00:01:30.000good morning and welcome of course to mountain standard time i'm your host nathan guida
00:01:44.720and today we'll be talking with aaron ekman he's joining us in studio today which is a privilege
00:01:49.920i mean we're uh in bc we just loosened up all our restrictions so obviously this is exactly what
00:01:55.320bonnie henry was thinking because we're going to talk of her so highly later
00:01:59.180So again, good morning, and I'm just so thankful you're here.
00:02:02.460We're going to be talking a few things today about the loosening of the restrictions and everything else.
00:02:07.320But remember to like us on Facebook, follow us on YouTube, and support the Western Standard with an online subscription if you can.
00:02:13.340We don't get a big check from the Liberals every year that tells us how to tell other jobs and support the Laurentian consensus back east.
00:02:20.780So if you take out a subscription, you can support independent journalism.
00:02:23.680And right now, the Western Standard is definitely the place to go for, you know, leaks, especially when it comes to Alberta and what's going on with the Kenney government and how that's all falling apart.
00:02:32.500I must confess that even a hardened cynic like myself is cautiously optimistic about the four-step reopening plan for B.C.
00:02:42.700And June 15th, July 1st, and then September 7th, just after the Labor Day long weekend.
00:02:47.900So perhaps the reason I've dared to hope that we might finally be heading out of this nonsensical tyranny that I honestly don't believe saved any lives and probably cost more than it helped is that the completely tone-deaf trio of Dix, Henry, and Horgan might finally understand that the rage of British Columbians has reached a critical mass.
00:03:05.380People are already heading to their cottages, cabins, and retreats without giving a hoot what the travel order is.
00:03:10.320Mass are beginning to droop under chins, and speakeasies are openly operating.
00:03:13.800There's even some churches that are leaving their doors open, just not telling anybody that there's a service.
00:03:18.060But if you happen to be there and the priest happens to be there, the pastor, whatever, Mass suddenly appears.
00:03:23.920And so funnily enough, I think that people are finally getting to a point that they're just upset with it all.
00:03:33.980So to that end, we've got Aaron Ekman on and we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on in B.C. and the change of the restrictions.
00:03:39.680Were you expecting them to extend things, or did you think things would loosen up this last Tuesday?
00:03:45.460I figured things were going to have to loosen up a little bit.
00:03:48.420I mean, the cases have been in free fall for the last couple of weeks, really.
00:03:52.900And especially if you compare the number of cases in British Columbia to the ones in Alberta, the difference is quite stark.
00:03:59.840And the number of vaccinations have gone up as well.
00:04:02.280A lot of people are—I haven't been vaccinated.
00:04:04.000I don't think you've been vaccinated, but a good number of people have.
00:04:07.220So at that point, you think they kind of have to come off.
00:04:13.340And I probably differ from a number of people in the sense that I've never felt that the restrictions in British Columbia were that stringent compared to some other jurisdictions.
00:04:23.040I think if I was still working in the service industry like I did when I was younger, I would be singing a different tune.
00:04:29.860I know if you're working as a server, especially in a restaurant or something like that, it's been terrible.
00:04:34.500but a good number of people in the province in the public sector for instance haven't haven't
00:04:39.260taken a hit at all but also what's so interesting to me is if you if you get on twitter like if you
00:04:45.140got on twitter yesterday which i don't recommend by the way no but some of us do it so you don't
00:04:49.540have to but if you were on twitter yesterday i mean you got the sense that british colombians
00:04:54.980were incensed at how fast the restrictions were coming off and and it was just another example
00:05:02.740of how twitter is like the same 10 people and the rest of us aren't there the people on twitter
00:05:09.360think that twitter is representative of the world like it is their whole universe but it is absolutely
00:05:15.120clear to me that it's this increasingly smaller group of basically technocrats and sort of the
00:05:21.580professional managerial class who just like accelerate and reverberate these echo chamber
00:05:28.080ideas off of each other until they they convince themselves that it's representative of of the
00:05:33.660whole population but if you step outside which none of these people are doing i guess uh and
00:05:38.760talk to a real person you get a very different sense of reality so so that was that was my
00:05:43.700takeaway was that the restrictions uh i've never thought the restrictions in in bc were quite that
00:05:49.200bad like uh but again i mean i don't go to church i don't work in the service sector uh but when you
00:05:55.340see the kind of stuff that's happening in alberta where they're where they're literally jailing
00:05:58.860pastors yeah like they're breaking into churches they're shutting down rodeos like all sorts of
00:06:04.160crazy stuff which you know in my opinion the western standard's been doing a great job uh
00:06:08.080quite a courageous job of covering i don't think anybody else is really covering it at least not
00:06:11.860with the same slant that the standard is uh that kind of stuff isn't really happening in bc um and
00:06:17.080so i've sort of got the sense that well you know it hasn't been quite as bad but um but if like i
00:06:22.040said if you get on twitter uh people are incensed that the restrictions are are coming off at all
00:06:27.800yeah we're gonna have to i guess we're gonna have to cross-examine stewart parker on that tomorrow
00:06:31.600well he'll give you a different take we're gonna get the opposite of that so if you were really in
00:06:35.680favor of the restrictions we're gonna have stewart come on tomorrow and explain to us why uh fly
00:06:40.080fishing isn't an essential service but uh we love you stewart uh but the point being that i think i
00:06:46.640think what's hit me a bit is that it's kind of weird i really expected bonnie henry to to blink
00:06:52.900again like she did right before easter right before easter she just all of a sudden she just
00:06:57.320reversed everything like people had started to like pull out chairs at churches and they had
00:07:01.160started to move things around like they had made a lot of moves to get this to happen because they
00:07:06.080were kind of given two days notice and they started to move move move as fast as they could
00:07:10.280and then it snapped the other direction and and they had to put everything back and roll everything
00:07:15.380back up and suddenly the restaurants even dine-in was closed like it was just it was a really big
00:07:20.720reality reversal for a lot of people and so a lot of people are really disappointed about it they've
00:07:24.180been mad about it the last six weeks and now now here we are so i for myself i felt like uh bonnie
00:07:30.920was going to blink on us again and and pull the football but but she didn't and so far we don't
00:07:36.560know what's going to happen next we'll see if cases climb or whatever but bonnie i really didn't have
00:07:40.840faith in her but at this rate you know uh i'm hoping to get married by the end of the summer
00:08:33.100I think that northern BC has got a desire for independence from southern BC at this rate, especially COVID.
00:08:38.040I think COVID might have really pushed that over the edge because they just divided the province into clearly the tiny little corner down in the southwest and everybody else.
00:08:47.320And everybody else is just like, that's it.
00:08:57.780The rest of us are all like, no, I'd rather go out to the mountains and do whatever and have a barbecue.
00:09:02.180And I think they kind of showed the cultural differences between the two parts of the province.
00:09:06.400Well, thanks, Rose, for, like, allowing us to, you know, prompting us to talk about this.
