Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show. March 22, 2021

00:00:00.000 .

00:00:30.000 .

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 hey there welcome to the first episode of the cory morgan show we're gonna be coming on twice

00:02:17.160 a week mondays from 10 till noon and fridays from 10 till noon so i can start up on the issues of

00:02:23.880 the week, let you know what's happening, what to think about it, and Friday we can wrap them up

00:02:29.800 and talk about them. So this is going to be an ongoing and interactive show. We've got the

00:02:35.600 comments scroll on the left. I really do encourage and welcome people to comment. Won't necessarily

00:02:40.820 respond to all of them, and we do want people of course to stay civil and stay polite, but you can

00:02:47.480 interact with each other as well. We've been doing these things with the Western Standard, expanding

00:02:52.340 our digital presence and live feeds has been going really well. Some of you may have already

00:02:58.020 seen some of the Danielle Smith presentations. She's done, I believe, four out of six of them

00:03:03.120 now, where she's been digging into the COVID issue in ways that no other media sources has

00:03:10.080 done it. I mean, they won't touch it anymore. And that's part of what's inspired this show

00:03:14.800 and it inspired the Western Standard is the conventional media just won't cover things

00:03:23.320 anymore. They've gotten too cowardly. Like talk radio. I grew up on talk radio. Love it. You know,

00:03:27.760 Rutherford, Weisbeck, Peter Warren. I mean, some fantastic shows out here. Green. I mean,

00:03:33.280 there's still some good ones, you know, Gormley in Saskatchewan. He's fantastic. But we're seeing

00:03:38.240 pressure coming on to keep these hosts from touching anything that might be remotely

00:03:44.200 controversial and they become fearful of it and it's made for very very boring media uh which

00:03:50.940 doesn't expose issues that are sensitive or important and we're just left with with crap i

00:03:57.760 i'm so thrilled that that uh i don't want to put this the wrong way uh thrilled that danielle

00:04:03.920 smith has left conventional media because she's just so much better now when she could be 0.77

00:04:10.100 unrestrained, ask the questions that she wants and go into those issues. I don't know if people have

00:04:15.940 been getting her newsletter. I believe if you go to danielsmith.ca is where you can get them.

00:04:20.380 She actually published, you know, the long explanation of where she is and where she's

00:04:24.000 going. But one of the disciplinary letters she got from her boss at QR 77, and she said politely,

00:04:30.840 she wasn't trying to shoot at a person or anything, but boy, they were on her for everything

00:04:36.000 and a long list of covering the wrong guests and talking about the wrong issues.

00:04:41.680 And she just felt cornered and couldn't work in that environment any longer.

00:04:48.480 And we're better for it in the sense of fresh media.

00:04:53.120 Ironically, on the left, we had Ryan Jesperson up in Edmonton.

00:04:57.640 He got canceled as well.

00:04:59.760 And he started his own streaming show.

00:05:02.060 I believe it's on at the same time right now.

00:05:03.700 But I mean, he comes from strongly left of center. But again, if you scare and tweak your media bosses, you're going to find yourself pressured to leave or pressured to shut up. So the remaining ones in conventional media, unfortunately, are often restrained and quiet and they're somewhat shut up, which again makes it for boring and it's not going to expose and dig into these important issues that we really need to.

00:05:28.860 So today I'm going to have a couple of guests on.

00:05:32.140 At the top of the hour, I'm going to have Franco Teresano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:05:36.860 He's the Alberta Director.

00:05:38.660 We're going to talk mostly about municipal politics.

00:05:41.560 You know, it's going to be Calgary.

00:05:42.860 Not everybody viewing and listening is from Calgary, but you will, I think people can relate.

00:05:48.880 I mean, there's something with municipal politics.

00:05:50.540 Some of the most crazy and irresponsible politicians managed to get through the mix.

00:05:56.040 You know, it's something I've discussed for a long time.

00:05:58.860 People don't like partisan politics, the tribalism that comes with being in a party and some of that stuff. It's fair enough. It leads to some ugly politics at times.

00:06:12.720 But the problem with nonpartisan politics, as we see in municipal politics, is people slide through the radar. They'll campaign on one thing and govern on another because you never had that filter. You never had nominations.

00:06:23.600 you'd never had a full election race or a brand attached to them to be able to see what they

00:06:29.220 actually might be talking about. I see Cindy here has said, you know, since I want to bring up

00:06:37.500 comments as people can put them in, the UN drip, which is the declaration on indigenous peoples,

00:06:44.420 I believe. That is a huge, dangerous policy area. And it's one, there's nothing that terrifies

00:06:51.620 politicians or media more than talking about native issues i mean those are frightening yet

00:06:56.420 there was that we desperately need to address i mean our system when it comes to first nations

00:07:02.340 is failing i mean these people are are living in misery uh by every measure health education 0.99

00:07:08.660 crime life expectancy it's a disaster yet always the only acceptable answer to deal with appears

00:07:15.940 to be just to pour more money at it and then you know and to do more of these things to try and 0.69

00:07:20.020 and actually separate and add to this apartheid within our country, which is what the reserve

00:07:24.120 system is. So the UN declaration, and there is a federal bill, I don't know what it is, C215 or

00:07:29.640 something like that, that is looking to, or no, it's a smaller number. It's not a private

00:07:34.100 member's bill. It's C15. Somebody might correct me on that. But there is a move to really entrench

00:07:41.320 that UN declaration, which if you read it, boy, we're never going to get any resources developed

00:07:45.540 ever again well we might already be in that position if if we put that in uh and now cheryl's

00:07:50.820 asking uh whether kenny will loosen restrictions today and yeah that's a very good question and

00:07:58.740 and that's one of the things i definitely want to talk about because it's this is the day it's

00:08:04.820 another three weeks we should be on to phase three but it seems the provincial government is always

00:08:09.460 kicking and screaming we meet our own benchmarks but they'll always move the goal posts make an

00:08:14.900 excuse and kick the reopening down the road a little farther uh something that was interesting

00:08:20.020 this morning i'm going to try this screen sharing here so for those who can read it and i'll read

00:08:24.260 it out because some people will be just listening to audio uh drew barnes this morning posted on

00:08:28.020 facebook saying step three of the benchmark has been achieved some time ago and he's asking that

00:08:34.420 the government honor the commitment of easing items laid out in the step three reopening graph

00:08:39.540 uh he said albertans are well informed citizenry capable of exercising personal responsibility for

00:08:43.860 themselves and others the cornerstone of a democratic society such as ours is that persons

00:08:48.500 within the democracy exercise rights and responsible responsibilities with the least 1.00

00:08:53.780 government interference possible isn't that refreshing to hear from an mla and uh yes drew

00:09:00.580 has certainly been uh giving premier kennedy some some uh gray hairs i think sometimes with his

00:09:07.540 outspoken nature but people appreciate it uh and and we need somebody to speak up because we have

00:09:14.100 hit the benchmarks so let's talk about it why to be honest i don't think they're going to open that's

00:09:20.580 my thoughts i hope to be wrong uh we're seeing a number of hospitalizations starting to rise a

00:09:27.540 little bit i mean they're not they're still well under the the benchmark that the government set

00:09:32.740 but they're starting to rise and that's that's what they'll say is they'll say oh yeah but look

00:09:37.140 at the trending we can't uh pardon me i'm just trying to get better at the screen sharing

00:09:43.620 we can't do the reopening right now because we're going to be over 300 within a week and oh the

00:09:48.340 variance the variance the variance that's the latest of the uh fear-mongering predictions is

00:09:53.540 the variants are going to wipe us all out and we'll be in trouble so here i do have this is what

00:10:01.540 step three is supposed to look like we have and then they do cover their butts a little bit and

00:10:05.780 and they say potential. So potential easing with adult team sports, casinos, racing centers,

00:10:11.680 and bingo halls. Now these are areas, remember that these employ thousands of people that have

00:10:15.440 been unemployed for a long time. And then people say, oh, they could just get CERB and others.

00:10:20.940 We're borrowing ourselves to oblivion. Not to mention it's unhealthy being restricted and

00:10:25.760 locked up like this. We need to move ahead. So we've got the casinos, youth sport, further easing,

00:10:31.720 indoor social gatherings with restrictions. Now, you know, that could mean a heck of a lot of things.

00:10:39.180 Indoor seated events, movie theaters, auditoriums, museums, art galleries, zoos, interpretive centers.

00:10:44.180 It would be nice to get out just for a day trip to a museum again. I mean, we can't cross the

00:10:47.820 bloody border. And of course, at the bottom, it says places of worship. And that one doesn't even,

00:10:52.160 you know, have that with restrictions or anything, though I imagine there would be some if they open,

00:10:56.660 But that's been a big one. Danielle Smith spoke to Erin Coates, the wife of James Coates, who was arrested and was in jail. I believe he still is. That's something that Dave Naylor, our news guy, has told me. Actually, he will give me an update if it happens during the show. We're watching for if Pastor Coates gets bail, and I will let you know at that time.

00:11:22.520 So will these happen? And then we've got Pat Ollenberger says, 300 is an arbitrary number.

00:11:28.280 Yeah, probably is. But you know, that's been a trend for this entire bloody COVID thing. It

00:11:34.840 seems everything's arbitrary, isn't it? I mean, they toss out numbers, they toss out goalposts,

00:11:39.320 and they move them on a whim, it seems like. They don't seem to know what they're doing,

00:11:44.840 and that really doesn't help with our confidence. Why don't I restrict myself,

00:11:48.920 potentially bankrupt myself when you guys don't seem to actually know what you're talking about

00:11:56.120 this is a frightening sort of thing so i'll show here here's some projections due to when they were

00:12:01.640 fear-mongering on the uh the variant of course the dreaded variant and uh they were this was

00:12:08.280 from january 25th now i guess this started uh this was supposed to be after 250 variant cases

00:12:14.200 were identified we were supposed to see this explosion and trend and uh they believed even

00:12:20.360 you know without the variants as you can see with the lower course we should have 1073 hospitalizations

00:12:25.400 we're about 270 right now i believe uh and with this dreaded variant we should be sitting around

00:12:31.400 3611 again that's well over 10 times what the reality is this is the modeling these guys

00:12:40.120 base their policy on so how are we supposed to trust them their models are crap i mean if

00:12:45.320 you can't project accurately but what good is are these arbitrary restrictions things

00:12:50.920 cheryl dawn's pointing out gyms should be essential for healthier uh health lifestyles

00:12:55.800 and mentally and so on i mean we do need i mean you gotta look at the bigger picture it's not

00:13:01.160 just getting in shape it's good for your mental health when you've had a good workout here's the

00:13:04.600 ICU admissions. Again, with the dreaded variant, we should be getting into the 800 people in ICU

00:13:12.680 range. As I said, I believe it's 46. And with regular, it should be over 200. Again, 46.

00:13:23.160 So these predictions are garbage, but we're modeling our policy based on them and we're

00:13:29.480 losing and that's what gets people to believe as chris uh is saying there that the whole thing's a

00:13:34.920 scam uh ray anderson saying yeah but they'll say the lockdown's worked and that's true and it's

00:13:42.760 it's frustrating and it's painful because then you're forced into this proving a negative

00:13:46.760 you know but the the great thing is we've got control groups out there texas and mississippi

00:13:52.840 they reopened they got rid of all the restrictions that's it get out don't wear a mask go to the

00:13:58.160 store play sports have fun live a life and guess what they're fine it didn't explode there's not

00:14:06.420 the mass plague it didn't take over texas and mississippi i mean these guys i got their stats

00:14:12.620 here they didn't change a bit so what's your excuse guys i mean that's a lot of what we see

00:14:18.320 you know their stats are the same as california uh california's kept some of the strongest

00:14:23.700 restrictions in the country like whatever is impacting the the spread of COVID it's lockdowns

00:14:32.000 really have a negligible impact on them at best but that doesn't stop governments from doing it

00:14:36.620 as other people said though here's here's Mississippi that trend is dropping right down

00:14:41.620 I mean it should be spiking you know they predicted the end of the world heck Stephen

00:14:45.340 King jumped in and said Texas was being irresponsible well if Stephen King said so

00:14:49.020 how could we argue with that and you know fine he's an author with a political point of view

00:14:54.860 we can dismiss that but we've got our yes supposed medical experts going on about these

00:15:00.780 these restrictions and saying that we've got to do this and they aren't working so will we see today

00:15:07.240 an easing of restrictions or will they make more excuses and i hate to say that i'm expecting more

00:15:12.640 excuses as other people are saying i'm so done with masks i had a person uh you know twitter

00:15:17.900 is a sick, weird little world, but I did have a person coming after me on my playground on Twitter

00:15:23.200 there saying that she actually does want to see masks mandated for every flu season. So even once

00:15:31.300 this is behind us, because there is a flu season every year and it does kill vulnerable people

00:15:36.420 every year. So she feels we should just wear them every year. This crazed zero risk mentality we've

00:15:43.760 gotten into. We've got to tell these people to go to hell. It's enough. We've got to push back.

