Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show. March 26, 2021

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00:02:00.000 Good morning. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show on the Western Standard. This is our

00:02:20.440 second episode. I've got a couple of great guests coming up today. It's going to be on

00:02:26.060 every Monday and Friday from 10 till noon. We'll cover the top news going on or at least what I

00:02:32.720 think is the top news and talk to interesting people to interpret the news and items such as

00:02:39.120 that. So and if our live digital presence at the Western Standard has really been expanding and

00:02:44.700 improving so I should pass along that we are going to have a show coming on out of Prince George with

00:02:50.880 a fantastic young man that's going to be on tuesdays wednesdays and thursdays and we do a

00:02:56.640 number of live specials uh if you missed it last night danielle smith did the sixth installment of

00:03:01.600 her uncensored series where she's been digging in with doctors lawyers individuals and politicians 0.89

00:03:09.040 even i know that make people cringe uh on the covet 19 issue because the mainstream media won't touch

00:03:14.480 it she's been just doing so great since she got out of the mainstream and loving being unrestrained

00:03:20.320 uncensored and able to cover the subjects and matters that she always wanted to so it's been

00:03:26.360 fantastic watching her do that and it's been great on the western standard so that's available on our

00:03:30.880 youtube channel if you want to download it and watch it later it's on our pod bean channel for

00:03:36.120 just the audio if you want to listen to it a lot of people have been taking it in and they've really

00:03:40.600 been appreciating it with the western standard again we've been as a western publication we don't

00:03:47.700 take any tax dollars not that the government's been falling over itself to offer it to us but

00:03:52.240 even if they did we wouldn't take it and we do rely on subscribers and sponsors so to begin with

00:03:59.740 i do want to mention kyrensway.com she it's penny who runs it and it's spelled k-y-r-o-n-s-w-a-y.com

00:04:08.900 she's a local business in calgary she deals with natural means of dealing with stress and anxiety

00:04:15.240 and a lot of us are dealing with that these days so if you want to look at dietary changes counseling

00:04:20.300 to just kind of get a better grasp on things in life talk to penny it's a free consultation she

00:04:26.240 might have just what you need to help you out because and she's helping us as well as a local

00:04:29.920 business as a sponsor and keep in mind you can subscribe to the western standard get those

00:04:35.080 stories it helps us helps pay for guys like dave naylor who pumps out so much great news

00:04:39.360 and we can carry on so thank you very much those who subscribe and for others please

00:04:43.660 consider doing so. So I want to start on COVID because that's just always the darned subject

00:04:52.120 of the day that we can't avoid and it's the top one. It's affecting every part of our lives whether

00:04:57.500 we like it or not. So last Monday with a great deal of anticipation that was during the last

00:05:03.020 show we were waiting for the breaking news. We weren't terribly surprised when when Tyler

00:05:07.120 Shandro came out and nothing changed. Unfortunately, they didn't back off on any restrictions. They're

00:05:14.600 keeping us locked down. They're still restricting businesses. They're hindering commerce. And

00:05:20.720 you know, they'll always keep saying it's these lockdowns, these restrictions that are holding

00:05:25.040 this bug at bay. But the problem is that there's other states and other jurisdictions that are

00:05:30.560 putting light of that. So I love bringing up Texas. It's been a couple of weeks now since all

00:05:34.280 the usual suspects predicted doom and gloom they freaked out texas dared to open up and oh

00:05:40.520 everybody's gonna die it's going to be a catastrophe well since they lifted the mask mandates and all

00:05:45.080 the restrictions i mean they didn't even do a phase thing like alberta's talking about they

00:05:47.880 lifted the works infections have gone down 30 you can see the chart here now if these restrictions

00:05:53.880 were the key factor then theoretically it's not even theoretically that line that you see on that

00:06:00.120 chart should be spiking upwards Texas Mississippi Florida those guys should be 0.57

00:06:05.280 having massive spikes and infections it's not happening the models are junk

00:06:10.260 they always have been yet we're basing our policies which are crushing 0.65

00:06:15.240 individuals and crushing businesses on these garbage models the other thing

00:06:19.560 that was unfortunately disappointing and again I really want to find something

00:06:22.320 where I can compliment Premier Kenny I wanted him in as our premier I was

00:06:25.700 looking forward to it I expected a great deal and I just haven't seen it yet and

00:06:29.700 the disappointment last Monday was if you're going to show up to deliver bad news or if you're going

00:06:34.200 to deliver bad news, show up to deliver it. You know, he dumped it on Shandro and Hinshaw.

00:06:38.540 Where were you, Jason? You know, part of the leadership thing isn't just being there to cut

00:06:42.100 the ribbons on the celebratory things. It's also to take your lumps if you're going to do something

00:06:45.540 then that people don't like. So, you know, here's that free tip. If you're wondering why you're

00:06:49.400 falling in the polls, we want to see leadership. And that means taking the crap sometimes. You know, 0.99

00:06:54.240 last year we saw Justin Trudeau every morning on the TV. Oh, I couldn't stand it. It made me cringe.

00:06:59.380 but you know what? It worked. People liked it. At least it showed he was paying attention and he was

00:07:03.880 there. Don't hide when the bad news comes in. It's not helping you or us. Get out there and

00:07:12.320 put it out. And yes, as Laura is pointing out, Laura Kinnear-Hammond, it's also warming up in

00:07:17.020 Texas. I mean, a real trend we've seen with this, I mean, the peak of the infections for the Northern

00:07:21.540 Hemisphere has been during the winter solstice. The lowest amount of daylight is when we had the

00:07:26.700 highest amount of infections. It is the coldest time of year. We're all locked inside. We're not

00:07:30.220 getting our vitamin D. There's a lot of factors in this pandemic and they are not focused around

00:07:35.800 lockdowns. So moving on from that, let's look at some of the folks who panic on these lockdowns.

00:07:43.060 These are the people driving it. So this is Shannon Proudfoot tweeted this the other day

00:07:46.380 and she writes for McLean's Magazine. So this is the mainstream. They're getting out there.

00:07:51.400 They're influencing people. And she put out this, this breathless panic tweets. I have no idea

00:07:56.660 I'll go back to indoor dining, but not soon. The only time I've been inside an open restaurant

00:08:01.000 the last year was to pick up a meal on my anniversary, and the jolly tables full of

00:08:04.120 maskless people legit freaked me out. Oh my lord. I hope she's gotten over this. Really?

00:08:11.720 You know, is it that terrifying? What did freak you out? Was it the fact that the tables were

00:08:15.920 jolly, or was it that they were maskless? I swear these people like to spread their misery. As they 0.73

00:08:20.520 say, misery loves company. She's upset that other people are enjoying themselves while she's locked 0.95

00:08:24.800 in her cave listening to all the health orders. Well, that's your problem, Shannon, not ours.

00:08:28.740 Quit making it our problem. But again, these members of the mainstream media

00:08:32.800 do influence it. And she made a whole tweet thread of it, too.

00:08:36.360 I seem to have lost that one, but that's okay. You know, you get much of the picture

00:08:40.640 out of her and what our haywire left puts out there. Moving on to that next

00:08:44.780 picture, we've got one of my favorite politicians, and there's a lot of them I like to bash

00:08:48.940 on, but Pierre Polyev, I mean, an Ontario politician, Alberta-born.

00:08:53.560 He's managed to win in the most difficult riding out there in Carlton and really, really

00:08:58.460 stirs the pot out there.

00:08:59.940 Again, dips into the issues that our mainstream media doesn't like talking about.

00:09:05.840 Well, he went out in an oil sand strong hoodie, as you can see here.

00:09:10.180 For those who are listening on the podcast, you know, it shows the symbol.

00:09:12.760 It's a circle.

00:09:13.440 It says oil sand strong and it's got a fist of strength.

00:09:16.160 You know, that's the rebellious symbol these days for a number of groups and so on.

00:09:19.560 and the carlton liberal association comes up says pauliev sure loves this hoodie to his

00:09:25.880 loyalties lie in carlton or fort max so again let's stop there for a second straight to the

00:09:30.720 regionalism and it is them versus us is that how it really is then you you can't speak for

00:09:36.760 and support a western industry it means you are not standing up for your ontario constituents

00:09:41.520 you know you can actually do both it is possible it doesn't have to be us and them but that is

00:09:46.500 where we're sitting. And then it goes on. Does he deny climate change? Well, I don't see anywhere

00:09:50.440 on that sweatshirt that it says he does. But, you know, I guess you could ask him if he'd want to

00:09:55.280 talk to you. But here's the best part and the most, I guess, predictable but frustrating. And what's

00:10:00.380 with the clenched white fist? A white supremacy symbol? Really? Okay, that symbol was made by a

00:10:07.840 young gentleman who runs oil sand strong. He's First Nations. He's up in Fort Mac. And actually

00:10:14.400 he's gay, though. I mean, that's sort of irrelevant. But, you know, he just doesn't fit the mold of a

00:10:20.200 typical white supremacist. And his labeling of anything and everything you don't like, you don't

00:10:24.500 agree with his white supremacism is getting tiresome. So if you want to go up there to Fort

00:10:28.040 Mac, I'd love to see you liberal weenies. Go up there and meet him in person and tell him that

00:10:34.220 you think he's a white supremacist. I would really look forward to it. I would post that video. To

00:10:39.760 their credit, the association did pull down that tweet, you know, in embarrassment. But the fact

00:10:43.880 they threw it out in the first place uh it's just odious so now let's go down memory road here for

00:10:51.960 for those who uh remember the eddie maurice case in in okotoks area he was a young father who dared

00:10:58.600 to defend his family from some uh burglars who were coming onto his property in the middle of

00:11:03.880 the night he fired a warning shot and a ricochet hit the the fellow in the elbow and it took eddie

00:11:08.520 years to get out of that whole mess of being sued and charged i mean he was cleared in the end but

00:11:12.440 but we wasted a lot of resources, stressed out a young man and his family, and really set an ugly

00:11:17.660 precedent before he set free. Well, the other day down at Granham, and that's a small town

00:11:21.960 south of Nanton, kind of getting towards Fort McLeod, a similar situation. We're seeing a lot

00:11:26.900 of that in rural areas, rural crime. Some burglars came onto the land. They were trying to steal

00:11:32.380 something. This gentleman now, from what we've heard of this story, the homeowner came out with

00:11:35.840 a shotgun, fired a warning shot, scared these guys, then held them until the police got here.

00:11:40.880 But some of the funny irony, because this might not turn out funny in the end, is that it was the burglars who called the police.

00:11:49.140 They said, oh, my God, there's a man with a gun.

00:11:51.280 It also shows their arrogance. 1.00

00:11:52.860 You know, I'm going to call the cops because this man is trying to stop me from stealing his things, that bastard. 1.00

00:11:57.640 And that's what they did. 0.99

00:11:58.840 And the police showed up.

00:11:59.820 They did charge the burglars.

00:12:02.160 And they are investigating the homeowner, though, investigating him.

00:12:06.080 now i'll tell you right now and i was out there helping organize outside the courthouse and such

00:12:10.640 for eddie maurice if this man gets charged for defending his property i'll be organizing again 0.96

00:12:14.320 and i'll be calling on albertans let's get out there we aren't going to put up with this crap 0.96

00:12:18.080 do not charge people for protecting their families and their homes and to show the idiocy uh dave put 0.97

00:12:22.560 in his story for those who can't read that that that uh screenshot i brought up ironically on 0.92

00:12:27.680 his facebook page one of the accused has an illustration of a death's head motorcyclist

00:12:31.760 under the banner, we don't call 911, we call brothers. No, dude, you chicken shit, you called 1.00

00:12:38.000 911 and got charged for it. So maybe you want to change your banner. They've already been freed 1.00

00:12:44.120 and released again, of course, and one of them had been charged in the past for not showing up for

00:12:47.720 court. I wonder if he'll show up this time. Catch and release doesn't work, but that's a whole

00:12:52.180 separate story for another time. Getting to control of information. Feds blasted for plans to block

00:12:58.800 entire websites for safety reasons it's not this is getting scary they want to control information

00:13:04.100 they want to control how we speak i'll speak personally my own youtube channel my personal

00:13:08.240 one just got demonetized this morning uh not that i made a heck of a lot out of it anyways but

00:13:13.220 clearly some people have been reporting and complaining about it and i'm looking through it

00:13:16.680 you know youtube doesn't tell me exactly what i did wrong it just says you've been violating our

00:13:19.920 terms and they pulled my monetization so they say you can reapply in a month if you've addressed

00:13:23.920 the issues but they haven't told me what the issues are i suspect the issue is that i'm

00:13:27.660 conservative. Now, they're playing both sides of the tracks here, though, when we get federal

00:13:33.380 legislation and this tech giants censoring online content, because this is where we are managing

00:13:39.260 to communicate with each other outside of the mainstream media. And we do have to be very

00:13:44.440 careful to make sure they don't block and filter it. And the liberals are trying their very hardest.

00:13:48.780 I mean, here we go with the federal government is going to pay influencers to praise itself.

00:13:53.200 Here's one of those areas, too. They don't offer me any money. Well, I don't have the chances of

00:13:56.800 me praising them are pretty slim but man this is pathetic but they do recognize that the social 0.78

00:14:02.240 media influencers do influence policy and things like that but rather than just try to do good 0.97

00:14:08.360 government they're just trying to control the messaging and that's distressing and frustrating

00:14:12.420 and annoying and that is where we are at today so i've got a couple of great guests i've got

00:14:17.640 michelle sterling on from the uh friends of science boy i'm sorry i keep almost trying to

00:14:25.500 say Friends of Medicare, which would be so terribly insulting, and I'm sorry about that.

00:14:29.640 I'm going to bring you in, Michelle. Morning. There's so many groups that are friends of so

00:14:35.360 many things, and we are. Michelle has done fantastic work, again, in putting that counter

00:14:42.320 message out there, cutting through the BS, cutting through the shallow hysteria when it comes to

00:14:47.260 environmental policy or news releases or government actions. Always very prolific on social media and

00:14:54.460 Twitter and getting things out there. So thank you very much for joining me today, Michelle.

00:14:59.540 My pleasure. Thanks so much. And let me just say, I may be the face or the front person for

00:15:06.200 Friends of Science, but we have a very small, dedicated, very hardworking volunteer team behind

00:15:11.880 me. And I give them all my heart and soul kudos because they make it happen.

