00:02:03.280And I know maybe some of you are sympathizers with him.
00:02:06.440But we're going to talk about his stuff today.
00:02:09.680And there's no way to put it beyond jumping the shark in the most extreme way possible.
00:02:16.900We're going to talk about former Governor General David Johnson's special rapporteur report, whitewashing the whole Chinese interference scandal away.
00:02:30.120Nothing to see here. No inquiry necessary.
00:02:32.900We'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.
00:02:49.220Not sure how much media pickup that's going to get outside of the Western Standard and other independent media here.
00:02:55.480But 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.
00:03:06.100And very importantly, we can't miss this, we're going to talk about how absolutely racist Canada Day fireworks are.
00:03:15.040That's right, you enjoy fireworks on Canada Day, you are racist.
00:03:19.560Well, 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.
00:03:29.360They know it's racist before anyone else does.
00:03:32.140And if we have time, we're going to talk our election predictions.
00:03:34.800But I'm starting to predict already that we might not get that far with the full roster we've got today.
00:03:41.060Before I get into it, I want to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
00:03:46.000I've been a member of the CSSA for more than a decade because I trust them as Canada's leading firearms rights organization to protect my rights as a law-abiding firearms owner.
00:03:56.800If you are a firearms owner in Canada, your right to own and use firearms legally are under grave threat.
00:04:03.340Firearms owners need to stand together or else lose their rights.
00:04:07.100So you need to become a member of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association right now.
00:04:11.700Go to CSSA-CILA.org or do what I do and Google them and click on membership.
00:04:33.200But Arthur Pawlowski told all the press,
00:04:39.300I'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.
00:04:51.960Now, he claims that he called Danielle Smith and others liars, I'd say, at least a several dozen times if you listen to it.
00:05:01.360Now, let's see if he's perhaps a liar here.
00:05:03.780He says he did not leak the recording of this phone call.
00:05:07.300So 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.
00:05:35.240But 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.
00:05:47.500So he's running something called the Solidarity Movement of Alberta, trying to channel the spirit of L'Aquilenza, the anti-communist movement there.
00:05:58.040Even Solidarity is the actual party logo of that, well, that union which became a party in Poland in the 80s.
00:06:05.240He called Danielle Smith and the UCP a communist.
00:06:08.900She said that UCP is totalitarian, that they are murderers, that they are Nazis, and that they are devils.
00:06:18.220You guys managed to catch at least some of this, I'm sure.
00:07:27.440Was it the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?
00:07:28.540I'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.
00:07:36.360In 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.
00:09:57.880But 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.
00:10:07.560His stuff has long since, I think, crossed the line.
00:10:14.080And 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.
00:10:27.040Well, 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.
00:10:44.840And I didn't like giving him attention because it was so clearly narcissistically about himself, not about the movement.
00:10:54.340Yeah, it was about building his little following of the Branch Arturians.
00:10:59.120And, 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.
00:11:12.080You know, he just, his entire thing today was just about him.
00:11:18.060It's about, he is, I think what he's trying to do.
00:11:20.780and I'm sympathetic to small breakaway parties. I've been a wild roser. I was freedom conservative
00:11:27.320party. I mostly have voted for breakaway smaller parties, but the intention needs to be about
00:11:32.900something larger than yourself, not pure self-aggrandizement. And I think this is just
00:11:37.580purely a vengeance tool because Danielle Smith turned out not to have the powers to get him off
00:11:45.000of the charges he faced, unfortunately, because I don't think he should have faced those charges
00:11:48.540to begin with. But it's, you know, it's time conservatives in Alberta, I think most aren't
00:11:55.800indulging him. But those who still are, I think need to finally see this guy for what he is,
00:12:01.240stop indulging him. And, and this pure cult of narcissistic self pity.
00:12:08.760Yeah, no argument. He's got that street ministry, they call him a street preacher.
00:12:13.080And I know he goes down there with a bullhorn.
00:12:16.440I hope he has a little bit more of the message, you know,
00:12:20.780that Jesus was preaching when he's talking to the people on the street,
00:12:24.480because that wasn't going to win souls for anybody.