00:09:10.460There's nothing I like talking about more in British Columbia than the independence question,
00:09:14.320which, you know, catches a few people off guard because I'm a self-proclaimed wide-eyed socialist, right?
00:09:20.360In fact, I mean, the reason why I wanted to rush to get on your show today was because a few people were calling you a socialist, I saw on the call.
00:09:25.360Yeah, no, yesterday I was being called a socialist.
00:09:27.080Which I was just at my house watching, howling.
00:09:28.960I thought, I better come on this show and remind people what a real socialist looks like, right?
00:09:32.400Nathan's just a capitalist from the days before bailouts, okay?
00:09:49.060Yeah, and it's more complicated because it's not necessarily a conservative...
00:09:54.060Like, there's not a conservative bent to it.
00:09:56.360Not a conservative liberal divide, not necessarily.
00:09:58.300No, it's not, like, wholly in the conservative milieu.
00:10:02.400it's it's sort of spread which it has to be because british columbia is so politically diverse
00:10:07.440depending on where you go uh you know and we said before you go to the northeast of the province
00:10:12.240close to alberta it's definitely more conservative but the further west you go even along the same
00:10:16.000parallel so you can stay just as north but you get closer to terrace kitimat etc or you go up to atlin
00:10:21.760like there's you know i mean there's some left-wing people out there right yeah um i'm from
00:10:25.280terrace originally my family's from terrace where you know it's like a i come from like logging
00:10:31.200stock right right right basically the forest industry before the bottom fell out of it
00:10:34.800uh and so it's you know like on my house for instance if you were to drive by my house there's
00:10:39.420a there's a some on some days there's a british columbian flag hanging off the house on other
00:10:43.360days there's a cascadian flag the old dug right hanging off the house but if you look at the old
00:10:48.100boundaries of the cascadian bio region it just sort eclipse uh prince george where we are the
00:10:54.720northern capital into it and sort of excludes the rest and sort of cedes it to basically alberta
00:11:00.400So the rough boundaries of people that have sort of played around with this idea, I think if you're in the lower mainland and sort of the southwest of the province and maybe the southern interior, you're kind of interested in, you've been kind of interested in the Cascadian experiment, the Cascadian discussion, and so you generally have an affinity to Oregon and Washington and that area.
00:11:21.800But if you're in the rest of the province, like Northeast, et cetera, you're more of like a, you probably more identify as a New Caledonian.
00:11:29.720And certainly if you get into the Peace River country, I mean, a lot of those folks identify with Albertans far more than they do with their, with their on their time.
00:11:42.100I mean, so, so there is that interesting political divide.
00:11:44.680So it presents a unique challenge for Alberta because part of the disagreement I might have with some Albertan independence advocates or separatists, for instance, is that I would argue that the independence movement, from my perspective, it's not necessarily accurate and not the same from everybody's perspective, is a little too controlled by oil interest, by industry interest.
00:12:06.860And it's not that I'm against oil or pipelines.
00:12:08.840I'm actually in favor of most pipelines.
00:12:12.000I'm always hesitant when any kind of a political movement has too much sort of corporate or industry control,
00:12:17.180especially given that a lot of the industry participants in that particular industry are their foreign interests.
00:14:08.660He did believe in laws, and so now he has criticisms around what Trudeau is doing,
00:14:12.620just letting Quebec rewrite the Constitution by himself.
00:14:15.140But I mean, I feel like, and I mean Manitoba as well,
00:14:18.260I think Manitoba and Saskatchewan under its NDP governments didn't necessarily always just go with Ottawa.
00:14:23.740Same with the BC NDP, didn't just hang out with Ottawa all the time.
00:14:27.660and i mean they're going to chart their own course here on the daycare question i don't i don't think
00:14:32.200that it's it how i think what people get wrong is that they think that if you're left-wing you're
00:14:37.340inherently big state right you're just inherently big government and this is actually somewhere
00:14:41.540where i think you and stewart i think that's one of the reasons why you and stewart disagree on
00:14:45.140some things is that i was talking with stewart about this last week because i was like well
00:14:49.580should bc get a senate right because because the problem is that victoria doesn't represent us
00:14:54.080very well so should bc get a senate and he's like well i don't believe in bicameral system i'm like
00:14:58.260well why is that was that because i'm a big state guy and i don't need three you know three four
00:15:02.200ten checks and balances to keep my agenda from rolling through and i'm like well that's an
00:15:07.520interesting back and forth but to the same point here like i just don't i don't think you're a big
00:15:11.420government guy i think you like the idea of like like crown corporations but you're not a big
00:15:15.740government guy no i think uh it's i mean that's an interesting point it's and my position's
00:15:22.140probably changed a little bit over the years but i i think you're correct i'm not a big government
00:15:26.600guy in the traditional sense that somebody like me would be i'm an old school leninist uh and
00:15:32.060you know my frustration with folks on the right is that they have that they don't understand
00:15:36.720marxism uh as well as they should in order to criticize it this has always been my big critique
00:15:40.960of jordan peterson for instance who i've got a lot of time for on a number of issues uh but he gets
00:15:46.100into this trap of blaming all of the things that are happening in universities etc which i agree
00:15:51.000with him on uh he blames it on what he calls cultural marxism and it's like you know the real
00:15:55.620marxists like me uh we're just as troubled by by the kind of stuff that's bothering people like him
00:16:02.060and people like you uh and and i don't think we're really giving credit for that um but because you
00:16:10.020know i mean the old leninist uh position on this stuff is eventually you you try to facilitate what
00:16:14.940he called the withering away of the state i mean you you really are trying to get rid of that stuff
00:16:18.900In some ways, he was a bit of an anarchist, but not in as much of a hurry, where the anarchists just sort of want to wipe it all out.
00:16:26.640I think that I'm a big believer in public services that provide value and are more economically efficient to deliver through the taxation model.
00:16:35.820It doesn't mean I think we should be subjected to all sorts of taxes.
00:16:40.460In fact, you and I disagree on which tax is better, right?
00:17:17.440But I have, I share the same worries that people on the right do about this leviathan that we're creating in government that is starting to get beyond just provision of health care and all, you know, all the other kind of services that are important and starting to get into discussions about like whether, whether white people have too much privilege without even knowing it, for instance.
