Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show, April 9, 2021

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00:01:00.000 Thank you.

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00:02:00.000 There we go.

00:02:24.100 Good morning.

00:02:24.660 Welcome to the Corey Morgan show for Friday, April 9th.

00:02:28.660 This is going to be a really good one. We've got the authors and documentarian who have put out

00:02:37.160 Bright Green Lies. It's a book that came out in mid-March and the documentary is going to be

00:02:42.240 released April 22nd and it gives a very critical look at alternative energy schemes, perhaps

00:02:49.660 greenwashing efforts that people perhaps well-meaning but are pushing that perhaps aren't as green or

00:02:56.620 doing as much good for the planet as a lot of people first anticipated. So it's going to be

00:03:01.400 an interesting discussion, as I tend to usually have conservative-minded guests on. From what I

00:03:06.520 gather, these aren't conservative types of folks. These aren't my usual screaming capitalists

00:03:11.040 pushing for more fossil fuel consumption and such by any means. They're environmentalists.

00:03:15.560 They're committed to greening things up, but they don't believe the conventional approach to it is

00:03:21.480 actually where things should be going. So that'll be a really good conversation. I'm looking forward

00:03:25.400 to it after that i'm going to be speaking with chris sims who is the bc director of the canadian

00:03:31.400 taxpayers federation and uh always lots of tax things to talk about i usually get franco

00:03:36.440 terrazzano on but i'm gonna have chris this time and i'm sure we'll speak to a lot of our spending

00:03:43.000 and taxation issues um i'll get out here and note as well our sponsor which is kyrensway.com she's

00:03:53.480 certainly been a strong supporter of the western standard and these new digital broadcasts

00:03:58.600 if you've got stress or anxiety issues again if you go to conventional medicine quite often they're

00:04:03.800 going to prescribe you with pharmaceutical products or things that perhaps might not be what you

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00:04:20.520 without having to dip into the pill bottle because these are stressful times a lot of

00:04:24.120 people are under a lot of pressure support local businesses support penny support yourself

00:04:29.400 this might be what you need for what's pressuring you right now so i'll go through a couple of the

00:04:34.920 news items um something that has been hitting news of course on top today was prince philip

00:04:41.880 has passed away at the age of 99. now i'm not a big supporter of the old remnants of the feudal

00:04:48.040 system and the monarchy but all the same i mean he was a a significant historical figure uh you

00:04:55.080 can see his transitioning through if there's ever any uh questions on the uh genealogical line with

00:05:01.640 prince charles you look at these shots no he's he's definitely the dad now we get down to the

00:05:05.000 grandchildren might have some interesting speculation going on but he did pass away

00:05:08.600 just a couple months short of his 100th birthday a lot of people are dancing on his grave already

00:05:13.800 of course um he certainly made some colorful statements things that aren't considered

00:05:17.640 acceptable today but you do have to remember the man was nearly 100 years old for the most part

00:05:23.000 he maintained the post with dignity i believe with the queen that'll pretty much be the end

00:05:27.480 of a full era and uh as we see the the remnants of the monarchy fading away as they probably

00:05:34.360 should but we'll still recognize them as the historically significant people that they were

00:05:39.240 and uh it it really was the passing of an era that's uh well best behind us but all the same

00:05:45.800 condolences to those concerned i just have to give a quick rant on this one yeah united airlines has

00:05:52.680 decided that they are going to set aside skill requirements in their training and hiring and

00:05:58.920 bring people on based on uh well affirmative action action essentially they they want to

00:06:06.120 make sure they they have a number of minorities or other people on it's just one of those realms

00:06:10.920 where I really want them to focus on skills rather than filling quotas of certain wants

00:06:17.260 and things that might look politically correct.

00:06:20.920 There are some fantastic people of every race and sexual orientation and gender and gender

00:06:28.320 identity who I'm certain can fly planes, do surgery and so on and they will make it to

00:06:33.060 the top of the list and they will become hired anyways.

00:06:35.180 It's really frightening though to think that hiring practices on something this critical

00:06:39.760 would focus on anything but the person who's at the top of the class so come on guys give your

00:06:44.700 heads a shake this is really again I don't think when airlines are pressured enough as it is with

00:06:49.440 the pandemic and people not traveling so much having something that makes your airline appear

00:06:53.640 that it may be a little less safe than other ones isn't going to be good for ticket sales I'm not a

00:06:57.700 master of marketing but I suspect that won't be a wise one I want to go quickly into something Dave

00:07:05.240 Naylor with the Western Standard has been going into. He's been doing a series on the whole

00:07:10.440 incident with Kaylin Ford. If you remember, she was a star conservative candidate for Jason Kenney

00:07:15.580 mid-election. A bunch of scandal broke. Some quotes came out. The media jumped all over. She

00:07:21.100 left the race. Her career was ruined. She was finished. Well, now she has turned around and

00:07:27.480 taken the accusers and a number of them to court. And as we're seeing the court records,

00:07:31.080 we're really getting an idea of seeing what really happened here and it's

00:07:34.800 horrific and it's a really good read Dave's been digging into that now we

00:07:38.140 can confirm these it's not just he said she said this has been before a judge

00:07:41.880 and it's it's just galling what she's endured I interviewed Caitlin before on

00:07:49.200 a different show that I had with the post-millennial and I mean she's a well

00:07:53.240 spoken well educated very smart woman she was going places and that was why

00:07:59.280 She's actually quite progressive as far as UCEP candidates would be considered.

00:08:03.360 They put her into a swing riding, and it got ruined.

00:08:07.380 But now what we're seeing is it was essentially due to a conservative compatriot of hers.

00:08:12.220 His name is Kareem Jivraj.

00:08:15.040 He was, I don't know where to begin.

00:08:17.580 He was a stalker.

00:08:18.960 He made up, she turned him down for drinks, and he went shortly afterwards and registers

00:08:25.180 a domain name in her name and puts up false stuff, makes her fight to get it back.

00:08:28.360 He spawned, and this is all stuff from the courts. This has now been proven. He spawned fake Twitter

00:08:33.520 accounts, which slandered her. He harassed other female journalists. There was definitely a pattern

00:08:40.780 to what this man was up to. He recently, just in March, has been arrested for assault. So this was

00:08:47.760 a very unsavory, dangerous character who had an obsession with a woman. He was a man shunned. So

00:08:55.700 instead of being like a rational individual and living with it and turning away unfortunately as

00:09:01.740 too many bloody short dick men do he went on a harassment campaign to try and tear her down

00:09:06.660 and he just ruined her she's still having difficulty getting employed to this day this

00:09:10.740 is an oxford educated bright young woman and she's gone through this crap but the other ones i want

00:09:16.120 to give crap to are the media because when this stuff was coming out it was coming from this man

00:09:21.220 who already had a bad record. If they really wanted to dig a little, they would find this is

00:09:25.640 not a good credible source. But in their zeal to tear down a conservative candidate, Press Progress,

00:09:32.220 which is an alternative media outlet, took quotes from this man that were taken out of context from

00:09:37.480 an academic discussion and tried to paint her as a white supremacist, and she was anything but.

00:09:42.540 The CBC and the Toronto Star jumped on it again, zealous, hoping to tear down a conservative,

00:09:47.640 didn't dig farther didn't give her a chance to speak up for herself when she did go on actually

00:09:53.420 on one radio show in calgary to try and defend herself the radio host was attacked and swarmed

00:09:59.120 and sponsors were called because they're saying you're putting this white supremacist on it was

00:10:03.180 just unbelievable it was a sick turning on an individual if you have political differences by

00:10:09.260 all means and different publications have different slants of course they do mine certainly does

00:10:14.220 but this was just horrific it was a character assassination on the most ugly of levels and

00:10:20.600 thankfully Kalen's not going to just lay back and and and give up and you know go into a non-public

00:10:26.980 life she's really aspired to to do big things so she's pushed back she's taken it to the courts

00:10:31.340 and from the court records that Dave's been digging up and what we're seeing what happened

00:10:35.820 with this whole situation I'm certain there's a number of lawyers at Press Progress CBC and

00:10:39.900 Toronto Star who are sweating right now because they published this odious man's garbage

00:10:43.680 and obviously didn't check their facts.

00:10:46.240 And yes, they are named in her suit as well.

00:10:49.060 But I mean, this should be a lesson

00:10:50.140 to alternative media, all of us,

00:10:51.980 including the Western Standard.

00:10:53.940 Watch it, check your facts and don't go personal.

00:10:56.600 Don't go after a person.

00:10:57.680 Don't try to tear them down.

00:10:58.780 We can differ from each other and vigorously.

00:11:02.640 I mean, I'm not a sweetheart on social media

00:11:04.560 when it comes to political discourse,

00:11:06.160 but character assassination, ruining a person's life,

00:11:09.280 harassing them, hounding them.

00:11:11.240 People shouldn't do it

00:11:12.340 and publications shouldn't take part in it. So hopefully we have all learned from this ugly

00:11:18.800 incident. Go to the Western Standard online, check out Dave Naylor's series on it. I believe

00:11:23.900 he's put three pieces up. There's going to be a number of them on it because there's just so much

00:11:26.960 to this. This is almost soap opera-like story. I mean, it would be fascinating and entertaining

00:11:32.380 and engaging if it didn't just have such a horrific human cost behind it, which is just

00:11:37.120 galling again. I just can't rant enough about this, this ugly situation. I'll close up with

00:11:42.640 something that's been hitting heavily today. Our conservatives, one thing we do like doing is

00:11:46.440 eating our own and we're doing a really good job of it lately. Jason Kenney has a caucus revolt on

00:11:52.420 his hands by the looks of it. 17 caucus members have put out a letter now condemning his reinstituting

00:12:00.720 of restrictions and lockdown measures. And then apparently, and the Western Standard got the

00:12:06.200 exclusive on that. A number of MLAs were told at a meeting with Jason Kenney behind closed doors

00:12:12.420 that Kenney would, if they keep this up, he's going to call an early election. He put, you know,

00:12:17.580 if I guess if you want to get an elected official to get in line, if they fear for their seats,

00:12:21.880 they fear for their job, they might behave. But three different MLAs confirmed this. What a

00:12:27.460 terrible top-down approach for trying to get your elected representatives in line. This sounds more

00:12:34.820 like a gentleman in panic who's having a hard time trying to keep things together rather than

00:12:39.240 a rational leader. It's really been surprising. You know, I expected much more out of Kenny. I

00:12:44.080 wanted so much more. So even, yeah, Michelle Ripple-Garner came out and took a swipe at it

00:12:49.240 because again, just from that elected representative, I'm sure if O'Toole came hollering at her at a

00:12:54.260 caucus meeting and making those kinds of threats, Michelle wouldn't be terribly thrilled with that

00:12:58.540 whole prospect either. But it's going to be an interesting week. We're seeing businesses now

00:13:03.620 committing, saying they're not going to shut down, they're not going to lock down. There's

00:13:07.980 the ongoing battle back and forth to observe with the churches that are refusing to stop services.

00:13:14.680 We've fenced in the one at Grace Life up by Edmonton that had been holding services in

00:13:19.000 defiance of the lockdown orders. It's just a crazy period in human history we've got going right now.

00:13:27.160 You know that battle between religious rights and, well, public safety, between the right of the

00:13:32.900 state to impose controls and the right of people to freely practice their religions i mean i'm an

00:13:39.620 atheist this doesn't impact me directly but i do understand the importance of religious rights for

00:13:45.300 others but at the same time if there really is a number of spreads going on is this a wise thing

00:13:50.580 to continue allowing or was the church being foolish and being defiant could they have just

00:13:54.900 moved on to virtual services i'm sure we're going to be talking about this for weeks to come and

00:14:00.740 probably years to come as we try to figure out just what has gone on with this this insane

00:14:05.860 pandemic so as i try to stop my screen share here as i said i i will be moving on to the the authors

00:14:17.540 and documentarian for bright green lies you know i i it's interesting with their zest and zeal for

00:14:23.700 for trying to green things up make things better we can sometimes uh greenwash or put things on the

00:14:29.940 wrong path and there's an article i wrote years ago that was quite well received but it was back

00:14:35.380 when calgary started their green bin program where you're separating your goods you're going to

00:14:39.060 recycle because recycling feels good immediately it sounds like it's something that's a good idea

00:14:42.660 it's going to make things better on the surface and quite often it is but this was a glass so we

00:14:48.260 would put all the glass in the green bins it would get taken away and then we could feel warm inside

00:14:52.340 knowing it was being recycled well what would happen is it would go to a facility where a lot

00:14:56.100 of workers would have to separate it and then wash it and then it would be crushed and then it was

00:15:01.300 stored at the dump in a big pile it turned out there's a monstrous pile of this crushed glass

00:15:05.780 building up over years because the problem with it was nobody wanted it so we're expending the energy

00:15:11.540 the cleaning the efforts on this glass and we couldn't actually do anything with it and finally

00:15:18.180 this this big press release came up from the city they were proud of themselves they figured

00:15:20.980 something out for the mountain of glass they said we're going to use it for road base at the calgary

00:15:25.220 landfill facility so in other words you're going to bury it at the dump why didn't we just do that

00:15:31.060 in the first place now there's things we could do we want to reduce our consumption we want to

00:15:34.420 reduce our glass use reuse it within the household things like that but what a complete farce and a

00:15:39.060 waste of resources taking this stuff separating it washing it crushing it now we've got this

00:15:44.980 beautiful sterile grass that we're sticking underground in the dump glass that you know that

00:15:48.500 that could have uh we could have just used gravel or dirt but either way i'm going to move on because

00:15:54.820 we've got a couple of the guests coming on and uh this uh one of the authors of bright green lines

00:16:01.860 bright green lies lear keith and julia barnes the documentarian who's got the documentary that's

00:16:07.540 coming out april 22nd uh it's been making waves we've probably been uh seeing it i saw a globe

00:16:13.380 and mail i saw financial post you guys have been kind of popping up all over the place with this

