No budget for you!
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Summary
It's a new day in Canada, and it's no budget day, which means it's time to ask the question: Is it time for a budget? Today, Western Standard editor Nigel Hannaford and editor-in-chief Derek Hildebrandt and senior editor Corey Morgan discuss the lack of a fall update from the Trudeau government.
Transcript
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I'm Derek Hildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.
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I'm joined by two-thirds of our usual lineup, Western Standard Opinion Editor, Nigel Hannaford.
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And Western Standard Senior Alberta Colonist, Corey Morgan.
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Good to be here. I won't rip the glasses off. I'm blind as hell.
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Unfortunately, we don't have Erica with us today, but hopefully we'll get her next week.
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Liberal leader, now Prime Minister Mark Carney,
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secretly ordered the removal of the Liberal tariffs.
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But now talking, putting them back on as Trump re-engages in steel and aluminum tariffs.
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Today's actually kind of, it's really just the Carney show today.
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Carnie met with the premiers and the big First Ministers' meeting.
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We don't really have First Ministers' meetings too often anymore.
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There was lots of hand-holding and kumbaya-ing about national unity,
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and doing some, not many things, but a few things on Alberta's to-do list.
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And that was very quickly shot right in the side of the head by BC NDP Premier David Eby.
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And no budget for you. That's where we're going to start today.
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For the... Canada has a budget essentially every year.
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Even tin-pot dictatorships in the third world, their budgets aren't very credible, but they have budgets.
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Although for the last decade, Canada's budgets have been lacking a severe degree of credibility.
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We haven't actually stuck to a budget for more than a few months at any time in the last decade.
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But they were at least an authorization of Parliament to generally spend a certain amount of money in a generally determined area with at least a fake aspirational deficit target.
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In the good old days, it wasn't the deficit target.
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we plan to break even or even run a surplus that's what that's how much things have become
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degraded that we now talk about having a credible deficit target which you never even do now a
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budget yeah so that's just well they they went from uh deficits to almost balancing the budget
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to just a small little deficit the budget will balance itself to uh you know i i suppose in
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uh currently saying we don't need a budget why don't you just kind of so look i mean
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the tabling of a budget is very fundamental to what democracy is all about we elect people to
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govern us governing means taxing us spending our money so it's very very basic that the government
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owes us an account of what they plan to do with our money we forget it's our money but it that
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that is the truth of the matter so we've had a budget every year since i think there was one
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we dropped sometime in the 1920s for some reason but even during the second world 32 or something
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like that sorry about 20s or 30s the last time yeah even during the second world war even during
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the first world war you know governments were tabling budgets they were and what they were
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doing they were actually being responsible to the taxpayers the people who had voted for them
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say this is we understand that it is your money this is how we're handling it and we owe you that
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well this year that understanding is off now there's a couple of ways you can think of what
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what uh finance minister champagne um did say that it was that um we should consider the
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government's election platform or budget most of the government's spending priorities were laid
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out in their platform he said that is a very novel way to describe a budget i absolutely
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amazing so you know i have a theory that the books after 10 years of mr trudeau were just so bad
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that they need a year to put things in order or at least paint a picture that won't actually lead to
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the peasants marching on Parliament Hill with pitchforks and fire torches and that something
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is clearly very very wrong they promised a fall update well okay four or five months we'll see
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what they have but this is a shocking and really bad situation that in peacetime you can't produce
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a budget. Corey I've been trying to you know as bad as they might be I tried to at least
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understand what is the most charitable view of why someone i disagree with on a lot of issues
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does something and one it's proud to think of was well we just had an election that has
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been a lot of time well that doesn't really hold um i remember uh you know when i was in politics
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the first budget i uh to deal with as the finance critic of the wild rose opposition
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was in 2015 the spring of 2015 um you remember uh the premier at the time jim prentice tabled
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to that government. They were gone, the NDP came
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Prentice's budget, more or less kept intact, because it was
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and then they just changed a few things here and there
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decade it's the staffers in those offices are literally in the same jobs very few many in the
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cabinet half the cabinet at least is the same people there's been no great transference of
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power literally one guy changed and that was about it i'm trying to understand what reason
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they would have here that is at least somewhat charitable and makes sense yeah i think the only
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reasons we can see are political it sounds like they might capitulate and have a fall one but
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but we'll see. But they're doing it like pulling teeth with this and they'd prefer a fall update.
