Western Standard - New army logo misfires

00:00:00.000 good day today is may 8th 2024 i am derek phildebrand publisher of the western standard

00:00:28.400 and you're watching The Pipeline. I'm joined as always by Western Standard Opinion Editor,

00:00:35.120 Nigel Hannaford. Welcome back from Ottawa. Thank you, it's always a harrowing experience.

00:00:40.720 And Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist, Corey Morgan. Always thrilled to be here.

00:00:47.120 Yeah, I had to be in Ottawa, actually I was in Ottawa for the Future of Media Conference,

00:00:52.560 Just discussing, is it a good thing or a bad thing that the government now treats the media like we're dairy farmers and need to be coddled and regulated and managed by the state?

00:01:05.280 And to my shock and pleasure, it was damn near universal, even among the more left-leaning publications in the room, that until extremely recently supported that kind of thing, they're moving away from it.

00:01:20.180 Even they, in their own industry, have realized that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are,

00:01:26.140 I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

00:01:29.020 They might still want the government.

00:01:30.060 I know, I always count that up.

00:01:31.640 Was it nine?

00:01:32.980 Ten?

00:01:34.320 I'm is an abbreviation.

00:01:38.000 Contraction.

00:01:38.540 A contraction.

00:01:40.580 I'd go with ten.

00:01:42.520 Anyway, we get the point.

00:01:44.760 It's nine because I say it's nine.

00:01:45.760 okay uh we've got a great series of topics for the show today uh canada's new army logo if you

00:01:54.400 i'm sure you've seen if you have the internet you must have seen it my god it's i i thought it was

00:02:03.920 like i made sure i checked my watch i spent my calendar to make sure it was not april fools

00:02:08.000 This was a real thing from an ostensibly first world army.

00:02:16.720 Hilarious. And it's a Rorschach test.

00:02:18.580 What everybody thinks it is are funny, funny things.

00:02:22.480 And we're going to go through both the policy and the change itself, but also some of the interpretations of this Rorschach test that's put forward to the world.

00:02:31.480 B.C. just announced it is ending its experiment in decriminalizing hard drugs, a partnership that was done with the federal government since the federal government controls the criminal code of Canada.

00:02:46.540 B.C. has realized that it wasn't a good idea after all, and they're packing it in.

00:02:54.060 Great news.

00:02:54.980 You know, we have a lot of doom and gloom on this show.

00:02:57.520 This one's a good one.

00:02:59.240 Calgary's city council voted to reverse their lunch bag tax.

00:03:04.980 Just this morning, I went through a McDonald's drive-thru.

00:03:08.560 I wasn't really in a mood for an Egg McMuffin, but I wanted to test it.

00:03:12.280 It was just the day after, less than 24 hours since it was repealed.

00:03:15.160 Went through the drive-thru.

00:03:17.240 I ordered an Egg McMuffin and a coffee. 0.84

00:03:20.900 And no one was forced by the city of Calgary to idiotically ask me if I wanted a bag 0.93

00:03:26.480 or if I wanted a napkin. 0.99

00:03:28.520 Or if I wanted a crappy, federally mandated paper straw.

00:03:31.960 Did they charge you extra for it anyway?

00:03:33.920 I don't think so.

00:03:34.720 No, that's good.

00:03:35.660 Well, it's always, we've always been charged for these things.

00:03:38.180 They were baked into the price.

00:03:40.080 But anyway, we'll get more to that later.

00:03:41.700 But it's great news.

00:03:42.900 And sometimes you can fight city hall and win.

00:03:46.600 AstraZeneca, the big international pharmaceutical, has withdrawn its COVID vaccine worldwide.

00:03:55.440 That's a big clicker on the standard right now. That's getting a lot of attention. And very interestingly, Catherine Tate, the president of the CBC, testifying before a committee of the House of Commons and asked pretty point blank about if there's going to be bonuses paid to the big executives at the CBC this year.

00:04:21.320 and she demurred and she talked to the politicians the way the politicians like to talk to media, 1.00

00:04:29.000 didn't answer the question, but for some reason the annual report of the CBC has been delayed

00:04:36.120 coming out until just a few days or a few weeks after her appearance there. So the conservatives

00:04:41.180 are accusing her of lying to cover up bonuses to executives at the CBC and being able to dodge

00:04:50.080 accountability at Parliament. All right, so let's get into it. This is the funnest. This is the

00:04:56.620 funnest of the topics, I think. Canada's new army logo. That is the symbol of an army. I have no idea

00:05:03.240 what the army logo is for the North Korean People's Liberation Army, or whatever they call

00:05:08.180 themselves, but I guarantee you it is more serious and more intimidating and more respectful of its

00:05:17.420 own institutions than Canada's has got to be. Before I go to you guys for comment, let's just

00:05:22.680 show some of the best examples of this logo. Some interpretations people have, some people have

00:05:30.800 postulated what they think these things are. It's kind of like a Rorschach test, you know, like ink

00:05:34.400 blots that a shrink gives you and saying, what do you see here? And you know, if it's a picture of

00:05:39.280 your mother, you got mother issues. If it's a picture of a butterfly, I don't know, you want to 0.97

00:05:43.940 I don't know, weird psychological tests.

