The Pipeline： Could Russia go nuclear？
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Summary
Join us as we discuss the Ukraine crisis, the Alberta Budget, and why the federal government won't budge on some of their anti-Russia policies. We also hear from our intrepid reporter, Melanie Roloff.
Transcript
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Good evening, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching
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the pipeline today is march 2nd 2022 i'm joined as usual by western standard opinion and news
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editor cory morgan how you feeling cory very good it's d2 un-gagged it's been very comfortable
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i i haven't worn the gag for since july at least yeah i still have when i've gone into grocery
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stores and things you know being the conformist i am some some lefties lost their mind when i
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said on twitter uh that i went down for a coffee and it was like yesterday or the day before i said
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uh i just put down as no mask as usual and some guy looked at me and he was like oh yeah
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and he took off the mask and then a couple other people took off their masks i was just like it
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was a nice little moment people are just like i don't i don't believe that i'm like you know not
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everybody loves masks as much as you guys right yeah someone who loves being uh masked i was
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gonna say gag that that sounds really bad uh somebody who loves being uh masked uh subbing
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in for our news editor dave naylor today uh our intrepid reporter melanie resident how you doing
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good but i don't love being masked no no no no we couldn't gag you if we tried no you couldn't
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no uh all right well we've got a great uh show today we're going to be talking about uh the
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situation in ukraine i know everyone's talking about ukraine we wanted to talk about
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something we that i think is getting really missed by a lot of the not entirely ignored but
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largely overlooked in the mainstream media uh the neocons are out there pounding the war drums
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it's one thing to be supportive of ukraine and want to help them here but i think there's
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uh there is an appetite in some quarters for war um i want to talk we're going to talk today about
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the potential of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalating.
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The ultimate end being nuclear, not necessarily going that far, but, you know,
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conflicts in Eastern Europe have a way of escalating to something that we didn't bargain for.
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So we're going to talk about the potential escalation of the conflict, the evasion of Ukraine.
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We're going to be talking about some good news for once from the provincial government.
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And Alberta projecting a balanced budget, not this year, but the next fiscal year.
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Things really turning around from oil prices, some of the economy coming back.
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So we're going to dive into the Alberta budget.
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And while Albertans are now breathing the free air, at least for those of us who choose to breathe the free air, breathing the free air,
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the governments of British Columbia and in Ottawa are dragging their feet.
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on masks, on all sorts of restrictions, we're going to talk about why those two governments
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in particular are really holding out, you know, govern me harder daddy stuff.
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So before we get into it, though, we're going to just have a quick message from our sponsor
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I'm afraid of keeping my money in the banks right now.
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The banks are happy to cooperate with the federal government and seizing your money
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Also, we want to thank all of our Western Standard members for your continued support.
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Wow, what a month we had in February with Western Standard membership signups.
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We had just piles of new memberships coming in.
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And to show our gratitude for you guys, we have hired a ton of new reporters who are going to be starting in the next few weeks.
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It's time we're not just looking at Ottawa from afar here and throwing stuff.
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We're going to send our reporters into the belly of the beast.
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And we're going to be giving you good kind of coverage we do in Alberta here and some of the other Western provinces.
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We're going to be sending you reporters straight to Parliament Hill.
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We've hired a reporter full-time to cover the legislature in Regina.
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So we're going to have way more Saskatchewan coverage.
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noticed a big increase in our Saskatchewan coverage with Reid Small,
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who's come on full-time with us in the last few weeks.
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Just an absolute frenzy of new hiring of reporters around here.
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And we've actually beefed up our Calgary headquarters as well.
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so uh cory's head doesn't look so shiny on the show in the morning there's only so much you can
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do yeah uh well i'll look that for it but uh we are investing that explosion in new memberships
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that we've had right back into giving you good quality content um just putting it right back to
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what i know you guys want it uh spent on not a not a new mercedes for me uh actually i'm working
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on the first one don't have one okay uh situation in you know russia's invasion of ukraine
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about the invasion of Ukraine, but from a political
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a different kind of government overreach elsewhere.