00:15:47.880 I'm not saying I want your great-grandmama to die, but we just can't keep moving on,

00:15:54.480 perpetually shutting things down. I mean, the economic fallout really hasn't even been going

00:15:59.300 to hit us yet, and it's going to be brutal when it does. Mark Cooper, discussing getting Albertans

00:16:07.240 back to work at the oil field, administer energy and AER, pushing for big operators going forward,

00:16:12.540 and he's got an interview suggestion. Yeah, the energy sector, I mean, that's another

00:16:17.720 giant issue. We got a lot to cover in upcoming shows. So I do appreciate the suggestions because

00:16:22.840 we really want to keep talking on important things. The energy sector, so we're seeing

00:16:28.140 world oil demand rising. It's getting stronger. World needs it. They're recovering and we're

00:16:34.920 shut in. Alberta is an investment pariah because we've got a prime minister who wants to shut in

00:16:41.700 well. We've got an American neighbor now who's shut down the Keystone XL expansion. We got

00:16:49.140 Gretchen Whitmer looking to shut down line five, which she's quite tightly aligned with Biden, 0.79

00:16:54.980 so I imagine she'll get it her way. Now we've got that old chrome there, Jane Fonda. She was out 1.00

00:17:01.060 opposing line three, which crosses the border. So I mean, they're shutting down our lines one

00:17:04.420 by one they're picking them off and uh we have to what the hell is that western standard put a

00:17:15.140 comment i'm not sure how that would happen but yes we we definitely have have to get things changed

00:17:23.620 we've got to get to tide water we've got to get to other options uh that's one of the things i

00:17:27.220 i believe clinton devoe who i'm going to be speaking to later on about the conservative

00:17:30.820 tax on things. He was talking about the Hudson's Bay option. We had a presentation on that last

00:17:35.820 weekend at a suits and boots conference that I hosted as well. Let's get that Trans Mountain

00:17:40.860 done. That thing seems to be stalled and dead in the water. What's going on there? Energy East,

00:17:47.160 perhaps. I mean, the problem we've got is we've only got one customer and it's the Americans and 0.92

00:17:51.460 the Americans have got a doddering old man who opposes our energy sector shutting us in. So

00:17:57.620 got that from Trudeau. We've got that from Biden. We're in a lot of trouble. So the world is

00:18:02.340 desperately demanding oil and gas. We're seeing it by the prices, but it's Saudi Arabia filling

00:18:06.660 the need, Venezuela, Russia, you know, while our ethically produced energy products are

00:18:14.420 remaining shut in the ground. It's just bizarre. It's ridiculous. And we're losing.

00:18:22.420 Rich Rogers said, when the vaccine came out, the flu mutated. Yeah, I don't know. I mean,

00:18:26.340 that's the thing. These are fluid things. And I really worry about where the bar gets set,

00:18:31.100 though. I mean, do you think this is the last infectious virus that's going to come and hit

00:18:36.060 the world population? It's going to threaten people. It's going to scare them. There's going

00:18:39.440 to be more. It happens. It's natural, unfortunately. We do want to get it under control. But now that

00:18:45.520 we've set this standard that we will shut down the world every time something like that comes

00:18:49.840 out that's going to kill 0.01% of the population, this is going to be a bad future to look ahead

00:18:57.540 to. So yeah, where are we looking at it? You know, let's see here. I got to get better

00:19:06.880 with this screen sharing thing there. Arm can't reach far enough. What else did I want

00:19:13.500 to cover today? See, we've got a new show. There's so much to cover and so much to hit

00:19:17.140 at once. So come on, people talk to me. There we go. Jane Fonda. Some of these people just don't

00:19:25.320 go away. So let's get some suggestions out there. What do we got with the commenters? I see a good

00:19:28.820 number of viewers though. How do we push back? How do we stop this ongoing effort to shut down

00:19:37.100 our energy sector? I mean, when the federal government won't give us a permit, how can we

00:19:42.460 force a pipeline? As much as I'd like to be able to say, we could just crush our way through. We

00:19:46.380 can't do that. So where does it go from there? All right, well, let's get on to somebody else

00:19:53.760 then. The Kielburgers, since we're going to go federally, you know, something actually, 1.00

00:19:59.220 a fantastic story at Western Standard Online, Dave Naylor put it together,

00:20:04.780 was an exchange between Pierre Polyev and one of the Kielburger brothers,

00:20:12.000 where they were discussing whether or not they'd actually been in communication with the Prime

00:20:17.600 Minister's office. And Ben Chin, who used to be a CBC employee, Ben Chin is now in the

00:20:28.680 communications office with the Prime Minister. And he was definitely, they've got now information

00:20:33.860 linking the Kielberger brothers in direct communication with Ben Chin, which thus

00:20:39.460 means the Prime Minister's office. And the stumbling, confused, excuse-making from Kielberger

00:20:46.000 during that, I guess you could say interrogation by Polyav was something else. So I should go into

00:20:52.960 that. Western Standard Online, that's where our news is. There's what's called a leaky paywall.

00:20:58.360 There will be a number of stories you can get for free, but after that, we will need a subscription.

00:21:02.280 And I know some people have been a little upset with that, but we are independent and we aren't

00:21:07.380 taking government funding like so many media outlets are, such as the CBC. We do rely on you

00:21:13.340 guys to keep this content going, to keep things rolling. We need those subscriptions and then we

00:21:17.840 can get that sort of content like Dave puts up there with these great interviews. So please

00:21:22.340 consider subscribing online as well. If you're watching this, subscribe on YouTube, subscribe

00:21:26.640 on Facebook. We get these specials. Tomorrow night, Danielle Smith, by the way, is doing another one

00:21:31.340 that's going to be up and out there. It's going to be, I don't know the exact subject matter,

00:21:36.480 but her theme with these ongoing specials has been the COVID-19. She did the interviews with

00:21:41.660 David Redman and Aaron Coates, who was on Tucker Carlson recently. So be sure to get on there and

00:21:49.820 have a look at those things. You know, they're going to keep coming up and covering that news

00:21:54.200 that nobody else will cover. Susan saying, you know, how do we get the information and news out

00:21:58.480 to the masses? It's not just Facebook and live stream. Many folks aren't technologically equipped

00:22:03.680 beyond a tv and a basic cell phone well it's a challenge but you know we can share we can push

00:22:09.680 i i know that there's still the the standard um social media mechanisms to get things out there

00:22:18.240 but uh it's going to take a while most people though are online uh something that was very

00:22:23.440 interesting when talking about these kinds of broadcasts actually i i'm in predecessor so uh

00:22:27.760 which is just outside of calgary you would think though i was in the arctic with the internet that

00:22:32.240 we have out here it really comes and goes and can be terrible so we've applied for we're on the

00:22:36.880 waiting list for that starlink which is elon musk's creation which is going to stream internet

00:22:43.040 information everywhere but the other things that that they've got in mind i mean this is incredible

00:22:48.560 we could finally see a world with uh unlimited internet streaming they're going to build cars

00:22:55.440 that are capable of receiving this if you want to see the end of radio stations that's going to be

00:23:00.400 it now you can stream your music directly to your car or your talk programs things such as this

00:23:05.520 be in your vehicle it can stream unlimited to your phone no matter where you're going so you

00:23:09.440 can listen to it in your headset or you can watch it on your phone screen so the world is changing

00:23:14.560 the old media is changing and if we stay on top of this curve we can make sure good information

00:23:20.640 is getting out there a problem we have of course now the liberals are desperately trying to find

00:23:26.640 ways to control the internet control what we're allowed to say control what we're allowed to do

00:23:31.760 i'm hoping in this information age that they're trying to stop a strainer though you know it's

00:23:36.720 just going to leak out if you block speech here it's going to spring up there and you just are

00:23:41.840 not going to get this out of here you can't do it but they're going to try uh there's nothing that

00:23:48.640 uh an authoritarian state likes more than controlling information uh i had the good

00:23:56.400 fortune way back at the end of the 80s to travel through the soviet union and when uh i crossed

00:24:01.600 from uh with aeroflot from finland to moscow we flew over there and you know customs came along

00:24:07.920 they searched my bags i travel i'm used to uh you know they're looking for drugs or they're looking

00:24:14.400 for for other uh illicit items well what were they searching for the soviet union back then

00:24:18.320 they were looking for cassette tapes and books they wanted to control the influx of information

00:24:24.800 from the outside world i mean they didn't want the poor miserable population to know just how poor

00:24:30.400 and miserable they were under a communist state so they were trying to stop the the the incoming

00:24:37.040 information in order to stop that from happening which didn't work and in the long run it was uh

00:24:42.960 successful i mean that's part of what made it crumble when gorbachev came along for those of

00:24:46.400 of you too young to remember it was the people saw what's happening on the other side of the wall

00:24:50.160 they saw what's happening in the rest of the world and they said that's enough and uh if the

00:24:57.300 information had been controlled if they could control it in the 80s as they did back in the 50s

00:25:02.300 they would probably still be communist today but as long as people can communicate we can stop

00:25:07.360 authoritarian dictators from controlling us so but we've got to be vigilant um and yeah some things

00:25:14.160 expensive dale frisk is pointing out sterling's 800 for the equipment and 150 for the subscription

00:25:19.440 yes it is but you know using my telus hub right now isn't very cheap either uh for those of us

00:25:24.160 who are in areas again with limited internet and that's just the starting rate i mean as things

00:25:28.080 get bigger we uh you know and we see uh infrastructure perhaps competition maybe

00:25:35.840 there's gonna be more satellites coming up these prices will get cheaper and it's surprising with

00:25:38.560 tech how fast it is i mean think of 20 years ago could you imagine you'd be able to read an email

00:25:42.960 on your phone and the internet was there but it had a way to go as dale also pointed out yes putin

00:25:48.160 still wants uh to control information and control new media he's trying to shut down twitter uh

00:25:54.000 china yes they're attacking the religious there and not enough people are speaking up on it that's 0.79

00:25:58.800 it's been another terrible area of weakness with our uh prime minister and our federal government 1.00

00:26:05.760 that that soft spot with china you know they're committing atrocities against their people they're 0.98

00:26:11.680 a vicious authoritarian regime that spies on other nations that steals information yet Trudeau just 0.98

00:26:20.320 just rolls over you know they're holding our Canadians hostage and at best he will wag his

00:26:25.360 finger a little bit at them it really again if you want to feed conspiracy theories let's talk about

00:26:30.080 why is the Trudeau government so beholden to the state of China where we at yeah as Dale says it's

00:26:39.520 it's a bargain for the internet at that sort of price. Now we got here, you know, this really

00:26:45.860 shows again where we are in our politics, especially with the East and energy here in

00:26:50.600 Alberta. So this was an exchange from Twitter again, where we had Gerald Butts, everybody

00:26:56.340 knows, he's Prime Minister Trudeau's right-hand man there. And Pierre Polyev, you know, who's

00:27:02.600 been a very outspoken member of parliament in in in ottawa he's the member from carlton and he was

00:27:10.080 just saying freedom he put a little tweet with the family he's having a beer but the big thing was

00:27:15.740 he was wearing an oil sand strong shirt and uh gerald butt says pierre's gonna make a nice uh

00:27:22.500 fine next vp ontario for the canadian association of petroleum producers uh they really do think

00:27:30.340 that it's offensive that somebody wears something that's pro-oil and gas, something that funds

00:27:36.520 billions and billions of dollars for Canadian social programs, for Canadian infrastructure,

00:27:40.120 for individuals, for pension. They see this as bad. They attack it. I mean, Butts really thought

00:27:46.300 he was taking a nasty shot at Polyev for his daring to look supportive of Alberta or even just

00:27:53.620 Canadian energy. What is the matter with this nation? And this is the guy who has Trudeau's

00:27:58.320 here. This shows some of the futility, it seems, of trying to, you know, develop our resources and

00:28:07.580 get them out. This hostile environment with this federal government. I mean, you know, he certainly

00:28:14.160 wouldn't have done that if it was hydroelectric in Quebec or manufacturing somewhere or fisheries in

00:28:20.020 the east. But you know, when it's something of an Albertan or Western bent, and you can see the

00:28:27.020 root of our alienation, our crabbiness out here, then it's something to mock or shoot at or even

00:28:34.440 say that it's a bad thing. So in here, at least again, one thing with Pierre Polyev, he doesn't

00:28:41.660 back down. He did respond well. He said, oh, and you would make a fine lobbyist for SNC-Lavalin

00:28:47.520 the next time they need help with the law. Because yes, the entrenched Laurentian elite and their

00:28:54.360 companies, among which is SNC-Lavalin, which the liberals

00:28:58.620 again swept under the rug, Bombardier, you know, so many of

00:29:02.580 those central Canadian companies, executives, the elite, that just

00:29:08.100 seem to be bulletproof. It doesn't matter how many subsidies

00:29:11.220 they get, how bad their performance is, they remain in

00:29:15.000 business. And off they go. So we should have our fellow from the

00:29:24.360 taxpayers Federation along here any moment now pardon me and I'm just

00:29:32.100 looking sorry I got an update from Dave Naylor I got a spammer from some guy

00:29:39.240 named Mark so it's breaking judges worried that pastor coats fine is not

00:29:46.240 not enough it's sitting bail so I'm not sure I'll expand on this in just a moment

00:29:52.120 and uh so yeah it looks like it's gonna be a few more hours uh to hear if he's gonna get mail

00:30:00.680 uh he's still in solitary you still can't talk to him i imagine if pastor coates gets out soon i

00:30:06.840 mean we will uh uh be able to interview him and ask about this i mean his wife erin has been

00:30:13.440 fantastic as i said she was a tucker carlton uh which is a widely rated show in the united states

00:30:19.920 of course. So we will update you as fast as we can as that information breaks.

00:30:28.820 Yeah, Mike Connelly pointing out how long it's going to be before we see a budget table from

00:30:33.200 the Liberals. I don't know. I won't hold my breath. I'm guessing though, just to throw a

00:30:37.400 shot out there, the Liberals want to go to an election. The Conservatives are still lagging

00:30:43.000 in the polls. The Liberals are going to put together a unicorn piss budget that's just going

00:30:49.740 to be full of baloney and projections that are unrealistic and then say this is so important

00:30:54.380 we're going to have to take that to Canadians and they'll go to the polls and if they win

00:30:58.500 well they'll set the budget aside and come up with a new one which who knows where that's going to go

00:31:03.060 so right on time we do have Franco Terrazzano coming on board he's the Alberta director of

00:31:10.620 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation these guys have been all over our governments on all their levels

00:31:15.520 because those governments have been all over us

00:31:17.460 and in our wallets and pocketbooks.

00:31:19.340 So, again, it's good to see somebody speaking up on our behalf.

