Western Standard - Smith, Ford do end run around Governor Trudeau

00:00:00.000 Today is December 11th, 2024.

00:00:26.820 I'm Derek Fulibrand, publisher of the Western Standard, and welcome to the pipeline.

00:00:31.220 I'm joined, as always, by my good friends, Nigel Hannaford, Western Standard Opinion Editor.

00:00:36.980 Hello again, Derek.

00:00:38.280 And Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist, Corey Morgan.

00:00:41.500 Good day.

00:00:42.860 Woo-woo, fun stuff.

00:00:45.440 Not winding down yet before the Christmas break here.

00:00:49.980 I'm afraid when we get into Christmas, I think we're going to miss two weeks of pipeline, just two weeks.

00:00:55.220 I'm afraid the news won't stop for us.

00:00:56.800 It just keeps coming.

00:00:58.880 Good show.

00:01:01.000 Western Standard Zone, Calgary City Hall columnist Mike Thomas has a great piece out on a new planning document from the city of Calgary written by some woke bureaucrats.

00:01:13.380 And they say, depending on where you live in the city and your access to certain amenities and things like that, you might be a racist.

00:01:22.120 And this is not a Calgary, this is a Calgary report, but it's not really a Calgary story.

00:01:25.940 It's the kind of thing we're seeing from the DEI departments and corporations and bureaucracies, not just even in Canada, right across the Western world, where we're intent on civilizational self-immolation, it seems.

00:01:41.800 Well, I think there's a lot of municipalities that want to take notice of what Mike wrote.

00:01:45.460 Indeed. All right, we're going to get into that.

00:01:47.580 Well, the civil war in Syria is over.

00:01:51.560 It seems, at least for this week or so.

00:01:56.960 But, you know, Canada, the United States, Germany, other countries in the West, very generously and perhaps unwisely,

00:02:05.540 threw open their borders when the Syrian conflict broke out.

00:02:10.100 And half the population, the pre-war population of Syria, now lives in Western countries.

00:02:15.420 Now that the Civil War is over and Syrian Canadians have been seen celebrating in the streets, is it then time for Syrians to return home, as the new Prime Minister of Syria is calling for? 0.88

00:02:31.560 We're going to discuss that.

00:02:33.660 But the first one we're going to get into, fun stuff.

00:02:37.980 Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, and to a lesser extent, some other premiers.

00:02:43.820 just doing a total end run around

00:02:46.700 Justin Trudeau's so-called Team Canada

00:02:50.360 approach, going around Governor Trudeau.

00:02:54.920 Donald Trump actually

00:02:56.140 trolling Trudeau again. At this point, I'm starting to think

00:03:00.260 it's almost mean. It's almost making me sympathize with Trudeau.

00:03:03.620 Stop picking on him.

00:03:06.140 We're not even that loudly flying our F-Trudeau flags at this point.

00:03:09.340 We already know the guy is done. He's cucked. Stop kicking him.

00:03:12.340 He's dead already. So, you know, Trump obviously got everyone's knickers in a twist when he said, you know, Canada and Mexico better get their acts together on the border and on drugs and some things, or I'm imposing a 25% tariff.

00:03:30.440 I think rightfully so, we got our knickers in a twist. That's an existential threat to the Canadian economy or trading country.

00:03:38.160 But Trudeau demanded we take a so-called Team Canada approach.

00:03:45.160 And Team Canada approach to him is Team Trudeau.

00:03:49.160 It means everybody shut up and follow his lead.

00:03:53.160 He had a meeting with the opposition party leaders of parliament.

00:03:58.160 And then right after, it went after Poliev, I guess Trudeau's demand was that everybody just stop, don't criticize anything Canada's doing.

00:04:12.440 Some things Trump is going after here, I'm not sure they have.

00:04:16.440 They don't all have merit, but he's definitely got some strong points on our failure, our free riding on defense, some border issues, fentanyl.

00:04:26.200 So there's some things to it.

00:04:28.980 But Daniel Smith does not see it.

00:04:32.500 And Doug Ford is extremely friendly with Trudeau, much more friendly than almost some of the members of his own cabinet.

00:04:40.460 But Ford and Smith are just trying to do an end run around him now.

00:04:46.360 I guess not really following Trudeau's dictates on Team Canada.

00:04:51.620 What do you think that is, Nigel?

00:04:53.160 Well, I think it's barely playing.

00:04:55.500 they don't trust him to represent canada well in this discussion ford's motives may be a little

00:05:04.460 more mixed but you know even he with a huge cross-border traffic in auto parts is very very

00:05:11.980 concerned about what any application of tariffs could mean this is a years old but i understand

00:05:17.740 that in the production of a motor car over there in the detroit windsor area that that same basic

00:05:23.340 frame goes backwards and forwards over the border about six times before it actually emerges on one

00:05:29.100 side or the other as a drivable motor car well you can imagine what the tax implications could

00:05:34.060 be for that if there's a tariffs involved then of course out here in alberta you know very well

00:05:39.980 cory has made this point many times that our interests are very much available to eastern

00:05:48.300 interests will get thrown under the bus quicker than anything so obviously daniel smith has taken

00:05:54.380 the right approach and that's if we've got a problem with border security while the ottawa

00:05:59.340 gets his act together let's do what we can hence the the alberta border surveillance so a classic

00:06:08.620 case of governments at a lower level taking the initiative and doing what's right when the senior

00:06:15.980 level of government can or won't or doesn't.

