The Cory Morgan show. Why the sacred cow of Canadian healthcare must be slain
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
177.35622
Summary
In this episode of the Western Standard Weekly Show, Corey rants about the upcoming election in Alberta and calls into question whether conservatism is even selling out anymore. Guest: Professor Tom Flanagan, who has been involved in conservative politics across Canada for a long time.
Transcript
00:00:29.980
Good day. Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show. I am Corey Morgan. This is the Western Standards
00:00:34.860
weekly show, or at least my weekly show with the Western Standard, where I will
00:00:39.120
speak to interesting guests, cover interesting issues, rant and rave, get stuff off my chest,
00:00:45.480
and have exchanges with commenters. So thank you very much for joining us today, guys. We've got
00:00:50.780
a packed show, lots to cover and lots to talk about. I've got a guest coming on in a little
00:00:55.040
while. He's Professor Tom Flanagan. He's been strongly involved in conservative politics
00:01:00.000
across Canada, federally and provincially for quite some time. And he's going to weigh in
00:01:04.820
and we'll talk about conservatism and the election in Alberta. I mean, Alberta is the bastion of
00:01:10.580
conservatism in Canada, supposedly. Yet here we are on the brink of possibly another NDP
00:01:15.760
government. What the heck is going on? Is conservatism even saleable anymore? That is
00:01:22.040
starting to get questionable. We'll see. I'm sure it is. But Mr. Flanagan is certainly going to add
00:01:27.420
more to it. So I'm going to start off, though, with what's got me going today. And it's an issue,
00:01:32.440
again, it comes up from the provincial election in Alberta, but it affects everybody across this
00:01:37.480
country. And the story is the same across the entire country. Every province in Canada has greatly
00:01:42.940
increased health spending in the last five years. Yet every province in Canada is facing an
00:01:47.860
overwhelmed short-staffed health care system. People are dying while waiting for specialized
00:01:52.440
treatment or diagnostics. Family doctors are nearly impossible to find. Ambulances and emergency
00:01:57.440
services can't keep up with the demand. And hospital emergency rooms are constantly overwhelmed. It
00:02:02.440
doesn't matter which party is in power. We've got different parties in government all across the
00:02:05.880
country. The issues are the same. So if money isn't the answer, and the party in power isn't the
00:02:10.620
answer, then the problem obviously has to be with the system. Any politician questioning Canada's
00:02:16.300
sacred health care system, though, is committing a form of blasphemy. Unions, pundits, and academics
00:02:21.980
will pour from the woodworks and condemn the offender for daring to question the perfection of
00:02:26.640
the Canadian system if they do. Eager legacy media outlets, of course, will jump into the mix and feed
00:02:31.660
the fires with dire images of people suffering for lack of care in the United States. And they'll
00:02:36.780
interview somebody from south of the border who's going to offer a sob story on how they lost their
00:02:40.660
retirement and their home due to medical bills from an emergency hemorrhoid surgery or something like
00:02:45.920
that. The politicians who set things off will then duck his or her head, you know, and head for
00:02:52.100
cover and won't bring the subject up again. And nothing changes. It has to stop. Canadians have
00:02:57.660
to stop falling for the fear mongering from the defenders of the status quo. Liberal and NDP
00:03:02.360
politicians have accused conservatives of wanting to dismantle the universal health care system since
00:03:07.360
it was created. Yet not once has a conservative government done anything to threaten the
00:03:11.660
universality of the system. Well, many have had majority mandates where they could have done so
00:03:16.540
at any time. I remember, well, with Ralph Klein, they were always saying he was going to privatize
00:03:20.240
it all. It never happened. So if it's hollow fear mongering from the left, so why do they do it?
00:03:25.620
Well, it's because it works every bloody time. Canadians have been trained for decades to believe
00:03:29.840
we have the best health care system on the planet. And the only alternative system is the American one.
00:03:35.220
That's an utter bunk. Canada's system is among one of the worst of universal health systems in the world
00:03:41.660
for the buck. I mean, there's great professionals within it, but the system's a mess. And there's
00:03:45.580
dozens of other systems in the world besides the American one. We need to have frank discussions on
00:03:50.360
the system and must look at models that are outperforming ours. There's many of them in Europe
00:03:54.840
and Asia that are providing universal care while spending less than we do and without having to
00:03:59.560
ration provision nearly as much as we do. So what's the catch, though? Well, they allow more private
00:04:05.040
provision of care. I remember universal coverage. So, I mean, everybody gets covered. Nobody gets turned
00:04:10.720
away. Nobody has to pay out of pocket. But it's not a monopoly any longer. Monopoly systems, they
00:04:16.820
always screw the consumer. And in Canada, we're living under a health care provision monopoly.
00:04:21.140
Lack of competition has stunted innovation, allowed a massive bloated bureaucracy to grow,
00:04:26.220
and has empowered unions to the point where internal reforms are nearly impossible to achieve.
00:04:31.200
The care is too centralized and hospital-centric, and they're bursting at the seams. But if you try to
00:04:35.900
take services out of a hospital setting, you're going to raise the ire of the unions who rely quite well
00:04:41.020
on those big union hospital environments. In Alberta, the NDP are raising the specter of privatized
00:04:45.960
health care in the election. They're running commercials showing a person reaching into their wallet
00:04:49.920
for a credit card while checking in at a clinic. And this tactic is standard from the left, and it's
00:04:54.580
unsurprising. What's infuriating, though, is that it works. Mistrust is being fostered in Premier
00:05:00.220
Smith, and many people are saying things like, well, I don't like the NDP, but I can't let the UCP
00:05:04.260
dismantle the health care system. How long are we going to allow the health care system to
00:05:09.040
deteriorate before realizing and admitting it needs reform? How long will we let ourselves be
00:05:13.540
fooled by the fear-mongering of unions that care nothing for patient outcomes and only about
00:05:17.580
maintaining the status quo? Politicians need to find the courage to take on the system,
00:05:22.420
and voters need to find the courage to allow them to do it. Until that happens, though, the system's
00:05:27.220
going to continue its slide to the bottom no matter how many tax dollars are pumped into it.
00:05:30.860
Well, that's kind of what's got me up and going today, guys. Well, lots of other stuff
00:05:36.900
breaking and bursting in the news. Let's get in and check in with our news editor, Dave Naylor,
00:05:41.140
in the newsroom and see what else is happening out there. Hey, Dave, how's it going?
