Western Standard - Plane Tragedy in New York and Ottawa’s Bilingualism Obsession

00:00:00.000 all right welcome back um actually i hope you got

00:00:30.000 i'll tell you a quick thing i i've been on the road for uh three days now i was going to say i

00:00:35.420 hope you guys appreciate that i'm here today but um there's a story there i've been on the road

00:00:40.420 i joined the jason levine show just temporarily going on the road with jason and a few other

00:00:46.680 great speakers uh tanya clemens and uh angela tabak we i went to uh drumheller on monday

00:00:55.980 uh leduc on tuesday last night was red deer and i rushed back to calgary to do the show so hope

00:01:03.660 you appreciate that and let me tell you it was a white knuckle drive last night maybe i should

00:01:07.960 have stayed overnight in red deer and come back this morning but it was a white knuckle drive

00:01:12.520 question for you guys you know i used to trust um what we call professional drivers right here in

00:01:20.680 alberta you see guys on the roads all the time like professional drivers the guys driving the

00:01:24.260 big rigs right it's it's a tradition in alberta lots of guys drive trucks we need them to deliver

00:01:29.280 equipment up in the field uh big halls big loads and stuff like that but am i the only one now who

00:01:34.220 feels a little nervous around some of these big trucks these days something's not right and i

00:01:39.420 think we all know what it is right i mean i got yesterday there was trucks driving with their

00:01:43.600 blinkers on and then you have the other extreme you have trucks that are driving at full speed

00:01:47.260 in the blizzard and there's like the the in between is missing and i'm like staying away

00:01:52.280 from the big trucks maybe it's me but uh i don't feel good about around being what used to be called

00:01:57.800 professional drivers uh you know you saw the show here uh today you know before before i come here

00:02:04.280 in studio john always uh asked me what i kind of want to talk about so he can prepare the title the

00:02:09.880 the thumbnail and i and i wanted to talk about uh bilingualism i like the uh i like the title how

00:02:16.280 he said that ottawa's bilingualism obsession it's a much nicer title than what i had suggested so

00:02:23.320 let's get into that um you know i i while i was on the road i heard about this horrible accident

00:02:29.560 that happened in new york the plane that hit the um uh the emergency vehicle on the runway at

00:02:36.120 la guardia i mean absolutely terrible i don't even know how that can happen luckily it only happens

00:02:42.120 you know extremely rarely like every 30 or 40 years so it's not there might have been near

00:02:48.040 misses but an actual impact between a vehicle and a plane is extremely rare um we don't know much

00:02:53.940 about the what led to the tragedy they're going to investigate it uh and and we'll learn about it

00:02:59.640 eventually but i want to just start the show with this clip from mark carney and we're going to play

00:03:05.320 the whole clip at first we're going to we thought we'd only play 30 seconds of it the one that

00:03:08.960 really annoy me but let's play the whole clip. First I want to repeat my sincere

00:03:16.340 condolences to the families, to the friends, to the work colleagues of the

00:03:23.000 two young pilots, Mr. Foray and Mr. Gunther of Air Canada whose actions

00:03:32.180 save lives. We proudly live in a bilingual country and companies like Air

00:03:37.520 Air Canada particularly have a responsibility to always communicate in both official languages

00:03:43.240 regardless of the situation. I'm very disappointed in, as others are, rightly so, in this unilingual 1.00

00:03:53.860 message of the CEO of Air Canada. It doesn't matter the circumstance, but particularly

00:04:00.140 in these circumstances, lack of judgment and lack of compassion. Lack of compassion.

00:04:08.300 you know i don't know how you guys feel about that but there's a couple of things to unpack

00:04:11.980 on there but i'm that upsets me right so let's think about this right the country

00:04:16.780 is struggling right now we got all sorts of issues there's a there's there's a conflict

00:04:22.700 going on in the middle east we got prices of gasoline soaring prices of food soaring

00:04:28.300 people have no disposable no uh discretionary income traveling is down so forth and then

00:04:34.940 somewhere in this whole mess you got a president of a company who's dealing with the fact that one

00:04:39.580 of his planes hit somebody a vehicle on a runway and two of his pilots got killed and a bunch of

00:04:47.260 passengers got injured and the poor president of air canada who is like i can't i i've been in

00:04:53.340 almost similar not not no i can't even say i've been in similar situations i've been in stressful

00:04:57.420 situations as the president of a company i can't imagine what this guy's facing the president of

00:05:01.660 air canada because he's on the national stage right everybody's noticing this and and the poor

00:05:08.140 guy comes on uh radio or television does a press conference and the guy is naturally anglophone

00:05:15.660 unilingual right and he makes his statement in english and then and and so on top of his strategy

00:05:24.300 tragedy and everything that's going on in this poor guy's life carney and the liberals decide

00:05:30.620 that now's the time to make an example of that guy and they're bringing him in to a committee

00:05:35.820 they want him in front of a committee to explain to the committee why he didn't make his statement

00:05:41.820 in both official languages and so and and i just want to unpack that a little bit right so and then

00:05:47.660 you hear carney say we live in a bilingual country yeah we live in an officially bilingual country

00:05:53.900 but let's be real here right and i'm a francophone i speak french it's my native tongue and i'm a

00:05:58.620 franco-ontarian who moved to alberta and now i consider myself uh an albertan and i have

00:06:05.180 francophone roots and i know there's a lot of albertans who speak french right but is the

00:06:09.340 country really bilingual no i mean there's like 15 million quebecers that speak french and english

00:06:16.460 and then the rest of us speak english mostly so the country and and and we have this official

00:06:22.380 bilingual country and then we have all these crazy rules because of it right so the house of commons 1.00

00:06:28.140 every day, even though Quebecers represent about 15% of the population, if that, almost half the

00:06:35.380 business in the House of Commons is done in French, right? They almost always open their

00:06:39.800 comments with French. We spend an incredible amount of money translating everything and the

00:06:47.540 federal government offering services in French across the board. It doesn't matter where you

00:06:51.720 live, right? So if you live in Drayton Valley, somebody at the post, if you go to the post office

00:06:57.740 in drayton valley you will see that there will be little signs you know you go to the drayton valley

00:07:01.660 office to pick up a passport application and you'll see that they're there in english and in

00:07:06.140 french and then the signs explaining things and the prices and everything it's all bilingual but

00:07:11.580 you're in drayton valley alberta where there might be you know a handful of people that speak french

00:07:16.380 but it goes beyond that right and and this bilingualism costs us a lot of money um definitely

00:07:23.340 has an impact on our productivity but it goes beyond that right so why why did Carney say that

00:07:28.420 he expected the president of Air Canada to speak in French well the reason Air Canada is a private

00:07:34.140 company it started out as a crown corporation but in 1989 or somewhere around there and went full

00:07:39.420 private it's a full private company you can go to double you know you can buy Air Canada on the

00:07:45.020 Toronto Stock Exchange it's it is not a public company or sorry it's a public company it's not

00:07:49.680 private but it is not a government corporation but it falls under federal jurisdiction rules

00:07:58.600 because it's a transportation company then it has to follow transportation rules that are managed by

00:08:04.860 the government right so that's why when you get on the plane they do the safety briefing they do it

00:08:08.680 in both languages french and english so companies like air canada fall under those rules west jet

00:08:14.560 via rail but what other kinds of companies fall under those kinds of rules the banking industry

00:08:20.000 is regulated federally which means that banks in this country have to offer services in both

00:08:25.180 languages the communications industry is uh federally regulated in fact i'm wondering

00:08:31.240 uh do we here at the western standard have to provide services in both languages i don't think

