15:05.940 statistically speaking wages are higher in union jurisdictions and people will say well that's

00:15:10.200 that's what chases investment away but here's here's the important thing to remember when

00:15:14.860 you're talking about natural resources and commodities that have to be extracted either

00:15:19.420 cut dug or drilled uh they're not going anywhere we got them right so when we talk about it it uh

00:15:27.980 attracting foreign investment and making sure that the climate is good for foreign investment

00:15:32.380 i mean that that's an important thing to consider when you're talking about manufacturing

00:15:37.180 but when you're talking about extracting a natural resource you have to remember we hold a lot of

00:15:41.660 cards because it's not like they can just pick up some foreign company or some foreign investor

00:15:46.780 can just pick up a refining facility or a mill and just go elsewhere without trying to continue to

00:15:54.460 get the supply of whatever commodity they're manufacturing or milling to that mill and

00:16:00.940 our government in BC in particular and to a certain extent the federal government

00:16:05.740 can do a lot to ensure that we're the ones that benefit from that commodity first but of course

00:16:11.580 the federal government is completely just out to lunch on this. So the natural resource minister,

00:16:18.540 for instance, the federal natural resource minister, Seamus O'Regan, I think his name,

00:16:23.820 a liberal. I mean, the only thing he's been able to report is that the US is unwilling to negotiate

00:16:30.860 on softwood lumber. So he's unable to even get the Americans to the table because they're in the

00:16:37.420 the business now of imposing massive tariffs on lumber that's coming in from british columbia and

00:16:43.260 so they're they're imposing this on raw logs they're certainly imposing it on uh milled lumber

00:16:47.860 and the purpose there of course despite free trade whatever they tell you about free trade

00:16:52.900 in reducing barriers the americans don't they have never really abided by it so the whole from

00:17:00.640 my perspective the whole free trade agreement i know trump gave it a different name uh is almost

00:17:05.860 useless it's not worth the paper it's written on because the americans don't observe it uh you

00:17:10.960 know often we'll end up in some kind of a hearing trying to work out a dispute but um the americans

00:17:18.360 just kind of do whatever they want anyway and you can't really blame them i you know you couldn't

00:17:22.480 blame trump for imposing tariffs on foreign lumber to try or foreign aluminum for that matter or

00:17:28.280 foreign steel uh to try to protect his own domestic uh companies and industries that's what we should

00:17:35.500 be doing uh and if the bastion of free market fundamentalism the united states who champions

00:17:41.740 free trade as much or more as we do won't follow their own rules why should we because we're the

00:17:48.560 ones losing the jobs we're the and we're the ones that have we're sitting on this gold mine literally

00:17:54.000 uh both in mining and in forestry and we're and we're you know why would the americans negotiate

00:18:01.280 with us they know that we're not going to stop sending lumber even if the tariffs go up and so

00:18:07.040 that just drives the price up more and so it puts us in a position now where we're supposed to be

00:18:11.600 the largest lumber producing entity on the planet and we can't even build a shed in our backyard

00:18:19.180 for less than 500 bucks in in the five sheets of plywood it takes to side the thing

00:18:23.560 it's absolutely enraging and british columbians should i i mean people should be revolting over

00:18:28.740 this i think that something that that occurs to me with all of that is quite frankly are

00:18:36.240 are british colombians putting their stake where it belongs when it comes to this stuff

00:18:40.440 is this where is this where people are finding their political meaning obviously people are

00:18:45.440 outraged at the price of lumber people are people are very upset uh entire projects are being

00:18:49.980 curtailed people are avoiding buying anything they're scabbing things they're they're taking

00:18:54.120 pallets and pulling them apart and using

00:18:58.300 the pallet lumber if they don't need it for anything that's stud-based. I mean, why

00:19:02.300 not? You just strap it together and all of a sudden you've got your doghouse or

00:19:06.040 the decking for your deck.

00:19:10.220 Things are getting egregious and the cost of construction is

00:19:14.200 going up. But are British Columbians united enough to fight that?

00:19:18.100 Because with the cost of construction going up, housing prices have gone through the roof. I've never seen

00:19:22.260 so many houses for sale in prince george in my life people are cashing in now and they are getting

00:19:27.740 out while the getting's good when are when are we all going to kind of come together in solidarity

00:19:32.340 and say you know what enough's enough the cost of things needs to be reasonable so that people

00:19:37.020 can actually afford them or else you just have a false economy well so much of the economy is is

00:19:42.740 built on sort of a house of cards and what you're seeing in prince george in particular is is playing

00:19:47.620 out across the interior in British Columbia, Kamloops, Kelowna, etc. And it is that there's

00:19:52.940 a record number of houses up, like the prices of housing is going up probably for the first

00:19:57.440 time significantly in Prince George since I've been here for the last 11 or 12 years.

00:20:02.160 And I've seen a lot of, like I've seen a lot of, even in my own neighborhood, a lot

00:20:05.520 of for sale signs up, but a lot of sold signs on them too. So who's buying all these places?

00:20:10.000 Well, I've also noticed in my neighborhood, and perhaps you're noticing this in yours

00:20:12.960 as well is that more and more of the lawns aren't being mowed uh so you know like i i hate to sound

00:20:19.960 like the the old grumpy guy who you know tells the kids to get off his lawn and yells at his

00:20:24.060 neighbor for not mowing their lawns but it that's not what's that i'm not angry about it it's a

00:20:28.880 signifier of something it signifies that people that are buying the houses aren't necessarily

00:20:33.040 living in them or they're buying the houses and renting them out so what's happening in in prince

00:20:38.800 George which is happening all over the province and frankly probably all over the country and

00:20:43.560 certainly in the US is again people are using houses as commodities and so you know if you're

00:20:49.980 coming from Vancouver and you already have property you're existing in an entirely different

00:20:56.380 plane of existence market-wise than in Prince George and so you can come in and you can buy

00:21:03.760 a massive house which in Vancouver would go for three to four million dollars and you can get it

00:21:08.640 for probably 700 grand in Prince George and so people in Vancouver you know I mean they saw what

00:21:13.580 was happening during COVID in places like San Francisco all along the west coast California

00:21:18.660 etc where people were like a lot of tech sector workers were moving out of the big expensive high

00:21:26.320 density urban areas and they're going out into the sticks because they can buy a house and there's no

00:21:30.480 need for them to be in the expensive areas anymore well that dynamic is playing we sort of predicted

00:21:36.080 that was going to happen it's not happening to the same extent but it is still happening

00:21:39.660 so you are seeing money from down south in British Columbia start to make its way up here to buy

00:21:44.580 houses and people aren't necessarily living in them so you start to get that same acceleration

00:21:50.860 of the housing market that has been plaguing Vancouver forever and that the housing prices

00:21:56.900 never really start to go down it's just the rate of increases starts to decrease if at all

00:22:01.040 uh and you know a lot of people like that i mean a lot of people base their retirement plans on

00:22:06.500 that whole scheme um and you know it's important that we don't blame people for that because like

00:22:12.200 especially for working class people like we've said in the past what other option do they have

00:22:17.140 if you're if you're a working class person real estate i mean it's not like the rich don't bet

00:22:21.040 everything on real estate real estate is literally the only commodity that uh is a sure bet than

00:22:26.840 gold i mean it just it just hasn't gone down ever all of our pension plan every pension plan in the

00:22:32.360 country is heavily weighted in in real estate and if there is ever a real estate crash i mean

00:22:38.240 that's that's when the foundations of the economy really really start to crumble yeah it is yeah

00:22:44.580 it's going to happen uh it's going to happen in every rural area i mean this is this is going to

00:22:49.140 be the story i think of rural areas interesting interestingly places that have struggled to sort

00:22:53.860 of see any kind of a population increase they may not necessarily see a population increase but

00:22:58.440 they're going to see housing prices increase as outside money starts to come in and buy up

00:23:02.920 the commodity and so you know you can make the the moralistic argument I think that you make

00:23:08.440 quite often which is a good one that people should treat houses like homes and rather than commodities

00:23:12.680 but again the market dictates in in a in a free market society like ours the market dictates

00:23:18.960 people's activity and so if you can make money on a house as a commodity people are going to do it

00:23:23.820 but there's consequences to that and we're gonna we're gonna live through that the frustrating

00:23:28.460 part is government can play a role uh and in certain places around the the world some governments

00:23:35.100 have played a role in trying to calm the real estate market and uh and in bc you know the

00:23:40.740 speculation tax was intended from the ndp to try to calm the market mostly in vancouver and it had

00:23:47.080 a limited effect back before COVID. It calmed prices for a few months, but it's not really

00:23:54.620 sufficient because eventually demand increases so much that even the new tax on the property

00:24:02.060 that's being bought, especially for the real moneyed class, just isn't enough to dissuade

00:24:06.020 them from continuing to buy more and more property as the value starts to increase.

00:24:10.360 But back to forestry, there's things that the NDP government can and should be doing

00:24:15.740 and in fact promised to do in their election to deal with some of the problems that we have

00:24:21.400 in forestry. And one of them was to retie the rights of timber to the communities where the

00:24:26.960 timber exists and to try to do something about these mega mills that, yeah, sure, they're centered

00:24:35.080 in BC, they're BC-based, but they're not operating as BC companies. And they certainly don't have

00:24:40.100 the economic interest of British Columbians in mind. They have their own economic interest in

00:24:44.400 mind and so I'll just put let's play this first clip from the premier last month responding to

00:24:50.880 the the lumber price can you talk about the pros and cons of these record high prices that we're

00:24:57.420 seeing well thank you very much for the question because I of course monitor commodity prices as a

00:25:02.600 resource dependent or resource economy here in British Columbia we look at gold copper zinc

00:25:09.340 prices, lumber prices, pulp prices, metallurgical coal to make the steel we need to build a modern

00:25:15.620 economy. All of those indicators have been fairly positive throughout the pandemic. But the

00:25:21.280 cost of lumber, the price for lumber is just off the charts. I looked yesterday, it was $1,200,

00:25:28.440 1,000 board feet. It was hovering around 900. I spoke to industry leaders. They're cautious,

00:25:35.080 obviously and optimistic with the prices they're seeing but we still have trade barriers with the

00:25:41.360 United States. I'm grateful that Prime Minister Trudeau raised the softwood lumber dispute in his

00:25:46.380 first call with President Joe Biden. I've been in consultation with the Canadian ambassador in

00:25:53.280 Washington not just about daylight savings time although that is a pressing issue but also about

00:25:58.580 how we can get a resolution finally to the 10 year and every 10 years we get into a battle with

00:26:06.140 a small group of lumber producers in the United States that have an undue amount of sway on the

00:26:12.460 decision makers in Washington, D.C. I'm hopeful we can get back to a free and fair trading relationship

