Western Standard - Mountain Standard Time - May 5th, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 .

00:01:00.000 .

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Good morning, and welcome to Mountain Standard Time.

00:02:55.820 I'm your host, Nathan Gita, and today we will be speaking with the Honourable Jay Hill of the Maverick Party in the second half.

00:03:03.480 And for the first half, we'll be taking your comments, questions, and concerns, some interaction again, kind of an opening statement here, on the census and what does that mean to you.

00:03:13.560 Remember to like and subscribe to The Western Standard on Facebook as well as YouTube, and don't forget to subscribe to us on the site.

00:03:20.500 We don't get any government dollars, this isn't the CBC, so if you enjoy our content, well, please support us.

00:03:28.200 My opening statement.

00:03:29.900 The census arrived at my door the other day.

00:03:32.500 In fact, while my beloved and I were on our way back from our very important, totally necessary essential travel on the weekend,

00:03:39.600 we noticed that someone had dropped off a cream-coloured item at the family cabin, despite the fact that it's not a real residence.

00:03:46.880 Apparently, even counting people in order to tax them can be a wasteful government exercise.

00:03:52.820 We need to understand that, as the Bible tells us, that's what a census really is about.

00:03:58.480 All the way back to the birth of Christ and long before, governments have herded and lined up those they rule,

00:04:04.400 counted them, and then asked them for their money at the edge of a sword.

00:04:08.160 You cannot squeeze your citizens for cash without counting your citizens and all of their private property.

00:04:13.300 There is a catch-22 here for many people, particularly those right of centre.

00:04:17.900 For the high-born and money, the census is an opportunity not only to brag about their own wealth,

00:04:22.400 but also to leverage the capital of the country to continue building the empire.

00:04:26.780 After all, there's no way to speculate on houses or land or infrastructure

00:04:30.380 if you don't know where the demographics are heading, where the future is for your country.

00:04:35.420 We remember this about the CPR.

00:04:37.140 There was a huge problem with the CPR because as soon as anybody knew where the rail line was going,

00:04:42.560 all the land around it immediately fell into speculation,

00:04:45.860 and huge costs were incurred.

00:04:48.420 For the lower classes, especially anyone attempting to live independently of the state,

00:04:52.760 the idea that the government knows who you are and what you are worth 1.00

00:04:56.020 is terrifying, and rightfully so. 1.00

00:04:58.400 Best understood by pro-gun advocates, 1.00

00:05:00.460 they only counter stuff or yourself in order to tax or apprehend you later.

00:05:05.960 All government numbering is to be treated with a deep, cynical suspicion

00:05:09.360 by this particular mentality, but from this perspective.

00:05:13.400 The left has their own versions of these privacy questions,

00:05:16.380 and perhaps we'll talk to them about it tomorrow

00:05:18.140 when we have Stuart Parker on and Aaron Ekman on.

00:05:21.260 But for now, let us puzzle out just a little of the conundrum at hand.

00:05:24.680 If we don't count people or their stuff,

00:05:26.500 we won't know how many more roads or schools or sewers to build.

00:05:30.620 But every time we do count them,

00:05:32.400 the state's power is increased and can be abused.

00:05:36.540 A concept I've had to explain to many people, actually,

00:05:38.780 particularly my own fellow Catholics,

00:05:40.320 because usually, you know, as we all know,

00:05:42.180 people who are Roman Catholic often vote liberal,

00:05:44.340 or at least in this country, and are usually pro-state,

00:05:47.740 sometimes they're pro-life and pro-state,

00:05:49.440 which is always a bit odd, but that's what I'm getting to here,

00:05:51.980 is the fact that the state is not our friend.

00:05:55.240 Indeed, the secular state was founded in order to resist

00:05:57.720 the morality of any church or divinity, 0.87

00:06:00.000 that it would be so large and brutal

00:06:01.900 that it could act in its own interest with impunity.

00:06:04.260 And we need to understand that, particularly with the West,

00:06:06.140 but any state authority was always self-interested

00:06:09.620 It was always violent, and it always used coercion to get its way.

00:06:13.100 So there isn't an idea here somehow that there's a moral authority within the state.

00:06:17.740 The state acts in its own interest, and it acts with it without asking forgiveness for anybody else.

00:06:23.440 And this has been proven in history many times.

00:06:25.540 Just look around the world today and tell me I'm wrong. 1.00

00:06:27.860 Look at what's happening with the Drogon. 1.00

00:06:29.420 Look what's happening to the poor Kurds in northern Iraq. 0.58

00:06:32.720 Look what's happening with the coup over in East Asia. 0.81

00:06:36.520 This is a reality. We know this.

00:06:38.280 People fight for control of the state because it has such powerful coercive powers.

00:06:45.480 But, pardon me, but we live in a society which requires cooperation and planning on such a massive scale

00:06:52.160 that we need some kind of read on where people are at.

00:06:57.800 For anybody who's listening to me in Alberta and might take a more reactionary stance to the census,

00:07:02.960 just just think for a moment what would what would you feel like if we didn't survey the land that

00:07:08.380 we were going to build a pipeline on so if we didn't know if there were sinkholes we didn't

00:07:11.760 know there's soft ground we didn't know that there were swamps and whatever else if we didn't know

00:07:15.720 that the ground and the bedrock was there and it was capable of supporting a pipeline capable of

00:07:21.160 supporting the weight and then if something were to go wrong that we'd be able to clean it up and

00:07:25.040 it wouldn't just drift away you wouldn't want to live next to that thing you wouldn't want to live

00:07:29.560 there. And so the same thing here. Without the census, how are we supposed to know where the

00:07:34.000 country is headed? It's a hard question. So we must have a sense of where we're going, which is what

00:07:40.140 the census gives us. That's way too many sense words in one sentence. At the same time, I wrote

00:07:45.200 it, so it doesn't matter. I just have to criticize myself. At the same time, it becomes easy for the

00:07:50.000 government to abuse such information. How do we fix this situation? Perhaps all we need to do is

00:07:56.380 give the census to municipalities which is where the numbers matter most so that's my opening

00:08:01.120 statement and uh this is going to definitely be a pretty comment heavy kind of day i think because

00:08:07.020 there's a bunch of things uh when it comes to these questions uh you know cody is right there

00:08:12.140 at the very beginning again registration always leads to confiscation that's why i plan on having

00:08:17.880 home births and not giving my kids sin numbers this is this is this is a serious debate though

00:08:22.780 at a certain level, right? Because the problem is, as soon as, as soon as you assign a number

00:08:27.780 to anything, as soon as you're in somebody's book somewhere, right? As soon as you've been noted,

00:08:32.060 you are at the mercy of whoever made that note, right? Because if they have coercive power,

00:08:38.680 what, what are you going to do about it? Especially if they have the entire power of the

00:08:42.820 state at their back. This is, this is an old problem. It's an old problem. And I mean, for me,

00:08:48.880 i usually use i use biblical allusions about this because there's at least well there's a couple of

00:08:53.340 different moments actually there's there's a census in the bible it's called the book of numbers

00:08:57.720 people forget that but it numbers all the tribes and all the peoples and all the stuff and what

00:09:02.400 was happening at that time so there's literally a census in the bible in all canons everybody's

00:09:07.200 canon it's in there and then the and then of course we all know that the the christmas story

00:09:12.780 Well, the Christmas story begins with literally Joseph and Mary having to go to Bethlehem

00:09:19.040 because that's Joseph's hometown in order to be numbered for the census.

00:09:23.880 So from the beginning of time, as far as the Judeo-Christian history is concerned, that's there.

00:09:30.980 And then we have kind of two parallels, actually, again, that we get from a biblical allusion,

00:09:36.200 which is Samuel and Christ.

00:09:38.440 So you get Samuel saying that if you have a king over you, he will dominate you, he will put your sons into his armies, he'll take your daughters for his harem and for his wine girls and everything else.

00:09:49.760 And he's going to tax all your stuff, he's going to take your best stuff for himself and aggrandize himself, and then he will coerce you into wars and put you into poverty and abuse you.

00:10:00.900 And that's what he says, that's essentially him describing the state, right?

00:10:03.940 He's talking about the king, but what did, what did Louis, is it Louis the 16th, the 17th, the sun king, what did Louis say, right, just before the revolution took his head?

00:10:13.100 I am the state, right, so the embodiment of the state, the embodiment of government in the sovereign, right, that was what Samuel's pointing to there and saying, look, he will be the manifestation of all that is wrong with power and coercion and everything else.

00:10:27.480 And then we get to, you know, the New Testament.

00:10:30.580 The New Testament says kind of the same thing to a certain point,

00:10:32.960 but says that we still have to live in this society,

00:10:34.820 so render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, render unto God what is God's.

00:10:38.400 I'm not just talking about those things because I'm some kind of Bible thumper or something.

00:10:41.640 I'm talking about those things because they're real illusions that have a deep belonging,

00:10:45.400 especially for those of us right of center, but they have a clear sense.

00:10:48.320 If we get into modern political theory, right,

00:10:50.500 the idea was that absolute monarchy corrupted absolutely,

00:10:53.820 But that was, interestingly enough, that was a result of the nation-state, not a beforehand thing.

00:10:59.420 So if you go to the pre-modern era, so about five minutes before the Reformation starts,

00:11:05.640 what you have are all these little dukedoms and little kingdoms, little princelings.

00:11:09.560 There's no real solid single states.

00:11:12.580 They're starting to move that way, but even France, we have to remember that, you know,

00:11:16.280 13th century France is like three-quarters or less the size it is today.

00:11:21.460 England owned a third of France at the time

00:11:24.160 through Henry

00:11:25.380 Henry V or 4th

00:11:27.940 I think

00:11:28.440 but the point is that

00:11:31.160 all these different things

00:11:33.220 the Henry who was in charge during Thomas Beckett

00:11:35.420 when the whole thing with Thomas Beckett happened

00:11:37.340 whom Trump recognized

00:11:39.500 bizarrely enough in December

00:11:41.240 just before he left office

00:11:43.100 but the point is that

00:11:45.120 the nation state

00:11:47.560 is kind of where it all starts

00:11:49.160 it all starts with the nation state

00:11:50.960 So the idea that we're not going to have belonging based on the kind of universal morality or calling and something that transcends tribalism.

00:11:58.600 We're going to build our tribes bigger, right?

00:12:01.440 And so we're going to be Burgons and we're going to be French and we're going to be Basques and all these kind of things are going to come together. 0.63

00:12:09.480 And we're going to have Spain, we're going to have France, we're going to have England, we're going to have Germany.

00:12:12.680 Germany got very late in the game, obviously, didn't form until 1871.

00:12:15.940 but all these pieces are going to come together

00:12:19.160 and the nation state is what's going to project power into the world

00:12:22.600 and then that's going to be embodied

00:12:25.180 first in a sovereign with absolute monarchy

00:12:27.460 then in a kind of oligopoly with a sort of selected

00:12:30.260 senate or upper house and lower house

00:12:33.380 because there weren't true elections until quite a bit later in the 18th century

00:12:37.040 finally get the American revolution, the French revolution

00:12:39.620 you get the state as kind of supposedly the vox populi

00:12:42.720 that it's a voice of the people

00:12:44.440 and then we get into our own modern era now what am i what am i talking about here what is what

00:12:50.040 does this have to do with anything right the point the point that i'm trying to draw here

00:12:54.960 is that state authority government power it requires it requires being able to kind of

00:13:03.380 number people right it requires requires when you you take numbers of things

00:13:09.140 and know where stuff is at.

00:13:13.060 You have to know how many people there are

00:13:14.300 and you have to know what their stuff is worth

00:13:15.620 so that you can tax them in order to supposedly

00:13:18.120 build the infrastructure that will allow for more people

00:13:21.300 and more private property.

00:13:22.720 That's the theory.

00:13:24.100 That's the theory behind the census.

00:13:28.040 I have questions about this

00:13:32.100 because I know, I'm fairly certain,

00:13:34.860 well, I know for a fact,

00:13:35.960 I'm fairly certain that the government

00:13:37.640 is definitely giving our information

00:13:39.820 to entities that are less than

00:13:41.460 perfect. They take our

00:13:43.700 census, they take our numbers,

00:13:45.520 they see who we are, they know who we

00:13:47.640 are, and then they give that information

00:13:49.760 or they reveal it to people who

00:13:51.640 would use it for their own ends. And of

00:13:53.680 course, that has to do with marketing, and it has

00:13:55.640 to do with the way capitalism

00:13:57.600 works and that sort of thing. And that's to be

00:13:59.660 understood. As soon as somebody's making notes of you,

00:14:01.780 you are the product. If the product is free,

00:14:03.680 you are the item that's being sold.

00:14:05.500 right we know this about social media we're streaming to social media right now and we don't

00:14:11.160 pay for this stream right you can stream to youtube and to facebook as long as you hit

00:14:15.260 enough subscribers and that sort of thing that means that we're selling something somewhere

00:14:20.860 somewhere there's an ad out there somewhere there's somebody who's making money off of this

00:14:24.900 and it's not me uh when it comes to that direct sort of correlation right i'm i'm the product

00:14:30.800 and somebody's making or at least the producer of the product and somebody's making that off my

00:14:34.740 labor. So the point is that, you know, some ulterior entity out there in the Facebook,

00:14:39.240 YouTube world, the social media world. And the point that I'm trying to draw here, I suppose,

00:14:44.460 is that when it comes to building up our future, the future of our country and that sort of thing,

00:14:51.040 we need, we need to know where we're headed. We have to, we do have to make notes, right? We can't,

00:14:56.180 if I have to build a school down the road here, I'm up here in BC's Northern Capital. I live in

00:15:01.020 a place that's called College Heights. It's kind of the ritzyer part of town. I don't live in a

00:15:05.440 ritzy place up here, but this is definitely, it's considered the wealthier part of town. It's kind

00:15:10.880 of almost its own town because Prince George was built in layers. So speaking of the census,

00:15:15.460 Prince George was built so badly, it was badly surveyed, and it didn't combine the towns together

00:15:19.680 properly that College Heights essentially, especially because it doesn't even have a branch

00:15:23.880 of the library, it feels very left out by the municipal government. It raises a lot of taxes

00:15:27.820 because there's a lot of nice property here,

00:15:29.480 but it doesn't really get a ton of services

00:15:31.020 outside of garbage and everything.

