Western Standard - The Cory Morgan Show, May 3, 2021

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00:02:30.000 hey there good morning welcome to the Cory Morgan show for May 3rd 2021 it's Monday I had a hell

00:02:40.200 of a weekend I hope everybody else did that's because yes myself and the rest of the Western

00:02:45.840 Standard team went to the rodeo south of Bowdoin it was a fantastic time it was great to get out

00:02:51.300 and feel human and get around people again and socialize see people smiling visiting with each

00:02:57.800 other and acting as they used to act for the other 10,000 years before the plague came around here.

00:03:04.120 I'll report a little more on that soon. Today I was going to have Quick Dick McDick on to talk

00:03:09.400 about Bill C-10. That's where the Liberals are coming in to try and regulate our internet. They 1.00

00:03:14.600 really want to stop the flow of information. They're terrified of us talking with each other,

00:03:20.120 organizing, you know, being a democracy. And C-10 is a tremendous threat to it. Those not familiar 0.99

00:03:27.000 with quick dick mcdick and yes the name sounds comical it's because he is a a funny funny guy

00:03:31.240 he's he's he's from saskatchewan he does youtube videos uh you should you know look him up i mean 0.95

00:03:36.900 it's it's great he has political messaging within it but with a good dose of humor from a rural

00:03:42.500 saskatchewan perspective we're going to reschedule him uh he's he is a literal farmer he gives that

00:03:47.180 farm point of view and he messaged me earlier this morning had a breakdown has to run into town to

00:03:51.720 get parts welcome to the realities of farm life and uh he couldn't make it on the broadcast today

00:03:58.140 we're going to reschedule and uh be sure to tune in for that it's a real good time when when we

00:04:02.740 have a chat he's just great bright guy gets on to serious issues but again put you know puts those

00:04:08.960 issues in in a uh a humorous light i mean he gets i think hundreds of thousands of views on his

00:04:14.180 videos and you see with c10 uh this bill coming through the liberal pipeline right now it's

00:04:20.080 exactly people like Quick Dick McDick that are suddenly going to be regulated. They're going to

00:04:23.980 treat them as if they were major broadcasters, as if they're TV stations. They're going to try

00:04:29.400 to censor them. They've said that, that the liberal view is what has to be kept within

00:04:34.780 the auspices of this bill. It's insane, but it's going through parliament. They're ramming it

00:04:41.380 through parliament, as a matter of fact, in quite a hurry. And there doesn't seem to be a heck of a

00:04:47.560 lot we can do about it. We got some big challenges in this country. Here it is, you know, they shut

00:04:51.180 down debate on an amendment that would allow a regulation on social media. The reason it's an

00:04:56.600 amendment because this bill initially didn't talk about coming after people who broadcast on YouTube

00:05:00.520 or people like me or people like Quick Dick McDick. Oh no, we're just going to, you know,

00:05:05.760 help stop the spread of hate and so on. It didn't take long before the bill started getting amendments

00:05:09.840 to spread their control further and further and further. And this is very distressing. I mean,

00:05:15.760 we're in the information age. And for authoritarians, that's a terrifying place to be so that they want

00:05:22.120 to keep that information from us as much as possible. And this bill's getting there. Where's

00:05:28.060 O'Toole on it? I don't know. I mean, he's criticized it. But as with everything so far, he's been

00:05:34.960 pretty ineffective. I'm afraid. You know, this is a good wedge issue. I mean, there are some people

00:05:38.860 who are left of center who are concerned about this bill too. And maybe O'Toole could finally

00:05:44.160 find something he can sink his teeth into to gain some support with Canadians. Again, I know the

00:05:49.680 real leader of the official opposition, you know, Pierre Polyev has been vocal on this and a good

00:05:55.300 number of people have, but the Conservatives haven't seemed to found the will to turn this

00:06:00.760 into the issue that they want to wrap themselves around going into an election this year. And they

00:06:05.780 really should, you know, even Warren Kinsella was advising that a little while ago. I mean,

00:06:10.200 love or hate Kinsella, the guy is a smart strategist. He knows what's going on and he sees

00:06:15.280 the conservative party spinning their wheels while Trudeau, basically the only thing that's

00:06:20.940 keeping Trudeau from going to an election, getting another majority rate now is that COVID is still

00:06:27.100 a huge issue and the vaccine delivery from the federal perspective has been terrible. So he's

00:06:32.540 going to hang on for a few months. That bought some time for O'Toole and maybe he can get it

00:06:40.060 together. But he's got a long climb to go. But this C10, this infringement on our speech really

00:06:46.440 is an area that they should be going. They should be making a lot of noise on this. I've never in 0.74

00:06:52.440 my whole adult life seen so many threats to our individual freedoms as we have this year. I mean,

00:07:00.480 threats and in outright infringements. I mean, that's where the lockdowns have been a problem.

00:07:06.300 The restrictions have been a problem. I mean, they have set aside our charter rights for

00:07:12.180 this pandemic. And, you know, when their rights get set aside, the authoritarians in the government

00:07:18.420 are not terribly inclined to give them back. They like having control and they're going to hang on

00:07:23.400 to it as long and as tightly as they can. And that's why we always have to stand up for our

00:07:28.920 rights, not just retroactively, but before they take more. We have to show that we aren't always

00:07:34.740 pussycats. We aren't always going to bend over and take it. That was part of the purpose of last

00:07:40.320 weekend's rodeo. There were a number of purposes for that. I'll get on to a couple of things

00:07:44.360 quickly here too. So in a little while here, I'm going to have Terry Wong on and he's been a long

00:07:49.580 time conservative. I got to know him quite a bit with the Wildrose Party. He's running for Ward

00:07:53.740 seven in calgary uh in this upcoming municipal election and that's the ward where drew farrell

00:07:58.960 has you know and city planning has shut down the ability uh at least for the time being of a dairy

00:08:03.900 queen that burned down and a small family business uh and uh terry's going to talk a bit about that

00:08:09.800 and his run and we'll talk some municipal politics so i i should uh pass that along i don't have

00:08:14.420 quick mcdick but i've got terry and terry's great and now i'm gonna get on to running down about

00:08:19.820 this rodeo a little more though so the rodeo happened last weekend and uh there was no problems

00:08:27.820 it went really well the biggest problem was the breeze was a little strong it was a little chilly

00:08:32.060 out there you know and it showed how dedicated people were they just huddled up in their blankets

00:08:35.420 and and uh you know settled in had a good time really enjoyed themselves uh you know there was

00:08:42.300 no crazies there like i i just uh can't think of a better way to express ourselves than at one of

00:08:47.260 these sorts of events like this. People were spread out, they were safe, there was hand washing

00:08:53.180 stations if people wanted them. You know, I did see one incident because some people had masks,

00:08:57.700 most didn't, but the bottom line is this is a choice. And I did see some people kind of calling

00:09:02.880 out and beaking off at a couple of young people who were wearing masks. And okay, guys, don't

00:09:07.520 forget, you know, you're missing the purpose here. It's about choice. And if they feel more

00:09:11.740 comfortable in a mask, then by all means, don't harass. The bottom line is you choose not to

00:09:16.440 wear one, they choose to wear one. So let's keep our, you know, resistance to these crackdowns

00:09:22.280 rational. Let's keep it sympathetic. We're not screaming outside of political offices or, you

00:09:29.780 know, throwing rocks through windows or spray painting things or blocking traffic. We're

00:09:33.940 rallying as Albertans do by holding a rodeo, by going out and having a good time with family

00:09:38.500 and friends and supporting a very vulnerable, small, you know, niche industry, which is distinctly

00:09:46.200 western um which is the rodeo industry and and ty northcott who put it on so getting back to quick

00:09:52.520 dick mcdick you know i mean some of the chat we had like the easy money of farm life right like

00:09:57.160 farming is darn tough every aspect of the agricultural industry is darn tough and uh

00:10:04.200 these guys are having a hard time i mean rodeos are of course an extension of that it's guys

00:10:09.400 practicing their livestock skills and and they turned it into a competitive uh sport and people

00:10:16.200 enjoy it it's entrenched in the west and people not familiar though it's hitting the news all over

00:10:20.440 today uh yeah ty held this rodeo in defiance of ahs he said i'm going ahead with it my my uh

00:10:28.440 livestock is down to half of what it used to be you know he's had to let his stock go they haven't

00:10:33.000 held a rodeo in a year and uh you know the funny thing was that the media tried their hardest

00:10:39.400 to pretend it wasn't happening. You know, that they wouldn't cover it. They wouldn't talk about

00:10:44.940 it. The only ones that really were covering it were the Western Standard, you know, and some

00:10:48.500 others, Rebel and other outlets reported on it a bit. But for the most part, they pretended it

00:10:53.600 wasn't there. And then shortly before the rodeo got here, you know, there was a report that

00:11:00.160 it had been canceled even. Yeah, you know, there was a radio host going on saying, oh, we've got

00:11:05.540 word. This rodeo has been canceled. All the cowboys pulled out. This was during my live

00:11:11.100 broadcast on Friday. Somebody was commenting and telling me about this and say, yeah, it's not

00:11:14.640 going to happen. Don't bother going out. People make different plans for the weekend. Well,

00:11:18.500 that was kind of shocked. You know, when Ty put the word out that he's holding a rodeo,

00:11:23.100 his competitor list filled up immediately. Like there were loads of competitors all weekend.

00:11:28.700 And I really found it hard to believe that all these guys were that eager to sign up for a

00:11:32.280 and they knew right at the time that this is not a sanctioned thing by the Alberta government right

00:11:36.600 now and Alberta Health Services that they would suddenly pull out no they didn't they didn't and

00:11:41.240 and it really again shows why we need as many sources of media as we can get and you know so

00:11:48.760 C10 coming in to crack down on things like the Western Standard things like Quick Dick McDick

00:11:55.000 even individuals I mean there's been people talking about that with C10 somebody who runs

00:11:59.000 exercise videos on her YouTube channel. These people are suddenly going to be treated as if

00:12:06.040 they're major broadcasters and they can be shut down. The government will pull their strings,

00:12:09.240 tell them what they can do, what they can't do. We can't let this happen. We have to keep pushing

00:12:14.840 back and entrenchments. I see some commenters talking about, yeah, the RCMP pulled through.

