Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show. April 2, 2021

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

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00:01:00.000 Thank you.

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00:02:00.000 good morning welcome to this friday april 2nd episode of the cory morgan show this is my live

00:02:18.380 show i do every monday and friday from 10 till noon mountain standard time i cover the top

00:02:26.460 pressing issues for the Western Standard and the West, and I interview interesting people to speak

00:02:32.200 on them. So this is Good Friday. I actually won't be doing a Monday show this week. I'll make it a

00:02:38.320 long weekend. It's one of those odd ones. Do people do Friday? Do they do Monday? So in this case,

00:02:44.160 I'm going to take the Monday off and go with that. So religious observances, you know, this is

00:02:49.800 something to look at. We are now just over one year into our two-week lockdown to flatten the

00:02:57.800 curve. So now we're actually getting into major religious gatherings and holidays that have been

00:03:05.260 deferred. I mean, we're on to the second ones now. So this will be the second Easter that people are

00:03:09.160 going to miss out on, the second Passover, I guess. How long is this going to go? And the signs don't

00:03:17.200 look promising. You know, Doug Ford, though, he's always been abjectly terrified of the pandemic and

00:03:23.320 eager to lock things down, has locked things down again. BC has rolled back and is tightening things

00:03:29.580 back up again. Alberta, for what it's worth, seems to be the most reticent so far. But we'll see what

00:03:39.000 happens here. You know, it just seems that Kenny will get pushed into restricting things further,

00:03:45.760 crushing businesses further, stressing families further, putting off again important things such

00:03:51.540 as religious services. Before we get into it though, this is a show with a live banner that's

00:04:01.780 supposed to go on the top. These are some of the great things when you are your own producer at

00:04:06.440 the time. Okay. Well, we are sponsored by KyrensWay.com and KyrensWay is a service that's run

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00:04:50.660 We aren't asking for it.

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00:05:13.700 Everybody wins.

00:05:15.600 So we've got Doug Coates saying Doug Ford's not so worried about the people he's worried about going.

00:05:21.680 He's his health minister.

00:05:23.680 Yeah, the health minister or these health bureaucrats we get as well.

00:05:26.940 I mean, you know, who is running Alberta?

00:05:28.960 Is it Hinshaw?

00:05:29.700 Is it Kenny?

00:05:30.780 In the case of Ford and then Bonnie Henry and so many others.

00:05:34.140 So this was interesting the other day with a standard story.

00:05:37.400 Kenny admitted that the pandemic modeling is inaccurate,

00:05:41.380 but he's asking for continued compliance of public health measures.

00:05:46.840 So, I mean, because we've been throwing it in their face.

00:05:49.400 I point it out every week.

00:05:50.600 I'm not even going to bring up their model this time, but their models are junk.

00:05:56.500 Last year they showed models that said we were going to be into the thousands of infections,

00:06:00.120 possibly 30,000 dead, never came anywhere close to that.

00:06:03.660 New models came out in fall, and then January they showed these models with things spiking and going out of control with thousands in hospital.

00:06:11.480 Again, we're just under 300 in hospital.

00:06:13.560 Their models are no good.

00:06:14.800 So now he's saying, okay, yeah, our models weren't all that good, but please, you know, everybody just keep complying because we don't know what's going to happen.

00:06:22.660 And that compliance means giving up on church services and things like that.

00:06:27.800 Now, Danielle Smith's been doing some fantastic specials.

00:06:30.920 I'm sure a lot of these viewers have already caught some of them,

00:06:32.840 and she's been speaking to doctors on the pandemic.

00:06:35.120 People are saying, oh, you're not a doctor.

00:06:36.520 You can't speak to it.

00:06:37.180 Well, Danielle spoke to doctors, and they spoke to it.

00:06:39.600 Not all doctors agree with the measures,

00:06:42.480 with feeling that lockdowns are an appropriate way to deal with a pandemic.

00:06:47.420 As well, she spoke with Pastor Coates.

00:06:49.480 She spoke with Aaron Coates.

00:06:51.440 I mean, we locked up a person for a month for daring to hold a religious service.

00:06:56.420 I mean, just think of the optics of that.

00:06:57.520 Think of the reality of that.

00:06:59.340 This is, you know, stepping on religious freedom.

00:07:02.080 That is a huge and important freedom.

00:07:04.200 It doesn't matter to me so much.

00:07:06.420 I'm not a religious man.

00:07:07.420 But, you see, as a non-religious man, I can understand the need to protect something as integral as free religion.

00:07:14.740 You know, people have the right.

00:07:15.700 This is a big part of a lot of people's lives.

00:07:18.440 This is important to them.

00:07:19.820 It's important to their mental health.

00:07:21.040 It's important to their spirituality.

00:07:22.240 It's important to their family.

00:07:24.140 And we are neglecting it.

00:07:27.060 We're banning it.

00:07:27.640 But this is interesting.

00:07:28.200 Notley, of course, she's demanding now that Coates is out, and it sounds like they're going to be

00:07:33.040 holding some big Easter services this weekend. She's demanding they be shut down. She's furious.

00:07:39.140 She wants that man locked up again. She wants that preacher back in jail. You know, we've got

00:07:43.880 misgivings about the UCP government and a number of things, but this does demonstrate that things

00:07:51.760 certainly could be a heck of a lot worse. There is something that socialists despise about religion,

00:07:56.900 And that's the fact that somebody might be following something other than them.

00:08:01.740 That's why, you know, again, socialist nations, and that's what it was.

00:08:04.800 Oh, there wasn't true communists, isn't that?

00:08:06.380 That's why you saw Stalingrad.

00:08:08.200 That's why you saw Leningrad.

00:08:09.400 They turned the state into their god, and they want people to worship it and follow it unquestioningly.

00:08:16.080 And you see signs of that when Notley's biggest outrage is the opening of a church when people are holding a service without her permission.

00:08:23.180 they're looking at something that's saying a messaging she doesn't like she wants it shut

00:08:27.960 down she doesn't care about the importance of free religion even an atheist like me understands and

00:08:33.140 cares about it notly does not keep that in mind when you vote next time around and we've got the

00:08:38.560 liberty coalition so daniel smith interviewed all of them as well that's a number of elected

00:08:41.780 officials or former elected officials who are getting up and speaking out against the lockdowns

00:08:47.000 They're speaking out in favor of liberty.

00:08:49.680 We had Randy Hillier.

00:08:51.840 We've got Maxime Bernier, Paul Hinman, Drew Barnes.

00:08:56.400 There's a number of them, and they spoke out.

00:08:58.660 And they're urging churches to stay open.

00:09:00.280 They're saying, go for it.

00:09:01.400 Get on it.

00:09:02.620 Do this.

00:09:03.140 It's the Liberty Coalition Canada, but it involves a lot of those elected officials.

00:09:07.600 We need to have good pushback, sane pushback, rational pushback.

00:09:11.980 It is time for citizens to speak up against these restrictions,

00:09:15.520 but we've got to do it rationally.

00:09:17.200 Right now we've still got some pretty out there folks getting out to these

00:09:20.380 demonstrations, and I don't think it's helping the cause.

00:09:23.380 I'm going to go out tomorrow to the Calgary ones and see how they are,

00:09:25.680 but, you know, I want to keep an open mind.

00:09:27.820 I'm really hoping for the best.

00:09:28.960 I hope some other folks come out and see.

00:09:31.140 It looks like around 1 o'clock at Prince's Island there's going to be

00:09:33.540 something going on in Calgary.

00:09:35.040 Hopefully there's a good rational pushback.

00:09:36.600 If not, well, I'll have something else to rant about.

00:09:39.940 Just further into April, what have we got things to greet us going into this

00:09:43.680 year. We're in an economic recession. We're in terrible times. We got tax hikes. And as the

00:09:50.000 Canadian Taxpayers Federation said, April Fool's Day is no laughing matter. The politicians got,

00:09:55.840 they raised their wages, they raised their salaries. Marcel Latouche is going to be coming

00:09:58.880 on right away, by the way. One of the areas that have been seeing a lot of hikes and salaries in

00:10:03.480 the Taxpayers Federation have been speaking on are municipal civil servants. We're all tightening

00:10:08.040 our belts. We're all having a hard time. Now we're paying more at the pump. Now we're paying more to

00:10:12.780 heat our houses. We're paying more to power our places. Farmers are paying more to plant and

00:10:18.000 harvest their fields. It's a tax on everything. And, you know, with the carbon taxes that are

00:10:22.760 rising, they call it different names. It's just tax is tax. They're hitting us. We can't afford

00:10:28.240 it, but it just keeps coming. Finishing here, just to remind you why shows like this, it's not

00:10:35.120 just my vanity that are so important. The CRTC is coming after internet shows. They're coming after

00:10:41.620 video online. Now, they're saying they're starting with Netflix and some of the heavyweights. I don't

00:10:47.020 care how big or small they are. I don't want the government telling us what we can and can't see.

00:10:51.340 But they are terrified. I mean, I'll tell you something else. I had the privilege of traveling

00:10:55.500 to the Soviet Union back at the end of the 80s. I went through Ukraine and Russia and a number of

00:11:01.220 places. And one of the things I think I wrote about in one of my past columns that was striking

00:11:06.020 when I crossed the border was they searched my bags and they weren't looking for drugs. They

00:11:09.940 weren't looking for weapons. They're looking for books and cassettes. You see, authoritarian states

00:11:17.260 have to control information. The internet wasn't there yet, but they wanted to make sure I didn't

00:11:22.000 bring in books or cassettes or things that would let their people know that there's actually a

00:11:25.740 better world outside. So they tried desperately to keep that inflow from information from coming

00:11:30.960 in there. And then eventually what collapsed the Soviet Union and the bloc out there was

00:11:35.760 people coming and going and realizing there's a better world. This communism, this socialism

00:11:40.580 is failing. It's no good. We've got to get out of it. Well, now the internet really blows that

00:11:46.040 out of the water. It's almost impossible for the government to keep us from speaking out and

00:11:49.460 reaching out to people. They've bought off a lot of the conventional media. They regulate the heck

00:11:53.920 out of it. The internet giants are trying to regulate as they will. And now we've got the CRTC

00:11:59.040 and we've got talks going on. They want to bring in legislation to control internet video,

00:12:04.060 which will, you can rest assured, come down to things such as this Western Standard Production

00:12:09.140 and they will stop us from being able to speak to you. So again, that gets back to why it's so

00:12:16.120 important to support independent media, things like us, things like Rebel, outlets like True

00:12:22.400 North with Candace. These are what are so important because once the state gets control

00:12:26.760 of the rest of the information, we all lose and we're in a great deal of trouble. So I will get

00:12:32.540 on to sharing now with someone more wise than I, Marcel Latouche. And Marcel runs the Institute

00:12:42.060 for Public Sector Accountability. I could be slaughtering that. I'm certain Marcel will

00:12:47.040 correct me on it right away if that's the case. So welcome, Marcel. Thank you very much

00:12:52.300 for joining me. I've got my rant out of my system. We can start talking about more productive

00:12:57.760 things that you're a published author and you manage that institute perhaps if you could expand

00:13:02.480 in a better way on what you're all about well no correction needed it is the institute for public

00:13:09.840 sector accountability oh my god what we do is we monitor policies at all three levels of government

00:13:16.880 and we try to hold politicians feet to fire and that's that's what we do and mostly nowadays

00:13:27.760 we because of the election year we are mostly focused on municipal issues right now but we

00:13:35.600 can speak about other things too because there are major issues that are affecting not only

00:13:41.760 municipal this year but as you well know federal carbon tax uh the management of the COVID-19 in

00:13:49.440 Alberta and other provinces are major issues that affect all citizens in a different way

00:13:57.760 Yes, and one of the areas, I mean, the principles remain the same, as you said, in all three levels of government, and we're being pressured and troubled by all three levels of government, but one of the areas you have been most effective and outspoken in has been on the municipal level, and Calgary and Albertan municipal governments have been giving a lot of fodder to examine and go on about.

00:14:19.160 So I'd like to start with going into the biggest issue we've seen out of municipal government in the last few weeks was that guidebook for communities.

00:14:28.680 This guidebook that Mayor Nietzsche keeps talking about is, hey, this is just a rough guide.

00:14:32.400 Let it slide through.

00:14:33.240 It's not a big deal.

00:14:34.180 It's just, you know, suggestions.

00:14:35.520 But we're hearing from others.

00:14:36.260 No, this is pretty much policy cloaked as a guidebook, which has some pretty stringent suggestions and controls on development and communities.

00:14:45.220 Can you expand on that?

00:14:46.140 Let's, before we expand on the guidebook, let's see what's happening at council currently.

00:14:54.860 Council is fostering and pushing down a number of issues down Calgarians' throat in a lame duck council year of an election.

00:15:06.360 There are at least some seven people who are not going to be on council, if not more.

00:15:12.060 But yet they are shoveling things down our throat.

00:15:16.140 so the guidebook is just only one thing and i'll come back to that in a minute

00:15:20.460 we have the guidebook we have the development of millennial park which was

00:15:25.180 this disgusting uh uh habit of council to take and remove people from the

00:15:31.020 the trailer park and now redeveloping the area

00:15:35.180 we have a discussion on richmond green which is uh a park that is going to be

00:15:42.380 discussed very soon. We also have a discussion on the development of McMahon Stadium and the area.

