Western Standard - May 14, 2021


The Cory Morgan Show May 14, 2021


Episode Stats


Length

2 hours

Words per minute

197.79811

Word count

23,907

Sentence count

1,036

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

30

sentences flagged

Hate speech

31

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Corey and Lee talk about Jason Kenney being kicked out of the Tory caucus, the anti-lockdown in Saskatoon, the BC carbon tax, and much more. Corey is joined by Chris Sims of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and Lee Harding of the Western Standard to discuss it all.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:00.000 You
00:01:30.000 Thank you.
00:02:00.000 Thank you.
00:02:30.000 Hey, good morning. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show, Friday, May 14th. It's been a lively
00:02:36.800 political week, and I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about today. My day's going better than
00:02:42.840 Jason Kenney's is, I'm sure, though I do have things easier than he does as well. He's in an
00:02:48.180 unenviable position, that's for sure, and we'll talk and rant a little bit about that as we get
00:02:53.220 going. So a little later on here, I'm going to have Chris Sims. She's the BC Director from the
00:02:58.620 Canadian Taxpayers Federation. They put out some great stuff on the results of the BC carbon tax,
00:03:05.360 which is the highest in the country. You know, the left coast, they're going to tax us all green.
00:03:10.820 They're going to save the world. If we could just charge ourselves enough money to do everything,
00:03:15.960 all the fluffy bunnies will do better and the temperatures will become stable.
00:03:19.260 Apparently it hasn't been very effective yet. And it's going to be interesting talking to Chris
00:03:23.640 about that and other taxpayer related issues on the federal and provincial fronts. After that,
00:03:27.920 I'm going to have Lee Harding on as MEC is commenting, I guess, on the YouTube channel there.
00:03:36.380 Lee Harding writes columns for the Western Standard, also for the Epoch Times and a number of other areas.
00:03:42.460 And we'll talk about some of the stuff he's written on.
00:03:44.140 He's written on the carbon tax impacts on agricultural producers.
00:03:48.220 He's out of Saskatchewan.
00:03:49.500 So, I mean, you know, the ag is big in the West and particularly in Saskatchewan.
00:03:53.660 So it'll be great talking to Lee about that.
00:03:55.580 and he also got fined $2,800 for being at an anti-lockdown protest and covering it. He was
00:04:05.180 there as a reporter, not as a protester. Apparently that wasn't good enough for the police out there.
00:04:12.000 I believe it was in Saskatoon. So they wrote him up. They fined him for $2,800. We'll see how that
00:04:18.160 stands up in court. But you know, with every one of our freedoms that are being eroded and stepped
00:04:23.500 on and pushed aside in the panic to try and stop a pandemic that I don't think the government can
00:04:29.080 do much about. Free Press is now another one of the ones that they've been stepping on. So it'll
00:04:35.520 be a great chat with Lee on that and a number of other items. So back to, of course, what's been
00:04:41.620 dominating the news and certainly dominated it yesterday. Jason Kenney has kicked out, and I'll
00:04:49.180 say Jason Kenney. They made it a caucus vote, I understand. But if it's not a fully secret ballot,
00:04:57.300 it's not really a good vote. It's your way of saying vote to kick these guys out or you'll be
00:05:01.860 next on the list. So Drew Barnes, you know, who's been outspoken for a long time. It's not terribly
00:05:08.860 surprising that eventually they kicked him out. He's been a thorn in Jason's butt. He's certainly 0.99
00:05:15.580 been outspoken on behalf of his constituents against uh the the encompassing nature of the
00:05:20.140 lockdowns how it's harmed his local constituency of medicine hat while they have low infections
00:05:24.560 things such as that he was of course one of the signatories uh along with the other 18 i believe
00:05:30.180 it was on a letter again that was condemning um jason kenny's lockdowns and and policies and
00:05:36.040 strategies the other thing though that was more surprising was it was todd lowen now he was the
00:05:39.920 caucus chair so they keep calling him a backbencher yeah he's not technically in cabinet but this was
00:05:44.140 a senior caucus member, multi-term. I've known Todd for quite some time, actually. Todd put out
00:05:53.200 a letter. He outright said he wants Jason Kenney to resign. So, I mean, again, it's not terribly
00:06:00.140 shocking, I guess, that that's going to lead to getting kicked out. I mean, it puts Kenney
00:06:06.680 in a terrible position. What do you do? You leave an MLA in who's outright saying they want you
00:06:12.380 kicked out of caucus or do we uh you know kick him out so that's what happened and while they're at
00:06:18.620 it i think they took advantage of that uh breaking situation in order to uh get rid of barns you know
00:06:24.140 killing two birds with one stone i guess you could say now todd is uh not he's not like drew he's not
00:06:31.640 one of the ones who's there to make a lot of noise you know they're different characters i guess is a
00:06:36.080 better way to put it uh they're both of the old wild rose stock which is worth noting they're from
00:06:40.500 the original Wildrose Party. They both are multi-term MLAs based on that. UCP, this is
00:06:47.500 their first, well, and clearly last term with them. But Todd isn't inclined to rock in the boat like
00:06:53.940 that. And it's really quite telling to see that he resigned his own position in there. He spoke up
00:07:01.140 and demanded the resignation of the premier. People should keep that in mind. You know,
00:07:06.760 this wasn't a person who's prone to impulsive actions to coming out and trying to undercut
00:07:13.120 from underneath. Him and I served actually on the Wild Road as executive together. I think
00:07:16.820 I was VP policy back then. And Todd was the Northern Zone director, I believe. And he ran
00:07:23.320 multiple times. I think it was noted in an article I read recently. He's a committed man, you know,
00:07:28.220 to getting in there and making political change and getting his view out. So for Todd to finally
00:07:32.880 hit his breaking point and say he wants Kenny to resign, that shows that he's been pushed to what
00:07:40.100 he feels is a corner. He's had enough. I mean, you know how it works in an old PC style government,
00:07:45.380 which is clearly becoming what the UCP is. If you stay quiet, you toe the line, you kiss butts 0.96
00:07:52.740 enough, you'll find your way into cabinet. If you've got ambition, the way to do it is to follow
00:07:58.180 the leader. Todd's not non-ambitious, obviously, or, you know, he wouldn't even have run for
00:08:03.960 MLA. That's a lot of work for a thankless job. But obviously, you know, he didn't want that sort
00:08:09.980 of political future. He'd rather speak for himself. Now, kicking them out, has this gotten rid of the
00:08:15.580 problem? Not even close, you know. Something that made a lot of news yesterday, the main thing was
00:08:20.640 the Western Standard was covering it. We were on it. We were on top of it. We broke it. We
00:08:27.460 followed it. We might as well have almost been in the caucus meeting. It was being leaked to the
00:08:32.680 Western Standard. There were people leaking info as it happened, as the vote came to expel those
00:08:40.280 MLAs, as the discussions came. It was constantly leaking to the Western Standard. And it was funny
00:08:48.980 as all hell, to be honest. At one point, there was a story about how they were having a meeting
00:08:53.040 on shutting up leaks and that meeting was being leaked to us as they talked about it but what
00:08:58.900 that shows is is cracks in party unity you know and and some people think well those two are gone
00:09:05.060 you won't hear about anymore I assure you that boat's leaking from more than just two spots
00:09:09.600 and Kenny is gonna have to get it together he's gonna have to get you know loyalty within that
00:09:17.800 caucus he's gonna have to get them feeling like they're moving in a direction that's positive
00:09:23.020 I mean, that's why they got into it.
00:09:26.060 Other things that we're telling out of Todd Lowen's letter, you know, the biggest pressures, things that we're getting on Jason's Kinney's case for all of us, whether it's outside of the party or inside, was his pandemic response, things such as that.
00:09:38.660 Todd didn't mention any of that.
00:09:40.160 I guess he did speak a lot to it, you know, when he was speaking up for himself before they kicked him out of the caucus there.
00:09:45.600 But no, most of what he was going on about was, again, the shortcomings of leadership, issues with the doctors, issues with the coal mining, issues with fighting with nurses, and a closed leaders circle, I guess you could say.
00:10:00.740 And I've heard that from a number of sources.
00:10:02.400 You know, if you aren't on in what is a very small inner circle of Jason Kenney's, you're outside.
00:10:07.980 You're just a barking seal on the back bench.
00:10:10.100 And that's frustrating.
00:10:11.280 And that doesn't allow them to speak up for their constituents.
00:10:13.940 it doesn't allow them to do their full job in a representative democracy. And this isn't unusual,
00:10:18.500 it's not unique to Jason Kenney. But the thing is, as a leader, if you want to pull off that
00:10:24.980 sort of tightness, you have to maintain that loyalty, you have to make those members feel
00:10:29.440 like they're taking part, that they're inside. And if you sit there and surround yourself
00:10:35.200 with a bunch of Ontario-based staffers, and that's what it is, he imported the staffer class
00:10:40.880 from Ottawa. That's just what Alberta needs. More Ottawa. Yeah, right. You want to know a little bit
00:10:45.660 of why Kenny? And there's one of the areas where Todd was strong on him. Andrew has been strong on
00:10:49.160 him. Kenny has been terrifically weak in pushing back on Ottawa. I mean, it's been pathetic. He's
00:10:53.820 been grudgingly dragged to try and speak up against Ottawa. He struck that fair deal panel,
00:10:59.000 which has now turned out to be an utter joke. I mean, it toured around. It was obviously modeled
00:11:03.640 just to calm us down, just to say, here, I'm doing something about it. Go to these town hall meetings,
00:11:08.080 vent your spleen, but we're not actually going to do anything about it. And it will conclude some
00:11:12.780 things that we've been talking about for 20 years, getting a provincial police force, getting a
00:11:17.840 pension plan, things like that. And he hasn't done a damn thing. All he did is strike more commissions 0.66
00:11:22.740 following that. Come on. How long do you expect us to sit still and take that crap, Jason?
00:11:28.880 You've got to follow through. But where is he getting the advice, do you think, to think that 0.99
00:11:33.120 he can keep ignoring regionalism, ignoring the basis that the West is fed up, the West is ticked
00:11:38.620 off. I'm not talking about embracing secessionism even, but just showing a strong stance against
00:11:44.140 Ottawa, recognizing Ottawa is the problem. Ottawa is not our friend. We need to push back against
00:11:50.560 them, and Kenny won't do it. Well, again, he's surrounded himself with all these Ottawa staffers
00:11:55.600 from his federal time. He's not listening to his MLAs who are on the ground, that are talking to
00:12:01.100 the constituents that are talking to the people who elected the UCP and won't elect him in the
00:12:06.140 future if he doesn't change something dramatically. People are saying, oh, you're going to put the NDP
00:12:10.080 back in. Nobody is putting the NDP back in except for a guy who's letting a majority party fall by
00:12:16.040 the wayside. Don't blame people who have abandoned a party for a vote split. I despise that. So you're
00:12:22.640 supposed to swallow a smaller mouthful of shit versus taking a chance on the bigger one? No, 1.00
00:12:28.360 we vote with principle. And if it means, unfortunately, that the bloody socialists 0.98
00:12:34.800 get in, and that would be terrible. It's not our fault. We're not going to sit back and take 0.98
00:12:39.860 bad governance, not over and over and ongoing. So Lohan isn't alone. He's not alone by a long
00:12:48.900 shot. And this isn't over by a long shot, not even close. I hope at the very least,
00:12:55.580 You know, and I'm saying this grudgingly. I'm not one of those people who was always on Kenny's case. I was supportive of him. I wanted to see the UCP do well. I wanted to see them really shake things up, bring Alberta back on course. I understand the pandemic was unexpected and it was going to challenge any party. It was going to challenge any leader. But I mean, these problems were happening before the pandemic hit, well before it. And now that we have that crisis on top of it, we're clearly seeing a crisis in leadership.
00:13:23.180 I am regretfully saying it's time for Jason Kenney to go I really wanted him to do well I expected
00:13:31.680 more I really respected his work in Ottawa I respected his time with the taxpayers federation
00:13:37.540 in Alberta getting on Ralph Klein's case I mean he got rid of those gold-plated pension plans if
00:13:42.360 it wasn't for Kenney lobbying back then they'd still be getting those gross pension plans uh
00:13:48.620 and returns, but he's, he's turned into a terrible premier. I'm sorry. That's just the fact of it.
00:13:55.100 You can't seem to get it together. You can't seem to maintain party loyalty. And the other part is
00:14:00.340 you're not getting any voter loyalty. And then in the end, that's all that matters in a democracy.
00:14:04.720 That's where you're going to see a lot more. You know, what you're seeing right now are wild rose
00:14:09.460 based and he hasn't unified that as part of it too. He technically brought the wild rose and
00:14:13.780 the PCs together into one room, but obviously they do not still feel like they're one unified
00:14:19.320 unit. And it takes a while. If people remember farther back with the Alberta Alliance and the
00:14:24.580 Wildrose Party, that was a split and we merged and it took years before we would identify as just
00:14:30.600 the Wildrose Party rather than I'm from the Alliance bunch and I'm from the Wildrose bunch.
00:14:35.180 Well, it also takes leadership to bring that unity, that sense to make it one group, one party.
00:14:42.160 And Kenny hasn't been able to do that. 0.87
00:14:43.820 So it's the Wild Rosers who are speaking up right now. 0.71
00:14:45.840 When you see those 18 people who signed that letter questioning his pandemic response, 0.90
00:14:50.380 that was people from the original Wild Rose bunch.
00:14:53.960 You know, when you see Todd Lohan, you see Drew Barnes, it's the Wild Rose bunch.
00:14:58.760 But what's going to change with the PC bunch?
00:15:01.020 So the Progressive Conservatives, the old stock ones that we worked so hard to get rid
00:15:04.820 of, and it looks like a great deal of them slithered right back in there, the old Redford
00:15:08.500 PCs.
00:15:09.040 well, they have no loyalty when they fear for their own seats. And if you look at the polling
00:15:14.540 numbers in Calgary and in Edmonton, there are no urban MLAs are going to get their seats back in
00:15:21.180 the next election unless something dramatically changes. So whether they want to speak up or
00:15:28.620 push back based on personal principle, on policies, or whether they'll do it just on the fact that
00:15:34.740 they want to save their own jobs. Again, unless Kenny manages to turn some things around really
00:15:40.320 fast, they're going to turn on them too. So yesterday was a very telling day. It's been
00:15:46.440 boiling for a while. It came to a head. Not everybody was terribly shocked, but it's funny.
00:15:50.820 It's listening and seeing some of the emails. Who are the leakers? Who are the leakers?
00:15:54.920 Guys, it's coming from all over and it's going to keep coming because again, people don't feel
00:16:01.020 bonded with the party. They don't feel loyal to the party. You don't blame somebody for not feeling
00:16:07.160 that connection. It's the job of the leader to make them feel that way, to make them feel like
00:16:11.360 they're participating. And they aren't. They aren't. So again, the ball's in Jason Kenney's
00:16:19.200 court. I do feel for him. He's in a terrible, untenable position, but he's had two years to
00:16:23.600 get it together. And we're not seeing any indication he is, you know, like stop talking
00:16:29.180 about the pandemic altogether, which is a huge issue. I'm not saying he should stop talking about
00:16:33.000 it, but let's look at all those other policy issues. He's increasing spending outside of
00:16:36.700 pandemic spending. He's increasing taxes in certain areas. He hasn't cut the size of government.
00:16:42.020 He hasn't made the grassroots a viable thing. He put out direct democracy legislation that was a
00:16:47.840 slap in our face. That was another one. That was another final straw. Oh, look, he's finally tossing
00:16:52.740 us a bone. I was thrilled when he said we're going to put that referendum policy on the table and
00:16:58.100 we're going to put recall on the table. And then they set the bar so high to trigger those things
00:17:03.460 that we know they'll never be used. And he knows that too. So again, he paid lip service to us. He
00:17:09.560 said, this is what we'll do, or, you know, this is what we'll tell you we'll do so that we can get
00:17:13.900 elected. But in reality, they turned their back on us. And we're sick of that. We're sick to death
00:17:19.760 of it. Maybe it's going to take more election cycles. I don't know. But Kenny has a terribly 1.00
00:17:24.760 huge problem right now on his hands and a lot of it is a problem of his own making and i i wish it
00:17:30.600 hadn't been you know i i guess there is a special talent very few you know i wrote on that it hasn't 0.96