00:12:21.240 They didn't intervene. A lot of people are all jumping up and down and quite upset about this.

00:12:26.360 You know, AHS came by, I think, and talked to Ty at one point, but otherwise they stayed clear.

00:12:32.020 You got to remember at most points in two days, 2,000 people came up to this.

00:12:36.100 It was a peaceful gathering.

00:12:38.840 It was a great time.

00:12:41.280 And, you know, why would you want police to go in there and create an incident?

00:12:47.340 Because that is what would happen.

00:12:48.860 I mean, I'm not saying these people are going to get violent with the cops or anything like that,

00:12:51.360 but it would cause havoc.

00:12:53.680 I mean, that's a lot of people dedicated to getting out for their day.

00:12:56.360 Not to mention, this was over a couple square miles.

00:12:58.800 You know, good luck stopping people.

00:13:01.820 What are you going to do?

00:13:02.160 Block the gate?

00:13:02.660 They'll go to the next gate.

00:13:03.680 They'll go around the field.

00:13:04.700 They'll park in the ditch.

00:13:05.440 They'll jump the fence.

00:13:06.540 So you're just going to cause an even bigger gong show, which could cause traffic issues

00:13:10.780 and actually put people at risk.

00:13:12.680 So no, they stood back.

00:13:13.800 And yeah, there may be some attempts at legal action coming from this event down the road.

00:13:19.160 Who knows?

00:13:20.440 All the events were held.

00:13:21.820 They went really well.

00:13:22.700 I was just astounded.

00:13:23.680 It really helped demonstrate Ty Northcott.

00:13:26.400 He raises rodeo stock.

00:13:27.720 He runs rodeo.

00:13:28.700 This man is a pro.

00:13:30.200 I showed up early Saturday morning because I wasn't sure if there's going to be a blockade or what's going on.

00:13:35.020 And they already had half of it set up.

00:13:37.520 I mean, they'd hidden the location of this.

00:13:39.640 This was a portable rodeo.

00:13:41.180 This was a pop-up rodeo because they didn't want AHS and the RCMP to know where they were going to be so that they could block them in advance.

00:13:47.540 And he was out there.

00:13:48.320 His daughter was out there.

00:13:49.360 Again, this is a family affair.

00:13:50.540 his son-in-law, his wife, and a pile of volunteers and others. They set up those gates. They set up

00:13:55.260 those chutes. They set up the stands around the rodeo grounds. They had all of that ready by one 0.82

00:14:00.840 o'clock when everybody got there. Vendors got there. It was magnificent. This guy is good.

00:14:06.760 And what he also proved and what we've been hearing, one of the things he said on the last

00:14:10.620 day when he gave a very emotional speech, it was very emotional. He was breaking down a couple of

00:14:14.640 times in happiness. I mean, over the sheer support of 2000 people coming out day after day to support

00:14:20.240 him, to support his industry, to support his business. It's been in his family for generations.

00:14:24.600 It's at risk. And I think, you know, you're still nervous. I mean, nothing was going to stop Ty this

00:14:29.820 weekend. Nothing was going to make him turn back, but you freak out. You're nervous. Maybe nobody

00:14:34.440 else show up. Maybe this will get shut down. Maybe we'll lose a fortune. Well, none of that happened.

00:14:39.120 It went great. It was a giant turnout. Yeah. You know, there was also, I mean, there's a risk at

00:14:44.820 rodeos of injuries, tragedy, things like that. There was none of that. You know, it was done

00:14:48.300 very professionally. The paramedics were there if need be. They never needed to be used.

00:14:54.040 It was a really good Alberta time. Now, the media now is sure paying attention to it. They're going

00:15:00.840 haywire. Not least doing cartwheels, but what do we expect? And here's the, again, where we've got

00:15:07.240 to push back. We've got to oppose. We've got to stand up for our rights. Jason Kenney is just

00:15:10.600 kind of, I don't know what he's doing. He's going all over the place. I don't think he knows what

00:15:15.120 he's doing um he's put out that letter you know there's some of the irony i mean he doesn't seem

00:15:21.080 to understand how and why he lost and he has lost it the rural support out here um and a great deal

00:15:27.540 of support everywhere else i mean he did the pickup truck drive around alberta he wore the

00:15:32.900 denim shirts he played to be one of us and he hasn't turned out to be he's turning into just

00:15:38.960 the same old pcs you know liberal tory same old story he pulled one over on us and then to have

00:15:43.960 him lecture because he lectured in his letter and said this isn't the cowboy way this isn't the 0.99

00:15:50.120 western way you can't tell us that shit kenny you've been in ottawa for decades you obviously 0.98

00:15:55.580 have no idea what the cowboy way is and he was saying you know that cowboy way means standing 0.98

00:16:01.580 up for the others and well that's what this is doing it's standing up for ty northcott it's

00:16:05.300 standing up for the competitors it's standing up for albertans it's standing up for businesses

00:16:09.020 traditions, and culture that are being lost. That's the cowboy way, Kenny. Don't lecture us

00:16:15.100 on that. Don't. You've lost that authority. You've lost that ability. We saw the cowboy way on the

00:16:21.540 weekend. And one of the things he said is, yeah, it's standing up for the vulnerable. And it is.

00:16:25.940 And that's what we should be doing right from the start of this pandemic. We've seen that. We've

00:16:29.120 learned that. There are vulnerable people. We need to isolate them. We need to get them safe.

00:16:34.520 And we have been. The vaccinations, I know some people are divided, but it's fine. But I believe

00:16:38.020 vaccinations and we're seeing the numbers that they're working you know right now and again the

00:16:43.940 media you know let me go on about that a little bit so they're reporting reporting reporting about

00:16:48.500 how brutal all these infections are how many of these infections are they've suddenly gone

00:16:52.740 from reporting daily infection counts and now they're reporting three days at a time they're

00:16:57.700 going on about 6 000 infections over three days well wait a minute go day by day but no we want

00:17:02.420 to make it sound as horrible and as scary as possible you know what they've been doing for

00:17:06.500 the last 14 months is they'll pick whatever growing statistic is the scariest and they will report on

00:17:12.100 it if you remember way back about a year from now when sweden was the ones standing out they were

00:17:16.660 saying we're not gonna lock down we're gonna let people choose for themselves to stay away from

00:17:22.980 each other uh you know wash their hands things like that wear masks if they choose to and of course

00:17:28.180 everybody went crazy about it and the number one thing do you know what they got on sweden's case

00:17:32.100 about the death number it was the death number because their infections weren't that high and

00:17:36.100 And that stumped the experts.

00:17:38.220 The experts didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do.

00:17:40.460 Because everybody kept saying, two more weeks, Sweden's all dead.

00:17:42.460 Two more weeks, Sweden's going to die. 0.97

00:17:43.640 Two more weeks, Sweden's in hell. 0.99

00:17:45.020 Didn't happen.

00:17:45.820 Never happened.

00:17:47.580 So they pointed at the deaths.

00:17:48.680 Because one of the things Sweden did wrong, a lot of countries did, I believe Canada did a bit of that, and Quebec too.

00:17:53.220 Is when the plague, COVID-19, was first going around, they didn't know what to do.

00:17:57.800 They were taking sick people and putting them into long-term care homes.

00:18:01.260 So they put them in the absolute worst possible place they could put them.

00:18:05.460 And yes, it killed a lot of people.

00:18:08.500 And that was terrible.

00:18:09.180 And that gave that death count that was higher per 100,000 to Sweden that people pointed to while the infections wouldn't go up.

00:18:14.520 But nowadays, nobody's talking about the death count.

00:18:16.760 I listened to the radio reports.

00:18:17.840 I listened to the news reports this morning.

00:18:19.340 And they're all talking about, like I said, three days at a time.

00:18:21.620 They're just cumulatively adding all those numbers to make it sound as scary as possible.

00:18:26.780 But they don't talk about the deaths.

00:18:27.980 Why?

00:18:28.200 Because there were three deaths over the weekend with COVID-19.

00:18:33.060 Not necessarily from it, with it.

00:18:34.860 and remember that with these deaths you know i i'm gonna sound and people call me cold for it

00:18:39.500 all the time fine whatever oh god i've been called more things this last 48 hours than than typical

00:18:44.940 don't worry it doesn't bother me a bit in fact it just pumps me up we've had what 2200 people

00:18:50.380 pass away with covid in alberta in this 14 months it's tragic we want to live as long as we can

00:18:58.620 that's the goal we take care of each other we got to start getting a little realistic about these

00:19:02.940 numbers out of 4.4 million people in a year with this thing that we've shut down the world for.

00:19:10.740 That is the death count. And as it still stands, the average age is 81, which is the average life

00:19:18.120 expectancy. The people, predominantly the number of people, and I mean, it's impossible to tell

00:19:24.520 for sure, the people who passed away probably weren't going to make it this long anyways.

00:19:30.600 They were people who had comorbidities. They were sick. They were elderly. They had one foot 0.68

00:19:36.360 out the door. In fact, if the door slammed too hard, it might have given them a heart attack.

00:19:41.320 Maybe COVID robbed them of a few months, which is, hey, we want every month we can get. We want

00:19:45.800 every minute we can get. But we have to really look at the bigger picture. We have to look at

00:19:52.200 the whole thing. So we have isolated the vulnerable. We've figured that out. We've

00:19:56.200 vaccinated most of them and it's still moving around along so what happened now that's why

00:20:01.240 when we've got thousands of new infections there's not deaths three deaths about a 4.4

00:20:08.600 million people tragic for the three now the other thing is can we confidently say that

00:20:15.080 any restrictions or lockdowns would have prevented that death and no you can't say

00:20:20.200 that they would have we don't know that there's so many inconsistencies out there

00:20:24.440 that's the other aspect people oh people have been saying to me on the weekend oh morgan you

00:20:28.680 got blood on your hands all the western standard you're killing people and they're literally

00:20:32.920 saying these things they're going haywire how do you know that the restrictions would have stopped

00:20:40.840 any of this i mean we've seen so many examples florida texas mississippi down there and hey by

00:20:46.280 the way when they all opened up they had far fewer people vaccinated than we have right now

00:20:50.920 far fewer. And it didn't go badly. I mean, things were fine. You know, the infections kept going

00:20:58.780 down. I mean, this thing's real. It's going around. It's hitting people. But I think we've

00:21:03.480 got a huge government vanity. This state authoritarianism just somehow thinking we

00:21:07.620 can regulate it away. We can just make a law. It will stop this virus. The only thing that

00:21:15.100 seems to be effective so far is either herd immunity or vaccinations. And that's coming

00:21:19.280 one way or another. But to keep punching ourselves in the economic nuts and thinking

00:21:24.680 we're going to stop this thing, and without looking at the cost of these shutdowns, is wrong.

