Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - June 9, 2021

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00:02:00.000 hello and welcome to mountain standard time i'm your host nathan guida and today i'll be joined

00:02:10.140 by bill barnes who's going to discuss with us the value vote ballot he's coming on in just a little

00:02:14.520 while here before that we've got our opening statement again never forget uh we run here

00:02:20.300 on subscriptions as well as some of our advertisers and our sponsors will be of course uh giving a

00:02:25.940 endorsement to one of our sponsors in a few seconds here but the first and foremost thing

00:02:30.340 to understand is that if you follow us on facebook or you follow us on youtube if you subscribe to us

00:02:35.760 online and actually support independent journalism here at the western standard you help provide a

00:02:40.420 free voice to the west the west of canada and to everybody who loves freedom and is tired of the

00:02:45.560 tyranny that we've been living under since the lockdowns began and beforehand one of the topics

00:02:50.620 we constantly visit on the show is that all of us whether we're talking about canadians who are just 0.94

00:02:55.260 tired of their rulers westerners who are particularly tired with ottawa or uh just

00:03:00.580 freedom loving people who want people to stay out of their lives and certainly anybody who's trying

00:03:05.500 to manipulate manipulate them and and and kind of give them rules that they don't really want

00:03:10.820 i we we don't have a way of expressing our voice together and that's one of the reasons i've brought

00:03:15.280 bill onto the show today uh his primary idea is that there's a way to express solidarity if we

00:03:22.040 change the system by which we both elect people but also by the way we express our political will

00:03:26.140 so i'm gonna let bill talk more about that but that's something that we've been talking about

00:03:29.840 this show since day one this is episode 29 and we're still looking uh still looking still

00:03:35.440 searching and hopefully have found now a way of expressing that solidarity in the west

00:03:39.500 one of the places where we this might have been very useful actually was the covid restrictions

00:03:45.300 we all know that covid19 went from just being a dreadful scary kind of disease that was unknown

00:03:49.600 to the biggest excuse in history for why our lives had to be completely controlled it didn't matter

00:03:55.460 what aspect of our lives either you want to travel no that has to be curtailed do you want to shop at

00:03:59.740 a mom and pop shop no that has to be curtailed you want to go inside of a you know go inside of a

00:04:04.060 place of business you have to wear a mask do we know that any of this stuff works no not really

00:04:08.020 but you must do it or else or else you'll be excluded from society and denigrated or fined

00:04:13.240 or even jailed in the case of some pastors this and for some reason of course you can get

00:04:18.880 the disease at church, but you can't get it at Costco. So that's exactly a particular point where

00:04:25.320 we might disagree on lots of other things, but having a way to have expressed our voice and

00:04:29.320 solidarity together through some kind of balloting system or some kind of referendum system would

00:04:35.140 have been preferable to the way things went. And so I think that, again, just kind of dwelling

00:04:41.120 briefly here on the COVID-19 stuff, that's where we'll start this morning, though right after we

00:04:45.660 get our endorsement uh of uh of i believe we're doing the coffee thing again but uh we'll go

00:04:51.040 briefly into the latest covid19 news now but make no mistake canada has suffered long enough from

00:04:55.560 systems that fail to show our true feelings about the country's situation as well as feelings of

00:05:00.860 its populace it's time the government returned to the hands of the people so we can make a better

00:05:05.200 world for everybody and that's that's regardless of where you sit on the sovereignty question

00:05:09.780 right we need we need a better a better way forward in this country and we're not going to

00:05:14.880 get much much further along the way if we don't have a way of expressing that i believe that we

00:05:20.180 have our resistance coffee sponsor so we got to throw that up that overlay there it is and uh

00:05:26.780 resistance coffee they're an interesting company they're kind of playing off the whole thing of

00:05:30.760 you know what people are are buying all sorts of items and those items are donating to woke causes

00:05:37.400 so whether you're you're dealing with procter and gamble you're dealing with some other big

00:05:41.300 corporation all that money is going to some kind of leftist woke completely you know inhuman sort

00:05:48.120 of system that's actually racist and sending us all back into the stone age and resistance coffee

00:05:53.540 is trying to go the other direction like you know what we're locally made it's out of wayburns

00:05:57.140 locally made you can order it online and every time you buy coffee from resistance coffee what

00:06:03.460 ends up happening is they do actually take a small portion and they make sure it goes towards

00:06:07.820 things that increase our freedoms instead of decrease them and fight the good fight when it

00:06:11.700 comes to our freedoms and our privileges as canadians as free citizens in a free country

00:06:16.360 if you use the western standard promo code you can get 10 off your first order i believe so

00:06:22.460 do use the western standard promo code let them know that you are watching this show and support

00:06:29.320 someone who's and support a local business that's attempting to help make canada a better place

00:06:34.220 instead of a more woke place we're going to carry on here to some of the things that are in the news

00:06:39.420 today uh one of the big ones of course is we've got a joint statement on covet 19's response we'll

00:06:47.260 bring that on to the screen share here in just a moment but we're going to bring bring you kind

00:06:52.300 of a live a live sort of commentary on what's been going on so um essentially what's happened

00:06:59.500 Dr. Bonnie Henry is BC, the Provincial Health Officer, obviously an agent, Dix, who keeps playing second fiddle to her.

00:07:05.580 I love doing my own color commentary on this stuff. It's fun. 0.95

00:07:08.340 Today, we are reporting that 74.2% of all adults in British Columbia and 71.9% of those 12 and older have now received both the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

00:07:19.660 In total, 3,685,340 doses of Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in BC, and then 345, so essentially 350,000 of which are second doses.

00:07:37.880 So, I mean, we're on our way to being fully vaccinated, I guess, by the standards of our provincial health authority.

00:07:44.540 i remain unvaccinated i have no plans to get vaccinated and i remain a part of a community

00:07:49.520 of people that are also not for the most part planning to get vaccinated we well really it's

00:07:54.380 become a conscious decision people people who wish to do so like it's not like we denigrate

00:07:58.900 them within our community but we also don't you know we don't promote it to anyone i have no

00:08:02.920 desire to get vaccinated um i i personally i i could understand how if somebody was from a

00:08:09.380 particularly vulnerable demographic why they would feel compelled to do so but for myself I don't

00:08:16.260 come from a particularly vulnerable demographic yes I used to smoke but I'm still under 35 and

00:08:22.560 I never had any you know lung trouble in my life and that sort of thing I'm not diabetic I've gotten

00:08:28.000 to far better shape since about Christmas time I I'm not in the high risk demographic I'm not I'm

00:08:33.340 not a triathlete anymore i was one once but the point is that we can't we can't we can't be handing

00:08:41.100 this out to everybody i guess we can cut three million of them out there i i'm not interested

00:08:45.560 in in getting the dose or the jab as people have come to call it because i just don't feel like

00:08:49.640 it's necessary for me where i'm really concerned actually is that some people are talking about

00:08:54.060 the fact that there might actually be covid19 uh passports vaccine passports and i think that's

00:08:59.780 really really really dangerous because uh quite frankly i think that's an offense against our

00:09:05.700 civil liberties if you didn't want to get the vaccine that was up to you and the idea that

00:09:11.140 somehow your life can be curtailed because you didn't get the vaccine i don't think that ever

00:09:15.700 happened when it happened with smallpox when it happened with anything else that was an outbreak

00:09:20.340 there was they did they did quarantine people who had active cases of things perfect example is 0.83

00:09:25.300 going back to biblical times at leper colonies that's true it's true that there have been

00:09:30.260 the segregation of people uh who have active active cases of things that are quite contagious

00:09:36.020 but and or chronic but that's that's also gone by the wayside and i don't think anything i don't

00:09:41.860 think it makes any sense uh here we have actually some evidence out of manitoba

00:09:47.380 and it's funny how that works with manitoba um manitoba is is slowly becoming it's weird

00:09:55.140 it was interesting i was in a morning call uh with the whole western standard crew uh and and

00:10:00.760 this morning the point that was made was that jason kenney is you know into the negatives in

00:10:05.760 the polling and somehow john horgan is doing quite well still he's having some faltering now probably

00:10:10.700 because of the old growth stuff people think it had to do with the lockdowns and everything else

00:10:14.280 no not really i think it had to do with the old growth stuff we can get into that after uh after

00:10:18.900 our segment with bill but but the truth of the matter is is that whether you're kenny ford or

00:10:24.180 palister you are just hated by your populace which is bizarre because all three of those

00:10:29.540 governments swept into power and those premiers which are all tory premiers pcs and and conservatives

00:10:35.700 united conservatives a progressive conservative and another progressive conservative they they

00:10:40.740 all swept into power because people were sick and tired of the left-wing governments that had come

00:10:44.660 before them and they wanted something different i think with the ndp in alberta that was a little

00:10:49.780 bit different i think notley could have gotten a second term to be honest with you but and i

00:10:54.020 i do think the ndp will rule uh alberta again i i absolutely believe that i know that there's

00:10:59.580 some people probably in the comments who aren't happy to hear those words come out of my mouth

00:11:03.360 but the truth of the matter is the ndp are here to stay in alberta and that's because the

00:11:09.040 demographics of alberta have changed and because quite frankly for 40 years while the pcs ran the

00:11:14.620 place they they ate them out of house and home they stole everything uh they took a lot of money

00:11:20.200 out of the wealth of Alberta, and they should have put it towards something smarter.

00:11:24.340 But the issue here is that with the vaccine passports,

00:11:31.320 we've got that up in the wings here, it's happening live.

00:11:35.200 We're watching it happen live.

00:11:36.520 So in Manitoba, we have a situation where fully vaccinated Manitobans

00:11:44.820 to get secure immunization card, a new secure immunization card

00:11:48.900 confirming full immunization against

00:11:50.820 COVID-19 will mean Manitobans

00:11:53.080 with two shots can travel

00:11:54.780 within Canada without quarantining on their return

00:11:57.060 and enjoy expanded visits to hospitals

00:11:59.080 and personal care homes, Manitoba's premier

00:12:00.940 says. If you had told me

00:12:03.080 so I've been in Manitoba

00:12:05.060 under Pallister's government

00:12:06.880 twice. I was there

00:12:08.860 back in 2017

00:12:10.260 when a buddy of mine was basically the right-hand

00:12:13.020 man of the premier

00:12:14.820 the current premier

00:12:15.640 uh you like you know not to not to throw my weight around or whatever i'm just saying that buddy was

00:12:20.440 a pretty big deal over there behind the scenes but like he was well known saw the premier every day

00:12:24.600 um and uh i got to spend some time with him while i went through manitoba the first time the first

00:12:30.480 time i went up to churchill back in 2017 i only go up to churchill during 150s so manitoba's 150

00:12:36.120 and canada's 150 were the two times i went up there and the the funky thing was that like you

00:12:42.800 know this was the thing they had just been swept into government they were really proud to have

00:12:46.080 taken over manitoba had been run under the ndp for for a million years so they had gotten involved

00:12:51.400 and like the the right wing element of that of that party was like really really voracious they're

00:12:57.320 like yeah no like we're finally in charge and we're going to like set this province right it's

00:13:00.780 just been so badly run for so long we're going to take care of this and if you had told those people

00:13:06.000 back in 2017 and the burgeoning hours of the first the first pallister government that hey you know 0.89

00:13:12.520 what your premier is going to be the one to impose a vaccine passport on his own people

00:13:17.260 they wouldn't have believed you they would have laughed you out of the room they would have said

00:13:20.740 yeah no why don't you go cry with all of the you know i don't know the socialists who work in the

00:13:25.760 cafeteria because we're coming for them next they could be a bit nasty they weren't exactly

00:13:29.740 i love them to death but i just i don't have time for that kind of mean-spiritedness to be honest

00:13:34.920 with you take over government be kind of magnanimous and honestly frontline service

00:13:38.980 workers in a cafeteria are not they're not like they're not those aren't the people that are

00:13:44.360 wasting the money and the time it's it's it's it's management and it's the managerial class we all

00:13:48.900 know that but the point is that the point is that uh i think i think that we need to understand that

00:13:56.140 when it comes to the manitoban situation that's not what that that is not what anybody would have

00:14:01.740 believed back in 2017 you know i could have walked around the legislature and poked everybody and

00:14:07.960 been like hey do you think this will happen in three years four years now and it'll be like no

00:14:12.780 that wouldn't happen like you're crazy there's no way there's no way that pallister would let

00:14:17.480 that happen or any of our mlas would let this happen there's not chance and that is like i mean

00:14:25.620 that's a reality now that's a reality and as far as i can tell the manitoba government is the first

00:14:30.380 government in canada to to push that first like to have it be official like even the feds have

00:14:35.080 talked about it but they haven't done it i don't even know if any of the maritimes have done i'm

00:14:40.260 kind of looking over my producer here in his mind i don't think everything's happened yet we'd have

00:14:44.140 to double check that but the maritimes just went into full lockdown remember like that's what they

00:14:47.760 did they just built a border wall basically between themselves and the rest of canada

00:14:51.220 and they just waited for a year um and now they i think they essentially as long as people don't

00:14:56.880 come into their territory they're they're just kind of having normal life now as far as i know

00:15:01.040 i'd have to check in with another buddy of mine who just traveled all the way from newfoundland

00:15:04.660 out west here so uh the point that i'm going to try and drive home here is like this is this is

00:15:11.300 canada now like this is where we are and again it's not this isn't coming out of toronto that's

00:15:15.840 this vaccine passport thing that's coming out of manitoba nobody's idea of of you know a radically