00:15:19.120 Thanks. Yeah, there are a lot of people behind the scenes, you know, whether it's in parties,

00:15:22.820 whether it's in advocacy groups and all sorts of areas we don't hear them we

00:15:26.840 don't see them but that's a lot of important tedious research and digging

00:15:31.820 I mean to make sure you are putting out the correct facts and information and

00:15:34.880 they are sort of the unsung heroes of the modern information age it's just us

00:15:38.840 to deliver the messages those guys who compile it all for us so you've got so

00:15:44.660 many areas you cover and I'm looking forward to this but one that caught me

00:15:48.000 recently because this has been the big trend this is what we've determined is

00:15:52.020 to be the big savior of the earth it's gonna you know cool things down uh if indeed that's what we

00:15:57.220 want and and so on and that will be the big shift to electric cars we've been hearing about it for

00:16:00.980 about 15 years now i'm sure it's going to happen anytime now but you really uh dissected and and

00:16:08.260 and broke down some of the baloney coming from one of our mainstream media outlets ctv

00:16:12.900 on electric vehicles in the shift um and you tweeted that i mean it was just fantastic i

00:16:17.460 loved reading i mean these are a lot of things i knew but you encapsulated it so excellently and

00:16:21.140 added to it so can you expand a bit on that sure well recently ctv calgary did a story on a kpmg

00:16:29.140 opinion poll and the opinion poll indicated that about 54 or so of albertans plan to buy

00:16:36.980 an ev of some kind in the next near future say five years and so by doing some simple math

00:16:44.020 the reporter came up with i think it was the reporter it might have been kpmg but they came

00:16:48.660 up with the idea that six hundred thousand EVs might be on the road in the next five

00:16:56.040 years in Alberta and so that's a rather astounding figure now to the reporter's credit he did

00:17:03.680 talk with NMAX and he did talk with the ISO the Alberta Electric System Operator about

00:17:09.300 concerns that that might crash the grid because you know a lot of people don't realize that

00:17:14.140 an EV doesn't run on electricity it runs on electricity that comes from a power

00:17:19.960 plant and that power plant is typically powered by coal natural gas or some oil

00:17:27.880 derivative or hydro or nuclear but it's not just because you can plug it in so

00:17:33.700 you know that means that if we switch out all the gas-powered cars to electric

00:17:39.340 vehicles there will be a tremendous strain on the grid so anyway I asked

00:17:44.200 Robert Lyman who was a senior transport manager with the federal government for

00:17:48.760 many years I asked him if this 600,000 figures sounded reasonable and so he

00:17:54.880 came back and said well well no he said it's been characteristic of the EV

00:18:00.440 advocates that they always exaggerate the increase in sales they underestimate

00:18:05.000 the growth in oil consumption and the current estimate of EV sales in Canada

00:18:10.640 is 53,000 so that's for all of Canada which is only 3.7 percent of vehicle

00:18:17.060 sales in a year in which car and truck sales declined by almost 20 percent so

00:18:22.940 it was an unusual year but it's highly unlikely that you know these kind of

00:18:28.240 numbers would be seen in Alberta based on that so if the article is right he

00:18:34.280 says Alberta car sales average about $223,000 a year, and one assumed that EVs would triple

00:18:41.420 their share of sales to about 10%, which is possible but not likely in his view, then

00:18:46.220 the maximum EV sales in the next five years would be $22,300 a year.

00:18:52.960 So projecting that EV sales will grow 54% of an Alberta car sale is not based on credible

00:18:58.820 analysis.

00:19:00.420 So I did find an actual zero emissions tracking report, and in fact pretty much everything

00:19:08.900 that Robert Lyman said was true.

00:19:11.360 Now I also asked a power generation engineer named Kent Zare, and Kent's written a couple

00:19:17.820 of articles for us and for himself, a couple of papers that he's published on this transition

00:19:23.780 to EVs.

00:19:24.780 And again, you know, the climate activists see things in very simplistic terms, and I'm sure that many of them are very well meaning, honestly. I mean, many times I think people on our side tend to sort of bash the climate advocates as if, you know, they're mean or malicious, but I think they're just misinformed and energy illiterate is what I basically call them. And most people are energy illiterate.

00:19:50.220 It took me four or five years to learn what I know today about the power grid, and I don't even know enough to make, you know, professional comments on it, of course.

00:19:59.880 I'm not a power engineer.

00:20:02.400 But, you know, Kent Zare pointed out that 54% number is very high due to virtue signaling.

00:20:11.100 And the fact that not all cars and vehicles in Alberta are EVs.

00:20:17.960 Like in Alberta, a lot of trucks are sold, a lot of SUVs.

00:20:21.000 We need those big vehicles for the most part.

00:20:23.640 You know, if you're any kind of working professional, like a journeyman tradesperson,

00:20:28.880 you're not going to be going anywhere in an EV, you know,

00:20:31.920 because you've got a lot of heavy equipment to carry.

00:20:34.300 You might have a trailer on the back filled with all your parts and tools.

00:20:38.680 And you're going to be traveling in very extreme conditions for most of the year,

00:20:42.260 whether it's extreme heat or extreme cold.

00:20:45.040 But EVs don't perform in that and they can't carry heavy loads.

00:20:49.220 So now the reporter at CTV had also asked NMAX about, you know, what about the power grid?

00:20:56.640 Could it stand it?

00:20:58.080 So Kent said, you know, if you use 80 kilowatt hour battery, which is the standard today,

00:21:04.980 and you said that all of them would need at least 50 percent charge a day,

00:21:08.580 the annual requirement would be 600,000 times 80 kilowatts times 50 percent times 200 days a year

00:21:16.080 or so and so on that basis you would end up with 2400 megawatt hours a day additional power and

00:21:27.080 if we're generous and say the load is spread out over 12 hours at night the grid would need an

00:21:31.900 additional load of 2,000 megawatts. So not the 400 megawatts that was talked about by the ISO

00:21:38.500 spokesman in the CTV article. And the only way that 400 megawatts works in the CTV story is if

00:21:46.100 the usage pattern, which was described by the NMAX spokesperson, Jana Mosley, no commuting,

00:21:53.380 no great distances, and the vehicle is a sometimes convenience. In other words, that is not the

00:21:58.780 average worth user so you know here we have the problem that I see here is that we have a you

00:22:07.720 know a major media outlet misleading the public perhaps with good intention but you know policies

00:22:14.000 are going to be set by this because people who want EVs who want to decarbonize you know they'll

00:22:20.140 be phoning their MLA and saying we need EV chargers in every part of the city all the way up and down

00:22:26.320 the qe2 now because we're going to have 600 000 evs in the next five years and people take this

00:22:33.760 as gospel because it came from a major media outlet and from kpmg but i remind people kpmg's

00:22:42.160 survey was an opinion survey and it's it's one thing for people to say well i'd love the world

00:22:48.480 to be decarbonized you know i would love it to be decarbonized because then we'd stop all this

00:22:53.680 craziness about climate change, but that's not going to happen. And we have to look at the facts

00:23:01.700 and cost benefit analysis and not rely on opinions of people. So that's that one story. Sorry, I kind

00:23:08.740 of went on and on there, Corey. That's okay. Cause it's a big one and it's one that's costly. I

00:23:13.480 mean, we've got huge demands for subsidies towards these vehicles and some, you know,

00:23:18.280 some are subsidizing these vehicles. I mean, if they come naturally, if they are affordable and

00:23:22.660 become better, fine. It's an evolution of power and transportation. I'm okay with it. It's this

00:23:27.600 trying to force it before it's ready, which is the problem. And I think, as you said, a lot of

00:23:32.780 people don't think of the whole energy grid. I mean, they got better things to think of. I understand.

00:23:37.620 But the same comes to economics. And that's an area that gets me with these electric vehicles

00:23:41.640 and some of the discourse is supply and demand, which is an area where it's a simple, simple rule,

00:23:46.740 but it's as solid as the law of gravity. And people keep talking, oh, look at the money we'll

00:23:51.720 save because my electric bill is only this. And if I could charge my vehicle, well, they don't

00:23:55.740 think if you put that many vehicles on the grid, even if somehow we've upgraded all of our generating

00:24:00.820 capacity and upgraded all of those houses and apartments and everything to be capable of

00:24:05.360 charging these vehicles, what do you think is going to happen to your power bill? Even if you

00:24:09.500 don't drive a car, your house electricity bill is going to go through the roof.

00:24:14.900 Right. Yes. And as Jenna Mosley said from NMAX, you know, that at the residential level,

00:24:20.260 the grid can presently the distribution grid can presently stand having two or

00:24:24.880 three vehicles on a street and then it's kaput they have to upgrade their

00:24:29.160 transformer they may have to upgrade the wiring you know and then at some point

00:24:37.900 you have to run more transmission lines you probably have to build more power

00:24:43.060 generation facilities which will be natural gas probably which is a market

00:24:49.000 commodity and subject to extremely wild spikes I don't know if people remember

00:24:52.900 but back in 2008 or so natural gas spiked dramatically and a lot of people

00:24:59.240 in Alberta could not pay their utility bill and at the time I was a subcontractor

00:25:04.120 to Alberta environment Alberta employment as a career counselor and we

00:25:10.480 were paying people's gas bills so they wouldn't get evicted and so that they

00:25:15.500 wouldn't be cold like we were paying $800 bills a month you know people would

00:25:19.260 come in and say I don't know what to do I'm gonna get evicted I can't have you

00:25:23.480 know so get natural gas is you know a great energy provider but if you have to

00:25:29.660 build more natural gas plants more transmission lines more distribution

00:25:33.920 lines upgrade the transformers and you're going to be losing all of the

00:25:39.560 taxes associated with conventional cars that pay for some of the things like

00:25:45.080 road maintenance you know all of your bills are going to go up dramatically

00:25:49.520 it's not going to be small and it's funny because in that CTD report they

00:25:54.060 interviewed a woman who said well you know even though I plug in my electric

00:25:57.440 vehicle my electricity power bill has not gone up much yeah because you know

00:26:03.340 the rest of us are paying for it so so but that's gonna change that'll be

00:26:08.540 upside down now Robert Lyman has three reports that he's written and they're

00:26:13.400 linked in our blog post. So he's written one called exposing the EV fantasy, assessing the alleged benefits of EVs and the false assumptions about EV benefits to the environment. So, you know, it's worth a read.

00:26:33.780 Yeah, well, and again, and expanding, you know, when people realize that the cost actually will kick them in their own butt, that's when they seem to finally wake up. It's unfortunate, though, we're trying to warn them in advance before it

00:26:43.380 becomes that far. Some years ago I used to own a diesel truck when I left the oil field actually

00:26:48.600 and then I bought a restaurant which was a terrible masochistic endeavor but I followed a forum because

00:26:55.300 I looked at something interesting they're talking you know these people are taking deep fryer oil

00:26:59.080 used stuff from restaurants and cleaning it up and converting it and you can burn it in a diesel

00:27:02.700 vehicle. I thought well that's kind of cool you know my restaurant generates a lot of that oil

00:27:06.740 out back that I take to the bin and maybe I could do it but I never got around to it it's just a lot

00:27:10.480 trouble for for relatively little savings but i followed that forum and it was funny to watch the

00:27:14.800 progression of it because at first these guys were going out there knocking on doors and asking

00:27:18.800 restaurants to for their oil and the rest was sure you'll get rid of it i need to dispose of it

00:27:23.200 anyways but once they realized it was a commodity uh then they started saying well you know what i

00:27:28.320 want a little money for this and these guys lost it but they don't understand that's the same with

00:27:33.200 the electricity anything else it's not free i mean sure when it was just a trash product it wasn't

00:27:37.840 worth anything and now actually at the end redux was a company they would come pick up my used oil

00:27:42.400 and pay me 10 bucks or 10 cents a liter for it whereas before i used to pay them to take it away

00:27:47.840 so it's changed and that's just reality again it's that supply and demand sort of thing

00:27:52.320 and that will apply with electric cars and people seem to be forgetting that you know the power has

00:27:57.360 to come from somewhere meanwhile they're trying to shut down site c dam and they're trying to

00:28:00.400 shut down every possible means of new generation nuclear is out of the question bc's got a huge

00:28:04.400 campaign against natural gas going on now. Well, guys, it's going to have to come from somewhere

00:28:09.660 and we can't get it from damming the Elbow River in Calgary. Right. Well, you know, Kent Zare did

00:28:15.340 an analysis of the conversion from conventional fuel to electricity in Canada. And we would,

00:28:22.780 according to his estimate, we would have to build 10,000 megawatts more power in Canada. So that

00:28:29.760 would be like eight Shepherd Energy centers that we have in Calgary which is

00:28:34.200 a combined cycle natural gas plant or it would be several sightsee dams or

00:28:39.580 muskrat Falls both of which are way over budget and you know way behind schedule

00:28:44.700 and for each one of these kinds of facilities you need a 20 to 30 year

00:28:51.840 horizon for each one because you have to get the land you have to get the plans

00:28:56.520 You have to do the environmentally impact assessment. You have to get the financing

00:29:00.980 You have to commission the parts to build it then you have to build the thing then you have to put it into operation

00:29:08.180 You know and test it out build any additional transmission lines to and from install various forms of

00:29:17.160 Integration systems, especially if you're adding more wind and solar wind and solar run on DC

00:29:22.840 uh the grid runs on ac so there's you know a conversion that's required there so 20 to 30

00:29:30.040 years for each one and there's not one new generation project on the table right now

00:29:36.280 not one so you know they want us to go all ev by by what 2040 or something like that like it's

00:29:43.240 absurd and the problem is we'll be bankrupt and sitting in the dark because we'll just run out

00:29:49.320 of power if they continue down this path yeah and affordable energy i mean it is so critical to our

00:29:56.520 well-being i mean um it just people just do not realize how to impact every aspect of our lives

00:30:04.040 whether north or south yet here we are kicking it and just not realizing how that's going to come

00:30:08.840 back so we'll move along there was a uh something you mentioned earlier you've been uh talking about

00:30:14.120 was with the city of calgary uh and their special uh group i guess you could say getting together

00:30:19.400 on the climate issue uh let me expand right now the city of calgary is running in their climate

00:30:24.280 symposium and so they've got tons of online virtual events going on uh one thing that you'll

00:30:31.000 notice is they're all on the green side there's no dissenting voices and um um one of the people

00:30:38.840 who opened the sessions was Bruce Laurie. He was on yesterday, and he was talking a lot about the

00:30:46.280 federal government's five bold moves, how he'd been part of planning that, and the five bold moves

00:30:53.320 that were presented by the Task Force for Resilient Recovery, which includes Gerald Butts as one of

00:30:59.080 the members, they effectively became part of the throne speech last fall. So we had written a

00:31:06.440 rebuttal report to that called penury versus prosperity and again we have these very optimistic

00:31:13.400 very enthusiastic climate advocates um making up all kinds of stuff you know and blithely saying

00:31:20.280 well hydrogen can replace um conventional fuels you know as if that's easy but hydrogen is a very

00:31:30.040 problematic molecule it's the lightest and the smallest but it can escape any

00:31:36.340 kind of metal it can in brittle metal and when it escapes is invisible and it

00:31:42.000 doesn't have a smell and unlike natural gas you can't add smell to it because

00:31:46.480 then it kind of defeats the qualities of the of the material so it's very

00:31:53.260 explosive as well and when it's escaping through a crack in an

00:31:58.300 embrittled metal container which is highly pressurized because of the nature of the molecule

00:32:05.580 it can create electrostatic charge which will ignite it and the blast range of hydrogen is

00:32:13.420 about 200 meters which is about the size of a football field so you know you have many people

00:32:19.100 saying oh we're going to put hydrogen in homes for heating we're going to put hydrogen in cars

00:32:24.780 and there are fuel cells for hydrogen cars and hydrogen buses they haven't been widely adopted

00:32:31.900 for some of these reasons and particularly with cars you know lots of people love to tinker with

00:32:38.760 their car and up the performance well you don't want to have anybody doing that with a hydrogen

00:32:44.200 vehicle so there are lots of problems that they're not talking about and they're treating hydrogen as

00:32:49.900 if it's the new miracle substance, and, you know, this is a consistent part of climate advocate

00:32:55.000 thinking, always a magic bullet, always a single factor, the single factor of CO2,

00:33:01.160 the magic bullet, hydrogen, because when you use it, the only outcome is oxygen release, right?