00:08:37.820 so because we're sort of uh maybe we do i don't know but i guarantee you that rogers and tell us

00:08:43.260 and other big companies like that that are federally regulated have to provide services

00:08:48.300 in both language as do banks you you see where i'm going right and so to to so there's one thing to

00:08:54.940 be federally regulated to offer services in both language i think it's going a little too far to

00:09:00.860 expect that the president of one of those companies has to be perfectly bilingual and offer his

00:09:06.300 condolences in a tragedy in both languages and i'm sure he was going to do it and i'm sure there

00:09:11.180 were press releases and statements in both languages but as he spoke it wasn't done in

00:09:15.260 both languages but lastly the thing i want to talk about is the hypocrisy of somebody like carney

00:09:22.700 uh criticizing somebody else because did you see in the clip what carney does right he opens

00:09:27.020 his statement in english but then he switches to french and what did he switch to french

00:09:32.140 he mentioned the names of the pilots and he you know and they'll they'll use token words merci or

00:09:37.660 beaucoup or whatever they'll they'll throw a little tidbit in french trust me mark carney is

00:09:42.940 not bilingual and and i mean he can he can barely read something that's given to him in french and

00:09:48.620 he'll do it and he butchers it but he's not you're not going to have a conversation one-on-one with

00:09:53.340 mark carney in french you're certainly not going to have a conversation with the governor general

00:09:57.820 of canada and a whole bunch of other dignitaries and and politicians right so there's a double

00:10:03.100 standard there that was there today that i don't like in in that video and lastly i want to i want

00:10:08.400 to talk about this one other thing so i'm so i'm a francophone and and but i'm being very blunt here

00:10:14.700 i think that bilingualism in this country has gone too far and i think today that was an example of

00:10:20.240 that or yesterday you know this is more pandering to quebec maybe maybe it might even lead to the

00:10:26.180 fact that uh they'll appoint somebody they'll force the guy from air canada to resign only so

00:10:30.820 they can appoint somebody else who's more bilingual, which is my last point I want to

00:10:35.060 talk about on this is that that is one of the other constraints of having a bilingual country

00:10:41.400 that annoys me, which is a lot of positions, whether they're in senior government or in the

00:10:46.760 courts or, you know, deputy ministers, the army, the RCMP, crown corporations, stuff like that.

00:10:53.060 There's a bilingualism, bilingual requirement that I think is unfair. And as an example, 1.00

00:10:59.880 you will not climb the ranks in this organization in in the canadian military if you're not bilingual 1.00

00:11:05.120 if you're if you if you go to uh saint jean you do your uh you go to the military college there

00:11:11.680 and uh you graduate you'll if you're anglophone they'll make you take enough french to just pass

00:11:17.160 but if you don't progress and your french really doesn't improve you've limited yourself so

00:11:22.100 it's another form of discrimination i think in this country uh forcing everybody to be bilinguals

00:11:28.280 anyways, call in, let me know what your thoughts are on that. I've spoken a lot, but again, as I've

00:11:35.780 said before, this is your show, right? So call in, you see the number there on the screen.

00:11:41.180 We don't have a, I'll repeat it again. We don't have a switchboard. So if you call,

00:11:45.860 let me know your name, where you're calling from, where you want to talk about. In some instances,

00:11:49.540 I'll keep you on the line. In other instances, I'll ask you to please hang up so we can take

00:11:53.800 another caller but while we're waiting for a call i will uh if you want to put that uh post on the

00:11:59.880 screen please john i got a comment from somebody says uh my main issue so it's a from prairie

00:12:06.340 kozak um says my main issue with bilingualism is that it forces the federal government to operate

00:12:12.220 on barely 20 of the available talent pool exactly that's that's what i just said right uh whether

00:12:17.540 it's the military senior jobs senior jobs right you're not going to get a you're not going to job

00:12:21.980 you won't get a job as a deputy minister in canada uh federally if you're not fluent in both

00:12:28.140 languages which is which is a shame and i and i guess your reference there to 20 is about

00:12:33.260 the the distribution of people who are bilingual in this country hey they could make it they could 0.97

00:12:38.300 say you need to speak multiple languages in order to get a senior role i'd be okay with that right

00:12:43.100 if you're gonna be uh working at um i don't know foreign affairs and you want to roll as a diplomat

00:12:48.620 then sure it's appropriate to you know you want to be uh posted in poland you might as well

00:12:53.340 put a requirement that you need to speak polish and english but to automatically make every job

00:12:58.940 past a certain level be bilingual i think that's uh i agree that restricts um it shrinks the talent

00:13:06.220 pool especially in the military in the military and in the rcmp it really really really really

00:13:11.900 shrinks the talent pool all our all our senior commanders and senior officers are uh have to be

00:13:17.660 bilingual um any other so yeah don't be shy folks give me a call uh and then and then we'll go from

00:13:24.620 there but thanks for that comment um so uh what else happened while i was gone which is an

00:13:31.420 interesting thing so i i've been on the road like i said doing these speaking engagements they take

00:13:35.980 about three hours every night they've been well attended uh um but you know i get a little bit

00:13:43.340 disconnected while i was there um one of the cool things that happened while i wanted uh was when i

00:13:49.900 was on the road is uh keith wilson came to one of our events uh always a pleasure chatting with

00:13:55.900 keith wilson you guys know keith right he's uh he's uh an alberta lawyer from uh up in the edmonton

00:14:02.940 there area became popular during the um the trucking convoy you often see him alongside uh

00:14:09.740 tamara lich and uh he's kind of a i think he's officially counseled for the alberta prosperity

00:14:16.380 project so he'll be one of the people um strategizing on how to deal with this injunction

00:14:23.660 that's uh that's approaching here on april 7th but the the more interesting news that i learned

00:14:28.380 this week is that keith uh is going to debate jason kenney in the coming weeks and uh that's

00:14:36.780 going to be awesome there's going to be so good on jason for agreeing to do this uh and good on

00:14:42.780 keith for agreeing to do this and they're going to debate in edmonton and they're going to debate

00:14:47.980 down here in calgary so i don't have the specifics maybe john can find something while i'm talking

00:14:52.700 on that but that's going to be definitely an interesting thing uh keith came to one of my

00:14:59.260 events one of our events he was there in leduc on uh tuesday night and uh we put him on the spot and

00:15:07.260 we had keith we asked keith to come up and talk and keith brought up some really interesting uh

00:15:14.220 perspective that i hadn't thought of uh focused around the conflict in uh in iran right now and

00:15:21.580 the problems with the strait of hormuz right so that's still ongoing over there um and you know

00:15:28.060 the full flow of oil hasn't resumed yet. So we're all seeing that. We're seeing the problems here

00:15:35.020 in Alberta. I paid as much as $1.79 for gas this week, which is crazy. But then we were talking,

00:15:47.820 I guess right now, New Zealand is almost to the point of having to ration fuels like gasoline and

00:15:54.380 diesel and jet fuel and so is new zealand and so is a few other countries right a few other countries

00:15:58.380 that did this weird transition to green and went too fast on it and shut down some of their

00:16:03.820 industries or or slowed them down similar to what we were trying to do here in in our country those

00:16:10.220 those places are hurting luckily we still have uh you know we have five refineries here in in

00:16:16.300 alberta so we're there's no shortage there won't be any shortage of of the fuels and the but you

00:16:22.300 You know, we're paying a higher price because the commodity is traded on the free markets.

00:16:27.380 But then Keith also brought up that now the rest of the world is starting to panic because the other thing that travels through the Strait of Hormuz are things like fertilizer.