00:17:35.160 gone through the editing yet conservatives are real pain in the butt we are hard to lead you know i
00:17:40.200 mean rachel notley has it easy you ever hear any of her caucus members speak up no they're socialists 0.95
00:17:45.320 they are inherently followers they want their leader to tell them what to do and they will do
00:17:51.640 it if anything they will lose control if the leader starts trying to let them speak for
00:17:56.600 themselves they don't expect that or want it it's a form of responsibility socialists don't want
00:18:00.920 responsibility they want somebody else to take responsibility leaving it to conservatives
00:18:05.560 libertarian-minded people we don't want to be told what to do it's very opposite so the more you try
00:18:10.360 to make us walk in a row the more there's going to be people flinging off to the left and right
00:18:13.720 and all over the place and it makes for very difficult political organization and certainly
00:18:19.000 in Alberta, we're as individualist as it gets, and we keep splitting and spawning new parties,
00:18:23.960 but we aren't going to change our nature. So you have to learn to deal with it.
00:18:28.260 Klein had the royal jelly. He managed to hold it together. Stephen Harper federally managed to hold
00:18:35.500 it together. I mean, there's always factioning, there's always fighting and so on, but they
00:18:39.160 managed to pull it together. Stockwell Day on the other end had a terrible time trying to hold it
00:18:43.440 together with the reform, and then you had the Canadian Reform Alliance party off to the side, 0.95
00:18:47.820 the crap party and all these other things. You know, Redford, it fell apart under her. Stelmac, 0.91
00:18:52.460 it fell apart under her. I think somebody pointed out recently that we haven't had anybody win
00:18:56.360 re-election as a premier since Ralph Klein, I believe. I could be wrong, but yes, it's been
00:19:01.760 a long time. So we put them up and we tear them down. But to have, again, Kenny trying things,
00:19:08.500 I see a Daryl quote, you know, posting a comment. Yeah, a quote from Jason Kenney,
00:19:12.380 I hold the pen you know those were some of the statements again you're not respecting the
00:19:17.900 grassroots also when Kenny threatened to call a snap election to get his caucus in line about a
00:19:22.800 month ago think about that I mean this is a guy who's at the end of his rope obviously Kenny's a
00:19:26.160 smart strategically thinking man but to bark out something like that that's brutal and again of
00:19:31.760 course it leaked to the western standard right away when he said it's a caucus and now he's
00:19:36.000 gonna have to start talking to caucus and yeah it's gonna keep leaking to us so you better start
00:19:42.160 talking the right language Kenny because it's not behind closed doors anymore and it won't be but
00:19:46.260 that's enough of my ranting on the latest of breaking issues in Alberta there'll be a lot
00:19:50.200 more talking about it uh there's going to be a lot more breaking on this like I said this is just
00:19:54.520 the trickle that's probably going to turn into a waterfall uh I think part of the reason there's a
00:19:59.280 turning point right now too is we're two years out from another election you know I mean part
00:20:03.400 of what Kenny put off the leadership review for himself too was six months before the next election
00:20:06.960 because he knows nobody wants to rip into a leadership review six months before an election
00:20:10.620 because it'll be more damaging than good.
00:20:13.780 But when you've got two years to work on it,
00:20:15.280 well, you know what?
00:20:16.160 Theoretically, you could take out a leader
00:20:17.640 and replace the leader
00:20:18.800 and hopefully get things back on track,
00:20:20.720 which they desperately need to get back on track.
00:20:23.780 So I see that guest in the waiting area there. 0.99
00:20:26.480 I should bring her in.
00:20:27.620 It's Chris Sims from the Taxpayers Federation.
00:20:29.920 And I'll pull up this image from what they put out
00:20:32.180 with the BC emissions are going up,
00:20:35.620 even though they have the highest carbon taxes in Canada.
00:20:39.180 Good work, BC.
00:20:40.000 I'm glad somebody could work as the guinea pig to show how effective carbon taxes are, though, I mean, it's at a very terrible price.
00:20:47.200 People still are paying that bill, but I'm glad for the Taxpayers Federation to be out there and talking about this and exposing it,
00:20:54.540 because otherwise I'm not hearing a lot from the mainstream media from that.
00:20:57.700 So how are you doing today, Chris?
00:20:59.640 Excellent. Thank you so much for having us on.
00:21:02.120 Oh, it's always, like I said, great to get the Taxpayers Federation people on.
00:21:06.220 of like mind and I just like having people coming out who are fighting for less government rather
00:21:10.980 than people always asking for more of my money. And I don't have much left anymore. So, but that
00:21:17.820 was, you know, carbon taxes are a huge issue. They're huge federally, they're huge provincially.
00:21:23.700 We seem to feel that if we can tax ourselves enough, somehow we'll make the planet greener
00:21:31.120 or somehow it'll get Ottawa off our case or somehow it'll buy a social license. It seems
00:21:35.500 be failing kind of on all of those fronts. So maybe if you could run down what you've discovered
00:21:40.160 with BC. It really is failing on all fronts and we're really glad to have this opportunity to
00:21:45.580 warn people about this because BC is the shining example of carbon taxes. When Prime Minister
00:21:51.020 Justin Trudeau first announced his first federal carbon tax, he cited British Columbia, my home
00:21:56.240 province out here in the west, many times. And now that we have the Conservative Party leader
00:22:00.860 Aaron O'Toole singing the praises of carbon taxes, his second carbon tax is actually based
00:22:06.340 on BC's, which is also the highest in all of Canada. And I need to be very clear. When we
00:22:12.120 were first had the carbon tax imposed on us here in BC, back in the year 2008, politicians told us
00:22:19.180 lots of things. They told us that it would be revenue neutral, that it would stop at $30 a ton,
00:22:24.920 that it would fund a plethora of affordable alternative energies. And this is key. They
00:22:32.060 told us that it would make emissions go down. Today, none of that is true. None of it. It is
00:22:38.300 $45 a ton. It's not even called revenue neutral anymore. Nearly $2 billion goes into general
00:22:46.060 revenue from BC taxpayers every year. That's just in the first carbon tax. And emissions are going
00:22:52.140 up, not down. Very interestingly, it was the feds this time around who compiled the data for all of
00:22:59.300 the provinces, by the way, including British Columbia, and the Justin Trudeau government
00:23:03.300 quietly posted it on the United Nations website last month. Funny, there is no press conference
00:23:08.800 about this because emissions have gone up. They've gone up 11% in the past four years. So between the
00:23:15.100 year 2015 and the year 2019, that's the latest data that we have, they went up 11%. And when you
00:23:21.680 break it down further, road transportation has gone up by 13%. On average, it's around 15% or so
00:23:30.160 for SUVs and light trucks. Those heavy duty big rigs that deliver everything we eat and use,
00:23:35.800 that's up around 20%. So really across the board on all the essentials where we need to actually
00:23:41.280 get to work and feed ourselves, those emissions have gone up. So our point is carbon taxes are
00:23:48.160 an expensive, useless failure. The only thing they do is cost average people more money to live their
00:23:54.180 lives and it doesn't help the environment. Yeah, well, I almost wondered though if the federal
00:23:59.980 government, though they obviously did it quietly, you know, it was more of your, you know, Friday
00:24:04.460 afternoon before a long weekend release rather than a Monday morning, let's celebrate something
00:24:08.220 release. But they did release it. But doesn't that perhaps set the stage for the real carbon
00:24:14.040 tax aficionados to say, well, you see, the provincial governments just aren't doing it
00:24:17.880 right. So we've got to bring in our federal one and do it at $200 a ton and reduce any exemptions.
00:24:25.620 And then we can really fix things. If we could just carbon tax harder, we'll reduce those
00:24:30.500 emissions. I mean, I'm speculating here, but perhaps that's some of the motivation on where
00:24:34.280 they're going with this. Well, really, there's not much more to give. Most people have a lot
00:24:40.200 of trouble paying these taxes. In fact, over 40% of Canadians are within 200 bucks of not being
00:24:46.120 able to cover all their monthly bills. So the translation for that is insolvency. So they can't
00:24:51.520 carbon tax you harder on something that you need to do. So folks need to get to work. They need to
00:24:57.000 go to school. They need to heed their homes because they don't feel like freezing to death.
00:25:00.760 And this is really important. We need to eat. A lot of folks don't realize how much carbon taxes
00:25:06.140 affect agriculture. Farmers, of course, use a lot of diesel, including diesel for the trucks to haul
00:25:12.420 things to market and natural gas to dry grains. And really everything in our food chain in Canada
00:25:19.020 does consume grains at one point or another. And so that increases the cost of the groceries that
00:25:24.980 you're buying at the store. If you've noticed an increased cost in groceries, carbon taxes play a
00:25:29.780 factor there, but they don't get the press. It's not a sexy topic. And so that's why we're trying
00:25:34.460 sound the alarm bell hey we're the example out here in bc we've had the highest carbon tax in
00:25:39.340 canada since it first started and all we're doing is getting ripped off it's not lowering emissions
00:25:45.980 well yeah and it should be huge and people should be speaking of that i mean on the bottom line if
00:25:50.060 you're assuming that emissions are the biggest problem facing us today that the rising oceans
00:25:54.300 all of those issues you know polar bears losing their fur or whatever it is week by week then we
00:25:59.660 have to address it well you have to address it with something that works then and if it's exposed
00:26:04.460 that this doesn't work, the fluffy bunnies aren't any fluffier, the trees aren't any greener,
00:26:10.440 then we have to re-examine our entire approach to it. Yes, exactly. And the answer isn't we'll
00:26:16.120 just do it harder because when you do the math, man, when once that carbon tax, the first one is
00:26:21.220 up to $170 a ton, I don't know how folks are going to be able to afford it, honestly. And then if it
00:26:26.040 goes even higher than that, I don't know what they're going to do. I need to stress too that
00:26:29.980 we actually have two carbon taxes here in BC.
00:26:33.080 There's the main one that everybody talks about
00:26:34.860 at $45 per ton.
00:26:36.480 That works out to about 10 cents per liter of gasoline
00:26:39.620 and about 12 cents per liter of diesel.
00:26:41.840 So figure out your fuel tank capacity, do the math.
00:26:45.300 And there's a secret one, a second carbon tax.
00:26:48.480 It's a regulation that's tucked into fuel standards.
00:26:51.580 It's actually higher than the first one.
00:26:53.900 It actually costs you about 14 cents more per liter
00:26:58.420 for gasoline and about 15 and a half cents per liter for diesel.
00:27:02.260 So combined, let's do the math combined.
00:27:05.120 The two carbon taxes here in BC are both 24 cents per liter of gas.
00:27:10.420 That's why if you ever come over the Rockies, when you're allowed to, you visit
00:27:14.380 BC, you have that sticker shock at the gas pump.
00:27:18.040 That's why we have on average 24 cents per liter of gasoline.
00:27:22.060 When you do that math, that's around 18 bucks extra per minivan.
00:27:26.860 If you drive one of those light duty Dodge Ram pickup trucks, I'm not even talking the heavy
00:27:31.100 duty ones. I'm just talking your average, you know, longer box, 1500 series, light duty Dodge Ram.
00:27:36.540 That's around $30 extra just in the carbon taxes. It costs you to fill up here. And then you figure
00:27:43.560 trickle down. Imagine what that is for diesel, for farmers, for all of that stuff. That's why
00:27:48.960 it's so bloody expensive out here. And we're not getting anything for it. We have higher emissions
00:27:53.320 than we did before. Well, I said, and the theory is that it would change our behavior and we would
00:27:58.300 make choices that have less emissions, but we're in a Northern country. We don't have a choice. I
00:28:04.240 mean, you add 50% to my gas bill. It means I'm going to pay that much extra. I mean,
00:28:09.080 I might insulate a little better or chances are I'll sneak a wood stove into the house and burn
00:28:12.840 some firewood, but that's not going to help much on emissions. I can't escape that. Windmills are
00:28:17.660 not going to heat my house and solar panels are too expensive. We aren't there yet. It seems that
00:28:22.940 trying to push us away from the the most cost-effective option but we haven't developed
00:28:26.780 an option to move towards yet yes exactly uh smart people uh the economist type would describe this
00:28:33.260 as an inelastic demand so the ability to feed yourself to heat your home and for transportation
00:28:39.980 that is an inelastic demand meaning it doesn't stretch back and forth that isn't something you
00:28:43.980 can go oh well i'll opt for paper bags or plastic bags or cloth diapers or disposable diapers depending
00:28:49.900 on what you want to do. And to be clear, I'm a born and raised BC girl. I love the environment.
00:28:55.580 I used cloth diapers. I sewed myself. When I lived in Ottawa, I rode a bicycle. I get it.
00:29:00.360 I could almost hug a tree. I get it. But it's not working. The emissions are going up, not down.
00:29:06.460 And we need to be clear, this isn't just an option for people. They can't just choose to not heat
00:29:11.780 their home. And they can't just choose to magically afford to possibly heat their home with a solar
00:29:17.120 panel, which they still can't technologically do right now. These aren't options for folks.
00:29:22.300 So all they're doing is eating it. They're eating this cost, or they're taking out lines of credit,
00:29:26.980 they're going deeper into debt, or they're doing without while emissions go up. And so it's just
00:29:32.380 fundamentally unfair to keep doing this. And it's one of the reasons why the huge broken promise by
00:29:38.080 Erin O'Toole with the conservative parties is such a big deal. They signed our pledge to scrap
00:29:43.700 Justin Trudeau's carbon tax and not impose one of their own. Now they're turning around and they're
00:29:50.200 imposing two because this is key. Trudeau's second carbon tax is actually right now set to be a
00:29:57.540 little bit lower than it is here in BC. But the Conservatives carbon tax right in their document
00:30:02.840 based on BC's. So get ready for those Vancouver gas prices that you are shocked at all the time.
00:30:08.620 get ready to see those in your hometown. Yeah, well, and it doesn't seem that O'Toole's carbon
00:30:14.040 tax is one of the hearts and minds of voters either. So the likelihood of him getting the
00:30:17.680 opportunity to impose his version of the carbon taxes isn't looking terribly good, though things
00:30:22.360 could change, I guess. You still have to presume and look at how those policies would apply if they
00:30:27.320 ever become applying. So, I mean, I'll just go to a side story about greenwashing because it seems
00:30:31.440 like that's kind of what the carbon tax is. It's looking like you're doing something. You do
00:30:36.580 something, do something, do something. And the favorite tool of many governments is a tax.
00:30:41.480 And they've taken on carbon taxes in order to do so. But like, you know, you just mentioned about
00:30:47.120 loving the bush or loving nature. And I worked for 20 years as an oil field surveyor and exploration
00:30:52.600 projects. And I love it out there. And they call us in the oil field. They think I'm out there just
00:30:57.280 to tear stuff down and ruin it. And it's far from it. And I spent four years working in the Arctic
00:31:02.060 in winter, not my favorite stints. I much preferred the Gulf of Mexico, but you didn't get a choice.
00:31:06.380 And what we would do is freeze a barge into the ice in summertime, build your camp on it.
00:31:11.580 And then once things are frozen enough out in the ocean there in the Delta, we would actually build
00:31:16.460 an ice road out to it from Inuvik and stay there for the winter and do our job. The problem was
00:31:21.420 the barge. Of course, there's 80 people living on this barge out there frozen in the dark ocean.
00:31:27.020 Effluent, you know, we're using the bathrooms, we're doing things. So it goes into these holding
00:31:30.700 tanks and we would get this truck to come twice a day and pump the tanks out and drive it all the
00:31:37.020 way to a certified disposal facility for sewage in Tuktoyaktuk. And when I was on some time off,
00:31:42.940 I went for a drive to Tuktoyaktuk and I went and looked and I found the spot where they dispose of
00:31:47.020 it. It's a big vent with a big giant pipe and they put the hose into it and they pump the effluent
00:31:52.460 into it and it goes right under the ice into the ocean where it probably flows under our barge
00:31:56.700 about uh two weeks later it goes right raw into the sea so we burn how many hundreds and hundreds
00:32:02.300 of gallons of fuel a day to have this truck going back and forth transporting these turds across the
00:32:06.620 ice just to pump them right back into the water but the bottom line is on paper it feels good
00:32:13.420 it looks good we this way we didn't put anything into the ocean that wasn't you know we did we used
