Western Standard - The Pipeline - August 18, 2021

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00:03:30.000 Thank you.

00:04:00.000 Thank you.

00:04:30.000 Hi, I'm Derek Fildebrandt.

00:05:00.000 Hi, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of The Western Standard.

00:05:03.160 You're watching The Pipeline today.

00:05:05.240 Actually, what's the date today? I don't have a computer problem.

00:05:09.000 17th, 18th, so it's the 18th.

00:05:11.120 It's Wednesday. It's Wednesday.

00:05:13.580 Thank you for joining us today.

00:05:15.400 Today I'm joined by my co-hosts, Dave Naylor, news editor of The Western Standard.

00:05:20.940 How are you doing, Dave?

00:05:21.840 I'm suffering, Derek. I'm suffering a bad case of election fever.

00:05:25.200 and I've got glazed eyes from going line by line through the platforms.

00:05:30.740 But I'm surviving.

00:05:31.780 You've got a bad case of election fever and the only cure is more cowbell?

00:05:35.880 More, yeah, more.

00:05:37.400 Well, you're wearing a tie today. It's nice.

00:05:38.960 Yeah, you know, it's election. Got a dress for it.

00:05:41.880 It's nasty.

00:05:43.020 And Western Standard Alberta political columnist Corey Morgan not wearing a tie.

00:05:49.020 No, well, I'm looking forward to the election and the dirt and the scandals

00:05:53.020 so I can take the lowbrow approach that I ordered.

00:05:55.200 We're going to get you in a hazmat suit when we send you to press conferences.

00:05:58.120 Yes.

00:05:58.760 There we go.

00:05:59.580 Well, today, of course, we're going to be talking about the campaign kicking off,

00:06:04.280 where the parties stand, what we can expect in the opening days of the campaign.

00:06:10.340 We're going to break down the Conservative Party's platform,

00:06:12.940 which has been released in full.

00:06:14.240 We've done a pretty thorough analysis of it.

00:06:16.800 We're also going to break down the NDP platform,

00:06:19.000 which was released even before the election was called.

00:06:21.500 It's been released in its entirety, and I've read it so you don't have to.

00:06:26.220 We're also going to be talking about tragedy in Afghanistan as the Taliban takes control of that country

00:06:33.920 following the final withdrawal of U.S. forces and the collapse of the Afghan army.

00:06:38.260 Tragic images coming out of that country.

00:06:40.820 We're going to be talking about what's happened there and what it is going to mean for Canadians and the broader Western alliance.

00:06:48.920 But before we get started, I want to thank all of our Western Standard members for your continued

00:06:54.120 generous support of what we do. If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard,

00:06:57.880 go to westernstandardonline.com and click on membership. You can try it free for 15 days.

00:07:03.800 It's only $10 a month or $99 for the entire year. That'll give you unlimited access to bailout free

00:07:10.200 Western media, supporting media that is not working for the government.

00:07:14.280 So let's kick off the election kickoff news. This election has been called more than two years before it was legally scheduled to take place. Dave, it doesn't seem like there's actually that much controversy around it. Polls are showing that even if people don't want an election, they're not going to probably punish the government for calling it.

00:07:36.020 No. To no one's great surprise, Justin Trudeau called the election on Sunday. Much to his chagrin, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan kicked a lot of the front page news that they hoped to have.

00:07:53.320 and that led the campaign for the first couple days.

00:07:57.500 We'll talk about that later.

00:08:00.540 The leaders are now out and about, crisscrossing the country,

00:08:04.720 except for the Green leader, and they can't afford to go anywhere.

00:08:08.600 And they're just stuck in there.

00:08:10.120 Is she still a leader?

00:08:11.700 This week.

00:08:13.280 Let's see if she makes it to the end of the campaign, yeah. 1.00

00:08:14.980 Last I heard, they didn't even have a campaign manager.

00:08:17.920 So platforms have been released for the Tories and the NDP, as you said.

00:08:27.220 Interestingly, polls are showing the gap is narrowing.

00:08:31.420 In fact, in Toronto, the greater Toronto area, which will be one of the key battlefields,

00:08:36.580 we did a story this morning, Derek, on the Western Standard Online,

00:08:39.580 that they're basically a tie, which shocks me personally that the Liberals aren't well ahead,

00:08:45.420 but they're in a statistical dead heat in the GTA.

00:08:49.200 And the other piece of good news for the Tories today

00:08:52.900 is the election win in Nova Scotia.

00:08:56.540 The provincial party there, in a shocking result,

00:08:59.620 upended the incumbent Liberals.

00:09:01.880 They were going for their third consecutive majority term

00:09:05.920 but were rejected on a campaign basically based on health care.

00:09:11.820 So that's also going to give a volt of good news to the federal campaign.

00:09:19.780 So, yeah, all party leaders are off and running.

00:09:23.900 Trudeau's spending today in the Vancouver area, Burnaby.

00:09:28.640 Jagmeet Singh also is down east, but he'll be heading back to his home riding in Burnaby pretty soon.

00:09:36.280 O'Toole has kept his campaign Ontario-centric and so far with, you know, an announcement

00:09:45.160 a day of his platform, highlights, and we'll see where it goes from here.

00:09:50.780 No great surprises in the first several days, no great scandals yet, but I'm sure they're

00:09:57.340 on the way.

00:09:58.340 Corey, I think it's fair to say that the early dominating issue, the issue, the primary

00:10:03.780 issue at the beginning of the campaign is seldom the same issue at the end, but the

00:10:08.220 dominating issue so far has been vaccine passports and mandatory vaccines for

00:10:12.960 federal government employees. I mean, clearly this was not important enough

00:10:19.080 for Justin Trudeau to get into before he called an election. The election has

00:10:23.160 clearly made it a necessity for him to get into. I think, you know, obviously

00:10:29.280 let's put aside if this is a good thing or bad thing or if this is good policy

00:10:33.220 or not. Just the pure politics of it. I think he's looked at the polls and said the majority

00:10:37.700 of Canadians support vaccine, mandatory vaccines or vaccine passports that would coerce vaccines.

00:10:45.540 And said, you know, the minority that oppose it tend to be conservatives. Conservatives are

00:10:49.780 more split on the issue than other parties. So Trudeau comes out, says vaccine passports,

00:10:56.340 even to go between provinces, which is extraordinary. It's one thing about having

00:11:01.300 vaccines for people, non-citizens coming into Canada, but it's quite something to say it's

00:11:06.740 illegal to get on a plane or a train or a bus in Canada and say you can't go across

00:11:10.840 provincial boundaries. If our Supreme Court was worth anything, that would clearly be

00:11:14.860 unconstitutional. O'Toole came out obviously very uncomfortable with the topic because

00:11:21.620 his own supporters are divided, saying that there will be effective vaccine passports,

00:11:30.480 But if you don't want to get a vaccine, you can get a rapid test.

00:11:33.300 And the equivalent applied for federal employees is you have to get a test literally every

00:11:37.440 single day you show up for work, which is clearly impractical for anyone.

00:11:41.560 I believe some government employees actually want to do a job and actually get to work.

00:11:48.160 How do you think the politics of this has played out?

00:11:52.000 Do you think O'Toole has been able to primarily, the big question is, has O'Toole been able

00:11:56.020 to find the sweet spot political area where he can appear to be enough pro-mandatory vaccination

00:12:02.840 with some people, but not so pro-mandatory vaccination with his base? I think he's gotten

00:12:08.320 as close as he can with it. He can't go full out for it because he will lose a good chunk of his

00:12:13.260 base to those, even if it's a minority, it's a very dedicated minority. They do not want to be

00:12:17.900 vaccinated. They do not want to feel pressured to be vaccinated. And they are not going to support

00:12:22.440 party that they feel is doing that. But the trend is now you have to push it. I mean, Doug Ford is

00:12:28.860 threatening his entire caucus. He's going to kick him out if they don't get vaccinated now, it sounds

00:12:32.300 like. But he's always been a little bit on the insane side with this whole pandemic. But it's a

00:12:36.120 play. It's a giant issue. It's a big part of the whole thing. As you said, with that balance, you

00:12:40.360 look at what universities are doing. This is where I think the end of some degree of these vaccine

00:12:44.860 passports going to come from. As you said, the Supreme Court, they're just allowing any government

00:12:47.940 to use Section 1 of the Charter to set aside all our rights. So they're not going to stand up for

00:12:51.840 us. But when it comes to healthcare unions and civil service unions, when it comes to mandated

00:12:58.480 vaccines, that's when we're going to see the back off. That's when they're going to find compromise

00:13:03.920 because there's a number of nurses who aren't going to want to be forced to be vaccinated, 0.93

00:13:06.800 though the majority do. When it comes to union court actions, the minority is going to rule.

