Western Standard - The Pipeline： Canada Day fireworks are racist

00:00:00.000 Good evening, I'm Derek Sildebrand, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching

00:00:17.120 The Pipeline. Today is May 24th, 2023. Almost there, this bloody election is almost but not

00:00:25.960 quite over. I'm joined today by Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel Henniford. How are you,

00:00:31.220 Nigel? I'm great. Thank you. Nigel, before we got right on, ask me how many cups of coffee I had

00:00:35.940 today. And the answer is a lot. Also joined by the Western Standard senior Alberta columnist,

00:00:42.220 Corey Morgan. How are you, Corey? Very good. Thanks. Beautiful. We're also going to be joined

00:00:46.180 by some of our reporters across the West here. We're going to have Christopher Oldcorn, our

00:00:53.260 bureau chief in Regina, our Saskatchewan bureau chief coming to us. Sean Polzer, our business

00:01:00.780 reporter, as well as Jonathan Bradley, one of our Calgary reporters. We're going to be talking about

00:01:06.540 a bizarre sort of press conference thing held today by Calgary street preacher Arthur Poloski

00:01:16.140 called the media there promising to release all the goods on the dirt on Danielle Smith

00:01:25.160 and had a raving, ranging, downright insane long diatribe

00:01:36.080 full of conspiracy theories about Danielle Smith 0.97

00:01:39.340 calling her both a communist and a Nazi, totalitarian, a murderer, a devil 0.93

00:01:45.520 All sorts of stuff. 0.96

00:01:46.660 Claiming that Danielle Smith had a secret pact with him to run for the legislature unopposed.

00:01:52.620 But then he would join her party crossing the floor.

00:01:55.300 That she was going to pay him to do COVID panel stuff.

00:02:00.520 Absolutely batshit crazy stuff.

00:02:03.280 And I know maybe some of you are sympathizers with him.

00:02:06.440 But we're going to talk about his stuff today.

00:02:09.680 And there's no way to put it beyond jumping the shark in the most extreme way possible.

00:02:16.900 We're going to talk about former Governor General David Johnson's special rapporteur report, whitewashing the whole Chinese interference scandal away.

00:02:30.120 Nothing to see here. No inquiry necessary.

00:02:32.900 We're going to talk about an NDP candidate in the Alberta provincial election here, who we now know was an intervener in support of Justin Trudeau's No More Pipelines bill.

00:02:49.220 Not sure how much media pickup that's going to get outside of the Western Standard and other independent media here.

00:02:55.480 But I'd say, you know, it's probably newsworthy, an NDP candidate supporting the federal government's right to come into Alberta and control its resources.

00:03:06.100 And very importantly, we can't miss this, we're going to talk about how absolutely racist Canada Day fireworks are. 0.90

00:03:15.040 That's right, you enjoy fireworks on Canada Day, you are racist.

00:03:19.560 Well, according to the City of Calgary and the City of Toronto, and I think the City of Victoria started years ago, they're always ahead of the curve here.

00:03:29.360 They know it's racist before anyone else does.

00:03:32.140 And if we have time, we're going to talk our election predictions.

00:03:34.800 But I'm starting to predict already that we might not get that far with the full roster we've got today.

00:03:41.060 Before I get into it, I want to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

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00:04:07.100 So you need to become a member of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association right now.

00:04:11.700 Go to CSSA-CILA.org or do what I do and Google them and click on membership.

00:04:17.980 It's worth absolutely every penny.

00:04:20.460 Okay, so this was a late-breaking one.

00:04:23.940 We just finished listening to the, I don't know if you call it a speech.

00:04:28.100 I don't know if you call it a sermon.

00:04:30.080 I don't know if you call it a screed.

00:04:33.200 But Arthur Pawlowski told all the press,

00:04:39.300 I'm going to be on the steps of the legislature at noon, Wednesday, and I'm going to tell you all the stuff that was behind the phone call with Danielle Smith.

00:04:51.960 Now, he claims that he called Danielle Smith and others liars, I'd say, at least a several dozen times if you listen to it.

00:05:01.360 Now, let's see if he's perhaps a liar here.

00:05:03.780 He says he did not leak the recording of this phone call.

00:05:07.300 So there's only three people who are involved here. We have Danielle Smith. Well, she didn't record it because it's a video recording taken from Arthur Poloski's side. And there's Dennis Modry in the room and Arthur. And he says, the only person who had a copy of it was my lawyer. So unless he's accusing his lawyer of grossly breaching privilege, something that would get him disbarred and possibly sent to prison, that means it was Arthur Poloski who leaked this video.

00:05:35.240 But he insists he did not. But he clearly leaked it himself. But he was going to talk about it. There wasn't really much of a theme to this to talk about, but he had some words.

00:05:47.500 So he's running something called the Solidarity Movement of Alberta, trying to channel the spirit of L'Aquilenza, the anti-communist movement there.

00:05:58.040 Even Solidarity is the actual party logo of that, well, that union which became a party in Poland in the 80s.

00:06:05.240 He called Danielle Smith and the UCP a communist. 0.98

00:06:08.900 She said that UCP is totalitarian, that they are murderers, that they are Nazis, and that they are devils. 0.98

00:06:18.220 You guys managed to catch at least some of this, I'm sure. 0.99

00:06:20.660 I'm afraid so.