00:32:19.420 a certified uh sewage disposal facility and left it at that but either way it's a long-running
00:32:25.340 story but it's the truth of how some of these things work it the impression of
00:32:28.380 looking like you're doing something is often much more important than actually
00:32:32.420 doing something so when it's been exposed that the carbon tax isn't doing
00:32:36.320 anything why is the government carrying on with it and all I can think is tax
00:32:40.520 grab then yes exactly so it's a huge tax grab here in BC and I'll give you an
00:32:45.740 example so back when it was first launched in 2008 we had a BC liberal
00:32:50.380 government here which as your viewers will know is kind of a purple tent it's
00:32:54.500 like a mix of federal liberals and provincial conservatives and all that stuff. So it used to
00:32:59.340 be the old social credit party, and then they basically changed their name. So it was introduced
00:33:03.760 then by Premier Gordon Campbell in the year 2008. And to be fair, when it was first put in, they had
00:33:09.800 a corresponding income tax cut. That was equal, they estimated, to what the carbon tax cost would
00:33:15.820 be for people. Okay, on paper, that seems revenue neutral. But here's the catch. When every of
00:33:22.340 politicians involved. It didn't take them very long to start playing with the books and your
00:33:27.460 viewers and you will get this. So I'll explain it. Other folks don't get it. After a few years,
00:33:32.580 they started playing with the books by doing this. They'd have all of the carbon tax revenue in the
00:33:36.500 budget document, all listed on how much it was. Say for argument's sake, it was $1 billion.
00:33:42.200 Then underneath that bracket, they started stuffing a whole bunch of random tax credits
00:33:47.220 into it. Some of it pre-existing, much of it having zilch to do with the environment. I mean,
00:33:52.260 BC film tax credit, seniors tax credit, fitness tax credit, little kids taking art tax credit.
00:33:59.380 And they managed to balance it all out to zero by putting a billion dollars of the tax credits into
00:34:04.100 that. Abracadabra, revenue neutral. So it was just an accounting game that they were playing for
00:34:09.460 years on end. That was the BC Liberals. Then the NDP came into power and they have a majority now.
00:34:15.140 they dropped the term revenue neutral altogether.
00:34:17.820 They just threw it out the window.
00:34:19.060 They're like, yeah, we're not calling it that anymore.
00:34:20.820 This isn't the reality.
00:34:22.140 That was very interesting
00:34:23.920 because a certain guy named John Horgan,
00:34:26.880 back when he used to be on the opposition benches of the NDP,
00:34:30.600 he used to rail against the carbon tax and for good reason.
00:34:33.920 And this was back when it was, oh goodness,
00:34:36.020 I think it was like 5 cents a liter or something like that.
00:34:38.340 He used to say, folks won't be able to afford
00:34:40.660 to heat their homes.
00:34:41.680 They won't be able to afford to drive to work.
00:34:43.620 this is an unfair tax, especially on lower income people, it's not going to work. Turns around now
00:34:49.460 he's premier and we've got the highest carbon tax in Canada. So my theory is actually that a lot of
00:34:55.600 folks, you're right, want to feel they're doing something. They want to be kind of seen on the
00:35:00.920 surface as if they're doing something. So in a way, the carbon taxes, again, 24 cents per liter
00:35:07.140 while you're filling up your car is almost like a sin tax, or it's almost like they're trying to
00:35:12.840 to greenwash their conscience to say, oh, well, I'm paying this tax, therefore it's going to help
00:35:17.480 emissions. It's not. People need to accept this fact that emissions go up while our carbon taxes
00:35:24.440 go up. If they truly wanted to do something to help the environment, for real, let's sell our
00:35:29.360 natural gas to India. India has hundreds of millions of people who are burning wood and animal dung 0.98
00:35:37.040 for their daily needs to heat their homes and cook their food. That has a terrible level of
00:35:42.040 emissions and indoor pollutants and it's usually women and children who are tasked 1.00
00:35:46.180 with gathering this fuel all day they're asking Canada for natural gas let's sell
00:35:52.240 it to them and their emissions will drop dramatically therefore global
00:35:56.860 emissions will drop dramatically and we have good jobs here while we're
00:36:00.100 exporting a much cleaner fuel that's a good solution that's great you got well
00:36:05.020 ahead of me there because I was getting on the solution part and yet it's
00:36:07.600 interesting though diving in a bit on that self-flagellation factor you know
00:36:11.140 people feel a little better if, well, I paid at the pump, so I've done my thing, you know, so,
00:36:14.960 you know, now I'm justified in leaving a little dog poop in the park or something,
00:36:18.580 because I paid my carbon tax and I'm okay with it. But it's funny with the deception, I guess,
00:36:26.120 the way people look at things. And that's why we got to discuss and expand more on them. I remember
00:36:30.540 having a large battle back when we had healthcare premiums in Alberta with a fellow. And he was
00:36:36.360 saying, well, healthcare, you know, in the States costs such and such, or, you know, the usual
00:36:41.040 discussions, but here for me, it only costs me like 600 a year. Dude, you're under this impression
00:36:47.880 that those premiums are everything that it costs. That's just a fraction of what it costs. But in
00:36:54.640 his head, look, I paid it so I can utilize it. I can go to the doctor every time I get a hangnail
00:36:58.840 because I paid my, my $60 a month or whatnot. Um, you know, there's a, I guess the psyche of
00:37:06.680 people, the reality, they feel they've paid a fee, uh, and, uh, it allows them to get away with
00:37:10.940 things, but getting back to that. So you're in the middle of the battleground when it comes to
00:37:15.680 liquid natural gas, we're seeing the projects. I mean, it seems to be people talk about it being
00:37:19.940 the future they talk about. Yeah. I mean, particulate emissions in India, uh, China,
00:37:24.140 whether we like them or not these days, they're burning a lot of terrible stuff,
00:37:26.920 a lot of developing countries, there are huge markets that are building up, Brazil even perhaps,
00:37:32.660 and they could really utilize this. They could get, wean themselves from coal, they can wean
00:37:36.600 themselves from wood, a lot of things, but our environmentalists are saying, no, we've got to
00:37:41.260 lock it in the ground, we've got to shut our pipelines down, and they're getting our companies
00:37:44.520 to divest from liquid natural gas projects. How is the outlook on your LNG future in BC right now?
00:37:52.640 that's a great point uh and it drives me crazy when i hear some of these environmentalists and
00:37:58.240 i personally would describe myself as an environmentalist based on what i just said
00:38:01.360 earlier like whenever i go walking with my kids to creeks or rivers i always bring an extra bag
00:38:05.600 i'm always picking up litter you have to embrace your environment and take care of it it's part of
00:38:09.760 stewardship i personally believe that it's part of stewardship clean up after yourself and don't
00:38:14.400 make a bloody mess but what's really frustrating about some of these ngo kind of big e environmentalists
00:38:20.480 is that they don't get it. They don't seem to understand that if you look around, look around
00:38:26.100 your room right now and try to find something that is not either a direct derivative of oil,
00:38:32.660 so nylon, plastic, anything like that, or that hasn't been manufactured using it or trucked to
00:38:38.500 you using it, or even sent you on a barge if you ordered it from China that uses bunker fuel.
00:38:43.860 You know, you'd be hard pressed to find anything around you that isn't from oil and gas. And
00:38:49.640 there's this huge disconnect there. And they also don't seem to look at the actual data and try to
00:38:55.120 understand how we can have the most minimal effect on the environment while maintaining our standard
00:39:00.360 of living and using energies properly. It just seems to be this knee jerk, leave it in the ground
00:39:05.540 and then what? To hell with everybody else? What are they supposed to do? Is India just going to
00:39:10.040 keep burning the wood and the animal dung? Is China just going to keep burning coal year after 0.87
00:39:14.920 year and building plants you know day after day it seems we have to have practical solutions to this
00:39:19.640 and then when you try to offer alternatives things like natural gas or even modular nuclear
00:39:24.840 which is the future if you talk to some of these folks sounds pretty exciting not i'm not sure if
00:39:29.400 they're there yet sounds pretty exciting and they just don't listen and so that's where we start
00:39:34.680 wondering is this really your game plan do you really want to reduce emissions and help the
00:39:38.920 environment because it sure doesn't sound like it and i'll give you an example uh vancouver city
00:39:43.560 council so beautiful area nestled right there in downtown vancouver is gorgeous they are you know
00:39:49.640 divesting themselves from oil and gas and they're even trying as best they can to bar people in
00:39:56.440 their own homes from using natural gas furnaces like the natural gas is like is the boogeyman
00:40:03.080 and it's really strange because uh premier john horgan back when he was an assistant staffer
00:40:09.160 He worked in the energy sector. He worked on the energy file. And I personally think that's why he's
00:40:14.520 not so hostile towards natural gas. He hasn't been a fan of Trans Mountain or any Kinder Morgan or
00:40:20.040 things like that. But when it comes to the natural gas pipeline that's slowly working its way across
00:40:24.760 Northern BC, he's been pretty permissive of it for a new Democrat in the modern sense.
00:40:30.360 So that's very interesting. And that one's still going ahead. Tons of folks are working on it.
00:40:35.800 you know people who work live locally i'm sure there's some folks from alberta who are working
00:40:39.560 on the pipeline first nations women you name it providing tons of great jobs but this is the catch
00:40:45.240 there seems to be again it's a syntax almost on a global level because they're allowing that
00:40:50.440 pipeline to go through to sell natural gas to other people it's as if they're taking on the
00:40:55.800 burden and the guilt and the syntax themselves by forcing british colombians to not be able to use
00:41:01.160 our own natural gas and our own natural resources the big push now is electrifying absolutely
00:41:06.520 everything and getting hooked on just bc hydro as your sole source of energy not quite sure how
00:41:12.360 that's going to work out but as of right now it is still a major battlefield here even with
00:41:16.520 something as clean burning as natural gas in bc yeah well and it's painful i mean you talk about
00:41:22.440 the inelasticity and that's the reality i mean energy of all things if you're going to make it
00:41:27.320 expensive it impacts every aspect of our living i mean we can't avoid it part of the the great
00:41:34.520 lifestyle we enjoy on a world scale is because we have abundant cost-effective energy sources and i
00:41:40.280 i think if anybody talks about being you know having a heart and caring about the third world
00:41:44.200 and caring about developing nations we should be sharing this we should be getting it up there to
00:41:48.360 get them up to our level and it shows that elitism and vanity where trudeau loves virtue signaling
00:41:53.800 but he still would bite his own tongue before saying, maybe we could, again, get some of our
00:41:58.680 products over there to help them come along and live a cleaner, more prosperous lifestyle like
00:42:02.840 ourselves. But again, we reached that front. So we've got inflation starting to hit us. I mean,
00:42:10.440 it's something the Taxpayers Federation talks about and economists. We've been borrowing like
00:42:15.160 mad. We've been living on the credit cards on every level of government. It's going to catch
00:42:20.200 up with us it's unavoidable we can't keep printing money like this uh cost of living is going to
00:42:25.320 shoot up and energy is going to be part of it uh so where though because when everybody's screaming
00:42:30.680 for the government to do more do more do more i mean i almost don't fault the government fully
00:42:34.120 they are responding to people on the ground who keep saying take care of me uh where can we start
00:42:39.480 cutting without a government getting thrown out of office for daring to try i think we need to change
00:42:44.680 our own hearts and minds see not you and i specifically but we need to make it normal to
00:42:50.360 stop asking the government for everything we need to make it part of the culture of smaller more
00:42:56.200 accountable government and do for yourself so lower taxes less waste and more accountability
00:43:02.120 it's literally why the ctf the canadian taxpayers federation was founded we were founded back in
00:43:06.600 1990 and that was when the big the deficits really started taking center stage and we had all of
00:43:12.760 those fights the no more taxes fights all those rallies all those forums and so this is why we're
00:43:18.200 here and i think it's important to spread the message to average people so the next time we're
00:43:23.720 allowed to gather and all that other stuff uh you tell both your as i lovingly try to say your crazy
00:43:29.640 right-wing uncle and your flaky loving left-wing sister that we need to stop looking to government
00:43:35.560 for absolutely everything ask yourself i'll put it this way i i have to save money all the time
00:43:40.520 as everybody does anybody who helps run a family you're always trying to shop and save for money
00:43:45.080 so when you're in a store and you have something in your hand you should ask yourself do i really
00:43:50.200 need this next question is this the best possible price i can get for this and next question is can
00:43:56.680 i wait can i do without it for a little while longer that's what budget conscious people do
00:44:01.560 every single day so we need to do that when it comes to government do i really need this can we
00:44:07.400 really afford this can we do this in a more economical way that will save money and we need
00:44:12.280 to make it normal so the next time you have a friend or a family member or a co-worker if you
00:44:17.800 can say it nicely who is saying the government this the government that we need this we need
00:44:21.480 that free this put a penny in the shoe and say you know what every time you get them to pay for
00:44:27.080 something for you that's going on not only your credit card that's going on your grandkids credit
00:44:31.720 card now because we're that far gone we're more than a trillion dollars in debt so it's not you
00:44:37.880 or i unless you know you're a highlander i like to be pretend of a vampire i'm immortal i'm not
00:44:42.760 going to be there i'm not going to be there when we're paying this thing off but my kids will be
00:44:47.400 and my grandkids will be is it fair to nuke them with these bills plus interest no most decent
00:44:54.440 people would say it's not and so that's what i would do i would encourage everybody that you know
00:44:59.800 to come to this line of thinking and then we can tell our mlas and our mps to stop to stop
00:45:07.080 spending all this money and to stop strangling our natural resources because right now at this
00:45:12.600 stage the way we're treating our natural resources and the way we're spending we're eating our seed
00:45:17.800 corn which means we won't have anything to plant next year yeah no we're really just pissing it
00:45:25.960 it away at a regular you know record level and it's terrifying uh it does come back to that that
00:45:32.080 fear of personal responsibility i i think you know and and uh we have to change the mindset boy
00:45:38.440 changing a mindset is a very difficult thing to try and do it hard times can be the times when
00:45:44.300 those mindsets change though and they're approaching i i hope we could get some of this
00:45:49.160 under control and yeah there's that instinct you know like if your local little league team runs
00:45:54.640 out of money and they can't function next year unfortunately what you hear is everybody screaming
00:45:57.520 well the city should fund it so that they can keep going well well hang on why this is your local
00:46:02.640 thing talk to your neighbors or get the kids selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door okay
00:46:07.440 i'm sure you're knocking yep absolutely the old ways you know get the pizza place down the road
00:46:12.080 to sponsor them but a person's first instinct is the government's got to pay for this and the
00:46:17.680 government of course well you got to respond to elected official well i want to shut up you know 0.99
00:46:22.480 karen down the road i gotta beat on a karen you know because she's really screaming for that team
00:46:26.320 so you know what i'm gonna make sure that we fund that and then once you do it's really hard to
00:46:29.520 extricate yourself from that uh but boy we've got a lot of work to do i mean it comes back to the
00:46:36.000 environmental thing like you said as well like i've got a beautiful house it's small but it backs
00:46:40.160 into the bush just outside of calgary and i walk the dogs back in the trees there all the time i
00:46:44.560 love it and i tell you it's spotless back there you know people hike through that area it's a game
00:46:49.280 preserve and everything but anytime i see a piece of garbage or anything i pick it up i'm not having
00:46:53.760 that back behind my place now once in a while when i go hiking in the provincial park east of