00:16:18.020 there's a lot of interest in what you've put together so i really appreciate you guys coming

00:16:22.020 on to speak to me today yeah well thanks for having us so uh i i guess i'll start with uh

00:16:31.620 lier perhaps because you were one of the authors of the book there were three of you and two co-authors

00:16:36.180 max wilbert and derrick jensen uh i i guess i'll get right to the start what you know you've been

00:16:41.940 a very active uh self-described as a radical feminist uh an environmentalist so you've got

00:16:47.700 some strong political views already uh you you felt inspired to uh add to get this book rolling

00:16:56.580 what what uh what brought this collaboration together for you

00:17:02.100 so i've been an environmentalist my whole life um and we once had a movement the reason for

00:17:10.180 the environmental movement was to defend wild places and wild creatures from destruction and

00:17:15.860 over the course of my lifetime the entire first principle of this movement has shifted and now

00:17:21.620 it's no longer about defending those wild places and those wild creatures it's become instead

00:17:27.940 how do we continue to fuel the destruction of those wild places and wild creatures

00:17:33.300 and that's the biggest lie in the bright green lies um that our movement that was so impassioned

00:17:40.420 and so honorable this was what we cared about was the wild places and the creatures and now

00:17:47.620 it's entirely become how do we replace fossil fuel so that we can continue to do that destruction

00:17:55.140 and i'm not a hundred percent sure how that happened so that's problem number one um the

00:17:59.860 second level of problem is that all of these technologies that are being proposed and indeed

00:18:06.900 installed in some places, all of them are dependent on fossil fuel. So my friend, Ozzie

00:18:13.120 Zenner likes to say we have fossil fuel and alternative fossil fuel, because you can't

00:18:17.240 make things like solar panels or wind turbines without vast quantities of fossil fuel. It

00:18:25.060 all rests on that same industrial platform. Another problem is that many of these technologies

00:18:30.400 are at least as destructive as fossil fuel. And they're fudging the math to make it look

00:18:34.820 different to the public, but many of them create even more greenhouse gases than actually burning

00:18:40.600 fossil fuel would. So that's another lie. And then the final thing is that the way that the, oh gosh,

00:18:52.960 the very last scraps of wilderness are now being taken to put up these kinds of installations,

00:19:02.300 like you know these huge solar panels that i mean these these wind farms and these solar

00:19:07.300 installations some of them are so big they can be seen from outer space and these are the last

00:19:11.440 places for creatures to live like it's the last scraps of wilderness um i mean just we talk in

00:19:16.860 the book about the last 35 scottish wildcats and when i say 35 i don't mean 3 500 or 35 000

00:19:24.100 there's literally 35 of these animals left in scotland and they're all going to be destroyed

00:19:29.720 to put in a wind installation. And I don't know what any of this is for. It doesn't actually scale

00:19:35.260 up. None of the numbers that they're trying to tell us, to convince us it could be done,

00:19:40.860 it doesn't even work. You're never going to functionally replace oil and gas with something

00:19:46.120 like wind or solar. They're intermittent, they're not dependable, and they simply aren't energy

00:19:52.680 dense enough to do what oil, gas, and coal do. So from beginning to end, it's like my whole

00:19:59.120 movement has been hijacked. We're no longer fighting for the same things. And the tools

00:20:04.620 that were being given to fight what they think they're fighting aren't even up to the task

00:20:09.000 of doing it.

00:20:10.000 That's I can imagine it's a frustrating thing. I mean, again, as I said, kind of in the intro,

00:20:16.240 I'm certain a lot of intentions were good going in. But you know, it's a cliche, but

00:20:20.640 it is a good one that road to hell is often paved with good intentions. But I mean, it's

00:20:25.640 refreshing to see a more cost benefit analysis when it comes to solutions to problems. I mean,

00:20:31.080 okay, you've established that the current conventional energy generation is not doing

00:20:36.840 the world any good. It is causing damage. It's causing harm. We're consuming too much,

00:20:41.960 but in a mad scramble for the alternatives, sometimes we might be coming up with something

00:20:45.880 as bad or worse than what we began with. And it's refreshing to see voices coming out to at least

00:20:49.880 speak to that. So I'll pull in your co-author Max here, who's also come on. So thank you very much

00:20:57.220 for joining us, Max. I was speaking to Lierre just about again, I had asked a similar question. So

00:21:04.180 what inspired you to get in on this collaboration? It's a lot of work to write a book at the best of

00:21:07.860 times and with a number of people, it's got to make for some great discussions along the way.

00:21:13.620 Absolutely. And thanks for having me on. I apologize for not being very professional right

00:21:17.880 now. I have been for most of the last three months living on the side of a mountain in northern

00:21:24.380 Nevada protesting a proposed lithium mine here. So I don't know if you want to show this to your

00:21:31.200 listeners, but I can actually turn around real quick and show you one of those wild places

00:21:35.580 that is threatened by extraction to power this so-called green economy. So, you know,

00:21:44.000 I've been an environmentalist as well, like Liere, since I was young. I started reading the news about

00:21:50.260 deforestation and global warming and all of these different issues, species extinctions.

00:21:55.980 And it's terrifying as a kid. You know, you think, what kind of future are we going to have?

00:22:01.780 And I started looking for solutions. And what I found was electric cars, solar panels, and so on.

00:22:09.080 that's what I was taught would solve these problems. And I believed it for many years.

00:22:14.240 And, you know, it was only with quite a bit of research and quite a bit of conversation and

00:22:19.180 dialogue with people like Liere, who, you know, have been critiquing these so-called solutions

00:22:25.000 for many years, that I began to uncover the actual truth. And, you know, I have been,

00:22:32.840 i just wrote an article yesterday from this location here about the links between tar sands

00:22:40.280 tar sands oil production and lithium production in a place like this the lithium that they hope

00:22:47.480 to pull out of this mountainside right in front of me here would be used to produce batteries

00:22:53.240 to power electric cars and to store the intermittent energy that's produced by

00:22:58.040 solar photovoltaics and wind energy facilities so this is essential this lithium is essential to

00:23:06.720 the new green energy economy it depends on tar sands because their main chemical ingredient for

00:23:13.420 their process is sulfur and as probably many listeners to the show know sulfur tar sands

00:23:20.920 fuels are very high in sulfur and they have to pull a lot of that out because of air quality

00:23:24.820 regulations so much of the sulfur that's produced on this continent comes from tar sands oil so

00:23:31.940 people can pretend that this is a green mining project that's going to save the planet and stop

00:23:39.860 global warming and so on but that's all they're doing is pretending the data doesn't actually

00:23:45.400 back that up you know as more and more solar and wind has come online greenhouse gas emissions

00:23:52.240 have actually gone up globally right oil and gas production is expanding it's not shrinking

00:23:58.000 you know that doesn't mean it will necessarily continue that way forever but we really need to

00:24:03.280 grapple with the fact that if we're living in the society that's based on perpetual growth

00:24:08.160 that's based on taking huge amounts of quote-unquote resources from the natural world

00:24:14.840 and just producing endless streams of consumer goods and cheap products

00:24:20.080 it doesn't really matter what energy source powers that right it's going to destroy the planet

00:24:26.900 sooner or later and you know that's why i think it's so important that we get this information

00:24:33.480 out there all that research and discussion that i had to have to uncover these truths we want to

00:24:39.320 help people uh you know short circuit that process bypass you know the 10 years that it took me to do

00:24:45.520 that and they can just read the book or watch Julia's film and start to learn

00:24:51.460 the truth about these issues great well and I'll bring Julia in so this couples

00:25:00.280 in quite closely I'm certain you've heard the parallel many many times whether the

00:25:03.740 planet of humans and follows up on that which was again a something that was

00:25:08.020 different you know the this came from producers and individuals that we

00:25:10.880 wouldn't anticipate would come in critical of some of the alternative

00:25:14.800 energy sources, things that have been

00:25:16.120 trumpeted as our solution going

00:25:18.240 forward to challenges

00:25:20.300 today.

00:25:22.300 So this documentary is coming out

00:25:24.120 April 22nd.

00:25:25.960 What's your reception been on the way

00:25:27.880 in as you're getting ready for this

00:25:29.440 release?

00:25:32.680 It's been mixed.

00:25:33.640 I mean, generally, I think people are

00:25:35.640 excited to learn about this.

00:25:37.520 I think there's definitely

00:25:39.760 somewhat of a hunger for this

00:25:41.040 information.

00:25:42.040 So, you know, anyone who's involved in environmentalism, we have been marketed to for a very long time that solar panels and wind turbines and hydro and biomass and all this is clean and green and sustainable.

00:25:55.040 But I think if you've really looked into these issues and understand the root causes, I think everyone kind of has a sense that that's not going to be sufficient to solve these problems.

00:26:06.100 But it's really interesting when you start learning more about it and actually how harmful this industry is to the natural world.

00:26:13.100 And I'm coming at this from a perspective of, you know, I made a documentary about the ocean prior to making Bright Green Lies and the big issues that are facing it.

00:26:21.940 And one of the most surprising things to learn was the impact that this green technology

00:26:27.060 industry could have on the ocean because there are plans to mine the deep sea to produce

00:26:32.580 the materials for things like batteries for electric cars and grid energy storage for

00:26:39.260 solar and wind.

00:26:41.060 And this is a highly, highly destructive industry that is coming down the line.

00:26:45.520 There are some estimates that each mining vessel would process two to six million cubic

00:26:50.260 feet of sediment per day which would be dumped back into the ocean where it would toxify the

00:26:56.020 food web with heavy metals um increase the turbidity possibly disrupt the plankton in

00:27:01.460 the ocean who produce the oxygen in two-thirds of the breath we take so yeah this is a really

00:27:07.780 huge issue and we we definitely need to be looking at at the reality behind this industry

00:27:13.460 it's not this clean and green and sustainable thing that it has been marketed as but i think

00:27:18.180 the perspective is really changing on that and yeah i hope this film in this book will help to

00:27:23.620 um reclaim the environmental movement and make it again about protecting life on this planet

00:27:28.340 make it biocentric yeah well and i really appreciate that and and something i i would

00:27:35.140 i'm enthusiastic about in seeing this though is we're seeing people of different uh political

00:27:41.140 slants uh sort of agreeing on something for a change which doesn't happen nearly often enough

00:27:46.580 and i mean i will point out i'm in alberta i worked 20 years in the oil and gas industry and

00:27:51.380 exploration uh internationally and within canada i spent four years in the arctic i spent time in

00:27:56.660 the gulf of mexico area uh i do know as an albertan uh too as some of the commenters have pointed out

00:28:02.500 we call it oil sands up here and we tend to cringe when we hear tar sands uh but that's a debate for

00:28:07.620 another time but the presumption too that um like part of why i was a surveyor i worked in the bush

00:28:13.220 i worked in the arctic because i did love the wilderness i loved the the pristine land i was in

00:28:17.540 i i liked working and there's no way you could have no impact but i liked seeing it minimized

00:28:23.700 i mean we weren't all people out there bent on destruction or ruining what we saw when we were

00:28:28.740 in these zones uh producing energy uh we were people who were making a living and going after

00:28:34.660 that but at the same time we didn't want to make it any worse than we had to at least most of us

00:28:38.340 and i think most rational people want to protect the planet i mean they do understand we're all

00:28:44.580 dependent on it we want our our children or grandchildren to to enjoy some of the wilderness

00:28:50.500 areas we've been in areas that such as max is in in the desert i love working down in the desert

00:28:55.780 it's uh an underrated area with far more uh diversity in wildlife than people would ever

00:29:01.300 anticipate. And yeah, now we're putting it at risk with other projects. So we'll get to the

00:29:08.260 harder part though. I'll pull the air in. We are still, the world population is growing. Our energy

00:29:13.820 consumption is growing as you're pointing out. Where do we start moving towards solutions though?

00:29:18.860 That's the toughest question of all the time. People don't want to give up their creature

00:29:22.480 comforts. They don't want to give up their cheap energy. Yet at the same time, we want to protect

00:29:26.380 the planet uh if these alternatives aren't going to help where can we go so i mean this comes down

00:29:34.060 to what are we going to value um and so you can make the argument from justice and you can make

00:29:41.100 the argument from um you know self-worth and so if you make the argument from justice you say

00:29:49.100 all of these creatures have a right to exist on their own because they do just because you're

00:29:54.860 going to value them and that there they are they have a right to be here they're part of

00:29:59.580 you know the web of evolution and you know every single creature deserves our respect

00:30:04.700 then the other argument the argument you know from self-worth or self-interest is you know

00:30:09.260 without them we're all dead anyway so to my mind no matter how we come out it we we have to have a

00:30:14.620 living planet that you and i cannot produce oxygen and we are also not primary producers

00:30:21.420 which is to say we can't photosynthesize we're not plants so we can't make our own food

00:30:25.660 we as apex predators we're absolutely dependent on consumption and that's not a bad thing we

00:30:31.420 we apex predators have a role to play in in that food web and a very important role um but we can't

00:30:37.660 do it without them so whether you want to acknowledge that other creatures have a right

00:30:41.900 to existence or whether you just want to care about humans either way we have to have a living

00:30:46.220 planet so having said that if we're gonna we can't continue to consume our planet and we can't eat

00:30:54.140 our planet and have it too so the problem with what's happened to the environmental environmental

00:31:00.060 movement is that um it's completely changed course so that instead of protecting the things that we

00:31:06.620 need to actually have a living planet they want to continue to fuel its destruction and we need

00:31:12.380 to have a good long think with ourselves as a species about what is the future that we want here

00:31:20.060 and you know james howard kunstler has this great line where he says you know the planet needs us

00:31:26.220 to be reality based adults it doesn't actually matter what we want at the end of the day what

00:31:31.420 matters is what the planet can sustain and at this very moment i mean we would need 40 planets

00:31:37.660 to sustain the levels of consumption that we have in the wealthier western countries

00:31:42.460 it can't be done i mean there's there's even a child can understand that math so are we going