00:15:53.340 We now have today, they released a discussion on the redevelopment of downtown. We can go all

00:16:02.860 through this and most of all we have the green line, this boondoggle that has been hanging around

00:16:09.980 our neck. And fortunately, irony of all ironies, the man who is going to save us from this

00:16:16.620 issue is going to be MacIver. I mean, it's amazing. But let me put one more thing before

00:16:25.940 we go here to the guidebook. Mr. Haskins' foundation gave the city a huge parcel of

00:16:36.480 plan to develop a park near Beersport.

00:16:41.340 The city has been maintaining this park, yet Calgarians have not been able to access it

00:16:48.780 because of the bureaucratic way of trying to find a right-of-way for Calgary to access it.

00:16:56.680 There is a man, a philanthropist, who has given us land, us, I mean Calgarians,

00:17:02.120 land for our enjoyment and yet the city has not been able to give us access to

00:17:08.420 it yet they continue to say we are going to make changes so there's the guide

00:17:14.240 book for you the guide book despite the fact that mayor and then she says it is

00:17:19.400 not a statutory by law which is going to affect us is in discussion what it is

00:17:25.400 is about a number of issues forcing people to have new building codes in certain areas

00:17:37.160 either that what that means is if you have an infill a single family home can be redeveloped

00:17:45.720 into a three and four story uh a new building what this is about is uh increasing the number

00:17:56.680 of housing in certain areas of calgary we talk about the belt line and and places like this so

00:18:05.960 what is this going to do is nothing more than increasing taxation revenues in those areas

00:18:15.320 They tell you that, oh, we need to increase the number of housing in those areas.

00:18:22.440 Furthermore, this is going to affect the value of properties in these areas.

00:18:27.160 It's going to disrupt things because parking is going to be an issue.

00:18:32.600 If you take one house and you put four residences on the same plot,

00:18:38.520 and if you have four different families living in it, you may have four cars if not more.

00:18:43.960 where are they going to park and yet calgary has started using parking for residential you pay

00:18:51.960 parking in front of your house when you pay taxes what do you think this is going to do

00:18:57.640 when you increase the number of residences and residents in an area and this is what the guide

00:19:04.520 book is going to do that is just the beginning so what is going to happen is people are going

00:19:11.880 to start moving out because their houses are going to be cramped in between four-story houses.

00:19:18.600 So there's going to be a disruption in the movement of people around the city.

00:19:24.600 So when there is disruption, what is going to happen is people are going to start moving out

00:19:29.400 of the city because they want their own piece of land. They want to have a backyard which is going

00:19:35.880 to be sunny at best if you start putting taller buildings next door to me I'm going to lose my

00:19:42.680 sunshine and people have not realized those things and they don't talk about those things

00:19:48.280 and this is part of the problem and this is being fostered on Calgarians in a lame duck council

00:19:55.080 and people have got to wake up to this so Sean Chu goes on and says we must

00:20:00.920 delay this project until after the election which makes common sense since maybe seven people on the

00:20:08.760 council currently may not be there so the amendment boys as i call them the great davidson and

00:20:16.440 sutherland come out and they make amendments they make amendments to everything i mean they make

00:20:21.560 amendments uh to to uh proposals by forecast to give 44 million back to people so they make an

00:20:28.520 amendment and it passes with 43 million i mean this is what happens so the amendment boys come

00:20:35.400 up and they they make a proposal to counter challenge you and now we're going to review it

00:20:41.000 until may so we are going to have a review until may do you think that people who are opposed to it

00:20:47.720 right now are going to have one month and they're going to say oh yeah let's accept it

00:20:53.080 I mean, you know, this is ridiculous. The council is going to be totally different after October of 2021. We must wait and see what is going to happen before we foster the guidebook on people.

00:21:10.180 yeah well and that all ties into a number of things i mean we've got a council and we're

00:21:16.060 seeing this in municipal governments everywhere they're guided by ideologues and they have a

00:21:20.980 i call them density zealots i mean they really are just they they density by all means no matter

00:21:25.980 what we have to cork the bottle shove people in and they will pull out all the stops to do so

00:21:31.680 and as you said a number of councillors and probably i think our mayor is not going to run

00:21:37.140 again this fall. So they want a legacy. And look at the legacy Nenshi's got. All he's got is a

00:21:41.160 legacy of failed attempts at things like the Olympics, a lot of tax hikes, a downtown that

00:21:47.400 is a ghost town and an embarrassment in the developed world these days, and people fleeing

00:21:53.260 to outlying areas. There's another one coming down the line that hopefully Rick McIver saves

00:21:57.880 us from as well. I wrote on it recently, is the municipal partnership that was imposed by Notley,

00:22:03.620 which gives the city of Calgary a bunch of veto power over neighboring communities and they've

00:22:09.020 come up with a development plan through uh the the failed developer Kara who got a uh contracted

00:22:15.000 an American uh consultant with this plan that would basically put those density values on Calgary or

00:22:20.600 on bedroom communities I live in Prittis I got just outside of the city of Calgary so I could

00:22:25.380 escape the clutches of Nenshi and his ideologues and they're trying to reach out further they don't

00:22:30.720 want to make us more dense in the outlying areas. They just want to make life as crappy for us out

00:22:34.500 there as it is in the city, so it keeps people from moving out of the city. I mean, this is

00:22:38.780 terrible. And then what's going to happen? People are going to leave the province. Well, let's put it

00:22:43.340 this way. There are current councillors today who would like to change the aspect of Calgary

00:22:49.880 completely. Let's put it this way. The first thing they did, or some of them did, was to change what

00:22:57.160 calgary stood for we change it from heart of the new west to be part of the energy these people

00:23:06.680 who say be part of the energy are the same people who actually support all these climate change

00:23:14.360 issues but be part of the energy we paid millions we paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a

00:23:20.920 Californian marketing group to make the change in what we should stand for. We

00:23:26.920 want to eradicate the past of Calgary to the Western culture and we've done that.

00:23:34.420 Drew Farrell for years has promoted that Calgary should look more like Portland

00:23:40.360 and Chicago. This is garbage. Now let's talk about our friend Cara who comes with

00:23:46.800 a background from from new york in the discussion with the development of the mcmahon area is going

00:23:55.680 to have a concept listen to this here the concept is called a charrette a charrette means that we

00:24:03.840 are going to engage people being part french i can tell you what a charrette means in translation

00:24:10.720 A charrette is a cart

00:24:12.940 And there it comes here

00:24:15.060 This council continuously

00:24:17.720 Puts the cart before the horse

00:24:20.520 And that's the kind of council we have

00:24:23.440 So the charrette is going to be another issue

00:24:26.560 Counselor Chara

00:24:28.900 Chara is going to start going around

00:24:32.420 Telling us that we've got to use more bicycles

00:24:34.780 We are going to reduce the speed all over the place

00:24:37.800 Do you think reducing the speed

00:24:39.860 is going to make any changes, we have to change

00:24:43.520 a behavior. There's more problem in the city

00:24:47.860 of Calgary with pedestrians who think

00:24:51.680 that they have the same right of way as vehicles.

00:24:55.580 They have a right of way at clearly marked crosswalks.

00:25:01.040 But Calgarians are going to have to accept

00:25:03.940 that people with earphones crossing the

00:25:07.940 road, not looking at the traffic, are also guilty of what happens on the road. Sure, getting hit

00:25:17.300 by a car is awful. An accident is always awful. But changing a 10 kilometer per hour is going to

00:25:26.760 save your life? I don't believe that. You get hit by a 3,000 pound car is going to be the same thing

00:25:32.700 as being hit you know at 3 30 or 40. i'm not a doctor i'm not in there to to tell you what i

00:25:40.380 think the injuries are going to be but pedestrians have got to start responsibility for themselves

00:25:47.100 i want to have less accidents i believe that we must have less accidents but legislating

00:25:55.820 are just reducing speed without education or pedestrians or even cyclists to share the road

00:26:02.220 with vehicles is going to continue to be a problem and cara doesn't address this issue he

00:26:08.220 just wants to put more bike lanes more bike lanes that are clean during the winter before the roads

00:26:14.300 are clean are you kidding me this is what's happening they want to change the character

00:26:21.020 and culture of calgary most of these people do you remember what kind said some years ago when he was

00:26:28.300 mayor of calgary we have these creeps and bombs who come to calgary and want to change the way we live

00:26:36.300 i am an immigrant i came to calgary in 1978 i accepted to come here and accepted the culture

00:26:44.460 there is a western culture that we must keep on living with this is why i agree with the alberta

00:26:53.500 provincial government to make the rodeo the sport of alberta this is part of the culture of alberta

00:27:02.700 we have the stampede because people built it with money from rodeos from ranching from uh from uh

00:27:12.300 you know the development of of the city why do we want to give it away we must go back to our roots

00:27:19.580 What was wrong with part of the New West?

00:27:23.800 Yeah, well, there's that attitude of self-loathing.

00:27:26.580 And again, it comes to the ideologues.

00:27:29.560 And they've been working on this for more than 10 years.

00:27:32.180 They've been trying to create this pedestrian's paradise downtown and investing loads of public money into downtown.

00:27:39.980 Meanwhile, harassing and hounding vehicular traffic.

00:27:42.840 because in their ideological world, if we can just annoy drivers enough, make it expensive enough,

00:27:49.000 make it a pain enough, they're just going to jump on the train or they're going to ride their bikes

00:27:53.400 and go downtown. And what happened? They didn't. It's quite the opposite. Businesses moved out to

00:27:58.840 Quarry Park. Businesses moved out to Balzac. People followed. The downtown is empty. Eau Claire

00:28:05.740 Market, I mean, what a disaster that area is. I mean, it's next to a river. It's beautiful. It's

00:28:11.140 It's a modern downtown, and you've got to pay $23 to park there for the day in an empty parking lot because nobody's going there.

00:28:17.740 The city can't even lower parking rates when they've got this going on.

00:28:21.240 Look, these guys are insane.

00:28:22.580 At what point do they have to admit their attempt, as you said, to change our behavior has failed?

00:28:27.800 It's not working.

00:28:28.800 They're trying to mash us in, and we're rebelling, voting with our wallets and our feet.

00:28:32.740 Well, there is a very interesting point today when they start talking about the redevelopment of downtown.

00:28:40.840 years ago when i came on uh my first column given to me by the publisher of the herald

00:28:47.960 then the the very nice person peter menzies who was the publisher invited me to write my first

00:28:54.920 column for for the herald and it was called cow town to become new town and some of the things

00:29:02.040 i said in there we must have an lrt that goes down to downtown from the airport nothing today

00:29:09.320 Here we have the Green Line, which is a disaster going down the center line, center street, and a tunnel.

00:29:16.940 When I first came here in 1978, I was told, coming from London, I said, well, the LRT should go underground.

00:29:24.120 I was specifically told by engineers at City Hall that you cannot do it because of the topography and the geology of Calgary,

00:29:34.860 where we have gravel and all sorts of water tables to make a tunnel downtown.

00:29:40.460 So now suddenly we want to talk about tunnels downtown to get the green line.

00:29:45.160 The green line from the north to downtown should be just postponed and look until we find a new solution.

00:29:54.480 But we should start getting the south part of the green line done.

00:29:59.980 This is why I think that MacIver is going to save us from this boondoggle and disaster.

00:30:07.920 Let's talk about, more importantly, the redevelopment of downtown.

00:30:14.320 We conglomated everything was built downtown for the business area.

00:30:19.680 That part of the article I said we should be building businesses into different little areas of development

00:30:27.840 where you live, work, and play.

00:30:30.620 By building downtown and putting all offices there,

00:30:34.580 we are seeing now the folly of this attitude.

00:30:38.780 Building downtown, we have old businesses which are now empty

00:30:42.300 because everything is concentrated in one place.

00:30:46.040 We have to do it.

00:30:46.960 We have to do it differently.

00:30:49.080 So now we are going to have to spend more money.

00:30:53.780 We are going to have more bureaucrats at City Hall

00:30:56.560 who are going to tell us how to do it excuse me but the bureaucrats are ideologues as you said

00:31:05.360 before they have no idea how to redevelop downtown except with all ideas all ideas

00:31:14.640 that are going to to say okay we are now going to redevelop these these buildings for residential

00:31:23.120 it's going to cost a lot of money to do this they won't accept that their ideas of the past

00:31:32.640 excuse me cannot be adopted in the 21st century we must change the way we do things

00:31:40.160 but i don't think anybody on council has got any vision for a real calgary except to bring

00:31:47.280 bad ideas from other places to calgary with charette and all these kind of issues

00:31:54.960 calgary has got the green spaces green spaces are the lungs of a city and if we start destroying

00:32:03.680 them and not making them more viable for people we are going to destroy the city people are going

00:32:10.640 to start moving out one because taxes are so high two because they are not livable as communities

00:32:18.800 and we are losing our green spaces when we talk about the redevelopment of of uh the mcmahon area

00:32:26.160 and and so on and so forth there are nobody on council who has any expertise in sports they have

00:32:34.240 no idea how to develop uh how to develop a recreational area or a field a field house

00:32:40.800 what do we have to put in a field house what should we develop it for uh for what purposes

00:32:47.840 okay the cfl for sure baseball why not the fastest growing sport today is pickleball

00:32:56.400 All big cities in Alberta have got pickleball, not stadium, but facilities.

00:33:05.760 Red Deer is going to hold the National Pickleball Championship this August.

00:33:11.880 Medicine Hat has got 17 to 18 courts being developed in Medicine Hat.

