Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show June 11

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00:01:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Morning, welcome to the

00:02:29.340 Cory Morgan Show, June 11th, 2021.

00:02:33.880 Well, it's been another lively, interesting week.

00:02:37.140 The sun's shining anyways.

00:02:38.800 Let's look on some bright sides.

00:02:40.220 You can always count on the weather hour by hour to get better or worse as things go.

00:02:45.180 We've entered phase two of the, or stage two, or whatever the labels are, week by week on ending the restrictions.

00:02:51.460 Some restaurants are open.

00:02:53.040 Some servers and workers and owners are gasping a sigh of relief.

00:02:57.040 And hopefully we finally start seeing some of the turnaround from this interminable year of lockdowns and pandemic.

00:03:05.480 I got a couple of good guests on today.

00:03:07.700 In a little while, I'm going to have Dave Bradley of Bitcoin Well coming on.

00:03:10.800 He's going to talk about cryptocurrencies.

00:03:12.640 Of course, they're huge these days.

00:03:14.200 They're booming.

00:03:15.060 And I've got to admit, I'm hoping he can shed more light on it.

00:03:17.800 I find the whole thing is quite confusing sometimes.

00:03:20.280 I have it hard wrapping my head around alternative currencies.

00:03:22.960 So hopefully he can lend some clarity to that for us and, you know, speak more to it because they're certainly not going away and they're turning into quite a big player on the financial field.

00:03:33.640 After that, I'm going to have Brad Field on. He is running for mayor in Calgary.

00:03:38.340 Probably seen his signs around town. Pretty creative.

00:03:40.620 Anyways, aside from that, I haven't heard much of him before.

00:03:42.980 And as far as political history goes or background, he seems to be a new player on that front.

00:03:49.840 and he's coming from a pro-business conservative angle, so we'll have a chat with him and see what

00:03:55.540 he's offering in this upcoming election. So we should get on and speak about. We have some

00:04:01.600 sponsors for these shows too. You know, again, as we say over and over again, we don't take any

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00:04:18.180 appreciate the subscriptions have been going great uh you know this is a a user uh driven sort of

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00:06:40.280 uh so you know yeah um wow interesting comments today unexpected so there's been a uh quite the

00:06:52.840 the issue going on i'm just gonna address it quickly because it's not my turf and i have

00:06:58.260 difficulty there's a story that's been pretty controversial it came out of the standard last

00:07:02.060 week there's a lot of uh i guess it's to the point of he said she said we'll see what's happening

00:07:07.360 with it as it unfolds. I can't speak to it. I didn't, wasn't a part of writing it. I know as

00:07:12.960 much about it as you do as readers. I like to maintain confidence that the standard is

00:07:17.360 maintaining standards as it goes forward. But at this point, it's an illegal mire. So there's

00:07:21.540 nothing I can add to it that's going to make it any better or worse at this point. I'm with the

00:07:28.620 rest of you. We'll watch and see what happens. Aside from that, I'm just going to leave that

00:07:34.160 alone for now i know people have a lot of questions i'm curious too and and we just got to

00:07:38.880 watch as this goes you know commenting on it this one of those rare things we'll see

00:07:41.840 if i don't know anything about it i'm not going to talk about it i mean i i know about it i've

00:07:46.880 read it like everybody else and and so on and i'm certainly quite connected with the western standard

00:07:51.220 but i i don't know the inside details on this one and i'm probably not going to make anything any

00:07:55.720 better or worse by uh trying to speculate on it it's interesting if nothing else so we'll watch

00:08:02.300 this as it goes. CTV is fake news. Go back to your back. CTV. Commentary is interesting. So

00:08:12.080 either way, getting back to where we're sitting now with the opening. Let's look at some positive

00:08:16.960 stuff before things get going. I mean, I'm looking at things with optimism. I used to own a pub. It

00:08:22.640 was a tough, tough business at the best of times. You know, I couldn't imagine going through this

00:08:27.100 year. I sold it just before the lockdown start. And it's on again, off again, on again, off again.

00:08:32.300 they're open tonight for indoor sit-down dining pubs restaurants places gyms are opening up uh

00:08:39.500 all sorts of things let's hope this just keeps going i mean we need this so badly people are so

00:08:45.820 deeply in debt they've got to uh we've got to start turning this around it's something of an

00:08:51.660 irony out of it you know and leading to a bigger discussion we're seeing the stories coming out

00:08:54.860 already though we got so much we're gonna have to learn of this pandemic we really are

00:08:59.900 and one of the things we're learning about is uh in my view you can look at this as a big

00:09:05.420 experiment in universal basic income so all these pubs uh i had one call me for a reference on an

00:09:10.780 employee uh they're desperately searching for staff now that they're reopening they can't uh

00:09:18.460 find any staff i mean front-end servers usually that's not too bad tips are good and so on

00:09:23.260 but cooks and such they are desperate and why well because i people don't like to believe it but the

00:09:29.020 The truth is there are a lot of people content to sit at home for $2,000 a month, maybe find

00:09:36.780 a few cash side jobs, things like that to do.

00:09:39.340 I know a lot of people like to think the best of everybody, and most people are pretty good.

00:09:44.740 Most people have enough pride to know, hey, if I can get up and work for a living, I will.

00:09:48.080 I'll get out and do it.

00:09:49.040 You know, if you're put out of work by the government, the government has an obligation to compensate you.

00:10:00.060 You know, this comes into a bigger conversation, but I mean, I understand the need for CERB.

00:10:04.620 If you throw these people out of work, they've got to pay their bills.

00:10:07.340 They've got to pay their rent.

00:10:08.340 They've got to keep getting by living.

00:10:10.320 It's an emergency thing.

00:10:12.500 But now we've got a lot of people become very dependent on it, and they've sunken in on it.

00:10:16.360 And they'd rather sit at home and watch TV than come out and go to work.

00:10:24.040 Those who want to go to work are getting up and they're going there.

00:10:26.360 But we're going to see this unfold as time goes on.

00:10:28.940 You know, and we've seen these universal basic income experiments.

00:10:32.960 We saw one, I think it was in Manitoba for kind of a little regional one.

00:10:36.000 We saw a big one in Finland.

00:10:38.140 They fail.

00:10:39.160 They fail.

00:10:39.960 They fail for that same reason that socialism in its hardest core and communism always does.

00:10:45.180 it takes these grand assumptions of human nature that everybody's just going to happily join the

00:10:52.140 collective you know if you want to look up neat things actually look at the trends from the 70s

00:10:56.620 and 60s when a bunch of communes were forming all over North America Europe everywhere that was the

00:11:00.800 hippies were getting together in communes you know somebody to inherit a farm they'd all

00:11:04.980 live together on it and free love we'll share everything we'll share the work and it's funny

00:11:10.760 to read those first person accounts of all those people who grew out of it I mean why are none of

00:11:14.100 those still around anymore? I mean, they're very rare. There's still probably a handful somewhere.

00:11:18.600 Well, because it doesn't work. The reality and the stories are the same out of all of them.

00:11:23.740 You know, you'll see the account saying, well, I was out tilling the field all day and buddy was

00:11:29.880 just sitting in the room smoking weed and doing nothing all day. And we all get the same amount

00:11:33.420 out of things. Well, again, welcome to communism, guys. You know, that assumption that everybody's

00:11:37.740 going to get up and put in equal work doesn't work. So the person who's sitting around on there

00:11:42.120 their thumb up their butt all day just feels more and more entitled and demands more and more and

00:11:46.360 more and the person working eventually gets sick of it and walks out the door but that's the premise

00:11:52.760 of socialism and that's why it always doesn't work universal basic income is the same thing

00:11:59.240 you're giving this this baseline for people and again yes most people don't want to live on that

00:12:05.560 they'll want more they'll aspire to aspire to more and they'll move on but a great number of them

00:12:10.920 won't and we have to face that human reality doesn't mean let people starve to death but

00:12:15.640 just giving this unquestioned funding to people to sit around is counterproductive to say the

00:12:22.280 very least and incredibly expensive i mean we are going billions and billions into the hole

00:12:27.080 so as we come out of this pandemic we're really going to have to closely examine a lot of the

00:12:32.120 things we've done we've got a huge debt and spending hole to dig ourselves out of

00:12:37.080 and uh one of those areas is going to be served and it's going to be interesting to see what

00:12:42.360 happens when they cut it off because it's going to have to be cut off at some point i mean they're

00:12:45.800 renaming it they're calling this they're calling that bottom line is they're still paying a whole

00:12:48.680 lot of people without question to sit at home and when that's cut off when they come calling for

00:12:54.360 more money we're going to see some very serious issues you know another one and again i'm not

00:12:58.920 saying we didn't we see we've gotten ourselves into a hell of a mess you had to give something

00:13:04.520 because again, people were innocently put out of work by these lockdowns. They had no choice in

00:13:08.580 the matter. They had no other way to pay their bills. But there's going to be some serious

00:13:12.540 consequences from that action now. And we got to start thinking ahead on it. And we got to set

00:13:16.500 aside the naivety. You know, one of the things we've seen has been the opioid epidemic. And again,

00:13:22.720 like I said before, I drive Uber in my spare time. I get out there. And you know, part of why I do

00:13:26.080 is I like getting out. I like seeing what's happening outside. I like talking to people

00:13:29.660 as passengers. An extra few bucks doesn't hurt either. But I've been watching the number of

00:13:34.060 addicts and troubled people on the streets, increasing and increasing and increasing.

00:13:38.260 These guys are getting served, okay, that they can get it because everybody qualifies. It's

00:13:42.520 no questions asked. And so what do you think they did? They're not going to take those funds

00:13:48.280 and pad up their resume to look for work. They're not going to redecorate the home. They don't have

00:13:54.220 one anymore. They're going to buy more dope, which of course they have. That's why part of why the

00:13:59.340 addictions are through the roof, this unfettered access to a baseline of drugs every month. These

00:14:04.500 are troubled people. They need help. They need treatment. But when you suddenly cut off now

00:14:09.380 that source of income, those who are still surviving when the time comes, now they're

00:14:13.660 going to become very desperate. And I do fear for the consequences of that. I mean, desperate

00:14:21.920 addicts can be terribly dangerous. I mean, we're going to see a lot of them, you know, already

00:14:26.120 they'll steal, they'll do whatever they have to, to feed their addiction. And with the CERB being

00:14:31.680 cut off, they're suddenly going to be roaming out and trying to find new means and we could all pay

00:14:35.720 a price. Again, we have to start talking about these things now. We have to start looking at

00:14:41.460 them now instead of waiting until it becomes a problem. That's something we're so prone to doing

00:14:45.920 all the time is waiting and then reacting. Let's use a little foresight for a change. You know,

00:14:53.400 it's put that hard veneer, not even a veneer, but let's look at hard reality rather than the

00:15:00.260 veneer of self-deception. Long-term care homes giving managers bonuses for everyone who gets a

00:15:05.720 jab. I don't know, you know, it's another controversial area. I would, look, I'm pro

00:15:13.220 vaccine. I think these things work. I think the fears of what they'll do to you as far as harm

00:15:20.240 goes are are overblown but i'm also fully in favor of voluntary i mean not forced there's there's no

00:15:28.400 forcing medication on people whatsoever i i feel similarly with say fluoridation of water which is

00:15:34.000 an issue that comes up every few years in municipal politics i don't think it's necessarily a bad

00:15:38.320 thing but it's not the place of the state to put medication into water for everybody you got to be

00:15:43.280 able to choose fluoride or not choose fluoride it's the same with the vaccines i hope and want

00:15:49.120 as many people as possible to choose the vaccines uh as they can we're seeing the numbers dropping

00:15:54.160 i know some people don't believe it fine but i do and i do believe the numbers are dropping

00:15:57.520 dramatically because of the vaccinations so those are getting out and getting it done i appreciate

00:16:03.760 it i hope more people do and those who choose not to that's fine that's your choice of course

00:16:07.920 now so we start getting into a gray area though and there's where it starts getting difficult

00:16:12.400 uh you know the the the vaccine passports for example i mean you know they don't even like

00:16:17.200 the term but that's that's the term for it and those are the things that people were saying

00:16:24.000 were in conspiracy theories oh they're never going to make you carry some sort of documentation

00:16:27.680 all the time to prove you've been vaccinated well that's exactly what they're doing

00:16:30.960 is it forcing people to get vaccinated by doing that no but there's going to be suddenly a whole

00:16:36.080 pile of services and things you won't be able to do without the vaccine uh yet at the same time

00:16:41.280 this isn't new in that if you wanted to travel internationally you always had to in many countries

00:16:48.520 you couldn't enter or you couldn't come back unless you'd had certain vaccinations you know

00:16:52.000 if you went into an area that had a large amount of malaria problems things like that you had to

00:16:57.860 get your your vaccinations before you could go there so this isn't new either but it's it's much

00:17:04.320 more widespread than that. So it's difficult. It really is. Another area, I mean, I've seen

00:17:13.160 some people saying employers should have the right to demand that their employees be vaccinated.

00:17:18.700 Well, wait a minute here. Again, we're getting into some troublesome area. You can demand that

00:17:25.820 an employee take a medication that they choose not to. That's scary turf. We got to watch where

00:17:32.680 we're going with this. So as we see it unfold, though, I'm looking into things with some optimism,

00:17:37.700 whatever people may feel is contributing to the drop in infections and deaths and hospitalizations.

00:17:44.620 The bottom line is they are. Some people feel that it's all a conspiracy, so be it. You can

00:17:52.320 have that. I feel it's real. I feel there's been a lot of BS out of government, though, on it.

00:17:56.760 A lot of opportunities taking advantage of those things. We're going to take it as it comes. But

00:18:01.900 for those who aren't afraid of vaccines, I suggest going out and getting it. I do believe it's been

00:18:05.900 helping. I believe it's been contributing and we can start to get our economy back on track and

00:18:11.400 getting back to something closer to regular life. We got to look back on all of this time of

00:18:16.660 quarantine and insanity and see what we did wrong. And there's a whole lot of things we did wrong.

00:18:22.240 And we've got to make sure that we don't do this again. So Rick saying I'm a POS. Well, Rick,

00:18:30.100 go away you know take your conspiracy theories and go away if you don't want to talk and discuss

00:18:35.760 things in a rational manner go somewhere else find an echo chamber oh do your research come on

00:18:41.460 now you're getting cliche rick either way this is the place i'm speaking my area it's opinion

00:18:45.760 i could be right i could be wrong but if you don't like it my gosh the internet door is right

00:18:52.600 there for you either way that's my opening rant to get going let's get on to something uh

00:18:57.620 um a little more uh rational than crazy rick there we've got dave bradley from uh bitcoin

00:19:04.740 well and he's going to talk about cryptocurrencies uh i appreciate his joining me today it's a big

00:19:10.100 area we're certainly hearing a whole lot about it thanks for joining me today dave how you doing

00:19:16.180 good good i just want to check your sound a little bit there you're coming in a little

00:19:19.060 Oh, here we go. That's much better. So maybe I'll just get a little background on yourself

00:19:28.540 so we can understand where you're coming from. Because as I said kind of earlier in the show

00:19:33.760 too, this is an area that I actually have difficulty understanding fully. I'm excited

00:19:38.040 about it yet at the same time, I don't quite know what's going on with cryptocurrencies and it's

00:19:41.580 certainly exploding onto the scene. You're with Bitcoin Well. So what is that service exactly?

