In this week's edition of The Pipeline, we talk about a new planning document from the City of Calgary, the Syrian civil war is over, and Canada's premiers are doing their best to do what they can to get around Team Canada.
00:01:01.000Western 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.
00:01:13.380And 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.
00:01:22.120And this is not a Calgary, this is a Calgary report, but it's not really a Calgary story.
00:01:25.940It'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.
00:01:41.800Well, I think there's a lot of municipalities that want to take notice of what Mike wrote.
00:01:45.460Indeed. All right, we're going to get into that.
00:01:51.560It seems, at least for this week or so.
00:01:56.960But, you know, Canada, the United States, Germany, other countries in the West, very generously and perhaps unwisely,
00:02:05.540threw open their borders when the Syrian conflict broke out.
00:02:10.100And half the population, the pre-war population of Syria, now lives in Western countries.
00:02:15.420Now 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
00:03:06.140We're not even that loudly flying our F-Trudeau flags at this point.
00:03:09.340We already know the guy is done. He's cucked. Stop kicking him.
00:03:12.340He'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.
00:03:30.440I think rightfully so, we got our knickers in a twist. That's an existential threat to the Canadian economy or trading country.
00:03:38.160But Trudeau demanded we take a so-called Team Canada approach.
00:03:45.160And Team Canada approach to him is Team Trudeau.
00:03:49.160It means everybody shut up and follow his lead.
00:03:53.160He had a meeting with the opposition party leaders of parliament.
00:03:58.160And then right after, it went after Poliev, I guess Trudeau's demand was that everybody just stop, don't criticize anything Canada's doing.
00:04:12.440Some things Trump is going after here, I'm not sure they have.
00:04:16.440They 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.
00:07:14.140I mean, Trudeau's ideological bent has always been on trying to phase Canada out of oil and gas.
00:07:20.420I mean, it's always failed because economic and physiological reality ends up overriding his wishes.
00:07:27.140I mean, the world needs the oil and gas.
00:07:29.300They're still consuming the oil and gas, but it just doesn't seem to matter to him.
00:07:33.040We 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.
00:07:39.520It doesn't matter. His thoughts are we'll just print more money to make up the void.
00:07:43.100So 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.
00:07:52.220Because it's over 90 percent of our exports, if we export oil and gas, is America, even with the Trans Mountain line.
00:07:58.560It'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.
00:08:16.320The 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.
00:08:28.560But, 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.
00:08:43.240I was exchanging the House of Commons just today on this, you know, accusing him of essentially working for Trump here.
00:08:50.820I can't imagine a Prime Minister Polio being happy to see a 25% tariff when he's Prime Minister.
00:09:40.520I don't know if there's a similar gesture he can make to Ontario,
00:09:43.260because Ontario tends to get whatever it wants, regardless of who the Premier is.
00:09:46.100But some goodwill gestures to the Premiers to let them know he's serious,
00:09:51.060that he's not just trying to score some political points on their backs.
00:09:55.160What do you think Trudeau could do to actually get the Premiers,
00:09:59.240herd the cats together, and get the Premiers pulling in the same direction?0.97
00:10:02.960I'm not sure there's anything that he could do.
00:10:04.960The 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.
00:10:25.120I mean, at the basement level, all the premiers understand this is a national problem,
00:10:33.420and they do have to deal with it as a country, but they have no confidence in the coach.
00:10:39.740They have no confidence in the team captain, if you will.
00:10:43.660And in fact, the very use of the phrase Team Canada is somewhat disingenuous,
00:10:48.120Because after nine years in office, Mr. Trudeau finally recognizes that there are other people in Ottawa who have an interest in things.
00:10:58.200And all of a sudden now it's Team Canada.
00:11:00.380We're all linking arms and going together.
00:12:03.520No one can take him seriously. Can't get a single bill through Parliament at this point.
00:12:09.420Donald Trump is not even yet the president of the United States, yet he's anything but a land of.
00:12:14.660He's literally changing geopolitical decisions and calculus before even being sworn in.
00:12:23.420Hamas is now pretty seriously toying with the idea of giving up the hostages
00:12:27.860because they know that they're probably going to get some daisy cutters to fall on what's left Gaza if they don't.
00:12:33.520But 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?
00:12:59.900I 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.
00:13:23.620He'd more likely stay on during the leadership race.
00:13:55.020I 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.
00:14:01.680I can't see them pulling together on a Team Canada thing.
00:14:04.660Even 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.
