Western Standard's news editor Dave Naylor and co-host Corey Morgan are joined by reporter Melanie Risdon to talk about Justin Bieber and his new venture with Tim Hortons, and the impact it could have on the economy.
00:06:24.860is tomorrow. As you can probably tell the people wearing the poppies, be sure to make sure to take
00:06:31.480a moment and, you know, thank the veterans who came before us and the veterans who are still around
00:06:36.480today who put it all on the line so we can have the freedoms to get together and complain about
00:06:41.440our political leadership like we do, because we wouldn't be able to if those guys hadn't done it
00:06:45.620and gals. So we should make a note, observe that, go to a ceremony tomorrow, or perhaps just take a
00:06:51.460home at home to think about it. It's pretty important. And I think underrated observance
00:06:55.260every year, you know, we do everything else from Arbor Day to who knows what, but Remembrance
00:06:59.440Day is a really crucial one. All right. Well, let's get into the news stories. Oh, actually
00:07:04.820I should start also and thank our members. I've always got to thank them. Those are the
00:07:09.080people who pay our bills and eventually in the painful way of trickle down economics
00:07:14.220that we do espouse, it does get to us a little bit. We wouldn't be able to do this though
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00:07:50.980subscription past that first trial period. It's a good deal. So thank you for those who've already
00:07:55.680subscribed. And if you guys haven't already, get out there and do it. Now, news that's been
00:08:00.680breaking. We'll start with something that's kind of good news, some positive news. The economy has
00:08:04.040been dreary and sad and depressing in a lot of ways, but there's been a big coup. A large company
00:08:10.500is moving out to Alberta. Dave, perhaps you can expand on that. Yes. Amazon is coming to town.
00:08:15.200It's a $4.3 billion deal for the Calgary area.
00:08:21.560They're going to set up a tech shop, basically, to do techie things that are well beyond my capabilities and help companies with their tech needs.
00:08:31.780They're going to be needing thousands of staff.
00:08:35.380Even places like Mount Royal University are offering a free course on how to get into the tech business.
00:08:41.960uh i think it's a 12-week program that you can basically walk from there and get a job at
00:08:47.640this upcoming amazon facility but one of the key questions corey that's not being answered is
00:08:53.480where is it going to be located uh specifically wasn't mentioned google says
00:09:00.360it's because of security purposes that they don't want the location known
00:09:05.080it would have been a major coup if it had come to downtown calgary because you know it's a ghost
00:09:10.760town right now we can use all the people down here we can get uh but korea i think it's probably
00:09:16.120more likely to go to an outlying area who get better tax deals i don't know like melanie you've0.99
00:09:20.920been downtown lately i mean this is certainly an area could use a resurgence some energy something
00:09:25.160new i mean what do you feel maybe this will bring some activity downtown into the core yeah i think
00:09:29.880so uh western standard just did a story yesterday about um the office buildings i think there's nine
00:09:37.640no sorry 19 different office buildings that are sitting completely empty downtown so
00:09:42.840i would say there's certainly room for it uh i think it would be a great way to revitalize
00:09:48.840downtown especially considering when you're talking the tech industry you're talking a lot of young
00:09:53.720you know um young i guess vibrance right so that's gonna uh potentially be something that
00:10:01.880that comes back into our downtown core. However, having said all of that and walking the downtown
00:10:07.800streets quite frequently, it would be great to see maybe another precinct downtown or some heavier
00:10:16.360presence to try to clean things up and perhaps that would instigate it.
00:10:20.440Yeah. Well, as Dave says, it's noteworthy. They keep referring to it as Calgary area.
00:10:26.840There are some people very desperate to see a couple of victories in downtown Calgary,
00:10:31.400for one with economic diversification, because the new mayor has said, we want to move beyond
00:10:36.200oil and gas. We need everything else. And of course we want to fill those vacant buildings
00:10:42.020downtown. So, but I just got a feeling, I mean, they know where they're going. This is a big deal.
00:10:46.320They've planned it out. This has been in the works for quite a while. She would be screaming
00:10:50.580it from the rooftops if it was going downtown. And look, here we are, here it's going. I suspect
00:10:56.380it's not going downtown. It might not even be in city limits. She's been actually, you know,
00:11:01.040optimistic, of course, because it's still good for all Albertans, no matter where it is,
00:11:04.760but a little quiet that maybe it might be up by Crossiron Mills where the other Amazon facility
00:11:08.900is. And they certainly would employ a lot of Calgarians, but it doesn't help that downtown
00:11:13.700crunch. In fact, it might even bleed a little bit. It'd be interesting to see how this develops.
00:11:19.640Yeah, it's not going to help Calgary's tax roll either, is it? If it's out in the Rocky
00:11:24.640View County, which I think you're right. I think that's probably where it's going to end up.
00:11:28.060Yeah. I mean, it'd be indirect. A lot of employees would perhaps commute from Calgary to the facility
00:11:31.980and they come home and pay property taxes in Calgary and other fees, but they wouldn't have
00:11:35.580that business to gouge as they so enjoyed out of oil companies for so long downtown.
00:11:40.540And of course they overplayed their hand and that's part of why our downtown vacant, but it's a larger
00:11:44.780Yeah. And this week, Jodi Gondek, our new mayor got her climate emergency motion on the table
00:11:52.860unanimously it's going to be debated on monday in calgary but i can't see that helping to bring
00:11:58.860businesses energy businesses anyways back to downtown well but i think the the positive though
00:12:05.020is when you're when you're seeing a big player like amazon setting up tech here i think you're
00:12:10.700going to find all sorts of you know subsidiary companies or you know other tech companies looking
00:12:16.540towards Calgary as well. Sort of a precedent setter, a trailblazer. And so maybe that will
00:12:23.980bring more business here that would- I mean, Bezos didn't get to be the richest man in
00:12:30.620history for being stupid. He's going to go where the taxes are lowest.
00:12:34.780Yeah. Well, and we got all that empty space. Maybe we'll get an Amazon proving ground here.
00:12:38.060Bezos can send his next fallout rocket. That big old flying chode was quite something to be seen
00:12:45.180crossing the skyline, Alberta could get a piece of that. But as you say, no, there could be a lot
00:12:50.220of associated businesses that come with Amazon. I mean, a longtime columnist in Calgary, Don Braid
00:12:55.920wrote an interesting piece. One of the things he spoke to is what Melanie was speaking of was,
00:13:00.320I think the term he uses is he draws other associated companies like filings to a magnet.
00:13:05.480They will come in and come around such a hub. But the other part he did say was that he was
00:13:10.120basically almost trying to credit the climate emergency saying that these companies come to
00:13:14.920cities because they've declared such things. And you point out Montreal is the only other one with
00:13:18.420such a hub and they declared a climate emergency. And I got to call bullshit. I mean, Amazon made
00:13:23.560this decision a long time ago. And I'm certain when they were in the boardroom, they weren't
00:13:28.320saying, oh, geez, you know, that city looks pretty good, but that one's got a climate emergency.
00:13:34.180That's the drawing. Come on. They're looking at dollars and cents. They're looking at space.
00:13:37.860Sure, they're looking at quality of life and they're looking at a great deal of factors,
00:13:42.160but whether or not the city is virtue signaled with a climate emergency, I think is very,
00:13:46.100very low on the priority list of companies when they're determining where they're going
00:14:06.520something coming into Alberta, something diversifying the economy. We should celebrate
00:14:11.000it. You know, it's going to put some people to work and it's going to be, you know, in a forward
00:14:15.480moving industry that's certainly been explosively growing. Yep. Good news for a change.
00:14:19.800So let's get on to some bad news. One of my favorite areas. Leader O'Toole there with the
00:14:25.480Conservative Party of Canada has not had a good week. Lay out what he's been enduring this week,
00:14:31.000It actually started last week, Corey, when Ontario MP Gladue announced she was forming a separate COVID caucus of up to 30 Tory MPs who would just deal with COVID-19 issues like mandatory vaccinations and things like that.
00:14:50.180seemed a strange move to a lot of people, followed this week on Monday with the knowledge or release
00:15:00.060of a story into Tory council member Bert Chen. He was suspended for 60 days because he called for
00:15:07.380the recall of Aaron O'Toole as the leader the day after the September 11th, sorry, the September
00:15:14.500elections uh so he put out that petition he got suspended now they've launched the tory party's
00:15:20.500launched a witch hunt they are demanding that he turn over all his personal emails uh social media
00:15:26.660postings uh you know all sorts of correspondence because they want to try and find out who within
00:15:31.300the party he was talking to they want to try and weed out the dissidents uh then they got even
00:15:38.260stranger for O'Toole. MP Gladue came out the next day, Tuesday and apologized, said she was all
00:15:46.460wrong about COVID and obviously she'd been whipped into place. O'Toole then announced his shadow
00:15:54.420cabinet yesterday. Some good news for the West with the naming of Michelle Rempel-Garner as
00:16:01.260natural resources critic and Pierre Polyev going back to finance. He was very good at that,
00:16:08.120but somehow, for some reason, moved out of it when O'Toole named a shadow cabinet in February.
00:16:16.620Noticeably absent was Leslyn Lewis, a strong leadership contender and perhaps a future voice of the party.
00:16:25.260And the MP Gladio also didn't get in there, obviously, because of her COVID coalition.0.96
00:16:32.740So up and down week for O'Toole. He's also being blasted for staying silent on Trudeau's plan to shut down oil and gas emissions out west, which is going to decimate our oil industry even further. He hasn't said word one about that. And I know you wrote a column on that, Corey. And he's trying to hide in the weeds, I think.