00:31:23.560 And the Taxpayers Federation has been around for a long time.

00:31:25.900 If we might recall, for some of the older ones of us,

00:31:27.880 Jason Kenney was one of the first heads of it.

00:31:30.100 My health, things change with time.

00:31:32.760 Perhaps when we're talking to Premier Franco Terrazzano in 20 years,

00:31:36.800 he'll suddenly have become a fiscal liberal too.

00:31:39.040 But we'll see.

00:31:39.720 This is where we'll get him on the record and find out.

00:31:42.560 So, hello, Franco.

00:31:43.680 How are you doing?

00:31:44.780 Hey, Corey. Thanks for that introduction. How are you?

00:31:48.620 Good, good. Well, I've started to kick off your campaign for Premier down the road there. You're

00:31:53.500 young, you've got a lot of time to work on it. Well, just make sure you hold me accountable

00:31:58.300 with all these op-eds and everything that we're putting out there. That's what we're doing with

00:32:03.660 Premier Kenny. You joke about that, but one of the things that we're doing is we're showing all

00:32:08.620 the promises that he made, especially with corporate welfare. When you have government

00:32:13.020 taking money from taxpayers and dishing it out to businesses. I mean, Jason King, when he was with

00:32:18.440 the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, he led the charge against corporate welfare. And now,

00:32:22.460 unfortunately, we're seeing his government dish it out left, right and center.

00:32:27.400 Yeah, no, that's been a frustration. I mean, one of the huge ones and you're too young to remember,

00:32:31.780 but that was a tremendous thing in Kenny's time as the Taxpayers Federation head because we had

00:32:37.360 Klein just kind of taking the reins in Alberta. But one of the big things hanging on us was the

00:32:41.800 provincial government had gotten into business on a number of levels and like governments do,

00:32:45.760 they failed.

00:33:11.800 Let's use the knelllock.

00:33:14.600 So, both of which is the case

00:33:37.560 .

00:33:43.380 .

00:33:52.780 .

00:33:58.320 .

00:34:03.500 .

00:34:07.020 .

00:34:07.040 .

00:34:07.080 .

00:34:07.120 .

00:34:07.500 .

00:34:07.520 .

00:34:07.560 Okay.

00:34:37.560 Thank you.

00:35:07.560 okay mike's hot from franco and uh sorry about that boy i uh had a technical crash there welcome

00:35:19.860 to episode one hey take two let's go yeah so uh thank you for those who patiently hung in there

00:35:28.100 so uh now i see what happens when my computer decides to reboot in the midst of something so

00:35:32.780 we were talking about corporate welfare. I believe I was just ranting about the leftovers from the

00:35:37.860 Klein government back then. People remember MagCan, that's that big red building you see down

00:35:42.980 towards High River. That thing is sat empty for almost 30 years. It was a magnesium plant that

00:35:47.820 the government put a half a billion early 90s dollars into that never opened up for more than

00:35:53.040 a week. Novotel was another one that was a phone manufacturing company that went broke, cost us

00:35:58.360 more billions i mean the list was long from back then so which examples now do we have out of uh

00:36:06.840 kenny's uh government are they still participating in corporate welfare well we have a bunch right we

00:36:11.720 have a bunch um the king taxpayers federation we've been keeping a list a running tab and we found

00:36:17.000 about 14 different announcements totaling five billion dollars and i just want to make a quick

00:36:21.960 distinction here when we're talking about corporate welfare we're not talking about the government

00:36:25.640 um you know giving giving some money to a restaurant or a gym to help them through

00:36:30.200 government-imposed lockdowns and restrictions no we're specifically talking about the government

00:36:35.000 using tax dollars to pick hand-pick winners and losers and the one that's really troubling for us

00:36:40.680 is that all the petrochemical subsidies with under the ndp government we heard them announce

00:36:45.640 hundreds and millions of dollars for petrochemical industry um including their petrochemical

00:36:51.000 diversification program now unfortunately what we heard with the ucp not only did they not scrap the

00:36:56.920 bad ndp corporate welfare program they brought in their own petrochemical corporate welfare program

00:37:02.840 on top of that and to make matters worse they don't even have a cap on program costs so taxpayers

00:37:08.840 are left in the dark with this one and we have no idea how much is actually going to end up costing

00:37:13.320 us at the end of the day yeah well and as a capitalist and as a former oil field guy it's

00:37:18.920 It's always driven me mad when we see the provincial government, the federal government,

00:37:22.760 they're saying, okay, we want to help the energy industry, so we're going to dive in.

00:37:25.660 No, we just want you out of the way.

00:37:27.700 We can do it.

00:37:28.620 We know how.

00:37:29.340 We're good at this.

00:37:30.800 Leave us alone.

00:37:31.720 Quit regulating us to death.

00:37:33.640 You don't have to reach into taxpayers' wallets any deeper.

00:37:36.280 Just let us do our jobs, and I promise we'll do it really well.

00:37:40.160 Yeah, exactly, Corey.

00:37:41.860 I mean, what we need from our governments, especially our federal government, is just

00:37:45.680 for them to take their boots off our necks, right?

00:37:48.300 you have bill c69 the no more pipelines law you had bill c48 the discriminatory tanker ban

00:37:53.300 we we know that ottawa we hear ottawa is going to be hiking its carbon tax on april 1st that's not

00:37:59.140 an april fool's joke it's just a cruel insult to taxpayers and and we we hear trudeau is going to

00:38:04.400 be massively increasing that carbon tax down the road and he's getting ready to hammer us

00:38:08.080 with his second carbon tax so i mean it's it's really death by a thousand cuts for for our

00:38:12.940 industry here in Alberta. And, you know, to give Premier Kenney some credit, because credit is due,

00:38:18.960 he is doing the right thing when it comes to business taxes, right? He reduced the business

00:38:23.000 tax to 8%. One of the most competitive jurisdictions in all of North America is what

00:38:27.880 Alberta is becoming. But just because he's doing some things right, like reducing the business tax,

00:38:34.440 it doesn't make sense for him then to turn around and harm taxpayers by taking our money

00:38:39.460 and giving it to handpicked businesses when we should be letting the market dictate who should

00:38:44.520 win and who should lose. Yeah, there's an old quote. I'm probably going to slaughter it as

00:38:50.080 a paraphrase of it. Governments are terrible at picking winners, but losers are really good at 0.95

00:38:54.400 picking governments. It just seems that the governments don't pick the best business plan,

00:38:59.080 they pick the best lobbyist. And that doesn't mean it's going to go well. They really should

00:39:03.140 just stay out of it. But that temptation seems never to stop with them. So speaking of losers

00:39:08.180 in government let's move on to municipally here uh you guys have been talking about you know that

00:39:13.140 the pandemic of course has really hurt a lot of us people have lost jobs those who are still working

00:39:18.580 a lot of them have either reduced hours or reduced pay but it appears if you're in the municipal

00:39:23.940 civil service that's not the case well yeah i mean that was a great way to say going into this i mean

00:39:29.860 there's been a lot of things that we've been extremely upset about with calgary city council

00:39:34.580 But just late last week, we find out that 14,000, nearly 14,000 city employees received a pay raise during lockdowns in 2020, an extra cost of $27 million to the taxpayer.

00:39:48.300 I mean, there's been so many things that taxpayers have a right to be outraged over with Calgary City Hall.

00:39:53.780 But this one is just an absolute slap in the face to know that the private sector has been shedding jobs.

00:39:59.920 The people who are lucky enough to hold on to their jobs have been taking massive pay cuts or, to your point, reduced hours.

00:40:06.620 You have businesses that have shut their doors down for good, many holding on for dear life.

00:40:11.860 And now taxpayers have the privilege to be paying higher taxes.

00:40:15.880 So nearly 14,000 bureaucrats at City Hall could get a raise last year.

00:40:19.940 An absolute slap in the face.

00:40:22.920 Well, everything has contracted.

00:40:25.800 I mean, the world has contracted.

00:40:27.740 industries businesses uh yet when it comes to government civil service not that i'm dancing

00:40:35.300 on the graves of jobs but i'm clearly there must not be as much work needs to be done now we've

00:40:40.840 got less industry we've got less everything i mean why where are the cuts when are on any level of

00:40:45.940 government we're going to see some some cuts from these civil service because we just don't need

00:40:49.340 this many right now well it's it's yeah i mean to your point it's it's the number of bureaucrats but

00:40:54.360 But there's one way where we know we're not going to reduce services, but still get more

00:40:57.720 bang for taxpayers bucks.

00:40:59.600 And that's if government employees take a pay cut, right? 0.84

00:41:02.120 That would save money right there.

00:41:03.500 Instead, we see the opposite.

00:41:05.020 Nearly 14,000 city of Calgary bureaucrats getting a pay raise last year, costing us

00:41:09.840 $27 million.

00:41:11.640 But guess what?

00:41:12.640 2020 was not the first year of the downturn in Alberta.

00:41:15.920 We've been in a downturn for more than five years, right?

00:41:18.500 It wasn't like 2020, all of a sudden we have a downturn.

00:41:21.120 really we've seen city council asleep at the wheel for the last five years if we go back to 2015

00:41:27.040 the cost of pay raises for the city bureaucrats put taxpayers on the hook for an extra 230 million

00:41:34.800 dollars i mean corey to me that is a significant sum of money and that's extra taxes for families

00:41:40.400 and businesses who can least afford it yeah i mean we need a break uh you know these businesses are

00:41:47.120 hanging by a thread and again you know that well we've got calgary economic development who's been

00:41:52.000 sitting on i don't know what's left of a hundred million dollar fund to try and dole out to the

00:41:56.080 winners and losers they're trying to find but a lot of the existing businesses there are some that

00:42:00.800 are still operating they just need a break they need the city just as you said get off their neck

00:42:05.520 and they will happily uh contribute i guess you could say well remember remember back in 2019

00:42:12.320 the spring of 2019 it was only it was only about a few years ago but it seems like a decade ago

00:42:16.480 just with with a whirlwind of all the things that have been happening since then but in 2019 there

00:42:21.120 was a calgary business tax rally at city hall and i was there i ended up speaking to council that day

00:42:27.440 and i talked to as many business owners as i could speak to and the common thread that i heard from

00:42:32.160 almost every business owner is that they all they want is for the city of calgary to spend their tax

00:42:37.600 dollars wisely right to stop with all these crazy benefits to stop with all the art projects to stop

00:42:44.560 with all of that kind of stuff so they wanted city hall to spend money wisely um and reduce

00:42:51.120 their tax bill i didn't hear a single business say that they wanted corporate welfare i didn't

00:42:56.640 hear a single business say that they want the bureaucrats to be giving them other people's tax

00:43:01.600 dollars but to your point which you've raised we we see the city of calgary sitting on a hundred

00:43:07.680 million dollar corporate slush fund right that's money taken from taxpayers in many cases struggling

00:43:13.040 businesses and then used by these bureaucrats to be picking winners and losers uh corey i just

00:43:18.640 did a quick check today and there's still nearly 60 million dollars in that corporate slush fund

00:43:24.800 immediately that slush fund should be drained and those tax dollars should be going back to

00:43:29.200 struggling businesses well absolutely i mean we got the bird in hand we got the companies that

00:43:34.000 are successful why be chasing other ones when these ones are struggling why lose 10 calgary

00:43:38.480 companies to try and draw in one maybe down the road uh miriam uh rashleigh i i was probably

00:43:46.240 correct is asked the question though the tough one because it's easy for us to to and we do

00:43:50.320 that's uh we're about but what's the solution you know what do we do get a civil lawsuit against

00:43:54.480 the municipal government uh you know she's getting tired of of the bad news and yeah there's there's

00:43:59.520 always a lot of bad news so where can we go how can we turn this around what do we got to do here

00:44:04.320 what is the government going to do here well oh the government has a laundry list of things to do

00:44:09.520 um the canadian taxpayers federation along with some other advocacy groups i mean cory and you

00:44:14.080 were there for this press conference we held a press conference that showed 21 different ways

00:44:18.720 for city council to cut the fat in 2021. the whole point of that was to show that there's still a ton

00:44:23.760 of fat at the city of calgary where they can still cut um so to answer part of that question there's

00:44:30.400 a laundry list of what governments need to do um to get to the the more difficult question in terms

00:44:36.080 of advocacy well there's many different things when it comes to the city of calgary you have

00:44:40.800 to attend their budget meetings you have to be there to show that calgarians actually do want

00:44:45.760 the government to reduce spending and reduce the tax pills right if you don't show up i mean um

00:44:51.280 you're not going to make an impact the other things to do is is go to taxpayer.com um you

00:44:56.160 You can join our organization free of charge to get our action updates to know when we're hosting events.

00:45:03.000 And with COVID-19, it's typically virtual right now or when we're hosting other types of mobilization efforts.

00:45:09.420 But the big thing is you have to keep contacting City Hall.

00:45:12.860 You have to keep contacting your MLAs and MPs, especially in the upcoming election.

00:45:17.160 I mean, we're going to be publishing a list of questions that you should be asking each councillor candidate when they come knocking on your door.

00:45:26.160 Yeah, well, and this is the year, if any, they're going to be listening. I mean, that's been a trend. It used to be a three-year trend. Now it's a four-year trend where suddenly they all turn into conservatives and responsible people for six or eight months leading up to election. And then, of course, the election passes, they go back to their free spending, irresponsible ways.