00:33:09.560 So it's very problematic that influential people like Bruce Laurie are presenting this to the city

00:33:15.260 of Calgary and all of the climate advocates who are online and none of these factors are being

00:33:20.340 mentioned. So that's just one element and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't produce hydrogen

00:33:26.420 by the way like Alberta is actually positioned to produce a lot of hydrogen which is very important

00:33:31.180 for agriculture but it's not really a consumer product and there are many dangers associated

00:33:37.920 with that and lots of dangerous thinking assuming that you know it's an easy fix it's not.

00:33:45.260 No, well, and getting to municipal government. So we have trouble with government on all level

00:33:50.660 and the city of Calgary has been very particularly odious in my view in that regard. I mean,

00:33:57.180 they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in the Pembina Institute as a consultant

00:34:02.720 on issues. I mean, these are an anti-conventional energy organization. Why are they? I mean,

00:34:09.280 they have the right to speak and perhaps even present to certain meetings and so on,

00:34:12.860 but to actually be contracted? 0.98

00:34:14.480 This is ridiculous. 0.57

00:34:15.860 If they'd paid the Fraser Institute, 0.99

00:34:17.420 we know some heads would have been exploding.

00:34:19.880 The city of Calgary just seems to find

00:34:21.220 every sort of way they can

00:34:22.520 to bring in these environmental advocates

00:34:24.720 and have them help them formulate policy

00:34:27.360 and influence the thinking of Calgarians.

00:34:30.300 Yes, a lot of people are not aware

00:34:32.760 that most of these large ENGOs

00:34:35.080 are funded to a large extent

00:34:38.580 by governments at various levels.

00:34:40.780 and I just want to give you a few insights on that like for instance in

00:34:46.420 2018 environmental defense was funded for almost 30% of their budget by

00:34:55.900 governments so various governments federal provincial municipal so a lot of

00:35:02.540 these already tax subsidized groups are getting funding from grants from your

00:35:10.280 tax money again and what are they pushing they're always pushing a narrative that supports um green

00:35:17.400 crony capitalism they're not pushing a narrative that's thoughtful and and open to public discussion

00:35:24.760 so let's just have a look here the the revenues of the received by the engos the top 40 engos in

00:35:32.840 Canada and their EnviroLaw counterparts over the period of 2000 to 2018 was 18 times the

00:35:41.540 revenues received by all federal political parties and over 27 times the revenues received

00:35:50.420 by the market-oriented institutes like Fraser.

00:35:55.080 Both Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Nature Conservancy Canada annually receive higher

00:36:00.000 revenues than all the major federal political parties and a large portion of the funding to

00:36:06.740 these organizations is from the federal government like nature conservancy got a 23 million dollar

00:36:13.060 grant from the federal government they're already a hugely fat tax subsidized organization

00:36:20.080 and the revenue received from tides organization alone is more than the combined revenues of

00:36:27.220 Canada's two largest federal parties, the Liberal Party of Canada and the Conservative Party of

00:36:32.600 Canada. And the David Suzuki Foundation's average annual revenues exceed the annual revenues of the

00:36:38.860 federal New Democrat Party. And eight of the ENGOs have annual revenues that exceed those of the

00:36:45.460 governing Liberal Party of Canada. So those are excerpts from Robert Lyman's report on the ENGOs,

00:36:52.720 which he independently compiled.

00:36:54.820 And I'd say it's a similar kind of research

00:36:57.280 to that of Vivian Krause,

00:36:58.600 but he compiled it independently from CRA filings,

00:37:04.040 public records, annual reports, and known IRS filings.

00:37:08.660 So when you look at those figures,

00:37:11.180 you understand why there's this sort of green push in Canada

00:37:14.420 from most of the federal parties,

00:37:15.880 because they're either being supported financially

00:37:18.420 by the green groups,

00:37:19.720 and there is some evidence to suggest that

00:37:22.200 in some of our reports or they want to get elected again so you have these

00:37:26.100 hugely fat rich e NGOs getting subsidized by certain governments so

00:37:32.340 obviously they're going to support it and that group also has a huge number

00:37:36.240 of subscribers and followers and so they're going to be on board with

00:37:41.280 whatever party that NGO directs them to like this is a third party of our sort

00:37:48.660 a fifth column if you like of unelected unaccountable individuals and organizations

00:37:55.940 and what we really need to do is to unfriend engos and cut this off right now yeah well and

00:38:03.380 it's such an interwoven group of people you start seeing some of the names surfacing all over the

00:38:07.540 the place and um boy i'm forgetting her name but uh a very hardcore activist that rachel

00:38:14.500 not libra and is one of her consultants there uh well tippy support vermin that's the one there we

00:38:21.060 go i mean you're you're actually on the payroll to come in and oppose our industries are of course

00:38:25.700 even bigger is gerald butts who's been very influential on on of course federal policy

00:38:30.500 he's been trudeau's right hand man it's only scandal that got him formally out of the pmo's

00:38:35.380 office which i think is worse because now he's informally influencing it and i mean i saw

00:38:40.580 something recently there's a consultancy i wasn't prepared for this but a group and i believe they're

00:38:45.620 new york based but they're for uh uh political communications and messaging and the provincial

00:38:51.940 government of alberta has spent a couple hundred thousand dollars because they're having some

00:38:55.300 communications nightmares there's no doubt about that but i look at one of the principles of this

00:38:59.380 group and it's gerald butts so alberta has given some of their tax dollars to a group that employs

00:39:03.540 the guy who's been shutting us down because these guys are everywhere and i mean

00:39:08.340 how do we stop this it's my understanding that they contracted that group before he was part

00:39:15.400 of that group and um you know i i can kind of see why they would want to talk with people like that

00:39:23.120 because what a lot of people don't know is that there's an organization called the united nations

00:39:29.600 principles for responsible investment this is a group of most of the institutional investors in

00:39:36.340 the world it's voluntary but their fiduciary guru is Al Gore so there's

00:39:43.480 about a thousand people signed up to her group signed up to it and this would be

00:39:47.920 groups like AIMCO is part of it CPP is part of it

00:39:51.640 Kesta depot is part of it so all the big pension funds are part of it and they

00:39:59.160 signed on to six principles and one of them is to comply or explain they have

00:40:05.340 combined at least 90 trillion dollars in assets under management and in 2014

00:40:11.280 they signed that many of their members signed the Montreal pledge to become

00:40:15.420 activist investors so the NEI investments which is a combination of

00:40:23.520 Desjardins out of Quebec and the central credit unions of the rest of Canada they

00:40:32.760 went to Rachel Notley at the time and they presented her with a letter that

00:40:38.340 said we represent 120 signatories and all of those signatories are signatories

00:40:44.080 to the UN PRI and here's what we think that you should do have a carbon tax

00:40:48.560 phase out coal you know charge large emitters and all the things that

00:40:54.420 happened in the climate plan in Alberta were basically delivered on a platter

00:40:58.080 from NEI investments and they said we have 120 signatories on this letter and

00:41:03.420 we have 4.6 trillion dollars in assets under management and here's what we

00:41:08.800 think you should do so you know that's kind of an ultimatum because probably

00:41:12.720 some of those organizations were investors in different companies in

00:41:17.460 Alberta on top of that though oak foundation was one of the signatories and

00:41:22.620 oak is identified as one of the tar sands campaign funders so you know as you

00:41:27.780 said before there's this like marriage of all these incestuous relationships

00:41:34.440 between the NGOs and the big funders so you know it's very problematic because

00:41:39.780 now these guys are very proudly the UN PRI in 2016 issued a list of 22 activist

00:41:46.920 investors who had gone out there to mobilize Canada corporations in Canada

00:41:52.140 Australia and the United States to be more climate activists right so that's

00:41:59.540 that's completely outside the whole principle of democracy we're supposed to

00:42:03.660 have representatives in Ottawa representing our interests and instead

00:42:07.320 we have the the pension funds for CUPE and Ontario teachers pension plan

00:42:14.980 telling people this is what you should do and at the same time they have at the

00:42:20.280 click of a button access to all of their constituents right so Ontario

00:42:26.340 teachers pension plan one of the biggest pensions in the world has something like

00:42:30.420 300,000 people QP 600,000 and QP was the actually even running QPVC was

00:42:37.720 running a petition to Barack Obama against Keystone XL this is a Canadian

00:42:42.760 union of public employees right so how can this be it's insane yeah well and it's so but we we try

00:42:51.800 to expose it there's groups that come out vivian krauss did a lot of work the other report now

00:42:55.800 we're waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the allen report uh that apparently has a lot

00:43:01.720 of detail on these sorts of things and and the usual suspects are already lining up and saying

00:43:05.800 oh the stuff allen's been speaking of is you know they're dismissing it it's not much money it doesn't

00:43:10.760 mean much i mean i'm the executive director of suits and boots if i could get just a fraction

00:43:15.400 of what some of these groups get as an organization you know as mines are defending a you know

00:43:20.840 conventional uh resource extraction uh boy the things i could do but we don't have that kind of

00:43:26.280 money behind us we don't have those kinds of hidden groups cutting us big checks contrary to

00:43:30.680 what uh conspiracy theorists may feel uh no shell isn't giving us uh six-figure checks or chevron

00:43:36.520 or anything like that but this is where it also gets difficult because we are a free society we

00:43:43.160 should allow groups to lobby to you know put forth their view whether we agree with them or not to

00:43:48.760 to be activists to uh lobby elected officials or spread information whether again we agree

00:43:55.080 or not with the public but at the same time when it's this destructive how do we counter it i think

00:44:00.840 transparency might be part of the answer but but how can we do that without imposing uh you know

00:44:05.480 infringing on rights well you know it's interesting we wrote a letter to the

00:44:10.280 ontario securities commission which is effectively the securities commission for all of canada i think

00:44:15.240 that was in 2017 and the unpri was then wanting all corporations to have to do climate reporting

00:44:21.960 climate risk reporting and we pointed out to the ontario securities commission that this

00:44:28.520 breaches sovereignty of canada unpri is an unaccountable unelected organization

00:44:34.280 And that, you know, if you look on their website, they're completely climate addled. So, you know, how can it be that this group, voluntary group is following Al Gore's tenets of investing?

00:44:50.720 Basically, the investments, the ESG investments have been put in place because no investment in wind and solar makes any sense whatsoever, unless you have all these subsidies. So you can justify those investments by framing it under, well, we're environmentally friendly, we're doing the socially good thing, we're working with, look, we put up a wind farm for First Nations, aren't we great?

00:45:15.020 And governance, you know, look at all the swell people we have on the board, you know, and those are issues that corporations were normally taking care of themselves.

00:45:26.620 Corporations, certainly in Alberta, have been very compliant and very proactive in all areas of environment, social and governance.

00:45:36.540 In fact, we see that, you know, all the arts charities are screaming bloody murder that now they all need UBI.

00:45:43.220 Well, they're part of the group that drove big oil out of Canada, right?

00:45:48.140 Universities are screaming, oh, you cut our funding,

00:45:50.840 and all the kids are running around building penguins.

00:45:53.480 You cut our funding, you know, don't freeze us out.

00:45:56.380 Well, guess what?

00:45:57.640 Your professors were the ones who were driving big oil out of Alberta,

00:46:01.540 and big oil was a very proactive contributor to the society here.

00:46:08.120 It was part of the requirement, actually, the legal and regulatory requirements for most major oil development or oil sands development had a specific socioeconomic component where they had to contribute something practical and helpful to the community that would remain behind.

00:46:26.460 So you have, you know, ice hockey rinks that were built, partly funded by these groups, theaters that were funded.

00:46:34.640 You know, of course, in some cases, they also got some tax benefit for it, too.

00:46:38.240 It wasn't they're not all, you know, wonderful just from the heart of people.

00:46:43.040 But that was a huge amount of support for the arts, community associations, hospitals, all kinds of things.

00:46:49.900 They're all gone.

00:46:51.560 And they drove them out.