00:17:41.400I mean, like we had this graphic, I don't know if we've, we've got it, but, um, I was just like,
00:17:46.280I was astounded the other day. Um, it was a couple of weeks ago. I saw this graphic come
00:17:51.920out from the provincial government that, uh, it basically like, it was like, it looked like a
00:17:56.640cartoon had been drawn up. It was official thing. I think it might've come out of the health authority
00:17:59.840or something. And it said something to the effect of if you, uh, if you don't realize you have
00:18:05.340privilege, it probably means you've got privilege or something like that. And it's this, it's the
00:18:08.620same diversity based idea that if um yeah here it is right here we're going to pull it up in a
00:18:16.040sec i just want i want people to see this because this is came from the government this is a
00:18:19.860government document yeah we'll just i know it's probably not up in the feed yet but our producers
00:18:24.700um it says if you are unaware of privilege you might be privileged um that's like so badly drawn
00:18:33.140can i are we showing this can people see it yet we're working on it yeah no we're we're getting
00:18:38.240there but it just i'm just like what like we're paying money for this what is happening well it's
00:18:45.100this idea that like you're so racist man you don't even know you're racist right and and it's just
00:18:51.220such a like identitarian it's a racist idea in itself uh and it's not it's not necessarily racist
00:18:58.440against white people it's like it just reduces everybody to their identity and totally removes
00:19:03.240it's it's unbelievable to me that that like you know our government is putting this stuff out on
00:19:10.060the taxpayer dime yeah if you are unaware of your privilege you might be privileged now and this is
00:19:15.660this is the thing like you know like the people that are really into jordan peterson for instance
00:19:19.360would look at this and go well this is this is coming out of our universities this is a product
00:19:23.240of cultural marxism right and it's like look i mean i'm probably the only person that western
00:19:29.960standard viewers will ever know or meet or interact with who actually was a member of the
00:19:34.720communist party right like not just a member of the communist party i was on the payroll of the
00:19:38.480communist party for a little while as an organizer and i can tell you that the the old school
00:19:43.960communists the the ones that i sort of studied with and and and and they were kind of mentors
00:19:49.740to me people that were literally trained in the soviet union uh instead of going to university
00:19:54.200they fought against this kind of stuff vociferously and and they fought against me when i was trying
00:19:58.780to bring it in like and this is the reason like i i'm not railing against uh the identitarians
00:20:04.020necessarily i'm sort of trying to come to terms with my own identitarianism of my own past self
00:20:08.280and you know so i i when i went into the communist party for instance i started doing the same kind
00:20:13.620of things that i was trying to do in student unions and every other organization i was involved
00:20:17.500in i i wanted there to be like tokenized representatives on the on the leadership
00:20:22.620council a lady representative i want a lady aboriginal representative you know all based0.88
00:20:26.940on the color of people's skin and stuff and it was and all the younger folks they were all like
00:20:31.180yeah yeah that's exactly what we need to do and it was the older school folks who had been trained0.85
00:20:35.080uh you know by marxists in the soviet union who were like no this is terrible this is a terrible
00:20:39.960idea this is divisive it takes away from what they termed at the time of working class unity
00:20:45.520so it's it's always funny to me that like you know whenever people on the right are railing
00:20:50.460against this stuff in universities etc it's always the cultural marxists that they that they uh that
00:20:55.460they blame but the reality is like name one real marxist in a university today in canada i can't
00:21:01.320really think of any there's a lot of people that maybe call themselves marxists a lot of people in
00:21:04.660the gender studies departments maybe describe themselves as marxist they haven't read any lenin
00:21:09.700they haven't read any marx like they've maybe read the communist manifesto which is a pamphlet
00:21:14.240you know uh like they it's it's so inaccurate so anyway i mean that's quite a tangent but uh
00:21:19.980what i'm trying to say here is like we're not all evil well and and at least your ends like
00:21:27.020your ends could coincide with our ends right and like we just have to find the right means to get
00:21:31.360there i think i think something that does need to be kind of uh pivoted to i think uh poor pat
00:21:36.060there poor pat is tired of our of our of our marxist rant here he said oh dear uh great show
00:21:41.760once again which he lost me in promoting marxism sorry this isn't this isn't a necessary promotion
00:21:46.220of marxism this is try to x to extricate what what is actually marxist versus what is
00:21:51.560identitarian which is clearly clear and identitarianism i think we can all agree
00:21:55.940regardless of our political backgrounds is incredibly divisive but it's racist well yeah
00:22:00.740no it's it is it's new jim crowism it's it's absolutely evil and and it's segregation and
00:22:06.060it's and it's apartheid and it's wrong and needs to stop i think i think that maybe one of the
00:22:11.520ways to kind of bridge the gap here too though is that especially for anybody who's watching from
00:22:15.640alberta i want you to imagine for a moment if somebody who who was all about you know like you
00:22:21.120get you know you're all on the same side on this question of like oh yeah i know the government's
00:22:24.120going to cut spending and we got to back up on our public services and that sort of thing it's
00:22:27.640like everybody's like okay yeah everybody can be on side with that and you know what we should do1.00
00:22:30.700too we should get rid of the catholic school boards and there was like wait a second i really
00:22:35.720like my publicly subsidized catholic school board those are better schools i know they're better
00:22:40.480schools i know that because i got cousins in them that go to their i think they're at francis
00:22:44.960Xavier in Calgary and they got a better football team and they got better students and they just
00:22:49.980got people are they're working harder there they are and they're performing better and could you
00:22:54.640imagine if somebody came in with that attitude it's like well that would be if you're going to
00:22:58.460use a word like intersectional that would be like a place of opposite right like where you would
00:23:01.960divide with that person so we're trying to do is find the opposite of that where it's like no like
00:23:06.120you could have your Catholic school board and and you know proper public services and a more
00:23:11.080efficient model too it's not just a cake and eat it too thing it's like no no there's a way to do
00:23:14.700this better and that's the argument we're not argument but that's the discussion we're having
00:23:18.200here we're trying to get find those places of intersection because if we all want this
00:23:22.800independence thing or we at least want ottawa to get the hell out of our lives we we have to find
00:23:27.680allies and we're not going to find allies by just rabble rousing we have to we have to reach across
00:23:32.580the aisle and be like look you may be a godless commie but we can both agree that ottawa sucks
00:23:39.020so how do we work together so i can go back to church and you can continue to do whatever you're
00:23:43.860doing and and we both have a better independent tax tax rationally state that that we participate
00:23:51.500in and we feel free in well i think one of the things that the conservatives in in canada and
00:23:55.980also you know across north america have the real positive thing that conservatives have contributed
00:23:59.900to the sort of the national discourse uh is this exposure of the reality that um we are far too
00:24:08.760divided and that when you try to cancel people they don't just go away no they don't and so
00:24:14.180you know my point is i guess you know both sides of the divide have to have to remember this because
00:24:18.980it's not i mean right now the left is canceling people at an alarming rate far more than i think
00:24:24.420any other any other political grouping but it hasn't always necessarily been that no there are
00:24:29.360i mean each side of the political divide has its ways that it cancels people in fact you know i
00:24:34.180would argue as a as a self-avowed marxist uh that the whole discussion around socialism and the way
00:24:40.960marxists are framed for instance is a way for the right to try to cancel people so yes like there
