Join us as we discuss the Calgary Stampede, Premier Daniel Smith and the gay pride pancake breakfast, and the anti-gay language coming out of the gay community in Canada. Thanks to our sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, for supporting the show.
00:05:25.980I mean, the guy, if you're out there with your rainbow flag and you're proud of the fact that you're homosexual, then presumably what's wrong with a guy who isn't homosexual saying I'm proud to be straight?0.79
00:05:37.720You know, where is the, there is this double standard.
00:05:41.400So let's not confuse the issue here that whether she read the, whether she read the t-shirt or whether she didn't, why can't a guy wear a straight pride t-shirt?
00:05:53.100Oh, well, as you see, that's not the narrative.
00:06:50.340And you know what? They don't accept it. They don't appreciate it. All they do is double down. They're thrilled because the premier's office just brought it back into the headlights again for another news cycle.
00:07:00.720Well, I bet you next premier's breakfast, they've got at least one staff member standing in the head of the line looking at T-shirts, and it's ludicrous.
00:07:08.360It is ludicrous. I mean, it makes it difficult. I mean, look, I don't see the point of such a T-shirt. I'll say that.
00:07:14.360straight people haven't been oppressed. I mean, I can understand the reason why people who were0.91
00:07:19.260of the LGBTQ community want to express themselves because for decades it was told it was shameful
00:07:24.480and your bars would get raided. But if you want to wear the damn, go ahead.
00:07:30.120The love that once durst not speak its name now won't shut up. I think that is why sometimes
00:07:35.860people get so sick of it that they decide the satire isn't. Well, as you said too, there is
00:07:41.320nothing on Premier Smith. She's been a public figure for quite some time in Alberta, and she's
00:07:45.560always been actually quite vocally supportive of the LGBTQ community. She's not known as a
00:07:51.560social conservative. For them to try, with that many years of public record, to smear Smith because
00:07:57.100of this, I got a feeling, though, the viewers and voters are going to be fatigued with this tactic.
00:08:00.720Well, isn't that what cost the NDP the election? People were tired of all the negativity.
00:08:05.460And in fairness, they haven't even stopped since the election. Every day, tweets and press releases
00:08:10.560on how bad this is, how bad that is, how bad the UCP has screwed things up.
00:11:44.300So they took advantage of that opportunity.
00:11:45.500You know, Prime Minister Trudeau was in Calgary at the same time as Premier Smith, and they actually sat down for a chinwag, right?
00:11:52.460They did, last Thursday afternoon at the McDougal Centre, and oh, to be a fly on the wall in that room.
00:12:02.600You know, obviously they have a lot to talk about, number one being the just transition and the Liberals' attempt to basically shut down Alberta's oil industry.
00:12:12.340I think the one thing they came out with was they agreed to, you know, have a provincial federal team get together and talk in the future.
00:12:22.840But in terms of Trudeau's environmental goals, he stood his ground.
00:12:29.140So I think the meeting ended with, you know, basically more harsh words from Premier Smith and, you know, the more threats of lawsuits.
00:12:39.860And if that doesn't work, the Solventry Act down the road.
00:12:44.460Yeah, you know, I think it works for the prime minister to have a feud with the western province.
00:12:51.740It always used to be that it was the provinces.
00:12:54.760It worked for them to have a feud with the federal government.
00:12:57.660But in this case, Mr. Trudeau was looking at a federal election no later than October 2025, just over two years' time.
00:13:05.700No guarantee that he'll even get there, unless the NDP is cooperative.
00:13:12.260So it could actually happen at any time.
00:13:15.120And for him to go back to central Canada, where, let's face it,
00:13:21.700it seems people think differently to how they think out here,
00:13:25.800and point to the Confederate states of Saskatchewan and Alberta and northeastern PC,
00:13:32.980and say, you know, we have people with what's his phrase
00:21:13.240that I think sums it up nicely. Natural Resources Minister Wilkinson was giving away more millions
00:21:21.660of dollars. He was up in Drumheller yesterday for solar power, made this big announcement
00:21:28.340in a field, and everybody looked up, and cloudy as hell. Couldn't see a thing. You couldn't
00:21:34.960see the sun anywhere. That was just like a metaphor of where it's going.
00:21:39.740So, I mean, we know, though, you know, as political wonky sorts, I mean, there's expediency politically to have a foil.
00:21:46.600Every politician, you have to have either an issue or a person or a movement, but to be able to point to and say,
00:21:51.800you must support me because I will protect you from him, her or that.
00:21:57.320So it's going to be valuable for Premier Smith to, of course, you know, keep that the fire stoked with Justin Trudeau.
00:22:04.180He seems to be quite a willing participant, but the price, the price is going to be, we've got support for secession as I'm sitting at 20, 25 percent steadily these days.
00:22:15.360It'll only grow if those two keep fighting.0.98
00:22:17.700Yeah, and I think what Smith has to do is more than what Kenny did.
00:22:23.180You know, Kenny would strike a panel to study something or send a letter to Trudeau.