00:46:58.160 bread creek i mean the government just imposed user fees actually to get into candanaskis and
00:47:02.240 everything in alberta people are throwing their crap all over the place there's trash and things
00:47:06.240 everywhere but that's because while i'm on government land we're paying somebody else to 0.99
00:47:09.280 pick it up that's the attitude of some not you know most people i think are such pigs but 0.91
00:47:13.600 unfortunately far too many are you know and again it comes back to it's not my 0.96
00:47:18.480 responsibility to clean it up it's the government's and it comes back to as well
00:47:22.040 as if I paid to have the government do it there's where I'm kind of fearful I'm
00:47:25.180 all about user fees I like the idea actually of charging access these parts
00:47:28.140 but some pigs I think are gonna feel that's more licensed to check their
00:47:31.180 stuff as well I paid for that somebody will come take care of it I paid the
00:47:34.400 emission so you know the usher is gonna come and sweep up the popcorn that I
00:47:37.660 dumped all over everywhere I know it's um it's a bit of a tough situation there
00:47:42.080 I'll give you an example. And so this, to me, the best way to help people come to your line
00:47:47.060 of thinking on this sort of stuff isn't just to use numbers, it's to use personal examples.
00:47:51.540 And so if you know anybody in Ontario, for example, who lived during the former Liberal
00:47:57.040 government there, especially under Kathleen Wynne, the Premier, the former Premier there,
00:48:01.280 ask them about their hydro bills. Chances are their hydro bills went through the roof to the
00:48:06.940 point where they probably struggled paying it. I'll give you an example. We were renting a
00:48:11.500 small bungalow in Ottawa. I was doing like laundry at midnight. I only used LEDs. We use natural gas
00:48:18.580 for heat, but our bill was still more than $400 a month. That's how crazy those bills got. And we
00:48:26.380 were some of the ones on the lower end of the spectrum. There were some folks living in more
00:48:30.200 rural areas of Ontario that were seeing hydro bills for like $1,200 a month. And it actually
00:48:36.580 started causing what's called energy poverty. And we don't need to go to, you know, fire-breathing
00:48:42.040 right-wingers to get this sort of thing. Go to the Ontario Food Bank website and look up
00:48:47.540 energy poverty. And they did a record amount of business, unfortunately, during those years
00:48:54.260 because folks, working people, couldn't afford their energy bills. And this is to light their
00:49:00.300 homes and to make sure things run. These weren't luxury items. And so if you want to have energy
00:49:07.180 poverty at the level that they had during Premier Kathleen Wynne's time in Ontario, one of the main
00:49:12.620 reasons Doug Ford became Premier, he said he'd fix the hydro mess. They kind of sort of have a little
00:49:17.740 bit if you squint and look at it sideways. That's one of the reasons why it's Premier. So you ask
00:49:22.700 folks who lived during those times of those crazy record high hydro prices, do you want to see this
00:49:27.800 across Canada. No? Well, you better get on the horn and you better start telling your local MP
00:49:33.240 to not do this nonsense because the very same architects, like physically the same human beings 0.99
00:49:38.620 who were in charge of that stupid green plan that caused all those problems in Ontario are now in 0.99
00:49:45.040 the PMO. They're now in Ottawa and they're branching this idea out across Canada. And 0.99
00:49:50.520 unfortunately here in BC, we're in the same boat. Knock wood right now, BC hydro rates are mostly
00:49:57.280 affordable for average people but who knows if that's going to change tomorrow because of these
00:50:01.520 ridiculous policies yeah well and again it gets down to the people on the ground they seem to
00:50:06.200 forget the concept of supply and demand at times as well you know i mean some of the people say 0.87
00:50:10.300 well look if you charge your car your home rather than buying gas it would cost you this much it
00:50:14.440 would save you this much they try to approach it on that front well okay if we got into that dream
00:50:18.600 world that a lot of people are promoting that somehow you know within nine years the majority
00:50:23.000 of us are all going to be in electric vehicles and we're all electrified we've all upgraded our
00:50:27.160 houses we've somehow upgraded all of the electrical grids and we've somehow found the generating
00:50:31.640 capacity the price of energy is going to go through the roof because you have suddenly got a
00:50:36.360 massive new demand on that power grid and there's only one way to respond it you raise the price
00:50:41.320 and you know the city dwelling urban hipster who never even gets on a bus doesn't realize
00:50:46.120 you still need the electricity to charge your iphone so you can virtue signal with your selfies
00:50:51.240 in stanley park so your costs are going to go up even if you don't travel and they've got to start
00:50:57.400 to understand this you know once people get hit in the wallet it's amazing how responsive they get
00:51:02.680 yes exactly and so that's why use an example like ontario a lot of folks might have family
00:51:07.880 in ontario i know i do uh ask them ask them what it was like and then get them to do a little
00:51:12.680 thought exercise and say could you afford that the answer is usually no and again when it comes down
00:51:18.200 to supply and demand yeah this this energy always comes from somewhere it's the same thing as money
00:51:23.640 the money always comes from somewhere and if they just print it in the basement they're going to
00:51:28.520 wind up with inflation which is what we're staring down the barrel of right now federally we we just
00:51:33.160 can't keep pretending and doing stuff like this when it comes down to taxes and it comes down to
00:51:37.720 things like oil and gas i know you've looked at these numbers before the fact that we don't have
00:51:43.160 our proper and right pipeline capacity in Canada has cost us around 13 billion dollars over 10
00:51:51.080 years just in the federal taxes we're not talking royalties we're not talking municipal taxes
00:51:56.760 property taxes nothing 13 billion dollars you could build i think six new hospitals here in bc
00:52:03.880 for just that amount that we've missed out on from federal taxes so even if folks like to pretend
00:52:10.120 that, I don't know, their handmade bicycle doesn't use any sort of oil and gas. They depend on things
00:52:16.360 like oil and gas, even for things like their health care and their education, because that's
00:52:20.660 one of the major fuels for our economic engine here in Canada. Yeah, well, there's that cognitive
00:52:26.780 dissonance that, you know, the same people quite often who are screaming for the underprivileged,
00:52:32.040 who want more social programs, more spending, more government involvement, are the same people
00:52:35.880 who are trying to shut down every means of generating the funds to pay for these things.
00:52:39.740 I mean, you've got to think about it, guys. It's got to come from somewhere. If you want those hospitals, you want those homeless shelters, you want that subsidized housing, you want the daycare programs, fine. But somewhere, somebody has to pay the bill. And you can't shut down every industry and expect these things to get paid. But that's where they're sitting, though. And, you know, I try to get reasonable with it. I'm going to pivot a bit, though, since we've still got a bit of time here.
00:53:03.880 something we've had happening in Alberta. We had a flat tax for a little while, which was
00:53:07.880 magnificent. Unfortunately, again, you know, the temptation to gouge further comes along,
00:53:12.680 and I believe it was Redford or got rid of it. Perhaps it was even Stelmac. I can't remember
00:53:16.120 now, but it went back to a progressive tax. And now Kenny is utilizing the tool that he used to
00:53:22.220 decry as the federal, you know, in the federal government, which is called bracket creep. We
00:53:27.980 didn't hear about much about it anymore, but it's the invisible tax hike. We're getting nailed every
00:53:32.260 year, and particularly when inflation starts kicking in, they are raising taxes on us while
00:53:38.820 telling us they aren't. And that's a real annoying thing. But maybe if you could explain,
00:53:42.520 is bracket creep happening in BC? And if not, just, you know, I'm sure it's happening in other
00:53:46.400 provinces, how that works. It's not happening to the same extent that it's happening in Alberta.
00:53:51.660 And primarily it's because of the differences in inflation costs of living. I'll be blunt. The
00:53:56.900 cost of living out in BC is outrageous. It's extremely expensive, not just for our oil and
00:54:02.580 gas, but housing. People call it a housing crisis. It is. That doesn't mean that there needs to be a
00:54:08.360 gigantic big government solution for the housing crisis. Perhaps they just need to get out of the
00:54:12.680 way and stop, for example, charging PST on building supplies, which adds around $18,000 to the cost
00:54:18.780 per house. So they could do something like that. But yeah, in Alberta, what's really disappointing
00:54:23.560 is that you rightly point out that Jason Kenney used to rail against bracket creep and named it
00:54:29.640 because, of course, he used to, way back in the day, be with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
00:54:34.900 And we take on things like bracket creep, which is an automatic tax hike. And if you don't keep
00:54:40.920 those brackets permanently where they are, as inflation goes up, as costs go up, your taxes go
00:54:47.100 up. It just becomes automatic. And it's because it floats on top during bracket creep that you
00:54:51.740 that you pay more. They need to cement those levels there and leave them there. This is the
00:54:56.480 problem. So that isn't so much the problem here in BC. The problem here in BC is outrageous housing
00:55:01.580 costs, outrageous carbon taxes, both hidden and non. And we have a PST on pretty much bloody
00:55:08.060 everything. We even have a PST on used cars. Used clothing has PST here. It's just disgusting.
00:55:15.460 So for example, say you go to Alberta and you buy a truck, like a used truck for, say
00:55:22.160 you really got a good deal and you got spent like four grand on it.
00:55:25.000 You bring it back over here, you're going to be paying PST on that.
00:55:28.400 And it's 13% because it's combined.
00:55:31.400 It's outrageous what they charge you out here.
00:55:34.260 It's so big a deal, the PST here in BC compared to our brothers over there in Alberta, is
00:55:39.580 that back, I think it was 2005, the BC government got wind that people, smart people, when they
00:55:47.000 were taking their summer tours out to Alberta, were waiting to buy their appliances in Alberta
00:55:52.100 because they don't have to pay PST. Ding, ding, ding. It just makes sense. So while they went
00:55:55.940 to Costco, they did their major shop, they would buy their appliances there and then bring them
00:56:00.300 back across the Rockies. Again, smart shopping. You're saving money. The government got wind of
00:56:05.260 this and they were so hungry for our PST money that they actually contacted Costco and Alberta
00:56:11.980 and said, Hey, could you send us photos of the license plates of the BC drivers that are in
00:56:17.560 your parking lots? I'm not kidding. So we can trace it back to their home and then nail them
00:56:22.840 with these PST charges. Luckily, Costco told them to get bent and they weren't able to do it,
00:56:29.880 but that's how hungry they are for taxes here. So that's more of our struggle there
00:56:34.140 compared to what you guys are dealing with right now with the bracket creep
00:56:38.080 issue and I keep hearing from very smart pointy-headed folks usually in
00:56:43.460 Edmonton that you guys need a PST does that sound like that's happening soon
00:56:47.160 yeah all of it they keep trying to set the stage for it and they leak it now
00:56:51.300 and then and they they say well it's not off the table later they're setting the
00:56:55.140 stage there's no doubt about it that they have more appetite to deal with
00:56:59.820 challenges through raising taxes rather than reining in spending which is very
00:57:06.820 concerning it gets back to my earlier rent you know as you've seen there's
00:57:09.480 there's been a lot of turmoil happening in Alberta between the small C
00:57:13.300 conservatives I guess you could say and the red Tories the usual battles and I
00:57:18.520 would say the red Tories have been winning in the Kenny government and as
00:57:21.940 where spending has been going up and yeah they're hinting at things like
00:57:24.440 bringing in a sales tax rather than talking like Jason Kenny of 25 years ago
00:57:29.200 saying we need to get spending under control yeah your government employees on average make quite a
00:57:34.800 bit more than even government employees out here in bc uh and you guys tease us for being all lefty
00:57:41.040 in that uh but when you do the comparison uh yeah for example you know no matter really where you
00:57:46.080 look for when it comes to government employees in alberta typically you guys are paying them a lot
00:57:50.960 more than we are out here in bc that's even with the cost of living and housing differences so you
00:57:56.320 So you guys don't have the PST out there,
00:57:57.980 your carbon tax is lower,
00:57:59.140 and typically your housing is much lower cost.
00:58:02.200 Whereas out here, it's much higher on all fronts,
00:58:04.500 but the wages are lower.
00:58:05.720 So yeah, you might want to sharpen the pencil out there
00:58:08.240 for the BC.
00:58:09.080 Yeah, for quite some time with the budget
00:58:12.140 that Jason pretended he was going to balance,
00:58:13.960 and he obviously never will,
00:58:15.940 he did talk the talk again prior to becoming premier
00:58:18.940 and pointing out at BC,
00:58:20.120 if we could just cut our spending per capita to BC levels,
00:58:23.200 because yeah, people forget that's the left coast,
00:58:25.680 you know what? They are showing more spending restraint than us. They spend far less per capita
00:58:31.060 than we do. If we could bring it down to there, because is the world over in BC? Are they dying
00:58:36.260 in the streets for lack of government spending? No. Well, then why can't we do so? But that talk
00:58:40.680 has been lost now that he's in the premier's chair and the spending just keeps climbing and climbing.
00:58:44.820 And I'm glad you pointed it out because it's a myth. I'm sorry, guys. We have not behaved
00:58:48.780 responsibly in Alberta. We call ourselves conservatives, but we spend our way out of
00:58:52.900 our problems and with the uh energy revenue going down with it as a whole separate discussion as to
00:58:58.180 why it's so far down you know through infrastructure and things like that we've exposed just how bad 0.50
00:59:03.300 our government is and that's why the head nichi is running for the hills in calgary because 0.70
00:59:08.740 downtown calgary is getting closer to a 40 vacancy rate that's how it's a ghost town down there it is
00:59:15.300 unbelievable and yeah wow and and they thrived on the those i mean the last number i think was 32
00:59:23.140 but realistically there's a lot of companies still stuck in leases as soon as the lease is up they're
00:59:26.820 out of there and so those office buildings are standing nearly empty and they used to just milk
00:59:32.500 them because there were all those oil company head offices and those oil companies just rather
00:59:35.860 than fight with government just take the tax increases take the tax increases so then the
00:59:40.020 the city just spent like crazy. Well, now those companies are gone. And that's where we had
00:59:44.160 400% business tax increases happening a couple of years ago. That's why people were protesting
00:59:48.500 in front of city. All business owners were protesting. And provincially, we're seeing
00:59:53.140 the same thing. The government got spoiled. They got lazy. They felt that this revenue will be
00:59:58.780 there forever. And they bloated the spending. And now they've hit the wall. But the thing is,
01:00:03.980 there doesn't seem to be the will to recover from that. They just seem to be looking for
01:00:08.900 new sources of money and that that's not going to help no because you can't get blood out of a stone
01:00:14.100 and folks the average working albertan has been pretty hurting for the last little while uh you
01:00:19.380 know i've got some family experience in the natural resources sector and when the nep hit back in the
01:00:24.420 early 80s it was brutal um there people aren't doing so well in the private sector but i keep
01:00:29.460 reading uh headlines that in the government sector they're not taking cuts they didn't have you know
01:00:34.100 15 or 20 percent salary reductions they didn't allow for massive attrition or early retirement
01:00:39.460 in order to trim their books they're not doing that and they have to it's just fundamentally
01:00:44.100 unfair if they don't because otherwise this whole we're all in this together is just an empty
01:00:49.300 platitude well yeah and i mean you know aside from whether policies are effective or not with
01:00:55.140 restrictions lockdown stuff like that but a lot of the policy discussion has come from people who
01:01:00.180 have guaranteed salaries and that's really slanted when you're examining restrictions when you're
01:01:06.180 sitting on a committee or where you're a medical professional or one of these others and you're
01:01:10.420 saying we really need to shut all this stuff down you're not coming from a perspective understanding
01:01:16.180 that yeah your bills are all going to be paid it's not going to impact you a bit except in
01:01:20.980 the social sense perhaps but you really are forgetting the person who can't pay their mortgage
01:01:24.820 the person whose business is going to go bankrupt the person who doesn't know how on earth they're
