Western Standard - December 24, 2020


The Pipeline： December 23, 2020. How violent is lockdown enforcement going to get？


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

137.44604

Word count

5,137

Sentence count

235


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
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00:01:00.000 .
00:01:30.000 .
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00:03:00.000 Amen.
00:03:30.000 Welcome to the Pipeline, Western Standard's weekly public affairs program. I'm Derek
00:03:38.600 Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard. Joining me today in the top right of your screen
00:03:44.560 from top to bottom is Western Standard podcast editor and columnist, Corey Morgan. Good day,
00:03:50.380 Cory. Good afternoon. Joining us from an undisclosed bunker somewhere. Ken Grafton,
00:04:00.100 Ottawa Bureau Chief for the Western Standard, joining me from the Den of Lions itself. G'day,
00:04:07.420 Ken. Hi, Derek. How are you? Very good. And in the bottom right corner, bottom, but on the screen,
00:04:17.080 but not in reality, Dave Naylor. Let's move him up. Dave Naylor, news editor of the Western
00:04:23.540 Standard, joining us from Vancouver. How are you doing, Dave?
00:04:26.980 I'm good, Derek. It's always good to be on top.
00:04:29.760 Very good. All right. Well, today we're going to be going through a lot of what's happening
00:04:35.260 across the West here and in Ottawa, of course, involving the West. We're going to be talking
00:04:40.940 about uh enforcement of lockdowns now turning violent um in the particular case capturing the
00:04:49.740 attention of westerners and many across canada is the arrest of uh a man for playing a game of
00:04:57.260 pickup hockey in calgary and the rather farcical and violent uh ensuing uh arrest uh that took
00:05:05.900 place from there we're gonna we're gonna get into that and parse it uh we're gonna talk about the
00:05:11.980 1300 1 300 flights that have come to canada since september that have had covid positive passengers
00:05:19.980 on it uh what has been happening with that and why the hell is that happening well we're not
00:05:25.420 allowed to celebrate christmas and uh we'll talk about uh the uh covet bailout that's taking place
00:05:34.060 and programs that are there for businesses.
00:05:36.920 Why is the Bank of China, SNC-Lavalin, and the weed charity
00:05:40.680 getting money from taxpayers right now?
00:05:43.700 We're going to get into that as well.
00:05:45.240 So we're going to start right here in the West.
00:05:49.080 I'm obviously coming to you from Calgary.
00:05:50.960 The scene of the latest lockdowns turning violent.
00:05:55.640 We had an extraordinary case here where a pair of Calgary police officers quite terribly attempted to use force
00:06:10.960 to take down a skinny 21-year-old pickup hockey player, and it went pretty terribly.
00:06:17.740 We're going to have Dave set it up in a second, but first we're going to bear with us.
00:06:21.640 we're uh new on this part of the technology but we're going to try and show you the video
00:06:25.640 uh very quickly here
00:06:41.880 well screw that that is not working um but there that's our first and last attempt for now uh maybe
00:06:51.000 people try to show you but many of you have already seen it this uh the video of this has
00:06:54.520 gone absolutely viral um sorry i think we got a little bit frozen here uh dave why don't you uh
00:07:03.240 tell us what what the heck happened here uh why was this man arrested and how did the whole thing
00:07:09.640 go down ain't technology uh great when it doesn't work uh derek uh this all happened uh thursday
00:07:16.920 afternoon in the southwest calvary community of southwood i know it very well my kids grew up in
00:07:23.320 in that neighborhood and they've been to that outdoor rink many a time uh thursday afternoon
00:07:28.440 there was an outdoor game of shinny going on some neighbor called the snitch line and the bylaw
00:07:35.080 arrived and tried to persuade the group to leave they didn't uh so the the cops were called uh
00:07:42.520 cops arrived uh oh there you go the video is uh working now so i'll just uh uh let you watch it
00:07:55.000 it's not a gun it's a taser and he's under arrest and i have the authority
00:08:01.400 we'll just leave it alone let's go
00:08:12.520 What are you doing
00:08:42.520 or sparks
00:08:51.080 right now
00:08:59.800 ocean just get off the ice
00:09:12.520 What are you guys doing?