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But I mean, it sounds like I'm sure we speculated earlier, what's in there is so horrific. They
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don't want parliament dealing with people now because that's what's happened is it'll be under
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scrutiny. People will look at the line items. They'll look at the numbers and realize just
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how horrific it is. They want to take as many months as possible to sugarcoat this, to change
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going to happen, but the NDP are saying they're not going to vote
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with the bloc or the conservatives or they might end up
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in an election even before then. They don't want to face
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have to. I don't think any of the parties are eager
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a catastrophic three weeks of budget discussions
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want to deal with. I don't know about that, because
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confidence vote, because they're doing a supply measure.
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you know, a couple hundred pages between all the different
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essentially just an authorization from Parliament
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and there's still going to be a vote on it that
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seems more likely to me they probably would have an easier time passing
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I mean there's a lot of discussion in it, but you're going to discuss a whole
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lot of things, a supply bill you can kind of ram
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I mean, the Tupus coined about his vote on a budget.
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On Monday, there was a vote calling on the government to impose a budget.
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Bernie kept on saying, well, we've taken note, because it affected take note motion.
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I mean, they lost that because four Liberal MPs didn't show up.
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I'm pretty sure everybody will be there for the vote on that one.
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But, you know, as to your point, though, about the continuity of government,
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the bureaucrats who prepare budgets never take vacations, so to speak.
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Like, as soon as one budget is passed, the next one is in preparation.
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So in the Department of Finance, there is a document.
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And there is a process of budget consultation that takes place during the fall.
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And in the fullness of time, we'll probably see that.
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And so on the basis of how the budget is prepared, they just don't have, they just don't believe in what they've got there.
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i'm trying to think of a charitable a charitable explanation and i just i just don't get it
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because it was obvious they said oh we don't need one this is the banker i mean if any
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masterful brilliant mind should be able to put a budget together in short order i would have
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thought it was the brilliant uh mark carney oh it but i'm also what's the politics of it i mean
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So if we eliminate any possible charitable outcome, because the NDP pulled it off weeks after coming to power in 2015 in Alberta.
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It wasn't just a change in the governing party.
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Remember, the NDP had a party of four seats in the Alberta legislature and went up to a majority government.
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Most of them didn't know where the bathroom was.
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The liberals have been trained, though, to rag the puck on touchy issues, difficult issues, and the voters reward them.
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they they put off the foreign interference scandal for two and a half years and guess what
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canadians just got sick of it and said okay fine keep interfering just uh quit uh quit bugging me
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with this talk um okay well that looks the next question is there a political price to pay for
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this i mean they're getting some bad headlines it's it's been universally panned even in the
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legacy liberal friendly media it's like it's a pretty shocking thing for you know media been
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sitting around, they're used to going to the lock-up, but it's
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ideological strength of the government, it's just something we do.
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So people just get bored with anything like that.
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I mean, conservative backbench MPs have just as little power.
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They have nearly as nothing power as a liberal backbench MP.
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I think it's been ingrained in our system that parliament is for show anyway.
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Governments spend money routinely without the authorization of parliament.
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something we used to cut off the heads of kings over.
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There have been literal civil wars fought in England over the issue.
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And we now routinely do it where Parliament spends money illegally without,
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where government spends money routinely without the authorization of Parliament
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I'm not sure people just care about this anymore.
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I mean, 250 years ago, just south of the border,
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they were saying no taxation without representation.
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and everybody cared about it and everybody was mad
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And as you said, they've become so aspirational.
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People come and expect that they don't mean anything.
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I mean, the regular routine with Finance Minister Freeland was for her to come out every few months and expand the projected deficit.
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I mean, the budget would just be blown every quarter, even beyond what they'd said to start with.
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It's not until they hit them in their own pocketbook.
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That's the reality with people when they start.
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They're standing on the right things, but it's not getting reported.
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I mean, the thing that hit balanced budgets in the 90s wasn't just how badly governments had mismanaged through the 80s and put us in that position.
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It was the double-digit interest rates, where people were suddenly realizing, it's going to hit me.
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And I don't think your average citizen is realizing that as our currency gets devalued, it's going to hit you.
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I think it's a catastrophic failure for parliamentary government.
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don't think the liberals are going to lose a vote over it.
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They're not people in the liberal voter universe.