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We're not going to get into the nitty-gritty there. The rest of the media are covering that ad nauseum. We don't need to get into that. What we're going to get into is a discussion around the potential for escalation around this conflict.
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um we've had two world wars begin uh over places that were probably not on everyone's
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front of anyone's mind and those those small conflicts quickly escalated into
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uh wars to claim the lives of tens of millions of people um and a million i guess this is more
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of a discussion than a news point but um i don't know what are um from what we're seeing right now
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what do you think are the points of escalation for this to get out of control beyond a localized
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conflict right now in Ukraine? Well, I mean, there's been the deploying of extra personnel
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to the nuclear forces. That's been discussed. It's also been discussed that Monday they've
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moved to ready Moscow's nuclear arsenal. So, you know, I mean, when we're talking, you know,
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something in the world coming to that brink I mean it's going to impact everybody in the world
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right it's not just a Russia Ukraine problem it's it's it becomes a global scale and you know I
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the sanctions that Canadians are bringing to the table you know we have we have said that we're
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not going to be we're not going to be importing any of the Russian crude anymore you know heavy
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sanctions coming from other parts of the world, including the US. I don't know if it's going to
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be enough. You know you've dropped the ball when you get the Swiss to drop neutrality, you get the
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Germans to rearm, and you get Venezuela and Cuba to vote against Russia at the UN. When you've lost
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Venezuela and Cuba, you're pretty isolated diplomatically. I think it's very fair to say
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But in this one, regardless of who you think the good guy or bad guy is,
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Do you think there's a sense of desperation setting into Russia?
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Because my expectation, I think most people's expectation,
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After Russia, including Russia and Europe,
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And a lot of people don't know there was an insurgency in Ukraine
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So the Ukrainian insurgency army fought both the Nazis and the Soviets.
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And that insurgency wasn't put down until 1952. Twice as many Soviets died fighting that insurgency as they died fighting in Afghanistan, which was a bloodbath.
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This is not turning into the rollover. They're ultimately going to probably lose in a conventional military sense.
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There is just no way that Ukraine can't hold out. But it's quickly devolving into what could be a guerrilla quagmire.
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The sanctions are much stronger than I expected against them.
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They've gotten the Germans to stop playing footsie with the Russians now.
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The Germans were really what was keeping big sanctions from biting.
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Do you think there's real risk that Russia panics and escalates this?
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Well, I mean, I think something's becoming clear a lot.
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This is Putin, not even so much Russia as a whole, but Putin.
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I mean, when you've got an autocratic type of system like that,
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I mean, it looks like we're seeing rumblings of resistance within Russia.
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He's lost international support, but we can't forget he's got China at his back.
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And that's a big ally to have if you're talking world games.
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When they start saber-rattling about nuclear weapons,
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we know that they typically couldn't assemble anything.
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Russia, on the other hand, has very real nuclear capability,
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he does seem to be conniving and nasty in many ways,
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Putin might, maybe he's a bad guy, but he's not insane.
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No, so thankfully, hopefully that reason stays because things change fast.
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I mean, you know, if you're looking at World War I history,
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it started with one assassination, what was it, Ferdinand,
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and then it plunged the entire Europe into war for the better part of a decade.
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This could still snowball into a heck of a lot more.
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And when he's even talking about the nuclear button, it does get concerning.
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I mean, this isn't the guy who's, yeah, just got one or two.
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So how much of this is, I think it's just saber-rattling.
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I mean, you're putting your guys on alert, arming some things.
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But I think Escalation is kind of in our court right now.
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I think what we're doing right now is we're kind of replaying the Cold War textbook.
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look. United States and the Soviets, very smartly, never went to war against each other directly.
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What they do is they fight proxy wars. Okay, America wants to clean the communists out of
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Vietnam. Well, the communists elsewhere are going to pour supplies and weapons, munitions into
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Vietnam, and they made it a quagmire to the point where it's just not worth it for America anymore.