00:31:48.060 to notice what we're doing before it's too late and you know pick a different course because for

00:31:53.260 most of our time on this planet we were not monsters and consumers i mean we didn't destroy

00:31:58.140 everything in sight it is very very recent in in human culture to have these kinds of life ways

00:32:06.620 that simply destroy. Up until very, very recently in our time on this planet, we took our nourishment

00:32:14.500 from inside living communities. We didn't impose ourselves across them and just turn it all to

00:32:20.040 humans. Right now, 80% of the primary production and the secondary production, which is to say the

00:32:26.800 sunlight, goes directly to support humans and no other creature. There's no way that we can think

00:32:33.120 that this is a plan with the future. So, you know, part of this is we have to start to reconsider

00:32:38.540 that. I mean, as Richard Heinberg says, the party's over. This was a way of life that maybe

00:32:43.800 three generations of people got to experience. And it can't go on, not if we want to have oxygen

00:32:49.380 and food for the next generation. Well, and for the most part, our resources that we're dependent

00:32:55.860 upon are finite, whether it's fossil fuels, the metals for the alternatives that we're digging up

00:33:01.800 uh or or even uh nuclear options such as that i mean there's a lot of debate i mean i i do know

00:33:07.880 from exploration there's a heck of a lot more fossil fuel out there than a lot of people

00:33:11.320 anticipate but it's still it's there will be an end to it at some point or another and end with

00:33:15.560 others so we do have to look farther ahead somehow and how we're going to deal with that because we

00:33:20.680 won't always be able to to generate such things for ourselves uh max so as somebody quite clearly

00:33:27.320 in the uh activist sort of community as you're literally camping out in a desert to uh block a

00:33:32.360 program but how have you been received then with others in the uh activist community who have jumped

00:33:38.040 on very strongly with the push for the you know electric cars for where the the windmills the

00:33:45.240 the alternatives i mean title generation uh we're seeing all sorts of creative ideas geothermal

00:33:50.920 uh but now that there's a critique upon it uh as some of them been shifting and then

00:33:56.680 mines opening in that sense or has there been i guess some some negative uh pushback as well

00:34:02.120 it's definitely a mixed bag and here in nevada with this fight in particular we're really

00:34:08.520 finding ourselves with strange bedfellows you might say so the folks who have been opposing

00:34:14.120 this mine are mostly conservative rural ranchers and farmers who their their water sources are

00:34:21.240 threatened with destruction you know their fields are what the toxic pollutants from this mine will

00:34:27.880 blow onto uh this project is also opposed by traditional indigenous people from this area

00:34:35.480 who look at what's happening out here and they say this is a cultural site this our ancestors are

00:34:40.920 buried in this these lands you know our sacred medicines and all of our traditional ways our

00:34:47.160 people still use this place and we don't want to see it turned into an industrial extraction zone

00:34:54.440 and then people like myself who are grassroots environmentalists

00:34:58.120 who i think see through a lot of the issues that at the mainstream

00:35:05.160 promote and so with these uh this strange alliance is actually really interesting because

00:35:18.660 on the other side of the fence you have mining companies you have uh the the state and federal

00:35:26.380 government here in the united states and in the state of nevada and then you have the mainstream

00:35:30.940 environmental groups that in many cases are either staying neutral and not pushing back

00:35:37.920 against projects like this because they believe that lithium is going to save the planet or

00:35:42.800 they're actively in favor of it and and so like you said earlier we're kind of cutting across some

00:35:50.320 political differences here and we're trying to make some waves we're trying to change these

00:35:56.620 conversations a lot of people have only seen the slick advertising campaigns that say electric cars

00:36:03.340 are clean and green and sustainable and they've never seen a lithium mine they've never seen what

00:36:08.540 cobalt mining in the congo looks like they've never recognized the links between a lithium

00:36:14.620 mine here and tar sands or as you all would say oil sands in alberta right these projects like

00:36:21.500 we are said aren't actually different from fossil fuels they're an alternative form of fossil fuels

00:36:28.300 and so i think we need to recognize that we need to tell the truth about these things and

00:36:34.940 you know telling the truth is often not a popular thing to do in our culture unfortunately

00:36:42.220 no no it isn't it's not always well received uh and we we do have some great new means of

00:36:49.420 communication coming out uh documentaries are becoming popular uh i mean they always have been

00:36:56.220 but uh the the film medium the platform uh digital broadcasts things like that we have more means to

00:37:03.340 get to people than we ever had before and with the uh pandemic happening i think there's a lot

00:37:09.340 more viewership than ever so uh julia with what you put out i imagine you'll be able to get a really

00:37:15.340 broad reach to people uh you know not everybody necessarily picks up books like they used to but

00:37:19.980 i'm hoping that sales are going quite well with this uh with the documentary though something

00:37:24.140 that happened again you know to bring up the planet humans for example it was on youtube uh

00:37:30.220 it upset a lot of people and then the the challenges came and it managed to get yanked

00:37:33.980 off of there because of a small uh copyright infringement and so on uh which means are you

00:37:41.020 putting out your documentary so people will be able to see it and and do you

00:37:44.560 fear potential efforts to cancel or shut down your messaging yeah so we're

00:37:50.720 starting with a worldwide premiere that will be streaming on Earth Day so it's

00:37:55.300 an event that people can sign up for the website is bright green lies calm so it

00:38:01.480 looks like we have a lot of interest for that and then from then on I'll be

00:38:05.240 releasing it on some online platforms like Vimeo, iTunes, Google play.

00:38:11.220 I'm, I mean, I don't know.

00:38:12.900 I'm not too worried about people shutting it down.

00:38:15.080 I don't think there would be any valid reason to, but we'll see what happens.

00:38:18.960 Obviously it's quite a contentious issue.

00:38:21.900 Yes.

00:38:22.340 Well, and as Max said, sometimes people just don't necessarily appreciate the truth

00:38:26.320 when it, when it's contrary to what they felt.

00:38:28.940 I know I'm a stubborn devil.

00:38:30.760 It takes a while sometimes when I'm wrong and I do admit it's happened

00:38:33.960 occasionally. I've been wrong, but it takes a lot of coaxing before I admit it. But I do get there

00:38:38.380 at times and with other individuals that could. So, you know, it's good to, again, to see those

00:38:43.800 questions out there in the discourse and the debate happening. Hopefully it remains productive.

00:38:49.120 So something that's often said, it can be considered a shallow statement, but there's

00:38:53.820 truth to it. You know, it's follow the money. And when it comes to alternative energy generation,

00:39:00.940 these projects, things like that. And we're seeing that a lot up here in Canada as well.

00:39:06.520 Governments are eager to subsidize these projects, things like that. Environmental groups that push

00:39:11.820 for wind generation, solar generation are getting subsidies, grants, or at least more donations from

00:39:20.360 their support base and so on. I mean, there's another addiction going on with some of these

00:39:26.320 activist groups and it's an addiction to money but how do you wean them off of that then and

00:39:30.880 towards a more uh productive approach perhaps liare well i think we have to go back to first

00:39:37.440 principles that if if what we really want to do is save this planet and all the creatures that we

00:39:42.880 love that we can't continue to consume them and there's no money in that and this is this is

00:39:48.080 something we are always going to be up against um no politician who says we have to stop the

00:39:53.040 growth economy will ever get elected so there's no way that our political system is ever going

00:39:58.160 to be on the side of the planet um because that's who funds it and i mean this is just it's

00:40:04.000 intractable so it's always going to be people from the outside pushing and pushing um to try

00:40:08.960 to make the changes that need to happen i mean until the the absolute disaster is upon us and

00:40:13.760 then i think all bets are off who knows you know what the governments of the world are going to do

00:40:18.000 but until then we're really stuck and this is functional i mean this is built into

00:40:22.640 the political system that we have you can't run for office without the money and the only people

00:40:27.280 who are going to give you the money are the people who have it and the reason they have it is because

00:40:31.520 they're turning the living world into private wealth so we're stuck um that doesn't mean we

00:40:37.600 can't keep fighting i i have no interest in giving up ever it's as long as there's one wolf and one

00:40:42.800 tree i will be fighting for them but um you know these problems are really functional to the way

00:40:47.680 way that we live it's not it's not a quick fix it's this is what they want right just swap out

00:40:52.200 one energy source for another so they've already tried it and we can already see it's not going to

00:40:56.620 work so we do have to ask these deeper questions about the way that we live why we live that way

00:41:01.920 why we think it's good has it actually made us happy because it hasn't i mean half of the people

00:41:06.960 in america have been on antidepressants at some point and so all of this consumption didn't even

00:41:11.340 make us happy um but yeah that's what we're up against is exactly that and and it's the same

00:41:16.580 issue in these what we call big green the big green groups i mean they're all dependent on

00:41:22.660 you know huge amounts of their funding doesn't come from small donations from people like me

00:41:27.300 it comes from these large corporations and they're buying the message that they want so

00:41:32.980 there's no big group that's actually fighting for the planet anymore it's there's plenty of

00:41:37.700 impassioned people on the ground who love this place or that creature but they're also up against

00:41:43.060 often you know the groups that call themselves environmentalists that's who they're fighting

00:41:47.540 because that's who wants to put in these installations and these you know industrial

00:41:51.860 scale projects so it's we're it's we're in a bad way we don't have the movement that we need right

00:41:57.940 now and so i mean that's why we wrote the book is because we we want that movement back

00:42:04.420 yeah well and the thing is the bottom line is we're growing and we're consuming and we want to

00:42:11.460 consume. I mean, it's personal comfort for people. It's asking a lot for people to back down. I can't

00:42:18.180 see that trend changing anytime soon either. People want energy on demand. They want cost-effective

00:42:23.860 means of transportation for travel. It's in our nature. Something the commenter was pointing out

00:42:30.180 too, we're seeing world changes in demographics. We're seeing a northern migration from less

00:42:36.180 developed countries to more highly developed countries. Those populations are growing,

00:42:39.860 but those highly developed countries of course consume much more energy per capita than the one

00:42:43.460 they came from the first place so we're seeing even more shift to more consumption so uh and

00:42:48.980 it's it's difficult i mean and we try to pivot here in alberta there was a coal mining proposed

00:42:54.260 in eastern slopes of the mountains and that caused quite a a number of people to become very upset

00:42:59.140 again as max was speaking these were ranchers downslope from it these were uh traditionally

00:43:03.860 very conservative people but they they didn't want uh that happening it did demonstrate also

00:43:08.580 though they're not in my backyard they'll vote for energy development as long as it's somewhere else

00:43:12.580 not my place but they still want the energy we want the energy we're going to use the energy

00:43:18.260 um you know telling people it's bad isn't going to stop them from consuming it so getting back to

00:43:23.860 where do we go i mean we we want to consume a bit less but we have to do it take a rational

00:43:29.860 approach to it it's going to take some time so as we keep shutting down potential new projects and

00:43:35.620 resources coming into a period of recovery from the pandemic though what can we move towards max

00:43:41.380 well i think that this is a really important point if we accept the premise that our society

00:43:49.860 is going to keep growing and that we're going to continue generating industrial amounts of

00:43:54.420 electricity we've already lost the fight to defend the planet i think at that point if we surrender

00:44:01.140 that idea then we've already committed ourselves to destroying the living world and that's something

00:44:07.060 we've seen over centuries now of this culture that we live in so you know we can we can talk

00:44:14.260 about yeah it's it's politically a non-starter almost these days to have these conversations

00:44:19.700 but you know this is a time for visionary politics i don't think we can live in this sort of past

00:44:26.260 world in this past mindset that we've been in for so long where we say you know that's not it's not

00:44:31.780 reasonable to stop consuming industrial amounts of electricity so we just need to figure out how

00:44:36.260 to make it less destructive i don't think that that is sufficient to meet the challenges of our

00:44:42.340 time because you know right now with the crises that we're facing uh you know you mentioned

00:44:48.500 migration right with climate change there are predictions that migration is going to accelerate

00:44:54.020 you know even beyond those predictions in many cases because like you said the first world

00:45:00.100 nations the wealthy nations do their resource extraction in these poor countries they destroy

00:45:05.140 the environment there and then the people say screw this i can't grow crops anymore i can't

00:45:09.460 drink the water i need to go somewhere else right so we're going to see more and more of this in

00:45:15.620 the future i mean if you look at desertification if you look at ocean acidification as julia

00:45:21.860 mentioned plankton populations are collapsing the ecological fabric of our planet is disintegrating

00:45:28.420 and we're insulated from feeling that on a daily basis because of cheap energy basically but you

00:45:34.340 know if you live in a small island nation in the pacific ocean sea level rise is not a theoretical

00:45:40.100 future thing right it's happening to you right now your island is disappearing because of it

00:45:45.380 if you live in the southeastern united states the increase in extreme weather is not a theoretical

00:45:50.180 thing you're getting hammered by these hurricanes year after year after year right so you know i

00:45:57.460 think it's a time for visionary politics and instead of thinking about you know what can we do

00:46:04.180 realistically i think we need to be thinking about what needs to be done and then working

00:46:09.460 backwards from that premise about how do we get there and that is not easy i'm not suggesting

00:46:14.420 that that is easy at all i think we need fundamental transformations in our economic

00:46:20.100 system in our food system in our political system we need to relocalize our way of life

00:46:26.100 we need to address these issues of overpopulation because yeah i think there are there are more

00:46:32.980 people than the planet can reasonably support and that doesn't mean we kill everyone that's

00:46:37.300 not what i'm suggesting at all but i think you know you can address those issues of population

00:46:42.580 growth in humane ways right most women when they're educated and given some degree of political power

00:46:49.380 and control over their own lives they only choose to have two children and because some people die

00:46:55.380 obviously before they reproduce unfortunately or choose not to reproduce you actually have a

00:46:59.940 steady or declining population right so i think it's only because of the political situation that

00:47:06.260 we find ourselves in that we have this huge population growth i don't think it's inevitable

00:47:11.300 in nature populations of animals and different creatures tend to stabilize at the carrying

00:47:19.480 capacity of the natural community that they live in and it's only because of fossil fuels once

00:47:25.440 again i mean literally 40 of the nitrogen in people's bodies today comes from fossil fuels

00:47:32.360 the nitrogen in your body is from the natural gas fertilizers that's poured on the fields

00:47:38.160 so we're literally turning fossil fuels into human beings physically and I don't think that

00:47:44.860 process can continue you know we're seeing the ramifications of this culture across the board

00:47:51.640 the impacts that it's having on the living world and you know again I I think that it's too easy

00:47:58.620 to get sucked into the sort of nitty-gritty what's right in front of us what's the political

00:48:05.040 situation and what's a reasonable politics that we can come up with right now and i think reasonable

00:48:11.840 politics has been leading us down this path of destroying the entire world and i think it's hard

00:48:18.460 it's challenging it's scary but i think we really need to confront these truths and then build our

00:48:24.700 societies rebuild our societies in a way that reflect you know these ecological limits that

00:48:31.120 we have to deal with and you know that's that's a generational task you know that's one of the

00:48:38.660 largest tasks that if not the largest task that human beings have ever attempted so I'm not trying

00:48:44.920 to undersell what I'm talking about here at all but I think we need everyone to be involved in

00:48:49.740 that you know whether you're on the ground doing work like I'm doing trying to stop this mine here

00:48:55.000 or whether you're involved in politics or you're a teacher or whatever your role in life,

00:49:00.760 everyone can contribute to that sort of massive transformation that we need to see.

