THE PIPELINE： Carney folds to Trump
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Summary
Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and Senior Alberta Columnist Corey Morgan join host Derek Fildebrandt and host Corey Morgan to talk all things Alberta. Topics include: - Two great Canadians, Bonnie Henry and Theresa Tam, are being honoured with Canada s highest entry into the Order of Canada. - Alberta announces its own police force, called the Alberta Sheriff's Police Service.
Transcript
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I'm Derek Fuldebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.
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I'm joined, as usual, by my two good friends here, Western Standard opinion editor, Nigel
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And Western Standard senior Alberta columnist, Corey Morgan.
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We should announce that at a to-be-exactly-confirmed date in August, Nigel Hannaford is going to
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Well, you've done a hell of a job, and you've unfortunately just left me with a pickle of
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trying to find someone who can fill those shoes.
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Well, we're going to miss Nigel very much, but I don't know.
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Well, for the confidence of the viewers, it will be for another five, six weeks anyway.
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Okay, well, two great Canadians, Bonnie Henry and Theresa Tam, are being honoured with Canada's
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We'll be talking about them, and I think we're standing by Don Cherry is being put in
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So, yeah, the kind of Laurentian Clareme de la Creme that is the governing body of the
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Order of Canada, deciding to put Bonnie Henry and Theresa Tam to join them in this highest
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Alberta announced just today it is creating its own police force, I think it's called the
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Uh, Danielle Smith says this is not to replace the RCMP.
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Critics of, uh, the sovereignty agenda say it is to replace the RCMP.
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And, uh, people like myself who love the sovereignty agenda say, I hope it's to replace the RCMP.
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Um, the old Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta might be back.
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Two exiled, uh, MLAs from the UCP have, uh, registered the name for the Progressive Conservative Party
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Uh, there might, we'll get into if they actually technically will succeed in that or not, but
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Um, they have said that, uh, the UCP is so corrupt and so big spending that the answer
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to it is to bring back the party with the highest spending and the most corruption in
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Uh, before we get to that vote, we're going to start Nigel with, uh, elbows up.
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Mark Carney, uh, promising he's going to fight the bad orange man and we're going to do what
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And then he folded like a cheap tent in trade negotiations, uh, just, uh, I think less than
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an hour, less than a day after saying the digital services tax is here.
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We're going to pose it on Canadian consumers using, uh, American products and it's here
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Well, I was just hoping that, uh, Mr. Trump's next, uh, demand will have something to do
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Uh, so look, well, the digital services tax, uh, I mean, it was, it's actually a, uh, Trudeau
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era legislation that was due to come into effect yesterday, June the 30th, uh, it was retroactive
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Well, what it was, it was to apply to companies that operate online, uh, marketing and, uh,
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online advertising services, social media platforms, uh, streaming like Netflix.
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Supposing that you had actually, uh, uh, booked into a, uh, booked into Airbnb.
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Uh, and then you, uh, um, when you got there, you decided to sit down and relax, uh, with,
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And by the way, you had Amazon drop off something or, uh, or a fast food drop off something.
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So the thing was that everybody said, oh, well, you know, just fold it like a cheap.
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But I mean, the thing was, it's not like this would have been taxing American companies.
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So that's like sort of putting a tariff on American food and then say, there, we showed
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You showed us that we're not paying a dollar for something that used to cost 75 cents.
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So this is, uh, this was never a good thing for Canadians.
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Even, even if you sort of like the idea that your, your people shouldn't be able to just
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come in and do business here without paying tax, we're the one we would have been the
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Trump was notified about it from you, I don't know, maybe Howard Leavitt walked in and said,
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you know what they're doing up there in Canada, digital service tax, and by the way, sir,
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So some of your biggest fans are going to have to come up with a couple of billion dollars
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We're not talking to those guys until they get rid of it.
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So I think really the takeaway from this one, Derek, is if you want something, nevermind
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talking to your MP, nevermind talking to your lawyer, send a note to the white house
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Uh, the, the kind of, uh, net, the beginning of this tax, um, you know, came from Trudeau
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He was kind of talking about this and, uh, Stephen Harper will recall, talked about Trudeau's
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plan for a Netflix tax and the media roundly laughed.
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They were rolling in laughter at this crazy conspiracy of, uh, Stephen Harper claiming
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that Trudeau would impose a, uh, digital services tax or a Netflix tax.
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And then of course they did impose the Netflix tax.
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This has been coming down the pipe for a long time.