00:06:19.980 Corey, let's dig into this on Daniel Smith, more specifically.

00:06:25.580 I think Premier Smith and Albertans in general and Saskatchewan have a pretty

00:06:32.980 good cause to suspect that perhaps just perhaps keeping trade in our oil and gas

00:06:41.880 industry is open, might not be at the very top of the list for Justin Trudeau. If this is going to

00:06:49.140 be a give and take, okay, fine, we really need to keep trade open on auto industry. We really need

00:06:56.300 to protect the Canadian market from American milk and cheese. Perhaps she suspects that oil and gas

00:07:07.380 might not be at the top of the negotiating list for Justin Trudeau.

00:07:12.940 It's a good suspicion.

00:07:14.140 I mean, Trudeau's ideological bent has always been on trying to phase Canada out of oil and gas.

00:07:20.420 I mean, it's always failed because economic and physiological reality ends up overriding his wishes.

00:07:27.140 I mean, the world needs the oil and gas.

00:07:29.300 They're still consuming the oil and gas, but it just doesn't seem to matter to him.

00:07:33.040 We can make the case on showing what it would do to the national budget if he stopped getting the revenues federally from oil and gas.

00:07:39.520 It doesn't matter. His thoughts are we'll just print more money to make up the void.

00:07:43.100 So Premier Smith's been very proactive, at least in saying, well, we'll maintain our pathways to make sure it's still got a good relationship, still got customers south of the border.

00:07:52.220 Because it's over 90 percent of our exports, if we export oil and gas, is America, even with the Trans Mountain line.

00:07:58.560 It's still a tiny amount that goes anywhere else. And she's being wise about it. I mean, you have a prime minister who doesn't have Western Canadian interests in mind, and she's making sure they're protected.

00:08:11.080 Nigel, welcome back to Team Canada.

00:08:16.320 The idea of Team Canada has worked sometimes. I mean, it's a fairly, it's a whimsical phrase that doesn't really mean very much.

00:08:28.560 But, you know, Trudeau sees himself as the captain or the coach of Team Canada, and his orders should be followed, which is why he's so outraged that, you know, Pierre Paulyov is not following his lead on it.

00:08:43.240 I was exchanging the House of Commons just today on this, you know, accusing him of essentially working for Trump here.

00:08:50.820 I can't imagine a Prime Minister Polio being happy to see a 25% tariff when he's Prime Minister.

00:08:57.640 I don't see that.

00:08:59.440 But a Team Canada approach to work where you've essentially got the opposition, you know, at least being polite.

00:09:08.060 and you've got the premiers pulling in the same direction

00:09:11.720 and not trying to do their own carve-out deals,

00:09:14.980 it seems Trudeau would have to come with something.

00:09:17.260 He would have to bring something to the table.

00:09:19.200 I know others and other outlets have suggested that, you know,

00:09:22.400 he should have come and said, okay, Alberta, I think, you know,

00:09:24.900 I think Jen Gerson at the line said, perhaps Trudeau could have come to Alberta

00:09:30.220 and said, I want you on side.

00:09:32.600 We're going to scrap the emissions cap for now.

00:09:34.880 You know, he's just done.

00:09:36.580 It's off the table.

00:09:37.680 That's a goodwill gesture.

00:09:40.520 I don't know if there's a similar gesture he can make to Ontario,

00:09:43.260 because Ontario tends to get whatever it wants, regardless of who the Premier is.

00:09:46.100 But some goodwill gestures to the Premiers to let them know he's serious,

00:09:51.060 that he's not just trying to score some political points on their backs.

00:09:55.160 What do you think Trudeau could do to actually get the Premiers,

00:09:59.240 herd the cats together, and get the Premiers pulling in the same direction? 0.97

00:10:02.960 I'm not sure there's anything that he could do.

00:10:04.960 The trouble with that notion is that there has been so much distrust, lack of fair play going back so far that I believe that Trudeau coming bearing gifts would be particularly well received.

00:10:25.120 I mean, at the basement level, all the premiers understand this is a national problem,

00:10:33.420 and they do have to deal with it as a country, but they have no confidence in the coach.

00:10:39.740 They have no confidence in the team captain, if you will.

00:10:43.660 And in fact, the very use of the phrase Team Canada is somewhat disingenuous,

00:10:48.120 Because after nine years in office, Mr. Trudeau finally recognizes that there are other people in Ottawa who have an interest in things.

00:10:58.200 And all of a sudden now it's Team Canada.

00:11:00.380 We're all linking arms and going together.

00:11:03.620 No, there needs to be some hard talk.

00:11:06.420 And I hope there will be some hard talk.

00:11:08.080 and that out of this will come a prime minister with a mandate but a much chastened one

00:11:16.200 who will actually respect some of the priorities of the other leaders at the junior level of

00:11:24.280 government. It's not going to be a simple matter of going in there and saying well

00:11:29.140 you know we face this external threat and now we must all pull together because

00:11:34.980 Sir, you brought the external threat upon us.

00:11:39.860 Corey, I'm not sure what can be done right now. 0.77

00:11:44.320 Trudeau is a lame duck prime minister, almost as so much as... 0.91

00:11:51.500 Let's just zoom out for a second. 0.93

00:11:54.560 Trudeau is elected and has technically not yet been replaced. 0.99

00:11:59.180 And he's a lame duck. 0.97

00:12:02.140 Can't get anything done. 0.99

00:12:03.520 No one can take him seriously. Can't get a single bill through Parliament at this point.