00:05:46.540 But I think there's a Rorschach test for Canadians here. 0.99

00:05:49.480 I have it on pretty good authority that there were, this was making the rounds to the U.S. 0.89

00:05:54.240 Armed Forces within hours of its release, and they were just belly laughing at how ridiculous it is. 0.89

00:06:01.040 My own interpretation is that it is a moose, it is a fat man giving a moose a,

00:06:08.740 He's reaching around underneath the moose, performing an unfit for daytime television activity. 0.99

00:06:19.840 Other people have said it was a lady with a big butt holding a moose up. 1.00

00:06:25.600 The common theme is that there's a moose in there somewhere. 0.97

00:06:28.320 That's what we can all agree on, but quite something.

00:06:31.180 So, yeah, we're showing some of the best memes and whatnot that are making the rounds on social media.

00:06:38.740 we have to confirm this, but we've got early reports that the Canadian Army's Twitter account

00:06:43.300 is even blocking people who have created memes making fun of it. So, Canada's forces are so

00:06:50.580 tough, strong, free, and proud now that we have to block people on Twitter for making memes about it.

00:06:56.660 You know, we'll start with you, Corey. What the hell were they thinking and why?

00:07:02.900 It's mere de feo. It's a problem looking for a solution looking for a problem. We're seeing this all over. I mean, it's absurd. We're getting ripped off. These consultants, these people in big bureaucracies, I mean, how demoralizing again to an armed forces that's already having nothing but, you know, demoralizing actions and policies and underfunding.

00:07:23.860 and now to even have become an international laughingstock over a logo that never needed to

00:07:30.420 change. And especially so dramatically, I want to find out how much, I mean, Calgary spent

00:07:35.220 almost $5 million to come up with a three word slogan. How much did the army spend to put that

00:07:42.420 brown blob of whatever onto something and claim that this is a new branding? I'm just,

00:07:48.620 I shouldn't be floored anymore, but I still am. Like, it's just, there was never a need for this.

00:07:55.600 Nigel, how do you think this fits into the broader context of the weird changes that the liberals are making in the armed forces?

00:08:02.740 They, you know, different file cabinet files interest conservatives more, different cabinet files interest liberals more.

00:08:10.620 If you're a liberal, you know, you probably see it as being more senior to be the social services minister than the defense minister,

00:08:17.980 a conservative but very likely considered more senior to be the defense minister than the social

00:08:23.420 services minister that's just you know based on ideological priorities perhaps but um you know

00:08:29.020 the liberals have been making fairly radical cultural changes in the forces the most radical

00:08:34.700 since the previous trudeau when he abolished the army navy and air force and brought it into the

00:08:40.060 united triforce and then you had the uh i grew up on military bases and i was a sea cadet and

00:08:45.420 And it was a point of intergenerational enmity that the Navy had to walk around on destroyers and submarines in green, and they had lost all naval traditions and whatnot.

00:08:59.360 That was eventually restored with essentially the reestablishment of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

00:09:05.240 But these are radical cultural changes.

00:09:08.520 I mean, some of the first places that free tampons in men's rooms were put in place by the federal government were on military bases.

00:09:19.340 You've got just crazy wokeness being pushed through it.

00:09:23.140 I'm not sure if this logo fits into wokeness per se, but I don't know.

00:09:27.460 How do you think it fits into the agenda of the huge cultural changes the liberals are trying to make in the forces?

00:09:32.040 Well, yeah, it is all part of it.

00:09:34.060 You know, I would love to treat this subject frivolously.

00:09:37.000 I'd like to enjoy the humor of the new logo and put it in other things.

00:09:42.120 And I do to a degree.

00:09:44.340 But what they are doing over a period of years is fundamentally destroying the traditional ethos of the Canadian military.

00:09:56.740 You know, there's something about serving in the armed services that speaks very deeply to men.

00:10:03.640 No offense to women who've put on uniform, but the idea is that you want to be, you know, the best crew in the best squadron, in the best wing, in the best air force, or whatever the naval and army equivalents would be.

00:10:21.640 And you want the symbiology, the symbolism of the badges and everything else to reflect that aspiration to greatness, toughness, bestness, whatever it is.

00:10:33.640 You know, if it's a transport squadron, they'll have, you know, a really heavy brick hanging

00:10:38.540 underneath the thing.

00:10:39.540 We can lift anything.

00:10:40.540 If it's the 101st, it's death from above.

00:10:45.040 These are the kinds of, I mean, liberals hate this kind of thing, and progressives hate

00:10:49.440 this kind of thing, but it's what armies are built on.

00:10:52.140 Well, I guarantee you it's what the Russian army is built on, what the American army has 0.95

00:10:56.840 been.

00:10:57.840 Not that it's performed particularly well in the last two years, but yes.

00:10:59.840 Well, you know, they're getting there, unfortunately, and it's the people you've got to worry about understand this very well.

00:11:08.900 So what have we done? First of all, we don't pay enough.

00:11:11.680 I mean, it really is kind of pathetic what we pay members of the armed services. 0.88

00:11:15.960 So that's the first thing. And then it is the look at the new uniforms that they put in relatively recently. 0.77

00:11:22.240 here's what it actually says in the government release that clothing options are no longer

00:11:30.340 gender-based with both catalogs open to all members in other words if it pleases your fancy

00:11:36.780 to dress as a woman and show up to the office to do your job that'll scare the russians that'll 0.93

00:11:42.500 scare the russians and so will the fingernail paint which i i gather is now uh you can now have 0.93

00:11:48.820 beyond natural colors, you know, 0.67

00:11:50.800 if you want to dye your hair blonde or brown

00:11:52.660 or black or whatever you always do. 0.52

00:11:55.040 Yeah, now you can have,

00:11:57.000 there's no regulation haircut now.