00:06:21.740 Actually, we'll start with you, Corey.

00:06:23.600 You've been aware of this guy for a while.

00:06:25.300 He's been hanging out.

00:06:27.440 Your thoughts on his remarks today?

00:06:29.880 I'm glad maybe he's finally exposed.

00:06:32.320 Give it a watch and see what he really is. 0.90

00:06:34.260 He's an unhinged street preacher. 0.73

00:06:35.760 You've got to watch it for yourself. 0.95

00:06:36.600 He always has been.

00:06:37.900 The media was collected because maybe he might have had a nugget or a gem that could expose

00:06:41.660 Premier Smith to something, but they realized there's nothing credible coming out of this

00:06:44.380 man.

00:06:45.120 He was poorly treated.

00:06:46.380 There's no doubt when they raided his church and things like that.

00:06:49.140 But just because he was a victim doesn't mean he's credible.

00:06:52.360 And I think today, anybody who ever had any doubts about his credibility, they've got

00:06:57.060 no doubt about him anymore.

00:06:58.520 Yeah, I think that is a fair point.

00:07:00.160 I think that, you know, the charges against him, I think, were generally very unfair.

00:07:05.320 Pastors were thrown in jail unjustly during COVID, and he had every right, in my view, to oppose these things.

00:07:13.740 But you could, you know, I got the impression all the way through COVID that this wasn't actually about COVID for him.

00:07:18.640 It was about him.

00:07:20.240 It was about publicity for himself.

00:07:22.620 And he's within his rights to do so.

00:07:25.000 I've been in politics.

00:07:26.080 I've been in media.

00:07:27.440 Was it the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?

00:07:28.540 I'm aware of trying to get publicity. It's fine. But that seemed to be the motivating factor behind so much of what he did.

00:07:36.360 In fact, he might be the only person I'm aware of who's ever started a political party solely for his own personal aggrandizement because he is so angry, viciously angry at Danielle Smith that she did not succeed in managing to be able to have any kind of amnesty or so-called stay of prosecution against him for this.

00:07:57.180 Your impression from his little talk.

00:08:00.260 What you've just mentioned there is a very definition of ingratitude.

00:08:03.640 I mean, it's clear from the tape that she heard him through,

00:08:08.860 couldn't do anything for him, told him so, but at least she listened to him.

00:08:13.720 Well, what did he think?

00:08:15.920 If he has legal advice, he should have known if that wasn't going anywhere anyway.

00:08:20.220 But he actually had a purpose in recording that conversation.

00:08:27.220 Highly suspect that that was not done with the Premier's knowledge.

00:08:31.220 I think that's fair to say.

00:08:32.220 And, you know, with the express purpose, if it didn't go the way he wanted it to,

00:08:36.220 well, then he would have something.

00:08:38.220 I mean, right there, if you want my trust as a politician,

00:08:42.220 not that you were ever inside the starter's gate to begin with,

00:08:45.220 but if you did, that alone would be enough to say,

00:08:48.220 to say oh I have no further business with you listening to that you were

00:08:52.960 wondering whether to call it a speech or a sermon or it was a rant and you know

00:08:59.620 there's people who do rants don't usually succeed in winning hearts that

00:09:05.920 was not a speech that would attract anybody who was not at least as bitter

00:09:10.660 and angry as he was you know even look we know where we stand with Rachel

00:09:16.240 notly, but calling her a witch is pretty vicious. That's kind of sort of below the belt.

00:09:25.920 Devils was another episode that was cast around for the UCP. You can overstate your case and blow

00:09:32.840 your own ship up. I don't think he had particularly much credibility to lose in the first place, but

00:09:38.340 you know, I've been conflicted about him for a long time, but particularly during COVID.

00:09:45.800 I've never found his views to be particularly Christian.

00:09:51.940 I mean, he's entitled to his views. 0.94

00:09:53.740 And I like politically incorrect.

00:09:55.500 In fact, I like offensive.

00:09:57.880 But not everyone who gets called hateful is not hateful the way, you know, say the NDP would call us hateful for simply questioning NDP education policies.

00:10:07.560 His stuff has long since, I think, crossed the line.

00:10:11.480 It's genuinely hateful, genuinely bigoted.

00:10:14.080 And not everyone who uses those terms is some woke little snowflake. Those are real things. They're just serially abused terms. And, you know, he's had these things for a while.

00:10:27.040 Well, during COVID, I'm kind of ashamed to say I was just kind of embarrassed of him because I thought he was setting back the movement to end lockdowns, to end mandates, to restore some semblance of liberty to Alberta and to Canada.

00:10:44.840 And I didn't like giving him attention because it was so clearly narcissistically about himself, not about the movement.

00:10:52.080 It was about building.

00:10:53.420 That's the way it came across. 0.86

00:10:54.340 Yeah, it was about building his little following of the Branch Arturians.

00:10:59.120 And, you know, and there are probably good people who have followed him, who, you know, like, you know, he's talking about the Bible and he was talking about freedoms, but may have been taken in by a bit of a con man here.

00:11:12.080 You know, he just, his entire thing today was just about him.

00:11:18.060 It's about, he is, I think what he's trying to do.

