Western Standard - ‘Professionally incapacitated’： John Rustad voted out

00:00:00.000 Good day and welcome to The Pipeline.

00:00:26.480 Today is December 3rd, 2025.

00:00:29.160 I'm Derek Felderbrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.

00:00:32.160 I'm joined by the usual crew in the studio here,

00:00:35.020 former Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford.

00:00:38.020 Good to be here.

00:00:38.960 And Western Standard senior operator columnist, Corey Morgan.

00:00:41.940 Always a pleasure.

00:00:43.220 And joining us for a very special day,

00:00:46.900 you're going to find out in a second why we've got Western Standard's

00:00:50.860 VC Bureau Chief, Jaron Yeager.

00:00:53.940 Welcome to the pipeline, Jared.

00:00:55.280 Hi, thanks for having me.

00:00:57.320 So we'll be talking about Bill C-9, a bill in Parliament right now,

00:01:03.220 which is designed to make sure you can't hurt people's feelings online,

00:01:07.700 but now is going to quite explicitly strip people of freedom of speech

00:01:15.760 and freedom of religion around saying, quoting things from religious scriptures,

00:01:21.420 which, you know, the Bible, that could be construed by some has, hateful, removing any provisions that were in that bill.

00:01:28.940 We're going to be talking about that.

00:01:31.000 We'll be talking about the pipeline deal between Alberta Premier Daniel Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney.

00:01:39.140 We were talking about it in anticipation of it on the pipeline last week.

00:01:43.340 Now we actually see the deal.

00:01:46.000 Is it a Faustian pipeline bargain?

00:01:48.900 I don't know. I'm not convinced one way or another yet, but it's not quite as shiny and pretty as we were hoping it would be.

00:01:57.240 But first, the reason we've got Jared Yager on the program today.

00:02:03.360 BC Conservative leader John Rustat walks the plank.

00:02:07.560 earlier today

00:02:09.200 our BC Bureau Chief

00:02:11.900 Jared Yager broke the story

00:02:14.020 that

00:02:14.660 a majority of the BC

00:02:17.720 Conservative Caucus signed a letter

00:02:19.760 declaring non-confidence in him

00:02:21.880 and then just moments

00:02:23.900 ago the board of

00:02:26.000 the BC Conservative Party voted to remove

00:02:28.000 him as leader. Jared

00:02:29.140 why don't you add a bit more detail about

00:02:31.780 what's been going on. There's a lot of moving parts

00:02:34.060 to this story. It's just developing as we're

00:02:35.860 talking but uh why don't you just give us a little background and what's been going on today

00:02:40.380 yeah so it's been a pretty busy day but uh for anyone who's been paying attention to bc politics

00:02:46.140 over the past few months this shouldn't come as too big of a surprise so more and more people

00:02:51.620 have been calling on restat to resign from both within and outside the party and today was kind

00:02:57.320 of a kind of the final nail in the coffin 20 out of the 39 mlas in his caucus signed on saying that

00:03:04.440 they no longer supported his leadership and so once that came out he held a press conference and

00:03:10.220 basically said like i'm not going anywhere that's it and then like you said just moments ago the

00:03:18.340 board of directors passed a resolution to oust him as leader of both caucus and the party and

00:03:25.800 surrey white rock mla trevor halford has been appointed interim leader of both the caucus and

00:03:32.680 the party so okay let me get this straight so that there was the letter released by the majority

00:03:38.800 of the bc conservative caucus declaring they had no confidence in rostat as leader and requesting

00:03:45.700 the employment of interim leader rostat then held a press conference after that saying doesn't matter

00:03:49.720 if the majority of my caucus have voted to remove me i'm still the leader right yeah someone asked

00:03:55.000 him like does this put you in an untenable position and he said no not really and he he

00:03:59.740 basically so he he said his argument was uh there's too many things that are going on in bc

00:04:05.740 under the bc ndp and ordinary people don't care about this you know internal party squabbling

00:04:13.260 which is true people don't but when it comes down to it there's how much you can do as a party if

00:04:19.620 you're not united and if there's all this stuff going on inside it takes time away from actually

00:04:26.860 tackling the issues that matter.

00:04:28.660 Well, look, Cory, I mean,

00:04:31.440 John Russ, that

00:04:32.440 blasted his heart. I mean, he did

00:04:34.400 obviously incredible things for this party,

00:04:36.840 getting it to where it is, but

00:04:38.760 his leadership ran into really

00:04:40.780 tough waters. He appears to have become

00:04:42.500 paranoid trying to fire everyone from

00:04:44.560 caucus that he suspected of

00:04:46.580 anything or disagreeing with him

00:04:48.700 on things, which is ironic because that's

00:04:50.640 how he got kicked out of the BC Liberal Caucus,

00:04:53.160 very strangely.

00:04:54.720 um but he doesn't seem to understand the simple i don't think most people understand the

00:05:01.360 constitution but the leader of a political party and the leader of an opposition should understand

00:05:05.400 one of the simple parts of our constitution and it's the idea of confidence whoever can hold the

00:05:11.460 confidence of the whole legislature or parliament is the premier or the prime minister but to stay

00:05:16.580 the leader of your party in your caucus you have to have the confidence of your caucus and today

00:05:22.800 the majority of his caucus declared non-confidence in him that is like the prime minister or the

00:05:28.920 premier saying i don't care if the house has voted non-confidence in me i'm not going to be

00:05:32.880 distracted by that i'm still the prime minister or i'm still the premier that's not the way the

00:05:37.820 system works john rustad appears to be totally off the reservation here i think you know what

00:05:45.180 i can't help but draw a parallel to former premier jason kenney when it all comes to it he did a lot

00:05:49.680 of work too he united two parties he managed to win over the ndp but then shortly after getting

00:05:55.880 in just everything started to fall apart but it he stubbornly i guess you know they get the sense

00:06:01.060 of accomplishment i did all this damn it you guys i own i i have the right yeah to to stay in the

00:06:07.240 leadership this long and they just aren't going to give out until they dragged out kicking and

00:06:12.180 screaming with premier kenny it took a whole vote he tried every mechanism he could to to hang in