00:19:47.180 Yeah, so Bitcoin Well is a retailer of Bitcoin. We buy and sell Bitcoin from regular people like yourself. Primarily, we have a network of Bitcoin ATMs that we have right across Canada, as well as about 30 in the UK.

00:20:01.240 yeah so those atms i i guess one of the areas i've uh and i think a lot of us have had confusion on

00:20:08.920 you know we see the numbers for uh bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and i mean they think they can be

00:20:13.080 massive you know some point sixty thousand dollars for one bitcoin or whatnot and it doesn't it makes

00:20:18.520 it a confusing um currency like how would i go and order a pizza with a a bitcoin sort of thing

00:20:25.240 so these atms kind of give a person a means i guess to have an account where you can can do

00:20:29.080 direct payments in a smaller valuation or yeah bitcoin is really divisible you can divide it down

00:20:34.440 to eight decimal places at the base layer so really you can go smaller than a penny still

00:20:39.720 even at the current pricing um so most people are not buying a full bitcoin if they're looking to

00:20:44.680 buy something to invest and then obviously if you want to buy something like a pizza or something

00:20:48.040 small you're you're paying with like a tiny fraction yeah so and now there's a number of

00:20:54.760 cryptocurrencies coming out and they're really hitting news and so on. This adds to, I guess,

00:21:00.440 some hesitancy or confusion, like which one do you choose or somebody is going to come and go?

00:21:07.480 Is it a hazard? Is it risky? I mean, Bitcoin is kind of among the first and the biggest,

00:21:11.480 but there's a lot really entering the market now. How do you determine where to go with these?

00:21:16.280 Yeah, there's a lot of confusion. And a lot of the creators and the people that sell these

00:21:21.000 extra cryptocurrencies um they they feed off this confusion they feed off the fact that it's kind

00:21:27.000 of a technical topic and uh it seems daunting to figure out what you want out of uh out of

00:21:33.240 these currencies as a means of payment or as an investment but when it comes down to it it's

00:21:37.400 really pretty simple um the whole point of bitcoin is that bitcoin is money it's not an investment

00:21:43.640 not like a stock or a bond it's just money and the point of money is to take the value that you

00:21:49.160 you create with your time and store it to use it some other time at another place and dollars are

00:21:55.760 generally just terrible at that because as you wait the government will inevitably be printing

00:22:00.640 more and so the dollars you're sitting on will be less and less scarce and your purchasing power

00:22:05.720 will go down and bitcoin is a lot better than that because the government can't print more

00:22:10.040 and so that's kind of like the core value proposition is just a currency that is truly

00:22:15.660 finite um no one is in charge no one can decide you know we're going to change this supply

00:22:21.740 and all these other coins um they range somewhere between a bad idea and a scam

00:22:27.020 and you know they they like to to market themselves as being faster or

00:22:32.380 you know more environmentally friendly or whatever the the buzzword that they can come up with uh

00:22:38.380 you know that week is but when it comes right down to it all of them have someone in charge

00:22:43.020 And so they don't actually accomplish what Bitcoin accomplishes.

00:22:46.540 Yeah, well, and an issue we've got with currencies all around the world right now,

00:22:49.820 particularly in countries that are getting in trouble, and we're seeing a lot of economic

00:22:53.020 volatility is, yeah, countries are essentially using their central banks to print out

00:22:59.500 more money in order to justify their spending, which is going to lead to some inflationary

00:23:03.580 issues and a lot of challenges down the road. But what is Bitcoin mining then? This is another

00:23:08.460 area i get confused about isn't that an area where some degree of currency can be added to the pool

00:23:14.780 well new currency is added with bitcoin mining but it's added at a fixed and predictable rate

00:23:19.820 so we know exactly how many bitcoins there will be at any given time uh right now there's a little

00:23:24.860 over 18 million bitcoins and uh six and a quarter new bitcoins come out every 10 minutes roughly

00:23:31.740 uh and that's divided up amongst those who are who are mining um ultimately that number

00:23:37.580 cuts in half every four years and so most of the bitcoins that will ever be mined or will ever be

00:23:42.460 issued have already been issued we're going to get to a hard cap uh a little over 100 years from now

00:23:47.740 of uh 21 million bitcoins and they'll never be more than 21 million bitcoins okay so uh

00:23:56.380 i've noticed recently uh el salvador has issued uh this is kind of i think a bit of a turning

00:24:02.140 point in a sense they've concerned consider bitcoin to be a legal tender yeah i mean so

00:24:07.260 that's big news um it's it's an attempt to essentially draw a lot of the innovation around

00:24:12.380 the bitcoin space uh into their country you know they're obviously a country that is is struggling

00:24:17.420 pretty significantly both economically and politically and with a lot of uh a lot of crime

00:24:22.220 and violence in the country and this is an attempt to sort of start turning that around um i wrote an

00:24:27.900 article actually uh maybe a month or two ago for the restaurant western standard um suggesting the

00:24:33.420 same thing for alberta and i think that um what el salvador is doing is the first step in that

00:24:39.180 direction the next big step though is a country actually holding a significant amount of bitcoin

00:24:44.620 and i think that uh once we see one country going you know significantly in holding a large amount

00:24:50.380 of bitcoin um it's probably going to be a domino effect that causes a lot of different countries

00:24:55.980 to jump in like that yeah well and and uh that that's just perhaps the first of many though

00:25:02.060 I mean, El Salvador is a smaller and, you know, developing country.

00:25:05.460 I guess that's the easier areas where they can pivot as opposed to an area, a country with a larger, more established currency.

00:25:13.620 Jane Robertson, one of the viewers, is asking, the value of cash is based on the amount of gold you have to back it.

00:25:19.140 What's the base of the value on Bitcoin?

00:25:20.520 It doesn't sound like they have an actual coffer.

00:25:22.900 I think the gold standard has been gone for some time now, but still, that's what adds to some of the confusion.

00:25:28.120 You know, you've got this ethereal something of value, yet it's all kind of digital.

00:25:33.740 Yeah. So that's a that's a common misconception. The gold standard has been dead since 1971.

00:25:39.920 Canada doesn't even hold any gold. As a country, we hold literally zero gold. And Trudeau was the

00:25:44.880 prime minister that provided over something the last of our gold. So what currency actually is,

00:25:50.280 what money actually is, it's just a consensus. And in the form of fiat in the Canadian dollar,

00:25:56.040 fiat literally means by decree, that consensus comes from the central government. So we trust

00:26:02.180 Canadian dollars will hold their value because the government says so. And as we've seen throughout

00:26:07.200 history, that is good until it's not. And so we see countries like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, you know,

00:26:13.900 very notably 1930s Germany, where that decree from the government stopped holding up and people

00:26:20.000 stopped being willing to accept that currency for goods and services at a rate that was anything

00:26:25.660 comparable to the rate that uh they saw yesterday so where bitcoin's different is that that consensus

00:26:33.100 is not delegated from a central authority that consensus is emergent and what what that mining

00:26:40.060 uh is accomplishing every 10 minutes when those new bitcoins are issued those miners are validating

00:26:45.020 that consensus they're saying here's how many bitcoins everyone has here are the rules of the

00:26:50.140 network and we all agree to those same rules again and we agree every 10 minutes and and that's how

00:26:55.180 bitcoin maintains its value okay and then value and then there's also some serious volatility

00:27:01.580 uh with it i mean the the i mean you can say that for a number of other currencies as well with ups

00:27:06.540 and downs but for example the american dollar hasn't had those those four figure jumps and

00:27:11.580 drops over the course of a year you know we're talking in percentages is there a point do you

00:27:16.620 feel where some cryptocurrencies are going to stabilize a little bit because i mean i understand

00:27:20.780 if you've got the magic crystal ball you can get in and out and do quite well on these things but

00:27:25.100 but you can also take a beating if you're not careful yeah it's definitely very volatile um

00:27:29.500 when i mentioned earlier that bitcoin was a way to to store your value over time it's only really

00:27:36.060 right now a good way to store value over a long time so if you have uh wealth that you need to

00:27:40.940 use in a month or two uh bitcoin's a very risky way to store that because it might be might be

00:27:45.740 20 higher it might be 20 lower in the next month over time in the long term what we've seen is that

00:27:51.660 consistently even though it is very volatile it's just continued to go up versus fiat currencies

00:27:56.540 like the dollar and i think as long as that that supply cap holds which i think you know you know

00:28:02.060 it's designed to hold that uh that we're going to see a long-term consistent uptrend like that

00:28:07.500 now part of the reason that it is so volatile i think is because it is it's probably the the only

00:28:13.740 truly free market traded commodity anywhere in the world so it's a global market trades 24 hours a

00:28:19.340 day it trades in a lot of places with very significant volumes that are not regulated by

00:28:23.980 any government and that can be pulled into what some people would call market manipulation

00:28:29.500 but really in the grand scheme of things those are just market forces and so bitcoin is going

00:28:34.620 through a long period of very volatile price discovery and i think what we're going to see

00:28:42.060 not that bitcoin is going to become more stable versus the dollar we're just going to see it

00:28:47.580 it becoming more stable versus goods and services that we actually use. So I don't know if you've

00:28:51.860 seen any of the memes kicking around where, you know, what a pile of lumber for $100 Canadian

00:28:57.540 looks like from a year ago versus today. And, you know, you obviously get a lot less lumber

00:29:03.380 than you did a year ago. And so there's a couple of ways you can look at that. You can say, oh,

00:29:09.340 the price of lumber is going up, or you can look at it and say, well, the purchasing power of my

00:29:13.700 dollars are going down and i think when you look at the economy as a whole and we're seeing um you

00:29:19.540 know with lumber being a really really radical example but we're seeing a lot of uh prices for

00:29:24.820 a lot of the stuff that normal people use on a daily basis going up and going up by a lot more

00:29:29.620 than the official inflation numbers i think we can all feel that right now i know a stake costs

00:29:33.940 about double that uh it did a year ago that's very meaningful to me and i think that's what we're

00:29:40.420 actually seeing is the dollar is about four times less scarce than it was when this pandemic started

00:29:46.340 and that's starting to trickle into consumer goods yeah well i think a lot of people have

00:29:51.540 seen that coming i mean we're seeing every government on the planet essentially borrowing

00:29:55.300 and borrowing and printing and printing money um cryptocurrencies have been considered i think by a

00:29:59.940 lot of people as a hedge you know that there's something they can jump into and perhaps save

00:30:04.900 themselves if and when a currency collapses uh though i mean that you know hedges are have got

00:30:11.700 their their hazards as well potentially uh again some people are questioning though you know and

00:30:17.380 to be fair uh there are other cryptocurrencies and and uh you know is there no merit to them i mean

00:30:22.420 they you know one of them had to start somewhere but is there there should be room for other

00:30:26.020 legitimate ones on the market if they're following similar uh models is there not yeah well there's

00:30:31.860 a couple couple points to that i guess one is that the the fact that bitcoin doesn't have a leader

00:30:39.220 was kind of an emergent thing when bitcoin was brand new um nobody knew about cryptocurrency

00:30:44.340 nobody was following this stuff and uh the the founder who uh remained anonymous uh when he

00:30:51.380 launched it someone potentially named satoshi nakamoto uh disappeared around a year after

00:30:56.740 launching it and so what happened at that point um satoshi had been largely in charge of the

00:31:02.580 development and the path forward and when that happened uh no one was in charge and so that's a

00:31:07.620 pretty hard thing to replicate because this this guy who or woman or whoever this was uh walked

00:31:12.980 away with or walked away from uh tens of billions of dollars at this point and so that's the

00:31:18.820 temptation that we haven't seen anyone else be able to avoid and so when you look at something

00:31:22.660 like ethereum which is the number two uh cryptocurrency by market cap and there's about

00:31:28.260 five or six founders and most of them have become billionaires because of the fact that they founded

00:31:32.340 this thing and uh these billionaires now get on a conference call every six months and decide what

00:31:38.580 the supply will be and so they're no different than a central bank they're just a central bank

00:31:43.060 of basement nerds instead of a central bank of ivory tower economists and as long as there's

00:31:48.820 someone out there who can make that kind of choice and say, yeah, we're going to print more,

00:31:53.940 then you don't have a hard currency like you do with Bitcoin.

00:31:58.580 Okay. So how has, well, both, I guess, Bitcoin in general in your business,

00:32:02.660 there's two things that governments everywhere hate. It's anybody stepping in on what they

00:32:08.900 consider their domain and their turf and their inability to actually control it. What sort of

00:32:15.380 regulatory pushback or challenges have cryptocurrencies and bitcoin been enduring

00:32:21.460 i mean outside of canada and within i there's like a lot of uh control issues going on right now

00:32:27.060 yeah absolutely so we're bitcoin well and my previous businesses and basically anyone who

00:32:31.620 wants to buy or sell bitcoin within canada is regulated by fintrac which is an arm of the

00:32:36.020 department of finance uh we're regulated for the purposes of anti-money laundering and we're

00:32:40.580 required to collect some customer information and make sure that we're not processing transactions

00:32:45.940 over certain amounts without proper reporting so there is some regulation there hasn't been

00:32:51.460 a large-scale crackdown really anywhere in terms of trying to ban bitcoin there's a couple countries

00:32:56.820 like smaller countries that have tried it uh very unsuccessfully you know i think we've seen with

00:33:02.020 you know the war on drugs and everything else the governments of the world are not really capable of

00:33:06.260 banning anything that people actually want and so um right now most of the world's governments are

00:33:13.140 are looking to regulate it make sure that it's not being used for money laundering

00:33:17.540 meanwhile the number one currency in the world for money laundering remains the us dollar and

00:33:21.860 probably will not change um it's kind of interesting when you look at uh the way that

00:33:27.540 governments see this stuff in relation to what el salvador is doing because very notably

00:33:31.380 um al salvador already didn't have control over their monetary policy they were using the u.s

00:33:36.380 dollar and so they didn't have that tool that governments like canada are using right now when

00:33:41.500 it's like you know what we'd like to do some unprecedented spending on all these great things

00:33:45.440 that uh that my friends would like and you know we don't have a way to raise those taxes we don't

00:33:51.120 have a way to borrow that money and so we're just going to print it and so that's the big obstacle

00:33:56.160 for governments to adopt it right now is they'd have to give up that tool and it was a lot easier

00:34:01.500 for El Salvador to do that because they didn't they'd already given up that tool to the United

00:34:05.340 States years ago. Yeah well and again as you said if people want something they'll get it. I had the

00:34:11.660 opportunity right towards the end of the 80s actually to travel to the Soviet Union and it

00:34:16.420 was a very eye-opening and interesting trip to a country that was still communist in a couple of

00:34:20.820 fronts. One of which was the ruble at that time was worth about two American dollars.