00:46:53.080 now what's interesting people say about the big oil issue well why doesn't big

00:46:57.940 oil speak up for itself or as you said they accuse big oil of funding us or you

00:47:03.520 guys well big oil is also reliant on these institutional investors which are

00:47:10.600 activist investors now and so if the institutional investors come to your AGM

00:47:16.660 and say listen we think you should buy a wind farm and look more green you know

00:47:22.520 there's not a lot of jobs for CEOs out there. So, you know, and if you say, well, look at that,

00:47:29.640 if we do build a wind farm, we'll look green, we'll sell more gas, we'll sell more oil because

00:47:34.460 everything's made from oil. The NGOs will get off our back, we'll get subsidies, we'll get tax

00:47:41.340 write-offs, we can engage in carbon trading. And I'll probably get as a CEO, I'll probably get

00:47:46.560 some kind of a benefit, financial benefit. Sure, let's do that. So, you know, people don't know

00:47:54.440 that's going on behind the scenes. So they assume, oh, wow, look at that. Big oil is bought into big

00:48:00.380 green as well. No, people are just being totally duped. Yeah. And we're never given credit for

00:48:08.280 those actions anyways. I mean, I worked in the oil field for 20 years and I traveled. It was

00:48:14.380 international work i did and it's not just lip service to say canada has some of the most

00:48:19.660 stringent environmental regulations on the planet plus as you said we developed those communities

00:48:25.340 when we would come in and work with them we employed people we built community centers we

00:48:29.660 upgraded the roads that the county didn't have to pay for it because we paid for the damage we did

00:48:33.980 which is fair enough for working in the area but do we get any credit no they still say we're

00:48:38.700 awful i mean they say that we're unethical oil and one of the worst oils on the planet and we

00:48:43.100 we're always on the defensive and it really gets frustrating like i've been out there guys

00:48:47.660 you shut us down i've seen where it's going to come from and it's not going to be better

00:48:51.820 for the environment like they're addressing the supply rather than the demand well and also i

00:48:57.420 think that part of what's happening behind the scenes again you know canadians are fairly

00:49:01.660 energy illiterate in terms of global geopolitics and geopolitics of energy have changed dramatically

00:49:09.340 I mean, they just switched again this past couple of weeks with the Biden administration now importing oil from Russia.

00:49:16.300 But prior to that, Trump had set it up that, you know, the U.S. had become an exporter of oil.

00:49:24.260 And so that really changed the geopolitics of the area.

00:49:28.480 And you have to realize that areas like Europe, they effectively have no oil of their own.

00:49:35.200 Most of Europe imports oil and gas from Russia.

00:49:37.640 they are beholding to Russia there is some oil from Norway there's a bit from

00:49:42.560 the UK but you know these are not huge resources the largest reserves of oil in

00:49:50.720 the world in the democratic world are the US and Canada and all the other

00:49:57.980 countries that have large reserves are dictatorships or theocracies of some

00:50:03.240 kind. So you can see that there may be a concerted effort to destroy our country and destroy

00:50:11.760 democracy for the benefit of other countries that are our oil and gas competitors. And how to do

00:50:18.700 that is to make people hate Alberta oil, because Alberta is the largest provider in Canada of oil

00:50:26.800 for export. And it's just so maddening and frustrating. And as you said, it's such a

00:50:34.000 multi-pronged, well-organized assault on us. And some of it's a bit abstract, like the divestment

00:50:40.860 movement, as you said, they can move through union leadership into the teacher's pension plan,

00:50:46.340 which is a massive fund with a lot of energy company ownership and pressure companies from

00:50:51.820 from within to, to do irrational in my view decisions.

00:50:55.400 And then there's now they've moved on to insurance companies and they're

00:50:58.480 pressuring them to back off on insuring our projects,

00:51:00.960 which will have the same effect as, as canceling them.

00:51:03.100 Even if the government allows it, if they can't be insured,

00:51:05.420 they won't do it. And we're, we're getting shut in. I mean,

00:51:08.520 we can't get our product to tidewater. And I don't know. I mean,

00:51:13.020 the solution that would come is what Justin's going to form a giant federal 0.64

00:51:16.260 insurance company and cover the trans mountain next. I mean, this is, 0.78

00:51:19.320 is getting very out of hand, but I don't see a light at the end of this tunnel right now.

00:51:24.260 Yeah, well, effectively, it looks like people, perhaps in Canada, some people want to nationalize

00:51:30.460 energy. You know, people have always been very jealous of the fact that Alberta owns the mineral

00:51:35.100 rights in the province and has total say over the mineral rights in the province. So it turned out

00:51:42.580 that we lucked out we came to this sort of vast relatively barren plains where 0.56

00:51:48.820 there you know we the Mounties came west here to stop the genocide of the First 1.00

00:51:54.820 Nations people and were being slaughtered by whiskey traders and they 0.94

00:51:59.080 effectively stopped that but what happened next is people went oh well 0.99

00:52:03.020 we'll just put all these immigrants in Alberta you know and they'll be our

00:52:07.540 providers while we lucked out we found coal in the mountains lots of it we 0.99

00:52:11.680 found the oil sands we struck oil with Le Duc and Turner Valley and wow all of a sudden we're

00:52:18.980 sitting on riches and for a long time people didn't notice that because they didn't really

00:52:23.320 think about it the world wasn't so geopolitically connected but now let's say you have groups like

00:52:29.080 the WEF World Economic Forum and their Great Reset right they're situated in Switzerland I invite

00:52:35.960 you to look at map fight and compare the size of switzerland canada and just get an idea of who's 0.98

00:52:43.880 got resources and who's smart and who's stupid we're stupid and they're smart but we have the 0.99

00:52:50.920 resources and they all want them all those corporations associated with the world economic 1.00

00:52:56.920 forum they need the resources of canada but they're not trying to get them in an open trading way

00:53:04.380 This is like again related to the tar sands campaign and like the Oak foundation is situated in Switzerland it

00:53:11.420 Granted 75 million dollars in a single grant to the climate work foundation

00:53:16.980 The climate works foundation has been spending six hundred million dollars a year

00:53:22.040 And they are about the I think there's about somewhere between 15 to 19 large foundations there

00:53:29.520 Bloomberg

00:53:30.820 Michael Bloomberg's foundation has been paying Sierra Club hundreds of millions of dollars to demarket coal

00:53:38.680 And it's interesting that Rachel Notley was a speaker at the Sierra Club's zombie duck rally in 2010

00:53:44.800 so

00:53:46.060 You know lots of very

00:53:48.820 Strange things have been happening in the world and people haven't really connected the dots or paid attention to them, but

00:53:55.380 You know we have to fight back. We have to defend what we have here

00:53:58.580 well yeah we've got to get better at it i mean they're playing the game better than us we have

00:54:02.940 to admit it they're they're mopping the floor with us and we've had better figure out how to

00:54:09.180 fight back with this because we we understand that it's counterintuitive we understand that 1.00

00:54:13.620 it's hurting people in general it's raising costs of living it's harming the third world they need

00:54:17.880 to develop they need energy they want to get up there too they don't want to keep cooking their 0.97

00:54:22.040 food over cattle dung fires but we can't produce to get out to them the environmental movement at

00:54:27.320 its heart is actually such a very selfish you know they like to knock uh old middle class white men

00:54:32.840 well who do you think really is at the heart of that movement that benefits from it it's not uh

00:54:37.560 third world minorities or or uh people who are vulnerable uh they suffer when we raise our costs

00:54:43.560 of energy uh and that that gets overlooked so canada's big solution though i mean a government

00:54:49.080 solution to everything always seems to come down to attacks they aren't very creative when they

00:54:52.920 come up with things so the carbon tax that's been the issue of the week i mean that's the

00:54:58.360 the big thing held up that's that's going to uh show that canada is saving the world if we

00:55:03.000 could just tax ourselves hard enough climate change will stop and the supreme court apparently

00:55:08.920 agrees with uh that theory uh i don't it doesn't seem a lot cooler in bc uh since they started

00:55:16.360 their carbon tax then then you know as it got rolling but maybe that'll be next year

00:55:21.240 uh where where do you stand with the carbon tax as a potential solution or something to deal with

00:55:25.560 climate issues uh well first of all we just put up a video where i did a reading of uh professor

00:55:31.560 lindsen and professor christie's paper for co2 coalition and it discusses how the temperature

00:55:38.040 global temperature average anomaly record is very misleading to the public so people should have a

00:55:44.440 look at that because you know it's based on that alleged one degree rise that people are freaking

00:55:49.960 out and saying, oh, we can't use fossil fuels anymore because, look, it's getting warmer.

00:55:53.840 But the connection between CO2 and temperature rises is very nebulous, like the temperature

00:56:01.860 rise caused by human activity.

00:56:04.680 And it's well explained in that report.

00:56:07.600 But maybe I could just look at some of the points that Robert Lyman made in 2019 when

00:56:12.840 he was responding to the Ecofiscal Canada demands for a carbon tax.

00:56:18.820 And so he said that he's going through their myths.

00:56:24.160 So he's saying, I'll state their myth first, and then I'll talk about what Robert said as a rebuttal.

00:56:31.740 So myth number one is that carbon pricing is a new untested idea.

00:56:36.640 But in fact, Robert Lyman says carbon pricing is an old, frequently failed idea.

00:56:41.840 and carbon taxes were analyzed and rejected by Natural Resources Canada in the 1990s

00:56:49.740 and there is a paper online about carbon tax experience in Norway and in the 1990s they had

00:56:57.460 a very high carbon tax and they found that it only reduced emissions about two percent

00:57:02.080 so that's not very dramatic and they actually also found that working with industry to reduce

00:57:08.840 emissions was a much better plan, and you could do it in a staged manner, so not the craziness

00:57:14.460 that's going on now. So myth number two is that only very high carbon taxes are effective.

00:57:21.000 And Robert Lyman writes that oil products used in transportation are notoriously inelastic

00:57:31.360 and unresponsive to price increases.

00:57:35.460 And you can see that in Canada right now,

00:57:38.600 the combined fuel taxes that you pay

00:57:41.140 are more than $192 a ton carbon tax equivalent.

00:57:47.580 And that will go up on April 1st.

00:57:50.420 But people haven't stopped driving

00:57:52.060 and people haven't gone to public transit.

00:57:54.900 Especially in Canada, we need our cars.

00:57:57.500 So, you know, if you have work in any remote area of the city,

00:58:00.680 you can't get there by transit. And if you're working out of the city, you need a vehicle.

00:58:07.160 So emissions reductions of the magnitude that the net zero people are proposing will not be

00:58:14.000 achieved by low or moderate carbon tax levels. The taxes would need to be high enough to shut

00:58:21.180 down entire industries. So we're not talking about five or ten dollars, we're talking like

00:58:28.680 400 500 per ton so myth number three was carbon pricing will cost canadian families so ecofiscal

00:58:38.760 called that a myth but the facts are that it will cost families and so a carbon rebate or dividend

00:58:46.680 is being offered to ease the financial pain but this is like a bait and switch this is like tax

00:58:52.760 them, bribe them with their own money. So if this was such a great idea, Robert writes,

00:58:59.460 why has it not been used with the same approach with sales tax or corporate income taxes? For

00:59:04.420 instance, raise the tax and then rebate the money to consumers or better yet, just lower everyone

00:59:10.040 else's income tax. But anyone who thinks that this approach will catch on should not hold their

00:59:16.400 breath. So what cannot be denied, Robert writes, is that the target groups, oil, natural gas,

00:59:25.040 coal producers, and consumers will be worse off by far. And that is the whole point of the tax.

00:59:31.960 It's not to save the planet. It's to make things worse for people. Ecofiscal myth number four of

00:59:38.960 carbon pricing hurts jobs. They said that's a myth. Robert's fact says it does. All taxes impose

00:59:45.760 what economists called a dead weight loss on the economy. They take revenues from those

00:59:50.840 that would have received them under free market conditions and reallocate them elsewhere.

00:59:56.460 So given the high degree of economic integration between Canada and the U.S., it's abundantly

01:00:00.940 clear that competitiveness of Canada will suffer. Now, with the new Biden administration,

01:00:08.640 that may change somewhat, but we still have the extraordinary pressures of the vast distances

01:00:14.380 and the extreme heat and cold temperatures that we have here.

01:00:18.460 So in China, you know, the carbon price is about $2 a ton.

01:00:24.160 So imagine Canadian firms with a carbon tax on their backs of $170 a ton

01:00:29.260 trying to compete with Chinese firms.

01:00:31.760 Myth number five is that big polluters get a break.

01:00:34.820 The fact is some do get breaks,

01:00:37.040 but this is the rhetorical equivalent of sucking and blowing at the same time.

01:00:41.500 and the effect of the carbon tax will be to shut down whole segments of the economy especially in

01:00:48.480 the resource intensive regions myth number six carbon pricing is a cash grab it is a cash grab

01:00:55.240 the only question is how high of a percentage of the revenue is raised will be used to serve a

01:01:00.740 wide range of the politicians favorite projects number seven people cannot change their behaviors

01:01:06.960 in response to carbon pricing and the fact is that if hundreds of measures are

01:01:13.380 not working yet and we have about 600 different carbon tax or GHG reduction

01:01:20.580 regulations laws incentives in place already so if those are not working why

01:01:27.720 would this one thing work the carbon tax so myth number eight there's no point to

01:01:34.200 carbon pricing if governments rebate the revenues that's from ecofiscal saying

01:01:39.240 that that's a myth and the fact is that rebates are a distraction to fool

01:01:43.380 Canadians by putting money back into their left pocket portion of the money

01:01:49.320 that was removed from the right pocket we can use a myth number nine we can use

01:01:56.040 other better policies to reduce our emissions the fact is governments are

01:02:00.360 already throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this issue so we're

01:02:06.240 clearly on track to miss the 2020 target it would take a miracle and ironically

01:02:11.700 this is almost prescient today or the worst recession since the Great

01:02:16.080 Depression for Canada to make the 2030 target and it gets worse after that it's

01:02:21.120 a long time past that we should recast our objectives and myth number ten the

01:02:26.440 final one there's no need to reduce Canada's emission the fact Robert Lyman

01:02:31.360 writes the fact is Canada is not the problem so you know China emits in one

01:02:38.440 month what Canada emits in a year and a half so any action taken by Canada to

01:02:45.840 reduce emissions will have a negligible or nil effect on average global

01:02:50.680 temperatures. So the carbon tax is really a bad idea. It's a terrible idea and it won't accomplish

01:02:58.940 what people think it will. And it will just be used to pay off green crony capitalists and more

01:03:05.340 of these ENGOs. Well, and as some commenters have been pointing out, I mean, it does tie in, 0.81

01:03:12.040 it certainly is a fine way for wealth redistribution. I mean, if we're taking it out

01:03:15.540 of people's pockets, you could put them towards whatever other ideological goals or projects you

01:03:19.900 you may have. So, I mean, if your interest isn't in the environment, you can certainly still see

01:03:24.020 what an ideologue might feel as a benefit to pulling this out. Again, the maddening thing is

01:03:29.460 if they really want us to shift, they keep attacking the supply, but they aren't offering

01:03:35.880 a rational alternative. And that's what makes me fear some of these NGOs and that they really

01:03:40.360 aren't actually looking at environmentalists interests at their base. I mean, you know,

01:03:44.740 horses evolved into cars not because we banned horses but because cars became a better manner

01:03:50.740 of transporting people more cost-effective efficient and in fact there i mean the old days

01:03:56.020 there were uh uh horse manure through city streets and uh you know a number of pollution issues uh

01:04:05.140 right now we're trying to ban conventional energy in favor one that hasn't been

01:04:08.740 been created to replace it yet. Right, and one that relies 100% on oil, natural gas, and coal.