00:15:33.200 And so it doesn't have a pool,

00:15:34.480 it doesn't have a library.

00:15:35.960 And so the point is that people up here

00:15:38.820 kind of like that they're the big box store suburb

00:15:41.240 because they were the last suburb to be built.

00:15:43.880 And they like being the big box store suburb

00:15:45.500 because then they never have to go into town

00:15:47.160 and Costco's at the bottom of the hill.

00:15:50.220 So the thing is that demographically speaking,

00:15:53.220 a certain kind of person lives up here

00:15:54.920 because they don't have to deal

00:15:56.400 with the rest of Prince George.

00:15:57.320 They have no need to deal with the rest of print stores.

00:15:59.020 They never need to leave here.

00:15:59.940 They have big box stores.

00:16:02.640 They have a few little shops as well.

00:16:05.500 And then they have, of course, well, you know, they have Costco not far away.

00:16:13.080 And so the point that I'm trying to draw here is that every single section,

00:16:18.680 at least of the northern capital, really, really, really builds on what was built there before.

00:16:23.700 and if we don't know where we're going then we can't build accordingly right so if i was in

00:16:31.640 charge if i suddenly became the civil engineer of college heights and i was about to go and build a

00:16:37.400 school or whatever i i i would need to know how many children are being born around here i need

00:16:44.860 to know that right because i can't build a school if i build the school too big then i'm going to

00:16:48.480 pay for heating bills and that sort of thing for the next 30 years for the lifespan of the school

00:16:52.820 30, 50, depends on how long you build it for, I guess even 100 years for some schools.

00:16:57.380 But the point is that from day one till day end, when they tear it down, I'm going to pay X number

00:17:03.020 of dollars in both the mortgage that it costs and the materials and then the ongoing costs

00:17:07.540 of operation, right? Let alone the renovations and the pipes that are going to burst and things

00:17:12.480 that are going to have to be fixed, right? Like wear and tear, right? So if I build something

00:17:15.920 smaller, it's going to be less wear and tear and less and less costs. But if it's too small,

00:17:21.260 then I got to start building portables and then I got to start appropriating new land and then

00:17:25.400 someone's going to start screaming at me because I didn't build a big enough space so in order to

00:17:29.500 build that space properly I need to know how many people live in this area how many children they're

00:17:34.540 having what is the likelihood of this place being full and then how much over capacity do I want do

00:17:40.700 I want five ten even fifteen percent over capacity or do I want to keep it super tight and basically

00:17:47.000 be like no it's it's for the hundred children that i know are going to be born and raised and

00:17:52.020 then brought through this school through the next 10 years that's for that's who it's for those 100

00:17:57.300 200 300 400 children that's who it's for it's like well what happens if we get a population

00:18:02.600 you know pump and we're in your 5 10 20 behind it's like well don't care like i've just built

00:18:09.080 it for these 500 kids if 700 kids show up those 200 other kids either got to go in the portable

00:18:14.200 or they've got to be put into a different school

00:18:16.220 and shipped there and bussed there, right?

00:18:18.360 Well, that's going to cost the census,

00:18:20.480 is that we understand that we need the information.

00:18:25.860 Again, totally acknowledging, you know,

00:18:28.480 both the comment that was made,

00:18:29.940 registration always leads to confiscation,

00:18:32.900 and of course, apparently, you know,

00:18:34.120 outside with James there a little bit earlier,

00:18:37.920 comply with nothing.

00:18:39.480 I appreciate the sentiment.

00:18:41.260 I don't know how valid it is,

00:18:43.040 but uh yeah cody again basically it basically census is necessary uh we just have to figure

00:18:52.480 out a way the government can't explain which is the case with everything no that's correct

00:18:56.260 and that's kind of what we're arguing well not arguing we're discussing it this morning right

00:18:59.460 we're discussing it here just a second just a second we're discussing it this morning and so

00:19:05.880 the way that i the way that i would pivot this is let's let's acknowledge that we need to know

00:19:12.260 how many people are there you do a head count every time you take you and your wife your kids

00:19:15.980 into the car and go somewhere you know especially if you have more than two kids you know you got

00:19:20.320 to actually kind of keep an eye on what's going on out there and if you get into the big i know

00:19:23.940 some really big families through my through my church like literally nine kids you need you need

00:19:29.700 to count and if you don't count you're going to leave somebody behind so if we do that in our

00:19:33.820 personal lives how much more so in our public lives and in our policy lives okay so we're all

00:19:39.320 on the same page here you need to count people how do we keep the government from abusing the

00:19:44.240 people that's counting and their stuff i think the simplest way to do that i mean this was harper's

00:19:50.180 solution this is actually probably what i'm going to write my column on this week if you go around

00:19:53.720 prince george there are actually still stop signs up everywhere that have the the harper underneath

00:19:59.080 right stop harper and you're sitting there and you're like harper hasn't been in charge for we're

00:20:05.240 going to get on to a decade pretty quick here. It's not going to be that long, especially if

00:20:09.080 the Liberals win again. If the Liberals win another mandate, it will be a decade, especially

00:20:14.260 this fall, right? It'll be four years, right? So if he lost in 2015, then it'll be 2025 by the time

00:20:21.720 Harper, by the time, you know, the legacy of Harper will be 10 years gone. And that usually

00:20:26.140 is how it goes in Canada, as we have about 10 year cycles when it comes to, when it comes to

00:20:31.380 our politicians so what happened was um i was driving around town and i could see all these

00:20:38.620 stop harper signs that were still up and i just kind of occurred to me that a lot of harper's

00:20:44.640 legacy has already been undone so like congratulations you did stop harper and also

00:20:48.840 what's the point of still keeping these up here as if stephen harper was the boogeyman like he's

00:20:53.260 he wasn't even much of a boogeyman while he was in there a lot of us who are more right of center

00:20:57.640 more right-wing than that government was there was uh we had a lot of questions about that

00:21:03.120 government you know they did some austerity stuff they lost a bunch of votes they closed a bunch of

00:21:06.880 lighthouses which was the the bureaucrats who did that to them and they managed to they managed to

00:21:11.480 lose government you know um that didn't work out for them if there's one thing i probably would

00:21:15.340 have objected to the most out of that government in in like things that got closed i think the

00:21:19.900 veterans offices was one because that was just a way to lose votes i have no idea you got zero gain

00:21:25.420 you saved pennies on the dollar nothing nothing really changed and you managed to lose a huge

00:21:31.460 amount of votes by closing the veterans office that was a waste of time but the the big the

00:21:36.500 kind of most eccentric one was probably those i think there was uh rehabilitative prison farms

00:21:41.700 so like places where like uh people who are non-violent offenders or or less violent

00:21:46.880 offenders whatever it was people need to be rehabilitated who were who had gone through

00:21:50.120 the penal system uh they they got to uh be on these working farms now let's be clear uh i hope

00:21:58.040 they made a decent wage because you shouldn't make prisoners work uh without being paid um that

00:22:03.900 would be called slavery so that's not okay so we don't believe in slavery um but the the the thing

00:22:10.540 is that this rehabilitative situation where people are being taught how to get back into society and

00:22:16.480 Maybe they're being taught it by learning some work ethic on a farm.

00:22:19.120 Whatever.

00:22:19.480 That's great.

00:22:20.040 And, of course, they're contributing to society in that way.

00:22:23.080 That got closed, I'm pretty sure.

00:22:25.020 Somebody told me about this a few years back.

00:22:27.240 And I remember that a buddy of mine who's actually a member of parliament now

00:22:30.200 was like his cousin twice removed on his mom's side or whatever

00:22:33.220 was out there with a sign.

00:22:34.800 It was kind of different politics.

00:22:36.160 My buddy's a Tory through and through.

00:22:38.240 And his cousin, I guess, kind of a libertarian lefty sort of thing.

00:22:41.280 But he's out there with a sandwich board sign just like, you know, stop it.

00:22:45.380 like we gotta we gotta save these farms and whatever and i kind of sympathize with that

00:22:48.880 like we should have saved the farms again what did we gain by cutting the farms i don't know

00:22:52.640 probably some corporation bought the land and i don't know started farming marijuana

00:22:57.820 waste of time in my opinion but the stop harper thing it's funny because harper tried to get rid

00:23:05.940 of the long-form census and we all remember it's funny because we're here five years later right

00:23:12.780 so in 2016 they quickly reimposed the census they rushed they went really fast and they reimposed

00:23:20.380 the census and and it was it was all rush job and i remember there being some weird questions

00:23:25.260 and everything like that funnily enough that was the last time my producer and i were living

00:23:28.560 together uh we were just just happened to be in pg at the same time and we just we were hanging

00:23:34.480 out whatever and this was actually that was five years ago is when this show was being discussed

00:23:37.920 actually but uh you know the thing that the thing that hit home with the census is that

00:23:44.760 it almost got killed it almost died off harper almost ended it and then of course it was reimposed

00:23:51.180 very quickly my answer would have been if if i had had steven harper's ear or he said you are now

00:23:57.820 the czar of the census you figure out what to do with the census is i would have uh gone to the

00:24:03.600 municipalities so i would have gone to the unions of municipalities the various unions of

00:24:07.180 municipalities that are throughout Canada regionally. I would have met with lots of mayors

00:24:11.480 and lots of regional district people. I would have been like, look, like the federal government

00:24:16.620 shouldn't be doing the census, or it can help pay for the census. It can even print it off for you

00:24:22.600 or something, but you guys should do the census, and the information is actually most relevant to

00:24:26.920 you. This is something that really, really bothers me when it comes to the left. The left makes every

00:24:32.280 single issue that ought to be a local issue into a national issue, and then they expect everybody

00:24:36.740 to pay for it garbage uh recycling um sewers water treatment like all that stuff is really

00:24:44.760 a local question or even a provincial question but then they always try and find federal mandates

00:24:49.440 for it heck affordable child care do it in a town man like take over a town's council put on two

00:24:57.200 two percent onto the sales tax the merchant tax of your town or up the gas tax or something i guess

00:25:03.040 have to call the feds about that but whatever the point is up the sales tax or find some way of

00:25:08.040 appropriating the money and run a model affordable child care system using the money that you have

00:25:16.720 appropriated like it's not hard don't try and make a national child care strategy do a local

00:25:22.660 child care strategy and then see if that's a model for the national one if you do the national one

00:25:28.280 you're going to impose something on everyone and it could be a really big problem a really big

00:25:32.700 problem. So let's take a step back here. Harper kills off the long-form census, which in a way

00:25:41.360 was almost a problem because he, instead of shaping it into something new, he was essentially

00:25:47.420 leaving a vacuum. And this is actually a free piece of advice to conservatives everywhere.

00:25:51.740 Never leave a vacuum. Never leave a vacuum. The lesson that the left has taught us over the years

00:25:59.260 is that if you leave a vacuum, someone will fill it.

00:26:04.240 Someone will fill it.

00:26:05.500 I would argue, actually, that even on a morality side,

00:26:09.180 what's gone wrong with so many things,

00:26:11.020 especially when it's like, well, we're trying to teach children

00:26:13.220 to not, you know, look at terrible pictures on the internet

00:26:15.300 or have good self-image and blah, blah, blah.

00:26:17.700 It's like, well, the issue is that if you don't tell them

00:26:20.480 that, you know, they're divinely inspired, handworked, artisan,

00:26:25.160 you know, dignified soul made by God,

00:26:27.540 then you're just telling them well don't do bad things you're not telling them you are a beautiful

00:26:31.820 creature and you deserve respect and honor and dignity you're telling them well just don't do

00:26:35.720 bad stuff so you have to tell people you have to give somebody something to fight for not just

00:26:40.120 something to fight against right and so the same thing here with with conservatism rah rah rah we're

00:26:44.740 gonna we're gonna stop the census it's like okay i get it that it's an invasion of privacy i get

00:26:50.720 that it's a problem i get that it's a huge expenditure of money and i get that the government's

00:26:54.340 clearly selling our information to their crony friends.

00:26:57.200 Totally agree with you. 0.76

00:26:59.420 But if you just cut the census,

00:27:01.540 your enemies will reimpose it and reimpose it worse, right?

00:27:05.700 And we see this with all of Harper's legacy.

00:27:07.600 It was all cut, cut, cut, cut, cut,

00:27:09.400 not a redirection of how things would go.

00:27:12.960 And it wasn't enough of a cut to be like,

00:27:14.560 if he had just cut the CBC and held his ground for four years,

00:27:18.100 maybe they would have brought back the CBC,

00:27:20.340 but it would have been at a far reduced capacity

00:27:22.600 because even the liberals aren't so generous of heart

00:27:26.100 that they would have given

00:27:27.340 every single old CBC person their job back.

00:27:30.360 They would have shuffled some people out

00:27:31.960 and that would have been the end of that.