00:11:20.780 and I'm sympathetic to small breakaway parties. I've been a wild roser. I was freedom conservative

00:11:27.320 party. I mostly have voted for breakaway smaller parties, but the intention needs to be about

00:11:32.900 something larger than yourself, not pure self-aggrandizement. And I think this is just

00:11:37.580 purely a vengeance tool because Danielle Smith turned out not to have the powers to get him off

00:11:45.000 of the charges he faced, unfortunately, because I don't think he should have faced those charges

00:11:48.540 to begin with. But it's, you know, it's time conservatives in Alberta, I think most aren't

00:11:55.800 indulging him. But those who still are, I think need to finally see this guy for what he is,

00:12:01.240 stop indulging him. And, and this pure cult of narcissistic self pity.

00:12:08.760 Yeah, no argument. He's got that street ministry, they call him a street preacher.

00:12:13.080 And I know he goes down there with a bullhorn.

00:12:16.440 I hope he has a little bit more of the message, you know,

00:12:20.780 that Jesus was preaching when he's talking to the people on the street,

00:12:24.480 because that wasn't going to win souls for anybody.

00:12:28.020 No, no, I think...

00:12:29.660 Maybe he does.

00:12:30.740 I mean, I'm not judging.

00:12:32.020 I haven't been down there to listen.

00:12:33.220 I'm not one to judge, but I don't...

00:12:36.540 It's not the most Christian message I would normally expect to hear from a pastor.

00:12:40.060 As a longtime speech writer, I wouldn't have recommended that.

00:12:44.120 Okay, we're going to move on here.

00:12:46.540 And we're going to bring in the Western Standard's Saskatchewan Bureau Chief, based in Regina, Chris Oldcorn here.

00:12:54.780 So just yesterday, former Governor General and Trudeau's special rapporteur, David Johnston, brought in his long-awaited report.

00:13:06.660 I think by now most people know what it was about, but just kind of give us the Coles

00:13:12.540 notes, Chris, about what, you know, what are the main takeaways of the special rapporteur

00:13:17.680 report here?

00:13:19.400 Yeah, well, it's basically based on the fact that there's, you know, somewhat some proof

00:13:24.240 out there that was leaked by another news organization that there was interference in

00:13:29.760 the last two federal elections, particularly with some candidates and trying to influence

00:13:35.640 them, either directly or indirectly, into, you know, being sympathetic to China. So when this

00:13:43.920 happened, Trudeau came out, he appointed David Johnston to be the, what they call a special

00:13:49.260 rapporteur, to look into it. And the first part of his report came out yesterday, which he released

00:13:55.540 five different recommendations. One, he said that, you know, there is a growing threat of

00:14:00.560 foreign interference. Second part was that what was given out in the media did not give the full

00:14:08.240 picture or he called it miss screwed it and they sort of had it but they they didn't have the full

00:14:15.040 picture which created which created a false impression of certain things that happened

00:14:21.040 such as Handong resigned for example because there was you know proof according to the original

00:14:28.240 report that came out from Global News that there was some communications between him and the

00:14:36.080 Chinese consulate, for example. He ended up resigning, becoming independent. Now he feels

00:14:41.680 he's been vindicated from the report that was released yesterday, and Trudeau today said,

00:14:47.680 look, he left to clear his own name and went independent. The Liberal Party didn't ask him

00:14:54.160 to leave. We don't know if he was kind of pushed out behind closed doors or if he did it of his

00:14:58.160 own accord, but Trudeau wants to have a conversation with him about coming back into the Liberal Party,

00:15:04.160 which is interesting because since Trudeau came in, 12 different Liberal MPs have resigned

00:15:11.200 for various reasons to become independents. Not one yet has ever been welcomed back into the party,

00:15:18.080 so this would make the first Liberal MP that has resigned since Trudeau became Prime Minister to

00:15:24.240 actually go back into the party and sit as an official part of the liberal caucus. Now the

00:15:30.240 final two parts of his report are they have to look at how sensitive information is moved between

00:15:36.640 different parts of the government. Now CSIS has said that they sent a report into Trudeau's office.

00:15:43.280 He never saw it two years ago during the election. We don't know if that's true or not because the

00:15:48.480 final part is we're not getting a public inquiry. We're going to have what's called public hearings

00:15:53.360 and then there's also going to be a second report coming as well. However, a public hearing has

00:15:58.560 absolutely no teeth to it. A public inquiry can subpoena someone to come and testify in front of

00:16:05.080 them. A public hearing cannot do that. So this surprised even me. I mean, I had a suspicion

00:16:13.520 that David Johnson would get appointed to this because he is an eminent Canadian,

00:16:18.400 was broadly respected.

00:16:22.100 I mean, he might be in a Laurentian elite,

00:16:23.800 but he's an accomplished man,

00:16:25.320 someone who's done a lot of good public service

00:16:27.060 over the years.

00:16:29.800 But it was also clear that he was clearly unfit for the job

00:16:33.360 because at the very least,

00:16:34.680 the perception of conflict of interest.

00:16:37.440 A senior, a board member of the Trudeau Foundation,

00:16:41.760 which incidentally,

00:16:44.360 totally escaped any mention whatsoever in this report.

00:16:48.160 It appears that he didn't even bother to look at the Trudeau Foundation, which has become a key flashpoint of the Chinese foreign interference scandal.

00:16:57.560 You know, he is a personal longtime friend of the Trudeau family.