00:34:27.180 I don't know where it is today. Like you need something like a thousand rubles for a dollar

00:34:30.560 or something. I mean, when the Soviet Union collapsed, their currency just went with it.

00:34:34.060 It was just went to total because it was purely manipulated by the state, of course, at that time.

00:34:39.520 But people knew that at that time, because those of us coming in, if you had American dollars,

00:34:43.840 when you went into that country, the real purchasing power on the ground of American

00:34:48.660 dollars was far more than the official exchange rate. Like people were desperate to get those

00:34:54.040 American dollars, especially if they're trying to escape the country, because if they could get

00:34:56.640 those dollars, they need those to be able to get out. Arubal was worthless outside of the Soviet

00:35:00.500 Union. But this sort of currency, this sort of means for somebody then, I guess in some senses

00:35:06.960 could empower people in states that are oppressive like that. You have a means to store transferable

00:35:14.320 wealth that's outside of the government's control, even if you leave the country.

00:35:18.660 Yeah, we're seeing that already. You know, some places where the currency has really already fallen apart, like Venezuela, Bitcoin, along with the U.S. dollars becoming like the de facto currency.

00:35:29.340 And there are official exchange rates that nobody actually pays attention to.

00:35:33.340 Some other countries like Argentina and Brazil are in similar straits where, you know, they have the official exchange rate.

00:35:39.520 The currency hasn't fallen off a cliff yet, but no one is following the official exchange rate within the country.

00:35:45.400 and then to your your your final example i think the biggest one is china where um you know if you

00:35:51.400 want to perform any kind of commerce in the country right now your your money is essentially

00:35:55.700 going through the central bank and that comes with all the capital controls involved in that

00:35:59.800 and obviously we're seeing um you know massive outflows of money from china that's coming into

00:36:05.800 all of our real estate markets and everything else over here um it's very attractive for them

00:36:10.820 have a way that they can get money uh either in as payment for goods and services or out uh without

00:36:16.900 government meddling in their in their finances so yeah it's it's taken off in a lot of weird

00:36:21.540 niche ways all over the world and we probably don't even know all the ways that it's being used

00:36:26.420 yeah well something in kind of good and bad like myself i'm a libertarian i i believe full free

00:36:30.420 trade let's just let it go and let it go where it lands uh but for those who do believe in some

00:36:34.660 degree of government trade control or even embargoes against rogue states and things

00:36:39.780 such as that it wouldn't uh i mean one of the areas they've been able to maintain those is

00:36:43.380 being able to control or at least watch the transference of currency and goods and service

00:36:48.820 you know how it applies to goods and services coming from those countries uh cryptocurrencies

00:36:52.900 would undercut that ability i imagine for uh that kind of state-by-state control yeah i mean in a

00:36:57.860 lot of ways it does it undercuts the ability for direct control but very relevantly the bitcoin

00:37:02.980 network is an entirely open ledger so everything that you do on there um can be watched now that's

00:37:09.300 not necessarily linked to your identity and it's not necessarily linked to any other kind of

00:37:13.780 information but the flow of funds is all public and so it's not really like a great way to hide

00:37:19.540 money from the government but it is it is a good way to prevent the government from

00:37:24.260 from stopping you from using your money if you're living in a despotic regime

00:37:29.460 yeah and the transference so again you know as you've mentioned a couple of times money laundering

00:37:34.100 concerns are of concern i mean for for large-scale criminal activities that's been one of the areas

00:37:39.380 that's been uh where the state perhaps has had a little more ability to you know influence some

00:37:43.940 control especially as we're going to a more cashless society uh it's getting more and more

00:37:48.420 difficult for some of the critical enterprises to launder that cryptocurrencies are potentially

00:37:53.620 giving them a bit of a way but you're saying that it's still quite trackable then yeah it's it's

00:37:57.620 quite trackable and and frankly like with the restrictions that are in place from the government

00:38:02.740 like our our limit is uh is ten thousand dollars before we have to report it to a government entity

00:38:09.700 that's not the kind of scale that's useful for large-scale money laundering and when we look at

00:38:14.340 like the kind of money laundering that has gone uh largely unpunished from major banks all around the

00:38:18.820 world where you've had things like the mexican cartels depositing literally billions of dollars

00:38:23.620 in cash uh with no oversight whatsoever um it's very clear that the the world's money launderers

00:38:29.940 want to use us dollars and they'd prefer to use the legacy banking systems where there is a

00:38:34.660 corruptible influence in some way there's no way to corrupt the bitcoin blockchain so even if you

00:38:39.780 uh do manage to get bitcoins as a as a criminal there's no way to get rid of that record there's

00:38:44.180 no one that you can bribe or or threaten to to erase that record yeah so so in in some senses

00:38:51.140 it reduces the the ability of it it's a valid concern some people have though but i mean as

00:38:55.140 you pointed out the same controls land on it i mean yeah if you walk into a bank day after day

00:38:59.380 with $9,999 in cash. Eventually somebody's going to ask you a few questions. I imagine if you're

00:39:06.660 purchasing Bitcoin in those kinds of volumes, even if you're trying to stay under the radar,

00:39:10.500 you might grab some adverse attention to your activities, I guess you could say.

00:39:15.140 So with your group though, I mean, and that's what's interesting for, you know, with these

00:39:19.220 ATMs, these are physical ATMs then or they're virtual? Yeah, they're physical ATMs. They're

00:39:24.820 like a kiosk that we have in bars and coffee shops and a variety of different places. And

00:39:29.140 that it tends to be the fastest and safest way to get bitcoins so most of our customers are looking

00:39:33.940 to get bitcoins for something that they're going to spend fairly immediately or uh we're looking

00:39:38.500 to try it out right away so we're not the cheapest way to buy bitcoins there's lots of online uh

00:39:43.460 online sources that can sell bitcoins cheaper but we're we're more of like a convenient service or

00:39:48.020 like a white glove service for people who need a bit more help or people who want to get their

00:39:51.780 bitcoins immediately yeah well it's like a larger a big turning point in my view i mean to when it

00:39:58.100 it comes to practical use i mean it's one thing to be able to buy something say if i bought a

00:40:02.020 whole pile of stock and something has done great for me well that's fantastic but i can't come in

00:40:05.540 with a common share and pay for my bar tab with it or fill out my vehicle with it but if you're

00:40:10.580 getting closer to the point where we can utilize this currency in our day-to-day activities i i

00:40:16.420 anticipate that could lead to quite a large uptick in it in general i mean it makes it much more

00:40:21.460 practical for a smaller user then yeah absolutely so we're right now our core business is that on

00:40:26.820 an off ramp we buy and we sell bitcoin uh but we're working on that whole middle piece of what

00:40:31.380 do you do in the middle with your bitcoins once you have them and so we've got um a pilot that

00:40:35.940 we're going to be launching with the national retailer here fairly soon um that most people

00:40:40.260 will know that uh will allow them to take bitcoins for uh goods on their website and we have um you

00:40:47.540 know merchant services that we have uh testing at a few of our our locations where you know people

00:40:52.740 come in and buy a coffee um with bitcoin and then the merchant gets the choice of either taking the

00:40:57.380 bitcoin or having it automatically converted into canadian dollars so they don't need to

00:41:01.940 necessarily take the day-to-day volatility on on the coins like that yeah and as a former bar

00:41:08.100 owner i i know i mean some of it would sound exciting to be able to take different forms

00:41:11.940 of currency but i mean i don't necessarily want to gamble on the day-to-day uh values of those i

00:41:16.500 mean i want to broaden the amount of abilities people have to pay me but it sure would suck if

00:41:21.220 uh yeah i had a great bar night on friday night but so you know somebody suddenly dumped a whole

00:41:25.380 bunch of bitcoins somewhere else and my revenues were cut in half uh so that instant conversion

00:41:31.380 is pretty quick then i guess from a a vendor standpoint then yeah absolutely it's from from

00:41:37.620 the standpoint of the the merchant um it looks just like using like your regular debit or monaris

00:41:42.820 you know you get you get uh the payment happens at the terminal and then uh you get settlement like

00:41:47.700 the next day or the day after that in canadian dollars okay no that's good to know i mean

00:41:52.260 especially in bars you know with narrow margin like i refuse to take american express nothing

00:41:56.020 against them personally but their their bloody fees were just about as high as my profit margin

00:42:00.340 so there's just not much point even taking their means of payment so uh bitcoin i guess it well

00:42:06.980 again it's the choice of the merchant whether they want to go into that realm or not but uh you know

00:42:11.060 most of them you want to give your customers as many means as possible to buy your product so

00:42:15.140 So that's another very interesting development with things.

00:42:19.520 Yeah, definitely.

00:42:20.340 And that brings up kind of an interesting point about the El Salvador thing that I noticed in there.

00:42:26.160 You mentioned that you want to, the merchants have a choice,

00:42:29.040 but with the new law in El Salvador, the merchants there are not going to have a choice,

00:42:32.720 which is kind of ironic.

00:42:34.060 So every merchant in El Salvador is going to be required to accept Bitcoin.

00:42:37.300 They're going to have a state-issued Bitcoin wallet and Bitcoin payment system.

00:42:42.540 I'm not a huge fan of that, generally.

00:42:44.140 I'd rather let the market decide and let businesses make their own decisions on whether it's a good payment tool for them.

00:42:51.520 But I guess if a country is going to try and embrace it as their currency, they have to kind of force a buy-in.

00:42:58.320 So it'll be an interesting experiment to watch.

00:43:01.520 As you said, it's kind of a turnaround.

00:43:03.480 It goes full circle to where it was.

00:43:05.280 It's just that the state isn't controlling the fund itself.

00:43:09.040 They're just controlling people's ability to use it or transfer it.

00:43:12.120 but yeah it's it's a fast changing market i guess in the usability but it's really come along i mean

00:43:19.860 we'd heard about this 10 years ago but still people are whatever you know it's so long but

00:43:23.500 now it's kind of in common conversation we're seeing it reported in the business reports i

00:43:26.860 mean some some very large entities are starting to buy into these uh uh currencies uh particularly

00:43:31.880 bitcoin yeah we're starting to see um you know most notably micro strategy which is a large

00:43:37.600 publicly traded uh it company and then we've seen everything from tesla to a bunch of square a bunch

00:43:44.960 of other smaller companies starting to put uh bitcoin on the balance sheet primarily for that

00:43:48.880 same reason that uh that i mentioned wherein if you're sitting on dollars and you don't you don't

00:43:53.680 intend to spend them soon um you're virtually guaranteed to start losing purchasing power the

00:43:58.240 longer you sit on those and so they're looking at it like you know what if we're sitting on this

00:44:02.160 bitcoin instead um our purchasing power is more likely to go up than down yeah and again you talk

00:44:08.480 about using it as a hedge people used to use metals for that and they've found something else to

00:44:13.280 potentially uh reduce the ability to get nailed when the currency uh goes down um so i mean uh

00:44:19.440 just to kind of close up then so with this service you said actually with the atms being around if

00:44:25.120 somebody signs up and gets that do you mail out a physical uh debit card of some sort or something

00:44:30.080 to people at some point no we don't we don't do a debit card service so most of our users um

00:44:34.880 use their own wallets we do have a wallet that we use that's like a mobile wallet you'd put on your

00:44:38.720 phone um anyone's free to use whatever wallet they want and when uh when we uh send bitcoins

00:44:46.080 from our atm it goes directly into the custody of the user so we don't ever hold uh the money

00:44:51.280 on behalf of our users and we think that's really important there's been a number of um

00:44:56.080 a number of cases uh you know around the world but especially in canada where

00:45:01.040 bitcoin exchanges who've been holding customer funds have either lost or stolen the customer

00:45:05.840 funds and we don't we don't want to be in a position to uh you know either either lose funds

00:45:12.240 or be accused of stealing funds or or anything like that we think it's pretty important for

00:45:15.840 everyone to learn to to hold their own coins and uh the saying in the in the bitcoin community for

00:45:21.840 a long time has has been be your own bank and uh that that's that's very relevant i think

00:45:28.000 being your own bank comes with a lot of power a lot of financial sovereignty that the

00:45:33.280 the custody of those coins gives you but it also comes with the responsibility of keeping them safe

00:45:38.320 so if you get into a boating accident and your your phone goes uh off the side your bitcoins are

00:45:43.520 lost and there's not necessarily anyone who can get those back unless you have a good backup

00:45:48.560 yeah yeah there's that other horror story of that gentleman who got a whole bunch of them

00:45:52.940 many years ago and didn't think much of it and then and lost his ability to access them and

00:45:57.460 they are now worth what hundreds of millions or something crazy like that yeah it puts that

00:46:01.460 responsibility on the individual and and that's a good i'm glad you distinguished that difference

00:46:06.300 because yeah a bank you're entrusting them with your money they're giving you a card to make it

00:46:10.540 practical for you to access your money in this case the money's always yours but what you're

00:46:14.780 providing is the service to use it in more broad manners on direct purchases. Yeah, absolutely.

00:46:21.100 Okay. So where do people go to look into Bitcoin well, or if they're looking to, you know,

00:46:26.800 set up an account so they can use these ATMs or purchase more widely with Bitcoin and different

00:46:30.840 denominations? Yeah. I mean, you can check out our website at bitcoinwell.com. That's got a full

00:46:35.700 list of our services and our ATM locations. And anyone who wants to get into Bitcoin in a larger

00:46:43.020 way we have a whole like i mentioned a white glove service uh wherein we help people set up

00:46:48.160 the wallet teach them how to back everything up teach them how to use the bitcoin and uh they can

00:46:52.920 sit down with one of our experts in either calgary or edmonton and uh to get get a hold of that team

00:46:58.420 is otc at bitcoinwealth.com great otc at bitcoinwealth.com well i i appreciate you coming

00:47:06.720 on and like i said it's it's a growing thing it's it's fast but for us uh commoners who don't play

00:47:11.280 in big finance or don't have large funds to to dive into these it gives a more modest way to

00:47:16.960 start entering that kind of market perhaps and looking at it more practical uses so

00:47:20.880 i appreciate you know you're clarifying a number of things on it i came into this like i said truly

00:47:24.480 not fully understanding i still don't have a i still have a little issue grappling that whole

00:47:28.560 mining thing but there's always lots of areas to research and look into that so i appreciate your

00:47:34.000 time today and uh we'll look forward to seeing how the the cryptocurrencies and bitcoin and bitcoin

00:47:39.600 while it all developed. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great. Thanks, Dave. We'll talk again later.