00:26:17.860 so that we can truly benefit from what are astronomically high forestry prices. All right,

00:26:23.700 let's cut that that we still have a let's let's get rid of that he's not saying anything my whole

00:26:28.860 point here is he's not saying anything of substance and it's it's maddening he's basically

00:26:33.360 listening commodity i know what commodities are thank you for telling me i i love this question

00:26:39.060 i i'm good like yeah let me explain to you how how up to speed i am on uh on on the current

00:26:45.500 commodity prices i just checked my phone this morning before you asked actually do you have

00:26:49.500 an opinion on humanity the leg bones connected to the

00:26:52.300 no and and look i mean the the ministry let me see if i can share my screen here again

00:27:00.420 they um they released they've now released a white paper i think just in the last week or so

00:27:05.800 that's supposed to be a uh an example of all of their their solutions to this and so here it is

00:27:12.100 so uh modernizing the forest policy in british columbia this is this is the white paper it's

00:27:16.800 basically just a PowerPoint and I can't remember which item it was but if you scroll down to

00:27:23.580 you know what they're going to do to try to increase the fiber supply they say they're

00:27:28.820 going to work with here it is right here going to work with value-added sectors sector reps to

00:27:33.620 understand how the province can support competitive value-added business so that's a bunch of

00:27:37.300 gobbledygook speak that basically means we're going to keep doing what we've been doing

00:27:41.200 which is uh we're going to rely on the companies to tell us uh what it is that we should do well

00:27:49.260 the companies have their own interests and their interest right now is to spend hundreds of millions

00:27:53.740 of dollars building and upgrading existing mills down in the southern united states ship raw logs

00:28:00.160 down there cut cut the yellow pine in louisiana for instance and and just make sure that everything

00:28:05.920 value-based is all produced outside of province. And the best thing that the BCNAP government can

00:28:11.980 come up as in terms of a plan to try to increase our own fiber stock and start producing and

00:28:18.240 manufacturing here again is to work with those companies to try to figure out, you know, I mean,

00:28:23.960 it's the same failed attempt to try to attract investment when we're holding the cards. All we

00:28:31.320 got to do is play them it's there are commodities they're sitting they're growing here or they're

00:28:36.360 underground here uh and so if the united states isn't isn't going to play ball and abide by our

00:28:43.180 own free trade agreement uh and continue to try to put tariffs on the lumber that we're sending

00:28:48.720 down there i mean we can we could fix this problem overnight not without some consequence to

00:28:53.420 ourselves i mean you know i mean we could stop shipments we could do what alberta keeps threatening

00:28:57.480 to do to british columbia understandably and shut the taps off and i have some sympathy for alberta

00:29:02.140 in that that's actually a card they they should be able to threaten to play uh if if we're not

00:29:07.060 playing nice with them and i i don't begrudge them for taking that attack at all it terrified

00:29:11.680 the bc government when they when they threatened to do it and it terrified to be and it was

00:29:15.660 embarrassing for the bc attorney general when he when he challenged in the supreme court and got his

00:29:19.700 got his rear handed to him uh and that was that was a big victory from my perspective in terms of

00:29:25.500 asserting the autonomy of provinces to determine what they do with their their uh their commodities

00:29:30.080 and what they produce so there's nothing stopping us from doing the same thing with the americans

00:29:34.920 if they want to slap uh unreasonable tariffs on the lumber that's going down there shut the shut

00:29:41.780 it off and uh drive the price up tomorrow and see what happens when when when their domestic

00:29:47.600 voter base starts to revolt because never mind you know a hundred dollar sheet of plywood it'll

00:29:51.680 be a $500 sheet of plywood in a hurry because yeah they got timber stocks down there but they

00:29:56.000 ain't British Columbia and you know people say well you know what about all the jobs we're going

00:30:00.220 to lose up here in in the time period we've already lost 40,000 jobs in forestry because

00:30:04.260 of what we're doing the the whole industry is in shambles our our timber stock is in shambles

00:30:09.800 because we haven't managed it I mean the best thing we could do right now is to stop these

00:30:15.020 these BC companies from from being active in the forest let them regenerate over just a couple of

00:30:20.780 years i mean it doesn't really take long to build up some of that biodiversity again

00:30:23.940 uh and reset our stocks um but you know the bc government's not going to do anything uh they have

00:30:31.060 no plan whatsoever other than to just listen to what the companies tell them and and march to that

00:30:35.960 tune it's called professional reliance it was a it was a process brought in by the bc liberal

00:30:40.940 government which basically took all the regulators out of the industry and just said you know industry

00:30:46.100 is good enough to be able to regulate itself they're the professionals we're going to rely

00:30:50.420 on them so the whole concept is called professional reliance and the bcndp uh to their credit railed

00:30:57.040 against this in opposition and have done nothing to reverse it since they've been in government

00:31:01.860 and we're we're living through the consequences of that so sorry to be so angry but it's uh

00:31:07.100 british columbians should be angry about this there it's like it's it's like uh it's like if

00:31:13.700 there was a a spike in price it's it's it's kind of the same as if chinese people couldn't afford

00:31:18.580 to buy tea you know it's like british columbians being unable to buy lumber you know there's

00:31:24.120 something wrong you know there's some serious mismanagement going on in our in our prime

00:31:28.460 primary industry here and british columbians shouldn't take it and here's the part like the

00:31:32.440 bc liberals don't have an answer to this either um i mean in fact we're we're in this situation

00:31:37.100 we're in because uh because of you know the policies like professional reliance that they

00:31:41.040 put on but uh neither of these two parties have any understanding or any willingness to get us

00:31:45.860 out of this problem and uh and pamela's right is a it's a it's a long-standing issue i i completely

00:31:53.620 agree but i think it also comes from a philosophical shift that's happened basically basically into the

00:31:59.080 90s and certainly after the 80s i'm sure we can get stewart to comment on this a little bit later

00:32:03.380 but but if on the left people got into commission government which is to say they gave everything to

00:32:09.240 the civil servants they outsource decision making from the legislature to civil servants or from

00:32:13.460 municipal councils from parliament i mean i mean this goes all the way back to quite frankly even

00:32:18.580 between free trade and the abortion decision in the 80s uh one one done by an international

00:32:24.460 committee the other one done by a bunch of unelected supreme court justices striking down

00:32:28.700 a law but making no replacement and then leaving it to a hapless parliament to try and do so

00:32:33.040 if you look at if you look at that as kind of a philosophical shift for decision making based in

00:32:38.600 a legislature we've been in this problem as you note uh for 30 years almost 40 years now and the

00:32:45.080 problem becomes very quickly if you don't have leadership then you're not going to get anywhere

00:32:50.660 with it and this is the problem we're lacking leadership um the the left gave it to civil

00:32:55.880 servants who are unelected the right gave it to you know the managerial class of the professional

00:33:01.420 private sphere what where do we go from here if all the authority has been taken out of elected

00:33:06.500 government what does the ballot box even do for you well we've solved these problems in the past

00:33:12.380 um in british columbia by you know creating new parties frankly i mean that's really was

00:33:17.800 you know i know i come back to this uh so often but that's really what happened in both alberta

00:33:22.220 and british columbia uh from the 1930s through to the 1980s when we'd had enough of liberals

00:33:29.000 and conservatives didn't have any time really for the ccf for the ndp uh in british columbia

00:33:34.480 least until 1972 and created the SoCred parties and you know they weren't separatist parties by

00:33:40.640 any stretch but but WAC Bennett and British Columbia in particular knew full well that that

00:33:46.080 autonomy card that independence card was an absolutely vital card to play and as a result

00:33:50.640 of him understanding that we owned what was here we had primary control over the resources in our

00:33:56.480 own province and should benefit the most from developing them he was able to drag the federal

00:34:02.240 government kicking and screaming into a treaty with Lyndon B. Johnston over the Columbia River

00:34:09.020 Power Project, which electrified, you know, a number of rivers in the Kootenays and built a

00:34:17.580 hydroelectric legacy that helps to sustain this province today. And both the BCNDP and the BC

00:34:24.660 Liberals have no understanding of how important that is as one of the foundational planks of

00:34:32.160 our provincial economy and so all of the efforts of the BC Liberals to try to undermine BC Hydro

00:34:38.580 to bankrupt it so they could completely privatize it and they got away with most of it by privatizing

00:34:43.360 the transmission and the infrastructure. The BCNDP is far too timid to do anything to try to

00:34:50.260 reverse that to put it back in the hands of British Columbians and and so we're in this

00:34:54.600 weird situation where by far the most socialistic premier or government in the history of the

00:35:00.980 province was wac bennett who's widely regarded to be this ultra right-wing conservative

00:35:06.400 but the bcndp when it comes to socialistic uh ways of arranging industry for the benefit of

00:35:13.740 british columbians first they they couldn't hold it they couldn't pack his skates and it's just

00:35:19.480 embarrassing and so when people like uh stewart parker who you're going to have on in the second

00:35:23.100 half when they say things like you know if if if you're part of the big moneyed class or you're a

00:35:29.660 ceo it can for and you're a little frustrated by you know the slow speed with which the bc liberals

00:35:35.380 help you rape the resources of the province and and ship them out uh bypassing all the value

00:35:41.780 production well just wait till the bc ndp comes to power because they'll help you do it faster

00:35:45.600 he's not wrong he's not wrong and so this is why you see environmentalists flipping out to the

00:35:51.900 degree that they do down in the south and you see pro-development people like me you know banging

00:35:56.980 our heads against the wall because the bcndp despite the promises they make can't figure

00:36:01.260 this stuff out and the province is no better for it and we continue to suffer so anyway that's my

00:36:05.800 that's my rant but think of the children aaron think of the children in kamloops that that's

00:36:11.500 why we have to continue the logging practices we have because because of what we discovered in

00:36:15.960 kamloops that that's how that legacy has to be honored i guess i still can't believe that the

00:36:20.840 premier said that i i did no one call him on this when he said this well this is the so this is the

00:36:28.220 total uh embarrassment i think for the ndp for people that are paying attention to this is he

00:36:32.440 made that statement i think stewart mentioned that uh last week that uh we we can't stop logging the

00:36:40.080 old growth in fairy creek because we'll return to you know the period of colonialism where we impose

00:36:46.720 our own uh white position on the first nations bands who want uh to carry on with the logging

00:36:53.940 now you know i mean people get angry because he's equated these two things there's some logic to

00:36:59.280 that statement i mean we have to you know i like i i rag on him a lot but i'll give him some credit

00:37:04.160 here that look the the bands actually were involved in the law game and they they're they're in favor

00:37:09.020 of it it was the bands that said to the protesters we didn't invite you here you didn't ask to come

00:37:14.460 get the hell out of here. Uh, but what, and so he basically said, we can't, we can't approve the