00:17:03.580 And so yesterday, you know, we had I almost took pity on him as he had to sit there in the press gallery and try to make the case to the press that, like, wow, we're not really that good of friends.

00:17:16.200 uh they've used our parking spot at our chalet before there's a lot of evidence would seem to

00:17:22.040 very clearly contradict johnson's take on their relationship a lot of pictures of them hugging

00:17:27.320 and embracing and their families hanging out together a lot more than lending someone a

00:17:31.640 parking spot at the montron blanche hill in quebec um so at the very least the

00:17:39.320 perception of a conflict of interest is very strong and uh to my shock he did not

00:17:46.200 recommend a public inquiry. I thought that even with these perceived conflicts of interest with

00:17:51.000 him, the case was so open and shut. Even a normally liberal, friendly media agreed almost

00:18:00.180 universally that there is way too much smoke for there not to be fired here, and we're going to

00:18:05.320 need some public answers if there's going to be a restoration of faith in parliamentary

00:18:09.280 institutions in Canada. Nigel, has Johnson irreparably damaged his reputation here, or

00:18:17.360 do you think he might get over this? Damaged, yes. Destroyed, no. I mean, the man's prior

00:18:24.240 accomplishments will carry him through in the end, and this is something absolutely unforgivable that

00:18:29.160 comes out of this. He's the first Governor General not to be embroiled in scandal in about 30 years.

00:18:33.280 Yes, it's, you know, he was a good man, but I could see all the reasons why he would have been a good choice, except for the one that he was closely associated, A, with the Trudeau Foundation, and B, a long history of their social involvement with the Trudeau family.

00:18:52.440 And he did his best to play that down, but as we say, we see the pictures, we see the evidence, and maybe it was a little closer than he cares to admit.

00:19:01.020 Now he's got, looking at this from the point of view of damage control, he's issued this statement which allows the Prime Minister to go up and say, trust me, no story here, David Johnson says so.

00:19:17.420 And we're supposed to buy that after everything else that the Prime Minister has let us down the garden path on?

00:19:24.680 I will not call him what Art Pawlowski called Daniel Smith, but my word, there are some reasons to distrust him.

00:19:32.760 So I would like to think that he regretted ever getting involved.

00:19:37.980 But now he has agreed to do one more thing, to put off the evil day of reckoning,

00:19:42.580 which is to take from now to October, going across the country, so that everybody can have their say on this.

00:19:48.720 Say on what? The people he wants to talk to are right there in Ottawa.

00:19:51.460 They don't need to go across the country. Should have talked to them in the first place.

00:19:54.680 So, Corey, I guess the issue where I want to go now is, was this a win for Trudeau?

00:20:01.060 I mean, yes, Trudeau gets to avoid, for now, a public inquiry,

00:20:06.280 which probably saves him and his government potentially a lot of embarrassment.

00:20:10.780 You know, they'd be able to, you know, subpoena and compel witnesses, subpoena classified documents, things like that.

00:20:20.140 But there's also now, I think, no hope of getting any kind of resolution to this.

00:20:26.080 I think there is virtually zero chance that most Canadians are going to look at this and say,

00:20:31.720 oh, well, the Trudeau Foundation guy says that Trudeau didn't do anything and everything's fine, so therefore I believe it.

00:20:40.400 There'll be some who do, but I don't think most.

00:20:44.300 Is this a win for Trudeau, or do you think this is just going to draw it out longer?

00:20:48.060 It's a win as far as kicking the can down the road, but it's such a blatant and obvious whitewash.

00:20:53.660 I mean, for one, Johnston, I wasn't that surprised, because if he'd already shown the poor judgment of not recusing himself when asked in the first place,

00:21:00.860 then he's already lost good judgment, so I don't expect much of him, and he led up to my expectations.

00:21:06.640 And now to take part and say, further, I'm going to take the investigation from here forward.

00:21:11.140 It's a gross, clear effort just to keep kicking this can down and hoping it disappears.

00:21:16.080 It was bizarre. He gave himself a mandate to continue to manage it.

00:21:20.600 It was not in his mandate to give himself further mandates to go and lead the whitewashing show.

00:21:27.060 The only thing Trudeau won was a little bit of time. 0.96

00:21:29.000 If he'd have been able to find somebody he could stick in that role,

00:21:31.480 who somehow he could, you know, would look truly arm's length and independent to come out and say,

00:21:36.560 we don't need inquiry. Maybe he could have called that away, but not this. Nobody's taking this

00:21:39.500 seriously. And I, you know, his recommendations more or less were, well, we'll solve this by

00:21:45.260 getting the politicians to play nice and talk to each other. And that means, and then he explicitly

00:21:50.340 recommended swearing the leaders of all three major opposition parties, Paul Liev, Blanchet of

00:21:56.140 the Bloc and Jagmeet Singh of the NDP to secrecy. They can see some stuff, but it also means they're

00:22:02.280 sworn to secrecy. They can't talk about it anymore. And so far, both the Bloc leader and

00:22:06.460 Polyev have rejected this out of hand, saying they're not going to be silenced by this process, 0.54

00:22:11.500 which is exactly what it would do. Fine, they get to see a few limited documents. They don't get to

00:22:16.320 speed any documents themselves and actually dig. They just get to see some of what Johnson saw,

00:22:21.820 and then they're not allowed to talk about it. And effectively, the idea was to take it out of

00:22:25.500 Parliament. They've rejected this. So already, Johnson's plan was dead on arrival. He, you know,

00:22:33.760 he said, and he called Aaron O'Toole, the former conservative, federal conservative leader,

00:22:37.720 to consult him on it. But apparently, that call didn't take place until the report was already

00:22:42.900 written and had been sent for translation into the printers. So the plan appears dead on arrival.