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The Americans have been unhappy about it under, under the Biden administration as well.
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Uh, you know, they, they've been unhappy about it.
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There's the Biden administration that did not really do much besides huff and puff about it.
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Uh, the Canadian government said, this is our business is not America's business, even
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though it acts as a de facto tariff against the American products paid for by Canadians.
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And the Canadian government is rightfully by pointing out to the Trump administration
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that, well, you know, you know who pays tariffs.
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It's American consumers are making life more expensive.
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That argument does not seem to, uh, have applied in reverse when the liberals were talking
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Um, but this is largely pushed by the Quebec cultural industry that likes to keep out anything
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Um, and then, uh, and we were just 24 hours before the liberals were adamant.
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Trump administration walked away from, uh, the negotiating table and then they just folded.
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Corey, the liberals I've seen put out some propaganda around this claiming that they played Trump
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Uh, to be blunt, and you can't do it, but they're trying to save a little face where there's
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I, I guess there's, there's people will take the statements of the liberals at face value.
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You, you know, the, the ones we see online, they'll just believe, you know, somehow do
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And, uh, they're, they, they have no other answer for it.
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It shows weakness, unfortunately, in the face of the guy who is the biggest bully on the
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And, and we kind of know that when you capitulate to a bully, he doesn't stop.
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Eventually Carney has got to actually show this elbows up thing of his.
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I mean, as we said, we're not too sad to see the end of the digital services tax.
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But the, the point of principle on the part of the government showing that they can be
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slapped over on things they said were not going to bend it.
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Or in the course of the 24 hours, you know, Trump's just going to come for another bite
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at something and they're really going to start building a revenue problem soon because they
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were counting on a big gouge out of this and they're not going to get it.
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Or as much as I think I saw over, you know, $3 billion a year, perhaps.
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Uh, but I mean, it's a big chunk of money when he's been spending like crazy and he's not
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cutting anything and, uh, he's just going to be printing money.
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Let's pray Canada continues to get out negotiated here because, uh, the more Trump demands in
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concessions from Canada, the better it seems to be for Canadians.
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Uh, Trump demanded that Canadians get a tax cut and we got a tax cut.
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Um, but the next big, uh, pee under the mattress in these negotiations is supply management.
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As you touched on Nigel, uh, Canada's Soviet style quota command and control system of
00:10:10.280
Uh, and it's particularly most damaging in the, in the poultry, sorry, in the, um, in the,
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Um, Trump, no, one, Wisconsin, uh, you, you won some of these dairy, uh, not Vermont, but you
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They want to be able to export into Canada freely.
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Uh, that's impossible with the trade, uh, with, with, with, with the supply management
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Now, the liberals have said, it's not up for negotiation.
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Uh, but they already said that about digital services tax, but the liberals voted with the
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block and half of the, the cowardly half of the conservative, uh, caucus, uh, to pass a
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block bill that makes it illegal to, um, negotiate away, uh, supply management and have any kind
00:11:06.800
But ostensibly the trade bill will be a bill and a bill can amend other bills.
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So I'm not sure that bill that the liberals just passed with some of the other parties,
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including half the conservatives actually is going to, you can't stop them from talking
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No bill could stop politicians from negotiating it, but the final deal will then be put
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into legislative form to be brought before parliament.
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And that can simply abolish that bill that just passed.
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They're just having sort of a chiro across the bottom of the screen says, got a problem
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We should do that just to, just to make a point.
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And so the, the thing with supply management, maybe one of you guys can understand, tell me what
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it is that keeps it alive because there's something like 10,000 dairy farmers.
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Before I go any further, I eat cheese, I like butter and I drink milk.
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And it's a, you know, I got nothing but good things to say about well-run professional farmers
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You have to buy your license before you get in.
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And then you're told how much you can produce, how much you can sell and what price you're
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So as long as they don't have expensive tastes, they are extremely secure in what they do.
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There's no, there's no animus here, but there are 10,000 people producing milk and butter in
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Canada and there are 40 million people who need it and are need to pay perhaps as much
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If you go onto the government of Canada website and look up the trade page, you will find that
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they admit that they pay, they charge as much as 230% tariffs on American dairy products.
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That's, I guess, what it takes to keep the Canadian farmers competitive and secure.
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And I just say, you know, 230% is clearly too much.
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I don't know whether 23% wouldn't be a bit much, but 230%, that $10 a pound, $9 a pound butter
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So it's been a pet issue for quite some, this is what we're saying.