00:14:13.520No, it's pretty clear that Mr. Trump has zero respect for Mr. Trudeau.
00:14:43.900we are yeah apparently um we were we just had a visitor to the office who knows about these things
00:14:51.900and uh there'll be more opposition days of course in in spring and so i would imagine we're going
00:14:58.620to be having another go chance to dump this government in january february and march maybe
00:15:05.900we'll maybe this time it'll take mr singh's pension i think vests in february
00:15:13.900All 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.
00:15:25.860It'll hurt us a lot more. It'll hurt them, but it'll hurt us a lot more.
00:15:28.460It will. But this could be resolved if we weren't in such a mess in Canada right now.
00:15:33.560Yeah. All right. All right. So we think back to, geez, what year did the Syrian civil war break? It was that 2011?
00:15:46.280You 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
00:16:13.440Well, now, in the case of Syria, he was not our son of a bitch.0.97
00:16:19.400And I know it's been applied to Pinochet and things like that.
00:16:24.200But now, Assad was never actually our son of a bitch.0.55
00:16:27.760He was Russia and Iran's son of a bitch.1.00
00:16:30.140But these sons of bitches, we don't get censored too much,
00:16:36.160they at least tend more often than not, as bad as they are, as murderous as they are,
00:16:41.700It tends to be more murderous even without them sometimes, because this is just such an unstable region of the world.
00:16:48.820The 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.
00:16:59.320Stadam Hussein was indefensibly a murderous monster, but it seemed to go worse even without him.0.95
00:17:08.660Well, there's a little bit of a vacuum for Ron there.
00:17:11.700But 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.
00:17:31.780I don't follow it daily there, but it seemed like a bit of a surprise to me, and it's gone.
00:17:38.020And, you know, I'm not sure if the people in the streets are representative of Syrians broadly,
00:17:45.300Syrian diaspora communities, very broadly, seem to be happy with this.
00:17:50.020They're happy with the fall of the Assad regime and what's coming in.0.59
00:17:52.900So, okay, when we think back to the Arab Spring and the beginning of the civil war in Syria,
00:18:00.820Governments 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.
00:18:13.900And 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
00:18:26.780But, you know, I had some sympathy. You know, it was a bad spot.
00:18:31.780You know, there were some legitimate refugees who came.
00:18:35.780A lot of people who came who were not legitimate refugees and just wanted a better life.
00:18:41.780But it's over. Syrians seem to be happy about it.1.00
00:18:44.780The new Syrian interim prime minister, if that's the right title for him, as I said, he wants everybody to come back.
00:18:53.780I'll start with you, Corey. Is it time, Syrians, to go home?1.00
00:18:57.980Yes. I mean, it's not as simple as that. We're talking about something that's been going on for 14 years.
00:19:03.880Perhaps I can only guess a number of them in Canada-wise have gained citizenship and perhaps want to remain.
00:19:09.880They'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.
00:19:16.300I mean, that would be inhumane. We are an immigration-based country.1.00
00:19:19.480I mean, it's not always a temporary refuge in these circumstances.
00:19:23.080But for those who said, and they've still maintained that status,
00:19:27.160saying we're just coming here to wait out the storm in Syria, well, the storm is over.
00:19:31.700And we've got a lot of other stuff to deal with over here right now.
00:19:34.300So head on over and get rebuilding, and I wish you the best.
00:19:49.480Nigel, 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.
00:20:07.480canadians were overwhelmingly in support of immigration both through the main channels and
00:20:15.720and through the refugee channels um that consensus is now utterly obliterated it does not exist
00:20:23.480anymore um largely because of the last five six years canada's done away with all border controls
00:20:30.840whatsoever it's resulted in that it's been a major contributing factor at least to the housing
00:20:35.480crisis, other costs of living aspects, and just major cultural breakdown that we've taken in too
00:20:42.920many people that we can assimilate in a reasonable period of time, and we're balkanizing. So I think
00:20:50.440there is a an appetite, perhaps for this now that would have not existed at all in 2011.
00:21:00.120But do we, do you think we should, not citizens, Syrians who have become citizens,
00:21:08.240unless you're a citizen, you're in, you're not really much changing that unless you've lied about it.
00:21:13.440But do you think we should consider deportation of non-Syrian citizens back to Syria at this point?
00:21:18.840You have to be very careful about who you deport.0.84
00:21:23.520There's quite a lot in what you just said there.
00:21:25.960One of the first things to observe is that if you are a Syrian Christian, you probably
00:21:31.820should stay where in Canada where you stay.0.64
00:21:34.040They might have reasonable grounds to stay.