00:21:31.180 We've got to look at both sides. Another stat that came out, you're not hearing a heck of a lot about

00:21:37.040 on the radio, opioid addiction is up 150% in the last year. You know, I'll give Alberta Health

00:21:44.200 Services a lot of credit. If you want to go on their site, there's some great statistical tools

00:21:48.660 where you can look at things and you watch the trending line of opioid addictions and overdoses

00:21:53.780 and you see it the spring of last year right when the lockdowns began and right when the CERB began

00:21:59.660 and a number of things it spiked and it stayed up there and it's still up there it's not a

00:22:05.660 coincidence and again you know similar sort of things I can't say that if we had no lockdowns

00:22:11.060 that none of these these people would have overdosed or gotten addicted but it was definitely

00:22:15.100 one of the contributing factors. So we've got to take these contributing factors into account

00:22:19.360 before we start intruding on people's freedoms, their abilities to get around, and their movement.

00:22:26.100 How many billions have we put out there in spending and health and everything else,

00:22:30.040 when maybe we should be putting it into addictions treatment, mental health, because mental health,

00:22:34.800 the pressure is being put on people. That's what I loved the most about last weekend,

00:22:38.740 was seeing people smiling, seeing people socializing, seeing people gathering. That's

00:22:43.740 what we do. It's natural to us. We are herd animals. We need to get together with our fellow

00:22:50.560 human beings. That's why every culture on the planet has social gatherings, as an intrinsic

00:22:56.200 part of their being. And we did that last weekend. And no, it's not going to have a visible impact on

00:23:04.140 the infections. Everybody's saying two more weeks, two more weeks. Well, when have we heard that

00:23:06.720 before? Oh yeah, when people gathered at Sylvan Lake last summer, nothing happened. In Ontario,

00:23:10.900 when all those people were in that park. Nothing happened. By the way, let's look at Ontario now.

00:23:14.380 Oh, I know. Alberta's got more infections for 100,000 in Ontario right now. Quebec had more 0.75

00:23:19.200 a little while back. They had stronger restrictions. Ontario, for the most part,

00:23:22.820 had had stronger restrictions than us. The restrictions don't seem to consistently

00:23:27.160 have an impact. Because again, it's starting to seem like these restrictions really don't.

00:23:31.100 They don't have much control. I mean, there's common sense things. If you've got an infected

00:23:34.500 person, you should isolate them. If you've got a vulnerable person, you should keep them away

00:23:38.740 from other people get them vaccinated do what you have to do but shutting down bars and restaurants

00:23:44.580 isn't necessarily going to stop anything it doesn't seem to be what are the costs of kids

00:23:48.660 you know they're looking at now their second year of lost sports this is part of their development

00:23:52.420 it's part of their life everybody who's watching this i imagine most if not all are adults

00:23:57.700 you know how the time passes faster as we get older it really does when when you've lost two

00:24:02.980 years when you're 10 years old 12 years old 20 of your life is in lockdown now you've lost that

00:24:09.940 youthful opportunity to take part in sports children's social activities these are developmental

00:24:15.220 times these kids you want to talk about long-termers that's what we're going to get long-term

00:24:20.420 mental health effects from a generation that's grown up in this screwed up time when they haven't

00:24:25.380 been able to do the social outlets the the the physical activities the learning opportunities

00:24:31.620 that they normally would have had like we've got to look at the whole thing people are really 0.99

00:24:37.580 screaming i'm listening to some morons and they are morons we got to do like australia new zealand 0.99

00:24:41.340 we should just do a solid month just literally lockdown put people in their houses chain those 1.00

00:24:46.100 doors deliver food make them stay in the house are you guys insane actually they are i think

00:24:51.320 they've got this imaginary zero risk thing going on look we are not a tropical island somewhere we

00:24:56.820 can't do that. It's not going to work. It'll cause a hell of a lot of damage, but it's not going to

00:25:02.160 work. But let's get to some other things. It's been 14 months, 14 long, miserable months that

00:25:09.900 we've been warned. And it's funny the deja vu we're seeing today when they're saying we've got a

00:25:14.280 lockdown to stop from overwhelming the hospitals. Well, what the hell's going on? You've had 14

00:25:18.520 months to get ready. How is it that 155 people in the ICU is bringing us to the brink of

00:25:24.300 overwhelming our hospitals. Again, supposedly, out of 4.4 million people, what do we got a few

00:25:29.600 hundred hospitals? We brought in those emergency hospitals, didn't we, with the ICU tents and

00:25:34.840 whatnot? 600 people in the hospital. This shouldn't be overwhelming our system. If we, in spending

00:25:41.340 the billions we have in this last 14 months, haven't upgraded our hospitals to the point

00:25:46.160 where we're not that bloody vulnerable, what are we doing? What is going on? We've got some

00:25:52.120 serious problems. And you know, it's funny that that brought some of the vitriol and the people

00:25:57.120 who are howling and they were, they were going insane on social media this last weekend.

00:26:02.520 I think a lot of it is envy. It really is. They're miserable. They're in their houses.

00:26:07.360 They're locked up. Fine. That's your choice. And they hate it. We all do. And they're seeing other

00:26:13.360 people enjoying themselves and they can't stand that. It's not worrying about their fellow

00:26:16.940 neighbors. It's not risky of others. They just can't stand to see other people enjoying life

00:26:22.220 while they're miserable, curled up in their apartment somewhere. Well, too damn bad. 0.93

00:26:27.760 Too damn bad. Stay in your bunker. Hide. We're going to get out and live. And we have to push 0.99

00:26:33.840 back. And remember, so we've got Notley who wants to bring in the insane, crazed, overwhelming

00:26:38.460 lockdown. We got Kenny who's run away. I don't know if he's closing the legislature. That's

00:26:43.100 another bizarre action on his part. I don't think the legislature would have been a super spreader

00:26:47.800 event. I mean, from what most people are gathering and seeing, he just doesn't want to get in the

00:26:52.520 middle of the shit storm right now. Don't blame him. He's not in a good position. He's tried to 0.99

00:26:57.860 play both sides, and he's basically pissed off both sides. He's failed. But again, getting back

00:27:03.960 to the social media lunatics, hey, I'm one of them. But they're calling for two. Everybody who

00:27:08.320 was at that rodeo should have their health care denied from them. If they show up at the hospital,

00:27:12.540 they shouldn't have it oh okay okay so i mean will this apply to people in organized sports then to

00:27:19.020 you know contact sports well not that we're allowed to do them right now anyways but where

00:27:23.020 do you stop with this do the people who eat fatty foods you know people who are obese people who

00:27:26.940 speed you know what i'm not wholly against this comment comment conversation if you guys really

00:27:33.500 want to start having it a private system where people can choose their own insurance and pay

00:27:37.980 based on the risks they take? I'm okay with that. Is that really what you guys are asking for?

00:27:44.540 I mean, hey, the bottom line is we're in a socialized system. I have no choice. I have

00:27:50.300 nowhere else to go, and I have to pay for it. I have to. It's not free. Don't use that stupid

00:27:56.360 free word with our health system. It's not. We pay dearly for it, a lot for it. So kiss my ass. 1.00

00:28:03.300 You're not in a position to tell anybody that they are not entitled to treatment if and when 1.00

00:28:06.800 need it when they come in even if they attended a rodeo but if you want to get into this world

00:28:13.920 where we can open a parallel private system where people can pay for their insurance and

00:28:17.440 the insurance company say we won't cover you if you go to those events you know if they want to

00:28:20.400 reduce their premiums that way or they'll pay more premiums because they're doing higher risk

00:28:24.560 activities and again paying more premiums as they get older we can go there if that's really what

00:28:30.400 what you guys want to see. But that's where we're at. And, you know, let's get some more about this

00:28:40.320 news. I just, I can't believe how heavily into the fear-mongering end of things our mainstream

00:28:46.360 media are with this. I mean, I understand there's media slander. The Western Standard's got its

00:28:51.460 leaning. I mean, Dave Naylor and Mike Damore and Alex Daliwal, they write news and they have no

00:29:00.680 bias. They do a great job with it and a number of them. But the columnists like me and Derek and

00:29:05.880 the others, yeah, we put an opinion out there and there's definitely a lean. But still, you need some

00:29:10.920 balance. You know, Dave writes on both sides and you see it when the commenters get all upset with

00:29:14.700 them. But I see like one I'm going to go into and this is a sensitive one and people probably all

00:29:18.760 seen this story because somebody went nuts on me on social media for that yesterday. A 17-year-old

00:29:23.500 passed away in McGrath, you know, last week, I believe it was. It was tragic. It's terrible. It

00:29:29.000 was sudden. It was out of the blue. You know, there's actually some questions with how fast

00:29:34.480 she got to the hospital. That's a separate question. But the father is completely convinced

00:29:39.520 it was COVID. But all medical evidence so far to date says it wasn't. She's had multiple tests

00:29:48.560 tests, and they came in negative. Other medical experts and doctors down in Lethbridge said that,

00:29:53.680 you know, the symptoms and the way this came about and the way it presented didn't really

00:29:57.060 appear to be COVID. This probably was not a COVID death. I mean, here's another thing. It's going to

00:30:03.640 be months before the medical examiners get back to us. Welcome again to our health system. But

00:30:08.640 it's more than likely it's not going to be COVID. And maybe it will, but it's very doubtful.

00:30:15.020 but the headlines are reporting it as if a 17-year-old died of COVID. You have to actually

00:30:19.460 read the story to realize, no, no, it's just a father who's grieving, and, you know, he's reaching

00:30:24.040 out. Nobody wants to, I can't imagine the pain. I can't. He's lost a daughter way too early. It's

00:30:30.880 horrible, and that, you know, the family, you want to see something. You want to point at something.

00:30:36.400 You want to know, so they've convinced themselves that it's COVID, and they're going out there,

00:30:41.300 And I'm not faulting them for that.