00:47:49.360 So there, yeah, as I'd said to Dave there, I mean, that clears up for me. I'm still,

00:47:54.960 I won't call myself an expert on these things. It's such an abstract sort of thing,

00:47:59.280 but that's the reality. As some people pointed out, I said, well, with this, you know, unfounded

00:48:05.600 currency not based on gold and something well fiat currency and says they said as a counter

00:48:09.680 the government's doing the same thing you know this is something though that's uh outside of

00:48:14.480 the control of the government if you don't want justin trudeau and and others who were controlling

00:48:19.840 you know the central bank to manipulate the value of of your currency or dollars well

00:48:26.160 bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are are the way to get out of that i mean it's a truly

00:48:30.800 user-driven, market-driven sort of way of purchasing goods and services from each other.

00:48:38.500 You know, I mean, it goes much further back, I guess, as to how currencies work.

00:48:43.060 You know, I mean, as society advanced, larger trade happened.

00:48:46.060 You couldn't do the old barter ways.

00:48:47.740 You know, you're not going to trade your eggs for some hand-woven products.

00:48:51.400 We needed to come up with currencies.

00:48:53.020 And it was the role of government.

00:48:54.520 But we're into this fantastic new world of modern communications and instant transmission

00:48:59.000 of data, which has allowed the formation of these kinds of currencies. I'm just kind of

00:49:05.160 excited and looking forward to it because I'm very fearful on looking at the whole world economy

00:49:09.240 right now with this nightmare of state borrowing and spending and getting into business, all sorts

00:49:19.560 of things in response to the pandemic. So Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies give us a way to get perhaps

00:49:26.080 out of the government's play. I mean, we're still stuck under their management in general,

00:49:31.820 but at least in the currency areas. So, and what I liked as well is it gives an area for the little

00:49:38.280 guys like me. Hey, I don't have a big budget, but I wouldn't mind, you know, getting a little and

00:49:41.580 starting to utilize these kinds of currencies and in a practical manner, again, you know, I can

00:49:46.560 potentially buy a pizza with it or whatnot. This is the way to do it. So it's a pretty interesting

00:49:53.460 field and it's really starting to come down more to a ground level practical area. So I've still

00:49:59.440 got about 10 minutes before Brad Field comes on to talk about his mayoral campaign. Speaking of

00:50:05.940 finance with the government, I'm just looking at a story here. The CMHC, you know, Black Walks

00:50:10.120 Reporter, I got to give it to those guys. They really break some great stuff online.

00:50:14.780 They're in Ottawa. They put out, they dig through the documents and such and they break some of

00:50:21.700 these fantastic stories. The CMHC, which is the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation,

00:50:28.040 and they're the federal mortgage insurer. They're a quasi-government institution

00:50:32.560 that really controls our housing markets. And it's a troubling area in some senses,

00:50:38.780 because of course, for most of us, that's the biggest purchase we'll ever make in our life.

00:50:44.580 Our biggest investment. If you bought a house, you got a mortgage, you really want that thing

00:50:48.700 to maintain its value potentially and then hopefully grow for you and perhaps your retirement's

00:50:53.100 riding on it. These guys are, I think some of their intent is good. You know, they want to

00:50:57.040 stabilize things, but they delve into politics too much. You know, they get, that's the problem

00:51:02.960 with the government organization in general. So, I mean, a big story that hit last summer,

00:51:07.240 Black Locks Broke Fat, was the CMHC was actually funding studies to look into how the government

00:51:13.440 could tax your home equity. I mean, talking about scary, your nest egg, your thing that you put

00:51:18.900 everything you have into and built on, whether for an inheritance for your kids or your retirement

00:51:24.920 or whatever you want to do, it's yours. But they are talking about taxing your equity. And why is

00:51:30.880 this branch of the government even talking about that anyways? Aren't you there as a mortgage

00:51:33.960 insurer? Aren't you there just to try and facilitate and stabilize our ability to buy and

00:51:38.960 own a home or a property? So that was very distressing. And the government, of course,

00:51:43.300 they all deny. No, we didn't. We're not looking there. We're not looking there. And then later

00:51:45.900 with more study, they found out, no, that's exactly what they're looking at. And I'm sure

00:51:49.720 they're still looking at it. We've got a government that is on the brink of going broke in many,

00:51:54.680 many ways. And yeah, the currency is going in the crapper. So one of the areas they can hit us with

00:52:00.940 is going after our physical assets and what bigger physical assets than the millions and

00:52:04.980 millions of houses across the country and businesses. So for them to go after that equity

00:52:09.380 is very troubling. But now there's something they've come out with and Black Locks broke that

00:52:13.900 as well as the CMHC is pushing for, they're saying, if we want to fight climate change,

00:52:20.800 we have to force people into high density living. They want to go completely contrary to what the

00:52:26.820 market trend is right now. And this keeps tying back to people bring it up a lot. And boy, I don't

00:52:33.460 know if it's purposeful or not, but when the UN names their initiatives and things, they almost

00:52:39.100 make it sound conspiratorial right off the bat i swear so that they can dismiss people when they

00:52:44.460 bring it up and say oh that's just a conspiracy theory so agenda 2030 you know it sounds like

00:52:50.100 area 51 those sorts of things but it's real it's from the un you can go look it up i mean it's all

00:52:55.920 there and the municipal governments are the ones that pull this sort of thing off this manipulation

00:53:00.380 this pushing and uh they want this high density living and they want to shove everybody into these

00:53:06.840 downtowns and you look at the actions of people like minchi and so on i don't think they're part

00:53:10.620 of a grand conspiracy with the un but they're guided by those principles it's all that same

00:53:14.620 group of socialists and that's what it is and uh there was another thing i saw you know i mentioned

00:53:20.340 earlier when i traveled to the soviet union at the end of the 80s was the wonderful living under

00:53:24.160 state socialism you know that yeah that nobody was homeless but i tell you that the giant city

00:53:28.580 of moscow back then with those bland box like row housing was awful it was horrible that's what the

00:53:35.240 state housing hey that was high density living probably low carbon impact for the time there's

00:53:41.180 revolting there's no individuality there was no footprint of your own that you could build develop

00:53:46.380 on enjoy and that's what these guys don't like so the CMHC though they want to try and find ways to

00:53:52.860 push people into more high density living they want to push us away from the suburbs they want

00:53:56.980 to push us into the apartment buildings downtown whether you like it or not that's that's distressing

00:54:04.200 And that's a story we have to watch closely as we see this government scrambling, maybe that'll be their means.

00:54:09.600 I mean, they're talking about that. If we can steal enough home equity from people who have freestanding single family dwellings, they'll be forced to live downtown, you know, because we won't steal that.

00:54:18.900 And I call it stealing. Yeah, I'm one of those taxation is theft people.

00:54:23.280 They'll say we won't steal that from the condos, from the townhouses, from the downtowns.

00:54:28.200 towns. We're only taking it from the single family dwellings. And we're doing it to end

00:54:34.600 climate change. Here's the other scary precedent we've hit with government, though, where they've

00:54:38.360 suspended our individual rights when they can declare an emergency, when they say it's a health

00:54:43.180 issue. And we've seen that language used. Biden used it recently. He called climate change a

00:54:47.380 world health issue. That's framing the discussion to say, we can suspend your rights because it's

00:54:53.400 for the sake of everybody's health. That's really, really disturbing. So keep an eye on that. Keep an

00:55:00.920 eye on Blacklock's reporter. And yeah, the Western Standard reported that one. You know, Dave wrote

00:55:04.480 up the story on it. There's a lot of things to watch, but this is an interesting one among the

00:55:08.660 bunch. I'm going to step up for a one minute break before we get on to Bradfield. We'll talk a little

00:55:12.780 bit about a few more issues after I get back until he comes on there. So just hang tough. I'll be back

00:55:18.100 in one minute. I had a lot of coffee this morning. That's the only problem with this where there's

00:55:22.360 not make commercial breaks like live radio. So please pardon me. I'll be back shortly.

00:55:52.360 Thank you.

00:56:22.360 ah that's much better i can thank uh nathan guida our uh tuesday wednesday and thursday show host

00:56:37.480 for uh pointing out that little trick uh now i can speak a little more slowly a little more

00:56:41.200 relaxed as we go forward so uh thanks for indulging me so uh this is from slayer mtb a

00:56:48.960 commenter, do your own research. And for the record, if you lose your phone, your bitcoins

00:56:53.000 or cryptocurrency is not lost. As long as you have your keys backed up, you can gain access

00:56:58.240 from another device. So that's getting back to where we're talking about. It's the consumer

00:57:03.540 responsibility, right? Like, you know, secure your resources, how you will to protect yourself

00:57:12.200 with those sorts of currencies, like anything else. So people say it's risky. I found it,

00:57:16.600 like I said, fascinating with that story of the fellow who locked himself out of millions and

00:57:20.960 millions of dollars of value of cryptocurrency because he didn't know his passwords. But that

00:57:25.840 can be prevented. I mean, you could probably look in history and find stories of people who lost

00:57:30.240 millions because they stored it in their mattress and the house burned down too. So take care. And

00:57:35.560 I imagine if it could be stolen, you know, like anything else, if you aren't taking care of your

00:57:40.560 access and means of getting to things too. And again, getting back to it, there are other

00:57:47.760 cryptocurrencies out there. I mean, this guest speaks to it and he spoke to the broader issue.

00:57:52.000 He certainly got a built-in bias towards Bitcoin because that's what their company

00:57:55.340 deals with. I won't speak to the value or stability of the other cryptocurrencies out there

00:58:03.920 that are developing, but they're interesting to watch as well. Still, there was nobody better

00:58:09.960 to speak to, in my view, to talk about the broader issue than somebody who's immersed

00:58:13.880 in that business itself. Because again, it's huge, it's building, and we're going to see

00:58:20.640 more of it in future years, clearly. I mean, as I said, some heavyweight businesses are

00:58:23.880 buying into it in a big way to hedge themselves against what they see to be government currency

00:58:28.300 collapses. We're going to see other individuals doing that. And as I said, having that ability

00:58:33.720 To be able to just go and purchase products, you know, with a debit form and ATMs around, really, I think, is a big game changer.

00:58:44.760 You know, it takes it out of just your speculating and playing on the computer and down to the point of, yeah, going to a coffee shop and buying a coffee or even, who knows, it'll get to the point of buying cars and such.

00:58:54.780 And person to person, you know, whatever you want to buy your neighbor's lawnmower.

00:58:58.240 Well, you're going to have this way if your neighbor's got that as well.

00:59:00.540 I mean, it's really fascinating to watch because this is, I mean, brand new, brand new worldwide history in a sense, you know.

00:59:06.940 It's Greg Murawski.

00:59:08.840 By the way, it's not a secret that the Russian standard of living hasn't improved much outside the shiny Moscow and Petersburg.

00:59:15.660 It's mostly backward and darkness under the new czar.

00:59:19.240 Yeah, Russia is a fascinating country.

00:59:22.040 You know, they're such a strong, powerful people.

00:59:26.400 I mean, the individuals, Russians are a separate breed.

00:59:28.900 They really are.

00:59:30.140 But I swear they thrive on rough living sometimes.

00:59:34.580 I mean, you look to the history of it, and they've always just been a tough, tough nation under top-down leadership.

00:59:40.980 I mean, breaking away from the communist system was great, but of course the bandits rose to the top.

00:59:46.440 I think they're far better today than they were 30 years ago, but they've got a long ways to go to get to the freedoms and the prosperity and things that the rest of us and the rest of the development world are enjoying right now.

00:59:58.920 But they're on the right track.

01:00:00.900 But yeah, Putin, man, that guy scares the tar out of me.

01:00:03.500 He is not your run-of-the-mill leader out there, even though it's not a communist state.

01:00:09.580 It's not a wide-open democracy.

01:00:13.360 And yeah, that standard of living in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

01:00:17.240 It was Leningrad and St. Petersburg when I went dating myself again.

01:00:23.280 But it's getting there.

01:00:25.180 Yeah, the criminals are rising to the top.

01:00:27.000 But I think eventually the people will get up there.

01:00:29.020 And I hope so.

01:00:29.540 Because, again, I mean, they're a tough people in Russia and an odd one.

01:00:34.420 They're different from us.

01:00:35.200 They really are.

01:00:36.160 But they're great people as well.

01:00:37.800 And, you know, the Cold War is behind us as they develop.

01:00:41.020 I think we'll all be better for it in years going forward.

01:00:45.860 It's something to look forward to.

01:00:49.040 Now, what else have we got?

01:00:50.860 Some recent stories before Mr. Field joins us here.

01:00:54.700 Oh, yes.

01:00:57.480 C10, the internet gagging bill.

01:00:59.780 It looks like the liberals and the NDP and the bloc have all gotten together, even though

01:01:03.100 they talked big, the other left-wing opposition parties as if they were going to hold it up

01:01:06.780 because they like to pretend that they support free speech, free expression, free press,

01:01:10.880 and all those great things.

01:01:12.320 They're all getting together and they ramrodded that through.

01:01:15.380 We're going to be stuck under that.

01:01:16.740 Michael Geist and some others who speak fantastically on communications, modern media,

01:01:22.640 things such as that have spoken, you know, out strongly against this bill, but it doesn't seem

01:01:30.100 to matter. It's gone through. And I was reading a book recently. It's a book full of essays. It

01:01:36.100 was called From Riel to Reform. It was put out at the start of the 90s. It's a collection of a

01:01:40.760 bunch of essays talking, you know, about right from Louis Riel to, yeah, reform, which was big

01:01:44.900 at that time, just Western alienation in general and frustrations of things. But there was a

01:01:50.740 fascinating tidbit in it from cable you know cable at the start of the 70s so Pierre Trudeau's time

01:01:56.420 uh cable television was coming in and it was coming into people's households but it was

01:02:01.820 bringing in of course all this access to foreign content for those of us old enough remember

01:02:05.140 you used to have your radio antenna or your tv antenna on top of the roof your three channels

01:02:09.140 you'd get what you could you'd hope for the best and uh in Ontario with with uh cities that were

01:02:16.540 front near the border. They'd always gotten a lot of American content, you know, because you could

01:02:20.880 just get it over the airwaves from Detroit or Buffalo or cities on the other side. We see in

01:02:25.140 the West, we didn't have that. South of Alberta, south of Saskatchewan, there were no big centers.

01:02:29.080 So we weren't getting exposed to that American television and the CRTC and the government were

01:02:32.960 well aware of it. So there was a battle back in 71 with cable television was coming in and the CRTC

01:02:40.480 CRTC took control of cable television because they were worried and they were actually restraining

01:02:46.580 it. It took longer for it to come in in Alberta and Edmonton and the writings on it were that

01:02:50.280 we can't have the West exposed to all that foreign content. We have to protect Canadian culture. Thus

01:02:55.300 the CRTC has to take over cable television and the regulation of it. Boy, does that ever sound

01:03:00.600 familiar. 50 years later, here's the CRTC, but what they're after is our internet access and the

01:03:06.580 government's using C-10 as the means to do it. The more things change, the more they stay the

01:03:11.160 same. As we develop with more means to communicate in unfettered ways with each other, the government

01:03:15.700 scrambles with more ways to try and control our communications with each other. This push and pull

01:03:20.880 never seems to end. But part of that is our democratic exercise. As much as I like to gripe

01:03:27.340 and go on and so on, we are, for the most part, a free country. We do have elections. We can choose

01:03:33.240 our representatives. And coming up this fall, we've got a municipal election across all of

01:03:38.340 Alberta. There's going to be a lot of items on it, as well as the equalization referendum.