00:09:14.520 What are you guys doing?
00:09:16.520 Guys, they're trying to get the clients to get a picture back off, okay?
00:09:20.520 Tease, tease, tease.
00:09:22.520 What are you doing?
00:09:24.520 What are you doing?
00:09:26.520 Stop! Stop!
00:09:28.520 Just let him go!
00:09:30.520 Let him take off his skates!
00:09:32.520 Let him take off his skates!
00:09:34.520 Let him take off his skates!
00:09:36.520 Why are you guys doing this?
00:09:38.520 so as you can see there derek it uh it turned into a bit of a fiasco uh gentleman involved
00:10:05.400 was called Ocean Wiesblatt, comes from a family of young hockey players. His brother was the
00:10:12.280 first round draft choice this year for the San Jose Sharks. Another brother plays for the Calgary
00:10:18.460 Hitmen, all raised by a single mother who happens to be deaf. And her struggles were featured on
00:10:25.120 an intermission of a hometown hockey on Rogers this hockey season. So one of the readers was
00:10:34.140 everybody seems to have seen the video and everybody's got their opinion of it
00:10:38.400 it's exploded on social media certainly exploded on our site people say ocean
00:10:45.320 was you know got what he deserved he's charged with resisting arrest obstruction
00:10:51.440 and reaching the peace order lots of mockery about the police as you saw in
00:11:00.420 video repeated knees and profane threats of a tasering those police actions are being criticized
00:11:09.380 the police chief himself held a press conference earlier this week to to address the issue
00:11:16.500 some some of his family today we did a story that's on the website right now a family branch
00:11:21.780 in ontario issued a statement saying ocean was foolish and should have just listened to the
00:11:27.620 officers. So it's John Carpe of the Canadian Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the Justice
00:11:36.500 Centre, talking to him yesterday, or the day before, I'm sorry, and he said it was an affront
00:11:42.320 to human dignity, that arrest, and certainly getting a lot of attention. Police have a lot
00:11:47.340 of explaining to do, and it was bad scenes all around.
00:11:51.960 Thank you, Dave. So as you can see from the video there, it was
00:11:56.380 quite an arrest. We can only imagine how much worse this would have been if he was an actual
00:12:02.180 criminal and had actually done something to resist besides standing up. Quite a bizarre scene.
00:12:09.000 I'm not very steady on skates. You know, I was out skidding on the weekend. I didn't get tased
00:12:14.820 thankfully, but I'm a lot less steady on my feet on the ice. He didn't push back. He didn't wrestle.
00:12:22.060 he just essentially tried to stay standing. And two police officers, ostensibly trained in force,
00:12:29.900 couldn't take him down. They were kicking at the backs of his knees. I think, you know,
00:12:35.980 maybe we should do a crowd, some crowdsourcing to get these cops some karate training or jujitsu or
00:12:41.980 something. They couldn't seem to take this guy down. And he's not, you know, he's not exactly
00:12:49.500 someone who would play enforcer for the flames uh he's not a big guy um but no what if you
00:12:55.020 when you see in the video one of the one of the officers actually took a tumble onto the ice
00:12:59.740 uh during the struggle so i'm sure that made them uh them even angrier and when they did get ocean
00:13:05.820 down to the ground they actually cut his skates off uh you know that's uh that's the kind of mood
00:13:12.220 they were in they wouldn't let him take his own skates off and they actually cut him off and uh
00:13:17.180 dragged him away to jail uh i guess in his walking feet yeah uh so it was quite an extraordinary
00:13:23.420 scene uh we'll get in maybe to the appropriateness of it but obviously the uh the police officers
00:13:28.140 became extremely agitated when he would not uh respect their authority uh you can almost picture
00:13:36.300 a south park episode out of this one um uh and their frustration at their inability to uh tackle
00:13:44.140 this skinny guy to the ground over quite a period of time. We only showed you half the video.