00:49:05.720 But I think it begins with acknowledging those truths.

00:49:10.220 Yeah, well, and then, so I'll kind of pivot a little here and get back to Julia,

00:49:15.380 because you've worked a lot with, as we can see from your background,

00:49:17.660 the ocean, water bodies, impacts there.

00:49:19.920 Because, I mean, water is, of course, a critical substance for us,

00:49:23.280 for everything from personal consumption to, you know, watering for food and just in the

00:49:30.100 ecology in general for everything around us.

00:49:33.740 Something you guys have tapped into that we haven't heard from many now is the hydroelectric

00:49:38.360 generation because that's really been proposed strongly in Canada as the way to go.

00:49:42.420 We are carbon taxing everything in the West where we have, again, petrochemical production

00:49:47.340 and things such as that.

00:49:48.920 They say the solution, though, is we can make, you know, Muskrat falls and expand our hydroelectric generation for dams and such.

00:49:56.280 But there's there's studies coming out now that those will also produce increased amounts of

00:50:03.560 greenhouse gases and such. I mean, it almost starts to feel like futility, though, whatever we try, it just causes more damage somewhere else.

00:50:09.960 Exactly. So hydro is one of these sources of energy that is oftentimes counted as carbon

00:50:19.720 neutral, but the reality is that dams produce large amounts of methane, and this has to

00:50:25.160 do with the fact that the water levels are rising and falling, and so plants are being

00:50:29.920 inundated, they're decomposing anaerobically underwater, and so a lot of methane ends up

00:50:34.820 being released. So some dams produce more CO2 equivalent per unit of energy than coal-fired

00:50:41.620 power plants. And, you know, on top of that, there's the direct harm that dams cause to rivers.

00:50:46.820 So they increase the water temperature and they make it impossible for some fish to swim up and

00:50:52.180 down the river who need to do so to reproduce. So, I mean, yeah, there's no such thing as a

00:50:58.260 real clean or green source of industrial energy production. That's something that we all need

00:51:03.300 to understand and take as the framework when we're looking at these issues.

00:51:10.020 Yeah, well, and it's just a lot to cover. I mean, again, we've got the demand, we've got it here.

00:51:17.220 Something that keeps coming back to and commenters are pointing out, I mean,

00:51:20.420 you know, human population is growing and how much, you know, is debatable that the planet

00:51:25.700 can sustain? Some say we're already beyond it. Some say it's coming soon. But part of it is,

00:51:31.860 if you look at the the trend around the world too it's developed high energy consuming nations that

00:51:36.340 have the least amount of children because traditionally the way it is we can afford

00:51:41.060 not to uh you know if you're in a developing nation you need to have a number of children

00:51:45.780 because that's how you support your household that's how you keep things rolling so it just

00:51:51.380 leads to i guess a challenge if we want to try and i guess uh get population more in line uh

00:51:57.700 it's not necessarily the developed nations that have to reduce it is developing but you're asking

00:52:02.260 a lot of people you know to say please try to reproduce less because we need fewer people and

00:52:08.260 that's their means of retirement i mean that's their means of production around the household

00:52:11.700 and in developing nations how could we address that so i mean a lot of times this debate is set

00:52:19.460 up as people versus the planet so you know we're in conflict with the needs of the planet and i

00:52:25.060 I don't actually think that's true.

00:52:26.780 I think that the only way that we're going to get to the culture that we need is to support

00:52:32.120 human rights.

00:52:33.360 Because when you do that, especially for women and girls, the population drops naturally.

00:52:38.660 So women and girls need absolute access to things like birth control and healthcare,

00:52:43.680 but especially education.

00:52:45.900 It's not just about birth control, though it is about that.

00:52:48.500 It really is about women's liberty.

00:52:50.640 So when women and girls are treated as fully human and have access to all of that, which

00:52:55.760 is stuff we should want anyway, right?

00:52:58.320 These are good things.

00:52:59.520 We should care about human rights.

00:53:01.340 But when women and girls have full human rights and are able to do all those things,

00:53:04.720 they naturally choose to have fewer children.

00:53:07.280 And this is why we never need to suggest anything like the one-child policy in China or some

00:53:14.500 of the reproductive horrors that are happening in Cuba.

00:53:17.800 We know the kinds of human rights horrors that have happened to women when population

00:53:24.780 control is suggested as an option, the forced sterilizations and all of this, and it's just

00:53:29.740 a nightmare, and it always falls on women.

00:53:32.600 But those aren't solutions.

00:53:34.700 Those never actually address the problem.

00:53:36.740 The problem is that everybody needs to have their fair share.

00:53:39.980 So when there's enough food to go around, which we could do tomorrow, and women and

00:53:44.560 girls have full human rights. In fact, the population just starts to drop naturally. You

00:53:49.700 know, as it turns out, most couples really only want about two children. So there's always a few

00:53:53.400 people who want more. And then there's always going to be people who don't want any, but it

00:53:56.200 averages out to about two, such that right now, there's actually already 42 countries that have

00:54:01.600 either negative or stable population growth. And that's how they did it. So this isn't something

00:54:07.880 we need to be afraid of, that it was never people versus planet. It's like, we don't have to make

00:54:12.720 these terrible decisions between oh do we want full human rights or we have to

00:54:16.480 do horrible horrible things in order to save the planet that was never a thing

00:54:20.560 that was going to work so we really just need to give women and girls to support

00:54:24.300 them and uplift their rights and then this problem actually takes care of

00:54:27.960 itself okay well and a word I don't hear often enough in my view is mitigation

00:54:37.140 I mean something I appreciate it from you Max is at least pointing out the

00:54:41.280 these solutions, things like we are talking about too. I mean,

00:54:44.040 these are cultural things that may take generations.

00:54:46.600 It's going to take a while. In the meantime, I would like to see, you know,

00:54:50.760 perhaps we can mitigate the impact we're having. I mean,

00:54:53.280 it's not going to happen overnight,

00:54:54.720 but we're in a circumstance where it seems every move we make to develop more

00:54:59.320 energy, we have strong, strong opposition to it.

00:55:02.800 I'll use the Western Canadian example.

00:55:04.880 We have abundant natural gas resources up here.

00:55:08.040 They've been developing that in the West for export from the West Coast with liquid natural

00:55:13.480 gas through tankers and such.

00:55:15.140 It does have an impact, but it's, you know, involving First Nations participation and

00:55:20.860 again, trying to be as kind as possible, I guess, in the extraction.

00:55:25.660 But the thing is, this can be exported to developing nations in areas such as India

00:55:29.860 and China, where they are burning coal, where they are burning wood, where they're using,

00:55:34.740 know, again, everything's going to have an impact, but some has a heck of a lot more impact than

00:55:38.580 others. And in transitioning to natural gas, this could at least perhaps bring about some of the

00:55:44.620 two things. I mean, that prosperity that's required in order to perhaps, you know, have

00:55:49.660 smaller families and things such as that, but also to generate power for their needs and things such

00:55:54.620 as that without having as adverse an impact on their local environment as it is. Can we see more

00:55:59.980 movement towards that sort of thing? Well, I think it depends because, you know, some data,

00:56:06.640 certainly with some types of, you know, fracked gas or shale gas formations, the greenhouse gas

00:56:13.040 emissions actually end up being higher than coal because of often because of methane leaks within

00:56:17.640 the system, right? So I think that we, I'm in favor of reducing the amount of harm that we do

00:56:25.580 to the planet but I think that it's never going to be enough fundamentally and I think that the

00:56:32.120 more that we keep investing in these systems that maintain the status quo the more momentum we put

00:56:38.900 into this energy consumptive system and you know this I recognize that this is really challenging

00:56:46.220 too because of the legal system that we live in you know if you're part of a corporation

00:56:50.800 you have a legal fiduciary duty to your shareholders to maximize profits and that

00:56:56.820 often does mean cutting corners that often does mean sacrificing the environment or ignoring

00:57:02.640 quote-unquote externalities in order to boost the bottom line those are structural issues

00:57:08.620 right and so often the people who are in those corporations and in those institutions

00:57:14.020 they're really quite interchangeable you know so if an individual in the company tries to

00:57:20.040 do the best thing for the environment, they might actually get fired because they're not

00:57:25.400 going to prioritize the bottom line properly. And the shareholders, the board of directors

00:57:30.900 might not be happy with that. So I think that reflects the issue that, you know, it's not so

00:57:37.060 much about the individual behavior here. These are structural problems. They're cultural issues,

00:57:41.900 they're social issues, they're economic issues. And similarly, you know, I don't think there are

00:57:46.620 individual solutions to these you know i'm sitting here in my car and yeah i own a car and it runs

00:57:53.020 on fossil fuels and you know i try and do the best i can i get it got a good gas mileage car and i

00:57:58.460 keep an old car running rather than buy a new one every couple years to reduce my energy consumption

00:58:04.460 but you know i often like to say a hypocrite is just a person in the process of changing

00:58:09.580 or more broadly you know a hypocrite is a member of a culture in the process of changing

00:58:15.420 and you know so as far as the harm reduction stuff i think it's important that we pay attention to

00:58:21.400 that but i think far too few people and far too much of our political energy our community energy

00:58:27.900 our organizing energy actually goes towards eliminating the harm once again having that

00:58:33.220 visionary strategy and you know being honest about it because yeah like you said the reality is

00:58:39.480 so much of our food production today depends on fossil fuel fertilizers so much of our lifestyle

00:58:45.920 just keeping people alive depends on these high energy systems that we live within so if we want

00:58:53.240 to if we want to move away from that way of life we need to address that realistically and that

00:58:59.160 means you know we need to relocalize our food systems that means we probably need to abandon

00:59:04.100 the industrial agricultural model and you move towards more agroforestry more holistic grazing

00:59:10.980 practices more permaculture these are challenging things right farmers who are out on the great

00:59:16.960 plains who are out in the plains in canada they don't know how to do those things they don't know

00:59:22.000 they don't have the skills they're going to need help they're going to need a lot of people to move

00:59:26.920 into these areas that have been depopulated because fossil fuel powered machines can do the

00:59:32.800 work that hundreds of people used to do in the past so you know I think that we

00:59:38.240 need to envision the future that we need to get to and then start taking

00:59:42.460 immediate steps to get there rather than focusing so much on harm reduction of

00:59:48.160 the processes that we're going to need to abandon as quickly as we can okay

00:59:55.280 well thank you and I move on to close things up here and then just gonna hear

01:00:02.380 from each of you uh you know liere again you know thanks for joining us and in this last few minutes

01:00:08.540 so i guess what message would you like to get out as to where you guys are moving where people need

01:00:12.940 to move uh big questions but we've got some time if you like and uh where can we find more

01:00:17.580 information about what you're up to well to find more information you can go to brightgreenlines.com

01:00:22.860 that'll take you to everywhere else that were involved um and you can watch the movie on april

01:00:27.820 22nd and i really encourage everybody to tune in for that hour and just see what julius put together

01:00:33.260 because it's all explained everything that we think is true is in that movie um but on a bigger

01:00:39.660 level it's hard to feel hope um when things are so bad and i understand that i really understand it

01:00:48.460 i mean i get up every morning and i'm faced with the same dilemma everybody else is that

01:00:52.540 the world is in such bad shape how do we keep going but i also know that i love this planet

01:00:57.740 and i love every creature on my land and i would do anything to protect them so we are motivated

01:01:03.580 by love and if you can find the creatures you love and protect your beloved we are halfway there

01:01:10.300 because no matter what you love it is under assault right now it it's bad um but motivated

01:01:17.420 by love i don't think we can lose so ask whatever deep questions you need to ask and and never stop

01:01:23.660 because that's what it is to be a human right we have this storytelling capacity and we also have

01:01:29.500 a great intellectual capacity so i mean the only reason i got to understand the things that i

01:01:34.780 understand is because i never stopped questioning so that is a really um it's a very key skill to

01:01:42.140 being human and it really does make us adults so some of what you're hearing from us today i'm sure

01:01:48.620 is going to seem slightly insane but we got here by thinking and by questioning and by trying to

01:01:54.780 engage with actual reality on the ground not with the fairy tale not with the world that as we would

01:01:59.820 like it to be but as the world as it is so just don't give up your curiosity but never ever give

01:02:06.700 up your love and and i think we will still get there that's great thank you and i'll head to

01:02:13.420 julia here so uh again just uh perhaps to remind folks where and when they'll be able to watch this

01:02:21.020 is you've done a number of documentaries so i'm certain we can look forward to a great production

01:02:25.900 there and uh anything else you'd like to say on the on the way out here yeah um thanks so much

01:02:31.660 for having us and you can watch the film at um you can get tickets at brightgreenlies.com

01:02:37.180 uh right on the front page you'll see a little thing where you can sign up to watch it on the

01:02:41.120 22nd um and i don't think i have too much to add to liere's brilliant ending there just yeah i mean

01:02:48.440 obviously things are quite bad right now but we need everybody who can be involved in turning

01:02:54.360 that around to get involved in it and yeah i mean learn about what's happening watch the film read

01:03:00.100 the book, do your own research into this stuff and figure out how you can

01:03:04.180 contribute to making the world a better place.