00:27:33.640 So if you're going to do the cut thing,

00:27:35.540 you actually have to make it extreme enough

00:27:37.220 that like it is like losing a limb

00:27:39.700 and you learn to live differently.

00:27:41.940 Like you have to live differently as a people,

00:27:44.140 as a group, as a nation.

00:27:46.180 So that's how extreme it has to be.

00:27:48.060 You can't do little things.

00:27:49.060 You have to be, it has to be like,

00:27:50.100 no people literally have to learn to live without there being a cbc it isn't on the radio it isn't

00:27:55.700 on the internet it isn't anywhere it doesn't exist anymore and people learn to live without it long

00:28:01.380 enough that they're like oh i forgot that that existed that's that's method one if you're going

00:28:06.560 to do that method two is that you redirect things and you create your own narrative and so if there

00:28:14.160 needed to be cuts in certain places or if there needed to be a rejigging of things then you just

00:28:19.040 you create your own narrative, and you explain it differently, right?

00:28:21.780 So, like, the Liberals make it sound like they invented health care.

00:28:24.440 They didn't invent health care.

00:28:25.980 Tommy Douglas invented the idea of a national health care plan

00:28:28.840 after imposing it inside of Saskatchewan,

00:28:31.520 and he needed both the Tories and the Liberals to vote with him,

00:28:35.600 which they did in order to get that done.

00:28:37.920 So, because it was a minority government, I believe,

00:28:40.380 or at least between minority governments,

00:28:42.240 between Diefenbaker's end and Pearson's beginning.

00:28:45.120 So, the point that I'm trying to explain here

00:28:48.640 is that conservatives have to shape the narrative.

00:28:51.260 If they don't shape the narrative,

00:28:52.640 they're just leaving a gigantic vacuum

00:28:54.300 and the left will fill it.

00:28:56.860 The left is full of great storytellers.

00:28:58.680 You know why a lot of my friends were left-wing throughout,

00:29:01.220 even in university, going to a place like Trinity Western

00:29:03.460 that was, at the time, very, very religious

00:29:06.140 and very kind of straight and narrow.

00:29:08.260 Rigorous, very rigorous.

00:29:09.480 It wasn't fundamentalist, but it was just,

00:29:11.300 it was definitely right of center

00:29:12.500 and it was definitely religious.

00:29:13.840 You know, it was full of social conservatives.

00:29:15.280 But there were a decent amount of social liberals in there too

00:29:17.480 and various liberals of all kinds.

00:29:19.700 But, you know, they stay up late, you know,

00:29:21.680 they have a few too many

00:29:23.100 and they share their, you know, pack of darts with you

00:29:26.260 and you get a good conversation, you know.

00:29:28.460 And sometimes us conservatives, we head to bed,

00:29:30.420 you know, on time, which is good.

00:29:31.660 It's good to go to bed on time.

00:29:33.080 But if you're not there for that conversation,

00:29:36.660 then you're going to miss it.

00:29:38.100 And that's not a universal, it's kind of a bad analogy,

00:29:40.880 but it's kind of the same thing.

00:29:43.500 If you aren't there to shape the narrative,

00:29:45.340 someone else is going to shape it for you.

00:29:47.620 You have to get ahead of the story.

00:29:49.080 You have to impose your own narrative

00:29:50.820 or someone will dictate it for you on your behalf.

00:29:53.680 And I promise you it won't be charitable to you.

00:29:55.520 It's going to be charitable to them.

00:29:57.640 So what does this have to do with anything?

00:30:00.160 It has to do with the census.

00:30:01.980 When Harper cut the census,

00:30:03.680 he made a mistake by just leaving it as a vacuum.

00:30:06.740 What he should have done

00:30:08.060 is gone to the municipalities and said to them,

00:30:12.520 hey let's get let's get this going let's find a way to help you guys do the census let's find a

00:30:21.360 way to have you guys understand where the new sewer is going to go where the new street's going

00:30:25.900 to go where the new school's going to go right all the all the federal and provincial governments

00:30:30.800 need to know up top really is like well where's this highway going to go obviously it's going to

00:30:35.520 go down the easiest path that we can do and especially if we're twinning the highway we're

00:30:39.300 finally get away from these single lane roads we have all these single lane roads in bc if i'm

00:30:43.380 envious of anything from you guys from alberta i'm envious of anything one i never got to make

00:30:48.240 any money off the oil bump and i think i'm a fiscal conservative enough that i wouldn't have

00:30:52.920 gotten caught out with a whole bunch of payments i think i would have just bought things cash

00:30:56.640 and been okay no offense to the people who did get caught out i'm sorry that happened to you

00:31:00.860 but number two the thing that hits me is that is that i i love the alberta highways okay alberta

00:31:08.760 highways are beautiful. They're beautiful. You guys have spent a huge amount of money on them

00:31:12.140 and your modern cities, at least with Calgary especially, the on-ramps, the off-ramps, the

00:31:17.660 overpasses, you guys are brilliant. That's beautiful stuff. That's what should be happening

00:31:22.980 in BC. Instead, in BC, yes, we've twinned a couple of our highways here and there. We have some

00:31:29.120 four-laners, but for the most part, we have these stupid little single-lane highways that are very

00:31:34.380 dangerous because obviously oncoming traffic and head-on collisions are totally possible

00:31:38.700 and furthermore they go right through the middle of town they go through the middle of towns like

00:31:44.960 they don't they don't not bypass the town i don't want the town to die because it gets no foot

00:31:49.180 traffic but but it should be an on-ramp and an off-ramp it should be i i'm getting off of the

00:31:54.220 highway and into this town or i'm not and i can just carry on instead of hitting 15 lights every

00:31:59.940 time I go through a town in British Columbia, it's just silly. So that's got to change in BC.

00:32:05.260 What you guys got going on in Alberta, that's brilliant that you guys have made so many on

00:32:09.640 ramps and off ramps and that sort of thing. I love your highways. But the thing is that

00:32:13.060 we need some kind of counting to know where those highways are going to go. Those highways in BC

00:32:19.640 aren't going to get built without, those highways aren't going to get built without knowing how

00:32:26.020 many people are moving up there and how many people are going here and how many people are

00:32:28.460 going there and and so we need to know that but that would have been my answer let's go back to

00:32:34.080 the people we'll go back to the municipalities and we'll talk to them about hey what's going on

00:32:42.600 you know what's going on we need to know how many people are living here you need to know how many

00:32:47.460 people are living here let's find a way to gather that information in a way that that respects

00:32:52.240 privacy and respects private property but does count the people so that we don't build a school

00:32:57.900 that's for 100 kids when 700 kids were born this year that's a waste of time and here in prince

00:33:03.500 george we've had a couple problems with that i don't know how it's going in the rest of the

00:33:06.720 province but here in prince george there's been a couple of moments that there's a couple of high

00:33:10.440 schools that have just been rebuilt my old high school or my old high school got rebuilt not that

00:33:15.640 long ago and uh and kelly road is getting rebuilt right now and and that and there were they're

00:33:22.280 having to overcompensate with kelly road because my old high school duchess park uh was built too

00:33:28.920 small so somebody took the wrong census data this is the other thing about counting people

00:33:33.680 it's like maybe you should go with your gut if you actually see a lot of kids running around on

00:33:36.960 whatever aboriginal day is called nowadays or canada day or bc day or whatever you're out there

00:33:42.000 in the park on a nice day and you're seeing a whole bunch of children maybe think to yourself

00:33:47.720 the school shouldn't be smaller maybe it should be at least the same size if not bigger like

00:33:52.240 And overbuilding is always better than underbuilding.

00:33:54.640 I understand the ongoing operating costs.

00:33:56.540 We don't want to build eight-lane highways in northern British Columbia, okay?

00:33:59.800 We don't need eight-lane highways.

00:34:01.340 We do need maybe finally four-lane highways and divided highways

00:34:04.840 in a way to make sure people aren't hitting each other oncoming traffic.

00:34:08.360 But we don't need eight-lane highways, okay?

00:34:11.020 We don't, made of concrete all the way up and down north.

00:34:13.480 Be clear, if that's what we spend our money on, that would be awesome

00:34:16.980 because I'd love an eight-lane highway made of pure concrete

00:34:19.560 that, you know, took me all the way to Tuktoyaktuk

00:34:22.300 and I could just rip on my motorbike

00:34:23.800 all the way there and back.

00:34:24.660 That'd be great.

00:34:25.560 But I understand that's unfeasible.

00:34:28.380 So, but we need to,

00:34:30.580 if we do need to overbuild things,

00:34:31.940 we do need to overbuild our infrastructure

00:34:33.400 when it comes to the soft stuff like schools

00:34:35.420 and that sort of thing.

00:34:36.760 And we can't be not taking the data seriously.

00:34:40.820 And so if you take the data badly,

00:34:42.380 like what happened with my old school,

00:34:45.020 where they literally, they built it too small.

00:34:47.120 and of course it was all brand it was all nice uh it was all it was all very nice so everybody

00:34:53.860 wanted to get into that catchment to go there right and uh but it was what it was we're gonna

00:34:59.660 bring up this comment by cody again uh i'm not just trying to play favorites here uh cody's got

00:35:04.540 some good points though decentralize the census information somehow so it's not compiled have

00:35:09.280 civilian oversight and necessary info is passed on each sector that needs it that's again valid

00:35:13.680 points i mean these are all kind of commonsensical things like it's it's not this isn't this isn't

00:35:18.860 rocket science it's very simple help the government know where to build the stuff without compromising

00:35:25.420 the integrity of the people it's building for right it's not this isn't uh this isn't rocket

00:35:31.000 science actually it's interesting here um julie has got a point here with prince george uh yeah

00:35:35.700 no it's uh our uh our roads need some tlc i think is what this comment says yeah yeah our roads and

00:35:42.400 Prince George needs some TLC. Yes, they do. But that's, I mean, there's a municipal problem that

00:35:47.940 we can get into. Maybe actually something that we could get into a little bit here is that,

00:35:52.720 or rather, there could be comments, questions, concerns. Again, we've, we always try to throw up

00:35:57.220 my email address to try and make sure that people can contact me with any guests they'd like on and

00:36:03.500 to know that people, you know, do send me things, send me items, send me news items, send me your

00:36:08.760 stories and uh we'll see what we can do i don't know if we're going to do an outright fan mail

00:36:13.360 side of this show i i've never i've never really done that you have to remember i'm as new at this

00:36:18.400 as you are i've been in broadcasting a long time but that was all recorded and even what was live

00:36:23.000 was just an interview with somebody right or a bunch of panelists there wasn't a personality

00:36:27.460 and people interaction right or a consumer and personality interaction um or any of that

00:36:34.920 i'm not saying i'm some great star i'm just saying like i've just never done this before

00:36:39.240 and so it's a bit of a new it's a bit of a learning curve for me so again if you can't be

00:36:43.400 patient i do send me stuff let me know who you want on the show let me know what kind of topics

00:36:48.220 you want to address it's all a lot of comments in there again about uh about the vaccine so i want

00:36:53.460 to do an update on that uh yeah the person who's close to me is still not feeling well uh and is

00:36:58.940 struggling and is having problems uh clearly has a blood clot i think a blood clot in the lung

00:37:03.780 so that's not good in case anybody was unsure of that blood clot lungs not good uh and it's funny

00:37:10.920 uh well that's not funny at all but i mean it's it's interesting that i'm now that i'm telling

00:37:15.880 people about it people are telling me that actually yeah a lot of people who are taking

00:37:20.240 the astrazeneca are not are not doing well or had to lie low for a couple of days really got wiped

00:37:26.460 out by it um so i again i don't really i i don't i want to be clear i've not changed my position i

00:37:35.280 never wanted to take the vaccine the moment i heard there was going to be a vaccine i didn't

00:37:40.120 want to take it i i guess i'm one of those odd people who did really respect how fast trump

00:37:45.120 managed to get that out there um because i was a big fan of the former president um president

00:37:50.660 emeritus i believe you would say but nonetheless we don't need to get into that here but

00:37:56.300 but nonetheless, the point is that I was never in favor of taking the vaccine myself. I was

00:38:00.580 fine with other people taking it if they wanted to, but it would, I think it'd be in bad conscience,

00:38:05.100 wouldn't be in good conscience if I didn't tell the truth around this, which is as far as I can

00:38:09.760 tell, uh, the, that, that vaccine is not going well for people. And, uh, people need to, people

00:38:16.540 need to be aware of that, that I've kind of seen it in my own, my own life, my own, somebody who's

00:38:20.940 close to me someone who's a family member and that's yeah i i that's pretty rough stuff you

00:38:31.240 know um we don't we don't want that for anybody you don't want that for your worst enemy and uh

00:38:37.400 people shouldn't have that happen to them um i i think that actually something that's kind of

00:38:42.480 interesting is the vaccine does kind of loop into this uh census question a little bit in the sense

00:38:47.180 said again uh how hard is it to get a bunch of guys into a truck load up load up everything in

00:38:55.020 the back there uh make sure you have all of your equipment and then go off to wherever you got to

00:38:59.760 go and start delivering the vaccine regardless of what one thinks about the vaccine like how

00:39:04.320 how hard could that be i'm not saying that that's nothing i'm not saying that wouldn't take effort

00:39:09.580 and you got to feed those guys and house them somewhere and you know if it's the army doing

00:39:13.460 the vaccinations that's a huge part of the united states version i think is that the army is helping

00:39:17.220 with the vaccination the armed forces uh in canada i think it's just mostly health care professionals

00:39:21.760 but even so right even so it's just we have these people we need to get them into this vehicle and

00:39:26.860 then in the vehicle it's going to be the vaccines and we got to get somewhere and i think what it

00:39:29.940 ties into again is kind of logistics and maybe that's what's kind of the the story of canada

00:39:35.460 if there's a material story of canada it is that we had to overcome the craziest things in the

00:39:42.780 world to make our country. We don't understand this. America is a dreamboat. America is the

00:39:52.700 absolute dreamboat at prom and whatever. That's what she is. Because America is just made up of 1.00

00:40:00.120 things that... There's a reason they wrote poems about her like she was the promised land.