00:30:43.520 What I'm faulting is the media presenting it, though, as if that anecdotal pointing towards this tragedy equates a COVID diagnosis.

00:30:54.020 And it doesn't.

00:30:55.500 But they're so eager to try and spread the fear and make it sound like, yes, young people are getting infected and dying from this.

00:31:07.260 They aren't.

00:31:07.880 Okay. If you're under 60 and you're healthy, your chances of COVID harming you are minuscule.

00:31:15.360 They're tiny. They're minute. That's a reality. That's something we've learned in 14 months of

00:31:20.080 this. That's something we're really lucky for. Look back on the Spanish flu. If you read up on

00:31:24.220 it, it's quite interesting. The Spanish flu actually spared the elderly quite a bit for

00:31:28.220 some reason and really hit the young, which was far more devastating. I mean, as well,

00:31:33.800 you know, they were producers. These were people trying to keep the economy going then and it's

00:31:37.080 killing them. This is nothing like that. And we're fortunate for that. So let's report on it like

00:31:44.980 that. Cut it out. Quit pretending that a 35-year-old healthy person might die of COVID. They got a

00:31:51.800 better chance, literally, this isn't theory, literally better chance of getting hit by a car.

00:31:58.340 So we can't bubble wrap the world. We can't make everybody safe from this. We can mitigate. We

00:32:06.640 want to try we want to be reasonable so the next one they like going on about too though is long

00:32:11.520 haulers you know people who apparently have ended up with with with long-term uh uh injuries

00:32:18.880 disabilities from covet again if you look to most studies and doctors uh know most of this tends to

00:32:24.720 be anecdotal uh it's the individuals are saying that and you know i i i'm certain there are some

00:32:32.480 people who really get some long-term effects from having COVID. Any sickness can potentially damage

00:32:37.600 parts of you, organs, many things that will last a long time. But for the most part, and it's a

00:32:44.320 coronavirus, these aren't new. This is, I mean, they call it new because it's novel coronavirus,

00:32:48.160 but I mean, this is just in reality a very, very strong flu. So what happens when you get a flu,

00:32:58.800 you tend to recover if you get a really really bad flu it might leave you with some long-term

00:33:02.560 effects but this is minute but then again the media is treating it as if this is real because

00:33:06.080 they want to keep everybody scared well and that's what they're screaming at now three people passed

00:33:10.400 away on the weekend so but you know they can't have that fear factor so they don't report on it

00:33:17.360 and then they point out well people might get permanent injury out of it though so we've got

00:33:20.480 to be scared of that it's fear fear fear and without basis i mean let's please please try to

00:33:27.440 to stay rational here um this is real but we're going about it in an irrational way to try and

00:33:34.720 cope with it uh i'll close with one other thing like what on earth was with the emergency alert

00:33:40.460 the other day you know things are going wild but what was the point of that like you guys

00:33:44.760 this is giving me that feeling of a government in panic oh my god things are getting out of our

00:33:49.560 control and i don't think it's getting out of the medical control so much as out of political

00:33:52.360 control so i don't know what are we going to do i mean that's a lot of what the problem is right

00:33:57.020 now. Everybody's screaming for the government to do something. And the government is doing

00:34:01.720 something for the sake of doing something. They're doing something to look like they're doing

00:34:05.280 something. The last thing any government leader wants to say is, I can't do anything about it.

00:34:10.720 Because yeah, people won't accept that. Maybe that's a bit of our attitude we've all got to

00:34:14.360 learn a little bit, is not to be so dependent on government and expect government to be able to fix

00:34:18.720 everything for us all the time. They can't. But that's where we're sitting. You know, I've gone

00:34:25.940 on and off about the rodeo and the COVID and the rant for now. Terry's with me. So we're going to

00:34:31.440 pivot a bit and talk about an issue in Calgary, you know, and we've got some serious economic

00:34:35.840 challenges coming. We're in the midst of some serious economic challenges. Our businesses in

00:34:40.080 the city of Calgary have really been dealing with some challenges and problems long prior to

00:34:45.940 the COVID, unfortunately, or the COVID just adding on top of the whole mess.

00:34:50.380 So I'm going to bring Terry in here. There we go. How are you doing today, Terry?

00:34:54.880 Morning, Corey. How are you?

00:34:56.120 Very good. Thanks. Can you maybe get your mic a little closer? You're a little bit faint.

00:35:00.200 How's that?

00:35:01.340 Oh, that's good. That's good. Thanks. Not everybody's, you know, hollering and bombastic as much as myself.

00:35:06.980 So, but yeah, thank you very much for joining me today. So just to confirm, like, as I said,

00:35:13.100 the introduction of the show to have known you for quite a long time. We've run together in

00:35:16.440 some political circles over the years and crossed paths many a time, especially when I still lived

00:35:20.960 up in North Calgary there. You've recently announced that you're going to be running

00:35:25.460 for Ward 7 in this Falls Municipal election? That's right, Corey. I followed my papers

00:35:30.240 last Tuesday. It was accepted and we are go. Okay. And then for people who aren't familiar

00:35:36.060 with Ward 7, that's sort of an inner city one. It's Central Calgary. It covers, I think,

00:35:41.140 the north end of downtown and then up to the north end of Centre Street a ways. It's established,

00:35:46.880 developed neighborhoods. It's a ways from the suburbs. It's been held by Drew Farrell

00:35:50.680 for over 20 years.

00:35:53.620 Councillor Farrell is unapologetically

00:35:56.060 a very, very progressive person.

00:36:00.000 So she's represented the left quite adequately,

00:36:04.180 I guess, for a long time there.

00:36:05.380 She's not running again this fall.

00:36:06.700 So there's an opportunity for change.

00:36:10.020 The main thing that got us chatting recently,

00:36:11.780 though, was an event that really,

00:36:12.940 I think kind of demonstrates and highlights

00:36:14.480 a lot of the problems going on.

00:36:16.300 People read about that,

00:36:17.440 and this is still waiting on appeal.

00:36:18.580 So there was a Dairy Queen that burned down

00:36:20.580 and a family that's trying to rebuild and the city is doing what it can to hinder it.

00:36:25.460 Can you kind of lay out that story on what happened there, Terry?

00:36:29.300 Sure. Back in October 2019, you're right, the dairy queen burned down as a result of an electrical

00:36:35.700 malfunction. Consequently, the owner of the property filed for an insurance claim and they

00:36:43.620 were awarded that claim last year. Subsequent to that, of course, then they approached a developer

00:36:48.660 to say we want to rebuild the dairy queen and the developer worked with the city to do that.

00:36:54.020 Through the discussion process, you know, they said we want to offer build again a single story

00:36:59.860 dairy queen. But again, the previous dairy queen was built in the early 80s, so the architecture

00:37:07.220 and the dairy queen guidelines said you got to do a more modern approach. And they talked to

00:37:12.260 the city about that. The city said, yeah, you can build it, build on the existing footprint

00:37:16.980 um and do that you could do it on existing building permit but because you are um how to

00:37:23.960 say your dairy queen has two driveway entrances on the center street um we would like to reconsider

00:37:28.960 that largely largely because it's it's designated as a future brt and ultimately an lrt zone and

00:37:36.000 you know would you reconsider that uh on top of that there's a number of other things that you

00:37:41.280 know that they had to look at from a building design perspective so the net result is they

00:37:45.560 They accommodated, as I understand, they accommodated the city by saying, okay, we'll close the driveway, and we'll have the driveway off the side street.

00:37:52.460 But that changes the orientation of the building, and as a result, it changes the orientation of the drive-through.

00:37:58.920 And the city said, well, on top of that, this is also a future Main Street, and this future Main Street would like to have a higher density,

00:38:07.740 and would you consider building multiple stories of this building, and with mixed use, and this and that.

00:38:14.060 And they said, well, again, the owner of the property is an 88-year-old, you know, retiree, saying, I'm not in the business of doing that.

00:38:21.420 You know, my daughter and I are in the business of just, you know, servicing the land as a Dairy Queen and operating.

00:38:27.540 So, needless to say, it went forward, and the development authority at the city rejected it, saying, no, it doesn't meet our aspirations, our future needs.

00:38:38.160 Consequently, the owner filed an appeal with Subdivision Appeal Board, which is where it's at now.

00:38:42.260 And so the owner, the developer, or the appellants, the side family, which is the franchisee who operates the Dairy Queen, is without, you know, without a business to operate, without a franchise to operate, and without, you know, basic income to, you know, support themselves.

00:39:03.080 So they're left in the dust, so to speak, waiting for this judgment to be made.

00:39:06.860 Yeah, and I know some apologists for this, you know, are saying, oh, well, if they did just applied for an exact like for like, there never would have been a development permit. But that's unreasonable. I mean, that's like somebody saying, okay, if your house that was 50 years old burned down, you have to build an exact replica with the old wiring, with the old pipes, with the old style, or we won't allow it. And now you have to build an apartment building on there.

00:39:31.140 I mean, that's kind of in a simplistic way.

00:39:33.700 But what they're saying to these people here is that, yeah, you did make some changes, but that's triggered it.

00:39:39.240 And we won't discuss accommodating the changes for modernity.

00:39:43.100 At this point, we'll just reject the whole plan and give you an entirely different one, which is the only one we'll accept.

00:39:48.380 Yeah, you know, part of that's correct.

00:39:50.320 And the developer for the property has submitted new drawings that met today's building code standards.

00:39:58.760 And, you know, so therefore there's no violation there.

00:40:01.140 Again, if they built on the same footprint and used the driveway, technically, there's no violation there.

00:40:08.460 Because in the expectation of Centre Street as a Main Street, it's currently, how to say, the words are, you know, should not put a driveway on a Main Street.

00:40:20.620 And it's not a thou shalt not, right?

00:40:22.740 And so the developer and the owner were quite cognizant of the aspiration versus what they could or couldn't do.

00:40:31.280 And they said, you know what, we'll support you.

00:40:35.300 We won't put that driveway there.

00:40:36.800 We'll put the driveway in the sideway.

00:40:38.280 So to accommodate the city, they created an alternative way of doing it, which obviously triggered the development program because now you've got people coming off the side of the street instead of off the side of the street.

00:40:48.900 You got, you know, the drive-thru circulating through the property differently than what it was originally intended.