00:37:19.500 deferral, which means, you know, the deferral means to restrict the logging company from logging

00:37:24.420 the old growth, uh, because we'd be imposing that will on first nations people. Well, a few days

00:37:30.700 later, after he made that statement, the bands came out and said, yeah, we actually do want the

00:37:33.940 deferral. Uh, and the provincial government, you know, basically has to grant it now because

00:37:40.420 the reason they weren't going to grant it was they were relying on our desire not to see it

00:37:45.700 happen well now we're saying we do want a deferral to my knowledge is still having granted it so so

00:37:50.860 he's in this really difficult position where last week he said well like i can't stop the old growth

00:37:55.520 logging on fairy creek because you know that would be colonialist uh because it's against the

00:38:00.440 wishes of first nations first nations come out and say the same bands he's talking about say no no

00:38:04.200 at least temporarily we want the deferral we want to stop the old growth logging here

00:38:08.360 and they haven't done it now so i guess i guess colonialism is just fine for the bcndp

00:38:13.040 uh they don't they don't mind uh running over roughshod over first nations rights which is

00:38:17.940 no surprise we saw i mean they're willing to to to allow and even encourage uh snipers from the

00:38:25.120 rcmp to invade what's wet and territory up here in the north uh meanwhile they run around talking

00:38:29.880 about how terrible this discovery of of of these children and it is terrible in kamloops

00:38:35.120 uh and they talk about reconciliation uh but they don't walk that walk at all they don't they don't

00:38:41.340 care right it's it's all just smoke and mirrors i think the green the green version of this at

00:38:46.340 least according to mr parker is that it's talk and log is how that used to be castigated talking

00:38:52.220 out of one side of your mouth and of course continuing to log uh as you kept telling the

00:38:56.620 cameras what you were doing otherwise and that's the stuff that confer it really concerns the

00:39:01.040 environmentalists what really concerns me is that you know like this white paper i showed you

00:39:04.780 earlier it's just it's like i don't know 20 powerpoint pages of this aspirational

00:39:09.240 platitudinal garbage that talks about how you know we have to give uh the value back to the

00:39:15.400 people of british columbia but there's not a single concrete proposal on how they're going

00:39:18.780 to do that so they just yappy yap yap yap and like they it's just business as usual and when

00:39:24.720 you when you criticize them about it they say well you know i mean all these children were

00:39:28.180 discovered in Kamloops and uh um and oh and by the way you're a racist there you go in other news

00:39:36.400 in other news uh you had one more thing you would wanted to bring up uh throughout the hour I believe

00:39:42.500 there was a uh a clip here I I don't I don't know which one it is though you've got a clip about

00:39:48.480 yeah let me let me let me introduce it yeah I don't normally talk about federal politics but

00:39:53.240 this this was playing out it's been playing out the last week or so and really came to a head

00:39:57.420 yesterday. And this is the saga of the Federal Green Party. And I don't normally like to,

00:40:03.100 I don't pay attention to the Federal Greens. I think they're pretty much irrelevant. And I don't

00:40:09.940 normally pay that much attention to federal politics. But I thought viewers of the Western

00:40:13.240 Standard might be comforted to know that the various conservative parties across the country,

00:40:18.120 both federal and provincial, aren't the only ones in disarray. And also what's playing out in the

00:40:24.280 Green Party right now is, I think demonstrates quite well, you know, the problems that we face

00:40:30.240 when we have this political system that is totally dominated by political parties.

00:40:35.080 And, you know, the one thing that I liked about the Green Party, you know, I don't like, I don't

00:40:40.020 agree with their policies. I can't stand the people who have been elected to the Green Party,

00:40:45.640 like in terms of, I mean, personally, I'm sure they're fine people, but I mean, they just,

00:40:49.400 you know, if you think I'm frustrated with the BCNDP for having no vision for the development

00:40:54.080 of our resources in this province and the green party is it has is terrible on this uh but the

00:41:00.080 one policy that they did have that i liked it was a constitutional policy was that they didn't they

00:41:04.880 don't bind their mps by this concept of caucus solidarity which means they're basically all

00:41:10.080 allowed a free vote on any issue without the threat of expulsion well that's something i can

00:41:16.160 i like that's something i can get behind that's pretty much how the american system works

00:41:20.240 and the reason why i like that is you know and i think you've commented and i've commented before

00:41:24.760 that we encounter the canadian system with with the the total dominance of parties exert over the

00:41:31.940 political structure we never would have had somebody like a donald trump uh nobody like

00:41:37.380 that would ever be able to sort of emerge i mean the closest thing we have is uh maxine bernier who

00:41:41.880 you've had on the show uh but you see how marginalized i mean they just put him in jail

00:41:45.540 the other day for goodness sakes right yeah uh and he's and he's you know like quite marginalized

00:41:51.460 and and at this point we'll see what the next federal election looks like but but wasn't able

00:41:55.700 to perform very well wasn't able to get elected um whereas in the united in the u.s system like

00:42:01.560 somebody like trump can come in and sort of you know just organize around the party despite the

00:42:05.900 party and and people on the left will say well that's good we don't want that system we don't

00:42:09.600 want a donald trump well it it runs both ways because in canada we we also it's impossible for

00:42:15.100 us to to produce somebody like bernie sanders um because somebody like him is just you know would

00:42:22.600 never make it through the ndp certainly wouldn't make it through the liberal party right would have

00:42:26.180 to run as an independent uh so the interesting part about the green party to me was that

00:42:31.360 they didn't impose this level of caucus solidarity so that if you if you if on if you disagreed with

00:42:37.660 the green party in as a member of parliament on one issue or another or you decided that it was

00:42:42.340 more important for you to represent the interests of your constituents god forbid rather than the

00:42:48.100 interests of your party there was no repercussion there was there was no consequence you weren't

00:42:53.520 going to get ejected from caucus but then something interesting happened so as people

00:43:00.080 may or may not know uh they've elizabeth may stepped down a little while ago there's a new

00:43:05.160 leader named anime paul and just by way of context because it doesn't relate to anything

00:43:12.000 important in terms of canadian policy as far as i'm concerned but it relates to the context

00:43:16.180 of the story she happens to be a black jew and she had a senior advisor by the name of noah zatzman

00:43:23.240 uh who you know is quite openly very pro-israel etc and a number of mps they've only got three mps

00:43:32.340 all of the the elected green mps tend to have more pro-palestinian views

00:43:39.220 and so let me share my screen here

00:43:42.020 because I want to show you this tweet

00:43:43.180 many of you have probably already seen this

00:43:44.680 but this guy who is a senior advisor to the leader

00:43:47.780 who doesn't have a seat in parliament

00:43:50.120 tweeted this

00:43:53.560 sorry this one on Facebook

00:43:54.740 now it's kind of long

00:43:56.040 I'll just give you a minute to read it

00:44:01.000 I can read it for the listeners if you don't mind

00:44:05.000 yeah go ahead

00:44:06.380 Shabbat Shalom

00:44:07.840 I have never experienced more anti-Semitism and Jew hatred from people I thought I knew well than I did this week.

00:44:16.080 This includes being on campus at York and Carleton in 2002-7, not a walk in the park.

00:44:23.540 The progressive and climate communities have displayed, at some points this week, overt and virulent anti-Jewish behavior.

00:44:30.540 appalling anti-Semitism and discrimination from a range of political actors

00:44:36.140 beginning with Jagmeet Singh and Dmitri Lekares

00:44:39.500 and many liberal NDP and as well as NDP and sadly Green MPs

00:44:44.200 we will not accept an apology after you realize what you have done

00:44:47.880 we will work to defeat you and bring in progressive climate champions

00:44:51.800 who are Antifa and pro-LGBT and pro-Indigenous sovereignty and Zionists

00:44:58.660 am israel chai yeah so i mean it's an interesting post uh for a number of reasons it's not something

00:45:06.900 that you like this guy he's listed i guess as he was listed as an advisor which in political

00:45:12.700 speak generally means he's a temp like but probably somebody that eventually could be a

00:45:18.300 chief of staff or something like that like it's it's high up right uh and he's widely known to

00:45:22.360 be really close to enemy paul uh but a couple interesting things here first of all he's going

00:45:28.000 after green mps there's only three of them and he's attacking them so this is the senior staff

00:45:32.340 person of the party attacking openly green mps well to me i mean that that shouldn't surprise

00:45:38.860 anybody given that the the green party is supposed to have this sort of freedom of thought and they

00:45:44.820 eschew caucus solidarity so people can spout their opinions without repercussion but there was this

00:45:52.700 huge backlash from supporters of the mps who demanded that the leader of the green party

00:45:57.600 anime paul denounce this guy's comments uh and fire him and all this stuff the entire quebec

00:46:03.700 contingent started demanding her resignation when she refused to repudiate his his remarks

00:46:10.820 so i mean here's here's the interesting thing first of all back to his comment he

00:46:16.980 he's it sounds like he's like pro antifa you know pro lgbt and he's listing off all these

00:46:23.220 groups of progressives that he wants to unite with zionists so he's putting zionists in this

00:46:29.080 group that includes antifa right which is just interesting to me because you know i got a lot

00:46:34.820 of jewish friends and some of them are are you know quite quite zionist openly describe themselves

00:46:39.560 as zionists they are not pro-antifa they don't you know i mean they're okay with gay folks like

00:46:46.160 they don't you know they're not homophobic or anything like that but this this effort to try

00:46:51.080 to include them with antifa is just bizarre um so anyway that that struck me as interesting

00:46:56.360 but i was kind of impressed actually that anime paul wouldn't throw the guy under the bus i mean

00:47:02.860 she finally did agree to not renew his contract so she didn't fire him but she was being hammered

00:47:07.380 by media like are you gonna you're gonna repudiate his comments and she just held her ground she's

00:47:10.660 like you don't know so so what happened yesterday is their senior leadership council came together

00:47:15.960 and she was widely speculated to possibly be punted because there were so many calls for her

00:47:22.640 resignation and if you talk to Stuart about this in the second half I think he's pretty firmly on

00:47:28.020 the side that you know she needs to go kind of thing but a couple of other interesting things

00:47:33.940 happen first of all those folks that are calling for her resignation to me that sounds like an

00:47:40.580 effort by the party to impose upon her because they're asking her to repudiate her Zionist

00:47:46.020 views and all his remarks and all this kind of stuff. Well, it sounds a lot like an effort to

00:47:51.340 impose caucus solidarity for a party that claims that they don't do that. So they're trying to

00:47:58.940 force her to say things that she doesn't agree with, or they're going to, they're going to

00:48:02.060 subject her to a leadership review. And so far she's just said, well, I don't know if I'm going

00:48:05.420 to do that yet. I'm still deciding. So I can't, you know, whether I agree with her or not, I kind