00:40:05.260 The Mississippi is such a slight grade over such a long distance

00:40:12.040 that it facilitated more trade than some rivers in Europe had for thousands of years.

00:40:18.740 In 500 years, the United States did more trade on the Mississippi

00:40:21.740 than some other places had done for thousands of years on their rivers

00:40:25.240 because their rivers weren't as good as the Mississippi.

00:40:28.700 Canada doesn't have a Mississippi.

00:40:30.840 The closest we have is kind of some of our prairie rivers,

00:40:33.440 and even though some of those grades are pretty nasty and there's rapids like they still have

00:40:37.840 hydro manitoba how do they have hydro manitoba it's flat no it's not it's not flat enough they

00:40:44.520 have hydro so canada just doesn't have that legacy like the united states does it just doesn't it

00:40:50.580 doesn't have the beautiful new england the mid you know the the the middle eastern middle eastern

00:40:56.340 that doesn't sound right it doesn't have the states that are below new england into into the

00:41:00.660 eastern seaboard and then into the south with the Appalachians and the Carolinas and then the deep

00:41:06.240 south with with the Baton Rouge and all the rest of it and the Creole and then up the Mississippi 0.92

00:41:11.880 through the Midwest with the with the breadbasket and then finally into the Rockies and then into 0.87

00:41:16.300 the gold of California it doesn't have those things and when they built their railroad when

00:41:21.440 they built the railroad in in America it was infinitely easier than it was in Canada Canada

00:41:27.720 had to build the St. Lawrence Seaway infinitely

00:41:29.700 harder than the little Hudson

00:41:31.080 locks that are on the Hudson River

00:41:33.280 into the Great Lakes. 1.00

00:41:36.660 We had to deal with

00:41:37.620 the Canadian Shield when we were building the railway

00:41:39.680 getting out of Ontario, southern Ontario

00:41:41.720 through the rest of Ontario, which at that point

00:41:43.500 wasn't Ontario, it was Rupert's Land, and then all the

00:41:45.600 way out to the prairies. And then of course

00:41:47.480 our Rockies were harder than their Rockies. We've all

00:41:49.600 heard that story from our childhood.

00:41:51.340 When they were talking about how many trains it took to get up

00:41:53.500 and down the Rockies. What am I talking about

00:41:55.520 this for? I'm talking about this for because

00:41:57.120 with the census with the vaccine and then with canada's kind of history up until basically 1967

00:42:02.720 until our centennial logistics were a thing we could do we used to have an aircraft carrier

00:42:09.080 we had a very large navy after the war we were capable of building pipelines and capable of

00:42:14.480 building roads and all this stuff and the i think with the vaccine is it's kind of it's it's it's

00:42:20.980 endemic it's a pandemic of endemics we do have pandemics of endemics there's all these little

00:42:26.080 endemics these little endemic signs that canada is falling apart it's not just sovereignty it's

00:42:31.800 not just separation it's not just people being angry at trudeau it's not just you know roadblocks

00:42:37.260 going up on on whether it's going into a reserve or onto a onto a rail line it's not just the

00:42:43.060 violence that's happening between different peoples different kinds of peoples different

00:42:46.360 backgrounds of peoples those are all pieces of it but something deeper than all that is that

00:42:50.640 you all got to live on the street right you all have to live on a street you all have to

00:42:55.380 drive to work or walk your kids to school or whatever right you there's a central belonging

00:43:00.600 right there's this piece of infrastructure it's where your garbage gets picked up it's where you

00:43:04.540 take your cows when you're going to the meat market it's it's what brings you your oil and gas

00:43:09.380 like this road a road right a road an airport a port right these things symbolize that we are all

00:43:17.640 connected in one way or another no matter how much you might not like your neighbor we're all

00:43:21.200 connected and we have to be connected and in this country you would starve to death in a matter of

00:43:25.840 minutes if if you didn't have your supply chains i lived at the end of one of those supply chains

00:43:30.940 you know i know what it's like to have spoiled milk arrive and that sort of thing churchill was

00:43:35.580 a long ways away from where the fresh stuff was cost of food was exorbitant and you could see what

00:43:40.520 it would you could see how bad it was when you live at the end of a supply chain far away from

00:43:46.620 where the stuff was packaged far away from where that chicken was finally put into a freezer or

00:43:51.300 something that's a long way to go and the vaccine and the census and these logistical things they

00:43:57.740 all tie together in a sense that canada is falling apart you know we weren't able to get the vaccine

00:44:06.720 out we weren't able to do a plan we weren't able to figure this out we don't even have vaccine

00:44:12.440 facilities in Canada anymore we don't build any pharmaceuticals here we don't manufacture any

00:44:17.480 pharmaceuticals here what what are we doing what are we doing I I've told you before on this show

00:44:25.060 I'm I'm kind of a soft sovereignist on this question I'm more interested in Canada working

00:44:30.000 better than splitting it apart just because we're mad that doesn't mean we don't have a right to be

00:44:35.200 mad but we do need Ottawa to give us the autonomy to do what we need to do and we need to fight for

00:44:40.600 rights uh how to fight for those is still a debate for me i'm still questioning which way to do that

00:44:46.080 a lot of it for me at this point is very much like we need to find a way forward through the

00:44:49.560 first nations people that seems to be the only vehicle that the supreme court respects and even

00:44:53.600 ottawa actually has to give some credence to so that's kind of where my lines are starting to

00:44:58.820 draw but that's a different question for another time the issue at hand the issue at hand is that

00:45:07.920 Canada is falling apart and the vaccine and the census as well as our inability to build a

00:45:16.360 pipeline or to get projects done on time and on budget all of it is tied up in the same thing

00:45:22.600 which is a fundamental lack of confidence in the country a lack of communication a lack of

00:45:28.100 cooperation. That's what's going on there. And until that changes, until there's just a change

00:45:38.280 at the deepest level of our hearts and our souls, where it's like, no, I want Canada to be a better

00:45:43.680 place, and I'm willing to make the sacrifices to get it there. And most importantly, of course,

00:45:47.940 our leaders making that sacrifice and being willing to do that. Until that happens, we are

00:45:53.020 in a very dangerous place very dangerous this country could fall apart tomorrow certainly

00:45:58.800 in many ways it already has and so that's that's what touches me about this question

00:46:07.460 of how do we how do we move forward as a country how do we do this and and the thing that hits me

00:46:15.100 is like well i i think that we we do need to kind of rejig what the census is doing and we need to

00:46:20.400 start bringing things back to the local level um a fundamental idea inside of inside of the

00:46:26.060 beliefs i hold which are actually mostly religious beliefs uh is the idea that you leave decisions

00:46:31.400 with the lowest possible common denominator the most the most local thing right so from from and

00:46:38.600 that's for everything pretty much pretty much i mean there's some practical reasons that maybe

00:46:42.680 you'd want provincial licensing rather than local licensing for when it comes to driving or something

00:46:47.260 but pretty much everything else

00:46:50.140 there's a lot of things

00:46:52.380 that need to be done

00:46:53.480 at a local level

00:46:55.520 and at a certain way

00:46:58.280 why couldn't it be

00:46:59.200 locally licensed

00:47:01.040 if Ontario can

00:47:04.300 respect a driver's license from

00:47:05.940 BC why can't

00:47:07.620 a license that was handed out

00:47:10.280 in the Prince George district

00:47:11.620 the other day we brought up that

00:47:13.980 image of where the travel

00:47:16.220 bans were and you saw if you saw bc you saw how it was cut up into all of its health regions well

00:47:22.360 i don't like the health region borders necessarily i have my own borders i prefer but imagine if it

00:47:29.020 was the health regions if that was the way that all of our provinces were redivided so we'd have

00:47:34.240 probably five times provinces we do it would almost be like the states we'd have like 50

00:47:38.680 provinces well why not why not and there would be poor provinces and there would be richer

00:47:45.980 provinces but the richer ones would also be this big and they have to spend their money somewhere

00:47:51.020 they don't want to just live in toronto they don't want to just live in vancouver they they

00:47:55.340 want to go places well you're leaving the province of greater vancouver and you are entering the

00:48:01.040 province of hope kamloops or whatever however you want to put that the thompson thompson river

00:48:05.480 province whatever thompson river uh fraser thompson uh you go wander around in there you

00:48:12.900 camp around in there you spend your money there why can't your driver's license from vancouver

00:48:17.160 qualify in thompson river why not and vice versa right like this happens in 50 united states it

00:48:25.380 happens in all the little states that are inside of germany inside of europe all of europe has

00:48:29.660 transferable driver's license so so breaking things down into very very small parts when

00:48:35.280 they're still inside of kind of a loosely confederated entity that doesn't mean that

00:48:38.940 that you're going to lose all your rights,

00:48:41.160 it doesn't have to mean that at all.

00:48:43.240 It's a choice by people.

00:48:44.680 That's the thing about government.

00:48:45.700 It's a choice by people.

00:48:47.060 How we choose to act is what the government manifests as.

00:48:50.940 And maybe that's kind of the place

00:48:52.440 to sort of bring it all together,

00:48:54.280 is to say, well, whether we're looking at the vaccines,

00:48:57.500 again, regardless of your desire to take it,

00:48:59.900 whether we're looking at the vaccine,

00:49:01.080 whether we're looking at the census,

00:49:03.660 or we're looking at infrastructure,

00:49:04.940 or we're looking at poverty reduction,

00:49:06.620 it doesn't matter.

00:49:07.160 There are all these problems that plague Canada, all of Canada, the kingdom of Canada, right, the dominion of Canada.

00:49:15.460 And I would hope that all of Canada could solve those problems, but we might have to solve them together alone, in a sense, with our local communities.

00:49:25.340 It can't just be the 10 premiers plus the prime minister and then the three guys from the territories.

00:49:29.960 It can't be even just our Western premiers coming together and solving this problem.

00:49:36.280 It might need to be broken down to the point where, I guess this is the problem.

00:49:39.700 If I'm a sovereignist, I'm a sovereignist that's a sovereignist of my town and my region.

00:49:45.080 I don't know how to stand in solidarity perfectly with the idea of all of Western Canada leaving Ottawa,

00:49:50.520 but I do know how to get even my small area to leave Victoria,

00:49:54.420 or at least that I could reason through that, at least to tell Victoria to get out of our lives.

00:50:00.100 I'm sure that there are many people in Alberta that could feel the same way.

00:50:03.240 this is the thing about sovereignty is that there's a real danger that places like Calgary

00:50:09.000 and Edmonton, I prefer to call it Redmonton, start running the show, right? So as if rural

00:50:16.720 people in Alberta don't already feel left out, the same as us in BC. And I'm not trying to

00:50:22.060 denigrate anyone that lives in Edmonton or in Calgary. I'm just saying that, you know,

00:50:26.960 the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And right now, people in rural Alberta and a lot of people

00:50:31.860 and suburban Alberta all feel that the government's not listening to them

00:50:37.840 and that they want out, they want to do something different.

00:50:41.000 Well, what happens as soon as you get, be careful what you wish for, right?

00:50:44.560 So you get what you wished for.

00:50:46.480 Okay, what next?

00:50:51.040 Now Calgary is the power center and Canmore is not.

00:50:54.900 So how's Canmore and Calgary, how are they going to battle it out

00:50:58.000 to decide who's in charge and what's going to happen next?

00:51:00.560 And, you know, what if the Canmore people don't want all the Calgary people to come and move in there and then they got to fight about that?

00:51:07.080 It's it's it's a difficult thing. It's a difficult thing.

00:51:10.340 So with with Canada, all I know is that we are facing some serious issues right now.

00:51:18.160 We're literally looking at a vaccine rollout that's been completely botched up.

00:51:21.800 We're looking at the census that, you know, I'm interested to see what kind of questions are on it this year, especially in light of covid and everything else.

00:51:28.240 i'm gonna i'm gonna do some bits on that tomorrow i just opened the package today so i'm gonna do

00:51:33.380 some bits on it tomorrow after i complete the package and at least look through the questions

00:51:38.560 and then uh yeah and i'm gonna write on it this week i think as well but but yeah again the the

00:51:44.740 census the logistics the vaccine this country has lost confidence in itself the separation the

00:51:52.460 sovereignness the mistreatment of the west by the trudeau government mistreatment of everybody by

00:51:56.720 Trudeau government I mean the Trudeau government's abusing this entire country I think I think

00:52:00.020 central Canadians are actually getting just as abused by the Trudeau government but it just

00:52:04.840 looks nicer just looks prettier but it's not huge protest in Quebec the other day I think for uh for

00:52:10.740 no more lockdowns and the curfews and the masks and everything it's just nonsense and I think I

00:52:16.720 think that people are finally trying to snap onto this but the question is where to from here I mean

00:52:21.060 we're not america we don't really have a legacy like america does throwing off its fetters and

00:52:27.540 and getting getting all hoorah about what they're gonna do and we we have to kind of acknowledge

00:52:34.740 that that you know i mean for myself i'm still a monarchist and it's a hard thing to kind of

00:52:41.440 reconcile like so what where to from here what to from here what what does it look like what does

00:52:48.040 it mean uh we need a vision for the country and that comes all the way back to the stephen harper

00:52:53.000 thing what was harper's greatest sin no offense to harper himself is a lack of vision for the

00:52:58.340 country or not communicating that vision very well and when he failed to do that he left a big

00:53:05.380 vacuum this country had been ruled by the liberal party for years for years and he had a chance

00:53:13.580 while they were in third place to basically censor them not censor them and then like ban them but

00:53:18.460 just be a bully be a bully a bit and bully them around a bit it's like nope you've had the run

00:53:23.360 of the place for a century you ruined it i'm gonna push you around i'm gonna denigrate you i'm gonna

00:53:28.360 make everybody know be ashamed to have anything to do with you the same way you do to us and you 0.95

00:53:34.140 deserve it you deserve it for the way that you've run this country the way you've hurt this country

00:53:37.920 and the people you've heard.