00:45:42.280 uh teresa shore yeah because you did put out uh yeah i remember that i was freezing cold

00:45:48.140 i'm sitting all steps that day uh 21 uh items to cut and she's asking you might not have it

00:45:55.220 immediately on hand but still where's your top five of the laundry list uh you know which ones

00:45:59.880 can you really point out yeah yeah yeah so uh first i have to say it has to be across the board

00:46:05.820 right you have to see spending reductions across the board on that list we said that the city of

00:46:10.820 Calgary should bring its spending across the board back down to 2014-15 levels, right? That's

00:46:16.420 right before the downturn began. So we're saying, look, families and businesses have found ways to

00:46:21.280 find savings throughout the downturn. And that's where the city of Calgary should be looking to

00:46:26.560 reduce spending across the board. And Corey, just one point is that we saw spending at the

00:46:31.920 city of Calgary massively increase in 2013. And it's kind of reasonable why it did, right? To deal

00:46:38.620 with the floods. That was a huge situation for Calgary. But the problem is, is that we haven't

00:46:43.700 seen spending levels be brought back to pre-flood normals, so to speak. So the problem is they

00:46:49.500 massively increased spending and we've just seen spending increase year after year. So the first

00:46:54.360 one is across the board savings. The second one is you have to go at the elephant in the room,

00:46:59.840 the cost elephant in the room, which we've been talking about, which is labor, right? Salaries,

00:47:03.920 the number of employees and the crazy benefits. Maybe that's point number three is these crazy

00:47:08.720 benefits. Not only are city employees receiving a generous defined benefit pension plan at a time

00:47:16.120 when most workers outside of government don't get a pension plan, but there's hundreds, hundreds of

00:47:21.520 city of Calgary employees receiving two or three pensions, which is just completely ridiculous and

00:47:27.240 out of touch. The fourth one, it has to be corporate welfare, right? Let's start with that

00:47:31.580 60 million dollars left in the in the corporate slush fund that the city of calgary is on top of

00:47:37.420 and you know let's lump in number five with just the priorities let's let's the we need our

00:47:43.960 counselors to have or exercise some common sense to say what is necessary what is not necessary

00:47:49.860 we should only be focusing on the essentials right now um you know i'll i'll say something

00:47:54.960 that maybe some of your listeners will agree maybe some won't but the 300 million dollars

00:48:00.680 that Calgary taxpayers are on the hook for the Calgary Flames arena is absolutely non-essential

00:48:07.580 and look I'm I'm a huge fan of hockey like but the thing is is that we should be supporting

00:48:13.900 the Flames with tickets and not with our tax dollars. Yeah that's it is a controversial one

00:48:21.040 it's funny uh and and frustrating sometimes how many hardcore fiscal conservatives suddenly open

00:48:27.920 up a big exception when it comes to their favorite sports team uh these are companies these are

00:48:32.640 businesses and they they can be viable ones just like any other if we create the right environment

00:48:38.720 for them to operate in i mean maybe there's ways we could have facilitated a a stadium or things

00:48:43.840 like that without such a direct injection of taxpayers dollars on it or an arena but once

00:48:47.680 they do that we're down that rabbit hole and and we sink further and of course it's always well

00:48:53.840 that city did it so we have to do it well you know the the race to the bottom unfortunately costs us

00:48:58.960 all dearly um is the city hiring more people again i saw a bizarre job posting a safe calgary threw

00:49:06.240 that out on twitter for a position of some kind of really strange name of a manager of

00:49:13.920 people person or something i'm guessing maybe it was human resources

00:49:17.040 and it gave a pay range of, I believe, $170,000 to $320,000 a year, which again was bizarre with

00:49:25.020 just how wide that range is they were advertising for. What roles is the city filling right now?

00:49:30.500 What are they doing in there that they're bringing on new staff of an indeterminate role at that

00:49:35.400 price? Well, that's a great question, especially when we're in this massive downturn and a

00:49:42.000 downturn that we've been in for more than five years. Now, sometimes I hear counselors and even

00:49:47.000 top city administration, the top city brass, talking about these savings that they're finding

00:49:51.840 labor. And I just don't know what they're actually pointing to. Because when I look at the city's

00:49:57.000 annual reports, I've seen labor costs increase by hundreds of millions of dollars during the

00:50:01.760 downturn. I've seen a ton of new full-time municipal employees being hired during the

00:50:07.240 downturn. So they're talking about all these savings that they're finding. And I don't know

00:50:11.240 what they're talking about because when I'm looking at the city of Calgary's annual reports

00:50:15.940 which you can find online I'm seeing the exact opposite I mean maybe they're talking about well

00:50:20.820 they're they're spending less than what they would have wanted to spend on right but if you ask

00:50:26.440 families in the real world if you ask businesses we'll tell you that that's not actually finding

00:50:30.980 savings like do if you remember um the letter that Mayor Nenshi sent with the property tax

00:50:37.580 increase it talked about finding all of these savings but if you look at the budget year after

00:50:42.860 year spending is going up yeah i mean it's just it's just hard math and another area it comes down

00:50:50.520 to efficiencies which is a little more difficult to define it maybe we could talk a little bit

00:50:55.360 about that a picture i like using from a blog posting i wrote years ago but i'd seen it posted

00:51:00.260 by somebody and they'd taken it from a plus 15 and there were literally 10 people standing around

00:51:06.020 while one guy painted a green box on a bike track.

00:51:11.140 And I tweeted it out.

00:51:12.840 I think that's the last time Mayor Ninchy

00:51:14.080 ever responded directly to me on anything.

00:51:16.640 But I said, really, how many people do you need

00:51:19.920 to paint a green square on a roadway?

00:51:23.320 And he did respond, say, oh, this is different.

00:51:24.860 This was a bike box.

00:51:26.180 And we just wanted to make sure to have it right

00:51:27.720 as we do more.

00:51:28.680 It's a green box, Ninchy.

00:51:30.640 You can't polish that turd.

00:51:32.320 You do not need 10 people to do this.

00:51:35.000 What is going on with you guys?

00:51:36.700 All these safety vests, and I imagine they're all making $30, $40, $50 an hour.

00:51:41.260 What are you people doing there?

00:51:43.400 And we see that, unfortunately, with civil service.

00:51:46.780 I know there's some very hardworking people out there, you know,

00:51:50.680 highways and maintenance and city jobs.

00:51:54.420 But there's also just a terrible amount of redundancy, inefficiency,

00:51:58.440 and it does often come back to organized labor.

00:52:01.540 That's always the big elephant in the room.

00:52:03.680 how do you get particularly the civil service unions to start talking reasonably about as you

00:52:10.940 said rather than layoffs let's examine pay cuts rather than uh you know cutting programs let's

00:52:16.700 see how we could do them at a better rate then so we can do more of them but they just seem

00:52:20.340 intractable well there's so much to unpack there cory really um it all comes down at the end of

00:52:25.640 the day to are you getting value for the city services are your tax dollars being spent wisely

00:52:32.060 And I think it's not only that the city of Calgary is spending a ton of money, it's how they are spending that money. 0.74

00:52:38.100 And I don't think you can go to Calgary taxpayers and tell a Calgarian who might have just lost their job,

00:52:43.260 might have just taken a 15% pay cut, or might be a small business owner who just laid off two of their friends

00:52:48.580 and tell them that they have more than 100 city of Calgary employees who are receiving three pensions.

00:52:55.140 I don't think too many of those Calgarians would say that that's a good use of their tax dollars.

00:53:00.080 I'm a Calgary taxpayer, and I can tell you I don't think that's a good use of my money, you know, especially when the vast majority of Albertans outside of government don't get a single pension.

00:53:09.520 So to your point, this often comes down to the city's unionized government union bosses that we need our councillors to have a political spine and arm wrestle with.

00:53:20.880 You know, there's great data published by secondstreet.org, a Canadian think tank, and they asked the city of Calgary, when was the last time that unionized employees took a pay cut? Surprise, surprise, data going back to the 1970s show no records at all of their city employees ever taking a pay cut, ever taking a pay cut.

00:53:43.880 Now, in terms of how do you actually solve this problem, you have to take a page from Premier Ralph Klein back in 1994.

00:53:52.520 What did he say? He said, we're going to cut the budget by 5%.

00:53:55.680 Either you take 5% further layoffs or you take 5% wage rollbacks.

00:54:01.480 Now, fortunately, we saw the union bosses agree to a 5% wage rollback.

00:54:06.060 But that's the type of tactic that we're going to need to see our politicians take here.

00:54:11.360 Yeah, well, and some of those labor bosses themselves are making a pretty healthy coin 0.98

00:54:17.760 from their union members. I think there might be some room for efficiency on their union dues,

00:54:22.080 you know, maybe if they took a bit of a wage cut, but they also had a reduction in union dues to

00:54:28.480 help offset that, you know, maybe the pork at the union level needs to get a little bit of trimming 0.91

00:54:33.040 as well. And getting to that, you know, I mean, what's with groups, Alberta Federation of Labor,

00:54:39.680 good old Gil McGowan there. I mean, he's also been very outspoken about reopening. You know,

00:54:46.480 I mean, I'm not asking you to make a medical opinion here or anything. But again, it really

00:54:51.680 comes down to, it seems odd, labor organizations pushing so hard for people not to go back to work.

00:55:00.320 They are happy to have people paid to sit at home. But how long can we afford that trend? We just

00:55:06.720 can't seem to do it but the priorities of labor unions just really seem to be skewed well and

00:55:12.240 certainly it's going to have to be taxpayers one way or another who are paying that money back

00:55:16.160 right whether it's the provincial government where we have to pay higher taxes um or or higher debt

00:55:21.840 which eventually is taxes or if you look at the federal government where it's the same thing

00:55:26.080 applies more taxes but also could be inflation a reduction in what our our money can actually

00:55:32.000 purchase right that in and of itself is a higher tax now one key thing that i want to bring up

00:55:36.960 because we've been talking about labor and it's clear to me that there's a huge divide in alberta

00:55:42.560 between two classes of people one is the government employees who have been completely shielded or

00:55:48.240 largely shielded from this downturn many as we've been talking about have been made better off

00:55:53.440 and then the other group of employees and that's private sector workers and business owners who've

00:55:58.720 been just been taking it on the chin for the last five plus years and who have been forced to pay

00:56:03.600 for this growing cap so there is there has been a classified here in alberta and we've also seen

00:56:09.360 that when we're talking about private sector versus government unions uh the canadian taxpayers

00:56:14.400 federation we put out a report back in december that showed we found nearly 300 government union

00:56:20.880 wage settlements in alberta that resulted in a pay increase we didn't find a single one of those

00:56:26.560 since 2015 that resulted in a pay reduction. On the other hand, we saw more than 100 private

00:56:33.360 sector unions agree to a pay reduction. So you can't tell me that just because it's a union that

00:56:40.100 they can't take a pay cut because we saw that happen across Alberta during the downturn because

00:56:44.940 private sector unions, they realized like, hey, we want to keep more of our staff employed. We

00:56:49.440 want to make sure businesses stay afloat. So they were willing to share in the downturn.

00:56:53.260 Yeah, there is a big difference and it's worth distinguishing between the private and public sector unions. I mean, the private sector ones, I think have a bit of a better understanding that, you know, they can kill the golden goose. If they keep pushing, there's just not going to be any more to take. Public sector seems to have a bit of a mindset that it's just the magical money machine. We can just keep printing it and there won't be consequences and government can keep spending and borrowing and spending and borrowing, which I think the whole world's in for a big lesson on that pretty soon, I'm afraid.

00:57:23.260 Just to expand a little though, because, you know, you guys have mentioned this a lot before

00:57:27.500 and it's a big one, but it seems inconceivable and it's worth just keep hammering to show how

00:57:32.140 crazed some of these compensation packages are. Ray is asking, Ray, how can someone be able to

00:57:39.340 get three pension plans? How is that working that way? Is it past negotiated settlements or something?

00:57:45.840 Well, it's absolutely ridiculous, but let me explain kind of how it works. So,

00:57:49.960 So and it's not just happening at the city of Calgary.

00:57:53.280 We actually found thousands of municipal government employees all across Alberta that are eligible for two or three pensions.

00:58:00.600 But at the city of Calgary, it's a big one.

00:58:02.620 The cost of the second and third pensions for Calgary taxpayers was about 15 million dollars.

00:58:08.800 And that's an annual expense, 15 million bucks.

00:58:11.320 And so how it happens is, you know, you have a very large portion of City of Calgary employees that get their defined benefit pension plan, your basic defined benefit pension plan.

00:58:23.480 And that pension plan provider actually refers to itself as being quite generous.

00:58:28.280 And let's remember, the vast majority of Albertans outside of government don't receive a first pension or any pension, workplace pension.

00:58:34.300 So on top of that first pension is a second pension, and it essentially tops up the benefits of the first pension.

00:58:41.320 So it tops up a portion of that first pension benefits.

00:58:45.400 Now, the third pension, where there was a little bit over 100 employees who was receiving

00:58:49.720 that at the City of Calgary, what it does is that it tops up the pension for high-income

00:58:55.000 earners, right?

00:58:56.200 So high-income earners up to a cap, they don't receive any pensionable earnings on higher

00:59:02.300 levels of salary, but this third pension allows them to get pensionable earnings on their

00:59:07.920 very high levels of salary.

00:59:10.180 And what's crazy about this third pension is that it's 100% taxpayer funded.

00:59:16.200 So just to reiterate, they get this first pension.

00:59:18.700 The second pension tops up pension plans for all, for over the whole range of the salary.

00:59:25.540 And the third pension top up is just for those real high income bureaucrats.

00:59:32.020 And it's 100% funded by taxpayers.

00:59:35.100 Yeah, and that's striking.