01:04:17.060 So, you know, it's like when people say, oh, we're going to build wind farms. Well,

01:04:20.900 what are you going to build them from? I mean, we actually had some of Elizabeth May's supporters

01:04:25.340 tweeting us during the election campaign saying, are you sure that wind turbines and solar panels

01:04:33.240 are made from oil gas and coal because we don't think so like you know that's

01:04:38.040 how energy literate people are people just don't know how things are made so

01:04:44.240 you know it's it's very complex we try in our reports to take these very

01:04:50.280 complex issues and explain them in more or less plain language and give people

01:04:54.400 some practical examples of what has worked and what doesn't work so you know

01:05:00.800 I hope that people would go to our blog and read penury or prosperity what is

01:05:06.900 Canada's future it's a two-part report it's critiquing the five bold moves and

01:05:12.640 the elements of the speech from the throne and it's explaining why some of

01:05:17.920 these things that sound good on the surface won't work like for instance the

01:05:22.740 big tree planting plant the problem is there's not enough land in Canada the

01:05:28.980 second-largest country in the world there's not enough land to plant all

01:05:32.640 those trees so you may say what how can that be well the only place would be 0.92

01:05:38.340 what's called the white zone which is an area that sort of parallels the burial

01:05:43.020 forest and the plains and as Sheila Gunn-Reed said to me one time on the

01:05:47.340 rebel she said you mean all that land that my ancestors cleared for agriculture

01:05:52.860 and it's like yeah so we'd be planting trees to replace agriculture well then

01:05:57.840 where do we have food from? So, you know, lots of these ideas that sound great on the surface

01:06:02.540 are totally ridiculous when you look at it in any depth. So I hope people will read that report,

01:06:08.560 Penury vs. Prosperity. Robert Lyman did another report recently called Pick Your Poison on Climate

01:06:17.480 Policies or Cap and Trade. They're both deadly to the economy. And he has another great report

01:06:22.740 called when giants arise and this really puts it in perspective you know the West

01:06:28.620 is very busy with climate change but Asia is not and Asia is where all the

01:06:34.920 growth and development will be all the use of fossil fuels all the emissions

01:06:39.360 and there's a couple of billion people in the South Asian corridor there and

01:06:44.760 they're not going to fall for the climate change hysteria of the West we

01:06:50.800 represent maybe 19% of the population on the planet. And that area represents about 60%.

01:06:59.840 So, you know, we're not going to be able to tell the rest of the world what to do

01:07:05.440 in their economies. And we should be pretty cognizant of that fact and wake up,

01:07:12.160 we got to wake up people. Yeah, they don't feel to be as

01:07:15.360 compelled to be trying to be the World Boy Scouts that we are at their own expense. So

01:07:19.840 Thank you very much, Michelle. It was a great chat. I'm sure hopefully we can have you on again soon. There's just so much to cover on this whole file. And one common thing I've seen from a lot of people in the comments scroll there is asking, you know, where to get the links, where to get the information. I know your site's very deep and has a great deal of information on it. So if you could remind everybody, where can we find more information and what you guys are up to?

01:07:42.480 well we're at friendsofscience.org and our blog is linked on the left-hand

01:07:49.500 navigation bar or you can just go to blog friendsofscience.org and you'll

01:07:55.280 find us there and our blog is kind of old-fashioned when you have to scroll

01:08:00.240 down to see all the different reports that are there you can also send an

01:08:04.720 inquiry to me at media at friendsofscience.org or on our Twitter feed

01:08:10.980 or our Facebook feed or LinkedIn you'll find most of the postings of our report

01:08:15.600 and we also have very active friends of science YouTube channel where again we

01:08:21.480 try to take these complex issues put some visuals on them explain them in

01:08:26.400 more plain language and we do also have very specific scientific references you

01:08:32.360 know a lot of people are not up to that but if you go to our event page on our

01:08:37.200 website, you'll find all of our annual speakers and under climate science, you'll find all of

01:08:42.480 our climate science reference material. Great. Well, thank you again. It's very

01:08:48.300 valuable information that you share and you do it encapsulated in a way that, you know,

01:08:52.780 those of us who don't want to dig through a pile of reports and studies and committee hearings and

01:08:57.620 so on, you know, you put it together in a way that we can appreciate it and digest it. So

01:09:03.260 So thanks again, and I'm certain we'll be talking again soon, Michelle.

01:09:07.300 Okay, thanks so much, Corey.

01:09:08.600 All the best.

01:09:09.640 Thanks.

01:09:10.000 Thank you.

01:09:12.880 Okay, well, and that was fantastic.

01:09:15.880 You know, you could just go on and on because there's just so much to the whole climate change file and issue and how it's impacting policies, how it's impacting us.

01:09:26.200 I mean, there really are concerns how it's impacting the environment.

01:09:28.920 that's fine, but we just, it's such a convoluted, tied up realm of NGOs, people with different

01:09:35.380 political interests using that potential crisis as a means to crack down in other areas of freedoms

01:09:41.820 or perhaps to benefit their own interests and companies. It's just an ugly thing. And this

01:09:46.720 is the sort of thing that sometimes I'm afraid sours people on political activism or getting

01:09:51.460 forward and they just throw up their hands and say, there's nothing we can do about it and move

01:09:56.000 but we can't afford to do that we do have to push back we got to keep up with it even if it feels

01:10:00.720 futile and that's where again michelle and the great work the friends of science do keep ourselves

01:10:05.200 educated share it get it out there you know share michelle's link talk to her on twitter or whoever

01:10:10.640 else is running that account they're very responsive they answer questions and uh you know

01:10:15.600 we don't have to lose this battle we're just uh getting beaten up terribly right now on it though

01:10:20.560 so let's learn from these activists rather than uh throw up our hands and dismiss them

01:10:25.120 So getting on to somebody else now who has been a fantastic voice out there and pushing back, particularly critical of our federal liberal government, which I'm quite critical of as well.

01:10:37.540 I focus a lot more on provincial issues, though, and it's Spencer Fernando, and he's very prolific online.

01:10:43.720 He's got a fantastic website where he puts his articles up.

01:10:47.040 I've seen him in the Postmillennial and I believe in a number of other publications.

01:10:51.500 And during these times, as we're getting into an election year, his voice is going to be more important than ever and much appreciated.

01:11:00.080 So there we go. Hi, Spencer. Thank you very much for joining me today.

01:11:04.400 Yeah, no problem.

01:11:06.900 So you're based out of Winnipeg, I believe.

01:11:10.560 And that's one of our most underrated sections in the country, in my view.

01:11:14.880 I mean, such a great area, great lakes, resource development.

01:11:19.160 you know, it's been a rail hub for us for a long time and it gets forgotten quite often. So

01:11:24.480 it's great that there's a voice out there talking to national issues from a part of the region of

01:11:29.440 the nation that doesn't get nearly enough credit to its due. So thank you. Yeah. So you've got so

01:11:37.280 many stories to cover. You know, let's start with, I don't know if you've written directly

01:11:42.400 much on that one yet, is the carbon tax ruling that came through in Ottawa. You're in a different

01:11:48.000 region too, to look at that. The Supreme Court's looked at it. It's been a big issue for a long

01:11:52.560 time. It's probably the last gasp from the provinces, at least from a legal perspective,

01:11:56.380 in being able to shut down this. Saskatchewan, Ontario, Alberta were allied in this.

01:12:01.580 It didn't matter. Part of the feeling was almost that the judges were almost saying,

01:12:06.520 yeah, it isn't really constitutional. It is stepping on provincial jurisdiction, but

01:12:09.880 this crisis is such a big one that we just feel that the government has to have the right to

01:12:14.520 impose this yeah that's what i found very disturbing about the ruling i just wrote about

01:12:19.560 it for the national citizens coalition and i said yeah i mean you know the government's the the

01:12:24.840 supreme court basically said yeah it definitely infringes on the provinces but we're gonna

01:12:29.160 we're gonna let it go this time because we feel the issue is so important and you know the law

01:12:33.640 doesn't really have much meaning if oh just you feel that it's it's an important issue so you're

01:12:37.320 just kind of gonna overlook it and you know it's it's such a dangerous precedent right because now

01:12:42.920 you know politicians will say oh man i guess we just have to make people feel an issue is really

01:12:47.400 important and feel it's a crisis and we can get away with anything regardless of what the

01:12:51.400 constitution says or provincial and federal jurisdictions so i think it's very concerning

01:12:56.440 and i think we're going to feel the consequences for a long time yeah it is frightening and we've

01:13:01.320 got so many crisis rising i mean you know the environmental one's been one that's been used

01:13:05.160 for a long time and it's still current and and being used but of course we're seeing the pandemic

01:13:09.480 now boy talk about a an issue and it's a real one and it's really harming people i'm not one of those

01:13:14.440 who feel it's a creation or a myth i think perhaps it's been quite exaggerated again for some people's

01:13:19.320 political interests perhaps or even just genuine fear and panic but they've utilized that to use

01:13:24.920 section one of the charter essentially again you know our constitution charter is supposed to be

01:13:28.920 there to protect us but we're seeing those clear caveats that apparently those can be set aside

01:13:33.800 pretty quickly as long as the government can claim there's a crisis uh that that could apply to a

01:13:38.760 great many things that happen in the future then yeah i mean we already see it uh with you know the

01:13:44.600 climate they're using that to justify things that you know a lot of politicians on the left

01:13:48.840 especially wanted to get away with for a long time right centralization of power more taxation

01:13:53.800 restrictions on development and so we've seen the same thing in in this crisis you know even

01:13:58.920 some conservative premiers unfortunately have been more than willing to use uh you know a temporary

01:14:03.880 crisis to expand their power and, you know, spend a whole bunch of money, you know, no plan to get

01:14:09.120 back to balanced budgets. You know, I think in Ontario, there's talking, what, eight or nine

01:14:12.680 years before a balanced budget. I mean, it's just getting crazy out there. So I think this is the

01:14:18.440 issue that we have just beyond these initial crises is that if the government has power that

01:14:24.560 they can use, they're going to use it and they're going to find an excuse to use it. And so I think

01:14:28.960 we need to be really pushing back and saying we need to remove a lot of the power the government

01:14:33.240 has and trust individuals and local jurisdictions. And unfortunately, it seems like there's very few

01:14:38.500 people federally who are willing to say that. Yeah, well, I mean, the way it should be is the

01:14:44.320 government should make a heck of a case before they should have gone to court before they could

01:14:48.480 impose something that would entrench on the Constitution or the Charter rather than afterwards

01:14:54.700 as we defend ourselves. I mean, the burden of proof should be on the state before they can set

01:14:58.320 aside provincial jurisdictions or individual rights when it comes to a crisis. But we seem

01:15:02.560 have it backwards it's like they can jump in and infringe and then it's up to us to try and push

01:15:06.720 back through government appointed judges to see if they would reverse that choice yeah and you know

01:15:12.080 one thing that's been very concerning is you know we get told these are your rights you know you

01:15:15.760 have the right to say protest you have the right to to have a business you have a right to walk on

01:15:20.960 the street but then we learned that actually all that can be cancelled if a politician gives you

01:15:25.520 know one order so are these really rights that we have i mean it's not really a right if it's

01:15:30.240 if a politician could just take it away on a whim it's more of a privilege and i think that's a

01:15:34.320 discussion we have to have as a society too you know all these things we think oh ironclad rights

01:15:39.200 freedom and all that stuff it's not quite as secure as we thought it was no i i think some

01:15:44.640 of that's just the canadian attitude and kind of the way we were formed i mean that's a much bigger

01:15:48.400 discussion we weren't born out of revolution so we didn't entrench so many things to make sure

01:15:52.720 the individuals are empowered as our southern neighbors did i mean when they formed their

01:15:57.280 constitution move forward it was based on that we want to make sure the state never again can can

01:16:02.560 crush the individual like that in our case we sort of slowly evolved out of a you know constitutional

01:16:08.160 monarchy and uh so those rights while they seem like a great improvement over the feudal system

01:16:13.280 uh didn't quite empower the individual the way some other nations did not to say that we should

01:16:17.120 have had a big bloody revolution to give us a better constitution but it puts us into a different

01:16:21.760 circumstance and mindset when it comes to these sorts of things so getting into things michelle

01:16:27.120 Sterling, who was on prior, did mention something that sends a chill down the back of most Westerners

01:16:31.860 and Albertans. But we are coming into clearly a financial crisis. I mean, every level of

01:16:36.480 government is borrowing like mad, you know, just to cover for these pandemic restrictions and

01:16:41.700 other issues going on. We are seeing energy prices around the world going up, though,

01:16:45.620 because as the world starts to recover, the reality is they still need oil and gas. Those

01:16:49.840 commodity prices are coming up. We fear for a greedy federal government that now realizes their

01:16:55.880 back is against the fiscal wall. Alberta's oil has been shut in effectively. We do want to get

01:17:01.200 it out. I mean, their solution to the Trans Mountain issue was to buy it. There's the fear

01:17:08.040 of nationalization, which Michelle brought up. And again, you know, this is close to what Justin's

01:17:13.480 father did and what Justin may want to follow up with down on his legacy. Do you think there's a

01:17:20.000 chance? Because again, if we could step on one area of provincial jurisdiction, what's to stop

01:17:24.280 them at all for saying, this is a crisis. This is an energy crisis. This is a financial crisis.