01:03:07.360 Cause yeah, we're, we're certainly not heading on the right track right now,

01:03:10.760 but we need to do a lot of work to change that.

01:03:14.740 Well, thank you very much. And I do appreciate again,

01:03:17.200 people getting word out on new platforms,

01:03:19.300 new means to at least invite discourse. Even if we aren't all agreeing,

01:03:23.140 this is a good way to share it with other people.

01:03:25.680 So I'm looking forward to it and I will be watching that and I'll give it my

01:03:29.460 review at that time so and i'll finish off with max down there out in the desert uh well i hope

01:03:36.240 things go well for you out there with your uh sunshine and uh protesting is there anything

01:03:41.520 else you'd like to say in closing as we wrap up here with you yeah well thanks for having us on

01:03:45.580 the show first of all and you know i just want to say you know i talked about the strange bedfellows

01:03:51.640 alliance that we have here and i think that's what we're gonna need if we're gonna turn this

01:03:57.480 around you know I think you know you talked about your background in the oil and gas industry I

01:04:01.720 think probably that that resonates with a lot of your audience and you know I think that the the

01:04:09.400 left wing has a lot of problems and issues they're telling a lot of lies around these things and

01:04:15.340 there are a lot of things you know that I think you know like we talked about with the natural

01:04:20.180 gas there are a lot of things that I think need to be re-evaluated from the extraction side of

01:04:24.840 things as well from more conservative parts of the country and more conservative economic areas

01:04:29.400 I think that we need to have the courage and the wisdom to tell the truth and I think one sign of

01:04:36.000 wisdom is to be able to look back on your past beliefs or your past behavior and say you know

01:04:42.140 what I think I made a mistake or I'd like to change my mind I'd like to evolve my opinion on

01:04:46.980 this topic I think that that is one of the biggest signs of maturity and intelligence that you can

01:04:52.120 find in a human being. And so I'm really hoping that our book and the film and this conversation

01:04:57.860 hopefully can prompt people to, you know, interrogate their own beliefs and have those

01:05:03.320 hard conversations, look at the information, look at the data, look into their hearts,

01:05:07.180 like Lear said, and try and collectively figure out a way that we're going to get out of this mess

01:05:13.120 because we're in a deep hole right now as a society and it seems like we just keep on digging.

01:05:17.860 So that's why I'm here at Thacker Pass.

01:05:20.600 People can check out protectthackerpass.org if they're interested in what we're doing out here in Nevada.

01:05:27.040 And, you know, we're trying to stop digging that hole deeper and, you know, start getting our way out of there.

01:05:34.220 Great. Well, thank you all very much.

01:05:37.180 It's been a great discussion and informative.

01:05:41.340 So I'm certain there will be a lot of good discussion with the viewers after this as well.

01:05:45.820 So good luck with your endeavors, looking forward to the documentary, and perhaps we'll talk again down the road.

01:05:53.460 Thank you.

01:05:59.100 Okay, everybody.

01:06:00.060 Well, that was something, you know, a little different in coming along, but it brought a lot of new questions to light, some different perspectives and thought.

01:06:07.820 And that's what I want to do on here.

01:06:09.480 I don't want to have an echo chamber all the time.

01:06:11.840 we can always bring on a bunch of conservatives and I do predominantly bring them on. But I think

01:06:17.120 we do have some commonalities and common causes and interests with these guests. And it was well

01:06:21.860 worthwhile to have them on to chat about. So something different from talk radio also that

01:06:26.360 I have is I don't have commercial breaks where I can sneak away. So we're going to chat for a little

01:06:30.260 bit about things in just one minute, but I'm going to start the countdown timer. And I've got to step

01:06:35.780 away for a moment because as a consumer, I've been consuming a lot of coffee this morning.

01:06:39.500 So get some questions into the comments and we can chat and I'll address those in one minute from now as we spend some time talking with each other before Chris Sims from the Taxpayers Federation comes on.

01:07:09.500 Thank you.

01:07:39.500 Okay. And back and much refreshed. Yeah. So again, I mean, I saw a number of, you know,

01:08:04.160 people getting a bit irksome throughout the presentations from those individuals. And that,

01:08:09.500 of course, being environmentalists, they love using that tar sands term, which gets us worked

01:08:14.440 up. And there's a lot of bigger questions. Something, yeah, I wish I'd heard more. And I

01:08:20.960 did keep trying to go for was, well, what's the alternative? Where do we go? And we didn't get

01:08:26.980 much clear answers on that, unfortunately. You know, everything is going to have an impact

01:08:32.240 one way or another but what was good from these guys they're breaking orthodoxy they are

01:08:37.880 uh you know deviating from what's considered the established left and and they're not just

01:08:44.200 parroting those lines saying we must go electric you know that fanatical push for electric cars for

01:08:49.320 uh this shift with windmills and and uh solar arrays and now even hydroelectric which is kind

01:08:56.660 of interesting. I mean, something that people are forgetting is that electricity still needs

01:09:03.940 to be generated. I mean, there really is a, to a great degree with consumers and individuals,

01:09:08.100 a bit of a shallow attitude of just, well, if I plug my car in, then it's clean. You know,

01:09:12.880 they don't look farther up to how did that power get to my house to do that? And they don't

01:09:19.200 understand that we have millions and millions of gasoline, diesel powered vehicles on the road.

01:09:25.440 if magically we made this giant shift to them in electric cars in a decade what is that going to do

01:09:31.840 to the grid we don't have the ability to charge that many vehicles it's not there even with our

01:09:37.340 conventional ones certainly not with wind and solar added to it I mean we would have to build

01:09:43.400 and this has been covered by a lot of others I mean a pile of nuclear plants we would have to

01:09:48.560 natural gas facilities I mean we're still going to be consuming these fuels we're just putting

01:09:53.520 it into something different. What do you do with the old batteries? That's something people speak

01:09:57.500 of a lot. I mean, there's a lot of very nasty pollutants that take part in a battery from,

01:10:02.700 you know, heavy metals to chemicals. There's nothing that comes with no impact.

01:10:09.900 Something, again, I had difficulty with is talking with mitigation. Let's get realistic

01:10:14.700 though. I mean, yes, natural gas has an impact. Everything does. But it's a lot less impact than

01:10:22.560 some other things. It's not zero sum. We can't just shift to nothing. I did notice the one lady

01:10:32.880 on there was speaking earlier about how humans, and I believe when I researched this a bit,

01:10:39.440 we lived in conjunction with nature and so on for thousands of years. And I know what people

01:10:45.920 are getting at with that, but it was a miserable, short, dirty existence. I mean, only a few hundred

01:10:52.080 years ago, the average lifespan was only 30 or 40 years, and it wasn't comfortable. I think in the

01:10:59.180 harder times we've got, the harder we are on each other. I mean, look at the human rights that didn't

01:11:05.320 exist a few hundred years ago. Look at the atrocities. Modern advancements have done us

01:11:11.760 all good. And yes, they pressure the planet, but we're all living better for it. And as I said too,

01:11:18.880 these things about having less kids and so on. We can afford to have less kids. Yes, that's what

01:11:24.620 the average family and couple wants in North America and Europe, a lot of the more developed

01:11:30.660 Asian. But if you're in a developing nation in Africa or some parts of India, things like that,

01:11:37.840 you need those large families. That's how you sustain yourself. That's your retirement plan.

01:11:44.180 You don't have a senior center to put you in when you're done working and enslavement your whole

01:11:48.100 life. You count on having your kids take care of you until you're finished. You watch the

01:11:52.340 grandchildren. It's the old school that way. So you can't look at somebody in India and say,

01:11:57.960 you should only have two kids. And yeah, you might starve when you're old, but too damn bad.

01:12:03.260 You know, I mean, it doesn't, it's asking too much. Or you should keep burning wood. You should

01:12:08.960 keep burning animal dung to cook your meals. We can bring good, clean gas. We can do that.

01:12:16.120 Nuclear, that's another one that, you know, we didn't touch much on.

01:12:19.840 The biggest argument in my view that I see against nuclear is often it still just doesn't come in as a cost effective means of generation.

01:12:25.340 But if the goal is really to reduce emissions, we have a lot of nuclear options and the emissions are very minimized from nuclear energy.

01:12:35.740 So let's get those reactors going.

01:12:38.420 But again, we get this group that opposes every possible form of energy generation.

01:12:44.060 then, well, where are we going to end up? And that's where I got a little bit frustrated with

01:12:50.140 these guys. I'm still looking forward to the documentary, but they were to a degree people

01:12:55.020 who oppose everything. Well, we've got to have something. It's easy to just say we'll consume

01:13:01.540 less. It's easy just to tell people reproduce less, but it's not going to happen. As I said

01:13:07.700 with Max, I did appreciate he does understand it's going to take a couple generations. This

01:13:13.520 isn't going to happen overnight. I don't think we're on that brink of environmental catastrophe

01:13:20.940 as a lot of environmentalists like to put it as well. It's not as bad out there as they're

01:13:26.680 making it out to be, certainly when it comes to climate change and a number of those things.

01:13:32.180 We're improving our practices. We get things that we didn't get into deforestation when it

01:13:37.660 comes to biofuels, but deforestation doesn't happen in areas where we're doing responsible

01:13:43.180 logging. In Alberta, actually, it was something that was in the news today. Our logging has gone

01:13:48.200 up. Wood prices have been going through the roof. And the minister is looking forward to seeing more

01:13:54.200 of it coming, which is good. It puts people to work. Responsible logging leaves, buffer zones

01:13:59.140 in the riparian areas around water bodies. It involves replanting. And that was something else

01:14:05.140 that, yeah, we didn't get into. There's only so much you can cover. Somebody else, one of the

01:14:08.400 commentators did mention uh you know reclamation i mean the oil sands areas up there when they're

01:14:13.880 reclaimed you can barely tell it was mine if anything the reason you can tell because i've

01:14:17.620 worked in reclaimed areas is that it's just so healthy it's unnatural you know the trees are all

01:14:22.660 in a row um there's a typically all more of the same kind maybe it'll be small pines or whatever

01:14:29.000 that you wouldn't see in a naturally growing area but it's still quite healthy the wildlife are

01:14:33.760 doing fine. The insects are doing fine. It might not have the full biodiversity of mixed species

01:14:39.780 among them. But we can do that. We can responsibly develop our resources and not have a giant

01:14:46.420 footprint. But it takes a lot of discourse and debate. And again, we've got to talk with each

01:14:52.400 other. We've got to reach out. People like those who have produced Bright Green Lies,

01:14:57.560 if we don't speak to them, where are we going to get anywhere? I mean, we didn't go that far into

01:15:02.560 but I was curious, how has the left responded to them and how will they? Is the cancel culture

01:15:09.100 going to come after Julia? As we talked about with Planet of the Humans, they managed to get

01:15:13.520 that thing ripped off of YouTube because that's often the way the left and some of the extreme

01:15:18.180 on the right, they don't want to discuss things. They just want to tear down the debate. They want

01:15:23.320 to shut it down by any means they can and they will. So is that going to happen to Julia? Will

01:15:29.640 there be a pushback against her production there i don't know we're gonna see in a couple of weeks

01:15:37.020 um it's just april 22nd so yeah just about two weeks from now when the release comes out

01:15:42.760 it'll be well worth watching um this is so what we got here nasa lied always and i'm not sure

01:15:51.480 but uh yeah if we're talking about uh oh we're getting back at so i may have mixed up a discussion

01:15:56.860 so somebody said look at the stratosphere we're moving through space uh and that's trying to do

01:16:02.620 this and now he's looking up okay interesting perspectives but definitely no solutions see and

01:16:07.980 that's that's what i'm kind of getting back to where's the magic bullet is there a magic bullet

01:16:16.140 you know what can we do to move forward and keep ourselves comfortable we can't just ask people to

01:16:24.780 give up conventional energy so we have any questions for me folks uh sorry i'm just running

01:16:30.220 short of words here since we are don't quite have chris sims in yet but she should be in shortly

01:16:39.340 no uh live productions they really have their good and bad aspects to them i'll try and get

01:16:48.460 back further and find somebody with breaking away from green windmills and solar. I'm not

01:16:56.060 just saying should we break away from those in general or is there some production of the sort

01:17:00.380 talking about it? Barren not barren. Okay the electric battery is the key for locking you in a

01:17:08.940 city because once the government gets people out of their land in the name of green then the

01:17:13.340 the law goes even further, no leaving cities. You know, it's interesting with the push with

01:17:18.520 the left, and people talk about Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, things from the UN, you know, that's

01:17:23.400 been a strong push, and it really is fixated on densification, on sticking everybody into

01:17:29.560 a tightly packed urban environment, living in downtown urban centers. We've certainly,

01:17:35.840 we see that push in every municipal government, actually, and it's failing. It's failing whenever

01:17:41.400 people are allowed to move to where they prefer. They prefer single family dwellings.

01:17:47.700 Right now, the boom with the whole pandemic, even though we've had 10 years of Ninchy,

01:17:51.800 who, great news, he's not running again. 10 years of Ninchy trying to stuff everybody into Calgary's

01:17:59.540 downtown. And what's happening today? And it's millennials. There's the neat thing with the

01:18:02.860 stats coming out. It's millennials who are buying these single family houses. They're moving out.