00:11:59.980 You could have

00:12:00.740 fluorescent pink hair and face

00:12:03.000 piercings.

00:12:04.840 There used to be a prohibition on beards

00:12:07.140 outside the Navy. It was always a Navy tradition

00:12:09.080 that you could have a beard, but Army and Air Force, you couldn't.

00:12:12.120 But all of this

00:12:13.060 is gone. And some things can change

00:12:15.080 with the times, but I think long

00:12:16.840 fluorescent pink hair with facial

00:12:19.000 piercings

00:12:19.700 probably doesn't speak to...

00:12:22.460 It's un-military. It doesn't speak to traditional military

00:12:24.980 virtues and neither does taking on people

00:12:27.160 with physical ailments.

00:12:29.460 There is...

00:12:30.120 Linda Slobodian carried a story

00:12:32.660 recently about no offense to the

00:12:34.820 individual involved. This gentleman has cerebral

00:12:36.880 palsy. He has been

00:12:38.720 enlisted. Now,

00:12:40.700 that is not somebody you can put just

00:12:42.780 anywhere. There are going to be places

00:12:44.740 where you can put him and others where

00:12:46.720 you can't. And we are chasing down a rumor that is going crazy around the Canadian military that

00:12:53.480 somebody has been enlisted with Down syndrome. I think it's probably the top generals based

00:13:01.800 on the decisions we're seeing. You know, what we're looking at is, I think, a very deliberate

00:13:07.000 effort by the Liberal Party to remake Canada's armed forces in its own image without any regard

00:13:13.580 to what they're doing to the military capacity of the organization.

00:13:19.080 They would rather just have it be a woke group and hope that we don't have to ever actually use it.

00:13:25.100 I think some of it, it's very much cultural and political,

00:13:29.080 and I think you're getting towards the heart of the issue,

00:13:33.300 is in most countries, the armed forces are a bastion of nationalism, conservatism.

00:13:41.540 Yeah, in some countries that can go too far. But in most countries, it's a fairly healthy and stabilizing institution. And the liberals would, I wouldn't say they're trying to tear the military down. The military is already in tatters. It was in tatters, frankly, when they inherited it. It's in even greater tatters now. It's effectually non-functional.

00:14:02.920 I would actually challenge you on that point.

00:14:05.880 John Thompson, who writes for us and has turned in a column on this,

00:14:10.840 when he made the observation that the guys who fought in Afghanistan,

00:14:15.920 and there was nothing wrong with the army in Afghanistan,

00:14:19.660 pretty much all gone now.

00:14:21.540 That reservoir of training and excellence is gone,

00:14:24.580 and you're left with people who have yet to discover it for themselves.

00:14:29.540 So, they did not inherit a rundown force, they had experience after the Afghan campaigns,

00:14:41.300 but the equipment was rundown. Early Harper government significantly started to reinvest

00:14:47.600 in the forces, but as it tried to pull out of deficit, the military was very much a victim

00:14:52.940 of the budget cuts rather than more wasteful liberal programs. By the end of the Harper

00:14:58.820 It was still, it was pretty bad. And the Trudeau government kept it bad and made it worse to the point where, I mean, I'm not worried about the army coming to invade Alberta. What army? More guns in the northeast quadrant of Calgary than the Canadian Armed Forces.

00:15:14.080 Okay. Let's move on to British Columbia now. So a few years ago, under former Premier John Horgan, but still the NDP government, the previous administration of it, they wanted to, it was called a pilot, but they just kind of dove head first into it.

00:15:39.040 They didn't pilot it in a single community and actually I would have been open to piloting it in the community because we've tried everything on in dealing with addictions and drugs.

00:15:47.980 Nothing has really worked and I'm starting to get convinced nothing can work.

00:15:52.200 It's just totally beyond our ability to fix, but they didn't just pilot in one little community.

00:15:58.240 They just said the pilot is BC and they asked the federal government to effectively decriminalize heart public use of hard drugs in BC.

00:16:12.440 And I think there was at least an element of logic to it. I still don't think it makes sense to prosecute addicts and users.

00:16:20.340 I think it makes sense to go after dealers and mules and people in the trade of it, not the users.

00:16:25.980 I mean, throwing someone in prison has never gotten anyone off of drugs or extremely, extremely self.

00:16:32.040 You're much more likely to get hooked on drugs in prison than get off them.

00:16:37.120 But they took a broad approach.

00:16:39.960 They didn't pilot a specific area, and they just decriminalized hard drugs from crack to heroin to meth right across the board in B.C.,

00:16:49.720 and they needed federal approval for that they've come to the conclusion now that and this is the BCMDP this is about as far left as you get in Canada before you get to an Islamo Marxist campus club at University of Alberta or something but they've climbed down off it now we'll start with you Nigel.

00:17:15.220 So why do you think the NDP, like the BC NDP, them climbing off of that, how significant is it that it's not the BC Conservatives coming to power or the BC Liberal United Party coming to power?

00:17:31.520 This is the BC NDP that brought it in.

00:17:34.480 This is the BC NDP that is looking at getting reelected or not in the fall of this year.

00:17:40.380 And the effect of these policies has been absolutely horrible

00:17:48.680 for people who actually have to live with it in front of their faces.

00:17:53.120 If you live in Vancouver, you're picking your way

00:17:55.660 around the attics on the street.

00:17:58.220 If you live in the, if you thought East Hastings was bad before,

00:18:01.720 you should see it now.

00:18:03.280 It even got into hospitals where you would have somebody

00:18:09.380 in bed with a serious illness, and next to them is an addict

00:18:13.140 who has been brought in.

00:18:14.760 And the nurses were actually supposed to administer the drugs 1.00

00:18:18.200 that they were hooked on.

00:18:19.880 You know, roll me a joint, nurse, 0.99

00:18:22.620 except that it was hard drugs that we would-

00:18:24.460 I was just saying, if they were smoking a joint,

00:18:26.080 I mean, it'll stink the joint up,

00:18:27.400 but I don't think that's not particularly bad.

00:18:29.820 So, and of course, some of these people had behavioral issues

00:18:35.000 which were, even the NDP admitted as they said

00:18:39.120 They were changing their mind that the safety and security of the medical staff had become an issue.

00:18:45.860 This is not every hospital in every city, but it was enough of an issue and enough of the hospitals in the city for the NDP to climb down.

00:18:54.020 Because this was actually a pretty significant flagship policy.

00:18:58.720 Oh, we've got to destigmatize the taking of drugs. 0.89

00:19:02.400 That's their opinion.

00:19:03.620 I'm not sure that de-stigmatizing antisocial behavior is such a great objective.

00:19:09.660 Maybe we should stigmatize it a little more.

00:19:12.660 But that's what they said they wanted to do, and they wanted to do it because they thought it would make it easier to treat.

00:19:17.680 Well, it didn't work.

00:19:18.840 So finally, realizing that people who hated this idea were likely to turn on them in the election,

00:19:28.040 They went back to the Trudeau government with cap in hand and said, would you please take this back?

00:19:36.040 We don't want it anymore.

00:19:38.040 And Kerry will recall debate on this issue is what resulted in the day we will never forget in Canadian history,

00:19:46.040 the day that will live in infamy, the day that Pierre Polyev said Trudeau and his drug policies are wacko.

00:19:53.040 the most unparliamentary uncivilized thing ever done in that temple of Canadian democracy.

00:20:02.240 How have the federal Liberals respond to this because I know they were pretty

00:20:05.520 noncommittable about it in Parliament. But I mean, there's no way they can impose it,

00:20:10.800 but there's no one to the left of the end. Well, I guess there's the BC Greens,

00:20:13.920 which in some ways are to the left of the MVP, at least on certain issues, but

00:20:18.000 you're not going to get a further left government in BC than the BC NDP.

00:20:23.040 They were reticent to repeal it because they were kind of sharing in the credit of it.

00:20:28.600 They were boasting of its success, how progressive it was.

00:20:32.140 The media class was very solidly behind it.

00:20:35.960 You know, they'd say, well, there's the BC model and the Alberta model.

00:20:38.920 You know, Alberta model bad. 1.00

00:20:41.040 I'm actually not sure if the Alberta model is working.

00:20:44.000 It's still very new and hasn't really been implemented yet.

00:20:47.160 I don't think any of these models is going to work, but some are probably worse than others.

00:20:50.720 But do you think this means, but now I think it's Montreal and Toronto, even though they're not sovereign jurisdictions, they're just municipalities.

00:21:00.720 They're appealing to the federal government for decriminalization within their city limits.

00:21:05.720 But do you think the collapse of support for this in BC spills the doom of decriminalization of hard drugs in anywhere else in the country now?

00:21:17.720 right now? Yes, because the Trudeau government wore the egg on the face of the failure of this

00:21:22.360 program. And, you know, they do not like to admit error. They don't like to back down on anything.

00:21:26.800 They had little choice now when their ally in B.C. just admitted and put up the flag of surrender.

00:21:33.480 This didn't work. It's made things worse. Please bring it back in. So they're not going to put

00:21:37.480 themselves back into that situation with Toronto or Montreal and have to retreat again. As you

00:21:43.060 said, nothing's going to solve it. There's no magic bullet. There's no simple thing. But this

00:21:47.100 was a terribly misguided thing. What we can hope for is mitigation, we can hope to slow the spread,

00:21:52.940 we can hope to reduce harm, ironically, which is a proper term, but they're just doing it the wrong

00:21:58.120 way by adding more drugs to the issue. And I'm just happy they at least admitted failure rather

00:22:04.240 than doubling down, as can be the case in a lot of ideological things. They always had the power

00:22:09.360 in a sense that there was an informal decriminalization. Police in Vancouver had better

00:22:13.860 things to do than chase the guy down with a needle in his arm or the meth pipe in the alley.

00:22:17.900 But it did give them a tool for intervention if they thought at their discretion it might be

00:22:22.920 useful. If you saw the 17-year-old kid who's just starting down that road, you know what,

00:22:26.320 you can pick them up and take them in and maybe do something about it. Or if you had a cluster of

00:22:31.220 them near a playground that are all consuming, at least take their materials away, crush their

00:22:36.920 pipes and say, move elsewhere. This is not what we want to see, this public disorder in our streets.

00:22:41.460 When it was fully decriminalized, they lost those tools, which can aren't solutions.

00:22:45.760 You'll never beat this by chasing around the users and charging them, but at least it gave them an ability to intervene.