00:13:12.400 So I think in the long run, we're going to see a lot of these workplace ones and mobility ones

00:13:17.040 thrown out. But for the course of the next foreseeable months, that vaccine passports 0.63

00:13:21.280 are going to be the way to go whether we like it or not trudeau in markham ontario yesterday said

00:13:26.560 there will be quote consequences unquote for federal employees who don't get uh vaccinated

00:13:32.480 which of course sent the unions uh into a tizzy uh so our manitoba columnist linda slabody and

00:13:39.280 she's writing a column on that today just about uh consequences that canadians may face not being

00:13:47.360 vaccinated so it's as you guys say it's going to be in the in the courts perhaps before the

00:13:53.200 pandemic is even over yeah it'll be interesting how this plays out i i mean obviously the western

00:14:00.400 center has a different take on things than a lot of the government-funded legacy media

00:14:04.000 but i've never seen um media look at things different kinds of media look at things

00:14:10.080 through the looking glass and get 180-degree different interpretations.

00:14:15.900 Now, the CBC, their headline with O'Toole was,

00:14:18.760 O'Toole comes out against mandatory vaccine passports.

00:14:22.560 And the Western Standard headline was,

00:14:23.920 O'Toole comes out in support of modified vaccine passports.

00:14:30.340 They are vaccine passports. 0.73

00:14:31.920 You have to have them or you have to get a rapid test

00:14:34.160 every time you want to travel somewhere.

00:14:36.200 Otherwise, I suppose the federal government now believes,

00:14:38.900 under either party believes it has the power to exile people and imprison them in their province.

00:14:43.540 Because, I mean, in Canada, unless you're living in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,

00:14:46.980 you've got to, you can't really drive practically between provinces for most things. You've got to

00:14:51.140 fly. Yeah, well, and it gives an out with the testing at least. I mean, I don't know how long

00:14:55.780 a person wants to have a Q-tip shoved out the back of their nose every day, but there is a way to

00:15:00.020 avoid at least the vaccination part. But the media is driving it hard. I mean, I was watching Twitter

00:15:04.500 the other night and a prominent media member was calling out, and it's not surprisingly,

00:15:08.340 just conservative candidates, but one by one going through the list. Hey, are you vaccinated? Hey,

00:15:13.380 are you vaccinated? Like it's the roll call for those candidates, and it's putting them on the

00:15:18.100 spot. I don't think the public is calling out and screaming for these candidates to take a stand,

00:15:22.740 but the media wants to make sure they're made to take a side on this one way or another.

00:15:27.140 It's not going to go away. And I know our viewers, our listeners, our readers,

00:15:31.140 they're pretty divided on vaccines. I mean, I think the three of us are vaccinated, right?

00:15:38.100 I'm vaccinated. See, I'm asking you, are you vaccinated? Are you vaccinated? Double vaxxed.

00:15:41.680 Yeah. But, you know, I didn't ask anyone if they were in the office here. It's personal choice.

00:15:46.960 I made the decision for me and my child was best for me. But people, I think it's a good choice for

00:15:53.620 others to make, but it's their choice to make. But apparently the My Body, My Choice crowd applies

00:16:00.080 only to aborting children, does not apply to your actual body and medical decisions for yourself.

00:16:07.000 It really is something. You see self-proclaimed militant pro-choicers, you know, the Jagmeet Singhs, the Justin Trudeaus.

00:16:16.460 They say, my body, my choice. And you say, well, choices on vaccines and it's, you're a terrible person and you deserve to be locked down in your province in perpetuity. 0.92

00:16:26.660 Yeah, and people just a lot can't seem to find the balance on this one.

00:16:29.760 I mean, I feel vaccines are effective and they're a good idea, but I do not want to see that forced on people at all.

00:16:35.940 that is just forced medication is dead wrong. It's just like fluoridation in the water, that

00:16:39.620 never-ending issue. I think fluoride's fine, and I'm not worried about all the things people talk

00:16:43.540 about, but I don't think it's the role of the city to provide it to you. I mean, if you want to get

00:16:47.780 it, go out and get it. Get a filter for your house. I'm pro-fluoride, but I'm happy to put a filter on

00:16:52.740 my house that the city's not putting in the water. Yeah, but this people taking a stance, and it

00:16:57.860 doesn't stop there. When the mob moves, you know, they always start it. You're giving the conspiracy

00:17:03.460 theorists a lot of stuff to chew on because the stuff you said was considered conspiracy crap 0.79

00:17:08.900 six months ago is reality today. The passports are here today. And the talk now is of virtually

00:17:14.980 forcing you to get a vaccine because we're going to cut you off from practically everything if you

00:17:18.700 don't. I hate to say that, but I'm sitting in a world where I think it's going to have to wait

00:17:22.320 for the unions to save me because the government's not scared of us, but they are shit terrified of 0.98

00:17:27.760 unions. Well, solidarity forever. Thank God for the union standing up for our rights here. 0.97

00:17:33.900 I think, to wrap this segment up here, the politicization around vaccines, about

00:17:42.720 trying to force people to take it, even if it's a good idea, trying to force people to take it,

00:17:47.400 I think it's going to, it creates more resistance to vaccines. I have regret getting vaccinated,

00:17:53.900 Not because I think it was a bad medical decision, but because I don't like to be forced to do anything.

00:17:58.940 And, you know, if I get one of these vaccine passports, if it comes in a paper form, I'm going to burn it.

00:18:04.220 Because using a passport, a vaccine passport, I believe would be unethical. 0.99

00:18:09.060 Because I would be sanctioning a system that punishes people for their own personal choices, even if their choices I disagree with.

00:18:15.540 I think it's important to note that this is not just happening in Canada.

00:18:19.060 If you're going to want to travel anywhere in Europe, you're going to have to have a vaccine passport. 1.00

00:18:22.380 If you're going to want to take a British registered aircraft, you're going to need a vaccine passport. 1.00

00:18:28.560 So it's coming around the world.

00:18:31.300 There is resistance around the world.

00:18:33.580 It's not just Canada.

00:18:35.080 We saw images in Paris.

00:18:37.860 Police walking around like other uninvited men in uniforms in Paris, demanding people's papers.

00:18:44.580 Papers, please.

00:18:45.360 Remember when carting was supposed to be bad?

00:18:47.400 Yeah.

00:18:47.640 Didn't we just have a big topic after Black Lives Matter and all this police stuff about

00:18:54.260 carding being discriminatory and a violation of people's basic rights?

00:18:58.140 Well, apparently only certain kinds of carding.

00:19:00.880 Yeah, I don't know, we're in a bizarre time.

00:19:05.320 Time will just have to pass by and once this thing subsides, I hope some sanity starts

00:19:09.800 to prevail.

00:19:10.800 Well, we're going to move on to the conservative platform that we've done an analysis of, kind

00:19:14.140 of go through the key points that are there.

00:19:16.220 But before we do that, we want to thank one of our important sponsors, the Canadian Coalition

00:19:21.400 for Firearms Rights, the Canadian CCFR is working vigilantly for you every day, protecting

00:19:29.020 your right to own, use and purchase firearms safely in Canada.

00:19:34.480 They're doing fantastic work, they're lobbying politicians, they're doing advocacy speaking

00:19:38.840 out for you.

00:19:40.920 You know, I know gun owners, we don't have time, we don't go protest because we're not

00:19:44.340 allowed to bring our guns.

00:19:45.460 So while we can go out and hunt or go to the range, they're out doing this full time and

00:19:54.040 they do a fantastic job of it.

00:19:56.060 So make sure you support them.

00:19:57.400 Go to firearmrights.ca and click why join to learn more about why you should become

00:20:06.900 a member of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

00:20:09.700 So we're going to turn now to the Conservative Party's platform

00:20:13.780 Aaron O'Toole, Conservative leader

00:20:16.000 Released his party's platform on the very first day of the campaign

00:20:19.440 It's an unusual move

00:20:23.140 It's been done before

00:20:24.280 Mike Harris did it famously in 1995

00:20:26.760 With his Common Sense Revolution platform

00:20:28.880 Put it all out

00:20:30.560 I mean, campaign strategies are divided on

00:20:34.000 If you want to do this or not

00:20:35.100 The big downside is you can't trickle out a news story every day

00:20:38.580 and trying to dominate the headlines with your latest promise,

00:20:41.960 sometimes big promises, sometimes little promises.

00:20:45.520 And then you kind of release the whole thing.

00:20:47.760 You bundle it all together and release it at the end of the campaign

00:20:50.420 or around the leaders' debate.

00:20:52.320 The other strategy is to do what they've done here,

00:20:54.620 which is just put it all out.

00:20:56.720 No one can accuse you of a hidden agenda then, at least credibly.