00:59:36.220 I mean, in the private sector for those companies that even do have a separate pension plan,

00:59:40.060 the best you can hope for is maybe some employer matching on contributions and things like that,

00:59:44.540 but there's no such thing as a hundred percent funded on their part. I mean, you both got to

00:59:48.140 kick into it or typically. So one of the things that helps though, and as it was asked, is we got

00:59:54.620 to shine a light on this because it slides under the radar. People don't see it. Again, we had a

01:00:00.780 mayor who very much promised the most transparent civil or municipal government on earth. It's been

01:00:05.740 quite the opposite they spend more time hiding in camera uh and and covering up i mean you guys

01:00:11.180 have got to wear your your fingers out trying to get those those freedom of information requests

01:00:15.900 for information that really should have been public in the first place uh where and how do

01:00:21.900 we get more of that like is there i know the manning center had been doing voting tracking

01:00:25.580 and so on before because as we're in election year i think it's really important to see just

01:00:30.300 where all of these candidates uh at least the incumbents stand and where they've actually been

01:00:34.700 because they say one thing and they vote quite another is there a place where people can find

01:00:38.620 that and see that now well i mean i do think it's a place for advocacy groups uh to really pick that

01:00:44.940 up so so hopefully we will have someone put out that information and you know i i think we need

01:00:50.300 our counselors just to exercise some common sense and to understand that they work for the people

01:00:54.540 and it's not the other way around so they should be doing most of their work the vast vast majority

01:01:00.140 um in in front of the camera right in front of the public's view now i do think this is a good

01:01:06.300 thing for an advocacy group to pick up uh quite frankly i don't i don't always um trust everything

01:01:11.980 that i hear from from city of calgary or city administration right so i would actually prefer

01:01:17.420 um either these votes be published online and that's it or to have this advocacy

01:01:23.100 an advocacy organization uh publish those

01:01:28.620 yeah well and and i mean it should be published it's they're voting on our behalf on taxpayers

01:01:33.980 behalf i mean why is this so hard you know we we have it provincially federally we have hansard

01:01:38.540 we we shouldn't have to force and then i appreciate you know uh advocacy groups to dig through i mean

01:01:43.500 i've watched city meetings i mean part of what they do too and i i do believe it's a purposeful

01:01:48.380 means of uh of just being non-transparent is when they have a long schedule during the day it's kind

01:01:54.620 of flexible so the portion you want to hear about you don't know when it's going to be so you got to

01:01:58.380 sit through the droning of a lot of uh you know perhaps important but quite dull matters that

01:02:03.980 they have to go through as a committee and council uh and then you fall asleep and you wake up and

01:02:08.780 you find out the vote pass you don't remember how they voted so you know they should just have that

01:02:13.580 encapsulated up there maybe we could ask people to ask their candidates to commit

01:02:18.920 to that I mean this isn't that hard you know I mean one bureaucrat on it there

01:02:21.740 you go there's one of those job shifts you can do and they can post those

01:02:27.440 voting records up there online in perpetuity so we can always see how our

01:02:31.640 representatives are voting yeah I guess it would be I guess it would be pretty

01:02:35.540 easy hey and and that should be basic basic transparency um I think to your

01:02:40.940 point the manning center formerly used to to release stuff like that and that was super helpful

01:02:45.760 so hopefully in the interim we do get an advocacy organization that that posts something but i do

01:02:50.260 think that would be uh something when you get your counselors knocking on your door this fall

01:02:54.660 something to push them for yeah well and i mean as we know uh jeremy farkas was was instrumental

01:03:00.920 in in that manning center initiative uh part of the council tracker and then he's been a city

01:03:05.880 councillor and now running for mayor uh but i i know some of his biggest uh you know where he

01:03:12.040 would have a lot of uh explosions in city council i guess or where they would get most ticked off at

01:03:16.920 him was in areas where he'd push for transparency was when he was talking about a roll call you

01:03:21.420 know did they show up for work or not let's get that down or or let's uh not go behind closed

01:03:26.640 doors for these things so uh hopefully more of that pressure because they just they bristle they

01:03:31.280 They don't want to actually have to speak to the electors.

01:03:35.340 You know, I mean, this is the time of year when they're going to.

01:03:38.720 And Corey, can I just interject with another point?

01:03:41.040 Do you remember the absolute debacle in the way the councillors pass the arena deal?

01:03:47.720 If you can remember, it was back in the dead of summer when they really, really started pushing on it.

01:03:54.140 And they gave Calgarians about a week, and I believe it was at the end of July, to just think about this arena deal.

01:04:01.280 So it was a week and then they rubber stamp these hundreds of millions of dollars for the Calgary arena.

01:04:07.500 I mean, they spend less time discussing it publicly than they do discussing the most minute city operations.

01:04:14.600 And we're talking about an arena that's going to be putting taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:04:20.520 And it wasn't like this was an overwhelming support from Calgary taxpayers.

01:04:24.940 I mean, I even remember councillors saying that, well, maybe half of the people who emailed them about it opposed it.

01:04:30.740 half of them supported it so how do you only give taxpayers about a week to talk about this thing

01:04:36.180 in the dead of summer i mean to me that shows a complete lack of transparency and even if you

01:04:41.100 support the arena deal there's no way you should support the way this council went about it

01:04:46.300 well no and that's been consistent with city council too though and city administration i

01:04:51.460 mean consultation when they say it is an insult to the definition of the word uh we've seen that

01:04:56.480 so many times over and over again. I mean, back when they were closing parking and lanes for bike

01:05:01.700 tracks through the Beltline area, they did their supposed town hall meetings and consultation. And

01:05:06.980 these were not consultation. These were advertising projects. And they were, you know,

01:05:12.840 they overlooked what concerned businesses that were losing vehicular customers about and just

01:05:18.540 listening to the handful of hipsters that had nothing better to do and come in and say they

01:05:21.620 like it. We see that in so many levels. Now we're seeing it actually with, I know you didn't dig too

01:05:27.080 far into that one, but the city guidebook for community developments. And that's been a heated

01:05:32.220 area lately because they're cloaking this and saying as if it's just a guide and a document

01:05:39.560 that's just going to help move in a direction of development. But no, that thing's a binding

01:05:44.880 document this thing will force community developments in a way that that that are

01:05:50.660 contrary perhaps to what consumer demand will be but they're purposely and deceitfully in my view

01:05:57.080 trying to slide that past voters and that's that's really problematic well i mean all of this also

01:06:03.580 reminds me of the calgary 2026 winter olympic bid doggle there are so many there are so many

01:06:10.100 reasons to vote against that bid fortunately the people were allowed to actually have their

01:06:14.820 say i think a large part of that actually has to go to thank you to uh the alberta government at

01:06:20.000 the time who who said that funding would be conditional on on the plebiscite so fortunately

01:06:24.940 we were able to get our say but one of the big reasons that people were opposing the calgary

01:06:29.480 olympic bid was just the lack of transparency um even around the cost i mean it ended up falling

01:06:34.340 on the canadian taxpayers federation uh me at the time as well who put who published how much

01:06:40.320 it was actually going to cost each household to fund this thing and you know we're happy to be

01:06:46.320 putting out that information but don't you think that probably should have been the first piece of

01:06:50.380 data that was given to Calgary taxpayers by the big corporation by city councillors was how much

01:06:56.560 is it going to cost a household during this massive downturn again we're happy to put out

01:07:01.860 that information but don't you think that should have been the first thing that they published

01:07:05.900 Well, and again, you know, credit where due, and I sure don't give Rachel Notley a lot of credit,

01:07:11.160 but even the NDP knew a boondoggle when they saw it in this case. And they said, okay, you know

01:07:17.100 what? If you want that, fine, but you run that by the voters. I'm not touching this thing.

01:07:22.460 And Nietzsche was livid. I mean, he did not want to have to go through that process.

01:07:27.500 It was clear. And that's part of why I think they didn't have a good plan to sell it,

01:07:31.980 because they didn't think they'd have to. They thought they could just run this under the radar

01:07:34.880 like they are with the guidebook and it'd be a done deal and yeah talk about dodging a bullet

01:07:39.840 while we're in a city in in complete distress right now and if we were somehow trying to build

01:07:45.280 up for a future olympic games while we're at it it would be it's inconceivable i mean it's

01:07:52.640 it's nuts and i like to note though the person who headed that olympic bid push you know for uh

01:07:58.480 there was millions of dollars spent to promote this too wasn't consulting it was promoting

01:08:02.320 they call it consulting but they were pushing was again uh uh mary moran who's now the head

01:08:08.320 of calgary economic development yeah doing such a bang up job there yeah and uh some of the you

01:08:14.320 know strangely vocal volunteers uh on social media promoting the olympics just doing it out of the

01:08:20.880 goodness of their heart found themselves in positions of salary with calgary economic

01:08:25.360 development that was a kind of a funny game where that works out hey cory and i'd just like to point

01:08:30.320 out like there was a a volunteer yes side right but the real yes side was the bid corporation

01:08:37.040 the real yes side that i was worried about every day was the was the taxpayer funded

01:08:41.840 bid corporation now can you imagine that your tax dollars going to fund um essentially a

01:08:47.760 propaganda campaign that you completely oppose to me that is is a non-starter and i mean even

01:08:54.080 if you were one of the people who did support the calgary olympics even that should shouldn't have

01:08:59.520 past the sniff test for you and make no mistake about it i mean i was in the trenches um i was

01:09:04.560 in that fight and the big corporation was on the yes side yeah no and and there were some uh it's

01:09:11.920 unfortunate we see kind of uh i guess you could say the elite the big players the the there's a

01:09:17.040 certain uh class of people i guess and and they're in the business community as well but they they

01:09:21.760 like taking part and playing in these tax-funded uh ventures at times and it's disappointing

01:09:26.400 sometimes to see but i mean it was fantastic it was great to see the taxpayers federation really

01:09:30.960 push among with other groups common sense calgary all those others or even me being a nagging pain

01:09:35.760 in the ass on twitter but voters got up and they told the you know uh olympic uh proponents to take

01:09:42.160 their their big considerations and put them where they belong and uh really saved us from a lot of

01:09:47.600 trouble so i will let you go thank you very much for joining me today uh there's always lots and

01:09:54.160 and lots to cover. Municipal is a good area. We'll have to get you on. I'm sure there's going to be

01:09:58.400 some federal and provincial stuff we can always go on about at length. So where again can we find

01:10:03.520 more information on what you and your organization are up to? Well the best place to go is just to

01:10:08.480 taxpayer.com. A great resource there is a newsroom so please check that out. All right thanks Franco

01:10:15.200 and thanks for filling in while my computer decided out of the blue to reboot there for us.

01:10:20.720 That reminder, if it happens again, though, I'm going to fix this problem, damn it.

01:10:24.440 Your mic was hot while you're on.

01:10:25.940 I imagine you didn't say anything too blistering or anything.

01:10:31.460 If it was me, there probably would have been already, we've been demonetized and censored

01:10:35.120 for some of the words that would come out of my mouth from my old oil field days.

01:10:39.160 So thanks again.

01:10:41.000 I'm certain we'll be talking again soon, Franco.

01:10:44.340 Well, thanks, Corey, and congrats on your new show.

01:10:47.100 Great, thank you.

01:10:50.720 so moving on uh uh something i do want to measure measure mention is uh we have had a sponsor who's

01:11:00.140 been helping us out she's running a local business it's kyrensway.com uh as we move into these these

01:11:06.840 digital shows and improving on them and getting better again we aren't tax funded we need sponsors

01:11:11.440 we need people to come out so hey if you want your brand or company or name out get a hold of me or

01:11:15.660 get a hold of daryl at the western standard and we'll certainly uh work something out it's a great

01:11:20.020 way to speak to local listeners and put them together with local businesses and services

01:11:24.840 and what penny offers at kyrensway.com is means to deal with stress anxiety those things we're all

01:11:32.700 dealing with right now some people better than others you know some people are turning

01:11:37.360 unfortunately to drinking or sometimes they go to the doctor and they just quickly get

01:11:41.300 prescribed with an antidepressant which works great for some people but not necessarily for

01:11:45.280 others. Kyren's Way and what Penny offers is a holistic sort of solution, you know, where we look

01:11:50.600 at your diet, we look at your lifestyle, we look at a number of things because your mind and body

01:11:54.760 are connected. You need to fix them both to feel better. That gets a bit back to the lockdowns and

01:11:59.500 gyms as well. Those things are important. So, you know, if you're considering, you know, you're a

01:12:05.460 little stressed out, you think you might need a little help with some things, get a hold of Penny

01:12:09.600 at Kyren's Way.com. She might be offering just what you need and consultations are free.

01:12:13.560 so moving on and back and i'll just respond to one quick comment from somebody says cory have

01:12:20.340 you ever thought about running for mayor uh short answer no and uh uh you rest assured you know one

01:12:28.060 of the things that uh a mayor needs to do and that's been one of the problems with uh head

01:12:32.200 is you've got to be a really good team player you've got to be uh patient and and you've got

01:12:37.760 to be able to keep a team together in City Hall. I didn't like Bronconnier very much, but he was

01:12:44.200 good at least in getting some degree of consensus with councillors. Part of the problem we have

01:12:47.780 right now, of course, is Mayor Nehaid and she runs a hornet's nest in council and it just very little

01:12:53.060 gets done aside from the fighting with each other. And if it was me in there, oh man, I would have

01:12:56.720 thrown a microphone at one of them by now or something. The other part is too, I live just

01:13:00.680 outside the city of Calgary. I'm right near the city limits, so I wouldn't qualify to run for

01:13:04.600 mayor even if I wanted to but I don't so moving on we've talked municipal we got

01:13:10.280 some provincial things we've gotten no news from you know it's been put off for

01:13:14.920 the bail hearing for pastor Coates I'm gonna talk to Clinton DeVoe and Clinton

01:13:20.980 been very involved in conservative politics and outspoken on it last weekend

01:13:27.200 we had a conservative party can't mention they had a lot of discussion

01:13:32.080 debate some policy motions and uh well let's talk and see if these were productive things need to go

01:13:39.440 well thanks for the show clinton i appreciate you coming on should i say good morning i should also

01:13:46.820 note that clinton's coming from um it's it's still morning here clinton's out in in halifax so he's

01:13:54.380 uh got a different perspective the day's uh farther ahead for him over there and yes i'm

01:13:59.360 afraid my internet's acting up a little bit. So as again, I said before, if I freeze up, just

01:14:03.840 just carry on, Clinton. I know you're very good at speaking at length. So that's the last thing

01:14:10.180 your audience wants by Clinton DeVoe. Well, we'll see. I mean, they can only listen to so much of

01:14:17.440 me as well. So the convention went last weekend. You know, I mean, this is a most likely, you know,

01:14:24.580 welcome to the parliamentary system, an election year, possibly within a few months, maybe

01:14:29.240 this fall who knows but it makes it all the more critical for these events these conferences things

01:14:34.200 like that um you know did they achieve what they wanted to last weekend uh quite frankly no uh i

01:14:45.880 think there's consensus that's been forming over the last couple of days from the public at large

01:14:51.800 that unfortunately, Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the Conservative Party,

01:14:57.160 basically used his opportunity of his big speech Friday night to talk to party members and not talk

01:15:05.400 to Canadians at large. You know, to your point, with an election sometime a month to two months

01:15:12.360 away, this was a real opportunity for him to talk to, you know, to just regular Canadians.