00:24:44.960you know again my my big criticism of jordan peterson and it's very narrow one because i like
00:24:49.320i said there's a whole number of issues where i think he's been very helpful in the national
00:24:52.400discourse um on compelled speech freedom of speech etc uh but the the big uh pitfall is like
00:25:00.280you know he'll sort of tag somebody as socialist or or something and it's just this word that
00:25:05.720people use to try to dismiss what everything else that somebody else is saying clearly i'm a
00:25:09.280socialist according to the comments from yesterday yeah which i mean if anybody actually talks to you
00:25:13.440for five minutes it becomes pretty clear that you are the furthest thing from socialism you know
00:25:19.320it's like i was laughing yesterday it was wonderful i know you're probably on the floor
00:25:25.380killing yourself so so you have to remember like you know you call somebody a socialist for instance
00:25:29.640they don't just vanish right it's just like if you call somebody a transphobe and maybe get them
00:25:34.100kicked off of twitter or something like that they don't vanish and so if you're trying to build a
00:25:39.100political coalition around something that has nothing to do with socialism or you know transgender
00:25:45.740rights or anything like that like you're trying to build a political coalition around provincial
00:25:50.000autonomy greater provincial independence vis-a-vis the federal government and especially if British
00:25:54.900columbia has to factor into that project well you got to contend with people like me yeah for sure
00:26:00.000and i have to contend with people like you no absolutely so so what i love about this show so
00:26:04.560much is like you know i mean i don't i don't know of any other show in the province that would have
00:26:08.940somebody like me on it and this is supposed to be the big right-wing show right i mean that's
00:26:13.260if you turn on the cbc or you listen to the ndp in alberta for instance i mean they you know they
00:26:19.880they peg this show and they peg uh rebel media for instance is like the antichrist right yeah like
00:26:25.200um fake news and all sorts of stuff i mean try to try to get it you've already banned this show's
00:26:30.100been uh banned even off of youtube for a few days at one point um but the reality is like you know
00:26:35.740we don't go away and and this is the only show that that uh will have somebody like like me on
00:26:41.240and and and even though the viewers are decidedly conservative uh you don't see them running for
00:26:46.780hills like they're quite happy to push back on me and and uh you know call me a long-haired hippie
00:26:52.300and all that kind of stuff and that's fine that's just the way we communicate and talk but at the
00:26:55.580end of the day you know we've got a project we got to um we got to figure out what we have in common
00:27:01.100uh because we're all british columbians we're all albertans we're all westerners and and we all care
00:27:06.620about um making sure that you know we're looked after first and that it's not essentially a foreign
00:27:13.180entity way out in ontario uh that's calling the shots for us i was just i think just we were coming
00:27:19.100in i was telling you you know one of the things that just grind my gears i was on my social media
00:27:23.580feed yesterday i saw this photo of this uh you know we're talking about the fairy creek logging
00:27:28.340dispute for instance yep so you know driving through basically victoria up towards north
00:27:33.160island i suspect there was this picture of this logging truck and it only had space to carry this
00:27:37.880one log because it was this old growth tree that put on like i wish i could find the photo because
00:27:42.500the size of it was just enormous so big that people were stopping the truck on the side of
00:27:46.140the you know from the side of the road to take a look at this thing and people were kind of mourning
00:27:48.720it uh the and it's so funny because the comments in the in the feed were like wow that tree must
00:27:53.540have been like 100 200 years old and i'm just laughing there's 200 year old trees in my
00:27:57.000backyard that are toothpicks compared to this thing like it was a 1300 year old tree and so
00:28:02.340you can have two different approaches to this most people especially down in the in the lower
00:28:06.680mainland the island look at it they have sort of an environmentalist bent they'll look at it with
00:28:10.280real sadness like you know we cut down this 13 year old icon kind of thing I'm a bit sad about
00:28:14.940that too because there really isn't a need for it but what really grinds my gears is that there's
00:28:20.760a pretty good chance that that tree isn't even getting milled in BC it's probably putting they're
00:28:26.680probably putting it on a boat and send it over to China where all the super mills are and it just
00:28:31.340reminded me of I think it was back in 2006 when I first went to go work for the BC Federation of
00:28:35.920labor, just as a, like a junior staff person. And I accompanied the secretary treasurer to North
00:28:41.460Island one day, uh, just to go speak at some, some rally that was being put on by laid off
00:28:47.260sawmill workers. Uh, and, and a lot of these guys were like, you know, third, fourth generation
00:28:52.080mill workers. They'd been on the, some of them had never been off the Island, right? I mean,
00:28:55.300there's people on the Island like that. And they'd been laid off for the first time in four
00:28:59.720generations. And the reason that they'd been told they'd been laid off was that there wasn't enough
00:29:03.040fiber how often have we heard that before right mills knows we can't get enough fiber can't get
00:29:06.700enough fiber so we're speaking at this little town hall kind of thing and one of the mill workers
00:29:12.360comes up and whispers in my ear says you know can you guys get out of bed early enough to join us
00:29:16.060out on a on a roadblock we're going to set up at 4 30 tomorrow morning i said well you know i'll
00:29:21.100check i'll check with the person i'm i'm helping out here but yeah we can probably be there we
00:29:25.400didn't really know what it was about so anyway we get it long story short we get up the next morning
00:29:28.980And we're out on this gravel road, and there's probably 50, 60 of these mill workers standing.
00:29:34.240They're trying to block logging trucks that they're driving past them, going right past the mill to the dry dock.
00:29:40.760We counted 42 logging trucks full of wood, and the logging trucks were owned by the mill that had laid off all these guys.
00:29:50.760And they were shipping that stuff straight to China.
00:29:53.000And they were doing so, trying to get it done in the dead of the night so the mill workers didn't see it
00:29:56.720because the day before they told them they'd been laid off
00:36:51.000he explains in no uncertain terms that without the language that we get out of the late 19th
00:36:55.700century from thinkers like marx and others who who give us the language to talk about why
00:37:00.400you don't feel as connected making a widget as you would carving a boat out of wood or you know
00:37:06.880making a cathedral by laying stone on stone with your own two hands it's called the alienation of
00:37:12.280labor and alienation of what of what you're creating he says that those that language is
00:37:16.720extremely important and so what we're living through right now i mean we're living through
00:37:19.560If you're a Trump fan, you actually need this language to understand what happened with Trump because there was an alienation of the voters to the point where they voted for a crazy guy from reality TV who lives in a gold palace at the top of a hotel he built pulling all sorts of illegal crap off.
00:37:37.120Like, that's the man who became the president of the United States.
00:41:58.900Well, it's not just that, but it's also like, Stuart actually puts it quite well.
00:42:03.280He's right when he says, you know, if you're unhappy with the degree to which the BC Liberals or any other government will just sell our resources out without trying to derive any value from them here locally,
00:42:16.640if you're unhappy with them, the NDP is even better at it because you don't necessarily expect that they're going to do it.
00:42:22.980But everything that was good about the CCF in terms of their, they were never opposed to pipelines.
00:42:26.920They were opposed to corporate ownership of pipelines, which is why I said last week when everybody was complaining that we should shut down the Line 5 Enbridge pipeline out east and the Michigan governor wants that thing shut down.
00:42:39.540My position was shutting it down is stupid, but what's even more stupid is allowing a foreign corporation to own and operate that pipeline when it's so vital to the infrastructure of Canada.