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I mean, I do not understand, therefore, I understand that the dairy lobby has got an incredibly
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I admire something professionally done, but it's not working for the rest of us.
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Each one of my kids, I think, is put through a dairy farmer's kid through college.
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You've got to buy the European stuff if you want good butter.
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When I owned my pub, one of my biggest sellers actually was pizza.
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And we actually had a rebate program that was given to restaurants.
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And they would knock off about 10% of the price for commercial mozzarella for my restaurant
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because they had a cheese smuggling problem happening in Montreal.
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If you look it up, organized crime mafia was smuggling cheese from New York into Montreal.
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And when you're talking $10,000 a month, which organization, the mafia or Dairy Canada?
00:15:18.400
You know, they were paying cash out the back door for cheese.
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It's that when the system is collapsing that badly that you've got underground cheese markets going on.
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The irony here used to be that we were distilling whiskey, sneaking it into the northern states,
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and now they're producing cheese and sneaking it into this.
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Well, and judging by how seriously the government takes the issue,
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Yeah, you won't get much fun with pot, but as long as there's cheese hiding underneath all that weed, you know.
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So what have we got, like, speedboats full of cheese zipping across lakes who buried their ears and truckers,
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You know, the cheese interdiction force with dogs sniffing it out across.
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It's just bizarre, but we also know the regional aspect.
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Quebec dominates the production of the dairy industry,
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and the only thing that makes federal government MPs shiver more than taking on indigenous people
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I mean, speaking about capitulation, where Quebec asks for Quebec cats.
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Yeah, but they got these dairy farms in Ontario as well.
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Quebec benefits most by having, because the quota system locks in incumbent players,
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and that has always been to the benefit of Quebec proportionally.
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I mean, in Saskatchewan, Alberta, we got the space, the cattle, the feed.
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We could be a dairy powerhouse, but we can't expand our quotas.
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Our dairy farmers, I get hate mail from dairy farmers all the time and poultry farmers
00:16:55.980
If you are in a supply-managed industry in Alberta,
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you stand to gain from the end of supply management, particularly in dairy,
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because you're not going to be subject to the same kind of quotas anymore.
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If you're not competitive, no matter where you are in Canada,
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the end of supply management is probably the end of your farm.
00:17:18.000
But if you are competitive, if you are good and you're in a position
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to expand your operation with the end of the quota system,
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Trump could save us from ourselves with this one.
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Something that we couldn't accomplish domestically over decades of this stupid policy.
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Canada is getting a better, is going to rebuild its military because Trump demanded it.
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Maybe he'll take on our immigration system next.
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He's just going to start dumping them here on us.
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He kind of went to war with Danielle Smith and the UCP over some of the questions around
00:18:30.500
some health care contracts and the restructuring there.
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He was removed because he said he would not vote for the UCP's budget, which is a confidence
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If you don't vote for your party's budget, you are by convention.
00:19:10.500
I mean, most things I think should be free votes, but the budget never is.
00:19:15.840
So these two guys have been in exile for some time, sitting as independents.
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I mean, we see this with conservatives when they go in exile.
00:19:31.740
But it's a lonely place to be if you're just a one or two or three person caucus in the
00:19:41.080
So in BC, they formed a new party out there with the ones that have broken off.
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And now these two are announcing that they're going to form a party, I guess, to try and
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strengthen themselves and maybe build something that they feel would bring people over.
00:19:55.220
That's not that surprising, really, when they've been sitting, as you said, in the wilderness.
00:19:58.140
It doesn't look like they're going to get back now, but why they would want to go back
00:20:06.020
Like you're taking on the baggage of people who got basically kicked out in shame.
00:20:10.820
You know, people haven't forgotten Alison Redford's visage and they don't look at it fondly.
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It reminds me of David Orchard, you know, trying federally.
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He just beat himself against the wall over there.
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And you're trying to resurrect, at least come up with a new party name and say it's something
00:20:28.280
But well, you know, Corey, not only is it a dead brand, but you have to wonder about the
00:20:33.380
forethought that went into this, because I don't think that it is legally possible to
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Okay, so there's a lot, but it tells you, yeah, but it just tells you about this kind
00:20:49.440
So, well, Mosh, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, but I fear I'm going to have
00:20:53.980
to a little bit, because I was a part of the negotiations that created the United Conservative
00:20:59.640
At that time, you could not formally merge political parties in Alberta, so a smart lawyer
00:21:08.120
guy cooked up the idea that because these parties are also not-for-profit corporations
00:21:14.780
or societies under the Alberta Societies Act, you would create a new party, and the Wildrose
00:21:22.140
Party and the PC Party would be owned by the new party, the new, because there's the not-for-profit
00:21:30.380
society or not-for-profit corporation entity, and then there's the entity registered with
00:21:36.540
They're more or less the same, but there's a legal difference between them.