00:21:35.200They might have very reasonable, and we therefore would have reasonable grounds not to insist
00:21:43.000What you have there is a couple of Islamist factions who have succeeded militarily, getting
00:21:51.100rid of the old government. But they have not yet sorted out between themselves who is actually
00:21:58.100going to be the government. Right now there is this transitional phase. This very much reminds me
00:22:06.160of that period of time in the Russian Revolution. The Tsar had gone, the Mensheviks were there,0.94
00:22:13.100they were Democrats, they were moderates, but the Bolsheviks were there and the Bolsheviks in the0.58
00:22:18.300supplanted them and brought in the reign of terror so i would i would hope that's not the future for
00:22:25.500syria and yet so many things seem to line up fairly well that you have this menshevik
00:22:31.020transitional government in syria right now meanwhile the other guys are getting ready to
00:22:37.420take power and the discussion is which of them is going to do it it will probably end in violence
00:22:43.340and there will be a whole new wave of people wanting to get out of syria because they're on
00:22:47.660the wrong side it might be too early to kick people out yeah and and let's be there's only
00:22:54.300one thing clear about civil war in syria is that it's unclear it's not like there was two sides
00:22:59.820it's not like there was the north and the south or uh cavaliers and roundheads this was this was
00:23:05.820not clear there were so many different sides i'm not sure if there was any good guys a lot of bad
00:23:10.220guys let's not forget the kurds as well when we're talking about another yeah when talking about who
00:23:14.940wants to and I've got a lot of sympathy for the Kurds uh you know the Turks are on the border
00:23:20.700considering uh further incursions in Syrian Kurdish territory because they will not allow even a small0.85
00:23:28.220rump Kurdish state to exist anywhere Kurds are the redheaded stepchild of the Middle East as far as1.00
00:23:34.060that goes and then they get said they're always vulnerable but I think a lot of the discussion
00:23:38.940right now though and that's what's happening in Europe isn't so much on getting rid of the Syrians1.00
00:23:43.420refugees have already arrived, those discussions are starting, but at least stopping the flow coming1.00
00:23:48.380in. I mean, now, okay, well, hang on, we can also hit the brakes. We are on a wait and see mode and
00:23:53.740what's happening over there. And that's what's been happening a lot of those countries correctly,0.69
00:23:57.340Italy, Germany, France, they said, Okay, well, hold it, the doors are closed. Now,
00:24:01.660we're going to pause and see what's happening. Well, further to Nigel's point about the Christian1.00
00:24:06.780minority. Now the Christian minority was greatly persecuted under the Assad regime, but I've gone
00:24:13.820back to my point earlier about these sons of bitches, they were probably better under Assad1.00
00:24:18.940than the other guys, which is, which is a pretty sad thing to say. Pretty sad state of affairs,
00:24:24.380but it's the truth. Would you rather be a Christian in the sound Syria or in the Iran
00:24:30.140ruled by the mothers? You know, it's just, well, you know, some of the foreign affairs commentators,
00:24:36.300People 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.
00:24:46.520And he's got a pretty spotty pass with Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which does not sound good for the Christian minorities in Syria.
00:24:58.500They're saying, you know, he's literally meeting with ministers of the deposed ancient regime.
00:25:03.500Maybe 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
00:25:15.660But, yeah, I think there's going to be a case for some of them to stay, particularly religious or ethnic minorities from Syria.
00:25:23.480You know, so we're talking Kurds, Christians, groups like that.
00:25:28.280There might be a case for them to just stay permanently of Canada's, their permanent home.0.76
00:25:31.940But 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?
00:25:48.880I 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
00:26:08.560It'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.
00:26:18.760And by the time that status returned, most of them had settled in as North Americans.
00:26:24.420Well, at that point, they were anti-communist.
00:26:26.840And they considered being a non-communist to be persecuted.
00:26:30.560But 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
00:26:37.720Yeah, I don't know. We got a lot of things to start asking now.
00:26:40.120Like 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.
00:26:48.880And 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.
00:26:58.720But even to this day, it's not ours anymore.
00:27:02.240So we literally can't. So, yeah, that was, you know, we were a case of permanency.
00:27:07.180But, 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.
00:27:24.300And 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.
00:27:38.180I suspect a number of those folks are actually Syrian in origin.
00:27:42.660Well, if they're that uncomfortable here, then there's a good place over there where they might feel a little more...
00:27:49.960All 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.
