In this episode of Mountain Standard Time, we speak with Aaron Ekman and Stuart Parker about the latest news in the world, and talk about the impending heat wave in the north. We also give our endorsement of Resistance Coffee, a locally roasted coffee company based in Saskatchewan, Canada.
00:01:42.480Resistance Coffee, of course, is based out of Weyburn, Saskatchewan,
00:01:45.400and they are locally roasted here in Canada.
00:01:47.980They bring in the beans, and they roast them here in Canada.
00:01:50.360And the big thing about Resistance Coffee is, of course, they don't support woke causes.
00:01:54.740So they don't skim something off the top and pay into woke causes that curtail your freedom.
00:01:59.280They actually go the other direction and help support those organizations that are trying to expand or preserve our heritage of liberty in Canada.
00:02:07.000If you use the promo code, the Western Standard, on your first purchase, you will get about 10% off.
00:02:14.540So that's where we're starting off with today, but we're going to bring Aaron on right away, and he's going to tell us what's happening in the world.
00:18:22.880And if she's advising on that, that's great.
00:18:24.580The big question, of course, is, you know, to what degree will this economist reinforce
00:18:32.140the importance of reestablishing our manufacturing base in British Columbia?
00:18:36.700because that's not really her bailiwick from my perspective in the limited amount that I've seen
00:18:41.780so far. And that it doesn't really matter how fancy we get in our investment strategy in BC
00:18:47.040trying to incubate tech firms, et cetera. It really comes down to manufacturing and international
00:18:51.880trade for BC. It always has. And none of the other industries, whether they're service or tech
00:18:56.020related, are going to do very well if we haven't got that foundational base in our economy. So
00:19:00.680more to come, I'm sure. More to come, I'm sure. I think that what occurs to me as I kind of
00:19:06.020listen to her one it's pretty clear that she's italian uh it's i i'm part italian too i also like
00:19:13.880using my hands uh and but but i think i think that something that it became clear as well as
00:19:20.060like this is someone who's a fundamentally an optimist uh a robust optimist actually uh when
00:19:26.120it comes to there there are these things i've seen it work before it can work again and we'll
00:19:32.420use that methodology it it's kind of it's kind of like the bright side of what happens sometimes
00:19:38.200in conservative circles there are conservatives who are very yeah very happy about what the dairy
00:19:42.700industry does right and like how we fixed all the dairy problems using the dairy industry or
00:19:46.800very happy about you know like or even maybe in a more industry side of things maybe of
00:19:51.300our manufacturing like to haviland like i'm that i when i put that hat on i don't put that hat on
00:19:55.840a lot i i'm usually kind of a bit of a dreary dour cynical uh you know kind of waiting for the
00:20:02.160apocalypse kind of guy in some respects but but when i do put the happy conservative hat on i do
00:20:06.980reference these things i mean there's viking air in victoria they took up all of de haviland's
00:20:11.220patents and they're able to manufacture all the old beavers and they still manufactured now a new
00:20:17.240twin otter which is still the single greatest two two engines stole aircraft short takeoff uh short
00:20:23.460landing eight uh uh you know uh aircraft they so we have these moments of optimism and i'm hopeful
00:20:30.480that you know and sometimes this is why i like talking to people on the left because they
00:20:33.700actually have a vision of of the future and they want to get us somewhere sometimes on the right
00:20:38.060it's hard to find that but but i do guess i do worry that there's a lot of government debt that
00:20:44.920can be piled up very quickly on on rabbit trails you know i've got a monorail i'd be happy to sell
00:20:50.080you if you're going to give me two billion dollars and again back to your point of public
00:20:54.180private partnerships i didn't understand why the bridge was told in vancouver i don't think i ever
00:20:59.720paid that toll and i i was playing the long game and i won uh it wasn't worth my time i had to
00:21:06.080underwrite the company that built that bridge why was i going to pay for it that was nonsense
00:21:11.200so i this is the thing that kind of hits me and and should governments own patents is that how
00:21:16.380we should do revenue should governments essentially not have any tax base they just have revenue
00:21:20.720bases because they own things maybe that's a better model i don't know it's a very it's a
00:21:25.300hard discussion it's a lot of competition yeah and mariana mazucato i mean she talks a lot about0.94
00:21:31.700the inefficiency of patents in our current system which is an interesting conversation she
00:21:36.660you know she talks about how basically the way a patent works is its government uh extending
00:21:41.860a 20-year monopoly and i think she talks about the american context mostly uh to a private
00:21:46.340corporation and the payback for that for the taxpayer apparently should be you know according
00:21:52.420to her would be that after the 20 years has expired then the the information gets to be
00:21:57.140disseminated and and and that's the payoff but you know her critique of that system is that it1.00
00:22:02.740doesn't really work that way uh but 20 years from now if you're talking about innovation in particular
00:22:07.860especially in the tech sector i mean 20 years from now it doesn't matter nobody wants that tech
00:22:11.460anymore it's probably been reverse engineered anyway um by somebody else in the private sector
00:22:16.660And so she talks about how really patents under the current regime are just a way to enforce monopolies and a way for government to award monopolies to big players as sort of a reward and a way to try to spur on innovation because it guarantees that income.
00:22:32.960Well, it does guarantee income for them, but as she shows through a lot of the data that she's put together over the years, it doesn't actually help innovation.
00:22:41.560She would argue that it impedes innovation.
00:22:44.920And I think, you know, whatever your position is on vaccines or the pandemic, et cetera, how vaccines were developed in this sort of tempest that was taking place at the outset of the pandemic was a great little microcosm of how our system doesn't really work very well.
00:23:03.220In fact, I didn't pull up the video, but, you know, the most effective vaccine in the world, apparently, I think it's rated at 92%, where the others are, I think, in the 80s.
00:23:15.440The most effective vaccine developed was developed by Cuba. It was developed by the public sector in Cuba and is basically being distributed at very low cost around the world, mitigated only by their limited capacity to produce it because they've been under, you know, five or six decades of sanctions, economic sanctions and blockade by the United States.
00:23:34.320And yet, despite all of those challenges, this tiny socialist country, 60 miles or whatever it is off the coast of Florida, was able to produce their own vaccine and was the first to get it out the door and start distributing it around the world.
00:23:49.340where the american companies uh they were they were working furiously to try to come up with
00:23:55.440a vaccine that worked and test it to the degree that they could but they're all hiding all that
00:23:59.520information from each other because their prime motive was not to help get people vaccinated
00:24:04.560irrespective of what you think about that their prime motive was to make a buck and to make as
00:24:09.220much money as possible so you know people can say well that's fine that's that's what their
00:24:15.060purpose is as private corporations pharmaceuticals and that's great I mean you can take that position
00:24:20.540but again I don't I don't deal in right or wrong I just deal in you know what we do and what the
00:24:26.180consequences are of doing it and and if your goal was to try to get as many people vaccinated as
00:24:31.740possible it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of big private pharmaceutical companies working
00:24:37.760in a siloed way from each other in secret not sharing any information I mean how much would
00:24:43.100we have benefited for instance if people have concerns about the side effects of these vaccines
00:24:49.220and there are some concerning side effects that are that are starting to emerge as they get more
00:24:53.500data like uh like heart inflammation is the latest thing that the cdc is reporting on in in in young
00:24:59.900uh individuals for instance still a very low rate and they still say that you know the possibility
00:25:05.440of you you contracting some level of heart inflammation from covet itself is a higher
00:25:10.680risk than from these vaccines. But wouldn't it have made more sense for these companies to share
00:25:17.620all that testing data in advance and everybody try to come up with a, you know, work together
00:25:22.180to come up with a vaccine that is the highest level of effectiveness and the lowest level of
00:25:27.340side effects, et cetera, and then distribute it as far and wide as possible. Well, if that's your
00:25:31.680goal, then sort of the capitalistic free market system is not the most efficient way to do it.
00:25:37.340And I think that's her point. How does that scale to the British Columbian economy, given that we're a resource-based economy, we're an export-based economy, we don't have the same kind of capital that another country has, that a whole nation has, that we can pile into research and innovation necessarily.
00:25:57.680But we do have a couple of potentially very successful crown corporations.
00:26:04.320And, of course, the one I always talk about is BC Hydro.
00:26:07.460So what I'm worried about in this case, and we'll watch it closely, is that they'll sort of get stars in their eyes about all these grand visions at a national scale that this economist will advise them on.
00:26:19.640And none of it will really be that applicable to what matters in British Columbia.