00:05:45.380
All right, Corey. You know what? We're three days into it, and I'm already sick of the election.
00:05:50.700
It's getting tiresome and repetitive already, but we'll push through. I mean, this is like the
00:05:54.880
Super Bowl for us in a lot of ways. It's just that it takes 28 days.
00:06:11.760
Okay. I think maybe we're having some technical difficulties
00:06:23.020
with Dave there. Perhaps we'll check again with him in a second. Sorry, Dave, we kind of lost you
00:06:30.740
Yeah, no problem, Corey. I think it's my old computer about to give up the ghost.
00:06:35.800
Why don't I just jump right in before it dies again? Well, lots of stuff on the website
00:06:42.180
already this morning. Corey, obviously, a lot of it election-related. We've got a piece by our
00:06:48.640
education specialist, John Hilton O'Brien, on what the fate of private schools will be under
00:06:54.980
an NDP. Basically, it'll be the end of them, because they've already said they will help
00:07:01.560
eliminate private schools in the province. All COVID restrictions have been lifted in the
00:07:09.020
United States. You do not have to have validation of COVID vaccines anymore to get in there.
00:07:14.840
Interesting story coming out of Calgary Police this morning. They've arrested an Edmonton man,
00:07:21.360
69 years old, for a series of three sexual assaults in Calgary in 1984, 39 years ago, in fact. So,
00:07:32.040
an incredible development there. You see, Brangine and Rebecca Schultz had a press conference in
00:07:38.840
Calgary about an hour ago saying the NDP's promise of putting Alberta into a net emission zero
00:07:47.720
plan for 2035 is going to cost $84 billion, according to two studies, and that would make it the most
00:07:55.560
expensive political campaign promise in Alberta history. And our real estate expert, Mike Thomas,
00:08:03.480
has a look at the real estate markets in the two key areas of Vancouver and Toronto,
00:08:11.960
and the real estate there is purring along just fine. Rachel Notley just wrapped up a press conference
00:08:18.000
in Edmonton, so our Arthur Green will be filing a story on that shortly. And lots more good stuff to
00:08:24.300
come this afternoon, Corey. Right on. Well, I can see you're, well, I know you're busy as hell in
00:08:30.360
there with this election going on and everything else, so I'll let you go back to it. Thanks for
00:08:34.040
taking the time to check in with us, Dave. Thanks, Corey. That is the Western Standard News editor,
00:08:39.540
Dave Naylor. And as you can see, they're working so hard, it's wearing down our internet access in
00:08:44.440
the newsroom there. But be sure to check in on there, guys. The reason we have so many stories,
00:08:48.500
we have reporters across the country, whether it's covering the Alberta election or all the rest of the
00:08:51.920
issues going on out there, is because of subscribers. So if you haven't subscribed already, guys,
00:08:56.560
get on there, westernstandard.news slash membership. That's how we stay absolutely tax
00:09:02.300
subsidy free, and that's how we stay accountable to you with our reporting, not to anybody else. So
00:09:08.100
those who have already subscribed, thank you. If you haven't subscribed yet, come on, guys, get on there.
00:09:13.140
Ten bucks a month, well worth it. All right. So let's see, getting on to the federal scene. Let's get
00:09:19.400
back, because I like to keep reminding people of this, because this keeps bubbling and going and
00:09:22.700
bubbling and going, yet we don't seem to be getting any resolution. And that's the Chinese
00:09:27.980
interference in Canadian politics, the latest revelation. You know, I mean, we keep seeing
00:09:33.140
people on social media saying drip, drip, drip, because you see that steady dripping of somebody
00:09:37.760
is leaking from CSIS, these reports, all of this stuff where they've been raising alarm flags for years
00:09:43.520
and years about how the Chinese Communist Party has been influencing Canadian politics. This latest one
00:09:49.760
is quite a bombshell. Yet, of course, Trudeau dismissed it. That's not to be surprising. So
00:09:54.480
Conservative Member of Parliament, Michael Chong, apparently CSIS had been tracking that the
00:10:00.660
Chinese government had been making potential threats to his family who reside back in Hong Kong
00:10:06.680
still, because Chong had been very critical of the Chinese government over here. Like, think of how
00:10:13.960
huge, how scary, how brutal this is. A foreign nation intimidating our elected officials because
00:10:21.320
they don't like the policy statements they took here. And it's not impossible, again, to think of
00:10:25.640
China wanting to do that. Of course, that's the sort of thing China does. They aren't a nice country,
00:10:30.720
or, well, they're a nice country that the government is terrible. They're communists.
00:10:33.340
So, yeah, the Trudeau government was warned of this years ago. And what did they do about it?
00:10:38.980
Nothing. Nothing. They didn't think it was important enough, I guess, to deal with.
00:10:45.520
And that's essentially what Trudeau said. He said that he felt that CSIS just didn't feel this was
00:10:49.640
a big enough issue to have to deal with. Meanwhile, Chong didn't even know about this going on. Now,
00:10:55.180
there was a diplomat, Mr. Wei Zhao, who was involved in this. He was part of the one with the
00:11:01.040
communications. He's the one that the CSIS had been tracking and watching, this diplomat from the
00:11:06.060
Chinese Communist Party in Canada. Well, guess what? He's still approved by the Canadian government
00:11:11.140
to work in Canada. He's still an active diplomat here. He's been working on interfering with our
00:11:17.660
elected officials, threatening their families back in China. That's how that government works. It's not
00:11:22.740
just that they can't control the people here. They control them through threatening their families.
00:11:31.000
Many of them, if there's new Canadians or Canadians with Chinese family, they can threaten them from
00:11:35.260
where they're back home. You know, threatening phone calls, things like that. That's been documented as
00:11:38.740
well. Yet nothing's getting done about it. Trudeau keeps kicking the can down the road, appointing his
00:11:43.960
friendly uncle-like figures to be special rapporteurs. The Trudeau Foundation, more stuff is leaking
00:11:49.160
about how they were taking Chinese money in. This corruption mess is getting worse and worse and
00:11:55.640
worse, and nothing's getting done. Jagmeet Singh, of course, he holds the power to change it.
00:12:00.000
Won't do a thing. One of the most cowardly leaders in Canadian history, that man.