00:53:39.240 So bleep, bleep you.

00:53:41.180 And he had a chance to reform Canada

00:53:43.700 and say, this is what we're doing.

00:53:45.920 This is who we are.

00:53:46.960 This is where Canada is going.

00:53:50.420 And it wasn't clear.

00:53:52.660 It wasn't clear.

00:53:55.220 And that vacuum allowed the liberals 0.98

00:53:57.680 to slither back in the way they always do.

00:54:01.160 That's how it is.

00:54:02.980 So if you don't create a narrative,

00:54:07.080 if you don't cleave to a certain set of values

00:54:10.240 and if you don't clarify what those values are

00:54:13.160 you are in deep, deep trouble

00:54:15.400 deep, deep trouble

00:54:17.100 and that's exactly what's going to happen

00:54:19.160 if you don't create that

00:54:20.400 so the census, it's an opportunity to recreate the narrative

00:54:24.700 and to redirect it and be like

00:54:26.600 no, you know what, Canada from now on

00:54:28.320 is going to be a loosely confederated entity

00:54:30.160 where the municipalities and the regions

00:54:32.420 and the local regional districts

00:54:34.420 and that sort of thing

00:54:35.100 and farm councils and little unincorporated entities

00:54:37.640 where everybody meets in the basement of the church

00:54:39.400 or in the post office or whatever at Bob's place

00:54:43.900 and we have a barbecue in the middle of summer.

00:54:45.620 That's the town council meeting.

00:54:47.740 That sort of thing.

00:54:48.860 Because those are the people who built this country.

00:54:51.460 Let's be clear about that.

00:54:52.620 Let's get excited about this.

00:54:55.000 Those are the people who built the country.

00:54:58.940 People who were not, I mean, it was the 19th century,

00:55:02.200 so they weren't illiterate or whatever,

00:55:03.440 but, like, there were some pretty illiterate people.

00:55:06.340 But by the sweat of their brow and the blood of the toil and in the soil

00:55:10.520 and the perseverance they had with their families,

00:55:12.980 like, they built this country.

00:55:15.220 The farms we have in the prairies, the railroad we have connecting it,

00:55:18.720 the highways we have connecting it, the mines, the portages, right,

00:55:23.900 the ports, the airports, the battles we fought overseas.

00:55:27.780 All of that came from real people, real people doing real things

00:55:32.140 that were very, very hard and very, very tough

00:55:34.260 and some of the rights that were won along the way.

00:55:38.840 We can be those people again,

00:55:40.780 but we have to have the tools to do it.

00:55:43.020 And the tools are not a whole bunch

00:55:46.420 of centralized authority way, way, way, way, way

00:55:49.140 over somewhere that you can't even see.

00:55:51.840 It's all centralized.

00:55:52.740 You don't even know who's in charge.

00:55:54.400 The expertise is way beyond you.

00:55:56.180 Language doesn't make sense.

00:55:57.500 It doesn't touch base with you.

00:55:59.400 You don't have any grasp of what's going on

00:56:01.380 because it's not, because it's not human, and it's not real, and it doesn't, doesn't hit you

00:56:06.200 the way that a real thing would. It's all like the COVID thing. It's all a bit of a lie.

00:56:12.420 We're all faking it. We're all faking it. We're all participating in it because we have to.

00:56:16.940 We called the Soviet Union Empire of Lies. Soviet Union had a lot of departments, 0.95

00:56:20.980 a department of everything, from female, from female fertility, all the way to what fur coats

00:56:27.340 should be sold in russia because certain mink had to be a certain grade like it doesn't matter

00:56:31.880 ministries of interior ministries of safety everybody had some kind of ministry somewhere 0.75

00:56:37.580 there's a lot of government in mother russia during the soviet union the entire soviet union

00:56:43.280 the ussr was a hugely bureaucratic system well we have a lot of bureaucracy today and covidism is

00:56:51.620 making for even more bureaucracy and technocracy and distance between people and people not feeling

00:56:57.040 like they have a connection

00:56:58.960 we have to change that

00:57:01.500 and people are snapping under the train

00:57:03.360 and I for one am glad

00:57:04.260 I don't want anyone to snap and go crazy and do something violent

00:57:07.160 but I for one am glad that people are finally waking up

00:57:09.400 and saying no

00:57:10.020 and they're waking up to the fact that government doesn't always have the answer

00:57:13.540 that's really important

00:57:15.940 it doesn't

00:57:19.640 they're fallible human beings

00:57:21.500 just like everybody else

00:57:22.480 and there's only one way forward

00:57:24.140 and that's to give each other some respect

00:57:28.020 and to trust that your neighbor might know what's best for his own kids

00:57:31.900 you know and his own family and his own job his own life his own work

00:57:36.260 and we have to work together to bring the power

00:57:40.260 back to the people that's what we have to do we're a couple minutes away

00:57:44.100 here hopefully from Jay Hill logging on with us we're going to be

00:57:48.240 talking with him about a couple of different things do bring it up in the

00:57:52.200 comments anything you'd like me to ask jay about the maverick party and what's happening there a

00:57:58.060 funny story jay was actually my member of parliament because i lived in the northern

00:58:02.600 part of uh prince george um we can bring up i guess uh maybe maybe the long title i don't want

00:58:09.160 to get it wrong um i think it was a different name when he was there i think the name changed

00:58:13.700 under bob zimmer who's still the member uh who succeeded jay hill uh yeah so that was so the

00:58:21.260 district used to be called prince george peace river and of course now it's called prince george

00:58:27.260 peace river northern rockies or something it's called something insane it's like the longest

00:58:32.780 one out of all i think it's the longest one um out of all of the uh all the districts yeah

00:58:39.620 prince george peace river northern rockies yeah it's got a lot of letters and i don't know if

00:58:44.920 there's a longer one than that but there's definitely something somewhere uh that's that's

00:58:49.900 pretty long and so and so bob zimmer he's the member for that district now but jay hill was

00:58:55.860 the member of that district for oh god how long was he made he was with the class of 93 right

00:59:00.420 so he was there till what 2000 and something 2010 yeah yeah i tried to help one of his buddies uh

00:59:08.580 i tried to help one of his buddies um one of him not one of his buddies sorry i want i tried to

00:59:16.140 help uh one of our buddies uh succeed him in that seat he didn't win that seat ultimately but uh

00:59:22.120 actually no that was a different seat wasn't it yeah it was todd's seat never mind i'm getting

00:59:26.780 all my wires crossed i'm sorry but the point is that jay was jay was my member for a long time

00:59:32.880 him and dick harris uh i think i think jay hill stuck around in in canada which is great and i

00:59:40.320 think uh dick harris went off to arizona or something live in the snowbird life uh far away

00:59:46.920 somewhere warm or maybe it was the southern okanagan either way i kind of treat those two

00:59:51.100 places the same i'm not saying that i don't love my fellow british colombians but i can't

00:59:54.880 i cannot be bothered with the sunshine tax i i i can't do it it's a beautiful place to visit i

01:00:01.240 just visited it it was wonderful to be there with my beloved she was looking great i was looking

01:00:05.040 great on the boat all fun times but man you couldn't pay me to live there that's a lot of

01:00:10.240 money too much money but love you south eastern bc love you very much sorry didn't mean to throw

01:00:19.540 you guys under the bus like that call it the sun belt we call it the sun tax for a reason

01:00:23.400 and it is not cheap down there but hey there's peaches that grow on the trees those are really

01:00:28.360 good no so we're just uh just hoping that j will be here in a couple of minutes again uh comments

01:00:34.220 send anything my way that you would like me to talk to him about and i just if you're ever

01:00:41.200 wondering like my monitor is over here so that's why i'm kind of always glancing over there to see

01:00:45.600 what's going on that's where if uh if my producer brings something up for me to read that's where

01:00:50.880 i'm looking and of course that's where my opening statement is so again one of these days we're

01:00:55.260 going to take the camera and we're going to move it around and we'll give you guys a kind of a tour

01:00:58.460 of what's going on maybe we'll pre-record that and you guys will kind of get a view of what's

01:01:03.040 happening uh in the studio here i think you guys are going to be kind of amazed at how these smoke

01:01:07.780 and mirrors work um it's it's kind of funny i mean i don't know i i don't know if it's worth

01:01:13.200 getting into right now because jay's supposed to be here uh in a few few seconds but we have

01:01:19.560 we have several lights several lights uh of course that's the key right and uh with with the lights

01:01:27.660 you know as soon as you have uh as soon as you have your lights going right then you need the

01:01:33.280 soft lights you need the harsh lights right and the big thing actually is behind us if you're if

01:01:37.620 you're looking past me here you'll actually just see a light i'm hiding it but if you if you look

01:01:42.820 past me here there's actually uh there is actually a green screen so uh so yeah so this is this is

01:01:48.560 what's actually behind us uh that's how things work in the movie world and in the tv world and

01:01:53.820 So you just impose an image.

01:01:55.720 And the key with the image, so the reason that there is this light behind me that you can see there,

01:02:01.240 and then there's a light this way and there's a light that way,

01:02:04.520 the reason that that exists is that without enough light casting,

01:02:10.200 you have to basically take all the shadows off the back.

01:02:12.700 So that's what all the lighting is for on a stage or something like that,

01:02:15.880 or a sound stage or a stage that's doing even a play.

01:02:23.000 right all that lighting is so that the shadows are cast as you want if they're not cast the right

01:02:28.500 way then all of this would look really messed up even so right i mean you can kind of see it's a

01:02:32.900 bit fuzzy here and that's fine we have a great camera thanks to some generous donors but other

01:02:39.780 than that we we have all these uh kind of smoke and mirror sort of uh items we have here and

01:02:45.040 it's kind of interesting i've never really done it this way before again the broadcasting i mostly

01:02:48.940 did was in the radio i did that or i still do it uh every friday i help with the local radio

01:02:55.560 station community radio station i have four i have four guys on there but um we'll uh we'll

01:03:02.300 pivot here uh pretty quickly we're gonna we're gonna go straight into our time with uh jay hill

01:03:08.200 the honorable jay hill to be clear jay hill joins me uh this uh this hour to talk about the maverick

01:03:13.600 party and to discuss the upcoming election jay can you hear me loud and clear perfect perfect

01:03:21.200 well welcome to the program uh it's great to have you on and i'm just super excited to hear about

01:03:26.880 uh this new this new party and what we're trying to do to to make the west's voice heard

01:03:31.520 getting a lot of feedback

01:03:37.640 yeah it might be uh just might be uh the microphone versus the speakers on your uh on

01:03:45.520 your computer maybe that might be what it is but uh so maybe bring down the volume on your computer

01:03:51.060 a little bit might go a little smoother uh the the best way forward here i think is is for you

01:03:57.300 to just tell me how it is what what's happening with the maverick party what how how did how did

01:04:02.340 we all get started here and then what do you think is going to happen with the election just

01:04:05.540 just go jay just go well thanks well thanks nathan um we'll see what happens here can you

01:04:20.400 Can you still hear me okay?

01:04:21.740 Absolutely, yep.

01:04:25.500 We'll try that.

01:04:29.640 Really, really what happens was, I think, similar to a lot of what's here,

01:04:36.280 and following the 29th election, it was a bit of a real fight on this 20th year.

01:04:44.980 when Prime Minister Trudeau got re-elected, albeit with a minority instead of his majority.

01:04:51.380 And what we saw was that there was a huge increase in interest in the West charting its own course.

01:04:59.100 And it manifested itself by people responding to a sort of a call to arms by Wexit movement.

01:05:07.760 Of course, that stands for West Exit, and it's a play on the term out of Britain with Brexit out of the European Common Market.

01:05:19.280 I obviously as well was attracted to that despite my former, originally as a reformer, then Canadian Alliance Member of Parliament, and ultimately a Conservative Party Member of Parliament, Nathan.

01:05:33.580 and I ended my career, as most people now know, sitting in Prime Minister Harper's cabinet

01:05:41.180 and resigned, or what I thought was resigned from public life in 2010.

01:05:47.020 And it was so clear, I think, to the vast majority of Westerners

01:05:55.980 that our current Prime Minister was the most unqualified, unprincipled, unfit individual to

01:06:04.940 ever occupy the Prime Minister's office. And yet Central and Eastern Canadians, for whatever 0.95

01:06:10.720 reasons, re-elected him. And there was just this sense of betrayal, as I say, on the part of most

01:06:20.300 Westerners dare I say it even anguish and anger and I like many others said well clearly what

01:06:29.580 this is is the worst possible example of why confederation does not work for this country

01:06:35.900 of Canada, that one region like Canada to re-elect the highest on the land and to, quote,

01:06:49.900 govern over us. And so this dismayed me, on my part, presented me with a dilemma.