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moderate liberals tended actually to vote conservative
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in the last election. Conservatives had an extremely good
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I just don't think people in the liberal voter pool
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really care you know and the other thing is we've had so many recent arrivals in this country
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probably 10 million over the last 15 years they're not raised in the western tradition they're they
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don't understand the principles of democracy so they're the last people who are going to be
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caring about it it's no what we need somehow to teach the fundamental principles of our system
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of government again we need a new you know organization to take that up and make it their
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own and just get people to the stage where they're ready to march on ottawa when these things happen
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it's a shocking situation last time people marched on ottawa they uh declared martial law yep sir
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this would be another good occasion yeah okay well uh i mean it's just today's all carny all day
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let's talk about the first ministers meeting so first ministers meeting uh there's two kinds of
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big meetings there's the council of the federation as it calls itself which is the meeting of just
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the premiers and then there's the first ministers meeting which is the premiers plus the prime
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minister uh those are exceedingly rare in canada now for political reasons i understand because
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had one early on in his prime ministership, and he
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but I'm not meeting with them as a group where they can all
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provincial management of money hasn't been much better.
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but uh yeah they gathered in saskatoon and and it was i mean as you said you framed it well
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justin trudeau didn't care for them uh prime minister harper didn't care for them i mean each
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is just gonna they're gonna come with their demands and their hands out and we got some
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some strong demands they they've come out of this though with a lot of you know sunshine and
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happiness uh premier doug ford said this is the best one he's been to in seven years and probably
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the best one held in 10 years so did he call it was he the one who called it a lovin uh he made
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I mean, he's just a gushing Carney groupie to the core.
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But there was one premier who didn't make it to this meeting,
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And he kind of rained on their hand-holding parade afterwards
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because when they were talking about we're going to get infrastructure from coast to coast and we
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we're going to fast track it and we're moving along and Nibi's basically come up and said well no
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I'm not participating uh there's no pipes coming into my province and uh so you guys might as well
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just get stuffed uh it it leaves it where I think where Carney was hoping uh he's got the authority
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I mean people gotta understand in Canada and the federation the reality is inter-provincial
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infrastructure is a federal jurisdiction provinces have a say in it and they can certainly do a lot
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a lot of things to hinder it. But in the end, if we're a federation, it means that these things
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cannot be stopped by provinces. They can't stop a railway, they can't stop a highway,
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and they theoretically shouldn't be able to stop a pipeline. Carney's best hope would be able to
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get all 10 into a room and convince them that it is in the national importance and they can all do
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it cooperatively and all together on it. Obviously, there's already one holdout. Quebec probably won't
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be much better. So Carney's got two options for him now. He's either going to lay down the hammer
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or he's just going to say we won't have the consensus
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we're going to have, build, do nation building again,
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well national consent i i know you know not everything needs to be spelled out in detailed
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uh form footnotes on all but national consensus is that the poison pill word because what does
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that mean is national consensus the new buzzword for social license yes well i mean if you actually
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look at the statement that the prime minister's office released after the meetings you'll see
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the conditions that follow after this bold statement of what we're going to do and it has
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to be in the national interest it has to promote canada's autonomy it must be acceptable to
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indigenous people that it go there are five six main points to it and frankly any one of them
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could if the political will is not there be used to tick the entire apple cart over
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uh so he has he has gone out and explicitly said that all of these good things will happen
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but they are dependent upon in the first case indigenous agreement well right now you have put
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the price of all of this up because if you tell somebody well we want to do this but it you get
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a veto but you get a veto like my veto can be bought but it isn't going to be cheap so that's
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the first thing the second thing it was all through the campaign he was talking about quebec
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has to be acceptable to quebec well if it goes out over the uh and over the hudson over hudson's
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bay then i guess quebec is cut out of that equation a lot of infrastructure a lot of
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development a lot of money will need to be spent before that can happen but it's not actually a bad
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idea now as for um nowhere in all of this he says and by the way as evidence of good faith
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we are scrapping the no tankers ban this is the ban that prevents tankers from docking in british
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columbia there is no comparable ban on tankers docking in eastern canada but there is one on
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the western canada so on the northwest yeah so there's a very specific anti anti-alberta
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been the easiest thing in the world for him to say you know and one of the first things we're
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going to do when we get back is to lift the no tanker ban on the west coast but it cost him
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nothing but he didn't do that so then you get to actually mr eby's uh designated mouthpiece
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nikki sharma the deputy pm comes in and says well you know alberta doesn't have a pipeline project
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to go anyway we prefer to go on things that are shovel ready well when you do things on that first
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off how would you have a prominent proponent when everybody has in federal and provincial politics
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has been saying for the last 10 years we don't want pipelines we don't want pipelines people
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say all right fine we'll go and build pipelines somewhere else and then the second thing the
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shovel ready the projects that she talks about turns about when you read the fine print a lot
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of it is what you would call social infrastructure now they they like that term infrastructure because
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it sounds good schools and hospitals and bridges and roads i mean these are all things you've got
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to have but these are the things you build with the money you make from pipelines and energy
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extraction these are not the same thing they are not a substitute for it so i mean the bc position
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is just what you would expect from any NDP government.