00:22:50.560 Where does it go from here, Nigel?

00:22:53.100 Well, I think it's like what Corey was saying.

00:22:55.300 They just wanted some time.

00:22:56.620 This boots it into the summer when nobody's paying any attention.

00:23:00.300 You've got a bunch of hearings, two days here, two days there from Cape Race to New Cassand.

00:23:07.200 And everybody just in the end gives up.

00:23:10.680 That was a very sly nod to the Maple Leaf Forever.

00:23:15.180 I picked up what you're putting down there.

00:23:18.360 I was just interested to see whether anybody else would.

00:23:20.920 Derek, I was waiting for the letters.

00:23:23.040 I used to know all three verses.

00:23:26.780 There was a lot of exonerations here. 0.83

00:23:30.100 Handong, exonerated.

00:23:32.380 Now, again, we don't really know what was going on there,

00:23:35.600 but I think it was either Global News or the Globe and Mail,

00:23:38.520 one of the two, just they're related,

00:23:41.240 had reported that he had encouraged the Chinese consul in Toronto

00:23:47.340 to interfere to keep the two Michaels locked up.

00:23:51.420 We can't be sure what really happened there.

00:23:54.560 But I'm not sure how Johnson exonerated it.

00:23:58.180 How did he know?

00:23:59.420 Like, that's going to take genuinely deep-diving investigations,

00:24:03.420 not a month or two kind of broad rapporteur stuff.

00:24:06.840 And by the way...

00:24:07.540 Dong's case is flaccid.

00:24:08.700 I mean, he has no place in going back into Parliament

00:24:12.120 unless we can see the evidence that Johnson...

00:24:14.440 Well, I also do believe in innocent until proven guilty.

00:24:17.340 I think we should be very cautious about going the other way. But we had these documents come out from from the intelligence services saying that he had done this.

00:24:30.220 Now, Johnson is just saying, well, he didn't. Well, this is why we need an inquiry. I want to see the proof.

00:24:36.220 We've seen evidence on one side that he did do it. I'm open, very open to the possibility that, well, maybe that was out of context.

00:24:44.000 Maybe it wasn't the full picture. Maybe he is innocent and didn't do this, but we need to see the evidence of that.

00:24:50.580 And all Johnson said was, trust me. And I'm sorry, he's living in another century if he thinks that Canadians just trust their government anymore.

00:25:00.760 We've just come to three years of the most untrustworthy things governments can possibly do.

00:25:05.980 Trust in government in our institutions is at an all-time low and for very good reason.

00:25:09.500 He exonerated Trudeau, says he did not knowingly do anything wrong here, alluded that maybe they don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

00:25:25.020 Possibly, that's possibly true.

00:25:27.420 He only named one villain, though, in the entire report, one villain, and that was the whistleblower.

00:25:33.360 The only one who has clearly done anything wrong here is the CSIS official, spy, whatever they are, we don't know exactly, but someone from the intelligence community who blew the whistle and has been leaking these documents.

00:25:48.480 So, Nigel, I guess David Johnson has named one villain and the person who let us know about the whole thing is it.

00:25:56.340 Yep, that's right. And we wrote about a month ago when all this first broke. This is the one patriot that you can identify in the whole system. We call them whistleblowers and we have whistleblower protection.

00:26:09.940 I'm not sure if that applies, though, in this case, but the principle that sometimes you are inside an organization and you are aware of something that is going badly wrong, that is affecting the public interest, I respect the man's decision.

00:26:29.980 He knew what he was dealing with, and he decided to renewing the risks to take his chances.

00:26:37.220 You know, this is the kind of exoneration, I'm just reading some notes here.

00:26:42.180 This is the kind of exoneration that Johnson has offered.

00:26:45.220 Limited intelligence, his phrase, supports the notion that the Chinese government intended for funds to reach seven liberal and four conservative candidates, Johnson's report says.

00:26:58.280 But there is no intelligence suggesting that they got the money.

00:27:02.280 Okay, so everything's all right.

00:27:04.380 That is not the kind of reassurance that any of us were looking for from David Johnson.

00:27:11.880 I think not.

00:27:13.640 All right, thank you for joining us, Chris.

00:27:15.900 We're going to bring in Western Standard Business reporter Sean Polzer now.

00:27:19.980 Sean, you've written in the standard today that an NDP candidate, it's come to light, was a key member behind a legal group that made a submission to the Supreme Court challenge made by the government of Alberta against the federal Trudeau's No More Pipelines Act.

00:27:43.280 Wanted to tell us a bit about this. Fill us in here.

00:27:46.660 Well, we've had some NDP candidates in the past make some rhetoric and, you know, some kind of accusations against the oil and gas industry.

00:27:56.820 But what I was really surprised is that this fellow in Airdrie, Sean, I guess we both have the same name, Sean Fluke or something, I believe,

00:28:05.940 was actually the lead counsel for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment that actually argued in favor of Bill C-69.