01:18:07.920 they're not moving into the condos. They're not going into the towers like the ones behind me.

01:18:12.020 The companies aren't moving into those towers. They're moving out. The agenda is to pack

01:18:16.300 everybody into cities, but it's not working yet, but they don't give up. So we've got to be careful.

01:18:22.760 But as long as people are able to move, it looks like they're going to choose otherwise.

01:18:28.780 Somebody spoke of corporate greed. There's corporate greed. There's personal greed. There's

01:18:35.680 left-wing greed is right-wing greed. Not every corporation is greedy. Not every corporation is

01:18:39.160 bad. That's some of the myths that we deal with quite often, actually, with efforts and things

01:18:44.580 from activism on left and right. A corporation is just a business entity. So what's this from

01:18:54.280 Cheryl? Didn't Russia speak of a technology that shows their boreal, absorbs more CO2 than they

01:19:01.480 admit can't canada show the same yeah you know we don't get nearly enough credit for our forest

01:19:07.160 i mean look at canada's boreal forest it consumes most of the country and then it's produced it

01:19:12.360 takes in co2 and it lets out oxygen but we don't take that as credit i mean we're unfortunately

01:19:17.700 under a federal leadership that is just you know self-flagellating and saying we've got to be the

01:19:22.300 boy scout we've got to shut down our stuff and again no alternatives though um you know with

01:19:27.260 with these things, they're unreliable. We see in Germany, people keep saying, oh, look at them

01:19:31.840 with all of their, you know, renewable energies going on. Yeah, but they're importing gas and

01:19:36.940 power from neighboring countries because the wind isn't cutting it. And that energy is being

01:19:41.480 generated by coal. So we got to get realistic. And again, getting back to the guests, at least

01:19:46.740 they were bringing a little more of a realistic approach, even if they tended to be more left

01:19:50.580 swinging than a number of others. What's this? Japan's doing a test city completely run on green.

01:19:57.260 So far, it's not working out costs, waste, et cetera.

01:20:01.360 Yeah, I mean, the initiatives are happening.

01:20:03.920 They're trying.

01:20:04.820 They're bringing these things in.

01:20:05.960 But more often than not, they do be complete failures.

01:20:10.100 I mean, that's the thing, too, with the shelf lives of these projects.

01:20:13.340 In Medicine Hat in Alberta, we saw that.

01:20:14.880 What was it, $20 million for that solar project that went up outside there?

01:20:18.620 And it's Medicine Hat.

01:20:19.480 That's Alberta's driest, sunniest spot.

01:20:22.420 And they had to pull a pin on it after a few years.

01:20:24.940 It just wasn't worth it.

01:20:26.100 it didn't work, but it doesn't seem to stop them. I know there's more solar being built right now

01:20:31.480 and there's more wind. Part of it's getting the state out of it. That's the thing. If this stuff

01:20:37.320 is viable, if it's good, if it's what people want, a private company will do it. They will provide it.

01:20:44.280 But as soon as you always get the cap in hand asking for subsidies and taxpayers to bail them

01:20:48.540 out, well, then we know it's not going to be viable. It's not going to be good. That comes

01:20:52.580 back on the right wings, guilty of it too. I mean, the big cry in Alberta has been economic

01:20:56.600 diversification, economic diversification. And we talk about with our oil and gas that we got to

01:21:01.480 export finished product rather than raw, you know, bitumen and oil. Well, so we've spent money. We're

01:21:10.240 pumping billions. That's another boondoggle that Kenny's continued and Notley went on and still

01:21:14.620 Mac with this refineries that we're subsidizing that aren't worth it. The reason that it wasn't

01:21:20.320 built was it's not worth it for companies to build these things and export this finished product.

01:21:24.940 You got to get real. We can't force every farmer to produce and then finish it up into Cheerios

01:21:30.900 before putting it on the shelf. It's more cost effective to sell the wheat and let them go from

01:21:35.840 there to where it's going to head to. So we got to get realistic. When you get government into

01:21:39.920 the market though, you can really screw it up. That's for sure. And yes, CM Lane, and that was

01:21:44.940 mentioned by the guests when it talks about those renewables, you need petroleum products to make

01:21:48.740 them. And not only do you need the petroleum products to make these renewable types of energy

01:21:55.000 generation and products and projects, you need them to back them up. I mean, the sun doesn't

01:22:00.700 always shine. The wind doesn't always blow. Look at the catastrophe in Texas when things went cold.

01:22:08.580 I mean, the natural gas failed there too. So there were shortcomings on a number of levels,

01:22:12.780 but the windmills and solar were utterly useless during that period of time and you know it's great

01:22:19.880 when the sun shines it's great when the wind blows but it's just not worth it you need to

01:22:23.940 stand by and the only other route is energy storage and that gets back to batteries which

01:22:28.320 is another crisis so I mean some of what we talk about like I said when I started this whole thing

01:22:34.480 about you know glass being recycled and not being worth it we can get better with reducing

01:22:39.680 consumption i think we can all work on that these are things you know we can be very wasteful

01:22:44.160 we're living in a disposable society uh even if the stuff's not worth recycling then let's see if

01:22:49.600 perhaps we can use a little less to begin with you know common sense solutions good old style

01:22:54.240 conservatives do believe in conserving a number of things uh here's somebody else saying you know in

01:22:59.280 my view the world needs more co2 i mean there's something to be said for that too co2 in itself

01:23:04.400 isn't a pollutant. I mean, what do you do with a greenhouse to make things grow faster? You know,

01:23:13.440 you add CO2. The plants consume it. It's plant food. They want it. So CO2, I mean, again, we

01:23:19.600 might have too much. It's a balance. That's the thing. You get too much of any one gas in the

01:23:23.360 environment, in the atmosphere, we could be troubled with it. But here we go. All of their

01:23:29.680 green initiatives aren't working. We have a system that works already. Well, then that's

01:23:34.420 possible. The system works. Something where there's some truth to it, though, is there still

01:23:40.000 is only so much oil and gas. I mean, eventually it will run out. And again, I don't think it's a

01:23:44.280 crisis. I don't think it's nearly as a hysteric immediate need as the environmentalists are

01:23:48.840 pointing out. But we do have to start looking beyond. If we are looking to the next generation,

01:23:55.260 if we're looking 100 years up. Let's try and find better ways to do it if we can.

01:24:01.660 As I said, I spent 20 years working as a surveyor oil exploration. The Mackenzie Delta,

01:24:06.140 the Canadian Arctic, has another Alberta worth of oil and gas up there. There are literally

01:24:10.860 thousands of capped wells of oil and gas sitting up there that they've been drilling and capping

01:24:15.340 and waiting since the 60s, 70s, 80s and can't get a pipeline through. Haven't been able to. The

01:24:20.860 Berger Commission shut down the McKenzie Valley pipeline back in the 70s. But we've got a lot more

01:24:25.940 to tap into yet. We've got more conventional resources that we can use. We can get better

01:24:30.900 at using them. I mean, that's some of it. Look at the vehicles of today, the amount of gas they

01:24:36.300 consume for the size of a vehicle. I've got, and no, we're not sponsored by them, but if they want

01:24:41.120 to buy ads, we'll fix them up. But I got a Hyundai Tucson. It's a nice little SUV, it's four-wheel

01:24:46.080 drive it's got lots of space and that thing's better on gas than a honda civic was back uh

01:24:52.640 you know 30 years ago like these cars are getting better our households are getting better we're

01:24:57.680 insulating better like we're we're enjoying the comforts while consuming less and we're always

01:25:03.520 going to consume some but if we keep that goal of just trying to again mitigation it's a word that

01:25:08.240 i think the extreme never likes they always want it black and white they want it simple mitigate

01:25:13.120 we can get better without cutting things right off and that's what activists often forget and uh

01:25:22.160 what do we got here uh aren't you tired of the it cannot be done type of people well i mean

01:25:30.160 yeah we get tired of it uh it's a frustrating uh thing i i'm a little bit of it you know i mean

01:25:36.000 i i admit i'm pointing out that these things have shortcomings as well i'm hoping for the

01:25:40.000 the miracle i'm hoping for the big new thing we haven't seen it yet uh maybe it's coming though

01:25:45.700 conservation is great but raise the cost of energy because they need the revenue

01:25:48.880 well um yeah but i mean as long as we're growing in population and that

01:25:55.220 the revenues will come up so oh yes jack mills so coming from overseas i haven't heard from you in

01:26:01.820 a while it's good to hear me let's see we have to chill out on showing off how green we are and

01:26:07.060 stop trying to appease the left hippies. Coal, oil, nuclear, that's fun. And they actually keep

01:26:11.420 the power on, unlike the other green pointless show-off junk. Yeah, that's the bottom line. I

01:26:18.060 mean, it's a, you know, a turn that we don't hear much anymore, but it was a good, it was green

01:26:21.520 washing. You know, we want to look better. It's like Calgary's LRT service, you know, oh, we're

01:26:25.900 powered on renewables. Well, no, you aren't. You just, you've got a different notation on your

01:26:30.180 bill. It's all coming out of the same grid. And yeah, some wind blew into it, but for the most

01:26:34.080 part it was natural gas and coal providing it uh an irony of the left too is that yes when we crush

01:26:40.580 uh feasible energy development it raises the cost of living for everybody so if you guys really

01:26:47.100 care about the underprivileged of poor people people trying to come up we should be reducing

01:26:51.640 the cost of living and energy impacts every aspect of our cost of living we should be trying to make

01:26:57.320 it as inexpensive as possible yet at the same time trying to reduce our consumption uh let's see

01:27:03.780 You should have asked about the billions of masks in the ocean.

01:27:07.560 Yeah, that's another thing.

01:27:09.160 I mean, plastic bags aren't the boogeyman anymore.

01:27:12.740 It's masks.

01:27:13.700 And, you know, it is gross.

01:27:14.600 You see those things in the ditches and the streets.

01:27:17.920 I mean, come on, people.

01:27:18.940 It's bad enough that we're forced to wear the damn things.

01:27:21.640 At least dispose of them right.

01:27:23.620 I know I tear it off my face in disgust as soon as I come out of a business.

01:27:26.640 I don't want to wear the bloody thing and smell my own breath.

01:27:30.440 But I'm still going to pocket it, or if I feel it's done, I'll throw it in the garbage.

01:27:33.780 So, I mean, these are common sense things though. You know, that's where we'd get to common sense

01:27:38.040 environmentalism. I mean, most of us think, you know, if you see somebody throwing their garbage

01:27:41.240 out in the ditch, they'll confront them and say, Hey, you know, don't be a damn pig. Uh, we can't

01:27:46.620 pollute like that. I mean, in your own household, consumerism helps. I mean, that's, that's another

01:27:52.880 thing too. You know, what helps make you insulate your home better? It might not be altruism. It's

01:27:57.020 saving money. It costs a lot to keep the heat and the air conditioning going. If your place isn't

01:28:01.480 well insulated. If your furnace is out of date. I mean, there's a number of things that give us

01:28:07.480 every incentive to go a little greener. But again, it's not the zero sum thing that some

01:28:11.900 activists seem to like. Well, you know, it looks like Chris isn't going to make it. So maybe I'll

01:28:20.340 cut it off here. It's been a good hour and a half of ranting and well, lots of questions and things.

01:28:27.600 But we got another perspective from a different group, and I really did appreciate it out of

01:28:31.300 them. So yeah, I wasn't going to come in and critique and attack. I agreed with a number of

01:28:35.560 things. I disagreed with a number of things, but I want to get a broad variety of guests on here

01:28:40.420 so we can get those different perspectives and maybe come to better conclusions. I mean,

01:28:45.520 as somebody said very early in it, we've got to hear how the environmentalists are talking and

01:28:50.040 what they're thinking if we hope to counteract some of those pushes that they're doing, because

01:28:54.820 they are winning the ground game on a number of fronts, guys, whether we like it or not.

01:28:58.740 and oh there i was just about to bolt but it looks like chris has appeared so good

01:29:05.520 the timing was perfect i will bring you into the stream there hello chris hi there can you hear me

01:29:13.400 sorry about the delay no problem you're coming in a little quietly i'm not sure if that's the

01:29:17.940 case for others i'll try to speak up i'm on my phone uh so big win for steve jobs and

01:29:24.460 unfortunately my uh windows pc failed me so if you can still hear me i would still love to chat

01:29:29.420 if not we can restart the uh the old pc here no i do i do hear you it's a little faint some

01:29:34.860 folks might have to turn up their their system on what they're they're listening on but we'll

01:29:38.780 we'll catch it i'm glad you came in i was literally starting to close things off and

01:29:42.220 bail on you and i was gonna send a crabby email to you say oh you stood me up and i was

01:29:47.820 sitting there awkwardly uh trying to to babble away so you made it just under the wire and i

01:29:52.940 I appreciate it. So for those who didn't quite catch the first introduction, this is Chris Sims.