00:26:23.780But on the whole, I think it's far better than trying to bring in an economist like other governments have in the past who just advocate that they conclude from the outset that government can't do anything right.
00:26:37.040Government should just get out of all business whatsoever and forego any opportunity to generate any non-tax-based revenue and privatize everything, including health care and education.
00:26:50.180And that's been very disastrous for British Columbia, so much so that Abbott, from one of the former leadership candidates of the B.C. Liberal government, who was a cabinet minister during the time that that was happening, wrote a book saying, look, there was no plan and it was terrible and there was drastic consequences as a result.
00:27:06.160i mean i mean the the play the ways that we've done things in british columbia when it comes
00:27:18.680to manufacturing is something that needed to kind of happen when it came to the fast cat fairies for1.00
00:27:25.060example that that's i think that's i think probably the classic example of how you know
00:27:31.300we had all this seed money we obviously had this innovation uh and and the idea was sound in in so
00:27:37.880far as hey who doesn't want to get to the island a little bit faster but of course uh certain
00:27:42.820certain elements of society were kind of wondering about the tidal wave that was headed their
00:27:47.440direction for their nice little spot on uh the various islands and the inside passage all the
00:27:52.640mansion owners will will innovation always be stymied by kind of nimbyism yeah yeah yeah will
00:28:01.060it always be stymied by nimbyism uh i mean there will always be nimbies uh but the the degree to
00:28:08.980which they're effective uh is the degree to which government feels like they have a mandate to carry
00:28:13.300out what they're doing in terms of the fast ferries i mean i i always thought i was actually
00:28:17.740in japan at the time so i was a bit out of the media bubble on it but looking at it from outside
00:28:21.480not being subjected to sort of the political messaging that was coming from the opposition
00:28:25.120at the time on it i thought well why don't you just slow the ferries down when they're coming
00:28:30.760into port like you know it it just seemed kind of silly or you know like if you if you have a
00:28:38.600property that a multi-million dollar property on the banks of of the ocean coming in on horseshoe
00:28:43.820bay or any any of these ferry terminals that is going to be damaged significantly from the wake
00:28:49.060made by by a ferry i think you probably need to invest in some flood mitigation measures for your
00:28:56.660property because there's much bigger tidal waves if there's potential if there's an earthquake just
00:29:01.280off the coast like what we saw in Fukushima. So it always seemed like just a bizarre attempt to
00:29:07.040just try to take a shot at that government who, from my perspective, irrespective of how much
00:29:12.320they spent, were doing the right thing and trying to manufacture boats in British Columbia. That was
00:29:16.940absolutely what we should have done and it's absolutely what we should be doing now. And my
00:29:20.980frustration with the BCNDB government, despite them having talked about moving towards re-establishing
00:29:26.520shipbuilding in british columbia again is they haven't done it uh and and they don't appear to
00:29:31.100be uh moving in that direction um anyway that's you know that's that's for a historical episode
00:29:38.100not necessarily this one um there is a little sorry there is a little bit of uh delay in your
00:29:43.980mic now as well so sorry if i uh interject at what seems like an in or opportune time but i'd like to
00:29:49.220move on to the another another story just very very quickly i won't spend too much time on this
00:29:54.060But it's also a follow-up to what we've previously reported on.
00:29:57.900Folks will remember, perhaps, when I reported a few weeks ago, that a prominent new Democrat,
00:30:05.160federally, by the name of Avi Lewis, who also happens to be married to Naomi Klein,
00:30:10.540who many would argue is even more prominent.
00:30:12.760These are the two folks that sort of co-authored the, what do they call it, the Leap Manifesto,
00:30:17.920I think back in 2015 which was introduced at the NDP convention in Edmonton where Tom Mulcair was
00:30:25.940politically assassinated. He announced a few weeks ago that he was going to seek the nomination for
00:30:36.580the NDP in West Vancouver Sea to Sky country which is probably the most affluent riding
00:30:42.520in the province and I guess they were I don't know if they're already living out here but
00:30:47.160they're coming out from Toronto to do it so the latest announcement is both of
00:30:51.180them both Naomi Klein and Abby Lewis let me just share the screen here have0.92
00:30:56.780landed very look what looks like very plum gigs at the University of British
00:31:03.600Columbia geography department so is that coming up
00:31:17.160there's a delay on your mic so i can't see i can't get nowhere we got her okay good uh so
00:31:25.280so this struck me as rather interesting because you know it looks like there's going to be an
00:31:31.320election uh announced any month here by this year i mean all the signs seem to be pointing
00:31:37.720to trudeau wanting to pull the trigger on election abby lewis has already announced he's going to run
00:31:42.520Um, and then he gets hired at the UBC geography department and along with his partner wife,
00:33:12.980We're thrilled to welcome Naomi and Avi to UBC to advance the urgent social, political, and economic changes necessary to address the climate crisis, says Gage Averill, dean of UBC's Faculty of Arts.
00:33:24.060Quote, this is a critical moment for the future of our planet, and we are committed to highlighting climate justice in all of our priorities.
00:33:33.820So, I mean, this is interesting to me in that it doesn't sound like they're going to be doing any research, right?
00:33:39.500Like the dean comes right out and says they're here to advance urgent social and political economic changes necessary to address the climate crisis.
00:33:47.060So he's basically saying we've hired them as advocates.
00:33:49.840uh and he's already like i mean my understanding of you know the academy and and in particular
00:33:58.300science is you're supposed to you're not supposed to come up with a with a conclusion first and then
00:34:04.080go search for research to prove it you're supposed to do the research and then make your conclusion
00:34:08.480based on what the research produces and here you have the dean of um of the faculty of arts
00:34:14.360already saying you know this is the state we're in and we're hiring advocates to come in advance
00:34:21.180to advocate for it so I found that interesting and then the whole thing is sort of about mostly
00:34:29.600about Naomi Klein because she's higher profile but then it finally gets around to saying what
00:34:36.480Abby Lewis will be doing at the Department of Geography at UBC it says he will join the
00:34:41.580university in july is a part-time faculty member so that answers a few questions i guess it's just
00:34:45.480part-time so maybe he can do this and other things and will teach courses focusing on social
00:34:50.320and political change communication and documentary filmmaking which to me um i don't know like i'm
00:34:57.880not a i'm not a scientist i'm not an academic i'm certainly not a geographer uh i don't fully
00:35:04.840understand how those kind of classes are are going to relate well to the department of geography
00:35:11.100at ubc um and as far as i can tell i'm probably the only person at this point who said anything
00:35:18.140that's slightly critical of this decision terry um because the response as i saw the story come over
00:35:27.420uh the newswire on twitter anyway was just like universal uh celebration that these two high
00:35:33.900profile folks are going to be joining uh the ubc faculty and so everybody seems happy that
00:35:40.060that these folks are coming out but to me it's just like you know do they need to work at a
00:35:44.860university to advocate like why wouldn't they work for for some environmental organization
00:35:49.100or something like that and would you pay for these classes i i guess people will i mean you know
00:35:54.940they'll probably be packed classes but it just struck me as slightly i mean nepotistic is not
00:36:00.300the right word but it just you know i remember i i used to complain years ago about how you know
00:36:05.900bosses and the rich and the and the conservative elite in my mind always seem to land on their feet
00:36:12.460you know they always they never really had any trouble getting any jobs or anything like that
00:36:16.460and things are starting to change a little bit and you've certainly got you know these increased
00:36:20.960number of instances where people who are definitely sort of the liberal elite in Canada seem to have
00:36:25.960no trouble getting pretty plum jobs even under conditions where you know no private sector
00:36:31.040employer would probably hire them under those conditions like why would you hire somebody who's
00:36:35.280gonna gonna run off to an election in a few months um kind of thing and why would you hire
00:36:40.380both him and his and his wife like and put them in the same department i mean it the universities
00:36:47.080what can i say it it definitely seems to me that that i they always seem to find a place to be
00:36:54.680don't they they land on their feet and like again to your point i didn't realize that you know
00:37:01.780groundbreaking documentary filmmaking was the purview of the geography department of ubc i
00:37:09.020didn't i didn't realize that the geography department of ubc was going to become the next
00:37:13.780pbs and we were going to do the next set of ken burns revolutionary ways of looking at the civil
00:37:21.740strife over canadian climate change i this is getting a little out of hand to put it politely
00:37:28.240and and but this is the nature it's funny because you're getting to see it kind of from the right
00:37:32.360wing perspective now because that is kind of how like the run-of-the-mill working class right wing
00:37:37.740or hardware store right wing or hardware store conservative you know they just kind of look up
00:37:42.240from their coffee and and the chat they were having with their friends and they look over
00:37:45.880and they see on the tv that somebody who was in one glitzy place is now in another glitzy place
00:37:51.780and there was no delay in between they didn't have to go on ei they didn't have to sell anything
00:37:56.740They didn't have to move towns or they did move towns.