00:12:03.880
And I just, you gotta wonder, what the heck is it gonna take? Meanwhile, so, I mean, it got heated
00:12:09.940
in the House of Commons. Pierre Polyev brought it up, wanted to speak about it, wanted an emergency
00:12:14.380
debate. And he got threatened from the House Speaker, threatened to eject him from the House
00:12:22.420
for persisting on it, because he shut down the debate. The Speaker, the Speaker who's supposed
00:12:27.360
to be impartial, but I mean, the Speaker is a Liberal member of Parliament. Thus, they won't
00:12:33.260
discuss it any further. I just gotta wonder, how many more leaks is it gonna take? How bad is it gonna
00:12:39.100
have to get? It sounds like they've interfered with multiple elections of ours now. And then,
00:12:44.240
they've got that other story, you know, down in the States, there's Chinese police stations that
00:12:48.740
were set up. We had them in Canada, too. And Canada's Prime Minister of Lies, and you know,
00:12:53.440
every show I talk about Marco Mendicino and his lies, because he lies about everything. The guy,
00:12:58.080
I swear, he's pathological. He lied and said there were none of those police stations operating in
00:13:03.460
Canada. Well, it turns out, yes, they are. Yes, they are. And, you know, these were, they call them
00:13:09.920
police stations, basically, they're little toeholds of the Chinese Communist Party within our country
00:13:14.800
that are here expressly for the purpose of influencing Canadian policy. Should we not be
00:13:20.180
concerned about this? I mean, yes, but this issue just seems to be dragging out to this strategy on
00:13:27.140
the part of the Prime Minister to just keep kicking down the can down the road is working. And I don't
00:13:32.580
know what it's going to take to hold them to account. I really don't. You can see why people
00:13:36.040
give up on politics sometimes. I mean, it just feels futile sometimes. I don't know. We'll see
00:13:42.080
what the release for next week is going to be when that one comes up. I mean, speaking of just some
00:13:48.500
other fun idiocy in the world of the woke and many other things, Bud Light, yes, they still make
00:13:54.880
the news now and then, their sales dropped 21% in the past few weeks. 21% after their collaboration
00:14:03.060
with a transgender activist, Dylan Mulvaney. And again, I don't care. The company wants to, you know,
00:14:10.160
go with social media influencers and different types. Good for them. That's your business. It's
00:14:14.100
your company. But I'm just astounded when it comes to this because, like, no, your market, guys.
00:14:18.820
These are guys at rodeos. These are guys, you know, in country bars. That's your main market.
00:14:25.460
If you wanted to change your market and ease into it, fine, do so. But do it carefully. Don't jump
00:14:31.300
right in with this. Boy, are you ever taking a spank over this pointlessly and without need.
00:14:37.400
I don't know. But it all comes down to that ESG trend and almost fanaticism on the part of
00:14:42.820
corporations. I guess recently Coca-Cola had their own shareholders stand up and tell them to cut it out
00:14:47.500
because they were getting pushed to take a stance and boycotting states that aren't providing ready
00:14:52.060
enough services for abortion. Let the corporations be corporations. It doesn't matter what side of
00:14:57.300
the issue you're on. Quit this ESG garbage. Their role is to make money for their shareholders. They
00:15:02.040
shouldn't apologize for that. And they got to quit dipping their toes into the water of social justice
00:15:06.600
activism because as the saying goes, go woke, go broke. So yes, a 21% sales drop in one of the largest
00:15:12.820
beer brands on the planet. That's nothing to sneeze at. And it's going to take them a lot of work to
00:15:18.460
get that market back. All right. Let's get into some more domestic politics and talk to our guest
00:15:23.120
Professor Tom Flanagan and talk conservatism, politics, elections, and all that good stuff.
00:15:31.040
We'll bring him in and see how it's going. Hello. How are you doing?
00:15:35.760
I appreciate you coming on to talk to us today. You know, we got this election going. It's going to be
00:15:41.020
clearly already a heated and ugly one in a lot of ways. But what I kind of want to start with is,
00:15:49.180
you know, it's so close. It's neck and neck. Well, there's no conservative split for the parties
00:15:54.980
right now. It's not even a liberal party on the other side that you could say is ostensibly
00:16:01.260
centrist. It's NDP. Alberta is supposed to be the bastion of conservatism. What happened?
00:16:06.900
Well, the main thing that's happened over the long term is the collapse of the liberals and the
00:16:13.540
migration of their support to the NDP. The perception of Alberta as an overwhelmingly
00:16:21.460
conservative province was always a bit misleading. It was based on the vote splitting on the left.
00:16:29.860
If you went back and looked at the voting results for all the years that the conservatives were in
00:16:34.740
power, it was only a couple of times that they got more than 50% of the vote. Usually their vote was
00:16:42.000
strong, but not actually a majority. There was always a lot of voters that were looking for an
00:16:48.100
alternative to the conservatives. Well, now they have one. And so our politics now looks pretty much
00:16:53.120
like that of the other Western provinces in which you have on one side a conservative party with,
00:16:59.480
you know, in each province, it's a different name and a different, different history. And then on the
00:17:04.720
left, you have the NDP. And so we're very, our politics now is very much like that of British
00:17:11.420
Columbia or Saskatchewan or Manitoba. And so, as I say, the perception that Alberta was different
00:17:19.140
was a bit misleading. It was based on the, on the split between the liberals and the NDP,
00:17:24.700
which has disappeared. Okay. So what can be done about it? I mean, we see the UCP, for example,
00:17:32.360
though, is definitely trying to recapture, I guess, some of that center right or softer conservative
00:17:38.160
vote. I mean, it's a very high spending campaign they're going on so far. And they're certainly
00:17:43.120
backing away quite often or trying to avoid what would be considered old meat and potatoes,
00:17:47.700
conservative issues. Do you think they're going to be able to pull that vote back to them by the time
00:17:52.660
the election day comes? Well, they have to try. I mean, here's a situation for the UCP.