00:15:22.380 left-wing progressive place it still has rules around where bars can be inside of hotels and

00:15:28.940 vlt machines like manitoba is a prairie province through and through it makes you know makes

00:15:34.140 Saskatchewan look more, you know, just not, not as prairie-ish. You'd think that Saskatchewan

00:15:40.060 would be it, but no, Manitoba kind of actually takes the cake in these counts. But nonetheless,

00:15:45.280 it, you, you wouldn't think that, right? You wouldn't think that that'd be the place where

00:15:49.780 vaccine passports begin, but here we are. You know, a very late age of COVID is the big topic

00:15:57.480 that it's getting the shots. I think, I think that that's actually a good point. There should

00:16:03.100 have been there should have been more discussion of how there could have been prevention around

00:16:06.360 regardless of one's opinion of the virus and I know that we've got some people

00:16:10.440 inside of inside of our comments here I mean one you know well once again once again I you know

00:16:19.020 me just simply referencing my life for like two seconds has has generated all sorts of negative

00:16:25.020 feedback that's okay I just happened to go to Manitoba that was the only point the point the

00:16:30.000 point being though that with prevention when it came to covid uh etc i think we need to look at

00:16:34.880 a few different things one one of the things that went wrong when it came to the questions around

00:16:39.760 covid was whether or not they were going to treat this like any other virus and therefore they could

00:16:44.040 have used some of the methodologies that we've used with other viruses right which we i mean

00:16:47.580 we all know that you know more vitamin d is good for you we all know that more sunshine is good for

00:16:52.720 you which was kind of ironic that we locked everybody in their houses and again to pamela's

00:16:57.400 point uh for early stages of covid um it you know there were there were methods available just like

00:17:05.460 there are methods available with a cold everybody else everybody on planet earth has methods that

00:17:10.060 they use to try and get ahead on any disease that they receive that isn't you know well you know

00:17:16.260 something something that requires expert medical uh care and and we all have both folklore as well

00:17:22.960 as as well as kind of you know over-the-counter pharmaceutical techniques in order to try and work

00:17:28.500 on these things but unfortunately a lot of that was cut off and some of the experimental treatments

00:17:34.100 around COVID particularly hydroxychloroquine which of course was an old malarial treatment

00:17:41.500 medicine been around for years that that got denigrated and used back and forth I think I

00:17:48.740 think if there's anything we can learn from 2020 and the whole COVID experience it's the whole

00:17:52.580 fake news narrative problem is pretty real because the issue is that there were people

00:17:59.420 who were trying to experiment with this stuff and then share their genuine interest in what

00:18:02.580 might have been working what might not have been working and the news media again just to try and

00:18:07.920 get rid of president trump like that's that's one of the evils of these things that's why we try to

00:18:11.560 be as as opening candidates we can be on this channel uh and and on on the western standard

00:18:17.040 this is the non-cancel space this is the freedom of expression space right we try not to swear on

00:18:22.780 this show and we try not to deny objective reality like the sun and the moon and the stars

00:18:28.900 outside of those outside of those two parameters and common sense we we just let people roll on

00:18:34.980 this show and tell us whatever they are feeling and thinking about things and the issue here

00:18:39.380 in no uncertain terms is that when it came to COVID-19 they were so determined to defeat

00:18:46.240 president trump that they were not going to allow even even the remotest possibility of something

00:18:50.760 that might have helped people and kept people from either dying or at least suffering really

00:18:55.880 bad adverse effects from whatever this virus was terrible as it was uh i mean this is an issue

00:19:03.040 this is an interesting one we'll bring up carmen's uh comment here uh in vermicitin

00:19:08.580 as well that's why india did so well they switched that so this is yeah and yeah invermectin sorry

00:19:14.760 uh so this is interesting invermectin uh is is actually something that's given to farm animals

00:19:21.640 uh it's uh that's something that's given to to uh farm animals in order to basically dose them for

00:19:30.040 for parasites i believe it's i i have some people that i know that are attempting to use this stuff

00:19:36.340 i have no idea i have no idea how it's going for them i don't and they're using a dosage that's

00:19:41.640 for animals so again that's something else i'm i'm not a medical doctor uh and i don't play one

00:19:47.200 on tv so i'm not going to give you any medical advice on the question of invermectin all i'm

00:19:52.780 going to say is if you are using something that wasn't intended for human use just be just be

00:19:56.940 careful with that that's uh just just don't maybe maybe look into that a little bit and uh think

00:20:03.800 about that a little bit so that would be good but uh damien's earth centrics yeah no i mean helio

00:20:12.080 heliocentrism this is this is the old problem isn't it you go down to the freedom of expression

00:20:18.580 channel and sometimes sometimes you cross the lines i remember somebody saying once it's like

00:20:23.800 you know how to outflank somebody who who has interesting ideas about something like well i

00:20:27.680 i don't believe in this and i don't believe that and i'm i but i'm not a conspiracy theorist it's

00:20:31.280 Like, you know, they're like, well, have you seen the moon lately?

00:20:33.980 And then you just turn back to them and you go, well, do you believe in the moon?

00:20:37.100 Are you still?

00:20:37.900 It's kind of funny that way.

00:20:39.760 One other thing that we're going to look into here,

00:20:41.700 and my producer is giving me the chance to try and share screen myself.

00:20:46.280 We'll see how well this goes.

00:20:48.000 It's not going to go very well.

00:20:50.760 We've got the Times columnist up here,

00:20:54.400 and the reason we're going to just jump into that quickly

00:20:56.380 is that that's probably going to be very helpful.

00:21:01.280 uh my my producer has uh has decided to take over when it comes to sharing a screen because i am

00:21:08.000 i'm not any good at this well i'm trying to learn more because we've got this commute thing going on

00:21:11.680 now so i'm trying to learn how to do this stuff so here we go and share and hey did i pull that off

00:21:17.760 yes that's awesome you guys are getting to watch me live but i i literally downloaded a virus once

00:21:25.440 thinking that it was apple itunes like you guys don't want me to run the tech on anything okay

00:21:30.560 that's that's important for you to understand we're trying to have fun at this show and i try

00:21:34.160 to be as honest with you guys as i can so let's let's get on with it okay so the times colonists

00:21:38.880 i know i know never never show the opinion of your competition blah blah blah don't care

00:21:44.400 uh agriculture minister uh lana popham declined to answer many further questions tuesday about

00:21:49.520 government interventions to get an agricultural land commission's rejection of an indigenous

00:21:53.520 addiction treatment center overturned so this has to do with my hometown here carries the county

00:21:59.120 family services wants to build a facility near vanderhoof at the site okay well near my hometown

00:22:03.840 at the site of a non-conforming old lakeside lodge in the agricultural land reserve but the

00:22:08.660 commission rejected the plan it cited the the law pop changed in 2019 to strengthen the mandate of

00:22:13.360 farmland protection and minimize consideration of other issues okay so we've talked about this

00:22:18.680 a few times on this show and darn gun it if we ain't going to talk about it again so what happened

00:22:24.640 in british columbia like so british columbia's got a lot of things wrong with it let's be clear 0.83

00:22:28.580 For those of us who are watching elsewhere, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, all the way to Ontario, sometimes our viewership goes.

00:22:36.420 The problem is in British Columbia, we have these issues where we have agricultural land reserve.

00:22:43.920 Okay, that's one layer of government.

00:22:45.320 We got the provincial government in general, right, helping with crown land.

00:22:49.440 Then forget it.

00:22:50.160 I mean, if you're near a fish bearing stream as a farm, now you got the fish cops involved, which of course was federal.

00:22:58.580 And then you have your regional district, which was, hey, look, Damien's all the way from Ontario.

00:23:04.740 There you go.

00:23:05.700 So somebody's already on lunchtime.

00:23:07.860 Good for you, Damien.

00:23:09.160 So the point is that when it comes to the ALR in BC, this is a hot, controversial topic.

00:23:15.620 We don't want, it was an NDP idea to come up with the ALR and some of the kind of BC assessment stuff,

00:23:22.220 the kind of land assessment stuff and land survey stuff that happened throughout the 70s

00:23:26.060 in the one-term Barrett government when that came to pass.

00:23:29.340 There is some great stuff that happened there, to be honest with you.

00:23:34.180 We actually have to be completely candid about this.

00:23:36.800 Barrett had some smart ideas around what to do

00:23:39.660 when it came to trying to make sure that British Columbian land

00:23:43.740 stayed British Columbians and that it didn't just all get bought up

00:23:46.680 by a foreign interest or just get developed madly by people

00:23:50.360 who clearly didn't have the best ideas of what to do.

00:23:54.340 So that was a kind of starting place for that. And that was great when that happened. But then things took a turn for the worse throughout the ALR's history to the point now where, ironically, the ALR might as well be the keep people from farming commission or keep people from being able to afford the ability to farm.

00:24:16.980 Like you can't afford it because there's no alternative means of production on the farm that might actually earn you a living while you also try to farm and try to blend the farming system with, say, I don't know, maybe you do have an Airbnb or something else and you're just trying to make some money go or or you need a secondary resident.

00:24:34.160 So that was the big one. So that was the big one. The big one was the secondary residence thing that happened in in man. That was the 2019 version, I think.

00:24:44.060 So in the 2019 world, when the NDP government came in, they changed the laws and all of a sudden with Bill C-51 and C-52, I believe, they managed to create a huge problem, a huge problem for farmers everywhere.

00:25:02.500 because all of a sudden non-conforming structures

00:25:05.520 were suddenly put under a whole new bunch of scrutiny

00:25:08.020 and secondary residences became very hard

00:25:10.700 to kind of build and do and change

00:25:13.160 in a way that needed to happen.

00:25:14.500 So this became a problem

00:25:16.420 because, I mean, what else were we going to do?

00:25:19.320 Obviously, farmers and people throughout British Columbia

00:25:24.800 that are on rural properties,

00:25:26.500 they need to be able to do generational farming.

00:25:29.060 And without having that ability,

00:25:30.940 they were well they they had it taken away from them so i'm just going to flip back to this

00:25:37.120 briefly i think i used this button oh almost maybe this one there we go my producer is is

00:25:45.820 blown away that i'm actually learning how to click on stuff he thinks that this is this is a miracle

00:25:49.980 it is a miracle uh they wanted to build a facility near vanderthew the other side non-conforming old

00:25:54.560 lakeside we just read that and so the agricultural ministry raised objections and appeared non-supportive

00:25:58.720 during the first application but now it is reverse course and is endorsing the proposal popham's

00:26:03.340 deputy minister even wrote a letter of support to the first nations stressing the importance of the

00:26:07.360 proposal which is now in the package before the quasi-judicial alcb this is an important uh turn

00:26:13.100 of phrase here quasi-judicial quasi-judicial is a terrifying phrase whenever you see the word

00:26:20.100 quasi-judicial what you are what you are seeing is a we are an unelected group of people that make

00:26:26.800 the kind of decisions that you can't reverse. That's what quasi-judicial means. So they're not

00:26:32.240 binding in a perfectly legal sense. They're not binding in a perfectly legal sense because they're

00:26:36.380 quasi-judicial. This isn't a court of law. And they actually have no real authority except for

00:26:42.080 what they've chartered from elected representatives. So by orders and counsel, they've come to exist.

00:26:47.520 And even by legislation, they've come to exist. But these aren't courts of law. And they have no

00:26:52.060 they have no legal precedence or authority in the sense that they don't they don't have any

00:26:56.620 expertise in the area either and they're basically just technocratic little organizations that play

00:27:01.000 the go stop go stop go stop game you get to go you get to stop you know duck duck goose you aren't

00:27:06.960 you aren't allowed to build it you aren't allowed to build it but you are well what was different

00:27:10.380 about that guy well you see he signed this form okay but my structure looks the same as his can

00:27:15.540 you give me that form no well i'd like to appeal this decision okay that'll be 1500 and you won't

00:27:21.340 get it back even if you win why because we say so so that's what quasi-judicial means and quasi

00:27:27.080 quasi-judicial boards exist everywhere the assessment authority the ALR inside of ICBC

00:27:32.680 quasi-judicial authority is terrifying and every time you see that word your back should crawl it's

00:27:38.900 it's very scary uh I guess we're just going to kind of get to the end here the point is that

00:27:45.600 I think it was actually in the headline I'm not talking about it anymore agricultural minister

00:27:49.420 says the alr intervention i think that's i think that's kind of the key here for some reason

00:27:54.140 the ndp government when it could very easily actually win some rural seats uh just by appealing

00:27:59.860 to people in the rural area at their level which is that if their taxes went down a bit or if it

00:28:04.760 became a little bit easier to farm or if the regulations around farming decreased a little

00:28:08.740 bit they'd be more than willing to uh to help out with things but and and probably to vote ndp

00:28:14.020 but the reason that they didn't vote ndp and that they won't vote ndp again for a long time

00:28:19.140 is precisely because of this it's it's the agriculture minister isn't interested in helping

00:28:24.260 them and this which makes no sense because i don't know why the ndp want to interfere with

00:28:29.540 small family farming because one that's where all the jobs are when it comes to farming at all

00:28:33.780 because in the big farms everything's automated it's small family farms that actually employ

00:28:38.260 people and two it no one knows their land better than than than the farmers right they they care

00:28:44.900 about their land like they care about what's going on they care about their animals you know

00:28:48.660 My brother never knew nothing about farming

00:28:50.700 until a couple of years ago.

00:28:52.880 My brother knows more about every single

00:28:54.680 animal, even from just the three, four,

00:28:57.100 I guess he's been there about five years now,

00:28:58.800 but he's only been on the farm for five years.