00:42:51.440Or a foreign government to have any influence over it.0.99
00:42:54.160Yeah. And I get people's mistrust of government. I share a lot of that mistrust. But the one thing that I like about government is people can control it more than they can control a corporation, especially a foreign corporation. You can vote the leadership out.
00:43:09.340And so, I mean, it's just, it makes no sense when you see, like, I just saw a prominent member of the NDP federal cabinet, it's not really a cabinet, but the federal NDP government, sorry, party, making this statement on social media the other day that, you know, Trudeau should sell the pipeline that he-
00:46:16.600I don't know if we disagree on all that many things, probably fewer things than people would expect.
00:46:21.700But the, you know, what I would disagree with sort of this, like, I take issue with this sort of stock reaction to these 10 cities where people are just like, you know, we,
00:46:32.740even you yesterday like you were saying um you know vagrancy is illegal right vagrancy is yeah
00:46:38.240and you're right um and so i mean the sort of the core analysis there is like it stops short of
00:46:46.900moving these people from where they are to out of sight and and the challenge i think that
00:46:52.220municipalities are facing is there is no out of sight like where else no no because there's too
00:46:55.700many yeah too many people so why are there too many i mean that's the question nobody's asking
00:47:00.000right well part you sort of nailed part of it uh yesterday part of the reason why there's so many
00:47:05.340is that there's an equal number of people that are speculating on housing as a commodity
00:47:11.900treating it like a commodity rather than a home yep and so you know you're going to get the house
00:47:16.940house flippers that are going to come on and they're going to push back because that's their
00:47:19.920seed and i and i got some sympathy for them you know i you know i graduated from high school in
00:47:23.88096 and it was like so all through the late 90s and into the early 2000s you know a lot of my
00:47:30.160friends that I you know my cohort coming out of high school I noticed that they were immediately
00:47:34.520getting into this house flipping game that was kind of what you did right I never did I you know
00:47:39.340my my wife and I we as soon as we were able to afford a house which we couldn't do until we
00:47:43.180moved to Prince George 11 years ago we just worked to pay that place off so because we wanted you
00:47:49.060know it was the old Tommy Douglas kind of approach to things you get the bank off your back as soon
00:47:53.540as you can because you can't do anything until the bank's off your back right and you don't
00:47:57.860really have freedom until you own your own house but we didn't view a house as a commodity we
00:48:03.300and consequently you know i got all these friends at a high school for instance who
00:48:07.680they're worth way more than i am but they're also like leverage so leveraged that you get a you get
00:48:14.020a housing bubble pop or or something else in their life you know goes askew and they're they're in
00:48:19.240trouble yeah like and especially if they've got a bunch of rental properties set up where that's
00:48:23.280a main portion of their income. And suddenly they're in this situation where none of their
00:48:27.980tenants can pay rent. And suddenly the government implements a no eviction clause. I mean, does that
00:48:33.200sound familiar? Because that's what we're in right now. What do you do? I mean, you literally can
00:48:37.460lose everything within the span of a few months. And of course you can. You're treating houses
00:48:42.620like a commodity. You're treating them like gold. And there's a housing shortage across the province
00:48:48.600And it's spreading across Canada. Yeah, it's spreading out of Vancouver and BC in particular. And it's, you know, it's an issue in Prince George. It's an issue all over the province. And it's particularly problematic for folks that are in northern climates, because like, you know, what do you do when when it gets minus 30? So we have to deal with this problem somehow. And, and yeah, sure. I mean, I can agree with people that when they say, well, you shouldn't be allowed to live in a park, for instance.
00:49:16.520but then what like what happens after that uh and is there any way that the market just the raw
00:49:24.640market can solve this problem well it hasn't so far no it hasn't it really hasn't and i mean
00:49:30.480and ultimately there's now there's a back and forth on these questions because if we brought
00:49:35.200on the fraser institute or whoever else playing the token libertarian role they would they would
00:49:39.560tell us in no uncertain terms that a huge amount of it is regulation that is that is causing the
00:49:44.360shortage because there is you can't build houses fast enough and the permitting process is insane
00:49:49.560etc i i would agree on the principle that permitting and all the other make work that
00:49:56.500surrounds housing is nonsensical and useless i i don't i don't think it actually gets us better
00:50:02.360housing i don't because i mean we got leaky condos are after we expanded the permitting agency not
00:50:07.720before so i mean and if these bc bungalows are worth four hundred thousand dollars but maybe they
00:50:12.840are if the only reason they might be is that i don't even think they were that well constructed
00:50:16.220necessarily but they were built at a different time and they have lasted this long so maybe
00:50:20.420they'll last a bit longer um and we do know that new developments have had all sorts of problems
00:50:24.500because of what's going on there so obviously the permitting doesn't make things better necessarily
00:50:28.100but but i think that more importantly i think that we do have to get back maybe into more of
00:50:34.180a homesteading mentality of or or trying to appropriate land and have people put onto the
00:50:39.660land and have people and start to develop the outskirts of our cities or whatever and start
00:50:44.240reappropriating land so that people can have a place to live and that they can develop it for
00:50:49.060themselves because that's the other thing that's a big problem even the cost of even if you didn't
00:50:52.640want to construct anything let's say for example you wanted to get a really nice yurt like i'm not
00:50:56.740and and it's funny and they get you know he kind of laughed at that and whatever but i mean my
00:50:59.760parents are actually thinking about doing this because of how strict the alr rules are so they
00:51:03.860want to give my the house that we built for the farm to my brother and then maybe me and my beloved
00:51:08.380could move into the into the garage there the uh the coach house and whatever it's a cool place
00:51:13.760i've seen it yeah it's nice and and i mean it's no yurt but it's no yurt but this is the joke
00:51:17.780right like i mean you can you can get a really nice yurt and and it's a lot cheaper than even
00:51:21.620a mobile trailer and you can and so you can build this spot and then it's also mobile so now you
00:51:26.140don't have to conform to anything and all the permitting is all gone it just the point that
00:51:30.040i'm trying to draw here is like but that's because my parents are already property they already have
00:51:33.700a piece of property and before the covet expansion before the increase the super inflation happened
00:51:38.600in the last five years they got it seven years ago so it did they were ahead of the game but the
00:51:43.380point is that that even if we were going to try and give somebody a half acre and whatever or or
00:51:49.540not even a half acre but like you know five acres and a cow if we're going to use chesterton's
00:51:53.360formula the point is that even if you were to go into parts of print storage where there still is
00:51:57.040five acres to give someone to give every you know every poor displaced person some land and a place
00:52:02.420to put their year or whatever like just the taxes on that alone are still out of out of control
00:52:07.040everything is out of control okay the cost of construction is out of control like it doesn't
00:52:10.460matter what it is even if you could appropriate that land like even that five acres it could be
00:52:14.920moose pasture as we call it's pure bush like it still needs to be cleared like by hand or by truck
00:52:19.260or whatever you got but it is it is going to be expensive and it's we don't have we don't have
00:52:25.300the means anymore we've we've created such a seat like such a floor a high floor on on the cost of
00:52:31.780things people can't get in yeah anywhere well you referenced the um the supply argument earlier
00:52:37.320that you hear a lot from i mean that's the argument you hear from developers in vancouver
00:52:40.700in particular and let's be clear i mean uh you know if the oil boys run the show in calgary
00:52:45.760it's develop property developers and condo developers that run politics in vancouver
00:52:49.880absolutely they do i mean it's a company town that way it's nuts um and the argument you hear
00:52:54.560from them is this sort of pure supply argument uh and look it's not like i'm you know like i'm
00:52:59.440marxist i'm not going to deny the reality of supply and demand uh which you know for people
00:53:04.320that don't really understand marxists that well probably would be surprised to hear me say that
00:53:07.920but i mean supply is a supply and there is the demand
00:53:13.520sounds like a german marxist but fair enough marx was german he was he was yeah
00:53:19.280but usually it's the russian accent people throw at me yeah uh soviet russia you know build house
01:06:42.620who cares but then like you're just subtracted from the population like you just don't exist
01:06:47.480anymore your facebook's gone your youtube's gone your twitter's been banned like you're gone yeah
01:06:51.300you don't exist and people can say look i mean you know employers have a right to let people go
01:06:55.800and and expand and contract as as the market allows or or doesn't allow and that's you know
01:07:00.940in this economy that's absolutely true i'm not saying that it's wrong again i don't really deal
01:07:04.980in right or wrong i'm just saying there are economic consequences to the way we do things
01:07:09.520Especially if it's rapid and without precedence and people don't know what's coming.