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A hypothetical stand on a notional point of principle.
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Something else of note with this, as much as Carney, as you said,
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doesn't inflame on each side and everything, but he's careful with his words.
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One word that actually has never escaped his lips since this meeting
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He talks around it, he talks above it, he talks below it,
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He'll say Trudeau before he says pipelines, and he hasn't said Trudeau yet.
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And when he says energy, you know, he just says energy,
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And if he, again, if he was meaning it, if he really thinks it's going to go, I mean, the man would say it.
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Part of me wonders if he's trying to just string this out for now.
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And I don't know if it could be strung out long enough.
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But, you know, we are headed towards an independence referendum in Alberta.
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It's the latest within two years, probably within a year and a half or so.
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If he wants to keep Alberta under the Dominion, I mean, we're going to need at least a pretty good signal that some of these things can go forward.
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I mean, I don't think a pipeline or two or three or four, even five actually solves Alberta's problems.
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is that what he's playing at here? Just trying to
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I mean, yeah, I've been traveling a lot lately and hit a few meetings and speaking, and things aren't calming down post-election.
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It takes leadership being sometimes doing something, even if your own ideology doesn't agree with it, but saying, we've got to get this done.
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We've got to see, or at least that's such a strong guarantee that a private player has said, you know what, I'm going to take a chance.
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I don't think Lucy's going to steal the ball from me this time.
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We're going to commit ourselves to doing this project.
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We've got to see a private interest say they're going to do it.
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I was like, who in their right mind, actually, there's obviously business case, strong, very strong business case for building pipelines.
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but who in their right mind looking at the current
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over the murder weapon. I think they pulled the plug
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the trial's over you change your plea to guilty
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same players, same staffers, mostly same cabinet
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people can't even name their own member of parliament
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or anti-Central Canada that you can't even give the fellow a chance to.
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I'm trying to work on my character because I am too.
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I have to say most people will say, well, let's at least give the, he speaks well,
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The thing with all of this is that the judgment on it comes down the road.
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two years he is is the he wants to bring in legislation that will put a worthy
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project on the ground in two years all the approvals will be there so people
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ask her enough that's better than 10 years that seems reasonable so he brings
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in the legislation he gets it passed somebody applies and we'll see if it
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happens inside two years so it's going to be two years plus before you have any
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kind of an opportunity to pass judgment on whether this is even a good idea well it depends on the
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legislation too because it it's got to be clear that there's a light at the end of that year it's
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not you can spend a billion dollars over two years and then we're going to rug pull you yeah because
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they gotta know and then speaking of in bringing down barriers to internal trade i think the idea
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was set pretty firmly during the election campaign that by july the first we'd have it done
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Can I send a dairy cow across the border yet?
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Or I can have a cow, but I can't pull milk out of it or all the dairy police will get me.
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I'm thinking of starting an ostrich farm in my house.
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Yeah, you've heard about the hunting marketing view.
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Anyway, people are going to be invited because he speaks well.
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People are going to be invited to give him a chance.
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And it's only two and a half years before you really see whether all this talk means anything at all, by which time you're 18 months from another election.
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And they're hoping that Albertans have cooled down enough, have not voted to leave.
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But we've got to look at the other aspects. Is he this brilliant economist? Is he this brilliant banker?
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Because we also know we've got a really ugly economic outlook, and we're sitting on resources.
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it will help them. It will help them with their
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We want to see more than promises. We've got to see
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elbows up here oh let's just show them doing the chicken dance there let's just roll that little
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video mark carney and his liberals elbows up they're fighting back against the bad orange
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man uh they're tough they're taking they're taking them into the boards elbows up boys
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um then it turned out once the votes were counted liberals are safely back in power
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it turns out the liberals secretly removed the tariffs the retaliatory tariffs during during
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the middle of the election campaign we found out only after the votes were counted the election
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campaign is over but during the election when a government is supposed to be in caretaker mode
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it's i mean this is pretty wonky westminster stuff but the government goes into caretaker mode
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It's really only to make the most extremely critical national security decisions.