00:22:28.440So, if it comes to, you know, the Liberals move ahead with all these things, which it appears they are,
00:22:35.440Smith has to take another step, whether it's yet another court battle or more likely the Sovereignty Act,
00:22:42.900you know, that's what she's got to do.0.97
00:22:45.240Well, I mean, the Sovereignty Act is intended to kick in when the federal government makes a demand
00:22:53.320that is not within their jurisdiction to make.
00:22:56.040presumably that is going to come in through how bill c69 is administered bill c69 is generally
00:23:07.980thought of as the no pipelines bill and that's correct that is certainly what it is but that was
00:23:13.060in in the context of pipelines from alberta to the coast any pipeline uh crossing provincial
00:23:20.260borders but it covers much more than pipelines and i believe that the intention of the federal
00:23:25.400government is to insist that they have the right to apply it within the province and not only where
00:23:33.000the project concern crosses a provincial boundary well the second they start doing that that is
00:23:38.680where the sovereignty act kicks in and then it'll be up to the federal government to sue
00:23:44.680so that buys time and as we're talking about election uh expectations i mean i think a lot
00:23:52.680of this is predicated on the on the hope that there would be a change of government in auto
00:23:57.400in a couple of years time we just got to get there you know i also note uh our energy reporter sean
00:24:03.720polster this week has churned out several stories norway makes the biggest oil discovery in 10 years
00:24:09.720you know expectations of crude oil barrels of crude oil a day you know going up over the next
00:24:15.880decades significantly natural gas uh britain signed a huge deal with the united states to
00:24:22.280import natural gas you know and of course we're sitting here with and germany of course and and
00:24:27.000and germany there's no business case for canadian gas in germany right so the rest of the world
00:24:31.720seems to be heading one way canada seems to be heading the other way and i'm not sure we're
00:24:36.920heading the right way yeah well they're facing reality in the other parts of the world i mean
00:24:40.440I mean, the part that they've realized, but it really brought it into focus with the Ukraine war, with the dependency on Russian gas and the realization that demand isn't going away.
00:24:52.480Despite what all we've been scolded and lectured for over the last couple of decades on oil and gas, we still, world demand is growing for it.
00:27:26.040Yeah, you know, and even if nothing ever happens, the fear factor in there is the possibility
00:27:31.960that something like that could happen. It just chases people out of Canada and off to places
00:27:38.120like Norway, which don't have that same policy set and have a very different view of the world.
00:27:45.960Well, getting back kind of a bit to the unity as these intractable battles happen,
00:27:51.640we seem to see natural allies developing between Daniel Smith and Premier Moe in BC. It's a little
00:27:57.720different than with the other... Saskatchewan. Sorry, Saskatchewan is a little different than
00:28:01.320when BC used to be actually quite regionalist, but aside from northeast BC and the interior,
00:28:06.600David Eby doesn't have much interest in allying with Premier Smith and Moe. And Manitoba supports
00:28:14.040kind of a swing, I guess you could call it. But you can see a battle with a block, like there's
00:28:19.880There's been a lot of discussion of having a utility corridor going to Hudson's Bay, perhaps, for example.
00:28:24.920Now, that would cross provincial borders, so it would be the federal's, you know, government's role to give a thumbs up or thumbs down.
00:28:31.100But if they give a thumbs down, if there really is a serious proposal to do that, again, I think the rage on the prairies is going to be pretty strong.
00:28:37.520Well, I think that's coming. I think the Hudson Bay route, I think you'll see more developments on that in the next, before the end of the month.
00:28:47.000And I think that's going to be a huge, huge story.
00:36:11.920All right, getting into something less funny.
00:36:13.880And back to the federal government, but not as regional.
00:36:17.560This is still pretty directly affects us.
00:36:20.020That's Bill C-18 and Ottawa's strategic withdrawal in this fight for democracy.
00:36:26.540Yeah, it was you knew it was going to come or some form of it was going to come because the government had said no to, you know,
00:36:35.440giving huge amounts of cash or asking for a huge amount of cash from Google and Meta for Facebook.
00:36:41.680And the law passed, and those two tech giants said, oh, we're cutting off your news supply.
00:36:48.420And, of course, everybody started to panic about that, because most Canadians probably do get their news through Google searches or Facebook posts and threads that they click on.
00:36:59.840So last week, the minister responsible, Pablo Rodriguez, put out a statement.
00:37:09.280Well, actually, he didn't put out a statement.
00:37:10.600his department put out a statement basically backtracking bottom line is google may be okay
00:37:19.640facebook meta likely not but they're open to more more negotiations and i think we're we're
00:37:29.000we're months away he said we're months away from implementing you know this anyways so there's
00:37:34.040still lots of time for lots more developments in their liberals effort to kill off the news industry0.95
00:37:39.560Well, you can totally understand where Meta was coming from,
00:37:43.020that they have absolutely no control over what will turn out to be a very significant cost.
00:37:51.420Every time they click, it's another royalty going to the newspapers.