01:07:13.380Yeah. And the big, the frustration that I share with, with, I think people on the right in regards to mainstream media is that nobody ever in mainstream media ever examines the reason why there's big tent cities growing in our parks.
01:07:27.300They don't get into these kinds of discussions. Like, you know, yeah, we can all agree that vagrancy should be illegal and that people shouldn't be living in parks, but what are we going to do about it?
01:07:36.500Are we just like, I mean, you know, I, I, uh, when I first started going to university
01:07:42.640Um, and it, it, Kelowna in many ways is kind of like Prince George in the sense that there's
01:07:48.100this traditional downtown core, uh, and nobody's there.
01:07:52.640Kelowna is a little different now than it was, uh, when I, you know, 20 years ago when
01:07:57.120I was going to university there, but, um, they've, they've been able to get a bit more
01:08:00.260activity in the downtown core, but Prince George, I mean, you walk downtown Prince George,
01:08:03.760it's like tumbleweed right um and you know there's reasons why that is uh and it's it's how we you
01:08:13.480know it's how we build the cities it's how we you know the big built out we didn't build up yeah and
01:08:17.820so you know you can see downtown there it is right downtown but can you see anybody uh you can see a
01:08:25.480few cars driving around in the background there but uh you know not a lot of people walking around
01:08:28.860right and it's and there's reasons for that and so you know when when poverty starts sort of
01:08:35.480occupying the empty spaces the the news reports we hear about it are simply well you know the
01:08:43.660police moved in they started ripping up the camps nobody ever talks about why those people are there
01:08:47.260or where they're going to go or what we're you know what we're going to do about it right and
01:08:51.420in some respects this is the discussion they're having in victoria right now as the victoria
01:08:56.180city council is is trying desperately to like try to find some solution outside of just kicking
01:09:01.480these people out and then there's the there's sort of the property crowd um who are just angry that
01:09:08.280they can't go to the park without tripping over a tent right i understand the frustration but
01:09:12.480uh like it's your community i'm not saying that you have to come up with a solution but
01:09:18.160at least we have like where are we going to have the conversation about why people are in that
01:09:22.800situation and what and and how they got there and whether whether any of the economic policies that
01:09:28.000we implement put them there uh and whether it's even possible for them to get out of that situation
01:09:32.800and if you kick them out of there well where the hell are they going to go right i want to cue in
01:09:36.820on this point of cultural approach to capitalism there is and and actually even even stewart for
01:09:42.080all of his left-wing ideas like he has to he has to you know admit this about it as well and he did
01:09:47.880so he did so on this show not that long ago of that we you know there is a there used to be an
01:09:54.440understanding that capitalists would have to bail themselves out you know there used to be an
01:09:58.440understanding too that oligarchs would do their bit there was an understanding i mean like used
01:10:02.300to be well and this is just it like i mean carnegie hall was built by the guy who arrived here with
01:10:06.880five dollars in his pocket you know and he and he built american steel u.s steel and he and he
01:10:13.840built carnegie hall and his wife you know made a lot of people to build it well there you go
01:10:18.220that's well and that's fine i mean that's good he paid people i mean it but this is the way we
01:10:22.340used to do this we used to have this kind of understanding that the oligarchs would contribute
01:10:27.140uh that's going away and a lot of that's because of foreign interests because they don't live
01:10:31.720where they work eat sleep and you don't you can't march on a factory owner's house
01:10:35.820when they don't live there right so that's a problem um and then the other half of that i
01:10:40.920would say is that i mean it is it is about it is about what's a reasonable profit or what's a
01:10:46.000reasonable thing instead of just the bottom line and if the bottom line is people's lives which is
01:10:50.280what often gets you know often happens it's it's i think there i think that needs to be changed i
01:10:55.880think that needs to be made different how we do that exactly i don't know i i still believe in a
01:11:00.420strong moral conscience sort of answer that question because i think all the regulations
01:11:03.300we've done they used to say that for i think in forestry the old rule was every two million dollars
01:11:07.820of profit back in like the season stuff was going to cost a life or two that's the way it was it was
01:11:13.800going to cost it on the road it's going to cost it in the mill someone's going to get ripped up in
01:11:16.640the mill someone's get ripped up in a machine it didn't matter and that was life now that was
01:11:20.440terrible but is it any better today now that we have an entire you know work safe culture and
01:11:26.120everything else that's around it that regulates it is is that so are less people dying but are
01:11:31.700but less people are also employed is that helping anything i don't want people to die i'm not trying
01:11:36.660to trade that i'm just saying if less people are still objectively employed or more people are
01:11:40.740sucking off of the profit who are in regulation positions who will never be put at risk right
01:11:45.460there did this do any better for the worker on the ground right well look i mean one of the one of
01:11:50.740the biggest uh controversial issues that would come up on the floor of every bc federation of
01:11:56.100labor convention would be over the question of wcb or work safe um because literally there were
01:12:02.260there were delegates on the floor voting delegates who worked at work safe because the work safe
01:12:07.220employees are unionized and so they would tend to be rather defensive of the organization
01:12:12.260but the rest of the working class on the floor unionized working class on the floor
01:12:16.020were all you know like viciously angry and dissatisfied with work safe bc because you know
01:12:23.140it's it's it's a public entity employers are are paying premiums into it uh by law uh but the
01:12:30.020The reality of WorkSafe and the creation of the Workers' Compensation Board was that it pulled away from workers the ability, the legal right to sue employers for negligence.