00:21:41.240
And so the UCP owned the Wildrose Party, it owned the PC Party, and ran a paper candidate
00:21:47.080
with no campaign to keep them registered through that first election.
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The UCP won, and then they amended the legislation to allow for a formal unification, and at that
00:21:59.160
time, the PC Party, the Wildrose Party, then officially disappeared from being paper parties.
00:22:06.180
But one thing I remember in that whole process, because we were looking forward to it in the
00:22:11.040
future so that it couldn't happen again, is the new UCP would obtain the trademarks of
00:22:17.680
the Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose Party.
00:22:22.660
But Elections Alberta ruled, I was able to do this when I registered the Freedom Conservative
00:22:27.360
I was able to use the word conservative, but I argued that's distinct.
00:22:31.000
There's already two conservative parties on paper, Progressive Conservative and United
00:22:34.280
Conservative, so no one has a monopoly on the word conservative.
00:22:37.480
So I argued you could have the word Freedom Conservative.
00:22:39.940
And then afterwards, as I was leaving and helping bring together Wexit with them, we got in Wildrose
00:22:46.760
Independence Party, which was distinct from Wildrose Party or Wildrose Alliance, because
00:22:58.260
So Elections Alberta said that they can use the name Progressive Conservative Association of
00:23:02.400
Alberta, which was the exact word-for-word name of the old PC Party.
00:23:05.780
That's an odd thing for Elections Alberta to agree to, but even if so, this could run into
00:23:14.660
legal problems on the other side, because the UCP owns the trademarks of the Progressive
00:23:19.600
Conservative Party, and it owns the trademarks of the Wildrose Party.
00:23:23.000
And so if you're trying to pass yourself off as the same thing, you know, not Freedom Conservative
00:23:26.900
or Wildrose Independence, but as just Wildrose or just Progressive Conservative, there's a
00:23:33.500
good chance there's going to be some trademark issues there, independent from whatever elections
00:23:38.720
So for now, the media is taking it as a granted that, yes, they're going to be called the PC
00:23:47.440
But I'm not convinced that this is the end of it.
00:23:50.160
I think the UCP's lawyers are going to invoke their trademarks here, and there's going to
00:23:54.960
be a trademark dispute about it if they're allowed to be called that.
00:23:57.280
And so anybody who contributes to the new entity is going to see their money going into
00:24:01.820
a trademark dispute instead of into active politics.
00:24:06.720
Well, you know, what confidence can you have in a couple of people who would embark on a
00:24:14.460
I mean, again, you'd think they would have seen this.
00:24:16.920
It's going to be a tough task as a two-member caucus to have a party that's functional.
00:24:23.560
Why bring on a bunch more headaches and baggage when you have...
00:24:27.020
The one advantage you have is a clean slate if you just come up with something new.
00:24:30.960
Well, I do get, you know, as I did, you know, tapping into somewhat of a known brand, Wild
00:24:40.800
Like, the Republicans are tapping into a totally...
00:24:45.160
But they took on baggage of a completely different political party, but they got some name recognition
00:24:54.040
Starting your brand from absolutely nothing, that's a huge task for a small party.
00:25:04.880
It was Alberta Alliance, and it was Wild Rose Alliance, and then it was just Wild Rose,
00:25:13.480
So, you know, I can see if these guys wanted to call themselves something conservative or
00:25:20.080
But progressive conservative, you're just trying...
00:25:23.480
Yeah, I think it's taken on a lot of baggage, and I'm not sure it's legally sound.
00:25:28.540
Lawyers are going to have to wade into that, you know more.
00:25:30.560
But I do know this was something very directly considered in the lead-up to and during the
00:25:36.440
negotiations that created the United Conservative Party so that exactly this kind of thing could
00:25:42.520
I don't think they're out of the woods on actually calling themselves this yet.
00:25:47.940
Same rationale of the Bolsheviks getting rid of the royal family and whole and the descendants
00:25:53.740
and the works just so you don't have that siege there to pop up and grow again.
00:26:00.380
Not as vicious with, you know, this, of course, but the point was to make sure there's just
00:26:05.700
no remnants of that party to blossom again and become a pain.