00:37:59.380It doesn't really matter if you're in downtown Toronto, downtown Vancouver, the same restaurants, the same people, the same sort of political milieu.
00:38:06.840So and then he just goes back to his coffee and goes, well, yep, that's the way of the world.
00:38:10.840Like, well, I'll go pay for my sins on my cigarettes, because that's what that's the sin of the world.
00:38:18.220The taxes I should pay on my gas, my cigarettes, my beer, my milk.
00:38:23.540that's that's where the sinning's happening so i'll go do that now i'll see you later
00:38:27.620well it's also it's also working class uh left-wing union members who look at this stuff
00:38:35.460and they just shake their heads and and it's not just because these people get these plum jobs
00:38:39.580universities i think as you say you know working class people however they vote whatever their
00:38:44.600political leanings i mean they just look at this stuff with disdain because it doesn't relate to
00:38:48.820them at all but they also catch wind of what these people are saying and so the first the first
00:38:53.900problem I think is this this tendency for universities now to be training activists rather
00:38:59.840than uh training people um and like I would argue that universities shouldn't even just be training
00:39:08.440academics that's my that's one of my criticisms of universities is that they're they see themselves
00:39:13.180as training more academics well we don't like I would argue like there's a lot of people go to
00:39:19.160university we don't need that many academics like in fact the economy can't sustain that many
00:39:24.040academics we need people actually doing work right we don't need to train more people to be teaching
00:39:29.420in universities um we do but we do need you know I mean people do need to be trained both in the
00:39:34.940humanities and the sciences that also work in other areas of the of the economy and society
00:39:39.520probably what we don't need is universities training activists and it's not that we don't
00:39:44.720need activists or that activists don't need to be trained it's just why would we use universities to
00:39:50.740train activists uh and and i'm not saying that people shouldn't be activists while they're on
00:39:56.020campus i mean i was like the most notorious in in my day student activist i've been expelled from
00:40:02.040three universities in two countries uh and and one of which was for organizing a student union
00:40:08.200overseas. So I'm not criticizing activism on university campuses, but I didn't get my activism
00:40:14.080from university. I got my activism from my own politics and my own experience, etc. And I played
00:40:23.000out those activist sort of plays at university because that's where I was. And that's sort of
00:40:29.380where students do it, right? And then when you get out of university, you realize, well, the world's
00:40:33.680a lot bigger than my, you know, the, the lunchroom at the university where I held a rally or something
00:40:38.820like that. Uh, and, and that's, that's fine. But when you're, when you're bringing people on that
00:40:43.960are like, they don't even hide it anymore. They're not even talking about the research that they're
00:40:47.140going to do or how they're going to contribute, um, to the university in any academic matter.
00:40:51.940They're, they're literally just coming out and saying, we're going to advocate for, uh, the kind
00:40:56.460of climate justice that we think is necessary. And I might not even disagree with them in terms
00:41:01.300of their analysis on some of that stuff. Although I mean, I do actually on a fair bit. But it's I
00:41:06.680mean, universities are really struggling to maintain credibility in the eyes of the communities
00:41:11.200that they're in, especially working class folks. And this is not a way to help them maintain any
00:41:16.520credibility. So I didn't want to spend too much time on on these guys. But it's just one of those
00:41:20.560things to bookmark. So people are aware of it, I think. I think you're right. And and the other
00:41:26.060thing to kind of note here is that there might be nothing weaker than the political elite so i'm
00:41:33.240just speaking to anybody out there right now who is part of this nexus uh that thinks that if you
00:41:38.940get the right celebrities on side you get the right speakers on side bring the right keynote
00:41:43.220people on side then you can build a political movement that's nonsense these people all need
00:41:48.500to be paid they all need to be pampered they all need to be perfectly handled and they are some of
00:41:53.280weakest people on planet earth so so if you're trying to build a movement this is not where to
00:41:59.520park that boat find somebody else these guys are going to get lost in the tidal wave uh let's let's
00:42:05.040get into actually uh the point that you were bringing up earlier uh you said that you wanted
00:42:08.960to address the changes when it comes to bc uh cannabis sales i was just making a joke about
00:42:14.000sin taxes two seconds ago why don't you why don't you bring us up to speed on what's happening there
00:42:19.200yeah just a quick report because some of the numbers have come out um from the bc government's
00:42:24.640venture uh foray into into bc cannabis sales over the last couple of years so i just thought people
00:42:29.680might be interested to see how they're doing because anecdotally what we've known uh and when
00:42:34.480i say anecdotally i just mean from the people that i talk to that are that are buying weed from
00:42:39.120places other than government uh cannabis stores is a lot of people were kind of resistant to buy
00:42:44.800cannabis from government store for a number of different reasons and so anecdotally you know
00:42:50.100what the theory was is that the government cannabis stores weren't doing that well
00:42:54.240that the private sector was doing much better and you might think that if you look at some of
00:43:00.260the base numbers so in 2019 there were 128 private cannabis stores in British Columbia
00:43:08.600I'm not sure whether that marks an increase or a decrease over 2018, because a lot of volatility happened around that time.
00:43:16.240And that, you know, there was a period of time, especially in Vancouver, when Harper was still prime minister, where the federal government was adamant that it was illegal for any cannabis store to exist.
00:43:27.160the government or sorry the municipal government in Vancouver took a very different tact and
00:43:32.860decided partially because they're under their own city charter which is separate from anything else
00:43:38.120in British Columbia in particular and they've got their own police department etc that there was a
00:43:43.780bit of a gray area there and so for that particular point in time they were essentially kind of turning
00:43:48.540a blind eye to the number of cannabis stores that cropped up when the federal changes finally came
00:43:53.360in under the liberal government and things were a bit more legal, Vancouver took the interesting
00:43:58.220tact of basically shutting down or at least refusing to register or legitimize any of the
00:44:03.980existing cannabis stores that had been set up. And so the private sector sort of had to redo
00:44:11.520itself. They had to start over again. And so it took them a little while to get going. But from
00:44:16.3202019 to 2020, the number of private stores in BC increased from 128 to 270. So that's a big
00:44:25.860increase, right? It's over a doubling of the number of stores. The number of government stores
00:44:32.320also increased as they were building new stores. So that's predictable from 11 to 25. So also a
00:44:41.580doubling over a doubling of the number of stores, but you think, well, because there's so many
00:44:45.680private sector stores, the private sector must be doing much better. But the report that's come out
00:44:52.000shows that on a per capita basis, government stores are selling on average about twice as
00:44:58.520much as the private stores, which is interesting to me because anecdotally we had heard that the
00:45:03.880traffic was actually kind of down. So it could be that, I don't know, the report doesn't get
00:45:11.060into any of the reasons by that. In fact, they say we don't know what the reasons for that are
00:45:14.080yet because it's you know the different areas report differently but what was most interesting
00:45:18.960to me is that the northern health region posted the highest per capita sales in the province
00:45:25.720which you know one of the one of the reasons for that might be that per capita there's actually
00:45:32.240more public stores in in the north uh i think there's two in prince george alone uh and they're
00:45:38.740in pretty uh high traffic areas one's in the mall right um so that might explain it but the stats
00:45:46.340also in terms of higher consumption rates and sales rates in northern bc mirror apparently
00:45:52.280the alcohol consumption rates in the northern region as well so apparently not only do we do
00:45:57.820we buy more weed up in the north we also buy more alcohol well that second stat doesn't need a lot
00:46:02.940of explanation i would just say it's because northerners are made of hardier stuff and we
00:46:06.580drink southerners under the table but i don't think that's a surprise to anybody um but it
00:46:12.020but more seriously i mean it also could i think some people would probably say well there's
00:46:15.860probably higher rates of alcoholism etc and some of the social is related to this stuff
00:46:20.260and the people that put together this report and it's it's out of the university of victoria
00:46:25.460uh they actually say look uh with higher consumption rates and the tendency that like
00:46:30.420sales are going up but not only are sales going up but the potency the thc content of cannabis
00:46:35.700being sold in the government stores is also increasing, which could lead to health issues
00:46:40.080that look, you know, the government's going to have to deal with and might generate additional
00:46:44.000costs. So we'll see what happens. I mean, it's, you know, there's, there's no real,
00:46:49.360I haven't got any sort of lessons or, or anything to lecture anybody on here or any real thesis,
00:46:54.160but I just thought it was interesting for people to sort of take a look at sort of,
00:46:59.000you know how it's progressing um and and the bigger question for me is you know for those
00:47:05.800who don't like buying from government stores you know what's the rationale right like uh for me i'm
00:47:12.020like i'm a i'm a crown corporation guy i don't believe i i think government messes things up a
00:47:17.020lot but i don't think that government as an entity itself is inherently the reason why things are
00:47:23.200inefficient i think people's approach to government and and and and particular uh
00:47:29.760politicians approach to government is what makes government inefficient uh dale says look at alberta
00:47:34.960we got a ton of stores here and out uh here in la we have um now does la is la short for lethbridge
00:47:41.740or is that actually la we have 39 private stores population 100k well i don't think it's la in the
00:47:48.060states i think it's uh somewhere in alberta but i don't know which part of alberta yeah uh so so i
00:47:55.280think what dale was saying there is there's a lower number uh of stores or maybe more maybe the
00:47:59.800same i don't know so it would be interesting to see what it is in uh but basically so that so the
00:48:04.700way the stats in terms of the amount of production that's being ramped up and again it's not public
00:48:09.100sector production either the weed's still being produced by private entities lethbridge thanks
00:48:14.100still. But in 2020, government sold cannabis products containing nearly 8,000 kilograms of
00:48:19.820THC, which apparently equals 400 million joints. So, and, you know, again, you got to be careful
00:48:26.560with these stats because it depends, you know, who's making the joints and where you're buying
00:48:31.100them. The argument I'd make, especially if you're looking at the private sector, if you're buying
00:48:35.280joints in the West Kootenays versus Vancouver, for instance, well, you might produce 400 million
00:48:40.080joints but the same amount like if you're buying from nelson it might be 40 joints because they
00:48:46.320roll them fatter there but it's uh it's it's an interesting uh interesting sign of our times i
00:48:52.280think and i just i thought i'd put it to you because i know i know you've got a different
00:48:56.180position than me on sort of whether it should be legal etc from my perspective from an economic
00:49:01.140perspective i think if the market is going to exist why shouldn't taxpayers uh get some cut of
00:49:08.900to try to lessen the tax burden and still be able to fund some of the services that we need.