00:16:44.360totally escaped any mention whatsoever in this report.
00:16:48.160It 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.
00:16:57.560You know, he is a personal longtime friend of the Trudeau family.
00:17:03.580And 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.
00:17:16.200uh they've used our parking spot at our chalet before there's a lot of evidence would seem to
00:17:22.040very clearly contradict johnson's take on their relationship a lot of pictures of them hugging
00:17:27.320and embracing and their families hanging out together a lot more than lending someone a
00:17:31.640parking spot at the montron blanche hill in quebec um so at the very least the
00:17:39.320perception of a conflict of interest is very strong and uh to my shock he did not
00:17:46.200recommend a public inquiry. I thought that even with these perceived conflicts of interest with
00:17:51.000him, the case was so open and shut. Even a normally liberal, friendly media agreed almost
00:18:00.180universally that there is way too much smoke for there not to be fired here, and we're going to
00:18:05.320need some public answers if there's going to be a restoration of faith in parliamentary
00:18:09.280institutions in Canada. Nigel, has Johnson irreparably damaged his reputation here, or
00:18:17.360do you think he might get over this? Damaged, yes. Destroyed, no. I mean, the man's prior
00:18:24.240accomplishments will carry him through in the end, and this is something absolutely unforgivable that
00:18:29.160comes out of this. He's the first Governor General not to be embroiled in scandal in about 30 years.
00:18:33.280Yes, 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.
00:18:52.440And 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.
00:19:01.020Now 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.
00:19:17.420And we're supposed to buy that after everything else that the Prime Minister has let us down the garden path on?
00:19:24.680I will not call him what Art Pawlowski called Daniel Smith, but my word, there are some reasons to distrust him.
00:19:32.760So I would like to think that he regretted ever getting involved.
00:19:37.980But now he has agreed to do one more thing, to put off the evil day of reckoning,
00:19:42.580which is to take from now to October, going across the country, so that everybody can have their say on this.
00:19:48.720Say on what? The people he wants to talk to are right there in Ottawa.
00:19:51.460They don't need to go across the country. Should have talked to them in the first place.
00:19:54.680So, Corey, I guess the issue where I want to go now is, was this a win for Trudeau?
00:20:01.060I mean, yes, Trudeau gets to avoid, for now, a public inquiry,
00:20:06.280which probably saves him and his government potentially a lot of embarrassment.
00:20:10.780You know, they'd be able to, you know, subpoena and compel witnesses, subpoena classified documents, things like that.
00:20:20.140But there's also now, I think, no hope of getting any kind of resolution to this.
00:20:26.080I think there is virtually zero chance that most Canadians are going to look at this and say,
00:20:31.720oh, well, the Trudeau Foundation guy says that Trudeau didn't do anything and everything's fine, so therefore I believe it.
00:20:40.400There'll be some who do, but I don't think most.
00:20:44.300Is this a win for Trudeau, or do you think this is just going to draw it out longer?
00:20:48.060It's a win as far as kicking the can down the road, but it's such a blatant and obvious whitewash.
00:20:53.660I 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,
00:21:00.860then he's already lost good judgment, so I don't expect much of him, and he led up to my expectations.
00:21:06.640And now to take part and say, further, I'm going to take the investigation from here forward.
00:21:11.140It's a gross, clear effort just to keep kicking this can down and hoping it disappears.
00:21:16.080It was bizarre. He gave himself a mandate to continue to manage it.
00:21:20.600It was not in his mandate to give himself further mandates to go and lead the whitewashing show.