00:12:09.420 Donald Trump is not even yet the president of the United States, yet he's anything but a land of.

00:12:14.660 He's literally changing geopolitical decisions and calculus before even being sworn in.

00:12:23.420 Hamas is now pretty seriously toying with the idea of giving up the hostages

00:12:27.860 because they know that they're probably going to get some daisy cutters to fall on what's left Gaza if they don't.

00:12:33.520 But what do we do right now? He has essentially no mandate to govern right now. He can't get a bill through Parliament. Everything's deadlocked. And he won't call an election. So I know the obvious answer is, yeah, we just need to have an election. And even if the Liberals win, at least the Liberals then have a mandate, some moral right to govern. But in the absence of an election, what can we do?

00:12:59.900 I don't know. I hate saying that, you know, I've always got an answer for everything. In this case, we're in a very impossible situation. And to be honest, if Trudeau stepped down today and said, you know, we'll run a leadership, well, that's not going to help us because now we're going to have a leaderless, you know, an interim leader sitting in as prime minister or something over the period of a liberal leadership race when we're in the midst of some of the most critical trade negotiations.

00:13:23.620 He'd more likely stay on during the leadership race.

00:13:25.340 Well, who knows?

00:13:26.360 I mean, we're speculating either way we look at it,

00:13:28.460 but he would be even more lame if he'd step down as the leader

00:13:31.820 because then he's not even facing another election.

00:13:34.940 We're in a really, really difficult circumstance right now.

00:13:39.200 The parliament's deadlocked.

00:13:40.480 They're all busy fighting with each other.

00:13:42.320 We've got, as you said, an existential threat to our economy going on.

00:13:45.640 I mean, whatever Trump may be,

00:13:47.200 it's just as believable that the tariff will come in the day he assumes power,

00:13:51.560 or it might be zero.

00:13:52.480 I mean, it's Donald Trump.

00:13:55.020 I don't have a good, clear answer on this because there's so much vitriol and it's just been so much division going on.

00:14:01.680 I can't see them pulling together on a Team Canada thing.

00:14:04.660 Even if Trudeau means the best and really actually wants to put something together, they can't stay in the same room and walk in the same pace anymore.

00:14:13.520 No, it's pretty clear that Mr. Trump has zero respect for Mr. Trudeau.

00:14:18.860 Governor Trudeau.

00:14:19.820 Yeah, well, Governor, he'll be Mr. soon enough.

00:14:24.840 Jagmeet Singh actually put it quite well, I thought, in QP today 0.99

00:14:29.140 when he said, look, Trump's a bully. 0.97

00:14:31.900 Bullies despise weakness. 1.00

00:14:33.660 Trudeau is weak.

00:14:35.240 We're not going to get much done.

00:14:37.720 And I wish he would then join the non-confidence.

00:14:41.900 Speaking of weak, but...

00:14:43.900 we are yeah apparently um we were we just had a visitor to the office who knows about these things

00:14:51.900 and uh there'll be more opposition days of course in in spring and so i would imagine we're going

00:14:58.620 to be having another go chance to dump this government in january february and march maybe

00:15:05.900 we'll maybe this time it'll take mr singh's pension i think vests in february

00:15:13.900 All right. And just to close, I mean, I think there's room to reason, like, you know, a 25% tariff would hurt the United States terribly, too. I mean, these go both ways. It's not going to be good for the American consumer.

00:15:25.860 It'll hurt us a lot more. It'll hurt them, but it'll hurt us a lot more.

00:15:28.460 It will. But this could be resolved if we weren't in such a mess in Canada right now.

00:15:33.560 Yeah. All right. All right. So we think back to, geez, what year did the Syrian civil war break? It was that 2011?

00:15:45.180 It was 2011.

00:15:46.280 You know, during the Arab Spring. And, you know, initially, you know, people throwing off these tyrannical, tin pot dictators, that sounds nice. But then real quickly, the whole Arab Spring goes pretty sideways and they start electing hardline Islamist governments. And then we start thinking, geez, maybe, what was the saying? He might be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. 0.83

00:16:13.440 Well, now, in the case of Syria, he was not our son of a bitch. 1.00

00:16:16.280 That goes back to Cuba. 0.99

00:16:18.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:19.400 And I know it's been applied to Pinochet and things like that. 0.99

00:16:24.200 But now, Assad was never actually our son of a bitch. 1.00

00:16:27.760 He was Russia and Iran's son of a bitch. 1.00

00:16:30.140 But these sons of bitches, we don't get censored too much, 1.00

00:16:36.160 they at least tend more often than not, as bad as they are, as murderous as they are, 0.99

00:16:41.700 It tends to be more murderous even without them sometimes, because this is just such an unstable region of the world.

00:16:48.820 The borders were carved up in the Sykes-Picot Agreement in the First World War that had very little to do with who's actually on the ground kind of thing.

00:16:59.320 Stadam Hussein was indefensibly a murderous monster, but it seemed to go worse even without him. 0.95

00:17:08.660 Well, there's a little bit of a vacuum for Ron there.

00:17:11.700 But in Syria's case, they fell into a civil war. The government did not get toppled in the Arab Spring. They just devolved into a long and bloody civil war. It actually seemed like that civil war was largely simmering down in favor of the Assad regime until all of a sudden it didn't. It was just gone.