00:26:12.660
You know, is there a market for a progressive conservative party?
00:26:19.700
The left has united without mergers, but the left has most certainly united around the
00:26:27.160
The Alberta party is, for all intents and purposes, finally dead.
00:26:31.600
But the Alberta party was trying in the last two cycles, or three, three cycles, they were
00:26:38.180
proclaiming, we are the new, we are the heirs to the progressive conservative party.
00:26:41.700
And, uh, 2019, they got Stephen Mandel, former PC cabinet minister and left-wing mayor of
00:26:52.140
Um, then they did zero and then they've done zero again.
00:26:56.480
Uh, I, I put it that, uh, there's no, like every other province in Western Canada, there
00:27:06.040
is no market for someone in the mushy middle between them.
00:27:08.540
We're now clear center left and clear center right parties.
00:27:11.860
Well, I, I think there might be room if we're going back to kind of the balance we had in
00:27:16.400
the nineties, but it's a real dangerous trip to get there.
00:27:19.040
Uh, I mean, the political makeup in Alberta then was actually a strong liberal opposition,
00:27:23.880
a strong progressive conservative, and the NDP would have two to four seats on and off
00:27:29.400
throughout and, but still there was never quite a threat to the balance.
00:27:33.320
In fact, the, the liberals and NDP tended to scrap for their vote or votes rather than
00:27:39.080
So the conservatives could kind of comfortably stay in power and have that opposition.
00:27:43.100
If that sort of balance could be reachieved, but the risk is where they're going to draw
00:27:48.380
their, where are they going to draw their support from?
00:27:50.760
If they come from the left, they pull their support from Ninchy because some people aren't
00:27:55.300
necessarily comfortable with him or the NDP, then actually in some ways it could work.
00:28:00.360
They could get a couple of seats, but the UCP would still dominate the legislature.
00:28:04.280
If they draw from the UCP though, we know that their wind was pretty darn narrow and that
00:28:09.080
could turn into something that, uh, brings the, the NDP in.
00:28:12.680
Uh, I think there's a possibility of a balance, but it just depends on where they draw their
00:28:19.520
New parties are always, uh, they almost always fail every once in a while they succeed.
00:28:26.840
But in the modern history of Canada, I cannot think of a single successful example of a new
00:28:37.340
Uh, Tom Flanagan wrote about this, uh, he called it invasion from the margins.
00:28:40.860
You have to peel off something, uh, from, from a flank or the right flank or the left flank,
00:28:46.480
or in Quebec, it could be something ethnic and linguistic politics, but you have to offer
00:28:51.080
something that no one else is work because the middle is where everyone's fighting.
00:28:55.740
You're it's like Switzerland trying to join the first world war.
00:28:59.020
It, they would just get crushed from both sides.
00:29:01.020
It's, there's, there's no, it's like joining as a third party in the first world war.
00:29:05.460
You have to join from one flank or another to ever successfully invade.
00:29:14.880
Switzerland must better to hold the gold of both sides.
00:29:17.380
Uh, you know, there's a, it's a, it's a, it's an unfortunate characteristic of the conservative
00:29:23.500
mind that we favor being correct according to our own preconceptions.
00:29:33.660
And, you know, I'm with you here and here and here, but not here.
00:29:40.660
And that's, uh, it is the achievement of the, everybody who put the UCP together.
00:29:46.240
And, uh, who now put the, the current premier into office and they managed to get past and
00:29:54.680
say, well, the important things are these and the unimportant things can stay unimportant.
00:30:02.420
And what you have here is very similar to the problem federally where again, conservatives
00:30:09.740
federally separate themselves out, got to have a consistent position on this or that.
00:30:18.160
You live in a state of virtue that you never hold power.
00:30:27.940
I really don't know the issue well enough, but there's, uh, if, if they want to be right,
00:30:39.200
But they're, they're not leaving over some great particular piece of policy.
00:30:52.160
Uh, we've had the reform party and the wild rose successful breakaways on the conservative
00:30:57.520
side are exclusively exclusively, exclusively, not just in Alberta, but even federally exclusively
00:31:06.220
That is, it is the rebellious side and sometimes it came from Mary from the right.
00:31:10.660
And then the, as you put it out, the Alberta party has played that mushy middle game and
00:31:16.140
They've been the darlings of them for a decade.
00:31:19.280
They've never, you've got to have something carved out.
00:31:22.200
But then that's part of what Nigel's saying too.