00:33:19.840 there are many facilities in calgary that are not being used currently because it is managed

00:33:27.140 by parks and recreation and parks and recreation have got no idea how to manage green spaces

00:33:34.160 i believe that more non-profit sports association should be given a mandate to develop and use

00:33:44.520 green space as opposed to just leaving them derelict and not being used. You just go around

00:33:50.180 and you see how many green spaces there are that are not being used. I mean, the problem that we

00:33:56.880 have is that there is no vision on council. This is why we have advocated for a number of years

00:34:04.740 a two-term limit for councillors. We have councillors who've been on there for too long,

00:34:10.520 I have no idea how to make things new.

00:34:14.980 I mean, when the campaign starts, we are going to be involved.

00:34:19.600 We've started interviewing people already who are potential candidates, who are already announced.

00:34:27.120 We are going to make it public at a later stage down the road here.

00:34:31.120 But we need people with a new vision.

00:34:33.380 We cannot continue to go in Calgary in the same way that we've been operating for the past 10 years.

00:34:40.520 The economy has changed. The environment has changed.

00:34:43.860 We need change on council.

00:34:46.000 And that's not only here. Let's look at what's happening.

00:34:49.040 In Inishvale, the same thing is happening.

00:34:51.200 There is a tendency in municipalities right now

00:34:54.900 to curtail and sanction people who challenge people on council.

00:35:03.760 They challenge Mike Nichol, who is a pariah in Edmonton.

00:35:09.180 Glenn Carey is a pariah in Inishvale

00:35:12.620 Of course, in Calgary, we have two pariahs, Farkas and Chu

00:35:17.540 If you look at what's happening today

00:35:21.080 There was an issue last week of pamphlets for the Farkas campaign

00:35:27.840 Going to a different ward

00:35:32.440 And this is not allowed

00:35:34.040 The problem is, they redistricted the wards

00:35:38.040 And some of his pamphlets from Ward 11 went to Ward 8

00:35:43.860 So immediately, Drew Farrell said

00:35:47.940 We've got to get the ethics commissioner to examine this

00:35:52.680 Because this is a breach of election rules and what things are happening

00:35:56.860 In the same time, Davison is holding campaign videos and campaign visual conferences with the city manager, with Mary Moran.

00:36:16.380 And on the other side, we have Shahal now holding a vaccine discussion with the mayor and the new director of CIMA.

00:36:32.820 I mean, so this is not being investigated.

00:36:35.340 So what do we have now?

00:36:36.880 We have investigation being done on certain people.

00:36:43.420 But not everybody.

00:36:45.180 what's good for the goose should be good for the gender but we don't do that and

00:36:50.820 these people are being targeted because they oppose the current establishment

00:36:59.020 yeah no we've definitely got a culture I mean between council and the

00:37:03.760 administration that built up underneath that council and getting back to what

00:37:08.040 you're talking about whether it's term limits or whatever else that we need we

00:37:12.660 need vision uh like the downtown is a disaster it just depresses me when i go down there with you

00:37:18.260 know we've got it technically about over 30 vacant realistically i think it's closer to 50

00:37:23.940 there's just a lot of companies stuck in leases right now um i i worked i did a lot of work you

00:37:29.380 know traveling in in the states there's a video i put up on my own youtube channel about eight years

00:37:33.860 ago when i was working in steubenville ohio and this was a place that was a boom city in the rust

00:37:40.260 belt, you know, across the river from West Virginia. It had big steel mills and it grew a

00:37:47.180 great, beautiful Art Deco downtown with these nice buildings, you know, that are about 15,

00:37:50.680 20 stories, big for the time and everything. But everything went bad. And then the steel mills shut

00:37:55.140 down and people bailed out of the area. So you see this, this is bizarre. We don't see this in

00:38:01.000 Canada yet. Urban downtown, like a ghost town. You drive into it from the outside. It looks

00:38:05.960 actually like it's functional it's a big sort of mid-sized city and you drive into it then you

00:38:10.980 realize that all the storefronts are closed and everything is for lease and even these office

00:38:15.820 buildings downtown are closed and I see Calgary turning into a giant version of that and we need

00:38:22.020 to stop this we can't have a city of over a million people turn into another Stupendville

00:38:26.880 North I wish I had the idea on how to fill those towers but spending money to change them into

00:38:33.560 residential spaces when people don't even want to live in the existing residential spaces is complete foolishness.

00:38:40.160 It's insanity. There's no point in doing that. We've got to fix the problem further.

00:38:43.760 I wish I had the solution, but as you said, there's some great minds out there.

00:38:46.660 If we can bring them into council and change administration, maybe we can turn that tide.

00:38:51.260 The issue is about a couple of months ago, before we were closed due to COVID-19,

00:38:59.160 i gave a speech called calgary becoming detroit and that's exactly that we see what the downtown

00:39:07.400 is coming to detroit is happening in calgary why is this happening is because we concentrated

00:39:15.720 all our efforts on the downtown the downtown after five o'clock is empty there are not enough

00:39:23.320 activities down there. The parking structure and the parking fees structure

00:39:29.320 controlled by the parking authority is a major problem for developing downtown.

00:39:35.060 We want to get rid of cars. We just impose huge amounts of parking fees.

00:39:42.440 We are the second highest, I believe, after New York with parking fees rates

00:39:47.540 in Calgary. When you talk about Eau Claire, they wanted it to be the

00:39:53.580 Granville of Calgary, but they never thought about this. They never thought

00:39:58.880 about the structure. They've got to work with the Chinese community to expand

00:40:04.640 Chinatown. If you want culture, Chinatown is a culture already. I understand that

00:40:11.220 Some people in the Asian community are talking about revitalizing Chinatowns across the country.

00:40:19.300 Chinatown, these places are part of a culture, a culture we inherited over the years.

00:40:26.080 So why not work with Chinatown to expand and make Eau Claire a better place

00:40:32.660 Instead of putting a huge Green Line LRT station there, destroying the YMCA.

00:40:42.440 And the YMCA is not working and is going to close now because there are not enough people downtown to use it.

00:40:53.140 Because businesses have closed.

00:40:55.220 All the business people used to go at lunchtime or before work to go to the YMCA.

00:41:00.120 And this is why we are losing it.

00:41:02.660 The problem is that we concentrate too much of our effort in one area.

00:41:07.700 As I said, when I wrote this first article, we should have dispersed businesses all over the place in different quadrants of the city where people would have had a different way of working, living and play in the same place.

00:41:25.440 But we lost that.

00:41:26.400 Bob Holmes, former commissioner at the city of Calgary

00:41:30.940 Had a great column in the Herald about a week or so ago

00:41:34.500 I wonder if anybody on council has ever listened to him

00:41:39.040 There was a man with vision

00:41:41.080 Who was part of bringing the Olympic Games here in 1988

00:41:45.840 And I have tremendous respect for him

00:41:48.180 Because I was working at City Hall when he was there

00:41:51.420 We need people like this

00:41:54.580 We don't need people just on council. They've got to tap in people like Bob Holmes, people who have vision to advise them.

00:42:04.140 But unfortunately, we have a council where the mayor thinks he's the smartest man in the room.

00:42:10.800 Now we have Davison, who thinks he's going to be the second smartest man in the room.

00:42:16.580 The problem is we don't use the talents that we have in this city.

00:42:22.700 It's amazing. We have people like Brett Wilson. I mean, people who are entrepreneurs. Calgary was built by entrepreneurs. Why do we have a council that doesn't tap the ideas of entrepreneurs?

00:42:37.700 This is what really irks me. Why I started the Institute for Public Sector Accountability is to hold their feet to fire.

00:42:47.700 Because these people are ideologues, as you said, and they do not work for Calgarians.

00:42:53.700 What they work for is bigger salaries. Everybody has had a cut, but City Hall, they've had increases.

00:43:00.700 Just like in the province, they've had increases.

00:43:04.700 Part of the problem is they are looking for the pensions.

00:43:08.700 And now we have transition bonuses when they leave City Hall before they get a job.

00:43:14.700 So we should pay them a transition.

00:43:17.700 When you're fired, you should not get a transition.

00:43:19.700 There's the problem.

00:43:22.700 Yeah, that happens on every level of government as well.

00:43:25.700 Some of those severance packages are brutal.

00:43:28.700 It was great to hear you bring up Chinatown.

00:43:30.840 That's an area that, again, our beloved long, long, long-term councillor, Drew Farrell,

00:43:36.700 has long had a beef with Chinatown and has not gotten along well with them.

00:43:40.260 I know she's been pushing for a plan to take Third Avenue that comes into Chinatown

00:43:45.020 and turn that into yet another pedestrian corridor.

00:43:48.280 None of the businesses want it.

00:43:49.860 None of the people down there want it.

00:43:51.540 It will hinder Chinatown even more.

00:43:53.820 Like these guys, as you said, that was a creative idea.

00:43:56.020 here's a way to make it a destination people can take a day trip come on down check out those

00:44:01.580 unique stores that culture those people and Drew Farrell wants to go the opposite direction he

00:44:06.280 wants to make it worse to go down there I was down at Riverfront Avenue and I got the the Twitter

00:44:12.120 hipster crowd all upset with me it doesn't take much to get them wound up but I took a picture

00:44:16.100 because what they did with their COVID separation you know social distancing was they closed a whole

00:44:21.960 lane of parking on riverfront avenue right behind chinatown with these stupid orange barriers and

00:44:27.160 you've got two more sidewalks between there and the river plus about 30 meters of parkway so all

00:44:32.900 this room for people to walk and socially distance why did they close all that parking i'll tell you

00:44:37.700 why to give a middle finger to chinatown because it's that much less area that people can come

00:44:42.140 down there park and shop and and they're just blind they're imbeciles and and it's killing

00:44:48.500 downtown businesses so yeah we need to get that that fresh outlook because we

00:44:52.740 do have merits downtown but this current city hall seems to be trying its hardest

00:44:58.280 to crush it let me let me bring you up to date on something that happened years

00:45:03.980 ago years ago I found out that a consultant was hired by the city of

00:45:10.880 Calgary to look at those things in downtown and stuff of course Drew Farrell

00:45:15.740 was all behind it i found a little line in there that said we should not allow the further

00:45:23.580 development of ethnic markets and you know what that was all about is not allowing chinatown to

00:45:32.540 develop further supermarkets for for the chinese community and for asian food they forget about

00:45:39.980 this. They forget about this. So I told Macaiva about this. Excuse me. I told Macaiva about this

00:45:48.100 and he brought it to council and they removed that particular line from there. But that was part of

00:45:54.040 a report that was supported by Drew Farrell. I mean, we've got to talk about what Drew Farrell

00:46:02.440 wants this city to be. Fortunately, she's leaving. My problem is who's going to replace her to

00:46:08.720 represent that area because Chinatown is going to be part of that new ward now,

00:46:15.960 the redistricting of that new ward. This is absurd that we are not looking at

00:46:21.680 developing this particular area with a Chinatown in mind. This is terrible.

00:46:30.200 They change a certain part of there to remove more and more restaurants and more activities in there.

00:46:40.460 These Chinatowns around the world are a destination for tourism.

00:46:46.200 They want to talk tourism.

00:46:47.560 Why not develop our Chinatown in an area which is now virtually derelict and empty?

00:46:54.640 Yeah, well, and we're seeing, as you said, into an election year, there's some people.

00:46:57.760 Drew Farrell finally isn't running again.

00:46:59.780 She's certainly earned herself, if you want to call it, earning a large pension.

00:47:03.400 So she'll be able to retire comfortably.

00:47:06.500 And, you know, we can see, though, that and it's looking very like I believe Ninchy's not going to run again.

00:47:11.680 I think he's playing coy.

00:47:13.380 He's handing it down to Jody Gondek, who's basically going to follow the same policies as him.

00:47:18.320 Stephen Carter is managing her campaign.

00:47:20.260 And, of course, he was joined at the hip with Ninchy to begin with.

00:47:23.480 And I believe it's Stephen Carter's partner who's running and Drew Farrell's riding to replace her now.

00:47:27.660 So the old guard has already picked their replacements.

00:47:31.460 So voters are going to have to choose very carefully if they want to see change in this coming election.

00:47:35.700 It is going to be the same.

00:47:38.320 What has happened in the United States is going to repeat itself here.

00:47:41.740 We are going to have a Biden administration, which is nothing more than Obama 2.0.

00:47:47.160 So we want Nancy 2.0.

00:47:49.200 Gundek was the campaign manager for Councillor Stevenson.

00:47:56.180 And he was one of those people who said, oh, we need more taxes in Calgary.

00:48:04.940 Of course, Gundek believes that the so-called tax room, which is not existent, should be replaced by a number, in fact, 36 proposed new taxes in Calgary.

00:48:17.260 So there is no chance of any changes there if you get Gondek and lo and behold, Stephen Carter as chief of staff for Gondek.

00:48:31.700 Do you realize what a mess that would be for Calgary?

00:48:35.560 I mean, Gondek is going to be Nanshi 2.0 and even perhaps worse, because the ideology is going to be worse.

00:48:49.920 Because Nanshi, I don't know what he's going to do.

00:48:54.860 Is he waiting for a new job?

00:48:57.380 Is he waiting for Trudeau to call upon him to be Senator Nanshi?

00:49:03.020 I don't know.