01:01:29.300 going to pay their rent or make their car payment that's what's happening but the decisions are
01:01:33.380 being made by such a huge and supported by such a huge civil service i mean we've got a lot of
01:01:38.580 unions standing up screaming keep the lockdowns well that's because all your members are having
01:01:41.700 vacations right now they're sitting at home and they're getting full pay i you know i can see why
01:01:46.580 they support it but this is not sustainable and that's fundamentally unfair because that is not
01:01:51.940 true representative government that is not the commons the commons and representative government
01:01:57.460 are supposed to represent common people meaning they're affected by their decisions pretty much
01:02:02.900 in the same way that other people aren't who aren't in positions of power and it's their
01:02:07.060 responsibility to make sure that they are aware of it it's one of the reasons why former british
01:02:11.620 prime minister margaret thatcher always insisted upon everybody including her cabinet ministers to
01:02:16.820 know how much milk cost because that was a practical price point for people to be able
01:02:22.340 to understand she was raised above the shop so she knew what that was like it's one of the
01:02:26.580 reasons why again ronald reagan said very similar things he wasn't raised in the lap of luxury he
01:02:31.460 was affected by the decisions that he made and it's a fundamental responsibility of government
01:02:36.180 to make sure that folks feel it the same way no matter if they have a private sector job or a
01:02:40.900 government job yeah well and our government uh workers again and hey a lot of them do a lot of
01:02:47.620 hard work and do some important jobs but but they're guaranteed they don't understand what
01:02:53.460 income instability feels like. They have not suddenly had their income cut by 30%, 50% in a
01:03:00.580 year. And, you know, it's hard to put yourself in somebody else's shoes. It's always a challenge
01:03:05.820 as humans, but we really need to try a little more of that, you know, not just on the leadership
01:03:10.060 level, but even on the people on the ground who are calling for the government to do more of these
01:03:13.420 lockdowns. Please try to think of your neighbor who perhaps doesn't have that secured income that
01:03:17.680 you do before you necessarily push for these things. And I mean, there's the health factor
01:03:23.080 take into account too that's fine but if we're looking it's a cost benefit thing uh people
01:03:28.440 aren't looking at the cost nearly closely enough so maybe i'll let you get going fairly soon here
01:03:36.840 though so in closing we have a feeling we could talk all day we could today we could
01:03:43.640 we'll tire folks out actually i'm supposed to have a lee harding coming on fairly soon but he's not
01:03:48.600 here quite yet but uh as i said i was going to take you to the top of the hour but by all means
01:03:54.120 you've got the microphone what would you like to put out there as what we should be doing where we
01:03:58.600 should be going i really want to stress to folks that again every time you talk to your friends
01:04:03.560 and family in british columbia every time you see a terrifyingly high gas price in a place like
01:04:09.240 vancouver understand this is coming to your local gas station understand that this will affect you
01:04:16.360 unless we plead and beg politicians to change their minds and to see the light and realize
01:04:22.280 that things like carbon taxes, both of them, are not working. And this is the government's data.
01:04:28.160 It's its own data. This report that the Prime Minister posted on the UN website is more than
01:04:33.860 500 pages long. They've got charts for every single province. You can do crazy deep dives
01:04:40.040 into all of their emissions, things like how much of it is road transportation, how much of it is
01:04:44.600 marine traffic, how much of it is aviation fuel being burned. They even measure stuff like how
01:04:50.060 the different ways you spread manure in different parts of the country emit different levels of
01:04:55.380 methane. They do emission tests on the mouths of coal mines. And what's really odd, and I don't
01:05:02.660 know why this is, there could be a very good scientific explanation. Even their historical
01:05:06.860 data, if you go back and look at previous reports, their historical data on their emissions changes,
01:05:11.760 It goes up, it goes down, it depends. But that's kind of strange. But you can do a really cool deep dive on it. I encourage anybody to go to the go to the UN website and look up Canada emissions reports and you can read them yourselves. The point is, is that it's not working. The carbon taxes were supposed to reduce emissions. They weren't sold as massive money making machines for government. They weren't sold as revenue generators. None of that was on the table.
01:05:38.820 they said they would reduce emissions, period. And I want to be clear, they didn't say, oh,
01:05:44.480 per capita or per GDP, blah, blah, blah. That's goalpost moving. If you're talking about emissions,
01:05:51.580 you're talking about a cumulative amount of stuff, pardon the loose term. You're talking
01:05:57.300 about a cumulative amount of stuff. Our cumulative amount of stuff is going up, not down. They said
01:06:03.380 it was going to go down. And the only thing that's happening is that people's wallets are being
01:06:08.200 drained. And more and more people are having trouble affording both groceries and getting
01:06:13.200 to work. And keep in mind also that this just continuously costs people in their day-to-day
01:06:18.640 lives. So even if you are, describe yourself as a hardcore environmentalist, fine, power to you.
01:06:24.260 It's not working. Even the Sierra Club of BC says this isn't working. They even called the BC
01:06:31.120 carbon tax a couple of years ago, a token effort. We've got the highest carbon taxes in Canada.
01:06:37.580 is 24 cents per liter of gasoline again 18 bucks if you're filling up your minivan it's 18 extra
01:06:44.360 every single time or it's 30 extra every single time you're filling up your pickup truck can you
01:06:49.480 afford that if you can't pick up the phone and call your mp and you tell them to get on this it
01:06:54.600 doesn't matter if they're liberal or conservative or ndp you tell them this is not the way to go
01:06:58.600 and you can go to our website at taxpayer.com we've got petitions there against both carbon taxes
01:07:03.820 yeah well it's a clear and gross policy failure but it again you know it gets back to the the
01:07:10.820 feeling like you're going to do something uh it was interesting i had some guests on who did the
01:07:14.920 documentary bright green lies uh you know some folks at least are coming and these guys i know
01:07:19.220 some of my listeners were their heads were popping because a couple of the guests i had a whole panel
01:07:22.940 were very very uh stereotypical very left-wing people but and so they started going into some
01:07:29.380 of the social justice things which really caused some veins to pulse but the reality was they were
01:07:33.040 also looking at alternative energy sources and things such as that much like that michael moore
01:07:38.080 went a while back and they're saying look guys this isn't working this stuff isn't actually
01:07:42.240 better than what we're trying to get rid of it's not an improvement and i i enjoyed seeing that
01:07:48.160 even if we were very uh politically you know different from each other at least they were
01:07:52.400 looking at it saying this is what i want to achieve it didn't achieve it so we have to do
01:07:57.120 something different and uh that is what people have to start saying left right and center on
01:08:03.600 these carbon taxes if it's not going to achieve a reduction in emissions there's just no point
01:08:09.120 exactly what are we doing then and this is why the data is very important and so like math is
01:08:14.480 math numbers are numbers go take a look at them and i would encourage anybody to do so if your
01:08:18.960 emissions keep going up that means it's not working because you told us it was going to
01:08:23.120 reduce emissions and this was all about global emissions in the environment so that's not working
01:08:27.600 so we have to do something else so this is why we need to scrap both of these carbon taxes it because
01:08:33.360 it's not helping the environment anyway and it's just costing us more and more money and just think
01:08:37.840 if folks had that money in their pockets they'd be able to perhaps afford a car that was more
01:08:43.680 energy efficient maybe they'd be able to afford insulation to better help their homes but frankly
01:08:48.960 Most people I know, I don't know about you, they try their very best anyway, even with the money
01:08:53.680 they do have. I don't know anybody who just grabs a barrel of oil and burns it in their backyard
01:08:58.960 for fun. Like people don't do that. People are usually quite energy conscious and they're quite
01:09:04.480 environmentally conscious. You know, Canadians generally are very much so on both fronts,
01:09:09.120 but it's not working and it's costing us a ton of dough. So stop doing this. You know, 0.59
01:09:14.400 the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.
01:09:18.480 well we need to stop being insane yeah well you're right most people want to do what they feel is the
01:09:23.760 right thing but they're getting bad leadership sometimes and uh i'll finish with an analogy of
01:09:28.400 one of my favorites of something that's happened in calgary and i think it's still happening you
01:09:31.200 know we brought in every city's doing it the blue bins the green bins the brown bins the rainbow
01:09:34.640 bins i don't know there's so many bins now i can barely keep track anymore what i'm supposed to
01:09:37.680 separate but they began with the uh recycling and and uh they've said no put everything into
01:09:44.000 the one bin we'll keep it simple and we're going to have people paid we're going to go and sort
01:09:47.440 all this and they're going to recycle it and again they're going to save all the fluffy bunnies and
01:09:50.720 we put all our jam jars and everything into that the glass was the main one it all went in there
01:09:55.760 and it was like years into it and it came out that okay they've been washing it and separating
01:10:02.400 it and sorting it and crushing it into this powder but nobody wants it and they've got this
01:10:07.360 mountain of glass they had a mountain at the calgary city dump of this powdered glass like it
01:10:11.680 was thousands of tons of this stuff because they didn't know what else to do with it they've
01:10:16.640 separated it they've cleaned it but there's actually no market for it and i wrote a piece
01:10:21.600 on it because it just floored me and this was bureaucracy at its best they came up with this
01:10:25.920 paper and said we figured it out we could take it since it's already at the landfill and this is
01:10:30.240 being smart and we can use it for filling the roads before we build them to get around the landfill
01:10:36.400 so in other words you're going to bury it at the landfill why didn't we just throw it in the garbage
01:10:41.680 in the first place laughing but you gotta laugh or cry sometimes yeah i know but that's the truth
01:10:47.120 of it and you know what it it's not you know i don't want to get on the case of the people who
01:10:52.160 took the labels off their jars and rinsed them out and separated them and put them in those bins they
01:10:56.640 really thought they were doing a better thing realistically there was more energy burned because
01:11:00.480 they had to be washed they had to be crushed and all of that and in the end they still ended up
01:11:06.400 just having to be buried anyways we would have actually done more for the planet i just sticking
01:11:10.720 it straight underground to begin with but again the feeling for feeling green is sometimes more
01:11:16.880 important than being green hopefully we can change a bit of that because people mean well and if they
01:11:21.280 can get the right means in front of them they will do the right thing for the most part so the carbon
01:11:26.720 tax isn't the right means so let's get rid of that and move on to more productive means so
01:11:30.320 thank you guys at the taxpayers federation so much for keeping to point these things out and
01:11:34.640 we'll keep pushing those reality checks and i think eventually we'll get better government it's
01:11:38.320 It's just a matter of how broke we've got to get first.
01:11:40.260 Thank you so much. We'll keep trying to use facts to change people's feelings.
01:11:44.560 Thanks, Chris. And you're at taxpayer.com is it? You betcha.
01:11:47.620 All right. I'm sure we'll be chatting again sometime soon. Take care.
01:11:54.680 Okay. As I said before, I always love getting the taxpayer folks on.
01:11:59.740 I got Chris to give that BC perspective. Franco has been on quite regularly.
01:12:04.160 Teresano. He's actually taking it on himself. He's going to be heading to Ottawa. He's the
01:12:09.820 federal director now. I'm sure we'll still be talking to him. He'll have bigger issues to take
01:12:13.760 on. And boy, there's a sacrifice, having to leave the West to get over there to expose things in
01:12:20.200 Ottawa. Ottawa is actually a beautiful city, but look at all those bureaucrats and weenies he's
01:12:23.720 going to have to deal with. He's going to be earning every dollar he does, that's for sure.
01:12:27.920 I just thought I'd go through a couple of comments. Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't catch this
01:12:31.940 when Peter before Chris was gone, but if your average family of four is only 250,000 debt by
01:12:37.520 2024 plus 75,000 for provincial debt, I can't confirm that. Sorry, I should have grabbed Chris
01:12:43.520 before I got here, but it sounds about right, and it's only growing. The debt load is just insane.
01:12:50.740 The private debt load is another frightening area, actually, with businesses, things such as that,
01:12:55.560 that are taking on. Lee just put a message. He's in the waiting room there. Go to the
01:13:02.360 debtclock.ca to find out. Yeah. And you can kind of break it down and break down your
01:13:05.920 provincial things. That's another one of the great things that the Taxpayers Federation
01:13:09.880 has done for us is showing those debt load that we're taking on. Because I think people
01:13:15.080 don't imagine, they just don't understand how massive that debt that we're sitting on
01:13:20.800 So Lee now, I mentioned at the top of the show, those who weren't there at that point, I'm gonna find this. He has been, where are we? Aha, there we go. Fine, $2,800 reporting on Regina's freedom rally. Yes, apparently it is illegal for the press to report on anti-lockdown protest rallies, discussions, things such as that.
01:13:47.740 got swept up in the works. So I'm bringing on the now criminal Lee Harding. Thanks very much for
01:13:53.940 joining me, Lee. It's an interesting story there. Thank you for the best intro ever. The now criminal
01:14:01.460 Lee Harding. Best ever. I should do it, Kevin. You haven't been convicted yet. Well, no, not yet.
01:14:08.480 Well, mind you, we're in an environment now where you're pretty much guilty until proven innocent
01:14:12.940 instead of the other way around. That's why I think a lot of these people were out here,
01:14:17.060 was ever seeing an end to our basic freedoms on the horizon. And that's worth covering. Absolutely.
01:14:25.500 Yeah, well, I mean, people need to push back. I mean, that's why every modern charter of rights,
01:14:32.140 constitution, those sorts of things that every developed country has, there's a number of things
01:14:35.620 that are essential freedoms that are always packed into those. Expression, association,
01:14:41.500 speech, you know, these things are all critical and they're all being pushed in and, you know,
01:14:47.180 pushed back on and crushed a bit with these pandemic restrictions. They're using section
01:14:51.280 one of the charter as a justification to kind of set these rights aside right now. I think we're
01:14:55.360 going to be discussing for a lot of years and whether they were justified in doing so. But
01:14:58.820 another one is free press. So how did you get swept up in the bunch when you were just there
01:15:05.060 to cover it rather than, you know, I imagine you weren't standing on the stage, you know,
01:15:08.840 waving a sign and giving speeches or anything. No, no. Who knows? They might have me on stage
01:15:14.280 if there's a next time just to tell the story of how far things are getting. But no, I wasn't there
01:15:18.420 to do that at all. And I haven't been a groupie for these things. I mean, they've had rallies
01:15:23.000 almost weekly for months and months. I went to one casually last summer. My friend said,
01:15:28.540 hey, you want to go see it? Sure. Let's see what's happening. Well, there was more people
01:15:32.140 that particular day in the summer who were celebrating Mohammed's grandson and acknowledging
01:15:38.160 him in in his principles and whatnot at the legislature steps that day i went when chris
01:15:43.680 sky was there i wrote an article on that and i had this was a very good opportunity to talk to
01:15:49.500 some people this particular rally because maxine bernier was there laurel and tyler thompson was
01:15:54.320 there uh art palowski was supposed to be there and he got arrested on the highway there before
01:16:00.000 that he could get over. And Mark Friesen, who is a PPC candidate, who has a YouTube channel in his
01:16:08.180 own right. And there were some others. And what better opportunity? So that's why I was there.
01:16:14.720 And what happened was I was following the entourage of speakers out to their vehicle
01:16:22.840 where they were going to go to the next event. So I was still asking questions, talking to them in