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Possibly tariffs could fall under that, but at least should be publicly announced if that's going on.
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The idea is that you're not able to use the power of the government itself for political ends during an election campaign.
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But they secretly got rid of their own retaliatory tariffs against the United States,
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Trump's tariffs have been like a yo-yo on and off.
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If it's, I'm not a believer that he does have some great strategy.
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I think they are just flying by to see their pants and maybe they do have an end goal in
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I I'm just not seeing their brilliant strategy here.
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Uh, but more tariffs, backbone, steel and aluminum here, which, uh, I mean, that's a
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Uh, not as big out here, but, um, we're not hearing too much about elbows up again.
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And they all of a sudden seem to be a lot more of diplomacy.
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One-on-one meetings seem to actually do a lot of good with Trump.
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You know, you can go in, you say the right things, make him feel good.
00:35:42.820
I think they figured that that's the way to do it.
00:35:49.700
And frankly, it was a foolish thing to start with anyway.
00:36:02.340
So I do believe that some of the tariffs, at least, that you speak of,
00:36:06.660
were tariffs that we had foolishly placed upon food.
00:36:13.960
If you've got a component or an ingredient or you're making something in Canada
00:36:19.120
and the end result of your retaliatory tariffs is to make that item more expensive,
00:36:24.960
then you're only hurting yourself and this of course is the tremendously frustrating thing
00:36:31.140
for canadian nationalists about dealing with the united states whatever you try ends up hurting
00:36:37.880
yourself they're just so much bigger and more powerful you can say well i'm not going to import
00:36:42.440
this from you the typical american manufacturer just says well that's i'll sell it in the domestic
00:36:48.020
market you guys are only four percent of my my business anyway so that so that's the first thing
00:36:54.240
about um about retaliatory tariffs is basically they don't work what but anyone who said that
00:37:01.600
uh during elbows up oh yeah was called a traitor weak on trump you're a puppet of trump i mean
00:37:08.220
polyev was calling for retaliatory tariffs too is the polls were shown that canadians wanted to
00:37:12.700
fight back even if it's a matter of kicking themselves between their own legs to do so
00:37:16.360
danielle smith was called a traitor she's a traitor because she doesn't spot the retaliatory
1.00
00:37:20.200
tariffs while carney had already gotten rid of them but publicly was pretending that they were
00:37:26.960
still in place am i taking crazy pills here well i mean ford's being through to his nature i guess
00:37:33.540
because he was on today speaking up it's demanding it we return the retaliatory tariffs so i guess
00:37:38.920
he's not always in carney's camp because i don't think carney wants to hear that pressure coming
00:37:50.740
so he's the tie dome, he's the enforcer on the team
00:37:56.560
against America, I'm going to cut off your electricity
00:38:00.780
a call from Howard Leavitt, the commerce secretary
00:38:13.500
The problem is we've got to let this policy, I think, run its course.
00:38:16.080
He seems to back off when, you know, the realities come.
00:38:19.220
It sounds like he's going to double aluminum and steel tariffs,
00:38:25.000
even if they're manufacturing those cars in the USA,
00:38:27.180
you're now adding another few thousand to the price tag of every vehicle there.
00:38:31.380
Or if you're looking at Ford's base, or Trump's base,
00:38:34.200
the aluminum tariffs will add to the cost of a can of beer
00:38:47.180
You know, the consumers aren't thinking of the economics of it.
00:38:52.460
and thinking it's brilliant until it hits their own pocketbook.
00:39:04.400
Well, it was like the old Charles Atlas, the Seven Stone Wheatling, who was never going
00:39:09.780
to arise from the sand, you know, he had to first go off and get himself toned up and
00:39:17.280
And I suppose that's what Mr. Carney would tell you he is trying to do with the strategy
00:39:27.520
But you know, the trouble is, I don't think we believe him, do we?
00:39:31.900
No, I mean, the same issues haven't changed at all in a month.
00:39:37.040
Trump's still ragdolling us with his on-again, off-again policies,
00:39:39.760
and we're still actually skittering on the ice talking about doing things,
00:39:47.660
Well, put a pin in there and go to our parting shots.