00:49:03.680 but his

00:49:05.860 past due date

00:49:07.620 I mean 10 years is more than

00:49:10.100 enough and he's got

00:49:12.080 to go one way or the other

00:49:14.120 the other side is

00:49:15.780 if he runs he'll be crushed

00:49:17.840 hopefully and that will be

00:49:20.280 a better way

00:49:22.180 of getting rid of him

00:49:23.660 it's like boxers you know

00:49:27.800 they go on for 50 years and then they

00:49:30.020 get a knockout punch I think that

00:49:32.060 be a better way of doing it forecast could give him a lot the knockout punch yeah it would make

00:49:37.960 a better closure to have him just lose an election rather than hop on to something else say is a

00:49:42.600 federal appointment or something like that i'm glad you brought up stevenson some because some

00:49:47.780 people might already be forgetting him and you know again it comes to that careful uh consideration

00:49:51.960 by voters when they choose who's going to run because stevenson is a classic example of one

00:49:56.960 of those councillors who ran on fiscal conservatism, pretended to be conservative, pretended to

00:50:02.340 be responsible. And it took until the Manning Center actually put out the council tracker

00:50:06.300 showing who voted on what. And we found out that Stevenson has been voting for more tax

00:50:10.820 increases and more spending than just about any other person on the entire council. And I'll be

00:50:15.340 blunt. He was lying in every election campaign. He knew how he was going to be. He knew he needed

00:50:20.100 to lie to get elected. And that's what he did. And there's going to be people trying that same

00:50:24.080 tactic this fall and voters are going to have to see through that or we will get

00:50:28.220 more of the same. Well as I said to you, we are preparing ourselves, we are

00:50:33.680 interviewing people, we are going to release certain data and we are going to

00:50:39.500 make sure that the so-called conservatives that we've had in the

00:50:45.200 past are not going to be given a free pass this time. We are going to examine

00:50:51.500 their ideology, where they have been before, and what they have done before, before they come in

00:50:57.420 there. Because you see, this is where Calgary has lost a number of issues. Because we've had people

00:51:05.720 telling us they are so conservative that they should be elected. They don't want to tell you

00:51:11.960 that there is party politics in Calgary. There is no party politics, but there is a cabal of the

00:51:20.680 left in council, and we must make sure that this doesn't happen again.

00:51:31.060 Absolutely.

00:51:32.260 Getting on to cabals in a sense, something that people don't see are the senior civil servants

00:51:38.660 and also some of these people running these commissions or these arm's length corporations.

00:51:43.100 So one that drives me mad and has for a long time is Calgary Economic Development.

00:51:47.240 I mean, even the name, a lot of people mistake it and think it's something like the Chamber of Commerce or something like that.

00:51:51.980 No, they are managers of a taxpayer slush fund to take tax money out of existing businesses to try and draw in competitors to take their place within Calgary.

00:52:03.640 I mean, it all comes back to that remodeling Calgary.

00:52:06.320 Rather than trying to keep our existing businesses alive, they're striving to pull in these, and as they're turning out, fictional foreign companies to come save us all from ourselves.

00:52:15.340 They got a $100 million slush fund.

00:52:17.780 They've had a terrible success record under Moran.

00:52:22.000 Is there still time to at least recover some of that money before these clowns piss it all away chasing dreams?

00:52:27.380 Well, I mean, you know, if they really wanted to make real some changes, they would adopt what Falka says.

00:52:34.520 Use OSIF money to give it back to the taxpayer and small businesses.

00:52:38.620 Mary Moran

00:52:42.380 Despite the fact that people think

00:52:45.400 That the economic development

00:52:46.820 Is an independent body

00:52:50.860 Moran is no more or no less

00:52:54.840 Than another employee of the city of Calgary

00:52:57.780 People have got to remember one thing

00:52:59.480 He who pays the piper called the tune

00:53:02.560 And Mary Moran is paid by the city of Calgary

00:53:07.140 Do you tell me that they are not calling the tune?

00:53:10.580 This is why she was shifted at one stage to run the Olympic bid.

00:53:16.560 Are you kidding me?

00:53:18.560 The EDC is a department of the city of Calgary under another name.

00:53:27.640 We know what really bothers me is the fact that the Chamber of Commerce is nothing today.

00:53:35.320 What it used to be and what it should be. They've relinquished much of their powers to the economic development of Calgary. This is a waste of time and money.

00:53:51.320 When I was on the Chamber of Commerce as the chair of the City of Calgary Budget Committee, there was a totally different attitude of what the Chamber of Commerce was at the time.

00:54:10.620 The Chamber of Commerce represented businesses, not big businesses, but all businesses.

00:54:17.420 Today, we have nothing from the Chamber of Commerce.

00:54:21.660 They decided to sell their building in the first place.

00:54:24.680 So therefore, they have no place to gather themselves and have discussions anymore.

00:54:31.980 The Chamber of Commerce is a shadow of what relinquished all their powers to the EDC.

00:54:42.520 And that is not working very well because, as I said once again, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

00:54:49.760 Osif, or the hundred million, has Nenshi on that particular committee.

00:54:57.540 I mean, you ask yourself, what the heck is going on?

00:55:00.060 So if it is arm's length what you have the same people on the

00:55:07.300 Committee

00:55:12.540 Yeah, it's it's a very short arm if it's arm's length and it shows again what I don't like is some of that dirty

00:55:19.980 Internal play that goes on so we saw Moran got shifted

00:55:23.160 Temporarily isn't this beautiful when you got this job where you're making over 300,000 a year

00:55:26.800 And you get shifted into another job where you'll get $300,000 a year to play around for a few months.

00:55:30.840 And then you come right back into your old job again, which you weren't doing very well to begin with after failing to bring in the Olympic bid for spending $30 million to try.

00:55:39.960 But what got me as well was there was a bunch of, and I'll put it in the air quotes, volunteers who were on social media and very prolific and pushing for the Olympic bid and saying they just want to do it for the sake of Calgary.

00:55:52.480 I think I lost you.

00:55:53.860 Yeah, we seem to have a bit of connection issues going on there, Marcel, and hopefully you're hearing me there or it'll catch up quickly. But some of these volunteers suddenly found themselves employed by Calgary Economic Development.

00:56:11.780 I mean, it's a backroom carrot to hang on a stick for some people who want to help and push and forward that agenda in another way as opposed to being in the open.

00:56:22.980 It's an abuse, I think, of what's supposed to be an arm's length organization.

00:56:28.240 I lost you completely for the past couple of minutes here.

00:56:37.140 Okay, we're having a bit of technical issues.

00:56:39.520 anybody in the commenting area is it me who's missing or is it Marcel who's

00:56:42.940 missing from our feed you were missing completely I'm missing completely okay

00:56:48.280 but you're hearing my voice now I hear your voice yeah I think we are both on

00:56:53.180 now okay good yeah just there's some of the challenges of doing a live feed and

00:56:59.700 internet abilities actually you know maybe we'll do a quick shift into

00:57:04.800 provincial if we can get you know the stream going well enough again people

00:57:08.460 saying they hear us both uh so provincially we've got a lot of big issues going on as well between

00:57:15.100 uh spending management of our purse and and attitude uh jason kenny's been two years in

00:57:20.700 office and doesn't seem to have been quite what we anticipated uh we got 15 minutes left which

00:57:26.940 how much do we get back some thoughts into the provincial setup right now well let's wait this

00:57:31.500 way I mean I'm not going to blame Kenny for all our problems because he was

00:57:39.800 given a bad place when he came in with what the NDP had done then he had

00:57:47.840 COVID-19 the problem I have is that he has not adjusted to the real environment

00:57:57.540 of today quickly enough to make things happen he spent too much time you know debating on

00:58:07.060 organizing a committee to look at things like the investment of foreign institutions in in our oil

00:58:17.540 industry i mean we spent so much money on this that it was a waste of time and and and and didn't

00:58:24.500 get us anywhere. The attack on foreign investment to dismantle our oil and gas industry was badly

00:58:36.900 managed. Then COVID-19 came in. We are beginning to ask ourselves, over the period of one year,

00:58:46.420 things have changed. Things have got worse. Things are supposed to get better.

00:58:51.300 but who is running this particular portfolio to get us to a better place today?

00:58:58.660 We have vaccines. I understand that vaccines are not forthcoming because of

00:59:05.700 that idiot we have in Ottawa who never ordered the vaccines for us. But there's my point.

00:59:12.980 If vaccines work, and it has been said that those people who are vaccinated,

00:59:18.820 we will be immune. If they are immune, why aren't we letting them out? Why are we not putting

00:59:29.040 policies in place to allow people to get their vaccine faster, as opposed to embrace this idea

00:59:37.780 that the first vaccine is given, but we should delay the second shot for certain people?

00:59:44.400 We have a problem. The unions don't want to open the schools. The schools should be open because it is said that children are not really affected as much as older adults or seniors.

01:00:01.400 The problem that we have today is the variance. Let's talk about the variance. We have three

01:00:10.260 variants now. We have the UK, we have the South African, and we have the Brazilian.

01:00:15.840 How do you think they came into Canada? It's because we allowed people to come from those

01:00:22.100 places apparently there are some 26 000 people who came through our airlines who were not tested

01:00:32.420 and been released into the general population what we have is a government at the federal level who

01:00:39.460 doesn't know what they are doing and we have allowed ourselves to make decisions solely based

01:00:47.540 on people appointed in from the health system who are no better than other people there are many

01:00:56.500 doctors and medical professionals who are saying that we should be doing things differently but we

01:01:03.300 don't we are just closing and killing businesses all the time kenny is in trouble because he's not

01:01:13.060 out there making the tough decisions we've got to ask bigger questions more important questions

01:01:22.020 and making decisions bureaucrats are going to do what they usually do cya cover your ass so

01:01:30.420 therefore they are going to give you advice to slow down and protect their jobs as opposed to

01:01:37.780 protect the economy and protect people out there the priorities to give the vaccines

01:01:44.580 are terrible we should be giving vaccines to the people who are most vulnerable and

01:01:52.420 since we don't have enough vaccines we should be doing it in a different way

01:01:57.620 but now it's beginning to get together now

01:01:59.700 yeah i mean there's been the ball's been dropped on a number of levels but as things hopefully are

01:02:07.720 finally easing and i know a lot of stuff is questionable i don't want to get into efficacy

01:02:11.920 of vaccines and so on but i've seen some interesting numbers uh i believe it was

01:02:16.220 actually vitor marciano has been posting them on facebook pretty good uh of some graphics and such

01:02:22.560 but it's showing that those going into hospital and dying now are getting younger and the reason

01:02:29.080 for that, though, is we did get out there and get the vaccines to the most vulnerable, that

01:02:33.380 smallest percentage. We got it into, and they do appear to be working. It's keeping them out of the

01:02:37.580 hospitals. It's reducing the chances of their deaths. And if there's nothing else, you know,

01:02:41.960 a year ago, we didn't know what was going on with this pandemic when it was starting. There was a

01:02:45.340 lot of fear, a lot of speculation. That's fair enough. We haven't dealt with something. We've

01:02:48.460 had a year under our belts. And we've seen that, I mean, the very young school-age children are

01:02:54.400 practically immune. I mean, they are unaffected by this virus. We should not be worrying about

01:03:00.160 them. If we have protected our vulnerable enough, our younger, I mean, sure, the goal is to get

01:03:05.500 everybody vaccinated or a large enough number eventually, but we don't have to fear if we've

01:03:10.480 got a lot of under 40s who aren't vaccinated. I mean, it's not going to cause that much. We can

01:03:15.200 start letting them open and get up because they're not doing a cost benefit. These are people who are

01:03:19.320 suffering mentally. These are people who are suffering financially. They're not taking into

01:03:23.020 account overdoses and suicides and all of these other consequences of lockdowns but Kenny seems

01:03:28.060 to be more reticent than other leaders but still stuck on the feeling that somehow the government

01:03:33.300 can control us if we could just lock down enough. But this is the problem we have here. We have

01:03:39.000 allowed fear to govern. We have had bureaucrats and now politicians who wants to cover their ass

01:03:48.180 and they are using fear to do it.

01:03:51.720 I mean, we've got to be more open in the discussion.

01:03:56.360 We must not have only one position from, say, Fauci or Hinshaw or Tam.

01:04:03.560 We must allow other physicians, other medical professionals.

01:04:08.380 In fact, I read an article today by a surgeon called Dr. Lee

01:04:12.420 who said she's been wearing masks for years

01:04:14.880 and she doesn't see why mask is going to be the solution

01:04:17.980 to our problem. I mean, there are other voices out there, but we are not hearing them. So when

01:04:25.340 you watch the news every day, what you hear is gloom and doom. And the people in the media who

01:04:31.800 are now virtually government employees, because Trudeau are financing them, you get the same story.

01:04:38.500 There is no different stories or different reporting on COVID-19 with professionals with different point of view.

01:04:50.580 Fortunately, Danielle Smith has been doing some of those things when she was on Chorus.

01:04:59.560 She was bringing in different point of views from different professionals.

01:05:06.260 We don't have this today on the local news.

01:05:10.260 People who listen to local news today hear only one version.

01:05:15.260 Shut down. Lock down. Don't go there. Don't see your grandmother.

01:05:21.260 Don't see your grandchildren. But this is why we are all in together.

01:05:26.260 We are not all in together if you don't allow other people with different views to speak their mind up.

01:05:33.260 And that's part of the problem.

01:05:36.260 Local news is gloom and doom every day.

01:05:40.260 And we are now being governed by fear.

01:05:44.260 Yeah, and we're seeing that everywhere.

01:05:46.260 There was an article I saw the other day that added to the gray hair I already have.

01:05:51.260 It was about an American, I believe, I can't remember which publication.

01:05:56.260 It was NBC or one of the big ones out there.