00:28:06.960yesterday. Do you have the actual title of the column there?
00:28:13.960I do. Basically, the gist of it was that you are, according to where you live, so you might be a racist in Calvary.
00:28:28.960You know all the racists live in Prittis.
00:28:31.960cornered the market so what's going what's going down there is that the city is applies
00:28:38.720under the municipal act to come up with a plan right so the administration has put forward a
00:28:43.400plan and the the long term this has to be approved by city council so right now they are it's in
00:28:52.800Now, 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.
00:29:10.840And 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.
00:29:29.260except we is not anybody who's ever voted for it.
00:34:38.400We need to juxtapose this with the electoral map from the provincial election in Alberta.
00:34:44.400I 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.
00:34:57.120The 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.
00:35:07.660This is an electoral map, and this is a Calgary bureaucrat saying parts of the city that voted NDP deserve more money.
00:35:16.360I don't think I'm transferring into Pump Hill.
00:36:39.380There's every department has now got its own DEI section.
00:36:44.480And 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.
00:37:14.480whatever you think of the issue the fact was that he was being called to account by people who are
00:37:20.720not elected but had been appointed by by the mayor or the mayor and council so this whole
00:37:28.080thing is backwards we're now getting the tail wagging the dog the you know the dog being the
00:37:34.320council and the people and the tail being the the administrative overburden very very difficult and
00:37:40.880hard to hard to undo is going to take a long time yeah as we said it's not just calgary it's
00:37:45.520everywhere i mean you you need a whole new cadre of people with the right idea coming through with
00:37:51.080the right qualifications to be actually well able to do this job and you have to look at who's drawn
00:37:55.180to it how many people graduate from university saying i'm looking forward to a civil service job
00:37:59.440you know people with ambition don't say that people who are self-starters or self-thinkers
00:38:04.900don't do that but people who like dei people who like writing it out for a high salary people who
00:38:11.860are woke they are drawn to these jobs and they've become dominant and you know cory the one thing
00:38:17.540that uh strikes me about all of this is that all those people who turned out to express their
00:38:24.100dissatisfaction over the rezoning uh that's actually before the courts right now this idea
00:38:30.820that they would get rid of a single family residential
00:42:10.300question period today was, oh, it was, it was peak Trudeau. I mean, this is called question period,
00:42:17.420not answer period for a reason. The opposition asked a question, you know, always an embarrassing
00:42:21.140kind of loaded question. That's the way these things work. But then the government answers
00:42:25.200the question that they wish they were asked. But sometimes it's, it really gets pretty crazy.
00:42:32.540Polyev was asking about, you know, the liberal solemn pledge not to let the deficit pass $40
00:42:39.180billion dollars uh it the liberals refuse to say what it will be but it is almost certainly going
00:42:45.540to be more importantly um but uh trudeau's response to polyev was that here polyev
00:42:52.060i'm not breaking canada here polyev is breaking canada um that's an incredible statement for
00:42:59.980someone to make who's been in power for nearly a decade someone who's been in power for nine years
00:43:04.700It'll probably be closer to a decade by the time this is all done, has been a power.
00:43:09.380Pierre Polyev has never been Prime Minister.
00:43:11.040Pierre Polyev has been a relatively junior minister in the Harper government, and he's the leader of the opposition.
00:43:16.720The leader of the opposition doesn't have all that much power, really, until they eventually potentially become Prime Minister.
00:43:24.780So, yeah, Justin Trudeau has told us, who's breaking Canada?
00:43:30.360It's not the guy who's been in charge for a decade.
00:43:32.460it's the guy who's never been in charge got enough time now I just want to make
00:43:38.700honorable mention my second parting shot today just to note that that we had a
00:43:43.740historic moment also in the House of Commons just last week when Jake meets
00:43:48.840seeing voted against Jake meets it I think we discussed this in the pipeline
00:43:53.400last week it was a very creative motion of non-confidence
00:44:01.500And 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.
00:44:11.380So 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.
00:44:21.460He quoted that and says that this House agrees with the leader of the NDP, and therefore has no confidence in this government.
00:44:29.100and what has got to be the single most humiliating moment
00:45:25.940If you value the work that we do, if you want there to be any free press left in this country not working for Justin Trudeau, we need you to step up and support us and become a member.
00:45:36.380Right now, it's only $10 a month or $100 a year, and you'll get unlimited access to our content past that pesky paywall, and you'll be supporting the work we do.
00:45:46.060Thank you very much for joining us, and God bless.