01:15:20.200 and his message seemed to have been focused on conservative party members and telling

01:15:26.920 conservative party members that they need to accept change they need to accept change and

01:15:33.320 i think that left a lot of canadians at home watching the few that did watch sort of scratching

01:15:38.520 their head and wondering well why would i want to support this party if they don't believe that

01:15:43.400 they're ready to govern yeah well and something that happened and i wrote a piece in a different

01:15:49.480 publication that came out on that today and it's just uh i'll kind of expand on what i wrote about

01:15:54.520 though because it's a frustrating thing in conservative politics and party politics but

01:15:59.960 uh i saw a federal party kind of repeat the history of the wild rose party i thought

01:16:05.400 in uh one of the areas that they've been getting battered and bashed on a lot was climate change

01:16:10.520 and they're being labeled constantly candidates and individuals as climate change deniers,

01:16:15.000 which I find is a bit of an odious twist on trying to make it sound like a Holocaust denier.

01:16:18.840 But it comes to a point if you don't agree with a particular liberal policy on climate change,

01:16:24.680 then you are a climate change denier and it hurts and it's been effective. And that's part of why

01:16:29.640 the liberals keep using that hammer to beat them with. And we had that with the the Wild Rose

01:16:35.480 party in the past in Alberta, they were stuck in opposition for two different terms. It was LGBTQ

01:16:42.360 issues that really would beat on them though. And they really, they had one outspoken candidate,

01:16:46.680 Huntsberger, who was talking about gays burning in a lake of fire. I mean, it gave them all sorts 0.76

01:16:50.600 of ammunition to label the entire Wildrose party as being anti-gay. So what though the party brass

01:16:57.400 decided to do was put in this policy motion to say right in our policy set that our party supports

01:17:04.200 LGBTQ rights. And what happened was there was a lot of discussion on the floor and the members

01:17:12.600 got up and said, no, we're not putting that in our policy. We support equal rights for everybody.

01:17:16.940 We're not going to start slicing and dicing down to each and every group. I mean, part of my case,

01:17:21.240 I voted against it too. Well, where do we go? Do I also say we support black people? Sure.

01:17:26.480 Do we support Inuit people? Sure. But then you start that process of exclusion. That means if

01:17:31.360 didn't have it in the policy does it mean you didn't support that like it's just an ugly road

01:17:34.720 and an apologetic one to come from it's defensive and i mean i know what they're trying to do

01:17:41.040 but it shows that you have to always wear it on your sleeve to keep repeating you know

01:17:45.200 flagellating i support this i support this i support this it's almost like the person saying

01:17:48.880 i have my black friend thus i'm not a racist you've got to do it through your actions through

01:17:52.960 your policies through over time i mean crack down on those candidates who are anti-gay crack down on

01:17:58.160 the other things. I mean, so we saw that with the climate change thing. They wanted to insert a

01:18:03.280 policy that said, we believe in man-made climate change or that climate change is real. And again,

01:18:09.880 memberships got up and said, no, we don't want that in there. And it doesn't mean that the members

01:18:15.140 didn't necessarily believe in climate change. It's just, they didn't want that policy. But now what

01:18:20.800 happened after both conventions, the Wildrose one and this one, I mean, the headlines at the

01:18:24.600 Wildrose one where Wildrose party rejects policy to support gay people. 0.99

01:18:28.500 So they just look like monsters out of it. 1.00

01:18:31.860 And again, they didn't.

01:18:33.040 It was a policy that they already had one that supported.

01:18:35.020 They just didn't go for the specific one.

01:18:36.800 And now basically the headlines are saying the Conservative Party

01:18:39.580 has refused to acknowledge that climate change is real.

01:18:44.200 What do you think of that tactic and what do you think of the outcome

01:18:46.340 after a long segue into that?

01:18:49.280 Well, so first of all, I think that the federal Conservative Party

01:18:53.420 really has to decide if it wants to be elected.

01:18:57.700 So if it does want to be elected, then it needs to look at where Canadians at large are.

01:19:03.500 And although it does make some Conservatives uncomfortable,

01:19:07.860 the reality is, according to all polling data through a whole various sources out there,

01:19:16.900 that Canadians do consider climate change an important issue

01:19:20.580 that they would like to see the federal government deal with.

01:19:24.600 So I guess the problem for the Conservative Party

01:19:27.440 that I've argued now for some time is that,

01:19:31.320 and this will make some of your listeners initially a little nervous,

01:19:34.860 is that they should embrace the issue.

01:19:37.020 They should take it on as their own.

01:19:39.200 And they should say to Canadians,

01:19:40.500 we believe that climate change is a serious issue.

01:19:44.200 And more importantly, we have an alternative solution

01:19:47.140 to what the existing status quo is on how to deal with the issue.

01:19:53.700 So, for example, we hear about we need to find a way to reduce carbon.

01:20:02.200 Well, I'm of the opinion that taxing something doesn't really reduce carbon.

01:20:07.960 So I would argue, let's look at Alberta,

01:20:10.600 at all of those great oil sands operations throughout Alberta.

01:20:14.340 There are significant lithium deposits.

01:20:17.140 and there's an opportunity where the Conservative Party could have said we believe in climate change

01:20:24.580 and the way we want to combat it is through a national mining strategy where we try and get

01:20:30.320 all of the provinces in Canada from Newfoundland to BC on the same page and we will supply the

01:20:36.560 lithium to the electric vehicle market globally. We will supply the nickel, we will supply the

01:20:42.500 platinum, we will supply the gold, so on and so forth. You know, another thing the Conservatives

01:20:47.840 could have done is they could have talked about hydroelectric power. You know, there's a renewable,

01:20:55.880 clean source of energy that Manitoba has vast, vast quantities of. Same thing with British 0.99

01:21:03.600 Columbia, same thing with Quebec, same thing with Newfoundland. And the Conservatives had nothing

01:21:08.800 to say all they did was they spent the entire weekend saying we believe in change we believe

01:21:14.200 in change we are going to vote down the climate change issue but we believe in change so you know

01:21:21.300 I think this was an opportunity where they could have showed Canadians that they have a plan that

01:21:26.640 they could have put a plan together and instead you know people walked away from that wondering

01:21:31.840 what does the party want what does it mean by change what you know and I think that's not

01:21:38.020 to help them i think that's actually going to lead to their defeat and that's because

01:21:42.740 they don't have a policy roadmap well ambiguity is is just a killer you know because it all really

01:21:49.780 comes down to trust then and we don't have a lot of trust in our politicians on any level these days

01:21:55.620 the public at large are they going in general so we need to see things laid out in the west when we

01:22:01.220 see ambiguous uh policies or ambiguous statements saying you know we're going to tackle climate

01:22:06.580 change but we're not saying how well then we do start seeing well what are you talking about and

01:22:10.580 we're nervous we've been beaten on a lot here we've dealt with c69 c48 you know tanker bands

01:22:17.700 carbon taxes what is it more of the same we get nervous our backs get up we need you to lay it

01:22:24.580 out as you said here's some things we can talk about we'll still produce in the oil sands but

01:22:29.540 we can also we've got this byproduct of lithium i mean we could participate in the larger market

01:22:34.260 in the changing market. I mean, a pragmatic approach. I like that, but the party isn't

01:22:38.180 touching it. Something Danielle Smith spoke of, I believe, before as well at a different conference

01:22:44.200 was carbon could be a resource, actually. There's some pretty creative products coming up. I mean,

01:22:50.040 when we're talking about carbon capture, that you may be able to do things with that carbon rather

01:22:54.000 than just sequester it. Let's get creative. Let's look at what our resources are. Likewise, though,

01:22:59.680 when we see the Conservatives being, you know, again, cagey or showing ambiguity with climate

01:23:05.700 and environmental policy, people who are more concerned about it in Central or Eastern Canada

01:23:09.360 say, well, does that mean you're just actually not going to do anything and you're paying lip

01:23:12.380 service to it? So, I mean, I see this approach as perhaps losing support and trust on both fronts,

01:23:17.300 which is a bad recipe for an election. Well, I agree with you. And quite frankly,

01:23:22.080 I'm uncomfortable with the Conservative Party always framing these discussions of we need to

01:23:28.460 do something for the West, or we need to do something for Atlantic Canada, or we need to

01:23:33.900 do something for BC, I think what they should start doing is talking to Canadians. So whether

01:23:38.500 you're a Canadian that lives in Calgary, or you're a Canadian that lives in Halifax or Toronto,

01:23:45.000 people have the same sort of concerns and worries, you know, the concerns and worries, like

01:23:50.120 We can, you know, the climate issue is one, pocketbook issues is another, you know, retirement savings is another issue.

01:24:00.060 Where are their kids going to go to school?

01:24:01.960 But instead of talking to Canadians, they're determined for some bizarre reason of speaking to specific regions.

01:24:11.720 And when they speak to those specific regions, they do it in such a manner that you've alluded to where they don't talk any sort of policy.

01:24:19.500 They just say, like, well, we need to stand up for people in this part of the country.

01:24:23.840 Well, great.

01:24:24.300 What does that mean?

01:24:25.760 You know, and to your point, there's all kinds of innovation.

01:24:28.640 There's all kinds of technology out there where we can take existing things that various regions are good, whether it's Alberta or Saskatchewan or whoever.

01:24:38.460 And, you know, we can embrace those other things, lithium, nickel, all of this kind of thing.

01:24:43.820 And it sort of gives you something to strive for.

01:24:47.500 You know, I think the other problem that the party has had, quite frankly, is I like to call it a an identity crisis.

01:24:57.620 So is it a political party that's interested in being elected?

01:25:02.020 And is it a party that wants to govern Canada or is it a a moral movement?

01:25:08.620 And the reason I argue this is because if it's interested in governing Canada, then it will focus the discussion on things that matter to the largest number of Canadians, which is pocketbook issues, which is, you know, how to make the climate issue your issue, fiscal responsibility, those kinds of things.

01:25:29.640 If, however, it's intent on sort of having these discussions related to morality, whether it's abortion, equal marriage rights, these kinds of things, they're going to lose every time.

01:25:46.320 Because, unfortunately, if we look at the 2019 election, you know, the conservatives, they beat the liberals in the popular vote, but they lost the election.

01:25:59.200 And I argue the reason they lost that election was that when the leader was questioned on a basic thing like do you support gay marriage and he sort of paused and hummed and hoed and wasn't really sure how to answer the question, it left a lot of Canadians all over the country sort of scratching their heads and wondering, who is this guy?

01:26:22.420 And so, you know, they need to be able to take on these moral issues in a way where they say, look, I understand that so-and-so might be a social conservative or so-and-so might have some personal moral views.

01:26:36.120 That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that.

01:26:38.560 But they also need to be able to say, as a government, we are not going to be touching any of those issues because that's not the role of government.

01:26:47.160 It's not to get into the business of morality, essentially.

01:26:52.420 Yeah, and that gets dicey. And again, when somebody dodges on it, you start losing support

01:26:57.540 on both sides because you seem untrustworthy. So we do have regional issues, though. I mean,

01:27:03.940 that's part of, you know, as Stephanie's kind of pointing out and think this has been going

01:27:06.900 on since the beginning of Confederation. I think we've got a real systemic problem, actually,

01:27:11.380 you know, with just the way we're laid out. And it makes for a difficult juggling act for any

01:27:15.860 government or somebody trying to form government to address. I mean, you've made a great point

01:27:20.580 and pointing out look there's a lot of things we have in common we still have concerns about our

01:27:24.100 jobs our wallets our health care our education that's universal across the country but we

01:27:29.940 definitely have some different points of view between saskatchewan and alberta versus british

01:27:33.860 columbia versus nova scotia and of course quebec is is definitely a distinct uh uh zone of its own

01:27:42.500 well you know cory not not to interrupt you but i like i noticed so one of your viewers of the

01:27:48.260 the television program here today, I think the name was Stephanie, stated that, you know, that

01:27:52.980 the conservatives need to ditch the West in order to win the East. I have problems with that

01:27:59.300 description as well, because I know you know this, you know, as well as anyone. What do people mean

01:28:05.240 by the West? I mean, British Columbia, the conservatives currently, as they're set up right

01:28:10.300 now, are in a distant third place in British Columbia. And the last time I checked, British

01:28:14.900 Columbia is as far west as you can get in Canada. If we look at Manitoba, the Liberals are in firm

01:28:22.920 contention in Manitoba. It's essentially a two-way race. So, you know, if people in Alberta or

01:28:30.440 Saskatchewan are deciding that they are the West and they will speak on behalf of the West,

01:28:36.120 well, there's a lot of people in Manitoba and BC that are going to feel a little different about

01:28:40.120 that and so to your point uh and to what i was saying earlier it's important that we find those

01:28:46.360 issues those pocketbook issues those economic issues that unites canadians from coast to coast

01:28:52.760 to coast otherwise they're never going to win and so if you don't want to win then you know why run

01:28:58.520 for government you know why not just join an advocacy group or why not write letters to the

01:29:03.720 editor or what have you you know if you're going to get into the political realm you have to deal

01:29:08.840 with the circumstances that are there and the circumstances in the political realm is to win

01:29:14.760 and the reason i say that is because your worst day in government is far far better than your

01:29:22.600 best day in opposition and that's just an undisputed fact because when you're in government

01:29:27.000 you can affect change you can bring about policy change you can embrace innovation you can embrace

01:29:33.320 technology. You can do all those things that you can't do in the opposition. If you're in the

01:29:38.820 opposition, you're basically criticizing from the sidelines. And I don't see any benefit to that.