00:31:23.720
This is going to be difficult for these guys because they don't have a, they are seeming
00:31:27.600
to be looking at the Alberta party turf, which is a path to nowhere.
00:31:31.720
And unless you can find one big issue to cling to, which they don't seem to have, it's, it's
00:31:38.240
Um, I mean, the only made, the big policy difference I see is that, you know, uh, Guthrie and Sinclair,
00:31:45.020
I guess the PCs, they're unconditional federalists.
00:31:48.500
They, you know, they sound kind of like Jason Kenney and that like any talk of independence
00:31:53.420
is treasonous and we want nothing to do with it.
00:31:59.580
Well, they're saying, oh, there was corruption and toxicity in the party.
00:32:08.240
We're going to sit under the banner of the party that was the most corrupt in the history
00:32:14.220
Like we, it's circling back to that bizarre choice of embracing the person.
00:32:18.660
Or, or, you know, uh, you know, the UCP is running a deficit, something they should be
00:32:23.700
So let's sit under the banner of the party that returned Alberta to deficits.
00:32:32.840
Uh, Corey, you got to get these guys on your show.
00:32:39.820
And I had a picture of Redford and Lukasik together just to keep in mind, everybody.
00:32:44.080
So I, you had a better choice of getting them about half an hour ago.
00:32:50.640
It'll be an easy interview, but like, you'll, you'll, you'll be fair and reasonable.
00:33:01.860
Uh, they might not get it under that name though.
00:33:04.440
In the end, we'll, maybe they will, maybe they won't, but either way, they're creating
00:33:10.480
Um, but also, but that was just the name to actually create a party is actually fairly
00:33:16.660
You generally, what you do is you take over a defunct party.
00:33:20.280
You take over a defunct party and you change its name and its constitution.
00:33:23.740
I think with two seats in a legislature, they might, is it two or three you need?
00:33:29.500
Cause I, I know where there's a number of seats.
00:33:31.380
If you get official party status in the legislature, which is four, then you get automatic party
00:33:36.180
Otherwise you got a petition and go through that whole process.
00:33:41.600
It's going to be over half of the amount running.
00:33:42.980
But if you want to have, uh, your party registered before an election, which is kind of the idea
00:33:48.520
of it to organize around it, you, uh, you need to do it by petition, which
00:33:54.880
Uh, or you've got to have, I think, I think have four MLAs.
00:34:00.040
That's how the Republicans did it with the Buffalo party.
00:34:04.340
Wilder's independence party was freedom conservative party, which was, uh, many days.
00:34:14.400
There's a whole Alberta cottage industry of this stuff of which we are too familiar.
00:34:30.660
Uh, speaking of comfy chairs, uh, Bonnie Henry, the former, uh, chief, uh, public health officer
00:34:38.840
of British Columbia and Teresa Tam, uh, chief, uh, public health officer of Canada and,
00:34:47.340
uh, uh, uh, translator has, uh, they are being appointed to the order of Canada.
00:34:55.060
I, bureaucrats are getting the order of Canada for doing their job and people are questioning
00:35:03.960
And it's unfortunate, you know, every country, I mean, it's a human nature.
00:35:07.460
I think we like to have awards recognition for our most outstanding citizens or people
00:35:13.360
who made a mark or made a difference and they have medals, they have awards.
00:35:18.460
I think there's, there's the different breakdowns.
00:35:19.860
There's a member of, and the fellow to, and the officers.
00:35:24.440
There's a few different levels of it, but it starts to really cheapen it when you're
00:35:32.300
I mean, it really should be very, very exclusive.
00:35:35.100
And I know there's a lot of debate on whether or not Bonnie Henry or Teresa Tam were good
00:35:40.000
at what they did, but even if they were good, they're just bureaucrats who did their
00:35:47.100
It was different, but again, Bonnie Henry, her job prior to COVID was trying to track
00:35:53.900
I mean, this is not a high level position as a health officer.
00:35:58.580
Well, I mean, you're, you're just tracking disease outbreaks wherever they might be.
00:36:06.180
So, I mean, I guess it's landed more spotlight to their positions from where they used to
00:36:12.560
be in the basement area of the legislature as the health office.
00:36:15.240
If Samuel Daniel Smith is watching, I want to nominate Corey for our next public health
00:36:21.120
I don't want to, I don't want to do those interrogations.
00:36:30.300
I don't know if they're trying to stir people up or if they really think these guys were heroes
00:36:33.440
for just doing what was kind of in their mandate as bureaucrats.