01:12:39.160So it's this huge historic compromise that actually many of us would argue that it worked in favor of employers in the sense that, yeah, they had to pay insurance premiums, but it's more of insurance against getting sued because their employees don't have the legal right in British Columbia to sue.
01:12:56.080if you get injured or if you're working at the sawmill and you you know you get your arm cut off
01:13:00.140you can't sue your employer for negligence like you can in many jurisdictions in the u.s for
01:13:04.180instance for huge sums of money you have to go through this wcb process uh you have to go through
01:13:09.640the basically like the tribunal that sounds like no fault uh well it's except that they do assign
01:13:16.180fault i mean it's slightly different but but yeah it's uh and then of course you know work safe would
01:13:22.260build up these huge surpluses of money because they weren't paying out claims to workers
01:13:26.820uh from the money that was all that they'd already collected and what would they do with
01:13:31.160that surplus well under the bc liberal regime they would vote to like give that money back to
01:13:35.580employers uh rather than holding it uh for workers for things like retraining and trying to make sure
01:13:41.180that they don't end up pulling down on more medical services because they can't work anymore
01:13:45.200sounds like aaron o'toole's carbon tax plan you know what blew my mind just i mean i know this
01:13:49.800is a total non sequitur you know what blew my mind over the weekend what aaron o'toole is two
01:13:54.200years younger than justin trudeau did you know this you mean the big bald baby guy is two years
01:13:58.920younger than the guy with good hair he's only five years older than i am wow this did you know this
01:14:03.800no the guy looks like he's in his 60s yeah he does look old i mean i hate to descend into like
01:14:08.840just crass um you know gossip here but but i mean we used to say angry tom i mean and tom still
01:14:14.460looks angry remember when tom was trying to smile like he'd like almost like had his eyebrows taped
01:14:18.600up during those debates in 2015. Mulcair. Yeah. It just, it was bad. I ranked him when he was
01:14:25.500running for leader of the NDP, I ranked him eight out of eight candidates on the ballot. I just
01:14:31.620wasn't impressed with him at all from the beginning. He was a great opposition leader.
01:14:35.720Well, I mean, flash forward to when, to that convention in Edmonton that did him in.
01:14:43.960Oh, it was brilliant. I voted to keep him. I mean, he had really won me over as an opposition leader. He was very effective and I think really helped to sort of strike this balance between an understanding of how our economy worked, kind of like Rachel Notley does, comparative to all other New Democrats is the other reason that I'm a big fan of Rachel Notley, at least, you know, like 2015, 2016 era Rachel Notley, was that she had adopted the mantle of Western alienation for Peter Lougheed, but also understood that we actually need pipelines.
01:15:13.800and still understands that and still understands the basis of the Albertan economy.
01:15:17.500And she got up at that convention and chastised the rest of the federal party
01:15:21.800for its ridiculous position on pipelines.
01:15:24.740Because, you know, like the Naomi Clyden and Abby Lewis crowd
01:15:27.560was coming in with the Leap Manifesto nonsense.
01:15:30.320Like this idea that the NDP should literally leap off a cliff
01:15:34.120and suddenly everybody's going to vote for us.
01:15:36.500Because the Great Leap Forward worked so well in that certain milieu
01:15:41.080over on the far west of the Pacific there.
01:15:44.280Yeah, and I recognize you're probably trying to bait me to defend it,
01:15:46.700but I won't because I don't think it worked.
01:16:50.540Oh, and the funny thing is, like, now Avi Lewis – I don't know if people – let me just adjust these headphones here.
01:16:57.700Avi Lewis, who – I don't know what his – like, his claim to fame is that he was – he's the son of Stephen Lewis, right, who is, like, NDP royalty.
01:42:12.240you know you got this evidence that somebody like cory morgan who's on tv or he's on you know he's
01:42:16.080doing what we're doing he's live streaming uh twice a week uh happens to make some money by
01:42:20.320driving uber on the side i fell in love with the guy when he uh uh when he demonstrated that he
01:42:25.360wasn't ashamed of that at all he was proud of it he said it's honest work he says doing this is
01:42:28.880honest work and i thought yeah right on man um and and way to point out the elitism in people who
01:42:34.560consider themselves progressive i mean that's again it's one of those issues where people like
01:42:39.120me who literally are the far left like the far radical left uh can find some common ground with
01:42:44.880people on the right like cory morgan because you know fundamentally his material uh relation to
01:42:50.480to the money that he makes is one of a working class person and he's not ashamed of that at all
01:42:55.040and i and he shouldn't be and nor should he be and i became a huge fan of that guy
01:42:59.200so i i don't i don't want to speak for you i doubt you're going to have him on very often
01:43:02.480because he's got his own he's got his own show and he's got his own time and it's and it's not
01:43:05.760it's not me not wanting it's just it's just like you know he he's got other things to do i got
01:43:09.680other things to do too he's busy he's trying to make a living yeah exactly exactly like the rest
01:43:13.160of us so so i hopefully no i'd love to i'd love to touch base of court we we've talked more via
01:43:18.460phone and stuff than anything else because we've been talking about trying to make sure that
01:43:22.320everything's up to the same snuff throughout the western standard and everybody's figuring out how
01:43:26.160to do cameras and mini ati boxes and that sort of stuff um all that sort of stuff so i think with
01:43:32.680let's just come back to the covid passport here for just a moment just kind of as we close out
01:43:36.660the show because the pipeline is coming on and i guess it's about 20 minutes but they always want
01:43:40.280me out of the way as as soon as they can get me out of the way but but um 20 minutes no that's
01:43:44.960wrong it's coming on about 10 minutes um the the thing that i'm going to kind of brick on here when
01:43:50.440it comes to the covid passport thing is that i just think i you know regardless of where you sit
01:43:54.640with the vaccine i have no intention of taking it myself but but whatever it's each their own
01:43:59.520I, the issue I take is that like, how, how can this possibly square with your charter rights at all? Like, it just makes no sense. And further to that, how, who, who, what happened to the ACLU people that were there, you know, back in the 80s, so that Twisted Sister could publish their record and, and, you know, Flynn could, could, could put, or Flint or whatever, could publish Hustler.
01:44:23.960like what happened to that generation of left-wing libertarians yeah where are they today like i mean
01:44:29.720like they're in the republican party where they should be well there it is like how can you
01:44:33.480how can you be arguing for a coveted passport and say i'm a leftist it's like or to be progressive
01:44:38.360or to be left-wing or even liberal it's like this is exactly the this is government control
01:44:44.440no it absolutely is and it's alarming to me and it's not just on vaccines it alarms it alarms me
01:44:49.160It's like, you know, irrespective of whatever position you had on the coastal gas link pipeline going straight through Wet'suwet'en territory in north central British Columbia, I happen to be in favor of that pipeline.