00:28:14.120 even though the Rachel, Team Rachel is, Notley, is going on about her support for pipelines.

00:28:25.100 Yeah, so I think it's, he is one of a fairly long list of NDP candidates in the election year who have made pretty stridently anti-oil and gas or Alberta energy comments.

00:28:38.340 We had Kevin Van Tingheim or Tingham from Livingston McLeod, who said compared the oil industry to slavery and said Albertans were essentially entitled entitled oil rednecks.

00:28:53.680 I think he meant that pejoratively. I didn't take it that way. I think he meant it as an insult.

00:28:58.880 But it adds to it. But this is a big one. This can't be dismissed as just an angry tweet or some obscure on a Reddit message board or something. This was, well, this was a major, this was an argument he made in the Supreme Court of Canada.

00:29:17.040 So one would think you probably think about your remarks before you go before the Supreme Court.

00:29:24.260 Sean, has the NDP had any statement or apology or clarifications about this candidate's remarks so far?

00:29:35.000 Well, none to us, obviously.

00:29:37.360 I did reach out and asked for just some clarification or even a link to a policy platform or something in their plank.

00:29:45.480 But no. But at the Smith presser this morning, there was some talk. Apparently, he was grilled about it from some reporters and he didn't really want to talk about it very much.

00:29:58.620 I would expect as much. So, Nigel, I mean, it's not, it's embarrassing for the NDP and for the

00:30:08.880 Notley campaign. It definitely contradicts the kind of moderate image they're trying to portray

00:30:12.620 that, you know, we're actually like law heat PCs here. We're not, you're great. We're not my

00:30:18.180 father's NDP. We're not kind of the small fringy far left NDP here. We're pro oil and gas. We're

00:30:24.820 just a little less crazy pro oil and gas as maybe UCP.

00:30:30.660 So it's obviously embarrassing,

00:30:32.220 but do you think the cost is just kind of sunken here at this point?

00:30:35.240 People who think the NDP are secretly anti-oil are already not voting for them,

00:30:40.600 or do you think this might actually have an impact?

00:30:43.400 I think the impact comes in the largest sense that when you look at the NDP,

00:30:48.380 they put their wares out on display.

00:30:51.160 If you buy this, you also get what's underneath it.

00:30:53.880 And whether we were talking about education, where, yes,

00:30:57.800 we want larger class sizes, but by the way, if you do that,

00:31:01.280 then you get a whole social agenda that a lot of people wouldn't like.

00:31:04.680 Yes, we're all for small business and no tax increases for the homeowner,

00:31:11.120 but underneath, there is quite a substantial job-killing tax increase

00:31:15.400 for small business.

00:31:18.200 And now you come to the oil and energy, and you say,

00:31:22.180 well, we're going to build windmills and we're going to, but we've got these people who are

00:31:26.800 actively anti-Alberta prosperity, anti-Alberta energy, anti-Alberta oil. And they don't talk

00:31:36.260 about that. They just quietly slip them in. So think about the realization is that there's a

00:31:40.300 whole bait and switch going on here. Look over here, try and ignore the stuff we don't really

00:31:45.700 want you to see. Oh, I'll put the same question to you, Corey. Is it just kind of a sunk cost?

00:31:53.300 Just as it is on the other end, you know, if a UCP candidate makes, you know, had made a

00:31:58.000 controversial social media post, you know, a year ago, what you already kind of expected they would

00:32:03.380 and the cost is maybe baked in, where do you know that NDP candidates, at least a good,

00:32:09.500 A good many of them have made statements, that kind of thing that were, you know, pretty anti-Alberta oil and gas or energy.

00:32:19.140 Is the cost just baked in here?

00:32:20.640 Is this going to have an effect or not?

00:32:22.140 It could chip away on a lot of those undecideds, I think, though.

00:32:24.440 I mean, this one in particular, not necessarily, but it gets cumulative.

00:32:27.740 When people are thinking, you know, there's a lot of concerns.

00:32:29.600 They just don't like Premier Smith.

00:32:30.980 They're still getting around that.

00:32:32.120 And they've been kind of wavering.

00:32:33.520 You know, maybe the NDP is moderate enough.

00:32:35.340 They'll be OK.

00:32:35.700 But one of the big fear areas is that the NDP is going to screw up the economy.

00:32:39.380 And when you see some of the true nature showing, I mean, again,

00:32:42.080 it's can't forget Sibora Berman was, you know, 0.93

00:32:45.120 one of the first people Notley brought on board and she's an extreme 1.00

00:32:47.620 enviro-wacko. 0.97

00:32:49.080 They don't want to remind people that they,

00:32:50.920 they at least maintain a degree of that element of anti-oil attitudes and,

00:32:55.760 and it won't help them any.

00:32:56.920 I get it won't be an election turner, but it's not helping them.

00:33:00.860 All right.

00:33:04.600 I guess. Okay. We'll wrap that one up there.

00:33:06.300 Thank you for joining us, Sean.