00:36:39.980
It's an endorsement that that was the way to do it.
00:36:42.800
And if it happens again, that's the way we'll do it next time.
00:36:45.540
Alberta's officer didn't get, what was her name again with the bowl cut there?
00:36:52.180
Yeah, but that was kind of, that was some of the absurdity of the COVID time too.
00:36:56.600
I remember people were going around with Dina Hinshaw t-shirts on and with a little superhero
00:37:04.840
Thankfully, you know, unlike, you know, the Rachel took off from what's her name with
00:37:08.640
friends, Hinshaw's haircut never took off as a style following.
00:37:11.620
But these are just unusual people who were usually kind of backroom bureaucrats that became
00:37:19.400
But whether that rates the Order of Canada, I find it pretty questionable.
00:37:23.180
Well, you know, I've got to draw your attention to Barry Cooper.
00:37:26.920
Dr. Barry Cooper, you know, he wrote an article, we published it earlier this morning, and he
00:37:33.660
The motto of the Order of Canada is they sought a better country.
00:37:41.620
That's, so that, it's in Latin, but that's what it means.
00:37:46.880
So then you have to think, if you get the Order of Canada, it's because you were seeking
00:37:51.600
a better country, is, and he asked the question, what is their vision of a better country then,
00:37:58.740
based upon how they conducted themselves during the highly traumatic COVID?
00:38:04.980
You know, this is an endorsement by the government of Canada who appoints people to the selection
00:38:15.240
board who can be relied upon to know what would be a better country.
00:38:26.180
Anybody else who wants a guide on how to get things done, how public health should be administered?
00:38:32.820
What is the relationship between the state and the citizen?
00:38:35.840
Is it one in which free citizens elect a government, or is one where a government has authority over
00:38:43.760
That's what this, there is a deeper significance to this award.
00:38:47.460
And there's echoes here, I think, of when Henry Morgenthaler was given the order.
00:38:54.780
Whatever you think of him, whatever you think of the abortion issue, it was a decision for
00:39:00.820
the Canadian establishment to put its stamp of approval on him and what he did, and try
00:39:11.520
I see this as, in some form, the Canadian political Laurentian establishment fighting
00:39:20.240
against, you know, those of us who do not accept, you know, the official narrative here,
00:39:27.320
and say, you know, they want to say, overall, yeah, things were pretty good, and we're going
00:39:31.900
to honour those who were the public faces of this.
00:39:34.900
Yeah, I'm not sure I would tie that to the Laurentian elite, particularly.
00:39:38.160
There was a lot of people in Ontario who didn't like this either, and it's more when we get
00:39:43.840
into economics and the relationships between provinces and the federal government, where
00:39:48.840
the Laurentian thing, and of course, unequalization is where that comes into play.
00:39:54.220
But I do think that there is a spirit of authoritarianism and a desire for control that animates the people
00:40:04.080
They are saying, this is the way we want it done.
00:40:10.760
But they toss it out to celebrities, left, right, and centre as well.
00:40:22.840
Like, if, I don't know, maybe I'll be wrong, but like, you know, if I asked Grok to make
00:40:28.400
a video of, for me, of the most Canadian guy in the world, it conceivably could spit out
00:40:34.540
Don Cherry, and it doesn't even need to invent the guy.
00:40:37.300
You know, he's just an old school hockey hoser.
00:40:42.000
And, you know, he's never been a, not particularly political.
00:40:45.820
He's just been considered political because he has, you know, what are now considered to
00:40:56.740
He is a cultural icon and beloved by most people in Canada, yet he doesn't get on.
00:41:05.040
And it's full of these C-list celebrities, you know, the kind of, like, I don't mean to
00:41:09.780
be disrespectful here, but like, think of like, okay, think of like the Junos and stuff.
00:41:16.540
But even ones way below that, people who like no one's heard of unless you go to like the
00:41:21.340
Toronto Folk Festival or something, you know, it's like people no one's heard of for crappy
00:41:27.280
like CBC shows with actors that 1% of Canadians could probably still not name.
00:41:33.200
These C-list Canadian celebrities who never made it internationally, they're in there as
00:41:41.420
And they don't put in the one guy everyone can name, everyone can look at his face and
00:41:48.300
And it's, I look at it kind of like almost the time person of the year or whatever, then
00:41:51.960
if you want to put it that way, it doesn't mean you have to like or dislike, but if they
00:41:54.620
were significant and had an impact, it's worthy of a degree of recognition.