00:17:59.800
Four years ago, under Jason Kenney, they did win an overwhelming victory, and they did get more than
00:18:04.420
a majority of popular votes. But then they had the internal splits within the party, Jason resigned,
00:18:11.700
and new leader, Danielle Smith, who's got into power, mainly on the strength of the, you might call
00:18:20.560
the further right elements of the party, sort of a populist rural version of conservatism. These were
00:18:27.240
her main supporters. So now to hope to win the election, they have to soften that image and perceive
00:18:36.220
more to, well, what in political science we call the median voter people who are kind of in the center
00:18:43.380
of the distribution. There simply is not enough support for the populist right, even in Alberta,
00:18:51.920
to win the election. They could win control of the UCP, but to win a general election,
00:19:00.940
they're going to have to appeal more to the median voters. So that's what Danielle has been
00:19:04.700
attempting to do. She has downplayed some of the edgier positions that she took,
00:19:11.200
like her Sovereignty Act, was watered down. And she's opening up the purse strings,
00:19:17.640
funding a new arena in Calgary, promises for improvement of the healthcare system. All the
00:19:25.040
stuff costs money. And it's designed to appeal to the median voter who could be swayed to vote in
00:19:32.440
either direction. They're not firm supporters of the UCP, so they have to have inducements. So anyway,
00:19:38.500
that's the strategy behind what she's doing. And it's a tried and true strategy of campaigning in
00:19:44.940
Canada as in other countries. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But what she's
00:19:51.480
doing is pretty standard. Yeah. So I mean, I guess some of the element of fear of the unknown with the
00:19:59.340
NDP is gone as well. I mean, Alberta had never had an NDP government. It was always assumed it would
00:20:03.480
be far, far left if they ever got their hands on things. And I believe, you know, they certainly
00:20:07.760
were a left-wing party when they were governing for four years, but they weren't as extreme as
00:20:13.020
some might have feared they'd be. So it's not, people won't feel it's the end of the world if
00:20:17.400
they got in again. So that's where they become, I guess, more into consideration for a common voter
00:20:21.380
than they used to be 10 years ago when they were kind of a mystery.
00:20:24.040
Yeah. Well, you know, elections are largely determined by fear and loathing, as great journalists
00:20:33.520
put it. I think the UCP should actually be doing more to stoke that. I think their best line of
00:20:42.940
attack against Rachel Notley would be, and they are doing this to some extent, and I think they
00:20:47.840
probably need to do more of it, to highlight her association with Justin Trudeau. And you could
00:20:55.900
even throw in the leader of the federal NDP for, you know, for keeps, for a bonus, you know, put the
00:21:03.820
picture of the three of them together, maybe have to manufacture the picture, and say, are these the
00:21:09.340
people you want running Alberta? Because Trudeau is very unpopular here, and the federal Tories have
00:21:16.180
no trouble sweeping the province. So, you know, you want, I would say you want to associate
00:21:22.540
Rachel Notley in the popular mind with Justin Trudeau, and point to episodes in the past where
00:21:29.320
the two of them were on the same page. For the, for their part, what the NDP is doing, I think this
00:21:36.980
is a very effective attack ad. I've seen it now on big posters, and it's actually quite unusual in
00:21:42.500
Alberta to have a big street poster with an attack ad on it. It's a picture of Danielle, and it just
00:21:48.720
says, what will she do next? And that plays to her history of, a very colorful political history of
00:21:55.680
having been in different situations at different times, Calgary School Board, Wild Rose Party,
00:22:02.540
attempt to merge. And then as a media commentator, yeah, what will she do next? As a media commentator,
00:22:09.500
of course, she said all kinds of controversial things. You'd understand that, Corey. You're a media
00:22:14.800
commentator. You're trying to provoke debate, but you're not running for office. Well, it's hard to
00:22:20.760
move from what she has done as a media commentator to running for office, because now you have all
00:22:24.800
this stuff that you said, and it's all online. So anyway, the NDP is, is their fear and loathing is
00:22:33.360
with this line of attack. So that's part of the election. Negative advertising is an essential part
00:22:41.140
of campaigns. Some people say they don't like it, but it's an essential way of bringing out facts.
00:22:49.160
Well, yeah, I mean, people complain about it, but there's, I mean, if any area of marketing has
00:22:53.880
been more studied and checked and tested before its political campaigns, the reason it's done is
00:22:58.840
because it works and, and whether you like it or not, you can't pretend to play a high road and stay
00:23:03.820
out of it, or you'll get the floor mopped with you from the other team. It's, it's an unfortunate
00:23:07.420
trend, but it's a reality in politics today. Yeah. I, you know, I've managed campaigns for different
00:23:13.860
leaders and, uh, different leaders when they were new in the job and without exception, leaders when
00:23:20.380
they're new say, well, no, I'm going to take the high road, no negative advertising. Uh, well,
00:23:25.560
they paid a price for it. Um, particularly I remember in 2004, the conservatives got creamed
00:23:31.920
by the liberals with a barrage of negative ads. Well, in 2006, we were ready for them and we had
00:23:37.400
our own barrage of negative ads. You have to balance the, balance the ledger. So I think Danielle has
00:23:43.680
learned that less, should have learned that lesson from the past. Um, so we'll see if she's,
00:23:50.000
if she's ready to respond in kind to what the NDP are, are attempting to do to her. Uh, so that's a
00:23:57.460
big feat. It's an interesting campaign, both, both women, uh, which is, nobody even comments on that
00:24:03.420
anymore. It's become so accepted that women have leading roles in politics. Um, but I think they're
00:24:11.420
going to have to use these and they are already starting to use these older techniques of campaigning.
00:24:17.340
Well, and you know, you mentioned that it's both women and one of the things that sort of went
00:24:21.560
really poorly for, for, uh, uh, premier Prentice during the, his election, when he lost to the NDP
00:24:26.540
was during the debates. And it, it really was an impression of bullying. You know, it was the
00:24:31.220
taller man standing up, talking down to, to, uh, a more, you know, a shorter woman. And that imagery
00:24:37.720
really soured a lot of people. Uh, premier Smith, isn't going to be accused of misogyny or bullying
00:24:44.420
if she jumps into the mix on the, the more negative front, uh, like a male leader would
00:24:49.720
in a sense. Yeah, that's a good point, Corey. Yeah. She, she doesn't have to worry about that.