00:16:38.220 And I hadn't really paused to think about that.

00:16:41.620 Again, we're blessed here in Canada with a ton of good fertilizers, right?

00:16:45.860 We have potash in Saskatchewan.

00:16:48.140 And then here in Alberta, in the process of producing our natural gas, maybe you've heard the term sour natural gas.

00:16:57.400 We refer to it as sweet and sour natural gas, and the sour natural gas is the gas that has hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide in it in large quantities, but it mostly refers to hydrogen sulfide.

00:17:09.180 And here in Alberta, we take out that sour component, that toxic hydrogen sulfide, and then we turn it into sulfur, elemental sulfur.

00:17:17.020 Some of you who are old enough remember driving by Crossfield north of Calgary maybe 20 years ago

00:17:21.820 when you'd see the big yellow piles along the highway there. Well, that was Sulphur. We used

00:17:26.700 to produce too much Sulphur, more than the markets needed. So we would actually just pour it in

00:17:33.340 blocks and stockpile it there. And there's some big stockpiles in Vancouver and places like that.

00:17:37.740 But over time, the world caught up and sulfur became a commodity that became rarer and rarer.

00:17:46.540 And so sulfur is used to make fertilizer and it's also used to make sulfuric acid,

00:17:51.980 which is one of the most important inorganic chemicals in the world.

00:17:55.660 Anyway, so we have an abundance of sulfur and we have an abundance of potash and ammonia, right?

00:18:01.660 Ammonia is pretty simple to make. It's nitrogen and hydrogen combined in the right way.

00:18:06.300 so you know three things that that the world needs in in big quantities natural gas oil and

00:18:12.780 fertilizers it they make the world go round and now they're all becoming in quick short supply

00:18:18.620 and guess who has all of those things but but we could and we could we have so much of it that we

00:18:24.060 could produce even more and we could supply some to the rest of the world so it's very uh keith

00:18:30.380 brought up a good point but it's very frustrating to um to see that we've been uh unprepared for

00:18:39.180 some of these events we should you know i i said that the election of donald trump should have been

00:18:43.580 a wake-up call what's happening in the gulf is a way should be another wake-up call and i hope that

00:18:50.300 we um you know we'll we'll take that wake-up call to and and seriously and and keep uh and i'll come

00:18:57.180 back to that keep promoting our industries just going to go through a couple of comments here

00:19:07.500 what we got here

00:19:10.860 uh i'm a senior that relies on canada post for communications over the miles

00:19:15.820 and provinces with family a friend could you suggest an alternative for my or our letters and

00:19:23.500 cards please uh well the internet you can email things i i mean that's a question uh that's a

00:19:32.700 question that comes up a lot when uh when people are uh you know with with canada post going on

00:19:38.060 strike uh several times in the last couple of years uh is well yeah i i think i answered the

00:19:46.380 question i mean the alternative is the alternatives are all there um it's it's it's the internet or

00:19:52.060 it's alternatives like Purolator and whatnot and and I think uh in the short term Canada Post has

00:19:59.100 to realize that the services they're offering are a little bit too expensive and and I'm not saying

00:20:03.420 go away completely Canada Post but maybe you know once a week uh instead of uh daily delivery we do

00:20:09.580 have a call on the line all right uh let's let's go to the caller name and where are you calling

00:20:14.460 from please. Hello Marty, it's Randy from Phony Flames. Hey Randy, how's it going? Good. Great

00:20:23.400 podcast, intelligent discussion. There's no wasted words and no fluff. I love it. So a few years ago

00:20:29.840 I visited my brother-in-law, a business owner in Peace River. He's a lifelong grandson, Rachel

00:20:36.220 Notley fan. So we're walking across the Espring path on the new vehicle bridge across the 90

00:20:42.580 He had an interesting comment, he said that Conservatives have been talking about building

00:20:48.580 this bridge for two decades and the NDP got it done during their short term in power.

00:20:53.580 They've also shut down the coal plants, even the new low emission key pills three.

00:20:59.580 They began the carbon tax, even without running on it during the election.

00:21:04.580 And Justin Trudeau said that that gave him the courage and impetus to introduce the federal carbon tax.

00:21:10.580 So my brother-in-law says the NDP gets things done, and we're caring dearly for this debt.

00:21:17.060 And here we are in 2026, we can't even get a beneficial Alberta pension plan.

00:21:22.540 Even though the Premier ran on it, has twice been given a membership mandate as per our

00:21:28.240 Western system, plus last year she got positive feedback from the Alberta Next panel.

00:21:34.340 I also believe, like I know she's really interested in referendums, but a referendum on the APT

00:21:40.580 while being noble i don't think it'll work out because legacy media will control with no

00:21:45.480 outcomes it feels like the ndp are steering the bus yeah no i i uh no great comment and uh

00:21:55.060 i i i agree i'm the i don't agree with the policies a lot of times of the ndp or the

00:22:04.100 liberals or the socialists but i do agree that the ndp in some instances act pretty quickly

00:22:10.400 And it is a warning that I've made to maybe we're leading to that, right?

00:22:15.740 It's a warning that it's a part that I don't like of, say, Danielle Smith, who's over constantly studying a problem and saying, I'm doing my due diligence.

00:22:23.340 I'm doing my due diligence and never progressing somewhere.

00:22:26.000 And I think she's genuine in that approach.

00:22:28.020 She's she's trying to do the right thing because she knows she's going to criticize if she doesn't check off all the boxes.

00:22:34.160 but on the other side yes if if uh if nenshi gets re-elected he's not going to do that due

00:22:40.740 diligence he's going to fly with his mandate and we're going to see changes quickly is that kind

00:22:45.280 of where you were heading with your comments or yeah yeah okay cool um no i appreciate the call

00:22:52.300 randy um anything else or no no that's good thank you all right yeah yeah thank you um i'm just

00:23:00.580 gonna you know while we wait for another call i'm just gonna go to uh one comment there you know

00:23:05.780 somebody said marty i think the best thing for canada can do is to go to a single operating

00:23:09.860 language listen that's not what i was advocating for in terms of bilingualism right i i okay i do

00:23:17.860 agree that there should that i'm not going to dispute the fact that the country is bilingual

00:23:22.180 and i'm not going to dispute the fact that uh we need to offer certain services in both languages

00:23:27.700 as frustrating as I as it is I think the house of commons the proceedings of the house of commons

00:23:32.740 will be will continue to be in both languages laws will be translated and I can read the laws

00:23:37.140 in both languages and so forth and so forth I agree with that but I think we need to get reasonable

00:23:42.100 and and reduce the requirements as an example I don't think it should be a requirement to be

00:23:46.980 perfectly bilingual to become a senior officer in the Canadian army I don't think it should be an 1.00

00:23:51.620 absolute requirement that every post office across the country have somebody on staff who can speak

00:23:56.580 french right i think i think i think we need to apply it in a much more reasonable way because

00:24:02.100 it's getting out of hand on us and i but which is one thing but i also think um that it is being

00:24:09.220 used like we saw it this week i think it is being used often as a as a disguised way to transfer

00:24:17.460 benefits to quebec so that you know and and and that's that that's kind of the angle i was going

00:24:23.140 with that i mean the fact that um back to the jobs right most of the senior jobs go to quebecers and

00:24:29.220 i think it's a form of discrimination that benefits quebec a lot more than anybody else so i that's

00:24:35.700 what i was advocating for i'm not advocating for a unilingual country could be worse you got

00:24:40.740 countries like uh i think switzerland has four official language actually that'd be an interesting