00:06:16.640 there and hold on but when it finally even push came to shove the members voted him out I think

00:06:20.960 Rustad's in a simple simple a similar mindset just the you know I've got to use every possible way

00:06:26.960 they don't understand what they're doing I deserve to be here and he just won't read that writing on

00:06:32.480 the wall and it's a shame because yeah already the amount of dignity lost is massive but if you're

00:06:39.860 pulled out virtually by your ear from that seat you know you just don't have any left whatsoever

00:06:44.300 when you go. There's a difference between building something and getting there and being able to

00:06:48.200 maintain it once you're there. And he can't hold this together, obviously. The only person who

00:06:52.940 doesn't know it anymore is him. You know, Nigel, sometimes leaders have failed, but they've been

00:07:00.700 able to still have a political career in that same caucus afterwards. You know, Joe Clark comes to

00:07:07.420 mind. Stockwell, they had a pretty messy one, but he did manage. He was a tougher one, but he did

00:07:13.840 manage to stay on

00:07:14.880 as a member of the Alliance and then Conservative

00:07:17.920 Caucus federally and as Captain Minister.

00:07:21.120 Brian Jean

00:07:21.860 did not initially with Jason Kenney because

00:07:23.820 there was so much bad blood there, but he did

00:07:25.320 come back.

00:07:27.480 Serbs now under Daniel Smith.

00:07:29.720 Andrew Scheer. Andrew Scheer

00:07:31.800 wasn't too bloody. He went down pretty quickly

00:07:33.940 so there wasn't too much blood on the floor.

00:07:36.760 But John Brustat

00:07:37.880 has held on so hard,

00:07:40.200 tried to kick out so many people.

00:07:42.500 I mean, I guess there's some parallels with Stockwell Day

00:07:44.760 in that respect, but does it seem like there's too much blood

00:07:48.280 on the floor for him to even be able to remain as a member

00:07:51.380 of that team, or is this just he now just needs to completely

00:07:54.600 exit the stage?

00:07:55.460 Well, the latter.

00:07:57.100 I mean, look, he's not leading anybody at the moment.

00:07:59.220 He's just going for a walk.

00:08:02.260 Like, who is going to back him up?

00:08:06.780 Who's going to want to run under his banner if there was a snap

00:08:09.580 election in British Columbia?

00:08:11.100 I mean, he couldn't manage duty, he almost won, but he didn't win.

00:08:15.180 So that's like losing.

00:08:17.840 So therefore, he has no leverage.

00:08:23.500 He is not in a position to reward, he's not in a position to do anything.

00:08:28.620 So he's going to have to accept that somebody else is going to do it.

00:08:33.240 Whether he can hang on, as a member of the party, as the respected former leader,

00:08:38.440 very much up to him what he does in the next 24 hours and if he says you guys you know if the

00:08:45.880 ship goes down i'm you're all going down with me then he's done but you mentioned stockwell day

00:08:52.580 uh stockwell day is a man of tremendously fine character and um he he accepted the judgment of

00:09:01.340 the party at that time and he did it in such a way that he was able to serve the new conservative

00:09:07.200 government under Harper

00:09:08.980 was extremely valuable.

00:09:11.520 He was brilliant in foreign affairs.

00:09:13.960 And, you know,

00:09:15.780 there is that, but you've got to be humble.

00:09:18.520 And

00:09:19.040 I don't see that in Mr.

00:09:21.400 Rustout's response here.

00:09:23.740 Jared, so he

00:09:25.200 refused to step down

00:09:26.720 unconstitutionally when his caucus

00:09:29.340 had

00:09:30.480 voted non-conflict.

00:09:32.580 A lot of this is just kind of behind

00:09:35.380 the scenes, but I've had people

00:09:36.900 pretty senior people well-placed people in the bc conservatives tell me that members of caucus for

00:09:42.500 quite some time had been trying to bring a vote of non-confidence against him in the caucus

00:09:46.480 but then uh the caucus john brustad's caucus chair was just refusing to allow their a vote to take

00:09:52.840 place which i mean i really wish i had a boring book of robert's rules of order to give them you

00:09:58.800 could then impeach the chair at that point you just impeach the chair if the chair is not allowing

00:10:02.960 a vote and then you can get to there but i mean the other way around was what they did today which

00:10:07.920 is you just sign a letter they would then just give that to the speaker and at that moment you

00:10:12.520 cease to be you you don't have the confidence of your caucus you cease to be the leader of that

00:10:17.740 caucus otherwise literally legally speaking anyone could declare themselves a leader of the caucus

00:10:22.100 that's the way i work it's confidence-based just by convention if you were elected the leader of

00:10:26.160 the party you're the leader of the caucus but the caucus can remove you at any time and replace you

00:10:31.360 it anyone that they like um he refuses to go when the caucus votes to oust him unconstitutionally

00:10:38.980 um but now the party as uh the party's borders were voted remove him so i i don't know

00:10:45.420 one of the things i've been told was that the party was at least strongly considering

00:10:49.800 um maybe this will be kind of a further carrot and stick uh i don't know if they've done it yet

00:10:55.160 But one one of the things told by some of the sources I've talked to is that if he would not step down, they would also revoke his party membership and ban him as a local candidate.

00:11:06.980 Now, that is that's not even just the nuclear option.

00:11:09.160 That's the Carthaginian option.

00:11:11.040 You're salting the earth, murdering everyone and selling the women and children to slavery at that point.

00:11:16.540 But I suppose that would be one further.

00:11:19.600 As far as you know, that is not judging by the look on your face.

00:11:22.200 That is not what we know that they've done yet.

00:11:24.080 right no i haven't heard anything about that yet no okay well i i i got i got the impression

00:11:31.300 folks i'm talking to that that is kind of like that's the ultimate stick as opposed to the

00:11:36.780 carrot it's like you're going to accept our judgment or you're literally not even a grassroots

00:11:43.160 member of the party and you're not allowed to be a local candidate uh any sign have you seen

00:11:50.200 any sign yet, Jared, that John Rustad

00:11:52.260 is going to, now that his caucuses

00:11:54.180 voted against him, and now

00:11:55.680 he did not accept that.