01:03:43.260 Calgary's got, this is a big one. We don't see it that often. Incumbent mayors usually

01:03:47.540 get in there. They stay there till they feel like retiring. And then they move on. In this case,

01:03:54.060 Nahed Nenshi is moving on. He's finished. We're going to have a new mayor in Calgary this fall,

01:03:59.320 no matter what who it is well the battle is just starting to shape up for that and the candidates

01:04:04.480 are coming in so i've got brad field here how are you doing brad good corey how are you very good

01:04:11.920 thanks so uh yeah brad field has entered the race it's uh i don't know if there's 15 or 16 people

01:04:17.120 but that's typical when a mayor has stepped aside and in the reality you're going to have perhaps

01:04:21.400 five serious mayoral contenders who are really you know pounding the pavement and bringing forth

01:04:26.940 their different visions. To be honest, as I was saying at the start, I mean, I'm a political

01:04:31.820 weenie. I've been at it for quite some time and I'm used to my political circles. So a lot of the

01:04:36.740 names we see are familiar people who've been active with things, but you kind of came out.

01:04:41.640 I haven't seen much political history for you. And that's, I'm sure a lot of people see that

01:04:45.640 as an advantage. You haven't been soiled by the process yet. We'll see. But perhaps we can start

01:04:52.400 with. So you're running for mayor this fall and a bit of background on yourself.

01:04:56.140 Yeah, I've been in Calgary nearly five decades, raised in South Calgary, I grew up in South

01:05:01.840 Calgary, riding my bike through Fish Creek Park to Midnapore when Midnapore used to be

01:05:06.480 out of town.

01:05:07.320 And it was so we considered that a road trip.

01:05:09.300 So yeah, I married my high school sweetheart, raised three wonderful kids here in Calgary,

01:05:14.840 Mitch, Kyle and Haley, they're 29, 27 and 22.

01:05:18.600 And yeah, so born entrepreneur, started my first business when I was 12, bought my first

01:05:23.100 real estate right here in calgary in my teenage years and went on to build buy and sell businesses

01:05:27.980 in different jurisdictions in different countries around the world in different industry sectors so

01:05:32.460 yeah fantastic happy to be here looking forward to leading this city uh going forward and uh yeah

01:05:38.620 excited well that's great and so in this case as a person who wasn't so politically inclined before

01:05:44.700 you've obviously been ambitious and motivated and a determined calgarian what was your tipping

01:05:49.420 point though what made you said okay you know all this stuff's behind me now i'm gonna throw my hat

01:05:53.340 in there and uh get into the running for mayor yeah so this journey started for me about four

01:05:58.860 and a half five years ago when i was approached by some calgarians that i worked in business as

01:06:02.940 well as in the community with and they asked me if i had ever considered running for public office

01:06:08.860 the mayor's chair and i said uh hell no never considered it um at that point i was just a

01:06:14.060 citizen with an opinion and uh so i declined at that point but i thought you know with my work

01:06:19.100 uh not only in the business community but in uh non-for-profit in the community i thought you know

01:06:24.220 is this necessarily a stretch for me and so uh i injected myself into the conversation by showing

01:06:30.220 up at council meetings and sitting in and just you know watching you know the good the bad and

01:06:34.300 the ugly the what's working for calgary what's not and so fast forward to 2017 uh when uh mayor

01:06:41.500 and she was reelected those same phone calls and emails came in and asking again and i said hell

01:06:47.020 yeah i'm in uh so i've been on this for just over three years excited and working towards this

01:06:51.820 campaign year so yeah it's you know we're at a point where uh you know we're needing strong

01:06:56.380 leadership uh more than anything else we need some strong positive collaborative leadership

01:07:00.700 here in the city of calgary and my track record uh both in the community and in in business

01:07:05.660 is proven and so yeah i feel like i can add to the city of calgary and lead the city

01:07:09.980 into the next generations well i mean hats off for your ability to sit in on council meetings

01:07:15.340 because they'll have one or two effects i think on people when they actually sit in and see how

01:07:18.940 those sausages are made you're either going to be horrified by the process and and the

01:07:23.740 infighting or you'll be inspired to come in and try and fix it up and change it because

01:07:28.460 particularly in this last couple of terms it's you know i think most pundits and other individuals

01:07:33.500 agree this is one of the most volatile dysfunctional councils we've had in living

01:07:39.260 memory almost. I mean, there's always some flare-ups. We've seen that all the way back to

01:07:42.700 Al-Dour and so on, but it's been something outstanding this time around. And that's one

01:07:49.200 of the things I want to see, I'm hoping, as a Calgarian in a mayor, is people point out it's

01:07:53.120 just one vote out of 15. I mean, there's only so much a mayor can do, but the mayor is the one who

01:07:57.080 guides that room, provides that leadership to try and keep people working in a productive means. So

01:08:02.280 how do you feel you could, you know, herd those cats then as opposed to other, you know,

01:08:07.800 people's visions on it i guess yeah there's no question we're we're in a very dysfunctional

01:08:12.840 situation we've got council members that literally haven't spoken in over a year and a half because

01:08:17.900 they had a disagreement uh you know conflict is good you know there's nothing wrong with

01:08:21.760 disagreeing as long as you go into a conversation with what i say an open heart and an open mind

01:08:26.740 and be open to different people's opinions that's where progress really happens that's not happening

01:08:31.460 right now i think uh our current council would prefer to argue on twitter than have a discussion

01:08:36.680 across a boardroom table or in council chambers so uh you know leadership starts at the top tone

01:08:41.480 starts at the top uh with my track record and history and leadership yeah uh it's building

01:08:46.760 those relationships with different individuals not just on council but within city administration

01:08:51.720 right down through uh the 14 000 employees i'm also a vendor with the senior cavalry and many

01:08:57.640 other jurisdictions throughout north america and different government sectors so i have a good

01:09:01.960 working knowledge on how uh how to work with government uh and you know the vast majority of uh

01:09:07.640 city of calgary employees come to work every single day wanting to provide value for the citizens

01:09:12.680 uh it's not the people that's broken it's the system that's broken and that starts with leadership

01:09:16.920 so okay yeah and so your campaign's been pretty creative coming out there i see some interesting

01:09:23.480 billboards and signs and other such things so you're trying to show i imagine a difference i

01:09:29.800 I mean, one of the areas when we talk about, you know, you can only change the system so much.

01:09:34.200 But one of the things I feel is the attitude between the council and senior members of the civil service.

01:09:40.660 I mean, you don't want to come in there and constantly battle with them.

01:09:43.020 But also there's some members who feel that, you know, when a city manager of some sort comes forward or from a department that they're sacred and you can't question you, you shouldn't.

01:09:50.960 And then there's others who feel adversarial.

01:09:52.460 We've got to rip right into them.

01:09:53.760 I think perhaps there's a balance.

01:09:55.080 but right now it's so much to the you're not allowed to question some of those guys when they

01:09:59.380 come forward and I think that high level leadership on the part of mayor and council is kind of

01:10:03.000 important overall isn't it oh there's no question and again I've worked with a lot of city

01:10:07.440 administration department heads and again they're good people they're smart they're hard working

01:10:11.960 they have great ideas it's the system the culture that's broken there's it's not a safe place right

01:10:17.100 now to be an employee at the city of Calgary I don't mean safety as in physical safety

01:10:21.560 it's talking about innovation cost saving measures i have an example of a 35-year employee with the

01:10:28.040 city of calgary hard-working individual and he says to me constantly he says brad i don't leave

01:10:32.280 my office unless i'm told to and i said that doesn't make sense you're not that type of person

01:10:36.040 he says brad i used to be innovative i used to bring cost-saving measures i've been kicked in

01:10:40.600 the teeth so many times by upper management or council i'm done so here's a gentleman that

01:10:45.560 wants to do the right thing uh shows up every day uh with the desire uh but he's just done he's done

01:10:51.560 getting kicked in the teeth and so we have to change that culture empower employees empower

01:10:56.360 city management to make those decisions take that risk once in a while uh but it's it's not a safe

01:11:01.400 place to do that so i and change i intend to change that yeah well i mean there's nothing

01:11:05.960 worse for any organization whether private sector or or public if you've got that just a broken

01:11:11.080 attitude of just putting in your days and getting your bills paid. You need more than that or you're

01:11:15.720 not going to go anywhere. We're going into some exceedingly challenging times. I mean, the city

01:11:22.280 has some big plans for expansion, but they've got some very limited revenue coming in. I think most

01:11:30.160 agree there's going to have to be some sort of cost savings done, which may actually lead to

01:11:34.160 perhaps even shearing or of some degree of city staffing or whatnot. How do you feel you could

01:11:39.080 get or guide cost cutting or getting it into control in a reasonable manner.

01:11:44.180 Well, and I've said this publicly and I'll continue to say finding the cost savings is not the hard part that that's actually right there.

01:11:50.840 I see it every day in my vendor work with the city of Calvary finding the cost savings.

01:11:56.600 That's not the hard part, changing the culture around wanting to make those changes.

01:11:59.720 That's where the real work comes in, changing the mindset.

01:12:02.540 I've sat in on numerous meetings where I brought one million dollar cost savings to the table and two

01:12:08.460 individuals fairly high up in the chain looked at me and said, yeah, but Brad, that's only

01:12:12.980 a million dollars. And I said, that's the problem that you only think it's a million

01:12:16.600 dollars. You know, so that's the challenges we're faced with is we've got good people.

01:12:21.440 We've got the cost saving measures are available. It's changing the culture, having those meaningful

01:12:26.420 dialogues about how we can do it better, how we can implement those changes. You know, I look at

01:12:30.940 the, you know, privatization of garbage collection here in the city of Calgary. You know, first of

01:12:35.480 we're doing a seven-year pilot project and nowhere in the world do you do a seven-year pilot project

01:12:40.760 but in calgary we do uh but yet we're not selling off one piece of equipment 25 percent of garbage

01:12:46.920 and waste recycling or waste collection in the city of calgary is going to be privatized yet

01:12:50.760 we're not getting rid of one asset each one of those garbage trucks is somewhere between three

01:12:54.840 and five hundred thousand dollars per unit not getting rid of one of them um staffing wise we're

01:13:00.280 we're going to have 25% less work within the city.

01:13:03.820 Are we talking about side shifting some of those employees into different

01:13:07.480 departments where maybe we could use more employees? Nope.

01:13:10.000 We're not talking about laying off one person or shy side shifting them.

01:13:13.720 And we have to have those meaningful dialogues.

01:13:15.880 We have to have those discussions. But I think in a lot of cases,

01:13:19.240 those are tough discussions that a lot of politicians or leaders are not willing

01:13:22.960 to have. I'm prepared to have those conversations.

01:13:25.900 Well, that's good. I mean,

01:13:26.980 any change you make is going to impact somebody else.

01:13:30.180 reality is they're going to defend their turf. That's just human nature. It's just not to do

01:13:33.940 it. I mean, the biggest spending item in any level of government is always labor. It's paying for the

01:13:40.340 people who do or don't do their jobs out there. And in public service, that's always unionized.

01:13:47.380 And it's the public service unions who are very entrenched and have their heels dug in.

01:13:53.060 How would you deal with them as they're not willing to change quite often?

01:13:57.540 Well, and again, I've worked with all levels within the City of Calgary, and I've worked with a lot of great union members.

01:14:03.980 And again, I say the vast majority of the 14,000 employees with the City of Calgary, unionized and non-unionized,

01:14:10.120 come to work every day wanting to do the right thing for the citizens of Calgary.

01:14:13.660 It's the system that's broken, not the people.

01:14:16.440 So having those meaningful dialogues, because those union members or non-union members, they're taxpayers too as well.

01:14:22.680 So they're responsible in the same vein.

01:14:25.000 so yeah having those meaningful dialogues but having those tough discussions and to your point

01:14:29.000 earlier about you know certain departments are off limits uh i disagree with that you know we talk

01:14:34.200 i've got friends uh past and present on cps as well as cfd and there's this narrative that they're

01:14:39.960 off limits well you know i at the end of the day i want to be able to have discussions around budgets

01:14:44.680 you know and are we buying our equipment our pencils uh affordably for any of those departments

01:14:49.480 but there seems to be this narrative that we can't have those discussions because they're

01:14:53.320 you know their uh first responders and uh public safety security of course it's important and we

01:15:00.440 want to make sure and maintain that and grow that make sure that every calgarian feels safe

01:15:05.000 but at the end of the day we should be able to look at the books as well and see how we're

01:15:08.840 operating can we do it more efficiently uh that's all i want is at least to be able to have those

01:15:13.320 meaningful dialogues yeah i know and i appreciate that like we see that in politics in some areas

01:15:18.200 where okay we've all established and determined that something is incredibly important i i'll

01:15:22.120 to sidetrack so it's not an area you need to address but see in education we understand the

01:15:25.720 teachers do a very difficult and important job they're they're educating our children they're

01:15:30.440 bringing them up but there's two modes of thought with it it was someone saying it's so important

01:15:33.960 that we can't dare critique them or look into how they're doing it and no actually in my view the

01:15:39.160 opposite it's the opposite it doesn't mean it should be destructive but it's all the more

01:15:43.000 important to keep a close eye on that and make sure that they're having the best uh you know

01:15:47.720 doing as well as they possibly can for us and the same applies to police and fire yes i mean

01:15:52.040 they are critical they are important we all value them but we want to make sure then that they're

01:15:55.400 doing as well as humanly possible for us and yeah as you said some people can hear it off limit

01:15:59.880 well and having having the stakeholders at the table right from the get-go and i think i think

01:16:04.360 that's the challenge sometimes you know coming out of our leadership is is we talk about meaningful

01:16:09.080 dialogue or meaningful consultation but it's not really happening we check boxes at the very last

01:16:14.120 moment to say that we had a conversation but you know meaningful consultation means that you have

01:16:18.920 those stakeholders at the table right from the get-go and so if we're talking about whether it's

01:16:22.760 cps cfd and and budgets and so forth let's get to the table right from the get-go let's not force

01:16:29.080 feed uh them at the last second and just try and check boxes for appearances sake uh and then you

01:16:34.920 know that goes for working with the business community or the next generation you know everybody

01:16:38.600 talks about our youth and the next generation here in the city of calvary let's have those

01:16:42.120 stakeholders at the table right from the get-go. Yeah and I've got a commentary just getting a

01:16:47.320 little more specific but saying that there's some recruitment challenges and issues the CPS