00:37:59.960And if you are in business, there is no way that you would tolerate a cost
00:38:06.760that you couldn't control that you had no idea excuse me that'll be just it would have been
00:38:16.520a money loser and of course whatever happened here in canada they'd have been stuck with around the
00:38:21.840world and the thing the strong point for meta for facebook is that they're in the business of
00:38:28.300supplying content it doesn't have to be news you know how many people actually uh everybody who
00:38:36.660everybody who goes on facebook needs to just sort of have a moment of self-reflection here
00:38:41.660yes i went on to read the news i ended up looking at kitten pictures so they have the kitten pictures
00:38:50.960they have the beauty they have the sports they they they have the sort of the real life stuff
00:38:57.720the entertainment and the fashion and everything else why do you think we started putting those
00:39:03.560things on the front pages of newspapers in the skyboxes because we knew that
00:39:07.560was actually celebrity slobber that drew people so uh they can do that they do not need to claim
00:39:14.920to impress well everybody that's the nature of facebook that's what they seem to have forgotten
00:39:19.240everybody's a content producer the the guy taking the picture of his food bowl and putting up there
00:39:25.160is a content producer the guy sharing the little video of his niece with her first steps is a
00:39:31.240content producer that's what generates it it doesn't mean that those people are stealing
00:39:36.680something from facebook and that's the language they used i mean you can see why facebook dug in
00:39:40.120you know i mean that's going to be really insulting so we're providing this giving you
00:39:45.160a platform to share these things and reach wider and we have this government turn around and accuse
00:39:50.280us of stealing from them i guarantee if if you were to take a if you could get an accurate measure
00:39:58.200on a news story uh today of how many people read it and you took the measurement of how many read
00:40:05.080it on print and how many read it on facebook and you wait until a year after this legislation has
00:40:13.480taken taken effect with facebook not being part of the action you'd still have that little bit
00:40:22.360of print that still goes out perhaps a little guarantees but let's hope and there would be
00:40:29.240nothing so total readership is going to go down and that's not helping corey had an excellent
00:40:36.360interview today on his show with peter menzies uh former crtc vice chair and and publisher of
00:40:42.840the herald and he said yeah basically the news industry has to find a way to survive
00:40:47.960and that way to survive is is for people for outlets like ourselves is through memberships and
00:40:55.080and subscriptions so we have to provide something that they people can't get anywhere else yeah
00:41:02.280exactly and we have to people have to get in their mind that if you want good um accurate not fake
00:41:10.760news you may have to pay for it and people are right now cannot get that around their mind a
00:41:17.960few years ago they had no problem paying 10 bucks a month uh and having the door to you know having
00:41:23.560the paper delivered every morning uh but they're unwilling to pay 10 bucks a month to get the same
00:41:29.480sort of access on on their computer or on on their phone or tablet uh so that's sort of the mentality
00:41:37.080that the news industry has to be leading the change on i think to be fair some people are
00:41:43.000willing to pay that and that's what we've found you know with the western standard it's a business
00:41:48.120like anything else once you've convinced a person that there is something behind that paywall that's
00:41:53.000worth ten dollars a month to me they will which you guys should subscribe and take out that ten
00:41:58.200dollars a month to help support the western standard and other independent outlets i mean
00:42:02.200that's the way it's going the government's fighting that anyways we're inspired to make
00:42:05.960sure we're providing products that they don't feel disappointment in their investment I guess
00:42:10.200you could say into that and and it's worked but rather than with the global mail to a degree with
00:42:14.920their paywalls I mean I think they've actually been doing a little well fiscally relative to
00:42:18.920some of the other publications New York Times yeah so this is a formula that can work this can be done
00:42:25.560without shaking down the social media platforms yeah I'd say I noticed the uh the deal between
00:42:34.120Post Media and Thorstar has gone south. So it can be done, but not everybody's doing it. I would
00:42:42.780have to conclude. I'm not sure if that was Post Media's last hope to avoid bankruptcy, but, you
00:42:50.120know, they are a struggling corporation at the moment. They have no active newsrooms, like in
00:42:56.200Alberta, for example. Well, we're the only one that actually has a newsroom, except for maybe
00:43:01.200the cbc uh everybody else has their handful of reporters working from their basements so you
00:43:07.760know it's uh it is an industry in major flux there's no doubt about it it has been for uh
00:43:13.680for several years and we're approaching the the crisis point the tipping point and uh you know the
00:43:21.280it's like a battle of nature the you know the strong will survive and the weak will perish
00:43:25.360Well, I just want to say, part of what seemed to happen too was the government was shocked
00:43:30.880as somebody stood up to them. I mean, the indignant rage coming from the Prime Minister
00:43:36.320and the Heritage Minister over this, like they were just shocked that their bluff got called,
00:43:41.520shocked that Google and Meta weren't bluffing. They said, we just won't carry it.
00:43:45.760Well, they were describing it as a fight of the century and, you know,
00:43:48.560Canadians to the ramparts. World War II comparisons and everything, you know.
00:43:52.880I don't know, was it Peter said in his little piece something about it took them a week to go from invoking Dunkirk and D-Day in the defense of democracy to negotiating the terms of their own surrender.