00:33:08.720 We're going to turn now to Western Standard Calgary reporter Jonathan Bradley. Jonathan,

00:33:16.880 I know you're a former eastern bastard so we haven't probably shaken all of the Toronto 0.98

00:33:22.320 out of you yet but there's been a growing trend here. I think it was probably two-ish years ago 0.95

00:33:29.760 I remember the city of Victoria said in the name of truth and reconciliation we're not going to

00:33:33.680 to celebrate Canada Day anymore. Now you have the city of Calgary has not technically canceled its

00:33:42.920 fireworks, but put them into a very limited area at Fort Calgary. And it'd be done in such a way

00:33:50.500 that you can't see the fireworks unless you really want to be there physically to enjoy those

00:33:56.240 fireworks. I think the city of Toronto has done something similar. And this is all in the name of

00:34:01.260 truth and reconciliation, because having fireworks is racist and insensitive to First Nations

00:34:07.760 people. Jonathan, tell us why Canada fireworks are racist. Okay, well, I mean, the left in all

00:34:14.760 sorts of cities in Canada has been calling fireworks racist for the last few years. It's

00:34:19.420 rather absurd. So the city of Calgary announced on Thursday that they're going to be canceling

00:34:24.020 their fireworks display to mark and celebrate Canada Day. And the rationale for this was

00:34:29.580 some people might have thought like oh you know noise pollution light pollution animals it's

00:34:34.940 because apparently fireworks are offensive to indigenous people because canada day is a day

00:34:40.480 that recognizes colonialism and on july 1st it's the anniversary of the chinese immigration act

00:34:47.620 which saw a head tax implemented on chinese people coming to canada back in the 1920s um 0.98

00:34:54.240 one funny part about it really does love fireworks though the chinese 0.51

00:35:02.240 yeah and then the funny part was it looks like it's been done by city staff not by

00:35:08.560 city councilors who have made this decision uh calgary councillor courtney petter went on an

00:35:13.520 unhinged rant on twitter saying that uh you know it's right but we cancel these fireworks and that

00:35:19.360 fireworks are offensive and if we go back on this decision it'll be upholding racism and

00:35:23.600 and colonialism okay and uh i believe you said uh in your report you had said that toronto did

00:35:30.640 something similar against these uh racist pyrotechnics yes that was a separate story

00:35:35.840 so toronto announced that they're going to be scrapping their fireworks but the issue on that

00:35:40.640 end wasn't because of colonialism it was because of costs and planning and they said it was too

00:35:46.240 difficult to maintain it there are still going to be fireworks in other parts of toronto but the one

00:35:50.400 area they're being canceled in is in nathan phillips square which is right in front of toronto city hall

00:35:55.040 okay well it would have been funnier if it was because they're racist yeah um 0.74

00:36:00.800 nigel our firework our candidate fireworks racist first up uh you know fireworks in themselves are 0.88

00:36:06.720 neither racist nor unracist but they're just fireworks but sorry so but in celebration of

00:36:11.760 something that these people say well that's that's that's what he's he's describing there is uh

00:36:16.320 young Jonathan is that this is to stick the put a stick in the eye of mainstream Canadians and say

00:36:23.680 that what you have got in this country what you have built what everything you have accomplished

00:36:28.480 from the time people first set foot on in Newfoundland to the present day is unworthy now

00:36:37.600 these this is being said by people who are living on the fruits of everything that has been done

00:36:44.560 in the development of Canada over a period of centuries.

00:36:49.220 The houses you live in, the fuel that you use,

00:36:51.780 the cars you drive, the telephones you use,

00:36:54.580 all of this is the fruit of a certain civilization,

00:36:59.080 and these people are calling it down,

00:37:00.660 and they're saying, we'll cancel your fireworks show.

00:37:05.360 We'll get over that.

00:37:06.580 Maybe there'll be another fireworks show somewhere else.

00:37:09.240 But this particular stream of thought is very dangerous, very damaging.

00:37:13.000 Corey, you know, you hear, let's call them the Federalists a lot. They say, you know, the Alberta Patriot types, right wing Albertans, you're not Canadian enough. You guys don't believe in Canada. And I'm defending Canada. You guys are against Canada. I'm for Canada.

00:37:31.660 But it seems that these very same people then kind of turn around at another crowd and say, Canada's evil, let's cancel all symbols of Canada.

00:37:42.080 So, you know, if you're someone who believes in, say, you know, an Alberta identity before a Canadian identity, is this such a bad thing to be cancelling any celebration of Canada?

00:37:52.660 Well, it's a double standard. I sort of said that in my column I wrote about it.

00:37:55.600 Well, you know, as an independence-leaning advocate, if you guys want to keep undercutting national pride, you know, it's not making my cause any tougher.

00:38:01.660 And that's what this is about, though. Their issue isn't the fireworks. Their issue is the visible celebration of Canada Day.

00:38:08.760 So they know they can't cancel the whole thing, but if we can cancel the visible part of it and make it smaller and smaller,

00:38:14.600 I mean, people used to go all over in the hills and the parks in Calgary, and you could sit a mile away with your children and watch the fireworks.

00:38:19.380 Now you have to go down to Fort Calgary, where they say they're going to have this pyrotechnic sound and light show,

00:38:24.340 which tells me it's going to be a bunch of woke garbage with probably a 20-minute land acknowledgement, 0.97

00:38:29.120 and you're supposed to hang your heads in shame over Canada. 0.99

00:38:32.060 That's what it's about.

00:38:33.060 You know, they have Truth and Reconciliation Day or Trudeau Surfing Day,

00:38:36.140 whichever interpretation you want to have for it.

00:38:37.820 We've already set an entire holiday for this.