00:40:54.700 So, yeah, a development firm had to be put in place, but only because, you know, they weren't allowed to, you know,

00:41:00.540 allowed to build the drive-thru onto Center Street.

00:41:04.380 Yeah, well, and like for like, I mean, fine, but that's kind of a, with rational people, that's a broad concept.

00:41:09.820 I mean, it's understandable.

00:41:11.220 If you had a Dairy Queen there and then suddenly it burned down and you want to replace it with a gas station,

00:41:16.140 well, you're gone quite radically different from what you did beforehand, but modest changes. I

00:41:20.440 mean, it shows the intractability of bureaucracy sometimes if they're going to take it to a literal

00:41:24.860 sense of everything and using that as an excuse. And I think it was an excuse to trigger because

00:41:29.100 they've got other plans in mind, other visions. And that's something that actually, I think,

00:41:34.560 really brought this story to a head because you don't often see a councillor intervening so

00:41:38.560 directly, you know, and putting out such a clear statement on what she felt should be built there

00:41:45.280 and told the business owners and the property owners what an opportunity they would have if

00:41:50.720 they would just follow her vision on what should be built there. But of course, that's not with

00:41:54.400 her money. But it's a symptom of a much broader problem. So this is going to go before, well,

00:42:00.660 it's in appeal now. Hopefully some reasonability comes in. But we've got city planning versus

00:42:07.460 consumer demand. This is an issue that's going on all over the place. When we've got a hollowed out

00:42:12.460 downtown we've got people with different visions on how to address that how to fix that and it

00:42:18.240 seems like though that we've got realistically a flight of people they want to move to the suburbs

00:42:22.320 businesses and individuals so how can the city cope with this you know the the city has um what

00:42:29.760 and i don't want to sound like a city bureaucrat or anything like that but i do appreciate through

00:42:33.940 the municipal government act the city has to put together a 30-year plan which we call a municipal

00:42:38.340 development plan and that's supposed to be tracking you know future trends of the city population and

00:42:43.940 you know how and how people want to use the city and travel around so and so forth so again there

00:42:50.820 the planners are appropriate to say you know this is a future direction of the city and we want to

00:42:55.940 use center street in this sort of way so i don't discount that the city has a right to put that

00:43:01.700 up there at the same time i don't want the right of the property owner to say look you know all

00:43:06.900 I've got is insurance money. I can't build anything bigger than I can build. Therefore,

00:43:12.580 the compromise is, you know, let's make some adjustments here, right?

00:43:17.300 There, at the end of the day, you know, you're going to get to between a rock and a hard place

00:43:20.980 between what the developer can do and what the city would like to do. And that's something that

00:43:26.180 I think through some innovative thinking, there could have been a resolution done before having

00:43:31.140 to go through a rejection of the permit and thereby the appeal process. That's the question

00:43:36.660 to be asked is, you know, have we thought out of the box and find a way to satisfy, you know,

00:43:42.060 both ends needs. Yeah, well, and it's a unique business. You know, it was interesting watching

00:43:47.400 some of the discussion. I owned a restaurant and pub for five years. Oh, boy, what a grind that

00:43:51.700 was. That's a tough, narrow margin industry to get into. And some people were saying, well,

00:43:57.900 you just skip the dishes. You can use, you know, DoorDash. I mean, all these restaurants. Look,

00:44:03.140 I don't want my blizzard to take half an hour to get to me.

00:44:05.720 And I don't want to pay 15 bucks for it.

00:44:08.100 Part of, you know, particularly with Dairy Queen is they provide, you know, cold products.

00:44:13.940 It's an experience.

00:44:15.220 I mean, that was a family gathering spot for years and years.

00:44:18.240 Teams, community associations, they would come in afterwards.

00:44:21.460 And the city, I guess, you know, it's hard for a bureaucrat, but sometimes a committee to take these things into account.

00:44:27.640 But they're important to a community.

00:44:30.360 They are important.

00:44:31.260 and again um if you ask the question is the city wrong to say no um if if the answer is

00:44:39.340 is that they're looking out for the future of the city and um you know without thinking out of the

00:44:45.340 box they decide to say no and leave it to the subdivision appeal board to make the determination

00:44:49.900 you know that is a viable path is that the right path for the owner is that the right path for the

00:44:53.980 public you know i think everybody is everybody's asking that same question today um my my belief

00:45:00.060 speaking as a candidate, I think we could have thought out of the box for different solutions

00:45:04.380 and that would have been more appropriate way of moving forward.

00:45:08.780 Yeah. Well, the center street's in quite a limbo. Like when I lived in Highland Park,

00:45:13.020 I was just off center right up on 40th and we were part of the community association.

00:45:17.100 And we had a gentleman present to the community association because he was at the end of his rope.

00:45:21.740 He had built or purchased a building that was commercially zoned

00:45:24.700 uh and he wanted to convert it into offices for his law offices and the city kept rejecting him

00:45:32.160 and rejecting him and rejecting him and he was he was almost in tears and they wouldn't say why

00:45:37.280 but the bottom line was they knew there's long-term plans they didn't want something

00:45:42.020 new going on there because eventually if theoretically it's going to get torn down

00:45:46.420 for a brt and or a green line but when you don't even know if that's going to come up there and

00:45:51.740 you're strangling development and he ended up pulling out and selling it at a loss i believe

00:45:55.980 uh you you look up center street this last eight years and what's happened i mean it's

00:46:00.640 gone downhill it you know it's rough because nobody's going to build anything on there it's

00:46:05.600 in development limbo and uh i don't know if it's intentional but it's causing in in some

00:46:11.240 minus view some damage you know i mean i guess if if if the city was that cold calculating you

00:46:17.040 could do that sort of thing because you could buy stuff for a lot less when you have to

00:46:20.580 appropriate or expropriate it later because the property values aren't worth anything but maybe

00:46:25.940 it's a time for the city to bite the bullet then and say we're going to go ahead with this and just

00:46:29.620 find the market value and buy these people out instead of leaving it hanging halfway like this

00:46:33.460 or is that a possibility yeah again yes the answer is yes the city can certainly buy out

00:46:40.100 property or or ultimately hold out and expropriate i don't think either those answers are necessarily

00:46:46.340 the right answer i think again we need to be able to work with the property owner and find a way to

00:46:50.980 help them through the situation and that is a counselor that is fundamental what you should be

00:46:56.980 doing um listening understanding and advocating for your constituent and working with the city

00:47:02.740 as city leaders to find that that uh you know that's still relying on the edge that you can

00:47:07.700 you can you know pull on yeah so so pulling away from this uh issue specifically but it's still in

00:47:14.660 in the broad sense as you're running for council this fall. One of the big ones is, you know,

00:47:19.000 and they're in, I believe right now in camera meeting on it is the green line proposal that

00:47:24.880 that mega project, a $5 billion ever shrinking green line. Where do you stand on that? Like

00:47:32.760 it's getting controversial that whether or not we could afford it, whether or not we need it,

00:47:36.140 the downtown at this point is in such distress. Do we really need to be at this point anyways,

00:47:40.820 bringing more transit access to it or or should we get it done while we can where are you sitting

00:47:46.240 on this it's an absolutely complicated question because there's many different levers and you

00:47:50.400 pull one lever the other lever goes the other direction that sort of thing so what i'll say

00:47:54.200 in my personal position is uh i believe that you know this the citizens of calgary residents of

00:47:59.760 calgary need to be able to you know get around calgary effectively and efficiently whether that's

00:48:04.580 by using a bus using a train or brt or taking their own car or bicycle you know it's their

00:48:10.460 choice how to get around from the city's perspective though um i often say that you know

00:48:16.060 your tax dollars is the city's product purse and they have responsibility protecting the product

00:48:21.200 proof to the best best way possible so a lot of it gets around to you know prioritizing where you

00:48:26.400 spend the money making sure you you exercise good due diligence and doing that and once you know

00:48:32.640 once you do it you know exercise the best most efficient way of procurement or building it

00:48:38.580 yourself so those are three fundamental things as to what government should do however nine times

00:48:46.580 out of ten you get you've thrown a curveball and a curveball being the downturn of the economy

00:48:50.820 down at the pandemic situation the office vacancies uh people are now getting accustomed to working

00:48:56.020 from home so as the as the scenario changes you have to pivot and change accordingly and i'm

00:49:01.380 hoping that today's you know uh council meeting is is exactly that understanding all those all

00:49:07.460 those changes in the environment that will ask you you know how do we pivot how do we how do

00:49:12.980 we pull the levers differently this time around as opposed to you know sticking to the guns on

00:49:17.460 something that was you know was a condition for a different environment yeah so getting back to

00:49:24.420 the downtown i mean let's say if you'd be become the uh next counselor for ward seven uh what can

00:49:32.020 you do i mean that's going to be part of your turf this is a giant issue going on down here we've got

00:49:36.660 got a massive vacancy rate. We've got actually also what happens when an area gets depressed.

00:49:41.680 I mean, we've got the associated crime now that's moving in and people just don't want to go down

00:49:45.520 there. What can you advocate for and do as a councillor to try and remedy or rectify this?