01:06:57.900 It's a dilemma.

01:06:58.900 I think it's one that's been stalled over the last one.

01:07:01.900 I think it's a lot of web servers.

01:07:03.900 What to do about it.

01:07:04.900 We can do what we've done.

01:07:06.900 We've done this in support for,

01:07:08.900 largely especially the French farmers,

01:07:10.900 but we're going to do it in the world where we have

01:07:12.900 parts of the world,

01:07:14.900 we're going to elect the regional center

01:07:16.900 and the European ideology reformers.

01:07:20.900 And we've tried to educate Central and Central

01:07:26.900 Canada, Canada, why do we feel the data, or do we try a new level?

01:07:31.740 And I came to realize a lot of things that the Federation was looking, there's really

01:07:36.440 only 22 paths to travel.

01:07:39.140 One is to modernize the federal institution, to ensure that either one is the West, or

01:07:47.800 Secondly, if that was a word on the word on the part of Central, Eastern Canadians, then we would to chart our own course, lay the foundations for independence referendums in the Western provinces, try and convince provincial governments across the West that that's the only feasible or practical path forward for the West.

01:08:16.000 And that really is what led me to stepping back out of the shadows.

01:08:21.280 I was happily retired, spending time with my grandchildren.

01:08:24.540 But last June, a small group of us, in fact, eight individuals volunteered our time to form a board.

01:08:32.820 The existing leader of Wexit Canada, which had applied for registration with Elections Canada, stepped aside.

01:08:41.760 and I volunteered to serve as interim leader and, as I say, these seven individuals,

01:08:50.720 some of whom were on the original board and were the original organizers of Wexit Canada,

01:08:57.520 and the remainder were new people, new to the board, and they stepped forward. We volunteered

01:09:03.680 to try and build an alternative for Western Canada. And so we proceeded from there. We

01:09:09.360 We designed and communicated a mission statement, we formulated our guiding principles for the

01:09:19.480 party and then more recently we've, oh, and then in there as well, we had to come to the

01:09:26.700 position of developing a new name, hence Maverick.

01:09:31.280 We can get into a discussion of how that came about, but that was in mid-September of last

01:09:37.920 year. And then more recently, we've started organizing electoral district associations

01:09:43.460 across Western Canada. We've nominated a, appointed a few candidates. We can talk about

01:09:50.140 the process we've used for that. And then we also, we've also recently released our draft

01:10:00.720 platform, which will probably carry us into the next election, depending on when it is.

01:10:05.400 let's talk about the next election just briefly there for a moment do you do you think we're

01:10:11.220 headed into one for this spring or do you think we're headed in for one for this fall it's i guess

01:10:15.440 we're at the end of spring pretty much here yes we are uh we're now uh basically looking at a

01:10:25.300 summer election if the writ was to drop um i think that in all likelihood i felt for quite some time

01:10:33.400 the Prime Minister would like to go. I think that he believes his polls and his internal polls

01:10:37.800 probably even show he's more popular in Central and Eastern Canada than he was in the fall of

01:10:43.800 2019. I think that if he had his way, he would probably call an early election. There's a couple

01:10:54.520 of things that are standing in his way. One is a bill that's before the House and so far he's

01:11:01.320 failed to get any support from the Conservatives to move it along through the parliamentary process,

01:11:07.320 that bill would allow Elections Canada to make certain changes in order to effectively operate

01:11:16.680 an election, a federal election during our current situation with the COVID pandemic.

01:11:23.760 So that's a bit of a problem for him. And then probably more important, his ineffectiveness and

01:11:30.640 inability to secure sufficient supply of vaccines for Canadians, I think has to be worrisome for

01:11:41.200 them because as we saw with the recent provincial election in Newfoundland, things could go sideways

01:11:48.960 pretty quickly if we experienced, for example, over the summer, a potential for a fourth wave

01:11:56.480 uh in different provinces or indeed across the land so that has to be of concern to him because

01:12:02.240 perhaps he would wear some of that because of the errors and judgment that we've seen

01:12:06.960 from the federal government on this issue over the past year

01:12:12.720 and and i think that with with the what's happening with covet and everything else like

01:12:17.200 everything's very tense not just about the nature of the election but but what it would look like

01:12:22.720 for policy we've had a couple of covet elections throughout uh the pandemic has that

01:12:29.360 is is that is are those models and and do those models favor an insurgent party like yourself

01:12:37.340 well i mean i guess that's debatable it depends on how the campaign will unfold i mean

01:12:43.680 up until we saw a very narrow victory for the liberals in newfoundland uh what we'd seen was

01:12:52.680 a succession of governments returned to power. In fact, I think it was two of them in New Brunswick

01:13:01.940 and British Columbia that went from a minority to a majority. So obviously that is what Prime

01:13:08.100 Minister Trudeau would like to see happen on the national level. Saskatchewan, of course,

01:13:12.980 they had a majority SAS party government and it was returned in overwhelming numbers because it's

01:13:18.340 one of the more popular governments across the country. So I guess the bottom line there is that

01:13:24.820 nobody lost. So your question about whether a early, what I would class possibly as an

01:13:32.040 unnecessary election would benefit a party like Maverick, it remains a big unknown, of course.

01:13:40.600 It would be a very unusual election, as you can imagine, just as the ones were provincially in the

01:13:46.360 fact that a lot of it would be conducted via social media, just as we're conducting this

01:13:51.560 interview today, Nathan. So I really don't know how that would play out and what effect that

01:13:58.560 would have on the voting public. I think that there's going to be a huge opportunity in Western

01:14:04.400 Canada, obviously, for Maverick to convey our central message about the unfairness of confederation

01:14:11.240 and about the fact that if Westerners really want true Western representation,

01:14:18.480 rather than electing members of parliament from whichever party, national party,

01:14:23.480 that are going to endeavor to appease the voters in central and eastern Canada,

01:14:30.980 they will have the opportunity, hopefully, to elect maverick members of parliament

01:14:37.320 that will provide accurate representation.

01:14:39.760 accurate representation this has been an ongoing problem since your first uh your first trip to

01:14:47.100 parliament back in 93 uh you belong to the class of 93 to the reform movement and and the projects

01:14:54.620 thereof what what after almost 30 years what what do you know differently now that you didn't know

01:15:02.020 then what what had you hoped to do then that you've had to kind of make make decisions now

01:15:07.760 and policy now that that's different or is it the same or did the project just not get complete

01:15:14.560 well i think what is different and i have freely admitted to talk show hosts and reporters and

01:15:21.440 and the media nathan over the last uh 10 months since we started this uh exercise i freely admitted

01:15:30.480 to being a slow learner and I don't say that with a lot of pride. I believe like a lot of reformers

01:15:40.640 that started out in the mid-80s that we did accomplish things. There's things about my

01:15:45.840 political career, the 17 years that I spent representing the people of Northeastern British

01:15:51.120 Columbia in Ottawa. There's things that I am quite proud of. I'm quite proud of a number of things,

01:15:57.440 for example, that we accomplished with Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative government.

01:16:04.700 Having said all of that, what I've come to realize and what I am trying to communicate

01:16:10.120 to Westerners is that for those that are Conservative-minded and believe that the

01:16:19.260 country is best served by Conservative governments, I'm asking them if they are getting tired

01:16:26.500 of seeing in our lifetimes and in former generations in Canada, this constant flip-flopping

01:16:36.060 back and forth throughout our history between conservative and liberal governments.

01:16:42.180 Because the reality is that whether it was Prime Minister Trudeau's father in that government,

01:16:47.640 whether it was the government of Prime Minister Clétien more recently when I was in Ottawa,

01:16:54.480 and whether it's Justin Trudeau now, is that eventually, no matter how often we elect a

01:17:02.900 Conservative government and we try to get our, from our perspective, from a Westerners perspective,

01:17:07.920 we try to get our country back on track or what we believe is on track, then inevitably what

01:17:13.500 happens is at some point Central and Eastern Canada says, well, you know, West is gaining

01:17:19.060 too much. Conservatives are pandering to Western Canada. We'd better elect a Liberal government

01:17:27.140 and rein these guys in a bit. And we have to figure out, Nathan, a better way of doing

01:17:35.060 government in Canada. And that's why Maverick has come up with this twin-track approach.

01:17:40.500 It's our mission statement, two-track mission statement. One is to actually try, as I said

01:17:48.340 already, try to modernise Canada's constitution to treat the West fairly. And if that fails,

01:17:55.620 then at the same time, while we're not going to wait around and see if Central and Eastern Canada

01:18:00.660 would agree to look at making those changes to the constitution, we will lay the foundations

01:18:06.500 for an independent West. And obviously, that's a huge task ahead of us as well.

01:18:12.020 we have to convince uh you know millions of westerners uh that that's the only viable course

01:18:18.900 forward so and uh we'll see what transpires it's it's kind of surreal you know that the idea that

01:18:30.100 this is this could all really happen that that if if and if it is another minority government

01:18:36.580 If enough Mavericks are elected to Parliament, they could hold a balance of power and they could ask some pretty serious things.

01:18:46.280 You know, they could demand some pretty serious changes from Ottawa.

01:18:48.760 And if Ottawa won't concede, then they could also bring down the government.

01:18:54.440 That's an interesting way forward.

01:18:57.380 What do you think is the appetite for separation in the West?

01:19:01.420 Are people still trying to keep Canada together, at least keep the borders the same,

01:19:05.720 maybe change the arrangement inside or are people ready starting to get ready to to leave

01:19:10.400 well i think that a lot of westerners as i've said nathan recognize that confederation is broken

01:19:17.980 it just simply doesn't work it was put into place in the 1800s under the old model of upper and

01:19:25.440 lower canada and the west has been used and abused ever since that's not saying for a minute that we

01:19:33.800 haven't benefited all of us from being Canadians. Of course, we have. And of course, most people are

01:19:39.420 still profoundly patriotic and love being Canadian and all that that stands for. But having said that,

01:19:47.340 I think we're way past time to modernize our constitution to ensure that Ottawa doesn't

01:19:54.200 dictate to the outer regions, in particular to Western Canada. We see that in the constant

01:20:02.740 drain of financial resources through the so-called equalization formula. We see that with laws that

01:20:09.220 are passed that dramatically impact on our future and the future of our children and grandchildren,

01:20:17.320 laws like the ban of oil tankers off the northern coast of the Pacific, off our British Columbia

01:20:26.020 Coast. When tankers come into Eastern Canada every day from countries that have far less

01:20:35.460 standards for human rights, for environmental standards, for labour standards, and yet we

01:20:44.740 import, we, Canada, Eastern Canada imports billions of gallons of oil every year in that way.

01:20:55.060 And so, you know, the West says, well, why the discrimination? Why two different rules under

01:21:01.380 Confederation? So, I think that there is a growing appetite for fairness. And we've seen

01:21:06.980 that manifested itself, especially on the prairies, especially Alberta and Saskatchewan,

01:21:11.940 the government's calling for greater autonomy. Here in Alberta, we've had this,

01:21:17.460 fairly recently, a fair deal panel that had travelled the province, come up with a strong

01:21:24.260 list of recommendations that they made to the Alberta government that has manifested itself in

01:21:30.100 at least in some policy direction for the Jason Kenney government to try and achieve greater

01:21:35.860 autonomy on a range of issues such as we've seen Quebec secure for itself over the years,

01:21:43.060 whether it's in the area of immigration, whether it's in the area of their own police force,

01:21:47.460 you can go down the list, their own pension plan. These are all things that Quebec has,

01:21:54.980 and in some cases has had for years. And we're increasingly seeing, especially in Alberta,

01:22:01.140 but in other provinces as well, saying, well, why don't we have that level of autonomy under

01:22:06.420 Confederation? So sure, I believe that the majority of Westerners, I believe the Poles are

01:22:13.780 right. The majority of Westerners would love to remain Canadian if we could arrive at an 1.00

01:22:18.660 arrangement where we could be treated fairly under Confederation. But right now, that's not

01:22:26.500 happening. There's not an appetite for that. And I would argue that potentially the provincial

01:22:31.300 governments are not moving quickly enough to see that happen. Part of that, Nathan, is that

01:22:39.540 that all governments across the land are consumed with this battle with this virus right now

01:22:46.100 and decisions that they feel they are forced to be to make in that regard.

01:22:51.420 So it's thrown a lot of legislative agendas, not only in the provinces, but in Ottawa off track, obviously.

01:23:01.260 This is an ongoing debate in the West, obviously.

01:23:04.960 Are we going to stay? Are we going to go?

01:23:06.680 do we think we can get anything properly to go our way or people just never going to give us

01:23:11.840 never going to give us a fair shake a just shake when it comes to selecting candidates to represent

01:23:17.280 your two tracks these are these are serious policy positions uh more serious than have been in many

01:23:22.400 years um probably only notable exception to that would be when when trudeau really promised that

01:23:28.380 there'd be the last first past the post election and marijuana would be legalized um outside of

01:23:33.340 there hadn't been a lot of new ideas for a while maybe scrapping the scrapping not just the carbon

01:23:37.820 tax federally but the scrapping the gun the long gun registry but this is a serious idea of

01:23:43.340 constitutional reform or possibly the the west leaving in a wexit move when you're looking for

01:23:49.100 candidates how do you discern which candidate would be best representing uh these ideas and

01:23:54.060 and representing the people they'll represent out west well uh as you can guess from uh the

01:24:01.660 perspective of a new political party in our infancy. We're only 10-months old since we began

01:24:09.180 this exercise at the end of June. In fact, we're just over 7-months old as the Maverick Party.

01:24:14.860 We're still in very early stages of evolution, but we have put in what we believe a very robust,

01:24:22.380 somewhat onerous candidate selection process to try and ensure that we have the best candidates

01:24:29.260 possible heading into the next election campaign. We've had, I'm going to just guess, and I might

01:24:36.220 not be completely up to speed on this because I'm not directly involved in the candidate

01:24:40.780 selection process, but we've had somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50-plus people that

01:24:47.100 have applied to become candidates for Maverick. Many of them have gone through a process that

01:24:54.300 involves a couple of different questionnaires. The first is a fairly brief one, just so that the

01:25:01.820 selection committee can get to know them a little bit. Then, I believe it's a 30-page

01:25:07.980 questionnaire goes out to them that involves things like criminal record checks and financial

01:25:16.220 information. Obviously, a lot of things that they have to be comfortable that is going to

01:25:21.260 be kept confidential, but that needs to be shared with our committee. The party has asked three

01:25:29.580 volunteers to sit on our committee. It's chaired by a former Member of Parliament colleague of mine,

01:25:35.420 Val Meredith. Her name now is Val Fraser. She's relocated from the lower mainland of British

01:25:41.100 Columbia to Calgary, so she lives not far from me here in Calgary. My deputy leader for Maverick

01:25:48.940 party as a fellow out of Saskatchewan, a farmer rancher named Alan Kerpan. And he was a former

01:25:56.460 colleague as well for two terms in Ottawa. And then he went on to serve a couple of terms with

01:26:02.860 Brad Wall as a SAS party MLA in Saskatchewan. And the third member of our candidate selection

01:26:09.340 committee is a former colleague, long-serving member of parliament, Leon Benoit from Northern

01:26:15.260 in Alberta. The reason why I asked three former colleagues is because between the three of them,

01:26:21.660 they have an incredible amount of experience as a politician. And I felt that they would be

01:26:28.520 ideally experienced to conduct the process that culminated with interviews with prospective

01:26:35.920 candidates, make the candidate, the nominee to be a candidate at least, well aware of what they

01:26:43.800 were getting into because unfortunately, Nathan, all too many people really don't understand the

01:26:50.320 job of a member of parliament and what it entails, the stresses and pressures it puts on not only

01:26:55.820 the individual, but by extension, their spouses and their family, their children. And so who better

01:27:02.220 than Val, Alan and Leon to convey that to them and to ask the probing questions to try to ensure

01:27:10.440 that they're well-prepared and that they are ideally situated to be a candidate for Maverick.

01:27:19.160 So that gives you some idea of the process that we're going through in selection of our candidates.

01:27:25.400 We've also, at this point, targeted 40-plus ridings across Western Canada in relation to

01:27:35.080 this whole fear of vote splitting. And I can explain that in some detail if you would like,

01:27:41.560 but suffice it to say that these are ridings where the Conservatives won by incredibly large margins.

01:27:48.920 And so people saying, well, why would you vote Maverick? Because you're going to simply split

01:27:54.920 the vote and allow the Liberals to win. Well, we say a couple of things to that. One is that we're

01:27:59.720 not running in Central and Eastern Canada. Maverick party is going to be a true Western party. We're

01:28:05.800 going to remain a Western party. We're only going to run in Western Canada. So there won't be any

01:28:10.600 boat splitting at all, or at least not caused by Maverick in Central and Eastern Canada. So that

01:28:17.080 eliminates about 2 thirds of the ridings in Canada. And then where we will be riding in

01:28:22.360 Western Canada for this first time around, we're targeting where Conservatives won by, as I say,

01:28:28.280 very wide margins, where if you split the vote that the Conservative candidate got in the last

01:28:34.040 election or two, straight down the middle, even half and half between a Maverick and a Conservative,

01:28:39.880 the people of those constituencies are going to send either a Conservative yet again back to Ottawa,

01:28:45.800 or they'll send a Maverick. So there's not going to be any chance of sending a Liberal NDP or Green

01:28:51.400 candidate uh and effectively vote splitting as the conservatives are trying to uh suggest uh so

01:29:00.120 that's sort of a quick calculation of how we're managing our candidate selection process yeah it

01:29:06.560 is and that's uh that's very helpful very helpful with with representation i mean one of the things

01:29:14.100 that comes to mind is that selecting a candidate isn't easy and it's not easy because we live in

01:29:21.840 a time of extreme political correctness being a new party means new ideas that might sound radical

01:29:29.180 it might sound to some people dangerous not to me but but people will will will castigate it that

01:29:35.320 way or try to cast aspersions on it that way how how do you find that line between having the guy

01:29:41.120 who can authentically represent his local riding

01:29:43.980 while still trying to make sure that the party's electable?

01:29:49.340 Well, that's an excellent question, Nathan,

01:29:52.180 and it's something I think that not only Maverick

01:29:54.120 but all parties struggle with when they're selecting their candidates

01:29:57.440 and trying to, quote, keep them on message.

01:30:02.540 You know, what we're endeavouring to do is to convince our candidates

01:30:06.980 and by extension, the public, that we have a huge job ahead of us on either one of our twin track

01:30:15.560 approaches. Whether it's to convince the other provinces outside of Western Canada to support

01:30:23.060 substantive modernization of the constitution and educate them as to why that's necessary

01:30:30.720 for Western Canada and for us to try and build a promising future for future generations of

01:30:42.720 Westerners, or whether it's the second approach of laying the foundations of an independent West

01:30:50.100 and to start out down that path by electing Maverick members of Parliament to truly represent

01:30:56.040 Western Canadian interests. Both of those are huge jobs and I think that most Canadians,

01:31:04.040 if they take the time to look at that, they would understand that.

01:31:07.560 And so what we're saying, Nathan, and we're trying to make sure our candidates stay on this

01:31:13.480 message line and don't get too distracted with other issues, is that we must stay focused on

01:31:21.080 those big goals and objectives. Because in order to have any chance of achieving them,

01:31:29.560 we have to rally sufficient Westerners to that cause. And we're not going to get there if we

01:31:36.280 get mired in, you know, well, what is this new country going to look like? Or, you know, will

01:31:42.120 we be a monarchy or a republic? Or all of these other myriad issues that would deal with independence,

01:31:50.440 as you're suggesting. So, we must have candidates that commit to the Maverick message and our goals

01:31:59.080 and objectives and that will try their best when they're under the stress and pressures of a

01:32:07.080 campaign to stay on that message and not be distracted by all of these other issues, no

01:32:12.520 matter how important they might be to either a segment of our Western population or the individual

01:32:19.080 that's posing the question. I'm not suggesting for a minute that all of us don't have issues

01:32:25.380 that are near and dear to our hearts. And we're getting this a lot in the last two weeks since

01:32:29.740 we released our draft policies. Of course, people are coming forward and saying, well,

01:32:34.660 what about this or that or the next thing that's not in your policies? And so what we're trying to

01:32:39.580 say, Nathan, is, you know, look, I mean, A, this party's in its infancy. B, we developed this

01:32:46.600 policy platform to try and give an overall view of where we're headed and what we stand for

01:32:53.600 and if you're going to vote for maverick what that means to you and should mean to you

01:32:58.100 and you know that we're trying our best to stay on message and keep our representatives on message

01:33:06.360 staying on message is always uh it's always a difficult task a couple of different ways

01:33:13.620 maybe something that needs to kind of be sussed out a little bit more is is again the reaction

01:33:19.200 of the media because so much of electoral politics is media we are happy of course to

01:33:23.740 have you here i'm very happy to be on the western standard and to have this platform to be speaking

01:33:28.720 to people like yourself and other people who may not get as nice of a hearing elsewhere or

01:33:33.340 be outright canceled by other uh platforms and other uh companies what what has it been like

01:33:39.560 in the media have you been able to kind of give your message or have they been interpreting it

01:33:43.480 mainstream media? Has it been interpreting it wrongly? Well, I would say that the so-called

01:33:50.860 mainstream media, especially in connection with what we commonly view as national media,

01:33:57.240 has been fair in their reporting when we have had the opportunity to present our message,

01:34:06.040 whether it's myself or anybody else speaking on behalf of Maverick. You know, I can't complain

01:34:11.800 that they have tried to, you know, disguise our message or attack us unfairly or anything like

01:34:20.580 that. I think the biggest problem that we've had is gaining a level of credibility whereby the

01:34:28.920 media will actually start paying some attention to us. With the exception of Western Standard and

01:34:35.260 some of the newspapers and television and radio in Western Canada, we've had very little success

01:34:44.220 in penetrating what you would call the mainstream media out of Toronto and Ottawa. It is coming.

01:34:51.100 We've had some recent successes where we've had some good stories with Central Canadian media.

01:34:58.940 I suppose to some extent, it's not unusual that they choose to ignore us by and large

01:35:04.540 because we're new, we're an upstart and we're easily labelled as a fringe party as we've tried

01:35:11.180 to get this going because we don't have a large membership base and we're just starting to nominate

01:35:17.900 candidates. So, it's easy for them, as I say, to ignore. We're not running in Central and Eastern

01:35:24.780 Canada, so we've eliminated two-thirds of the ridings in the countries by making that our choice.

01:35:30.060 but I think the direct answer to your question is that I would have to say that from my experience

01:35:39.260 as a longtime politician that all the media that have interviewed me have been actually very fair

01:35:48.800 and just asked upfront questions about the party and I've certainly appreciated that and I think

01:35:55.380 all of our supporters and members have have appreciated that fact that they've given us

01:35:59.880 sort of a a a clean microphone if you will to get our message out well that's fair that's fair

01:36:09.040 i'm glad to hear that i mean at a fundamental level we've had serious constitutional questions

01:36:13.840 in this country for a long time and it makes no sense that anybody should get panned for that

01:36:19.300 i know that there were times where particularly in quebec the reform movement got some short shrift

01:36:24.540 by various reporters uh i've heard stories of that but i'm glad that this time around at least

01:36:30.840 at least so far some respect is being paid and the democratic ethic is being honored

01:36:36.000 with with respect to that then the the democratic ethic what what is your hope then with with the

01:36:43.940 upcoming election if it is going to be a covet election and there's going to be a new sort of

01:36:48.660 system to ensure that that people have social distancing and everything else how how does one

01:36:53.620 campaign when you can't even get door to door or maybe you can I'm not sure what that's all about

01:37:00.500 well those are those questions um Nathan I think that from what I've heard from some of our

01:37:08.680 supporters that are actually door knocking as we speak uh you know they are there are ways to do

01:37:14.640 it and do it safely um obviously out of respect for the homeowners uh the folks that are doing

01:37:21.120 this for Maverick are wearing masks. Even if they don't personally believe that a mask accomplishes

01:37:28.400 a lot, they wear a mask out of respect for the folks that are going to answer the door.

01:37:36.560 When the person comes to the door, the person doing the door knocking takes a step back,

01:37:40.960 perhaps steps down a couple steps off of the porch, and has some social distance as they

01:37:46.880 have a conversation about what is this maverick all about. I think that there are ways in which,

01:37:54.800 even under a COVID-type restrictions, that we could have at least partially a normal,

01:38:04.640 if I can call it that, election campaign when it comes to door knocking at least.

01:38:08.560 Where the difficulty is, of course, is the restrictions. If they were under our current

01:38:13.200 conditions, we wouldn't be allowed to hold meetings and rallies of any size. That would be

01:38:20.800 quite different, especially for the leaders' tours where we're accustomed to seeing these large

01:38:28.160 rallies where a leader will fly into a certain city and it's all pre-orchestrated. Maybe that's

01:38:35.040 a good thing that we wouldn't be allowed to hold those things and get back to the most basic types

01:38:41.440 of campaigns where people would have to carry the message more one-on-one sort of eyeball to eyeball

01:38:51.360 rather than these large orchestrated PR events that we're used to in the past. I don't know,

01:38:59.760 we'll have to see. As I say, part of the problem for the Prime Minister if he wants to call an

01:39:05.360 early election is that Elections Canada doesn't have the flexibility, this is my understanding at

01:39:10.800 least, the legal flexibility to bring in some of the changes, for example, to have much more

01:39:18.080 of the electorate make use of mail-in ballots. I know one of the things that apparently is in

01:39:26.200 this bill that the Liberals have put before Parliament is to have a three-day voting time

01:39:33.500 period as opposed to traditionally, we just have the one day with a few advanced polling days.

01:39:40.800 So they need some flexibility, they being Elections Canada, to hold an election under these types of conditions that will still allow the vast majority of Canadians the right to exercise their democratic right and cast a ballot.

01:39:57.860 So we'll have to see how that unfolds. I don't think that anybody would think that it's not going to be quite different if it's held before sufficient people get vaccinated, and hopefully we can put this virus business behind us, or at least get it down to where it's more like an annual flu shot, which, of course, I think everyone, no matter which side of the debate they're on, would agree with that that's the ultimate goal.