00:49:15.160It becomes counterproductive, of course, if the industry itself starts to produce
00:49:20.000health conditions, which end up costing taxpayer more money on the health care side.
00:49:24.720So it's funny that you jump to that part of the argument right away, that there could be
00:49:29.920ramifications later, because this, of course, is the old social conservative arguments. Like,
00:49:34.440why shouldn't the government be into gambling because it'll create gambling addiction why
00:49:38.840shouldn't it be into alcohol or cigarettes because it'll get married to the revenues from alcohol and0.66
00:49:44.040cigarettes and i mean for us you could just expand the argument right so we have all these physical
00:49:48.840objects and i guess one activity gambling that are that the government likes to play around it
00:49:53.880and make money off it's like well what's to stop them from from if they legalize prostitution or1.00
00:49:58.680if they and if or if porn becomes something that they actually create revenue from there's a syntax
00:50:03.480on porn not just sales tax for a subscription to your favorite porn site no like an actual
00:50:08.520syntax the same way that we do it on cigarettes right so there's not there's not sales tax on
00:50:12.440cigarettes they're inflated by like 600 so why don't we just do the same thing with everything
00:50:18.200and so the thing is that government will always be married to its revenues and it does they always
00:50:23.080say well this is to cure a social ill you need people to smoke to keep government coffers topped
00:50:28.120up you need people to drink and gamble and now smoke marijuana to keep government coffers topped
00:50:33.460up and so they become they become their own dealer and loan shark and enforcer and addict in a way
00:50:40.680because they are all the parts of that relationship because they need the revenue if they don't have
00:50:45.980the revenue they can't keep doing things elsewise because it all goes to the general revenue there
00:50:51.320is no specified amount that goes to hospitals or schools or whatever else it all goes into general
00:50:55.740revenue then it gets cut up so it's i think that's where we social conservatives kind of draw
00:51:00.620the line and go you know what if we have to have this stuff let it let it be only taxed the way
00:51:06.120everything else is taxed and we'll have private industry do it and if we and if but better yet
00:51:10.540for some of these items just let it stay underground where it belongs and let the local
00:51:14.560rastafarian uh make his buck because i don't really want trudeau's lobbyists uh to carve up
00:51:20.220all of saskatchewan and replant it full of weed and just say that's it that's what we're doing
00:51:24.720with saskatchewan from now on it's just one gigantic weed farm from the you know u.s border
00:51:29.400to the pine forest north of prince albert well i'd love to see saskatchewan do that but if they
00:51:35.280were to take some uh because look they grow they seem to make good coffee so they probably would
00:51:39.840grow pretty good marijuana too but uh but but i would argue that they should take take some advice
00:51:45.140from us in bc and that if you're going to plant a whole bunch of marijuana crops don't plant
00:51:48.840monocrops like like mix it up make sure there's some biodiversity otherwise the weed won't be as
00:51:53.620good. That's what I would say. But look, your arguments are not wrong, right? That's the thing.
00:51:59.240All of these things, they have a potential social consequence. We know for alcohol in particular,
00:52:03.400there's significant social consequences that end up costing taxpayers a lot of money on the back
00:52:07.840end. And so the argument from the progressive side of the fence for public distribution of
00:52:12.240these things, and I'm a big advocate of the public distribution model for alcohol, is that you,
00:52:18.660and I actually was hesitant to see it opened up to the private sector because I think the profit
00:52:24.300motive in the private sector is far stronger than in the public sector so I mean you've raised an
00:52:30.220interesting point which is not wrong and that government can get addicted to these revenues
00:52:34.420absolutely government can get addicted to these revenues private corporations are far more addicted
00:52:39.700to that revenue which means because they don't have any others I mean that's their revenue right
00:52:44.060and literally if they stop selling that product they're done and so any of the sort of shady
00:52:49.420sales practices that would evolve or emerge because of the profit motive is going to be
00:52:55.340exacerbated like it's going to be way more intensified in the private distribution model
00:53:01.420and you'll like when would you ever get a private company that's going to make a decision to stop
00:53:05.820selling a profitable product because they're worried about the social effects that it's
00:53:10.620having i mean the tobacco industry is the perfect example of this where not only do they resist
00:53:15.340efforts to shut things down they fund research to try to counter the medical research that's saying
00:53:20.860that this stuff is killing us right they fund junk research and it starts the same thing happened
00:53:26.060with marijuana right the same thing with marijuana like marijuana doesn't help with als that's
00:53:30.380complete nonsense they just kept handing handing surveys to people while they were high and asked
00:53:36.540them if they felt like maybe this was helping this has been well documented of course you feel good
00:53:41.180while you're high of course you think it's working it's not working it has nothing to do with working
00:53:46.540it just it's an alleviation so it's not actually helping anything it's just an alleviation and you
00:53:51.420and you say yes of course i want more and then they use that as a statistic yeah look i'm not
00:53:57.020like i'm not a big advocate for uh uh for the medical properties of marijuana like i i'm a
00:54:03.580recreational user at best right like i don't i don't have any medical conditions that i would
00:54:07.660ever use it for i do know a number of people who do claim that it is quite helpful but you know
00:54:11.900i'm not gonna you know whatever i don't care what i do know is that it's not as harmful as alcohol
00:54:16.760it's not as harmful as uh cigarettes and it doesn't produce the same kind of social costs
00:54:23.300on the back end as those things do and people are going to buy it and if there are any social
00:54:29.320consequences as a result of it or health risks it strengthens the argument from my perspective to
00:54:34.280distribute it in the public model because it's the only model in which you can actually restrict
00:54:40.120distribution and pay more attention to making sure miners can't buy it like you know when i go to the
00:54:46.120liquor store if i go to the public liquor store they i'm 43 years old i get id'd all the time
00:54:51.400which is wonderful i love it but i never get id'd at a private store right and it's just like it's
00:54:57.080it's just one more example of how the public store is going to follow the regulations better
00:55:01.700because the profit motive, though strong, is not as strong for the individuals. There's no CEO
00:55:07.320who is worried about whether he's going to get his bonus or not because of the profit margin at the
00:55:14.080end of the year in the public model. Plus, you don't have to pay the CEO as much, so there's not
00:55:18.480as much waste. But again, I mean, that's the economic argument, and I don't want to discount
00:55:23.520to any of sort of the moralistic or or the social consequence arguments that you do raise uh but i i
00:55:29.040i brought it up because i i wanted to try to provoke a bit of a discussion uh and i i'm just
00:55:34.260looking at the time i know you got stewart coming on but i did have another clip of my one of my
00:55:37.860favorite musical artists canadian out of uh uh out of hamilton ontario though he's probably living
00:55:43.700in toronto now his name is b.a johnson he he comes to prince george like once or twice a year he plays
00:55:48.440uh at a number of different venues i've seen him at the legion most recently he's not everybody's
00:55:53.380cup of tea but he's got a great song uh on this last item that i that maybe you can play out as
00:55:58.260i take off and you transition to uh stewart but it's it's just been a delight to be with you
00:56:03.320absolutely well let's hit play on this thing and see what happens
00:56:06.780oh man i want to get high but i don't have time to wait for the mailman or the desire to buy it
00:56:14.700I don't smoke no government weed Cause I still get my weed from Steve
00:56:26.700I don't pay no tax at the dispensary Cause I still get my weed from Steve
00:56:35.700Send a text, say I'm here, garage door rolls up, Steve appears
00:56:43.700Wearing a housecoat, smoking a butt, shuffling in his mom's driveway
01:03:46.020I was asked to look at all basic government, NGO, academic scholarship on the Highway of Tears.