00:24:45.140 comment i don't know if somebody knows that how many countries in the world operate in two languages

00:24:49.780 um i i don't know how many actually interestingly enough um the the the pilots that uh that flow

00:25:00.900 that flew one of them was a quebecer but he had to learn english because in the airline industry

00:25:06.340 that's an example where uh around the world english is the official language of uh of of

00:25:12.420 air traffic right every pilot in the world has to learn to speak english to be able to communicate

00:25:18.580 with the towers and places like that i mean that's a real problem right you're traveling

00:25:22.740 you're crossing borders you're going all around the world so if you want to be an international

00:25:27.140 pilot you have to speak both languages if you're just gonna i guess if you're uh fly for chinese

00:25:31.940 airlines and you just fly domestically then i imagine they just talk to each other in chinese

00:25:36.580 on those flights but uh um yeah who knows um well let's stay um let's stay on let's stay on uh on

00:25:45.780 uh paul or not on politics let's stay on energy a little bit uh i saw yesterday uh press release

00:25:54.100 coming out that uh let me get the wording exactly here or maybe john can find the press release on

00:26:02.660 uh can or on danielle smith and ottawa uh an agreement in principle on uh methane emissions

00:26:12.900 another another one of those things that i want to unpack right so um what's what what's that

00:26:21.540 agreement in principle again it's apparently we are expected to reduce our methane emissions in

00:26:29.300 in in canada but be careful when you look at that right first they started with carbon dioxide

00:26:35.860 emissions right so everybody had to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the way and that's to me

00:26:41.940 that's bogus science right carbon dioxide is a trace element almost inert it's it's in in very

00:26:48.740 small quantities in the atmosphere and they accused it of being the culprit behind climate change even

00:26:56.020 though it's a minuscule amount so then they passed the carbon tax and the carbon tax became immensely

00:27:00.980 unpopular and Carney had to reverse the carbon tax right he used almost those exact words it's

00:27:07.620 It's an unpopular tax, and we're reversing it.

00:27:10.220 The reason is it was unpopular is because they couldn't achieve what they were going to do with the carbon tax.

00:27:15.880 And at first, they thought it was convenient.

00:27:18.560 We're just going to charge the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide a tax, which happens to be Alberta, right?

00:27:25.080 Hey, how convenient that the biggest producers of carbon dioxide emission is Alberta.

00:27:29.640 And so let's pass a carbon tax across the country, but we're mostly going to collect it from Alberta.

00:27:35.700 Turns out it's an unpopular thing.

00:27:37.280 so they reverse it. So we're positively affected by that. They're addicted to the revenues and to

00:27:43.860 the money and to this insane narrative that they're going to control climate. So they need

00:27:50.300 some other boogeyman. So now they're turning their attention to methane. So now they're going to try

00:27:56.020 and make us believe that methane, and methane, by the way, is just natural gas, right? And most

00:28:01.180 natural gas, we burned it into a furnace, and then it becomes carbon dioxide and water vapor,

00:28:06.260 but some methane also escapes you know as an example when you're fueling your car in california

00:28:12.900 they've been doing this for a long time right when you go to fuel your car with gasoline in

00:28:17.380 california you have this little vacuum pump there that's making sure that when you open your cap

00:28:22.660 there's not uh leakage of vapors going up into atmosphere that's what they're doing there they're

00:28:28.260 trying to capture methane and other uh volatile compounds so yesterday carney and smith announced

00:28:35.060 this understanding so a month you know six months ago they their carbon tax is back on the is off

00:28:42.180 the table but now we're replacing it with this uh methane equivalent which um again conveniently is

00:28:50.180 mostly a problem in alberta so they're mostly going to try and get money out of alberta and

00:28:54.420 i'll tell you this the one i'll tell you very pragmatically the thing that scares me about

00:28:58.580 this is that they want to go they want to reduce methane back to like pre-2013 levels by some year

00:29:08.580 in the future right well this isn't new okay we've been trying to reduce methane in alberta forever

00:29:16.020 for as long as i remember it's always been something that in my line of work we had to do

00:29:21.620 remember the good old days when you drive around in alberta especially at night and you'd see

00:29:26.260 flares everywhere. That's because we had pump jacks all over the countryside. And every time

00:29:30.580 there's a pump jack, the pump jack's also making a little bit of methane, right? A little bit of

00:29:34.120 natural gas. And we used to use the natural gas to run the engines that ran the pump jacks. If

00:29:39.100 you ever went by there, you'd see those aero engines just chugging along. And then somebody

00:29:43.060 said, well, we got to capture that methane. Instead of just burning it, we got to capture it. So we

00:29:47.040 went through all sorts of efforts, right? We built pipelines. I mean, and the methane we were burning

00:29:51.080 was uneconomic and trust me if ever it's economic to get to to preserve a resource the industry will

00:29:57.620 do it like you don't have to tell an industry to do it if it's if something's worth something they

00:30:02.460 will capture it if it's not worth anything they will dispose of it as a waste so this flaring that

00:30:08.560 was going on everywhere we reduced it drive around the countryside right now you barely see any

00:30:12.700 flares uh because we've found new technologies and and and we've gotten the emissions so low

00:30:20.300 that um i don't know how they're going to keep lowering them at some point you lower them so

00:30:25.600 much that it becomes uh uh diminishing returns we call it so i i just saw that note that that

00:30:32.960 announcement i still don't understand why danielle is so set in collaborating with

00:30:40.940 Carney I I mean she's convinced that she can get us a better deal and so they made that announcement

00:30:47.840 yesterday which hides the fact that the MOU and and uh the MOU that was signed uh you know just

00:30:55.060 before uh the new year there the MOU that was signed in October parts of that MOU come into

00:30:59.920 effect on April 1st on April 1st the industrial carbon tax in Alberta goes up and it doesn't

00:31:06.520 matter if it's an industrial carbon tax or a commercial or a private citizen's commercial

00:31:11.380 carbon tax, it taxes, it taxes, it taxes, and somebody's going to pass it on to us.

00:31:16.340 So if industry has to pay an increased carbon tax starting on April 1st, somehow or other,

00:31:21.120 it's going to trickle its way down to us. And we're already, I mean, we're paying $1.70 for

00:31:27.420 a liter of gasoline at the pump, and now the cost is going to go up on April 1st.

00:31:32.620 that makes no sense to me i have no idea so the mou so so the mou was a nothing burger it resulted

00:31:38.540 in us suddenly getting suckered into increasing our uh commercial uh carbon tax and now we got

00:31:45.580 this additional um whatever statement of understanding that we're going to reduce

00:31:51.900 our methane emission and meanwhile we're no closer to getting a pipeline i haven't seen anybody step

00:31:56.780 up and start building a pipeline uh anywhere uh anytime soon because it's a victory we'll come

00:32:02.780 back to the pipeline all right got another call in the line uh name where are you calling from please

00:32:08.060 hi marty it's pete from sturgeon county hi pete sturgeon county close to your refinery or not

00:32:15.660 very close to the refinery i live in the country so really close to there i'm floating because

00:32:21.660 i got a question for you and the question is do you really trust danielle like let me preface

00:32:26.140 that i i like danielle i think she's done a lot of good for alberta but i'm not so sure i trust

00:32:32.320 where she's going in the direction that she's going the reason why i say that is because i'm

00:32:36.800 originally from quebec and i was born and raised there i voted in the first referendum i lived

00:32:43.540 through a lot of this garbage i was glad to leave there because i grew up english in quebec we had

00:32:48.720 the french police come around and uh not a good time i joined the service i ended up in alberta

00:32:55.100 I fell in love with Alberta, and I chose to stay here.