00:49:51.660 Sure. Well, let me just go back to the green line. One of the things about the green line is

00:49:55.460 it is really, if put in place properly, it can eradicate some of those issues you're talking

00:50:01.260 about right in other words that people can get around as opposed to being stuck in the downtown

00:50:06.860 core because they can't get to a job or can't then then i think we do need to provide transit

00:50:11.980 in there but having said that uh transit's got to be affordable it's got to be done in a in the

00:50:17.260 right way and done in the right uh right locations and i think that the jury's still out despite the

00:50:22.700 fact the council made the the determination last fall on the alignment right um we need to we need

00:50:29.260 to ask the question you know um for the 4.9 billion or 5.6 billion whichever way you want

00:50:34.300 to count it you know is the alignment is the party there still the right way um so that this

00:50:41.020 all i'll leave it at that um i have strong opinions as to what happens across the river and up center

00:50:46.700 street but you know then we're not there for that discussion yet relative to downtown core and

00:50:51.980 everything else is such you're right we have a 30 vacancy in the city calgary have recently announced

00:50:57.340 the greater downtown strategy or greater downtown plan which replaces the 10th street plan and

00:51:04.300 the center city plan and that plan is you know visionary as to how we can change downtown into

00:51:10.540 a community as opposed to a commercial office core and and there's some good you know merit

00:51:15.900 in doing that but again it gets back to you know putting your mouth where you get the biggest the

00:51:21.180 biggest banging buck for and and uh you know we the parties are putting money in arts common the

00:51:27.820 part of parties are putting money in retrofitting office towers or residential the president you

00:51:32.540 know parties are doing us and changes streetscape that's really i think we we owe it to the citizens

00:51:38.540 to take that take that greater uh downtown plan to the public and say is is this the best way to

00:51:44.540 deal to eradicate some of the problems we've got whether it be vacancy or people people um having

00:51:50.780 you know social disorder issues mental health issues whatever is that is just the best way

00:51:55.820 um certainly there's been a lot of good thoughtful heads put it together that way but i think the

00:52:00.460 calgarians need to need to weigh in and say yeah and the best way to do that is weigh in during

00:52:06.060 the during the election again i have i have different opinions but you know that's that's

00:52:10.860 where i'd like to have conversations with people hear what they have to say yeah well the elections

00:52:14.780 certainly are our opportunity this is going to be a big one and that's why i'm looking forward

00:52:18.140 of covering a lot of this as it develops over the next few months because we have a well the mayor

00:52:22.620 is not going to be running again we're going to have a new mayor one way or another in the next

00:52:26.140 term and we're going to have a i believe at least five incoming councillors aren't running again at

00:52:30.220 this point so we're got an opportunity for change so it's going to be important i think for calgarians

00:52:35.260 to really pay attention in this one and and choose carefully because it's tough to get your voice

00:52:40.380 out there between elections that's been an ongoing thing and one of the things you've mentioned was

00:52:43.820 was taking it to the citizens because it seems that there's a, I guess when you talk bigger

00:52:49.320 planning, you know, there's urban designers, developers, they're kind of in their own bubble,

00:52:53.160 their world. They've got a vision of what they want to see. I mean, we saw that back with Imagine

00:52:57.120 Calgary when it was put together. And now with this recent community guidebook, which turned

00:53:01.340 actually into kind of a hot button item. I mean, it seems to be a dream book for an urban designer,

00:53:07.380 but a horror story for a suburban residential person or business person.

00:53:13.500 Where's your thoughts on that guidebook and what it was proposing and what it was examining?

00:53:18.240 So a bit of orientation on that.

00:53:20.540 The guidebook was intended to help the city and the developers and communities

00:53:25.080 go from that 30-year vision of the municipal development plan

00:53:28.580 into something that communities can say,

00:53:30.840 this is what Crescent Heights is going to be built out in the next 30 years.

00:53:35.120 So the guidebook is there to help people formulate what that looks like.

00:53:39.520 The old guidebook was presented in January and presented to the public with very short notice to really read, understand 130 pages and understand the magnitude of it.

00:53:50.460 But the other part that became apparent about that guidebook was it was representing a different way of doing business and a different way that developers and communities and homeowners weren't accustomed to.

00:54:02.720 And therefore, it's rushed.

00:54:04.720 And what we want the city to do is just take it back to the public and explain it to the public, saying, you know, no longer we talk about looking at your specific house and zoning your house, but we're looking at zoning the entire neighborhood.

00:54:17.600 And based on zoning the entire neighborhood, everybody gets the same zoning and everybody gets the same sort of allowable uses on it and everybody gets the same way to build houses on it, right?

00:54:29.120 And in a lot of communities such as Crescent Heights, there is uniqueness, there is character,

00:54:34.680 there's a lot of heritage and contextual balance that needs to be preserved there.

00:54:40.520 And so having a blanket approach, you know, could erode what we have there.

00:54:46.540 And that's why we want to take it back to the public and say, is that what you want?

00:54:50.360 Do you want, you know, vanilla sort of use and construction in Crescent Heights of a community that's, you know,

00:54:57.260 90 to 100 years old you know yeah well it's it's not simple balance is a word it's important you

00:55:04.060 know but we don't we don't want to be crippled by it as well at the same time so it's it's finding 1.00

00:55:08.140 the the middle ground i mean we don't want a shanty town with no development rules whatsoever 0.95

00:55:12.220 i mean as a pure hardcore libertarian would want to see but we also you know these these 0.57

00:55:15.420 plant communities can get a little bland a commenter also was just asking you know how

00:55:19.500 the city's going to handle voting whether it's going to be traditional in person or mail-in

00:55:22.700 i think at this point none of the voting plans have changed uh but that might change if the

00:55:28.860 pandemic is still raging by fall perhaps but this really impacts your ability to get out i mean

00:55:33.980 that the traditional way to campaign is holding town hall meetings and knocking on doors uh how

00:55:39.900 have you have you been managing that in your campaign so far so you're right um getting out

00:55:45.260 knocking on doors um and masking and and standing back six feet or or you know more two meters or

00:55:51.900 war to have a conversation is is a challenge not impossible not impossible the greater concern is

00:55:57.900 the people at the door themselves do they want to open their doors and and as a result you have to

00:56:01.980 find another way to reach them if they won't open their doors so the use of social media is going to

00:56:07.020 be very you know prevalent throughout a lot of campaigns and being innovative as to how you use

00:56:12.300 the social media website is going to be the challenge for a lot of people like the other

00:56:16.700 great challenges most people who are wanting to meet and talk to talk to a candidate and donate

00:56:25.100 to a candidate one if i use the word they want to see the the white of their eyes and just to

00:56:30.300 understand you know how credible honest reputable is this person before you know before i throw my

00:56:36.620 vote to them or throw some you know contributions to their campaign yeah no it's just challenging

00:56:44.540 you can't beat a face-to-face meeting and unfortunately these days not everybody is

00:56:47.820 necessarily comfortable with that so all the candidates will have to find their ways to work

00:56:52.220 around that and reach out to people in the coming months um an area of concern with myself so i live

00:56:57.340 just outside of the city just a few minutes from the boundary of it but i am technically in the

00:57:01.420 county of foothills uh this regional development plan has been i mean people out in my neighborhood

00:57:06.220 and i know in rockyview county and others are just raging the battles between the city

00:57:10.620 and neighboring municipalities over the municipal development plan are only getting stronger and i

00:57:16.780 know that i get frustrated look i moved out of the city to have some of that freedom that can come

00:57:21.020 with being an acreage and and being able to you know build or develop as i please and a lot of

00:57:26.380 this planning makes it look as if if i want to subdivide in a few years i might have to apply to

00:57:30.300 the mayor of calgary at that time uh where would you sit on you know working with your again it's

00:57:36.140 a growing city so there's a reason that there has to be some longer term planning and working with

00:57:40.220 those those neighbors but to be honest it feels a lot like the city's taken a

00:57:43.820 bullying approach the last few years and it's not helping and it's making people

00:57:47.120 dig their heels in that where can you work to ease with that perhaps yeah

00:57:51.560 that's that's been a constant challenge and you know the 40 years and I think

00:57:56.480 you listeners need to know that I've worked for the city for 30 years prior

00:58:00.740 to prior to retirement in 2014 but despite all that you know the reason I'm

00:58:07.040 running is to listen to the people and understand where the towns are and find a way to find

00:58:12.340 the right accommodation, right solution for them.

00:58:14.560 So that same model or MO is what I hope to bring if I'm on council, dealing with the

00:58:21.920 MDs at Foothills, Rocky View, the small towns and villages around there.

00:58:27.900 And that is, we need to listen, understand, we need to find the harmony, if we can use

00:58:32.720 that singular word, that one thread of harmony that can make the MDs and the small towns

00:58:41.180 and villages work with the city of Calgary.

00:58:43.340 I know that the city of Calgary has a lot of services that they provide to the outlying

00:58:50.540 areas and they want to feel that they are still managing and hate to use the word control

00:58:55.960 of it, but there is a responsibility if you want effective, efficient services, the city

00:59:00.600 has to you know uh somewhat have a voice at the table but not not necessarily dominating or bullying

00:59:06.520 voice it's a voice that says you know let's let's listen understand let's you know reason balance

00:59:11.560 and come to that that uh right you know solution and if people say well that sounds like a kumbaya

00:59:17.640 session but you know the uh at the end of the day it's it's uh i don't see um any advantage of one

00:59:25.720 dominating the other, one pushing the other to, you know, to get to anywhere. We're a stronger

00:59:30.760 voice if the regional municipality of Calgary and all the other municipalities around us

00:59:36.440 work together and then they're able to speak in one voice and dealing with the province because

00:59:41.080 a lot of what the city and the towns and villages, you know, get their authority from and get their

00:59:46.920 funding from is from the province and the more unified we are and the more strategic we are,

00:59:52.520 I think the stronger a region will be. Great. Well, maybe just to summarize, so you're just

00:59:58.460 still under your first week of the campaign. So what are your prime planks? You know, when you're

01:00:02.660 going around Ward 7, what are you telling people when you've got them for two minutes? You know,

01:00:06.600 why should they select Terry Wong as their councillor in the next election year?

01:00:11.360 Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. First and foremost, again, while I have different sorts

01:00:17.500 of involvement with the city, I don't pretend to be a BO endo. My life has always been about,

01:00:21.820 And as I said before, listening and understanding and working towards the right resolution.

01:00:27.400 By doing that doesn't necessarily mean I'll agree with everything you say, but I will respect the conversation.

01:00:33.260 In terms of priorities, the greatest priority, number one, is the green line, the green line, $4.9 billion.

01:00:39.320 We're not too far into the investment yet, and we do have the opportunity to make the adjustments according to the environment in this scenario.

01:00:47.240 So that is certainly one of those things I want to see re-examined once the council sets.

01:00:53.240 The other thing is the urban planning process.

01:00:55.640 And as we just talked about with the Darren Coon and the guidebook, it will fundamentally change the way we build our communities, how we handle population growth, how we handle transportation transit.

01:01:06.980 And again, it's got to be the way Calgarians want to go, not necessarily the way theoretically or ideologically we should go.

01:01:15.400 So part of that statement also goes to say we don't always have to be the global best, but we have to be right for Calgary, you know.

01:01:24.620 And there's a number of undertones in what that means there, and we'll go into those undertones in a moment.

01:01:30.520 But I think the other critical point I want to get into is the balancing of budgets, but really is what I call the affordability.