00:17:31.780 I don't follow it daily there, but it seemed like a bit of a surprise to me, and it's gone.

00:17:38.020 And, you know, I'm not sure if the people in the streets are representative of Syrians broadly,

00:17:42.180 but I haven't heard much else.

00:17:45.300 Syrian diaspora communities, very broadly, seem to be happy with this.

00:17:50.020 They're happy with the fall of the Assad regime and what's coming in. 0.59

00:17:52.900 So, okay, when we think back to the Arab Spring and the beginning of the civil war in Syria,

00:18:00.820 Governments right across the Western world flung open their borders. Canada, United States, Europe, probably most prominently Germany, where they put in place zero screening whatsoever.

00:18:13.900 And they had guys coming from who weren't even Arabs. They were like Pashtuns coming from Afghanistan showing up in Germany saying, I'm a Syrian, free cell phone and welfare, please. 1.00

00:18:26.780 But, you know, I had some sympathy. You know, it was a bad spot.

00:18:31.780 You know, there were some legitimate refugees who came.

00:18:35.780 A lot of people who came who were not legitimate refugees and just wanted a better life.

00:18:41.780 But it's over. Syrians seem to be happy about it. 1.00

00:18:44.780 The new Syrian interim prime minister, if that's the right title for him, as I said, he wants everybody to come back.

00:18:53.780 I'll start with you, Corey. Is it time, Syrians, to go home? 1.00

00:18:57.980 Yes. I mean, it's not as simple as that. We're talking about something that's been going on for 14 years.

00:19:03.880 Perhaps I can only guess a number of them in Canada-wise have gained citizenship and perhaps want to remain.

00:19:09.880 They've got jobs, they've got family. So, I mean, I'm not calling for some mass deportation of those who came at that time.

00:19:16.300 I mean, that would be inhumane. We are an immigration-based country. 1.00

00:19:19.480 I mean, it's not always a temporary refuge in these circumstances.

00:19:23.080 But for those who said, and they've still maintained that status,

00:19:27.160 saying we're just coming here to wait out the storm in Syria, well, the storm is over.

00:19:31.700 And we've got a lot of other stuff to deal with over here right now.

00:19:34.300 So head on over and get rebuilding, and I wish you the best.

00:19:37.800 And it's time.

00:19:39.480 But Canada, as we'll probably get to, is the only country on Earth that hasn't changed its policy yet.

00:19:43.620 We're still taking in refugees from Syria right now.

00:19:46.380 Nigel.

00:19:48.300 Notice closing errors.

00:19:49.480 Nigel, when we opened the borders to Syrian refugees, many of which were refugees, some of which were just called refugees, but when we opened the borders to them, the great Canadian immigration consensus was very much still intact.

00:20:07.480 canadians were overwhelmingly in support of immigration both through the main channels and

00:20:15.720 and through the refugee channels um that consensus is now utterly obliterated it does not exist

00:20:23.480 anymore um largely because of the last five six years canada's done away with all border controls

00:20:30.840 whatsoever it's resulted in that it's been a major contributing factor at least to the housing

00:20:35.480 crisis, other costs of living aspects, and just major cultural breakdown that we've taken in too

00:20:42.920 many people that we can assimilate in a reasonable period of time, and we're balkanizing. So I think

00:20:50.440 there is a an appetite, perhaps for this now that would have not existed at all in 2011.

00:21:00.120 But do we, do you think we should, not citizens, Syrians who have become citizens,

00:21:08.240 unless you're a citizen, you're in, you're not really much changing that unless you've lied about it.

00:21:13.440 But do you think we should consider deportation of non-Syrian citizens back to Syria at this point?

00:21:18.840 You have to be very careful about who you deport. 0.84

00:21:23.520 There's quite a lot in what you just said there.

00:21:25.960 One of the first things to observe is that if you are a Syrian Christian, you probably

00:21:31.820 should stay where in Canada where you stay. 0.64

00:21:34.040 They might have reasonable grounds to stay.

00:21:35.200 They might have very reasonable, and we therefore would have reasonable grounds not to insist

00:21:40.680 that they leave.

00:21:43.000 What you have there is a couple of Islamist factions who have succeeded militarily, getting

00:21:51.100 rid of the old government. But they have not yet sorted out between themselves who is actually

00:21:58.100 going to be the government. Right now there is this transitional phase. This very much reminds me

00:22:06.160 of that period of time in the Russian Revolution. The Tsar had gone, the Mensheviks were there, 0.94

00:22:13.100 they were Democrats, they were moderates, but the Bolsheviks were there and the Bolsheviks in the 0.58

00:22:18.300 supplanted them and brought in the reign of terror so i would i would hope that's not the future for

00:22:25.500 syria and yet so many things seem to line up fairly well that you have this menshevik

00:22:31.020 transitional government in syria right now meanwhile the other guys are getting ready to

00:22:37.420 take power and the discussion is which of them is going to do it it will probably end in violence

00:22:43.340 and there will be a whole new wave of people wanting to get out of syria because they're on

00:22:47.660 the wrong side it might be too early to kick people out yeah and and let's be there's only

00:22:54.300 one thing clear about civil war in syria is that it's unclear it's not like there was two sides

00:22:59.820 it's not like there was the north and the south or uh cavaliers and roundheads this was this was

00:23:05.820 not clear there were so many different sides i'm not sure if there was any good guys a lot of bad