00:48:10.520 of hope she sticks to her guns on it um but i you know i think people are are pissed enough about it

00:48:15.440 that they're they're probably going to subject her to her leadership review but then you know i was

00:48:20.700 watching some of the interviews that she was doing and she's taking a terrible terrible defense on it

00:48:25.780 and she's really starting to try to play identity cards uh which is as i think we'll see in the

00:48:32.260 coming weeks is gonna just rip the green party apart so let's play the second clip here this is

00:48:37.640 a clip of her um only claim to support this work to diversify politics and yet their actions don't

00:48:45.460 back that up that claim that they are allies is one where they talk the talk without walking the

00:48:52.780 walk to the prime minister justin trudeau i say to you today you are no ally and you are no feminist

00:49:03.860 your deeds and your words over these past weeks prove that definitively a real ally and feminist

00:49:12.980 doesn't end their commitment what to those principles whenever they come up against their

00:49:18.740 personal ambition to the people okay that's enough of that um so basically she's blaming

00:49:26.860 the liberal party here because i think as i forgot to mention but people probably know quite well

00:49:30.300 the sole eastern mp because the other two are in british columbia right like it's it's they're able

00:49:37.040 to elect two in british columbia and they got one out east uh jennica atwin is her name she crossed

00:49:42.240 the floor and joined the liberals right because she was attacked by this senior advisor she felt

00:49:47.700 like she wasn't being defended by the party leader and of course the liberals started talking to her

00:49:51.560 saying well you know i mean we're we'd love to have you right and they told her all sorts of

00:49:56.220 things one of which was oh you've got very pro-palestinian views and you think that uh

00:50:01.500 israel is a ethnostate yeah well you know we're a safe haven for those views but if you know

00:50:07.140 anything about the liberal party you know that they're not like it's not it's not a it's not a

00:50:12.440 generally pro pro-palestinian party it's definitely not a party that thinks that israel is an ethnostate

00:50:18.440 or would admit that israel is an ethnostate and so this idea that like she just joined because

00:50:24.320 uh it was more supportive to her uh and now anime paul is responsible for for driving this this

00:50:31.740 woman out i mean if you're willing to join the the bc liberal or sorry the the federal liberal

00:50:36.160 party for any reason let alone because it's a safe haven for your anti-israel views it sounds

00:50:42.600 to me like you're an opportunist looking to to eject and looking for a reason uh to justify

00:50:48.080 that ejection so uh i think that was probably going to be inevitable very opportunist move

00:50:53.020 and i i don't think enemy paul should have to wear that necessarily uh but then again you can

00:50:58.600 see she decided she's going to like blame the liberals for stealing her her member and for

00:51:03.580 some reason try to turn that into a sexist thing saying you're you're limiting uh atwin's ability

00:51:09.380 to be a strong female mp somehow because she exercised her own agency to to jump ship like

00:51:15.940 it's just bizarre and it gets worse so let's play the third clip because i hate to admit this

00:51:20.580 that you know there was a good interview on legacy media but every once in a while evan

00:51:25.320 solomon does a pretty good interview so let's play this third clip and i'll i'll just advance

00:51:29.160 it through i know that she said it was a factor and then she said it was a big factor to me so

00:51:33.620 but let me just get at you were asked on friday press conference the media the media the media

00:51:40.240 has been leaked what are federal council allegations against you i can read them

00:51:45.060 you've acted with an autocratic attitude of hostility superiority and rejection you've

00:51:49.480 You've failed to assume your duty to be an active, contributing, respectful, attendant member of the federal council.

00:51:54.340 You've failed to develop a collaborative working relationship.

00:51:56.940 You've failed to engage in respectful discussions.

00:51:59.060 You've failed to use dialogue and compromise.

00:52:01.160 You've attended few council meetings.

00:52:03.020 You've displayed anger, long, repetitious, aggressive monologues.

00:52:07.000 You've failed to recognize any of the ideas except your own.

00:52:10.220 You've acted in a manner not in compliance with the leader's role.

00:52:13.440 This is a lot here.

00:52:14.800 um you have a i'm reading here a personal reputation for dishonesty which gives opposition

00:52:20.560 parties the ability to compromise her election like what do you make of these allegations against

00:52:26.640 you well i as i said i i said today what i made out of those allegations they're racist and sexist

00:52:33.520 and of course it's uh and again i'm not i have not um i'm not aware of this document being sent

00:52:39.040 out yeah that's all we need to hear that so the point there is he you know he lists he literally

00:52:44.080 reads out the um the the litany of charges that are coming from our own party against her work

00:52:50.480 style her leadership style and what's her response uh yeah they're racist and sexist there wasn't a

00:52:54.700 racist or sexist charge there was all about her work style or autocratic style etc and so you know

00:53:00.000 the whole point here is that this is what's happening to the so-called left parties and

00:53:04.460 progressive movements these people are punching down even though i'm the leader of the party

00:53:08.140 yes yes right yeah she's in the position of most influence and uh and i guess what her her case is

00:53:15.300 is you know because i'm a black woman and they're casting me as angry that it's playing into this

00:53:20.200 trope of the angry black woman which i mean i didn't realize that was a trope maybe it is a

00:53:24.580 trope but to me it's like well what's wrong with it with a black woman being angry like

00:53:28.620 you know and what does it have to do with your autocratic leadership style like you know maybe

00:53:33.480 black women have a good reason to be angry like I don't think anybody uh criticizes black women

00:53:39.100 for being angry uh and nobody's nobody's criticizing you for being a black woman um

00:53:44.260 people are criticizing you because of your leadership style and because you know and I

00:53:49.220 think some of the criticisms to me are not fireable offenses just because she didn't throw her advisor

00:53:54.120 under the bus I mean to me it's like you either have a party where everybody has freedom of

00:53:58.000 expression or you don't and and so make that choice but you can't force her to turf this guy

00:54:05.160 and then resign because she won't repudiate her views on Israel and at the same time say that

00:54:09.900 you know your party extends the freedom of expression to all of its MPs so this this kind

00:54:15.620 of stuff affects all parties and it's really it's just ripping apart left parties and you're going

00:54:21.120 to see more of this stuff so we'll see how it develops to some extent it's a bit satisfying

00:54:25.580 because it confirms what many of us have been saying for years uh that identitarianism is an

00:54:30.700 absolute blight and an infestation on the left in particular right now and and these kind of

00:54:37.100 developments is the result of it and we're just going to see this i mean that's what that's what

00:54:41.500 it's uh designed to do is to sow division and rip organizations like this apart it doesn't bother me

00:54:47.260 so much that it's going to rip the green party apart but uh it's uh it is confirming to see it

00:54:52.140 it happen no absolutely no it's it's all deeply confusing when it comes to these federal scenes

00:55:04.120 because everything just seems to be getting more and more and more politically correct uh

00:55:09.460 and to what end i think if you have something to answer for you need to answer for it there's no

00:55:15.780 there's no place to be uh sanctimonious when when somebody's punching down at you if you're if you

00:55:22.360 are uh and or punching up depending either way if you've got your ground to stand on then stand on

00:55:28.520 it otherwise you got to answer for the fact that it's like no we don't think you're a very good

00:55:32.260 leader well then maybe it's time to go yeah sorry it takes so long to respond there's a bit of a

00:55:37.620 delay i noticed um it's uh it's just another example of people receiving people in positions

00:55:45.320 of influence or power receiving valid criticisms from you know their party uh and instead of

00:55:51.740 dealing with those criticisms head on they they resort to the racism sexism whatever you know i

00:55:58.280 mean i'm surprised you didn't accuse them of being transphobic and all the other stuff too

00:56:01.580 uh and so you know what does that say to to everybody else in the party who has concerns

00:56:06.920 about your leadership you've just called them a racist how are you going to pull things back

00:56:11.820 together after doing that like you can't call somebody a racist and then expect that they're

00:56:16.620 going to they're going to support you after a work with you going forward um so it's and you

00:56:22.260 know i hate to pick on the green party because they they really are kind of irrelevant i mean

00:56:25.580 they they're more relevant in bc than anywhere else i mean they're now 100 of bc now comprises

00:56:31.060 100 of the green caucus and there's uh two mlas uh provincially here as well and there were three

00:56:36.440 and they they held the balance of power in the last parliament in british columbia um but

00:56:41.440 this stuff is is making its way through all parties and i think the ndp should pay close

00:56:45.820 attention to this because uh and certainly i mean the liberal party as well it's a it's a

00:56:52.940 slippery slope it's an intoxicating road to go down for people in power because it it's so effective

00:56:58.100 in removing any criticism and distracting from any of the real issues that are being thrown at them

00:57:03.460 but it has a consequence a long-term consequence and and we'll see it play out

00:57:07.440 i think uh i think that's exactly what will happen uh at the federal level even at the

00:57:18.960 provincial level the the the issue will be very quickly if you can't if you can't keep your

00:57:26.000 coalition together you're not going to get power again or any kind of power even as a small starting

00:57:32.420 party it is a bit of a niche market when it comes to green politics we'll see how it all turns out

00:57:37.860 but i i'm hopeful that whatever alternative parties that are out there they they gain

00:57:43.500 better leadership because you're gonna you're never gonna get past go and collect your 200

00:57:48.700 seats if you uh if you're stuck where you are yeah no i think that's that's clear so we'll see

00:57:55.860 whether she survives uh the next few weeks and we'll see the degree to which uh other parties

00:58:01.020 sort of respond with their own crises like you know i mean i'm surprised that this hasn't been

00:58:07.060 employed more by jason kenny uh to try to distract from the sky palace dinner uh debacle um to some

00:58:15.000 extent it has i mean instead of calling people racist you know the jason kenny government has

00:58:19.140 sort of tried to describe his just his detractors as kind of like loony redneck anti-vaxxer types

00:58:26.740 uh which really is the same as calling calling people racist you're you're grouping everybody

00:58:31.960 into like this one uh sort of deplorable group of people and the first person that we really saw do

00:58:38.420 this to great extent was hillary clinton and we saw how that worked out for her in 2016 and so

00:58:43.580 and that's that's precisely what the notley government in alberta tried to try to do to

00:58:49.360 win the election in in uh uh when was the last one was it 2017 or was it 2018 didn't work they

00:58:56.280 lost and jason kenney looks like he's going to try to employ this as well we saw his main advisor

00:59:00.920 just describing these people in those terms as well so um it does have ramifications and and

00:59:07.000 consequences across the board it absolutely does well aaron i just want to say thank you so much

00:59:17.440 for joining us today and uh bringing us up to speed on what's going on both in bc and in the

00:59:24.080 federal realm yeah you bet you man i appreciate it i'll watch the rest of the show with interest

00:59:28.500 absolutely thank you aaron all righty well we're going to do do do do do uh there i am

00:59:41.740 stream uh we're going to bring on stewart parker right away uh there you are i'm sorry if uh there's

00:59:49.000 bit of a delay, Stuart. Just let me know if there is one. But in any case, let's let's jump right

00:59:54.800 into it. We'll start we'll start at the federal level and then we'll come back to B.C. and the

00:59:59.640 problem of intersectionality when it comes to sovereignty. Should you back the guy who says

01:00:04.800 get rid of Canada Day when you don't believe in everything else that guy says every other day?