01:03:54.040Now, it would cost us approximately $10 million additional per year to upgrade the bus service to what the people there have been demanding
01:04:02.260since 2006. And since 2006, we've cut the bus service on the Highway of Tears. We've
01:04:09.300canceled all the flag stops. We've canceled the on-reserved stops. And the rate at which
01:04:13.700indigenous women go missing on that highway has increased. So, and we know what increases it.1.00
01:04:22.660It's a lack of bus service and the presence of man camps. But we're not going to pass any laws1.00
01:04:29.940that require permanent housing for workers we are not going to find 10 million dollars
01:04:36.980to upgrade the bus service to what it's supposed to be we found 100 times that much money to give
01:04:44.100annually to big oil we have a billion dollars a year we give big oil in this province but we can't
01:04:52.820find one percent of that to prevent some murders not one percent so um a lot you know what
01:05:06.500this thing i know that there you know some you know indigenous neo-traditionalists will denounce
01:05:12.260canada day but they were already against canada day um and this idea about these celebrations
01:05:19.300we're not having because we haven't gotten far enough out of covid to have the big public
01:05:25.380celebrations right like this is all completely hypothetical it's if we could celebrate canada
01:05:32.980day would we oh let's have a fight about that let's cry and distract people and then apprehend
01:05:40.580more indigenous kids and let more indigenous women be murdered um that's our plan and so i'm just1.00
01:05:48.660sickened by this obsession with ceremony i'll tell you if people looking back at modern canadians
01:05:57.940the word they would use to describe these endless apologies and performances of guilt
01:06:04.100right they're all recognizable they're what a man who beats his wife does that's what this is
01:06:11.940these are classic wife beater apologies right we're gonna cry and then the fact
01:06:19.540that like we've beaten the person somehow you know we're gonna cry about that like it's our
01:06:26.500emotions that matter it's our emotions we have to perform what this spectacle is is grotesque
01:06:34.820This is utterly grotesque. We are still poisoning the water in grassy narrows with mercury
01:06:43.140every day. Every single day. There's more mercury we're pumping into that water.
01:06:49.540And we have the gall, the gall to get all emotional about this and make this about our emotions
01:06:57.700while there are children in hospital in thunder bay with minimata disease because we're poisoning them
01:07:05.860right now so i just i have no time i have no time for these stupid debates about ceremony0.58
01:07:13.700they are disgusting they are narcissistic they have absolutely no business in the discourse
01:07:21.140what settlers should be doing is not having opinions about canada day and deciding whether
01:07:29.220working folks get to eat some corn on the cob and maybe light off a firecracker no no we're gonna
01:07:36.100we're gonna focus on we're gonna focus on condemning um regular people who want to have a holiday
01:07:45.220on judging them the horgan government should be judging itself the civic government of victoria
01:07:52.980should be judging itself the government here in prince george should sure as hell be judging itself
01:08:00.180because our current plan right is to destroy a homeless encampment in which indigenous people0.99
01:08:09.460are significantly overrepresented with no place to send them some of those people are gonna die
01:08:15.620some of those people are gonna die in this heat wave because they don't have a safe drug supply
01:08:22.580they don't have housing because we've destroyed it and they're gonna die and i just uh and we
01:08:30.740are going to be arguing about the bloody holiday so um i just i have no patience with canadians
01:08:38.580and their white guilt. And let me tell you, this particular kind of ancestor blaming,
01:08:46.900which actually doesn't even rise to the level of guilt because it's just shifting blame to people
01:08:51.860who are dead, this is part of the essence of Canadian whiteness. The tears, the guilt,0.97
01:09:03.460the histrionics that's how you show how white you are in this country and it's disgusting0.95
01:09:14.340it is absolutely unseemly and i am i i just i find the immediate turn in the debate towards the
01:09:24.260holiday uh indescribably disgusting i i don't even i don't even know where to put my anger
01:09:32.420you see this is improper whiteness because i'm furious i'm absolutely furious um0.58
01:09:40.820and uh i know that um you know that's um that is that is not going to register to public policy
01:09:51.300level until we start doing what we should have been focused on all along which is
01:09:57.780if settlers want to do something about this or non-settlers or immigrants or whatever the hell0.99
01:10:04.180you want to call yourself what we should be doing is focusing on the media outside of canada
01:10:15.540because canadian foreign policy is all based on the need to sanitize our image so we can continue
01:10:25.380performing this genocide here so all of the sort of histrionic liberal stances we take
01:10:33.860on the international scene every time we advocate for the rights of indigenous people in other
01:10:40.580people's countries every time we talk about how we're on the side of those pacific islanders who
01:10:47.380want to limit the temperature increase to one and a half degrees even though every year they've been
01:10:52.340in office. John Horgan and Justin Trudeau have increased fossil fuel subsidies, increased
01:10:57.620emissions, and then they do photo ops with Greta Thunberg. You know, this sort of nonsense.