01:16:51.320 has been having so you know how can you balance that with you know getting in good new people for

01:16:56.040 that department? Yeah there's no question I mean you know frontline services first responders have

01:17:01.960 been taking a hit you know the police you know in North America have been taking some blows over the

01:17:07.080 last years and and some of it rightfully so i mean there's need there's room for improvement but

01:17:11.640 at the end of the day public safety security here in the city of calgary is the utmost important

01:17:17.080 importance and we have to do a better job of recruiting and getting more people and making

01:17:21.560 sure that cps feels safe too as well right and right now i think they feel attacked in a lot of

01:17:25.880 ways but they do a wonderful job every single day they come to work just like everybody else

01:17:30.440 wanting to provide good service public safety and security to all calgarians so we have to support

01:17:36.200 them in that uh in that situation and and make it inviting for them to come and work for cps

01:17:41.960 you know it's a wonderful career path and we have to be there to support them too as well

01:17:47.080 great uh something with a release you put out recently so there was a little different than

01:17:49.960 all the rest which i kind of appreciated uh was a policy on energy you know it's an area of

01:17:54.840 municipal politics where there is direct impact and interaction and actually with suits and boots

01:17:58.840 is one of the things i'm working on this summer with with things and municipal politicians uh

01:18:03.080 but you don't hear much about that i mean it's we're certainly a very energy uh you know

01:18:07.640 development uh intensive province and our municipal governments have a lot of impact

01:18:11.960 on energy policy even if people don't realize it can you expand a little though on what you'd put

01:18:16.120 out there with that well yeah for me again i'm all about creating the environment here in the

01:18:20.360 city of calgary where all businesses can thrive and jobs can flourish again and you know energy

01:18:26.040 uh you know is a big part of that and i think what people forget in a lot of cases i don't know if

01:18:30.440 they forget or the narrative within mainstream media and social media is that you know all energy

01:18:36.360 is bad uh fossil fuels is bad and you know there's a transition point we can do a better job some of

01:18:41.720 the greatest innovation in in clean energy and carbon capture comes right out here in the city

01:18:46.520 of calgary worldwide um so you know there's a lot to be expanded on there's still uh years ahead of

01:18:52.600 us of uh talking about job creation within the energy sector you know my son kyle has a master's

01:18:58.040 degree in in environmental sciences so he's all about the environment and green and and making

01:19:03.960 sure that we leave the planet in a better place but i i i lean on him to talk about okay how can

01:19:09.320 we do the energy sector better and so he provides that information for me and so there's lots of

01:19:14.600 opportunity for job creation within the energy sector but we have to do a better job of supporting

01:19:19.880 all businesses here in the city of calgary and that includes the energy sector great well and

01:19:24.840 And we are all quite concerned about it.

01:19:26.140 I mean, there's a whole lot of us very dependent on that sector.

01:19:28.560 And we do kind of feel abused and underappreciated sometimes.

01:19:32.660 And I mean, with our civic government, I mean, with things I want to ask you to dive into it,

01:19:38.060 but a lot of funding towards the Pemida Institute, for example, for city services that perhaps

01:19:42.740 they kind of chafed on a number of people might have been outside of, you know, where

01:19:46.840 they should be going.

01:19:47.340 But I do want to drill down into a little more of the specific issues.

01:19:50.000 the green line I mean that's a big white elephant in the room you know it's been going on for years

01:19:56.360 and years the scope of it keeps shrinking the budget keeps growing and we aren't seeing any

01:20:01.860 dirt moving on it yet it's in question whether or not it ever will get going where do you stand on

01:20:07.880 that project it's the biggest one facing I guess in the near future yeah I shake my head you know

01:20:12.980 it was an election issue in 2017 this has been talked about for decades I am a supporter of

01:20:18.580 you know public transportation world-class transportation for a world-class city so

01:20:22.820 there's no question i'm in support of the green line i'm not in support in how it's ruled out i'm

01:20:28.020 very disappointed that it keeps shrinking and the price keeps escalating so i think we can we can do

01:20:33.620 a better job uh me as mayor i'll be married to to the hip of uh the project manager on that one

01:20:39.780 make sure it comes in on time on budget um you know we need to stop talking about uh tunneling

01:20:46.100 under city city of calgary downtown calgary tunneling under the rivers and so forth that's

01:20:52.500 a huge cost uh creep possibility there and it's a vast majority of the budget is talking about

01:20:58.180 tunneling so let's do its surface let's do above ground uh let's get it built i'm disappointed that

01:21:03.380 the southeast leg has not been i mean the land's acquired it's flat it's not rocket science at this

01:21:08.500 point why we don't have shovels in the ground uh on the southeast lake right now um is confusing at

01:21:15.460 at the best um we could be creating jobs in that situation so i'm just disappointed uh that it uh

01:21:21.380 that we're not farther along i'm disappointed that the budget has continued to creep and we haven't

01:21:25.540 got any shovels in the ground at this point and then to expand on that i'm really disappointed

01:21:30.660 that we haven't talked about connecting yyc to downtown calgary when montreal's rail link is

01:21:36.500 done in the near future calgary will be the only major city in canada without a direct rail link

01:21:42.820 between its international airport and downtown that's has a huge economic impact it services

01:21:47.540 calgarians from a social aspect as well so and then to expand on that i'm a big supporter of

01:21:53.300 connecting yyc through downtown out to banff by rail too as well that for southern alberta and

01:21:58.340 calgary would be a game changer in so many ways so yeah there's lots to be talked about um i want

01:22:04.340 to get the green line built but i need to do it on budget and on time that'll be my task as mayor

01:22:10.740 Yeah. Okay. Well, to tie some of it together, I get some interesting questions from viewers.

01:22:15.740 The Albertan here saying, how do we propose to actually attract business? Currently, it's

01:22:20.220 cheaper to set up business outside of Calgary than in Calgary. Now, I'll expand a little on

01:22:24.540 that though. I live in Prittis, just outside of the city of Calgary. There's been some battles

01:22:31.860 going on. I mean, the municipal development plan is really pressuring the counties outside of the

01:22:38.460 city of Calgary. It seems that some people have their development visions in the city of Calgary

01:22:43.220 and feel they should be able to enforce those on municipal municipalities outside of the city,

01:22:47.520 which really gets us very crabby. But at the same time, I mean, there's some competitive issues

01:22:54.460 going on. I guess some feel, I guess there's two points of view. I mean, I've seen someone who's

01:22:59.080 running for mayor and I won't bother going into who that was, but was talking about along the

01:23:02.460 lines of just basically finding ways to choke the outside development, to force it to be able to

01:23:07.000 come into the city of Calgary I personally showing my bias but as the commenter said how do you make

01:23:13.420 it though more competitive just to come in rather than trying to cork the bottle right now because

01:23:17.400 there is a flight of capital from the city and a flight of people right now the downtown's hollow

01:23:21.500 if we want to pay for things like the green line we need to get that business back in how can we do

01:23:25.540 that yeah I mean that's a multi-layered question multi-pronged approach that we have to take but

01:23:30.460 you know dealing with our community partners outside the city limits we have to have a

01:23:34.640 amicable relationship right now you know you've if you use uh uh north of town the balzac area

01:23:40.160 you know uh if there's a fire event or or a crime in progress we're showing up city of calgary

01:23:45.840 showing up providing our services in most cases free of charge you know why are we not creating

01:23:50.800 a partnership there's no sense in those counties creating their own fire or police situation so

01:23:56.960 why are we not partnering with them where we can supply the services because we already have them

01:24:01.760 in place uh but we can also get re uh you know repaid for them as well too so creating those

01:24:06.720 partnerships having that amicable uh relationship uh but you know i often say the greatest thing

01:24:12.080 about alberta about calgary is we have lots of land it's also a detriment because there's no

01:24:16.560 boundaries to stop us from growing so but again it goes back to city council seems to think they

01:24:22.000 need to tell us how and where we live and it's not up to a city council to decide that so

01:24:27.040 uh i have a real concern about uh you know the guidebook to great communities and what that

01:24:31.440 brought forward that we had no meaningful consultation around that we have to do a

01:24:35.520 better job of bringing again bringing the stakeholders to the table right from the get-go

01:24:39.360 and so um there's lots to be discussed here but you know attracting new businesses

01:24:43.920 but more so retaining our existing businesses we often talk way too much about attracting new

01:24:48.960 business what about the businesses that are currently right here in the city of calgary

01:24:52.480 have been here for decades building and supporting the city of calgary let's talk about property

01:24:57.760 taxes giving those businesses a clear line of sight around budgeting every calgarian i've talked

01:25:03.360 to business owner i've talked to they have no problem paying their fair share they just want

01:25:07.520 to be able to budget and plan for the future this peaks and valleys of one year to the next not

01:25:12.080 knowing what your property taxes are going to be that's that's ridiculous we can't plan for the

01:25:16.560 future both as a homeowner or as a business so a clear line of sight on that um you know simple

01:25:21.920 thing like business development permits and business licensing um you know by jurisdiction

01:25:27.520 we are one of the longest to get those permits in place uh we got to get it down into the days not

01:25:33.040 months you know it should be a 30 to 45 day process if you're applying for a building permit

01:25:37.840 or development permit let's let's fast track it let's get things let let's change the narrative

01:25:43.040 that calgary's open for business right now um we talk tough but our actions speak differently

01:25:48.560 we're not open for business. We're not a business friendly city. I intend to change that. We got to

01:25:53.760 do a better job. Yeah. And red tape is a big issue. I mean, and that's what it doesn't have to be that

01:25:59.200 costly to make things more attractive for business. I fully agree there. An area though of that is,

01:26:06.800 you know, in talking about, yeah, supporting existing businesses, Calgary Economic Development,

01:26:11.040 I can dive into that a little quickly. They've had that hundred million dollar fund for quite some

01:26:16.080 time. And it's been almost insulting to a number of business owners because they're spending that

01:26:21.160 money to try and attract business owners to compete with the ones who are already struggling

01:26:25.440 and sitting in the city. To be honest, their success records, they point to a few things

01:26:30.940 they've drawn in, but overall, it's not been very good. They've burned through 40 million of the 60

01:26:35.000 so far. The head of them just suddenly took off and has resigned. And where do we go with Calgary

01:26:42.160 economic development? They're still sitting on a pile of money. They seem to be directionless and

01:26:45.220 leaderless right now, can it be fixed or perhaps is it time just to fold that back in and let

01:26:50.400 business be a little more natural? Well, and I think, again, the mandate of these agencies,

01:26:56.520 whether it's Tourism Calgary or CED and so forth, is drive the economy, increase visitors to the

01:27:03.520 city of Calgary, increase business, create jobs. And I find quite often with these different

01:27:08.920 agencies, whether it's Tourism Calgary or CED or the Convention BMO and TELUS Convention Centre

01:27:14.120 and all the other agents they operate in silos and you know my idea would be to bring those

01:27:20.360 agencies create a single narrative coming out of the city of calgary and actually physically put

01:27:25.720 them under one roof right now our overhead to run all these different agencies they all have

01:27:31.640 individual cfos they all have receptionists they all have hr departments and i'm thinking god you

01:27:36.760 know they all have the same mandate to drive economic development here in the city of calgary

01:27:42.200 why are we under one roof why are we not saving having cost saving measures implemented that way

01:27:48.280 but more importantly force them to work together and collaborate together to create that single

01:27:53.160 narrative uh so yeah i think there's lots of room for for improvement you know the opportunity

01:27:57.800 investment fund i was a little disappointed i like the idea of it don't get me wrong and i'm

01:28:02.360 in support of attracting new businesses and so forth but i had this conversation very early on

01:28:07.640 uh with the head of cd and this goes back a couple years ago where we were looking for a 60 million

01:28:13.160 dollar shortfall to try and you know scale back property taxes and at that point i think we'd only

01:28:18.520 spent 10 million or 15 million of the of the 100 million and i said can we not steal or draw back

01:28:24.200 claw back some of that money and help support the businesses that are already city account

01:28:28.200 and the answer was brad that's too short-sighted you know the net gain of all the new businesses

01:28:33.880 that that fund has created I think it's far outweighed by the losses of business either due

01:28:38.840 to bankruptcy here in the city of Calgary or moving out of the jurisdiction. So I don't know

01:28:43.480 at the end of the day how many jobs we've actually gained but I suspect that it's a negative. We

01:28:48.360 haven't gained any jobs through the Opportunity Investment Fund if you consider how many jobs

01:28:52.840 we've lost. Yeah well that's a challenge with those arms-length corporations that get set up

01:28:59.800 whatever the reasoning may be for it but unfortunately they're unfoipable we can't

01:29:03.400 have a look at these things even though they take in a great deal of tax dollars it's sort of a way

01:29:07.080 that uh you know governments can hide their actions from you know and take away that accountability

01:29:13.160 that they would have had if they did it in house i mean maybe they're doing a fantastic job but

01:29:17.080 we've got no way to check on that and find out really and that's distressing um so we are a

01:29:21.960 city that's evolving though and and we're growing we're changing i mean there's there's a push and

01:29:26.680 you know we're seeing the infills coming in we're seeing densification uh we see the visions in

01:29:31.720 conflict at times so use the dairy queen example up north where you know uh should we allow them

01:29:36.520 to rebuild or do we want a different vision and sort of step on it uh but we're gonna have to

01:29:41.320 have those discussions the the guidebook now that was quite a a controversial item that came forward

01:29:46.600 i mean it was put forward it sounds like a guidebook but then it's very prescriptive and

01:29:50.120 telling what to do uh where would you go with city development and evolution i guess is the best way

01:29:55.000 to put it you know uh whether it's more outward growth or whether it's more control of what can

01:29:59.640 be done inside the city what are you looking at there yeah i mean again recognizing that again

01:30:05.880 it's not up to city council to decide how and where we live here in the city of calgary it's

01:30:11.080 up to city council to figure out after we've made that decision so i get densification version versus

01:30:17.480 urban sprawl every time we build a new committee it costs more right we have to service it with

01:30:21.560 police fire maintenance all that kind of stuff so yeah the math says that but again it's not

01:30:26.840 up to city council to decide that for us if we all decide uh to urban sprawler and build uh

01:30:32.840 build houses with backyards because we want to grow gardens or have a place for our kids

01:30:36.600 then it's up to city council to figure it out and then eventually you know maybe it's up to

01:30:40.360 city council to have that tough discussion with the citizens of calgary and say hey you all looked at

01:30:45.080 want backyards it's going to cost you more property taxes but again i think council is

01:30:50.680 in fear of having those tough discussions but uh densification i get it uh urban sprawl i get it

01:30:56.680 i think finding that bounce approach but it again it's not up to council to decide how and where we

01:31:01.080 live uh it's up to them it's their responsibility to figure it out and make it work within the

01:31:06.200 budgetary constraints that we have um but yeah you know the the um the dairy queen the the you know

01:31:13.000 that uh debacle you know here's here's a family that uh poured their heart and soul of their

01:31:18.200 finances into their own small business they had a fire and now they were left holding the bag

01:31:23.400 not knowing if they could rebuild or not so you know it's examples like that where you know i

01:31:27.880 think council is currently out of touch uh with its citizens we have to do a better job of engaging

01:31:33.160 with our citizens and having those meaningful dialogues yeah well and uh getting to uh touchy

01:31:38.920 dialogues one of the bigger roles and there's been a lot of sparks and conflict is is multi-levels

01:31:43.480 with government though uh the minute you know you you would have to be you would be the representative

01:31:47.240 this city assuming you were elected to the provincial government and the federal governments

01:31:53.080 right now the relationship i'm going to speculate between the current mayor and the current premier

01:31:57.000 isn't all that great there's always going to be some degree of that going on but but what sort

01:32:02.760 of relationship would you anticipate having with those other levels of government said simply

01:32:07.240 nothing good comes from negativity i cannot understand our current council some of our

01:32:12.520 mayoral candidates taking the adversarial role with the province um you know i i just you know

01:32:18.040 in simple forms i just anecdotal uh you know i i talk about you know the parent teenager relationship

01:32:24.920 and the teenager disrespects its parents and then goes for their allowance an hour later and they

01:32:29.400 expect there's going to be a good result from it i'll stand up for calgary all day long i'll fight

01:32:34.040 for everything for calgary but at the end of the day we have to do it in a respectful manner we

01:32:37.640 We cannot continue to trash talk the provincial leadership in social media, on mainstream

01:32:44.360 media, and then expect a good result the next day when we go to negotiate a deal or look

01:32:49.960 for a helping hand.