01:29:57.960 She's the BC Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. I do have representatives from the

01:30:03.680 Taxpayers Federation on often or with the Western Standard, but it's because there's not many groups

01:30:09.480 I can reach out and talk to who aren't asking for more of my money all the bloody time through the

01:30:15.080 government. These are actually ones who want the government to take less out of our pockets. So

01:30:20.340 yes i'm going to have them often and if we want to spawn more groups that have that sort of agenda

01:30:24.820 i will happily have them on as well so thank you very much for joining me chris

01:30:30.260 um where i would like to begin i guess is it's uh it's been nine days now but april 1st a whole

01:30:36.580 pile of new taxes uh just walloped us everywhere in bc in particular uh what what's uh happened

01:30:43.780 there with this april fools this year and it's really kind of a cruel sick joke we find sometimes

01:30:49.380 that a lot of these tax increases happen on april 1st and the big one here in british

01:30:54.660 columbia is of course our british columbia carbon tax that is now at 45 a ton for normal people

01:31:02.740 talk that means that it's about 10 cents per liter of gasoline now so if you're filling up

01:31:08.420 your minivan that's more than seven dollars every single time you're filling up your minivan just in

01:31:14.980 the carbon tax that doesn't include gst that doesn't include the second carbon tax or of

01:31:19.940 course the cost of gasoline which here on the west coast gets pretty darned expensive pretty darn

01:31:24.580 fast so that's going up which of course increases the cost of everything because everything arrives

01:31:30.420 to us on a truck it doesn't matter if it's food or furniture if you increase the cost of fuel

01:31:35.860 using this ridiculous tax you're going to increase the cost of everything so that's the big one here

01:31:40.740 in BC for sure. We also have a brand new PST 7% tax on sweetened drinks. Now for some folks they

01:31:48.980 might say something like oh well then don't drink pop. Well it's not quite so simple. The government's

01:31:54.320 planning on taking more than 30 million dollars from British Columbians in one year through this

01:32:00.160 PST on sweetened drinks and this is the weird thing and I think you'll probably love and hate

01:32:04.980 this part just add government the sweetened drinks tax is also on drinks that contain no sugar

01:32:12.580 so if you're buying a diet coke with aspartame in it or that really fancy stuff you buy at the

01:32:18.820 grocery store that's sweetened stevia leaf that has zero sugar you're still getting the sweetened

01:32:23.780 drink tax and this is the real kick in the teeth too is that it's also on you know when you're

01:32:29.060 sitting at a bar or a pub back when we used to be allowed out of our homes to go to those places

01:32:33.780 and you know the bartender is using the gun to fill up your mixed drink anything that comes out

01:32:38.420 of the end of that nozzle now has a seven percent pst on it so it's a real kick in the teeth

01:32:43.780 unfortunately to the restaurateurs and the pub owners and folks like that now they've got this

01:32:49.140 extra cost and last but not least it's the so-called netflix tax we have a brand new seven

01:32:55.060 percent pst on streaming services so that means anything that originates from outside of canada

01:33:01.220 so you got your netflix amazon prime disney plus and if you're listening to music spotify so those

01:33:07.140 are three major new taxes that are coming into effect here in bc and of course we have the

01:33:12.740 federal taxes on booths we have an escalator tax on beer wine and spirits here in canada

01:33:19.540 and that means that it goes up automatically they don't even debate it in parliament

01:33:23.620 there's nothing to see here folks they just automatically hike your cost on your booth so

01:33:29.220 yeah April 1st is not fun for taxpayers. Yeah I was about to say you can just keep the pop tax

01:33:34.900 in the bar if you just want to stick to the liquor but I'd forgotten about that and I shouldn't have

01:33:39.300 as I owned a bar for five years I just sold it last year just in time and that was one of the

01:33:46.260 things with these creeping things I tell you if you want an area where consumers are sensitive

01:33:50.420 about pricing own a bar because you raise that drink price by 30 cents and they will tell you

01:33:56.580 about it and i you know i don't mind raising because the cost was natural of an increase in

01:34:02.900 cost for a product but when it's a tax i'm taking the flack not the government and it it reduces

01:34:09.620 its return eventually i mean people when that the cost goes up will consume less and i'm going to

01:34:14.740 earn less i'm going to employ fewer people that the whole effect you know just doesn't lead to

01:34:19.540 them getting the money they hoped but i mean they always cloak it in well these are things that are

01:34:23.940 bad for you. So we're going to do it for your own good. And boy, there's nothing I despise more than

01:34:29.060 when the government tells me they're going to do something for my own good. And it seems their only

01:34:32.240 tool is a tax. So have you guys been campaigning NBC to make people aware of that though, knowing

01:34:38.620 that this is part of why your costs are going up on everything? Oh, very much so. And I think folks

01:34:44.640 are finally getting the message for a long time here. And I'd like to say it's well-meaning. A lot

01:34:50.640 british colombians myself included would probably describe themselves as small e environmentalists

01:34:56.400 we live in an absolutely beautiful province we love nature we want to keep our rivers and our

01:35:01.760 oceans clean you know i i don't know anybody who likes littering or wants to go after endangered

01:35:07.040 species you know most people are conservationists at heart and i think unfortunately they believed

01:35:14.480 the politicians back in 2008 when they said this will help the environment and it will reduce

01:35:20.240 emissions and it's you know your key to shangri-la now i think people are realizing that this is just

01:35:26.640 a huge cash grab and i'll tell you what back in 2008 when they first brought in the carbon tax

01:35:32.160 into british columbia they said many things they said it would stop at 30 a ton that would always

01:35:38.320 be revenue neutral that it would reduce emissions and that it would somehow create just a plethora

01:35:45.600 of alternative affordable energies that you could just take your pick from you know hydrogen fuel

01:35:51.200 cell to electricity you name it sky's the limit today none of that is true it's more it's 45 a

01:35:58.320 ton more than 30. it's not even called revenue neutral anymore they took that label off altogether

01:36:03.760 it's just plowed straight into general revenue last time in the last full budget update they did

01:36:08.880 they reported that they took 1.6 billion from british colombians just in the bc carbon tax

01:36:16.480 and this is the key emissions are going up not down we have the highest carbon tax in canada

01:36:23.600 and our emissions are going up they've gone up 10 in the past three years and they've gone up

01:36:29.280 within five of the last seven and this is the government's own data they have to report it

01:36:35.760 once a year by law and we of course sit there and wait for that report to come out and sure enough

01:36:41.360 the emissions are going up in bc so this isn't working it's a big expensive failure and we think

01:36:48.240 that some people are catching on to it and for example the times colonist which is a post-media

01:36:53.520 newspaper very mainstream newspaper of record in in our capital in Victoria they ran an editorial a

01:37:00.640 few weeks ago saying the carbon tax is a tax grab so it's a huge culture shift slowly happening here

01:37:06.880 in BC they're waking up yeah well I mean of course you know if they pull by the cloak and realize

01:37:12.720 this didn't do what we said it was going to even if their intent were to make it do that I imagine

01:37:17.760 there's no will of them to say oh well geez that was a failure so we'll just back off and get rid

01:37:21.440 rid of it then none of that's happening i wish it were and i'll tell you why because back when

01:37:27.280 john horgan who was our current premier he's an ndp premier he has a majority that was handed to

01:37:32.340 him back in the fall when he had an election during the pandemic when john horgan was in

01:37:36.820 opposition in victoria in 2008 he railed against the carbon tax and for good reason he's on the

01:37:44.360 record we have videotape of him in the legislature in victoria saying that this would cost average

01:37:50.080 working people too much to drive their cars to work and to heat their homes in the winter he

01:37:56.320 said that this would punish average working people too much and we shouldn't do it that was back when

01:38:01.040 it was like three cents a liter now it's more than 10 cents a liter for gasoline and more than 12

01:38:07.280 cents a liter for diesel and it it costs people tons of money to heat their homes with natural

01:38:12.240 gas here in bc using that again the carbon tax but that's sad because he was in opposition back

01:38:18.880 back then and now he's premier and he just finished jacking up the carbon tax on april 1st

01:38:24.720 and what's even worse here too is just it's rubbing salt in the wound you probably were

01:38:29.120 keeping an eye on what was going on at the supreme court where prime minister justin trudeau was

01:38:33.280 forcing his federal carbon tax onto provinces like yours in alberta so he was fighting against the

01:38:38.240 premiers like jason kenny and scott mo next door your neighbor there what was weird is that john

01:38:44.240 Horgan jumped in on Trudeau's side. He tagged in and said, no, no, no, you guys should have federal

01:38:50.000 jurisdiction here in BC. Please, please do it more. So that's really disappointing because now

01:38:56.000 we're tied in to the so-called federal backstop. And what that is, is a mandatory minimum carbon

01:39:04.240 tax cost. And it's going to skyrocket within the next nine years. The federal carbon tax is going

01:39:11.520 to be a hundred and seventy dollars a ton in normal people language that's 37 and a half cents

01:39:18.720 per liter of gas so just do the math if you're driving a brand new dodge grand caravan your

01:39:25.600 your standard minivan that calls the family around your grocery getter that has 73 liters in the tank

01:39:32.320 so it's going to cost you about 27 bucks every single time you're filling up your van

01:39:37.760 Yeah, well, it's the disingenuous approach to it. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, yet we don't

01:39:44.780 scream about it enough. This common citizens, I guess, you know, they swore up and down this

01:39:49.560 thing's going to stop at $50 a ton. Complete lie. Outright lie. There's no other way to put it.

01:39:55.460 But people are like, it's lied. Oh, well, they lied to us again. We shouldn't take it so bloody

01:39:59.720 complacently when they lie to us. We should punish them and fire them, but we don't do it.

01:40:05.880 So they're tempted to keep going this route and these revenue neutral. Yeah, I cringe when I hear

01:40:11.640 those words all the time because it's never revenue neutral. We see that in the push for

01:40:15.320 sales taxes and such as well, which, okay, I know a lot of economists will always say consumption

01:40:19.880 taxes are much more efficient and fair. I can live with that. But I want to see a commitment

01:40:25.320 that get rid of income tax to the exact amount that you would bring in with this sales tax.

01:40:31.240 then you get no well we won't do that well then it's just another damn tax don't don't

01:40:34.680 blow the sunshine up my butt um but that's the thing and we keep falling for it over and over

01:40:41.400 again we do i'll give you an example so because it really i i can't stand that term revenue neutral

01:40:47.560 and i'll give you an example why when they first brought in the carbon tax here in bc in 2008

01:40:52.440 to be mathematically fair they did do a corresponding income tax cut at the time

01:40:59.800 But here's the catch. Devil's always in the darn details, right? People stop paying attention.

01:41:04.680 After a couple of years, the carbon tax outpaced that income tax cut and the government didn't do

01:41:11.080 anything about it. Then they really started playing with the books. So when I landed here

01:41:16.600 back home in BC, I think it was 2017, I took a look at their previous budget. And if you look

01:41:22.360 at the budget document, it's plain as day. They call it the revenue neutral carbon tax income.

01:41:28.360 and you can see how much money it was let's say for argument's sake it was one billion dollars then

01:41:33.400 what they did was they had a billion dollars in that column box then they just took a whole bunch

01:41:39.480 of old pre-existing tax credits and other tax credits that meant diddly squat compared to the

01:41:46.280 carbon tax like youth fitness tax credit senior citizen tax credit converting school to farm

01:41:52.440 property at 50% tax credit, and they shoved all of it inside the carbon tax revenue column,

01:41:58.800 made it balance out to zero, abracadabra, revenue neutral. They did that for years. It was just a

01:42:04.760 little shell game that they did. And what also gets us is that there's all this talk of rebates.

01:42:10.360 Oh, you get more than you put back in. Okay, just for argument's sake, that sounds like nonsense.

01:42:16.420 The idea that somehow you would give the government money and they have a magical

01:42:20.420 appreciation machine in their basement somewhere and they can give you more money back sounds very

01:42:25.880 foolish but let's take it at face value here in bc we're the template for the federal carbon tax

01:42:32.980 meaning the rest of the country is going to follow what we already did here in bc our rebate

01:42:38.600 evaporates completely the moment a two-person working family hits 59 000 a year the average

01:42:46.940 salary for a two-person working family in BC is $84,000 a year, meaning the rebate is completely

01:42:54.580 meaningless for average people. Gone. You never see it. Yeah, it's, as you said, I mean, it's voodoo

01:43:01.540 economics. It's a shell game. You know, another thing I get fearful on the federal front when

01:43:06.220 they're talking about universal basic income plans and the people who promote that tend to say, well,

01:43:11.540 no, but we'll get rid of all these social programs that that's what's going to make it again, you

01:43:15.060 not a cost. As a pile of BS, you guys don't have the courage to cut out all those departments,

01:43:20.100 all those civil servants, all of those union members who were working, providing those services

01:43:26.180 to couple it into this one centralized thing. Again, sounds great on the surface,

01:43:29.700 but I know damn well you guys won't do that. So it's just going to be another giant expense.

01:43:34.980 Getting back to expenses then. So I mean, there's the ever ongoing battle. Does the government need

01:43:40.660 more revenue or do they need to spend less? I think we're more of the mind of the government

01:43:44.660 needs to spend less of course so where are some spots in BC I'm sure you've got a number of you

01:43:50.260 could point to where they could take and shave some money off of the spending file.

01:43:55.380 Well one of the major ones that we're taking a look at is hundreds and hundreds of millions

01:43:59.140 of dollars that they're plowing into something called Clean BC. Now again that sounds nice so

01:44:05.300 does you know the Green Energy Act of Ontario back under former Premier Kathleen Wynne and former

01:44:11.220 or Premier Dalton McGinty. Again, the devil's in the details. And what they're trying to do,

01:44:16.060 they say, is to electrify our construction industry, basically. So anytime you build a home

01:44:24.000 or you're digging a new mine or doing anything like that, they want to somehow only use

01:44:30.320 electric equipment for that. A lot of it doesn't exist yet. And so they say that they're putting

01:44:37.440 money into hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into research and development in order to

01:44:42.080 i don't know invent electric earth movers and invent massive industrial cranes um anybody who's

01:44:49.520 worked in heavy industry and i know lots of folks who have they kind of scratch their head at that

01:44:54.640 going yeah we we don't have electric electrified logging trucks and charging stations for our

01:45:00.480 earth movers so we always get queasy every time we see something like that so that's big money

01:45:05.520 it's hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars last time i checked i think it was about 500

01:45:09.360 million bucks that they're putting into it and on the surface if they want to invest in something

01:45:14.400 like that we're very skeptical because it almost never results in anything good but also what

01:45:19.440 they're trying to do is they're trying to strangle our own natural resource industry while doing so

01:45:24.800 so we've got you know abundant natural gas resources here in british columbia as you guys

01:45:29.600 do there in Alberta, but they're bashing it. All they're trying to do is block it, for example,

01:45:35.700 from even existing in Vancouver. The city of Vancouver, you know, had this big pronouncement

01:45:40.840 that they're, you know, stopping the use of fossil fuels and divesting themselves from it.