00:24:54.620
Uh, so I say, let, you know, let them go at it. I think it's important. Uh, it is very close. Uh,
00:25:02.100
the biggest advantage that the UCP has is the fact that, um, they get more bang for the buck for their
00:25:08.880
votes, uh, in that, uh, the rural ridings in Alberta have smaller populations. So they, or in
00:25:15.540
other words, they elect a few more members than they would if, if the constituency boundaries were
00:25:21.960
strictly proportional. So that's the advantage that the UCP has, whether it's enough to carry
00:25:27.200
them over the finish line. I don't know. They will probably lose. They'll be lucky to elect, uh,
00:25:33.660
two or three or four members in Edmonton. Um, they'll sweep the countryside except for
00:25:39.320
urban pockets like Lethbridge. Um, Calgary is, uh, you know, contested and both parties will win
00:25:47.900
seats in Calgary, I think, but, uh, just a case of, do you get quite enough to get you over that
00:25:53.780
50% plus one number of seats? Uh, every seat counts, you know, I mean, so this battle has to
00:26:00.640
be waged everywhere. Even if the UCP isn't strong in Edmonton, the two or three seats they, they could
00:26:06.700
win there might be the margin of victory. Uh, so both parties have to contest everywhere.
00:26:12.320
Well, absolutely. And I mean, you get the donut around Edmonton, which are, are, there's actually
00:26:16.500
some strong UCP support there, but it's swing. And if you neglect Edmonton too much, I imagine that
00:26:21.600
could hang over and you could lose some of those marginal seats on the edge. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:26:24.940
Even if interior Edmonton looks like a lost cause. So, I mean, a lot of it's laying on trust and
00:26:31.200
they're really bringing that to a head with premier Smith, the NDP against her and saying,
00:26:36.120
you can't trust her. You don't know what she's going to do. I mean, Daniel Smith has always been
00:26:39.860
prone to impulsiveness. She is a more of an idea idealist than a, you know, uh, uh, a pragmatist.
00:26:46.340
I think when it comes to a lot of things, I think she's learning about that quickly now,
00:26:49.380
but as you said on my show, if I were to run and Oh, I know better. That's not going to happen.
00:26:54.880
Uh, of course the opponents are going to dig out all sorts of quotes and things, and they'll pull
00:26:58.760
them out and let them out slowly all the way through the campaign. We know that's going to
00:27:01.980
happen. It continued to happen with premier Smith. Is there any way though she can head that off or
00:27:06.460
is she going to keep suffering this death of a thousand cuts every day? Uh, the best defense is a
00:27:11.740
strong offense. Uh, if you're playing defense, you've already lost. So that's why I say that the,
00:27:18.300
the UCP has to, should have its own strong negative campaign against Rachel Notley. Uh,
00:27:24.280
don't bother trying to explain away things that Danielle may have said in the past. I mean,
00:27:29.900
she's already dealt with that, for example, on, uh, healthcare. She said there won't be any fee
00:27:35.880
for service healthcare. Um, there's other ways you can point things that she has done. That's enough.
00:27:43.920
Now you go on the attack and, uh, you know, make it all about Rachel Notley's ties to the federal
00:27:50.740
politicians who want to destroy Alberta's economy. Um, that's the best defense.
00:27:56.320
So, uh, one other thing before I finish up with you is something's kind of different around this
00:28:00.740
time. I mean, there's always been some hotspots, but the rift between a kind of both parties and
00:28:05.140
the media in this election and trying to control their messaging going out in the case of Rachel
00:28:09.880
Notley, there's just certain outlets, including ours, that she just won't even talk to
00:28:12.840
whatsoever when they won't even send us press releases. Uh, and, uh, premier Smith is won't
00:28:17.820
take follow-up questions at conferences and is trying at least to reduce the amount of messaging
00:28:23.820
going out when she goes into those. Uh, I mean, normally politicians are beating your door down
00:28:27.980
at election time to try and talk to the media as much as possible right now. They seem to be kind
00:28:31.980
of almost trying to avoid it. Yeah, this is again, unfortunate, but I guess an inevitable trend of
00:28:37.380
the polarization of media, uh, you know, at one time there were fewer media outlets and they
00:28:43.240
had some pretense of objectivity and neutrality in politics today. That pretense is largely gone and,
00:28:51.800
uh, all the media are identified with one side or another and politicians inevitably then, uh,
00:28:58.360
take side. This is not a new development. Uh, for example, when I was working for Stephen Harper,
00:29:03.500
uh, he made strong attempts to, to speak to, uh, local community newspapers, uh, in preference for
00:29:12.260
wasting his time with the Toronto star, for example, uh, Joe Biden, you know, uh, he's very selective and
00:29:20.260
in the questions that he will take. Um, it's, it's just a fact of life. So, uh, we have to get used to that.
00:29:29.400
And, uh, you know, I know it'd be frustrating for an outlet like Western standard if the NDP won't talk
00:29:35.840
to you. Um, so go and talk to the other side and let them speak. Well, and that's what happens. And
00:29:43.020
I mean, certainly we were, we're in an unapologetically conservative editorial slant here, but
00:29:47.480
you know, you're, you're only making us crabbier and we're not going to get any nicer for, for your
00:29:51.480
having shut us out, but, uh, that's no, it is unfortunate. I, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of
00:29:56.600
unhealthy, but that seems to be the way it is. And it's not just here in Alberta, it's the way it is
00:30:01.700
everywhere. So, uh, I guess we just have to live with it. So, you know, you, we used to think there'd
00:30:06.820
be a neutral media that would let both sides speak. Well, both sides are still speaking, but now they're
00:30:11.640
speaking through their own outlets. Um, NDP has press progress and other house organs that they can
00:30:19.220
speak through Western standard as a conservative voice. Um, you know, I guess there's, it's not
00:30:26.640
the ideal, but that's the way it is. Yeah. Well, I guess I hope that some outlets on each side managed
00:30:31.420
to hit the middle of somewhere and inform the voters. That's all we can hope for. All right.
00:30:36.080
Well, that went fast, but there was just a lot to cover. I really appreciate you coming on to talk
00:30:40.300
to us today, Professor Flanagan. Uh, it's going to be an interesting few weeks to see how this develops.
00:30:44.460
I mean, we, we, it's close races in Alberta are actually something that only come about in the
00:30:49.200
last 10 years or so. And, uh, well, because of the, I have to go back to the, the big structural
00:30:54.860
factor that is determining everything else is the collapse of the provincial liberals, migration of
00:31:00.760
their support to the NDP, the emergence of a two-party system in Alberta, a true two-party system in
00:31:06.940
which you have two large parties contesting for, for government. These are all relatively new
00:31:12.400
developments in our history. We never had them from 1905 up until, as you say, the last 10 years.