00:38:40.180 And now that's not enough.

00:38:41.240 We have to get rid of the one that celebrates the nation.

00:38:43.680 And there should be a strong pushback for people who truly care about Canada

00:38:46.700 because this is one big step.

00:38:48.580 True fact.

00:38:49.360 And Nigel backed me up on this.

00:38:51.660 I think, you know, we were having, I think there was questions around,

00:38:55.220 do we get Easter Monday off?

00:38:56.500 Some of the employees at the office here thought we could get Easter Monday.

00:38:58.440 I said, no, no, that's a banker's holiday. You only get that if you're a federal government employer in a federally regulated industry, just like Truth and Reconciliation Day.

00:39:07.540 It's federal, and you only get it if you're a federal industry.

00:39:10.760 But then I said, but everyone working at the standard, I will give them Truth and Reconciliation Day off if they will send me a picture of themselves on a surfboard holding Tofino's newspaper with the date on it.

00:39:25.640 If you could send me today's newspaper in Tofino on a surfboard, I'll give you the day off.

00:39:30.800 And that policy stands for all of our employees.

00:39:33.440 You did indeed say that, but you did not authorize it for expenses.

00:39:37.760 Well, no, no.

00:39:38.260 You have to get there and surf on your own expense.

00:39:40.540 Oh, I'm sorry.

00:39:41.140 But you can have the day off if you go surfing in Tofino.

00:39:44.840 You have to specifically do that.

00:39:46.140 And I need evidence or it didn't happen.

00:39:48.960 Try and make it next year.

00:39:50.380 Yeah.

00:39:50.940 On my holidays.

00:39:53.060 Okay, really quick.

00:39:54.400 election predictions here. Oh, yeah. Thank you very much, Jonathan, for joining us here.

00:39:59.860 Election predictions. Outside the studio here, up on the wall, we've got our predictions we put

00:40:07.080 down, I think, right around the time the writ dropped. And I came to regret my predictions

00:40:15.340 for a bit. I thought, oh, I don't think this is happening. Mine could still be off. But I've

00:40:21.160 predicted UCP 53, NDP 34. So healthy, UCP still losing seats,

00:40:28.780 but holding a pretty healthy majority. I looked at it again

00:40:32.920 today went by through the writings. I think I'm going to

00:40:36.320 stand by it. Nigel, I'm standing by my original quote, 5433.

00:40:41.800 5433. Okay, so you're just one more seat from mine in the UCP's

00:40:47.660 direction. Yep. I can see it. I can see how it could happen. Corey, what was your prediction

00:40:53.440 and do you regret it? We're all close together and I'm standing by mine at 52.35. 52.35. Yeah.

00:41:00.160 Okay. Yeah. Let's see. We're all bunched together. I suppose I split the difference right in the

00:41:04.180 middle there, but it's had its ups and downs, you know, but I think I was thinking maybe they're

00:41:09.620 going to lose more than that. But now that I'm looking at the trend of things, no, I think that's

00:41:12.380 about where it's. Yeah. Post-debate, you know, Smith came through that debate pretty well, I

00:41:16.640 think. And I mean, even if there is a big campaign scandal at this point, there's not really a lot

00:41:22.320 of time for it to sink in, in a big way, unless it's absolutely devastating, I think.

00:41:27.260 There's just been a couple of things that have, I think, have come up in the last 10 days. That

00:41:31.720 tax increase that Rachel Notley was talking about, I think that is going to hurt her. The debate was

00:41:37.960 good. And you know, it's only a trivial thing, but that science story, people enjoyed that.

00:41:43.900 All of you who joined us on the pipeline, make sure you join us again tomorrow morning for the Alberta Report.

00:41:49.940 We'll have the latest news from the campaign trail.

00:41:52.400 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, make sure you go to westernstandard.news, click on membership.

00:41:57.180 It's only $10 a month or $100 a year for unlimited Western Standard content, getting the best coverage of politics in Alberta you're going to get anywhere.

00:42:05.180 Corey, Nigel, thank you very much for joining today and all of our reporters who are with us.

00:42:09.040 God bless.

00:42:10.260 Here's an update on commodity prices in Lethbridge for today.

00:42:13.560 Cash barley is steady at $4.05, feed wheat remains at $4.04, and corn increased $2 at $3.92 per metric ton.

00:42:21.400 In the milling wheat markets, July Minneapolis futures dropped $0.215 at $7.99.25 per bushel, with local hardware at spring bid for main movement at $10.48.

00:42:32.060 Looking at canola, nearby futures slipped $3 at $6.98.60 per ton, with delivered knives for June movement at $10.50 per bushel.

00:42:40.560 In the pulse markets, nearby red lentil prices are higher a half a cent at 33.5 cents per pound and yellow peas are holding at $11.25 per bushel.

00:42:50.780 And in the cattle markets, June live cattle climbed $1.95 to $1.66.22.5 per hundredweight.

00:42:57.680 For more information on pricing or picked up options, give me a call at 403-394-1711.

00:43:04.600 I'm Matt Musicum at Marketplace Commodities, accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.

00:43:10.560 Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.

00:43:17.400 These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada.

00:43:25.060 And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.

00:43:30.220 We've become a member. It's absolutely worth every penny.

Western Standard - May 25, 2023

The Pipeline： Canada Day fireworks are racist

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