00:32:59.540 And so right now, I think Alberta, I made a mistake in 1980.

00:33:03.220 I don't plan on repeating that mistake.

00:33:05.920 And, yeah, right now, I just think it's time for us to get out of Dodge.

00:33:11.680 Stay on the line, Pete.

00:33:13.460 So just clarify, what was the mistake you made in 1980?

00:33:17.260 How do you, was it that you voted the wrong way or you didn't fight harder?

00:33:21.800 Or what do you think?

00:33:23.480 Oh, I voted the wrong way.

00:33:25.100 I should have listened to some friends and wrote yes to leave.

00:33:28.500 I voted no because when you get in that referendum ballot, that referendum box, or whatever you want to call the poll,

00:33:34.560 you stand there for a little extra longer, and then you start to think, holy cow, I have an effect here that could create such huge,

00:33:45.900 like an earthquake within Canada and the Federation that, you know, you sit there an extra minute to wonder what you're going to do.

00:33:53.140 well i voted no then now i would most definitely go for sure thanks for that comment i mean i just

00:34:00.660 got a bit of a goose bump because you're saying something that i've been warning people about

00:34:04.500 right you've heard me say on the show that collecting signatures right now to to trigger

00:34:08.740 a referendum i think that's the easy part and we got a lot of people i think convincing getting

00:34:14.420 around the fear that you just mentioned exactly when you're in that box that ballot room or that

00:34:20.420 and you're going to check off. That's a bigger decision. So thanks for confirming that, that

00:34:24.960 some people had cold feet and, and, and, and I'm glad you've changed your mind. So back to your

00:34:30.600 original question. My answer regarding Danielle Smith really changes from almost from day to day

00:34:37.840 to day. You can ask me how I feel about her one day and I'll say, I love her and I love the direction

00:34:42.000 she's taking us. Then she'll do something. And then, and then, and then you asked me the same

00:34:46.180 question the next day and and my answer is different right i'm having a hard time figuring

00:34:51.680 out where she stands i'll tell you a couple things i mean i'm disappointed in her from a 0.99

00:34:57.180 as a fellow as a conservative i some days i really don't think she's being very conservative

00:35:02.100 and with some very specific things right our government is still too big and she's struggling

00:35:06.940 to bring it under control and shrink it the fact that we run these big deficits that the

00:35:12.000 that the spending seems out of control that part upsets me um but i understand that but then she'll

00:35:20.200 do something like she did yesterday where um you know she uh she she does move the the province in 0.96

00:35:27.780 the right direction generally speaking right uh so yesterday she she passed a law that uh if you're

00:35:35.460 a criminal and a repeat offender or whatever and you have a bracelet or an ankle bracelet or

00:35:39.740 something and then you get closer to somebody else there's going to be an app and an alarm and

00:35:44.340 and and you know I haven't gotten into the detail but she's getting tougher on crime let's say so I

00:35:49.480 like that she's getting tougher on immigration she's getting tougher she's protecting the 0.91

00:35:53.480 children right I absolutely love that she's protecting our children by by making it harder 0.63

00:35:59.100 for parents to transition their kids and do things like that so you know what I'm saying so on a lot

00:36:05.120 of things she's going in the right path and I definitely do not want to slow her down when

00:36:08.700 she's doing that because it's all useful i wish she was more conservative and taking control of 1.00

00:36:13.920 the of of the finances and stuff like that but ultimately to your last question to your actual

00:36:20.800 question do i trust her at this point i don't trust too many politicians so um so i i and i and

00:36:30.440 i i put more weight in a politician's actions than i do in their words which is why i love

00:36:36.540 Donald Trump so does that answer your question let me add so do you trust her

00:36:40.040 or what's your thought on it well my first impression of Danielle was she was 0.99

00:36:44.640 a fantastic premier and I still think she is and I agree with what you're

00:36:49.420 saying but she's flip-flopping a lot and I really believe that originally what

00:36:54.600 happened was she created all these lines in the sand that she gave the carny you 0.79

00:36:59.620 know you cross this line and we're gonna do this there'll be a price to pay we

00:37:02.560 never knew what that price was and she did that what about three times I think I think she cornered 1.00

00:37:08.240 herself with the AGM in November and she had to come up with something it was either that or really

00:37:13.720 challenge Carney and uh she she came they both came up with the MOU thing which we all know

00:37:19.700 is absolute garbage it'll never happen and all it's going to do is raise our taxes further and

00:37:25.120 increase inflation so no I uh right now it's not only that she's trying to do the same thing that 0.97

00:37:32.160 like did which was uh with the pops quebecois which is the nation within the nation it doesn't

00:37:38.760 work and what happens there because i live through this is they'll make concessions and as soon as

00:37:44.920 the party leaves so once the pops quebecois was gone then they they go back and revert back to

00:37:51.020 their normal ways of doing business and it just doesn't work and if that's the road that danielle

00:37:54.940 is going to go she's in for a surprise and so are a lot of albertans yes and it's sad because i

00:38:00.320 I really think Alberta has a massive opportunity to do something good here. 0.78

00:38:04.940 Why not take a maiden voyage, you know?

00:38:07.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:07.940 No, stay on the line because I want to ask you a couple of questions.

00:38:11.740 But, you know, back to Danielle, there is one good thing that I really like that she gave us in the last little while, though,

00:38:18.600 and it is this Citizens Initiative Act, right?

00:38:22.060 So she gave us the tool to do this petition, and that'll be a big test for me, for her.

00:38:30.320 if if she totally respects the law that she passed the way she said she will recently you

00:38:36.380 know if we collect 177 or whatever you know 200 000 signatures and she's like yeah i'll give you

00:38:41.540 the referendum that'll be that'll be a step in the right direction but uh i just want to go back i

00:38:47.860 i noticed the way you say party quebecois so you do speak french and i just want to ask you we

00:38:52.220 started the show talking about bilingualism um a couple of questions did you you do you still

00:38:59.040 speak French so you kept your French it was if you kept your French was it a

00:39:02.580 choice or was it because you felt that or or because the government made you do

00:39:07.080 it why'd you keep your French oh I think that was more of a choice yeah it was

00:39:12.120 also beaten into us yeah not to mention I was a kid then so yeah if you want to

00:39:18.900 go with some French girls whatever you had to learn the language right so 1.00

00:39:22.440 you're so you're pragmatic about it yeah yeah getting back to what you were saying 0.98

00:39:28.200 earlier with regards to the hypocrites because i'm going to call them what they are they are 0.92

00:39:32.520 hypocrites when we were growing up oh there's another interesting one too you're probably

00:39:37.900 going to hear soon a lot of stuff that there's going to be a lot of businesses that are going 0.66

00:39:41.240 to be anxious to want to leave alberta and so on and that this is what happened in quebec and so

00:39:46.100 on so forth but the reality is in quebec at the time was there were a lot of head offices in

00:39:51.920 montreal and they came up with bill 101 and it was bill 101 which was the language stuff

00:39:58.120 that actually caused a lot of the head offices to move to toronto it wasn't so much the referendum

00:40:04.320 so i i don't buy that that logic that's uh at that time they shoved us all into like the english

00:40:11.440 people into like one or two schools that was it and even when you wanted correspondence in english

00:40:17.200 they would send you everything in french so you would have to do two tax forms in quebec

00:40:21.920 You would have to do the federal tax and the Quebec tax, and it was all in French.

00:40:26.700 And so, yeah, even though you would ask for it in English, you wouldn't get it in English half the time.