00:11:58.480 But now that the party's board has voted

00:12:00.200 to remove him as the leader, has there been

00:12:02.180 any indication as yet? I know this just

00:12:04.220 happened. Any indication that he's going to accept

00:12:06.260 that, or is he

00:12:07.060 going to bring them to the Carthaginian auction?

00:12:11.240 I mean, I don't

00:12:12.180 know how you can't accept that, because, you know,

00:12:14.080 he's been the MLA

00:12:15.360 up north in his writing

00:12:18.100 for almost 20 years.

00:12:20.200 and so i'm sure he wants to continue doing that so i mean or maybe he's just gone too far to give

00:12:27.620 up and he might just push it all the way to the end it's really too hard to tell at this point

00:12:31.800 oh what is further than this i guess exactly like it was you know i've never i've fired people in

00:12:38.840 my career i've never had to hire security to escort someone out i've had staff walk out

00:12:44.660 in extremely rare occasions staff has walked someone out but at this point it sounds like

00:12:50.020 you're going to have to hire Brinks or something to come

00:12:53.580 and get him to pack up his box and escort him out of the office.

00:12:57.220 Well, so the question that I have for Jared is,

00:13:00.680 whatever happens to Mr. Rustad,

00:13:03.340 what is Dallas Brody and her fellow's thinking at the moment?

00:13:08.380 Is there likely to be a rapprochement between these rogue MLAs

00:13:15.160 and the rest of the party?

00:13:16.600 Because really their fight was...

00:13:18.080 Yeah, there's the independent ones expelled by Rustad on the left end of the party.

00:13:23.080 Then there's the 1BC ones on the right.

00:13:25.400 Yeah, Jared, your thoughts on rapprochement with the rebels?

00:13:30.080 I think 1BC, they've been successful as a standalone party.

00:13:34.500 You look at the polls and they're, you know, almost at the same popularity as the BC Greens.

00:13:40.720 And so I think they're just going to keep doing what they're doing and let the BC Conservatives kind of figure out their mess themselves.

00:13:48.020 Really?

00:13:48.360 But Eva, with Rustad gone, they wouldn't, like, I don't know.

00:13:52.300 I get the impression Brody would be a contender to win the leadership of the United Party.

00:13:57.060 I could be reading it wrong, but I'm gathering this is the typical battle we have with any big tent conservative party, though.

00:14:03.260 You know, you get your red Tories and your blue Tories, and they've really fractured to the far sides.

00:14:07.820 I think a lot would depend on what the leadership race is, because I imagine there's going to be candidates sort of representing,

00:14:13.760 you know, we're just getting ahead of ourselves, but still, like, presuming Mr. Rustad's gone.

00:14:17.520 there's going to be a race and there's going to be candidates

00:14:20.120 representing each of those sorts of factions

00:14:22.040 they're trying to find a way to pull it together

00:14:23.700 and anybody who's on the outs

00:14:25.940 with the party right now I think would be taking a wait

00:14:28.040 and see as to who's going to end up winning

00:14:29.960 the party confidence. I think Brody should run

00:14:32.240 let Brody run

00:14:33.480 very few people knew who she was

00:14:36.160 until she was expelled and then she's built some

00:14:37.980 significant profile

00:14:39.260 what are your thoughts Jared

00:14:41.340 if Brody were to go

00:14:44.060 back in and run for the leadership do you think

00:14:45.980 she be a competitive candidate she's kind of thrown all her cards on the table and like you

00:14:51.800 were saying cory it's it's hard to keep a party together when there are so many different factions

00:14:56.100 but i think the the majority of those who have stayed in the bc conservative party

00:15:02.640 haven't joined one bc or or split off because they kind of want to be a part of that big tent

00:15:08.340 coalition and bringing brody back in i think would kind of i don't know just put the party

00:15:15.440 back in the same place it was

00:15:16.800 when it was more fractured at the beginning.

00:15:19.800 Well, then it's not a Big Ten coalition

00:15:21.140 if it's not got a place for people like

00:15:23.400 Brody.

00:15:24.780 It depends on how big you want to make the coalition, yeah.

00:15:27.740 Well, I mean, it's a pretty fundamental part

00:15:29.380 of it. If you're going to be the conservative party, you've got to

00:15:31.360 have the conservatives.

00:15:33.700 Otherwise, you're just kind of the old liberal

00:15:35.100 coalition, and we're

00:15:37.360 back to where we were 15 years ago.

00:15:39.840 That's also a possibility.

00:15:41.680 It's a big discussion. I think some of that,

00:15:43.560 assuming even if Brody wanted to make a go at it, I guess that would land on the party executive

00:15:49.420 committee on whether or not a lot reestablish your membership even in the party, which I imagine

00:15:54.060 right now is void. I mean, there's a whole lot of rabbit holes to go down with this.

00:15:58.540 And if she did win the leadership, that would lead to quite a split in the remaining party.

00:16:03.820 I could see a center left breaking off. Welcome to conservative politics as usual.

00:16:08.700 Yeah. You know, I had congratulated BC Conservatives on having such a quick and neat and nice unification relative to the Alberta experience. And it is still a lot less messy. Like, we've got to remember how friggin' messy it was. Remember, like, the mass floor crossings and then just total death and it's still not as bad as it ever got in Alberta.

00:16:33.360 but you're you're really working on it bc you guys are really working on replicating to how

00:16:38.440 nasty and messy talk to some of the veterans of the pc wild rose battles yeah there's still blood

00:16:47.000 dried on the floor yeah um okay uh well where does it go from here jared like

00:16:52.940 oh actually let me put it this way so if john rustad finally bows to yes my caucus has voted

00:17:01.520 me out. Yes, my party board has voted me

00:17:03.540 out. That's it. Okay, then we know

00:17:05.520 more or less where it's going to go.

00:17:07.420 What happens if he

00:17:09.340 chains himself to the radiator,

00:17:12.460 handcuffs himself to the radiator,

00:17:14.420 locks the door,

00:17:15.800 says, I'm not leaving my office.

00:17:17.480 I'm the leader. You guys can go to help.

00:17:19.980 What happens then?

00:17:21.260 Does someone go to court or something?

00:17:24.020 I have no idea.