00:31:18.980
So a lot of our sort of conventional wisdom about politics is outdated. It goes back to an
00:31:24.260
earlier era. Um, but now we have a, a different, uh, uh, configuration, which seems likely to last
00:31:33.420
into the future. I don't see any sign of small parties, uh, reviving liberal, provincial liberals
00:31:39.400
are dead. The Alberta party seems to be dead. The greens never got anywhere in Alberta. The further
00:31:45.380
right parties have been wiped out by the, uh, the further right takeover of the UCP. Then that took
00:31:52.180
the wind out of the sails of the provincial wild rose party. So all these small parties are, are,
00:31:57.440
are non-entities now. So it's just the big two going at it. And it's, it's different for people
00:32:03.080
with memories. That's quite different, uh, than Alberta politics used to be, but I think it's going
00:32:07.400
to be the, the way it will be for the future. Yeah. Well, we'll watch them punch it out for the next
00:32:12.640
few weeks and see what happens. Uh, so thank you again. I hope we can check in with, uh, you again,
00:32:17.820
perhaps before the end of the election or right after it. Okay. Vote early, vote often. Bye-bye.
00:32:22.600
Thank you. Bye. Again, that was, yes, Professor Tom Flanagan, who has, has been very involved in
00:32:28.340
politics in Canada for quite some time. And as is, uh, pointing out some, some very good points.
00:32:33.500
Um, and that, that, that change, you know, that, that true evolution into a two-party system,
00:32:39.000
uh, I, I think it's a bit, it goes in cycles to a degree though, right? Like when we look at
00:32:44.360
Saskatchewan, uh, a new story that came up recently, the Sask United party, uh, I mean, Saskatchewan
00:32:51.180
kind of went to a point where they had a few things going on. They used to have progressive
00:32:54.240
conservatives and Grant Devine sort of blew that up. Uh, if you remember that old term
00:32:59.080
for it, what to, to err is human, but to truly F up is divine. And he really did do it. He
00:33:04.020
basically annihilated the progressive conservatives in Saskatchewan. It led to a long period of time
00:33:08.820
with the NDP in power of Romano. And, uh, they sort of, they, they had a liberal party on
00:33:15.520
the scene as well and things. And the liberal party in Saskatchewan sort of seems to have gone
00:33:19.800
to the wayside and it turned into a bit of a two-party system, but now you've got this
00:33:24.100
Sask United party coming from the right. And is this going to be a repeat of Alberta though?
00:33:28.300
Is, is there going to be a risk of Saskatchewan putting a, uh, NDP government back in power
00:33:34.060
because the right splitting. And I, you know, when you think of it in Alberta, yeah, we had the,
00:33:37.920
the NDP and the liberal splitting things on the left. Now look at the federal scene. That gets a
00:33:43.280
little more concerning altogether because we still do have a number of parties up there.
00:33:46.640
But as far as the house goes, they're only splitting things on the left. You've got the
00:33:51.020
NDP and the liberals. And yes, they've, they've formed an agreement, you know, not a formal
00:33:54.480
coalition, but something of a coalition and they're maintaining power based on that.
00:33:59.340
But, uh, how do you break that? I mean, that means if the NDP and the liberals are one of the
00:34:04.360
two collapses, or if the two ever formally merged, they would become even more powerful and intractable.
00:34:09.820
Like in a two-party system, if it really was just conservative, just liberal in Ottawa,
00:34:16.000
I think we'd have liberal governments forever. Perish the thought. As part of why I do think,
00:34:22.160
you know, I, I look along the lines of, uh, uh, sovereignty and independence and provincial
00:34:27.220
autonomy. So we can, uh, adapt to those regional differences because changing things within the
00:34:32.100
current system is, is going to be exceedingly difficult, but we'll see what happens. And this is,
00:34:37.740
uh, some of the things, I mean, with, with Canada's regional imbalance, let's talk politics,
00:34:42.780
let's stick with it. So there's a language bill the government just changed. This is concerning.
00:34:46.620
These are the other things we're not hearing about. Nothing's changing. This is one of the areas
00:34:50.300
where Pierre Polyev tends to be silent, uh, again, because you have to cater to the central Canadian
00:34:56.820
voter. So this bill is going to give equality of status and use of English and French in Canadian
00:35:03.180
society on a laudable goal, of course. But, uh, this, what this will do is expand bilingual
00:35:10.140
requirements into the private sector. Now this is federally regulated industries in the private
00:35:16.700
sector, but that's a lot of them into provincial trucking. Uh, a lot of it's in transport, you know,
00:35:22.300
airlines, uh, things such as that. These are private companies, but because they come under strong
00:35:29.100
federal regulations, suddenly they're going to say, you need to have a degree of bilingual, uh,
00:35:35.100
ability and provision, even if you have no need for it. See, that's the thing. There's no need.
00:35:40.540
Let's quit pretending Canada is bilingual. We are not, we've never been. Quebec is pretty bilingual.
00:35:48.300
Parts of New Brunswick are pretty bilingual when we're talking French English. Aside from that,
00:35:52.780
the country's English guys. We've got a lot of areas with a lot of people speaking English as a
00:35:57.340
second language, but usually the first language isn't French. And I mean, Alberta, I don't know
00:36:01.900
where French lands, uh, as far as first languages go. And I mean, in Northern Alberta, there's some
00:36:07.980
areas, you know, with, with a strong French population and every province has some of that
00:36:11.260
going on, but Hindi is more spoken than French. Uh, Cantonese is more spoken than French. Yet here we
00:36:18.380
have this government that's going to force a degree of, uh, bilingual requirements into the private
00:36:26.060
sector. Think of the advantage economically that gives to Quebec that as if they haven't already
00:36:31.900
had enough legislated advantage in Canada, as if they hadn't already dominated the senior positions
00:36:39.100
in the public sector. Now we're going to be forced to have a degree of them in the private sector.