00:23:10.220 guys let's not forget the kurds as well when we're talking about another yeah when talking about who

00:23:14.940 wants to and I've got a lot of sympathy for the Kurds uh you know the Turks are on the border

00:23:20.700 considering uh further incursions in Syrian Kurdish territory because they will not allow even a small 0.85

00:23:28.220 rump Kurdish state to exist anywhere Kurds are the redheaded stepchild of the Middle East as far as 1.00

00:23:34.060 that goes and then they get said they're always vulnerable but I think a lot of the discussion

00:23:38.940 right now though and that's what's happening in Europe isn't so much on getting rid of the Syrians 1.00

00:23:43.420 refugees have already arrived, those discussions are starting, but at least stopping the flow coming 1.00

00:23:48.380 in. I mean, now, okay, well, hang on, we can also hit the brakes. We are on a wait and see mode and

00:23:53.740 what's happening over there. And that's what's been happening a lot of those countries correctly, 0.69

00:23:57.340 Italy, Germany, France, they said, Okay, well, hold it, the doors are closed. Now,

00:24:01.660 we're going to pause and see what's happening. Well, further to Nigel's point about the Christian 1.00

00:24:06.780 minority. Now the Christian minority was greatly persecuted under the Assad regime, but I've gone

00:24:13.820 back to my point earlier about these sons of bitches, they were probably better under Assad 1.00

00:24:18.940 than the other guys, which is, which is a pretty sad thing to say. Pretty sad state of affairs, 0.99

00:24:24.380 but it's the truth. Would you rather be a Christian in the sound Syria or in the Iran

00:24:30.140 ruled by the mothers? You know, it's just, well, you know, some of the foreign affairs commentators,

00:24:36.300 People who are apparently experts in the region saying it's, I mean, this guy, I can't recall his name, but the transitional prime minister right now is a warlord.

00:24:46.520 And he's got a pretty spotty pass with Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which does not sound good for the Christian minorities in Syria.

00:24:54.120 But he's showing very good signs.

00:24:58.500 They're saying, you know, he's literally meeting with ministers of the deposed ancient regime.

00:25:03.500 Maybe he's a come-to-Jesus moment, no pun intended. Maybe it does work out well. It could work out well, relatively so for the region. 0.85

00:25:15.660 But, yeah, I think there's going to be a case for some of them to stay, particularly religious or ethnic minorities from Syria.

00:25:23.480 You know, so we're talking Kurds, Christians, groups like that.

00:25:28.280 There might be a case for them to just stay permanently of Canada's, their permanent home. 0.76

00:25:31.940 But if we're talking mainstream Syrians, and if the violence does seem to be at an end and there's no particular persecution against mainstream Islamic or Muslim Syrians, are there really refugees anymore at that point?

00:25:48.880 I don't know. When does a refugee cease to be a refugee? That's a good question. If you flee the country to get out from an immediate threat and then the threat disappears, are you still a refugee or are you now just a landed immigrant or a visitor or something else? 0.70

00:26:08.560 It's hard, and it depends on how long. You know, the Vietnamese refugees, we had a great number of them, and it took a long, long time before you could say Vietnam is a safe place to return to.

00:26:18.760 And by the time that status returned, most of them had settled in as North Americans.

00:26:24.420 Well, at that point, they were anti-communist.

00:26:26.360 Yeah.

00:26:26.840 And they considered being a non-communist to be persecuted.

00:26:30.560 But moving back stopped being a consideration because they just kind of had settled into the new area now. Has that been long enough with Syria? 0.97

00:26:37.720 Yeah, I don't know. We got a lot of things to start asking now.

00:26:40.120 Like my family came to Canada, not technically as refugees, but effectively so, because we came from areas that had been overrun by the Red Army.

00:26:48.880 And even once the violence stopped, they were literally not allowed to return because those areas have been annexed by other countries, including the Soviet Union.

00:26:58.720 But even to this day, it's not ours anymore.

00:27:02.240 So we literally can't. So, yeah, that was, you know, we were a case of permanency.

00:27:07.180 But, you know, if you're in an area that was facing war, persecution of some kind, and that ends, and you're able to return to it safely, you know, probably time to go home.

00:27:20.380 And rebuild your homeland.

00:27:22.100 I mean, don't you care about Syria?

00:27:24.300 And I know it's easy to say, and it'd be hard to slice and dice, but we've seen some pretty difficult issues with the Islamist population in Canada, with some of the demonstrations swinging the Palestinian flags, pro-Hammas sorts of things.

00:27:38.180 I suspect a number of those folks are actually Syrian in origin.

00:27:42.660 Well, if they're that uncomfortable here, then there's a good place over there where they might feel a little more...

00:27:46.880 Go fight the war all over there. 0.86

00:27:48.000 Yes.

00:27:48.780 Yeah.

00:27:49.620 Okay.

00:27:49.960 All right, so he's unfortunately tied up over at City Hall, but our Western Standard City Hall columnist, Mike Thomas had a really great column yesterday.

00:28:06.960 yesterday. Do you have the actual title of the column there?

00:28:13.960 I do. Basically, the gist of it was that you are, according to where you live, so you might be a racist in Calvary.

00:28:23.960 What's going on at City Hall?

00:28:28.960 You know all the racists live in Prittis.