01:17:28.220 We need to take those resources directly and produce them ourselves and distribute them for

01:17:33.400 the sake of the nation. Yeah. You know, at this point, I wouldn't put anything past the Trudeau

01:17:38.840 government. I think if you look at the attitude, I think the government hasn't really a lot of

01:17:43.080 the elites in the country have is they feel completely entitled to the resources in the

01:17:48.380 West, especially in Alberta, and to do whatever they want with it. So, okay, we're going to tax

01:17:52.840 we're going to control it we're going to restrict it but when we want to make a bunch of money off

01:17:56.360 it we'll take it you know just the same and so that kind of attitude yeah in a crisis you know

01:18:00.760 governments as we've seen governments will do things that we never expected they would

01:18:04.440 so i wouldn't put anything past them at that point of course then you'd see a gigantic surge

01:18:09.160 in support for separation in the west of that happened of course yeah and that's already

01:18:13.560 getting pretty high we're pretty darn grumpy out here these days we always are that's our nature

01:18:17.320 as Albertans, but I mean, it's spreading and people are feeling a sense of futility in a sense

01:18:23.400 that nothing can seem to change or break this status quo and this makeup. And I mean, that is

01:18:29.400 a gets to a much larger picture because our country, I believe, is sort of systemically

01:18:34.040 broken. It is the constitution needs to be revamped. But I mean, how can we? Charlottetown,

01:18:40.040 Meech Lake, I mean, those were attempts, you know, whether you agreed with them or disagree

01:18:43.060 with them but they never came close to coming through because the bar set to change the 0.92

01:18:47.780 constitution is so high and it should be but then with such regional diversity it's virtually 0.98

01:18:53.380 impossible that we'll ever be able to do anything more than a minor tweak with our constitution

01:18:57.940 yeah and i think that's what's interesting if you look at you know the the maverick party for

01:19:02.340 example i think the the unfortunate thing with the way uh the trudeau government especially but

01:19:08.420 past governments have acted is it's all about incentives right so okay people will act in a way

01:19:13.340 that seems to get them what they want so what did quebec do quebec got a lot of what they wanted by

01:19:18.180 constantly threatening to leave the country or break up the country and leave and so they used

01:19:22.800 a threat and it got them a lot of what they wanted so other parts of the country that you know feel

01:19:27.160 they're being mistreated are going to say well look you're not listening to us when we say we

01:19:31.120 need help you're not listening to us when we say the carbon tax is terrible and it's just pushing

01:19:34.640 jobs and investment out of the country into other places with worse environmental regulations so i

01:19:41.040 guess we'll have to start saying things like you know we're going to leave and see if the threat

01:19:44.400 works in that way and so there's been an incentive created by quebec's behavior which has worked for

01:19:48.880 quebec which unfortunately i think is it kind of leaves a lot of people thinking that's the only

01:19:53.200 option yeah but i mean quebec wields a lot more power in canada just due to their population their

01:20:00.400 location and the constitutionally entrenched, a number of Senate and parliamentary seats they

01:20:06.060 have and things that the West just doesn't have. So that's where the central government has been

01:20:10.440 more inclined to when Quebec is threatening to separate. Okay, what can we do to keep you here?

01:20:14.620 The West is threatening to separate. They say, quit whining, you guys. It's enough.

01:20:18.320 We definitely get a much different response to our actions as they can afford to.

01:20:25.320 I mean, it's a frustrating thing. That's at least the Western frustration because the 0.99

01:20:28.820 conservatives can take us for granted because they say, well, who else are you going to vote

01:20:31.240 for? And the liberals can take us for granted and say, well, you're never going to vote for us

01:20:34.320 anyway. So we've kind of put ourselves into a difficult position that way, at least out in

01:20:38.680 Alberta. Manitoba is a bit more of a swing area. You guys can kind of move around a bit, which I

01:20:42.820 think empowers an area. If you vote consistently the same way all the time, you're going to be

01:20:47.380 taken advantage of. If there's a chance you can be swung one way or another, then I think all sides

01:20:51.600 are going to pay a little more attention to you. Yeah, Quebec is very, whether it's, you know,

01:20:57.380 I don't even know how it happens, but it seems like in Quebec, they make decisions, a bunch of

01:21:02.920 individuals make decisions collectively. It's very interesting to watch. They'll switch from

01:21:06.680 one party, I mean, the NDP, right? And then back to the liberal incentives, they'll go for the

01:21:10.600 bloc. So they do use their influence very well. And yeah, that is an issue the West has, right?

01:21:16.040 It's the conservative party, especially lately, seems to be in many ways taking the West for

01:21:19.580 granted, saying, look, we're going to get all your seats and votes. So we'll move a little bit more

01:21:23.480 to a more i guess you could say liberal position on certain issues and uh the liberals as you say

01:21:29.060 yeah we're not going to get votes in the west so we're not going to give you anything and uh that's

01:21:33.960 it's kind of a problem and you know the west is a it's an interesting region right i mean

01:21:37.520 you know vancouver technically it's in the west but doesn't think at all like you know much of

01:21:41.760 alberta does manitoba the difference between rural manitoba and winnipeg is huge so you know it's not

01:21:47.180 really a monolithic area too and the liberals will pick off a few areas where they can win

01:21:51.180 enough votes to keep it a little bit competitive and hopefully they'll think they can keep trying

01:21:56.840 to get away with it. Yeah, well, in Vancouver, it's always been a political hornet's nest down

01:22:02.340 there, but that's one of the things I've respected and admired. I mean, you can look at three federal

01:22:05.840 ridings and you will have a conservative next door to a liberal next door to an NDPer and those can

01:22:10.680 switch, you know, like those can change. I mean, in Alberta, we've got ridings that have been

01:22:15.020 conservative since the beginning of confederation and I don't anticipate they're going to change

01:22:18.560 any time after that. Though they will change when we had reform and things such as that. When the

01:22:23.360 West finally had enough, when the Conservatives collapsed, we went that route to another type of

01:22:29.180 Conservative Party and then it eventually morphed into where we are today. It seems Maverick may

01:22:33.540 be moving on to a similar sort of cycle. They aren't gaining the steam that the reform had yet,

01:22:40.360 but that might come as we see Aaron O'Toole modeling platforms clearly to try and appeal

01:22:45.420 more to the central Canadian voter or the lower mainland voter. Do you think that the Maverick

01:22:50.720 might become a bit of a factor in this year's election, assuming it's this year?

01:22:54.940 It's possible. I mean, I wouldn't see them winning a huge percentage. Maybe in certain

01:23:00.060 parts of the country, they might get, you know, 10, 15, if they get, you know, were they lucky

01:23:04.120 in certain areas? But I think it's what happens after the election, right? I think if either the

01:23:08.360 Conservatives get in, but then they're seen as basically, you know, having similar policies to

01:23:12.560 the liberals then that that's what creates a sense of hopelessness right as people in the west will

01:23:16.780 say well we voted for you and you won and we still didn't get anything right so that would be a

01:23:21.040 problem that's why the conservatives have a big responsibility to keep supporting the west and

01:23:25.180 defending it right i mean that's still their their main voter base and they're going to need that

01:23:29.020 or if trudeau gets back in you know especially if he gets a majority and then he screws the west over

01:23:33.820 even more then i think you're going to see people say well look you know we voted conservative it

01:23:37.920 doesn't seem like that worked out for us so maybe we'll try something else so i think a lot will be

01:23:42.500 decided this election, both in who wins and then how the winner acts afterward.

01:23:47.680 Yeah, so the Liberals finally scheduled a date for a budget. Now, I'm going to go down the road

01:23:54.460 of what my theory is on it. It's probably wrong, won't be the first time, but I do feel it's going

01:23:59.700 to be a giant, as much feel-good spending budget as we could possibly see, full of goodies, full

01:24:05.480 of promises, no matter how unachievable they are. And I think that's the budget what they're going

01:24:10.300 to use to fall on. They're going to say, this is so important. This is such a critical time

01:24:14.680 in Canada's history. We've got to take this budget to the people in a general election

01:24:18.880 so they can accept it and we can move on with it. I mean, the polls are showing the liberals

01:24:23.260 are eager to get into an election before another scandal might pull them down a bit and try

01:24:28.800 and get that precious majority. What are your thoughts on how the liberals might trigger

01:24:33.720 an election if they are going towards it? Yeah, I think that's quite likely. I've written

01:24:38.260 before that I think the Liberals kind of see it as they have a one or two year window where you

01:24:43.560 can spend a lot of money and and or get credit for promising to spend a lot of money before the

01:24:49.720 you know the the crap hits the fan so to speak right I mean you look at the Bank of Canada

01:24:55.440 balance sheet how much it's it's expanded debt everywhere I mean debt is going up everywhere 0.99

01:25:00.780 it's not like it's okay it's going down for corporations or individuals but it's going up

01:25:04.620 provincially or it's going up everywhere in the country right so that's a huge problem interest

01:25:09.480 rates have been suppressed for a long time that can't last forever so at some point economic

01:25:13.780 reality does reassert itself canada will have to become fiscally conservative really whether the

01:25:20.000 country likes it or not it just depends whether we do it before a crisis during or after and i think

01:25:25.280 the liberals know that that's coming up and they hopefully you know they think okay you know we'll

01:25:29.580 win this time we'll win within a year then we'll maybe ride out a crisis for two years in the

01:25:34.600 economy then we'll get back in again or you know the conservatives will be playing for it down the

01:25:39.640 road so i think they see they they know that they can't keep the game going forever but they can

01:25:44.680 still fool a lot of people in the short term because the damage isn't quite as obvious as it

01:25:48.600 will be and i think they're they're desperate to go pretty soon yeah no and i totally agree i mean 0.90

01:25:54.280 whatever liberals might be they aren't stupid and then they've got some smart strategists in there

01:25:58.600 and they aren't completely blind to economics i mean we have been fortunate that hyperinflation 0.93

01:26:03.800 hasn't been triggered yet with the amount of borrowing on the other level that's being forgotten.

01:26:08.920 The CFIB brought it up is the amount of debt that businesses have been going into

01:26:13.000 across the country, whether it's debt to government bailout programs or debt to their

01:26:16.600 own personal financial institutions, but they're all hanging by a thread.

01:26:20.280 And if we get just a slight increase in interest rates, we are going to see a catastrophe on

01:26:27.160 government level, business levels. But that's the first thing the Bank of Canada will do if

01:26:31.240 inflation starts triggering in. So, I mean, they know there's an economic freight train heading

01:26:36.440 towards them and you don't want to go into an election when that's starting to crash. So you

01:26:40.600 kind of want to reset the clock as fast as you can before it hits, I would think.

01:26:45.640 Yeah. And then there's the housing bubble issue too, right? I mean,

01:26:48.440 you know, I think it's our housing market makes up twice a percentage of GDP in Canada as in the U.S.

01:26:56.360 Some of the numbers in Canada look worse than they looked like before the U.S. financial crisis.

01:27:01.620 I'll see people, they'll tweet like, oh, well, you know, Alberta or B.C. has a carbon tax.

01:27:06.740 And look at how strong we're growing.

01:27:08.680 I mean, sure, I mean, you're growing great in Vancouver because, you know, people from China, in many cases, you know, billionaires and millionaires from China are pumping tons of money into the housing market there.

01:27:17.580 Sure, yeah, that looks great for a while.

01:27:19.420 The U.S. economy looked great in 2006 and 2007 for a bit.

01:27:22.840 And then we saw what happened.

01:27:23.740 So I think the disconnection of our economy from real productivity growth, you know, actual growth, you know, you get better at, you know, producing oil, you sell the oil, you make more money, your profit margins go up.

01:27:36.440 That's real productivity.

01:27:37.640 Your housing market is a bubble.

01:27:39.140 Sure, it looks like you're getting rich, but that's not actual productivity.

01:27:42.280 Nothing's really being created.

01:27:43.680 And people have kind of lost the, I think, the understanding of the differences between those two things.

01:27:48.780 And, you know, we're going to, people are going to learn it one way or the other, and it's probably going to be pretty rough.

01:27:53.740 Yeah, that seems to be human nature. We seem to be determined to learn things the

01:27:57.380 hard way, no matter how much we're giving examples. Otherwise, I mean, that's something

01:28:02.080 that's been depressing lately is just everybody, if you speak to them, if they're looking into

01:28:06.360 things, unless they're BSing us, there's not many pretty pictures in the future. The only

01:28:11.440 slightly optimistic thing is we are seeing vaccines coming out. We're seeing in a number

01:28:16.420 of jurisdictions, infections are going down. There's probably a good degree, it looks like

01:28:20.680 of a seasonal nature to the infection. So in spring, when people can get out and enjoy

01:28:24.240 themselves, we'll also see just better spirits, more commerce within our communities. I said,

01:28:29.440 not necessarily production sort of economics, but that people are moving again. It makes me think

01:28:34.620 that might be a good time to kind of try and run into an election mode. Outside of domestic policy,

01:28:41.900 though, that's one of the areas, I mean, the liberals are one of the most ideologically

01:28:45.060 driven governments I've seen in my adult life. I mean, there's no doubt about it. And we know

01:28:49.860 when Trudeau mumbled about the Great Reset, he brought that from the realm of conspiracy talk

01:28:54.420 into reality. There really are people in positions of power who look at that as a viable course of

01:29:00.340 action for a nation. And the other thing that's bizarre is they're so beholden to China. I don't

01:29:07.760 get it. This is a country that's turning into this generation's bad player on the world stage. 0.97

01:29:12.360 I guess we always have one. When I was young, it was the Soviet Union. And now we've moved on to 1.00

01:29:16.860 China. I mean, we shut down the discourse, of course, in saying anybody speaking out against

01:29:23.960 China's government is a racist. No, we're talking about the government, not the people.

01:29:28.600 But they're so defensive of that country. I mean, this country is taking Canadian citizens hostage,

01:29:32.840 essentially. It's been doing terrible practices, yet all we get out of Trudeau is apologies or

01:29:38.040 even funding. So something you wrote recently was they were giving money to a Chinese infrastructure

01:29:42.960 Bank? Yeah, the Asian Infrastructure Bank, which China set up to be a rival of the World Bank.