00:36:46.060
And people say, well, English people could just learn French. Yeah, they could, but you know,
00:36:49.340
realistically, again, getting around to who's really bilingual or not go to Quebec. Most of the
00:36:54.060
population of Quebec can speak a degree of English, even though they'll often pretend not to
00:36:59.420
go anywhere outside of there in parts of New Brunswick and people don't speak French. So yes,
00:37:04.300
there's a distinct advantage being given over to them. Yet again, our system is so imbalanced
00:37:09.980
and in nuanced ways. See, these are ways that people don't think about with that, but it gives them
00:37:14.940
a heck of an advantage. Uh, getting back to, this is something else too, uh, the CRTC. Yeah,
00:37:22.380
they said they're going to define newsroom ethics. This is concerning under a cabinet bill
00:37:27.500
on internet revenue sharing. This is a executive director of broadcast policies. So he's met with
00:37:34.060
newspapers and, uh, puts the onus on them to, uh, define newsroom ethics. I don't trust this
00:37:41.340
government to define newsroom ethics. Governments need to stay the heck out of newsrooms period,
00:37:46.300
particularly the bloody CBC. Speaking of the CBC, the state broadcaster, they hate it when I use that
00:37:54.140
term for it, but I mean, as they become so increasingly a true liberal trumpet, you can't
00:37:59.980
deny they're a state broadcaster. They do what they're told. Come on. I mean, again, Rosie Barton,
00:38:05.980
I mean, you can almost see her quiver a little when she mentions Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's name.
00:38:12.300
And that's the head of the political news desk up there in Toronto for the CBC. And speaking of that,
00:38:19.260
getting back to our, our minister of lies, Mendicino, he talked about that. And he said,
00:38:23.500
the CBC is a pillar of democracy. That's interesting. Mendicino, again, the minister who specializes in
00:38:31.020
baloney, the minister who is the king of BS and lies has said the CBC is a pillar of democracy.
00:38:38.620
How is it a pillar of democracy? When every Canadian is forced to kick money into it, forced,
00:38:42.940
you have no choice. See, I don't care. I don't care if there's a million outlets in Canada,
00:38:48.060
individual ones, and I don't care how far one way left or right they might have a leaning.
00:38:53.580
Doesn't matter to me. Just don't make me pay for it. I'll choose whether or not I want to view it.
00:38:57.900
But with the CBC, I've got no choice. I have to pay for that. Every Canadian has to pay for it,
00:39:02.620
whether you'll watch it or you don't watch it. And come on, they have, they barely made anything
00:39:05.820
decent since the kids in the hall and the beachcombers. But he says they're a pillar of
00:39:10.380
democracy. How is it democracy when you don't have a choice? That's liberal logic. And that's the sort
00:39:15.020
of thing again with Mendicino, who again is incapable of telling the truth with anything. So let's talk
00:39:19.900
about newsroom ethics. Because the CBC, this pillar of democracy, in the last year had to publish 36
00:39:30.460
corrections. 36 corrections. 36 times they put out articles that were wrong or untrue and they had
00:39:39.500
to go back and correct their own record. 1.4 billion tax dollars a year plus hundreds of millions of
00:39:48.300
dollars stolen from the private market with advertising revenue. And they still can't check
00:39:54.460
their own news items well enough to avoid having 36 corrections a year on it. Comrade Jake, one of
00:40:01.100
our commenters saying, make CBC user pay. Yeah, I'm all with it. I have a national one. Let them raise
00:40:06.300
their money through subscriptions or let them raise it through fundraising. Hold telethons. I don't care.
00:40:11.420
Just don't make me pay for it. We don't need it. We don't need it. What is the need anymore for a
00:40:17.500
state broadcaster? I mean, they were formed in the days when you had to get to some isolated parts of
00:40:22.380
the country for communications with radio stations or television. Now, thanks to Elon Musk, you can get
00:40:29.020
internet access anywhere on the planet with Starlink and just with other satellite dishes. If you're
00:40:36.060
just looking for television, you can get that anywhere in a relatively affordable way. When I was working
00:40:40.460
up in Anuvik and Tuktuk 15 years ago, every house up there already had satellite dishes on their roof. They
00:40:46.540
had full access to broadcast and television and they had cell coverage. They didn't need the
00:40:52.220
CBC. But we still have it. So why is the government so dedicated to hanging on to this dinosaur, this
00:40:59.100
expensive piece of media, this obsolete piece of media that we don't need any longer? Well, it's because
00:41:04.620
that's the piece of media that never questions them. Remember, again, I'm talking about we've got a massive,
00:41:09.980
massive Chinese election interference scandal. We've got Chinese Communist Party operatives threatening our
00:41:16.860
members of parliament. And you know what you hear out of the CBC? Crickets. Dead silence. It's an
00:41:22.300
embarrassment. And it's an expensive embarrassment. But I mean, hey, if the Liberal government doesn't
00:41:27.740
have the CBC running cover for them, then maybe private markets will get in there and start asking
00:41:31.820
questions they don't want to answer. Thus, you can see why their love affair for the CBC continues.
00:41:40.060
And it's maddening. Yeah, I'm going to talk about another one now, you know, an issue. I just got
00:41:44.220
to get into this one. I know this, this gets the commenters going with me and they don't always agree,
00:41:47.660
but I still see this is where you get polarized politics. And I don't like how it gets played
00:41:52.620
sometimes. So Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and I like DeSantis, don't get me wrong here. But he signed
00:41:57.900
a bill into law on Tuesday that would allow the death penalty. And I like the terminology in this one
00:42:02.300
for cases of child rape. I'm tired of people, you know, talking about sexual interference and
00:42:07.900
talking in circles or things like that. Or even the most vulgar and disgusting of people you see
00:42:12.300
out there were some activists calling them minor attracted people. No, they're child rapists,
00:42:17.340
they're pederasts, they're pedophiles. Don't sugarcoat who those people are. I have no use for them.
00:42:24.780
But I also have no use for capital punishment. That's where we depart. That's where we have a
00:42:31.420
problem. And that's where I don't like it when people start playing the black and white in politics.
00:42:35.340
Will you oppose capital punishment for child rapists? Does that mean you support child
00:42:38.940
rapists? No, not for a second, not even slightly. I just don't trust the government to have the power
00:42:45.820
to kill citizens. That's the problem. This is a government that's completely incompetent. This
00:42:50.940
is a government that is corrupted. This is a government that locked us down for a virus. They
00:42:56.940
seized our bank accounts. They raided churches. They shut down restaurants. Do you really want them
00:43:03.340
to have the ability to kill citizens? And people say, Oh, we'll only use it in cases where it's 100%
00:43:09.900
known for sure. We never know 100% guys, anything can be faked. There was a piece I saw a while back
00:43:16.540
on a laboratory, I believe it was up in the New England area, but it turned out it was underfunded.