00:17:26.240 Start by turning up the heat on the

00:17:27.580 radiator.

00:17:29.300 Well, you have to send me out to Victoria, because that'd be some

00:17:31.440 great footage yeah yeah i well again you know what this actually might we're ever so slightly

00:17:39.080 pre-recording here with this already might be answered by the time we're done uh jared keep

00:17:43.560 your twitter feed open as we're talking we'll come back to this if uh if we get an update but uh

00:17:50.040 john john you know you probably got other things to do tonight but if you're watching this

00:17:55.480 for god's sakes for the good of the bc conservatives and for british columbia

00:18:00.400 I know you feel you've been wronged here

00:18:03.360 and that you're on the right side, but

00:18:05.240 it's time to fall on your

00:18:07.500 sword and do the right thing. It's

00:18:09.040 over.

00:18:11.140 It's just bloody over.

00:18:13.700 Okay.

00:18:17.300 I guess it kind of segues with BC

00:18:19.200 a bit here. The pipeline.

00:18:22.800 So,

00:18:24.660 last

00:18:25.260 Wednesday, last time

00:18:27.500 we did the pipeline,

00:18:28.260 our general comment thing was

00:18:31.220 it's got to be pretty good because Smith is facing

00:18:33.440 UCP members Friday night

00:18:35.440 at the annual

00:18:37.400 UCP convention in Edmonton

00:18:39.220 and I mean for her

00:18:41.360 to be able to do a peace deal with Ottawa

00:18:43.020 with a party that does not like peace with Ottawa

00:18:45.500 right now is better be

00:18:47.260 pretty good

00:18:48.120 saw the agreement

00:18:51.200 Thursday

00:18:51.780 it's kind of

00:18:55.240 conflict there's a lot of ins and outs of it

00:18:57.020 but there's some odd stuff

00:18:57.980 But yeah, Corey, you were with me at the convention, and I think to the shock and horror of the rest of Canada, Alberta Conservative members were not glowing in their praise of this agreement on Friday, were they?

00:19:15.060 Not even slightly. I mean, they're absolutely mortified by it and they expressed it. And watching that parallel and talking to a lot of people, we talked to probably hundreds of people over that two days. Smith is still wildly popular. Among the members, they love her, but they think she signed on to a stinker. And it's not just, there's two aspects.

00:19:37.920 One is just some people don't believe the pipeline's ever going to go anyways.

00:19:41.920 And the other is some of a, you know, basically as you're putting out, is a Faustian deal.

00:19:46.360 We're looking at some of the commitments that have to be made in order to do this.

00:19:49.860 A massive carbon capture project, which could benefit some crony capitalists and possibly suck some subsidy dollars into certain directions,

00:19:58.520 which blue conservatives aren't necessarily thrilled with that sort of trade-off.

00:20:02.760 A large hike in the carbon tax industrial.

00:20:05.200 what i see is actually a lot of junior operators in alberta probably not really happy with this

00:20:10.580 whole deal at all yeah because that's crushing their ability to be competitive on the markets

00:20:15.180 while the major players play the subsidy game yeah the the big players they they pay but they

00:20:20.460 also get to collect yes all guys don't know they only pay if you're sucking it back out through

00:20:25.020 the carbon capture thing then you can perhaps recluse yeah it's just getting uglier and uglier

00:20:29.620 as we look at it and then with our own dave winning talking about some of this stuff with

00:20:32.940 obligations uh domestic purchases of materials for it which could price this out of the range

00:20:38.940 uh you know rather than having a wide option of areas to source your uh materials and so on

00:20:44.640 it's just it's just a bad deal i i mean we did expect a lot because we'd seen that hard you

00:20:51.040 know and we'd gotten on our case premier smith said hey these nine things have to be gone by

00:20:54.840 gray cup or else and then we came all the way up to gray cup and it was or else well i'll tell you

00:20:59.280 in two weeks and we come up on two weeks

00:21:01.220 and okay this is going to be something big

00:21:03.000 and she said seven of nine

00:21:05.140 is not bad but you don't even get the seven of

00:21:07.140 ten and this is a commitment on

00:21:09.160 paper to seven of nine

00:21:11.100 and it just flew like a lead

00:21:13.080 balloon so

00:21:14.240 and now we're seeing the debates we're seeing the discussions

00:21:17.160 we're seeing that the Bloc Quebecois

00:21:18.900 you know demanding the Prime Minister

00:21:20.560 basically stop this. BC saying

00:21:23.220 we're not going to have it. Indigenous groups are saying

00:21:25.280 we're not going to have it and the Prime Minister has just kind of

00:21:27.200 said eh I'm going to say

00:21:28.900 step out the door and let Premier Smith deal

00:21:31.100 with this. Because

00:21:32.260 the only way this is going to happen

00:21:34.900 is with ongoing support

00:21:37.140 from the Prime Minister saying it's going to get done

00:21:39.120 and he's not doing that.

00:21:40.980 So she's holding on

00:21:43.020 to a dead document, I think.

00:21:45.200 Nigel, you know, one of the

00:21:47.320 reoccurring themes you've talked

00:21:49.140 about with Mark Carney is he

00:21:51.160 you know, he likes to have his

00:21:53.160 cake and eat it too. He likes a process

00:21:55.080 where the process is

00:21:57.080 his decision, not

00:21:58.240 not what we're actually trying to achieve in the process you know i will recognize a

00:22:02.320 palestinian state if they do x y and z and well then allows him to just pretend the process made

00:22:08.240 something up um i got a bad feeling this might be something somewhat this is not an agreement to

00:22:15.920 build a pipeline it's an agreement for a process to potentially build a pipeline it potentially makes

00:22:23.280 it wildly

00:22:24.720 uneconomical to do if you have

00:22:27.260 to use these buy Canadian steel

00:22:29.120 provisions. We've got the

00:22:31.120 carbon tax built in.

00:22:33.420 And then it talks about

00:22:34.680 there's a verbal

00:22:37.140 agreement and then there's the written

00:22:39.100 agreement. The written agreement does not say B.C.

00:22:41.040 and First Nations have a veto, but talks about meaningful

00:22:43.100 consultation and them being involved.