01:00:09.160 But we'll we'll get we'll get back to that later. What happened? What happened with with the federal

01:00:15.280 green party and and this whole mess this week well um so uh last year um or the year before

01:00:26.800 last i was interviewed for a book by james marshall who is a green diaper baby it was a

01:00:33.240 history of the canadian greens and it was called what do what does green mean and throughout that

01:00:40.300 book. James was a lovely man. He's a very conciliatory, congenial, bridge-building kind

01:00:48.280 of man, which is not the kind of person you want to be if you're a sustained member of

01:00:52.040 the Green Party. It's not the personality the party fits. But anyway, good guy, but really

01:00:58.160 brought no analytical chops to his book. It's sort of a hate geographic book about the Green

01:01:04.000 party's inevitable upward ascent and the master term he used again and again in the book

01:01:11.120 that he used as synonymous with success was professionalization uh professionalization we

01:01:19.920 professionalize the party and that's why it's succeeding this step helped to professionalize

01:01:25.120 the party now this actually speaks to a weakness the greens had even when when i was leader the

01:01:33.760 culture of the party had already gelled back in 1993. And the thing is, the Greens don't

01:01:41.280 have a structural analysis of why they don't have power and they don't have a structural

01:01:45.680 analysis of why policies they don't like are made. So they blame all those things on people's

01:01:51.680 bad character or people's lack of education. People's lack of education and people's bad

01:01:58.080 character is the explanation for nearly everything with the greens um and obviously that that opens

01:02:05.040 you to some problems because any venerable political party has an analysis and there were

01:02:11.160 green political thinkers there are green philosophies out there they just never took

01:02:15.140 with the party itself so when i was um the first convention i presided at as leader of the bc green

01:02:23.020 party um this guy who to me was obviously a white collar criminal showed up with some crazy scheme

01:02:32.700 to make the party the government in two years um and what i found amazing was that all of these

01:02:41.100 otherwise professionally accomplished or effective people were just beguiled by him because he

01:02:49.180 promise because he used this language of professionalization i'm going to make us

01:02:54.060 professional and then we'll seize power because that's the only thing standing between us and

01:02:59.060 power now of course the first phase of professionalization is to pay the professionalizer

01:03:05.260 um and you hire him and then he's going to generate all this money to bring in more money

01:03:12.500 TO MAKE YOU ALL PROFESSIONALS, SO YOU'RE ALL BEING PAID. SO TO ME, WHAT THE TERM PROFESSIONALIZATION

01:03:20.180 MEANS IS LOOTING. GREEN PARTIES ATTRACT LOOTERS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY HAVE A STATE FINANCING

01:03:28.120 SCHEME AND THEY'RE GETTING A GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY. IN FACT, ANY ORGANIZATION THAT GETS A BIG CHUNK

01:03:34.900 OF MONEY FROM THE GOVERNMENT WITH NO CLEAR PARAMETERS FOR HOW THEY HAVE TO SPEND IT ATTRACT

01:03:41.200 looters the difference is that when the greens see a looter they fling wide the doors they go

01:03:48.000 this is a professional welcome in so you know first there was charles charrington back in 93

01:03:55.040 there was john richardson in 99 i mean he was dealing cocaine out of a steel briefcase for

01:04:00.720 god's sake but he talked he spoke the language of professionalization and he demanded this stuff so

01:04:11.200 Why did the Green Party even have this leadership race? Well, it had this leadership race because the party was turning on Elizabeth May. They were angry at her. They thought that they had finally tired of her leadership because the party had essentially got its one seat, got up to two, and then plateaued and managed to squeak through in Fredericton with little help from the central party.

01:04:35.780 but lots of help from people like Andy Shadrach, who flew out to New Brunswick to work on that

01:04:41.120 campaign. So Elizabeth May, faced with being removed in a death of a thousand cuts, I think

01:04:49.020 got the bright idea of bringing in some kind of empty suit. Somebody with no history in the party,

01:04:55.160 someone who had no support really latently within the party, had not been a member for long,

01:05:01.120 so that she could control this new leader and continue to function as the effective leader of

01:05:07.380 the party. The problem is that Annamie Paul is turning out a bit like Michael Ignatieff.

01:05:16.300 She is an empty suit, but an empty suit filled with hot air. And the sort of hubris and hot air

01:05:24.800 of Annemie Paul has made her someone Elizabeth May can't control. And so Annemie Paul has brought

01:05:33.300 in a small team of looters with her to empty the party coffers. And, you know, maybe, you know,

01:05:40.660 I don't know whether she seriously thinks she could win Toronto Centre or not. I have no access

01:05:44.900 to her consciousness. But this advisor, Noah Zappman, that she brought in, the exorbitant

01:05:50.120 salary demands she made of the party to me she is just one in a very long series of sort of

01:05:59.240 mid-range white-collar criminals who show up to loot the green party when it's doing well

01:06:05.240 and who the members celebrate initially is look at this outsider look at this professional look

01:06:12.120 at all the languages they speak look at all the degrees they have welcome in with no real like

01:06:18.600 that's one of the problems with green culture there isn't that mammalian sense of like it's one

01:06:24.040 of the it's one of the few things i really like about conservative culture conservative culture

01:06:29.880 is really values being able to read people face to face knowing what kind of person they are

01:06:36.440 looking past their credentials or their rhetoric or their titles and that's um you know that's a

01:06:43.640 really um it's a significant uh thing about the greens instead what the greens have instead of

01:06:51.000 that sort of um you know dogs sniffing each other mammalian culture i'd associate with the populist

01:06:58.840 right what the greens have is the culture of credulity where they feel that believing that

01:07:06.680 someone is lying to them is somehow a black mark against themselves and especially if that person

01:07:15.240 presents themselves as a member of some sort of minority as a racialized person as a sexual

01:07:21.720 minority or of course these days you can just state that you're non-binary and disqualify

01:07:27.720 different pronouns every couple of hours if you want which is basically what amita cutner one of

01:07:33.640 the runners-up in the leadership race states she does in the her recent interview in the tie-ee

01:07:40.600 so what's happened with the greens is simply elizabeth may has inadvertently welcomed in a

01:07:47.320 looter um and her team and um has realized she's made a terrible mistake that the looters are

01:07:55.400 uncontrollable and the looters are making it really clear right annie paul's press conference

01:08:01.320 lot of people found it mysterious because it was all about saying this was a this whole attack on

01:08:07.480 her was a liberal conspiracy stating that the conspirators were inside the party and the

01:08:13.640 conspirators were motivated by anti-semitism racism and misogyny a real trifecta of discrimination

01:08:22.040 accusations now let's be clear here there obviously are racists in the green party like there are in

01:08:29.160 every party in this day and miserable age. There are both closeted racists and avowed racists in

01:08:36.440 any party you'd care to join in this damn country. But racism is not the thing that has made Annemie

01:08:48.440 Paul unpopular. Her enforcer announced that he was going to work his ass off to defeat two-thirds

01:08:57.480 of her caucus at the polls you you can't have that right you can't have the leader's enforcer

01:09:04.120 announcing that his first priority is to defeat two-thirds of the party's own caucus that's

01:09:10.440 insanity and so obviously all kinds of people are now scrambling to fire her except that at

01:09:17.320 her press conference she made it very clear what the consequences of that will be that she can

01:09:21.720 destroy the green party brand in woke circles by labeling it as a white supremacist anti-semitic

01:09:30.120 organization this is how the um when i was on the board of fairboat canada we had to rebuff a

01:09:37.480 takeover attempt and key in that takeover attempt was uh desmond cole who did that exact thing

01:09:46.120 where the threat is either you capitulate to us and give us what we want or you will be branded

01:09:52.360 a racist organization in every city in this country and we will destroy your brand

01:09:58.280 well in case of fair about we called the bluff but i'm not but you can see with the green party's

01:10:04.520 federal council bulking right now they're afraid to call the bluff what is going to hurt them more

01:10:10.920 a continued looting operation or a third party campaign against them during the federal election

01:10:19.720 labeling them as white supremacists now you just i mean my view is you can't capitulate

01:10:26.200 to blackmailers looters etc you stand up to bullies that's what you have to do

01:10:31.400 if you can't stand up to her good luck standing up to the real bullies you know

01:10:36.520 you think adam if enemy paul is too scary to stand up to try standing up to royal dutch shell

01:10:42.760 you know try and stand up to your actual enemies who've got real resources and not just like a

01:10:48.840 small team of toronto-based weirdos who are lining their pockets with small amounts of money

01:10:55.000 i i mean i i think the old line stewart was uh this this aggression will not stand man

01:11:08.040 and we don't negotiate with terrorists yeah yeah no i think we have much to learn from

01:11:15.220 george herbert walker bush and from the big lebowski on uh on that front it's pretty simple

01:11:21.260 But one of the things that is really odd on the political left is its embrace of cowardice as a value. I didn't think anyone would ever decide cowardice was good. On the other hand, I didn't expect the Trump movement to embrace cruelty as a value.

01:11:41.160 So, you know, I guess it's just the 21st century and, you know, no one speaks English and everything's broken, as the Tom Waits song would go.

01:11:50.880 But I really, I really, I find the anime Paul situation maddening because none of her detractors anticipated her obvious move.

01:12:05.760 i actually went on twitter two weeks ago and said if you guys don't get it together

01:12:11.780 enemy paul will re-narrate this as being about your racism you know look at your watch there

01:12:19.220 we go right on schedule that's what's happening uh yeah am i wrong am i wrong no so the canadian

01:12:30.320 Greens, this is actually, I mean, both the Liberals and NBP are going to benefit from this.