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And the West did the same thing against the Soviets in Afghanistan and bled the Soviets
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white in men and materiel. Looks like we're trying to do the same thing in Ukraine. We're
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We're now pumping guns in, we're pumping supplies in, and the sanctions are, remember, the Soviets were not as connected to the world economy as the modern Russian Federation is.
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People are trying to buy digital currency, stuff like Bitcoin or, you know, things like that.
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Melanie, do you think they're going to, is this going to be a, I don't know how to put this.
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is this going to, I think, incentivize the Russians to go crazier? We're going to see
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crazy Ivan here. Or do you think this is going to maybe make them think twice? They'll call it a
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tactical victory. Hey, we've successfully denazified Ukraine. That's what they're saying,
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their excuses. We've successfully denazified them. They try to save face and leave. How do
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you think they react? Well, I think that's probably the million dollar question. I guess
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when it comes to the response what what else would you do like you know you can't back down
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and just sort of allow that steamroll right so there's i think you know you're kind of between
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a rock and a hard place with how you're going to deal with it as you know nato allies how you're
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going to deal with with russia's push into ukraine what else do you do there i don't you know i don't
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i don't see there being too many other options how much of a rational actor do you think putin
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is going to be in this they think he's going to be willing to raise this if it looks like
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he can't win and you know some in the west are talking about a no-fly zone if we put in place
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a no-fly zone that we've sitting we could do a no-fly zone for uh saddam hussein's iraq or
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assad's syria because what are they going to do they don't have nukes they don't have big
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conventional forces they could take on our guys so we could do it and if they break the no-fly
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But if we put a no-fly zone over Ukraine, the Russians are not going to respect that.
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Yeah, I don't think it'll get to that point again.
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I mean, I believe we've got at least a number of rational diplomats on this, too.
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Hopefully the main thing is, as you were kind of alluding to, make sure he's got an escape hatch somewhere where he can say, I've done it.
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We're going to take the part down here by the Crimea because these guys want to be Russians.
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uh, you know, we're going to set that border, but now we're going to back off, like give them an
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event to maintain a little bit of pride and get out of there. If you corner them completely,
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you know, treat them like Saddam Hussein saying, we're going to hunt you down back to the Kremlin
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and try you. That's the sort of way you take the guy to say, well, you know what? I'm not turning
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the last light out when I go on pushing the button. And, uh, you know, Putin, as we know,
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in nations like that, he's got a lot of currency squirreled away. Who knows where and how he can
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or retire into the sunset when he feels things are too hot for him.
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And I think he's probably, I would hope, as I said,
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he's a rational player, maybe starting to think about it.
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That is the key ingredient I think we're missing right now
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in our strategy in the West is we have to have an escape hatch for him.
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This isn't Saddam Hussein where the endgame is we're going to storm
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the presidential palace and find him hiding in some little hole
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in the ground somewhere it's not going to be like that you have we have to allow him to save face
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and pull back we have to make it unprofitable for him to be there we have to turn uh ukraine and
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ukrainians have to turn ukraine into a quagmire for him so it's not worth it and the sanctions
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are biting too much there's got to be away from the back out okay let's talk about happier news
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balanced budgets we haven't had one of those in a very long time in alberta uh technically there
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was a surplus of like 50 million dollars or something in 20 no no there was one technically
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um 2015 14 or 15 um like a five it was like don't call it a balanced budget they they got close to
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one but we've been running deficits essentially since 2009 in alberta uh stelmac redford
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henson for include him prentice notley and all of kenny's so far as until now uh
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melanie tell us how we got there what's happening well they tabled the budget on thursday and they
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are projecting a balanced budget for the first time since you uh mentioned since 2008 and a lot
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of it is likely hinged on how oil is performing right now uh the west texas west texas intermediate
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it was up to $111 today. That's, you know, I mean, I mean, I remember, you know, it wasn't that long
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ago when oil was under $50 a barrel, right? It's, you know, it's been steadily climbing, but,
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but when, when things really tanked, it really tanked. So, you know, I think that that's going
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to, they're talking about a surplus of over 500 million projected for 2022 to 23. And that's
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compared to the forecasted deficit for this time around of $3.2 billion from 2021 to 2022.