00:40:32.160 Yeah, no, thank you.

00:40:33.440 Okay, well, that's awesome.

00:40:34.680 Yeah, Quebec, you know, great point on the language.

00:40:38.980 So you're saying the language law scared more businesses away than the referendum.

00:40:43.340 I probably agree with that.

00:40:45.060 And it does bring up an interesting point.

00:40:47.240 And Quebec is almost officially French only and goes out of its way to make life miserable for Anglophones over there. 0.94

00:40:56.500 So they play the card both ways, right?

00:40:58.340 Locally at home, they promote French and then discriminate against the English.

00:41:05.080 And then federally, they scream when they don't get their way.

00:41:10.120 So I appreciate the call, Pete.

00:41:11.640 Thanks.

00:41:12.820 Is he gone, John, or is he?

00:41:15.540 Oh, he's still here.

00:41:16.300 here hey just last lastly for the other people listening how's the how's the

00:41:20.060 independence movement in your neck of the woods you see a lot of flags a lot

00:41:23.620 of pop-up stations what's the what's the general sense in that part because we

00:41:27.820 always hear bad things about Edmonton kind of being lost cause I think I'm

00:41:34.240 into lost actually it's pretty quiet it seems to be subdued though it seems to

00:41:41.260 picking up. And yeah, I'm hopeful. I'm really hopeful for Alberta because I think it would be

00:41:48.380 amazing to create your own country. And this is the best province in the country as far as I'm

00:41:54.780 concerned. I got here during Ralph Klein, then I was posted away and I fought to get back and

00:41:59.980 Earl Ralphie was good. Yeah. So yeah, I think Alberta has a lot of opportunity. 1.00

00:42:06.140 Excellent. All right. Thanks for calling Pete. I'm just reading some of the comments. Somebody

00:42:10.300 said i said new zealand twice i don't know what that means uh maybe i was referring to new zealand

00:42:14.940 and australia and i said new zealand twice uh those are the two countries right now that are uh

00:42:20.860 getting really really close to having to ration uh fuel and things like that um because of their

00:42:28.060 bad decisions let's hey just be you know staying on the topic of danielle another interesting

00:42:33.500 announcement uh that came out of uh the smith government this week um the province plans to

00:42:40.940 close edmonton's remaining safe consumption sites and others uh as it shifts towards recovery focused

00:42:47.740 models so i guess that means that hand they finally realized and somehow it was amazing

00:42:53.820 that governments take so long to realize what most of us take for granted as common sense

00:43:00.460 who thought that handing out hard drugs to people was a good way to help them rehabilitate like i i

00:43:07.100 i i'm just glad they're uh they're slowly reversing uh that that whole bad policy um

00:43:15.980 where well so i got uh all right well let's uh i gotta okay well i still got a couple of topics

00:43:23.980 so uh give me a call folks otherwise you're gonna make me uh you're gonna stretch my ability to uh

00:43:29.420 to talk on point on one topic um a quick update on the gun compensation program we've talked about

00:43:37.500 this one quite a bit in the last few weeks uh and we'll maybe this will be the last time we talk

00:43:43.740 about it in this form in uh in this format but remember the the minister the i call him the

00:43:50.620 chick monk i don't even know his name actually i gotta be careful gotta be careful about my

00:43:54.460 statements online now because bill c9 passed in the house of commons this week so it went through

00:44:01.100 uh passed his third reading right the uh the supposed anti-hate bill passed so now it's just

00:44:07.100 going to the senate which i think it's just going to be a rubber stamp and that's going to be a very

00:44:12.140 impactful uh bill for people like me for others here at the western standard for me as a private

00:44:18.860 count on x and whatever uh i have to start watching what i say because i don't want some

00:44:24.280 cop knocking on my door in the near future because of a post i've made online and uh and and speaking

00:44:31.540 of cops knocking on the door i will i'll come back to that one but i got a caller on the line

00:44:36.760 go ahead name where are you calling from hello mr marty this is gail calling from red deer area

00:44:44.460 From where?

00:44:46.540 Red Deer.

00:44:47.440 Oh, Red Deer.

00:44:48.100 I was just there yesterday.

00:44:50.880 Yes, I'm one of the blessed people who lives in the middle of everywhere.

00:44:57.580 Right on, right on.

00:44:59.140 So what's on your mind?

00:45:01.320 I mean, because I know that you are very proficient in explaining things in simplistic terms,

00:45:12.180 please educate me in why within a 12-hour period gas on the other side of the world has an issue

00:45:22.580 and our gas at the tank go up i know it has something to do with the economic price in

00:45:30.960 futures and gas and all of that but i need a very simplistic answer because i'm very simplistic

00:45:38.880 it's unfortunately it's supply and demand and um the world needs a hundred million barrels of oil

00:45:49.240 every day and because of the and and and because of what's happening in the gulf right now the

00:45:56.560 supply is reduced by about 30 million barrels like it's a big big drop and um and because there's a

00:46:08.340 big drop everybody's uh stepping over each other trying to buy oil and the sellers are jacking up

00:46:16.040 their prices so as we just said you got countries like the boats are stopped the oil is not flowing

00:46:22.640 so whoever it's a market right now so someone some guys like i'll offer you 80 bucks and the

00:46:27.800 other guy goes i'll offer you 85 and i'll offer you 90 so the price is just going up and up and

00:46:32.560 up and up and even though we're half a world away and we make more oil than we need here

00:46:39.920 our guys i don't blame them for doing this they are selling their oil at a higher price so some

00:46:46.160 of the oil that's being produced here now is going to make its way to houston and make its way to

00:46:50.800 vancouver and get on boat and go to those buyers who are paying premium for it and because they're

00:46:56.560 paying a premium for it our guys locally are having to compete for it so the refinery that

00:47:01.920 makes our gasoline it's a competitor it has to buy oil from cnrl or synovus or suncor or whoever

00:47:09.520 they have you know some refineries have their own oil but but but some don't and so the it's it's

00:47:14.880 just what's happening right now and we're all uh i wish there was a control on it but at the end of

00:47:20.320 the day i'm a libertarian so i take the pros and the cons i'm happy when competition i can't be

00:47:26.000 happy when the competition makes things go in my way so once in a while extra you know if there

00:47:30.160 when there's someday we'll go back to having too much oil and when there's too much oil one guy

00:47:34.400 will they'll they'll they'll basically dump the oil and it'll go down in prices and i'll i'll

00:47:39.520 benefit so it i i don't know if that answers your question but it's pure supply and demand at this

00:47:45.120 point actually that is very good clarification so basically they are bidding on future supply yes

00:47:56.000 yeah okay yeah no and okay and so and sometimes some people will say well the oil is being produced

00:48:04.040 today will get sold in three you know in three weeks from now sure but yeah they're they're

00:48:09.140 they're anticipating and and vice versa as fast as it can go up it can go down uh i i worked on

00:48:14.920 uh i think i talked about this on one of the shows uh earlier um you know a barrel of oil that goes

00:48:20.640 into oh you're in red deer but you know if you're closer to hardesty that's where the start of the

00:48:25.980 Keystone Pipeline is, a barrel of oil that goes in the Keystone Pipeline at Hardesty,

00:48:31.220 it takes about 27 days for it to get all the way down to Houston. So somebody in Houston is

00:48:35.360 ordering that barrel of oil like weeks in advance and paying a price, trying to anticipate what

00:48:41.420 they're going to make with that. So it's very complicated. And yeah, it's easy to kind of want

00:48:45.920 to blame them for gouging us and profiteering, which they are. I mean, you know, they are,

00:48:51.600 but we live in a free market and that means sometimes uh things don't go necessarily our

00:48:56.120 way but great question hope uh actually yesterday in red deer i i tweeted out about this i mean i

00:49:01.140 paid a buck 44 for uh gasoline at the costco and then as i was driving around and i went to my

00:49:07.960 event and red deer i saw it as high as a hundred as a buck 76 so when there's a gap like that in

00:49:13.360 one geography then you know that somebody's trying to gouge somebody else right so uh like anything

00:49:19.400 else shop it around folks yeah thanks for the call great question okay thank you so much yeah

00:49:24.840 unless you have a follow-up well actually i did um okay so i need an education on the difference

00:49:34.500 between sweet gas and solar gas and i have one oil pump on my property and two gas lines okay

00:49:42.680 But I'm just kind of curious at what is flowing through and if there's ever a time that I could take a straw and just spice it out what I need rather than going to town and taking it.