01:12:40.800 I think what's, however, what's most interesting to me is that in the writing of Fredericton,

01:12:46.120 it will be the Tories. Because the outcome of all of this insanity in the Greens is that Jessica

01:12:52.920 Atwin, um, Jennica Atwin, uh, announced that, you know, she felt that the Palestinians

01:13:01.940 were being disproportionately harmed, which is a pretty, you know, statistically, um,

01:13:07.220 bulletproof argument, um, stuck her neck out, um, dealt with these threats, crossed

01:13:16.560 the floor to the liberals and then proceeded to apologize for all of her palestine solidarity

01:13:24.180 statements and fall in line with the very position the leader had been demanding she

01:13:29.240 take in the first place. Now, I think if you look at the vote in Fredericton, a bunch of

01:13:38.060 her vote was a strategic vote by Tories to get the liberals out of Fredericton. Fredericton's

01:13:44.560 a green town of the provincial level in new brunswick and um you could see from the last

01:13:51.600 result in 2019 that um everybody every every vote except for the green vote went down and that means

01:14:04.400 and i have this uh on good authority from andy shadrack who flew out there to work on

01:14:09.280 her campaign as a green um edwin was elected by a cross-partisan coalition that was um anti-trudeau

01:14:21.120 and she to go back there as trudeau's candidate i would imagine that many people even greens and

01:14:30.160 new democrats in that riding will cast a strategic vote for the tories erin o'toole may have wrecked

01:14:37.360 the tory's chances at pickups in nova scotia and in big swaths of the maritimes through this purge

01:14:45.040 of peter mckay organizers but i would say fredericton is uh i would put it near the top of

01:14:53.200 the list of tory pickups if they're smart in the next election and i think that's something that um

01:15:01.440 you know people have got it greens have got to realize and one of the things that greens don't

01:15:05.920 realize is people who vote for them are not necessarily Greens. Greens have spent so much

01:15:12.140 time condemning strategic voting that they have no clue when they actually benefit from strategic

01:15:18.960 voting, right? Like they did in the House sound writing in the provincial election.

01:15:24.620 And so they're in all this crazy inside baseball stuff that most Canadians don't give a damn about.

01:15:31.620 Now, I have opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, I'm sure you have opinions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but let me tell you, outside of the writings of Thornhill and St. Paul's, you're not going to decide, nobody should be switching parties based on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

01:15:52.520 um that's not a canadian issue fundamentally like it's an important global issue and canada

01:15:59.960 plays a small part in that important global issue but if you're a progressive here are the things

01:16:08.840 your organization will split over the uyghur genocide in china the um israel's attacks on

01:16:18.920 occupation of palestine um whether sex work is work and whether trans women are women

01:16:27.240 those are your four issues the climate doesn't even rate the economy doesn't rate guaranteed

01:16:33.000 basic income doesn't rate progressives hardcore progressives change their votes based on these

01:16:38.440 highly peripheral issues that divide them socially and make them yell at each other at parties

01:16:43.480 but i think the greens have got to get it through their heads that if they both those on anime paul's

01:16:50.800 side and those opposing anime paul that if they don't make this about something canadian

01:16:56.600 people are really going to turn off

01:16:59.700 i i completely agree i think they will turn off and there needs to be something fundamentally

01:17:11.580 different on the menu for that the federal election appears to be forthcoming i have some

01:17:18.780 inside baseball on that because i happen to know the organization who will be hosting elections

01:17:25.180 canada here in prince george they happen to be very close to me close to my heart in a lot of

01:17:31.100 different respects and they got they gave them a good deal on the space and they're making their

01:17:34.700 penny off of it good for them the point being that elections canada is coming to town uh in august

01:17:41.020 And now we know that there must be an election forthcoming.

01:17:44.440 What are the Greens' chances if this is June and in August we could be seeing ballots being printed?

01:17:51.180 Oh, I think, well, it really depends on how the extortion attempt works during the looting.

01:18:01.920 So the thing that will hurt the Greens the most is Adam E. Paul refusing to sign nomination papers of candidates.

01:18:11.020 What will hurt the Greens the most is them standing down in ridings, and that's the biggest danger they face.

01:18:21.260 That if Paul is still the leader and she's still in a war with the party, she could eviscerate their chances by simply pulling them out of more and more ridings.

01:18:32.740 The Greens became irrelevant provincially here in northern B.C. last election because they only ran in two of the eight seats.

01:18:39.020 there could be big bald spots on the map of Canada.

01:18:43.920 Now, the reality is that Elizabeth May has Saanich Gulf Islands until she dies.

01:18:50.500 She will be the heritage MLA for Saanich Gulf Islands into her 80s, I am sure.

01:18:57.720 So there's really only one seat left now, right?

01:19:01.400 There's Nanaimo and there's Paul Manley.

01:19:04.460 Now, my guess is that Annamie Paul is refusing to comply with a direct resolution by the party's

01:19:13.740 governing council to do a joint presser with Paul Manley and articulate the same position.

01:19:20.220 Annamie Paul continues to support the defeat of Paul Manley. And I think the easiest way for

01:19:27.760 to do that is not signing his nomination papers and appointing instead an unpopular strident

01:19:35.840 zionist in the nanaimo rioting um and uh that would be that paul manley would be done um

01:19:45.920 it's of course tremendously ironic because the israel palestine conflict is why paul

01:19:50.720 manley became an mp in the first place right his father um was an ndp mp he went to uh israel

01:20:00.480 during the intifada he uh he was incarcerated and um tom will care turned on him and basically the

01:20:11.520 party actively worked to keep him incarcerated in Israel. And so Paul Manley really crossed

01:20:23.040 with the Greens out of a sense of family honor because the NDP had crossed a line and sort

01:20:29.360 of tried to kill his dad. It's the same reason Adam Olson is a Green. The NDP rigged a nomination

01:20:35.600 meeting against his mother, he believes, and that's why he's the MLA for Saanich North and the

01:20:42.120 Islands. So these stories of like deep, deep NDP betrayals being met by these guys who would

01:20:50.140 otherwise be New Democrats. So Paul Manley will have nowhere to go. Having been purged by Zionists

01:20:59.680 from two parties um i i think i think he's he's done i would i would imagine he'd walk out of

01:21:07.200 electoral politics or good so what the most likely outcome is elizabeth may will have a seat

01:21:13.360 enemy paul will lose toronto center and after the election um it will just be a bloodbath who knows

01:21:23.120 for how long my guess is that enemy paul plans to leave after the election i think that once we get

01:21:29.040 into the election and there's a set of contracts to be awarded if she can drain the party's coffers

01:21:35.280 by the end of the election then she's gone if for some reason there's still a sack of cash

01:21:40.400 there then i guess the fight will continue a dreary outlook but i don't think an incorrect one

01:21:52.400 again we sometimes find bizarre uh inversions and and and conversions between people the same

01:22:00.480 things happening right now when it comes to victoria city council having tried to ban canada

01:22:05.440 day and essentially successfully unanimously voted down celebrating canada day in in what

01:22:11.520 they say is in honor of the 215 children discovered in kamloops i the there were western separatists

01:22:19.520 and sovereign is now fighting about this question but but now we have to wonder again to the same

01:22:24.880 point is who are your friends who are your allies who's trying to loot the party who's trying to

01:22:29.360 steer the narrative what's going to happen here okay well first of all um i gotta say a few words

01:22:36.160 about how victoria city council is covered because the bc legislative press gallery loathes victoria

01:22:43.040 city council they all live in victoria they hate bike lanes and the bc legislative press gallery

01:22:50.480 is one of the smallest most unanimous most vile groups of toties i've ever seen um right the press

01:22:59.200 gallery they're like the press corps was in the u.s right after 9-11 they believe their job is to

01:23:08.080 write down what the government says um and endorse it and so we see these characters like keith

01:23:15.520 baldry von palmer mike smith etc um they tend to articulate a unanimous view it's a center right

01:23:23.360 view but it's also a pro john horgan view given that john horgan's basically a center right

01:23:28.080 politician leading a former socialist party and john horgan really hates victoria city council

01:23:36.560 He hates them so much that when they put in new bike lanes he penalizes them by moving

01:23:43.920 government offices out of the city of Victoria into the district of Langford where he's the MLA.

01:23:51.120 So we have to understand there's a very small town parochial politics being enacted here.

01:23:57.520 So the legislative press gallery always has a friend and that friend is the provincial

01:24:02.160 government it's been that way since 2001 and the legislative press gallery always has an enemy and

01:24:07.840 that enemy is victoria city council and it has been that way since 2001 and so the legislative

01:24:15.280 press gallery engages in i would say um borderline actionable misrepresentations of victoria city

01:24:25.280 Council on a regular basis. Their thing about the John A. MacDonald statue was just an orgy of

01:24:36.880 hyperbole and misrepresentation. And that's what's happening with the Canada Day thing.

01:24:42.560 Now, love or hate Victoria City Council. You can really hate bike lanes and hate them for that

01:24:46.640 reason. But Victoria canceled the Canada Day celebration the same day everybody else canceled

01:24:54.240 the Canada Day celebration, when the state of emergency went into effect a year and a half ago.

01:25:01.300 No city is having a Canada Day celebration. The debate at Victoria City Council was about

01:25:07.940 making a Canada Day video. A video, not a celebration. There was never a plan for any

01:25:17.080 city in British Columbia to have a Canada Day celebration this year that exists only in the

01:25:23.020 minds of the legislative press gallery. No one else thought that was going to happen.

01:25:29.180 So the issue was Victoria ordered up a video. The video is half made. The video sounds tone

01:25:37.980 deaf and insensitive in light of what happened in Kamloops. So they went, oh, no, we got to

01:25:44.140 commission a new video. So they went, hey, can we get a new video? And the video people said,

01:25:49.180 You think we can get that done in two weeks? You're nuts. We'll make you a new video, but

01:25:55.340 it's not getting done in two weeks, guys. The Victorian City Council went, ah, geez.

01:26:00.380 And, of course, they all knew what was going to happen. They all knew that Vaughn Palmer and Keith

01:26:04.700 Baldry and all these people who don't like the bike lanes were going to do their usual thing

01:26:09.580 and set their hair on fire and massively exaggerate what is essentially a screw-up about a video

01:26:19.620 that probably they should never have ordered in the first place.

01:26:24.100 So, yeah, I just, I step back and I look at this nonsense and, you know, I would say that

01:26:34.620 has been the rule for everything that's happened in the city of Victoria since 2017. There has been

01:26:43.100 an often veil, and that's why the council was unanimous, the left lost its majority on Victoria

01:26:49.980 City Council in a by-election last summer. So the center-right currently has a majority on

01:26:58.140 Victoria City Council, and the council voted unanimously. It's not because center-right people

01:27:03.740 in Victoria are crazy, it's because central right people in Victoria understand the term video

01:27:10.300 production deadline the same way left-wing people understand the term video production deadline.

01:27:16.620 So, you know, it's like this bloody John A. MacDonald statue. Oh, no, they're destroying

01:27:21.660 our history. Oh, really? When do we put it up? 1983. Uh-huh. And what's happening to it? Oh,

01:27:27.740 we're moving it into another building. Right. We've erased history and destroyed John A. MacDonald.

01:27:34.220 No, I think moving statues around is a normal thing. Even taking them down is pretty normal.