01:29:44.560 I really don't. I think it's a waste of time. You know, I will differ a little bit on that front

01:29:51.420 with getting back to the 90s when I was really, you know, getting through the politics myself and

01:29:56.780 that. I remember that era quite well, actually. And I mean, the Gretchen liberals, if nothing

01:30:03.020 else, and I despise them as a government, but they were pragmatic and they knew how to get

01:30:08.800 stuff done. But part of that was because there was a reform party breathing down their necks

01:30:13.600 and a very effective opposition. I think the reform started losing some of its

01:30:17.760 ability when they started diluting. But then it can be argued it took a long time,

01:30:23.660 but eventually that led to the Harper Conservatives getting in, you know, into the 2000s and bringing

01:30:29.920 about some conservative government for a change. But we've just got such a, it seems cyclical. It

01:30:35.780 just never quite stops. And again, I blame the system rather than the people. It does force,

01:30:40.860 as you said, the goal is to get in. If you want to make real change, you've got to be in. You've

01:30:44.800 got to be in government. And the only way to win government, realistically, is to win Central

01:30:50.080 canada there's no getting around that that's just math that's not and uh but that's part of what

01:30:56.400 drives the west wild because we do have some policy differences and that that's why we see

01:31:00.600 these spikes in in secessionism which we're really seeing one right now uh because the frustration

01:31:08.220 of feeling like well look i would argue that there's not really that many policy differences

01:31:16.020 between the quote-unquote West and the rest of Canada.

01:31:19.980 I mean, obviously, I know the big issue is the pipeline issue.

01:31:23.880 So, you know, what I always argue with Conservatives

01:31:28.340 is that arguing about the Energy East pipeline

01:31:34.180 when you know that the province of Quebec,

01:31:37.380 for a whole host of different reasons,

01:31:39.980 is not going to play ball is a waste of time.

01:31:42.560 It's a waste of energy, pardon the pun.

01:31:45.560 Arguing about British Columbia, why British Columbia doesn't want to play ball, again, I argue that's a waste of energy.

01:31:53.780 You know, I think you're better, you're always better in life to look at a problem and rather than complain about the problem, find a solution.

01:32:03.140 So I've argued, and I've argued this now for a number of years,

01:32:06.580 that the solution for Alberta and Saskatchewan energy exports,

01:32:12.240 in order for that product or those two products, gas and oil, to reach tidewater,

01:32:18.980 you have to look at Manitoba.

01:32:20.660 You have to look at the Hudson Bay.

01:32:23.960 And that, you know, if we look at the Port of Churchill in northern Manitoba,

01:32:30.760 that that is the answer.

01:32:32.300 Uh, whereas, you know, I know that beating up on Quebec and to a lesser extent, British Columbia is really great for the conservative party from a fundraising perspective.

01:32:42.920 You know, it lets them do those mail out letters that they like to send out every month and they say, hey, we need you to contribute 10 bucks or whatever it is.

01:32:51.840 But if they're really interested in finding a solution, uh, what they will do is they will look to Manitoba as the, as the answer.

01:33:01.220 So I'm sure you might have a different perspective or maybe the same ideas, but that's how I view it. And just to circle back to your earlier discussion point, I'm not really sure that it was purely the opposition federally, in this case, the Reform Party.

01:33:18.720 I think it played a role in Jean Chrétien's government, but there's a lot of other components to this that people often forget.

01:33:29.320 So if we look at Alberta, and I know it's not my home province, but you had a very successful provincial government in Alberta under Ralph Klein that was able to eliminate the provincial deficit and then go one step further and eliminate the provincial debt.

01:33:46.980 In Ontario, you had the Mike Harris government that was also very simpatico, if you will, with Ralph Klein in Alberta.

01:33:56.880 And then even you had liberal governments like Frank McKenna in New Brunswick.

01:34:03.940 And then, of course, you had a federal opposition party with the Reform Party that talked a lot about fiscal responsibility.

01:34:11.420 And so that definitely made things easier for the federal liberals, the fact that you had provincial government consensus and you had a federal opposition consensus.

01:34:23.220 But I think the other thing that your listeners or your viewers may forget, and Jean Chrétien has made no hidden secret about this, is that his political hero wasn't Pierre Trudeau.

01:34:37.240 His political hero was Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

01:34:40.300 And it's important for people to remember that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was probably the most free enterprise prime minister that Canada had.

01:34:52.640 Or many people would argue that he was probably one of the most free enterprise prime ministers that Canada ever had.

01:34:58.540 So, you know, you had a combination of Jean Chrétien's personality and his political heroes.

01:35:05.240 You had really effective provincial governments at sort of promoting the same sort of issue.

01:35:11.460 And then, of course, you had an opposition party that was also on board.

01:35:15.400 So that allowed for the 90s to be a really unique time period in Canadian politics, I would argue.

01:35:24.140 Yeah, fiscal responsibility was in in the 90s.

01:35:27.100 There's no doubt about it.

01:35:27.820 Even the Saskatchewan NDP actually were moving towards balancing their budget.

01:35:31.160 The pressure was on everywhere.

01:35:33.120 I like to think in the future we're going to come into a period of, well, it's going to be austerity, unfortunately.

01:35:38.940 But as we're spending like mad somewhere at some point, all of these governments are going to have to rein this in.

01:35:44.740 I mean, again, I'm not talking about opinion.

01:35:46.340 I'm talking about math.

01:35:47.520 You just you can't do this.

01:35:49.520 Hyperinflation is going to hit us pretty hard and pretty soon, I suspect.

01:35:53.180 But getting back to, you know, speaking of reform and speaking of politics, it really did reform made it difficult for a conservative government to form again for a long time.

01:36:03.120 Because, of course, the Mulroney, well, and then Kim Campbell conservatives were completely decimated at the start of the 90s.

01:36:11.000 A lot of that was due to votes bleeding off to reform in the West and just a complete rejection of them in the East because reform only ran in the West.

01:36:18.520 But reform was also...

01:36:19.520 And also, to be fair, you know, we had the creation of the Bloc Québécois at that time federally.

01:36:24.120 And so you had federal liberals and federal conservatives leaving their respective parties to form the bloc in Quebec.

01:36:33.460 So to your point, that led to a decimated federal conservative party, all those vote splits occurring in different parts of the country.

01:36:41.680 Oh, yeah. People forget Lucien Bouchard came from Mulroney's cabinet initially, I believe.

01:36:46.620 But reform was a response to, again, what I keep coming to is kind of a broken system, unfortunately.

01:36:51.620 like we were frustrated in the west again we were ticked off it's funny if you want to get the west

01:36:57.220 mad we get far more angry when a conservative government screws us and when a liberal one does

01:37:01.780 because we expect the liberals to screw us but the cf-18 contract with mulroney that one cut

01:37:08.420 deep and that was in manitoba for those who don't remember but there was a uh was it bristol uh

01:37:13.300 aerospace so uh so to be fair uh and just to put my cards on the table i've spoken i've been a

01:37:20.420 a guest speaker at some of the aviation industry in Manitoba in the past. So yes, it was Bristol

01:37:26.980 Aerospace in Winnipeg, who has since become known as Magellan, in fact. And then you had

01:37:35.440 Bombardier in Quebec. But yeah, those are stories from 30 years ago. But I mean, to circle it back

01:37:43.100 to today, I think the bigger problem is that the Conservatives need to be electable. And so,

01:37:49.540 So, you know, I generally believe that Aaron O'Toole made a strategic mistake speaking directly to the party at the convention rather than using that opportunity to speak to Canadians at large.

01:38:01.920 And I think if we look at the polling data over the last two months, it's been horrendous.

01:38:08.980 And so the national polling data, depending on the polling firm, has the Conservatives anywhere from 23 to 28 percent.

01:38:17.740 And that's really problematic because you and your viewers know that the conservatives have kind of a healthy built-in head start in Alberta and Saskatchewan that sort of boosts their national number.

01:38:37.280 And the worry in that is that if we look at the polling data, and I'm not saying this in a pejorative or a negative way,

01:38:45.720 but if we remove Alberta and Saskatchewan out of that equation, what that means is that the federal conservatives drop from 23 to 28 to like 20 to 25.

01:38:57.840 And so that tells me that they're simply not competitive in British Columbia, in Atlantic Canada, in Quebec, and in Ontario, and to some extent, you know, Manitoba's kind of in play.

01:39:14.320 so the conservative party its leadership its national council of a conservative fund of

01:39:22.180 canada you know all of those components of that that big blue tent they need to figure out how

01:39:30.360 to appeal to canadians at large because uh for the last uh six months it's been an abysmal failure

01:39:38.620 quite frankly. Yeah, no, there's no avoiding that. I mean, whatever the winning strategy might be,

01:39:45.480 that's debatable, but there's no doubt that the current strategy is a losing one. They aren't

01:39:50.760 getting there. And I mean, that's part of what, just a head scratcher. I mean, it's not like the

01:39:56.080 Trudeau liberals have provided this brilliant, strong leadership and morality and clean governance

01:40:02.820 or anything of the sort.

01:40:04.380 I mean, they've proven themselves to be borderline corrupt,

01:40:08.220 if not beyond borderline with the WE affair and SNC-Lavalin.

01:40:13.080 And, you know, ineptitude seems to kind of range a bit

01:40:17.120 when we're looking at vaccine distribution.

01:40:19.440 And, you know, if we're playing on the gotcha politics of cancel culture,

01:40:24.460 my Lord, this prime minister has been seen in blackface multiple times.

01:40:28.640 And even with all of that, we can't seem to chip into that liberal armor.

01:40:34.200 I mean, I guess we can't be relying on them to screw up in order to win.

01:40:37.900 That's what it should be teaching us.

01:40:40.020 That's not going to be enough.

01:40:41.820 You know, people want to vote against the liberals, fine, but they need to vote for something.

01:40:45.600 And the conservatives just can't seem to figure out what that four is yet.

01:40:48.860 Yeah, I agree with you 100% on that point.

01:40:51.820 I don't believe that it's good enough to say, well, let's wait for the existing government to screw up.

01:40:58.920 So there's this old adage that says that opposition parties don't form governments.

01:41:04.640 Governments throw themselves out of power.

01:41:09.240 I don't think that that sort of thinking applies in the year 2021.

01:41:14.500 And the reason I don't believe that applies is because we do have this global medical pandemic that, you know, with COVID that's happening everywhere that is allowing governments of all political stripes to have a bit more support than what they normally would during normal kind of economic times.

01:41:38.060 because, you know, I've always argued along with other people that in times of crisis,

01:41:44.220 whether it's right or wrong, that large numbers of the populace will rally around their respective

01:41:50.140 governments, rather than try to take down their governments. And so to your point,

01:41:56.940 I think the Conservatives need to actually put out, you know, a detailed policy roadmap.

01:42:04.380 and i think that they they need to be honest and they need to to really talk about it and saying

01:42:11.560 like we want change and not telling us what the change is is not good enough and uh you know

01:42:18.580 they really need to find these answers and um and if they don't well they're gonna you know there's

01:42:25.780 there's not a lot of runway left right so if we think of uh if we think of the conservatives as a

01:42:32.520 as a big big blue jumbo jet you know uh there's a short amount of runway and they got to get that

01:42:41.080 plane in the air and they're running on a runway and uh that means the likelihood of a victory

01:42:49.640 is shrinking every day and um you know that means taking some really hard serious decisions and i

01:42:58.440 agree with with Aaron O'Toole by the way like I want to go on the record of saying I agree with

01:43:02.920 Aaron that the conservative party needs to accept change now what that change is that he has in mind

01:43:09.880 I have no idea I mean I've laid out sort of what I view as a as a road map right and that's fiscal

01:43:18.040 responsibility embracing innovation and technology putting together a national mining strategy to

01:43:23.560 where you can take advantage of Alberta and Saskatchewan and Manitoba's resources

01:43:27.880 in order to supply the global EV market.

01:43:31.720 You know, look at the hydroelectric power from British Columbia,

01:43:37.280 from Manitoba, from Quebec, from Newfoundland.

01:43:40.140 Tie that all into like a national Canadian grid, so to speak.

01:43:44.280 You know, those are policy things where the Conservatives could enter

01:43:48.420 the election campaign and they could go into the leaders' debates

01:43:52.180 and they could say look this is what we want to do and then you could let canadians make an honest

01:43:57.540 decision as to which vision they prefer more but as it stands right now if it's just empty

01:44:05.540 platitudes of change well then i believe unfortunately that the government the existing

01:44:11.140 government will be re-elected and that you know if you're the if you're the liberal party that's

01:44:15.540 great you know they're happy about that because i think they're betting on the fact that the

01:44:21.860 conservative party and the people within the conservative party lack the the ability to

01:44:29.380 sort of talk about bold vision yeah well and getting back to so i mean a lot of our audience

01:44:35.640 again predominantly is in the west and there's just again a lot of regional frustration uh and

01:44:41.160 how that we spawn new political parties. We do it all the time. We've historically done it from way

01:44:46.600 back to the progressives, up to reform, up to the CPC and provincially we do it as well. So

01:44:52.200 we've got other ones now. It's not Western, but there's the PPC out there. We've got Maverick

01:44:57.440 Party, which a number of people have mentioned now. And Dave Borkman is commenting. He's been

01:45:01.880 working on forming yet another federal incarnation of an alternative out there. I don't believe any

01:45:08.060 parties in any position to win seats at this point, but they can most definitely still impact

01:45:13.860 things. This is core supporters, volunteers, donors, and sometimes perhaps in swing ridings

01:45:19.800 on a conservative party that really can't afford to lose those 1% or 2% or 5% here and there.