00:49:56.060 Yeah, yeah, no, never do that.

00:49:58.540 All right, I'll let you hang up and I'll answer that question again real quick.

00:50:02.300 Yeah, thank you.

00:50:02.860 so yeah we you know so we in alberta we produce a lot of natural gas right and when we refer to

00:50:10.220 natural gas it simply means the gas is coming out of the ground but what's coming out of the ground

00:50:14.460 the natural gas that comes out of the ground for us is a whole mixture of stuff so it's generally

00:50:20.940 speaking it's methane ethane propane butane and some heavier stuff it has uh often has helium

00:50:29.340 nitrogen carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide and sometimes even other things and it even has

00:50:35.900 mercury it has also so it's a mixture of usually like 10 15 compounds they're all more or less

00:50:42.860 gaseous at room temperature and atmospheric pressure so that comes out of the ground and

00:50:48.780 then it goes to all the what we call gas plants you see the gas plants north of calgary here the

00:50:53.260 crossfield gas plant is a plant that takes that gas and then separates it into its different

00:50:58.380 components so the methane goes out separately and it's used for burning in your furnace the ethane

00:51:06.220 it's a nice molecule we ship that all up to edmonton and we turn the ethane into ethylene

00:51:10.940 and things like that the propane you guys all know what you use propane for you it's it's used

00:51:16.460 to dry grain it's for your barbecue it's heating homes propane is nice because it can be liquefied

00:51:22.620 and transported by truck then we take out a bunch of butanes and the butanes they also go to edmonton

00:51:27.580 and they make things like whatever plastics and butylene and things like that the carbon dioxide

00:51:34.380 we ship that up in the air unfortunately now they're making us try and capture that and put

00:51:40.060 it back into the ground right so there's carbon dioxide that's in the gas we're also gonna and

00:51:45.660 then the last one which we call the sour component is the hydrogen sulfide and so when you have a

00:51:51.900 gas well on your property and it's got sour gas you'll have a little skull on the sign with the

00:51:58.220 name of the with the location and and the emergency phone number because the h2s what we call the sour 1.00

00:52:05.260 component of the natural gas it's toxic and it doesn't take a lot to uh to be uh harmful to people

00:52:12.620 so um be very careful i always liked working around um h2s because it gave us uh a heightened 1.00

00:52:24.040 sense of awareness and we were a little more careful i've now i one thing i didn't like is

00:52:31.360 i found a lot of guys that worked around uh sweet gas would get a little complacent and it's like

00:52:37.820 no they're both equally dangerous but so that you know i i like the sourness because it really puts

00:52:43.380 you on your toes um yeah good another good question god we're blessed in this country we

00:52:49.660 are so blessed with uh not this country this province we are and i love that too right carney

00:52:55.180 this week saying again he's repeating something he said last week you know canada can supply the

00:53:00.420 world with oil no no no no no no it's not canada's oil the uh the resource transfer act of like 1930

00:53:06.760 made sure that it's our oil it's our resources so it's uh it's alberta's oil uh saskatchewan

00:53:12.660 produces quite a bit of oil and uh british columbia not so much but uh i i love when

00:53:18.200 carney talks about canada's oil and it's not um all right so hopefully somebody else calls we got

00:53:25.020 a couple more minutes on the show but i was i was joking about um somebody coming to knock on my

00:53:30.100 door and arrest me for saying something unpopular and i think that's a you know when i look at

00:53:34.700 what's going on in Europe right now, that's a reality. People are getting arrested for their

00:53:39.240 posts on Facebook. And I think with C9, that could potentially come down the path for us,

00:53:44.820 right? And then the other thing that could happen down the path in terms of people knocking on our

00:53:51.540 doors is the gun confiscation program. But I'm less worried about that one, to be honest. So

00:53:58.780 just wanted to repeat, we keep getting those letters. I got another one last week. It's the

00:54:04.360 third one that i've received in a couple of uh third one i've received from the rcmp in the last

00:54:09.720 month right it's a letter they keep sending to us reminding us that we need to that if you want to

00:54:15.400 take part in the compensation program you need to register before march 31st in other words

00:54:21.640 they don't know they banned a whole bunch of firearms but they don't know who has those firearms

00:54:28.680 because for the longest time we didn't have to register our firearms so if i bought if somebody

00:54:33.720 bought a i'm gonna pick a model i i know that i know that the ruger mini 14 is on the list of

00:54:40.040 banned firearms forever and ever up until 2021 anybody could buy a ruger mini 14 it's known as

00:54:47.160 a ranch rifle it's just a short little semi-automatic it was perfect to fit in the pickup truck and when

00:54:52.120 you're driving around the back on the on the ranch on the farm if you saw a kite over the distance

00:54:57.480 you grab your mini 14 and then you quickly stop your truck got out put a clip in there shot a

00:55:02.760 couple of times and took care of that coyote well the mini 14 became prohibited uh in 2021

00:55:09.800 but the problem is there's there's thousands of them in the hands of canadians and they don't know

00:55:15.080 who owns them and so they want us to pre-register in this program and tell them that hey guess what

00:55:21.960 i have one of these things and then and then in so doing we register for the compensation program

00:55:27.800 which is a joke so uh everybody i keep advising this it's not my legal advice but i don't think

00:55:35.720 it's a good idea to register for this program and nobody and people seem to be following uh

00:55:42.840 thinking this along the same lines as me because only about 20 000 firearms have been registered

00:55:47.880 for this program which expires on march 31st so the minister has a problem on his hands because

00:55:53.960 after march 31st um he's gonna have to figure out where the other 650 000 banned firearms are so

00:56:01.480 people are not complying with his rule and that's why i said i'm not worried about him coming and

00:56:06.280 knocking on my door if he wants to come on knock on my door and do an inventory of my firearms

00:56:10.280 that's not going to look good on the news for him uh go ahead uh caller on the line where are you

00:56:14.680 calling from name please hey marty my name is roger can you hear me okay yeah yeah perfectly

00:56:20.840 go ahead roger oh nice awesome uh first of all i'm such a big fan of yours i've been following

00:56:26.120 you just kind of on the different podcasts that you've been on and i think you're speaking a lot

00:56:29.720 of truth like i really believe in what you're saying i think you know the last 10 years have

00:56:34.040 been really tough on every albertian like it's just kind of i i won't swear but it's been really

00:56:39.480 crappy for for all of us i think you know the resource staff and just a through z it's just

00:56:45.160 you know in my opinion is it's just too big a country like i think you know i'm i i'm born and

00:56:50.520 raised in alberta and you know my parents are east indian they came here in 1972 my father started

00:56:56.200 with nothing that's kind of our story and and you know he built himself up it's the story of a lot

00:57:00.920 of albertans that have been here and you know i think the more i've thought about separation

00:57:05.320 especially these last couple years that's my opinion is just the country's too big my question

00:57:09.080 to you is you know can you speak to the business owners and the people that that do business and

00:57:14.360 and not just Alberta to Canada, but in your mind, what does that look like?