00:28:31.960 cornered the market so what's going what's going down there is that the city is applies

00:28:38.720 under the municipal act to come up with a plan right so the administration has put forward a

00:28:43.400 plan and the the long term this has to be approved by city council so right now they are it's in

00:28:52.800 Now, this plan makes the assertion that there are disadvantaged, disempowered, and even, what's their lovely word, equity-denied groups when they're concentrated in certain areas of the city.

00:29:10.840 And therefore, those areas should have more funding from the common pot in order to build the kind of diverse, equity-observing and inclusive city that we want to be.

00:29:29.260 except we is not anybody who's ever voted for it.

00:29:33.060 It is the vision of the civil service

00:29:36.000 that stands behind the city council.

00:29:39.120 And the city council has some people

00:29:40.720 who are totally into this idea,

00:29:43.220 but a number who aren't.

00:29:44.800 And meanwhile, the other 1.4 million Calgarians

00:29:48.060 are only now, thanks to the kind of journalism

00:29:51.600 that Mike Thomas is doing,

00:29:53.540 starting to become aware that there's a whole philosophy

00:29:56.040 that guides and underpins the administration

00:29:59.140 at city hall we don't know anything about but fundamentally it is woke and it is trying to

00:30:05.780 socially engineer this city so that the fantasies and dreams of a kind of elitist group of people

00:30:14.580 will be endorsed by a city council some of whom agree with it or enough of them elected by people

00:30:21.540 who probably don't really understand what is going on so you better pay attention western

00:30:28.100 standard viewers to what thomas is writing at the moment because it's not only happening here it's

00:30:33.940 going to be happening in every major city because the same people kind of people are recruited by

00:30:40.420 the same kind of people in the same kind of cities so if it's happening here it'll be in edmonton

00:30:45.460 it'll be in saskatoon regina vancouver toronto so i i i mean put it more dramatically if it's

00:30:53.780 even happening in calgary just imagine how nutty it's going to be in vancouver or montreal or

00:30:59.860 toronto well we know how nutty it gets in vancouver they won't even let you have a gas stove but i

00:31:03.860 mean that's not been brought up here yet that i'm aware of but that's the kind of craziness and when

00:31:09.700 you were talking about 15-minute cities you think that'll never happen and maybe it's not such a bad

00:31:15.620 thing to have your dentist and your doctor reasonably handy nevertheless i want to have

00:31:21.300 the choice i think most people want to have the choice to be able to get up and go deal with who

00:31:26.660 they want to wherever they are in the city or outside of it so the idea that we're going to

00:31:31.060 have these little clusters through which we can be controlled and our mobility restricted

00:31:38.260 this is kind of a lot of what's behind the the administration in city hall this is the kind of

00:31:43.540 thing they fantasize about they're trying to push it through corey i thought racially segregated

00:31:50.100 neighborhoods or something the right wing does i thought um keeping people to their own little

00:31:57.540 balkanized schools their balkanized neighborhoods that's something conservatives are supposed to do

00:32:02.980 but i mean this is coming out of the you know kind of the extreme left uh

00:32:09.700 you know let's say critical theory critical race theory it's coming out of that oh well

00:32:15.460 what's that intersectionalism. I saw you're reading through some of this report. I could

00:32:20.740 see the intersectionalist language, you know, intersections of different identities. And I

00:32:25.540 mean, it's, it's, I'd hate to see a visualization of whatever chart they have to do to get you

00:32:32.980 know, for your world, they can't even describe or define. Holy crap, they have a map of it. 0.77

00:32:42.260 Looks like my neighborhood's pretty racist. 0.98

00:32:47.480 See, I don't even know what the colors mean.

00:32:49.160 I just know that my neighborhood is probably considered bad.

00:32:52.180 And, you know, I live in a fairly diverse neighborhood.

00:32:54.340 It's majority white, but it's very diverse.

00:32:56.400 But for the most part, other than certain shotgun-wielding maniacs, it's pretty peaceful. 0.99

00:33:01.480 This crap has been a long time in coming. 0.98

00:33:04.980 I wrote about this back when I was just blogging in that. 0.99

00:33:07.660 I broke it down.

00:33:08.240 There was a document that Nenshi was a part of making before he became mayor.

00:33:11.680 People might forget the name of it.

00:33:12.820 It was called Imagine Calgary.

00:33:14.280 Yes.

00:33:14.700 And the city spent millions of dollars on this thing.

00:33:17.780 And it is literally, if you're bored and want something weird to read, Google Imagine Calgary.

00:33:23.080 It's surreal with the absurd and bizarre things they wanted to do in it.

00:33:27.380 And then she said in his earlier years that he's modeling his plans on Calgary on that document.

00:33:31.940 And the Office of Sustainability Calgary was this giant bloated bureaucracy that nobody knew quite what they did. 0.84

00:33:38.240 But they have a whole lot of money, and their stamp goes on just the sort of crap like we're seeing coming out right now. 0.54

00:33:44.660 Mike is just reporting on the latest incarnation of these woke and how much more they've dominated that civil service. 0.89

00:33:51.960 But when you dig down and scratch through all of that, you know what it always comes down to? 0.98

00:33:56.200 It's bloody socialists. 0.76

00:33:57.300 They're just finding another justification for wage redistribution, beating down the successful. 0.97

00:34:03.380 And now they want to say, if you oppose this wealth redistribution, you must be a racist. 1.00

00:34:08.500 It's not a matter of saying, maybe I oppose your flawed, stupid economic theory. 0.98

00:34:14.340 It's, you know, as Nigel pointed out some of those terms with, you know, the equity factor. 0.99

00:34:18.180 Like, this is what it all comes down to in the end.