01:11:04.340What we need to do is start hammering this country's image internationally. We need to
01:11:09.700start showing people in the rest of the world who we really are. Because it's on the international
01:11:17.620seen where people can actually visit consequences on this country like our mining companies right
01:11:23.380which are feared by indigenous people from tiara del fuego to alaska canadian mining companies
01:11:32.100are three times as likely as mining companies from any other country to employ professional
01:11:40.660rape gangs to commit sexual violence against indigenous women in the territories where we're
01:11:46.740mining that's the record of barrett gold and these other companies so indigenous people in
01:11:53.140the rest of the world are terrified of us as many indigenous people in canada are legitimately1.00
01:11:59.620terrified of canadian industry we need consequences to start hitting we subsidize our telecom sector
01:12:07.140we subsidize our mining sector we go out into the rest of the world and we get permission to do
01:12:11.380things because of this image we've crafted well we need to start hammering this country's
01:12:16.740international image so that the telecom sector starts to hurt so that the mining sector starts
01:12:22.340to hurt and maybe then the message will get to our governments that we want something other than tears
01:12:32.260something other than tears would be nice in this country because sanctimony seems to be a
01:12:37.220fundamental canadian virtue it's just simply because we're not the united states somehow we're
01:12:41.780just a better place i don't don't really know where this came from maybe you can help us
01:12:46.420understand how canadians decided they were inherently virtuous just because they weren't
01:12:50.820americans well i think there are two parts to it so one part is the international part
01:12:56.420if you're campaigning for better health care in america um of course you're gonna point to canada
01:13:03.940and you're going to dress it up as a kind of social democratic or liberal paradise
01:13:09.380so it is rational for american leftists to help sanitize canada's image so that they can draw
01:13:17.620contrast between the u.s and canada in a certain light similarly europeans who wish to criticize
01:13:27.300the united states by pumping our image up they can use us as a kind of fake rhetorical foil
01:13:35.300um so the illusion of canada has uses for people who are who are in a dispute with the uh with the
01:13:44.260united states uh at some level so i understand why misrepresenting us in this way is rational
01:13:52.420for people outside the country but we have to remember as we are approaching canada today let's
01:13:58.660talk a little bit about so it was um so stephen harper one of his plans i was really frightened
01:14:06.260he'd pull off and now i almost wish he had was um so it's actually like we have to remember that
01:14:18.260the age we've decided canada is its birthday all that stuff those are political questions
01:14:25.060as a historian i can give you about eight answers as to how old canada was or what day it was founded
01:14:31.700and they're all correct and you get to pick based on and so what and so what governments do right
01:14:39.540is they pick the historical narrative that reinforces the agenda of the government
01:14:47.380so stephen harper when he got his majority in 2011 he created something called the 1812 secretariat
01:14:54.420and the original plan of the 1812 secretariat was to celebrate canada's 200th birthday in 2014
01:15:04.580the day the war of 1812 ended and we were going to move we were going to change the narrative of
01:15:11.380canada because stephen harper believed that canada's values were loyalty um courage in battle
01:15:24.660um uh allegiance to the british crown and um and um uh and alliance making uh right because
01:15:37.540we fought the war with the Iroquois Confederacy as our allies. And, you know, and so Canada would0.52
01:15:45.700have gone from being, you know, about 125 to being 200 all of a sudden, but Canada would have been
01:15:54.980refounded with this new story, one that espoused conservative values or at least Stephen Harper's
01:16:02.260conservative values. The reason Harper thought he could get away with that, it's actually quite
01:16:06.900funny why the plan didn't work. It relied heavily on volunteer work from U.S. Civil War reenactors
01:16:13.760and the volunteer Civil War reenactors wouldn't do it. That the idea of them being in a war where
01:16:22.780they lose to the British was just too appalling. So he couldn't get the personnel necessary to do
01:16:28.440the original 1812 celebrations he was hoping to. But the reason he thought he could do this is
01:16:34.760because this is exactly what Lester Pearson did in 1967. He re-founded the country, gave it a new
01:16:41.160flag, a new birthday, and a new set of values. Because before 1967, Canada described itself
01:16:50.840very much in the terms that Stephen Harper wanted to re-describe it. As loyal to the British crown,
01:16:58.600as English, as stalwart in battle like we were at Vimy Ridge, blah, blah, blah.
01:17:07.160But the Liberal Party of Canada, one of its most ambitious acts,
01:17:13.080was to re-found the country for its supposed 100th birthday.
01:17:17.400Now, there is no correct date for Canada's birthday. It was sort of born in 1814.
01:17:24.600it was also sort of born in 1776 it was also sort of born in 1783 when the treaty of paris was
01:17:32.600signed um you could pick lots of years that canada came into being but the new but this centennial
01:17:41.000celebration that the pearson government pulled together replaced the old conservative vision of
01:17:47.640canada from john a mcdonald to john diefenbaker one language one queen uh all of that stuff
01:17:56.120um and replaced it with the values of um at the the of of lester pearson and let's be clear that
01:18:04.920lester pearson was um we know he was like an american planet he was largely controlled by
01:18:12.520the Kennedy administration. He was a diplomat who spent very little time in Canada. And what he did
01:18:20.840was he crafted a self-image for Canada that was consistent with our policies, with America's
01:18:29.160policies for fighting the Cold War. And America's policies for fighting the Cold War was to create
01:18:35.720welfare states in the countries of its allies so that um anything the soviet union was offering
01:18:44.280people in terms of social programs our countries would match so we were gonna we rejigged capitalism
01:18:51.720so that we had all of these wraparound entitlement programs that of course i think are very good
01:18:56.360but those um oh yes that's true the winning of the uh seven years war well done john um so yeah
01:19:07.000so there's 1761 1763 when the treaties signed lots of lots of potential dates but the values
01:19:15.400that we encoded in canada right multiculturalism bilingualism um this um uh and uh uh all of these
01:19:28.680sort of diversity politics that became the center and we retrojected that into the past
01:19:36.680to make that who we had always been so the pearsonian liberal state really in many ways
01:19:44.280our country as we know it, is just a little over 50 years old. It was effectively refounded by
01:19:51.300Pearson and Trudeau based on fundamentally different values than it was created with.
01:19:58.040And that's a thing countries can do. And I'm not even saying it's a thing they shouldn't do.
01:20:04.760There's nothing wrong with refounding your country. The United States is an example of1.00
01:20:10.420the danger of keeping a constitution for too long. It gets too confusing, too much stuff
01:20:16.900accretes to it. The system becomes inefficient. You know, countries need a good house cleaning
01:20:23.220now and then. So I don't oppose what Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau did, but I think
01:20:29.060it's important to recognize that who we've always been as Canadians is only who we've
01:20:34.740always been since 1967 and um you know i i like our canada day celebrations fine you know i um
01:20:45.860uh the best canada day celebrations before covid were um at the pne in vancouver and one of the
01:20:54.020things that was striking about it was you'd go down there and you'd realize you're actually
01:20:57.460in a different city than you thought you were because pne canada day is 25 indigenous
01:21:04.740in a city that's got about a 1% indigenous population.
01:21:09.740It was actually a great time to just enjoy our food,
01:21:16.240enjoy a good time, and mark whatever it was
01:21:22.500The P&E's Canada Day was masterfully non-ideological
01:21:26.380because it was focused really on the provision
01:21:30.300of barbecued corn, which is good stuff.
01:21:34.160And, you know, so I think that we need some adjustment on our Canada Day now.
01:21:47.300I think we're definitely in need of adjustment.
01:21:49.980But what we do not, what we should not be doing is what we appear to be planning to do,
01:21:54.340which is just have a big national cry day.
01:21:57.120um i think there is right a larger phenomenon going on in this culture of men not wanting to
01:22:06.880be men uh and we see it manifest in all kinds of ways and i guess my thing is like
01:22:15.480suck it up princess this isn't about you or your tears um why don't we try a little bit more0.64
01:22:25.220some values that involve taking responsibility rather than shunting responsibility to our
01:22:33.180ancestors. And there are ways we can figure out to encode this in our celebrations or in our
01:22:41.300marking of the day or what have you but um we have to remember that uh these these histrionic
01:22:52.980uh morning behaviors are not even what we're being asked to do
01:22:58.100it's what we're deciding to do for fear we might be asked to do something substantive
01:23:05.700something substantive in this country would definitely be an improvement upon our current
01:23:09.780situation because regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum it's feel it's felt for
01:23:15.100many years now that canada has been in a bit of a listless direction uh it in as you put it this
01:23:20.840the post the post cold war era has not been kind to people conservative or liberal progressive or
01:23:27.220traditional and and the question becomes then what is a proper way forward for this bizarre nation
01:23:33.520state i mean we are here on sovereignty tv for a reason and it and this is one of the only places
01:23:38.760we can have this conversation because the consensus out there seems to be everything's
01:23:42.360fine never mind the fire well yes and people aren't saying everything's fine they're screaming
01:23:48.460everything's fine in the way that people only do when things are very very not fine
01:23:53.900um well i think one of the um there are big questions to ask about how we think about
01:24:03.460pluralism in canada i think this is what it really comes down to is that our theory of pluralism
01:24:12.380is um underpinned by this ideology of multiculturalism and we have to remember
01:24:19.920who gave us multiculturalism multiculturalism is an ideology we got from the united states
01:24:26.740it was the official ideology of the National Association of Manufacturers. And it had to
01:24:36.240do with the National Association of Manufacturers tactics for breaking unions. So NAM was strongly
01:24:46.240in favor of people keeping their European language when they came to North America.
01:24:51.240They built streetcar suburb ghettos that were linguistically based. Here's the Polish ghetto.0.98
01:24:56.240here are all these things that was how we built company housing 100 years ago it was all ethnically
01:25:01.440and linguistically segregated and the national association of manufacturers gave lots of money
01:25:08.080to um multicultural uh to national clubs the swedish club the hungarian club etc
01:25:18.560and the reason for that was to maintain and magnify differences that people brought with
01:25:25.360them from the old country so that if your union went on strike you could bring in a bunch of1.00
01:25:31.360polish speakers you could bring in a bunch of hungarian speakers if the polls went on strike
01:25:37.200you go down to the black church and bring in some black people and this is multiculturalism was not0.99
01:25:43.120a state ideology it was the ideology of the right wing of the american manufacturing sector
01:25:50.240and like so many other parts of liberalism we forget that at its core is capitalist explication
01:25:59.840that that we we liberalism has been so successful in rebranding itself we forget that its main purpose
01:26:10.960is to unfetter markets to uh in various ways and um you know by making free trade agreements and
01:26:19.360the like through things like nafta that create investor rights and all this stuff and you know
01:26:25.040who opposed multiculturalism uh 100 years ago socialists right they we got our famous old
01:26:34.720labor song, Joe Hill, I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, the story of this copper miner
01:26:42.240in Salt Lake City who was framed for murder because he was an organizer. Well, if our
01:26:51.840present woke liberal consciousness looked at that, they would be giving shit to Joe Hill
01:26:58.640because he wasn't calling himself by his real name, which was Joel Haglund, a Swedish name.