01:32:51.660 We got to do a better job that way.

01:32:52.880 And so having those collaborative leaderships, it doesn't mean that we always have to agree.

01:32:57.080 It doesn't mean that that I won't fight for Calgary.

01:33:00.620 But at the end of the day, we got to do it in a respectful manner.

01:33:02.700 And that's whether it's provincial or federal level or within council.

01:33:05.840 got to do it in a respectful manner more gets done on a positive note than ever will get done negative

01:33:12.080 yeah well and so the cities and municipalities are under the umbrella of the provincial government

01:33:16.560 that's just the nature of our legislation one of the areas that a lot it's been mayor to mayor

01:33:22.720 is looking for different revenue tools perhaps and means to to fund this city

01:33:29.520 i believe it's open for debate but i mean sometimes it just seems like they're looking

01:33:32.000 for more ways to grab more versus more efficient ways to go I mean property taxes alone are a

01:33:37.920 difficult area just to raise so much funding for such direct areas of government but at the same

01:33:42.080 time I'm not all that eager at the thought of giving a mayor that the opportunity to make a

01:33:46.000 local sales tax either but still are you receptive to I mean they've talked about municipal charters

01:33:51.920 and changing things but are you know negotiating with the government for different abilities for

01:33:56.000 municipalities to perhaps raise and disperse funds yeah yeah there's no question there's you

01:34:01.680 You know, you talk about city charters and having open dialogue with the province and how we can, you know, tax differently or what the split should be.

01:34:11.500 But again, I still go back.

01:34:13.080 I truly believe other than the downtown core.

01:34:15.380 Yes, we've got a revenue issue because of the valuation of downtown property, but we don't, as a general rule, we've got a spending issue in the city of Calgary.

01:34:22.580 We don't have a, we don't have a revenue.

01:34:24.280 So I get tired of the narrative coming out of council that here's your two choices.

01:34:28.280 We either raise taxes or cut services.

01:34:30.100 And for me, there's better ways we can look internally and it's having those tough discussions

01:34:36.160 that we spoke about earlier.

01:34:37.960 Current council, current leadership is not willing to have those tough discussions about

01:34:41.640 how we change the culture in the city so we can implement some of these cost saving measures

01:34:46.360 that are right there in front of us.

01:34:48.300 So again, I'm less worried about revenue generation.

01:34:51.880 First of all, I want to be able to look every Calgarian in the eye and know that their tax

01:34:55.860 dollar that they've given us has been spent wisely.

01:34:58.980 And until I do that, I'm not going to look at talk about more taxes and more revenue streams reaching into other people's pockets or their pockets for more money.

01:35:06.540 Let's look internally first before we start asking the citizens to pay more.

01:35:11.940 Great. Well, and yeah, so I mean, I'll start to kind of wrap up here.

01:35:16.120 Are some other areas you'd like to speak on in your campaign that, you know, planks and where you're going with your vision for the city?

01:35:21.920 Yeah, for me, again, I talk about, you know, our current generations, you know, the people that are on this call.

01:35:28.560 but i want to talk about the next generation we've had great interaction uh with that next

01:35:33.440 generation the 20 to 30 year olds we had a call about two weeks ago with 80 young professionals

01:35:38.880 between the ages of 20 and 30 and i want to know again it's about having the stakeholders at the

01:35:43.600 table right from the get-go and um you know so having the discussion about what they see for

01:35:48.720 the future of calvary that's what i want to talk about and you know whether it's environmental

01:35:53.520 discussions or public transportation or a train out to banff jobs we want to talk about creating

01:36:00.160 you know that made in calgary talent pipeline and you know we have an opportunity here where

01:36:05.840 we potentially are losing some of that next generation to other jurisdictions under my watch

01:36:11.280 they can go on vacation they can go do their schooling you know if they want to explore

01:36:15.200 the world but i want them at the end of the day to be back here in calgary creating their life

01:36:19.360 building their life here in the city of calgary because if we're talking about attracting

01:36:23.360 new businesses or retaining businesses in the city of calgary those businesses want to know

01:36:27.600 that they have talent uh you know that's available employees that are available otherwise why would

01:36:32.080 they come if they can't find talent to put in the put in the seats so yeah it's a multi-pronged

01:36:36.880 approach but i want to talk about the next generation what they can add uh to the future

01:36:41.200 of calgary have them at that uh at the discussion table right from the get-go we've i've committed

01:36:45.920 to forming yyc 2030 council where we'll have those young professionals that next generation

01:36:51.920 at the table right from the get-go because it's about my kids my grandkids my even my great

01:36:57.200 grandkids that's why i'm here that's why i'm talking about leaving the city of calgary it's

01:37:01.680 not all about me uh and our generation it's about the next generations to come yeah we do have to

01:37:07.600 look ahead i mean they're the ones that gonna be taking care of us when we retire too so we want

01:37:10.800 want to respect them now so they respect us later exactly but it is important I

01:37:15.180 mean especially with development we've got to look at a bigger and longer way

01:37:18.920 so I appreciate that and appreciate you coming on where can we find more

01:37:23.040 information about your campaign and what you're doing with it vote bradfield

01:37:27.840 dot CA we'll be rolling out platform over the next couple three weeks you can go

01:37:33.840 on you can order a lawn sign you can donate you can sign up to volunteer would

01:37:38.640 love to hear from you can ask for a call with me you can book a call with me i'm taking personal

01:37:43.040 one-on-one calls with anybody who wants to get on the line for 15 20 minutes have a discussion about

01:37:47.760 what's important to them so yeah votebradfield.ca would love to hear from everybody and look forward

01:37:53.680 to connecting great i appreciate that and i hope we can talk again i mean it's very early there's

01:37:58.160 a lot of campaign to develop over the next few months but i'm trying to lay the groundwork and

01:38:02.080 speak to people now while we can and and then towards the end you know uh somebody had asked

01:38:06.960 know whether you're willing to come on to more online debates with other candidates as things

01:38:10.560 come on in the future because it is going to be there's going to be a large group to sift through

01:38:16.400 for voters to choose from so uh i uh appreciate your willingness to come out and speak to these

01:38:22.080 things look forward to it anytime happy to be on the call great thanks brett we'll talk to you again

01:38:27.440 thanks corey take care

01:38:28.400 so yeah that was bradfield one candidate of many uh you know i i know uh yeah somebody saying i'm

01:38:40.080 not allowed to ask about certain questions no i i can ask about whatever i like and and i talked

01:38:44.480 about that before i i brought uh brad on with uh things like the un agenda for development and

01:38:52.000 things such as that and they're tied into development goals it's just it's a broader

01:38:55.680 distracting discussion. I guess if you feel that some people are bound by that agenda directly or

01:39:01.960 something, I don't feel that that's really what's going on. I mean, a lot of, say, what the current

01:39:06.740 council and mayor are moving along with follows and ties right into the UN agenda. Absolutely.

01:39:13.280 And are they feeling guided by that agenda? Yes. But are they bound by it? I don't know. I think

01:39:17.920 that's more a case of political philosophy and it just happens to meet that or match that UN

01:39:23.660 means of doing things. But I just, it's a bigger rabbit hole. And I don't want to pull prospective

01:39:29.980 candidates into that specifically. I mean, you can read in a lot when you hear about what these

01:39:34.160 candidates' plans for densification are, where they are with things such as taxation or the

01:39:41.000 green line or the guidebook items such as that. And, you know, I think you can get a pretty good

01:39:48.040 feel of whether they'd be following along that same line as the past administration or going

01:39:51.840 somewhere differently. But it's not a matter of what I'm allowed to ask or whatnot. I'm just

01:39:57.100 trying to keep the conversation on to, you know, just more of a straight line on the campaign

01:40:02.180 issues. Maybe as we see things develop over the summer, we'll get into more things with candidates

01:40:08.040 as questions and issues surface. It's going to be interesting to see post-stampede.

01:40:12.560 I'm not going to get candidates to take swipes at other ones. You know, that's hard during a

01:40:19.300 campaign and it gets too personal. But I'm not running and I'll say some things. Like I'm watching,

01:40:25.080 for example, if you want more of the same thing, in my view, it's Jodi Gondek. I mean, that's just

01:40:30.480 Nancy's heir apparent. You know, speaking on some of the issues we talked about earlier with Brad as

01:40:36.160 well with interprovincial, she's taking shots at the provincial government. She's diving in on,

01:40:41.540 you know, whether the stampede should be open or not, or the vaccination plans and things like that

01:40:45.640 that are totally out of her jurisdiction. That is an area to get concerned with. I mean,

01:40:52.660 she's not talking about what she wants to do with Calgary. She's talking about what the premier

01:40:55.560 should do with the province. If you want to see more months and years of fighting between the

01:41:02.340 mayor and the premier, putting in she's heir apparent, Jody Gondek, on the mayor's chair,

01:41:07.820 and we're going to see more of the same. I'm just wondering why she seems to be,

01:41:13.820 rather than campaigning for what she's doing within Calgary and campaigning against the premier.

01:41:19.000 I mean, boy, I know the premier is getting enough abuse from the Western Standard and others as well.

01:41:23.900 And hey, by the way, I wrote a flattering piece on the equalization referendum recently.

01:41:28.240 We're not always beating on them, but yeah, we're not always nice with them.

01:41:32.060 We will hold anybody to account if they're drifting away from conservative principles.

01:41:35.800 That's the bottom line, though. It doesn't matter who the premier or the government is.

01:41:39.300 uh jake uh yeah there should be lots of debates televised and non-televised last election there

01:41:45.040 was no debates um you know i'm hoping to see as much discourse as possible i i'm just going to

01:41:51.980 run down a road for those who remember past elections uh if you remember civic camp that

01:41:58.480 was a an organization set up off on the side it was actually and she was one of the founders of

01:42:03.000 it was set up over 10 years ago just before he got into office this is kind of neat turned into a

01:42:06.960 little neat election tool. They said this is just an organization that's there to help facilitate

01:42:16.220 democratic discussion and things such as that. And what this group did though is they actually

01:42:22.460 were speaking directly to electoral issues. They were speaking directly to council. They

01:42:27.720 made presentations on the budget, yet this group didn't formally exist. So two elections ago,

01:42:35.360 So there were debates to be held, you know, for all the municipal candidates and for the mayor and everything. And nobody likes organizing those. I'll tell you what, it's usually chambers of commerce, whether it's provincial, federal, anywhere else, or community associations or, you know, other groups that organize these debates and forums. And it's a thankless job.

01:42:56.000 it's a lot of work. They're painful as a candidate because usually you're going into a room

01:42:59.660 where realistically 80% of the people in the room are already tied to one candidate or another.

01:43:05.320 They're just there to support them. Your level of undecideds there are very low, but if it's

01:43:10.320 televised and it gets out there, you know, you can certainly make or break campaigns if somebody

01:43:13.980 says something wrong, but they're important. They're supposed to debate. So Civic Camp as an

01:43:17.700 organization, raise their hands and we'll take on all the debates. We will take on

01:43:22.360 um the the candidate the council ones the mayor ones everything so of course everybody's oh good

01:43:28.660 yeah you go ahead guys thanks i appreciate that well what a stunt that was so i was working out

01:43:34.660 in pennsylvania and i watched the you know online this debate and civic camp said we're not going

01:43:40.980 to do it like other organizations what we're going to do is crowdsource our questions and this way

01:43:46.720 you know it keeps it civil and orderly so all the mayoral candidates here's the 12 questions they

01:43:51.520 dropped on them supposedly just that night. These are the 12 questions we crowdsourced. Well,

01:43:55.960 the head and then she's mother might as well have written them. You could tell he had a canned answer

01:43:59.460 for every one of those questions. What they had managed to basically do is stack the questions

01:44:06.120 in favor of the man who was one of the founders of that group. And I was infuriated. Like you

01:44:10.800 guys ruined this democratic exercise. You stacked it. You gave a head start. They went all into the

01:44:18.340 areas that the incumbent mayor wanted to go into. They didn't go into any of the areas he didn't

01:44:21.900 want to go into. You didn't have that having to answer, you know, stand on your feet with a live

01:44:26.320 question. It made me furious. So what did I do? I asked my wife, Jane, actually to look into it

01:44:32.120 and do a nuanced search. And that means going online, finding out who owns it, who incorporates

01:44:36.180 that. Because you look on their website, actually, there was not a single name for civic camp

01:44:39.520 anywhere, nowhere. These guys who do budget, you know, presentations to city council, these guys

01:44:47.060 who manage debates, and you couldn't find a single name connected to it. What I did find was the

01:44:51.160 Calgary Foundation gave them $5,000. And that's another question all in itself. How does an

01:44:57.660 organization that doesn't exist, it doesn't, it wasn't registered anywhere. There was no, when

01:45:02.220 the nuance search came up, it was empty. They were a paper tiger. There was nothing there. Yet

01:45:07.440 they're getting money. Who's given the money? Well, the Calgary Foundation, a charitable grant

01:45:13.040 to an organization that doesn't exist this blew my mind so what I did was I

01:45:17.600 got a few friends together and we registered Civic Camp under my name as

01:45:21.140 the president and and I put out this website that endorsed every candidate

01:45:28.460 that Nenshi despised and it looked very much like the other Civic Camp website

01:45:31.460 either way Nenshi lost it his eyes almost bugged out of his head when this

01:45:35.660 came out because some of the media even got confused with is this the real Civic

01:45:38.120 Camp or not and then they discovered oh wow this is run by Cory Morgan it's fake

01:45:41.480 I said, what's fake? Who owns it then? Come on out, show your face. Nobody would. Why? Because

01:45:48.760 everybody who ran that group was on NSHE's campaign team. They couldn't expose themselves

01:45:52.520 for who they were. I even said to the media at the time, look, I spent the money to register

01:45:57.480 this as a nonprofit. It's out there. But you know what? I will give it back to you guys.