00:13:50.860 I mean, there's still another half where this goes on and on and on. But then, you know,
00:13:56.080 their frustration leads them to draw a pretty serious non-lethal weapon, a taser on this kid.
00:14:03.440 Corey, maybe you want to speak to maybe the professional, maybe tell us some of the reaction
00:14:09.140 about the professionalism of these police, how they handled it. Let's just assume the guy's
00:14:16.440 wrong. Just for the sake of argument here, we're going to say Ocean is a bad guy and deserved to
00:14:21.900 be arrested. Maybe just speak about how the police handled it, even in that context.
00:14:27.600 Well, sure. Well, if they really knew how to handle his case, they would have pulled his
00:14:30.580 jersey over the back of his head, and they could have brought him down a lot faster,
00:14:33.700 clearly they have time on the ice. But being serious like this, this was a circumstance if
00:14:40.420 this had been a dangerous individual. You know, it's a bit of a more sensitive issue,
00:14:45.880 but those were also two small female police officers. And while he wasn't a large rampaging
00:14:52.840 criminal, they had some more challenges in trying for a physical takedown than other officers might.
00:14:59.680 When we're talking in such a time when there's been so much tension with police forces and
00:15:03.600 escalating situations. It really should have been, if they didn't feel they could get this
00:15:07.900 in a reasonable manner, maybe they should have, again, just called for more help to come in
00:15:11.760 and tried to talk it down. But when you get in and start physically wrestling, then yeah,
00:15:16.280 one of them fell to the ground. She got more upset. And then they move on to the taser because
00:15:20.880 they're feeling they physically can't cope with this by hand. So they felt they had to move on
00:15:26.920 to the taser, which can be quite dangerous, actually. I mean, they're less lethal force
00:15:31.380 methods they aren't harmless and again the optics are just awful i mean what do you want young
00:15:36.500 people to do right now they're cooped up they're stressed they're they're getting upset and there's
00:15:42.460 you know you can't get much healthier than just getting out and doing some some skating and this
00:15:46.760 is what they crack down on so it's just been an ugly scene all around and another thing that
00:15:51.460 didn't show on that video but at one point the police got into the faces of the kids who were
00:15:54.820 videoing it and that's another problem and that's upsetting because it you know if we don't document
00:16:00.240 these things, we don't know what happened. And that's, you know, it's been covered before. You
00:16:06.180 have every right to film officers when something's going on, whether they like it or not. So don't
00:16:09.700 back off if they get in your face when you're doing so. Just stay out of the way, of course.
00:16:15.220 Indeed. So I think it's hard to make an argument that these officers handled themselves correctly,
00:16:23.780 in addition to their complete lack of any martial ability or physical ability to deal with
00:16:30.180 this guy. Their composure was wildly off screaming, I'll fucking taser you. Wild stuff. But in
00:16:39.520 addition to their comportment and their abilities to do their job, let's talk about the appropriateness
00:16:46.820 of this. You know, I think what this has done, I think what Ocean Weisblot has maybe unwittingly
00:16:54.380 exposed here, is that every law, the good ones and the bad ones, are backed by the threat of violence.