01:05:59.260 ones out there but they're talking about how uh infections yes infections in texas are down

01:06:05.060 in the three weeks now since they've lifted all the restrictions got rid of the mass restrictions

01:06:08.360 but they're rising a little bit in dallas and they're going up everywhere else in the country

01:06:12.240 like they they just will not want to admit a good news story they can't just put one out there and

01:06:17.600 say look things are going okay somewhere they can't do it they got to throw a caveat in it and

01:06:22.360 say look at that it's raising a little in this little section of the area and and the rest of

01:06:26.780 country is in hell I mean what an awful thing to put on to people and it's

01:06:31.160 having an impact on us all there there is absolutely no good news on the news

01:06:38.840 today they have embraced this idea that we are all going to be dying if we don't

01:06:46.760 follow the dictate of our governments I mean our politicians are playing a

01:06:53.300 different agenda and a different game. I don't know, I don't understand it yet. I

01:06:58.940 have been seeing some of the economic damages done by COVID and how the

01:07:04.280 governments, from the socialist point of view, have been using it. There's another

01:07:09.980 issue too with COVID actually. There's a recent report in the US that says that

01:07:15.860 religions are losing adherence every time. There is something going on in the

01:07:22.220 world right now using covid is that we are closing churches we are not allowing them to to operate

01:07:29.580 in a way that was you know in in in a free way of of delivering the word of god we are making this

01:07:39.820 an issue churches are being closed synagogues are being closed must have been closed all these

01:07:47.740 institution of religion are not being allowed to operate you know why i remember this saying from

01:07:55.500 the communist religion is the opium of the masses so we've got to destroy it and i believe that

01:08:02.620 covid is being used as an agenda to bring us closer to communism and it is a path of destruction

01:08:11.500 of values when you don't have black lives matter

01:08:15.100 inc is a marxist organization and we've got to be very careful because

01:08:21.580 part of the agenda is the destruction of religion

01:08:26.700 and and the family unit and that's part of the whole thing

01:08:30.380 and i don't know what the agenda is i don't want to really speculate

01:08:34.460 except from what i am reading and what i'm seeing there's no conspiracy here

01:08:39.180 but I want to see what is going to happen very very soon if we don't get a federal election

01:08:46.060 in say this summer and Trudeau is not kicked out and we don't get a new government in this country

01:08:53.820 Canada is going down a path that will see us not recovering for at least 20 to 25 years

01:09:02.540 yeah you know a year ago it would have been unimaginable to think that you're a year and

01:09:08.500 a half i guess you know that churches would ever be closed again it just seemed like such an

01:09:11.520 ingrained uh specific right so so those who see religion as a threat those who don't like it

01:09:17.060 they really are seeing an opportunity in this this uh pandemic to really try and crush organized

01:09:23.380 religion again i don't take part in it but i i fully agree in the rights of individuals to do

01:09:28.560 that. And it's an important part of society and people socially and bonding and family and just

01:09:34.180 on so many levels. You know, another side note with media, though, and part of it's our own

01:09:38.260 fault. It's part of the evolution of media, though, is if it bleeds, it leads. That's always

01:09:43.780 been a principle. And, you know, sometimes we blame the government for everything and so on.

01:09:47.380 But media is because of social media losing money. They're doing badly. Advertising doesn't

01:09:53.580 pay a fraction of what it used to. The market's very diluted. People are going to streaming

01:09:58.140 services, they're coming to the Western Standard, they're going to other things. A lot of columns and

01:10:04.060 things like that now are actually paid the writer and the person based on clicks. So I got to admit,

01:10:10.860 it's a bit of a human nature thing. When I write one of my rage columns and it's just ripping into

01:10:15.500 people and I'm crabby and it's nasty, I get loads of reads and comments and interaction. When I

01:10:22.060 write something that's a bit more on the good news side and everything, which is nice and it's

01:10:25.260 refreshing it just doesn't quite captivate and grab people unfortunately

01:10:29.200 it's a bit of human nature but the the pay-per-click model that came about you

01:10:33.500 know classified ads don't pay for the paper anymore so there's just not a an

01:10:38.160 incentive for people to put out good news sometimes and maybe as readers and

01:10:41.400 that if we could respond a little better to the good stuff writers will be more

01:10:45.060 inclined to produce it well it does seem it does seem that mass media nowadays

01:10:49.740 has got an agenda, and the agenda is to protect the gloom and doom naysayers, and

01:10:57.240 it doesn't help, it doesn't help the society to sort of enlighten themselves

01:11:05.420 and to get back to what we should be doing today, is helping each other, having

01:11:13.080 a discussion among ourselves. The problem that we have is we don't speak the truth

01:11:19.320 The media doesn't allow people with dissenting voices to be heard.

01:11:25.320 The truth is not out there, as they usually say, but it's out there, but it is not being released by the mass media.

01:11:36.320 Yeah, well, and hopefully as this media evolves and changes and we do productions like this and other things come along,

01:11:42.320 it will get better in whatever final form it takes.

01:11:45.320 So I'm going to wrap it up, Marcel, and thank you very much for a good long conversation on mostly two levels of government but we touched a little bit on the third one.

01:11:55.320 It's always good to speak to you because the problems are kind of the same on every level, it's just that they impact us more directly in some areas than others.

01:12:04.320 So is there anything you'd like to say in closing and where can people find more information on what you're up to?

01:12:08.320 uh soon we will release it uh sometime in in the near very near future uh and we will let you know

01:12:17.440 and uh i am very happy to be with you all the time if uh my little contribution is to inform

01:12:24.400 the public and give a dissenting voice or a different opinion i am always glad to come and

01:12:29.920 join you and discuss these these issues with you and i think that canadians have got to wake up

01:12:36.960 learn about what's going on around them make sure they are informed before they

01:12:43.880 make an opinion as opposed to get ideas and information from only one source

01:12:50.240 there are many bad sources out there make sure you get the right source to

01:12:55.340 inform yourself before you make a decision and with that I would say happy

01:13:00.280 Easter to everybody enjoy yourself and stay safe out there and I will

01:13:06.800 join you some other time, Corey. Always a pleasure.

01:13:10.040 You bet, Marcel. Happy Easter to you too as well. Thanks again. And I'm certain we'll be talking

01:13:14.120 again soon. Thank you.

01:13:18.100 Okay, moving on. Marcel segued it quite well. Different voices, people getting out there.

01:13:24.780 I've got Colin Craig coming up. He's going to come on in a moment. He was very vocal and visible

01:13:30.900 through the Taxpayers Federation in the past,

01:13:33.220 and now he's been involved with secondstreet.org,

01:13:37.080 which is an organization that's bringing a different approach

01:13:40.660 to issues messaging and getting things out there

01:13:43.940 and trying to bring information to people,

01:13:46.020 as Marcel was talking about, different means of listening.

01:13:49.320 And I don't know if Colin caught that earlier,

01:13:51.040 but a little bit of what I was asking,

01:13:52.080 because we've got that real if it bleeds,

01:13:54.920 it leads mentality in alternative media and in mainstream media,

01:13:58.620 and it makes the messaging sometimes really negative and not necessarily productive.

01:14:03.300 So having different ways to communicate with people and engage people and talk with people

01:14:07.320 maybe can get us to come into some better outcomes in the end of things.

01:14:11.480 So without more, I will bring Colin in here.

01:14:15.280 There we go.

01:14:17.220 Hi, Corey. How are you doing?

01:14:19.500 Good, good. I just want to make sure we can hear you.

01:14:21.440 So thank you very much for coming on with me today.

01:14:24.940 I hope I somewhat described your organization correctly.

01:14:27.660 It's relatively new, I believe, on the advocacy front.

01:14:31.520 Can you expand a little bit about what you guys are doing these days?

01:14:35.060 Yeah, so we're a public policy think tank.

01:14:37.700 We were launched two years ago.

01:14:39.440 And one of the reasons behind launching the organization was that the founders felt that there were a lot of good think tanks in the country.

01:14:46.740 They're doing great work.

01:14:48.020 But they felt that there was a need to kind of approach public policy a little bit different and not compete with the existing guys, but complement their efforts.

01:14:55.980 And by that, what we try to really do is tell the stories behind the numbers.

01:15:01.280 So we do conduct public policy research.

01:15:03.800 We release our reports publicly, but we also try and tell the stories about how everyday

01:15:07.600 people are affected by government policies.

01:15:11.280 And to give you an example, in BC, you'll hear that there's, I think it's like 80,000

01:15:16.660 people or so prior to COVID that we're waiting for surgery.

01:15:19.840 That's a big number.

01:15:21.180 It's a cold statistic.

01:15:22.760 But when you actually hear the stories behind the numbers, it makes you think a bit differently about how people are affected by health care policy in BC to hear a story like Jenny McKenzie's where she's waiting or she at the time she was waiting one to two years for hip surgery, living in chronic pain, unable to walk across her room without having to really think about, you know, what she's going to do.

01:15:45.520 and you know she gets to the other side get her tv remote do something else when she's over there

01:15:49.920 so that she had to minimize as little uh mobility as possible because like i say she's living in

01:15:55.360 chronic pain so when you hear stories like that it it starts to i think connect with people on

01:16:00.720 a different level and they can start to see some of the consequences of government policy so we

01:16:05.200 tell the the positive stories there are things that governments are doing that are good that

01:16:08.720 can really help people and then there's often uh the other side as well so we try and do both and

01:16:13.760 and just kind of approach public policy a little bit differently.

01:16:17.580 Yeah, no, and that's great because, I mean, something that policy wonks and dorks like

01:16:21.440 ourselves might overlook the human side, which is really, in the end, the most important thing.

01:16:26.320 It's the end product. That's, you know, how and where it's impacting people. And we can write

01:16:31.020 papers and essays and show stats and costs, but the actual person on the ground who it impacts

01:16:37.200 is who we need to hear from and see where it's happening. I mean, you know, we can write about

01:16:42.620 showing comparisons of, uh, healthcare waiting lists and how our systems have shortcomings and

01:16:47.840 so on, you know, all over the place. And we do that, but to show somebody who's, yeah, living

01:16:52.340 in prison in agony, essentially, uh, waiting on this for this, yes, free, as long as you don't

01:16:58.160 mind waiting a long, long time to get it, uh, a procedure that's made their life intolerable.

01:17:03.720 It's just a different way to highlight it. And I really appreciate that. Have you seen good,

01:17:07.620 uh, response from that approach so far? Yeah, I think so. I mean, obviously I've got my own

01:17:12.400 bias, but I think we've had some success in drawing attention to the different stories and

01:17:17.960 kind of approaching public policy differently. In Jenny's case, like I said, she was told she'd

01:17:22.700 have to wait anywhere between one to two years. We brought her story to light. She did a little

01:17:27.280 bit of media in Vancouver on it. And full credit to her, she was also pushing as a patient more in

01:17:35.100 the system to say, hey, like my goodness, when is my surgery going to come up? Because I'm living

01:17:39.620 in pain i i just can't take it and uh with after shortly after we were involved with her she

01:17:46.260 her case got bumped up but that that's a problem that we see so often in the health care system is

01:17:51.060 that some kind of tragic story finally hits the news because a patient has hit a wall and then

01:17:56.820 the government does something about it well that's no way to uh deal with patients people shouldn't

01:18:02.580 need p public relations teams in order to get their their uh health care to timely matter so

01:18:08.420 in that respect you know we think we've had some success we've also uh um this year or pardon me

01:18:13.700 last year after covet emerged we saw some good examples of governments cutting red tape so

01:18:19.540 obviously countless businesses were affected and harmed by lockdowns um that was obviously very

01:18:26.340 difficult but there were actually some small positive things that governments were doing

01:18:30.660 right across the country around the world for that matter to cut red tape to make it easier

01:18:35.220 for people to go about their lives to make it a little bit easier for businesses and so forth so

01:18:39.620 one example would be allowing restaurants to sell alcohol with their takeout and delivery orders

01:18:45.460 allowing patients to video conference with their doctors instead of having to go into the

01:18:50.260 the doctor's office so there were things like that that governments were doing

01:18:53.940 and we tracked all those examples of red tape to show that quite often governments can help

01:18:58.980 people and businesses out by just simply getting out of the way getting these red tape rules out

01:19:04.580 of the way we did some public opinion research on it released it and shared it with governments

01:19:10.500 across the country and in many cases we saw governments that had made these red tape cuts

01:19:15.860 temporary they ended up making them permanently reduced so permanent freedom in different areas

01:19:21.300 and and that was a very positive example we think that you know we played a part in some of those

01:19:25.860 victories so that that was good to see that's good it's good to one to bring up uh i used to own a

01:19:32.100 pub just out of calgary i was there for five years just sold it just before the restrictions came in

01:19:37.220 uh as i said before i feel a little survivor's guilt i didn't mean to hand off a uh you know a

01:19:42.740 new business to these people in such trying time to take on i mean a difficult industry at the best

01:19:47.460 of times one of the things that yeah they did do in alberta was they allowed um take out liquor at

01:19:53.700 least because take out people have to understand in the hospitality business your margins are

01:19:57.780 razor slim and if you were going to make a profit quite often it was on the liquor that's where

01:20:03.040 you'd actually get good margins decent margins and and uh craft beers being so popular uh you

01:20:08.860 know i sold more draft on my taps than bottled stuff and it supported local businesses people

01:20:14.060 really enjoyed it i mean in my younger years the draft beers for when you were broke and you buy

01:20:18.060 that garbage stuff you know there was one brand of it in the bar now it's it's the good stuff

01:20:22.760 And what they allowed, though, was for growlers and takeout, which really helped supplement with their takeout.

01:20:28.560 And it happened fast.

01:20:30.000 People missed.

01:20:30.900 I mean, they missed the social aspects of the pub, but they also missed that unique draft beer they could get from those craft breweries.