01:46:02.680 Just give me the names and I'll give it to you. I can't give it to you if you don't tell me who

01:46:06.520 you are well they wouldn't answer nobody ever raised their hand and said it's mine give it back

01:46:13.560 so yes as much as all people were even saying cory should be charged for stealing it from who

01:46:19.240 but that's how dirty the municipal politics is creating a shell organization like that to sit

01:46:23.880 there and campaign on the side and hey what are you gonna do sue me over it come get me just just

01:46:29.640 show me who actually is behind you and the fact that not a single one of them could raise their

01:46:33.800 hand and say it's their organization tells me that it was dirty so eventually it just faded away i

01:46:41.240 got bored with it you know let it lapse in the corporate registration but a lot of people didn't

01:46:45.160 understand what i did and then she went to the media said oh that jerk cory morgan went out and

01:46:48.680 you know killed off a charitable organization out of spite and nastiness no actually what i took

01:46:53.240 away was a proxy campaign group that nobody would put their name on now in that long roundabout way

01:46:58.280 in this rambling rant back to what jake was talking about uh we can do these debates on

01:47:03.160 zoom we can do on facebook live uh and it's important yeah as he said it's important to take

01:47:08.600 questions as they come from real people bring them up as they come up so when we get these on

01:47:14.440 i'm hoping the western standard can hold some of these down the road bring on multiples it's going

01:47:17.880 to be hard it's going to be hard when there are 15 16 17 mayoral candidates out there realistically

01:47:25.080 you can't have a good debate with more than five maybe tops otherwise it just goes on forever and

01:47:30.120 and everybody gives their stock answers. So that comes a little later in the campaign and some

01:47:34.580 people will get upset and it might seem arbitrary by different groups and organizations holding

01:47:39.320 these debates and town hall meetings, those sorts of things, you know, on how they chose what they

01:47:44.600 felt to be the top contenders and how they excluded others. But if you held a free-for-all

01:47:50.020 with all 15 candidates for mayor, it might be 20 by the time we get to, you know, closer to voting

01:47:56.020 day, you can't realistically hold one. But either way, we've got some great tools in front of us.

01:48:00.260 We've got these online meetings. Hopefully the restrictions are down enough. We can actually

01:48:04.660 get together in a community center and have these for real again. And it's up to us to make sure

01:48:09.420 nobody stacks it again. I don't see a side group. I mean, a civic camp was blown up and that's one

01:48:14.100 of the things I'm proud of. I don't care if Ninchy and the rest got upset with me over it. I think

01:48:19.100 among the political stunts and acts I've done over the years, that was my best one, even though the

01:48:22.780 least amount of people understand just exactly what I did that time. But they won't pull that

01:48:28.260 again because they realize you can't, it's going to be, you're going to get called on it. They got

01:48:32.320 away with it for years. And you know, this way they can't do it again because we'll see that

01:48:40.280 coming and we will call them out again if they pull that sort of crap. So that was one less tool

01:48:45.620 in their ugly campaign box because we got a lot of the same players from back then managing

01:48:50.420 campaigns of today. So watch for those things. And when you get the in-person ones, what did

01:48:55.240 they not like? What did they want to fix? And that's what it was. It was a fix with the civic

01:48:58.720 camp thing. They didn't want people actually on the floor to throw out a question that the

01:49:03.780 preferred candidate of them wasn't ready for. And they did that on every one of them. There was

01:49:08.820 Pincott who used to run and he ran for council and he actually complained about who the moderator

01:49:13.820 they chose for civic camp was. So they pulled the moderator and changed it. Well, wait a minute,

01:49:18.260 the candidates don't get to pick and choose that. Don't show up then if you're too scared to face

01:49:21.900 that moderator. But Civic Camp was already geared to their preferred candidates. That's why. So

01:49:26.360 they bent over for them. Let's get good debate. And part of it's driven, you know, it's part of

01:49:31.900 it's driven by us, you know, voters, activists, so on, because a lot of the candidates don't want

01:49:38.920 to go to these things. And they can be painful. And they can be minefields. You know, as I said,

01:49:46.020 a lot of the room is undecided, but if you say something wrong, oh, don't worry, you will hear

01:49:49.520 about it for a long time. Let's not forget Ward Sutherland with his Johnny Jew comment back there

01:49:54.800 in the last election, which was bizarre. I don't know where he was going with that. I'm certain he

01:50:00.180 didn't want to jump in with an anti-Semitic slur, but that hung on him, and I like to remind him of

01:50:05.500 it, because he's not one of my favorite counselors as it stands, but all the same, we can't let them

01:50:09.920 be scared to come out of these things in case that sort of incident happens.

01:50:16.020 Rose West asking if I can interview Mike Nichol from Edmonton actually I've had

01:50:19.320 Mike Nichol on before in the past if you look in the archived Facebook and

01:50:26.880 YouTube videos you'll find the Mike Nichol interview I'll probably have him

01:50:30.060 on again it's hard you know most of our followers in an audience are Calgarian

01:50:33.840 but I mean we do want to broaden it and it's important and Mike Nichols

01:50:36.360 certainly standing for some good conservative values there lots of others

01:50:40.200 saying yeah in-person debates are the best I mean we do want to see them

01:50:42.760 interact with each other and there's one of the things that's interesting because

01:50:45.220 as I said, the fights between the mayor and council and so on, if we want to see how capable

01:50:53.860 they are of holding composure with each other in a stressful environment like you would be in city

01:51:00.100 chambers, what better opportunity than an in-person debate? So, you know, I mean, it's just another

01:51:04.560 test that we can have and watch. And then we can live stream these things to multiple places. You

01:51:08.500 know, TV stations don't have to commit themselves anymore to show up at these, you know, organizations

01:51:13.280 such as the standard would happily stream those sorts of things. Let's see, you know,

01:51:20.980 interesting concepts coming up. So here's the Albertan, you know, can we have two moderators

01:51:25.320 to negate bias like a second referee? That is an interesting concept for sure. Because yeah,

01:51:31.620 I am not unbiased. I mean, that's, there's no getting around that. I have my strong slants and

01:51:38.860 so on. When I interview candidates such as I've had Brad Field on now and Jeremy Farkas,

01:51:43.500 I tend to bring on the more conservative leaning candidates. But at the same time,

01:51:49.100 I do try to interview them just to ask straight out in the questions. I'm not there to combat

01:51:51.820 them or play gotcha or any of that sort of thing. But in a debate, people could question the outcome

01:51:57.160 of it if I'm moderating it because, yeah, I make no bones about my views on issues and subjects

01:52:01.480 and things. Having two moderators, I think that's another way to help counter some of that natural

01:52:09.320 bias. Even if a host is trying hard not to be biased, it's difficult to keep that out of it.

01:52:13.780 And it's very important to get as much of this candid discussion as possible. You can only read

01:52:18.720 so much off a campaign pamphlet. You can only get so much out of press releases. But getting

01:52:24.920 somebody there live in front of an audience to uh speak to questions and issues that really does

01:52:32.280 as i said they're painful for candidates i've sat through them in provincial campaigns as a

01:52:36.120 candidate and i moderated leadership debates for the wild rose party it's it's hard to get your uh

01:52:43.720 message out in a room that's kind of quite often quite quite slanted uh as jake said yeah there's

01:52:48.680 no such thing as unbiased there's truth to that you know and the standard doesn't try to hide

01:52:52.440 is biased, making it more trustworthy. And no, we don't. And again, though, I mean, I don't want

01:52:59.540 to play gotcha stuff. I want to get good information out there. I have my leanings. I

01:53:03.580 have my columns. Dave, you know, he writes his news with straight news copy. So we don't shy

01:53:11.580 from the fact that we're conservative leaning publication, but we're not trying to deceive

01:53:14.880 people either with anything like that. Claudette saying, never saw a worse debate than the last

01:53:19.820 election uh was everyone yelling no one could hear in the federal one yeah like these debates are

01:53:24.860 are difficult to hold they are to hold in a manner that's productive and decent

01:53:29.980 i'll tell you a few of the things that i learned at moderating the wild rose debates for example

01:53:34.380 the leadership ones you've got to give the moderators the ability to shut off a mic and

01:53:39.580 it drives me nuts as a moderator somebody who just lets them go over time and ramble and ramble

01:53:47.980 and ramble and won't shut them up. I've had that before where I've had to speak up into the mic

01:53:52.400 and over speak them to get them to shut up. Give the moderators the ability. There's your two

01:53:57.560 minutes off. It's done. And if they're speaking up over each other again, cut off the microphone.

01:54:03.900 I mean, I understand some good back and forth debate, but if it's a shouting match,

01:54:07.100 it just sours people. And it also lets us know what's going to happen if and when they get in

01:54:11.520 council or as mayors or this fall, we're probably going to have federal elections.

01:54:15.440 um so it's it's it's going to be an interesting year we've got some democratic exercises coming

01:54:22.380 uh i i didn't want to corner uh mr field on um the equalization referendum but that's something

01:54:28.360 that's going to be interesting coming in this fall's election as well it's not going to be

01:54:32.520 just like any other municipal election we've got a referendum going on at the same time

01:54:36.360 so we're going to have multiple debates going on and to give a little bit of slack to nancy

01:54:41.680 one of his frustrations with the equalization debate coming in is it'll distract from municipal

01:54:47.680 issues as we go. I do believe some of that's going to happen, but for the most part, people

01:54:53.000 can walk and chew gum. People can look at municipal issues and choose their councillor, their Reeve,

01:54:57.860 their whatever it may be, and make their mind up on the equalization question too. Don't

01:55:01.840 underestimate the ability of voters. We're not that dumb. And it's certainly much more cost

01:55:07.220 effective to hold these when we're holding a general election. People are going to the polls

01:55:10.360 Anyways, it's just one more piece of paper. Ah, there's a suggestion from the Albertan make

01:55:16.020 overtime comments, subtract time from the final arguments. Yeah, that's one way to do it. Though

01:55:21.400 it would lead to some battles. But I mean, I think if you just cut them off, you make that a hard

01:55:27.280 line. Here's your three minutes or whatever it might be. And I mean, you have somebody sitting

01:55:30.720 there with a button, literally three minutes is up, click, that's it. You're speaking into empty

01:55:34.580 air. But I mean, yeah, the giving a punishment factor is interesting, but it'd make it tough

01:55:41.200 as it's an unfolding thing. I like it though. I mean, I can tell this is a person who shares my

01:55:45.440 frustration when you watch these sorts of events as the candidates step on each other and get into

01:55:51.440 each other's speaking space and so on. I mean, there is a viewer, there is an undecided voter.

01:55:56.440 I want to really actually listen to them. I'm dedicating my time to it and I don't want to see

01:56:00.760 one candidate speaking over another. I want to hear from all of them. So we've got a lot to look

01:56:05.560 forward to this fall. There's going to be a lot of debates. I hope the Western Standard is taking

01:56:09.140 part in some of that. There's so many candidates and so many races going on. By the way, that wraps

01:56:14.420 things up for today. I should get back to, you know, things with the Western Standard. We are

01:56:19.820 not tax funded. We are reliant on you for subscriptions. We're reliant on our sponsors.

01:56:26.360 This allows us to, again, we're not beholden to government. It allows us to be critical of

01:56:30.220 government uh you know once you start taking money from somewhere it's pretty difficult i mean you

01:56:35.300 know news organizations if you're reliant on government funding well you don't really want

01:56:40.020 to shake the tree too hard because you might lose your your revenue and not be able to pay your staff

01:56:43.420 and bills uh we aren't we don't have any of that dependency but we are reliant on our subscribers

01:56:48.480 and our sponsors so again resistance coffee check these guys out they're hilarious you know follow

01:56:53.680 their facebook ads it's great they're creative uh they put out those those different uh ads and

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01:57:06.020 towards causes that will stand up for your individual rights, such as the Justice Center

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01:57:19.880 your money's not going towards something that you don't like, as many corporations do with

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01:57:42.120 the Western Standard. So be sure to let them know. As I said on the pipeline the other day, Ben,

01:57:46.520 one of our regular listeners, he sent me a picture of all the coffees he'd bought and he had them

01:57:52.100 all lined up on his counter and he's quite enjoying them. Our other sponsor for the show

01:57:57.440 today is yeah the ccfr the canadian coalition for firearms rights and don't forget nobody works

01:58:03.440 harder for firearms owners than the canadian coalition for firearms rights and they're suing

01:58:08.000 the federal government on behalf of gun owners right now so become a member you know to donate

01:58:12.000 to their legal fund help them out go to firearmrights.ca and click why join these guys need

01:58:17.680 help because they're helping you you know the government's not going to do it for us we have to

01:58:21.920 to do it for ourselves. So great. And just a complimentary one out there from Claudette at

01:58:29.900 the end. Yes. Only podcast I listen to is Western Standard and Nathan is so enjoyable and intelligent.

01:58:34.740 Nathan's great. And he'll be back on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So, you know, he's got that

01:58:40.980 radio voice. I envy so as well. I mean, he just blasts that out there. He's great. He's got that

01:58:45.580 show. I'm going to be back at Monday at 10. Something we are probably going to be moving on

01:58:50.440 too is uh we're still going to keep the same schedule uh but we may start pre-recording our

01:58:55.920 shows because uh going live has been great but it's it's difficult to um get guest scheduling

01:59:00.340 and sometimes things like that so i'll we'll try to keep you up to date when the live ones are

01:59:04.100 coming and when the recorded ones because we do want to get the interaction with guests coming on

01:59:07.980 and and and uh you know listeners being able to ask them questions and talk with them but at the

01:59:12.700 same time we're trying to get as good a product out as we can and feedback is always appreciated

01:59:17.360 even though it's not always positive so either way we're looking at a great weekend get out there

01:59:22.720 and support your local you can actually sit down in a pub with up to six people now have a drink

01:59:27.480 have a bite they don't even have to be from the same household anymore the weather's going to be

01:59:31.900 great they got all those expanded patios get out and get your hair cut yeah i got jane to do mine

01:59:36.600 shaved it cost efficient though uh but you know support those small businesses use the gym i'm

01:59:42.340 sure a lot of us have got a few extra pounds but all those small businesses are reopening they

01:59:45.820 really need our support. They need our help right now. Get out and do it. We can start getting back

01:59:50.760 to a normal life again. Thanks for tuning in today and I will see you guys all next week.

Western Standard - June 12, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show June 11

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