00:22:46.320 But, you know,

00:22:47.180 I'm going to go to Jared and a bit

00:22:49.220 about David Eby, but

00:22:50.980 verbally he said

00:22:53.100 No, B.C. and First Nations have to be on side.

00:22:55.580 And if that's the case, there's a zero...

00:22:57.840 We may as well just bury this document right now.

00:23:00.680 It's the only thing that's getting in the ground.

00:23:03.380 There's a zero percent chance this thing gets built.

00:23:07.200 Do you think...

00:23:08.580 Smith seemed genuinely proud of us,

00:23:11.380 and she does not have a reputation for being weak on Ottawa.

00:23:15.340 But do you think she got snuckered here?

00:23:18.540 Well, I'm not going to say that just yet,

00:23:20.440 But boy, oh boy, you've raised such a raft of questions in what you just said there.

00:23:28.060 We're very good at trying to look at things from Alberta's point of view, and we should.

00:23:32.260 But I've been trying to think, well, all right, if I were Kearney, what would I be wanting out of this?

00:23:38.100 You want to give the impression that you have a national reach, that you're not just central Canada.

00:23:43.740 You want to give the impression that difficult, though, Danielle Smith is to deal with.

00:23:48.860 I'm the man to do it, and I will go out and I'll engage with the rebel premier, and we'll sit down at the table and we'll work something out.

00:23:59.680 And that's the image I want to portray in eastern Canada.

00:24:04.120 Now, so many of the things that we're talking about, we just brought in the price of steel into the discussion.

00:24:11.820 Yeah, that's a big deal.

00:24:13.260 the attitude of Quebec.

00:24:17.200 I mean, you have to say, why

00:24:18.920 would we care what

00:24:21.000 Quebec thinks? This is all Western Canada

00:24:23.060 stuff. They've had their say. They don't want a pipeline.

00:24:25.540 They didn't get one. So why

00:24:27.080 are we...

00:24:28.160 What's their spot on the table there?

00:24:31.000 But it's all... These are the details

00:24:33.280 that people forget.

00:24:35.260 You know? Even we

00:24:37.200 have to make notes before we come into

00:24:39.060 the meeting to make sure we don't forget

00:24:41.260 anything. So

00:24:42.540 Well, what sticks in eastern Canada is that the Prime Minister went out and met his biggest political opponent,

00:24:50.920 they shook hands, they signed something, and everybody smiled as they went their separate ways.

00:24:56.560 That's a political win for Mr. Carney.

00:25:00.180 Don't ask about the details, because then it doesn't look so good.

00:25:04.280 And with Premier Smith, I mean, she did do this two days before she had a big speech to make at a convention.

00:25:11.460 uh at which point most people hadn't well she may have expected that most people wouldn't have got

00:25:18.380 into the details it kind of sounds as if enough had that you know some of the applause was muted

00:25:24.900 uh i can just see this whole thing as a charade as a as a as a little bit of political theater

00:25:33.020 that met the temporary needs of two leaders at the same time well car you were there with me

00:25:38.720 And as this agreement was booed, it was roundly booed by the members on two days, the first day during a bear pit kind of accountability session with the members, you know, Smith went into this, I think, you know, beaming, genuinely believing she had a win and she could hold this up.

00:25:59.480 and, you know, in front of the people and say,

00:26:03.280 we played tough, you know, and we won, we got this,

00:26:08.860 and people booed it.

00:26:10.380 The next day, you know, she said, you know,

00:26:14.000 let's not give up on our, I'm going to paraphrase it,

00:26:15.920 let's not give up on our country just as we're winning,

00:26:18.100 you know, for a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada,

00:26:21.820 and people booed again.

00:26:23.000 Now, that time there was also some applause interspersed with it.

00:26:25.800 The room wasn't unanimously opposed to it.

00:26:27.880 That would be an unfair characterization.

00:26:30.840 But she went into this convention, I think,

00:26:34.120 expecting this to be a triumphal victory entry into Rome.

00:26:39.340 And I was kind of of two minds.

00:26:43.980 I was still not...

00:26:45.380 I'm still not 100% one way or another,

00:26:47.800 but I was still very much taking stock of it, analyzing it.

00:26:51.180 I was shocked for one of the first times in my life

00:26:53.380 to find myself the moderate in the room

00:26:55.200 where most people were hard against it.

00:27:01.040 Smith's brilliant, and I think highly of her,

00:27:03.360 but she's got a tendency to forget what the membership thinks.

00:27:07.080 If anything, you give me a flashback of a time where she held up a thing

00:27:11.100 and told Alberta, we won. It's over.

00:27:14.860 She negotiated a great deal with a political leader,

00:27:18.220 and they're going to say it. I know I'm going to say it.

00:27:20.840 And it was the mass floor crossing, which was a political catastrophe

00:27:23.820 and cost every one of them their seats.

00:27:26.480 The promised cabinet positions,

00:27:29.880 again, that leader fled on his commitments

00:27:32.020 once he got pushback from his own party,

00:27:33.940 as we're seeing Carney doing right now,

00:27:35.920 and he rug pulled her.

00:27:37.520 And I could see Carney doing it to her again.

00:27:39.380 I think some of it is Daniel Smith

00:27:40.620 trying to see the best in people.

00:27:42.780 She really does and tries to think this is genuine,

00:27:45.280 this can go somewhere,

00:27:46.140 but forgot what the members might think instead.

00:27:49.500 And she better be really, really careful now.

00:27:52.660 And hopefully it was a wake-up,

00:27:53.820 as i said everybody at the agm really does seem to love premier smith they think very highly of her

00:27:58.640 but we know how quickly conservative minds can change she's gotten a warning shot and i hope

00:28:04.200 she's thinking really really hard about it yeah i um i was gonna say but i i you know i get

00:28:11.340 prentice vibes from carney i mean looks good and professional is comfortable in the corporate

00:28:19.160 boardroom, accomplished

00:28:21.120 very much

00:28:22.380 hailed and respected by

00:28:25.020 the Blue Bloods, that type of crowd

00:28:27.360 and

00:28:29.060 I mean, Danielle fell for it

00:28:30.840 with him, to catastrophic

00:28:33.300 ends

00:28:33.960 and I'm not

00:28:37.140 saying this is the same thing, but I get

00:28:38.800 I get Prentiss vibes

00:28:40.960 that's what I mean, I'm not saying it's the same, but some of that

00:28:43.160 feel is coming up, and thankfully she's

00:28:44.980 just learned from it

00:28:45.900 and I think that she's always, the members do

00:28:49.040 love her, but they still remember

00:28:51.340 that. And I

00:28:52.580 mean, and it took a lot for forgiveness

00:28:54.940 to take place there. But they did.