00:41:59.360
And when you exclude Cherry, it really shows that the bias.
00:42:03.000
It shows that they don't really value diversity.
00:42:10.980
Well, I, you know, I wanted to get into the Alberta police force.
00:42:15.260
So I said to say, we're going to have one a little bit by a little bit.
00:42:19.240
We're taking the incremental approach and good on getting it done.
00:42:22.520
As long as we're making progress in the right way and it's aggressive enough, it's good.
00:42:27.940
So you'll get, when you get a ticket, you're going to smile.
00:42:30.920
As long as it's going to a proper Alberta cop, not a fed.
00:42:40.400
Is this also a step in removing federal control of police to seize our guns?
00:42:47.780
God bless you, everyone behind creating the Alberta sheriffs here.
00:42:59.540
Oh, my, well, you know, maybe it's not fair to keep picking on the CBC, but that's fair.
00:43:05.700
So, you know, they've got a, they've got a, an internal issue going on there and they want
00:43:11.920
to exclude other media from reporting on what they would cheerfully report on if it was the
00:43:19.960
And, you know, they've got some good people, but thus much so, they, they, they shoot themselves
00:43:24.500
in the foot conceptually at the upper levels all the time.
00:43:33.340
Well, just back to sort of the old progressive conservatives and their icons, Thomas Fabio
00:43:39.560
People are members, part of the left flank of the progressive conservatives and everything.
00:43:44.460
Well, if you want to pronounce it, the Polish Lukasik.
00:43:50.440
You pulled the trigger early on the referendum petitioning and he's sort of playing the
00:43:55.180
game of the act, trying to turn it into a negative saying, well, campaign is a, would
00:44:03.320
And it looks like it might've thrown sand in the gears of the Alberta prosperity's
00:44:09.640
It shows that there's more to be ironed out on what this process is going to do.
00:44:13.940
But as I said, I don't know how well that's going to work for him at the worst that's
00:44:19.340
It just means that the independent side will have to take the no on their campaign rather
00:44:23.920
But either way, there's going to be a referendum on if he gets the 300,000, which is very,
00:44:30.840
I actually, you know, a lot of the legacy media are crowing about how much they love this.
00:44:35.600
We get to crow when the federalist side in Alberta can't get enough people to sign a
00:44:42.360
People, that would have been the people who think it's easy are people who have never
00:44:48.440
I tell you what, this is not an online click, uh, you know, getting a hundred real signatures
00:44:53.860
on a petition, uh, an official one physically is a 10 hour day of work.
00:45:05.820
So we're going to come back to this when it's done, because we're going to be able to say
00:45:10.240
Thomas Lukasik and the NDP, all these guys working together could not get 300,000 people
00:45:16.620
and a province of 4 million to sign a petition to stay in Canada.
00:45:22.860
So, uh, still a gratification, but I think maybe I'll have to eat my words, but I don't
00:45:29.520
We'll have our, I told you so is more than likely.
00:45:32.380
Well, speaking of, I told you so Leah Thomas has had his medals strapped, uh, stripped for
00:45:39.760
winning in women's swimming in the United States.
00:45:50.540
Uh, so, I mean, this has been a big controversy.
00:45:55.100
Uh, he, he, he has taken medals away from, uh, women who have rightfully won in women's sporting
00:46:02.600
Uh, and this is not a dainty little trans person.
00:46:08.560
This is, and he's still got all the bits and pieces.
00:46:13.560
You know, uh, it could have made it more aerodynamic for swimming.
00:46:19.720
I don't know about you, Derek, but when I was at school, if you tried to win a race
00:46:28.480
Oh, I'm surprised he didn't remove the keel from the boat for the race.
00:46:33.560
Anyways, that's, that's good news for women, for sportsmanship, no pun intended, uh, and
00:46:39.280
for science and sanity, the world returning to a little more balance, the force, balance
00:46:54.900
Remember, if you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, you're freeloading.
00:47:02.540
It's only $10 a month or $100 a year for unlimited access to all Western Standard content to support
00:47:10.460
Uh, in the newsroom behind me, we've hired a rash of new reporters.
00:47:13.220
We've got more new reporters starting, uh, next week.
00:47:17.340
And I think the week after that, we're beefing up the number of reporters we've got on staff.
00:47:22.900
Uh, and we have to try really hard to find someone who can fill nodule shoes here.
00:47:27.080
Thank you very much for joining us today, and God bless.