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Well, Corey, how much credit do you think the politicians deserve for this one?
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Well, the thing I will give credit for is their projections are modest still, actually.
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You know, we've got a hundred and some dollar oil, but they're projecting their budget based
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on $60, $70 oil. So they weren't shooting for the moon because it is a projection.
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They normally do that. They normally overestimate oil.
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which is wise political planning too because if you're looking at an election a year from now
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and if the oil does stay in the hundred dollar range they're gonna have a massive surplus come
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election time and then we're gonna see an election budget which means that's when we
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see the irresponsible government that's when we see these guys spending like lunatics right back
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to redford's stomach they want to buy our love and and uh and get us in and they might stay within
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budget that time but once you set that bar cutting is a heck of a lot harder later and
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it's melanie said it wasn't that long ago when oil actually it was less than two years ago when
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We're all getting to that zero level we've seen before.
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So, I mean, they definitely balanced it on the back of increased resource revenues.
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You know, I did talk in that interview with the finance minister about it.
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I did point to areas where they've shown some restraint and a little bit of clipping here and there.
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But the reality is they got a windfall with this.
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It's how they manage it is what we got to look forward to seeing if they're going to be responsible.
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So they reserve some credit for restrained spending.
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um you know i they were wise they wisely showed some of the math that uh you know based on the
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current the trajectory of spending that the ndp had it on we'd be running a six to eight billion
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dollar deficit still today um the ucp did not cut spending as much as the ndp likes to say they did
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they did not cut spending they have slowed down the increase in spending uh except for covid
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related stuff which has been which has been incredible i think that's been kind of left
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the budget story is all the COVID spending. As per the deficit, I'm sure $3.2 billion.
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Yeah. So I think they deserve some credit. They would still be in the deficit if they
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hadn't slowed down spending. But the Alberta government is still spending wildly more than
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we need to be. Is there a downside here, Corey, that by having a surplus, it takes away the
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political uh the political uh necessity of actually cutting spending because we've never
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had a government in alberta cut spending since ralph klein early ralph klein yeah i mean it
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takes away some of it we also some of the news that kind of slid up was the central bank just
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raised interest rates a little bit though and they might want to start looking at debt retirement
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because if we start seeing interest rates rising fast that's going to eat their surplus really
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quickly well you asked the minister about that didn't you debt retirement yeah and he said
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they're going to look at that into 2022 uh but one of the things he did talk about was they're
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going to put more money back into the heritage trust fund which i was happy to kind of hear but
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i worry about it being responsibly used as we've seen in the past i mean it turned into something
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to be rated over and over again and again the minister i asked him about that and he said oh
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no we won't do it this time but they always will uh they're saying the right words and i i would
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hope that we see i would rather see more towards debt retirement especially if interest rates are
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going up rather than than mad spending depends on public appetite you know they're always going
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to follow that i mean ralph klein knew that the public wanted that debt retired i mean we had
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double-digit interest going on. I mean, our interest servicing costs were almost outpacing
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our healthcare expenditures, so they had to move. At this point, they can afford to carry some debt,
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and I worry that that's going to tempt them to hang on to it. Okay. Well, before we move on to
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our next segment, we got to thank my other favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports
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in Canada. I've been a member of this organization for over a decade. These guys, they're lobbying
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for gun owners on Parliament Hill. They're running public advocacy campaigns trying to
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educate the public on reasonable firearms legislation in this country. If it wasn't for
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the CSSA, I think we'd have a lot less legal guns in Canada, a lot more illegal guns.
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Uh, so I'd encourage, uh, everyone watching right now to go to, uh, what's the URL?
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And I'm sure that C-I-L-A is some viewer perhaps can send me an email.
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It's some sort of French translation, I'm sure for the same thing, but, uh,
00:22:01.700
Just, uh, note to Nico, next time I want, uh, like the lyrics at the bottom of the screen with a bouncing ball.