01:01:39.720 City of Calgary as a government can only operate within what they can afford and what they can

01:01:45.400 afford is the tax dollar, the fees and the grants they get from the federal provincial government

01:01:50.020 and we've got to prioritize and make sure we use the best use of that money. So that gets back to

01:01:56.720 having a good look at the expenses, taking a look at the capital projects and priorities and making

01:02:01.060 sure that whatever we do reflects where the people want to be and doing things right as

01:02:08.400 as opposed to doing things best because we can't afford the best and you and to say we want to be

01:02:14.080 the leader in a world you know so let's take care of our own backyard first before we pretend to be

01:02:19.840 the leaders of the world on the revenue side um you know the the question gets back to um

01:02:27.440 affordability of the public you know in other words if we if we're in an economic downturn

01:02:33.280 right now where people are struggling to hang on to jobs or pay pay the mortgage month by month

01:02:38.400 there all these things last last thing we need to do is start looking at additional revenue sources

01:02:42.960 we're picking the pockets of people we need to ensure that you know that the revenues are are

01:02:48.720 affordable to the to the citizens and balanced to the appropriate expenditures that the city

01:02:55.120 has if that means we have to hold the line for a year or two years then you know that that's

01:03:00.320 what affordability is all about match with affordability is value that whatever we spend

01:03:05.120 your tax dollars on we get the greatest value for you there's no waste there's no there's no um how

01:03:12.080 to say um pet projects or anything else except it is what you want your priorities and we'll spend

01:03:19.040 the money there well that's great and you know something that people just underestimate too much

01:03:24.160 i mean our municipal government is our closest level of government and it's the one sometimes

01:03:28.240 we pay the least attention to and we really should stop doing that it impacts us very directly uh you

01:03:34.080 know our electoral turnouts can be unfortunately very embarrassing sometimes when it comes to

01:03:38.160 municipal elections so as i said this is going to be a turning point election i think on a number

01:03:42.480 of levels uh due to just you know current challenges going on uh a large turnover of

01:03:48.080 people in city hall it's a good chance for people to get out and get the the representatives that

01:03:52.320 are going to represent their views out there so i really appreciate you coming on and sharing that

01:03:57.280 i'm sure we're going to be talking again over the coming months there's still a good few months

01:04:00.320 before voting day and the campaign will keep heating up so where can people find more information

01:04:04.800 about you and your campaign terry sure the website is terrywong.ca very straightforward

01:04:10.080 and similar if you want to reach me just send an email to terry at terrywong.ca and both ways

01:04:16.560 will be to answer your questions great well thanks terry i'll let you go and i'm sure we will talk

01:04:23.760 again sometime soon. Corey, thank you, and nice to see you again. Yeah, you bet.

01:04:31.120 Okay, so that was Terry Wong, and yeah, you know, there's a lot of big challenges going on in

01:04:37.280 municipalities. You know, a lot of these, you see the news out of Edmonton and such,

01:04:40.640 if I got Edmonton listeners, or even Regina, it's the same everywhere, these same things,

01:04:45.280 and we got these urban development views, these bike lane infatuated urban density infatuated

01:04:52.160 designers and and counselors and mayors and they ignore what the actual people on the ground the

01:04:56.960 people have to live in it the people have to pay for it they ignore them they find every way they

01:05:01.040 have to force their vision through their view through as young carol carra is a beautiful

01:05:06.400 example i i believe he considers himself a developer but nobody's actually managed to

01:05:10.400 accept one of his developments again i believe you know these guys have an ideology but they

01:05:15.680 they reject reality and it's but that's up to us i mean once we put in these incumbents we don't

01:05:21.120 don't put them out of there. Drew Farrell, she's been in 20 years. I mean, the last 10,

01:05:31.060 she never won with over 50%, but 20 years for a counselor to sit in there. Guys, we've got to

01:05:37.000 wake up and pay attention to these things. If you put them in and then never follow up and hold

01:05:42.980 them accountable, well, it's a guarantee that you're going to get bad governance. You're going

01:05:49.060 to get bad candidates. I mean, this happens on every level of government, but we're particularly

01:05:52.120 guilty when it comes to the municipal ones. We really are. And it's like I was saying at the

01:05:56.340 end with Terry, you know, this is the government that's close to us right now. And you really want

01:06:02.260 to watch for it. I mean, they tax you. They tax you hard. They impact your neighborhood. They

01:06:05.720 impact your real estate. Watch the election. So yeah, we're going to cover as many candidates

01:06:10.960 and issues as we can in the months to come. Term limits. Some people are mentioning that,

01:06:16.120 You know, I'm mixed on term limits. I really am. I mean, on a personal level, I wish politicians

01:06:22.020 wouldn't make a career of it and they would just put in a couple of terms. You know, we see that

01:06:24.920 so often, like how many even good politicians go out with a foot on their ass because they didn't 0.99

01:06:29.440 know when to leave. You know, Ralph Klein at the end, I mean, his first eight years was fantastic 0.99

01:06:34.460 and he was winning, you know, again, despite all the doomsayers, when he was doing cuts,

01:06:38.700 when he was getting out there, he was winning larger and larger majorities. And then towards

01:06:43.120 the end, the support was dropping, it was fading, and it was kind of his own party at the end

01:06:48.040 that pushed him out. I mean, such a historic premier that he was, and he would have been

01:06:54.560 much better remembered if he'd left four years earlier. But at the same time, term limits are up

01:07:01.100 to us. If you're going to be purely democratic, if we'll get off our butts, we fire these guys 0.98

01:07:06.780 every eight years, you know, but if a guy can't get, or a gal, you know, or whatever these days,

01:07:13.360 their agenda in, or what they want to do in eight years, uh, you know, again, to go back to Klein,

01:07:18.760 the term was fire in the belly. It's time to step aside and let someone else do it because the fire

01:07:22.000 is going to start burning out. Uh, Jean Chrétien had the same thing. You know, these guys leave

01:07:25.760 with their own parties, uh, uh, you know, feed on their butts and it's, uh, not, not the best way

01:07:32.420 for them to go out. So you can kind of save them from themselves a little bit with term limits as

01:07:35.800 well. But hey, I mean, who knows, you might get a brilliant, brilliant leader who comes on and

01:07:42.900 everybody loves this person and wants them in for 12 years. Well, if we're in a democratic society,

01:07:49.600 shouldn't we be allowed to keep them for that long? It's a tough area. If we would just pay

01:07:55.400 attention more in elections, and if we would get out to vote more in elections and get out to vote

01:07:59.620 differently more often in elections, I don't think we would need term limits. It's up to us. That's

01:08:04.780 the great thing of democracy and our democracy is at risk on many many other things I mean one

01:08:08.820 thing that was pointed out was yeah mail-in ballots that's you know the vulnerabilities

01:08:11.860 that start coming when you start messing with the electoral system that's vital and again we've got

01:08:17.560 to pay attention to that and that the last Calgary election was a gong show uh what they're short on

01:08:23.160 ballots and and people were lined up and it was a mess I mean some people said that that was why

01:08:28.360 NG won I don't think so he won with enough that that didn't make a difference but it was still

01:08:32.220 an embarrassment for such a big democratic exercise. These things are important. And there

01:08:36.280 are unfortunately some very crazy unprincipled people out there. The best means for elections

01:08:43.100 on any level is to get people to come in, in person. And yes, with identification, ID is not

01:08:49.240 racist. I'll say it again, ID is not racist. Man, the insanity these days with some of that stuff,

01:08:55.720 south of the border and everything. It's not that hard. You've got to present ID to open a bank

01:09:00.160 account. You've got to present ID if you look young and you want to buy a bottle of wine.

01:09:04.300 It's not unreasonable to ask somebody to come in person and present ID to vote. Something as

01:09:10.560 important and as critical as voting. It's not. So yes, you know, but there's people who want to

01:09:18.360 undercut the institutions. They want to change the ability to come in. You know, and I get sick of,

01:09:23.060 I mean, you see, I don't like low electoral turnouts either. It bothers me. But we heard

01:09:27.460 O'Toole again. You know, let's get on to him. He was talking about making voting mandatory.

01:09:32.780 Why? So you can lose by a bigger margin? O'Toole, you've got to learn to win the love of the

01:09:37.780 electors before worrying about forcing the ones who don't even want to bother to vote to vote.

01:09:41.560 And they're not voting for you. I don't care about somebody who doesn't want to bother

01:09:46.800 themselves to get off their butt and vote. It's not that hard. In fact, we make it so easy. We 0.99

01:09:52.080 bend over backwards. We've multiple advanced voting days now, mail-in options for people

01:09:57.840 who are leaving the country. You know, every campaign, a large organized campaign, a good

01:10:02.540 campaign will give rides to identified supporters to get them to the polls. The hours are extended.

01:10:08.560 They're long. No more excuses. I do want to get people out voting. I want to see candidates out

01:10:13.880 there engaging people and encouraging people to vote. I want to see news media outlets encouraging

01:10:19.200 people to vote. But for those, after all that, who don't bother voting, well, screw them. I don't 0.67

01:10:24.280 care. Stay home. There's nothing I can think of more stupid than forcing them to come in and cast

01:10:29.360 a ballot because I don't think they're going to make a good choice. They can choose. We don't 1.00

01:10:34.400 need a law for it. So O'Toole, I don't know where he's going. And again, we got the real risk to

01:10:41.500 democracy. It's not lack of voters coming out to vote for lack of a law, forcing them to do it.

01:10:45.900 It's people coming in like Trudeau with Gabbo and bringing in C-10 to infringe on our free speech.

01:10:52.720 They've been bringing in things so that this broadcast would be controlled by the CRTC.

01:10:56.560 This broadcast would have to abide by the liberal standards, their standards on what it's supposed to be.

01:11:02.140 God, they'll have to be cut off within a week.

01:11:04.900 So I'm sure some people will be happy with that.

01:11:07.600 But this is frightening.

01:11:08.540 This is troublesome.

01:11:09.720 There are no tools mumbling about forcing people to vote.

01:11:13.180 Where on earth are you going?

01:11:14.300 Like, you know, back to the municipal, somebody pointing out getting Gondek on.

01:11:20.240 Yeah, that would be the chances of getting Gondek on are extremely slim, to be fair.

01:11:26.280 And he also said, you know, a Western Standard moderated informal debate would be good.