01:16:28.240 the parking lot okay it's time to go and then the police showed up and gave them tickets and
01:16:34.860 laura lynn gave the police officer writing her up a little lesson on some other ways to treat
01:16:40.640 corona and why this was overblown i don't know if he was listening or not he at the end of it said
01:16:45.940 i was surprised you got that out it was almost in one breath then uh the uh you know bernier said uh
01:16:51.980 i'm happy to get this ticket i'm fighting for canada and i'm going to put this in my office
01:16:56.780 wall so he did that and then i said i'm a member of the press are you going to ticket me as well
01:17:04.380 i said well you might not want to go back to the park there uh you know on your way home
01:17:10.620 well i was walking by the park and then i heard a rapper uh from the stage and i used to freestyle
01:17:16.620 and battle and all that kind of stuff and this is someone i wanted to talk to so when the performance
01:17:22.380 was done. I went back. I made sure I didn't miss him. Talked to him for an interview. We got him
01:17:28.960 on the walkway out for a picture. We were walking out of the park and that's when the police
01:17:34.120 arrested him. Well, not arrested, but ticketed him and myself. And he was quite happy to get a
01:17:41.320 ticket. He was a martyr for the cause. And of course, it never hurt a rapper to be in an
01:17:46.360 altercation with the police. I mean, that sounds like street cred to me. So he was of a different
01:17:52.620 attitude of that. I, you know, was not looking to get a ticket. I was not looking to be a martyr
01:17:58.380 for the cause. And I think $2,800 hurts just about everybody but Bill Gates. But it, you know,
01:18:06.380 it's not like I'm flush with cash either. And so, you know, I didn't really need that. But
01:18:12.040 It's a sign of the times.
01:18:13.560 I mean, I, the policeman, he, I said, no, I'm here doing interviews.
01:18:17.140 That's why I'm here.
01:18:18.980 And he says, well, can you show me your press credentials?
01:18:21.900 Well, do you think an illegal event issues press credentials?
01:18:24.940 No.
01:18:25.640 So I showed him my portfolio for Western Standard and for another organization that I write for.
01:18:32.780 And he says, why weren't you wearing your mask?
01:18:34.920 Why weren't you social distancing?
01:18:36.880 Well, that's completely irrelevant to an outdoor gathering.
01:18:39.580 I mean, it's the 11th person makes everyone liable to a $10,000 fine.
01:18:45.860 So anyway, you wrote me up, and the maximum fine has been increased to $10,000,
01:18:52.920 but they have not used any of those $10,000 fines yet.
01:18:57.100 This whole thing is so political.
01:18:59.780 What's remarkable was in advance of this very important rally,
01:19:03.980 they increased the fines from $2,800 to $10,000, the maximum fines.
01:19:09.220 And then I did a story for Western Standard on Saskatchewan's Queen of Fines, which is Tamara Lavoie.
01:19:16.400 And she says, I don't care what these fines are, whether they're $2,800, $10,000, they're illegal, and they're not going to stop me.
01:19:24.720 So then I think they decided, well, let's not make any martyrs of people by actually using this $10,000 fine.
01:19:29.920 And while this rally was going on, on a Saturday afternoon, that's when the premier decided that they were going to announce that the public gathering limits were going to be 150 instead of just 10.
01:19:44.440 So at the same time, they're saying, well, in three weeks, 150 will be fine.
01:19:47.900 But today, the 11th one is criminal.
01:19:50.960 You know, they're announcing this.
01:19:52.120 This is a very political endeavor that's going on here.
01:19:56.460 This is not about medicine.
01:19:58.100 It's not about science.
01:19:59.300 And to see the JCCF in this last week bring forward some very damning evidence about the PCR test is very significant, too, because they've been cycling them at 40 and there's still a substantial amount of errors, even at a lower amount.
01:20:18.980 and the PCR test founder, when he was still alive, he said, they're misusing my test. And
01:20:25.380 he also had some very damning words about Anthony Fauci. And he says, these people have their own
01:20:29.840 agenda. They make up their own rules as they go. And he says, it's not the agenda that we would
01:20:34.500 want, given that our tax dollars in some way go to them to pay for our health. So there's lots
01:20:40.220 rotten in the state of Denmark, as they might say. Yeah, well, it's Saskatchewan's numbers.
01:20:46.320 that you're not in as dire a condition as Alberta's been lately, and Alberta has actually
01:20:51.340 plateaued and seems to be stabilizing. Thankfully, you know, the deaths are way, way down, and we're
01:20:56.340 seeing that everywhere. You know, that's a separate debate as to why and things such as that, but
01:21:00.980 I mean, the crackdowns seem excessively harsh out there when you guys really haven't had as much of
01:21:07.000 a problem with the infections on the go anyways. Yeah, it's all about crushing a movement, really,
01:21:12.880 And it really surprises me.
01:21:15.100 I mean, the first reports in the Leader Post about this gathering, oh, there were very few people.
01:21:19.380 There were 16 people who were gathered.
01:21:21.340 Really?
01:21:22.440 Well, it said there were 16 people who were ticketed.
01:21:24.720 And they showed a picture that from the way it was framed, looked like there was not that many people there.
01:21:29.980 Well, you know, we gave coverage to it and showed that there were hundreds and showed the fact that the Leader Post had lied.
01:21:35.100 And one of my commentaries on this.
01:21:37.360 And in the one sense, I've heard them estimate, oh, there's about 200 there.
01:21:41.760 I think there was more than that. I know Bernier thought there was more like 500 there.
01:21:45.860 So there's, you know, they're trying to say that this is a small group of people, that this is fringe.
01:21:50.600 And then the way that it's being covered, say, you know, really cast these people as kooks.
01:21:55.080 I mean, this morning, the article I wrote on Nathan Linchuck, which, again, would not have even happened if I hadn't gone to this event.
01:22:02.300 The Saskatoon policeman who basically left the force over this because, oh, my gosh, he took his children to a children's rally,
01:22:09.580 a freedom rally where there was oh no a clown and bubbles in a hula hoop and the mayor is calling
01:22:16.060 this you know insane super spreader event blah blah blah and you know uh linchuk is looking at
01:22:23.820 it going you know if you're gonna chastise me for bringing my kids to a an event in the park i i'm
01:22:32.300 i'm out you're not gonna have a hearing and cast me as the bad guy why did you do this
01:22:37.340 And plus, he says, if I've got my fellow cops that are taking pictures of me,
01:22:41.380 hanging them into my bosses, not talking to me first and whatnot,
01:22:45.060 and then doing that, he says, trust is a lot as being a policeman.
01:22:48.600 And you don't have trust in your fellow officers or the trust of your fellow officers.
01:22:53.440 It's already over.
01:22:54.360 So he was a person of principle.
01:22:56.640 He says, I can't look my kids in the eye because he says,
01:22:59.180 we could have communism here in a few years or sooner.
01:23:02.060 And when they look at me and say, Dad, why didn't you do something?
01:23:05.480 So, you know, he's not looking for fame either.
01:23:08.500 He says, I'm not a gifted public speaker.
01:23:11.300 He said, I'm uncomfortable doing these things.
01:23:15.040 But he says somebody has to stand up. 0.74
01:23:17.840 But you look in the media, in the mainstream media, and he's basically being cast as a kook.
01:23:23.120 You know, oh, my gosh, one of those people, one of those people fought, you know, whatever. 0.89
01:23:26.700 But never framed in a way where, you know, you can fully appreciate what it is and why he's doing it.
01:23:33.560 So I shouldn't say that.
01:23:34.820 I think there was a time later, about a week later, or two weeks after his resignation, where they did try to give him some air.
01:23:42.000 But I think there's this consciousness in the back of the mainstream media mind that, you know, if it ever ends up being that this article is enough to actually sway someone from not being a skeptic to being someone who's sympathetic to one of these protesters, well, maybe that's going too far.
01:24:00.560 So, you know, there's always a limit as to how they will frame something, how they will look at it.
01:24:06.620 And so I think people, we really need a discerning public.
01:24:10.540 And unfortunately, it's almost like the They Live movie where in 1988 or around there where Rowdy Roddy Piper, he has these glasses.
01:24:19.160 And with these glasses, he can see through the signal that is blinding people.
01:24:24.980 And so he's seeing reality through a whole new lens.
01:24:27.280 and so he's begging these people put on the glasses put on the glasses and his friend won't
01:24:32.420 do it and he thinks uh you know his his friend's a murderer and so they have this fight and
01:24:38.340 basically he forces these glasses on him where a person can finally see and i find with so many
01:24:44.260 issues around this it's like that whether it's uh risks of the vaccines whether it's uh just
01:24:49.540 you know social distancing and whatnot and i see these people that are otherwise intelligent
01:24:53.820 posting, why don't people just listen to the science? It's so clear. Our authorities are
01:24:57.880 clear. Well, our authorities might be all singing from the same hymn book, but that doesn't mean
01:25:02.320 that it's the right tune. No, and we've turned people against each other, and that's one of the
01:25:07.800 most distressing things at all, the mobbing, the shaming. You know, an event, yeah, you know,
01:25:13.940 I'm more afraid of clowns than I would be of the COVID at such a thing, particularly when if we
01:25:19.320 want to follow the science, if there's anybody who's at very, very, very little risk of
01:25:23.560 transmission or attaining or getting harm from COVID, it's children. We should be thankful for
01:25:29.380 that. As far as bugs go, I mean, if there's anything we want to save, it's our children.
01:25:33.360 So we've been fortunate in that sense and we need to cover these events. I mean, super spreader,
01:25:38.180 there's a term they love throwing out there all the time. When we were at the rodeo
01:25:41.220 almost two weeks ago tomorrow, well, two weeks ago tomorrow, everybody's been saying, wait two
01:25:46.380 weeks, wait two weeks. Well, Dave Naylor has been in touch with Alberta Health Services and the
01:25:51.340 amount of cases from our super spreader event remains at zero. It's a goose egg, not a single
01:25:57.100 one. We're contact tracing. People are out there. They're looking, look, if that rodeo is going to
01:26:01.140 spread it, we would have known it by now. It didn't happen. It didn't happen when Houston
01:26:06.240 had a baseball game. It didn't happen when the Super Bowl happened. It didn't happen when people
01:26:09.780 got together at Sylvan Lake in Alberta. But what we do see happening, we had that, you might have
01:26:15.140 seen it in the standard, a student from Olds College, it was found that she was at the rodeo
01:26:19.780 and they were actually threatening her ability to finish her classes. Thankfully, that turned
01:26:23.380 around when the Western Standard reported on it. We saw a couple of nurses that, again, social media
01:26:28.420 police, self-appointed police folks outed them and reported them to Alberta Health Service saying,
01:26:34.180 these are people who attended the rodeo, they've been put at risk, they should be fired, they should 0.96
01:26:36.820 be courted, they should be shot, they should be skinned, whatever else. It depends on which 0.99
01:26:40.260 hysteric lunatic you're listening to online was pushing these things, but we've really turned 0.60
01:26:46.100 ourselves into this mob, but we're at each other's throats. I mean, and the state is feeding that and 0.89
01:26:52.260 it's really distressing. And that's why we need press to report on these events to show they
01:26:55.880 aren't dangerous. They aren't killing people. They aren't necessarily that insane. I mean,
01:26:58.720 there's a handful of lunatics there always will be, but for the most part, they're just concerned
01:27:02.360 people. And when you're charging press for reporting on that, that's a really scary precedent.
01:27:07.600 Oh, I agree with that. You know, I think this is new territory. And when you look at what they did
01:27:12.800 to rebel news i mean where they've they're renting a houseboat from airbnb for the reporters out
01:27:18.220 there in mid-april and our 50 police that are surrounding this houseboat and not letting anyone
01:27:24.120 in or out and then arresting david menzies and saying well we'll we'll release him if you let
01:27:28.600 us go through your stuff uh that's that's just a whole new level and we knew that montreal was a
01:27:34.580 city of corruption but this is this is the next level and i don't know it's a sign of the times
01:27:40.580 really so you know linchuck gets it he's like look if we keep going the direction we're going
01:27:45.780 where are we going to end up and if anyone thinks this is still about the disease i encourage them
01:27:50.980 to think a lot more broadly than that because it's a lot like climate change i mean we just heard a
01:27:55.860 bunch of facts where none of the things are really working the measures that they're doing the
01:28:00.980 measures are a big pretense it's ending up in the dump so what is this all of the all of this about
01:28:06.580 in the environmental movement is really actually about the environment or is the environment
01:28:11.060 a specific means to an end to get certain kind of regulations and controls a mentality of scarcity
01:28:16.260 etc into the public mind so yeah i mean people need to wake up and open their eyes a bit and
01:28:24.180 really you know a lot of people who are concerned say well how can we stop this and i do think that's
01:28:29.140 a very important question and i think that's the selfless question but i think there's other ways
01:28:34.260 that we need to start looking at this and that is if if Canada is going to head
01:28:38.520 on this road that we and we can't stop it is it time to move is it time to leave 0.90
01:28:42.360 Canada like the some of the Mennonites did when they could see the Bolshevik 1.00
01:28:46.740 Revolution where it was going to end up and they came to Canada generations ago 0.98
01:28:50.400 or like Art Pawlowski says well you know I came in 1995 and they promised
01:28:55.180 freedom here and it's not looking like that right now and I know where this can
01:28:59.220 end up because I've seen it I grew up in it so yeah I mean it is concerning I
01:29:03.780 think one thing people can do because the food prices have gone up and i don't think we've seen
01:29:08.740 the end of that is if you are any non-perishable food that you want you should be buying it right
01:29:14.180 now because if there's 10 or 12 increase in inflation by the end of the year well you just
01:29:19.460 save yourself 10 at the best uh you know at at the worst case scenario and the best benefit
01:29:25.940 uh it's going to be hard to get out there and and there'll be food shortages but at the worst
01:29:29.940 you know, you save yourself 10%. Yeah, you've got some shelf space that all got taken up with some
01:29:35.540 cans of food, but you're going to eat it. So I think there's certain things that people can do
01:29:39.260 right now to prepare for worst case scenarios, but it's certainly time to speak up. And I think
01:29:45.460 people need to, when they're looking at things, stop Googling them and start looking them up on
01:29:51.280 DuckDuckGo. There was one video where you can take it or leave it, but Dr. Sherry Tenpenny talked
01:29:57.480 about eight ways the MRNA vax can kill you.
01:30:00.440 I don't know if it's going to kill you.
01:30:01.680 It's going to, it could be bad for immunity instead of better.
01:30:05.540 But if you look that up on Google, you can't even find it.
01:30:08.940 And if you look it up on DuckDuckGo, you can see a whole screen full of that video exactly as it is.
01:30:16.880 So people are being protected, quote unquote, from certain information. 0.99
01:30:22.880 And the only information we see about these doctors is that they're quacks and kooks, 1.00
01:30:26.940 except we see that they're not. 1.00
01:30:28.100 They're actually well-qualified.
01:30:29.200 They have a different opinion, 0.99
01:30:30.480 but they've become the heretics. 0.99
01:30:32.180 They've become the Galileos, 0.89
01:30:33.860 the Copernicus's of our time,
01:30:37.000 where there's a church of sorts
01:30:39.140 that doesn't want that opinion out there,
01:30:41.320 and they will persecute and brand, 0.52
01:30:43.080 and brand is a heretic, 0.81
01:30:45.320 and burn at the stake almost, 0.97
01:30:47.420 if they could, 0.94
01:30:48.440 anyone who has a different opinion.
01:30:51.200 Yeah, well, let's pivot a bit, actually.
01:30:52.980 I'll get to one of your other stories,
01:30:54.220 since you're talking about that,
01:30:55.020 and cost of living,
01:30:55.860 and how it's going to go up.
01:30:56.700 So I was talking again with Chris Sims of the Taxpayers Federation earlier, and part of what they're putting out was how carbon taxes aren't actually reducing emissions.
01:31:05.760 So, again, it's just a tax grab.
01:31:07.200 They're not actually having any impact.
01:31:09.120 You wrote recently, though, as well, carbon taxes and the impact on agricultural producers, because it's an area people are thinking about when they're filling up to go to the soccer game or something, but they're forgetting these get applied all over the place.
01:31:20.560 And that trickles all the way down to you as a consumer, no matter which way you go about it.
01:31:24.400 And it's really putting pressure on our ag community.
01:31:27.580 Can you expand a bit on your article there?