00:43:21.180
And terribly it was a forensic laboratory. And it turns out the person running it was it was just a
00:43:26.620
basket case. And they had all sorts of screw ups with genetic samplings and DNA things that people
00:43:33.820
went to jail based on the wrong outcomes of that lab because people are saying with DNA, we know for
00:43:38.860
sure that this person killed that person or this person raped that person. No, we don't actually.
00:43:43.100
No, we don't. I believe in life sentences. I'd like to see child rapists put on a bus, put to a prison
00:43:50.140
somewhere deep in the territories up there where the door will be welded shut, and they will die up
00:43:55.500
there of a ripe old age. I'm perfectly fine with that. But I do not want to see the government having
00:44:01.900
the ability to irreversibly do something such as execute somebody. It's just too, too much to entrust
00:44:10.700
a government that can't even get its own payroll system right. And again, in Florida, they're talking
00:44:15.740
about, you know, the death penalty for people who do this on children under 12. Remember, there have
00:44:19.980
been people falsely convicted of those sorts of things. There have been cases where people falsely
00:44:24.700
accuse people of those awful, awful crimes, and it's not found out until later. And at least it's still
00:44:30.860
better that you can somewhat rectify it later than if what are you going to do? Chisel something new on
00:44:37.180
the gravestone? Oh, sorry about that. We got new evidence. I guess you weren't guilty about that.
00:44:41.740
We've given your descendants some money and a lawsuit on it. We'll try and do better next time.
00:44:48.700
Either way, sometimes, you know, there's complicated problems. Capital punishment is kind of a simple
00:44:54.220
solution to it. And the point of justice systems should be prevention, sometimes reform. You can't
00:44:59.580
reform those child molesters. I agree with that. Keep them in for good. But we should never set it up for
00:45:03.900
vengeance, no matter how hard we feel it may be appropriate or how little we think of those people
00:45:09.420
being convicted under it, who often, again, I'm not talking about nice people, but don't jump out
00:45:14.700
and say, oh, he must feel soft on child molesters. Of course not. It's just that sometimes the cure is
00:45:21.980
worse than the disease. All right, let's check in. We haven't talked to him in a while with Jim
00:45:27.260
Bousicum from Marketplace Commodities. We're going to pivot a little something a little less intense
00:45:32.460
than the justice issue south of the border, but very important in that that's our agriculture
00:45:37.180
commodities. Hey, Jim, how are you doing? Hey, great, Corey. How are you today?
00:45:40.700
Very good. Very good. It's been crazy times with the election, but overall pretty good.
00:45:45.740
Good, good, good. All right. So yeah, we've got a lot to cover. It's been a while and it sounds
00:45:49.900
like there's some big international issues kind of affecting markets right now.
00:45:53.820
Yeah, we'll start there. The biggest issue is geopolitics. Russia and Ukraine continues to,
00:46:00.860
wouldn't hardly call it trudging along, but it's a serious issue. So to your listeners, I thought I'd just
00:46:06.460
run through that real quick. Six percent of the world exports of wheat come from Ukraine. 25 percent
00:46:13.500
come from Russia. So the UN is brokering a grain corridor out of Ukraine, which is important.
00:46:21.820
But more importantly, if the war moves from Ukraine soil to perhaps Russian soil, as we've seen last
00:46:29.260
night, there was a drone attack on Russian soil, it would have a larger impact on the grain markets.
00:46:36.460
Right now, Russia continues to ship. They ship to really most countries around the world, whether we
00:46:42.460
like it or not. There are big sellers into Southeast Asia, into China, and Canadian grain has to compete
00:46:50.700
with that. So we'll have to see how some of those things develop, but I'd say it's important that we
00:47:00.380
keep our eye on that for sure. And then outside markets, you'd said some other stuff on that.
00:47:06.700
I mean, these things impact, of course, the domestic things as well, and they need to be
00:47:09.820
watched as such as the crude oil markets these days.
00:47:12.220
Yeah, you know, it's always important as a producer, as a farmer, to pay attention to more than just what
00:47:23.260
your local commodities are selling at. Because you look at crude oil, it's been in a free fall for
00:47:29.420
a few days. It's actually dropped below $70 a barrel this morning. And actually, another one that I find
00:47:35.500
of interest is sugar. And I'll explain the reason why. Sugar has actually been on the upswing.
00:47:41.900
It's corrected over the last few days, but it's actually quite strong. So we would look at energy
00:47:46.780
markets as sort of your industrial energy and sugar as sort of your food energy. So between the two of
00:47:54.300
them, they will have impact on the crops that you're growing. We tend to think of the food or the crops
00:48:03.020
that we grow on the prairies as typically just food or maybe feedstock that we grow. Well, they're actually
00:48:08.780
energy stock as well. If you look at the ethanol industry, the biofuels industry,
00:48:13.740
a lot of the commodities that you're growing do end up as an energy product somewhere along the line.
00:48:18.940
So keep an eye on those outside markets as well.
00:48:22.780
Well, there's a lot to track and that's where you guys specialize. So where can people find more
00:48:29.340
You've got it listed right there. We're always available. Marketplace commodities,
00:48:34.700
give us a call at the office. We have a team of dedicated traders that are looking to help you
00:48:40.460
market your grain. We are buying and selling grain across Western Canada, across Alberta and Saskatchewan
00:48:46.860
specifically. It's where most of the volume comes and we'd be happy to hear from you.
00:48:51.260
Great. Well, good to check in with you again, Jim, and we'll talk to you again soon.
00:49:00.540
Okay, guys, that kind of runs up our time today. There's so many issues and not enough time.
00:49:07.420
So again, just that reminder, if you haven't subscribed to the Western Standard yet, get on
00:49:11.820
there, guys. Westernstandard.news slash membership. Take one out. It's well worth it. Help support us.
00:49:16.780
It gets you past that pesky paywall so you can see all of that stuff, articles and columns without
00:49:23.500
any of that hindrance. I will be back again next week, guys, at this time. Thank you for tuning in
00:49:34.860
Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long,
00:49:40.700
long ago. These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms.
00:49:46.700
Regulations and legislation in Canada. And more importantly, educating the public about how we
00:49:52.300
keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. To become a member, it's absolutely worth every penny.