00:29:01.160 And he's been there for all of it,

00:29:02.600 and building the buildings, and it's made him

00:29:04.560 a better carpenter, it's made him a bit of a

00:29:06.620 spot welder.

00:29:07.960 It's an incredible lifestyle, and it's

00:29:10.580 not for everybody. I'm not saying it's the highest lifestyle,

00:29:12.780 the best lifestyle, but it is pretty incredible.

00:29:14.940 And I really enjoyed my time on the farm

00:29:16.460 when I was there. But the point is that

00:29:18.660 you i think that you need to understand that when it comes to the alr and how things are going with

00:29:26.020 this current ndp government there's a lot of issues for for us farmers and and it's kind of

00:29:31.940 a problem and we don't have a way of expressing that but luckily we're going to be bringing

00:29:36.340 somebody on uh very shortly here uh we're going to bring bill on and he's going to explain to us

00:29:41.700 how to how to express ourselves when it comes to this stuff i need to figure out how to click out

00:29:46.100 of here randy can you help me yeah that's better i'm totally lost and we've got bill bill can you

00:29:55.380 hear me and we've just got bill muted we just got to get him unmuted and um bill i need you

00:30:05.140 to unmute yourself i think you're muted right now

00:30:16.100 you've you've yeah we're gonna have to unmute ourselves here

00:30:20.820 oh there we go bingo blanket hey it's not a problem so bill uh you are of course the creator

00:30:40.700 and author of the valuable ballot the bill barnes system of balloting and you have some ideas i'm

00:30:48.100 sure about how we could express ourselves to our agricultural minister etc on various ministers

00:30:53.640 covid and that sort of thing but why don't you just take us from the top bill how did you get

00:30:57.820 involved when it came to uh creating your balloting system and why why did you think it was important

00:31:03.040 Well, I have a terrible bad habit. I listen to people. And when I listen to them, I can hear the frustration in them every election, between every election, of how, basically, we were electing people to govern us, but they were always interpreting it as we had elected them to rule us.

00:31:26.440 And we have no, at that time and even today, we do not have a system available that can override anything that the rulers want to do.

00:31:36.880 So listening to people, I realize that if we're looking for a political messiah, which basically we need, it cannot be him or her.

00:31:47.680 It has to be us.

00:31:49.800 And without a system that allows us to have input, you've got nothing.

00:31:55.540 now as i say we hire them or elect them to govern us so therefore i can't take all of their power

00:32:05.400 away but we have to take some of it away because they're taking us to hell in the hand

00:32:11.200 and and that's where i mean we have to start with everything which is that

00:32:17.480 i mean obviously obviously getting the universal ballot was better having having universal

00:32:23.520 enfranchisement was better than not having enfranchisement that's where things started

00:32:27.560 people agitated for a long time for people to get a vote at all then they had then they had an

00:32:33.480 agitation around what that ballot was going to look like whether it was going to be secret or not

00:32:37.280 and finally of course having non you know first of all it was all men and property holding men

00:32:42.420 then all men then finally women and men though first the married wives of soldiers now now we

00:32:48.920 have universal enfranchisement so some people might argue hey we have universal enfranchisement

00:32:53.540 isn't that good enough what's what's wrong with the balloting system we have right now what would

00:32:57.900 what would change about it don't people have a way of expressing themselves right now 1.00

00:33:01.500 well you can keep the bums and throw the bums out that's the only expression you've got it 0.99

00:33:07.960 it isn't that we don't have an opportunity to vote and that more and more people have an 1.00

00:33:13.760 opportunity you vote but once it's all done then you have to wait for four years before you can do

00:33:19.040 anything about your bad decisions and the only decision you can have is to throw them out and

00:33:23.520 bring in another group who won't do anything that is not on their agenda and lots of times their

00:33:29.760 agenda is not what we want and you mentioned farming take farming as a classic example there

00:33:37.200 is no way at present for farmers across canada to become one voice not one political persuasion

00:33:45.760 one voice that's the difference they can be an ndp or a conservative or a liberal it doesn't make

00:33:50.800 any difference but they have to have one voice and our system does not support that our system

00:33:57.840 is a divide and conquer system you either have to be ndp or you have to be conservative or whichever

00:34:05.440 and if a party comes up with something that you like then you have to give up your own

00:34:10.800 political philosophy and walk across and vote for that person that maybe you have no

00:34:16.640 value in their system at all except for that one point 0.98

00:34:20.800 well to me that's the stupidest way to run anything so with my system you get to stay 0.73

00:34:27.120 with your philosophy because i think that's important if you're a conservative or a liberal 0.98

00:34:31.680 or an NDP or a Bloc Quebecois, whatever you are, if that's who you are and that's where

00:34:35.740 you see value, you should be able to stay there.

00:34:39.800 If Trudeau decided he wanted to walk across the floor and become a conservative, it would

00:34:45.560 be front page news.

00:34:46.700 Everybody would be talking about it for a while.

00:34:48.900 But every time you step into the voting booth, you have to make the decision on whether you're

00:34:53.980 going to stay with what you believe in or whether you're going to cross the floor and

00:34:57.920 vote for somebody else that you don't believe in.

00:35:00.040 And that doesn't mean a thing.

00:35:01.680 So we're not representing the people. We're not letting the people be represented. And there are lots of issues. And again, we'll go back to the farming. I think it's a classic place to start. You go back to the farming, there is no system out there at present that can unite their voice as one.

00:35:18.940 So they are always going to be struggling trying to get to the common sense position.

00:35:23.960 It doesn't mean to say farmers should control the world,

00:35:26.520 but they should have a system that can give them some control in their lifestyle,

00:35:31.020 whether it's farmers or whether it's loggers or whether it's doctors.

00:35:34.500 I don't care what it is.

00:35:36.320 Everybody has specific needs in their area that are not being addressed.

00:35:41.400 Now, you have to be able to have a system that can draw that to the forefront.

00:35:44.400 And in my system, again, going back to the farmers, if we took something like the cost

00:35:50.980 of fertilizer, and say the cost of fertilizer, they have to tax on it 50%, then you can go

00:35:56.260 to the next election, and there's an A part and a B part to the ballot.

00:36:01.640 A part, you choose the party that you want.

00:36:04.800 B part, you then put in a suggestion.

00:36:07.680 For example, all the farmers should get together, regardless of what party they voted for.

00:36:12.080 They could get together and say, for example, tax, lower tax on fertilizer. Put an X in the box, yes or no, whichever way, you know, that you want to believe it. And if 5% of the people that vote that election want the taxes dropped on fertilizer, then it has to go to committee and it has to be looked at, regardless of what the ruling party's platform is.

00:36:40.820 so you've taken away some of that total blind control that we have given them and we put some

00:36:46.260 of it back into our hands now that doesn't mean to say that because five percent decided that

00:36:52.100 the tax on fertilizer to drop automatically gets drunk no no it has to go to committee

00:36:57.380 it has to be studied all the way across the board all the pluses and minuses of it and then if the

00:37:03.300 committee decides that yes this is a good idea then that's what they recommend to the government

00:37:08.820 and the government cannot go against that unless they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt

00:37:16.180 that their idea or concept behind it is better but most of the time they couldn't so the farmer

00:37:22.500 would get what they need and so would the rest of them and it's it starts it starts all in the same

00:37:29.220 way i think which is that fundamental dissatisfaction with the system itself i i believe

00:37:33.780 that in in in the book that you wrote on this on on the valuable ballot you start by discussing that

00:37:40.980 uh you know there was there was there was the 88 election i believe and and yours and you're seeing

00:37:46.420 you're seeing that the pc candidate is obviously going to be carried there's no question but

00:37:50.900 there's these ballots that are going to have to be destroyed because because they're spoiled they

00:37:54.660 haven't they're not legible and what's going on uh what can you talk a little bit about that as

00:38:00.180 as kind of the starting place of that inspiration well that's sort of what uh i guess was the

00:38:06.340 catalyst that brought this whole thing together because i've been doing a lot of thinking about

00:38:09.540 it as i was going along but couldn't quite figure out how to put power back into the hands of the

00:38:14.180 people and it was the 84 election that brought brian marooney to power at the time i was a signed

00:38:21.300 up paid up member of the conservative party of canada and as such i was also a director for frank

00:38:28.340 And as such, they asked me to go to a little place called Coots Coupe to be a scrutineer.

00:38:36.340 Everything went great, of course. No problems within the voting system at the time.

00:38:43.340 But when it was all over and they were counting up the ballots, the landslide that Mulroney had got

00:38:50.340 and the landslide that Mr. Oberle got, there was no need to count anything.

00:38:57.340 to count anything it was done but there was about six ballots that had been destroyed in that little

00:39:03.260 voting section of bc and the attention that was paid to those six damaged ballots or destroyed

00:39:12.380 ballots or mismanaged ballots whatever you want to use it it was about a half an hour that these

00:39:18.300 people kept going around and looking at it and seeing if they could somehow make it so that those

00:39:24.220 votes counted for something and it dawned on me that if that's where all the attention is

00:39:30.220 is in the voting system itself at the ballot box then that's when we as a voter have to have our

00:39:35.980 state and therefore that where it comes out with part b whether you can actually make a suggestion

00:39:41.820 whether it's fertilizer costs whether it's universal daycare whatever but it has to be

00:39:48.540 something that most governments are running from because they don't it won't give any votes so

00:39:53.660 they run from it we are this country we are the ones that need certain things and we are the ones

00:40:00.620 that have to say to them i don't care you got no choice you have to at least look into this

00:40:06.540 i don't think we have the right to tie their hands to force them to go in directions that

00:40:11.100 maybe are illogical only because we happen to be a large crowd but we have to get them to the point

00:40:17.340 that they have to look at it at least doesn't happen classic example of a political messiah

00:40:23.340 whether you like him or not or sister trump now i'm not saying good matter and different to him

00:40:31.260 but in the four years that he was there he made numerous changes

00:40:35.580 good matter and different that's everybody's personal opinion

00:40:39.180 very shortly after he was out everything that he had changed

00:40:42.860 that's how long that's how long a political messiah lasts only as long as they're in power

00:40:52.280 or until they die so we have to be the political messiah it has to be us who can stand up and say

00:40:59.960 no this is what we need this is what we have to do and then there has to be a method that it is

00:41:05.240 democratically looked after it right at in the middle of 2015 election some some people uh noted

00:41:15.020 that justin trudeau our current prime minister i did say that that the 2015 election was going to

00:41:20.760 be the last election held on first past the post obviously that didn't materialize they they did do

00:41:27.400 a bunch of committee work they did meet with people they had back in the days when we still

00:41:32.080 had town halls before covid it's another anti-democratic thing about covid nobody gets to

00:41:37.840 consult with their political leaders anymore because they're not allowed to meet them because

00:41:41.360 they might get infected uh the the funny thing well infected with some good ideas for once hey

00:41:46.560 bill the the thing is that uh he said this he said that this would be the last election held on first

00:41:52.240 past the post they did the consultation and they stayed with first past the post um was that just

00:41:57.920 another cynical move by another cynical class or or do you think that maybe they they didn't want

00:42:04.220 to jump ship just yet it was it was too complicated to get into another voting system or does it

00:42:09.100 reinforce just reinforce the power that's already there my personal opinion is that it was first

00:42:16.500 I suppose is beneficial to politicians not to us but it's beneficial to them so they're not going

00:42:22.540 to look into anything. And I have proof that they did not do any research. Now, when he

00:42:29.840 made that suggestion, and I knew about my system, I wrote a letter to every person sitting

00:42:37.320 in Ottawa, informing them that this system was available. I did not sell one book. I

00:42:45.100 did not get one phone call. I got absolutely total silence from them all. And then Mr.

00:42:50.820 trudeau come up in ottawa and he said we couldn't find anything so we're going to stick with what 0.93

00:42:55.860 we got i then wrote another letter to them all and told everybody they already knew that he was a liar 0.98

00:43:02.980 and i knew he was a liar and i can honestly say he was a liar and is a liar because nobody checked 0.74

00:43:09.220 my system and even after i wrote that letter i still never sold one book i never got one phone 0.91

00:43:15.780 go i got nothing but silence except i will say that the ndp must have noticed that i had

00:43:22.740 sent this letter because they put me on their donation list asking for money

00:43:27.940 and that's all i got out of it then i talked to uh our local fellow in town here mr zimmer

00:43:35.940 because i had given him a book at the time to read and they just lost it

00:43:41.940 so i mentioned to him after that i had sent these letters and the rest oh he said well letters he

00:43:49.460 said we get so many of them he said most of them we don't even read so where the hell is our

00:43:53.680 democracy where the hell is our representative how do we ever say anything when i was with mr

00:43:59.260 he told me that a petition is useless because they look at a petition the same as they do

00:44:07.040 a letter. You can have

00:44:09.100 500,000 names on a

00:44:11.320 petition, but it counts like one letter

00:44:13.420 because they know that those

00:44:15.320 500 names are the opinion of the

00:44:17.360 person that did the original

00:44:19.340 write-up of the

00:44:20.860 of the

00:44:22.720 you know, the word I'm looking for.

00:44:24.980 Anyway, and so

00:44:26.700 that was the reason that I made sure I wrote

00:44:29.420 300 and what is it,

00:44:31.040 35 members of parliament?

00:44:32.880 Wrote 335 letters twice

00:44:35.020 but got no response.