01:27:41.740 Protest movements have been toppling statues since the fall of the Persian Empire. That's

01:27:47.260 what you do. That's what protest movements do. They knock statues over. You may not like it,

01:27:53.660 but the history is not the statue. The history is the moment the statue is knocked over. That's

01:27:59.020 what history is as a historian, I say. I have never used statues to do history,

01:28:04.460 nor has anyone else I know. Statues are nice to look at. They are neat. I really like that statue

01:28:09.500 on the Nanaimo sea wall because the late mayor Frank Ney's right hand, the inside of the hand

01:28:16.860 is the shape of a mickey of Captain Morgan, which is what he used to wander the city wearing a

01:28:23.180 pirate hat drinking Captain Morgan out of his right hand. So you can put your empty Captain

01:28:30.140 Morgan in his hand. That's a good statue in my view. But the Victoria press gallery people

01:28:37.980 lead a little bit too comfortable a life. And that's always like the danger of Victoria as a

01:28:43.820 whole. My friend Scotty when he moved there he described it as the velvet rut. And I think that's

01:28:52.060 very much you know what we can expect out of victoria is our endless tempests in a teapot

01:28:59.180 because after all victoria understands itself to be the afternoon tea capital of canada

01:29:13.900 in in a land where there is no more afternoon tea like it just it's just perfect well actually

01:29:20.140 people in Victoria, it's like they're in a separate time zone, right? Everybody gets up

01:29:24.700 at 6 o'clock in the morning. They spend three hours having brunch. They go for a jog. They go

01:29:31.300 to work. They leave work at about 4 p.m., as far as I can tell. Watch television until 7 and then

01:29:36.100 go to bed. It's a maddening sort of city to try and be social in. The only good thing about it

01:29:42.880 as the breakfast uh you know but i i don't go there anymore i i just it's not my scene as uh

01:29:53.440 bubbles would say in trailer park boys it's just not my scene boys it's not my scene

01:29:58.800 so uh yeah i think this um i mean i'm all for denouncing cancel culture but um that was that

01:30:07.360 was not council culture over there in Victoria. That was an administrative screw up. The other

01:30:15.760 thing is, my friend, he sits on Victoria City Council, he's so resigned. He's so resigned to

01:30:24.080 being misrepresented in the provincial media that they don't even try anymore. They don't try to

01:30:30.160 talk. Of course, with the city councilors, half of them, people like Ben, they've been blocked

01:30:36.800 by half the legislative press gallery

01:30:38.760 on Twitter. It's not like Twitter's

01:30:40.700 it's not like the press gallery people are even going to

01:30:42.820 hear their side of the story.

01:30:50.600 Ah, the Norris cartoons, those are damn

01:30:52.860 good.

01:30:54.380 Alright, well, what's next? What else

01:30:56.820 have we got to worry about this morning?

01:30:59.560 They really are.

01:31:03.920 Well, I mean

01:31:04.920 in general, the question

01:31:06.620 the question of forestry and the question of logging uh aaron was bringing that up a little

01:31:11.340 bit earlier i'd like i'd like your take on it we what what does what does sustainable logging

01:31:17.820 actually mean and and for that matter when we're looking at what's going on in bc's forest today

01:31:22.460 or what the fairy creek episode what what is the proper political solution here so that we don't

01:31:28.140 just mow everything down and ship it offshore we keep some jobs here but we also don't lose all

01:31:33.980 our resources all right so first of all let's start with some good news for once i'm very excited

01:31:39.660 about this new company in terrace that's going to build a small sawmill for terrace and then is going

01:31:46.140 to um and then is going to manufacture additional small mills for other um uh smaller forest

01:31:54.460 dependent communities in bc that look something good happened this week folks that's great news

01:32:01.740 that's about processing our wood here and the government didn't even have anything to do with

01:32:07.660 it um i'm not a private sector cheerleader by any means but without a doubt the best

01:32:13.980 logging news in british columbia came out of a business news story because if we can start

01:32:20.780 having small mills um spread around the province again that is our way back from the precipice

01:32:30.060 we are at right now. Now, here is the basic problem with BC forests. So indigenous people,

01:32:38.300 of course, logged and burned forests here prior to our arrival. And there are two basic

01:32:45.420 styles of indigenous logging. In the wet belt forests, the way indigenous people worked was

01:32:56.380 they would either remove wood from existing very large trees in planks and allow the tree to seal

01:33:03.060 over it. That's how they handled old growth wood. However, younger trees were felled in those

01:33:12.640 forests, younger coniferous trees, and taken out. But what the indigenous people worked to do was

01:33:18.200 maintain the forest canopy in a wet belt forest. So you had to have enough old growth trees

01:33:25.520 that direct sunlight was not hitting the forest floor so the forest floor remained wet so the

01:33:31.980 forest floor uh remained rich and um so the forest floor got minimal direct sunlight those were the

01:33:40.500 logging practices now um in many parts of bc uh settlers adopted those practices first

01:33:49.000 and um it was only with the arrival of industrial forestry in their community that they

01:33:55.400 began clear cutting. Now, clear cutting is a decent model of logging in a dry belt forest.

01:34:05.400 Dry belt forests do not have a canopy that screens light. So you go to a ponderosa pine forest or

01:34:12.620 something in the Okanagan, you have a hot forest floor and you have a dry forest floor. And so

01:34:20.260 when you clear cut there it simulates a fire and in fact that's why you slash burn which is not

01:34:28.700 always a bad thing to do you slash burn after a clear cut because in order for a dry belt for us

01:34:35.680 to regenerate um you need charcoal and you need light because a young ponderosa pine needs heat

01:34:43.660 and light but in a wet belt forest whether you're dealing with another pine variety whether you're

01:34:51.260 dealing with cedar whether you're dealing with a mixed forest whatever it is

01:34:56.860 coniferous trees do not survive their first year if there's no canopy because it's too hot

01:35:05.740 it's too dry and they and they are strangled by undergrowth and vegetation now if you let that

01:35:15.660 happen the problem will fix itself because what happens if there is like a blow down or a clear

01:35:22.620 cut in an old growth wet belt forest alder and aspen trees grow up within 20 years the alder

01:35:29.500 in the aspen create a seasonal canopy that produces darkness and cool on the forest floor

01:35:36.060 and then the coniferous seedlings can grow up and grow past the succession trees shade out the

01:35:43.320 aspen and alder over time and create a coniferous forest well we did not have the patience for that

01:35:51.680 and we had a lot of hubris so what we decided to do was eliminate was to clear cut wet belt for us

01:35:59.600 and eliminate succession trees and so what that is what that meant was the only way conifers could

01:36:06.600 survive is first of all they would have to be grown in a greenhouse or some other human environment

01:36:12.820 until they reached about this size and then they could be planted they wouldn't be able to grow up

01:36:18.120 from seeds. And then to prevent them being strangled by salal and succession trees like

01:36:26.460 alder, there's massive glyphosate spraying that we did. And the idea was we're going

01:36:33.000 to skip 20 years in the succession process and we're going to get these trees to market

01:36:37.900 faster. So we planted a bunch of monocrop pine forests and then the climate change and

01:36:44.340 beetle took them out so now we have some surviving monocrop pine for us they're tiny they're stunted

01:36:52.020 they have few animals in them because berries can't grow there because they've been sprayed

01:36:56.500 to death with glyphosate so the hunting jobs disappear the trapping jobs disappear the trees

01:37:02.980 are spaced too close together you see you can't hike there so the only economic activity that

01:37:08.740 can come from those forests is logging except up north the trees don't grow that fast knocking

01:37:16.180 20 years off 120 years you've still got 100 years to wait until you have something comparable to

01:37:23.220 what you cut so we have screwed up our inventory there are huge swaths where the beetle where we

01:37:32.260 had monocrop pine the beetle took it out and now there's just undergrowth there's just like sparse

01:37:39.700 undergrowth suppressed by glyphosate outgassing carbon into the atmosphere uh not helping foresters

01:37:47.300 not helping trappers not helping the environment so we've got a choice basically and this is the

01:37:54.180 consensus in the ubc forestry department the unbc forestry department if we want the forest to

01:38:01.300 function again we have to stop the glyphosate spraying allow the alder and aspen to grow up

01:38:08.100 and allow the forest to regenerate naturally and the good news in all this is that we are a lot

01:38:15.780 better at using uh cottonwood alder aspen these other deciduous trees in construction

01:38:24.180 so the good thing is if we let that happen we can actually be cutting deciduous softwood

01:38:30.900 and getting that to market stop the spray bc james stettles organization is great on this stuff

01:38:37.780 um and james has his own woodlot and he demonstrates what you can do with a fairly young aspen

01:38:45.780 um as a replacement for these conifers that just aren't going to come because you know what they're

01:38:51.540 being grown the spruce and the pine are being grown in mississippi next to the mills where

01:38:57.860 they're being milled in a much wetter much warmer much more abundant climate and they'll

01:39:04.420 they'll have two generations the system could work there but it doesn't work here so there are two

01:39:09.940 ways in which you can do long-term forestry in bc maintain the canopy and do selective logging under

01:39:17.700 it um which is what they should be doing on vancouver island and what they uh and uh the

01:39:23.540 central coast or you let the succession trees grow and you harvest primarily succession trees

01:39:30.740 until your forest is naturally regenerated now neither of those things says stop logging

01:39:38.020 right but the fact is those very large old growth trees we need to keep them because

01:39:45.060 if we take them out um it is going to take us 20 years to regrow start regrowing the canopy

01:39:53.300 and that's 20 lost years in the planting of new trees so um you can log in old growth forests

01:40:02.820 without taking out the largest trees that's how indigenous people did it and that's how

01:40:08.020 many settlers did it for a long time and that's how it's done in american national forests in

01:40:14.900 washington and oregon where they have the same climate we do so this is not an untested way of

01:40:21.940 logging this is well tested and uh national forests make money and companies bid to log

01:40:28.340 those forests this is a this is an economically competitive thing to do don't destroy the canopy

01:40:34.980 the canopy maintains too many values including tourism values i'm not thrilled with inviting

01:40:41.380 the world here because i you know i don't want to see too many of my british colombians in crappy

01:40:46.580 service industry jobs begging for money from tourists but i'm certainly not going to turn

01:40:51.140 tourists away who want to see pretty unique ecosystems that have vanished in most of the

01:40:58.900 world. So, you know, I think the thing we got to do is, you know, when I was in an environment,

01:41:06.020 I had an argument with Greens yesterday about this. They're saying, like, how could you be

01:41:09.780 advocating cutting trees? I'm going, do you know what the carbon footprint of concrete and cement

01:41:14.580 is? It's 8% of climate change. You're telling me you want to replace wood with concrete? You're

01:41:20.820 insane that's not responsible but the problem is the people who are having these conversations

01:41:28.020 are generally not people who um have a lot of information about the specifics of our ecosystems

01:41:38.100 because it's insane to design a forestry policy without knowing the nature of the ecosystem you've

01:41:45.460 designed the policy for. We should never have had the same policies for wet belt and dry belt trees

01:41:52.420 in BC and yet we have had the same policies for wet and dry belt trees since 1843. This sort of

01:42:00.580 ridiculous cookie cutter theory of industrial forestry that is copied from Sweden? Anybody else

01:42:10.740 accidentally spray their Ikea bookcase with a hose only to discover it has turned into a pile of

01:42:16.100 sawdust by the next day? I mean, who the heck wants to run their forest like the Swedes with

01:42:22.380 all the trees in lines and you having to make everything out of crappy particle board and meat

01:42:27.720 glue? Like, that's just, it's just nonsense. Now, when it comes to Fairy Creek, that's a,

01:42:35.440 Then you get into some other political questions that I think are very important to address.