01:20:36.840 So they would order a pizza, come in and fill their growler while they're at it.

01:20:40.240 And I do believe that the government's going to keep those changes permanent.

01:20:44.520 You know, so, I mean, it's a small victory, as you said, but at least it's a move in a positive direction out of this crisis.

01:20:48.640 And if we could examine more, I'm sure there's a lot of businesses with a lot of good ideas that could get government out of their hair to make things a little more improved for them as we move into what we hope to be a recovery.

01:21:00.660 Yeah, no, for sure.

01:21:01.560 There's a whole bunch of examples like that across the country.

01:21:04.280 I think we've got over 30 on our website because we were keeping tabs on it, scanning news stories and government news releases and that to track them.

01:21:11.440 Because, like I say, quite often it's a good way that government's going to help people is just cut back on these unnecessary rules and red tape.

01:21:17.900 and as we saw with the liquor change the sky has not fallen by allowing people to order alcohol

01:21:24.740 through takeout and delivery orders has it been perfect i doubt that across the country there

01:21:29.380 hasn't been a problem somewhere but certainly it is it is it is not a major problem we talked to

01:21:34.940 one business owner in winnipeg he said it's not a big deal they just make sure they follow the

01:21:40.100 rules carefully you know you can't sell to miners all the other um rules that they have to follow

01:21:45.100 it's fine so uh yeah we've got like i say we've got a whole bunch of different examples on our

01:21:49.580 website uh in toronto the government's changed the rules around um i believe it was when grocery

01:21:55.340 stores could accept deliveries uh quebec changed some rules around the the rules around how many

01:22:01.500 workers could be present in the store during certain hours like the government was regulating

01:22:07.100 it was weird um of course when they give those stores more flexibility they're able to operate

01:22:12.620 better in a time like covid when people are always at the grocery store so lots of good examples

01:22:18.220 across the country like i said these were positive moves that helped people and and we were pleased

01:22:22.460 to try and bring some of those stories to light so that the public could understand just how uh

01:22:27.420 how these policies play out at the grassroots level uh it's good and of course we we do still

01:22:33.420 have to highlight the negative before we can move on to the positive in an area i'd like to kind of

01:22:37.820 pull back into a little bit is where you've been pressuring because i think it's a really important

01:22:41.420 one with our health care system and the the waiting list because i think a lot of people

01:22:46.380 understand it's a symptom of the problem with our system it can't cope it's too rigid there's a lot

01:22:52.220 of issues with it and it leaves people waiting for treatment and then some people can manage

01:22:56.540 to expedite uh my wife needed back surgery i've got that diagnosed but needed an mri for it and

01:23:02.620 i can't remember they said yeah you can get that in 10 more months or something and then it would

01:23:05.580 go to the specialist or you could pay 800 bucks go in and get it and then you'll expedite your

01:23:10.780 visit to the specialist and cut that portion out. We had the means, so we did it, but not everybody

01:23:15.740 does. But looking at the bigger consequences and costs of these waiting lists in this rigid system,

01:23:22.220 if a person is incapacitated waiting for back surgery, knees, hips, things such as that, for one,

01:23:28.300 they aren't in the workforce, they aren't paying taxes, they can't, or at least they're reduced.

01:23:33.260 It's of course horrible and miserable on them as you guys highlight with the social costs,

01:23:37.020 the individual costs. Another one people don't talk about a lot, but we've had this opioid epidemic

01:23:42.400 and a lot of advertisements and doctors talk about, they say, keep your painkillers out of

01:23:48.760 the reach of the kids. This is often the starting point. This is the first place where somebody got

01:23:52.820 into an opiate was actually a leftover prescription from somebody else. But when we've got

01:23:56.960 tens of thousands of people on waiting lists, what's the doctor do? They prescribe painkillers

01:24:01.840 to get the person through the day while they're waiting for the procedure. There's so many levels.

01:24:05.400 If we could cut these lists, then our whole society is going to be better off for it.

01:24:10.220 So what suggestions, though, do you guys have then in reducing those waiting lists?

01:24:15.960 Yeah, there's a lot.

01:24:17.400 And you've hit the nail on the head with some of the costs from these waiting lists that people don't always think about.

01:24:24.020 And I like the one that I'll get to solutions in a second.

01:24:26.460 But I like the one you just mentioned about people being stuck on painkillers for a long period of time.

01:24:33.620 They're not meant for that.

01:24:34.560 they're not meant for people to be taking Tylenol threes for full year or

01:24:38.440 whatever. It causes other problems in your, your system.

01:24:42.460 And there was a nurse that we talked to who had done some research on,

01:24:46.380 on that issue.

01:24:48.300 And she spoke with a patient who had waited so long for surgery.

01:24:53.200 Finally their time came up, but when their time came up,

01:24:55.980 they did the test and they said, well,

01:24:57.060 we can't operate it on you because you're, I think it was, uh,

01:25:00.120 your liver's in rough shape now because you've been on painkillers for so long.

01:25:03.800 so though the problems start to compound because of these waiting lists um and there's lots of

01:25:08.500 other stories out there they're tragic these are real people who's with you know with going through

01:25:13.820 uh some pretty significant problems as a result of these waiting lists in terms of solutions um

01:25:19.100 one that we've talked about quite often is just simply to keep the public health care system

01:25:24.100 but allow private clinics to do the same services and there's many benefits from that one is for

01:25:31.120 patients, they have choice. They're not stuck with one option for healthcare. Two, there's

01:25:37.120 sometimes with different procedures, there's more than one way to do it. The government often

01:25:40.860 chooses the cheapest way. Some private clinics might offer a different approach. So that would

01:25:46.960 give patients more choice. Three, it takes pressure off of the public healthcare system when you do

01:25:52.180 that. When in the case of, you know, you're mentioning about your wife's story. Well,

01:25:56.340 when she goes to pay for a private MRI scan she's one less person in the

01:26:00.840 waiting list so everyone else moves up so there's there's benefits from that

01:26:05.280 there's also an economic benefit because right now when people can't get those

01:26:10.680 private options in Canada because quite often they are banned and it's a real

01:26:14.760 mishmash of rules around what is and isn't allowed and even across different

01:26:19.400 provinces some allow things some don't you can pay for private MRI scan and in

01:26:23.880 Alberta you cannot do that in Ontario because the rules don't make any sense

01:26:28.320 so what you end up seeing is quite often patients just they give up on Canada

01:26:32.400 they fly to another country whether it's the US China Mexico Germany we've talked

01:26:38.580 to people going all over the world and I don't know obviously driving sometimes

01:26:43.320 to the US but when they do that they're taking money out of our economy and

01:26:46.800 they're spending it somewhere else there's a they're supporting jobs in

01:26:49.500 another in another country businesses in another country that pay taxes and so

01:26:52.880 forth. So there's an economic loss when this happens. And I certainly don't blame any patient

01:26:57.900 for doing it, for using their own resources to try and improve their health. But I think we need

01:27:01.440 to think of it from an economic perspective, too. If we allowed these private clinics to do the same

01:27:06.980 services, well, then some patients would stay in Canada. The final point that I'll mention, too,

01:27:12.580 is that going into COVID, Canada was under-resourced when it comes to health care.

01:27:17.440 and that is because we have fewer doctors per capita than many other countries developed

01:27:23.400 countries fewer hospital beds per capita we have you know we're low on equipment and so forth

01:27:28.820 because the government controls the system they ration what services are provided and it's not

01:27:35.220 that there's not enough money in the system it's that it's poorly spent you know you end up with a

01:27:40.020 lot of money spent on administration and so forth, right? So if you have private options at the same

01:27:47.800 time, well, then going into COVID, you have a public system and more private facilities that

01:27:53.040 can help shoulder that burden of COVID. Yeah, well, and sorry, I'm just messing with the

01:28:01.240 comments here. Self-produced productions. Just somebody was asking, saying it's good to have

01:28:06.560 Guest info, like websites in the show notes, which is good. I just remind people I was trying to type it there, but secondstreet.org is where you find more information for you guys. So we'll go over that at the end as well, just so people can look while we're going.

01:28:21.720 And, yeah, with those other alternatives, and they've really been brought up acutely, you know, with people who leave the country to get health care, there's a myth, too, that these are all rich people or well-to-do people.

01:28:30.780 And, no, they're desperate people.

01:28:32.240 I mean, if you're living in agony and you can't work and they're saying, well, we can get you in in 18 months for this procedure, but you find out, you know what, if I remortgage my house, I can fly out to get this done in a month, you're going to remortgage the house.

01:28:48.280 And, again, it doesn't mean it was somebody who's rich.

01:28:50.020 It's somebody who spent a lot of money and saved and built equity up, and now they're going to spend it, as you said, take it out of the country, possibly to a Canadian-trained doctor somewhere else and get it done.

01:29:03.300 An interesting factor somebody else brought up was the diversity of clinics, if we could have outside clinics, because part of how we found we were so vulnerable when an infectious pandemic came out like this was we had to put off a lot of these procedures because we had to essentially quarantine the hospitals

01:29:18.820 because we were bringing the COVID patients into the hospitals.

01:29:21.200 If we had more outside hip replacement clinics or dialysis centers

01:29:26.340 or a number of all of these different types of things,

01:29:28.760 it would have been much easier to carry on with other procedures for people

01:29:32.780 because you wouldn't need to log off whole wings to the hospital.

01:29:36.720 And you could dedicate the hospital, of course, to the infectious issue at hand.

01:29:40.760 So, I mean, because now we're really compounding the waiting lists due to the pandemic.

01:29:44.320 So it was just another factor, as you said.

01:29:47.120 hopefully we can learn from this negative and make our system a little more resilient again by

01:29:51.220 moving towards you know diversifying our treatment options oh exactly um and that's that's a problem

01:29:58.200 is that you put all your eggs in one basket in canada like i say for the most part there's some

01:30:02.160 exceptions private mri scans being one in in a majority of provinces now but um yeah i mean if

01:30:08.940 you want to pay for private knee surgery and your only option is the government and the government's

01:30:13.940 you know shutting down those procedures because of covid well then you're out of luck but exactly

01:30:17.860 your point if there are private clinics doing it well then you might still be able to go to that

01:30:21.700 private clinic and get uh your health problem rectified and like i say in cases where people

01:30:26.980 are living in chronic pain or they they're worried about the the problems from taking

01:30:31.620 painkillers for an extended period of time i mean there's all kinds of benefits from

01:30:35.620 having um that dual track system and and what made i think with the point that people need to

01:30:40.500 understand the most is that studies show that systems that perform better than canada system

01:30:45.620 they have both options public system and a private option that's how australia does it

01:30:51.140 new zealand norway like countless countries around the world have that that dual approach

01:30:56.580 they're they're providing better results and i think we need to uh our elected officials would

01:31:01.620 be wise to uh start looking at those other options and reforming health care because ultimately

01:31:06.740 there's a lot of patients suffering in some some cases dying we produced a report where we got

01:31:12.480 government data on patients dying on a waiting list in uh 2018-19 we've got more data coming

01:31:19.480 but in in that one year alone uh 1480 patients died waiting for surgeries and and i'm not

01:31:26.760 suggesting that they were all waiting for surgeries that would have saved their life

01:31:29.480 there were many cases where people were dying while waiting for cataract surgery knee hip

01:31:33.980 operations and that but you're reducing their quality of life during their final years you

01:31:39.580 know who knows some of these patients maybe it was important to them to be able to see maybe they

01:31:43.340 liked having their hip um so it's there's a lot of tragic stories like that well and a few myths

01:31:50.800 need to be busted as well you know there's some people with a very heavy interest in in protecting

01:31:55.900 the status quo they like how the system is as it is they just feel that the only solution anything

01:31:59.660 is to pour more public funds into it uh one of which is that there are only two health care

01:32:04.700 systems in the world canada and the united states and any discussion no matter what you have they're

01:32:09.660 going to jump up and say i don't want to americanize our system we don't who does i mean their system

01:32:14.140 is a mess too they got their own challenges but as you said there are models all over australia

01:32:18.540 through europe uh parts of asia that are doing much better than us and they have different aspects

01:32:24.860 of perhaps more diverse provision and a private alternative. But the other part, too, is all of

01:32:31.100 those ones you're speaking of, they have universal coverage. Like people, you know, the fear and

01:32:35.180 mongering that comes out, they're saying, oh, you'll get turned away from hospitals if you

01:32:38.060 don't have a credit card or you'll have to sell your house if you break a leg. And no,

01:32:42.380 they're still universally covered. Nobody's getting turned away. They're just allowing more

01:32:46.220 private participation in a parallel system. I just like to clarify that because people are

01:32:51.580 scared sometimes they think they're going to lose uh coverage if they change the model and that's

01:32:55.340 not true at all yeah and that and our biggest problem is that we're right next door to the us

01:32:59.820 if canada was physically located in the middle of europe we would have a completely different

01:33:03.740 health care system because health care discourse would not be limited to canada's option or the

01:33:09.180 united states this it's so frustrating because there's nearly 200 countries on the planet you

01:33:14.620 know as you alluded to there's all kinds of other models we could be looking at

01:33:18.300 models that are doing better and in many cases not even costing as much as what we're paying so

01:33:24.060 they're doing they're providing better results for lower cost uh i think we're foolish not to

01:33:28.940 be looking at how we can embrace some of those lessons learned from those other countries um

01:33:33.900 because they're doing better and and one thing i'll note is on our website we had a report

01:33:39.500 uh we issued it i believe it's last year where we looked at some of those systems australia

01:33:45.100 new zealand norway and we we put together like a little write-up that explains here's how it works