01:11:29.280 Yeah, we'll see what kind of things we can develop as we get into this election year.

01:11:31.920 There's a lot of potential.

01:11:33.140 Like we're just developing this digital broadcast platform.

01:11:35.920 This is only a year and a half in as a publication.

01:11:39.220 And we've been trying a lot of new ideas and they're going really well.

01:11:41.720 you know it's just been doing fantastic growing in leaps and bounds some fantastic people getting

01:11:45.960 involved maybe we'll do something like that uh gondek on the other hand now you have to remember

01:11:50.680 a little while back uh her election campaign got uh leaked early uh that that she was going to run

01:11:57.920 that she was going to have stephen carter who by the way was threatening to sue the western standard

01:12:01.180 as her campaign manager and the person who leaked that was uh some guy named cory morgan on his blog

01:12:06.480 so it really kind of uh upset her apple cart and you know pissed her and card her off probably so

01:12:12.260 i might not be the person who's going to get them on but maybe we'll find a less uh abrasive host

01:12:19.180 with the western standard to take on things like debates because it is important getting the other

01:12:23.460 candidates to point of point of view out there it really is and i mean if we're going to talk about

01:12:27.180 what i can see is leading contenders for mayor right now there's where it shows that incumbent

01:12:32.760 an advantage. We've got Farkas and Gondek. I haven't seen any real good polls yet, but

01:12:38.700 realistically, they're by far the top two. There's that other gentleman, Brad Field. He's got a lot

01:12:45.800 of advertising out and he's a visible presence out there. I think he recently released a bit of

01:12:52.520 a platform, but he's still not quite registering, I think, with a lot of voters yet. But it is very

01:12:57.020 early in this campaign yet. So we'll see what develops out of all of these mayoral

01:13:02.740 candidates. And we'll give time to the ones. I mean, for mayor, with no mayor running, there's

01:13:11.200 probably going to be 15 or 16 of them running. That happens just about every time when an

01:13:14.960 incumbent steps aside. And of those, usually the bottom 10 don't pass like 2% support. So I know

01:13:23.820 it's a bit of a bias, but I tend to want to focus on those top four or five, which really are

01:13:28.860 contending for the win in this sort of thing. I spoke with Mike Nickel up in Edmonton too. He's

01:13:37.420 doing quite a battle up there. You know, this is a big year. Another thing to remember this fall

01:13:42.100 is we got our equalization referendum coupled with the municipal election. So this is one of

01:13:46.220 the things I think is going to increase turnout. Ninchy was furious and that's part of the reason

01:13:50.460 probably why he chose not to run again too. See, strategically, the last thing guys like Ninchy

01:13:56.080 want to do the leftists like him want to do is have conservative voters get out to vote you know

01:14:00.920 they're not going to vote for him if you're going to go to the polling booth maybe it was people

01:14:04.620 who were indifferent on municipal elections but they're going to come out to vote on the

01:14:07.400 equalization referendum and if you got the ballot there it only takes another second to mark an x

01:14:11.700 next to somebody other than nichi but it is a great opportunity and you know there's something

01:14:16.740 coming up this year too in campaigns like i'm just uh you know going on on a number of things

01:14:23.060 But the equalization referendum is just fantastic.

01:14:27.340 I mean, we're going to get all of the usual tall foreheads, academics and all the rest

01:14:31.980 poo-pooing us and telling us, you can't change equalization.

01:14:35.760 You don't understand how equalization works and all the rest of the usual stuff.

01:14:39.620 You knuckle-dragging Albertans, just quit whining about it.

01:14:42.420 Accept the formula and the constitutionally entrenched equalization formula and just 0.99

01:14:47.160 shut up and do your thing.

01:14:49.160 It's not going to go over well. 0.94

01:14:50.460 And I understand, you know, we could have 90% of Albertans vote to trash equalization, unless the federal government and enough people want to adjust the constitution, it's not going to change. It might change the formula if they really felt compelled to, I doubt they would. But it sure sends a warning shot, doesn't it?

01:15:09.500 you know what i see that equalization referendum as a practice run because there could be a much

01:15:15.340 more important referendum held within a year or two after that or three and that's the bigger

01:15:20.780 one what better way to get out and discuss regional issues you know talk to people what

01:15:26.780 are you upset about can you change this system is it worth trying to change this system the

01:15:32.540 equalization referendum is going to bring all those regional questions up for discussion people

01:15:37.260 are going to talk about a lot more than just equalization over that period because of the

01:15:41.740 nature of it and when we get told to roll up our equalization vote and stuff it okay but under the

01:15:49.180 clarity act it does say if we vote for independence with a clear question by your own act government

01:15:57.100 of canada then you have to negotiate our independence in good faith so let's look at

01:16:03.500 that equalization referendum is a stepping stone in my view uh you know either a warning shot to

01:16:08.780 fix things or a practice run to totally change the system vote to get out vote for independence

01:16:16.380 and fix things for real in a whole new system so that's going to be coupled though with the

01:16:20.780 municipal election so i mean we've got a really important election coming this fall get out to

01:16:24.780 vote in the independence but since you're going anyway have a look at who your local candidate

01:16:29.340 whether you're in a small town you know who's your vote running for reeve or whether you're in

01:16:33.820 one of the cities you know look who's running for mayor and look who's running for councillor

01:16:37.740 and uh take your time and mark that ballot too because we can make a lot of positive changes

01:16:40.940 while we're out at the same time there but yeah so i'm you know it was a one guest day i think

01:16:45.820 i've rambled enough for today i've covered quite a bit here uh a lot on that that rodeo you know

01:16:51.340 people are upset too bad the world's not gonna end they're saying the usual wait two weeks wait two

01:16:55.500 weeks. I'm not too worried about it. They said that after the Super Bowl. They said that after

01:16:59.580 40,000 people got together down in Texas for a baseball game. They said it in Sylvan Lake. They

01:17:04.260 said it in Ontario. Two weeks later, nothing happens. I mean, if something does happen,

01:17:08.000 it's not going to be related to the rodeo. Though some people will probably blame it on the rodeo

01:17:11.440 anyways, but whatever. We've got a really divided society going on because we are in the midst of

01:17:16.080 just a weird, insane period, and we have to stand up for our rights. And that's what people did last

01:17:21.100 weekend. I'm not ashamed of it. Uh, it'll be interesting to see what comes. There's more

01:17:25.420 rodeos coming and a tie doesn't back down for anybody. So, uh, that's going to be interesting

01:17:33.300 to watch developing is going along. So remember to support us though, you know, things like that

01:17:39.020 C10. I mean, if that comes through and it probably will, uh, they will start using it to crack down 1.00

01:17:44.440 on things like the Western standard. That's where we got the justice center for constitutional

01:17:48.240 freedoms jccf.ca those are the guys standing up for ty northcott assuming if he gets charged

01:17:54.620 standing up for uh pastor coates standing up for i believe chris uh up in uh mirror with his cafe

01:18:01.960 uh we might need some legal help too we sponsored that rodeo

01:18:06.400 we'll see uh but the other thing was was um as i said the free speech bill c10 i mean if they

01:18:13.800 start trying to gag us they start trying to shut us down we are going to push back i mean we're

01:18:17.540 not giving up. Derek's a stubborn, you know, fellow of German heritage. He's not going to let

01:18:23.300 this go easily, but we do need your support and it's been great. You know, so be sure to subscribe

01:18:27.500 to the Western Standard, get on there, get a membership. We don't get tax funding. That's

01:18:32.180 great because we aren't beholden. We don't let the government dangle a carrot around for us to tell

01:18:36.340 us what we can cover and what we can't cover. That's why they're moving on to laws, but we need

01:18:40.260 those subscribers to pay those bills. That's why we've got a large team. That's why we've got

01:18:43.720 guys who are writing such great news copy some of the great columns we get in pays for these

01:18:48.980 broadcasts things like that so if you haven't subscribed already subscribe share our stuff

01:18:53.800 nag other people to subscribe make that western standard chain letter you know they'll appreciate

01:18:58.320 it in the end when they're getting some good news because the more people we get on board the more 0.80

01:19:01.920 content we can produce and we're only going to get better at it so thank you all very much for

01:19:07.040 that tomorrow by the way between 10 and noon we've got Nathan Gita he's a fantastic young man

01:19:11.760 he's got his show on it's every tuesday wednesday and thursday it's called mountain standard time

01:19:17.640 and it is 10 till noon mountain standard time he's from prince george he covers the bc issues

01:19:23.360 and the national issues fantastically be sure to come on there take part get some comments in there

01:19:28.400 and again keep sharing it as for kareen you've subscribed but you haven't been able to read the

01:19:33.400 articles um i'm not sure i'm afraid that's a little out of my turf but what i would suggest

01:19:38.620 is, yeah, send an email to, I believe, info at westernstandardonline.com and somebody will

01:19:44.320 address that. They'll fix it up because, yeah, we certainly want everybody to get through.

01:19:47.220 We did have the occasional tech issues, you know, and some of that's been because we've had such

01:19:51.520 a massive readership. We're one of the most read publications in Western Canada already,

01:19:56.160 even with the paywall. But of course, you know, it's really pressured the servers. And I know

01:20:00.580 some of you've been frustrated when you get some of those 404s, but we're upgrading as fast as the

01:20:04.500 new readers come on and uh we're keeping up with it uh i'll pass it along that you've contacted

01:20:10.680 them corinne and hopefully that gets rectified really soon because yeah we don't want anybody to

01:20:14.260 to miss out on on seeing these things and i'm sorry that that's happened uh so thanks again

01:20:19.460 i will see you on friday hopefully i'll have a uh quick dick mcdick on by then we'll see it's

01:20:25.620 hard to schedule you know with a guy who's farming i mean they're they're working fast

01:20:28.900 seeding time now and things are moving and he's at breakdowns we'll have other guests as well

01:20:33.560 and I'm certain lots to talk to talk about by the end of the week on Wednesday I'll be on at

01:20:38.340 the pipeline too which we do every week at noon with Derek and quite often Dave and others thank

01:20:44.080 you all again for tuning in thanks to those who came out to the rodeo thanks to those who watched

01:20:48.140 and I will see you all later

Western Standard - May 04, 2021

The Cory Morgan Show, May 3, 2021

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