01:45:02.640But I don't like the idea of the RCMP at the behest of either the federal or even worse, the provincial government marching into a nation's territory like that with sniper rifles and enforcing the will of a corporation.
01:45:17.380I just, I mean, that's just not something
01:45:19.220that I think any government should facilitate.
01:45:21.700And it was funny because we talked about this before.
01:45:23.660It was, because I do another show here in Prince George.
01:45:26.020I do a radio show at the local radio station.
01:45:29.400And it was my right-wing guy was the most pro,
01:45:55.520No, this, and this is what, you know, these people that I'm supposed to be on the same side of the fence of are the ones that are advocating more lockdowns.
01:46:01.580They're the people that are on Twitter saying, you know, Bonnie Henry's terrible because she's not, you know, because she's lifting the restrictions too soon.
01:46:07.700She's personally murdered every single British Columbia.
01:46:09.180That she's responsible for 1,200 new deaths.
01:46:11.420Like, so, yeah, no, that stuff worries me.0.82
01:46:14.960this authoritarianism that's that's uh coming out of the left vaccine passports are very much a part
01:46:19.520of that authoritarian uh tendency and so like you know to be clear i'm personally not opposed to the
01:46:25.120vaccine whatsoever like i'm not i'm not choosing to not get it because you know i'm worried that
01:46:30.240it's going to make me sick i'm sort of on the same page as you know like cory morgan and uh
01:46:34.720uh well derek fildebrandt anyway oh yeah derek got the back the publisher of this outfit um
01:46:40.640in that you know you make your own personal decision on whether you're going to get you
01:46:43.760weigh the options and you make a decision based on on your own interests and the interests of
01:46:47.600your family and you make that decision like I wear a mask everywhere right and I and I have
01:46:52.580I don't even bat an eye when I encounter somebody else who doesn't wear a mask like that's their
01:46:56.800that's their right um and I really appreciate um you know the position I think that's been put
01:47:03.380putting out put out by the standard which is encouraging people not to chastise people who
01:47:08.580wear a mask um because that's their personal right as well I mean that's that's the whole
01:47:12.620that's how we get along better live and let live everybody just lets everybody else do whatever
01:47:16.260the hell they you know makes them feel safe as long as it doesn't infringe on on our stuff and
01:47:21.200so you know i might get the vaccine i haven't decided for me it's more like you know i spent
01:47:26.160most of my time by myself in my house uh like you know you guys your linux system with my linux
01:47:32.560system and my marxism and uh yeah uh and i figure you know there's other people like my mom for
01:47:37.300instance who's just a giant nerd is what you are well yeah well i'm not i'm not that giant but i
01:47:41.420i'm a nerd but uh you know like my mom for instance she's got a heart condition and she's a
01:47:45.520very social person and she's you know like she's not as much of an isolationist like i am and
01:47:49.800and the last year and a half has been really tough on her because she knows if she catches
01:47:53.320the thing she's probably dead uh because she's already not in the greatest health and she really
01:47:58.140wants to get out i mean i didn't go and see my grandmother i didn't go give her a hug like i
01:48:01.580mean we've all made choices even us who are very skeptical of all this stuff have have
01:48:05.240shows like we're not licking doorknobs or eyeballs as you put it yeah yeah well my and my grandfather
01:48:10.560is wasting away in an old folks home in uh in Kelowna and nobody can see the poor guy and
01:48:16.020you know like so she wanted to get vaccinated so she could get into the home to go see him fair
01:48:20.060enough uh for me it's more like you know I'm just waiting for everybody who really needs it to sort
01:48:24.560of go through and then if I've got nothing to do maybe I'll head down and get it too but
01:48:27.760I take personal care uh to make sure I you know that I don't I don't want to catch the thing it's
01:48:34.040it's not like i believe that it doesn't exist um but uh you know i like the other side of it is
01:48:41.220these things aren't tested to the same degree as most things on the market because of the and i
01:48:45.440understand the speed at which it was you have to get them out fast and so i'm in a position where
01:48:49.780it's not really impacting my life right now to not have it so why why not wait for a few weeks
01:48:55.200and watch to see what happens to everybody else oh there you go yeah no use that as data and make
01:49:00.120a decision i know when everybody else turns into a zombie you can just we'll see i'll probably get
01:49:05.360it but um i'm in no hurry at this point enough and it doesn't bother me in the slightest you0.62
01:49:09.580get a second head right here then we have another person to talk to the right is gay i don't really0.72
01:49:18.520understand what's going on there but uh well some people on the right are gay it's true actually
01:49:23.520there was he's not on twitter anymore but there was a gay patriot he was a republican in the
01:49:28.140united states and uh very pro-gun very pro-development and yeah um yep yeah well this0.95
01:49:33.980is the thing about gay folks they're everywhere they are yeah they are just like hetero folks0.82
01:49:38.240just like just like people people are just everywhere go figure um as we kind of close
01:49:42.640out the show here i think i think kind of one of the places to kind of come back uh to from the
01:49:47.700beginning is is again this question of sovereignty and independence and we're not going to get there
01:49:52.360without each other right and that's the thing too because if you were to cut off the west tomorrow
01:49:56.080guess who would still be here right we still have john horgan we'd still have wab canoe
01:49:59.840we'd still have rachel notley so if you're a right winger who hates those people well i mean
01:50:04.760they're going to be there tomorrow if you cut off uh at lakehead or take tunder bay with us
01:50:09.280and that's that hell if you take the rest of northern ontario with us and just leave the
01:50:12.760laurentian valley and the and the seaway and everything else like you're still going to have
01:50:18.280even if you got the rest of the northwest territories and everything else you took like
01:50:21.500what is that's for four you know fifths of canada basically um if you took all the rest of that
01:50:28.500you'd still have all the people in thunder bay still vote ndp and nikki ashton's writing and
01:50:33.920you'd still have you'd still have things going on throughout throughout and i mean the non-partisan
01:50:38.360but usually left-wing territorial leaders uh so this is the reality of things so we're a community
01:50:44.340we're a we live in a society um we're a community margaret thatcher disagreed but there you go
01:50:56.340And, you know, you've got to love your neighbor as yourself sort of thing.
01:50:59.100And ultimately, we're not going to get into a better position either as all of Canada, as Western Canada, or just British Columbia and Alberta or whatever.
01:51:07.980We're not going to get into a better position by not finding places to find allies and agree on things and move forward.
01:51:17.400Yeah, I mean, we get to independence and I'll fight with you then.
01:51:19.560Well, there it is. Right. Exactly. I mean, as soon as the revolution is over, the front guard goes.
01:51:25.720It's like, wait a minute. I've seen this before. I've seen this movie before.
01:51:29.560But the pipeline's coming on pretty quick here.
01:51:32.020So we're going to close out a little bit earlier today just to make sure that we're all on the same page.
01:51:36.640But again, thank you so much for watching. Thank you for being here.
01:51:38.880I love it. We're going to have to come up with a better introduction for you because I kept calling you the B.C. Secretary of Labor, the former Secretary of Treasury.