00:21:27.060The only thing Trudeau won was a little bit of time.0.96
00:21:29.000If he'd have been able to find somebody he could stick in that role,
00:21:31.480who somehow he could, you know, would look truly arm's length and independent to come out and say,
00:21:36.560we don't need inquiry. Maybe he could have called that away, but not this. Nobody's taking this
00:21:39.500seriously. And I, you know, his recommendations more or less were, well, we'll solve this by
00:21:45.260getting the politicians to play nice and talk to each other. And that means, and then he explicitly
00:21:50.340recommended swearing the leaders of all three major opposition parties, Paul Liev, Blanchet of
00:21:56.140the Bloc and Jagmeet Singh of the NDP to secrecy. They can see some stuff, but it also means they're
00:22:02.280sworn to secrecy. They can't talk about it anymore. And so far, both the Bloc leader and
00:22:06.460Polyev have rejected this out of hand, saying they're not going to be silenced by this process,0.54
00:22:11.500which is exactly what it would do. Fine, they get to see a few limited documents. They don't get to
00:22:16.320speed any documents themselves and actually dig. They just get to see some of what Johnson saw,
00:22:21.820and then they're not allowed to talk about it. And effectively, the idea was to take it out of
00:22:25.500Parliament. They've rejected this. So already, Johnson's plan was dead on arrival. He, you know,
00:22:33.760he said, and he called Aaron O'Toole, the former conservative, federal conservative leader,
00:22:37.720to consult him on it. But apparently, that call didn't take place until the report was already
00:22:42.900written and had been sent for translation into the printers. So the plan appears dead on arrival.
00:24:08.700I mean, he has no place in going back into Parliament
00:24:12.120unless we can see the evidence that Johnson...
00:24:14.440Well, I also do believe in innocent until proven guilty.
00:24:17.340I 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.
00:24:30.220Now, Johnson is just saying, well, he didn't. Well, this is why we need an inquiry. I want to see the proof.
00:24:36.220We'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.
00:24:44.000Maybe it wasn't the full picture. Maybe he is innocent and didn't do this, but we need to see the evidence of that.
00:24:50.580And 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.
00:25:00.760We've just come to three years of the most untrustworthy things governments can possibly do.
00:25:05.980Trust in government in our institutions is at an all-time low and for very good reason.
00:25:09.500He 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.
00:25:27.420He only named one villain, though, in the entire report, one villain, and that was the whistleblower.
00:25:33.360The 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.
00:25:48.480So, Nigel, I guess David Johnson has named one villain and the person who let us know about the whole thing is it.
00:25:56.340Yep, 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.
00:26:09.940I'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.
00:26:29.980He knew what he was dealing with, and he decided to renewing the risks to take his chances.
00:26:37.220You know, this is the kind of exoneration, I'm just reading some notes here.
00:26:42.180This is the kind of exoneration that Johnson has offered.
00:26:45.220Limited 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.
00:26:58.280But there is no intelligence suggesting that they got the money.
00:27:13.640All right, thank you for joining us, Chris.
00:27:15.900We're going to bring in Western Standard Business reporter Sean Polzer now.
00:27:19.980Sean, 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.
00:27:43.280Wanted to tell us a bit about this. Fill us in here.
00:27:46.660Well, 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.
00:27:56.820But 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,
00:28:05.940was actually the lead counsel for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment that actually argued in favor of Bill C-69.
00:28:14.120even though the Rachel, Team Rachel is, Notley, is going on about her support for pipelines.
00:28:25.100Yeah, 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.
00:28:38.340We 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.
00:28:53.680I think he meant that pejoratively. I didn't take it that way. I think he meant it as an insult.
00:28:58.880But 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.
00:29:17.040So one would think you probably think about your remarks before you go before the Supreme Court.
00:29:24.260Sean, has the NDP had any statement or apology or clarifications about this candidate's remarks so far?
00:29:37.360I did reach out and asked for just some clarification or even a link to a policy platform or something in their plank.
00:29:45.480But 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.
00:29:58.620I would expect as much. So, Nigel, I mean, it's not, it's embarrassing for the NDP and for the
00:30:08.880Notley campaign. It definitely contradicts the kind of moderate image they're trying to portray
00:30:12.620that, you know, we're actually like law heat PCs here. We're not, you're great. We're not my
00:30:18.180father's NDP. We're not kind of the small fringy far left NDP here. We're pro oil and gas. We're
00:30:24.820just a little less crazy pro oil and gas as maybe UCP.
00:37:06.580Maybe there'll be another fireworks show somewhere else.
00:37:09.240But this particular stream of thought is very dangerous, very damaging.
00:37:13.000Corey, 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.
00:37:31.660But 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.
00:37:42.080So, 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?