00:17:06.960 If you kill someone, there's a threat of violence that the police will come and get you. That's a
00:17:10.400 good thing. You don't pay your taxes. You'll get letters, and eventually, if you refuse to comply
00:17:16.480 with taxes, men with guns will come, and they will put you in prison. And now, for something like
00:17:21.840 this, you know, if you don't respect, you know, the UCP's lockdown here, men and women with guns
00:17:31.820 will come and they will use violence on you if you do not comply. And I, you know, the officers
00:17:38.000 here repeatedly refused to answer his questions about what he was being charged with. They just
00:17:42.620 said, you're breaking the law, you're breaking health orders or something, but they couldn't
00:17:45.660 cite the law. And it's a pretty well-established constitutional principle in free countries,
00:17:50.760 including Canada, that the police, you know, if it's not imminently dangerous, if you're not
00:17:56.120 pointing a gun at the cops, or at a hostage or something, and you ask what I'm being charged
00:18:01.580 with, they have to tell you, if they don't, you don't have an obligation to comply. That is a
00:18:06.140 police state. You don't have an obligation to provide your identification to the police just
00:18:11.460 because they asked it, unless they have indicated what you're being charged with. Again, that's a
00:18:17.040 police state. In fact, it was very specifically just outlawed by the UCP government in Alberta
00:18:22.060 a little over a month ago, carding, because it was used disproportionately against minority
00:18:27.400 groups. And so it was quite rightfully banned. But what we're seeing here now is a lockdown
00:18:34.520 being enforced by people with guns. And God knows how far this would have gone.
00:18:41.360 Derek, these are, well, I think what we have to remember is these are tense situations.
00:18:49.260 Police Chief Newfield at his press conference said, police don't want to be doing this.
00:18:53.640 They have better things to be doing.
00:18:55.640 And he's seeing more and more emotional, tense scenes.
00:19:01.280 More than 500 Calgarians have snitched on their neighbors.
00:19:05.140 And these are Calgarians who think that the health laws are being broken.
00:19:10.720 And for the most part, they're probably right, they are broken.
00:19:15.440 There were other cops at that scene in Southwood, but they were more concerned about keeping
00:19:20.220 the crowd back, keeping the cameras back from filming.
00:19:25.540 Instead of going to help their colleagues, they were trying to maintain crowd control.
00:19:31.560 And those sort of emotions have come into play during the downtown weekend protests
00:19:36.600 were for the first time there were actual arrests last week and things got a little bit violent
00:19:43.080 but their their fear is inciting the crowd into into greater violence certainly the downtown case
00:19:50.680 is a lot more significant when you've got hundreds of people as opposed to you know half a dozen young
00:19:57.080 men who armed with hockey sticks but you know as you can tell it was tense the cops were tense
00:20:02.920 they made the situation worse with their threats and their their knees and their and their failed
00:20:08.120 takedown but i don't think the police go into these situations lightly i don't think they want
00:20:12.920 to be there and i think they're you're at the point now where they understand people are fed up
00:20:18.440 and they understand every time they go into one of these things there is a potential for it to go
00:20:23.160 so absolutely it's um you know i think i want to talk about maybe some of the hypocrisy around
00:20:34.120 some of this uh you had guys like uh mayor naheed nenshi when the blm protests were taking place
00:20:41.880 uh just a few uh months ago uh or during the summer and uh you know some of the people there
00:20:48.280 would be wearing masks some of them not some of them with social distance some of them not
00:20:51.960 And you didn't hear him say boo about it. I did a pretty extensive search online for his comments. The only comment I could find from Nenshi was that these people should just get a COVID test when it's all done.
00:21:03.200 Now you have protests, so not just people playing hockey, but people actively protesting, exercising their right to free speech and free assembly, being arrested.
00:21:14.100 And you have Nahid Nanchi calling them idiots, calling them selfish, calling them fools, saying that they should be arrested.
00:21:22.620 Well, what's the difference?
00:21:23.640 Now, there are differences in the only difference really is the protest, what the protest is about.
00:21:29.340 These protests are against lockdowns.
00:21:31.900 some of them are against masks not all but uh they're against lockdowns they're against people
00:21:35.740 losing their livelihood they're against the government controlling what you can do in the
00:21:39.740 space of your own private home and that is apparently foolish and selfish uh but uh
00:21:48.140 but apparently uh protesting to defund the police is uh is is just fine uh corey how do you think
00:21:55.580 both Mayor Nenshi in Calgary has handled it, Don Iverson in Edmonton, and then some of the other
00:22:02.540 prominent politicians, do you think they've been particularly consistent in this going through?