00:22:14.360
i want the bouncing ball only tone deaf melanie's the singer oh yeah you're gonna say it for us
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and no no okay you probably see it just google it if you're like me and can't remember that
00:22:23.460
okay uh well kind of come in the opposite way of what's happening in alberta saskatchewan
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even ontario a bit slower in ontario but it's happening across the country it's happening
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way behind most of the world actually opening up right now uh ottawa and british columbia though
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not budging on mandates. Melanie, send it up. Yeah, so BC has come out with the news that they
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will not be dropping the passports anytime soon for those 12 and up. They are looking at a tentative
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expiry of June 30th, but they are holding steady that that is going to be very dependent on
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whether they see fit to lift the mandate. And BC's chief doctor, Bonnie Henry, has also
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made the statement that they're going to keep it in their back pocket to use whenever they
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need to. Whenever they need to re-implement it, they will make sure that they have it
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sort of at the ready. So this is something that they just seem to be really hardlining on at this
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point. And they're also saying in BC that more restrictions may come ahead of spring break and
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as well as heading into the fall. And what about Ottawa? Well, Ottawa, that's, you know, we're
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looking at federally regulated industry with mandates still, vaccine passports. We're looking
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at travel is still affected by that international domestic uh by plane by boat by you know sea by
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trucker uh the mandates don't seem to be going anywhere where the feds are concerned i'm gonna
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have a great intersection of a few of an earlier topic and this topic in a bit don't get ahead of
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me think you know what i think you know what it is um but yeah you still can't travel domestically
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in Canada if you're unvaccinated at all on a plane or by ferry. Train? Yeah. There is no sign
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of any of that changing, right? Not that we've seen signaled. I mean, you know, I know when we
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were talking about the Emergencies Act and in there, you know, I'm certain that Trudeau was
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making mention that we are, you know, planning to look at things. We are planning to act accordingly
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you know there's been sort of talk like that but nothing very specific as to any kind of targets
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or or anything along those lines we know all these mandates you know conservative governments
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NDP governments liberal governments they've all been pretty politically driven do you think the
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reason Corey that Ottawa is not signaling any even intention in the future of course at some point
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they'll drop this stuff but do you think the reason they're not signaling any intention to
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drop this stuff even a timeline to announce a timeline is because it would look like trudeau
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giving in to the truckers i think there's some pride factor in it absolutely and i at some point
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i mean when they've got enough buffer you can uh you can look that way i mean even in online
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discussions with the liberal supporters or whatnot you know when i said like look if we
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want to mitigate some of this just start backing off in some of the restrictions some of the
00:25:36.200
and say, well, we can't look like we're getting into the terrorists.
00:25:41.600
Say that the science said you did it or whatever.
00:25:48.840
And I think it'll come to that point because, I mean, they are detrimental.
00:25:53.980
There's got to be, you know, people from the trucking industry,
00:25:56.900
from airlines saying, look, this is really harming us.
00:26:07.920
I got a question for you to put to the Alberta government tomorrow, Melanie.
00:26:13.860
I want to know if the Alberta government will commit to destroying the vaccine passport data
00:26:18.740
so that it can't be used by the Alberta government if they want to bring back a vaccine passport
00:26:23.920
or, even more worrisome, handed to the federal government for some sort of integration with the digital ID
00:26:41.420
And we'll either have you on it or our Alberta legislative reporter, Amber Gosling, up in Edmonton on it.
00:26:53.380
Okay, let's talk about a really interesting intersection of all this.