00:20:59.440 It's all there, and we've gone through it in some detail.

00:21:04.740 Dave, why don't you just kind of give us the highlights,

00:21:06.180 and then we'll go through some of the pieces.

00:21:07.860 I personally like the releasing of the platform at the beginning.

00:21:12.100 It gives voters a chance to go through it at their leisure.

00:21:14.740 Do you know how late we've had to work over this stuff?

00:21:17.180 I like trickling it out.

00:21:18.580 My fingers are bleeding.

00:21:19.780 My fingers are bleeding.

00:21:22.120 And speaking of firearm rights, one of the things they're going to do is get rid of the 0.71

00:21:26.180 Liberal gun grab, which of course the Liberals are jumping up and down saying there's going

00:21:30.980 to be blood flowing in the street.

00:21:33.100 Assault rifles.

00:21:34.100 There'll be assault rifles.

00:21:35.100 Assault rifles.

00:21:36.100 Which is great.

00:21:37.100 Yeah, well, they haven't been legal in Canada for how long?

00:21:40.100 Sixty, seventy years?

00:21:42.100 Sixty years?

00:21:43.100 But if they are legal, I'm buying one.

00:21:45.100 I'm buying twelve.

00:21:47.100 Now I lost my train of thought thinking of you armed with an automatic weapon.

00:21:53.100 Got to keep discipline around the office.

00:21:55.100 Yes, very true.

00:21:57.100 So, yeah, anything you want to know in there about any policy is in there.

00:22:04.100 The only thing that's not mentioned, Derek, is equalization and the balanced budget.

00:22:11.540 Absolutely no plans in there to balance the budget other than a pie-in-the-eye statement saying it'll be done in a decade.

00:22:21.160 The Parliamentary Budget Office, you remember, a week or so ago said currently it won't be balanced until 2070, long after we're all dead.

00:22:31.020 But there's stuff in there about revamping the immigration system, propping up and helping

00:22:40.840 unions and employees, savings accounts and employee trust to buy companies, you know,

00:22:51.680 the carbon tax, the flip-flop carbon tax explained in detail, you remember in April, it was the

00:22:59.740 political u-turn of the century when he came out and only weeks ago it signed a pledge to never

00:23:06.060 bring in a carbon tax and and he did all that is explained in detail there how you're going to get

00:23:11.260 a fancy little debit card to go out and buy electric scooters uh but you know any issue you

00:23:17.100 want in there is there uh people can go through it at their leisure and see what the conservatives

00:23:23.820 have to offer uh you drive an electric scooter to work right i do you should see me in my helmet

00:23:28.860 It, it's sight to behold.

00:23:31.100 Yeah.

00:23:32.100 Yeah.

00:23:33.100 So there's a lot of, we're obviously, we can't go through the entire thing.

00:23:35.860 We, so when we went through, we, we put together kind of the most important eye grabbing parts.

00:23:42.120 There's good and there's bad, kind of give each one a letter grade.

00:23:45.900 I got to admit on both the conservative and the NDP platforms, we had to grade on a curb

00:23:50.460 because there's a lot of bad and I don't want to be just negative.

00:23:53.920 So mostly the things with positive letter grades, they're less important, but we had

00:24:00.040 to say something positive.

00:24:02.140 In the positive category is on guns, undoing the cabinet order and one piece of legislation

00:24:07.360 from the Liberals that is just confiscating tons of firearms that are no more dangerous

00:24:12.660 than any other, but that the Liberals think looks scary.

00:24:16.880 Looking scary is very important to Liberals.

00:24:20.300 So we've got guns.

00:24:22.600 What else was positive?

00:24:23.600 about the other broken promise we should mention and get out of the way is the CBC. He campaigned

00:24:32.160 in both the leadership of the party and immediately afterwards that he was going to defund the

00:24:38.500 CBC. No, not quite. He's going to review the English language operations. He's actually

00:24:45.980 going to add a division. Review the mandate. Review the mandate. He's going to add a division

00:24:51.120 into Radio Canada for, you know, specifically for them to protect French broadcasting, but

00:24:59.560 you know, nothing there about cutting the one in the one point some billion dollars

00:25:05.360 of taxpayers' money they get every year.

00:25:07.580 Yeah, so he's going to review the mandate. I think this is the worst of both worlds. What

00:25:12.180 he's going to do is he's going to anger the CBC. He's going to remind their reporters and

00:25:17.160 their management that they're afraid of conservatives. So they're going to continue to act as an

00:25:21.780 attack dog for Trudeau. But even if he was to somehow form a majority government and do this,

00:25:27.040 he wouldn't be doing much anyway. It was a similar mistake to what Stephen Harper made.

00:25:31.720 Stephen Harper cut a very small amount of the CBC's budget and the CBC went to absolute war

00:25:36.800 with him in 2015, more so than they did in the past. They were a huge reason that Stephen Harper

00:25:42.780 and the conservatives lost the 2015 election having the CBC go at them the way they did

00:25:47.240 to no gain because they didn't really cut much of the CBC budget anyway.

00:25:52.260 If you're going to go after the CBC, you privatized it.

00:25:55.240 You say, it's sold.

00:25:56.600 We're going to defund it.

00:25:58.080 Maybe we'll keep a little bit for the far north

00:25:59.700 or we'll contract out some broadcasting services for the far north

00:26:02.320 where there is nothing and they should have some kind of news.

00:26:04.800 Fine. 1.00

00:26:05.420 But you kill it and you kill it dead. 1.00

00:26:07.900 You don't, you know, if I wanted to get rid of Dave, 1.00

00:26:10.360 I don't walk over and just poke him in the eye. 1.00

00:26:12.100 I have to shoot him. 1.00

00:26:12.780 Because if I poke Dave in the eye, he's probably going to punch me in the face, right? 1.00

00:26:17.980 So you got to pick.

00:26:18.980 And this is the problem with conservatives and the CBC.

00:26:20.740 They poke it in the eye and then they don't do anything about it.

00:26:24.420 So it's a missed opportunity.

00:26:26.340 So let's kind of go good news and bad news.

00:26:27.880 We've already done a little bit of bad news, but let's go to some good news, which is related

00:26:31.380 to CBC, but on the so-called ostensibly private media.

00:26:36.600 The media bailout, the conservatives are following through saying they are going to

00:26:40.620 end the $600 million a year media bailout.

00:26:45.040 Good news, any way you cut it, unless you're a part of the old legacy government-funded

00:26:49.780 news, that's now something they're reliant upon.

00:26:56.400 That is probably going to create some more unfavorable coverage indirectly for the conservatives,

00:27:01.480 but a definite positive.

00:27:04.400 Refugee policy.

00:27:05.220 This has not gotten any real pickup on the rest of the media that I've seen outside the

00:27:08.920 Western standard, but hidden in there was some really good policy, less about immigration than

00:27:13.920 it is about refugees. You know, you've got, you know, I know when my grandparents came to Canada,

00:27:21.120 they were privately sponsored. They were sponsored by a church. And if the way it worked is if my

00:27:27.480 family went on to welfare or needed any government benefits whatsoever, the church had two options.

00:27:33.560 They could pay for it themselves, or they could put us on the next ship back to Hamburg.

00:27:37.460 There was no risk to the taxpayer.

00:27:40.460 And we still do have some privately sponsored refugees in Canada.

00:27:44.460 And they are, across the board, almost unanimously more successful.

00:27:49.460 They have a higher rate of getting a job, a better rate of having a good job,

00:27:53.460 better rates of learning unofficial language.

00:27:55.460 They are incredibly less likely to be involved in crimes,

00:27:58.460 incredibly less likely to be reliant upon government assistance.

00:28:02.460 Privately sponsored refugees mean that you have a person or an institution like a church or a charity that is responsible for them and they take direct ownership over the problem. 0.91

00:28:13.460 It's not some faceless bureaucracy that just sees them as a number.

00:28:16.460 And so the conservative platform talks about moving to a 100% privately sponsored refugee program with a few exceptions.

00:28:24.460 You know, if a guy shows up on the shore and there's a guy in another boat behind him in the Taliban and you're shooting at him, we're going to let him on. 1.00

00:28:31.460 That's okay.

00:28:32.460 I'm okay with that.

00:28:34.660 So I think it's a hugely positive move forward in that area.

00:28:40.180 One of the interesting things they're also going to do, Derek, is prioritize workers

00:28:43.840 who want to come in and work in the long-term care industry to get foreign workers working 0.51

00:28:50.320 in the old folks' homes and stuff like that.

00:28:54.520 So I think that's a good idea.

00:28:56.520 Yeah.

00:28:57.520 Corey, was there anything positive that we haven't touched on in the platform that you

00:29:01.460 I think you've touched on the positives already for the most part.

00:29:03.900 It's good to see two pragmatic, rational refugee immigration sort of discussion because it's been a weak spot.

00:29:11.100 I mean, that's where they have poked and tried to point out conservatives as being paranoid or anti-immigrant or things like that.

00:29:17.220 Well, it's not saying less or more refugees.

00:29:19.840 They weren't talking about that.

00:29:20.780 They were talking about just how we deal with it.

00:29:22.800 And that is one of the big problems is the burden to the Canadian taxpayer.

00:29:26.040 And frankly, we're not really helping people too much if we get them to Canada

00:29:29.760 and they're on welfare, they don't have a job, they can't speak the language, 0.52

00:29:33.900 then they're more likely to get into crime, onto government assistance.

00:29:38.200 This is going to mean for not necessarily more or less refugees,

00:29:41.380 but it's going to make for more successful refugees.

00:29:44.860 Well, there's a lot of that.

00:29:46.380 And Dave already touched on the budget.

00:29:48.900 For the first time that I'm aware of in modern history of the Conservative Party,

00:29:52.800 they did not release a costing of their budget,

00:29:54.760 just a bunch of promises with a bunch of spending attached to it,

00:29:58.640 but no costing. Now, they're saying that they're waiting for the parliamentary budget officer to

00:30:03.460 review it. It's good that actually this stuff goes to the parliamentary budget officer because

00:30:07.560 it's a more honest and independent accounting of platforms and the parties themselves.

00:30:11.240 Parties make up all sorts of wacky stuff to make the numbers fit on their platforms.

00:30:15.160 I remember Rachel and I forgot a billion dollars when she was running for premier in 2015,

00:30:19.400 just left a billion dollars out. Oops. So it's good to do that, but generally it makes sense

00:30:25.100 to release your own costing as well.

00:30:27.140 And you could say, we're going to update this

00:30:28.260 based on what the parliamentary budget officer says.

00:30:30.700 Bob, I'm not sure why you would release the platform

00:30:32.720 with a bunch of spending promises

00:30:33.740 if you haven't already accounted for it.

00:30:36.140 Why would you say we're going to do this,

00:30:38.220 but we have no idea how much it's going to cost?

00:30:41.020 As it works.

00:30:43.140 That's exactly how the progressive conservatives

00:30:45.140 won in Nova Scotia.

00:30:47.280 I mean, that's part of it.

00:30:48.540 It looks like a conservative victory,

00:30:49.960 and technically it is.

00:30:51.520 But if you look at that campaign,

00:30:53.200 they proposed the most spending

00:30:54.320 out of all three major parties they no plans to balance the budget no plans on how they were

00:30:59.360 going to do it they just promised everything and anything and i hate to say it but it worked so

00:31:05.200 perhaps why give the voters the the blood and guts and the reality of how you get there when

00:31:11.120 you can just make the promises and figure out how to deal with it after you get in yeah uh and and

00:31:16.320 o'toole has clearly stated several times already he has no plan to balance the budget he says i'm

00:31:21.360 I'm going to do it over a decade, and we've talked about this before.

00:31:24.360 A decade, 10 years, that would require three back-to-back majority conservative governments.

00:31:30.000 The last conservative leader to do that was Sir John A. Macdonald.

00:31:33.580 And I just have a sneaking suspicion that Aaron O'Toole is just a little bit ambitious

00:31:39.280 for believing he is going to be the only conservative leader in history to match Sir John A. Macdonald.

00:31:46.900 It's just, I'm not going to put my money that he could do that.

00:31:51.360 So there is a 0.0% chance Aaron O'Toole would balance the budget if he was elected Prime Minister,

00:31:57.080 unless we had the greatest economic boom in Canadian history and he didn't tack any extra spending onto that.

00:32:03.120 Highly unlikely to happen.

00:32:05.720 We did a word search of the platform.

00:32:08.520 How many times did Alberta come up? 1.00

00:32:10.080 Oh, no, was that the NDP one we did that with?

00:32:12.020 No, it was the NDP.

00:32:14.140 Okay, we'll come to that later.

00:32:14.880 But there's a ton of promises around Quebec.

00:32:18.060 prompts that the federal government will not intervene in the courts with Bill 21.

00:32:22.780 That is a clearly racist piece of legislation that, you know, I don't think it's a good bill.

00:32:28.460 It's a very bad bill. It's discriminatory.

00:32:30.420 But I'd like Alberta to adopt it anyway, just to see what would happen.

00:32:34.060 Just to see the reaction.

00:32:35.080 Like, let's not enforce it, because it is terrible.

00:32:37.220 Don't enforce the bill.

00:32:38.120 But let's pass the racist bill and just see what Ottawa does.

00:32:43.160 They will fight us in the courts every step of the way. 1.00

00:32:45.280 The media will lose their shit. 0.98

00:32:48.060 And we'll just see what happens, like, let's pass it word for word, just translate it into English, pass it here, change, we'll just do a Google, we'll just, we'll do a word replacement in a word document, we'll just change Quebec to Alberta, and French to English, and we'll just see what happens. 0.97

00:33:02.180 They've said that the Conservatives will not challenge it.

00:33:06.180 We did a word search of the word, the phrase balanced budget.

00:33:10.180 It appears only once in the entire document.

00:33:13.180 And that is in reference to saying that in balancing the budget, they won't cut transfers to Quebec.

00:33:19.180 That is the only time that the word balanced budget comes up is saying we won't cut transfers to Quebec.

00:33:24.180 So tons of promises around Quebec. Quebec gets automatic seats on the CBC now.

00:33:29.180 now.

00:33:30.180 I must have missed the part about Alberta and Saskatchewan getting...

00:33:32.840 You did.

00:33:33.840 You did.

00:33:34.840 Small print.

00:33:35.840 I just didn't see it.

00:33:36.840 I must have been not reading carefully enough.

00:33:39.620 But they also don't, on the West, they don't really get into equalization. 0.97

00:33:45.240 They acknowledge that Alberta is getting screwed. 0.95

00:33:47.160 They give a little lip service to the problem, but they're not touching equalization. 0.93

00:33:51.140 They are not touching that with a 10-foot pole.

00:33:53.980 What they are promising is more federal spending going into the physical stabilization fund,

00:33:59.860 which Jason Kenney never talked about before until it became clear nothing's happening

00:34:03.480 on equalization.

00:34:04.480 Then he starts talking about this, which he calls an equalization rebate, which it is

00:34:08.360 not.

00:34:09.360 It actually has nothing to do with the equalization program.

00:34:12.200 It's a short-term band-aid to give us more money, but it will do nothing to stop sending

00:34:16.800 our money to people who don't like us.

00:34:19.600 Corey, do you think there was any way that Erin O'Toole could touch equalization?

00:34:24.600 Not really. The reality is what we're seeing with this platform like you're talking about, it's standard.

00:34:30.600 It's a platform that's trying to win in the reality of what Canada is.

00:34:34.600 There's no sense catering to the West, even if that is your base of support, because there's little to gain.

00:34:40.600 You need to win Quebec, you need to win Ontario, you need to maybe try and maintain a few seats in the Maritimes.

00:34:46.600 If you go after equalization, you're not gonna win them.

00:34:49.940 So yeah, you can pay lip service to Alberta on the way up as you do with carbon tax or

00:34:54.420 even defunding the CBC.

00:34:55.840 But when the campaign comes along, everything's focused on the center.

00:34:59.240 Well, to be fair, Aaron O'Toole never even promised during the leadership campaign to

00:35:01.900 do anything about equalization.

00:35:02.900 Well, he said, he gave a vague nebulous promise that he'll review it or...

00:35:06.840 Yeah.

00:35:07.840 It's just like supply management.

00:35:09.560 They're not gonna touch it.

00:35:10.560 They just...

00:35:11.560 Oh no, they did touch supply management.

00:35:12.560 They said they love it.

00:35:13.560 Yes, okay.

00:35:14.560 They did touch supply management.

00:35:15.560 love it and they're going to defend it. Our Soviet style production of eggs, milk and cheese

00:35:23.080 is critical for Canada. That's much of this. This is a solid,

00:35:27.960 unfortunately predictable campaign strategically modeled to try and win the election. So he's going

00:35:33.800 to stay away from regional type of issues that really don't benefit him. That aren't Quebec.

00:35:39.160 Yeah, Quebec and Ontario. He did promise swimming pools for Nova Scotia. That is true.

00:35:44.600 Yeah, he's going to build a big federal swimming pool.

00:35:46.480 After that shark attack, I can see the demand.

00:35:51.300 I mean, there's a bunch of stuff in there.

00:35:53.600 Loving unions.

00:35:54.520 I mean, I read the NDP platform.

00:35:56.380 It's obviously not as strong as that, but it's very much a big change in tone from previous

00:36:01.380 conservatives, which try to stay kind of neutral on unions, to we like unions.

00:36:06.020 Unions are great.

00:36:06.960 Unions are important.

00:36:07.800 Unions are going to get all kinds of new special rights under Aaron O'Toole.

00:36:11.820 But let's go to O'Toole taxes.

00:36:14.600 Do you remember in the 2015 election, Stephen Harper was warning about Trudeau imposing

00:36:21.400 a Netflix tax and the media all laughed about that?

00:36:24.960 Well Trudeau has now got plans for a Netflix tax and the O'Toole platform, and as we'll

00:36:29.640 mention later, the Sing platform, they're all hot on a Netflix tax.

00:36:34.240 O'Toole wants to tax your Netflix.

00:36:36.600 Corey, is that a winner?

00:36:39.600 I don't know if it's a winner, but again, it gets back to what they want to propose to do with it.

00:36:45.340 And I mean, Trudeau's justification, the rest were always, it's for the protection of Canadian content.

00:36:49.860 It's protectionism.

00:36:51.180 And when you say protection of Canadian content, translate French.

00:36:55.400 So, yeah, it's another play for Quebec.

00:36:57.380 It's just embedded as it tends to be with most policies.

00:37:00.860 And again, not terribly unexpected.

00:37:04.860 Okay.

00:37:05.580 And of course, we dealt with carbon tax.

00:37:08.220 I mean, the greatest flip-flop I've seen in my lifetime politically.

00:37:13.100 I've never seen one that monumental.

00:37:16.800 When you'll stand next to a screen and sign on a press conference saying outright,

00:37:21.780 I will not do this.

00:37:23.640 The closest I can remember was Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty

00:37:27.000 when he was first running in roughly 2003 against Ernie Eves in Ontario.

00:37:31.460 He signed a giant pledge saying he promises not to bring in any more taxes.

00:37:34.580 He got elected.

00:37:35.540 He signed a big Canadian Taxpayers Federation pledge, and then he flip-flopped.

00:37:38.640 Going a bit before your time, but the Liberals completely flip-flopped on abolishing the GST.

00:37:43.320 The only one who fell on her sword over that, of all people, was Sheila Copps.

00:37:47.720 Yeah.

00:37:48.260 And, well, Gretchen didn't pay a high price for that flip-flop in the long run, unfortunately, 1.00

00:37:52.220 but they were very clear that they were going to end NAFTA and abolish the GST.

00:37:56.760 We didn't mention that, Derek.

00:37:59.240 I don't know if you consider it a good thing or not, but the Tories will promise a GST holiday in May.

00:38:05.060 You can get all your Christmas shopping done and not have to worry about paying the GST.

00:38:16.000 Whether or not they're going to make it easy for businesses remains to be seen, but a little bit of good tax news.

00:38:23.540 Well, I don't know. I would like an actual tax cut, not just a little gimmicky holiday.

00:38:28.000 I mean, obviously retailers have been hurting, but I mean, Christmas is their time.

00:38:32.860 I'm not sure, if you want to actually increase retail sales, you should have a GSD holiday

00:38:37.760 in January when they're actually hurting.

00:38:40.660 If you're going to be doing this, you do a GSD holiday in January, not when people are

00:38:44.360 already buying stuff.

00:38:45.360 Absolutely.

00:38:46.360 And the CFIB roasted that because what's your average consumer going to do?

00:38:49.000 You know what retail sales are going to look like in the last week of November?

00:38:51.460 You're not going to be able to give your product away because you can wait a week and get a

00:38:55.260 5% discount on everything you buy or depending on what product, well, I guess it's just the

00:38:58.620 federal.

00:38:59.620 If I'm owning a retail store, I close down for November.

00:39:04.120 Yeah, you might as well.

00:39:05.120 Just close your doors, say we'll be open, free stuff.

00:39:09.000 He had to dangle a goody, I guess, I mean, Trudeau came out with the check to seniors

00:39:12.680 and now, well, here, we'll give you a GST holiday.

00:39:14.740 Look, if you want to cut the GST, I mean, the GST is a less harmful tax than income

00:39:19.520 taxes, every economist will tell you that, but we all hate it because we see it.

00:39:23.000 If you want to cut the GST, I'm in favor of a tax cut, so fine, it'd be broad-based and

00:39:27.140 it's permanent. But this kind of thing is just gimmicky. I mean, he's quite literally

00:39:32.820 playing Santa Claus, so I don't know. Why don't you cut my income taxes?

00:39:38.080 I'm sure Jane is cursing at home because it throws a loop into all the bookkeepers 0.93

00:39:41.100 and the rest because you get this one month now where you're buggering around where you're

00:39:43.340 not remitting 5%. Oh yeah, it's going to be an accounting

00:39:47.940 nightmare. I mean, I have to deal with all sorts of accounting here at the Western Standard

00:39:52.960 and GSD and stuff.

00:39:55.300 I think we're going to continue to charge GSD because we're not retail, but maybe we

00:40:00.600 don't. 0.99

00:40:01.600 I don't know, but it'll be a pain in the ass. 0.97

00:40:03.480 How do I not charge everyone GSD for one month and then I have to charge them GSD on the 0.98

00:40:08.420 end?

00:40:09.420 It's an accounting nightmare.

00:40:10.620 More money for our accountant, I guess.

00:40:13.280 Accountants will love this.

00:40:15.360 Okay, well, and I do want to emphasize, the conservative platform is not all bad.

00:40:21.160 I know we can beat up on them, but that's because, you know, we believe, you know, I'm, I don't call myself a conservative, I'm a libertarian, but I'm definitely on the right.

00:40:29.200 I've voted conservative at times in the past.

00:40:32.280 I've never voted for parties on the left.

00:40:34.480 I want to see conservatives be better.

00:40:36.360 I want Canada to have a good conservative party that I might see myself voting for one day.

00:40:43.120 And that's, I think, why I'm a little tough on it.

00:40:46.200 and as are some of my colleagues is we want to see a good conservative party campaigning and

00:40:52.120 executing conservative policies. And that's why we're rough on it. But if you thought that was

00:40:57.540 rough, we're going to get to the NDP platform in a second. But before we do, we want to thank

00:41:03.300 another of our sponsors. Why don't you do resistance coffee? Resistance coffee. I love

00:41:08.860 doing resistance coffee. It's your stuff. It's one of those things. We're drinking it at all.

00:41:12.740 I had to lead by example.

00:41:14.080 I mean, it was a gamble.

00:41:15.000 I ordered resistance coffee online.

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00:41:17.540 But chances are, even though they got those awesome names like, you know,

00:41:19.960 Liberal Tears and Defund the CBC, I mean, it might have been awful.

00:41:23.640 I might have had to fake it and say, you know, this is good stuff.

00:41:26.100 Order it.

00:41:26.280 No, I don't have to.

00:41:27.460 And these guys, so they are the office.

00:41:30.080 Have you been faking it?

00:41:31.500 Not on the coffee.

00:41:34.000 We can do a whole other show on other stuff.

00:41:36.540 But either way, you know, these guys are great.

00:41:40.600 They're pushing back into the mustard.

00:41:42.740 Oh, I guess there's so many digressions I can go with here.

00:41:47.320 Back to the sponsor.

00:41:48.280 We're going to think it's not a red screen because Corey would

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00:41:52.140 So back to that damn coffee. 0.99

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00:42:14.840 10% of your purchase goes towards that.

00:42:16.400 Plus, if it's your first time buying, there's a promo code box.

00:42:19.900 You put Western Standard in, all one word.

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00:42:24.720 If you order, I think it's over, I'm not going to guess here, $60 worth or something.

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00:42:34.620 Your money's not going to go to some left-wing cause.

00:42:36.700 and stay in tune next week

00:42:39.700 and I'll talk about what I was faking it with.

00:42:43.120 Trying to attract viewers or repel them?

00:42:45.600 Well, I'll change them.

00:42:48.260 Well, I've never been faking it.

00:42:51.080 I feel dirty hearing that.

00:42:54.220 All right, well, let's move on to something else dirty.

00:42:57.300 Let's go to the NDP platform.

00:43:00.260 Dave, we've actually not yet published our review on it.

00:43:02.780 I was actually just kind of working on one of the first drafts

00:43:05.420 when we had to get in here for the show, but you've gone through it, right?

00:43:09.920 Well, yes. It can be summed up in three words, Derek. Spend, spend, spend.

00:43:15.920 I think we've identified 25 separate stories that we'll be doing over the next day or two.

00:43:22.420 See, I don't know why you don't prefer trickling out a platform.

00:43:25.420 25 days in like 25 stories on one platform in a matter of days, that's a lot to bite off.

00:43:31.420 It is. It is. And we're doing it so you dear viewer don't have to. So yeah, and everybody gets more money. I think you called it a socialist dream. Even the CBC will be rolling in even more taxpayer money. So again, no, nothing in there. I don't think about balancing the budget.

00:43:52.400 I didn't see the word once.

00:43:54.320 No. I think we said Alberta got mentioned three times.

00:43:58.440 No, zero.

00:43:58.880 Zero.

00:43:59.880 Zero.

00:44:00.880 There is no, if you do a word search, the word Alberta never comes up once.

00:44:05.880 Saskatchewan comes up, does come up one single time, only insofar as they're referring to

00:44:10.880 Tommy Douglas.

00:44:11.880 So.

00:44:12.880 So very obviously very heavy on Quebec stuff, but yeah, every sector of the economy gets

00:44:21.560 more cash, bottom line, and who's going to pay for it, nobody knows.

00:44:27.760 they're going to pay for it nobody knows. You know, I think as Corey says, it seems to work,

00:44:35.280 promise the world with no plans on how you're going to pay for it.

00:44:40.560 Okay, so as I said with the conservative platform, we graded these things on a curb.

00:44:45.280 It's not, you know, when we compare the platforms, it's not apples to apples,

00:44:51.840 because we expect more out of the conservative platform I think. But I tried really hard to

00:44:56.880 find some things that aren't terrible and we were able to find that even in the NDP platform

00:45:03.500 because we're nice guys. So let's got to go through the nice things and I'm sure some of

00:45:09.980 our listeners and viewers are not going to agree with me on this but I actually thought they had

00:45:14.500 a really good point on drugs, on illicit drug use. The NDP are kind of leading the pack on this one

00:45:21.520 I think, from a libertarian view, although it's not for libertarian reasons they're doing

00:45:26.880 it.

00:45:27.880 I think they just like drugs.

00:45:28.880 I think that's probably it.

00:45:29.880 Or they're wrong.

00:45:30.880 Well, you've got to consume something to read that platform.

00:45:32.880 Yeah, yeah.

00:45:33.880 I felt like I was on shrooms the entire time.

00:45:36.880 But the NDP, I think, have got actually, out of the three big parties, actually the best

00:45:41.900 approach to drugs.

00:45:42.900 It's about decriminalizing the use of drugs and redoubling police efforts on traffickers,

00:45:50.280 pushers. No one has ever quit drugs because the government put them in jail. People go to jail

00:45:58.560 and they do more drugs 99% of the time. Addicts deserve, I think, treatment and compassion.

00:46:07.940 Putting them in prison is just not going to fix it. And I think the NDP have got,

00:46:13.120 they're actually on the right, I can't believe I'm saying this for God's sakes. They're on the

00:46:17.200 right track in this specific policy area. Take the resources you're spending going after people who

00:46:24.400 are addicts for the most part and put it going after the traffickers. At the same time, they

00:46:29.920 also want to get more aggressive on expunging the criminal records of people who have been convicted

00:46:34.960 of having small amounts of cannabis before it was legalized. Absolutely. I would imagine we

00:46:41.280 We probably did something similar when Prohibition in Canada ended in the later, some point in the 20s.

00:46:47.420 It's not illegal anymore.

00:46:48.540 It's no longer a crime.

00:46:49.460 You should therefore not have a criminal record for it.

00:46:52.460 Corey, how do you feel about drugs?

00:46:55.180 Well, it depends on what we're taking and what the party is.

00:46:57.780 But as far as where they're going, though, I mean, seriously, it's an area I've always been big on.

00:47:02.460 I'd like to see rehabilitation.

00:47:04.260 And from a libertarian or even just a conservative point of view, it's a smart way to go.

00:47:08.320 Like, guys, you're paying for these addicts already.

00:47:10.580 Whether you like it or not, you're paying for them in the hospital system, in the justice system, you know, in general welfare, in property damage, you name it.

00:47:19.380 I mean, the homeless, addicted people are costing a fortune if you just want to look at the cold, hard costs.

00:47:24.740 For every one you can get out through treatment and perhaps get straight and get into the working world, we benefit.

00:47:32.320 I mean, they're no longer draining, they're contributing.

00:47:35.460 You know, criminalizing these guys, as you said, it's been a failure, it doesn't work.

00:47:39.520 So, yeah, I mean, good on the NDP to point out that this is the way to go.

00:47:43.160 Quit chasing after these guys, trying to throw them in jail.

00:47:45.360 Let's chase after them and try and get them into rehab, which is still not easy,

00:47:48.920 but it would have a lot more benefit for us and them for every successful case you could find.

00:47:54.100 So they've got some proposals around EI.

00:47:57.580 I'm going to talk about one little good part there,

00:47:59.940 and that's the last of the good stuff I could find, really.

00:48:02.540 Oh, actually, no, they had some stuff around B.C. salmon fisheries that are tough.

00:48:06.640 So we've got, there's kind of two broad kinds of salmon farms.

00:48:13.100 There's the onshore ones, which you can imagine is a big fancy swimming pool with a bunch

00:48:16.560 of fish in it.

00:48:17.560 And then there's the offshore ones, and they're essentially floating farms.

00:48:23.400 And unfortunately, they are extremely damaging to the environment.

00:48:29.700 All sorts of pollution that comes from the waste and the feed, and they are disease,

00:48:35.640 disease farms. And what they do is they spread diseases to the natural salmon and they're

00:48:40.460 damaging habitats. It's unfortunate stuff because it's an honest living. I don't think

00:48:44.520 there's anything wrong with salmon fishing. Love salmon, but it's damaging, particularly

00:48:50.520 to the wild salmon stocks. The NDP are talking about finding a reasonable transition plan

00:48:56.400 to move from the offshore salmon farming to onshore, which is not really impactful to

00:49:03.000 the environment. It's more expensive to do, but it's producing bad quality fish. It's

00:49:08.900 hurting the wild salmon fisheries, which is not fair to those farmers. So, a little bit

00:49:13.500 of good stuff there, I think, as long as the transition is reasonable and fair and recognizes

00:49:19.060 that people put a lot of money into capital for these things already. Tiny little bit

00:49:23.220 of good on EI. They want to make it so, you know, right now, if you want to collect EI,

00:49:27.460 You've got to get laid off if you get fired for a cause or you just want to go back to

00:49:34.040 school and upgrade your skills so you can come back into the labor market and make more

00:49:37.180 money.

00:49:38.180 You can't do that.

00:49:39.180 I don't think that's fair, especially if you've been paying into EI your whole life.

00:49:42.880 You're a hard worker, never lost a job, but you want to go back to school so you can come 0.89

00:49:46.400 back and make more money.

00:49:47.400 You know, so you're an entry level nurse and you want to come back as a nurse practitioner.

00:49:51.700 Well, right now you can't write EI for that.

00:49:53.880 So they're talking about allowing that.

00:49:57.280 good stuff there. It's all downhill from here, all downhill. On EI, they're going to make

00:50:03.740 more generous for everybody though, including quote unquote seasonal workers, which is Latin

00:50:09.880 for Atlantic fishermen. We remember, you know, we've got the pogey culture that still exists 1.00

00:50:15.380 out there. It's less extreme than it used to be. They want to go back to an older system

00:50:20.500 where they could literally fish for two months and then collect pogey for the rest of the

00:50:24.460 Terrible, crazy stuff.

00:50:27.320 They've got a whole list of stuff for EI.

00:50:30.340 I can't get into the thing.

00:50:31.940 It's too much.

00:50:34.220 Corey, there's a bunch of stuff on unions there, banning replacement workers during strikes,

00:50:42.080 strengthening union power in all sorts of ways, basic guaranteed income, without cutting

00:50:48.840 back the welfare state, I'll just tack you to stone money. 1.00

00:50:52.560 Any of that stuff surprising for you?

00:50:53.960 No, I mean, the bottom line is we could look at how the NDP were going to come into this campaign one of two ways.

00:50:59.300 I mean, they were either going to perhaps hope they could turn singing to the next Jack Layton

00:51:03.100 and actually start contesting, like really threatening to perhaps become a player, to win an office.

00:51:09.120 Or they could just stick true to their socialist roots, their principles,

00:51:13.320 and just put out an unrealistic wish list of socialist dreams and flog those and push.

00:51:20.000 their hope is to impact the election their hope is to be a voice in the house of commons but never

00:51:24.560 actually be in power in the house of commons so they clearly chose to swing left stick to that

00:51:29.920 and maybe hope the balance you know hold the balance of power so they can really push hard

00:51:33.280 left when the next government well i think the ndp has to because there's no point to the ndp if the ndp

00:51:39.280 is pretty much the exact same as the liberals or even to the right of the liberals uh trudeau in

00:51:44.400 2015 swung to the left of the ndp where thomas mulcair had them thomas mulcair was dedicated

00:51:48.640 to balance budgets, not very strongly, but a little bit. And Trudeau said, budgets will balance

00:51:53.760 themselves, which Aaron O'Toole effectively has too. He's like, we're just going to grow the

00:51:58.800 economy and the budget will balance itself. Not an exact quote, but that really is summing up what

00:52:03.600 he said. So the NDP have reacted to Trudeau's pretty hard left turn by just going into total

00:52:11.680 cuckoo bananas. They're not even pretending. And, but I mean, they'll corner their support

00:52:16.640 in those areas where that strong you know lower mainland bc a few you know toronto quebec ridings

00:52:21.680 maybe a prairie socialist or two but i mean there were there were always two kinds of ndp i mean

00:52:25.760 there's the romano mdp you know in the past as well and you know compared to what singh is putting

00:52:30.960 out i mean those guys are hardcore conservatives but if you want to well roman was a hardcore

00:52:35.440 conservative darren o'toole yeah well he knew though he had to get realistic if he actually

00:52:40.000 wanted to win and form office and then and there's no illusions on the part of the singh ndp that 0.52

00:52:45.040 that's not their goal. They're stuck on the ideology. So, fair enough.

00:52:50.000 Taxes, just don't know where to start. Look, there's a section on, I can't get into it,

00:52:54.080 it's just so long. 75% capital gains tax. So any of you, if Jake...

00:53:00.240 Past-rated economy, I can't think of a better way.

00:53:02.560 If Jake meets Prime Minister and you want to start a business, think of something else.

00:53:08.720 I mean, like, just, who the hell would invest in anything with a 75% tax?

00:53:17.380 It's madness.

00:53:18.540 Wealth taxes.

00:53:19.420 So now taxes, not even on your income, just for having it.

00:53:22.400 Well, I'm sure Turks and Caicos and all kinds of other tax havens will be very happy if

00:53:28.020 Jake Meadson becomes Prime Minister because everybody's moving their money over there.

00:53:32.360 I don't have a bunch, but whatever I have, I'd move it overseas.

00:53:35.140 That would be insane.

00:53:36.100 There's just nowhere to go from there.

00:53:39.780 Carbon taxes, he is virtually a carbon copy position as Trudeau and O'Toole.

00:53:48.040 So the three parties agree there.

00:53:50.300 Carbon taxes are great.

00:53:51.300 The three parties all agree and they support supply management.

00:53:55.360 In fact, Aaron O'Toole's language, like they both say the same thing, but the language

00:54:00.100 around it about how much they just, God, love supply management, Aaron O'Toole was even

00:54:05.100 They're more socialist and saying by quite a bit, but it's still the same policy.

00:54:08.980 They just really wanted to emphasize they love, love supply management, uh, CBC, as

00:54:15.860 you mentioned, Dave, uh, more money, uh, any people promise they're going to get rid of

00:54:19.920 the media bailout though, right?

00:54:22.180 That's a trick question.

00:54:23.980 No question.

00:54:24.980 No, no, no, absolutely not.

00:54:27.660 Love the media bailout.

00:54:29.260 should work for the government.

00:54:32.920 Deficit?

00:54:33.920 I mean, O'Toole at least mentions the word.

00:54:38.220 I don't, I could be wrong, I have to do a word search, but I don't think I saw the word

00:54:41.920 deficit or balanced budget anywhere in the entire thing.

00:54:46.020 Why don't you tell us about some of their energy transition?

00:54:49.940 No, continue, you're on a roll.

00:54:53.020 You just haven't read it yet.

00:54:55.140 Okay, I haven't really sent you my drafts yet.

00:54:59.020 Okay, so that's fair.

00:55:01.060 Yeah, just shut down the energy industry. 0.59

00:55:03.960 That's what amount.

00:55:05.740 It's a total shutdown.

00:55:08.240 It doesn't mention the word Alberta once, as I said.

00:55:10.780 It mentions Saskatchewan once, but only in reference to St. Douglas.

00:55:17.500 But it just says, yeah, we're shutting it down,

00:55:19.160 and we'll provide EI for you and some transition training.

00:55:23.680 So all of you watching and listening who are working in the oil patch,

00:55:27.460 you will get retrained to assemble solar panels and engineer some windmills.

00:55:32.860 That sounds great.

00:55:34.720 I'm sure kids who are from poor families and go straight into the patch 1.00

00:55:39.140 trying to earn a decent living, I'm sure they'll be very happy about that change.

00:55:43.060 There'll be some good labor jobs, too, for people with big fans to blow on the windmills 0.77

00:55:47.300 on the days when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, too.

00:55:49.800 So, I mean, this will be a good make-work project.

00:55:51.380 Do you remember when Trump was first running for office and all the Americans said,

00:55:56.840 If Trump wins, we're moving to Canada.

00:55:58.980 Well, you know what?

00:56:00.200 If Jagmeet Singh wins the election, they'll be moving trucks headed the other way at the end.

00:56:05.860 Well, we'll at least transfer our money offshore.

00:56:08.300 That's really easy.

00:56:09.840 I've actually already had some family flee Canada because they're done with lockdowns.

00:56:14.140 They're done with mask mandates.

00:56:16.220 They're suspected to be mandatory vaccinations.

00:56:18.620 I've had some family already flee down to the United States.

00:56:21.540 Florida.

00:56:21.780 So, I mean, you know, I'm not moving anywhere because I think Western Standard is going to have, we're kind of counter-cyclical.

00:56:30.800 The worse the government is, the better, you know, the better the news is.

00:56:33.940 So I'm not going anywhere, but I'm definitely moving every penny I own offshore.

00:56:38.780 You know what?

00:56:39.380 I'm canceling the rest of this list. 0.99

00:56:40.600 It's just too much crap. 0.85

00:56:44.840 And I'm otherwise having a good day. 0.99

00:56:47.600 As Corey said, if you have no chance of winning the election, promise the world.

00:56:53.240 And you'll get away with it with some people.

00:56:57.020 Yeah.

00:56:57.560 Okay.

00:56:58.100 Well, let's leave the NDP circus for there.

00:57:01.820 Let's go to the very dark circus unfolding in Afghanistan. 0.98

00:57:06.840 Dave, why don't you set it up?

00:57:09.060 Extremely horrible stuff going on, Derek.

00:57:11.620 The Afghan army basically collapsed and fled, and I think it took the Taliban three days to take over the entire country.

00:57:22.300 Unbelievable pictures of Afghans climbing aboard, moving planes, falling from the skies as they tried to hold on to get out any way they could. 1.00

00:57:35.500 Canadians had to hire Gurkhas, the legendary Nepalese soldiers, to... 0.94

00:57:40.980 I thought you meant pickles.

00:57:44.020 No.

00:57:44.780 Gurkans? 1.00

00:57:45.560 Gurkaz.

00:57:46.180 Gurkaz.

00:57:46.900 Which one is it?

00:57:48.100 Gurkaz.

00:57:48.540 Gurkaz is the pickle. 0.95

00:57:49.460 Okay.

00:57:51.260 The Gurkaz are the one that slit your throat in the night and you never knew they were there. 1.00

00:57:56.300 So thanks to their efforts, all our Canadian staff and JTF soldiers were able to get out.

00:58:03.160 Of course, Canadians left the Gurkaz behind initially, which caused outrage.

00:58:09.100 or outrage. And Prime Minister Trudeau said this morning they have been able to get them out to

00:58:16.400 safety now. But horrible, horrible scenes. You know, if you're a veteran that died protecting

00:58:23.120 Kandahar, you're turning over in your grave. The West is being accused of abandoning these poor

00:58:30.800 people. Joe Biden standing by his decision saying, you know, we can't be there forever. The Afghans

00:58:36.800 have to have to fight for themselves. The Taliban already bringing back Sharia law. 0.94

00:58:44.260 Our Linda Slobodian has talked to veterans and people working with the translators that

00:58:50.840 are now behind trying to get them out. And it's just sort of panic and sort of devastation,

00:58:56.980 especially for these people who have spent a decade risking their lives to help Canadian

00:59:02.460 troops being abandoned and left to what would be a certain gruesome fate?

00:59:10.220 Yeah, you know, I grew up in military towns, Army and Air Force towns around Canada,

00:59:15.020 and so I've got a lot of buddies who served in Afghanistan, a lot of friends whose dads

00:59:21.340 served in Afghanistan. It was very personal for me because I knew people right after 9-11 who went

00:59:29.500 to Afghanistan fought there. And some of my friends who came back were not the same.

00:59:37.340 Some are still suffering in very serious ways. I mean, I suppose every war always has a losing side

00:59:43.980 and they feel frustration and hopelessness that the loss and what was it all for when you lose.

00:59:51.340 And the frustration here is similar to Vietnam. We never lost a battle. We won every single battle,

00:59:58.300 but we have lost the war. And I do agree, we cannot be there forever. America and the West

01:00:06.940 should not be world policemen. I think we made a grave mistake in trying to bring freedom to

01:00:12.260 a place in the world that, I hate to say it, is probably never going to be free,

01:00:16.820 at least in the next few lifetimes. Maybe our great-great-grandkids might know a different

01:00:20.940 world, but you can't change a people unless you're willing to commit damn near war crimes to subdue 0.83

01:00:27.100 them. And I don't think we should be willing to do that. And, you know, the Russians tried,

01:00:32.220 the Americans tried. This is, at this moment, an unconquerable country.

01:00:38.380 And what it has done is it's taken over the election news cycle for a couple of days and

01:00:43.500 focused maybe a little bit on veterans. You'll all remember the last election campaign when

01:00:49.660 Trudeau told that veteran who lost a leg that they have no more to give. And veterans

01:00:57.100 veterans, the money spent on veterans will once again become a key campaign issue, I think.

01:01:03.100 It's funny, I'm actually reading a book on Alexander the Great right now, and that's the

01:01:07.820 first man we, at least they're aware of in history, who tried to conquer Afghanistan. It just doesn't

01:01:13.020 work. I'm not one of these people who says we should have never been there. I mean, they attacked

01:01:17.820 our ally. They murdered thousands of innocent people. They deserved what they had coming to

01:01:23.020 them. But in the long term, we've got to really rethink here when we have to intervene. Not like

01:01:31.180 a rock where we didn't have to intervene, but where we actually do have to do something.

01:01:35.340 What's our long-term goal? Is it we show up, we knock out the bad guys and say,

01:01:39.340 okay, you get McDonald's strip clubs and Facebook? Or are we just going to make sure we just have

01:01:44.700 someone who's friendly to us there? And they might be, you know, as they said about Pinochet,

01:01:49.660 He might be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. 1.00

01:01:52.200 I mean, I think we need to take a more realistic view of how we deal with the world and not be policemen. 1.00

01:01:57.620 It just doesn't work.

01:01:58.320 Certainly didn't work in Afghanistan.

01:02:00.440 And I think the message has to be, look, we'll leave you alone.

01:02:04.140 You guys can figure it out yourself.

01:02:06.000 But if you send any harm our way, we will turn your rubble into even smaller rubble.

01:02:11.880 And act swiftly and decisively on any terrorist action that comes from that.

01:02:18.700 Yeah.

01:02:20.300 Corey, do you think there was any way around this?

01:02:23.020 Well, I'm glad to see them pulling them out.

01:02:25.060 20 years of being there, as we've seen, it didn't change the culture of the place.

01:02:29.120 It didn't change the nature of it just being vulnerable to be run by the extreme fundamentalist element of Islam. 0.98

01:02:35.380 That's just what that place seems to be about.

01:02:38.940 I mean, it took three days and bang, they're back.

01:02:41.460 So they really accomplished, and I hate to say it, 158 Canadians died over there.

01:02:45.460 Thousands got injured and many more, as we said, with injuries we can't see.

01:02:49.660 They should have been working to get out, but boy, they should have.

01:02:52.880 You knew it was coming.

01:02:53.900 There should have been a better plan.

01:02:55.520 Get these people out before you take the military out.

01:02:58.780 If you're going to save the unarmed, take them out while you still have armed people there. 0.99

01:03:02.680 You pulled away all the defenses and left them hanging.

01:03:06.600 Their excuse to that or response to that, if you will, is that no one expected the Afghan army to just...

01:03:13.380 But they do it every time.

01:03:14.720 I mean, you know, as you said, back to Alexander the Great, or if you look back to the end of the 1800s, the Brits were there.

01:03:19.120 That country can't be held.

01:03:20.860 But they did dissolve kind of overnight.

01:03:23.280 I mean, generally, it takes a while for these things to melt down.

01:03:26.220 Biden said it would take 90 days for the Taliban to recover.

01:03:29.380 It took 90 minutes.

01:03:31.240 And you can't announce a pullout without having a plan in place.

01:03:34.840 It's the land of the proxy war for fundamentalist Islamists, unfortunately. 0.64

01:03:39.300 I mean, look what all the neighbors are.

01:03:40.780 Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and they've got China filtering things in the south.

01:03:45.640 Don't forget Pakistan and the tribal areas. 0.75

01:03:48.580 The Kashmir area, it's just a focal point for this sort of thing.

01:03:53.240 So, I mean, they were just waiting in the wings to be able to come back in.

01:03:55.820 It's awful, though.

01:03:56.540 I mean, you can't help but feel awful for those people trying to get out of there.

01:03:59.120 I just, seeing those people so desperate to get on,

01:04:04.240 the people clinging to the outside of planes,

01:04:08.200 I don't know what hope they had that they could stay on a moving jetliner

01:04:12.220 on the outside, not actually holding on to any,

01:04:13.980 even if you had something good to grip onto,

01:04:15.280 you're probably still coming off.

01:04:16.560 Frenzied terror.

01:04:17.340 Just absolutely heartbreaking to see.

01:04:20.920 And I actually, at this point, I don't think there's a good way to deal with it

01:04:23.680 because these people who, many of the people, like the people who are translators,

01:04:29.420 people who helped Canadian soldiers, they should have been fast-tracked to get out of there.

01:04:34.760 But other refugees in general, people who we don't necessarily owe anything to, 0.93

01:04:38.920 but who we might want to help, they've got to be screened.

01:04:42.020 Like, we can't just take any person running around a tarmac.

01:04:45.340 I'm sure many of them are deserving of refugee status, but obviously there's going to be

01:04:50.420 some pretty questionable characters salted into that crowd.

01:04:53.700 And they've got to, it's got to be, because we should learn with what happened from Syria.

01:04:57.720 I mean, you had the Syrian refugee crisis, terrible situation. 1.00

01:05:01.520 Then you had the likes of Merkel and other European leaders just opened up the borders.

01:05:06.280 Europe got flooded.

01:05:07.680 All sorts of nasty characters came in, people who should have had no business in a civilized

01:05:12.300 country.

01:05:12.720 So these things are not easy to do, but part of the problem here was it just happened so quickly and no one seemed to see it coming.

01:05:21.720 As our Linda Slobodian wrote in her column, she talked to a military expert who says you can bet the Taliban is already working on fake papers to get their agents into the line of refugees and out to other countries where they can lay in wait and create havoc when called upon.

01:05:41.720 In all likelihood, although if they are smart, the Taliban, and who knows, maybe they're smart now. 0.99

01:05:47.740 Who knows? Maybe they're smart.

01:05:48.720 This is a new, improved Taliban. Who knows? 0.99

01:05:50.840 Maybe they're going to say, you know what, let's just be happy taking Afghanistan 1.00

01:05:53.840 and, like, consolidate our gains there for a while.

01:05:57.040 Because, you know, if, you know, within a couple of weeks they blow up another building in New York,

01:06:03.320 well, then the American army is coming back again.

01:06:05.520 Like, they're not going to take that laying down. 0.99

01:06:07.800 So, if the Taliban, I mean, they might be crazy, but they're not stupid. 1.00

01:06:12.800 So, if they're not stupid, they'll probably try to just consolidate their gains in Afghanistan for a while and try to bomb us later. 1.00

01:06:21.500 Yeah, I don't think it's in their nature. 0.99

01:06:23.280 I don't think it'll be immediate, but you can bet they're having agents infiltrate the refugee lines now.

01:06:29.920 Absolutely.

01:06:31.320 Okay, well, we're going to wrap it up there.

01:06:33.940 Again, we want to thank all of our Western Standard members for your continued support.

01:06:37.800 We are greatly appreciative of what you do for us.

01:06:41.140 You allow us to continue doing the work we do.

01:06:43.520 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard,

01:06:44.940 go to westernstandardonline.com and click on membership.

01:06:48.180 You can try it free for 15 days and get full access to bailout-free Western media.

01:06:54.440 Corey, thanks for your magnetic presence, as usual.

01:07:00.560 My pleasure, as always.

01:07:02.580 And Dave, thank you for making sure you read all your notes before the show.

01:07:06.520 Oh, yeah, you're very welcome.

01:07:07.420 And I'm just glad Corey has never had to fake it.

01:07:12.180 Well, fake it till you make it.

01:07:13.740 That's what they say.

01:07:14.760 Thank you very much, all of you, for watching.

01:07:18.340 Have a great day.

01:07:19.240 God bless.

01:07:37.420 You

Western Standard - August 19, 2021

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