00:57:18.160 Like, how does that relationship change if separation is going to go through?

00:57:21.320 And again, thank you so much for being such a proponent of this.

00:57:24.680 I think you're a wonderful voice, and I really love hearing what you're saying.

00:57:27.540 Thanks so much.

00:57:28.400 Okay, perfect.

00:57:29.240 Thanks for calling, Roger.

00:57:32.920 First things, in the tour this week, I've been sitting down with one of the guys speaking with us,

00:57:39.060 a guy named Fergus Hodgson.

00:57:42.100 And as part of his talk, Fergus brings up a really cool concept, which is the fact that the countries around the world have come and gone and bigger countries have shrunk into smaller countries.

00:57:54.400 And he brings up an interesting statistic that, you know, sort of up until about World War I, World War II, like in the interwar periods, we had something like 60 countries around the world.

00:58:06.380 So big, big, what do you call them? Kingdoms and big, big areas, right? The England built a big empire and, and Europe was bigger countries and stuff like that. And then today around the world, there's something like there's over 200 countries. So, so in the same, in the same surface, there's three times more countries than there used to be 50 years ago, which kind of points to your comment, which is some areas become too big to manage.

00:58:36.380 and just by geography you end up having regions that have really different interests right and we

00:58:41.180 see and i think we see that clearly in canada right so the the the the local interest of

00:58:46.940 somebody in atlantic canada is probably more focused on um you know i'm going to be you know

00:58:53.820 very generalist here but they're more interested let's say in fisheries and their aging population

00:58:59.580 and we're more interested in the fact that we have a younger population and our bat and and

00:59:03.820 our focus is oil so it's very different focuses different geography different climate different

00:59:10.220 realities right so i have longer distances to travel and i'm doing it on dirt roads or doing

00:59:15.820 it on on paved roads i need guns because i need to control predators and so forth so the geography

00:59:22.540 automatically leads to cultural differences and automatically leads to different interests and

00:59:29.260 and it becomes hard to to to to manage and i think that's that's the pure example of what's

00:59:34.440 happening in canada we're just too big we're just too big to to manage um and and so we need to

00:59:40.080 break up the second part of your question though was uh was the businesses and uh you know we had

00:59:47.040 one caller earlier say that in quebec um some businesses were scared away because of the

00:59:52.300 language laws and whatnot i'll say this about in fact i won't beat around the bush i don't think

00:59:58.940 we can scare any more businesses away than we have. So here in Alberta, we've scared away the

01:00:05.800 capital. The bad policies of Ottawa have made it such, I've lived it personally as a senior

01:00:13.200 manager in oil and gas. Banks from around the world and investors don't want to invest in

01:00:19.460 Canada in general and not in Alberta. They don't want to build anything here. Daniel Smith says it

01:00:24.400 all the time. We can't even attract somebody to build a power plant here. Nobody wants to build

01:00:28.940 a power plant. So across the country, I don't think we can scare business away more than we

01:00:34.720 have. That's the first part answer to your question. So then after that, businesses invest

01:00:41.080 in areas. When businesses invest, they're only to thinking about two or three things.

01:00:46.280 A business at its core will be, do I have a market? Is there somebody who wants the product

01:00:52.600 that i have and can i and and as my can i do something profitably so that's the number one

01:00:59.320 thing so if i spend a dollar can i make a dollar ten so that's the first thing the businesses thing

01:01:04.760 the second thing they think of is how quickly can i do that because the value of money if i invest a

01:01:09.880 dollar today but it takes three years before i break even on my investment and i even start

01:01:14.760 making a profit i'm not going to go there so that's the risk and the risk is is they look at risk of

01:01:21.640 will my customers disappear will the laws change will whatever so if you think of the way a

01:01:26.920 business thinks they don't want to invest here in canada and in alberta because the risk and the

01:01:33.000 timing is scaring them so an independent alberta can easily address those problems by saying come

01:01:41.080 on in and we'll make sure we speed up the timeline so your money starts working for you quickly

01:01:46.440 and we'll set a framework of rules that you can understand and you can manage your risk in fact

01:01:52.360 that's a that's an interesting thing about risk is that um companies can generally adjust to a

01:01:59.480 lot of risk as long as they know the rules i used to do this all the time i don't really really

01:02:04.280 care about the rules if you tell me the rule is i need to do this as long as i know that the rule

01:02:09.800 is not going to change constantly i can adjust i'll decide if i can meet the rules if it's not

01:02:14.920 too risky and if i can stay profitable so it's not the rules per se that scare investors is the fact

01:02:20.280 that the rules are changing constantly i don't know if i i hope that makes sense but um so alberta

01:02:26.120 yeah so alberta could be a very uh alberta a common sense alberta will attract a lot of investors 0.55

01:02:34.120 well and marty i'll leave you with this this always blows my mind is that alberta is like 1.00

01:02:38.600 the fourth and fifth in in the world in terms of the amount of oil that we have deposited and look

01:02:43.880 at these countries that we're that we're comparing ourselves to you look at the UAE Saudi Arabia you

01:02:49.320 know if you're a citizen of those countries you get meaningful benefits a good friend of mine is

01:02:54.280 from UAE and when he gets married the government gives them a hundred thousand dollars because

01:02:58.760 they're trying to encourage you know citizens to get married I think you know Alberta separation

01:03:03.960 is an unlock to a ton of wealth for the people that live here and I think that's why Ottawa is

01:03:08.120 here Marty thank you so much I really appreciate you being the voice of this movement and again

01:03:12.840 i'm just a big fan so great to talk to you appreciate it thanks for calling all right folks

01:03:17.240 uh okay well i'm glad a few more of you were brave and uh called uh maybe the secret is picking a

01:03:23.160 topic that's a little more controversial i don't know uh i'm definitely i'm happy with uh today's

01:03:28.600 show and the questions you guys gave me awesome questions uh let me know in the comments what uh

01:03:33.720 what i can do differently what topics you'd like us to cover um i see we're running out of time i'll

01:03:39.080 do my quick uh so so uh thanks to the western standard for giving me a platform and allowing

01:03:45.320 me to share my message and uh and and that's a shout out to them make sure if you you know

01:03:53.080 i've said this before all medias are a little bit biased that's fine the western standard might be

01:03:58.120 a little more right-leaning i'm definitely more right-leaning uh all all all medias are biased

01:04:04.840 but a media like this is not uh in a conflict of interest because it's not getting money from the

01:04:11.960 government and so we're capable of reporting on any issue we want because the money for us here

01:04:18.360 for the western standard comes from you guys and so we work for you guys and we will report what

01:04:24.680 you want to hear whereas the cbc works for the government because that's who pays them so they're

01:04:29.240 they're in conflict of interest. And so that said, we can't do this without your support.

01:04:34.540 So if you're not a member of the Western Standard, I encourage you to become a member.

01:04:39.680 Go to www.westernstandard.news. It's $10 a month or it's $100 a year. And hopefully you guys will

01:04:48.960 be back next week. I'm here on Thursdays at one o'clock looking for it. Like I said, it's your

01:04:53.920 show. So make sure you call in. All right. Cheers, folks.

01:04:59.240 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - March 26, 2026

Plane Tragedy in New York and Ottawa’s Bilingualism Obsession

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