00:34:21.600 It's what it boils down to. 1.00

00:34:23.020 And the graduates from these universities that couldn't find a job in the private sector because they were woke morons, 0.99

00:34:29.040 were welcomed into the bureaucracy of these cities. 0.99

00:34:31.260 And now we're all getting to bear the fruit of it.

00:34:34.480 You know, I'm looking at this map.

00:34:38.400 We need to juxtapose this with the electoral map from the provincial election in Alberta.

00:34:44.400 I am, again, I can't see it's too small in the index here, but I'm guessing the least equity deserving areas in here, those look to me like UCP ridings.

00:34:57.120 The most equity deserving are NDP writings, and the ones in the middle, actually, I'm seeing my neighborhoods in the middle, those were the swing writings.

00:35:07.660 This is an electoral map, and this is a Calgary bureaucrat saying parts of the city that voted NDP deserve more money.

00:35:16.360 I don't think I'm transferring into Pump Hill.

00:35:19.440 Yeah, probably not.

00:35:23.700 It's gobsmacking.

00:35:25.100 Equity index.

00:35:25.740 But, you know, this is part of the nature of the beast of bureaucracy.

00:35:31.520 I mean, Calgary is, you know, it's not as conservative as people outside of Alberta think.

00:35:37.960 But it is nowhere near, like, the outright neo-Marxist view that these people have.

00:35:46.840 You know, how is it that our own city bureaucracy, in a relatively conservative city,

00:35:52.240 could be dominated by neo, like, cultural Marxists like this.

00:35:57.780 The thing is, these bureaucrats, nobody can name them.

00:36:00.560 They don't face election.

00:36:02.180 And there's something really bad that happened over the period of Nenshi's tenure as well.

00:36:06.200 It was happening prior to him, but more so that city councillors wouldn't call the bureaucracy to account.

00:36:12.420 In fact, they would be yelled at by the mayor if they dared to question some of the senior bureaucrats on some of their actions.

00:36:18.080 They were given free reign.

00:36:19.620 The relationship got turned backwards.

00:36:21.780 You know, city council and mayor are supposed to be oversight on these bureaucrats. 1.00

00:36:25.980 Instead, they tend to answer to the bureaucrats.

00:36:28.580 And that relationship's got to change.

00:36:30.220 There's got to be critical questioning of these bureaucrats and what they're doing. 1.00

00:36:33.520 And it's going to take new city halls across the country to start doing that.

00:36:36.940 No, it's completely upside down.

00:36:39.380 There's every department has now got its own DEI section.

00:36:44.480 And I heard of one situation recently where a chap, an alderman, I forget his name now, but I'm not very up on the individuals, but he got hauled in to see, he had to go and see the DEI people and explain why they weren't being more progressive and getting a handle on making sure everything was inclusive in his writing.

00:37:14.480 whatever you think of the issue the fact was that he was being called to account by people who are

00:37:20.720 not elected but had been appointed by by the mayor or the mayor and council so this whole

00:37:28.080 thing is backwards we're now getting the tail wagging the dog the you know the dog being the

00:37:34.320 council and the people and the tail being the the administrative overburden very very difficult and

00:37:40.880 hard to hard to undo is going to take a long time yeah as we said it's not just calgary it's

00:37:45.520 everywhere i mean you you need a whole new cadre of people with the right idea coming through with

00:37:51.080 the right qualifications to be actually well able to do this job and you have to look at who's drawn

00:37:55.180 to it how many people graduate from university saying i'm looking forward to a civil service job

00:37:59.440 you know people with ambition don't say that people who are self-starters or self-thinkers

00:38:04.900 don't do that but people who like dei people who like writing it out for a high salary people who

00:38:11.860 are woke they are drawn to these jobs and they've become dominant and you know cory the one thing

00:38:17.540 that uh strikes me about all of this is that all those people who turned out to express their

00:38:24.100 dissatisfaction over the rezoning uh that's actually before the courts right now this idea

00:38:30.820 that they would get rid of a single family residential

00:38:33.480 and build anything anywhere.

00:38:35.060 All those people who went to council

00:38:36.900 and made their views no need to make

00:38:39.320 a little New Year's resolution

00:38:41.120 that when the election comes up,

00:38:43.220 they will go out and they will vote

00:38:45.340 for people who will do what they want

00:38:47.240 because this has always been the problem

00:38:49.280 with the city council.

00:38:50.680 Let's let somebody else do it.

00:38:51.980 Oh, apathy.

00:38:52.620 I mean, it's their own fault in the end.

00:38:55.180 This is how this has come about.

00:38:56.920 All right.