00:22:07.620 Well, consistent, I guess, somewhat, yeah, but, you know, they're in a position if a bylaw has
00:22:16.640 been set, they should expect people to abide by it and encourage people to abide by it,
00:22:22.460 But as you said, that chiding, you know, a scolding almost that they've been giving, this isn't helping.
00:22:29.660 You know, people, again, are tense.
00:22:31.680 They're upset.
00:22:33.800 And to be, you know, having their finger wagged at them by the mayor and such on these things is not going to make them feel any more inclined to be compliant.
00:22:40.940 I mean, you know, I've had my run-ins of Ninchy and by law enforcement in the past when they had the incident in Olympic Plaza.
00:22:48.700 And I tell you, Ninchy's scolding wasn't going to make me any more likely to come out of the park that day.
00:22:54.500 It was negotiation with officers.
00:22:57.120 So they're really handling this poorly.
00:22:58.840 And things are going to get more tense as time goes by.
00:23:00.840 So I hope they really reevaluate how they're coming at this.
00:23:04.220 I'm not saying necessarily that they would drop the laws, but they've got to be a little careful with their enforcement.
00:23:10.540 Indeed.
00:23:11.420 Well, sorry.
00:23:13.980 Is there a feedback on here?
00:23:15.840 Okay, well, everyone, just watch your mics for feedback.
00:23:20.800 All right, well, we're going to move on now.
00:23:25.260 I'm quite taken with the story.
00:23:27.200 Just incredible to see police, not just the unprofessionalism of it, but the, you know, let's just remember here, while the police officers themselves may have bungled this and made an ass to themselves,
00:23:41.120 what they were doing overall, arresting someone for playing hockey.
00:23:46.620 The fault is not necessarily with the police.
00:23:49.060 It is with the politicians that order them to do so.
00:23:52.340 They are following orders, and I'm just following orders.
00:23:54.980 It's not always the greatest defense, and there is accountability for their own actions.
00:23:59.680 But let's remember, they are acting on the orders of their superiors,
00:24:03.860 and their superiors are acting on the orders of the politicians.
00:24:06.920 It is the politicians who have ordered the lockdown who are ultimately responsible for people
00:24:10.840 being treated with violence for disagreeing with it.
00:24:16.000 But we're going to turn now to maybe somewhere
00:24:19.840 where the government isn't doing enough, kind of bizarrely.
00:24:22.680 You know, they're arresting people for playing hockey.
00:24:24.400 They're arresting people for protesting against lockdowns.
00:24:28.740 They say they're going to arrest you
00:24:30.520 if you have people over for Christmas who are not single.
00:24:35.200 But we have 1,300 flights that have come into Canada since September
00:24:39.960 that have had people who have tested positive for COVID aboard it.
00:24:44.680 Let's go to Ken Grafton, our Ottawa Bureau Chief, for what exactly is happening there.
00:24:50.520 Yeah, Derek, this story came out when the website was put up by Health Canada.
00:24:57.080 It's a searchable website that lists all of the flights that have come into Canada where
00:25:03.240 subsequently a COVID passenger has been identified. And I think, you know, obviously it sounds bad
00:25:14.520 when we say 1300 COVID flights arrived or departed from Canada. I think for the most part what is
00:25:23.480 happening is those people are being subsequently identified and traced back to that flight.
00:25:30.280 so um you know it's actually 2 000 flights if you go back to uh i believe it's march uh this year
00:25:42.760 okay um yeah i mean a lot of flights do come in let's uh we won't exaggerate it uh it is a
00:25:50.440 considering how many flights come in and out of canada it is not a great number but still
00:25:54.440 1,300 flights of people coming over. You know, governments in Canada have been rather trigger
00:26:00.320 happy in locking Canadians down in their own homes and restricting them from going to restaurants
00:26:06.440 or playing hockey in an open-air pond. But they've been pretty hesitant, I think, about
00:26:12.940 controlling flights from hot areas. Remember, you know, Donald Trump originally put in a
00:26:19.500 flight ban from China, particularly from Wuhan province, and that was considered racist.