00:16:59.080Yeah. Well, I mean, one thing to be said though, is a couple of,
00:21:20.400Brian Jean has re-emerged from the sidelines where he's been lobbying a lot of grenades
00:21:25.420at Jason Kenney over the years, but never officially got back into the political game.
00:21:29.120And now he's come in full bore and he is looking to-
00:21:32.480He is looking to be nominated for the UCP party in Fort McRiding.
00:21:39.580Brian Jean, you'll remember, ran as leader of the Wild Rose
00:21:44.300and ran for the leadership of the UCP, but lost to Jason Kenney.
00:21:49.200As Corey mentioned, he's been sitting on the sidelines,
00:21:52.640throwing in grenades more and more over the last year,
00:21:54.920and finally made it official, announcing he was going to seek the nomination.
00:21:58.960uh you can talk about how nomination processes sometimes don't go the way they should uh jason
00:22:07.900kenny says basically just called him a distraction he said he'll sign nomination papers for whoever
00:22:14.100the party uh selects uh you know john's openly said he's only running to help the process of
00:22:21.620getting rid of kenny uh so it's going to be interesting the uh the hallways of the gray
00:22:26.880Casino will be filled in two weeks time with political intrigue with the annual UCP AGM.
00:22:34.880And I'm sure Brian Jean will be on the lips of a lot of people.
00:22:38.620Well, assuming they let us in, we'll be there to cover it.
00:22:43.020For that. So, I mean, what did you, in Fort Mac, do you think Brian Jean would be able to
00:22:46.760establish himself again up in that region? I mean, he's a well-entrenched personality up there.
00:22:52.180I personally think he could. Yeah, I do. I think he could. And taking another run at Kenny,
00:23:01.680it kind of feels like, you know, Kenny's in a vulnerable position these days. I think there's
00:23:07.020a lot of, a lot of call for Kenny to step down on from many people. So maybe it's good timing
00:23:17.360for him. Well, and that's part of the issue is if this was somebody who didn't have an established
00:23:23.040constituency, somebody who you could block the nomination on, who you could shove aside,
00:23:29.520chances are as an independent, they would never take that seat. But Brian Jean's in a different
00:23:32.660position. This was a member of parliament for a number of years. He was a popular MLA up there.
00:23:36.760Even if Kenny's poking the shots at him, you know, on his having left both of those roles
00:23:41.120before finishing terms, he could very realistically win that without a UCP nomination. And that
00:23:46.260changes the whole game i think for how jason kenny has to deal with this you know maybe
00:23:50.360maybe jason kenny is being nice by to sign his papers because he knows he's not going to be
00:23:55.180around you know uh the first the first thing we said when we heard the uh the news was oh there's
00:24:00.500no way kenny's going to sign his papers but uh you know he's saying all the right things now but
00:24:05.680yeah jean could easily cruise to victory up there yeah well and as we talked about before we've
00:24:11.920talked in the office and derek and i and we've dealt with nominations i mean there's a lot of
00:24:16.020ways parties can play with things to give an edge or pull the rug out from somebody who's running
00:24:21.500and things like that. But again, it's easier with a smaller name. You know, Gene, it's going to be
00:24:26.540difficult, say, to get a ringer in there to try and sell memberships and beat him for a nomination,
00:24:30.440which would be the best thing Kenny could hope for. Well, there, see, I gave him a chance and
00:24:33.220he lost. But that would be a tough, tough go for him. But if Gene gets elected, you've got a caucus
00:24:39.740member, another caucus member, I hear has been pretty open about calling for Kenny's resignation.
00:24:44.900you're, you're starting to build a whole section of caucus calling for Kenny's head. I mean,
00:24:49.340how long could he last with that? Well, and people want change.
00:24:51.800It's going to be interesting for the, the independence. Those who were kicked out of
00:24:55.820the UCP, like Drew Barnes and Todd Lowen. Drew has said, I think he's running again,
00:25:02.180but he's gonna have to run as an independent and Alberta just tends not to elect independent MLAs.
00:25:08.600So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with those two.
00:25:11.240Yeah, well, I personally don't think Kenny's going to make it to the next election. I don't. And whoever comes in to replace him, that might be where I notice, I'm just guessing here, but Todd and Drew have both been, they've stayed away from, say, joining the Wilder's Independence Party.
00:25:29.180Drew floated an idea of forming a new party, but I don't think he's going kind of ahead with that.
00:25:34.300They're biding their time. And if a new leader comes in, chances are they'll come back to the
00:25:37.940UCP caucus, I suspect later on. But this is all a lot of speculation.
00:25:42.120Yeah. I think at the UCPA GM, Kenny's going to have to deliver the speech of his life,
00:25:47.320or that could be the last one he attends.