01:45:45.380 You know, it sounds like something a student union would do from a college campus in first year,

01:45:49.720 but this is an actual city council doing this. So it's those things combined while fighting,

01:45:54.600 for example the twinning of the trans mountain pipeline in court that's obviously costing

01:45:59.320 millions of dollars for bc taxpayers but they won't tell us how much they're spending on it

01:46:04.600 because they say it's lawyer client privilege if you can believe that excuse so there's lots of

01:46:09.480 that kind of um i would say ideological activism on that side of it where they're wasting a lot

01:46:16.200 of money and we want to see that change yeah well we see that in every level of government and uh

01:46:22.520 in every province i i want to delve into because you're one of the few that have been mentioning

01:46:27.240 it black locks reporter put that out uh last summer uh i wrote actually a short blog posting

01:46:32.440 that went completely viral on that but then again people responding saying oh it was it was not true

01:46:36.760 and then uh you know this didn't really happen but the this canadian uh housing and mortgage

01:46:42.360 corporation there has been definitely examining a home equity tax so i i can't think of anything

01:46:49.160 more vulgar from a government to come in and the one thing you've been saving your one nest egg

01:46:55.400 that you've invested in whether it's physical time to upgrade and upkeep or just your actual

01:47:00.520 money to purchase it and pay the mortgage and now they are examining ways of saying you know what

01:47:05.400 we're going to take it and it's real and they're considering it so can you expand on what's

01:47:11.080 happening there yes it's definitely real and they're really really considering this hard

01:47:16.440 and we'll explain why. To give folks a background on what you just mentioned with Black Locks

01:47:21.220 Reporter. Black Locks Reporter, first, they're an investigative journalism website based out of

01:47:25.920 Ottawa. They do fantastic work. They broke this story last summer saying, hey, CMHC is spending

01:47:31.780 around $250,000, which of course eventually comes from taxpayers because it's an arm's length

01:47:37.080 government entity. They're spending quarter million bucks to participate in the study done

01:47:42.900 by a group within UBC. The group within UBC is called a Generation Squeeze, and they're dedicated

01:47:50.420 to studying the problem of housing costs. Now, make no bones about it. Housing is crazy expensive.

01:47:57.580 We know that, especially here in the Vancouver area. It's gross. A lot of people can't afford a

01:48:03.260 home, even if they're working really hard and they've got two incomes coming in. They can't

01:48:06.780 even do it. So we agree it's a problem. We don't agree that more government regulation, taxation,

01:48:12.160 and studies is the solution. That's where we differ. So they break this story and they all

01:48:18.300 freak out. CMHC says, oh, it's fabricated. It's not true. Basically saying that it's fake news

01:48:25.440 in a way, saying this isn't a real story. The feds, interestingly, had ministers releasing

01:48:32.160 statements on this on like Saturday afternoon, which almost never happens. They were falling

01:48:37.120 all over themselves saying nothing to see here, folks. We didn't do this. We're not studying this.

01:48:41.500 were not even thinking about it. So we of course got really curious and our investigative journalist

01:48:48.000 James Wood, who works at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, filed a whole bunch of freedom of

01:48:53.080 information requests, FOIs. What we got back was a chain of emails between CMHC and UBC talking

01:49:01.220 about the study. The study which clearly outlined that they were also going to be considering

01:49:07.460 the wealth that is inside people's primary residences their homes and the lack of taxation

01:49:14.760 like it's almost like that moment in austin powers remember when they're going through that

01:49:19.460 box of all the stuff that he had and there's that tool and he's like this isn't my bag baby

01:49:24.960 right remember that and they're like pulling out the receipt and then they pull out the warranty

01:49:29.780 and then they pull out the book it's like this is my bag baby yeah he's even holding the book

01:49:34.760 This is their bag, baby.

01:49:36.320 They're definitely thinking about it.

01:49:38.200 And also, you can read any of UBC's Generation Squeeze studies on this stuff.

01:49:43.400 They mention it all the time.

01:49:45.100 They said that a lack of a capital gains tax on the sale of your primary home, the one

01:49:51.840 you're living in right now, is a loss to government to the tune of $7 billion a year just for

01:49:59.780 the feds.

01:50:00.340 That doesn't include any sort of provincial tax that could come into play here.

01:50:03.580 so yeah they're they're looking really hard at this we have a petition up on our website against

01:50:08.720 this folks are rightly incensed about this because as you point out a lot of people save up their

01:50:14.440 entire lives that's their nest egg that's their work that's all of the money that they put into

01:50:18.840 it and they're counting on that to take care of them when they're old they're planning on selling

01:50:24.120 it when they can no longer live in the home and that's what's going to take care and sustain them

01:50:28.300 their old age because not all of us have gold-plated government pensions and so now they're

01:50:33.500 sniffing around this tax and people are rightly ticked off well that exposes that sickening

01:50:39.980 attitude that some particularly in government have that that's not a loss it's not your bloody money

01:50:45.500 to begin with you know but they look at it as every asset is actually the government's by default

01:50:50.860 and that they will allow us to keep a degree of it that that's the true mindset of them and it

01:50:55.820 exposes it there and we see that in alberta all the time when rachel notley sounds like one of

01:51:00.060 those dolls where you pull out the string and it says the same thing over and over again because

01:51:03.260 she keeps going on about that corporate tax giveaway corporate tax giveaway no it wasn't

01:51:08.620 your money you know they we didn't give them anything we just took less but but that that

01:51:15.980 mindset doesn't change and i can't remember the term there was something they used actually with

01:51:20.540 that that group or the terms they'd used about home equity or home ownership it was a an insult to

01:51:25.660 people uh something about their wealth i should have researched my own blog posting about it a

01:51:30.220 bit better but oh yeah it was this well that's why they call it wealth they call it like home

01:51:34.940 ownership wealth and they'll call it unfair like that's really the tone that if you read through

01:51:39.900 that study uh on the ubc website and again if that's their bag and that's how they feel like

01:51:44.940 give her fine that's okay just don't deny it don't call reporters out saying that they're fabricating

01:51:52.140 a story when they're not um if you really want a home equity tax on the sale of people's homes

01:51:58.540 primary residence own it like own it come out and say so in fact i debated a gentleman who wasn't

01:52:05.420 as far as i understand isn't part of generation squeeze uh but he is a ubc professor very smart

01:52:11.660 guy he's got a phd went to mit i also believe he went to harvard so i debated him on the radio

01:52:17.260 about this and he said you know it is time for for a capital gains tax on the sale of primary

01:52:22.920 residence and here's why and he was echoing the lead editorial which was in the globe and mail

01:52:28.260 recently so this is definitely something need to pay be paying attention to i talked to him about

01:52:33.720 it and he full-on wants it and he's part of ubc and what's interesting there and this is weird

01:52:39.200 even if you came at this from the perspective of this will help the housing problem like this will

01:52:45.740 somehow magically create more housing and and lower the prices of housing that flies in the

01:52:52.660 face of reason and common sense because if you're sitting on a house and it's your only house and

01:52:58.420 now you're being told that the government's going to take i don't know 10 15 20 000 from you

01:53:05.100 what are you going to do you're going to probably not sell for longer so that reduces the number of

01:53:11.820 homes on the market that reduces the supply or you're going to tack that amount of that tax onto

01:53:18.840 the listing price of your house so that you're not eating it. That increases the price. So even if

01:53:25.840 you did put this in with the intention of increasing the supply and lowering the price, it does the

01:53:30.040 exact opposite. Yeah, well, we're coming into it in less than a couple of weeks. We're going to see

01:53:36.200 a budget from the liberals, which is obviously going to be an obscenity of spending and promises

01:53:40.760 and you know everything to try as we're moving into an election year they're desperately going

01:53:47.900 to seek money so I don't think it's unrealistic at all to think and I'm certain they won't platform

01:53:52.400 they won't campaign on this this is why they were so much in denial when this started getting

01:53:56.020 exposed but I think it's worth pointing out to people when they start looking for money this is

01:54:00.980 one of the areas they're planning to look I mean that you don't fund these studies you don't start

01:54:05.140 looking there if you don't have some intention of moving down that road later on so I really

01:54:09.180 appreciate you know you and uh james what is that the fellow i used to write for the herald i believe

01:54:13.340 out here in calgary i believe so yeah he's fantastic he's in ottawa now and uh he does a

01:54:19.180 lot of research for us he also is the editor of our podcast so he does a lot of heavy lifting

01:54:24.140 behind the scenes and really takes it to them and on your point of them not campaigning on it

01:54:29.100 we know but also remember the carbon tax before the last election they said like you said they

01:54:34.460 have no intention nothing to see here folks we're not going to increase it past 50 a ton

01:54:38.620 no no no just after the election what did they announce yes in fact we are skyrocketing it 170

01:54:46.620 a ton i think it's a 470 increase over nine years that's a huge broken promise so hopefully he gets

01:54:54.220 a visit from fibra very soon so again if you want to believe the feds and say oh i'm just going to

01:54:59.740 fall asleep happily thinking that this will never happen to us because they promised it won't

01:55:04.300 well good luck uh we're we're a little bit more cynical than that yeah i understand well all we

01:55:10.380 can do is keep trying to tell people as we go into this election year so i appreciate you know

01:55:13.880 black locks as you said report they do some fantastic stuff they've they've dug up and

01:55:18.020 leaked out there i'm looking forward to more and uh you know the canadian taxpayers federation

01:55:22.340 following up and and exposing these things and pointing it out to the public hopefully we can

01:55:27.120 turn the tide or at least make them vehemently deny it enough that it really becomes impossible

01:55:31.780 for them to bring it in if and when they get back in with another majority. So where can we find

01:55:37.080 more information about what you're up to and the Taxpayers Federation in general? Oh, that'd be

01:55:41.200 fabulous. We're also trying to get provincial recall legislation in every single province. I

01:55:46.900 know you guys have just tabled your legislation there in Alberta, which is great to see. We've

01:55:50.680 had it here in British Columbia for a long time. It's a nice tool to have. We'd like to think it

01:55:55.400 keeps politicians more on their toes. So even if we're not recalling people every week, having that

01:56:00.460 big stick there is a really good tool in the toolbox so we want to see that happen across

01:56:05.680 Canada it's one of our campaigns right now you can go to our website taxpayer.com we have a ton

01:56:11.740 of different petitions on various issues there depending on what be is in your bonnet and what

01:56:16.700 I really love about it is that we have a toolbox there on how to really be a good citizen and an

01:56:21.320 activist in an effective way how to write a good letter to your MP or your MLA how to make that

01:56:27.080 good, firm, but polite phone call. How to actively campaign to a politician and say, listen, lady or

01:56:33.600 guy, we're not going to vote for you next time if you keep screwing up like this. And it matters

01:56:38.940 for every, I know with your experience in media, for every one letter or email that you get into

01:56:45.240 a politician's office, the rule of thumb is about 100 people feel the same way, but they haven't

01:56:50.800 bothered to call. So that's what we really try to harness at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

01:56:55.100 is to really bring that movement to politicians

01:56:58.620 and put pressure on them to stop screwing up.

01:57:01.800 That's excellent.

01:57:02.760 It's really important to keep them somewhat accountable

01:57:05.280 more often than once every four years.

01:57:07.340 And it is up to us.

01:57:08.800 And your average citizen doesn't look into

01:57:10.700 how do you reach out or how do you contact

01:57:12.660 or does it have an impact?

01:57:14.040 So in providing those tools and showing,

01:57:15.660 no, you can, you can do it.

01:57:17.680 Again, it's much appreciated.

01:57:19.380 So folks, have a look at taxpayers.com.

01:57:21.600 you can uh make your mark out there as we lead into an election year at the end of a crazed

01:57:28.160 pandemic so thank you for coming on i'll be a little late there i'm glad you got things working

01:57:33.280 i know about it i had a past episode actually where my computer decided to reboot right in the

01:57:37.280 middle of it and yeah i was watching that that was with franco too i was watching you so i don't know

01:57:42.080 what gremlins the ctf is bringing to the technology but yeah when i was connecting on the pc um

01:57:47.520 neither the mic nor the camera would connect so i just i've like i've macgyvered my iphone to my

01:57:53.520 dead laptop right now so hopefully it came through okay for you yes it seems to work so i appreciate

01:57:59.600 you putting it together with the duct tape and spittle or whatever else you had to use for it and

01:58:05.120 i'm sure we'll have a chance to talk again in the future there's always lots of taxing and spending

01:58:09.520 things to discuss unfortunately you betcha looking forward to it great thanks

01:58:13.920 okay well thank you everybody that's it for this week uh monday i'm gonna be on i'm gonna have

01:58:24.240 jeremy farkas on and i'm gonna have a panel of individuals from uh hospitality industry i've got

01:58:31.040 a person who has a small business i want to talk one-on-one with some other people who have been

01:58:36.080 impacted by the increases of restrictions i mean we we hear about how it impacts hospitals we hear

01:58:40.720 how it impacts so many other things and that's fair and it's valid but we are not humanizing

01:58:45.840 the cost enough i think to the individuals the ones who really get slapped when we keep cracking

01:58:51.200 down and shutting down facilities businesses movement of individuals so it should be a really

01:58:58.160 good conversation and actually if you've got other people impacted a gym owner or something like that

01:59:02.000 reach out get a hold of me i want to put a few people on on monday so we can discuss those things

01:59:06.080 so again pop by kairansway.com uh that's our sponsor uh we've got a great show that's been

01:59:14.280 developing as well through the week with uh nathan the guide and uh he's out of prince

01:59:20.420 george so we've got a bc perspective there and uh he's on on tuesdays wednesdays and thursdays

01:59:27.280 is the tiny same time slot as me and be sure to you know subscribe on uh or subscribe to the

01:59:33.660 Western standard self for the stories subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss

01:59:36.780 these specials when they pop up Facebook like those things and I'm looking

01:59:41.460 forward to talking to you all next week thanks

Western Standard - April 10, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show, April 9, 2021

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