01:31:29.940 Well, there's a few things going on there.
01:31:32.080 Yes, I mean, there are signs, first of all, with the initial thing here that the prices are going up.
01:31:37.040 Now, when we saw the thing that was happening in 2008 when there was a massive injection of government money,
01:31:44.020 it didn't really trickle into the economy for various reasons.
01:31:48.260 And the Bank of Canada wound that down quite quickly to get its balance sheets back to normal.
01:31:53.260 Well, this time around, we're not seeing that. We're already seeing the early signs of inflation.
01:31:57.780 And the debate amongst economists is really, when is it going to hit?
01:32:01.660 And that's another reason to, again, spend, except maybe on lumber right now, because it's a crazy price.
01:32:07.320 But if you know you're going to spend it in the next year, you better spend it now.
01:32:10.860 Now, with regards to the carbon tax on agricultural matters, yeah, I mean, it's going to be another thing that drives up the cost.
01:32:19.640 And talking to Trevor Tombaugh or other economists about this, the fact that you have a carbon tax, even if they rebate it all back, let alone do Aaron O'Toole's dumb idea of a points program.
01:32:30.600 But even if you rebate it all back, it does affect the economy.
01:32:33.480 And so agricultural producers have very large input costs.
01:32:38.060 You know, it costs a lot to put in gas or diesel in your tractor.
01:32:43.060 and they have lots of input costs with greenhouses for those who are using them and other ways that
01:32:52.720 even with feed and whatnot, it costs. So they are, as a producer, absorbing a lot of these
01:33:00.340 consumption taxes on carbon, basically. So yeah, I mean, it's a concern for them and they are trying
01:33:06.780 to exempt in any way that they can through the agriculture carbon alliance they are trying to
01:33:13.740 lobby the government to acknowledge the carbon sinks that are in their land which the government
01:33:21.180 is doing for the ones since 2017 but again the more conscientious or or maybe foreseeing farmers
01:33:27.420 that did it before then they're not getting any credit for it so they want it there's a conservative
01:33:32.140 of bill that's going to exempt some of that if it passes, but they want to see exemptions from
01:33:36.940 carbon tax even further, not just on their fuel, but on other input costs. So, I mean, good luck to
01:33:42.700 them. One of the problems that John Robson has seen, who is the history professor at Augustine
01:33:48.340 College, but also has a forum for talking about climate change, he says, as soon as you concede
01:33:53.940 the argument on climate change, you really have conceded the carbon tax. As soon as you say it's
01:33:59.780 this man-made contribution that is the crucial and major factor in worldwide ecology and climate
01:34:06.300 change then he says you know it's very hard to have the moral argument against a carbon tax and
01:34:10.560 he says the fact that neither the conservatives nor most groups are willing to debate in that
01:34:16.860 which again part of the reason they don't is is there is this uh sort of um the conformist kind
01:34:23.340 of almost religious belief that this is man-made climate change and and again if you say anything
01:34:29.440 or present any evidence contrary to that, the cancel culture says you shouldn't.
01:34:33.900 So you can't even make that argument.
01:34:35.920 So, of course, if you have arguments you can't make, you have conclusions you can't refute
01:34:41.020 because you're not allowed to.
01:34:42.300 So, yeah, I mean, it's a problem.
01:34:44.800 And one of the things that I did, I'm also a research associate for the Frontier Center
01:34:50.000 of Public Policy.
01:34:51.400 And last year, I looked at everything that Tides Foundation is funding.
01:34:55.920 And it's pretty stark when you look at this because it's not just oil and gas and pipelines.
01:35:00.860 It's every aspect of the resource sector, including forestry and agriculture.
01:35:07.840 So this is going to hamper everything that Canada produces.
01:35:12.600 And we are a resource-based economy.
01:35:14.900 So if you wipe that out, I'm not sure what you have left.
01:35:17.740 You have a service economy and you might have some high tech, but it's not like we keep all the brightest minds either.
01:35:23.860 and with the math curriculum, the way it is in some of these provinces, I don't even know if
01:35:28.520 our kids are going to be able to add two plus two. Yeah, well, and we're heading into, there's no
01:35:34.200 doubt about it. I mean, we're in hard times. We're heading for harder times. I mean, we've put
01:35:38.420 everything on the credit cards to get through this year. It's going to lead to inflation. It's
01:35:42.240 going to lead to other challenges. I mean, a great number of businesses have gone out of business
01:35:46.640 and they won't be coming back. Something I'm exploring more, but a large number of businesses
01:35:51.980 that are open right now, they're hanging in there only because of the current subsidies.
01:35:55.780 They're getting wage subsidies. They're getting rent subsidies. But when that comes to an end,
01:36:00.140 they're shuttering their doors too. So we're going to have unemployment. We're going to have
01:36:03.160 closed businesses, massive government debt, inflation. I know I'm just sounding like the
01:36:09.500 apocalypse is coming, but this is scary stuff and we've got to pay attention. And so we should be
01:36:14.540 looking to what can we do domestically to keep that cost of living down while we recover? What
01:36:19.460 can we do to make it affordable? And of course, energy ties into everything. So I'm tying into,
01:36:24.820 you'd written recently on line five. Now Gretchen Whitmer, speaking of lunatic 0.97
01:36:28.460 environmentalists, the governor of Michigan, she looks very dedicated to shutting that line down 1.00
01:36:36.240 by any means. The environmentalists are still lined up behind her. They're starting to find 0.98
01:36:40.340 native activists to put at the front of the line. It's turned into a battleground. You wrote recently
01:36:45.900 on the impacts of a line five shutdown and it's going to impact a lot of us i mean east and west
01:36:51.740 some people are kind of looking forward to it in a sense i gotta admit i've said a little bit of it
01:36:55.500 just for a reality check you know guys this is what happens when you shut down your domestic
01:36:59.660 ability because that's what we're doing but all the same it's going to have a very big impact on
01:37:03.820 a lot of people and you wrote on that can you tell us a little bit more about that oh well yeah
01:37:08.940 you know it's interesting talking to dan mctee the former liberal mp who's now in charge of
01:37:13.980 Canadians for Affordable Energy, which he founded. He said, I have been trying to warn people about
01:37:18.260 this for years. And he says, nobody wanted to pay attention to me until just recently at the 11th
01:37:23.640 hour when we could lose everything. Oh, is this a public issue? Yes, it is. He says, if we'd have
01:37:28.980 had Energy East approved, it wouldn't have been so bad. You know, they'd be much closer by now.
01:37:34.380 Well, actually, if it had been approved in the early stages, it would have been done by now.
01:37:38.580 But he says, if we had that, we wouldn't have all our eggs in one basket. But as it is,
01:37:42.860 you've got a 45 percent loss to Ontario's fuel supply and its refinery supply if line five gets
01:37:50.420 shut down and also for Quebec it's about the same numbers line five feeds into line nine which goes
01:37:55.440 to Quebec and some of the western independence people like Barry Cooper who I enjoy talking to
01:38:02.380 at the University of Calgary he says you know the the worst damages does the better in a perverse way
01:38:07.880 for the east to understand the west's pain when it just keeps shutting down pipelines because
01:38:12.680 you can have this imaginary economy where you don't need any fossil fuels and pipelines are bad
01:38:17.420 and oil is bad but as soon as you see the prices triple which some analysts say could actually
01:38:23.080 happen if line five was shut down as soon as that happens boy you know they're going to really really
01:38:27.860 be missing that fossil fuel and realize that they cannot live without it and maybe they should not
01:38:31.920 have been so smug but this is bad for michigan ohio pennsylvania because line five provides a
01:38:38.280 lot for them as well it takes a lot of the western oil mostly from us actually and then it'll start
01:38:44.940 out at the western edge of the Great Lakes and then it heads through mostly under the ground
01:38:52.160 but there's about a four mile stretch where it goes through the Strait of Mackinac and then it
01:38:58.200 it comes out so they want to eventually put this in a concrete corridor so they're still working
01:39:04.540 on that. But in the meantime, Whitmer wants to shut it down. And the latest thing she did
01:39:08.220 just on Wednesday was to say, well, if this continues, as far as we're concerned, it's
01:39:13.360 illegal now. And we will just basically take away all revenue from Enbridge from any money it makes
01:39:19.240 from now on. So this is somebody who is basically putting the poison pill to their own economy
01:39:23.960 without good reason. And there hasn't been, I mean, there was a couple of times where anchors
01:39:28.880 and different things hit this pipeline in 2018 and 2019, didn't cause any harm, but she's very
01:39:37.580 alarmist and she's disturbing. This is the same woman who a year ago banned seeds from being sold
01:39:43.420 in stores because of Corona, you know, so you couldn't plant your garden. So people don't like 0.74
01:39:47.740 her. And again, she's not for the people. And we're seeing far too much of this is there are 0.98
01:39:51.740 people in government right now, whether they're in Calgary, whether they're in Ottawa, whether
01:39:56.020 there in Lansing, Michigan or wherever their capital is that are not for the people. And so
01:40:01.380 what are the people going to do? Just sit and take it. Well, yeah, a lot of this is based on a lie.
01:40:06.380 And the thing is, one has to look at somebody like Gretchen Whitmer and there's a lot of Gretchen 0.83
01:40:10.140 Whitmers out there, but she's an ideologue. And unfortunately with an ideologue, you can't
01:40:14.480 reason with them. And you know, the lie that's being exposed is that as you pointed out,
01:40:20.400 there's been a couple of anchor strikes. It got people concerned. Okay, fair enough. It is a
01:40:23.820 concern. You wouldn't want something that moves half a million barrels of fuel a day to suddenly
01:40:27.820 start leaking into the Great Lakes. So let's address this. And Enbridge did. They said,
01:40:32.360 we are going to case it in concrete. We're going to upgrade it. This thing ran safely for nearly
01:40:36.680 70 years, but you know what? There's a risk presenting itself and we are going to tunnel
01:40:41.400 and change that so that that risk doesn't present itself. Now, Whitmer knows this,
01:40:46.880 but the problem she has, the reality, and again, this gets back to the lie and the idealism,
01:40:51.460 is that if they do that, then that pipe will run for another 50 to 70 years. And that's what she
01:40:57.260 doesn't want. It's that anti-petroleum fanaticism that we just have to shut down this infrastructure 0.99
01:41:03.880 using any excuse and means possible. And then somehow, you know, unicorn piss will appear and
01:41:10.260 we will be able to power our homes on it. But, you know, that's where the problem is. And that's
01:41:14.300 where the standoff is. And I don't see, you know, people are saying it's not going to happen. It's
01:41:18.360 not going to happen well i don't see where the intervention is going to come from to change it
01:41:21.700 maybe the american courts will step up but biden's obviously staying way the hell out of this one so
01:41:26.000 what might save people from this well i don't know save yourself or call out of god to save you i
01:41:32.960 really i mean whatever it is it's not going to be the politicians i think that it needs to be the
01:41:37.580 people and um you know it's interesting sometimes you see some cues for the future in some science
01:41:44.060 fiction shows. I've been looking at some of the old episodes of The Outer Limits, and there was
01:41:49.220 this person who was bred in a government facility in the future in a hatchery and was a soldier all
01:41:54.400 of his life, and somehow he went through some anomaly and time traveled back to the past,
01:41:58.740 and so he's learning English better, and he's asking, what is government? What is this? And
01:42:03.740 he said, this is the people who make decisions for us because we let them. Okay, so I thought,
01:42:09.400 wow now there's some social commentary from 1964 that still applies uh this is scary you know we've
01:42:16.360 had a good run in the west for a long time you know we haven't had wars on our shores we we've
01:42:21.300 had democracy and whatnot but i think we need to start looking at the scenarios that happened in
01:42:26.820 nazi germany uh and people are could be saying people like me okay you're on the wrong side of
01:42:32.560 history well if you're in 1933 you're on the wrong side of history but in 1946 you're looking pretty
01:42:37.640 good and i remember reading actually hearing an interview and it was called the blind spot and it
01:42:43.940 was to hitler's secretary she was just taken from a clerical pool in the late for in the towards the
01:42:51.200 end of the war you know 1944 or so and so she was up close with hitler really had no idea what the
01:42:56.040 nazis were about and so she recounted in this interview some of her observations and what was
01:43:01.560 happening at the end in the bunker and kind of the dire mood as the bombs got closer she said after
01:43:06.480 the war she saw a memorial to somebody who spoke out against the nazis a young woman who paid the
01:43:11.960 price for it and she looked at that and she's like wow this girl was my age and somehow she saw it
01:43:18.600 and why didn't i and she was right there with as hitler's secretary and as a woman who was 80 at
01:43:25.400 this interview she said i am just now beginning to forgive myself so you know there's the opportunity
01:43:32.460 for people watching this to see. And I encourage them to look deeper. I really hate the fact that
01:43:38.940 the Saskatchewan government is holding our own children hostage and saying, if you vaccinate
01:43:43.220 70% of them with the COVID shot, well, then we can open things up again. So they are making
01:43:48.360 these people's political pawns. And I've got teenage daughters that this is going to affect
01:43:54.520 if they choose to get this vaccine. And I don't really, you know, have the final say in this
01:44:00.080 in the situation. So I'm concerned for them. And really, when you look at the infection rates for
01:44:05.180 kids, they should not be getting a vaccine that we have developed in record time, a fraction of
01:44:11.000 the record time of any previous vaccine, which is not even actually a vaccine in the traditional
01:44:15.600 sense. They're not working by the methodology of having a weak version of a COVID virus,
01:44:21.240 because it's kind of weak as it is anyway. They're using a completely different kind of
01:44:26.360 methodology. And we're seeing some disturbing side effects in the short term and some in the
01:44:32.720 long term, even by people who've been close to people with the vaccine. Now, this may sound
01:44:36.900 weird if you've never heard it, but there's even people whose menstrual cycles, if they've been
01:44:40.600 near someone with the vaccine, it's all going wonky. We're seeing postmenopausal and prepubescent
01:44:45.780 girls that are having vaginal bleeding that are because of their proximity to someone with the
01:44:51.460 vaccine. But all of these kinds of otherwise normally very disturbing would be made public
01:44:56.560 kind of things. They're being suppressed because it might be causing vaccine hesitancy. And the
01:45:03.300 doctors that speak out about it are getting chastised and threatened with losing their
01:45:07.500 license and silence and this kind of thing. This is communist East Germany kind of tactics.
01:45:12.800 This is terrible. Yeah. And to get back to, you know, as I said, like, I don't think there's
01:45:18.820 anybody as motivated or as horrible in the background as Hitler at this point but the
01:45:22.880 principles are the same and the problem and as you pointed out with your analogy I mean things were 0.88
01:45:26.700 almost easier for for lunatics like him and sickbuggers to pull off what he did your average 0.91
01:45:31.780 German on the ground did not really actually know what was going on in those outside areas they 0.99
01:45:36.920 would they're human they would have been mortified to realize there was such mass extermination I
01:45:41.120 mean there were issues going on you know that's a whole separate show and discussion but what it
01:45:45.720 gets to is the importance of free flow of information and communication among people.
01:45:51.140 We are at one of the most empowered times. Well, we are at the most empowered time of human history
01:45:55.500 for information. I mean, the government is trying its hardest through C10 and through other things
01:46:00.120 to stem the flow of information. And I mean, hey, you know, vaccine concerns, other things,
01:46:08.220 there's debates to be had. Some are right and some are wrong, but the only way to do it is
01:46:12.300 through communication, stifling the voices doesn't aid any of us. We need to keep those
01:46:17.340 communication lines full. And it is distressing to see that the government feels the better way
01:46:21.440 to deal with this is to step on individual rights rather than try and bring it in the open then and
01:46:25.840 make your case. If you're right, make your case and let's debate it. Oh, absolutely. You know,