00:37:52.660Well, it's a double standard. I sort of said that in my column I wrote about it.
00:37:55.600Well, 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.
00:38:01.660And that's what this is about, though. Their issue isn't the fireworks. Their issue is the visible celebration of Canada Day.
00:38:08.760So 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,
00:38:14.600I 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.
00:38:19.380Now you have to go down to Fort Calgary, where they say they're going to have this pyrotechnic sound and light show,
00:38:24.340which tells me it's going to be a bunch of woke garbage with probably a 20-minute land acknowledgement,
00:38:29.120and you're supposed to hang your heads in shame over Canada.
00:38:56.500Some of the employees at the office here thought we could get Easter Monday.
00:38:58.440I 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.
00:39:07.540It's federal, and you only get it if you're a federal industry.
00:39:10.760But 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.
00:39:25.640If you could send me today's newspaper in Tofino on a surfboard, I'll give you the day off.
00:39:30.800And that policy stands for all of our employees.
00:39:33.440You did indeed say that, but you did not authorize it for expenses.
00:39:54.400election predictions here. Oh, yeah. Thank you very much, Jonathan, for joining us here.
00:39:59.860Election predictions. Outside the studio here, up on the wall, we've got our predictions we put
00:40:07.080down, I think, right around the time the writ dropped. And I came to regret my predictions
00:40:15.340for a bit. I thought, oh, I don't think this is happening. Mine could still be off. But I've
00:40:21.160predicted UCP 53, NDP 34. So healthy, UCP still losing seats,
00:40:28.780but holding a pretty healthy majority. I looked at it again
00:40:32.920today went by through the writings. I think I'm going to
00:40:36.320stand by it. Nigel, I'm standing by my original quote, 5433.
00:40:41.8005433. Okay, so you're just one more seat from mine in the UCP's
00:40:47.660direction. Yep. I can see it. I can see how it could happen. Corey, what was your prediction
00:40:53.440and do you regret it? We're all close together and I'm standing by mine at 52.35. 52.35. Yeah.
00:41:00.160Okay. Yeah. Let's see. We're all bunched together. I suppose I split the difference right in the
00:41:04.180middle there, but it's had its ups and downs, you know, but I think I was thinking maybe they're
00:41:09.620going to lose more than that. But now that I'm looking at the trend of things, no, I think that's
00:41:12.380about where it's. Yeah. Post-debate, you know, Smith came through that debate pretty well, I
00:41:16.640think. And I mean, even if there is a big campaign scandal at this point, there's not really a lot
00:41:22.320of time for it to sink in, in a big way, unless it's absolutely devastating, I think.
00:41:27.260There's just been a couple of things that have, I think, have come up in the last 10 days. That
00:41:31.720tax increase that Rachel Notley was talking about, I think that is going to hurt her. The debate was
00:41:37.960good. And you know, it's only a trivial thing, but that science story, people enjoyed that.
00:41:43.900All of you who joined us on the pipeline, make sure you join us again tomorrow morning for the Alberta Report.
00:41:49.940We'll have the latest news from the campaign trail.
00:41:52.400If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, make sure you go to westernstandard.news, click on membership.
00:41:57.180It'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.
00:42:05.180Corey, Nigel, thank you very much for joining today and all of our reporters who are with us.
00:42:10.260Here's an update on commodity prices in Lethbridge for today.
00:42:13.560Cash barley is steady at $4.05, feed wheat remains at $4.04, and corn increased $2 at $3.92 per metric ton.
00:42:21.400In 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.
00:42:32.060Looking at canola, nearby futures slipped $3 at $6.98.60 per ton, with delivered knives for June movement at $10.50 per bushel.
00:42:40.560In 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.
00:42:50.780And in the cattle markets, June live cattle climbed $1.95 to $1.66.22.5 per hundredweight.
00:42:57.680For more information on pricing or picked up options, give me a call at 403-394-1711.
00:43:04.600I'm Matt Musicum at Marketplace Commodities, accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.
00:43:10.560Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken long, long ago.
00:43:17.400These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada.
00:43:25.060And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
00:43:30.220We've become a member. It's absolutely worth every penny.