01:27:03.840He was a native Swedish speaker when he came to the Americas, but Joe Hill wrote all of his songs in English because he felt that if the labor movement didn't speak the lingua franca of the people, it could never break down the barriers between the different races and ethnicities so that people could do something together.
01:27:25.940Now, I'm not saying, I'm not Maxime Bernier, I'm not saying like suppress languages or
01:38:09.220did nathan just vanish am i on live well this should be interesting oh there we go i was trying
01:38:16.100to correct my sound okay uh did that work better do i sound better now yeah you're you're all hooked
01:38:22.660synced up again okay very good i don't know what's going on over here but who cares point being that
01:38:27.600when it comes to when it comes to the canadian experience it really does seem like we we just
01:38:34.180won't talk about serious questions i think a case in point is even our socialized medicine or the
01:38:39.640cancel culture problem that we're having nowadays or you mentioned uh recently in a column that you
01:38:43.740wrote for the georgia straight that that of course there's the the way we filter out uh insurgent0.99
01:38:49.620candidates in every party canada just refuses to have serious conversations we won't be able to
01:38:55.240sustain the socialized system we have when it comes to medicine we need to change some things
01:38:59.040inside of it in order to make it uh more state sustainable and and at the same time canadians
01:39:04.900will spend 12 billion dollars on their teeth but then also have no idea what we should do with
01:39:09.700emerging i don't i don't know where that conversation starts but it doesn't really seem
01:39:13.700to matter whether one wants to be in favor of pipelines or not they can't have a conversation
01:39:17.900about it. So they do both at the same time. There's a protest, but the pipeline gets bought
01:39:21.980by the government, but you can't have a private pipeline, but we won't have that pipeline. So
01:39:25.600we'll do this pipeline instead. It's all nonsense. Canada is always talking out of both sides of its
01:39:31.140mouth at the same time. And I really think it goes back to that moment in 1995 when
01:39:38.220we only won that referendum because we cheated, right? The S side was going to win the Quebec
01:39:46.540referendum so we violated all the spending laws for the referendum and all and the airline
01:39:52.300companies and all these businesses just said just threw everything at um winning that referendum by
01:40:00.44030 000 votes and i unfortunately we took all the wrong lessons from that we talked about it about
01:40:07.720a bunch of issues that have been pent up for a long time and we nearly lost the country and so
01:40:13.700the response was to just to to push real debate away now of course some of this is part of a
01:40:22.640global trend it's just that it's being felt more strongly in canada because we were always a
01:40:28.820country or at least since 67 a country that prioritized symbol over substance we're now
01:40:36.080moving into a time when the world at large is increasingly prioritizing symbol over substance
01:40:44.460and so it's magnifying traits in this society that we're already completely out of control
01:40:50.400so one of the arguments i recently made is you know i might vote for the tory incumbent in my
01:40:58.340riding and the reason for that is this i've now looked at enough governments in canada over
01:41:06.100enough time to see that the more a government states that it's really important to deal with
01:41:13.220climate change the faster it increases its carbon emissions so if you vote for parties like the
01:41:22.340liberals or the ndp that say that climate change is a big priority they will frack more gas pump
01:41:29.460more oil and burn more coal than jason kenney the climate skeptic um so you're having these debates
01:41:41.460between people who say climate is really important and climate is not an issue but their governments
01:41:49.060are doing the precise opposite now i'm not saying that conservatives are trying to reduce emissions
01:41:55.380let me just say that people who are honest about what they're doing are less effective
01:42:00.660at increasing emissions uh that brazen liars are much better at that job and you know it john
01:42:13.460horgan increased fossil fuel subsidies by more than by more in three years
01:42:22.820than gordon campbell and christy clark combined in 16 years uh and so i'm thinking well like what's
01:42:32.260what's the point like look how am i supposed to make choices if the choices are not just
01:42:38.660divorced from physical reality but constitute the opposite of physical reality so everybody's doing
01:42:47.700this because frankly and i know some of your listeners disagree with this but i think we all
01:42:52.660know in our hearts of the climate's destabilizing and it scared the hell out of us it scared us all
01:42:59.380so much that we're all reacting in different crazy ways some people are denying the problem
01:43:06.900some people are yelling about the problem but the really scary people are people like
01:43:14.100horgan and trudeau with their false smiles who know perfectly well that they're committing a
01:43:21.060crime against humanity people who even in their own story aren't the good god like
01:43:28.260i can deal with a lot of folks on the other side because i know i can i can i can hear the story
01:43:35.380right that people are telling um they're the good guy because there's some kind of elite consensus
01:43:42.660that's screwing them and lying to them and and they're pushing back against that i can get behind
01:43:48.500that i i believe that about certain issues i just believe it about different issues
01:43:54.420but these folks who piously quote the science and then do the exact opposite
01:44:01.140i don't know what's going on inside there and i don't want to look but when you're in a society
01:44:08.680that's afraid to have a real conversation and canadians have always been really afraid of
01:44:14.160offending each other when you get too afraid of having a real conversation then it's these
01:44:18.920sociopathic monsters who end up in charge and uh that's not good for anybody now the capture of the
01:44:27.580canadian political system you did mention that that's it's the single it's the single most
01:44:32.400problematic thing we have a first past the post system which means there are only so many
01:44:36.800mainstream parties at any one given time right there's just a cap because of how the votes get
01:44:42.060divided so you can have fewer mainstream parties than you could in a european country um and all
01:44:50.040of the mainstream parties have the same provisions to prevent their members from getting the final
01:44:56.740say on who their candidates are. And my friend Gary Shaw, I remember I was the first person
01:45:02.920the NDP used this power on, so I was about to be acclaimed as the candidate for the writing
01:45:09.120of St. Paul's in 2009, and then the office phoned me and devetted me, interestingly,
01:45:16.680over a Facebook post about the Gustafson Lake siege in 1995, mentioning that the NDP had
01:45:22.860shot 14,000 rounds of ammunition at a group of indigenous protesters. So the party sacked me.
01:45:31.340And my friend Gary Shaw said, you know, they're saying it's over your past statements. But it's
01:45:37.660not. This is minority report. This is the NDP's pre-crime division. And that's what these parties
01:45:45.020run. They run a pre-crime division. They go through a candidate's resume. They're not looking
01:45:50.300for gaffes or bad affiliations, they're looking for a time the candidates stood up to authority.
01:45:59.820Is this person getting along with their family? Are they in touch with their parents? Have they
01:46:05.420ever stood up to a boss? Have they ever dissented from a professional body? And that's the
01:46:14.380information political parties use so the result is that only cowards can be represented in the
01:46:22.620house of commons people could go well won't one of these backbenchers stand up over this
01:46:27.740or stand up over that it's like no they're cowards because we because since 2003 we have
01:46:38.860systematically created mechanisms to remove from our legislatures anybody with warm blood running
01:46:47.420through their veins we have just we are we are creating a mammal free zone in uh the legislatures0.56
01:46:54.700across this country and it shows the distance the distance between regular people with normal
01:47:03.100personalities and the people representing them it's huge right you know politicians have always
01:47:11.100been weird people but especially in bc we used to celebrate that weirdness you know on and i'll
01:47:20.060tell you sometimes and a lot of people right they just want a politics of real people that it's
01:47:26.540actually more important to them to make sure that their mp is a mammal than that their mp agree with
01:47:33.020them about climate change. I might even be turning into one of those people. And I remember, like,
01:47:40.940one of my organizers back in the 90s, Mary Clarkson. Who had she organized before? Where did her0.99
01:47:48.060experience come from? She was a van der ZAM organizer. And she saw my propensity to say what
01:47:56.380I thought as being, you know, it's like, well, the ZAM's out of politics. I'll go with this guy.0.88
01:48:01.580he says what he thinks. And, you know, I think that if there's going to be some kind of political
01:48:09.340renewal in this country, some way we can short circuit this increasing delamination of our elite
01:48:16.300and our political class from the rest of society, it's going to be about something more basic and
01:48:23.920more fundamental than policy. This has become a kinds of people question. What kind of person
01:48:33.900are you? Not what specific views do you have, but are you the kind of person who's straight
01:48:40.160with people? Are you the kind of person who sticks with their friends through tough times?