01:33:50.060 in australia's health care system so that people canadians who are wondering what it's like as a

01:33:55.340 patient they can read that and get a bit of an understanding okay this is how it works the sky

01:33:59.500 doesn't fall if i need a heart surgery i'm not going to go bankrupt i don't have to whip out

01:34:04.620 my credit card whatever it's a universal system um so i if your your viewers are interested they

01:34:10.540 can go on our website take a look through that report if they can't find it shoot me an email

01:34:15.260 and i can point them in the right direction but like you said corey there's so many fallacies to

01:34:19.260 go to your other point about the rich using the private options that's not true we've talked to

01:34:23.820 a lot of people from all kinds of different backgrounds um that have been going to other

01:34:28.620 countries we talked to a nurse from nova scotia who works in the health care system she hurt her

01:34:34.620 back on the job she could not get her her back problems treated she works in Canada's health

01:34:41.220 care system couldn't get them treated went to Mexico had to pay for surgery in Mexico to get

01:34:47.040 her her health her back problems fixed and within hours days after surgery she was feeling a lot

01:34:55.400 better she could walk farther she was doing so much better because she was able to get that

01:35:00.020 that surgery so there's a lot of stories of people like her i mean she's like say she's a nurse i

01:35:05.140 don't think she's she's nurses they're not low paid but they're not millionaires either right so

01:35:11.360 middle-income canadians from all kinds of backwards going abroad for health care and

01:35:15.420 i think we need to be focused on on those types of issues because they're important they affect

01:35:19.700 a lot of people well yeah and part of the bigger issue all around is under a monopoly whether it's

01:35:26.560 government monopoly or private monopoly, the consumer always loses. I mean, you need choice,

01:35:32.260 you need options, or you're just not going to end up well in the end of it. So you guys have

01:35:37.100 done some coverage on another area that's similar, is school choice, because that's another area where

01:35:42.860 we kind of have something close to a government monopoly, or at least they try their hardest to

01:35:46.600 strangle private options and people demonize private schools. And of course, the unions fight

01:35:51.840 against charter schools and things such as that. But you guys have done some work and research

01:35:56.180 into the school choice issue uh what conclusions did you come to there yeah so there's uh that was

01:36:02.020 uh report was authored by uh paige mcpherson who i used to work with at the canadian taxpayers

01:36:06.820 federation we hired her to write that up we did some public opinion research and then paige brought

01:36:11.940 in some relevant information for the questions that we asked canadians on so i'm going by memory

01:36:16.420 here but uh canadians supported more school choice when it comes to issues like being able to choose

01:36:22.420 even what public school that you want to send your kids to it's not universal

01:36:26.700 across the country where you're you have that choice quite often you're

01:36:29.800 restricted to catchment areas you can only go to schools maybe this local

01:36:34.060 school or a couple schools within this division but Canadians like the idea of

01:36:38.900 having that choice to send your school or your child maybe to a school quite

01:36:43.660 far away in another part of the city but it works with your commute so you can

01:36:46.840 drop them off and that so even more choices in the public system was one

01:36:51.000 that Canadians liked one thing we picked up on too is that there was a

01:36:56.640 significant number of Canadians that were concerned about the direction the

01:37:02.400 system has gone in over the past 20 years and I can't remember the stat off

01:37:06.720 hand but it was significant enough that you've got a large segment of parents

01:37:12.780 who are essentially customers sending their kids to the system who aren't

01:37:16.800 satisfied with the product but quite often you don't have too many choices

01:37:20.160 right especially when you're restricting school options to you can

01:37:24.000 only go to that one local public school or go out to a you know private school

01:37:28.680 where some parents don't have the funds so I think that that would be something

01:37:32.640 for policymakers to dig a bit more deeper into is looking at a number of

01:37:37.500 these reforms that have occurred in schools over the past 20 years to see

01:37:41.260 what actually the customers think taxpayers everyday parents what do they

01:37:44.700 think about these these different changes whether we're talking about

01:37:48.060 discovery math or shifting away from phonics I know some schools have had

01:37:53.160 these no no fail policies where you can hand in an assignment whenever you want

01:37:56.940 and the teacher can't can't take off marks for you know different things like

01:38:00.540 that where I suspect that some of them do not go over too well with parents and

01:38:06.420 I think there'd be a value for schools to or the public's education systems to

01:38:11.160 review what parents actually think and dig a bit deeper into that issue yeah

01:38:15.480 Well, if parents have more ability to vote with their wallets, in a sense, I suspect that all schools would improve to a degree because they have to realize, you know, what the end consumer wants of them.

01:38:25.500 But right now, it's locked in there.

01:38:27.920 And something that frustrates me because I think there's a very valid point that comes out.

01:38:30.740 One of the things that the teachers unions may hate are standardized testing.

01:38:34.660 Oh, you can't do that.

01:38:35.500 It's terrible because every student is different and it doesn't measure accurately.

01:38:39.500 Of course, what they get most upset about is it also measures their output and ability as teachers.

01:38:45.500 And I know it's not perfect, but that's more of what gets them furious about it.

01:38:48.480 But the point is valid.

01:38:49.740 Different kids learn different ways.

01:38:51.680 Some do better in some environments than others.

01:38:54.060 Some early sort of know what track they want to go on to.

01:38:57.320 They're more artistically inclined or some are into.

01:38:59.880 And, you know, when you mash them all into a standardized system, they might not necessarily do well.

01:39:05.400 but as soon as we talk about giving more school choice to different types of

01:39:08.260 schools that can service those kinds of different needs that's when they say oh

01:39:11.440 no no no you can't do that we just want to test the kids that's all that's that's

01:39:16.560 the reality of it it goes back to what we're talking about with health care

01:39:25.780 right where you have people that are in a system and they will resist change and

01:39:31.020 and it's the same thing in education you've got powerful government employee

01:39:36.060 unions the teachers unions that do not want to see change of of any kind unless

01:39:40.980 it's just simply throwing more money at the school system and at that you know

01:39:45.300 taxpayers cases are burned out we can't just go afford to keep throwing more

01:39:49.480 money at at healthcare and education and other issues we need to be looking at

01:39:53.920 how we can do better and how society has changed since school systems were set up

01:39:58.420 mean if you look at our school system it it's set up on what the farming world of the 1800s right

01:40:06.180 that's why kids get the the summers off so they can go and help on the farm and you know assist

01:40:11.780 with crops and so forth right well that society has changed right so i mean we can look at different

01:40:17.700 school models where maybe it's not even just the what's taught that is different but maybe the

01:40:22.260 hours that schools operate are different and maybe they run throughout the year i mean i think we

01:40:26.100 we could benefit from having a bit more innovation in that system giving parents more choice and that

01:40:32.380 doesn't mean that there doesn't have to be any standards I mean schools the public education

01:40:37.020 systems could still look at saying okay here's the minimum standards you have to teach this this and

01:40:41.240 this and then you've got some flex time where maybe that particular school could focus in on

01:40:45.720 teaching a certain language or certain culture or maybe it's focused around the trades or maybe

01:40:52.080 higher education, whatever, I think there's, there's ways that we could look at some more

01:40:56.520 innovative approaches to education, ultimately provide better outcomes for, for students, which

01:41:01.040 is, should be one of the top priorities of the entire system. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I

01:41:07.000 graduated from high school, I was literally under the impression, I mean, that was really driven

01:41:11.380 into us. I was from a smaller school though, but in Banff, but it was either you go to post-secondary

01:41:18.020 or you're going to be a janitor there's no in between um i literally graduated i had no idea

01:41:23.080 what a tradesman was i didn't know what an apprenticeship is i had no idea i should if

01:41:27.500 for some reason i wanted to be an electrician or something which are hey you don't see them

01:41:32.120 driving old clunkers they're doing well they're very good jobs very good trades i graduated from

01:41:37.880 a system that never taught me even a little bit of those things if i was inclined to those

01:41:42.000 where would i go how would i start and in it with again with a more diverse system maybe i

01:41:46.180 I wouldn't have come out so blindly, you know, into the working world from that, which is a real frustration.

01:41:53.520 Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways the system could be improved, maybe even having more of a focus on entrepreneurship.

01:41:59.780 Right. More of a stream around business, starting up your own business.

01:42:03.480 So many young kids, they have great, bright ideas about products they could create or businesses that they could open up and so forth.

01:42:11.660 And we should be encouraging that because any healthy economy has a strong business sector.

01:42:17.380 And, you know, sometimes I think the system, it doesn't focus enough on on being entrepreneurs.

01:42:22.880 You often hear, too, of in school, at least when I was in school, there's a focus around being a good employee.

01:42:28.220 Well, what about being a good employer, teaching kids to be those entrepreneurs that are going to take the risk to start up a business, to employ other people?

01:42:36.500 because we certainly need a lot of entrepreneurs to help get this economic recovery going.

01:42:42.740 It's not going to be the government that does it.

01:42:45.180 At least if it's a successful one, it's going to be driven by entrepreneurs taking risks,

01:42:50.060 you know, starting up new projects and so forth.

01:42:53.080 Absolutely.

01:42:53.660 I mean, it's those young ones coming out of school that are, you know, creative ideas

01:42:56.360 and they're full of piss and vinegar and ready to dive in and try some things.

01:42:59.460 We've got this economic, hopefully, recovery coming ahead of us.

01:43:02.300 We're going to need some creative minds to jump in there.

01:43:04.840 I'm 50 and I've run a bar and I've run a survey company.

01:43:07.600 I've got to admit, I'm not that interested in diving into a big new venture and trying to start something fresh.

01:43:11.440 So I'm going to be reliant on those younger entrepreneurs and creative people to do so.

01:43:16.160 I sure hope we can keep training, as you said, and modeling them even better in the future for that.

01:43:21.500 So I'll shift a little now then.

01:43:24.380 April 2nd we are today.

01:43:25.620 Yesterday for April 1st, we got our latest carbon tax hike, which raises the cost of

01:43:32.740 living for everybody on pretty much everything.

01:43:35.540 You guys did some polling on the carbon tax, and it seems perhaps the support for it isn't

01:43:39.740 quite as universal as our current federal government would make it out to be.

01:43:43.980 I think that's a fair conclusion, yes.

01:43:46.720 We polled Canadians because, just as a bit of background for your viewers, in December

01:43:52.440 of last year. So a few months ago, the federal government announced they were going to raise

01:43:56.380 the carbon tax from $30 per tonne to $170 per tonne over the next nine years. So right

01:44:03.360 up until 2030. And so when you do the math, that's I think it's a 467% increase. It's

01:44:09.760 a huge, huge increase. And we thought, okay, well, let's ask Canadians about it. Let's

01:44:14.860 do some polling. Let's do what people think about the carbon tax going up every year for

01:44:18.760 nine years. And what we found was that 52% of Canadians were opposed to the idea. Now, the

01:44:26.840 interesting thing was that when we asked Canadians about a specific example, because that's a little

01:44:31.400 bit generic, just what do you think of this tax going up? But when we say, what do you think about

01:44:35.320 when we reach 2030, and it's going to cost you an extra $20 in carbon taxes, just to pay for

01:44:43.820 filling up your car so if your car right now if it's costing you 60 bucks to fill up if it cost

01:44:48.980 80 i mean that's the type of change that we're looking at just on the carbon tax not counting

01:44:53.320 any of the any of the other fuel taxes and when you put specific questions like that specific

01:44:59.640 examples rather to the public that's when opposition grew 68 of canadians said no we

01:45:05.200 don't support it now in fairness to the government they have um at least the federal government has

01:45:11.600 these rebates that consumers are going to get. So yeah, you're going to pay a lot more in carbon

01:45:15.120 taxes. You're also going to get a rebate. How that rebate compares with what you're paying in

01:45:20.300 carbon taxes, of course, that depends where you're living in your lifestyle and how much

01:45:23.780 fuel you use. There's certainly a large segment of society out there. I think it's around 30,

01:45:28.700 40 percent, according to the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, where they found

01:45:33.540 that when you look at the total tax effect, because the GST is on top of the carbon tax,

01:45:37.860 people are paying more than what they're getting in the rebates. Some people, of course,

01:45:41.420 are on the other side where they're getting more from the rebates. But when you talk to Canadians

01:45:45.780 about what they think about the rebates, a large segment believe that those rebates are not going

01:45:50.620 to be as much as what they're paying in taxes. So that is a, I think there's a skepticism out there

01:45:57.060 on the part of Canadians that this will ultimately become a tax grab. We've certainly seen that in

01:46:01.980 the past where tax measures have either started off as a tax grab or they grew to become a tax

01:46:10.480 grab they were not revenue neutral in the case of british columbia that was what a recent study

01:46:15.840 concluded there was that yes they brought in a carbon tax they reduced other taxes and so for

01:46:21.200 i think the first few years that tax uh was not it was sort of revenue neutral as for for

01:46:27.120 governments right but then over time it did become a tax grab so um i think really what what can be

01:46:33.920 drawn from that poll is that canadians are not there for uh are not supportive of radical changes

01:46:38.960 at this point when it comes to uh the carbon tax especially when you talk to them about how it's

01:46:44.600 going to impact them what potentially they might be paying for it yeah and again that's part of

01:46:50.120 what i appreciate with the approach that's coming from your organization it's getting down to that

01:46:53.760 human level and just pointing out you know that this is the straightforward thing an analogy such

01:46:58.280 as filling your car because it's a direct one that most people can relate to and it gives a different

01:47:02.940 perspective when they sit and think about it for a minute that perhaps it's not quite what they

01:47:07.120 were hoping it would be. And I despise rebate systems. There's just so much room for abuse

01:47:12.600 and inefficiency when you call it revenue neutral. I mean, just the bureaucracy involved

01:47:17.340 and dealing with taking that money out of my pocket and handing it back to me when you

01:47:20.260 could have just bloody left it with me in the first place. It sours with me. And revenue

01:47:27.860 neutral. I mean, there's room for tax shifts if a government could commit to that. I mean,

01:47:32.580 we get a lot of economists, a lot of people talking about consumption taxes are more fair.