0.96
00:39:58.280
what exactly is the final score on the election and the answer is i can't tell you even now because
00:40:04.200
they're still litigating one uh one uh seat in quebec but it calls me to go back to the numbers
00:40:10.280
first of all as things stand according to elections canada the liberals have 169 seats
00:40:16.520
which is four short of a majority and the conservatives have 144 which is 17 seats short
00:40:24.040
But I just noticed something. Four seats changed hands on a combined 40 votes.
00:40:34.200
That is to say that in one of the Windsor seats, the candidate won, the conservative, as it happens, won by four votes.
00:40:49.940
these are all the subjects of judicial recounts these we can now take to the
00:40:54.380
bank and say that it's a done deal there's another seat change hands on 23
00:41:01.700
and then in Quebec Terranova 12 seats but the best of all is terrible damn
0.70
00:41:08.360
terrible terrible terrible which also works on one seat what one one vote
00:41:15.380
to turn the seat so 40 seats sorry four seats turned on 40 votes this is democracy in action
00:41:23.820
i suppose it's a good thing but it's i'll tell you what it sort of validates everything you ever
00:41:28.260
heard about getting out of the vote jenny byrne is kind of controversial i'll tell you all about
00:41:33.320
that and those four seats are the difference between majority and minority which that's a
00:41:38.460
very big deal um yeah that one seat terrible in uh quebec uh it's one one vote one vote uh but we
00:41:49.700
know it was not a legitimate election there i don't think it was any great conspiracy there's
00:41:53.560
no there's no evidence of that but normally there is a margin and you accept that okay there's going
00:41:59.160
to be a little bit of there's there's human error in a human process a democracy is human
00:42:13.140
the margin of victory is big enough that it doesn't matter
00:43:01.740
Well, you know, I was looking at things, David Clement. There was a good piece on the story he did with the Mexican cartels. They're operating in Canada with fentanyl and we've had foreign interference going on. We still have intimidation of families of politicians in Canada. So our federal force, what are they doing to take care of this?
00:43:20.120
Well, they're investigating possible war crimes in Israel.
00:43:24.580
The RCMP is dedicating time to a jurisdiction on the other side of the ocean.
00:43:31.620
They've got a task force on it to see if there's been war crimes committed by Israel and the IDF over the conflict over there.
00:43:38.340
I just, it's so profoundly stupid and out of their range and showing again the ideological leanings that are taking over this government where they're infatuated with other things.
00:43:46.920
Well, we've got a whole pile of domestic things they really should be working on.
00:43:51.120
And it just reminds me again is why Calgary, Alberta should kick them the heck out of our province, get a provincial force that'll focus on crime while they dither away on causes that have absolutely nothing to do with us.
00:44:02.740
Yeah, I think it is appropriate for some kind of independent authorities to be looking into.
00:44:07.920
I mean, if there is war, there is going to be a war crime that is always there is almost never been an exception to that on both sides.
00:44:38.680
responsible for looking into that kind of thing.
00:44:44.660
of opinions on the history of the conflict, but
00:45:02.400
they've taken up half the alphabet. I think they added
00:45:04.880
two letters this year. I think there was another L
00:45:06.820
and an I or something. They always make sure to throw a plus on the
00:45:08.920
end too so you can just kind of cover everything.
00:45:19.580
So anyway, they've got a $400,000 funding shortfall this year
00:45:25.580
because in the backlash against DEI and wokeness and whatnot,
00:45:39.360
I was watching some man in a dress on CTV yesterday bemoaning this,
00:46:12.000
They're exposing themselves to little children.
00:46:14.420
There are grown men, some of them still consider themselves men, some of them do not, but they're people with men's parts, and they go around showing themselves explicitly and disgustingly to little children who are there.
00:46:28.700
People who should be immediately charged criminally with indecent exposure and forms of child sexual exploitation.
00:46:35.940
Maybe somebody should have a word with the parents as well.
00:46:40.800
You know that's going to take place if you're a parent.
00:46:44.100
I think you should also be held criminally responsible
00:47:23.760
We're going to find out when our reporters get into it.
00:47:41.140
I want to thank all, well, Corey and Nigel, of course, and all of you who have joined us.
00:47:49.360
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00:47:56.760
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00:48:05.020
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00:48:10.480
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00:48:28.940
Thank you very much for joining us today, and God bless.