01:29:50.540 Even under the Obama administration, they had warned that this is really an effort by China

01:29:54.840 to control a lot of money, to get countries to give China money, and then let China use that

01:29:59.720 to expand their influence. The states was very concerned about it. The Trudeau government,

01:30:04.280 of course, joined and started giving money, and the payments have continued. So they just gave

01:30:09.120 40 million US in, I think, recent weeks. And what people are saying is, look, I mean, what message

01:30:14.700 does that send? China can just kidnap our citizens, mistreat our country, you know, treat us like

01:30:20.100 garbage, show us total contempt, and we'll still give them money? Well, yeah, how do you expect 1.00

01:30:24.800 you're going to change what they're doing if you do that, right? And so it's just really a lack of

01:30:28.620 self-respect and a lack of standing up for the country. And I think, you know, this is a, I don't

01:30:34.520 know if it's a blind spot for Trudeau or some sort of, you know, character flaw or whatever it is.

01:30:39.120 But he almost has kind of a, I almost remind like, you know, university student unions, right?

01:30:44.860 There's a lot of people there.

01:30:46.080 They're nice people.

01:30:47.080 You know, they mean well, but they're just super naive, right?

01:30:50.220 It's like, and Trudeau seems to have that attitude.

01:30:53.160 He just doesn't understand that dealing with other countries sometimes means it's going to be pretty ugly, right?

01:30:58.400 China's not a country that's going around saying, how can we be nice to other people?

01:31:01.680 How can we come to mutually beneficial agreements?

01:31:04.180 It's not just trying to bully people and trying to dominate the world.

01:31:07.260 And sometimes being tough and being a little aggressive in response to that is the only way you can respond and actually protect your country.

01:31:14.160 And Trudeau, he seems unable to do that.

01:31:15.960 It's just whether it's too mean or whether it goes against who he thinks he is, he just doesn't have the edge it takes to stand up for Canada.

01:31:23.180 Yeah, well, diplomacy, I mean, that is an entire art form in and of itself.

01:31:27.040 I think one of the things that I really miss the most out of the Harper government, they didn't do everything perfectly.

01:31:32.640 But we were respected. He was respected on the world stage when there would be G8 summits, things such as that.

01:31:38.680 Stephen Harper was there. He was considered a player and an equal among those discussions.

01:31:43.460 And it had a degree of influence. Justin Trudeau just can't seem to find his feet there.

01:31:50.240 I mean, we've seen from even when he had a majority at those meetings, he was literally the kid standing outside of the circle of discussion.

01:31:56.440 He would try and interject and, you know, even with the best of intentions, perhaps, but most often embarrass himself.

01:32:03.860 You know, the India debacle, we just can't forget that.

01:32:06.980 And that annoyed the heck out of me so badly just because it is such a great and growing nation.

01:32:12.200 We have such a huge and productive, you know, Indian Canadian population.

01:32:16.760 This really is a country we should be tightening our ties with and our relationships with.

01:32:21.640 and to have him go over there and bungle it like that, you know, what sort of diplomacy is this

01:32:28.440 from a majority government? So, I mean, this handicap of diplomacy you feel is perhaps part

01:32:33.980 of what's still leading to today's lack of confidence maybe in dealing with China?

01:32:38.900 I think so. You know, it's also about understanding values, right? I think you see a lot of the woke 0.86

01:32:44.520 people, you could call them, Trudeau among them, who they kind of, they think the West is just bad

01:32:50.740 And not Western Canada specifically, but Western civilization itself, right?

01:32:55.500 They say, oh, it's just one of many civilizations.

01:32:58.080 It's not that great.

01:32:59.220 It's mostly just oppression and colonialism.

01:33:01.580 So they have no confidence in the values of the West, which, look, no civilization is perfect.

01:33:06.580 But the West, compared to other parts of history, the best on individual rights, best on individual freedoms, best on welcoming people from around the world.

01:33:17.900 And there seems to be no confidence in that.

01:33:20.440 where by contrast, China is extremely confident in themselves, despite obviously the many crimes 0.56

01:33:25.520 it seems the government there is committing in the present day. So Trudeau doesn't have that

01:33:29.840 confidence in Western civilization, in the values that Canada's built upon. And then he can't make

01:33:35.380 strategic moves based on that, right? So you saw even before China was getting really aggressive,

01:33:40.120 this kind of attitude of, you know, we'll hedge our bets between the US and China, you know, 0.82

01:33:44.620 we'll kind of be in between them, we're not going to pick a side, you know. And then I think we're 0.90

01:33:49.380 finding out the hard way, first of all, we're right next to the United States. So we're always

01:33:52.720 going to be closer to them. Our values are much closer to the US than China. And that's always

01:33:57.780 going to be the case. And then our allies and our history, you know, means we're going to be

01:34:01.740 allied with, you know, fellow democratic countries, not countries like China. And so with India, I

01:34:07.000 mean, India is a large democracy, right? The biggest democracy in the world. Its economic

01:34:11.920 prospects are massive. It's also in some ways a military competitor with China. So there's

01:34:16.400 the strategic benefit of, you know, helping India become stronger as well. And Trudeau just, he

01:34:21.700 seems to have, he doesn't even care about that. He just all wins some votes with some domestic

01:34:25.480 political gains when I go to India, you know, and that's all he cares about. And then he tries to

01:34:29.460 reach out to China and then we saw how that worked out. So at some point you think even he'd get a

01:34:34.020 little tired of being humiliated by China over and over again, but it seems like he, I guess, 0.63

01:34:38.580 has a little further to go there. No, he doesn't seem to be quick on a number of uptakes, you know, 0.87

01:34:43.960 and that whole woke culture that he has really, you know, cloaked himself within and embraced.

01:34:49.780 It is frustrating to watch considering how insane it has been getting.

01:34:54.240 I mean, I think that the people who are most inclined to self-flagellate in Canada and talk about our evil colonial history

01:35:00.920 and how we're inherently racist and we're all white supremacists haven't gotten out much.

01:35:06.880 You know, they haven't traveled. I mean, there were some benefits I had in my own life.

01:35:09.780 I got around the world a lot. 1.00

01:35:11.440 Boy, the Western world is far and above some of the third world and nations out there. 1.00

01:35:19.480 And it's not saying we can say, well, we're not bad because they're worse. 1.00

01:35:22.600 No, we can always be better.

01:35:24.540 But to keep acting as if we were a bad player, we're one of the most progressive, accepting free nations on the planet.

01:35:31.820 Yet we're always apologizing for ourselves.

01:35:33.980 And that hurts us.

01:35:35.240 I mean, as citizens, it dejects us.

01:35:37.240 I mean, we feel beaten down.

01:35:38.500 And Trudeau seems to be one of the main drivers for it. 0.92

01:35:41.480 Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to see the hypocrisy, right? 0.96

01:35:44.220 I mean, Canada is very racially diverse.

01:35:46.960 And the other thing is when you see, you know, stories about racism in Canada, well, you don't see anyone defending it, right?

01:35:53.300 I mean, it's a story because it goes against the values most people have.

01:35:56.800 That's the reason, you know, racism would get attention in the first place, you know, in a country like China.

01:36:01.820 Yeah, you're not going to see many stories about racism because the country is in many ways extremely racist and it's just perpetuated everywhere.

01:36:08.500 Right. I mean, you had, I think, stores in China putting up signs like no Africans allowed during the coronavirus, the early part of it.

01:36:17.140 And China was trying to blame Africa for it. They blamed a bunch of other people.

01:36:22.140 So, you know, this attitude that we in the West should be apologizing all the time. 0.99

01:36:27.420 It's just foolish. Right. And I think we should acknowledge history, acknowledge things that weren't done well. 0.98

01:36:31.820 And that's part of the story, too, is we've moved on and we've improved and we've constantly tried to make our society better.

01:36:38.500 that's something to be proud of but the idea that oh we're just going to crap all over our history

01:36:42.660 because it wasn't perfect and then and then what i mean go as you say go to other parts of the world

01:36:48.420 you think the west has a bunch of racism yeah yeah try visiting basically anywhere else in the world

01:36:53.460 so yeah i think uh and this is the problem you know history you know shows that confident

01:36:58.900 civilizations win and ones that lose confidence in themselves lose and right now the the western

01:37:04.420 world is losing confidence in itself, and China is extremely confident. You see how their diplomats

01:37:09.120 are acting. They go around the world. They basically threaten and bully people in every

01:37:13.060 country they're in. They seem to think they're on the way up, and I think we have to prove them

01:37:17.300 wrong. Well, and a lot of it is, in my view, mainstream media fed. I mean, we get hysterical

01:37:23.280 stories. I mean, okay, white supremacists exist. They're really out there. There's not a hell of 0.98

01:37:28.520 a lot of them. They're as rare as hen's teeth, but when you do find one of them, I mean, when we got

01:37:32.960 millions of people, if even 0.01%

01:37:35.120 of them are white supremacists, well it means

01:37:37.080 with the internet you can manage to gather a couple 1.00

01:37:39.040 of dozen of these lunatics in one spot 0.82

01:37:40.700 and they'll be very offensive and say 0.98

01:37:43.100 very ugly things, but they're not

01:37:45.000 worthy of headlines. These are a fringe, fringe, fringe

01:37:47.260 minority, but the media feeds it

01:37:49.160 as if this is a growing thing and we

01:37:51.040 keep getting told that we're systemically

01:37:53.100 racist. Stockwell Day got

01:37:55.000 cancelled for

01:37:56.480 stating on a CBC panel that we weren't

01:37:59.020 systemically racist because we bloody well aren't.

01:38:01.240 You know, I mean, there's people with issues, there's things we had to grow that the treatment of the Chinese in Canada at the start of last century was abhorrent. 0.97

01:38:09.300 You know, the residential schools were a terrible concept, but to keep going on as if currently we're in this state of racism is ridiculous.

01:38:18.100 But we have our leadership and our media constantly driving that into our heads. 0.98

01:38:22.240 You should be hanging your head low because you're part of this racist system.

01:38:25.420 But how do we turn that around?

01:38:26.400 on. Yeah, I think, you know, it's, it's one of those issues where everyone is saying one thing

01:38:32.180 in public, and then everyone is saying something else in private. I think a lot of people go along

01:38:36.880 with the narrative because they're afraid, right? You know, especially, I think, for a lot of, you

01:38:40.080 know, white people in Canada, if someone says, oh, I don't think Canada is racist, well, they're

01:38:44.240 going to get attacked, right? And so I think people are starting to say publicly, oh, certainly, yes, 0.84

01:38:49.560 Canada is very systemically racist, we need to work on it. And it's because people are afraid,

01:38:54.720 right people you know the dominant narrative even if it's not shared by the majority of people still

01:38:59.540 feels like it's the majority because that's what people see all the time so I think common sense

01:39:03.640 people need to push back on that I mean I'm a mixed race person so I think when I push back on

01:39:07.680 that you know some people say well maybe you know maybe it's interesting that someone who's you know

01:39:12.700 has a mixed background isn't going along with the narrative right and I think you're seeing that

01:39:17.400 more and more a lot of minorities are saying look you know I get treated pretty well in Canada you

01:39:21.440 know nothing's perfect but to say that canada systemically racist just doesn't fit with the

01:39:26.000 life experience of a lot of people of many different backgrounds in canada i think that's

01:39:30.120 important and then i think you know politicians they they need to have the courage to push back

01:39:33.840 as well you know they might get attacked or criticized but i think the majority of people

01:39:38.520 will agree with them when they say that you know canada's not perfect no country's perfect but

01:39:41.960 we're not a systemically racist country and i think they'll actually they would gain support

01:39:46.180 by having the courage to say that yeah well the ever powerful rage mob you know is scary i mean

01:39:52.220 people lose careers over this uh people can be ruined so they don't want to speak up against it

01:39:56.880 because it might be uh misconstrued and then pushed back against them uh later on so they

01:40:01.900 just ignore the issue altogether and and just kind of getting back to where we're going with

01:40:05.540 it you know it impacts our whole collective pride our whole sense of holding our heads up high as

01:40:10.940 being a good nation and i think that really harms us all it doesn't matter which party we're under

01:40:15.600 whatnot. It's just an unfortunate and ugly trend for us right now.

01:40:20.800 Yeah. I mean, your country has to have some confidence in itself to achieve great things,

01:40:26.000 right? If everyone thinks, oh, we're just terrible. It's like an individual. Someone who doesn't have

01:40:31.680 self-worth in themselves is going to have a tough time succeeding. And it's the same for our country.

01:40:38.880 Yeah. So another thing out of the federal government to hit quickly then is the

01:40:42.880 Auditor General's report came out and it had a number of gems within it. You covered that a

01:40:47.520 little bit. What sort of findings were there in that? Yeah, well, the main one was that the

01:40:53.440 government was unprepared for the pandemic, which I don't think is a surprise to anyone watching,

01:40:58.240 right? I mean, they got the pandemic early warning system. They didn't take it seriously. I think,

01:41:03.520 you know, Patty Hajdu, I don't know how she still has a job. I mean, at the beginning,

01:41:08.560 and this is where sometimes it feels like the twilight zone, right? Like I've been,

01:41:11.280 And at the beginning, I was warning, saying, this looks like a problem.

01:41:14.480 Maybe the country should do something.

01:41:16.160 And a lot of people are like, oh, no, it's not an issue.

01:41:18.620 And now when I say, you know, maybe these lockdowns are going way too far.

01:41:22.000 Maybe the government's, you know, abusing their authority.

01:41:24.060 Everyone's like, no, we need to be way tougher.

01:41:25.520 We need to keep it all locked in.

01:41:26.740 So it's very weird.

01:41:29.180 But, you know, back to Patty Haidu and the report.

01:41:33.080 Yeah, I mean, the government, when they were saying that, you know, border controls would cause harm and the virus was low risk.

01:41:40.120 You know, the report found that they heavily downplayed the risk.

01:41:43.100 They didn't have a good sense of it.

01:41:45.140 And then with people coming into the country at the beginning, you know, they had flights coming in and the government said, yeah, we're forcing people to quarantine when they get here.

01:41:52.340 Well, they lost track of two thirds of those people, right?

01:41:54.540 They only actually tracked down one third to see if they were quarantining.

01:41:57.960 So it's as we saw, you know, when it could have been stopped from getting into the country or at least mitigated, the government didn't take it seriously enough and didn't do anything about it.

01:42:06.240 And that led to where we are today.