00:28:57.480 But they have not forgotten.

00:28:59.260 So I don't know. If I was Smith, I'd be

00:29:00.900 treading very cautiously around

00:29:02.800 Kearney here.

00:29:05.220 Let's get the BC perspective

00:29:06.780 on this.

00:29:09.880 David,

00:29:10.520 according to the written agreement, David Eby

00:29:12.920 has to be meaningfully

00:29:14.880 consulted. First Nations along the route need to

00:29:16.900 be meaningfully consulted.

00:29:18.060 according to Carney, verbally

00:29:20.720 they have to agree

00:29:22.540 if the verbal one is the case

00:29:25.080 and actually because it's an MOU

00:29:26.940 it's not actually a legally binding contract

00:29:28.700 it's a memorandum of understanding

00:29:30.420 you can't take an MOU to a court

00:29:32.380 it is not a contract

00:29:33.800 but

00:29:34.660 if they are given some kind of veto

00:29:38.920 there are consents required

00:29:40.260 it is just done and there's no sense discussing it

00:29:43.300 but I know

00:29:45.540 David Evey responded by

00:29:46.920 he said something very odd he's open to another pipeline but so long as the northwest coast

00:29:52.880 tanker band remains in place so you can you can build the pipeline but you're just not allowed

00:29:58.360 to spend the oil anywhere like it could just sit in you know infinitely accruing pile of barrels

00:30:05.060 in a port somewhere on the west coast um where is ed on this one right now uh so that yeah you

00:30:14.800 summed it up pretty well there uh the thing with the bc coast is the the tanker band covers pretty

00:30:20.120 much everything north of vancouver island and then obviously you have vancouver island in the way so

00:30:25.600 you're not going to build a port anywhere along there and there's no cities anyways leaving only

00:30:30.440 one option vancouver and burrard inlet it's already too shallow to allow the existing tmx pipeline to

00:30:39.940 operate at full capacity so nobody's going to want to build a third pipeline next to two that

00:30:48.500 already don't fully work so i think what eb is doing is kind of in a beat around the bush way

00:30:56.900 saying yeah this has never happened yeah um i wouldn't imagine so like he i mean the the hardcore

00:31:05.840 eco green movements you know a pretty major part of the bc ndp coalition um at what point does the

00:31:13.160 federal government actually exercise the power it says it has to control movement of product across

00:31:19.520 provincial buildings maybe he does maybe he does i like i'm i'm trying not to be overly partisan or

00:31:27.680 ideological about this maybe he does maybe he still remembers this pardon where did that start

00:31:33.140 You're not being over-partisan.

00:31:35.980 Ideological.

00:31:36.880 Look, I mean, the federal government comes to Alberta and says,

00:31:41.440 you better do things our way.

00:31:43.080 We want net zero by 2035.

00:31:45.500 Okay, make it 2050.

00:31:48.020 Your pipeline projects are not going anywhere unless we say so.

00:31:53.280 All right.

00:31:53.980 Well, no, you're saying they will.

00:31:55.520 Are you stating that still aren't going to go anywhere?

00:31:57.720 Either the federal government has control over interprovincial trade movements, or it doesn't.

00:32:06.680 And right now, he seems to be hiding.

00:32:08.960 This is the bad thing about Carney.

00:32:11.680 It always tells you something, and then says, of course, you made reference to it earlier, but it's conditional on something else.

00:32:17.940 Well, I'd maybe end with this, that we have a likely independence referendum coming up in 2026.

00:32:25.880 there needs to be a hard

00:32:28.680 deadline for approvals

00:32:31.100 I mean and by

00:32:33.040 Canadian standards that is warp speed

00:32:34.800 to get there that fast but there needs to be

00:32:37.040 a hard deadline on approvals

00:32:39.200 before that vote takes place

00:32:40.920 we should probably schedule the vote for next fall

00:32:42.560 and we should know this

00:32:44.820 the answer to this by September

00:32:47.220 so Albert's

00:32:48.500 federal legislation

00:32:50.140 it's in Carnies

00:32:51.900 bring that in

00:32:54.240 Is this even feasible? Because has the conditions attached to this made this thing economical between the carbon tax, between buy Canadian steel provisions, carbon sequestration, between all of this stuff? Is it even going to be economically viable?

00:33:09.260 But there are some deadlines built into the MOU.

00:33:11.780 That's one thing positive to kind of be said about it.

00:33:13.980 There's some April ones and some June ones that at least start some, you know, road signs to say whether you've actually made any progress working towards this.

00:33:21.440 And if they don't hit those, then, you know, again, I already think this thing's dead, to be honest.

00:33:25.880 I'm getting from skeptical to cynical, but those are in there.

00:33:29.620 And yeah, if there's an active independence referendum campaign going and these deadlines come with even those relatively modest goals haven't been reached, it's going to look really ugly on voting day.

00:33:41.020 And Daniel doesn't have to defend it any longer after that.

00:33:43.640 No.

00:33:44.340 So that changes the equation as well.

00:33:46.920 Yeah.

00:33:47.260 Or will she move the goalposts again?

00:33:49.200 That's where she's getting in some real danger.

00:33:50.920 Yeah.

00:33:51.400 We can't allow that.

00:33:52.460 We're going to have to hold her feet to the fire on this stuff.