01:45:25.900 Well, and I mean, to your point, so I don't mean to interrupt you.

01:45:29.720 So with some of those opposition or some of those other sort of what I like to call fringe parties,

01:45:34.520 you know some of them are actually not only bad for the conservative movement but they're just

01:45:40.400 bad for Canada in general so if we look at like the PPC for example because you know you hear

01:45:46.860 people sort of on the fringes will mention them in passing occasionally you know the problem with

01:45:52.740 those guys quite frankly is that their immigration views are out to lunch and the reason I argue that

01:46:02.520 is people in Alberta and Saskatchewan and other parts of the country care about the economy and

01:46:08.040 care about finances and things like that. The number one way that you could kill off the

01:46:12.840 Canadian economy, quite frankly, is to shut down immigration. Because what we have seen

01:46:18.840 over the last three or four years is that Canada's retirement rate, according to Stats Canada,

01:46:27.400 They're somewhere in the neighborhood of close to half a million Canadians a year are retiring.

01:46:33.280 So, you know, those are people leaving the workforce.

01:46:36.100 Then you add another somewhere in the vicinity of 300,000 Canadians a year are dying just, you know, through natural causes and those kinds of things.

01:46:48.180 um that means you're left with a big uh gap that you need to make up in your workforce in your

01:46:57.160 economy in order to keep things moving and uh if we look at the Canadian birth rate uh that's been

01:47:05.060 on a downward spiral now for uh two decades and it's not at a high enough rate in order to make 0.98

01:47:14.620 up for uh the death rate and the retirement rates which is why immigration is important so

01:47:20.460 to circle this back around to some of those fringe parties um you know they would those policies of

01:47:27.800 of no immigration or bare minimal immigration and these kinds of uh silly ideas they would turn our

01:47:36.400 cities into towns our towns into villages and our villages would cease to exist so you know

01:47:43.480 immigration is good for the Canadian, for Canada, and it's good for the Canadian economy.

01:47:50.360 Yeah, immigration is one where people have taken a short-sighted view of it

01:47:54.440 at times, you know, and we see it all over the place. The bottom line, you get the old, 0.99

01:48:00.600 they're coming and stealing our jobs. Well, no, immigrants are taking actually quite often jobs 1.00

01:48:04.280 that you didn't want. You know, I did a lot of work in managing projects down in South Texas

01:48:11.240 in louisiana pennsylvania through the states and in seismic with the recording crews they're 90 1.00

01:48:17.640 mexican people and i'll be blunt we knew most of them were illegal uh they would show up at the 0.98

01:48:23.160 safety meeting one morning and there would be a whole bunch of different faces they're all working 1.00

01:48:26.040 under the same green cards but don't get upset at them nobody else was applying for the bloody job

01:48:33.000 and you need the job done uh you need the job done but you have people that are willing to do

01:48:39.240 the jobs, that are willing to put in the work, they want to be part of our society, they want

01:48:44.280 to be part of our country, and in the long term it benefits all of us as a nation. Whether you

01:48:49.160 live in Alberta or Newfoundland or British Columbia or Quebec, immigration is good for Canada.

01:48:57.560 This is why I argue that the Conservative Party really needs to be bold, take on a big vision,

01:49:04.120 start talking about these big policies. Whether it's Hudson Bay, whether it's a

01:49:08.280 national mining strategy whether it's a national hydroelectric power grid uh you know whether it's

01:49:14.920 uh pocketbook issues it's got to it's got to take these issues on it's got to embrace them in a way

01:49:20.600 and sell them to the public at large if it just wants to fight these old antiquated ideas that

01:49:27.240 immigration is bad and that uh you know we don't believe in climate change well they're going to

01:49:33.720 to lose every single time, especially if you combine that with the inability to answer basic 0.67

01:49:40.500 questions on things like gay marriage or abortion. And, you know, I know some of your viewers may

01:49:47.860 disagree with me on this, and that's fine. But I'm convinced more than ever that that is the

01:49:55.260 roadmap to success. Yeah, well, an interesting point I just brought up out of Stephanie, which

01:50:00.420 true but that's just the change of western demographics in the western world uh there

01:50:04.820 were some very influential books actually back in the 60s and 70s it turned out to be mostly hogwash

01:50:09.060 but it was the the population time bomb and the top population explosion and everybody was told

01:50:13.140 that we we're going to overpopulate the world's going to be in a catastrophe so you got to stop

01:50:16.820 breeding and well only western societies could afford to take on that sort of tactic and we

01:50:21.540 moved on to much more of a society that has one or two or even no kids which is fine but that does 0.77

01:50:26.980 lead to we need that ongoing generation of immigrants to come in to help pay for the

01:50:32.020 retiring people moving out it's it's not a an opinion thing it's a it's a common sense thing

01:50:36.980 but it needs to be sold because uh an uninformed vote is still a vote nonetheless well yeah i mean

01:50:42.780 i know that i know that 2020 was a unique set of circumstances because of covid but uh stats

01:50:48.880 canada released some numbers this week that showed canada's immigration in the year 2020

01:50:54.340 is the lowest it's been in over a century that we had less than half a percentage

01:51:03.360 in population growth. I think it was like 0.4. So you don't need many years like that

01:51:12.580 with the kind of high retirement rates and the sort of the high death rates and the low birth

01:51:21.440 rates to very quickly discover that your economy is going to collapse in a relatively short period

01:51:30.440 of time. So this is why I don't pay much attention to these fringe parties, because

01:51:36.180 they really don't have any sort of ideas. And a lot of them are essentially a pimple

01:51:44.200 on the ass of the conservative elephant, and I would much rather be the elephant

01:51:50.860 than a pimple on the elephant. Yeah, well, they're an expression of frustration with

01:51:57.780 the status quo, though, and something we're going to see is they started fringe, particularly

01:52:03.040 federally, but I mean, people called reform fringe when it got going, too, and it did take off.

01:52:07.320 They had to evolve, and they had some pretty crazy anti-reform stuff initially, or anti-immigration

01:52:11.460 stuff, but they moved beyond it. But it took a lot of work. I mean, Preston Manning was good at

01:52:15.920 keeping it to a reasonable voice. And something we've got in the West, and you'll see that

01:52:21.180 more and more, you know, in commenters with our listenership, separatism is higher than

01:52:25.640 I've ever seen in my life. And it's growing. And you've got to be careful. I mean, I don't want to

01:52:32.240 see it as some threat saying, if you guys vote liberal again this time around, we're separating.

01:52:35.620 But the reality is, if there's another election, and we're still looking at Prime Minister Trudeau,

01:52:41.460 particularly with a majority,

01:52:44.400 I think we're going to see a referendum out here in the next few years.

01:52:49.180 And that's just, well, again, I think the system is broken

01:52:53.480 and that might be what we need,

01:52:54.580 but that's more of an anarchist sort of approach to it.

01:52:57.320 But this is going to be a critical election on a number of levels, I think.

01:53:01.140 Well, so this is where you and I sort of have divert on this discussion, I guess.

01:53:09.680 And I know I'm not in Alberta, and I don't pretend to be in Alberta, but I don't buy into the argument that we're looking at a referendum for a couple of reasons.

01:53:23.820 So again, this may make your viewers uncomfortable, but this is my thoughts on it.

01:53:29.380 So, I think that if the Conservatives lose provincially, I don't think, I know, based off of all of the polling data, that Rachel Notley and the New Democrats will form government in Alberta.

01:53:44.840 and you're never going to see either Jason Kenney and the Alberta Conservative Party

01:53:54.980 nor Rachel Notley and the New Democrats talk about a referendum.

01:53:59.400 The other thing I think that's important to remember in all of this

01:54:02.800 is that despite the conservative side of the ledger, if you will,

01:54:10.060 Being extremely successful in Alberta federally, if we look at the breakdown of the vote, let's say 50%, they win 50% of the popular vote.

01:54:25.040 That still means that 50% are voting for liberals, a combination of liberals and New Democrats, even though they're not necessarily winning seats.

01:54:36.120 And so all of that is important because when people start talking about referendums and these kinds of things,

01:54:42.280 the reality is in order to win a referendum, you need to be able to win.

01:54:47.020 And I don't believe they can win.

01:54:50.760 And I think drawing comparisons to Quebec is a strategic error and a strategic blunder, quite frankly.

01:55:00.020 And the reason I argue that is because the Bloc Québécois, which is what people often point to when they talk about the Maverick Party in Alberta, is that the Bloc was made up of liberal and conservative MPs who left their respective parties in order to form the Bloc.

01:55:24.100 And just as important, it had the full support, backing, and endorsement of the provincial Quebec government, the Parti Quebecois.

01:55:36.300 So it had real infrastructure in place on the ground, both provincially and federally.

01:55:43.460 I don't believe for one minute that you're going to see a bunch of Alberta liberals or Alberta New Democrats leave their respective parties in order to champion the secession of Alberta.

01:55:59.480 And I know that might make you, I know you might disagree with me on this, but I don't believe that the people advocating this Maverick idea have really fully thought this out.

01:56:15.660 And the other thing, quite frankly, is that if you really want to help the federal liberals win more seats, then go ahead, support Maverick, because that's going to create vote splits, which will allow all kinds of federal liberals to be elected in Edmonton and Calgary and all over the place.

01:56:37.960 So I don't think that this has been fully thought through.

01:56:42.840 And I also think as well, and I know this puts me sort of on the outside of these things,

01:56:50.840 but I also believe that the Maverick Party is not necessarily what they are pretending to be.

01:57:00.740 And I believe that under the right political circumstances, that if the Federal Conservative

01:57:09.460 Party can get its act together and become competitive on the national scene, that you

01:57:16.260 would see the Maverick Party dissolve rather quickly, and most likely throw its support

01:57:24.660 behind the federal conservatives well i throw a lot there at you i know so oh yeah no and we're

01:57:33.380 coming towards the end that's fine i didn't bring you on to agree with everything i was saying or i

01:57:37.700 would just talk throughout the entire thing and then people would get quite bored and i do agree

01:57:41.860 with a good deal of it but it's good there's a lot to unpack a lot discussed and we're in a

01:57:47.380 turning point of a pivotal year so i mean we'll be able to get together and talk about how our

01:57:52.500 projections and uh ideas came about as time passes uh pre-election yet hopefully and post-election

01:57:59.720 as well and and we carry on but it's the discourse that's important and you're offering a perspective

01:58:04.120 from from halifax which we don't get a lot out here which is important because uh whether the

01:58:09.720 secessionists uh among us here like it or not we are still in a confederation and these federal

01:58:14.840 elections are all take you know the the participation of the entire country in them to

01:58:19.620 determine who's going to win it or lose it in the end. So it's all well worth discussing. I really

01:58:25.060 appreciate you coming on with me today for this first show. It was lots to cover and there's

01:58:30.460 always lots more. And just on a different note, I do, setting aside anyone's personal

01:58:37.420 preferences, either for the Liberals or the Conservatives or whatever, I do believe that

01:58:44.260 it's imperative for the federal conservative party to be a competitive national party.

01:58:52.040 And the reason I argue this is because in a parliamentary democracy like we have, no

01:58:58.680 matter who is the current government, whether it's this liberal government or a potential

01:59:03.680 future conservative government, you always want a functioning opposition that has the

01:59:11.140 capability of forming government.

01:59:13.500 And the reason you want that is because that keeps governments on their toes.

01:59:19.120 It helps keep governments honest.

01:59:20.940 It helps governments question whether they're doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

01:59:26.540 And if you don't have an effective opposition voice that is capable of replacing whoever the government of the day is,

01:59:35.500 that is generally when you start to see serious mistakes happen.

01:59:39.740 And so I am concerned as a Canadian citizen that I do want to see a functioning political party system in this country.

01:59:50.820 And that's just my thoughts on it.

01:59:53.880 Much appreciated.

01:59:55.080 So just in closing, where can people, if they want to talk to you or find you or see what you're talking about, what you're up to, what's the best places to do so?

02:00:02.260 Best place to find me is on Twitter, Clinton DeVoe.

02:00:06.000 You can see the spelling of my name on the screen there.

02:00:09.120 I write on a regular basis for Troy Media on issues of technology,

02:00:16.840 innovation, disruption.

02:00:18.700 I also write for Medium.

02:00:21.620 And I do radio and television broadcast and Internet broadcast like this as well.

02:00:28.300 And hopefully you guys will have me back.

02:00:31.560 I really enjoyed this today.

02:00:33.260 Oh, I'm certain we will.

02:00:34.500 Thank you very much again, and I'm sure we will be talking again.

02:00:38.420 Okay. Well, that brought us right to the top of the hour here. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Clinton. Thank you, Frank, and for you viewers, listeners, watchers, I'm tuning in on this first episode of this and a little bit of the technical difficulties which were to be anticipated, I guess, in our first round.

02:01:04.060 So, tomorrow night, there will be a special with Daniel Smith again, and she'll be talking on COVID again, which, you know, is so important, and so few people are doing it now.

02:01:15.040 And we will be back on Friday from 10 till noon to carry on with the Corey Morgan Show.

02:01:21.140 If you got ideas, things you want covered, thoughts, send them on to me.

02:01:25.500 You can private message me.

02:01:26.720 Find me at Corey B. Morgan on Twitter, and there's contact information at Western Standard as well.

02:01:34.060 So thanks again.

Western Standard - March 22, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show. March 22, 2021

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript