Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and Senior Alberta Columnist Corey Morgan join me to talk about Canada's new army logo, a Rorschach test, the end of B.C. s experiment in decriminalizing hard drugs, and the return of the lunch bag tax in Calgary.
00:00:00.000good day today is may 8th 2024 i am derek phildebrand publisher of the western standard
00:00:28.400and you're watching The Pipeline. I'm joined as always by Western Standard Opinion Editor,
00:00:35.120Nigel Hannaford. Welcome back from Ottawa. Thank you, it's always a harrowing experience.
00:00:40.720And Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist, Corey Morgan. Always thrilled to be here.
00:00:47.120Yeah, I had to be in Ottawa, actually I was in Ottawa for the Future of Media Conference,
00:00:52.560Just 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?
00:01:05.280And 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.
00:01:20.180Even they, in their own industry, have realized that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are,
00:01:26.140I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
00:02:18.580What everybody thinks it is are funny, funny things.
00:02:22.480And 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.
00:02:31.480B.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.
00:02:46.540B.C. has realized that it wasn't a good idea after all, and they're packing it in.
00:03:42.900And sometimes you can fight city hall and win.
00:03:46.600AstraZeneca, the big international pharmaceutical, has withdrawn its COVID vaccine worldwide.
00:03:55.440That'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.
00:04:21.320and she demurred and she talked to the politicians the way the politicians like to talk to media,1.00
00:04:29.000didn't answer the question, but for some reason the annual report of the CBC has been delayed
00:04:36.120coming out until just a few days or a few weeks after her appearance there. So the conservatives
00:04:41.180are accusing her of lying to cover up bonuses to executives at the CBC and being able to dodge
00:04:50.080accountability at Parliament. All right, so let's get into it. This is the funnest. This is the
00:04:56.620funnest of the topics, I think. Canada's new army logo. That is the symbol of an army. I have no idea
00:05:03.240what the army logo is for the North Korean People's Liberation Army, or whatever they call
00:05:08.180themselves, but I guarantee you it is more serious and more intimidating and more respectful of its
00:05:17.420own institutions than Canada's has got to be. Before I go to you guys for comment, let's just
00:05:22.680show some of the best examples of this logo. Some interpretations people have, some people have
00:05:30.800postulated what they think these things are. It's kind of like a Rorschach test, you know, like ink
00:05:34.400blots that a shrink gives you and saying, what do you see here? And you know, if it's a picture of
00:05:39.280your mother, you got mother issues. If it's a picture of a butterfly, I don't know, you want to0.97
00:05:46.540But I think there's a Rorschach test for Canadians here.0.99
00:05:49.480I have it on pretty good authority that there were, this was making the rounds to the U.S.
00:05:54.240Armed Forces within hours of its release, and they were just belly laughing at how ridiculous it is.
00:06:01.040My own interpretation is that it is a moose, it is a fat man giving a moose a,
00:06:08.740He's reaching around underneath the moose, performing an unfit for daytime television activity.
00:06:19.840Other people have said it was a lady with a big butt holding a moose up.1.00
00:06:25.600The common theme is that there's a moose in there somewhere.
00:06:28.320That's what we can all agree on, but quite something.
00:06:31.180So, yeah, we're showing some of the best memes and whatnot that are making the rounds on social media.
00:06:38.740we have to confirm this, but we've got early reports that the Canadian Army's Twitter account
00:06:43.300is even blocking people who have created memes making fun of it. So, Canada's forces are so
00:06:50.580tough, strong, free, and proud now that we have to block people on Twitter for making memes about it.
00:06:56.660You know, we'll start with you, Corey. What the hell were they thinking and why?
00:07:02.900It'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.
00:07:23.860and now to even have become an international laughingstock over a logo that never needed to
00:07:30.420change. And especially so dramatically, I want to find out how much, I mean, Calgary spent
00:07:35.220almost $5 million to come up with a three word slogan. How much did the army spend to put that
00:07:42.420brown blob of whatever onto something and claim that this is a new branding? I'm just,
00:07:48.620I shouldn't be floored anymore, but I still am. Like, it's just, there was never a need for this.
00:07:55.600Nigel, how do you think this fits into the broader context of the weird changes that the liberals are making in the armed forces?
00:08:02.740They, you know, different file cabinet files interest conservatives more, different cabinet files interest liberals more.
00:08:10.620If you're a liberal, you know, you probably see it as being more senior to be the social services minister than the defense minister,
00:08:17.980a conservative but very likely considered more senior to be the defense minister than the social
00:08:23.420services minister that's just you know based on ideological priorities perhaps but um you know
00:08:29.020the liberals have been making fairly radical cultural changes in the forces the most radical
00:08:34.700since the previous trudeau when he abolished the army navy and air force and brought it into the
00:08:40.060united triforce and then you had the uh i grew up on military bases and i was a sea cadet and
00:08:45.420And 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.
00:08:59.360That was eventually restored with essentially the reestablishment of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
00:09:05.240But these are radical cultural changes.
00:09:08.520I 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.
00:09:19.340You've got just crazy wokeness being pushed through it.
00:09:23.140I'm not sure if this logo fits into wokeness per se, but I don't know.
00:09:27.460How do you think it fits into the agenda of the huge cultural changes the liberals are trying to make in the forces?
00:09:44.340But what they are doing over a period of years is fundamentally destroying the traditional ethos of the Canadian military.
00:09:56.740You know, there's something about serving in the armed services that speaks very deeply to men.
00:10:03.640No 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.
00:10:21.640And you want the symbiology, the symbolism of the badges and everything else to reflect that aspiration to greatness, toughness, bestness, whatever it is.
00:10:33.640You know, if it's a transport squadron, they'll have, you know, a really heavy brick hanging
00:12:42.780anywhere. There are going to be places
00:12:44.740where you can put him and others where
00:12:46.720you can't. And we are chasing down a rumor that is going crazy around the Canadian military that
00:12:53.480somebody has been enlisted with Down syndrome. I think it's probably the top generals based
00:13:01.800on the decisions we're seeing. You know, what we're looking at is, I think, a very deliberate
00:13:07.000effort by the Liberal Party to remake Canada's armed forces in its own image without any regard
00:13:13.580to what they're doing to the military capacity of the organization.
00:13:19.080They would rather just have it be a woke group and hope that we don't have to ever actually use it.
00:13:25.100I think some of it, it's very much cultural and political,
00:13:29.080and I think you're getting towards the heart of the issue,
00:13:33.300is in most countries, the armed forces are a bastion of nationalism, conservatism.
00:13:41.540Yeah, 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.
00:14:02.920I would actually challenge you on that point.
00:14:05.880John Thompson, who writes for us and has turned in a column on this,
00:14:10.840when he made the observation that the guys who fought in Afghanistan,
00:14:15.920and there was nothing wrong with the army in Afghanistan,
00:14:21.540That reservoir of training and excellence is gone,
00:14:24.580and you're left with people who have yet to discover it for themselves.
00:14:29.540So, they did not inherit a rundown force, they had experience after the Afghan campaigns,
00:14:41.300but the equipment was rundown. Early Harper government significantly started to reinvest
00:14:47.600in the forces, but as it tried to pull out of deficit, the military was very much a victim
00:14:52.940of the budget cuts rather than more wasteful liberal programs. By the end of the Harper
00:14:58.820It 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.
00:15:14.080Okay. 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.
00:15:39.040They 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.
00:15:47.980Nothing has really worked and I'm starting to get convinced nothing can work.
00:15:52.200It's just totally beyond our ability to fix, but they didn't just pilot in one little community.
00:15:58.240They just said the pilot is BC and they asked the federal government to effectively decriminalize heart public use of hard drugs in BC.
00:16:12.440And 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.
00:16:20.340I think it makes sense to go after dealers and mules and people in the trade of it, not the users.
00:16:25.980I mean, throwing someone in prison has never gotten anyone off of drugs or extremely, extremely self.
00:16:32.040You're much more likely to get hooked on drugs in prison than get off them.
00:16:39.960They 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.,
00:16:49.720and 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.
00:17:15.220So 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?
00:17:31.520This is the BC NDP that brought it in.
00:17:34.480This is the BC NDP that is looking at getting reelected or not in the fall of this year.
00:17:40.380And the effect of these policies has been absolutely horrible
00:17:48.680for people who actually have to live with it in front of their faces.
00:17:53.120If you live in Vancouver, you're picking your way
00:20:41.040I'm actually not sure if the Alberta model is working.
00:20:44.000It's still very new and hasn't really been implemented yet.
00:20:47.160I don't think any of these models is going to work, but some are probably worse than others.
00:20:50.720But 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.
00:21:00.720They're appealing to the federal government for decriminalization within their city limits.
00:21:05.720But 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?
00:21:17.720right now? Yes, because the Trudeau government wore the egg on the face of the failure of this
00:21:22.360program. And, you know, they do not like to admit error. They don't like to back down on anything.
00:21:26.800They had little choice now when their ally in B.C. just admitted and put up the flag of surrender.
00:21:33.480This didn't work. It's made things worse. Please bring it back in. So they're not going to put
00:21:37.480themselves back into that situation with Toronto or Montreal and have to retreat again. As you
00:21:43.060said, nothing's going to solve it. There's no magic bullet. There's no simple thing. But this
00:21:47.100was a terribly misguided thing. What we can hope for is mitigation, we can hope to slow the spread,
00:21:52.940we can hope to reduce harm, ironically, which is a proper term, but they're just doing it the wrong
00:21:58.120way by adding more drugs to the issue. And I'm just happy they at least admitted failure rather
00:22:04.240than doubling down, as can be the case in a lot of ideological things. They always had the power
00:22:09.360in a sense that there was an informal decriminalization. Police in Vancouver had better
00:22:13.860things to do than chase the guy down with a needle in his arm or the meth pipe in the alley.
00:22:17.900But it did give them a tool for intervention if they thought at their discretion it might be
00:22:22.920useful. If you saw the 17-year-old kid who's just starting down that road, you know what,
00:22:26.320you can pick them up and take them in and maybe do something about it. Or if you had a cluster of
00:22:31.220them near a playground that are all consuming, at least take their materials away, crush their
00:22:36.920pipes and say, move elsewhere. This is not what we want to see, this public disorder in our streets.
00:22:41.460When it was fully decriminalized, they lost those tools, which can aren't solutions.
00:22:45.760You'll never beat this by chasing around the users and charging them, but at least it gave them an ability to intervene.
00:22:53.080And again, I think the problem with this whole thing is there's no magic solution.
00:22:58.140And even the mitigating solutions are going to be very expensive, very time consuming and have a limited amount of success.
00:23:05.260but at least they did realize, you know, as Oregon did as well, this enablement policies aren't
00:23:11.260working. Others might not be but this one definitely isn't. You know what, I think it's,
00:23:17.580they should wear it. And they should wear the blame for its failure. But credit is due for
00:23:23.900admitting error, which is something you don't see a lot of humans generally don't like to do it. But
00:23:29.580Governments and politicians almost never do.
00:23:33.100In 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.
00:23:43.980The B.C. conservatives strong in the polls.
00:23:46.400I think even one poll had them even leading the NDP, which is crazy because they haven't elected an MLA.
00:23:52.120That poll's in the Western Standard right now, actually.
00:23:54.200Yeah, considering that the B.C. Conservatives haven't actually elected an MLA in 60 years or something.
00:24:00.340Well, it's one of the things about the B.C. Conservative surge there.
00:24:05.980Part of it is due to the fact that the Liberals under B.C. United now, under Kevin Falcon, actually supported this.
00:24:14.300They 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.
00:24:20.680Well, 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.
00:24:35.620Well, 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.
00:24:44.740Yeah, no, it was a very good conversation, and they're certainly optimistic.
00:24:48.040I mean, they've got the momentum right now.
00:24:50.440And this, when you could see it, I mean, I went to Vancouver about a month ago.
00:25:11.000Well, let's turn to other illegal substances,
00:25:14.540at least substances that were illegal in Alberta until yesterday, sorry, in Calgary until yesterday.
00:25:21.540Calgary's lunch bag tax, the war on lunch, as we've called it.
00:25:26.540You know, the federal government had banned plastic straws and whatnot,
00:25:29.540although that's been overturned as unconstitutional meddling in provincial jurisdiction.
00:25:34.540But it's, you know, just as common, if not more common than the federal government meddling in the provinces,
00:25:40.540provinces 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.
00:25:58.540But that would just be kind of blowhard opinions.
00:26:48.740I 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.
00:27:01.800And the process started really quick for the repeal of this bylaw.
00:27:06.220There's a process for it, and came to a vote yesterday.
00:27:09.700And I think all but three members of the council voted to repeal it, including the mayor who had supported it.
00:27:16.980And 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.
00:27:29.780Yeah, I think it was Jasmine Mian. I think she was the proponent. I'm not 100% sure.
00:27:34.840And though, bear in mind that it was, I believe, like an 8-6 vote or an 8-7 vote to bring it to repeal.
00:27:45.880realize they're not going to ride this train to stupid any farther. What they've also done is put
00:27:50.560another bullet into Premier Smith's gun when she's she's right now in battle with municipalities. And
00:27:55.940she's trying to make the case as to why we need and I'm kind of mixed on that, why we need a
00:28:00.820provincial government to reach into municipal laws and jurisdictions. And when you've got such a
00:28:06.660fantastically stupid law that managed to get all the way through and go into force, even if only
00:28:12.840for a short time, it does make the case for having provincial
00:28:16.200oversight on these things. So the fact that I guess that they
00:28:19.980repealed it on their own might also say you don't need the
00:28:22.120province to do that. But it's just one dumb act out of the
00:28:26.700city council after another, when really people are worried
00:28:29.340about the potholes that you can almost get stuck in right now in
00:28:32.220this city. And you know, transit system falling, many, many
00:28:36.480things that fall within city jurisdiction. And these clowns1.00
00:28:39.480waste so much time on these virtue signaling missions. It's just absurd.
00:28:44.480Nigel, I want to pick up on a point Corey made. Is it Bill 20, the provincial legislation on this?
00:28:50.480Yeah, Bill 20, very controversial, especially among municipal politicians.
00:28:57.480Among one of the new powers that would have is the ability of the province to more easily overturn municipal bylaws.
00:29:04.480It can right now, but it takes an act of the legislature. This would put the hands directly in cabinet.
00:29:08.480I'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.
00:29:20.480Perhaps 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.
00:29:33.320But 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.
00:29:46.000They repealed it themselves. It didn't take the profits.
00:29:48.640Do you think that helps or hurts the argument for Bill 20?
00:29:55.340I mean, if the municipality hadn't repealed it, I would see it as very much strengthening the argument for Bill 20.
00:30:01.040they did repeal it. So does that undermine the need for those powers if, at the end of the day,
00:30:07.160the municipality corrected its own boneheaded decision? No, I think we still need that
00:30:12.920legislation in the background. You're right. I mean, they did repeal their own stupid legislation
00:30:18.560that city council intends to attract do-gooders. And they don't come with any preloaded concept
00:30:29.120of what is a municipal function and what is a provincial or even a federal function like
00:30:36.240where did our present incumbent mayor get the idea that it was within her view or would be
00:30:42.080even an effective policy to as soon as she was elected declare a climate emergency
00:30:47.760and commit 87 billion dollars in fake money to it you know like that's when it's good to have
00:30:55.040a senior level of government say maybe you shouldn't do that we have had a number of
00:31:02.720cases where boards and whole city councils i'm thinking of chestermere have been dismissed by
00:31:09.120the provincial government under the existing legislation it didn't take bill 20 to do it
00:31:14.480but there are certain certainly i i have more confidence in the um this provincial government
00:31:22.480any way to get it right than I do some of the doorknobs who present themselves for election
00:31:28.240to municipal councils. That's true, but we always need to be mindful that powers that a government
00:31:35.440that you like gives itself will someday be inherited by a government that you don't like.
00:31:43.520And liberals and conservatives and new democrats are all guilty of doing this because
00:31:47.560somehow every government seems to think it's going to be in power forever.
00:34:40.540I 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.
00:34:54.360There was very little of it during COVID, and both sides were guilty, I think.
00:35:00.120At times, I have a bias about which side was a little less, but both sides engaged in hyperbole and whatnot.
00:35:09.600But I think most people want to forget what happened here.
00:35:18.000You 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.
00:35:31.200When 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.
00:35:43.280I 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?
00:35:58.300Maybe 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?
00:36:11.300I'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.
00:36:22.080But actually, I sort of encourage people to take a bit of interest in this.
00:36:25.720You know, we're talking about AstraZeneca today.
00:36:28.040Last 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.
00:39:18.500And, 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.
00:39:31.140But she's just constantly refused to answer questions about it, considering they laid off a good number of journalists at the CBC this year.
00:39:39.700She just refused to answer questions.0.98
00:39:42.100Now, the annual report of the CBC was, I think, already supposed to have been released, but hasn't been for some reason.
00:39:49.100Could 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?
00:39:58.100Why, yes, that is the way the timing worked.
00:40:00.100And she was repeatedly asked about this from the conservative members of the committee.
00:40:04.100And 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
00:41:49.680The English one, the French one will keep going.1.00
00:41:52.380whatever more money for Quebec I don't care I just want CBC gone although I
00:41:56.640think there's a few important things that can do that can be repackaged into
00:41:59.460a separate new crown corporation like a photo service for other media to use or
00:42:03.720something but pretty small limited rules that can it can function in how much
00:42:11.160damage do you think Tate is doing here I think I forget who was but someone said
00:42:15.720on Twitter yesterday maybe it was Tristan Hopner I'm not positive said
00:42:19.060that Catherine Tate is probably a sleeper agent for the conservatives, and she's been planted
00:42:25.780there to undermine it from the inside. Well, she's not doing them any favors. I mean, she is
00:42:30.480just a terribly unlikable public persona. She is the epitome of a champagne socialist. It's not
00:42:37.840just that she doesn't answer them. You can tell by the questions, you can tell by her attitude,
00:42:41.780she feels that it's beneath her to have to answer these questions. If they wanted to save themselves
00:42:48.420from a potential incoming government that wants to defund them, they should be saying,
00:42:53.120hey, these are the new initiatives we're doing. This is how we're trying at least to increase
00:42:57.680readership, viewership. These are some of the numbers we've improved. And as Nigel pointed out,
00:43:03.940they've done a terrible job. And then they're giving themselves bonuses and patting their own
00:43:07.840backs for doing a terrible job. So yeah, Tristan's almost right. It's amazing. I think she's just
00:43:14.980completely 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.
00:43:43.280Oh, I understand, but that's what I'm saying.
00:44:13.280All 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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00:44:57.080Thank you very much for joining us all here today, and God bless.
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