00:38:57.920 Well, we're going to have a little more time

00:39:00.540 than usual for our parting shots today uh we'll start with core you get to go first sure i i saw

00:39:07.100 from uh mr snell who put that uh piece in the western standard actually on there that's our bc

00:39:12.380 reporter yes but on the tesla trucks those and you know i love elon musk he's musk he's brilliant

00:39:18.860 he's a disruptor he shakes things up he does things but all those trucks are awful they're

00:39:24.220 hideously ugly they're heavy they're unwieldy and now it turns out they obviously as much as

00:39:30.140 mr musk has determined on how to make rockets fly up and land back in their pads he didn't create

00:39:35.340 trucks that will actually work on canadian winter roads so people have bought some of these chrome

00:39:40.300 abominations and now the pictures are showing up this winter of them being winched on to tow trucks

00:39:45.180 and pulled a dysfunctional off to repair shops wherever you get those things fixed

00:39:49.820 uh just well whatever it's your money guys but uh i think actually it's our money too they're

00:39:54.540 heavily subsidized yeah yeah that but uh yeah just a nod out to those tesla trucks guys

00:39:59.980 merry christmas you know the day will come i believe the day will come when we have viable

00:40:05.500 electronic vehicles the day will come when we can have a battery that lasts more than five minutes

00:40:11.660 in uh minus 30 weather the day's not here it's not here yet and uh that's just a reminder that uh

00:40:18.780 justin trudeau and steven gilbeau have outlawed uh new uh traditional combustion engine vehicles

00:40:25.180 by what? Is it supposed to be 2035? 2035. I mean, it'll obviously never happen because they'll be

00:40:30.340 out any day now. But yeah, Nigel. Well, that's, you know, it actually just reminds me of a

00:40:38.160 time up in Fort St. John about five years ago where the NDPBC government decided they needed

00:40:44.560 to push this electronic thing and they sent an electronic vehicle up to Fort St. John for the

00:40:48.960 use of the energy mines and petroleum resources or whatever they call it now. This thing got no

00:40:54.240 miles on it at all. Nobody would take it further than the 7-Eleven to pick up coffee.

00:40:58.320 So anyway, there's got to be some huge technological change before that goes anywhere.

00:41:04.220 But look, turning to my parting shot, I think actually Mr. Trudeau is riding a wave at the 0.98

00:41:11.940 moment, thanks to Mr. Trump, because Mr. Trump has made him look like a chump. And you can 0.98

00:41:20.220 see this all right well that didn't go so well but i'll tell you what let's let's just let's

00:41:24.940 gather the anti-american cards and play them to the election we can always go into an election

00:41:30.300 and be captain canada against the uh against the uh united states so you could just patriotism as

00:41:38.700 the last refuge of a scoundrel it's an old quote but a true one and i think that uh mr trudeau

00:41:45.580 was going to do his best to to to try and make us all hate Trump even more all right uh I had to pick

00:41:57.160 between two uh you know maybe I will do depends on which time um but uh watching question period

00:42:03.640 today it's double barrel parting shot double pipe double barrel double pipe yeah uh watching

00:42:10.300 question period today was, oh, it was, it was peak Trudeau. I mean, this is called question period,

00:42:17.420 not answer period for a reason. The opposition asked a question, you know, always an embarrassing

00:42:21.140 kind of loaded question. That's the way these things work. But then the government answers

00:42:25.200 the question that they wish they were asked. But sometimes it's, it really gets pretty crazy.

00:42:32.540 Polyev was asking about, you know, the liberal solemn pledge not to let the deficit pass $40

00:42:39.180 billion dollars uh it the liberals refuse to say what it will be but it is almost certainly going

00:42:45.540 to be more importantly um but uh trudeau's response to polyev was that here polyev

00:42:52.060 i'm not breaking canada here polyev is breaking canada um that's an incredible statement for

00:42:59.980 someone to make who's been in power for nearly a decade someone who's been in power for nine years

00:43:04.700 It'll probably be closer to a decade by the time this is all done, has been a power.

00:43:09.380 Pierre Polyev has never been Prime Minister.

00:43:11.040 Pierre Polyev has been a relatively junior minister in the Harper government, and he's the leader of the opposition.

00:43:16.720 The leader of the opposition doesn't have all that much power, really, until they eventually potentially become Prime Minister.

00:43:24.780 So, yeah, Justin Trudeau has told us, who's breaking Canada?

00:43:30.360 It's not the guy who's been in charge for a decade.

00:43:32.460 it's the guy who's never been in charge got enough time now I just want to make

00:43:38.700 honorable mention my second parting shot today just to note that that we had a

00:43:43.740 historic moment also in the House of Commons just last week when Jake meets

00:43:48.840 seeing voted against Jake meets it I think we discussed this in the pipeline

00:43:53.400 last week it was a very creative motion of non-confidence

00:44:01.500 And Pierre Polyev and the conservatives could not get the NDP to vote non-confidence in the liberals on conservative issues, or even just for a plain, this House has no confidence.

00:44:11.380 So he tried something else. He took Jagmeet Singh's own words about why Justin Trudeau is a bad prime minister, why he's a corporate shell, why he should no longer be prime minister.

00:44:21.460 He quoted that and says that this House agrees with the leader of the NDP, and therefore has no confidence in this government.

00:44:29.100 and what has got to be the single most humiliating moment

00:44:34.740 in the history of Canadian politics,

00:44:37.740 Jagmeet Singh voted against Jagmeet Singh.

00:44:43.180 And, I mean, that's got to be the cherry on his political career right there.

00:44:46.420 It's still one of the smartest votes he's made in his whole time in there, though. 0.99

00:44:49.620 He will be crazy.

00:44:50.680 He'd be crazy to call an election right now. 0.58

00:44:52.640 Yeah.

00:44:53.260 Okay, Jonah, why don't we wrap it up there?

00:44:55.140 You bet.

00:44:56.620 Thank you for joining,

00:44:57.420 and thank all of you for joining us here

00:44:59.520 on the pipeline today.

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Western Standard - December 12, 2024

Smith, Ford do end run around Governor Trudeau

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