01:42:10.120 yeah and it leads to a real lack of confidence uh but yet it doesn't seem to impact this

01:42:20.380 government in the polls uh they they you know they they are the teflon government it's one

01:42:24.980 scandal one inapt action one activity after another but they still we can't seem to come

01:42:32.240 up with an alternative that the majority of canadians want to vote for to replace them i

01:42:36.100 mean the we scandal is coming up in the news yet again that seemed to hurt them a little bit but

01:42:39.980 then it gets forgotten within weeks. What do you think it will take to put Canadians off of this

01:42:45.600 Liberal government they seem so in love with? Yeah, well, I think the big issue is the Conservative

01:42:51.520 Party. And I think it's that that party seems to be struggling to figure out what it actually stands

01:42:55.900 for or really what it is, right? And, you know, I make the joke that, you know, for the Liberals,

01:43:01.080 they kind of understand the whole, you know, the whole thing about if you're being chased by a bear

01:43:06.060 in the forest, you don't need to be the fastest, you just need to be not the slowest, right? You

01:43:10.540 know, the bear is going to catch the slowest person and eat them and you're going to get away.

01:43:14.380 And I think that's kind of true for the Liberals. They don't really perform well,

01:43:17.180 they don't do a good job in government, but Canadians don't seem to think the

01:43:20.460 Conservatives would do any better. So the Liberals, you know, stay in power for that reason.

01:43:24.780 And the issue, you know, I kind of look at what Atul is saying, and I like some of what he's saying,

01:43:29.740 but some of it is, it's kind of tough to really square, right? Because he's saying you shouldn't,

01:43:35.020 for example, the Liberals shouldn't be increasing the debt limit. They're spending too much money,

01:43:40.140 the deficit's out of control, we need to stop that. But then he says, we won't balance the

01:43:45.020 budget for a decade, and we're not going to cut anything. And it seemed like he was saying they're

01:43:50.860 going to spend more on foreign aid, right? So you spend more on foreign aid, you don't really cut

01:43:55.580 anything, and you don't balance the budget for 10 years. What exactly are you talking about then

01:44:01.580 with the government spending too much money?

01:44:03.300 Where are you going to be different?

01:44:05.320 And the conservatives get it half right.

01:44:07.160 They make good criticisms of the government.

01:44:09.380 But then the question is, what are you going to do about it?

01:44:11.380 And often that's where they fall short.

01:44:12.920 And I think that's the problem that they have at this point

01:44:15.840 is people look and say, yeah, you know,

01:44:17.560 I don't think Trudeau is a great prime minister.

01:44:19.060 He doesn't seem that competent,

01:44:20.340 but I don't think you guys are any better.

01:44:22.480 So people will stick with the person who's currently in power

01:44:25.080 if they don't think the alternative is better.

01:44:27.880 Yeah, they do have to be,

01:44:29.120 people have to be able to vote for something

01:44:30.600 rather than just against something. And that is a frustration with the conservatives. I mean,

01:44:36.660 elections come down in a huge way to trust. More than policy, it's trust. And if you're giving out

01:44:42.120 mixed messages and you're making grand promises by not telling how you're going to get to them,

01:44:46.780 you start losing trust, especially if you're an unknown. I think the biggest issue we saw with

01:44:51.260 that was in Alberta when Rachel Notley won. If you sat with the vast majority of Albertans and

01:44:57.880 went through NDP policies and said, do you like this, do you like this, do you like this? They

01:45:00.900 would have said no to virtually all of them. But there had been such a breach in trust from Jim

01:45:05.760 Prentice with the conservatives. And then the Wildrose was decimated and a new leader that was

01:45:10.060 untested. And again, just they saw so much political machinations and weasel words over

01:45:15.380 the course of a few months that they not only looked like a face they could trust. So they

01:45:19.500 embraced it and they voted for it at terrible cost. But that's the reality. Now, Aaron O'Toole

01:45:25.200 has to come up with a way that people will feel they can trust him. And yes, as you said, when

01:45:29.500 he's going to criticize the liberals on spending, but then targets that may be worse or things as

01:45:35.040 Albertans were concerned about, even though again, we don't necessarily control the election, but

01:45:38.520 we're having troubles with trust. He's very heavy on the green side on climate change. Fine. That's

01:45:43.900 a big issue with Canadians and it needs to be addressed. Conservatives are weak there with

01:45:47.840 voters. But when you say you're going to scrap the carbon tax, okay, we're fine with that.

01:45:52.880 But you do feel something has to be done.

01:45:54.600 You keep saying that exactly what what does that mean?

01:45:58.280 You got rid of the carbon tax.

01:45:59.640 So what are you going to do?

01:46:00.640 Then we get nervous.

01:46:01.320 Well, what does that mean? 0.87

01:46:04.640 Yeah, I think that's the big problem that O'Toole has currently is he ran as a true

01:46:09.320 blue, very conservative person to get the the leadership of the party and then very

01:46:14.280 quickly switched to saying, well, actually, I'm a moderate centrist right in the middle

01:46:18.320 of the political spectrum.

01:46:19.600 And then, as you say, he's talking about green issues quite a lot.

01:46:21.880 So there's the other problem of, you know, playing into the narrative of the other party.

01:46:26.540 He's very much playing on the field that the liberals like to play on.

01:46:30.320 And they're always going to win an election based on if the choice is, who do you trust to intervene more in the economy from the central government?

01:46:38.700 Well, yeah, that's going to be the liberals.

01:46:40.300 So if you fight them on that, you're not going to win if you try to be more like them.

01:46:44.620 And so you talk about trust, right?

01:46:46.020 I mean, Rachel Notley, she was probably going around saying the same thing over and over and over again about NDP policy.

01:46:51.180 Whether people like it or not, it was very consistent, right?

01:46:53.400 They knew what you stood for, and hey, you know, it's chaos everywhere else, so let's vote for someone who seems consistent.

01:46:58.480 And the liberals, whether you like it or not, they're going to spend a ton of money.

01:47:02.480 That's their solution.

01:47:03.340 The government's going to intervene.

01:47:04.720 They're going to spend a bunch of money.

01:47:06.160 So you know what they stand for, whether you like it or not.

01:47:08.680 The conservatives, it's very wishy-washy, right?

01:47:10.940 Well, the conservatives, they stand for limited government except for not cutting anything and balancing the budget in 10 years.

01:47:17.180 and the Liberals' debt is too high, but they're not going to reduce spending

01:47:20.640 and they're not going to increase taxes, but they're going to do something in the environment.

01:47:24.640 They're going to get rid of the carbon tax, and then we're not really sure what else they're going to do.

01:47:28.040 So it's very vague, right?

01:47:29.560 And people already don't trust politicians, and so when politicians are vague,

01:47:33.840 it just adds another level of distrust, and it's almost impossible to overcome that.

01:47:39.000 Yeah, well, something I've said before is I'd rather vote for an honest leftist than a corrupted conservative.

01:47:45.280 As much as the policy may harm me, I cannot vote for somebody I can't trust.

01:47:49.980 We have a case of that in Calgary.

01:47:51.840 There's been some battles with a local councillor who's been one of our most conservative councillors,

01:47:55.880 which seems to be a rare thing in a municipal government, Joe Magliocca.

01:47:59.940 But he did some extremely questionable expensing.

01:48:02.960 Basically, he was issuing receipts for a conference he attended, claiming he'd dined with people,

01:48:07.440 that those people said they never even met the man.

01:48:09.540 It was fraud.

01:48:10.700 He ripped off the taxpayers.

01:48:11.820 As much as it was a small amount, it's that principle.

01:48:14.560 And I would never vote for somebody who's going to steal from the taxpayers.

01:48:18.600 I don't care how good your policies are.

01:48:21.740 You've broken my trust.

01:48:23.100 I would vote for an NDP member before I would vote for you, Joe.

01:48:27.500 And it's, you know, trust in principle are so much more important.

01:48:31.400 There's a few months for Aaron O'Toole perhaps to try and build that trust,

01:48:34.560 but he's really trying to play catch up now.

01:48:36.440 Do you think they can do it or are we looking at another liberal government?

01:48:38.980 You know, I never put anything, you know, in politics, never say anything's impossible, right?

01:48:45.100 So they could, I mean, Aaron O'Toole, he's a good communicator.

01:48:47.840 That's the one thing he has going for him.

01:48:49.160 He speaks fairly well.

01:48:50.560 I could see him doing well in a debate.

01:48:52.220 So, you know, if a scandal hits and Trudeau gets, you know, destroyed in a debate, you know, they could have a chance.

01:48:57.100 But right now it seems like it's going to be very tough.

01:48:59.480 And I think the problem they have is they seem to be, and I've written about this a fair bit,

01:49:03.920 is they made a bet that they could kind of pretend that all the true blue, real conservative stuff

01:49:10.060 doesn't exist and that they're centrist all of a sudden. And, you know, oh, the base will vote for

01:49:15.060 us because they hate Trudeau. They're going to vote for us no matter what. And we'll win over

01:49:17.940 some new voters. The problem is if that bet goes the other way, then you don't gain any new voters

01:49:23.460 and you depress your base and some people stay home, right? And then you're in big trouble. I

01:49:28.040 mean, that's where you see some polls, not all, but some polls have the conservatives,

01:49:31.380 was around 28%. That's kind of what would happen in an election where some of your base is pissed

01:49:39.040 off or demoralized and they stay home or they vote for someone else. And then you don't resonate

01:49:43.420 with the public. And that seems to be the problem O'Toole has right now. And you're seeing the

01:49:47.140 contradiction where he keeps saying, oh, the debate is over. The debate is over. We're done

01:49:50.860 talking about this. I'm in charge. I'm in control. I set climate policy. And then the members are

01:49:56.200 like, no, we don't really like that. So it doesn't look good for the public to see chaos

01:50:01.360 like that, even if the media spin was unfair. I mean, the Conservatives obviously were not saying

01:50:06.100 that they were climate deniers, but the media spun it that way, and O'Toole put himself in a position

01:50:11.160 where it looks like there's a lot of daylight between himself and his party, and that's not

01:50:15.840 really helping him too much. No, well, and to kind of wrap things up on a bit of a note of optimism,

01:50:20.720 as you pointed out, a lot can change in a short period of time. A lot depends on the Liberals,

01:50:24.820 it depends on the Conservatives. Going back historically, Kim Campbell took the federal

01:50:29.840 Conservatives from what I believe was the largest majority in Canadian history at that time ran a

01:50:34.520 campaign and managed to finish with two seats. I mean, she completely decimated what was a powerhouse

01:50:40.480 of a party. A campaign can turn things around quickly and irreversibly. So yeah, you don't want 1.00

01:50:47.600 to roll the dice and make definitive bets or guesses on where we might be in four months from

01:50:51.600 now. The trends look a little bleak, but there's still time for things to change around. And there

01:50:55.800 are a lot of really good members in the Conservative Caucus. I mean, there's even if Aaron might be

01:51:00.560 feeling weak with people, you know, if you get a good cabinet out of that, we could really have

01:51:04.620 a much better government perhaps going into next year. It sure would be nice. So I will wrap up

01:51:10.100 and thank you very much for joining me. It was really good talking to you. I mean, we've kind

01:51:13.000 of interacted a bit on social media now and then I read your stuff all the time. You're a very

01:51:18.080 prolific producer of political and analytical articles and stories. So you're in a number of

01:51:24.540 publications out there, aside from your own blog. Can you let us know where we can find

01:51:28.560 more of your stuff out there? Yeah, you can read me at the National Citizens Coalition. I do one

01:51:33.840 column a week there, and then the Post Millennial as well. Should be writing something for them

01:51:37.860 soon, actually. And then I've written a few things for the Western Standard too, and I think that'll

01:51:42.080 be continuing as well. Right on. Well, thanks again, Spencer. It was a great chat. Get some

01:51:48.420 federal insight. It's going to be, you know, so many issues to look forward to in such a crazed

01:51:54.100 time to be alive in a weird year. So keep up the good fight. I appreciate it. And I hope we'll

01:52:00.900 talk again soon. Alrighty. Take care. Thanks. Right. So that's the show for this week. A couple

01:52:10.940 of fantastic guests. Thank you all you viewers for tuning in and those who are going to download

01:52:17.940 this for later. This is something to remember. This show is going to be on twice a week. Some

01:52:20.880 people had commented uh pointing out that there's other shows going on at the same time we're

01:52:24.700 competing with them it is tough but you know we've got to get out there and get our presence where

01:52:28.680 we can if you can't watch the live version of this uh it will be on youtube to view later or

01:52:34.740 you can download it from our podbean site and listen to it you know as you would have with

01:52:38.380 talk radio because talk radio has really kind of gone downhill in in alberta um and uh yeah i'll

01:52:44.000 respond to a comment or two there yeah the albertan there uh saying uh mulroney made a stew and then

01:52:48.300 left Campbell with the pot. That's true. I think there was a book called Poison Chalice, you know,

01:52:52.480 it was handed off to her. I mean, they were already kind of getting ready to swirl the drain

01:52:55.840 before they hit there. But she did things like making fun of Gretchen's Bell's palsy and stuff 1.00

01:53:01.120 like that, which led to a much bigger swirling of the drain, which destroyed that party. But again, 0.99

01:53:08.920 the point's valid in saying that we feel hopeless right now. But as Spencer was saying, a lot can

01:53:14.640 change in a relatively short time you know a campaign is forever uh it feels like it's speeding

01:53:20.400 by when you're working on one and it feels like it's dragging at the same time and and public

01:53:24.720 opinion can really shift and you know alternative media like the western standard like the post

01:53:28.960 millennial rebel all these sites we're cutting past the bs of the mainstream media we're getting

01:53:35.280 to people despite what the mainstream and the liberals want to see and some of that's thanks

01:53:40.480 to you so you know share the links to this share it in your social media uh feeds get it out there

01:53:47.040 the more viewers that you get the more sponsors we can get the more hosts we can get it just travels

01:53:50.800 all the way down the line we can fix what the mainstream media broke subscribe to the western

01:53:55.520 standard get those articles dave kneeler we've got a new correspondent in bc we've got alexander

01:54:02.240 dallywall and edmonton they all write great news stuff so you can keep up with issues and of course

01:54:06.080 there's always columns, my columns, Derek's columns, Spencer's columns, things like that.

01:54:11.020 So thank you all again for tuning in. I'll let you all go. I'm coming back this Monday. I'm

01:54:15.640 still lining up the guests for it, and I'm looking forward to talking to you then.

Western Standard - March 27, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show. March 26, 2021

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