00:22:53.080 And again, I think the problem with this whole thing is there's no magic solution.

00:22:58.140 And even the mitigating solutions are going to be very expensive, very time consuming and have a limited amount of success.

00:23:05.260 but at least they did realize, you know, as Oregon did as well, this enablement policies aren't

00:23:11.260 working. Others might not be but this one definitely isn't. You know what, I think it's,

00:23:17.580 they should wear it. And they should wear the blame for its failure. But credit is due for

00:23:23.900 admitting error, which is something you don't see a lot of humans generally don't like to do it. But

00:23:29.580 Governments and politicians almost never do.

00:23:33.100 In this case, I think they had to admit error and retreat because, as you know, I just said, this was going to be a milestone around their neck for the coming election.

00:23:43.980 The B.C. conservatives strong in the polls.

00:23:46.400 I think even one poll had them even leading the NDP, which is crazy because they haven't elected an MLA.

00:23:52.120 That poll's in the Western Standard right now, actually.

00:23:54.200 Yeah, considering that the B.C. Conservatives haven't actually elected an MLA in 60 years or something.

00:24:00.340 Well, it's one of the things about the B.C. Conservative surge there.

00:24:05.980 Part of it is due to the fact that the Liberals under B.C. United now, under Kevin Falcon, actually supported this.

00:24:14.300 They were afraid not to support it when the NDP brought it out because it sounded so progressive and we don't want to fight on that area.

00:24:20.680 Well, now, of course, the NDP have backed away from their own legislation, and the B.C. Conservatives were faster to say hooray than the B.C. United.

00:24:33.860 Very bad move by Kevin Falken.

00:24:35.620 Well, we don't have time to get into it right now, but I'm going to make sure to watch your interview, Corey, with B.C. Conservative leader, John Redstatt, just earlier today.

00:24:44.740 Yeah, no, it was a very good conversation, and they're certainly optimistic.

00:24:48.040 I mean, they've got the momentum right now.

00:24:50.440 And this, when you could see it, I mean, I went to Vancouver about a month ago.

00:24:54.540 And, yeah, it is so overwhelming.

00:24:57.040 This is an election issue.

00:24:59.080 And they've come out.

00:25:00.780 I mean, this is one of a few things I think that led to their gains.

00:25:04.460 But this is a very evident one where they were on the side of right.

00:25:07.820 And voters are realizing it.

00:25:10.480 Okay.

00:25:11.000 Well, let's turn to other illegal substances,

00:25:14.540 at least substances that were illegal in Alberta until yesterday, sorry, in Calgary until yesterday.

00:25:21.540 Calgary's lunch bag tax, the war on lunch, as we've called it.

00:25:26.540 You know, the federal government had banned plastic straws and whatnot,

00:25:29.540 although that's been overturned as unconstitutional meddling in provincial jurisdiction.

00:25:34.540 But it's, you know, just as common, if not more common than the federal government meddling in the provinces,

00:25:40.540 provinces is the municipal governments meddling and issues way above their jurisdiction. And we remember Nenshi would regularly opine on, you know, wars around the world. People want to know the opinion on global geopolitical issues of Calgary's mayor.

00:25:58.540 But that would just be kind of blowhard opinions.

00:26:02.600 Now, they're outright passing bylaws

00:26:06.680 into areas of provincial jurisdiction.

00:26:08.400 And that's what we got with the single use ban,

00:26:14.000 ban on single use products like bags

00:26:16.660 that your hamburger comes in.

00:26:18.840 I remember, I mean, this just flew below the radar

00:26:23.020 of everybody until it became law in Calgary.

00:26:26.720 And I remember I went to, I think I went to A&W for lunch or something, I got a burger and they said, would you like a bag with that? 0.99

00:26:32.360 I just kind of stared at them and I said, like, you stupid or something? 0.99

00:26:36.680 You know, I just rewatched Forrest Gump. 1.00

00:26:38.580 And all they could pretty much say is stupid is as stupid does, that's what the government tells us we have to do. 1.00

00:26:42.980 It was nuts. 1.00

00:26:43.940 It came in, massive backlash.

00:26:48.740 I remember standing in line at places, and I just, not intending to eavesdrop, just overhearing conversations of regular, non-political people, just piping angry at this.

00:27:01.800 And the process started really quick for the repeal of this bylaw.

00:27:06.220 There's a process for it, and came to a vote yesterday.

00:27:09.700 And I think all but three members of the council voted to repeal it, including the mayor who had supported it.

00:27:16.980 And maybe you can, I don't remember the name, including the city councillor who proposed the bylaw in the first place, voted to overturn her bylaw because it was so universally unpopular, Corey.

00:27:29.780 Yeah, I think it was Jasmine Mian. I think she was the proponent. I'm not 100% sure.

00:27:34.840 And though, bear in mind that it was, I believe, like an 8-6 vote or an 8-7 vote to bring it to repeal.

00:27:41.400 Yeah.

00:27:41.660 So Gondek and others did want to hang on to this, but by this time it had come.

00:27:44.960 They knew it had lost. 0.99

00:27:45.880 realize they're not going to ride this train to stupid any farther. What they've also done is put 0.99

00:27:50.560 another bullet into Premier Smith's gun when she's she's right now in battle with municipalities. And

00:27:55.940 she's trying to make the case as to why we need and I'm kind of mixed on that, why we need a

00:28:00.820 provincial government to reach into municipal laws and jurisdictions. And when you've got such a

00:28:06.660 fantastically stupid law that managed to get all the way through and go into force, even if only 0.99

00:28:12.840 for a short time, it does make the case for having provincial 0.99

00:28:16.200 oversight on these things. So the fact that I guess that they

00:28:19.980 repealed it on their own might also say you don't need the

00:28:22.120 province to do that. But it's just one dumb act out of the 0.98

00:28:26.700 city council after another, when really people are worried 0.96

00:28:29.340 about the potholes that you can almost get stuck in right now in

00:28:32.220 this city. And you know, transit system falling, many, many

00:28:36.480 things that fall within city jurisdiction. And these clowns 1.00

00:28:39.480 waste so much time on these virtue signaling missions. It's just absurd. 1.00

00:28:44.480 Nigel, I want to pick up on a point Corey made. Is it Bill 20, the provincial legislation on this?

00:28:50.480 Yeah, Bill 20, very controversial, especially among municipal politicians.

00:28:57.480 Among one of the new powers that would have is the ability of the province to more easily overturn municipal bylaws.

00:29:04.480 It can right now, but it takes an act of the legislature. This would put the hands directly in cabinet.

00:29:08.480 I'm always leery of that, but I was looking towards this bylaw as the best reason for the ability of the province to have it.

00:29:20.480 Perhaps they should define it more as they can overturn bylaws that could justifiably be considered an intrusion into provincial jurisdiction, kind of another version of the Sovereignty Act.

00:29:33.320 But at the end of the day, there was enough public outcry that the city council repealed its own bylaw that it passed just months ago.

00:29:46.000 They repealed it themselves. It didn't take the profits.

00:29:48.640 Do you think that helps or hurts the argument for Bill 20?

00:29:55.340 I mean, if the municipality hadn't repealed it, I would see it as very much strengthening the argument for Bill 20.

00:30:01.040 they did repeal it. So does that undermine the need for those powers if, at the end of the day,

00:30:07.160 the municipality corrected its own boneheaded decision? No, I think we still need that

00:30:12.920 legislation in the background. You're right. I mean, they did repeal their own stupid legislation

00:30:18.560 that city council intends to attract do-gooders. And they don't come with any preloaded concept 0.99

00:30:29.120 of what is a municipal function and what is a provincial or even a federal function like

00:30:36.240 where did our present incumbent mayor get the idea that it was within her view or would be

00:30:42.080 even an effective policy to as soon as she was elected declare a climate emergency

00:30:47.760 and commit 87 billion dollars in fake money to it you know like that's when it's good to have

00:30:55.040 a senior level of government say maybe you shouldn't do that we have had a number of

00:31:02.720 cases where boards and whole city councils i'm thinking of chestermere have been dismissed by

00:31:09.120 the provincial government under the existing legislation it didn't take bill 20 to do it

00:31:14.480 but there are certain certainly i i have more confidence in the um this provincial government

00:31:22.480 any way to get it right than I do some of the doorknobs who present themselves for election

00:31:28.240 to municipal councils. That's true, but we always need to be mindful that powers that a government

00:31:35.440 that you like gives itself will someday be inherited by a government that you don't like.

00:31:43.520 And liberals and conservatives and new democrats are all guilty of doing this because

00:31:47.560 somehow every government seems to think it's going to be in power forever.

00:31:53.120 So it's something to be...

00:31:55.280 So here's the thing, Derek.

00:31:56.400 I mean, what you say is absolutely true.

00:31:58.780 And the implication of that is that as a citizen,

00:32:01.960 you can never take your eye off what's going on around you.

00:32:07.720 You know, people say, I'm not interested in politics.

00:32:09.500 Well, I'm sorry, sir and madam, politics is interested in you.

00:32:13.100 And so don't think that you can get this set up in 1867

00:32:17.240 and expect confederation to roll out over the next 150 years

00:32:22.460 in a way that is totally satisfactory.

00:32:25.000 You have to be told constantly they're adjusting

00:32:27.340 and what is true at the federal level

00:32:29.560 is true at the provincial level

00:32:31.800 and it's true at the municipal level.

00:32:34.180 You can't take your eye off it.

00:32:36.480 Okay.

00:32:37.340 Well, zooming way out from the municipal level

00:32:41.300 to the global level, AstraZeneca was one of, I think,

00:32:47.660 yeah, there was the three big vaccines

00:32:50.560 were pfizer moderna and astrazeneca astrazeneca one of the big three uh coven vaccination

00:32:57.680 pharmaceuticals uh withdrawing uh its vaccine from around the world i mean i don't know who

00:33:04.400 who's still taking this stuff at this point but i i guess i actually i was just in ottawa

00:33:11.440 there's still people messed up around there um they got the big i don't know uh i just call it

00:33:18.720 it the Vipond. I don't know that it's the end something. 95 or whatever the heck. I don't know.

00:33:23.460 I just call it the Vipond Vader mask. But I guess people are still taking this. It's been

00:33:30.800 withdrawn, Corey. Well, actually, you know, I want to get ahead of our subjects, but the state

00:33:35.340 broadcaster just had a story out the other day saying COVID's on the rise in Alberta, and here's

00:33:39.000 where to find your vaccinations. Good timing, guys. Meanwhile, we've got one of the major players

00:33:43.760 saying, you know what, this seems to be causing a little more harm than good as we're finding,

00:33:47.600 and we're going to pull this before we really get soon into oblivion.