01:48:45.500like and and we're eliminating those people from everywhere except society you know except the
01:48:52.780street right you can meet those people everywhere except in positions of power in this country
01:48:59.500because whatever is happening in the house of commons is just a shadow of what the hr industry
01:49:05.660is doing in our workplaces right people keep complaining about this critical race theory
01:49:11.260let me tell you none of the down rate mba management consultants who will do anti-oppression
01:49:19.340and diversity training for your school board has read any more critical race theory than you have
01:49:26.220these people are hr people who are taking a couple of buzzwords from some ivy league university
01:49:34.380and wrapping it around a project I think we can all recognize, the desire to organize workplaces where control is more important than productivity.
01:49:52.140Oh, man. Yes. Well, don't you miss David Icke these days, eh?
01:49:57.680Like, he makes piles of sense compared to QAnon.
01:50:02.680Like, David Icke's meta conspiracy theory about the climate, right?
01:50:06.700Because maybe people don't know David Icke's conspiracy theory.
01:50:09.400But so David Icke used to be like the Alex Jones of the world until he was just annihilated in the 21st century by people who took his game pro.
01:50:19.240David Icke had been a pro footballer in England.
01:50:22.140He was a huge success as a pro footballer.
01:50:27.680did sports commentary for a number of years, and then he became the leader of the Green Party.
01:50:34.220And then he announced he was Jesus. And then even the Green Party had to do something about that.
01:50:41.800So David Icke was thrown out of the Green Party, and he announced his big meta conspiracy theory,
01:50:48.880which is that the world is controlled by a gang of shape-shifting space lizards headed by the
01:50:55.280queen. And the thing was, this conspiracy theory could go anywhere because the shapeshifting space
01:51:03.360lizards were trying to warm the planet. They were trying to cause climate change so that it would
01:51:07.200be more comfortable for shapeshifting space lizards. But David Icke recruited all these
01:51:16.320people to his conspiracy theory because you could slap it on top of any other conspiracy theory.
01:51:22.040And so, like, there's a testimonial on his website from this woman going, you know, I live in Bristol, and every night I would fall asleep, and the entire city council of Bristol would come into my bedroom and rape me until the morning, and then they would leave.
01:51:35.180And David Ike would go, well, you know why that is?
01:51:37.680It's because they're shape-shifting space lizards.
01:51:45.000It really does get more plausible all the time, Sheldon.
01:51:48.120and uh so this became the meta explanation for everything he had actually solved that fundamental
01:51:55.640problem of all conspiracy theories right because my friend brian stedman used to take the number
01:52:00.60020 bus in vancouver a lot go down commercial drive and he has one of those really open faces
01:52:05.340so he would say um so um guys would just sit down next to him and get into their new conspiracy
01:52:13.320theory. It just happens all the time over there. And so he had a tactic for dealing with it. He'd
01:52:19.300just look at the person and go, hey, I don't have a lot of time here. So is it the aliens or the
01:52:24.860Jews? And of course, David Icke solved that problem too. The aliens are the Jews because1.00
01:52:31.380they're shape-shifting space lizards. So Icke was an unstoppable force. In 2000, actually,
01:52:40.020he claimed I was one of the shape-shifting space lizards, and then 13 years later, I'm on the bus,
01:52:46.480and I get this phone call. This person goes, hi, is this Stuart Parker? And I go, yeah. He goes,
01:52:53.340well, I'm David Icke's lawyer. I go, excuse me? Yes, well, he's being sued for libel by Richard
01:53:01.760Warman, and we'd really appreciate your testimony. And I go, but he accused me of being a shape-shifting
01:53:09.740space lizard and he goes it's our argument that he's so promiscuous in this accusation
01:53:15.260that he can't libel people by claiming that they're shape-shifting space lizards anyway i
01:53:20.380told her she was an anti-semite and hung up but uh that that's so there's so it is funny and
01:53:30.700there's actually the best moment of david ike's career is he's on tv he's being interviewed about
01:53:34.700this and he is really letting the shape-shifting space lizards have it for what they're doing with
01:53:39.580climate change and the uh and uh and then he pauses and he goes no i don't want to be speciesist
01:53:46.780about this because really they're only doing this because they have very low self-esteem
01:53:56.620oh i you know we're in week 12 of this show um i think we've had you on almost every week
01:54:04.300and i didn't think we'd get here in 12 weeks but i'm glad that we did i'm really glad it's just
01:54:11.020another piece of the puzzle if you want to if you want to assemble the puzzle and figure out what's
01:54:15.260going on now um there's a lot of weird stuff to pay attention to and if i'll say if i can say one
01:54:22.460more thing about canadian identity is so damn tragic um it sure has no space for weird people
01:54:32.060like say what you will about boris johnson he's a terrible leader and an asshat and whatnot but
01:54:39.820like he's obviously a crazy person and people are fine with that they recognize that crazy people
01:54:47.980can bring a lot to their job whereas canada is so very interested in its facade in its false
01:54:58.140boringness that um we really in addition like we gotta deal working folks back into
01:55:08.620the mainstream of society we've also got to deal crazy people back into the mainstream of society
01:55:14.060because um they've got something to offer and right now i think anybody with a view that can
01:55:21.420even be characterized as crazy is afraid of the social unemployment consequences of just saying
01:55:30.060what they think well um they said something nice about me on the screen shall i ring off i think
01:55:37.180we've uh we've gone around the houses as the british would say indeed we have indeed we have
01:55:42.380steward as always and always it's a pleasure and we're so thankful to have you here uh next week
01:55:47.500everybody has to take off uh of course thursday lands on a day that shall not be named i suppose
01:55:52.940i don't know what's gonna happen with that first of july uh going to the fourth of july so it's a
01:55:58.480false long weekend because nobody in canada is productive after a stat so friday is a write-off
01:56:03.240but but thursday is a day off so uh aaron and stewart won't be here we'll just have two shows
01:56:07.980next week uh but so thankful to have you here today stewart pile of fun thanks nathan bye
01:56:13.380Absolutely. No, I mean, that was that was a journey, wasn't it? We went down some interesting roads today, but important roads, I think. And I was advised by my overlords that we needed to get into what happened in Saskatchewan.
01:56:26.380Saskatchewan, and so I'm lucky that we had a first-hand interpretation live hot off the presses
01:56:32.020for how to look at that tragedy and how to maybe think about it. I guess as we head into the last
01:56:37.980weekend before the summer officially, it's a school summer as it is, and of course our national
01:56:45.420holiday next week, just a few thoughts. One, if you're a graduating student from high school,
01:56:51.180I remember my graduation all those years ago. Congratulations. And welcome to the first summer
01:56:57.300of the rest of your adult life. Don't let it go to waste on you. Have some memories. Maybe stay
01:57:04.160safe. Don't make any mistakes that are permanent. And also just think through what you want to do
01:57:10.280next. I wish I knew then what I know now. But I also don't wish that the innocence I did have in
01:57:16.900that time was taken away so if you are a high school graduating student uh keep your you know
01:57:21.340keep keep focus but be open to you know a happy summer a final summer before the dreary adult
01:57:29.040world comes for you uh anything else to kind of announce on that count again there will only be
01:57:34.380two shows next week tuesday and wednesday 9 a.m pacific 10 a.m mountain and we'll be speaking
01:57:41.240with a few different people uh one of them actually we've booked him already we're hope
01:57:45.520hopeful to get mr hinman a leader of the independent wild rose party out there in alberta
01:57:50.060that we can we can kind of talk about some of the things that have to do actually with with
01:57:54.980of course candidate and and the rest of that question uh do uh do let us know if you have
01:58:00.640any thoughts about the show i'll just put up the my email very quickly here do let us know if you
01:58:06.900have any thoughts about the show any suggested guests people directions you'd like to see the
01:58:11.020show go i'm going to have a conference about that not so distant future just about i we and we've
01:58:15.980talked about at the western a little bit the possibility of pre-recorded shows and that sort
01:58:20.080of thing maybe in-depth conversations with certain people so we're interested in people commenting on
01:58:24.180the format how has this worked does this not work we're in week 12 right now what's working what
01:58:29.280isn't working we want to hear from you so there's the uh there's the email let's see if i can