01:40:23.880 yeah it's i'm just thinking of all that i mean there was a lot of things that came out of

01:40:32.220 the most recent american election that came to mail-in voting i don't want to entertain any of

01:40:41.100 that here relitigated it's a lot to get into but nonetheless if there is one thing to say

01:40:47.740 about america versus canada and this is something that's not understood very well by canadian

01:40:52.960 electors is that in america you can pretty much vote by a bingo card carrier pigeon or a one-armed

01:40:59.840 bandit it looks that diverse there are punch cards there are trailing hanging chads as it were and of

01:41:06.420 course the uh there's digital voting as well you can press buttons on a screen for digital voting

01:41:11.120 because their ballots are much larger than ours but nonetheless the mail-in voting question in

01:41:16.060 the united states was quite controversial and remains quite controversial in canada i think

01:41:21.620 I think it'll have more integrity but even so with those kind of doubts swarming around if an

01:41:27.360 election is held in the fall I can tell you that I personally will find a way to vote in person

01:41:31.600 that's that's very important to me and I would encourage everyone else to do the same as far

01:41:36.280 as they are able when when we're going into this question of the election itself of course the

01:41:41.280 writ's going to have to be dropped by somebody who isn't the governor general because of course

01:41:44.600 we don't have one anymore when we're getting another one I'm not sure but we don't have one

01:41:49.880 right now so apparently it's going to be the chief justice or the former chief justice perhaps

01:41:53.940 beverly mclaughlin herself that would be interesting but but as we kind of move into

01:41:59.240 this new new mode of canada we've had the pandemic for a while debt is climbing the questions of

01:42:05.280 separation and sovereignty yes they are important to many people but a lot of them also are taking

01:42:09.760 a bit of a back seat it's the question of the economy what is the maverick answer to what are

01:42:14.880 we going to do with all this debt and how are we going to get out of the covid the covid crunch

01:42:19.420 that we're feeling? Well, I think that it's obvious to most Western Canadians that have

01:42:26.720 some modicum of common sense that we cannot continue to go the way we are. I made one of

01:42:33.460 my leaders' video shortly after the budget came out to express my concern on behalf of my

01:42:40.660 grandchildren about this horrendous accumulation of debt. If the numbers are to be believed and

01:42:50.100 we have to question them, that we're headed to $1.4 trillion of debt. And the biggest concern

01:42:59.240 over and above the amount of money that's been shoveled out the door by Mr. Trudeau and his

01:43:05.420 government is the unaccountability of it. I mean, it's just, there's a story almost every week

01:43:11.240 about how they cannot account for billions upon billions of dollars. And that is extremely

01:43:19.240 worrisome for me, Nathan, as someone that really has been proud to describe myself as a fiscal

01:43:28.060 conservative. Indeed, when I left the farm in the mid-80s to run for the Reform Party,

01:43:34.540 it was largely out of concern of the runaway debt at the time. I was quite proud to be part

01:43:41.900 of the Reform Party in that initial tranche of 52 reformers elected in 1993 that put pressure

01:43:49.900 on Jean Chrétien and our Finance Minister at the time, Paul Martin, and I give them full marks

01:43:55.420 for responding to the pressure of reformers in the House of Commons and making some hard

01:44:00.940 decisions. I mean, they didn't balance the budget the way reform would have, but they did make a lot

01:44:07.100 of changes that were necessary to get Canada back on a solid fiscal foundation and good on them.

01:44:14.080 I've often remarked, Nathan, that in the last while, I don't understand why Paul Martin and

01:44:21.520 Jean-Crécien aren't outspoken about what is happening to their fiscal legacy. It's sad that

01:44:29.700 the 2 of them primarily as leading the Liberal government for those 3 successive majority

01:44:35.200 governments and the steps they took and the heat they took from, shall we say, the left in Canada

01:44:40.560 that didn't believe in the cuts they were making in order to get back to balanced budgets and

01:44:45.860 indeed start to run surpluses and begin to pay down debt and now to see what Justin Trudeau has

01:44:52.760 done to the financial viability of Canada and future generations. I mean, if anybody over and

01:44:59.960 above us old reformers should be just aghast at what has happened, it should be Mr. Kfechen and

01:45:07.480 Mr. Martin. So, where do we go from here? I would like to see a plan, obviously, put forward by

01:45:15.960 a federal government, whether it's Liberal or Conservative, that clearly lays out how they are

01:45:22.040 going to stimulate the economy, not through spending billions of dollars that we don't have,

01:45:29.120 but by supporting the private sector. And I cannot understand why there's this open warfare

01:45:35.940 against the largest generator of economic activity and income for a federal government,

01:45:44.600 which is our oil and gas industry that has sustained not just Quebec and the Maritimes,

01:45:51.620 but indeed all of Canada for quite some years now, why there's this open warfare on the part

01:45:57.800 of the Liberals in regulation, in carbon tax, and you run down the list. They are driving the

01:46:06.660 investors away at the very time when we need international investment in our own gas sector

01:46:12.520 to fuel the upcoming hoped-for recovery. I don't understand this, Nathan, and I don't think most

01:46:20.980 Westerners do. And that's why increasingly we are rebelling against the policies of Justin Trudeau

01:46:33.800 and his liberal government. I think there's lots of speculation that can be had from outright,

01:46:42.080 you know, who's paying who to, you know, the Tides Foundation. I had Vivian Krause on a program that

01:46:49.000 i used to do uh called prince george up close because of course i'm calling you from or we're

01:46:54.620 talking to each other you're in alberta i'm in the bc's northern capital prince george your old

01:46:59.280 part of your old riding i i used to live on your side of the river and uh i think that i think that

01:47:06.080 ultimately i mean it doesn't matter which way you kind of turn it all around especially with the way

01:47:09.680 vivian was talking about it and how she explained how how there really is a large organization

01:47:14.340 attempting to take these things out she saw it first when it came to salmon fishing salmon farming

01:47:18.640 in the west coast of BC.

01:47:20.420 She's no one's idea of a conspiracy theorist.

01:47:22.140 She worked for the UN for 20 years.

01:47:24.160 She's great.

01:47:24.860 I hope to have her on the program

01:47:25.960 in the not-too-distant future.

01:47:27.220 But to your point that there's this open warfare

01:47:29.580 on Alberta oil and an open war on the West

01:47:32.360 to the point where the Trudeau government

01:47:35.540 really does seem to take delight

01:47:37.380 in seeing the West suffer,

01:47:39.960 I fundamentally believe that it comes back

01:47:42.560 to the same point that you were making

01:47:44.780 about Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien.

01:47:47.540 Why aren't they criticizing their own people?

01:47:51.340 Well, because they're the de facto ruling party of Canada.

01:47:57.180 They are the default ruling party of Canada.

01:47:58.920 They're the natural governing ruling party of Canada.

01:48:00.700 So they can't commit the sins that others can.

01:48:04.700 They just can't.

01:48:05.460 They're part of the elect.

01:48:06.820 They are perfect.

01:48:07.820 They are blameless.

01:48:08.940 And they must be defended at all costs.

01:48:10.900 And I think that we can see this in the United States as well on the left,

01:48:13.640 where there are plenty of places where joe biden is criticizing even obama he was his vice president

01:48:18.800 for goodness sake and and that and yet uh there's no there's no uh there's no consternation between

01:48:25.960 bill obama and biden they're all on the same side they're all fighting the same way because it's all

01:48:30.900 about control it's all about power it's not about the people anymore when it comes to canada maybe

01:48:35.740 that's exactly a place to kind of bring this all to a conclusion jay if if this is about the people

01:48:41.440 and bringing power back to the people what would you propose someone says you look ottawa victoria

01:48:46.640 calgary edmonton i don't care where it is they have too much control in my life how are you

01:48:51.120 going to bring power back to the people well as i said nathan you've summarized the situation

01:48:59.280 on the political front very well there um i think that people increasingly in western canada at least

01:49:05.760 recognize that, as I said earlier, the system simply doesn't work. I've taken to referring

01:49:12.880 to it as the tyranny of the majority. And when I say that, people say, well, does that mean that

01:49:18.640 you don't support democracy, as in one person, one vote? And I say, no, that's fine. But in a

01:49:26.320 supposed bicameral system, people have to understand that really in Canada, we've always

01:49:32.880 just had a unicameral in the sense that it's the majority in the House of Commons that dictates the

01:49:40.640 policies of the country. And what ends up happening is because there's no check and balance the way

01:49:46.960 they have in the United States or Australia, where they have an elected equal upper Senate,

01:49:52.560 upper house in their system, we don't have that in Canada. And so that's why I refer to it as

01:49:59.840 tyranny of the majority. The fact that every majority government or every national government,

01:50:09.280 whether it's Conservative or Liberal, has to attempt to appease where the votes are and where

01:50:15.520 the majority of the seats are, which is central Canada. People have referred to this. It's that

01:50:22.400 huge corridor that runs from Windsor to Quebec City and encompasses Mississauga and Toronto and

01:50:28.800 Montreal, and even out as far as Ottawa. So that's where the majority of the people in Canada

01:50:35.760 reside. And that's fine that those people under our democracy would control the lower house.

01:50:43.440 But we have to have a safeguard in the form of a Senate that would oversee 0.92

01:50:50.000 any discrimination that might be passed by the lower chamber. And then we don't. Instead,

01:50:54.320 we've got a rubber stamp, we've got an ineffective, we've got an unequal Senate,

01:51:00.080 the majority of the seats for the Senate as well are in Central and Eastern Canada. They have far

01:51:06.880 more representation in both houses than they deserve. We have a ridiculous situation because

01:51:14.400 of the arcade constitution we live under where Prince Edward Island has 4 members of parliament

01:51:20.000 for 130,000 people. We have other ridings in Ontario and in the West where you've got almost

01:51:28.000 that many people in one riding. So, they have arguably 3-4 times the representation in the

01:51:34.160 lower house and then they have 4 Senators as well in the upper chamber. So, that's why Maverick is

01:51:40.800 saying that we need to change the way in which we're governed if we're ever going to have

01:51:46.400 have fairness, respect, equity in how Western Canada is treated.

01:51:52.780 And if we're ever going to get some control of our own destiny

01:51:56.020 and not just give that right because of a constitution designed

01:52:02.660 in the 1800s, give that right to central Canada.

01:52:08.320 As it comes to the end of our time, we're going to have to break

01:52:12.580 at about 1055 Pacific, 1155 Mountain,

01:52:16.340 because that's when it goes on to the pipeline

01:52:18.300 every Wednesday out of the Western Standard in Calgary.

01:52:22.420 But as we had a few last minutes here, Jay,

01:52:25.300 somebody wants to get involved, they want to join the party,

01:52:28.120 they want to be a part of the party and be a part of the movement.

01:52:31.160 How do they do that, and what would that look like for their role?

01:52:36.100 Well, we would urge them foremost to go to our website

01:52:41.520 at www.maverickparty.ca. So it's pretty easy to access. As I say, we've got our twin track

01:52:51.580 mission statement up there. We have our eight guiding principles. We have our five proposed

01:52:59.320 constitutional amendments under our track A, a modernizing Canada's constitution. They're easy

01:53:06.160 to understand and they clearly show where the Maverick Party believes that we could

01:53:14.560 get the fairness that we're seeking and stay within Canada and within Confederation, but

01:53:21.920 developed a lot more autonomy for Western provinces and Western people. And then over

01:53:28.160 and above that, more recently, we have on there our policies and our upcoming platform.

01:53:34.720 So, a lot of information there for them. They can take out a membership, it's just $10,

01:53:41.520 and become a member, and then we have bi-weekly newsletters that go out to our members,

01:53:48.080 and so they would be kept apprised of the ongoing development of the party.

01:53:53.600 They have the opportunity there to apply to be a candidate, if they so choose,

01:53:59.840 and to get involved in forming a local electoral district association. So, it's all there.

01:54:07.600 We welcome all people. If you look at our guiding principles, the party is open to

01:54:12.880 one and all in Western Canada that want to put their shoulder to the wheel, come out of the

01:54:19.600 shadows and are brave enough to step forward and become Mavericks. Hence the name. We designed the

01:54:28.720 name to really exemplify Westerners that are willing to take a risk to try and change the

01:54:37.680 system. We've had Mavericks worldwide down through history, people that are quite willing

01:54:47.040 to take the risk and break the moulds, as it were, in their chosen profession. They come from all

01:54:53.120 walks of life in all countries. And we figure that it exemplifies what we need to do if we're

01:55:00.340 going to change the way the West is treated. Yeah, I believe it was once put that government

01:55:07.860 by the people, of the people, and for the people would not cease to exist from this earth. So

01:55:12.100 hopefully your party will be instrumental to reinstating that in Canada, because we're in

01:55:17.740 desperate need of it. I've been speaking with Jay Hill, leader of the Maverick Party, of course,

01:55:22.620 the former member for Prince George Peace River,

01:55:25.380 now Prince George Peace River in Northern Rockies.

01:55:27.860 Thank you so much for joining us today.

01:55:30.400 My pleasure, Nathan.

01:55:31.300 Thanks for having me on your program.

01:55:32.860 Good program.

01:55:37.700 There, we have the pipeline coming down in just a few minutes.

01:55:42.360 That will be out in Calgary there.

01:55:45.660 And so our friends in Calgary will be bringing that on at noon.

01:55:49.000 Again, I wanted to say thank you for everyone who tuned in today.

01:55:51.500 and as always do send me a message do suggest guests do uh do suggest anybody and everybody

01:55:58.220 that you'd think should be brought on the show the email's right there we're still we're still

01:56:02.880 practicing the hand draw thing i have to learn how to do that because i i've never really done tv

01:56:08.000 before in this way not live anyways and not with a green screen so someday i'll learn how to do the

01:56:13.420 weather don't you worry but in any case do send anything and everything and uh do suggest guests

01:56:18.680 And that way we can bring people on and discuss the things you want us to discuss.

01:56:24.000 So thanks again.

01:56:25.180 That was Mountain Standard Time.

01:56:26.400 We'll see you tomorrow at 9 a.m. Pacific, 10 a.m. Mountain.

01:56:48.680 You

Western Standard - May 06, 2021

Mountain Standard Time - May 5th, 2021

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript