Western Standard - The Pipeline： Big Media gets more big bailouts

00:00:00.000 G'day, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching

00:00:16.120 The Pipeline. Today is a beautiful June 28th. Beautiful, at least here in sunny Calgary.

00:00:23.040 Joined, as usual, by Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford. How are you, Nigel?

00:00:27.560 Lots of opinions today, Derek.

00:00:29.740 Never short.

00:00:30.740 Never short.

00:00:31.880 Paul Scott, as usual, Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist Corey Morgan.

00:00:36.700 Sorry.

00:00:38.020 I'm good.

00:00:38.820 There you go.

00:00:39.340 I didn't even ask.

00:00:40.280 I'm just nodding at you.

00:00:41.560 Subdued today.

00:00:42.780 Subdued.

00:00:43.460 Well, that'll be an unwelcome surprise.

00:00:46.260 I'll work myself up.

00:00:47.900 All right.

00:00:48.120 Well, today we're going to be talking about the big media in Canada getting yet another

00:00:53.460 big media bailout.

00:00:55.440 And why do they need that big media bailout? Well, because their other bailout, and I should say not their other bailout, the latest bailout, Bill C-18, to steal money from tech companies and give it to these undeserving looters, has blown up in their faces, crushing their business models yet further.

00:01:14.040 So they're going to need more bailouts. Wonderful news. Speaking of sort of bailouts, the two biggest media companies in Canada, or two biggest newspaper chains, I should say, are in talks for a merger.

00:01:27.800 That is Post Media and Torstar. And if that happens, that would be pretty much nearly every single major daily paper in English-speaking Canada will be under a single corporation, operated out of Toronto and owned out of the United States.

00:01:47.740 So it's a great few days for the free press in Canada, isn't it, folks?

00:01:53.200 And we're going to talk about the Liberals' fortune cookie here.

00:01:56.180 The Liberals are very awesome internal memos coming out showing how worried they are about perceptions of the China file

00:02:04.580 and a few other things involving Liberals and China here.

00:02:08.460 And, well, it's a gas.

00:02:10.160 you might recall, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Canada, cup in hand,

00:02:17.760 his cup in hand saying, we need Canada's natural gas. We don't want to buy from Russia anymore.

00:02:22.900 We're going to freeze in the dark in the winter. And Justin Trudeau said, there's no business case

00:02:26.740 for it. Well, if you needed any further proof, that theory is kaput. Now that the United States 0.68

00:02:33.120 has signed a big liquid natural gas export deal with Germany, no business case indeed.

00:02:40.160 Well, probably not if you're living in Canada, at least.

00:02:45.040 Okay, before we get going, though, I want to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:02:50.380 You know me, I've been a member of the CSSA for more than a decade because I trust them as Canada's leading firearms rights group.

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00:03:09.760 the CSSA, the federal government would have probably seized the last of our firearms long

00:03:15.320 ago. So if you're not yet a member, go to cssa-cila.org right now, click on membership,

00:03:21.300 it's worth every single penny. Okay, so we're going to get into it now. Big media gets more

00:03:28.280 big media bailouts. So just a quick little history to set the table. About four years ago now,

00:03:35.200 the Trudeau government said, hey, media guys, I guess we're not friendly enough. We're going to

00:03:40.600 get a little friendlier. And we're going to give you a $500 million subsidy package over a few

00:03:47.000 years here. And all you got to do is be considered officially approved as media by this friendly

00:03:53.000 group of totally non-partisan, non-liberal, liberal media panelists. Now, that's obviously

00:04:00.260 done nothing to actually get the media on a solid financial footing in Canada. It's just delayed

00:04:05.560 the evolution of the press till whatever, where we're supposed to be right now, but clearly are

00:04:11.260 not. Fast forward to a year and a half, big media guys say, we're still not good businesses. We

00:04:19.940 can't make a buck. We need more help from the federal government. So then we get Bill C18. C18

00:04:25.600 is designed to quite literally steal money from Facebook and Google, companies I'm not particularly

00:04:31.740 normally fond of, but in this case, literally steal from these companies to give to big

00:04:36.900 government-approved media companies because Google and Facebook help readers find our websites,

00:04:45.440 which I've always considered to be a good thing. They're providing us a service, generally free of charge. So but big media say that Google and Facebook need to pay them for the privilege of helping them. So, you know, you dear listener, viewer, if you owned, I don't know, a hot dog stand, and I went to your hot dog stand and said, give me a hot dog, and you gave me a hot dog.

00:05:11.620 And now I say, now give me $4 as well.

00:05:15.120 That is what the media is doing here. 0.99

00:05:17.480 It is the craziest, dumbest bill in history. 0.99

00:05:20.340 And that is saying something. 0.99

00:05:22.740 Google has said there's going to be consequences if this bill passes because they're not going to play ball.

00:05:26.600 And Facebook or Meta has outright said, if you pass this bill, we're going to turn off the news in Canada because we are not going to pay media companies for doing them a solid.

00:05:36.400 It's crazy.

00:05:37.220 It has unlimited uncapped liabilities.

00:05:39.640 Well, the bill just passed.

00:05:40.840 last week. And surprise, Facebook said they are now doing what they said they would do. And shock!

00:05:50.660 The media, the government, how could we have seen this coming? They only told us they would do it a

00:05:54.480 few hundred times in writing and in public. Well, they did do it. And so now, media is panicking,

00:06:01.140 saying, what are we going to do without Facebook and Google? What are we going to do? Well, just

00:06:06.200 proving that actually, they were providing us the service, not the other way around. And in response, the federal liberals have said, don't worry, kids, we're going to make you whole. And they haven't spelled out the details of it yet. But the federal liberals have said that there's going to be a whole new round of media bailouts, because the big media got the bill they wanted, and it predictably blew up in their faces. So that's enough ranting from me. Nigel, you used to be very

00:06:35.800 senior member of the Calgary Herald, you were on the editorial board. I guess it was a different

00:06:41.040 era in media when they were businesses and existed without sucking on the government teat. 0.75

00:06:49.020 How do you think the liberals are going to be able to square this? They've been bailing out 0.61

00:06:53.440 these bastards for years now. They've given them everything they wanted. It's blown up in their 1.00

00:07:00.500 faces, and now they need more money. This is probably not going to be particularly popular

00:07:06.440 with Canadian voters. How do you think the Liberals can square this?

00:07:10.160 Well, first of all, they'll make it a non-issue, and they'll just do it, and then forget about it.

00:07:16.220 Up to people like us to remind them, but the public has got a very short memory for anything,

00:07:20.600 and this will just pass. I mean, people should still be outraged at the first bailout that went

00:07:29.000 through the media. Now, I think you used the figure of 500 million. I've seen 600 million.

00:07:33.960 Somewhere between there, yeah.

00:07:35.120 Yeah, it's a little more than that. But frankly, it doesn't matter how much money you give them.

00:07:41.400 It's not going to be enough, not within the realms of common sense. It's a little bit like

00:07:46.660 saying the buggy whip manufacturers. Remember the cliche about how technology overtakes some old

00:07:52.960 trades if you had a subsidy program going for buggy whip manufacturers you could certainly

00:07:58.800 still have some buggy whip manufacturers around but who would be buying the buggy whips because

00:08:06.240 everybody drives a car you know so we're talking about a business model that was based on the sale

00:08:13.680 of advertising and that paid the freight in newspapers for the most part yes there were

00:08:18.640 a subscription with subscriptions that were paid paid for

00:08:21.960 that's like 10% of the revenue.

00:08:25.400 Subscriptions are actually more for just the delivery.

00:08:28.660 Generally.

00:08:29.500 Often didn't even cover that, but certainly the point being

00:08:33.160 subscriptions don't pay the costs that newspapers

00:08:37.020 have incurred.

00:08:39.220 And I just can't see how this is ever going to salvage

00:08:45.800 the newspaper companies.

00:08:47.500 I talk about newspapers. This is awesome. CBC, CTV, Global. These are not good. It's the same

00:08:54.860 business model. Advertising. People advertise on the internet. I mean, you could just see.

00:09:00.860 I remember being in the Herald when we started to see the legal ads, which were very, very profitable,

00:09:06.300 starting to leave Section 3 and end up on sites on the internet. Then came Kijiji. 1.00

00:09:13.180 and by that time I was off to Ottawa, by the time I came back, you know, the Herald was about that

00:09:19.100 thick and very, very little advertising in it. So they haven't come up with a way to monetize

00:09:26.140 their product. And I'm not sure there's one out there that they ought to have grabbed. It's not

00:09:29.660 like I'm sitting here where you should have just done that. I'm not sure what they should have done

00:09:33.180 but the thing was the whole model wasn't working. But this is dangerous for democracy.

00:09:39.340 Corey, a similar but slightly different question for you. The media in Canada, I mean, the media

00:09:47.340 across the Western world is generally going down in trust as an institution, if you can call the

00:09:51.500 media an institution. But in Canada, I think it's gone down particularly fast because in particular

00:09:58.700 because a few things hyper consolidation means you're getting one particular worldview out of

00:10:04.060 but I think it's generally a very Toronto-centric leftist worldview, but also the media bailouts.

00:10:09.400 I think have been devastating for trust in media as an institution in Canada.

00:10:14.700 They've gotten oodles of money. 1.00

00:10:17.960 They've now gotten this asinine and idiotic Bill C-18 that I can't even say predictably blew up in their face, 1.00

00:10:26.640 was always going to blow up in their face. 1.00

00:10:29.260 There was a 100% chance it was going to blow up in their face, and then they did it,

00:10:33.180 and that it happened. Now they're, I don't want to use too graphic a rude term, but they're doing

00:10:41.020 favors for Trudeau under the table. Let's put it that way. And Trudeau's doing it back to them.

00:10:48.040 How can the media, how's the media, the big media in Canada going to be able to square this message

00:10:56.900 with their readers and with Canadians more broadly that they're trying to earn some trust back 1.00

00:11:01.760 when all these guys do is like, they're just, they're bastards. They're greedy bastards. You 1.00

00:11:09.240 can tell I'm, I'm obviously a little pissed off about this one. They just ring the taxpayer for

00:11:13.960 money. They get this other legislation, blows up in their face. It's going to hurt the independents

00:11:18.840 like the Western Standard a lot more than them. But then they get to say, oh, we've been hurt by

00:11:22.020 these bad companies because we couldn't have perceived that they would react like this to

00:11:24.800 the bill. Give us more taxpayers cash. How is Post Media? You know, so the Herald, the Journal,

00:11:30.520 the Suns, the National Post? How's the Globe and Mail? How's the Toronto Star? How are all these

00:11:35.400 guys going to kind of square this with their readers and be able to convince them that they're 0.99

00:11:39.360 not the greedy bastards that they really are? Well, they won't, but they don't care. They don't 0.99

00:11:43.040 have any readers anymore. That's the whole... Well, they've still got some. Very few, though.

00:11:47.680 People aren't tuning into the TV anymore when the news is on. People aren't... Not the TV,

00:11:52.060 but people aren't still reading news online. They aren't picking up the newspaper at the

00:11:55.560 corner store. They're looking online, but companies like the Western Standard are eating

00:12:00.120 their lunch. They have a micro audience compared to what they had 10 years ago. And they're just

00:12:06.380 desperate. They're drowning. And, you know, as Nigel said, it's a broken model. The government

00:12:11.420 can pour all the money it wants in. It's flowing out the holes in the boat faster than you can pour

00:12:15.580 it in. And they're flailing. They're just grabbing any lifeline they can. They aren't thinking about

00:12:20.320 squaring it with readers or journalistic principles or anything like that. They're

00:12:24.380 companies that can't for the life of them figure out a successful model. So they're just begging

00:12:29.200 for and grabbing any little bit of money they can. And the bailout model is not sustainable

00:12:34.180 either. It's just a question of how much damage to, yeah, public trust, to media and to the

00:12:39.700 government coffers and to little outfits like ours is going to be done while they try to keep

00:12:44.740 this corpse animated. And it's an ugly, ugly path. So let's, this is obviously a self-interested part,

00:12:53.140 but let's talk about what this does to competitors. The entrepreneurial independent media that have

00:12:58.140 been on the rise. Canada is way beyond the eight ball from where a lot of other advanced Western

00:13:04.020 countries are with an independent media coming up. Those other countries have either not built

00:13:09.240 out their media at all or have provided significantly less forms of government assistance. But in

00:13:15.300 Canada, you know, we are subsidizing the buggy industry or, or the candle industry, whichever

00:13:19.560 way we want to slice this, and it is retarding growth is retarding innovation and entrepreneurial

00:13:25.020 newcomers. You know, the Western standard has since our very first day said we're not taking the 0.77

00:13:30.300 government bill of money of dirty money, we're not going to touch it. And that's been hard,

00:13:34.700 it's a competitive disadvantage for us, but we've done it. And now C18 cuts us off at the knees,

00:13:40.380 takes away some of our biggest sources of readership. And I know some of our dedicated

00:13:45.820 readers, dedicated listeners and viewers are gonna say, Well, I just go straight to you guys.

00:13:49.580 You know, or I get, I go in through the newsletter in the morning. That's awesome. And that's what we want. But finding new readers requires that we have to have people who are not currently on our list or people who don't have us bookmarked and going to us every day. And if you're not growing, you're dying.

00:14:04.840 This is just trying to kill us now.

00:14:07.840 And I think this is what these guys were getting at.

00:14:09.840 I think the big media guys in the government, they wanted the money, the free money to come from Facebook and Google.

00:14:15.840 But they always knew in the back of their mind, well, if Facebook and Google do what they say they're going to do,

00:14:20.840 worst case scenario, we'll take the bailout.

00:14:23.840 But we can cut off a bunch of our competitors, the Western standards and other independent non-bailed out media.

00:14:30.840 media but just we're cutting off the competition at the knees so let's go to

00:14:36.420 you Nigel do you think this was what was the design here was the design to bail

00:14:43.800 these guys out or was it always designed knowing it was going to fail and that

00:14:49.620 it'll help stifle I mean we'll put it another way your thoughts on between the

00:14:56.460 first bailout, C18, and now the second cash taxpayer bailout,

00:15:00.700 which we expect to come. What is good? What is the effect on

00:15:04.200 the evolution of the media industry in Canada?

00:15:08.940 I think it takes them back to about 1975. I think it when

00:15:13.620 those were the days when the only game in town were what we

00:15:18.060 refer to as the legacy media. Now, there was no internet, there

00:15:22.780 was no Western standard or anything like it and we have the Alberta report but

00:15:27.220 it had to be a magazine that we had to be printed under so and that was I don't

00:15:34.240 think that was necessarily always a money-making enterprise you know it's

00:15:37.720 by field on that subject but at any rate the so the government government now

00:15:43.360 will have this dependent entity the news media which is going to understand that

00:15:52.480 if it goes too far there will be consequences it may never be announced it never may never be

00:15:59.200 publicized but something that could have happened won't happen next time keep your boys on a tighter

00:16:05.040 leash so it's and you will never be able to convince people that that isn't going on and

00:16:13.360 this speaks to the trust issue that corey brought up just a moment ago there are other reasons to

00:16:19.520 to be distrustful of mainstream media product.

00:16:23.000 It's not all bad.

00:16:24.820 Some of it is good.

00:16:26.400 I mean, some of the work done

00:16:28.400 bringing the China inquiry material to light,

00:16:32.120 that was mainstream media and they did a good job.

00:16:34.840 And out of the big mainstream papers,

00:16:36.840 guess which one is the only one that's profitable?

00:16:39.360 Global mail.

00:16:40.200 Yeah.

00:16:41.040 And that's...

00:16:41.880 However, having said all of that,

00:16:43.960 most people will say, well, if the government is paying you,

00:16:47.220 Even if nobody even sends a letter, an email, a text saying, you better cover this this way,

00:16:53.680 nobody will ever believe that that doesn't happen and doesn't happen frequently.

00:16:57.640 So now you've got an old-style news media going on just like it did 40 years ago,

00:17:04.340 as if the internet didn't exist, and the government holding the leash.

00:17:10.620 It's a very, very sad day.

00:17:13.120 Only one thing will be different.

00:17:14.700 There will be no more 35% on revenue earnings by the traditional media.

00:17:22.300 How would you like 35% revenue?

00:17:25.080 Oh, nice.

00:17:25.980 Wouldn't that be nice?

00:17:26.580 Sounds pretty good.

00:17:28.320 Corey, I guess some of this is maybe internal, but it's maybe just your general thoughts.

00:17:34.720 We have said no to the bailouts from the beginning, but our own tax dollars that we pay are weaponized against us.

00:17:41.640 We pay the federal government money, and then they take those dollars, and they hand it to these multinational conglomerates that control 99% of the Canadian media, and they use it against us.

00:17:51.420 And now they pass legislation to cut off virtually all our new readership.

00:17:57.360 So maybe I want to ask the question in terms of just the Western standard, but maybe the independent, the few, very few outlets in Canada that don't take bailout money, do you think at some point they should?

00:18:09.180 Like, because like, are we just going to be faced with literally zero media?

00:18:13.300 Like the independents could all go under if, like. 0.94

00:18:16.580 I like to think if we get more creative, I know it seems bleak, but it's hard.

00:18:20.480 But I mean, if you just sink into the rest of the pile, you get lost among the heavyweights anyways.

00:18:24.780 You're diving into a pool with them, which is now you're in their turf and they're just going to shove you down.

00:18:30.980 But I mean, the desperation of being cornered and the odious nature of taking your own revenues, taxing you,

00:18:36.920 and then shooting back at you that is repugnant.

00:18:40.760 But, I mean, it's so important that the independents just somehow manage to do so.

00:18:45.240 But what if they're facing death?

00:18:46.480 Like, there's a financial reality to these.

00:18:48.040 These are companies, and you have to pay people competitively against your competitors.

00:18:52.320 Like, if it's faced with, you know, at some point, I think we're faced with, like, fighting fire with fire.

00:19:01.400 Like, what do you do?

00:19:02.640 I don't have a good, clear answer, but I just don't want to see one bigger pool.

00:19:06.920 Like this is, as you said, we're behind.

00:19:08.580 Like we're killing what should be an innovative market.

00:19:11.080 We should be seeing outlets like this springing up like daisies.

00:19:14.000 There's all kinds of talented people in the legacy media.

00:19:17.600 And what's happening now is they're losing their jobs altogether.

00:19:20.120 They should be evolving into smaller independent outlets instead.

00:19:24.020 I mean, the journalists themselves are losing out of this.

00:19:29.180 I mean, as for jumping in and fighting fire with fire, I think it's just jumping onto the pyre together then is all that's going to happen.

00:19:36.060 And I might buy a little more time, but I just, I know it's an ugly scenario.

00:19:40.960 I don't have a clear answer.

00:19:42.000 If I did, I'd be starting an independent outlet.

00:19:44.860 I don't know.

00:19:45.680 It's just absolutely disgusting.

00:19:47.700 It's not good enough that the government gets to control the media in the country. 0.97

00:19:50.400 Now they need to go out of their way to just do everything they can to try and kill anyone who would challenge them.

00:19:55.220 Yeah, you know, I don't think that's what was the original intention, but boy, oh, boy, they recognize what an interesting fringe benefit it would be if this legislation.

00:20:03.860 Trinch benefit, I think that's the right term.

00:20:05.560 It would also put some of their severest critics out of business.

00:20:09.680 Okay, switching to topic, but not by a lot.

00:20:14.320 Postmedia, the single biggest conglomerate-owning newspaper chain in Canada,

00:20:20.880 is now in confirmed talks with the second biggest conglomerate newspaper-owning chain in Canada, Torstar.

00:20:28.400 So just for those who don't know, Torstar is owned by essentially two gentlemen in Toronto. Postmedia is owned by Chatham Wealth Management Group out of the United States, just on the other side of the river from New York City there. So it's essentially a New York hedge fund, although technically located in New Jersey.

00:20:47.400 Between the two of them, they control,

00:20:52.340 other than the Daily, the Globe and Mail

00:20:54.940 and some publications in Quebec,

00:20:57.680 they control virtually every newspaper in Canada.

00:21:00.300 130 brands on Post Media alone.

00:21:02.700 Yeah, so excluding like, I don't know,

00:21:05.100 your Strathmore Times and...

00:21:08.080 No, no, actually quite a lot of the little local newspapers

00:21:10.280 are owned by Post Media.

00:21:11.360 Strathmore Times has not owned by Post Media.

00:21:13.240 But they do own a number of smaller ones as well,

00:21:15.800 But generally, like mid-sized cities,

00:21:17.600 it'd be something like the size of Red Deer.

00:21:19.600 Well, like they own the Fort McMurray Advocate.

00:21:21.800 Is that the name of the Fort McMurray paper?

00:21:23.200 Red Deer Advocate.

00:21:24.300 Or is it Fort McMurray Today?

00:21:25.560 Fort McMurray Today.

00:21:26.460 Yeah, whatever it is.

00:21:27.180 Anyway, the Fort McMurray paper, they own that.

00:21:29.900 So like mid-sized, you know, not really small towns,

00:21:32.360 but they own a bunch of those.

00:21:34.040 And then they own the Calgary Harrow.

00:21:35.980 They own every single sun across the country,

00:21:37.820 except for the Vancouver sun, I think.

00:21:41.580 Vancouver sun's part of Posta, you know?

00:21:43.400 Is it?

00:21:43.620 It's a part of Posta.

00:21:44.580 Okay, I'm not sure about that one.

00:21:45.800 But they own all the Suns in Alberta and all the Suns across Canada, except maybe Vancouver.

00:21:49.620 They own the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, Victoria Times Colonist.

00:21:54.980 I think they own the province in B.C., right?

00:21:57.400 Province and the Sun go together.

00:21:58.960 Yeah.

00:21:59.460 Okay, province.

00:22:00.200 Pacific Press.

00:22:01.100 They own, you know, Regina Leader, Post, Ottawa Citizen, obviously the National Post, all this stuff.

00:22:06.340 This would virtually mean there is one country that runs newspapers, one company that runs newspapers across all of Canada.

00:22:14.920 Period. Adding on to that, the fact that you already have the Canadian press wire service, which is writing half of the news in the newspapers already. Essentially, every newspaper in Canada is going to write almost the exact same thing, certainly on national stories. They'll write the same on provincial stories.

00:22:32.920 There might just be a tiny little bit of color on whatever little reporting is done left at town, you know, your city hall kind of thing.

00:22:40.920 So with you, Corey, do you think, you know, is there a role here for antitrust legislation?

00:22:50.880 Should the federal government stop this?

00:22:53.940 Well, they're discussing it.

00:22:55.300 I know they said they was going to go to their competition committee or whatever that might be.

00:23:01.460 Competition bureaus already allowed the hyper-centralization.

00:23:03.580 Antitrust is always such a dicey, dicey area, you know, when you want a free market.

00:23:07.020 But if you're getting to the point of, yeah, one media outlet controlling 90 some percent of a segment, then we have some serious concerns going on.

00:23:16.240 That could be one of those rare moments where me as a libertarian minded guy said, it might be the time for the government to step in.

00:23:22.120 Well, in this case, they're not even like they're a free market enterprise that has achieved a monopoly by any feat of capitalistic ingenuity on their own.

00:23:32.860 These are welfare queens. 1.00

00:23:34.400 These are some of the biggest scumbags in Canada who are operating with taxpayers' money to support all of their operations. 0.99

00:23:42.460 They've got all these regulations working for them. 0.98

00:23:44.420 So it's not like they're just a great bunch of entrepreneurs who could have just built up a monopoly. 1.00

00:23:49.300 These guys are scumbags. 0.98

00:23:50.520 Yeah, and I don't see it building any more a sustainable model for them anyways. 0.99

00:23:54.060 I mean, when Postmedia and Sun came together, it just shriveled the whole works rather than creating good merged entities.

00:24:00.480 And I imagine the same thing will happen if and when this is allowed.

00:24:04.400 Again, it's just a desperation move, though. These are last gasps of a dying industry.

00:24:10.400 Yeah. Nigel, do you, I mean, mergers and consolidation can sometimes make sense. You

00:24:16.920 can eliminate some overhead costs. Okay. So instead of, you know, 100 people in your sales

00:24:23.660 department, 100 people in two different sales departments might be able to do with 100 people

00:24:27.780 in one sales department, you know, cut the number in half from 200 to 100. Perhaps there could be

00:24:32.860 economies of scale and technology and maybe, you know, and, you know, he's selling your

00:24:39.460 advertisement, there could be economies of scale in these things. But they've, these media mergers

00:24:44.920 have always just gutted whatever local coverage or local culture is there. Do you think there's

00:24:49.960 any like your newsroom better? Is, is there an upside to this perhaps?

00:24:55.660 I can't see one.

00:24:57.160 You know, the point about scale, this is explicit.

00:25:02.560 Just looking at one report here, publishers involved say that this is a bit to create greater scale.

00:25:10.360 So all your talk, what you were saying earlier about one message coming from, shall we say, Ottawa,

00:25:17.220 they're not going to have two people with two different points of view.

00:25:20.240 You don't get more than one point of view out of the press gallery anyway.

00:25:23.600 But even without making snide remarks, how are you going to trim costs?

00:25:34.600 Well, you're going to trim costs in the newsroom because that's the biggest piece of the pie.

00:25:41.900 It won't be the executive suite that gets trimmed in a meaningful way.

00:25:47.600 People might be allowed to retire and not replace, but that's not where the big savings are going to be.

00:25:53.200 So I just can't see how these guys are, this is nothing more than I think one expression is a Hail Mary pass, you know, when you've got nothing, when you can't think of anything else, you do that.

00:26:08.920 This is there in that situation, they've got nothing else to do.

00:26:11.240 It's been a poorly kept secret in some media circles that PostMedia is headed for bankruptcy.

00:26:18.760 They are still carrying massive debt loads. They've been raiding their funds to pay the interest.

00:26:25.240 They're broke. They're already broke. They just haven't declared bankruptcy yet. So PostMedia

00:26:30.520 needs an off ramp. And I mean, yeah, the federal government keeps showering them in cash, but

00:26:35.000 But it's still not enough.

00:26:38.260 So part of this deal involves the monetization of that debt.

00:26:43.340 Sorry, they're going to turn that into equity.

00:26:46.440 And also there'll be a big dilution of shareholder value if what I'm hearing actually comes to pass.

00:26:53.040 So it actually looks more like, we don't know what the deal looks like, but it could be more or less Torstar kicking over post media in some ways because its investors seem to have a bit more cash.

00:27:04.380 I don't know, but what's your understanding? Because it's all very murky right now.

00:27:08.060 Well, it is. I think according to the numbers that have been published,

00:27:13.900 keep in mind this is all speculation by people who are a little closer to it than we are,

00:27:19.180 but that I think it's 56% would go to the, what do we got here?

00:27:26.860 the discussions are leading to post-media shareholders will hold a 56 percent interest

00:27:35.660 and the tour star people would hold 44 but then north star would retain 65 of the star the star

00:27:44.700 is the stronger of the two entities so so your theory that this may be a an off-ramp for post

00:27:52.940 media they hold water the one thing about it is that they've got some big money losers but they

00:27:57.660 also a lot of those little newspapers actually hold their own quite well even today so that

00:28:02.540 might be the strength of post media it's a miserable situation derek i mean look i love

00:28:10.780 newspapers gave my whole career to them i believe strongly in the the value of a of an active

00:28:18.380 newspaper in holding politicians to account and sticking up for the public there's an old cliche

00:28:25.660 about you know comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable and newspapers do that

00:28:33.540 and they've done it very well they're losing their power to do it they're losing this is what's

00:28:38.600 they're losing their will to do it and i i'm not sure that the news media as it in terms of what

00:28:46.340 is becoming is going to be quite the loss that we who remember a different news media

00:28:51.580 feel it is going to be. Yeah. Okay, we're going to switch gears up out of kind of a

00:28:59.200 internal media critique here, but still kind of staying in Ottawa today, the Liberal fortune

00:29:06.760 cookie. Maybe I'll get you to elaborate a bit more on it, Nigel. But as one would expect,

00:29:14.060 The liberals are very upset about how this China business is working for them.

00:29:18.020 They're not upset, particularly, that China was meddling in Canadian elections.

00:29:22.100 In fact, they denied it was for a long time until it became, it was well beyond the point where they could deny it.

00:29:27.560 But we now know a bit about how they've been treating this as very much an internal communications exercise.

00:29:34.160 Yeah.

00:29:36.280 They should be upset.

00:29:40.400 Their chickens are coming home to roost.

00:29:42.580 they have not handled this well um so what is it we know now so what we know is that

00:29:50.340 when the story broke as a result of excellent reporting from the legacy media as we said

00:29:56.020 earlier then the question was how do you make the issue go away you're the government you've

00:30:02.260 been fingered now what are you going to do so the first strategy was to get david johnson

00:30:08.660 former governor general highly respected man up until that point i don't know the first first

00:30:12.820 strategy was denied there was anything going on at all and that the conservatives were racist

00:30:16.660 against chinese people that was the first one well then the leaks came out and yeah it was 0.99

00:30:20.820 impossible to deny i must confess i wonder sometimes whether the guy who did that leaking

00:30:25.780 is alive or dead i haven't heard much i wonder i haven't heard any more uh leaks if he was uh

00:30:31.780 if he did have a tragic fall out of window we probably wouldn't know about it no we wouldn't

00:30:36.100 would be. Have to wonder. Anyway, let's leave the George Smiley stuff to the people who write

00:30:44.340 George Smiley stuff. So there you go. You've got the leaks. Well, how do we deny this? We can't.

00:30:50.500 All right. We'll have a special rapporteur. That was David Johnson. But we won't give him any real

00:30:56.260 powers. So he'll never actually be able to uncover the truth. And anything that he does see,

00:31:01.540 he'll just say, well, I can't talk about it because it's classified. All right. That didn't

00:31:05.700 work, partly because of those very things. At the end, the report didn't tell you very much that

00:31:11.580 you couldn't have guessed. So he finally gets... Well, he did tell us some outright falsehoods,

00:31:17.700 which have been proven incorrect. He finally gets moved out of the picture. And then,

00:31:24.160 in their charming way, they turn around and blame the opposition for making this a partisan,

00:31:28.840 partisan, a partisan exercise. I mean, what's the exact word? A highly partisan atmosphere

00:31:35.480 that lead up to the resignation of David Johnson. So they turn around and blame the very people

00:31:42.980 who are holding them to account. Well, of course they would, wouldn't they? So now,

00:31:47.760 well, let's have a real public inquiry on who you're going to get to do it. And so we got to

00:31:54.180 stage where the federal government is saying well yes we'll do it but we all have to agree on who

00:32:00.020 it's going to be and we're not going to take any next steps on proving foreign interference until

00:32:06.100 the opposition gives us full buy-in well who gets to define what a buy-in is well obviously the

00:32:13.300 government so they'll just stall and stall and stall and in in the perfect world is in their

00:32:17.940 theory they would stall this thing out two years until the putative election so that's the game

00:32:22.980 how do you make this go away and there's something there all right uh corey is there

00:32:31.700 no where's this going next i mean like we we are headed towards an inquiry i think that's

00:32:36.740 that's been pretty much conceded but it's been some weird games with the liberals saying

00:32:40.900 will you give us a name of a commissioner first and the conservatives are saying no you put like

00:32:48.340 Like, we'll talk, or you put them up.

00:32:50.480 Like, we're in this weird kind of finger-pointing phase,

00:32:52.720 but it's inevitable we're getting to an inquiry now, right?

00:32:55.720 I don't know. I don't know.

00:32:57.860 I mean, he can really just keep dragging and dragging 1.00

00:33:00.500 and throwing up roadblocks and coming up with more stupid things. 1.00

00:33:03.760 And I really don't see an end to it any longer. 0.99

00:33:07.020 Maybe he'll grab another compromised individual like Johnston

00:33:11.000 and say, we're doing it again and waste two more months.

00:33:14.080 And then when that person steps down, I mean, I just see it getting circular.

00:33:18.340 The only linchpin in this is Jagmeet Singh.

00:33:21.680 Nothing's going to happen until Singh finds something and stands up for himself.

00:33:28.380 And there's no indication he's going to do that.

00:33:30.500 I think we are headed towards an inquiry.

00:33:33.180 It's just how tough and independent is going to be the person leading in.

00:33:36.760 What are the terms of reference going to be?

00:33:38.780 I think at this point it's been, I think the liberals have more or less conceded.

00:33:42.640 Yeah, we're going to an inquiry, but they're trying to, and I actually don't blame the liberals on this part.

00:33:48.340 This is the one part where they've maybe not been terrible, is they're just trying to make sure that the conservatives can't do to the inquiry what they did with Johnson, you know, like discredit, you know, put a bunch of light on it and discredit and drag it through the mud.

00:34:03.340 From the liberal perspective, they want the conservatives to have to buy into this and say, okay, we trust this guy, we're going to go with its findings, we're going to go with its conclusions, we're not going to throw shade at it if it doesn't give us our conclusions.

00:34:16.080 They would strike a committee by now.

00:34:17.680 Let's do it then.

00:34:18.300 An all-party committee, there you go.

00:34:19.740 Let's start throwing the names out there and hashing it out.

00:34:22.180 They're not even getting that far.

00:34:23.580 They're just throwing out platitudes, as you said, playing that game, ragging the puck.

00:34:28.400 But I don't know if they have a will to ever get to that pool.

00:34:31.280 I mean, they're getting away with it.

00:34:33.160 The polls aren't hurting them that much.

00:34:34.700 I mean, they're not gaining anywhere, but they're not falling.

00:34:37.640 It's just kind of locked in a holding pattern.

00:34:41.360 All right.

00:34:43.040 Well, speaking of maybe not foreign interference, but a foreign issue.

00:34:49.040 So, God, it must have been roughly, was it a year ago that Olaf Scholz came here?

00:34:55.040 End of August.

00:34:57.040 Okay. Yeah, you know, just a little shy of a year ago, then the newly elected German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came here.

00:35:06.040 And this was in the shadow of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

00:35:12.040 The West in general, Germany in particular, is saying, well, we've got to get off of Russian gas.

00:35:18.960 We're funding the Putin war machine here.

00:35:21.400 We're clearly dependent.

00:35:23.720 Russia could turn it off at any time if it doesn't like what we're doing by sending munitions or aid to Ukraine.

00:35:29.040 Plus, even if they don't turn it off, we're funding Russia's war machine.

00:35:31.940 So this is clearly something that's got to stop.

00:35:34.340 Schultz comes here.

00:35:35.880 Oh, he's saying, well, Canada has got all hell for a basement.

00:35:38.460 There's all the natural gas in the world you would need in Canada. And they're a good ally, a member of NATO. And they're not total idiots. They must want to make some money. Let's go to Canada and do a deal. And Trudeau famously said there was no business case for it.

00:35:53.200 Well, not long after that, Olaf Scholz signed a deal with the United Arab Emirates, get gas from them. And now I think it was what just yesterday? Yes, just yesterday, Scholz signs a deal with the United States, I think for a Louisiana based company to bring natural gas from that country to Germany.

00:36:15.080 Okay, I guess the question is, are we just a stupid country? Are we a stupid people? Are we, are we, let me put it another way. Let me put it in terms of Trudeau. 1.00

00:36:29.940 does Trudeau really believe there wasn't a business case? Or did he know there was a business case and not want to do it anyway, because it's something that would benefit Alberta? And it's technically, even though it's a very clean fossil fuel, it's technically a fossil fuel and fossil fuels are evil. So maybe that's the question. Is it malice or incompetence on Trudeau's part that the only business case that doesn't exist in the world for exporting LNG to Germany is if it's from Canada?

00:36:57.080 You see, it's a little bit like what we were talking about earlier with bailing out newspapers and Bill C-18.

00:37:06.820 Yes, it has this primary objective, but if it happens to hurt the independent media, that's great.

00:37:11.960 Here, I think Mr. Trudeau, and I say I think advisedly because I don't know what's in the man's head.

00:37:17.860 I don't think anybody does, but I think that he is so personally committed to this idea of fighting climate change

00:37:29.120 and that he is going to be the person who will be able to claim to the people that he respects

00:37:35.380 who, you know, go to Davos every year and hang out in Paris and at COPS meetings and say,

00:37:41.560 I was the person who got Canada down to net zero, not by 2050, not by 2035, in some cases down to 2030.

00:37:51.380 I believe on the basis of what I read that that's what drives him.

00:37:56.580 And so never mind the fact that you could help the global atmosphere by selling Canadian natural gas to people who would otherwise be burning coal.

00:38:09.700 Never mind the fact that Germany is actually an ally and is in distress and needed it.

00:38:17.240 We had stories about Germans going around picking up firewood in the national parks over there,

00:38:22.360 which is illegal, but they felt such an alarm at the approaching winter that this is what they were doing.

00:38:29.100 None of that made any difference.

00:38:31.200 What he desires is to be able to say, I brought Canada down to net zero.

00:38:37.420 And by the way, if it hurts Alberta, that's great.

00:38:40.820 I don't like those guys either.

00:38:42.380 A lot of them have unacceptable opinions.

00:38:46.300 Probably us, I think.

00:38:48.560 Yeah.

00:38:49.020 I think we're very much in the unacceptable opinions camp.

00:38:52.740 You know, Corey, I, as a rule, after I take a deep breath on something,

00:38:59.160 especially in politics and whatnot,

00:39:02.340 I try to give the benefit of the doubt that,

00:39:05.540 I'm paraphrasing someone else here, but says don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. 0.99

00:39:11.540 Most of the time when governments do stupid things, like we might think they're being evil bastards, but they're malicious, 1.00

00:39:18.540 but it's generally they're just idiots. 1.00

00:39:20.540 They're incompetent. Government itself as an institution is incompetent, even if the people in charge of it are not incompetent. 1.00

00:39:26.540 You add incompetent people on top of incompetent institutions, it's kind of very predictable outcomes.

00:39:32.540 But I have a hard time believing in competency here.

00:39:36.740 We have, as the saying goes, all hell for a basement.

00:39:39.100 We have unlimited natural gas.

00:39:42.800 Just, there's no end of it.

00:39:45.700 Germany needs it.

00:39:47.760 And we've got pretty well-established shipping lines

00:39:50.220 across the Atlantic for it.

00:39:53.440 I don't know, but was it just incompetence? 1.00

00:39:55.540 Was it just that Trudeau was an idiot 1.00

00:39:57.080 or was it malicious? 1.00

00:39:59.760 Yes.

00:40:01.220 Okay, explain why you say malicious.

00:40:04.100 It's similar, I mean, yes to the whole works.