01:42:43.360 What we saw with Ferry Creek was the government claimed to have the support of the First Nations there.

01:42:49.840 Why did the government claim that?

01:42:51.560 Well, because they'd signed benefit agreements with band councils.

01:42:55.000 And this is really problematic.

01:42:56.360 Like, it's one thing for a corporation to sign a benefit agreement with a band council,

01:43:00.320 where a private company says hey if you go along with this thing we'll cut you in at one cent on

01:43:06.320 the dollar but i think it's really irresponsible for provincial government to say to and if you

01:43:12.920 look at the benefit agreement they made with the bands on vancouver island it's it's it's revolting

01:43:18.540 it basically says you will lose your cut of these timber sales if you don't control your people and

01:43:26.200 prevent any of them from speaking out against this logging so it demands very upsetting levels

01:43:32.600 of bullying and social control from band councils in exchange for what one tenth of one cent on the

01:43:39.800 dollar from the timber sales uh one thousandth of the money um and so eventually when the band

01:43:47.880 councils realize they couldn't control their people anymore um it's not like it's the it's

01:43:53.240 not like they're the people who run the traditional territory they're just running a little municipality

01:43:58.840 in the middle of that traditional territory their response was oh to hell with it we're going to

01:44:03.400 lose our benefit agreements anyway we might as well come out against this thing and um i think

01:44:09.880 and then of course the provincial government finds itself between a rock and a hard place

01:44:14.280 because they've been claiming a level of support that only existed because they signed contracts

01:44:20.120 to make band councils bully their members for fear of losing services, which those members will now

01:44:26.040 lose. Ferry Creek is an example of why I keep beating the drum for land reform. The real

01:44:32.680 problem is the poverty of the people on those reserves. That's why they signed the benefit

01:44:38.120 agreements. They shouldn't be getting benefit agreements, they should be getting the land.

01:44:44.520 it's their land they live on it they're the neighbors they're the people who live next to

01:44:50.520 the land and as you know i would say that about a settler community too i think there are some

01:44:55.000 special responsibilities to indigenous people but in my opinion if you've got a bunch of dirt poor

01:45:00.440 white people in the middle of a forest and somebody else is making all the money from it

01:45:05.400 that is an equally offensive thing and that community deserves to control the land around

01:45:11.800 it and make money from the land around it and so you know fairy creek is you know it has become a

01:45:21.000 lightning rod and i'm happy it has i'm very i'm very proud of especially older folks who were in

01:45:29.400 the clackwood blockades with me and they were middle-aged then so i mean one of the really

01:45:34.840 you know we often hear about the role of indigenous elders we often don't hear about the role of

01:45:39.480 elders in different kinds of settler communities but just when it looked like the fairy creek

01:45:45.320 blockades were going to go badly i a bunch of seniors came forward got back into activism

01:45:53.160 and led the charge out to fairy creek and overwhelmed the police roadblocks and really

01:46:01.080 showed the younger people how it was done how you build a big common front how you behave with

01:46:09.640 honor and of course the older people are better trained in civil disobedience and so people like

01:46:17.180 my friend donna clark went out there and i just i can't thank them enough i think they elevated the

01:46:22.300 debate they elevated the practice and they stopped um some of the logging and they changed the

01:46:28.480 conversation i think what we need to do to honor those people is have a conversation that is rooted

01:46:35.440 in specific knowledge of ecosystems about where to go from here because uh and you know and that's

01:46:42.640 fundamentally the problem sovereigntyst folks are dealing with right that people are making policy

01:46:49.680 from far away without specific knowledge and uh the solution to fairy creek is to just bring

01:46:58.000 everything closer to home yeah to finally to finally have some kind of some some semblance

01:47:11.200 of of giving away power back to the local level uh and and to ensure that people can actually

01:47:17.600 make their will be done uh in their neighborhood as we kind of round out the hour here stewart uh

01:47:23.120 what uh what what are you looking forward to as the summer progresses i know that uh reopening

01:47:29.200 plan of bc probably isn't uh perfect uh in your mind but but as as we do come out of the covet

01:47:36.480 lockdown and head back to some other political questions did we learn anything have we have we

01:47:42.320 taken the right notes along the way absolutely not i i don't think we learned anything from

01:47:47.920 COVID. And I think what we've seen during COVID is everybody is eager to get back to the tailspin

01:47:54.800 we were in before. I think that in terms of who made money during COVID, that tells the story of

01:48:04.860 COVID, right? COVID is a period of another giant upward wealth transfer. And that means that we're

01:48:12.380 coming back to the same problems we had before COVID, but following an increase in the power

01:48:18.480 imbalance that is generating a bunch of those problems. Now, I also want to just, so the thing

01:48:25.320 is, I'm going to say something about the reopening plan. Like, as a politically informed and

01:48:31.780 responsible person, I oppose the reopening plan. As an individual who has friends, I welcome the

01:48:38.940 reopening plan my reaction to the reopening plan is really when people talk about voters voting

01:48:48.060 against their interests so they talk about voters as individual choice makers i think what they

01:48:54.220 miss is that both of those impulses exist in each of our souls right the desire to do what is good

01:49:01.500 for us and the desire to collectively rise to the occasion as a people. And you can't collapse that

01:49:11.240 difference. That difference is part of what it means to be a human being. So, of course, I'm

01:49:17.420 going to take advantage of the reopening plan and go and have a barbecue with my friends and watch

01:49:21.680 boxing in Vancouver on July 24th. I'm counting the days to it already. I can't wait. But that's

01:49:30.120 the point of making decisions collectively is that if we have a good political system

01:49:37.800 that speaks to our better natures we collectively will make a choice better than each of us would

01:49:44.440 do if we were asked to make that choice as individuals in many ways i think that politics

01:49:50.280 is like a wedding ring right if you want to if you want to hear my my real socialist defense

01:49:56.120 of like why it's important to use the power of the crowd to force me to do things that i know i

01:50:04.520 should do but won't it's it's the wedding ring the wedding ring shows how long we've recognized

01:50:10.680 that conflict in our existence because you solemnize a wedding after you've become a couple

01:50:18.440 after you've decided that you are only with that person and only for that person for the rest of

01:50:23.560 your life. And what the ring is for is to ask everyone else help you to be faithful. And because

01:50:33.620 you can't actually be faithful all by yourself. You need the solidarity of everyone around you

01:50:40.200 to fulfill your marital vows. And so when they see the ring, they throw in and they help you

01:50:48.300 be the person that we collectively want to be who is better actually than any one of us could

01:50:56.780 pull off individually without the support of those around us but that's and so i feel about

01:51:03.260 and that's how i feel about the reopening plan i'm i'm disappointed right i would have voted for

01:51:08.500 a plan that kept more people safe that prevented more people from dying but knowing that other

01:51:15.440 people are going to get to do whatever they want um and that i can't by myself produce those outcomes

01:51:22.320 that could only be achieved collectively i'm going to make a different set of choices that is going

01:51:29.120 that that that you know i understand will be part of a big set of choices that will endanger some

01:51:35.360 people and i think we i think libertarians and the taxpayer movement they keep trying to erase

01:51:44.720 that fundamental conflict. But that's actually been like the most important subject in Greek

01:51:52.720 literature, right, was this question, what is the difference between being a good man

01:51:58.000 and being a good citizen? The TV series Deadwood is entirely about that question,

01:52:06.240 to show you the difference, that you sympathize, sometimes you sympathize with the good citizen,

01:52:12.080 sometimes you sympathize with the good person but i i wish i wish we were in a space socially

01:52:22.480 and politically where we could talk about this as like a profound ethical conundrum that comes

01:52:27.920 from being part of a civilization rather than just the silliness of the debate and you know

01:52:36.720 maxime overdrive getting on the road getting himself arrested trying to free the people of

01:52:42.960 wherever the heck he was in manitoba all seven of them who came to his rally um you know

01:52:50.720 you know that that that that does not dignify this debate you know and there's uh

01:52:59.360 you know obviously there are many things that people prize to a tremendous degree in this day

01:53:05.440 and age, but dignity does not appear to be one of them. And I think if we had cared about dignity

01:53:12.160 a little more, our own dignity and the dignity of others, we might have been able to use COVID

01:53:17.360 to have that big conversation about, you know, the wedding ring theory of politics, shall we say.

01:53:23.840 uh here here someday hopefully we return to the to the great chain of being uh that we've lost

01:53:35.860 for so long uh stuart it's always wonderful to have you here on thursday thank you so much for

01:53:41.240 blessing us with your knowledge uh we'll have you on again next week and uh we'll we'll chat with

01:53:45.960 you then all right thanks so much nathan always a pleasure

01:53:53.840 Absolutely. Thank you so much. Well, we've come to the end of our time here on Mountain Standard Time that we have on Thursdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 to 11 Pacific, 10 a.m. to 12 Mountain.

01:54:09.800 And I'm your host, of course, Nathan Gita.

01:54:11.920 And just as one last shout out to our sponsor,

01:54:14.440 we're going to go back into Resistance Coffee.

01:54:17.760 Again, Resistance Coffee, they do not support woke causes.

01:54:21.920 They support freedom in this country.

01:54:23.680 If you can support them by purchasing their coffee beans

01:54:26.740 using our promo code of the Western Standard

01:54:29.720 for 10% off your first order,

01:54:31.940 you'll be helping people live in freedom and not in tyranny.

01:54:36.060 So that's the end of our show for today.

01:54:38.640 tune in again next week we're going to bring on some questions around china and money laundering

01:54:43.740 we're also going to be talking about what independence might mean for alberta and the

01:54:48.100 west and finally of course at the end of the week as always we'll have aaron and stewart on to tell

01:54:53.140 us what's what in bc and canada thank you so much for tuning in and watching this was mountain

01:54:58.540 standard time have a great weekend

Western Standard - June 18, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - June 17, 2021

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