01:47:35.800 if we'd move to a sales tax in alberto or consumption taxes in other areas it would be

01:47:40.960 an improvement for all of us okay but i want a commitment that you're going to get rid of income

01:47:46.220 tax when they're not going to they're just going to put another tax on the tax revenue neutral

01:47:50.580 though does mean to me you will get rid of if you're going to take in another five billion a

01:47:54.860 year out of this i want to see five billion not in rebates five billion in in reduction in taxes

01:48:00.020 somewhere else and then you can call it revenue neutral but governments won't do that no so often

01:48:04.800 it just it becomes a tax crap um and and people get jaded they get cynical about these types of

01:48:12.800 commitments by governments i mean i i think that's what our polling showed right is that

01:48:16.900 large people feel that ultimately this thing is these rebates are not going to be as much as what

01:48:21.240 they're paying in taxes uh how that plays out we'll have to wait and see a little bit but you

01:48:26.400 know we can't forget income taxes are a temporary measure right they're brought in in 1917 to help

01:48:31.960 pay for World War I, well, we're still paying them 100 years later. So I think there's a lot

01:48:37.660 of examples out there like that that contributes to the frustration that the public has. And one

01:48:44.560 of the interesting things from one of the questions is that we picked up a sentiment that I think the

01:48:48.700 public is thinking about when it comes to carbon taxes is that there's other ways to reduce

01:48:53.920 emissions without simply taxing people. One example here in Calgary is that the city has

01:48:59.440 shifted some of its bus fleet from diesel to natural gas. Well, natural gas, it's cleaner

01:49:04.740 burning, has lower emissions. The buses are quieter too, so that's one way that they could

01:49:09.720 reduce emissions without having to tax the public more. The great example I love is just getting

01:49:15.540 more Canadian natural gas over to Southeast Asia. In countries like China, India, Japan even,

01:49:22.500 I believe Indonesia, they've all been looking for more natural gas so they don't have to rely on

01:49:26.920 coal coal is it there are lots of problems associated with it especially when you look at

01:49:32.320 smog there's I believe it's a million people plus in China and India every year that are dying from

01:49:38.420 smog well imagine if they were burning natural gas there to produce electricity instead of coal

01:49:43.960 they could reduce their smog levels they could reduce their carbon dioxide emission levels

01:49:47.580 for Canada we get tons and tons of jobs out of it by firing up our natural gas sector even more than

01:49:53.420 what it is to to start exporting more um and of course that initiative it's it's underway a little

01:49:59.880 bit in british columbia but there's an opportunity to expand it quite a bit more and ultimately um

01:50:05.480 like i say create jobs for canada help reduce smog and emissions in southeast asia so i think

01:50:11.800 that elected officials could uh would be wise to consider options like that to reduce emissions but

01:50:18.740 without impacting people's pocketbooks here in Canada through taxes.

01:50:22.660 I wish we would see more of that,

01:50:25.060 but we see the imbeciles in Vancouver city council looking to ban natural gas

01:50:28.360 use in households.

01:50:30.000 I saw a sponsored story from the Globe and Mail on a handful of doctors from

01:50:35.000 somewhere who'd written a piece on how using natural gas in your household for

01:50:39.420 cooking has long-term health effects.

01:50:41.220 And then they're paying to promote that article and have it go out further.

01:50:44.880 And that's just a, yeah,

01:50:45.560 you just open a different can of worms.

01:50:46.840 It gets me stirred up because it's absolutely right.

01:50:48.740 I mean, it's a plentiful resource.

01:50:51.180 We've got lots of it.

01:50:52.080 We've got infrastructure for it.

01:50:53.580 It's much better clean burning, you know, better for the environment than what currently is going on.

01:50:58.820 But the activist sector, the true hardcore environmentalists are opposing it.

01:51:04.340 They're lining up to stop this.

01:51:06.240 They're funding the natives to stop the CGL line in B.C.

01:51:10.720 They are, you know, looking and we're seeing divestment.

01:51:14.680 Chevron couldn't give away their shares, essentially, on the liquid natural gas board.

01:51:18.740 up in BC. It's a frightening thing. If our elected officials could change some of their

01:51:22.780 attitude and be more outspoken in promotion to gas, they said it'd be better for the environment

01:51:26.560 than carbon taxes probably ever would and better for all of us. But I fear for how that trend is

01:51:32.660 going right now. Yeah, I think ultimately we just need a more mature conversation. The conversation

01:51:38.940 when it comes to the environment, climate change, whatever, so often it's being led by the radicals

01:51:48.160 with ideas that are just not realistic they're not feasible and i think we need to shift things

01:51:53.920 back to having a more reasonable conversation in this country about these issues they're important

01:51:58.720 we should be having a good sober discussion about them um one great example of similar to what you

01:52:05.520 had raised there corey was in in quebec you've got a ton of natural gas in the ground and if quebec

01:52:13.600 used its own natural gas instead of importing natural gas it imports natural gas from western

01:52:19.280 canada imports natural gas from the united states if it used local natural gas from quebec it could

01:52:25.600 reduce emissions but the environmentalists there do not want that to happen to them it's they will

01:52:32.320 they will overlook the environmental benefits of using local natural gas because they just simply

01:52:38.000 don't want any natural gas well it's it's not feasible and in winnipeg recently city council

01:52:42.960 they're passed a motion to look at phasing out natural gas in the city and within i believe

01:52:49.920 hours the media had talked to manitoba hydra the province's crown utility and they asked them about

01:52:54.480 this they said basically it's not realistic hydro would have to double its electricity capacity to

01:53:00.800 do so so you you have all these pie in the sky ideas i think we need to be a little bit more

01:53:05.920 realistic about about the world what's happening um long-term trends for oil and natural gas

01:53:12.240 still shows the demand is going to keep going up and up and up so really the question for canada

01:53:17.360 is do we want to produce these resources that the world is going to keep buying or should some other

01:53:22.400 country do it and as long as we continue to block pipelines and block oil and gas projects here in

01:53:30.240 canada then some other countries getting those economic benefits there's not an environmental

01:53:34.240 benefit when a rig you know goes from alberta down to texas still going to produce oil just

01:53:40.400 all that happens is that Canada's not getting those jobs.

01:53:43.960 So, you know, it's kind of silly.

01:53:46.180 And I think ultimately this irrational conversation that we're having about these issues as a nation,

01:53:52.020 it's ultimately, it's costing us jobs.

01:53:54.220 In many respects, it's worse for the environment because a lot of countries do not have the same environmental standards

01:53:58.980 when it comes to extracting these resources that Canada has.

01:54:04.240 Yeah, well, and hopefully, as you said, I mean, it's just the loudest voices of the radicals in the environmental movement.

01:54:10.400 And they tend to dominate the discussion.

01:54:12.300 It gets frustrating on how much they do tend to actually influence the people in power, though, to make policy changes.

01:54:18.660 But there are some rational ones.

01:54:20.400 And it helped me segue into next week.

01:54:21.840 I'm going to have a documentary producer named Julia Barnes on.

01:54:25.380 And she's releasing one called Bright Green Lies.

01:54:28.860 She's an environmentalist.

01:54:30.320 She's put out past documentaries and won awards on environmental issues.

01:54:34.560 I mean, this is not a screaming drill, drill, drill, you know, oil field person or anything like that.

01:54:39.840 But it's exposing the amount of damage that's being caused by this pursuit of electric vehicles and wind generation, biofuels, you know, because we're getting deforestation, we're getting some mining projects, polluting water.

01:54:54.280 So there are some rational environmentalists who are looking and saying, hey, let's tap the brakes on some of these moves.

01:54:59.360 You know, we want to get off petroleum products.

01:55:01.620 We want to change emissions, but we're going on the wrong course.

01:55:04.780 Like we're not.

01:55:05.480 This is counterintuitive right now.

01:55:06.740 So it's going to be a very interesting conversation next week to see where she's coming from in that.

01:55:10.760 So, you know, just to end on a note that there are, I guess, some common sense speaking environmentalists out there.

01:55:15.900 And if we could just give them a better voice, maybe we can find solutions to make the world a greener place without castrating our economies quite so much.

01:55:24.940 That's great. Good on you for giving her that opportunity to share her research and what she's discovered.

01:55:31.560 Because I think that's important. Like I say, these important issues, we should have a good, reasonable debate about them.

01:55:36.740 Yeah, it should be an interesting conversation. I'm looking forward to it. I'll learn some stuff. It's not always echo chamber sort of things. So getting on to what do you guys, as we wrap up here, what are you working on currently and what can we look forward to coming out of Second Street in the coming months here?

01:55:52.400 Yeah, so we've got a lot of stuff in the works related to natural resource development that

01:55:57.960 we're going to be looking at. Same with healthcare, we're going to continue to look at the suffering

01:56:05.040 that often occurs that patients often experience in our healthcare system. So we're looking

01:56:10.480 into more data related to patients, unfortunately, passing away while waiting for surgery. And

01:56:17.060 we think that that's important for the public to understand, because certainly politicians

01:56:20.980 aren't holding press conferences to draw attention to those figures so that's some of the stuff we

01:56:25.300 have in the works and if anyone wants to learn more about us get our email updates watch your

01:56:30.540 videos and that they can go to our website and also follow us on social media great and that

01:56:36.880 website is secondstreet.org and are you guys you're active on twitter with second street yeah

01:56:43.640 Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. All the good stuff. All the good spots, yeah.

01:56:50.420 Well, excellent. Well, thank you very much for coming on, Colin. I really appreciate it. Just

01:56:54.760 a long discussion on what you guys have been up to. And I do like, like I said, the way

01:56:58.480 you put things out so they're digestible, they're common sense, they're fact-based. And it's, you

01:57:03.960 know, we kind of have to approach these issues from all fronts and get the product out there

01:57:08.400 so people can make their choices on policy issues and such as informed as possible. So

01:57:13.540 So keep up the good work, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

01:57:17.420 Yeah, thanks a lot, Corey.

01:57:18.320 I appreciate it.

01:57:18.940 Take care.

01:57:20.080 All right, thanks.

01:57:25.620 Okay, so that's it for this week, everybody.

01:57:29.480 Thank you all so much for tuning in.

01:57:31.860 I'll answer one question here from Shelley.

01:57:34.300 How come these brilliant people like Marcel and Colin, somebody in the show, aren't leaders?

01:57:38.640 uh it's funny you know and somebody needs to do the job in the elected office but it's not for

01:57:45.240 everybody it's a tough area to try and get things done it chews people up and spits them out

01:57:50.960 some people just do much better and have much more impact outside of the elected field than

01:57:55.740 they do in it and i see that today um you know we see danielle smith i mean she's really found

01:58:00.980 herself i'm liking her a heck of a lot more these days as a as a voice out there for common sense

01:58:06.400 and conservatism and classical liberalism than when she was bound by trying to be an opposition

01:58:11.160 leader, trying to win government or being bound with the mainstream media and having to do what

01:58:15.160 she's told. So, you know, guys like Colin and Marcel still influence policy. They still get

01:58:20.660 stuff done. They just aren't right in the government trenches for it. And I think it's

01:58:25.380 better overall. So as I said earlier, I'm not doing a show on Monday. You know, it's going to

01:58:30.600 be a long weekend. Let everybody rest. They don't need my political babbling for a day.

01:58:33.600 There will be the pipeline on Wednesday.

01:58:35.980 I believe a new show from Nathan, our new BC gentleman.

01:58:41.200 If you look on the Western Standard, you'll see it is starting, I think, this Tuesday.

01:58:44.400 He's going to be doing the same time slot as me, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays, though.

01:58:48.800 And we might have some more Danielle Smith specials coming along.

01:58:52.620 So be sure, again, subscribe to the YouTube channel.

01:58:55.540 Subscribe to the Facebook.

01:58:57.280 This way you'll see the alerts when these shows come up because Danielle does those specials.

01:59:00.260 We get her in, and sometimes it's short notice, you know,

01:59:03.300 because she gets a guest and she pops up there.

01:59:05.000 So if you subscribe, you'll see it coming.

01:59:06.900 You'll see that the show is scheduled, and you'll know to pop on

01:59:10.100 because those have been just fantastic.

01:59:11.960 And I do the occasional specials now and then and things like that too.

01:59:16.000 For the news, Dave Naylor, Alexander Daliwal,

01:59:19.720 so many others are putting out so much great content on the Western Standard.

01:59:24.460 We are behind a paywall.

01:59:25.640 I know it frustrates some people,

01:59:26.860 But this is the way we can keep from being dependent on government or anything else to be able to create and get our content out there.

01:59:33.700 So we really rely on and appreciate viewers and listeners.

01:59:38.400 Keep coming back.

01:59:39.640 Send me advice, tips, ideas.

01:59:41.640 I'm more than happy to discuss them.

01:59:44.320 Thank you all very much.

01:59:46.220 And I will talk to you Wednesday on the Pipeline and Friday with Julia Barnes with that documentary.

01:59:52.800 Have a good Easter.

01:59:56.860 Okay.

Western Standard - April 03, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show. April 2, 2021

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