00:40:06.780 And it's maliciously incompetent.

00:40:09.620 Yes, and as well as he's ideologically obsessed. 0.81

00:40:14.280 He's got tunnel vision.

00:40:16.080 It's as Nigel was saying, his whole world, what legacy has he got?

00:40:21.300 He's been a prime minister, he's been sitting for a long time,

00:40:23.580 but there's not really a heck of a lot of things he can point to,

00:40:26.540 you know, say as an elderly man and say, I did that, I did this.

00:40:29.740 he's put all his eggs in the climate change basket. And if we open up a big port on the east

00:40:35.840 coast that's exporting LNG, even if it's Germany this year, he does have enough brains in his head

00:40:40.380 to realize that'll probably start exporting to other nations as well. And it's going to be a lot

00:40:44.640 harder to shut down the petrochemical industry when you've got this outflow and income coming

00:40:50.940 from it. So, I mean, for him to state sitting there, it is questionable whether it was malicious

00:40:57.060 or incompetence or what, when you're sitting with the gas right there and you're sitting with a

00:41:00.860 customer saying, I want to buy that gas and for you to say there's no business case, no, that's

00:41:05.380 exactly what a business case is. But he doesn't care. He just, as Nigel said, wants to be the one

00:41:11.940 he could say, look what I did. I stopped this from spreading further. And yeah, as he said,

00:41:17.820 a bit of the icing on the cake is the malicious aspect. You know, if I can give the middle finger

00:41:21.460 that Alberta that made Dada have such a hard time in the 70s and 80s, all the better. 0.97

00:41:26.720 Proven markets, proven products, no business case.

00:41:30.340 Theoretical products for foreign corporations, totally a business case.

00:41:35.460 So let's talk, yeah, like EVs.

00:41:38.080 Like we're just throwing the GDPs of small countries' worth of subsidies at EV stuff

00:41:44.940 where there is clearly no business case of any kind.

00:41:49.640 But he says there's a business case there.

00:41:51.700 But LNG, like, exporting LNG doesn't require a dime from the government.

00:41:56.800 Not $1 of subsidy is required.

00:41:58.500 Just the federal government to say, we're not going to get in the way.

00:42:01.300 Okay, we'll work with you for right-of-ways on some pipeline infrastructure to get it to ports

00:42:05.880 and the right to load these tankers and have it.

00:42:09.780 That's it.

00:42:10.420 No dollars from the taxpayer spent.

00:42:12.220 No business case.

00:42:13.540 But if you go to the federal government, you say, hey, I'm running a money-losing newspaper

00:42:16.800 or, hey, I'm running an electric battery operation.

00:42:19.660 Can I have a few billion dollars or tens of billions of dollars?

00:42:24.360 Well, there's clearly a business case to be made.

00:42:27.140 It just raises, I guess, kind of tying it all back together now.

00:42:32.540 Does it make sense to be a capitalist in Canada?

00:42:35.980 Like, especially if you're in a subsidized industry, does it make sense to start a media company?

00:42:41.020 Does it make sense to start, say you wanted to have an EV company in Canada.

00:42:45.960 I have a problem with EVs as long as people are paying for it themselves.

00:42:49.660 But if you didn't want to take subsidies, it'd be impossible to exist.

00:42:53.060 Does it make sense to be a capitalist in Canada anymore?

00:42:55.780 No, at all.

00:42:56.340 You know, we're living in the conditions described by Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrubb.

00:43:00.860 Exactly what I was thinking.

00:43:01.980 Were you really?

00:43:02.580 Okay.

00:43:03.220 We're literally sitting in the John Galt studio.

00:43:05.100 You know, I understand that not every viewer necessarily has read the book, but Ayn Rand just talks about the progressive destruction of capitalism.

00:43:15.060 and how at the end nobody does anything without a government grant

00:43:21.660 and all the people who are genius who actually do something

00:43:25.020 have withdrawn to a, you know, gulch gulch is called, yes.

00:43:29.840 So, I mean, that's kind of where we are.

00:43:32.060 But I just want to make one point about when we're trying to work out 0.98

00:43:36.000 whether Mr. Trudeau is foolish or malicious. 0.91

00:43:40.180 And what we have to remember is that he does things that a lot of people don't like, perhaps even a majority of people don't like. 0.93

00:43:52.380 I'll use the recent passport renewal as an example, but the sort of the destruction of the symbols of an old Canada that he doesn't like, we have not been able to stop him. 0.98

00:44:05.940 So is he a fool? 0.99

00:44:08.480 Is he incompetent? 1.00

00:44:10.060 He is doing what he set out to do.

00:44:13.560 And people who didn't like it have been unable to stop him.

00:44:17.240 What does that make us?

00:44:21.260 Dangerous thought.

00:44:22.100 I don't like thinking about that.

00:44:23.260 That's a dangerous thought.

00:44:24.700 Well, Nigel, Corey.

00:44:26.020 That's what you pay me for, dangerous thoughts.

00:44:28.140 Dangerous thoughts, oh, that's a good name for a show.

00:44:31.740 Dangerous thoughts.

00:44:32.580 I like it.

00:44:33.420 Dangerous thoughts.

00:44:35.140 Okay.

00:44:36.140 Go ahead.

00:44:37.140 Killed that conversation, didn't I?

00:44:39.140 Different gears are turning now.

00:44:41.140 Okay.

00:44:42.140 All right, gentlemen.

00:44:43.140 Thank you for joining us.

00:44:44.140 And thank all of you for joining us.

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00:45:07.340 and god bless here's what commodity prices are doing in lethbridge today cash barley is steady

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Western Standard - June 29, 2023

The Pipeline： Big Media gets more big bailouts

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