00:44:36.580 and then was informed well that's because we get so many letters we don't even bother reading

00:44:40.660 happening so where is our representation whether it's first past the post of a single transferable

00:44:48.980 vote i don't care what system you've got unless you can put some teeth in back into the power of

00:44:55.700 the people you've got nothing and and this is where things get kind of interesting very quickly

00:45:02.740 Because the fact of the matter is that John A. Macdonald built this country, you know, while being under the influence, with two secretaries in his front office.

00:45:13.720 That was it. That was the prime minister's office when John A. Macdonald was alive.

00:45:18.020 It's essentially a couple of secretaries to help him with correspondence. That's it.

00:45:22.460 Today, the prime minister's office has, you know, a thousand people that work at it.

00:45:28.120 It's certainly dozens and dozens.

00:45:30.600 And by the time you count all the bureaucrats that are involved with the PCO, you've got that the core of the government has no less than probably a thousand hands and feet running around doing things.

00:45:41.220 And and yet they can't get to their people and they can't they can't appeal to the people.

00:45:45.800 The people don't feel heard.

00:45:47.580 They don't feel heard by their local parliamentarians.

00:45:50.260 They don't feel heard in their local provincial capitals.

00:45:54.340 They don't even feel heard in their local city halls.

00:45:56.600 and there's only eight people at City Hall

00:45:58.360 and there's only 80,000 people in this town.

00:46:00.900 What do you think that disconnect comes from?

00:46:03.080 Why don't people feel heard by their representatives?

00:46:05.900 Don't representatives know that the people are who elect them

00:46:08.740 and if they don't hear them, they might get unelected? 0.98

00:46:12.840 Politicians are not stupid people by any stretch of imagination. 0.96

00:46:16.220 They know all of those things, 0.97

00:46:17.360 but they also know they don't have to do anything

00:46:20.480 except what they want.

00:46:22.460 There is nothing out there that forces them to do anything

00:46:25.260 other than what their political platform is all the decisions are made in the war room prior to

00:46:30.780 the election only thing that ever comes up on the platform is that which will possibly get us

00:46:35.560 elected get us vote then some of those have probably a little star beside it that once

00:46:42.020 elected we can just forget about that but that'll get us elected and going back to this business of

00:46:48.240 how many helpers they got when you think about it i wrote 335 letters now how many people were

00:46:55.000 available to read that book out of that. Maybe 5,000 people in total? Not one of them were asked

00:47:01.700 to buy the book or to read it or to make a phone call. That's how much they pay attention to it.

00:47:07.680 And in my letter to them on the first trip around, I mentioned Lester D. Pearson and how

00:47:15.060 he was the one responsible for the Suez crisis, solving the Suez crisis, and how Canada was put

00:47:22.520 on the map they're doing such a great thing and i was saying to him this is another chance for

00:47:26.680 canada to be put on the map to solving a problem within democracy now to me i would think we would

00:47:32.840 want canada to be front and center in the world but they couldn't have cared less they never even

00:47:37.320 took the time to look and that's the sad part of politics they don't have to take a look and as

00:47:44.200 long as they don't have to they're not going to and again i'll go back and i'll just use his name

00:47:49.560 mr trump it doesn't matter whether you like it or not the fact is it was a big change made

00:47:55.240 but how long did it last just four years anything that was good in it gone that's how long anything

00:48:01.800 would last even in canada or in england or australia or wherever that's how long a messiah lasts

00:48:07.800 just the length of time that they're in power but they last forever if it's put into the hands of

00:48:13.320 of the people because we would constantly i call it a friendly revolution every election becomes a

00:48:20.600 friendly revolution because every election you can say no you can't do that you have to do this or

00:48:26.360 you got to look into this all the time you're constantly pulling pulling on the ring steering

00:48:31.320 this government ship down the road but we got nothing as long as first pass a vote single

00:48:38.120 transferable vote i don't care 27 parties it makes no difference if you have no say you've got nothing

00:48:48.280 something that's that does seem to have changed since well really in a sense basically

00:48:54.440 probably from the 80s onwards the issue the issue becomes very quickly in my opinion that

00:49:01.000 somehow even local candidates candidates that kind of get elected on a populist sort of platform

00:49:08.220 it doesn't matter when you send somebody to ottawa or you send them to victoria or you send them to

00:49:12.720 city hall uh you you they come back representing them to you instead of the other way around and

00:49:20.240 they become part of the party machine they become lockstep with the party machine i've observed this

00:49:25.160 with even some friends of mine i have a friend of mine who's been elected to to uh parliament uh

00:49:31.320 he's a good guy i went with him in trinity and everything a good guy not not a bad person at

00:49:36.100 all but like i definitely i remember a kind of and i'm not saying that opinions don't mature with age

00:49:40.820 they do you know i'm guessing guessing i won't be as radical as i am today in another five years

00:49:45.540 like that's fine but nonetheless it it's not just a change in tone it was a change in tune it was a

00:49:52.180 change as he came back from ottawa and had really become lockstep with with who was in charge there

00:49:59.140 now and what was going on there now and that was even after harper was was out of office

00:50:04.180 and no longer a sitting mp so i i just kind of sat there and heard that change in his voice and

00:50:10.560 his cadence and the way that he represented himself i really wondered about that you know

00:50:15.440 someone who i thought would never be able no one could no one could tame him in that sense

00:50:19.460 politically speaking i spent he was he was always going to be you know a wild wild one

00:50:24.260 and he did completely change how does this happen i mean did you see this with frank

00:50:28.500 overly when you were dealing with the back of the 80s there's two things two things that are involved

00:50:34.100 and one of them was a meeting i had with frank overly

00:50:39.700 they were teenagers at the time and of course teenagers like to push the rules and check things

00:50:46.900 out so i went and i was talking to frank because when it boiled down at that particular time

00:50:52.660 the teenagers had all the rights the parents had none so i went and i was talking to frank about

00:50:58.020 this particular issue and then i said we must have chatted for maybe an hour and when i got

00:51:02.980 ready to leave he said you know bill he said this was a very interesting conversation but he said

00:51:07.220 i'm going to tell you right now absolutely nothing's going to come of this i said why what's

00:51:13.380 up because he said you don't have a lobbyist he said when we're in ottawa we have we're constantly

00:51:21.700 bombarded by lobbyists those are the people that we pay attention to because we want to get them

00:51:26.660 the hell out of our hair and at that particular time this was back in the 80s it was the women's

00:51:31.940 issues and the first nations he said those are the two issues that we look at all the time yours he

00:51:37.700 said we'll never see the light of day the second thing is in bc here when uh oh i forget the

00:51:45.140 fella's name but he voted against bc rails and they put him made him a backbencher took away

00:51:54.020 all of his powers and then he ran independently after that and of course lost out and that was

00:51:59.620 the end of it so you either fall in line or you're absolutely useless and that's unfair to all of us

00:52:07.940 who hire those people to represent us not them it's it's and it's becoming a growing problem

00:52:18.340 one of the other issues that's that's coming to the fore here is that uh it appears that there's

00:52:23.060 a lot of foreign uh influence so not just internal party influence or internal lobbyists but also

00:52:29.140 foreign lobbyists foreign interests particularly from china that i've definitely infiltrated

00:52:36.340 uh the federal government certainly provincial governments particularly british columbia because

00:52:40.420 it does face uh the pacific and and therefore uh the chinese domain of power where china hopes to

00:52:46.740 project its power the same way japan was attempting to 70 80 years ago and and so there's there's

00:52:54.900 definitely a tension in this country where foreign interests are beginning to influence the way that

00:53:00.340 we see things the way that we do things and how we vote do you think do you think that's another

00:53:05.380 thing that resists change when it comes to our balloting system or giving more power to the

00:53:09.220 people is that it would threaten foreign interests well i don't know who's all behind the power but

00:53:15.780 if china has any say at all then yes that would be part of it the unfortunate part we don't know

00:53:23.300 who represents us we get total strangers that a bunch of strangers choose to like to represent us

00:53:30.100 and we have no say in the matter for example if you belong to a secret society that is not front

00:53:35.700 and center in your platform but that should be part of what's front and center you should know

00:53:41.060 who a person is what they represent who they support so when they're sitting there if it

00:53:47.620 happened to be a sworn member of the communist party of china and you don't know it you're just

00:53:54.900 shot in the dark and that's the trouble with politics you're always going to have people

00:53:59.700 in there that are i won't call them corrupt but have their own agendas or their own concepts of

00:54:05.380 life and the rest of it and that's fair enough but what isn't clear is if you and i and everybody

00:54:11.540 that's listening doesn't get a chance to have their opinion validated that's where the problem

00:54:19.620 and not only that but it not just not validated but but also we have we have these values tests

00:54:27.860 right now but they're all pointed in very odd directions so if you have a problem with abortion

00:54:33.460 or euthanasia or perhaps uh you know the idea that you know the idea that people can only be

00:54:40.340 a certain number of genders and not not 72 of them that there are that gender and sex are connected

00:54:45.460 and therefore there are only two genders outside of the obvious caveats of hermaphroditism etc

00:54:51.300 if you have those kinds of values if you happen to believe in god if you happen to if you happen

00:54:55.460 to have questions about covid and what was going on during covid and the lockdowns and why we could

00:55:00.820 You go to Costco, but not church.

00:55:02.480 All those sorts of values, some of which are expressed in rather easy tones.

00:55:07.060 They're not always shouted from rooftops.

00:55:08.880 It's said very calmly by many people.

00:55:11.540 You're not allowed to say anything, and you'll be pushed out.

00:55:16.320 So somebody riding right now, they might have the popular support of a lot of people

00:55:20.240 that they're an anti-lockdown person or that they think masks are silly,

00:55:25.220 but they'll be beaten out by the Canadian media, the Canadian political establishment.

00:55:30.120 they won't be able to get elected and it's kind of funny because i mean there are plenty

00:55:34.120 of other opinions that are far worse or people getting paid by people that are far worse

00:55:38.280 and they and that doesn't seem to bother canadians at all i don't know why

00:55:43.640 well unfortunately i think that politics has got us all to the point that we think

00:55:48.280 there's nothing we can do about it and we behave that way and you shouldn't be able to have i'm

00:55:55.800 against for example a whole bunch of parties i think it's all you need is two because we either

00:56:00.440 like to spend or we like to save one of the two so politics basically fits in there now

00:56:06.200 if somebody comes along let's say a green person comes along and looks and says holy mackerel there's

00:56:11.320 nothing being done to protect the environment the system we have we have forces that person to go

00:56:19.480 and start up a whole new party then they have to work like hell in hopes that they can finally get

00:56:24.440 a seat and still nothing necessarily has to be done so the whole thing is designed so that nobody

00:56:33.880 wants to do anything and it's designed the thing i find the most humorous about politics

00:56:40.760 is when politics got started of course the people said well you know we have to have some rules

00:56:47.320 so they said to the politicians how about you guys making some rules okay they said

00:56:53.560 the first rule they made was we can't be held responsible and that's the way we live they can

00:56:59.340 do whatever the hell they want and they're never held responsible none of them ever go to jail

00:57:03.140 nothing ever happened you know and so when we have no power we have no power now I don't want

00:57:13.700 to run the government I don't want to be the person that is making the decisions people a lot

00:57:21.240 smarter than i should be doing that but i don't want to be totally ignored as i am i have to have

00:57:28.040 the right to be able to say well for example harper lost the election the first time around

00:57:34.040 because he wanted to put soldiers in afghanistan the canadian said no the second time the liberals

00:57:40.760 were doing such a terrible job we had no other choice we had to vote for harper and the first

00:57:45.880 thing he done is he put us into afghanistan why what did it accomplish absolutely nothing

00:57:52.280 canadian people didn't want it but they didn't want the liberals at that time so they had to take

00:57:56.960 harper and there you are you're stuck now with a war that you didn't want

00:58:02.320 so the system is chaotic it's crazy and the sad point is we leave it in the hands of total

00:58:12.320 strangers and we just say do whatever you want you've got four years or maybe it turns out to

00:58:18.960 be eight years or 12 years but in the meantime we just have to sit back here and hope like hell 1.00

00:58:24.960 they don't totally destroy the country and that's a stupid way to run a country 0.99

00:58:30.640 we wouldn't run a business that way why do you run a country that way 0.99

00:58:35.040 i think one of the reasons that that we can run a country that way well we don't

00:58:39.040 we can't it's bad for us but i mean the reason we try to is is that the idea that well i mean

00:58:45.360 you can just keep you can just keep pumping money out it unlike a business uh with the the country

00:58:51.440 prints its own money and therefore it can just keep handing it out the door in in wheelbarrows

00:58:56.500 if it wants to i think that creates a lot of debt and a lot of problems and it's actually a really

00:59:01.000 perverse thing to do to people because of course you're gonna have to pay it back someday and

00:59:04.580 whatever but that's i think a lot of it's tied up in that people don't know the value of a dollar

00:59:08.540 anymore uh or at least our leaders don't and they're and and then they're just printing more

00:59:13.580 of them which is actually making them worth less and and expecting somebody else to pay for it

00:59:18.220 they won't be here when when that problem comes to the fore they're just here to get elected

00:59:22.460 i disagree with you they all know what's going on but it's all about power it's all about prestige 1.00

00:59:29.820 it's all about personal wealth and by going along with all of the stupidity that's out there 0.99

00:59:35.340 they just get richer and richer they couldn't care less they know that printing money is a 1.00

00:59:40.620 stupid idea they're not stupid people they know that but their platform says keep your mouth shut 0.99

00:59:47.580 we'll give you a promotion we'll give you money we'll give you you can have investments you can 1.00