00:33:54.420 there's no we we got a referendum likely coming up here and these dates mean something in this mou

00:34:01.380 you hold to them if they don't we declare this thing dead yeah well that's it and we vote

00:34:06.740 accordingly if she can say that the dates have come and passed despite my best efforts

00:34:10.900 they didn't happen then uh whose fault is it obviously the federal government's not hers

00:34:16.800 referendum gives her some some leverage yes she does it does okay uh we don't have a ton of time

00:34:23.720 for it but let's talk about bill c9 nigel this is uh i guess the new uh you know hurt feelings

00:34:29.940 online act uh there had been provisions in it that you know if you express a sincerely held

00:34:35.780 religious view uh you know i mean there there's some spicy verses in the bible and in the quran

00:34:41.300 around homosexuality and things like that um that you know don't go over well in a modern

00:34:48.500 progressive cocktail party

00:34:50.840 but there was protections

00:34:53.160 ostensibly for

00:34:54.560 sincerely held religious views

00:34:57.040 expressed that

00:34:59.120 in order to secure

00:35:00.920 the support of the bloc

00:35:02.360 of the legislation have been stripped out

00:35:04.560 well you know

00:35:06.160 I think the liberals are brave

00:35:08.660 if you're going to go up against God

00:35:10.760 get ready

00:35:12.160 it's not going to go hand well

00:35:14.320 look Bill C9

00:35:16.460 there's two things to say

00:35:18.340 One is Bill C-9 is ostensibly about online protection for children.

00:35:25.220 And what it says in there is, you know, fair enough if that's what you want to do.

00:35:30.700 We actually already have the legislation to do all that stuff about protecting children from online predators,

00:35:37.080 making it illegal to distribute non-consensual erotic pictures and that sort of thing.

00:35:44.400 But it's in the bill, and they're defending it on that basis.

00:35:48.340 What they have also done is they introduced a second stream in there

00:35:53.520 which deals with anti-hate, and that's where they, you know,

00:36:00.360 I don't know who would actually want to hoist a swastika

00:36:03.500 on their flagpole in their back lawn.

00:36:07.120 I don't see that happening, but if they did,

00:36:10.460 they would be breaking the law, a big accomplishment.

00:36:13.180 I think it's more aimed at Muslim expressions of Muslimism in Quebec.

00:36:21.520 I think that's what's driving this.

00:36:23.760 But to kind of make it look fair, they have also said,

00:36:28.560 well, by the way, the Bible says some unkind things about homosexuality.

00:36:34.060 We've got to ban that as well.

00:36:35.640 and it's part of a back-scratching deal between the government and the Bloc Quebecois.

00:36:44.360 Now, the second thing to say is that although it would be possible for Christian conservatives

00:36:49.280 to get mightily angry about this, and they should, because it's wrong,

00:36:55.120 nevertheless, they'd have to understand that the Liberal Party, which is backing this,

00:37:02.780 has got a very different world view, and within their world view,

00:37:07.800 they are being entirely consistent.

00:37:10.880 So it illustrates the deep cultural divide in this country at this time.

00:37:18.220 You know, the temptation when you see Mark Miller out there saying,

00:37:22.020 well, you know, we're going to have to ban these passages of the Bible.

00:37:26.720 They're not going to be used as a defense of genuinely held belief anymore.

00:37:31.260 you know your back goes up and you think well who are you to say that the bible is wrong

00:37:35.960 within their essentially uh atheistic point of view that's that they're doing exactly what

00:37:45.120 you would expect them to do um i'm surprised it's taken this long to get here yeah uh cory

00:37:53.420 the bill was i mean ran into similar trouble in the previous parliament under trudeau they've

00:37:59.620 essentially just trying again here,

00:38:02.100 I guess. They said, ah, we're going to avoid

00:38:03.780 some of the pride falls of the last one. They do

00:38:05.680 not appear to be.

00:38:08.040 The UK, I think,

00:38:10.060 Ukraine arrests, not even accounting

00:38:11.740 for the difference of population size, the UK

00:38:13.440 arrests

00:38:13.880 in gross numbers

00:38:17.400 three times as many people a year

00:38:19.760 for online comments as Russia.

00:38:22.120 Now, to be fair,

00:38:23.900 in Russia, they just de-denisrate you in some cases.

00:38:25.920 They fall off a bell. Yeah, you

00:38:27.200 fall out the window

00:38:29.380 So I'm not accounting for those numbers.

00:38:31.640 And that's real.

00:38:32.660 But that's probably not a big number.

00:38:34.660 But it's a harsher punishment than you get in Canada or in Britain for hurting feelings.

00:38:39.280 But Britain arrests three times as many people a year.

00:38:43.400 And Russia has a significantly larger population than Britain.

00:38:48.580 The worry is this is going to put us on the same trajectory.

00:38:52.340 You go to prison for sharing memes.

00:38:54.680 um there doesn't appear to be much of the way in pushback uh there's elements of the i guess you

00:39:03.220 know the center-right establishment mainstream conservative media uh you know like the post

00:39:07.840 media stuff is it is it's around it on their opinion sections but there doesn't seem to be

00:39:12.460 any major major pushback from this even the conservatives i think are a little tepid on it

00:39:19.160 makes for hard political games to play because you know how it always works you're defending

00:39:23.120 hate. You're defending fascism.

00:39:25.080 I mean, you want to be the guy who defends the right

00:39:27.140 to fly a National Socialist flag. No,

00:39:29.120 that's not good politics.

00:39:31.160 Exactly, and I find that, I'll

00:39:33.080 take that stance as a libertarian. I find the flag

00:39:35.240 disgusting, and anybody who wants to wave it

00:39:37.480 is doing so, but I don't think it should be

00:39:38.960 legalized. You know, it should just be

00:39:41.300 pointed out and let the public

00:39:43.060 bury that down. Likewise with religious

00:39:45.100 texts. I mean, most of them, in every religion,

00:39:47.320 if you go back, they don't

00:39:48.960 match the standards of modern living. If you want to take

00:39:51.260 a literal interpretation of them, well,

00:39:52.960 There'd be people pushing to have slaves and, you know, have sacrifices and things, depending on how far of the Old Testament you want to go.

00:40:01.320 But the modern world has moved past that without banning the text.

00:40:04.280 There's been reformation.

00:40:05.400 There's been, you know, just realizing that we don't take those interpretations as they are in public.

00:40:11.620 Well, I guess part of the problem, Islam, Islam's a different...