00:26:56.600
uh of a sudic one of our reporters today uh she broke the story that um refugees fleeing
00:27:05.280
uh the ukraine war zone um if they if they want to be refugees to canada and they're unvaccinated
00:27:13.420
uh they have to be tested before they can leave and board a plane to canada they have to
00:27:19.620
quarantine for 14 days in their new destination of freedom and they got to get of course more
00:27:24.620
testing uh more testing on this end uh just tell me more about this story it's just a wonderful
00:27:30.720
story well i think that's basically it i mean it's you know they're they're kind of sticking
00:27:36.920
with the policy that they have in place for any newcomer coming to the uh coming to the country
00:27:41.980
and uh again it's just a position of not budging uh cory this is obviously terrible and sad but
00:27:51.280
there's just a dark part of me that thinks this is bloody hilarious this is i i i was working out
00:27:56.360
um like i don't work out much i'm just starting so this is not ripped me i'm not this is not
00:28:03.260
peak there um but i i was just you know trying to get a new routine of work i was early in the
00:28:08.280
morning i think yesterday and uh and my brain was pretty foggy because it was really early
00:28:13.220
like 5 30 and i just had this funny idea in my hand i was like wouldn't it be funny if they were
00:28:18.300
that i'm gonna say it that big assholes to say uh you gotta be vaccinated to come to canada
0.96
00:28:24.040
and so you know we're just gonna put it to the newsroom thought we'd see what we find out um
00:28:29.800
what do you think the reasoning is cory what is the actual reasoning behind requiring unvaccinated
00:28:36.520
the ukrainian refugees to be quarantined for two weeks when they land in their new country i think
00:28:42.280
it's just tone-deaf bureaucratic hammerheads the same old thing they're intractable you know the
00:28:47.140
types. They've got their list of rules, and they won't budge for it. They don't make exceptions.
00:28:51.880
This is my rule book, darn it, and I'm a pointy-headed bureaucrat. We're going to make
00:28:56.000
sure people follow it. They don't see nuance. They don't see room for common sense. So unless
00:29:01.420
they're directed otherwise to move in the other direction, they apply it everywhere. So even if
00:29:06.500
it's, look at this, we've got an unusual emergency situation. We've got people coming from a war-torn
00:29:11.360
country that just need refuge. They just need to settle in. They need to get safe, and we're going
00:29:15.560
to stick them in a quarantine facility for their first two weeks. Oh, a great way to build trust
00:29:19.560
with them. But that doesn't register in the mind of a senior bureaucrat. That's all they want to
00:29:23.720
make sure is everybody complies with their bloody rules. Well, and I think with the narrative that
00:29:28.040
came out of, you know, the protests and the convoys and the blockades and whatnot, I think
00:29:34.240
there will be a lot of pushback from people witnessing what they would say is, you know,
00:29:40.760
sort of hypocrisy or you know a double standard or you know if canadian citizens are are being
00:29:47.180
held to this this you know and i agree i mean it would be ridiculous that canadians require a
00:29:52.740
vaccine passport but i was don't i was quarantined for for two weeks uh you were definitely not here
00:29:58.800
appearing on appearing live on podcast the entire time oh no it was movie magic uh but as i came
00:30:05.720
across it was just appearing remotely folks he was not actually in the studio i'm not one of those
00:30:09.840
two wrongs make a right person so if you know we had to go through a bunch of crap and rigmarole
00:30:14.360
it wasn't and we are vaccinated but i didn't have a timely enough test so i had to go through as a
00:30:19.520
canadian citizen and then to see somebody come from somebody somewhere else and not have to go
00:30:23.340
but i would rather just drop it that's okay drop it for them and i endured it i could live with
00:30:26.680
that i don't i'm not a misery loves company kind of guy like just just get rid of it but they can't
00:30:31.300
it's it blows my mind we live in a country that could be governed this dumbly
00:30:43.260
Well, I know he's Canada's first black prime minister,
00:30:45.700
but it doesn't mean he's the best one we've had by any means.
00:30:53.920
Lesley Lewis could be our second black prime minister.
0.94
00:31:00.420
When she was running for the Conservative Party leadership,
00:31:04.760
I'm running to be Canada's second Black Friday.
0.83
00:31:07.280
Like, that would have just brought down the house.
00:31:23.160
he's not a cerebral, respectable sort of leader
00:31:27.500
You know, I would have rather had Fred Chan back,
00:31:34.160
Again, I want to thank all of our Western Standard members for your support.
00:31:39.500
I know a lot of you who have not already been members have been signing up
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