01:46:31.000 one of the interesting things that when you look deeper at the whole Nazi phenomenon is that when
01:46:36.120 the Cold War ended, those Nazi scientists, well, some of them, they're completely unaccounted for.
01:46:41.060 Some of them went into the United States in Operation Paperclip,
01:46:44.000 and the others went into Russia, and they just kept on going.
01:46:46.880 And so the research that they gained and some of the mentality has seeped into some things.
01:46:53.280 But when I went to Yad Vashem, and if viewers go to fcpp.org and read Lessons I Learned from Yad Vashem,
01:47:01.320 when I went there in 2009, and this is the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem,
01:47:06.000 I had some very deep impressions from talking to the tour guide who was there.
01:47:11.000 And I mean, first of all, when the Jews started to be exterminated, even the Jews, they heard
01:47:15.880 rumors of it, but they couldn't believe it themselves.
01:47:17.880 They could not believe that people in Poland or wherever else would be doing this to them
01:47:22.260 or this be happening in Treblinka, would be happening in these other places.
01:47:26.380 And they actually had to send someone to find out, really, an emissary.
01:47:31.220 And after that, eventually, even though they were half starved by then, they finally decided
01:47:35.360 to break out of the Warsaw Ghetto and, you know, found out that they could.
01:47:40.140 And when you think also of even when you look at the sound of music, I mean, there's a part in there where she says, well, how did you know my dad was on vacation?
01:47:48.680 He says, well, we make it our business to know everything about everybody.
01:47:52.920 Well, this was the very same thing that Wazinski had for he predicted in 1971.
01:48:00.060 He said that the the authorities will the technology will be there for the authorities to know even people's personal habits.
01:48:06.780 And I mean, this is our cell phones.
01:48:08.520 Every app goes out. The app is listening all the time because so you can talk to it to tell it where you should be driving or, you know, Siri, what about blah, blah, blah.
01:48:18.480 And then it'll tell you something. Or if you get a louder with Crowther, you ask it who Jesus Christ was and he'll tell you he was a fictional character.
01:48:27.480 And you ask it who Mohammed was and they'll give you a biography. So, I mean, some of these things are happening. 0.55
01:48:33.060 But she says, remember, she says, this is the tour guide in Yad Vashem.
01:48:36.320 She says, remember, all of this happened in a democracy, right?
01:48:39.920 So if you think that Canada is all great and everything, I mean, Germany was very cultured, but it had economic desperation because of World War I and the reparations put on it. 0.79
01:48:49.260 And that economic desperation led to a Hitler.
01:48:52.660 So if we have economic desperation imposed on us in Canada, and you have people thinking that government tracing and contact tracing and knowing everyone who's related to everyone and everywhere they go, all of a sudden this becomes advantageous somehow. 0.88
01:49:07.280 Well, you add economic desperation to that, and we can have our own Hitler.
01:49:11.140 And I wouldn't call Trudeau a Hitler, but as far as this liberal government is listening to the people, it might as well be a dictatorship because they don't care about us out here, that's for sure.
01:49:21.800 No, we've been spoiled and we always presume that the government's benevolent.
01:49:25.340 It's because for the most part, that's what we've had.
01:49:27.680 But we can't forget that there are people who will take that authority, that ability, those powers,
01:49:33.840 and they will use them for ends that aren't in the interest of the people on the ground.
01:49:38.360 It's a concept that's being lost.
01:49:40.920 That came back with talking actually a bit with Chris Sims.
01:49:43.860 We've given up personal responsibility.
01:49:45.720 We want the government to do everything for us.
01:49:47.280 Anytime we've got a problem, we ask the government to take care of it.
01:49:49.860 In fact, anytime we've got a problem, if the government doesn't take care of it, we blame them for it.
01:49:52.940 I mean, some of it we're telling them to control us.
01:49:56.440 We're telling them to run our lives and we're voluntarily giving away the ability to speak up for ourselves.
01:50:03.440 As you said, Siri is there. It's listening to us. It's sharing that data.
01:50:07.100 But you know what? It wasn't. There was no gun to our head. We bought it. We set it up. We did it.
01:50:11.740 We, you know, gave up our right to that privacy.
01:50:14.740 Every time we ask the government, you're responsible for my health care.
01:50:17.200 you're responsible for my financial well-being you're responsible for the climate well you're
01:50:21.920 empowering them and you're taking all the responsibility away from them yourself and
01:50:26.560 and that's a problem we have as a society and and again my only hope is that that's why i get most
01:50:32.800 worked up when it comes to the freedoms is when they try to control information though that's the
01:50:36.400 only way we can get ourselves out is if we can communicate share the experiences share the
01:50:41.040 happenings report on them as you did reporting and that's where it's so disturbing to see you
01:50:45.280 fined for reporting on an incident and you know and and people getting shut down screamed at
01:50:51.280 canceled for putting out different points of view no throw it all into the mix we've got a lot of
01:50:56.560 smart people we've got a lot of discussion we've got a little discourse and most often not always
01:51:00.960 but most often the best answers will come out in the end rather than trying to control it and
01:51:05.360 control is a scary thing well it is you know and let's okay one of my friends who's otherwise
01:51:12.560 intelligent he's he said this a few months ago he says now i hate this because somebody's going to
01:51:17.920 put a post on here saying that they shouldn't take the vaccines and because of some what some 0.68
01:51:22.720 kook says and then uh grandma's going to be dead and my kids are not going to be able to see their
01:51:27.520 grandma because blah blah blah and i'm thinking whoa okay now wait a second here um first of all
01:51:33.280 you're banking on the fact that these people have nothing good to say uh because you're not listening
01:51:37.760 to them either you're not giving them the time of day and you think they should be censored but the
01:51:41.120 But the other thing is what happened to people making their own decisions based on the information
01:51:45.860 that they encounter?
01:51:47.500 Because we all encounter different information.
01:51:49.280 We judge whether we think that information comes from a source that knows what they're
01:51:53.120 talking about and for good reason.
01:51:54.880 We assess that and then we make our own decisions.
01:51:57.100 So when you control the flow of information, you're starting to control the thoughts of
01:52:03.240 the people, just to leave them the illusion of having a fully informed and reasoned choice
01:52:08.020 when they don't have it anymore.
01:52:09.940 This was the thing, if you read, I always encourage people to read Edward Bernays' 1928
01:52:14.660 book, Propaganda, and you can find it on the website, historyisoweapon.org.
01:52:19.220 But he basically says there, back in the day, when public relations, and he's the father
01:52:24.160 of public relations, but it's in a very infant form back then, and he says, the invisible
01:52:30.800 government of the world is basically people who control the minds of people.
01:52:34.220 Now he wasn't yet, he was hinting at it, but he wasn't really saying this as a council
01:52:37.600 people in the room or anything but he says the propagandists control the world so the the people
01:52:42.400 that make make things cool so that we buy them the people that put the ideas out they're the ones
01:52:47.920 really controlling things and he said even the people that we elect by popular demand it's only 0.74
01:52:52.960 because you had a big campaign to make them that way he was part of the creel commission that got
01:52:57.680 america into world war one woodrow wilson campaigned on the fact that he kept america out of the war
01:53:03.120 in 1916, and then he put America into the war. He put propaganda to work. Censoring the mailing
01:53:09.860 at the post office of the anti-war groups was part of the way of doing it. So here you have
01:53:14.400 a government institution that's used as a mandate of censorship, and people don't even know it.
01:53:19.300 And then all of a sudden, the people are demanding that America enter World War I,
01:53:23.300 even though they just elected someone on the premise that he didn't, you know, and all this
01:53:26.980 goes on. So he said, we realize as governments, they realize that they could propagandize people
01:53:32.920 to some extent against their own will and make them move. And he basically, he was Freud's nephew
01:53:38.100 and he said, we can use the basic human motivations on a mass social scale and use those currents to
01:53:45.580 our advantages. And if you look at some of the things Bernays did, the fact that we eat bacon
01:53:50.060 and eggs for breakfast in the morning is because he had a campaign and he used a poll of doctors
01:53:54.640 to get this result to say that a hearty morning breakfast was better.
01:53:58.980 He got women to smoke because he was hired by a tobacco company.
01:54:03.080 And he did a few public relations events and a few kind of subtler things,
01:54:09.320 even involving the fashions in Paris that would use the color of Lucky Strike cigarettes
01:54:16.520 so that the logo became a cool color.
01:54:19.220 And then women would want to, you know, they'd be more inclined to buy it.
01:54:22.720 I mean, there was a whole bunch of subtleties and things that you never thought would be connected.
01:54:25.900 But if you were to identify them, you would have to be thought of a nut job conspiracy theorist to say that they had anything to do with it.
01:54:32.660 But he propagandized the people and even led a revolution in one of the countries that had taken away some of the interests of Alan Dulles and his brother,
01:54:42.720 who had investments in this company and were losing because of what the new government was doing.
01:54:49.140 And I mean, I encourage people to look at that.
01:54:51.740 there's some good youtube videos on it there's uh the propaganda book and um the same thing is
01:54:57.820 happening today we and and this is a really interesting thing and i know this is a bit of
01:55:02.280 an aside but i think it's important is that what bernet said is he says we could imagine some people
01:55:07.620 who were making the best decisions that were experts in every field but the people wouldn't
01:55:13.020 have it because they insist on this thing on democ called democracy so he says that's where
01:55:17.100 propaganda comes in so his whole premise is we make the people do what we want them to do by
01:55:23.560 propaganda making them believe it's their own idea and this this is so you know what democracy has
01:55:30.120 become is it's almost like when you have the kid that is maybe five years old he doesn't know how
01:55:35.060 to play the video game and he wants to and you hand him a joystick that doesn't do anything and
01:55:39.380 you say hey you're playing too now and they're and they're like and once in a while they go i
01:55:43.300 don't think I'm doing anything. No, no, you're doing great. You're playing great. And you just
01:55:47.240 let him think he's doing something. So, you know, we're the, the propaganda is, is at a high level
01:55:53.820 right now. We have through Google search engines and different techniques that they do. We're more
01:56:01.140 inclined to pick the first thing on the screen and say, whatever our search engine said, that's
01:56:04.900 probably the article I should read. And this has been proven many times through many different
01:56:10.240 studies. So we are, we are getting led, we are getting herded. And then once in a while you get
01:56:15.680 a sheep that wants to run out and, and say that, you know, I don't want to be shepherded in this
01:56:20.720 way. I don't even think these shepherds are doing anything, but leading us to the slaughter.
01:56:24.800 And, you know, you have the other sheep trying to round them up and say, no, don't leave.
01:56:28.080 No, this shepherd is for our good. Well, that's great. It's been quite a
01:56:34.320 discussion that we're getting up against the clock and I appreciate that. And yeah,
01:56:38.000 uh information again it's a double-edged sword you know and it can be abused and taken against
01:56:42.880 us by the state as you said in subtle ways and in direct ways and again my view of it is the
01:56:48.000 the only cure for it is just more access to information and eventually we will we'll figure
01:56:52.480 it out we can have different points of view and hopefully come to uh rational conclusions in the
01:56:58.400 end but we've got to stand up for our rights or they will be taken away from us there's there's
01:57:01.840 no getting around that it happens every time so thanks for having and coming on for such a great
01:57:06.560 chat and thanks for your work out in saskatchewan keeping us up to date on what's happening out
01:57:10.400 there i hope and look forward to hearing that you beat that 2800 fine because uh i'm certain you
01:57:15.760 got better things you could do with that kind of money uh where can we find more information on
01:57:19.920 what you're up to well uh western standard you can click on my name and see everything that i wrote
01:57:26.000 there as well i also write for epic times i'm usually doing three articles for them a week
01:57:30.640 and as well i write commentaries and do the occasional long research thing for frontier
01:57:35.360 Center, which is fcpp.org. I have a YouTube channel that has the logo LeeTV, but the name
01:57:41.360 is Lee Harding. And boy, if you do all that, you're listening to me an awful lot.
01:57:47.420 That's excellent, Lee. I'm sure we'll be talking again soon. I'm looking forward to
01:57:51.640 your future pieces.
01:57:53.040 Oh, well, thank you very much, Corey. I enjoy your show. I think it's important. And I want
01:57:56.620 to say thanks to all the people that are sponsoring Western Standard. And, you know, it makes all
01:58:01.700 the difference because the wages of journalists are not always healthy, but they're healthy for
01:58:08.700 the democracy. And it helps us so much because we are not government-sponsored media at Western
01:58:14.140 Standard. We are here because people believe in us and because we believe that the things we're
01:58:18.900 saying are things that need to be heard. And this is another thing that democracy and media has been
01:58:24.900 really consolidated. There are 90% of the media organizations in North America are controlled
01:58:31.060 by six corporations. And so we, you know, we, we need to have more independent media. We used to
01:58:37.580 have more independent media. And that's part of the reason why we have a controlled message is
01:58:42.240 because we have a controlled media. Right on. Thanks Lee. And we won't be letting ourselves
01:58:47.540 be controlled. Oops. Sorry. Cut them off here, there, but yeah. And Lee got ahead to what I was
01:58:54.600 going to get at and just, we got to make the plug and we do have to remind everybody and thank you
01:58:59.080 all who are watching thanks to those people who've been sponsoring us you know we we can use
01:59:04.120 advertising on these shows we can support local businesses through that promote our local uh
01:59:09.400 services products things like that and people need to you know subscribe it helps us we aren't
01:59:13.720 getting tax dollars like the cbc we aren't getting money like the print publications from the federal
01:59:18.440 government we are staying independent and that allows us you can bet lee wouldn't be allowed to
01:59:23.240 even talk about those sorts of things if we were with the cbc or if we're getting funding from the
01:59:27.880 government because editors will be saying, no, we're too afraid to go into those subjects.
01:59:30.760 Let's stay away from it. Don't touch it even. We're not going to be like that. We're not
01:59:35.400 interested in reporting like that and being told what we can say or what we can't say.
01:59:40.280 So that makes, we're still reliant. We're relying on you guys. We're relying on those subscriptions.
01:59:44.760 I know some people got a little upset still over the paywall and I know, but there are a number of
01:59:49.480 means you can sign up and you get a number of free articles and publications and things like that.
01:59:55.080 and if you subscribe to the newsletter and again the analogy i use is you know we never batted an
02:00:00.040 eye uh 15 years ago 20 years ago on spending 15 20 bucks a month for a newspaper subscription and 0.71
02:00:06.040 you got stuck with all those darn newspapers stacking up in your place that you had to get
02:00:08.920 rid of 10 bucks a month for all this content you're getting from the western standard breaking things 0.97
02:00:13.480 like the caucus uh insanity of yesterday uh lee reporting from those those those protests in
02:00:20.040 in Saskatchewan that you never hear of, Nathan Gita talking out of Prince George in BC. We're
02:00:24.800 really spreading out there. Linda Silbodian's writing in Manitoba. We're truly becoming a
02:00:29.320 Western publication. It's because so many people have been signing up. So thank you and thanks
02:00:33.860 for supporting a free press. I'll be back on Monday. I haven't lined up my guests for it yet,
02:00:39.240 but I'm certain I'll find some interesting people to talk to. If not, you'll be stuck listening to
02:00:42.820 me for a while, but I'm sure I'll come up with something that may be interested babble about
02:00:46.000 rant about. So thank you all very much. You all have a good weekend and I will see you all soon.
02:00:51.320 Thanks.