00:33:50.780 When they pull it themselves, I mean, there's something going on.

00:33:53.340 This is the start of, I think, something very, very big.

00:33:56.160 And I'm not talking about the lawsuits,

00:33:57.660 but now there's a whole lot of people who had misgivings about vaccination,

00:34:02.560 had misgivings about the pressure and the coercion and getting into it.

00:34:06.080 And they have a very big I told you so to put out there right now.

00:34:09.580 And government overreached with how hard they pushed on these things.

00:34:13.740 And with this happening, it's reopened to this entire issue.

00:34:19.460 And unfortunately, unfortunately, we really are seeing, because of the bad management of this,

00:34:24.680 vaccination with proven vaccinations going down.

00:34:27.460 People aren't getting their whooping cough ones.

00:34:29.260 They're getting their measles ones.

00:34:30.220 Those are tried and true and tested vaccinations.

00:34:32.780 And they're going down.

00:34:33.480 And they're going down dramatically because of how badly they shoved these unproven ones down everybody's throat.

00:34:39.100 And we're all paying a price for it.

00:34:40.540 I just hope it opens some rational discussion then. I mean, we can't fix the idiocy that happened in the past over this whole thing. But boy, let's hope we manage to learn from it. 0.97

00:34:49.620 Well, rational discussion, Nigel.

00:34:54.360 There was very little of it during COVID, and both sides were guilty, I think.

00:35:00.120 At times, I have a bias about which side was a little less, but both sides engaged in hyperbole and whatnot.

00:35:09.600 But I think most people want to forget what happened here.

00:35:18.000 You know, Jen Durson at the Line wrote, she's working on a book on this, but she's written some columns, in times of moral panics, you know, there was the Satanism scare in the 90s, you know, we have the Salem witch trials.

00:35:31.200 When you have these big moments of mass popular psychosis, and there's a moral panic, and then it comes to a crashing end, people tend to want to just don't talk about it.

00:35:43.280 I know nothing. You know, it's, and I think that's where most people are. Do you think the AstraZeneca withdrawal is going to have an impact on getting the conversation going on?

00:35:58.300 Maybe not just the vaccine efficacy, but the coercion of against people's free choices with their bodies comes back or are people just so sick of COVID that we just don't ever want to talk about it again?

00:36:11.300 I'm sure there are many people who've got better and more interesting and more fun things to talk about than the pandemic from a couple of years ago and the government's response.

00:36:22.080 But actually, I sort of encourage people to take a bit of interest in this.

00:36:25.720 You know, we're talking about AstraZeneca today.

00:36:28.040 Last week, we were talking about how Health Canada stated that Moderna had not told them about an ingredient in what they were offering as a vaccine.

00:36:44.000 So that's two stories in two weeks.

00:36:47.380 one from Jen Hodgson one from Lee Harding which are showing that actually not everything was as

00:36:58.460 it was presented by government now I want to echo what you said about we didn't really know what

00:37:06.020 was going on back in March of 2020 and there are a lot of people who probably honestly did what

00:37:12.700 they thought was best. But then the narrative became embedded and nobody wanted to challenge

00:37:21.880 it because no reputations were on the line. And I do think that it is time that we looked

00:37:27.680 back over our shoulders and say, what were we told? What was true? What turned out not

00:37:33.600 to be quite true or even a blatant lie? And let's recollect that Dr. Teresa Tam, who

00:37:39.680 has come in for a lot of stick over the years, actually briefed the Parliamentary Health

00:37:46.260 Committee in February of 2020, before the emergency was declared, and actually told

00:37:53.760 them that older people were much more vulnerable than younger people, and it was problematic,

00:37:59.200 but it was handleable, and then they went off the deep end and did everything they did

00:38:03.440 the national lockdown. So there has been some bad handling and some of it, frankly, is a little on

00:38:11.960 the malicious side. Bit by bit, it's starting to come out. What you'll find is that the people who

00:38:17.860 have something to fess up will put it out there. It'll be a sensation for an hour and then it'll

00:38:25.180 be quietly shuffled away and forgotten and the mainstream media will move on. That is the perfect

00:38:30.980 segue to our final segment is the CBC hiding its big executive bonuses. That great tool of

00:38:41.700 transparency and holding the government to account its president, Catherine Tate.

00:38:48.580 I think she runs the CBC kind of part time from New York City.

00:38:52.740 Yeah, such a Canadian institution that can be a run from New York.

00:38:55.620 She's been under questioning for quite some time about if there's going to be big bonuses paid to the executives at the CBC.

00:39:06.420 Now, if it's a private company, I couldn't care.

00:39:09.140 That's the company's money.

00:39:10.340 It's not my business.

00:39:11.440 You want to pay your executives a billion dollars or pay them zero.

00:39:15.460 It's the company's business.

00:39:16.680 But this is the taxpayer's dime.

00:39:18.500 And, you know, if you do a good job, you know, the relevancy or should the CBC exist aside, someone's doing a good job, bonuses are often fine for executives.

00:39:29.260 That's part of executive pay.

00:39:31.140 But she's just constantly refused to answer questions about it, considering they laid off a good number of journalists at the CBC this year.

00:39:39.700 She just refused to answer questions. 0.98

00:39:42.100 Now, the annual report of the CBC was, I think, already supposed to have been released, but hasn't been for some reason.

00:39:49.100 Could it be that yesterday, Catherine Tate, the president of the CBC, was called to testify before a committee of parliament where she knew she'd be asked about this?

00:39:58.100 Why, yes, that is the way the timing worked.

00:40:00.100 And she was repeatedly asked about this from the conservative members of the committee.

00:40:04.100 And she answered those questions the way politicians have a reputation, often for answering questions from the media, which is not answer the question. 0.99

00:40:14.700 In this case, it was funny.

00:40:15.620 It was the politicians asking the media personality questions and the media personality answered just like a politician.

00:40:23.940 And so, yeah, the delay of the, and she just couldn't answer, oh, we haven't made the decisions on the executive bonuses yet.

00:40:31.040 But, Nigel, I think that report that would contain the answers the parliamentarians were asking for,

00:40:36.960 that's supposed to come, what, within the next few weeks now?

00:40:39.660 Mm-hmm.

00:40:40.040 Yeah.

00:40:40.420 Just after she's conveniently done testifying at parliament.

00:40:43.920 They lost $100 million.

00:40:46.540 How could there be a bonus?

00:40:49.400 Like, when do you take a $1.3 billion operation and lose?

00:40:55.400 It's actually more than that.

00:40:55.800 No, it's more than that.

00:40:56.460 That's just the public subsidy.

00:40:57.660 That's the public, yeah.

00:40:58.600 And you lose $100 million, and everybody gets a big bonus?

00:41:04.040 I don't get that.

00:41:05.820 I don't think Canadians in general get it.

00:41:07.800 I don't think the committee was getting it.

00:41:10.080 And I don't think she wanted to answer that question.

00:41:14.800 Corey, the CBC, I think, appears headed for the end.

00:41:21.060 I actually can't believe it.

00:41:22.380 I am skeptical when politicians, even ones I'm sympathetic to, promise something because I'm so used to being disappointed.

00:41:31.820 But I really think Pierre Polyev is going to do it.

00:41:35.400 I think he is going to shut the thing down and sell the building off.

00:41:43.020 And, you know, the family's going to pull up and it's you all.

00:41:44.700 He's going to turn it into new housing for families. 0.97

00:41:48.520 I think he is going to kill it. 0.92

00:41:49.680 The English one, the French one will keep going. 1.00

00:41:52.380 whatever more money for Quebec I don't care I just want CBC gone although I

00:41:56.640 think there's a few important things that can do that can be repackaged into

00:41:59.460 a separate new crown corporation like a photo service for other media to use or

00:42:03.720 something but pretty small limited rules that can it can function in how much

00:42:11.160 damage do you think Tate is doing here I think I forget who was but someone said

00:42:15.720 on Twitter yesterday maybe it was Tristan Hopner I'm not positive said

00:42:19.060 that Catherine Tate is probably a sleeper agent for the conservatives, and she's been planted

00:42:25.780 there to undermine it from the inside. Well, she's not doing them any favors. I mean, she is

00:42:30.480 just a terribly unlikable public persona. She is the epitome of a champagne socialist. It's not

00:42:37.840 just that she doesn't answer them. You can tell by the questions, you can tell by her attitude,

00:42:41.780 she feels that it's beneath her to have to answer these questions. If they wanted to save themselves

00:42:48.420 from a potential incoming government that wants to defund them, they should be saying,

00:42:53.120 hey, these are the new initiatives we're doing. This is how we're trying at least to increase

00:42:57.680 readership, viewership. These are some of the numbers we've improved. And as Nigel pointed out,

00:43:03.940 they've done a terrible job. And then they're giving themselves bonuses and patting their own

00:43:07.840 backs for doing a terrible job. So yeah, Tristan's almost right. It's amazing. I think she's just

00:43:14.980 completely unselfaware not realizing from her cloistered world her her New York, you know, sweet and her 500,000 a year salary, that people don't respond well to you talking down to them like this when they're asking legitimate questions about where their dollars are going, when your corporation produces an unwatchable product. And that's the other thing too, if they could just at least make something good, they can make a case for them not because then they'd be real competitors.

00:43:43.280 Oh, I understand, but that's what I'm saying. 0.95

00:43:44.880 I prefer to be crappy.

00:43:45.420 So I think that we are seeing the beginning of the end, because the defenders of it, when the time comes, what are you going to point at? 0.71

00:43:51.100 I mean, what are you going to say?

00:43:51.860 Oh, we'd lose this?

00:43:53.220 I mean, there's nothing.

00:43:54.700 No one cares.

00:43:55.100 No.

00:43:55.740 So carry on, Ms. Tate.

00:43:58.340 It's expensive to watch you pad and feather your nests for the executives, but at least we're seeing it towards the end run of it.

00:44:04.880 You know, when they close the CBC, I have a feeling it's going to be like a tree falling in the forest that no one heard.

00:44:11.120 No one's going to know it's gone.

00:44:13.280 All right, gentlemen, thank you for joining. Thank all of you for joining us here on the Western Standard Pipeline today. Remember, if you are not yet a member of the Western Standard, you should be. The Western Standard, unlike the CBC, is one of the very, very few media outlets left in Canada that do not accept the federal government's media subsidy.

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00:44:57.080 Thank you very much for joining us all here today, and God bless.

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Western Standard - May 09, 2024

New army logo misfires

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