00:59:51.020 do all kinds of stuff how many politicians do you know that walk in poor and come out rich

00:59:57.260 pretty well all of them why because it's a corrupt system what are we doing about it 0.97

01:00:02.380 nothing we just wait four years and throw the bums out because there's some other bums waiting 1.00

01:00:07.900 to get some money so we got to put them bombs in like the whole thing is so stupid i can hardly 1.00

01:00:12.940 believe that we as a intelligent people and we are put up with it it just amazes me 0.98

01:00:20.540 well we've been putting up with it for far too long uh something something that you can maybe

01:00:24.620 talk about a little bit bill uh and and kind of explain to the viewers is is just the nature of

01:00:30.620 the ballot itself so we've talked a little bit about the problems in canada let's try and

01:00:34.860 illustrate the ballot itself what does right now when you walk into an election at at least the

01:00:40.540 provincial and the federal level because obviously municipal uh elections are a little bit different

01:00:45.500 uh but at the provincial federal level you walk in it's a black and white ballot it has the

01:00:50.620 person's last name first i believe and they're arranged alphabetically then their first name

01:00:55.020 and then the party that they're a part of and then a white circle to put an x in uh and that's

01:01:02.300 it that's the way it is so it could be it could be 50 names long if there were 50 parties that

01:01:06.460 are eligible in your riding or it could be five names long or three names long and that's it you

01:01:12.060 get to put one x beside the name and that's how the ballot stands today how would you change that

01:01:16.620 with a line adding a line see the trouble with the system that we have today is when you put

01:01:26.960 that x down there it's illiterate it tells the world nothing except that that person that was

01:01:34.300 holding that pen put that x there doesn't say why it doesn't say anything but if you also give

01:01:42.040 voters a line an option to discipline with a line then let's take a town here we have zimmer and

01:01:50.360 doherty for example in the federal so let's say you're not happy with the man that's looking after

01:01:56.200 you or say zimmers and you go in there but you're a conservative you believe in the conservative

01:02:02.280 party so you go in and you put your x there because you don't want to work for vote for

01:02:06.120 the green or the ndp or whatever you're a conservative so you go in and you vote for

01:02:10.680 the conservatives but then you draw a line through zimmer's name and you draw the line through zimmer's

01:02:17.080 name to tell the whole world that you don't like the way this guy is behaving it does not cancel

01:02:24.120 the s it just tells you that you're an unhappy conservative now if you go in there and you are

01:02:33.800 totally dissatisfied with mr zimmer or the conservative party or whatever the case happens

01:02:40.040 to do you go in and you draw a line either through mr zimmer's name or through the party's name or

01:02:45.320 through the whole works depending on where your anger is and you do not put an x down now instead

01:02:52.520 of having to go across and vote for somebody who you don't like and supporting them you get to keep

01:03:00.520 your vote by not voting but telling the world that you as a conservative are so fed up with those

01:03:07.480 people that you cannot in good conscience vote for them but in conscience you cannot walk across the

01:03:13.960 street and vote for the other guy either now at the end of the election you count up all the votes

01:03:19.400 those about the x's you count them up one about the most x's they win then you look at the lines

01:03:26.600 and you might say let's take the lines without an x and the conservatives lost and they're lost by

01:03:34.600 three percent and you count up the number of votes without an x but with a line and you find

01:03:41.400 out that five percent of the people that voted did that the conservatives could have actually won

01:03:48.120 if they'd have been behaving themselves the way they were supposed to but they lost because it

01:03:52.760 angered the people now you've got some intelligence in your election people know what the heck's going

01:03:57.800 on classic example in uh bc election the last uh i forget which year it was but the ndp were taken

01:04:08.440 to the point that they were not even a official uh opposition because they lost so many seats

01:04:14.840 in 2001 actually yeah there were so many of those writings that were strong ndp but the people were

01:04:22.200 so angry at the ndp that they had to vote for other people they were still ndp at heart

01:04:27.480 because the next election they won again but they were still ndp at heart so they had to go in and

01:04:32.280 vote for the other party now uh beacon hill i think was one of them if i remember it's in the

01:04:38.760 book but it was one of them and i think the separation was something like 20 votes or 30

01:04:43.640 votes was all so if you'd have had my system and you could have gone in as an nd peer

01:04:49.320 and put an x and drew a line or put not put an x and draw a line or whatever and not give it to

01:04:54.920 to another party there's a good chance the ndp would have won enough seats to remain the loyal

01:05:00.040 opposition they'd have probably still lost that election but they would have been an official

01:05:04.600 opposition you'd have had things running a little bit more like government should run

01:05:08.520 no it's incredible how quickly how how how much people's dissatisfaction because it is just a

01:05:17.080 single block of vote right like a votes worth i guess you could call it right there's no

01:05:22.440 distinction and without the distinctions you have to earn a whole a person's whole vote the

01:05:27.400 threshold's actually pretty high you can't take pieces of the vote and have have different uh

01:05:32.400 realities come out of those those voting patterns and for that matter it lacks metrics you don't you

01:05:37.560 don't get any metrics out of it because you just get yes or no you don't get a yes but or no but

01:05:42.920 right and you don't get any kind of distinction and that's a humorous part because when the

01:05:48.580 election is over the politician tells us what we meant by our vote they haven't got a flippin clue

01:05:55.240 when harper won the last time and he had i think it was 26 of the popular vote but he won and he

01:06:03.340 said to all of us we have your mandate this is what the people want no no 76 of the people didn't 0.95

01:06:09.780 want it but because of the stupid system that's there he was just going by the experts and the 0.99

01:06:15.480 fact that he won. But he didn't 1.00

01:06:17.580 have a clue why so many people didn't

01:06:19.600 vote for him. Nothing.

01:06:21.660 No knowledge at all. And like I said,

01:06:23.540 you wouldn't run a business that way.

01:06:25.780 Why would you run a government that way?

01:06:28.120 Here's a classic example of a

01:06:29.480 fast food store downtown.

01:06:31.620 We have our election Tuesday on Tuesday.

01:06:33.940 So if Wednesday morning

01:06:35.160 a fast food store went to open

01:06:37.660 up and found that

01:06:38.980 none of their customers were there, they were all

01:06:41.460 across the street at the other fast food.

01:06:43.540 They would want to know why.

01:06:45.480 they would do some investigation but when it comes to politics they say oh well we'll wait 0.99

01:06:49.720 four years we'll get them back again they couldn't care less there is nothing stupider than politics 0.99

01:06:56.680 there's nothing smarter than politicians but there's nothing stupider in our system 0.96

01:07:03.880 certainly wily certainly very wily are uh our politicians and uh and shrewd at getting their

01:07:09.960 away I've met lots of them and boy I'll tell you some of them are very very impressive very

01:07:15.420 impressive but it isn't long before the system destroys them but when they go in they go in 1.00

01:07:21.620 wanting to make the world a better place wanting to serve their people but because of the stupid 0.98

01:07:27.060 system we have it isn't long and you either do as you're told or you're out and you could do more 0.99

01:07:32.900 when you're in than when you're out so most of the time you bend and you give up being like your

01:07:38.540 friend you give up being who you are on the misconceptions that you'll be able to do some

01:07:43.860 good because i'm still there it's an it's it's it's an old chicken and the egg problem i was

01:07:49.900 actually going to bring this up with you which this is this is an ongoing debate particularly

01:07:53.880 amongst in right-wing circles there are left there are left-wingers who are very interested

01:07:58.200 in vote reform but most most people on the left not all but a lot of people on the left are still

01:08:02.940 pretty comfortable with having a big government whereas on the right that's usually more suspicious

01:08:07.400 There's more people on the right who are suspicious of it than on the left. Wasn't always the case, but but is today. And so one of the chicken and the egg arguments is, well, maybe the voting system we had was good enough when government was small.

01:08:23.420 but now that government is big things need to change and then people argue should we just change

01:08:29.260 the voting system to fix the government or did the government need to shrink again does it need to

01:08:35.160 shrink now or did it never need to grow in the first place and that's what went wrong it's a

01:08:39.540 chicken and the egg argument is it the philosophy of government or the philosophy of voting which

01:08:43.400 side do you kind of fall on that question well i think it's both i think it's all i mean it's

01:08:49.640 how best to word that

01:08:53.720 it

01:08:56.500 dump me for words for a second

01:08:59.920 let's just leave that sit for a minute

01:09:05.600 and I'll come back

01:09:06.440 not a problem

01:09:07.700 I think personally for myself

01:09:09.880 it

01:09:10.840 I keep hoping that government

01:09:13.720 wouldn't have grown to the size that it did

01:09:15.780 but the problem is that it also

01:09:17.640 grew for a reason

01:09:18.600 I mean, and you and I have had this debate before when it comes to say socialized medicine and other things.

01:09:25.560 The issue is that, you know, now that we're here, there's not really much crying over spilled milk.

01:09:32.140 It doesn't you can't really change what happened.

01:09:34.840 You can't go back to a world where, you know, you could pay for your medical procedures in goats instead of money, because that did happen.

01:09:42.340 It did happen in the pre-public system that we had.

01:09:44.740 There are still stories of people paying what they could afford and doctors basically using just as we use a progressive tax system, essentially using a progressive fee system where they where they charge people what they could afford for what they could pay.

01:09:58.540 And, yeah, the middle paid and the rich had to, you know, had to pay a bit more and the low had to, well, they could scrap together what they had to scrap.

01:10:05.100 Like that was how it was. And now we have a public system where we all pay taxes and then and then doctors make the same whether you're a rich guy with a back problem or a poor guy with a back problem.

01:10:14.260 And I understand the system evolved to this for a reason. And we get that. The question becomes, do we have do we have the kind of the strings in it and the structure in it and the and the architecture in it to make it effective? Or are we going to just slowly but surely, like kind of every civilization kind of head down the hill into just being so bogged down with bureaucracy and people who aren't actually doing the work, but taking some of the value away?

01:10:40.460 that's that's going to just get to us the same way and was was that preventable or or can we

01:10:46.980 turn back now or is there a way out of the situation we are today well i think oil is a

01:10:54.700 good example when i was a young man i lived in whitecourt alberta gasoline at that time was 42

01:11:02.560 cents a gallon we got our gas from edmonton 100 miles so you pay two cents a gallon for transportation

01:11:11.100 if you moved up the highway 100 miles to valley view it was 44 cents a dollar because you paid

01:11:16.860 four cents for the transportation everybody knew what was going on there were sets of rules that

01:11:22.700 everybody followed whereas today using oil again as an example you haven't got a clue what's going

01:11:28.700 on not a clue give you an example i used to fuel up on first entry at the mohawk station when i

01:11:35.660 was heading south for the projects and jobs and i would also stop at a hundred mile house at the

01:11:43.420 mohawk station there they both got their fuel from the mohawk plant out here on

01:11:51.020 across the river and quite often i paid less for the fuel in a hundred mile house than i did on

01:11:58.700 first avenue and they said to me well that's because that mohawk sells most which is an

01:12:04.780 absolute lie when you put an oil company's side over top of your business and sell their product

01:12:13.820 you're paying they pay you for that advertisement and they pay for it by letting you buy the fuel

01:12:20.300 at the same price whether you sell one gallon or one million gallons you pay the same price

01:12:26.540 that keeps you competitive but you're paying for that sign that's up there basically

01:12:30.540 that's what they're paying for nowadays the whole thing is corrupt right from word go because

01:12:37.340 nobody nobody has to tell the truth whether it's oil companies whether it's the first nations

01:12:43.400 business that's going on right now there in Kamloops no matter what it is all of it's about

01:12:48.280 how much money can we get and put in our pocket it's got nothing to do with what's right or wrong

01:12:52.280 so how are you going to get back there you have to do something that allows the average person

01:12:59.020 who knows better

01:13:00.800 to have input.

01:13:02.900 And the only way to do that is you have

01:13:04.800 to change the balance.

01:13:06.720 You cannot keep going with what you have.

01:13:09.160 What was it Einstein that said?

01:13:11.380 Insanity?

01:13:12.500 Did you keep doing the same thing, expecting a different

01:13:14.380 turnout every time?

01:13:17.060 Can't do that.

01:13:18.320 You have to go back. You have to change

01:13:20.540 the system so that the average person

01:13:22.800 who has intelligence

01:13:24.220 has an ability to help

01:13:26.320 run the country.

01:13:29.020 Maybe that's another aspect of it. I mean, it's a slightly different topic than the value ballot itself, but it kind of ties in philosophically with what we're talking about, which is that life seems to have gotten kind of so complicated that it does seem like little people and average people can be left behind very simply.

01:13:48.000 In fact, it can affect all classes of people that that the things, the skills of yesteryear, even kind of the wide open, the wide open space of yesteryear.

01:13:57.020 I think Flannery O'Connor, the great novelist, once put it as, you know, they'd both gone to university and they couldn't do anything.

01:14:03.960 Speaking of the children of the protagonists in the book.

01:14:06.640 But, you know, her father had gone, had barely passed grade five and he had and he couldn't and there was nothing he couldn't do.

01:14:13.220 and so i mean that's a times changing sort of statement i guess but it but it feels though

01:14:19.600 it feels as though part of the reason just like our just like our economy which is requiring more

01:14:23.860 and more of us for perhaps less and less pay certainly more busyness and more education for

01:14:28.540 not necessarily wages that will actually afford anything but simultaneously it seems like that

01:14:33.500 maybe is happening in government as well so we have this illiterate ballot but the reason for

01:14:38.540 but the reason that nobody wants to change that is they like the power they enjoy where the experts

01:14:43.160 are running things the experts are in charge we saw this with cobit the experts have been in charge

01:14:47.160 running this country for 15 months 18 months now they really like being in charge and and yet

01:14:53.160 they've been wrong over and over again but none of them have been taken to court none of them have

01:14:57.000 been tried none of them have been put put you know been been put up for for well scrutiny

01:15:02.840 over their decisions very true in life nothing stays level it either increases or decreases

01:15:11.800 Now, when it comes to government and oil companies and COVID and the whole business,

01:15:16.220 it has become more and more corrupted because there has been nothing in place to stop it.

01:15:22.040 We have, for example, we had a judge in town here that was handing out sentences to people,

01:15:29.120 sending them to jail and all kinds of stuff.

01:15:30.380 Then he finally ended up in jail himself for being a pedophile.

01:15:33.680 Now, not saying that all judges are corrupt, but the bottom line is that there was nothing

01:15:41.480 ever put in place to stop the corruption.

01:15:45.220 It's allowed to happen, especially with money.

01:15:48.240 The rules, they just keep changing the rules.

01:15:50.320 Nobody goes to jail.

01:15:51.320 Nobody.

01:15:52.320 And the bigger the...

01:15:53.320 Well, look at that terrible disaster in the Gulf of Mexico with that oil spill.

01:16:00.660 What did the executive of that company do?

01:16:03.680 He jumped on a plane and headed to Europe where he was in the Gulf Coast.

01:16:08.260 To hell with what was going on in the Gulf of Mexico.

01:16:12.820 Now, if you want to stop that kind of stuff, you see,

01:16:15.460 it should have been that he should have gone to jail.

01:16:19.360 But that doesn't happen.

01:16:21.320 If I do something, or one of my kids takes my vehicle and does something,

01:16:27.460 I become part of the responsibility that has to pay for all that.

01:16:30.700 But not the way we have set up governments or big businesses. They are scot-free, and you can't have anything but corruption when you allow people to be scot-free. You have to change, first of all, the voting system.

01:16:46.200 But once you start to draw the government back into line, then the big business, like, say, an oil company, what's the sense of them supporting that politician, paying for his way, if he has no more power?

01:17:00.240 You start to change the whole thing.

01:17:02.680 You start giving it back to the people who actually live in the country.

01:17:07.740 And that's big business in a room.

01:17:09.320 it's it's funny because we have we just have so many instances of of people walking away uh

01:17:19.020 scot-free while while some little guy takes the fall for it i mean it's it's happened politically

01:17:23.840 i believe i'm thinking of pierre poutine and a bunch of other bunch of other poor staffers that

01:17:28.700 every now and again get victimized by an oversized juggernaut called the conservative

01:17:33.700 party let alone the other parties and and it happens it happens here at home with with people

01:17:38.680 getting blamed in fact actually an interesting reference would be when john dieffenbaker went

01:17:43.480 and defended that poor kid who uh who had supposedly uh been the reason that the that

01:17:49.300 soldiers all died on their way to korea through the through the not rogers pass but through the

01:17:53.600 yellowhead uh when when the trains collided because the tracks weren't properly switched

01:17:58.300 and the and the railroad company was attempting to railroad that poor kid into a life sentence

01:18:03.100 for having effectively committed you know 85 counts of manslaughter and uh john dieffenbaker

01:18:07.780 got him off. Prime Minister John Deeper eventually

01:18:09.640 Prime Minister John Deeper got him off.

01:18:12.200 But so there has to be

01:18:13.860 advocacy for the little guy. Do you see

01:18:15.760 any advocates for the little guy in our

01:18:17.760 current system? Are there people that you look

01:18:19.840 up to in our federal

01:18:21.840 or provincial system that seem to be fighting

01:18:23.700 the good fight? Or do you think that we're going

01:18:25.820 to have to change the balloting system

01:18:27.580 first before we get those kind of heroes?

01:18:31.340 There are a lot of people out there that I respect.

01:18:34.320 But because they

01:18:35.560 have no teeth,

01:18:37.780 They cannot change the system.

01:18:39.720 And that's the bottom line.

01:18:40.940 If you just keep leaving everything the way it is, it can only become more corrupt.

01:18:47.400 It's not going to get there.

01:18:49.480 How many times, just as an example, how many times do you see lawyers in court for some offense in their court case?

01:18:57.700 Because you can't get a lawyer to speak out against another lawyer or a doctor or whatever.

01:19:05.680 you see the bottom line in court because everybody's willing to attack them but you never see the top

01:19:12.080 side of it so the corruption is everywhere now i'm not saying all doctors all lawyers and the

01:19:17.440 rest of it are bad people but there is no accountability uh 2019 there was 35 000 deaths

01:19:29.700 in canada from poor diagnosis of medicine no no court cases how come now if there was 35 000 deaths

01:19:40.100 because of poor tires you think there would have been court cases lots of how come certain parts

01:19:46.580 of society are not held responsible and we have no way to hold them responsible so now we'll just

01:19:53.220 go back to the government which is the most important aspect in our life because they

01:19:59.700 influence every bit of our life and we have absolutely no input whatsoever except that

01:20:07.220 illiterate x and when it's all done you might not even have voted for the party that you want 0.98

01:20:12.580 you voted for the party to discipline the party that you want can it get any stupider than that

01:20:18.100 i don't think so i don't think so but we leave it we keep it i'll give you an example of uh

01:20:25.060 oh car i think was her name was the lady that was looking after the green party of bc

01:20:32.020 and she brought up the green party president or whatever from new zealand to show us how well the

01:20:40.260 system works with single transferable votes and the rest that type of stuff proportional

01:20:45.220 representation and the example he used was medicine they were going to fix the medicine

01:20:53.300 the medical system that they had down there so i think if i remember correctly there were

01:20:57.940 seven parties three made up the government and four made up the official opposition

01:21:03.860 so the three in government first of all got together and they made up all kinds of rules

01:21:08.580 and regulations or decisions of what how they should rectify it then they gave it to the

01:21:12.820 opposition and the opposition looked at it made a whole bunch of amendments and changed it all

01:21:16.500 around and they finally got to a point where they thought well maybe we can agree with it

01:21:21.700 took it into parliament and nobody could agree so nothing was done how is that different than

01:21:27.780 our first-past-the-post system no different as long as we do nothing to change the way we are 1.00

01:21:35.060 governed we will always be governed into stupidity because that's what we're heading for stupidity 0.99

01:21:42.180 And I've met Frank Overly, I've met Mr. Zimmer, I've met lots of, I think Mr. Zimmer, if I remember correctly, he was a schoolteacher. 1.00

01:21:48.100 So you don't get a lot of places without having enough of a brain to pass exams and study and do all that kind of stuff. 1.00

01:21:54.940 So these people are not stupid, but they are stupid in the sense that they accept this stupid system. 1.00

01:22:02.420 They are an abuse to this country because they accept this stupid voting system that has taken us from whatever it was in 1920, 1.00

01:22:10.940 money, which at that time in my book, I also mentioned back in those days, most people 1.00

01:22:16.940 couldn't read and write. But if they were entitled to a vote, then there was maybe a

01:22:21.940 symbol or a color. When they went into the voting booth, they looked for that and they

01:22:26.220 put their X. So therefore, X was a valuable tool. But no, we're not stupid. We're well

01:22:31.940 educated. So when we walk in there, lots of us walk in there with an idea or a concept

01:22:37.620 or a concern but we're still limited to that illiterate x that's all we get and then we're

01:22:45.220 told to just suck it up or like when harper got 26 percent of the vote he said this is what the

01:22:51.820 people want but some of them say that was close damn near lost that one but oh no this is what

01:23:00.200 the people want and on they go with their lives and we sit there and wait four years to do it all

01:23:05.200 again another four years and do it all again where's the logic in our lives there is no

01:23:11.960 we're just accepting this goofy way of doing things

01:23:16.080 no i i i'm i'm always happy to hear your opinion on these things bill you know that

01:23:25.780 it's it's the i think that's something that's kind of interesting as well when it comes to the

01:23:30.760 way that we might do balloting differently as well as and what and organizing the country differently

01:23:35.160 is that it's it's also kind of just a big place to try and have a one-size-fits-all sort of policy

01:23:41.020 um we might have a small population and certainly government needs to be run by someone who's in

01:23:47.160 charge we can't have we can't have a lack of understanding about who's in charge it can't be

01:23:51.500 you know joe this week bill that week and and henry the other week we need to know that somebody

01:23:56.980 is in charge of something around here and somebody's office is their office and this is

01:24:00.840 their constituency none of us want to be the citizens of some other country every other day

01:24:05.420 of the week that would be very confusing but but at the same time it's i think that's perhaps part

01:24:11.780 of the problem is that just like centralization of power has occurred in these political parties

01:24:16.780 and a lack of responsibility and a lack of consistency the other thing that's gone wrong

01:24:22.500 is that, again, it seems like they keep trying to impose ideas

01:24:26.800 that would work maybe in Toronto or work maybe in Vancouver,

01:24:29.740 but they're not going to work everywhere.

01:24:31.740 And maybe that's another way that the second part of the ballot would help.

01:24:36.380 Do you think that would help, that people in non-metropolitan parts

01:24:42.140 could express themselves and explain how they're frustrated with things?

01:24:46.260 Oh, definitely.

01:24:47.360 And to be fair to the people in Vancouver,

01:24:49.800 a lot of those people want the same thing

01:24:52.400 that we want up here

01:24:53.300 and lots of times they would join us in that petition

01:24:56.300 or not the petition

01:24:57.700 expressing their point of view in part B

01:25:00.240 of the vote

01:25:01.200 it isn't just because they live there and we live here

01:25:04.580 most of the time

01:25:06.300 it's because we are

01:25:08.160 manipulated

01:25:09.020 and

01:25:10.620 provincially they will manipulate it for where the

01:25:14.220 major population is at

01:25:15.820 federally

01:25:18.740 they'll manipulate it for where the major population 0.91

01:25:21.380 is at

01:25:21.820 changing the system so that you still have

01:25:25.280 one person in charge, a prime minister

01:25:27.240 and then all the rest of the people

01:25:28.860 but giving

01:25:31.020 the people a voice

01:25:32.200 is what you need

01:25:34.220 without that you've got nothing

01:25:36.200 you've got absolutely nothing

01:25:37.840 I mean, why

01:25:40.220 I had two university students

01:25:42.860 who both were graduates of

01:25:44.340 political science

01:25:45.580 one graduated here

01:25:47.420 from the University of Northern British Columbia,

01:25:51.200 and the other was a student out of Ontario,

01:25:53.500 and I forget which university he had attended.

01:25:57.080 But both of them told me that they don't vote

01:26:00.500 because they said it's a waste of time.

01:26:03.880 But they said, if your system was in place, we would vote

01:26:08.340 because it gives you an input into it.

01:26:13.240 you're not just a dummy casting a vote to see who it's like a dartboard showing a dart to see 1.00

01:26:20.540 who wins the election i mean it's so stupid it's unbelievable you wouldn't run your family that 1.00

01:26:25.640 way you wouldn't run your business that way but we run our country and it's and it's interesting 0.99

01:26:31.980 that you point out that hopelessness too in in in reforming the system or having the system

01:26:36.740 work by those political science students that i must admit that i get pretty cynical about it as

01:26:42.520 well uh and so it's it's funny it's funny to know that that that there are plenty of people perhaps

01:26:47.960 even a silent majority of people that are that are finally fed up and maybe things could change

01:26:51.900 but further to that the idea that you know voting even even just voting like people just don't feel

01:26:57.800 like participating because they don't feel like it makes a difference very very true and it's the

01:27:02.640 surprising part of what i've learned from all of this is if i talk to the people in charge whether

01:27:08.700 it's the professors up at the university or political parties whatever it happens to be

01:27:13.900 none of them want to do anything about changing the system but if i talk to people in the street

01:27:19.740 and i start telling them about my system right away they say that's a good idea i like that

01:27:25.420 but those that are already in comfort don't want to lose their comfort they don't want anything

01:27:30.780 changed they want it to stay the same i was talking with a logger one time about this and

01:27:35.580 And he's a very successful lawyer.

01:27:37.860 And finally, he said to me, for God's sake, he said, leave it alone.

01:27:40.220 He said, I'm doing quite well, thank you very much.

01:27:42.860 And that's exactly what's wrong with the system.

01:27:45.820 Those that are doing well will keep on doing well.

01:27:48.440 Those that aren't are going to suffer like hell.

01:27:51.340 Unless we change so that ordinary people like you and I get a chance to have a solid input.

01:28:00.700 Not to the point that you can hold a gun at their head and say, you have to do this.

01:28:04.380 but to hold the gun that says you have to look at this you have to study this then once we've

01:28:11.840 come to a decision of whether we keep it or not then we move forward from there but as it stands

01:28:17.260 right now there's nothing you can do very little very little and and i think i think that's the

01:28:25.000 that's maybe a good place to kind of kind of end on in a sense that we how if we want to change the

01:28:30.740 system we want to learn more about the system that that you're proposing where do people go

01:28:35.400 do you have a do you have a copy of your book there bill that you can show everybody on on

01:28:39.180 the screen look at you look at that that was that was well-timed it's on kobo and amazon

01:28:50.360 and i recommend the digital and the reason i recommend the digital is it's cheaper i recommend

01:28:57.640 on a kobold because they're both the same price bc or canada united states but you have to pay the

01:29:03.480 exchange in the united states so why not buy in canada and pay justified dollars the second reason

01:29:09.640 i like the digital is every copy that sold is recorded in ottawa then i can go back to them

01:29:17.000 for the tool as of now i don't sell them for whatever reason people are not interested they

01:29:22.200 don't buy them so when they say to me well how many books have you sold and i say

01:29:27.640 10 yeah yeah and they turn around and walk away if they buy digital it's delivered instantly to your

01:29:35.000 computer and it's instantly recorded i'd start i don't mind fighting for you people i don't

01:29:43.520 but i have to have a tool that gives me some power and the sale of this book is that tool

01:29:50.720 that i need if all of a sudden i went in there and i had 5 000 books or 10 000 books sold

01:29:56.220 certainly I'm going to make some money off

01:29:58.320 not lots about a buck a book

01:30:00.320 but

01:30:01.960 I have a weapon

01:30:04.500 to walk in there with and say no no look

01:30:06.380 the people are looking at this the people

01:30:08.380 want it and up until now it's

01:30:10.380 well come back if anybody

01:30:12.540 ever gets interested in it

01:30:13.800 hmm

01:30:14.820 no it makes sense

01:30:18.420 very very good book

01:30:19.560 highly recommend

01:30:21.960 don't even know this guy on the cover

01:30:24.080 just

01:30:24.500 just just letting people know letting people know well i'm very thankful for you taking taking the

01:30:32.580 time with us today bill uh tell us about the valuable ballot um i'm not sure if you'd like

01:30:36.760 to come back at some point through you know maybe throughout the summer or whatever we need to we

01:30:40.780 always need more content obviously and we could talk about some other aspects maybe even some of

01:30:44.940 the stories from the past of where you saw people organize for the better and organize for the worst

01:30:50.180 and how things went in that respect.

01:30:53.000 But I'm just very thankful for your presence here today

01:30:55.260 and giving us a view into how we might make Canada,

01:30:58.520 Western Canada, B.C., a better place.

01:31:02.020 Well, I thank you very much for the opportunity.

01:31:03.900 I've traveled around the world in the Navy.

01:31:06.380 I love Canada.

01:31:08.360 I would not want to see Canada go down a path

01:31:12.820 that can't come back on.

01:31:15.600 Agreed. Agreed.

01:31:17.440 Well, thank you so much, Bill,

01:31:18.720 and we'll talk to you again soon thanks for the opportunity thank you bye-bye well that was bill

01:31:26.320 barnes talking to us about the value vote ballot and as he explained you can find it on kobo and

01:31:31.920 on amazon uh simple five dollars for the book and it'll help explain exactly what he means by

01:31:38.720 both the first and second sections of the value vote ballot and how that might move forward

01:31:43.600 i as we kind of close out the broadcast today we've got a few minutes here i i kind of want

01:31:47.840 to visit a couple of points again uh one of the things i want to visit is just kind of riffing

01:31:53.120 off of what we just talked about there are a lot of questions about how canada needs to move forward

01:32:00.560 and i understand of course we're on the sovereignty's channel here we're on the

01:32:04.240 separatist channel depending on which way you want to say that uh the secessionist channel

01:32:09.360 and again i've i've been very clear from day one that my own opinion of sovereignty and and the

01:32:15.840 the West separating is rather ambivalent. I believe that Canada looks like a pretty good

01:32:22.180 country from space. I like the borders external that we have. I like the wealth that we have as

01:32:27.700 a country. I think that almost all of our internal divisions are entirely built around the fact that

01:32:36.160 there are people just knife fighting with each other over things that are kind of silly. It's

01:32:40.460 all about power there's a lot of corruption but i think that alberta really does have a future in

01:32:45.980 canada so does bc so does the rest of western canada so long as we can really reform ottawa

01:32:52.520 and and the ways that we go about things and for that matter our own provinces because i remain

01:32:56.820 i remain very very stern and firm on the idea that quite frankly the you know bc even like i'm from

01:33:06.840 again i've told you guys many times before i'm from the northern capital that's called prince

01:33:10.820 george plenty of people here in in bc don't don't really like they don't like uh uh you know even

01:33:19.280 northern bc they don't like the big urban center that is prince george and some of the rural places

01:33:23.380 have problems with the big urban center all of us have a problem with the with the southern uh the

01:33:27.820 southern western part of the province called the lower mainland and even the lower mainland has a

01:33:30.940 problem with victoria so that's that's not new i mean bc is a pretty divided place and so is the

01:33:35.780 rest of canada you know i'm pretty sure people in trois rivières got a problem with people in

01:33:39.460 quebec city got a problem with people in montreal got a problem with people in toronto that's that's

01:33:44.040 life but but deeper than all that at least in my perspective is that therefore we need kind of lines

01:33:50.440 in the country that better appropriate the country which would mean pretty much literally recutting

01:33:55.740 the provinces a lot of which were done in complete convenience the only provinces whose borders make

01:34:00.840 complete sense from their time period is of course newfoundland and the maritimes quebec was just

01:34:07.400 along the saint lawrence seaway it had nothing to do with the rest of northern quebec same with

01:34:12.040 ontario was just along the great lakes it had nothing to do with the rest of northern ontario

01:34:16.760 and and these provinces have become massive and have all this this power both politically from

01:34:21.800 their populations as well as demographic well kind of geographically from the size of their

01:34:25.800 provinces that are just kind of nonsensical the same is kind of true in the rest of the west you

01:34:30.360 You know, Manitoba started a postage stamp.

01:34:32.840 So did Saskatchewan, I believe, at one point.

01:34:34.620 Alberta, I think, came in and was grown from a postage stamp upwards.

01:34:38.480 B.C. is actually the only province that came in with all of its borders intact.

01:34:41.800 So the fact of the matter is that we've always had these struggles.

01:34:45.540 We've always had these struggles.

01:34:47.900 And quite frankly, we need to kind of reappropriate our land in order.

01:34:52.940 And I mean, that's kind of funny because it even comes up on the Aboriginal question as well.

01:34:56.820 i mean the entire argument of the aboriginal question is hey the land that we kind of wanted

01:35:02.300 or actually used to inhabit is no longer our land or we're arguing about what which is whose land is

01:35:08.720 what around here whose line is anyways whose land is it anyways uh that argument has been going on

01:35:14.000 for a while and the the issue at hand is how do we reappropriate the land and make sure that people

01:35:22.100 are feeling a sense of belonging in the geographic location that they call home. It's an ongoing

01:35:28.940 debate. I mean, there's a really micro way of thinking about this. If you've ever moved into

01:35:33.760 a new home, even if you've just moved into a new apartment, hell, if you've just moved into a dorm

01:35:37.160 with some new roommates, you have to establish your boundaries and you have to make it your own.

01:35:41.260 You have to feel like you have a sense of belonging and a stake. You don't just sleep on a park bench

01:35:46.120 at university. You don't. You don't do that. And even if you did, you'd probably start customizing

01:35:51.320 the area around the park bench that you're sleeping on i mean we see this with the homeless

01:35:55.380 populations that we do have inside of inside of canada transient populations that we have here

01:36:00.160 in british columbia and and the kind of unhoused population that we have here in downtown prince

01:36:04.760 george there's a there is an there is a culture that develops because that's what people are

01:36:10.880 people are culture building machines and being a culture building creature a creature that exudes

01:36:16.260 culture the moment that you come into contact with anything you begin to try and customize it

01:36:20.700 and bring it into your understanding and treat it in a way that makes sense to you you've done this

01:36:26.240 with the home that you've moved into you've done this by painting a fence or painting a wall or

01:36:29.780 renovating your house that's that's all very very commonsensical everybody knows that everybody

01:36:35.300 knows that the moment you come into possession of something you begin to kind of shape it into your

01:36:39.880 own item that's what you do you know not even abusively you want it you want it to be a certain

01:36:45.400 way because you just prefer it a certain way i'm a gun owner i the day i got my gun i started

01:36:50.160 citing it and changing it putting the stock in the place i wanted to be on my shoulder

01:36:54.160 so that it felt better when i was shooting it that's that's what you do the moment that you

01:36:57.760 pick up any kind of tool whether it's as large as a house or i guess even a country or as small as

01:37:02.640 you know a hockey stick you start forming it to to be according to your understanding of it and and

01:37:08.800 your cultural understanding but the issue at hand the issue at hand when it comes to the future of

01:37:16.720 canada is that we just have so much potential and yet we waste it all away on so many fights between

01:37:22.640 each other and that's that's where things go wrong and we need to think about that

01:37:28.240 and how do we change that well i think that bill's proposal has has a piece of the answer

01:37:33.600 that the voting system itself isn't working and that we need to be able to keep our candidates

01:37:38.640 under better scrutiny and keep them more honestly just more convicted more more more responsible

01:37:45.200 and accountable to the students that they have or the students well it can be teachers i guess at

01:37:50.640 times you know why that is because we're just talking about bob zimmer and he's a teacher

01:37:54.320 and therefore we're all his students get it but they're but they're representatives right the

01:37:58.800 the citizens that they represent and so the issue the issue is that we have to find a way to keep

01:38:07.360 people accountable while also not grinding the country to a halt because that won't work

01:38:12.000 and and simultaneously moving forward into a better better and more equitable future

01:38:17.520 that's possible and i don't think that i remember a couple of days ago i was called a socialist on

01:38:22.640 this program by somebody in the chat for musing out loud that perhaps you know one man shouldn't

01:38:29.240 own 10 houses perhaps 10 houses should be owned by 10 different individual families that was just

01:38:34.300 a thought uh and that that everybody needs a stake in their country you know and and if you create a

01:38:40.980 a system where there is just one man who owns 100 houses and the next 99 families have to rent from

01:38:46.780 him it doesn't take long for the next 99 families to get a lot of resentment and start wondering

01:38:51.620 about whether or not maybe they should just take those houses from the one man who owns them all

01:38:55.500 and that is a reality that's a reality that happens in other countries all the time where

01:39:01.840 where the class divisions become so strong that people feel like they have no chance of moving up

01:39:07.940 the world and therefore they must seize seize the means of of wealth see the means of production

01:39:14.100 seize the means of housing and everything else and and appropriate it to themselves that's how you

01:39:18.660 get revolution that's how revolution comes to be so canada needs to be careful in this count because

01:39:25.140 especially with the cost of living that's happening around here and the fact that wages just aren't

01:39:28.740 keeping up and finally it's and finally the the fact that again we we are just becoming such a

01:39:35.380 stratified society um we we could be very well headed towards that it's no wonder there's so

01:39:42.420 much dissatisfaction covet isn't helping and some of the arguments that are happening aren't helping

01:39:47.060 none of that stuff's helping so we need to be honest about that but uh i i think where i want

01:39:51.700 to kind of jump off here uh coming back into some of the other stuff that we were talking about is

01:39:57.220 is one there's some things in the comments here uh daniel daniel uh bernhard has been kind of giving

01:40:02.340 me some some some thoughts here throughout the show so let's walk through them a little bit

01:40:06.820 uh but there is the problem reform of even the usa system is all but impossible but creating

01:40:11.860 a complete new updated republic is so much more than the band-aid on top of band-aids that we

01:40:16.740 will never be thrilled with yeah a republic um this is probably the other part of the problem

01:40:23.380 for me as the sovereignty question i'm a i'm a monarchist uh and i'm a monarchist through and

01:40:28.820 and through now let's be clear i'm also a catholic who understands that the monarchy is kind of

01:40:33.780 i mean for lack of better words usurped but that's not the that's not the point the point is

01:40:39.460 that that i am a monarchist through and through and i don't really want a republic because i have

01:40:46.500 questions about the effectiveness of a republic we live right next to a very dynamic republic

01:40:51.460 and i have questions about that system i have a lot of respect for the senate part of that

01:40:57.300 republic i do believe in a kind of second cameral system of government and the bicameral system that

01:41:03.060 is elected or at least selected of uh maybe of by lot and that the people in that system

01:41:10.500 whether they're amateurs or they're professionals uh help in a kind of regional sense when it comes

01:41:15.700 to questions of government and and a sober second thought but i really respect the american senate

01:41:21.140 out of the out of the out of the three houses of their government and the three branches of

01:41:25.940 of their government. I like the Senate. But outside of that, I have questions about the

01:41:33.600 American system. And quite frankly, I'd probably redistrict America. I'd probably cut up their

01:41:38.260 states too if I was in charge of America, because they need to change things. So Daniel had that

01:41:44.560 brought up. And North Run Grader said, maybe it's time to do away with political parties and just

01:41:52.120 elect independence and do away with immunity. I will admit that the idea of electing independence

01:41:59.960 is pretty, it appeals to me pretty greatly. I did run an independence campaign here in Prince George

01:42:07.380 along with some help from elsewhere. And we definitely gave them a run for their money.

01:42:14.320 We definitely had them scared in the 2015 election. And being an independent is important.

01:42:20.180 we need more of them but the problem is

01:42:23.040 the problem is that

01:42:24.480 with independence it's just so

01:42:26.960 it's so rigged against them

01:42:28.320 we would have to reform our laws completely

01:42:31.360 because quite frankly the simplest

01:42:33.200 way to look at it is that you can't get a Bernie Sanders

01:42:35.400 if you're left wing watching this show

01:42:37.020 and you can't get a Trump if you're right wing

01:42:39.060 watching this show

01:42:39.900 in Canada you just can't you can't it's not possible

01:42:43.120 can't be done

01:42:44.160 and it can't be done because of the financing

01:42:47.340 systems that we have in Canada

01:42:48.900 So say what you will about the American system of elections, for that matter, of medicine, of everything else.

01:42:54.300 In America, money talks, and money pays, and money goes places.

01:42:57.940 And so you can get a Trump or a Bernie, because with Bernie, there was a whole bunch of small donations.

01:43:02.200 With Trump, he basically just had the right analytics.

01:43:04.760 And he did get donations, for sure, but he did not have the corporatocracy on his side.

01:43:08.420 They were backing a lot of other people.

01:43:09.840 But he beat the corporatocracy, and he beat the Democrats, and their corporate favorite, Hillary Clinton,

01:43:15.420 because uh because he had the right read on people because he did the social media stuff

01:43:21.520 that he needed to do to get elected and because he did the rallies and he visited places where

01:43:25.320 the votes count more that count more michigan than they do in california that count more

01:43:29.220 in pennsylvania than they do uh in in certain parts of i mean in washington and other places

01:43:35.640 and in new york it's so it that's kind of what he did to get there so but in canada it just doesn't

01:43:42.940 work like that we have a very conservative system with a small c that is built around elites running

01:43:49.780 the show extremely conservative it's hard to change and you had better be an established party

01:43:55.300 that can print off perfect receipts and you got perfect letterhead and you got a lady at the desk

01:43:59.840 who takes all the calls like you need a lot of stuff going you want to be an independent that's

01:44:04.480 fine but you want to found like kind of almost a party of a party of independence a group of

01:44:10.680 independence they can't even share resources like it's it's it's so difficult for them to build up

01:44:16.420 the money necessary you need you need you know to get elected and get elected in canada i mean i'm

01:44:21.360 kind of looking at my producer here how much money federally do you need to get elected quarter

01:44:24.880 million 250 000 that's your upper budget anyways yeah that's yeah no like 250 000 like i mean so

01:44:31.340 if you're going to do that for three what are we at now 338 ridings that's a lot of ridings

01:44:35.040 if you do it for half of them that's a lot of money so i think that's uh that's a big part of

01:44:40.260 we got a couple of other comments here uh nathan i like the concept of more provinces

01:44:46.180 such states within canada's present external boundaries one problem would be the bureaucracy

01:44:50.340 created with many more capitals and governments that's that's an interesting concept i've had

01:44:54.900 this i've had this debate with a couple of people on what would happen if we doubled or tripled the

01:45:01.780 amount of provinces we had it's like well now we got a whole bunch more representatives that's just

01:45:05.300 going to cost more money and whatever else and it's like i sometimes the same people who make

01:45:13.620 that argument it's interesting because i hear it from both the right and the left on the left of

01:45:17.140 course they like they like the big state so they don't want a whole bunch of little states they

01:45:20.500 just don't they don't want that uh you know uh they don't want they don't want that sort of system

01:45:25.940 but on the right i hear that it's like oh it's redundant to know it's just cost and everything

01:45:30.020 it's cool what do you think a small business is like a small business is if we all worked at

01:45:36.900 walmart right if we all worked at walmart then walmart would have like 10 accountants in i think

01:45:42.020 kansas is where walmart's based at arkansas kansas is down there in the southwest somewhere in the

01:45:46.660 united states mid southwest to be clear not the not the true south not the true west not the true

01:45:53.540 midwest it's the mid southwest but but the point is that you know we all worked for walmart or

01:45:59.400 costco or whatever so we had like three stores that ran everything right there was the pharmacy

01:46:04.280 store the grocery store and the hardware store and they were just three big soviet style stores

01:46:10.020 that we all worked for and we just bought from each other stores and that's it and the rest of

01:46:14.040 us were farmers farmers police firemen and people who work at the three stores and some doctors

01:46:20.180 lying around. That's it. That's all there is. Well, then, I mean, there would never be another

01:46:24.300 accountant, right? Like there'd be like four accountants. They don't need to be any accountants

01:46:28.980 because we all work for the same companies. Like they don't, when you have small businesses,

01:46:34.500 that's where you get 600 bookkeepers from in a population of 80,000 people. It's probably more

01:46:40.040 than 600, but you get what I'm trying to say about Prince George. The point is, why is there even a

01:46:44.080 bookkeeping business in Prince George? You could just have one person do all the bookkeeping if

01:46:49.020 we all worked for the same three companies, right? It doesn't matter. You would just have staff hired

01:46:53.880 on to help shuffle the paper around, but you don't actually need the expertise. Small and medium-sized

01:46:59.020 businesses cause redundancy. That's what they do. They keep people employed vis-a-vis redundancy.

01:47:04.640 That's not because what they do isn't valuable. It's just because that's the nature of having a

01:47:10.400 small business, right? Every small business has their bookkeeper they go to. Every small business

01:47:14.700 needs a front desk girl every small business has got some you know young guy stocking shelves and

01:47:19.980 maybe he's going to marry the front desk girl someday and then they'll have a family and they're

01:47:22.900 going to start a small business and then the process will repeat itself this was how the

01:47:27.020 economy used to work that was the entire concept of the economy was it was actually incredibly

01:47:31.720 inefficient in the sense that it had way too many repeat jobs within it but it it offered real

01:47:40.040 service and because because a mom and pop shop could only get so big it it offered its services

01:47:46.360 and then you know you go 10 blocks the other way and there's another mom and pop shop why

01:47:50.320 because well this was their district and that's their district and that's their district but ever

01:47:55.020 since basically uh everybody getting a car and having multiple cars and then on top of that

01:48:00.660 the big parking lots around super centers as well as the death of downtowns between the growth of

01:48:07.100 the suburbs, and of course, the poverty that has resulted from automating work and sending work

01:48:12.800 overseas, we have a problem, right? We have a big problem where our downtowns are becoming full of

01:48:19.140 transient people and with addiction issues, and we need to do something about our homelessness

01:48:24.340 situation. And simultaneously, I mean, why would you want to go to 10 mom and pop shops to get

01:48:31.920 your items on a Saturday? You're too busy for that. You and your kids are driving all over all

01:48:36.440 week you're going to soccer you're going to flute lessons you're going to drama lessons like you're

01:48:40.780 too busy so of course on a saturday morning which should be your time off instead you all pile in

01:48:45.880 the car and you go to superstore or walmart and you buy from superstore walmart costco home depot

01:48:52.560 why would you go to a mom and pop shop you have to visit two three four shops in order to do the

01:48:57.700 same amount of shopping over a longer period of time when you could just visit one or two shops

01:49:03.080 over a shorter period of time and get all your items and that's the death of the medium and

01:49:08.680 small size business because it's incredibly efficient but it doesn't keep a lot of people

01:49:13.060 employed unless everybody thinks we can raise our families off of stocking shelves at Walmart we all

01:49:17.500 know we can't do that we can do it a little bit we can do it as a start but that is not a long-term

01:49:22.800 solution to the question of a family supporting wage regardless of the dignity of the work itself

01:49:27.020 hell it could become the most dignified work on earth everybody could treat each other well and

01:49:31.140 Nobody could be nasty to people's stocking shelves, and that's great.

01:49:34.500 But it's the actual pay at the end of the day on top of the cost of living.

01:49:40.000 That's the problem.

01:49:41.740 And for that matter, again, it would be incredibly efficient.

01:49:44.580 Incredibly efficient.

01:49:45.940 But it's not.

01:49:47.740 It doesn't give a diversity in the workforce and a diversity for our talents.

01:49:52.300 And it doesn't.

01:49:53.780 And the redundancy, therefore, the only redundancy is government.

01:49:55.960 I bet you, actually, if we look at exactly that, that the government is the last redundant thing on earth.

01:50:00.320 It's the only thing on earth that's still employing more people than it probably should, while everybody else has either been eliminated from the game because of the cost of the market and the issues of the market, or they've been reduced to their atoms, where, you know, somebody's stocking shelves.

01:50:16.320 Like, in America, I remember somebody telling me about this.

01:50:19.060 There was a guy who lived in America for a long time.

01:50:20.640 He had lived in Kentucky, and he was really trying to get into the United States permanently.

01:50:25.360 He thought about just becoming an illegal alien there because they had an entire system set up for that.

01:50:29.860 you don't need you don't need your sin number to pay your taxes like you can do anything in america 0.99

01:50:33.400 like you just they have an entire parallel universe for non-documented migrants in their 0.97

01:50:38.920 society both both of course the majority of which are from central america but but people just go to

01:50:44.480 america and just get lost in america there's like yeah no i i said i'm here for a bachelor party and

01:50:48.600 i just lived here for 10 years like um and the point that he made though was that because of

01:50:54.080 the cost of things in america because you can get a jug of milk for like two bucks because you can

01:50:58.660 get a block of cheese for two bucks because you can you know buy you you know i mean the dollar

01:51:03.660 menu in america is a dollar it's not it's not three dollars it's a dollar and so the cost of

01:51:08.740 things in america are just so much lower than canada and the taxation system is different

01:51:13.040 that people with lower wages as long as they don't have health problems and we're not arguing that

01:51:17.940 point can actually do quite well in america they can actually do really well and so this is well

01:51:22.680 really well i just mean that they can survive better in america in a sense than they can in

01:51:26.340 canada because the cost of living in canada which is just ridiculous you know it's just ridiculous

01:51:30.840 so what are we going on about the point that we're trying to drive home here is that there's a lot of

01:51:39.320 issues facing our country and uh and i do say our country by meaning coast to coast to coast and that

01:51:44.680 is to say all of western canada all of central canada and all of eastern canada and of course

01:51:48.580 the great white north that a lot of people ignore which is probably our most promising hope none of

01:51:53.860 the northwest territories and the yukon there's a lot of resources up there and quite frankly if

01:51:58.660 if the ice keeps freeing up up there that's where there's going to be a ton of transportation

01:52:02.740 logistics future uh for a lot of things but but the point is we have a huge amount of potential

01:52:07.620 but we just lack direction and vision as a country and if we don't figure that out sooner rather than

01:52:12.340 later we are in big big big trouble we can't go on like this so i think that the fundamental

01:52:19.380 point here both at the western standard where we're talking about this issue of sovereignty

01:52:22.580 and how to assert ourselves as Western Canadians

01:52:24.540 and how to make sure that we're getting a fair shake.

01:52:27.280 But in a wider discussion, which was happening here earlier,

01:52:30.180 when it comes to Bill's value ballot and the rest of it,

01:52:33.780 I think that fundamentally at the bottom of it all,

01:52:37.220 we can make a better country,

01:52:38.560 but we have to get some methods that would lead to a better country,

01:52:41.880 like accountability, like what would happen with that vote ballot,

01:52:45.260 but also with just a mentality change

01:52:47.920 and with a fundamental conviction that we're all in this together

01:52:50.800 and we can do something better if we try if we work hard we can do something better so i think

01:52:56.420 we're going to leave it there for today uh i've got a couple of last points to make here i'm

01:53:00.920 actually going to give her a go and see if i can put up my own email i think i had i think i did

01:53:04.580 this when i was left alone the other week look at that hey look i put up my own email my my producer

01:53:09.980 is is clapping for me like i'm a little doggy who's learned to not you know wet the carpet

01:53:15.320 um there so we've got our you know i got the email up here remember uh i'm always looking

01:53:20.520 for guests we got a lot of content to generate every week um and i'm just i'm looking for guests

01:53:26.520 i need people on here i hope that you can suggest some people you'd like to have on here there are

01:53:30.840 some suggestions that we've had that we've tried to follow up on some of those people been willing

01:53:34.360 some of those people haven't been so always suggest guests always suggest ideas hey some

01:53:39.000 of the commenters that are in here i mean they'd be happy to have some of you guys on so just send

01:53:42.760 Send me, you know, send me an email and be great to have you on and talk about these things.

01:53:47.020 This is, this is, this is a, this is a popular show, right?

01:53:50.200 We, in a sense that it's the Vox Populi.

01:53:52.320 I want the people's voice to be, to be shared on this show.

01:53:56.220 And so that's, that's a big part of it.

01:53:57.820 So do send me, do send me any suggestions that you have for people on our show and what kind of, what kind of way we should go forward with our guests and our content.

01:54:09.820 another things uh another thing that that just needs to be noted is that of course the pipeline

01:54:15.240 is coming on in a couple of minutes so do stay tuned for that i believe derek dave and cory are

01:54:21.200 going to be on the show today so they're all going to be working on on what's going on in alberta and

01:54:25.300 throughout west the western uh canadian uh spectrum and what's happening and i guess as a

01:54:31.360 final point on my end um yeah i'm just i'm thankful to have you all here i'm thankful to have this

01:54:36.160 platform and i'm thankful again as we move into kind of week 10 here and onwards to be a part of

01:54:41.120 the western standard and have this opportunity to kind of start these conversations around how

01:54:45.360 do we build a better country and a place a place where we have a stake in our future because you

01:54:51.200 know god knows it's not working right now so how do we change that how do we move it forward how

01:54:55.200 do we make it better thank you so much for uh tuning in today and thank you so much for your

01:54:59.920 contributions through the comments and everything else we hope to see you again tomorrow bright and

01:55:05.280 and early. I've got

01:55:07.300 Stuart Parker on, I believe, in

01:55:09.240 the second half and Aaron Ekman on in the first.

01:55:11.200 So that's what we're going to be doing tomorrow. And

01:55:13.240 we'll see you bright and early, 9 a.m.

01:55:15.860 Pacific, 10 a.m.

01:55:17.460 Mountain. Thank you so much.

01:55:35.280 You

Western Standard - June 10, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - June 9, 2021

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