00:40:16.940 We, I think, generally the Christian world, which has a more elastic interpretation of some of these texts, whereas in Islam, it's, you know, the Quran is the literal divine, not divinely inspired, but is the literal written word of God.

00:40:34.860 And it is, and of course, not every Muslim takes it this way, but very significant numbers of Muslims do.

00:40:42.560 And so, yeah, some of their texts, spicier sections, if you will, a lot of people do take it very literally.

00:40:52.660 And I get that some groups don't feel safe from that.

00:40:56.940 But guess what? That's the price of a free society.

00:40:58.820 They're going to get to say some stuff that makes you feel very uncomfortable.

00:41:01.880 Well, certainly. I mean, we have to go after the crime rather than the text.

00:41:05.080 I mean, I'm an atheist and my views in some of the countries in the Middle East, if I tried to put those out in the open, that's the same crime because my thoughts and speech wouldn't be allowed and I would be beaten down because it's a theocracy.

00:41:17.900 On the same other side of the coin, you can't ban the texts.

00:41:21.640 You just ban the acts and, you know, and murder and honor killings and some of the other things that people might use their texts to try and justify.

00:41:29.360 We just don't allow that.

00:41:30.480 But the government's using that, I think, just as an easy target, low-hanging fruit, to bring in another bill that's controlling speech.

00:41:36.000 So they'll go after those extreme elements and say, we need to do it because of this.

00:41:39.760 But as you said, it's going to come to the point where people are going to be getting incarcerated for memes, and then we all lose.

00:41:45.600 It's dangerous, dangerous territory.

00:41:47.260 I mean, I always err on the side of freedom.

00:41:49.360 Yeah.

00:41:49.880 Okay.

00:41:50.600 Well, we're going to put a pin in that and go to our parting shots.

00:41:55.160 First one, Jared, I'm going to give you a little more time since you're new to the show.

00:42:00.480 We'll start with Nigel.

00:42:03.040 Okay, so what Nigel thinks is that we just have the numbers on medical assistance in dying,

00:42:09.940 and they reveal that the practice continues to grow.

00:42:16.000 You know, you try to be so organized with these things,

00:42:19.540 but look, 16,499 people received medical assistance in dying in 2024.

00:42:28.540 The figure's just out on Friday.

00:42:30.480 And what a lot of people have missed is that more than 22,000 were actually approved for medical assistance in dying.

00:42:38.400 Some did back off, decided to change their minds.

00:42:41.980 But, you know, there were more than 4,000 who were approved who didn't get it.

00:42:47.800 And here we are.

00:42:48.600 How often do we hear about somebody who wants a life-saving procedure, dies on the waiting list?

00:42:54.160 You can't even get a death procedure.

00:42:56.220 you'll die on the waiting list waiting for assisted suicide so that is the most canadian thing ever

00:43:02.320 it's uh yes it's a hell of a thing dying for death dying waiting to be killed yes yeah cory

00:43:08.680 uh just uh reminding folks that it's not just uh the pipeline that's being held up going to the

00:43:14.540 west there's indigenous leaders as reported in the standard saying that the ring of fire

00:43:18.120 development's never going to happen in ontario as well which is in the major projects office so

00:43:23.380 Kearney, you can't hide from this.

00:43:25.580 You've got to take a stand one way or another.

00:43:27.280 Either nothing's getting done, or you're having a fight

00:43:29.380 with the Indigenous leaders.

00:43:32.100 Jared, your parting shot.

00:43:35.000 So,

00:43:35.900 I actually don't have a parting shot,

00:43:37.440 but I have something that's even more...

00:43:38.640 I didn't actually tell you to have one ready, so I sprung this on

00:43:41.540 yet.

00:43:43.340 So, the BC Conservative Party

00:43:45.280 just released a statement saying that they

00:43:47.180 the board certified

00:43:49.360 that Rustad is professionally incapacitated

00:43:51.820 and thus unable to get

00:43:53.380 continuous party leader under the constitution there's only there's a number of ways you can

00:43:58.220 get rid of a leader either they die or they're not saying they didn't kill him they didn't kill

00:44:04.560 him right all right all right put that on record just his career resignation death incapacitation

00:44:11.560 or a leadership review vote and so they got creative and uh incapacitation it's it's kind

00:44:18.500 of like article 25 of the u.s constitution usually deals with with health issues and

00:44:24.000 they argued that he's professionally incapacitated so there you go and it's now uh if it's if the

00:44:34.640 party is structured anything like in alberta that's a bylaw under the societies act and it

00:44:38.680 could technically be challenged in court but i mean do you really want to have also in the meantime

00:44:43.580 but there is always the option um one small party in alberta did this uh they ousted their leader

00:44:49.160 the wild rose independence party to oust their leader they just literally revoked his membership

00:44:53.020 and if you're not a member of the party you can't be the leader of the party and so that's

00:44:56.640 like there there are ways okay all right well that's that's interesting uh that's a good party

00:45:04.240 shot it's not really a party shot but it's a it's a good bulletin thank you uh all right mine um

00:45:09.520 I'm jealous of this one

00:45:12.480 a Canadian

00:45:14.220 manufacturer sold 20

00:45:16.580 APCs armored personnel

00:45:18.600 carriers to ICE

00:45:20.420 in America to help

00:45:22.220 root out and get rid of

00:45:24.220 illegal immigrants

00:45:25.780 my only problem with that is I want

00:45:28.480 them here

00:45:28.980 the vehicles not the immigrants

00:45:31.880 yeah

00:45:32.440 I want them here rounding up

00:45:36.220 all the people that we

00:45:38.180 illegally allow in

00:45:39.620 out. We're going to need some

00:45:42.020 APCs here. So that's my only problem

00:45:44.100 with it, is America stealing our APCs

00:45:45.960 to deal with their illegal migration problem.

00:45:48.600 Okay.

00:45:50.020 Nigel, Corey, Jared,

00:45:52.660 and John running the studio.

00:45:54.320 Thank you very much for joining us.

00:45:56.280 Thank all of you for joining us here today on

00:45:58.120 the Pipeline. Remember that

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Western Standard - December 04, 2025

‘Professionally incapacitated’： John Rustad voted out

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