00:26:24.440 Ken, do we have any idea where these flights are coming from that have tested positive for COVID?
00:26:33.400 It's everywhere, Derek, basically, and all over Canada for departing flights as well.
00:26:40.240 So these are global passengers.
00:26:42.760 And of course, the problem is we can't really, there's no method for determining exactly how many infections occurred on the plane, if any.
00:26:54.440 But obviously, if there's someone with COVID on an enclosed space like an aircraft, and the aircraft has 250 or 300 people on it, that's potentially the number of affections that could have occurred.
00:27:10.900 So what is the government doing about it?
00:27:13.520 We're still not testing people entering Canada for COVID-19.
00:27:18.580 There's no testing at the border, period.
00:27:20.380 and you know as a an earlier article this week 5.3 million estimated travelers have entered
00:27:29.020 canada without quarantining so it's not really surprising that uh covert is coming into the
00:27:36.540 country now health canada is also telling us that at this present time the infection rate
00:27:42.780 from international travelers is low um i think it's one percent or something like that whereas
00:27:48.860 Because early on, you will recall, it was quite high and initially the almost sole source
00:27:56.420 of infection.
00:27:57.420 Yeah.
00:27:58.420 I think, Derek, that air travel was the reason the pandemic, the initial pandemic spread
00:28:05.900 so quickly.
00:28:06.900 I mean, you've got somebody who's in China, could be in New York City the next day.
00:28:11.840 Now the big concern is the mutant virus that's popped up in southern England and countries
00:28:17.480 around the world are blocking air traffic to and from the united kingdom well i'm sorry but that
00:28:24.200 horse has already left the barn uh in the last week or so just imagine the number of people
00:28:29.880 that have flown out of the united kingdom to various points in the world potentially with
00:28:34.440 this mutant virus it's already showing up in uh in italy and south africa and dr tam the canadian
00:28:43.960 medical officer of health says no no cases in canada yet but uh dollars to donuts they're coming
00:28:52.040 indeed okay let's uh we're gonna turn our attention uh also more craziness in ottawa
00:28:58.680 we've got um now we've got reports uh well the federal government has published uh what companies
00:29:06.120 in canada have received uh bailout emergency bailout dollars from the coven shutdowns
00:29:11.720 Bailouts are always terrible. They're always bad. Although in this particular case, you know, some assistance might be required because the government's actions in shutting things down. Some things are not the government's fault. I mean, I think some reasonable travel restrictions internationally, some basic social distancing.
00:29:29.720 but when they're shutting down businesses, they can't hurt, although it's been small businesses
00:29:34.440 that have been by far disproportionately hurt. But there have been some interesting recipients
00:29:38.760 of COVID bailout dollars from the federal government. Ken, why don't you tell us,
00:29:44.600 who's been getting money from the taxpayers in Ottawa right now?
00:29:47.880 Well, I guess the three most interesting ones, Derek, are the Bank of China,
00:29:53.240 um snc level and then uh we charity so um the bank of china for example posted a close to 35
00:30:05.080 profit in the third quarter of 2020 it's one of the four largest banks in the world
00:30:13.240 and all the four top banks in the world are chinese banks
00:30:17.560 um you know billions of dollars in assets and uh it's very difficult to conceive with
00:30:24.760 those sorts of performance numbers that this company was in any way
00:30:30.360 um unduly stressed by the covet 19 virus now i think the benefits went to the uh bank of china
00:30:39.320 of Canada, which is encorted in Markham in the GTA.
00:30:45.720 But that is a call for taxpayers, particularly in the state that we're in right now, to think
00:30:52.840 that we're subsidizing one of the four largest banks in the world who's posting exorbitant
00:30:58.020 profits in the middle of this global pandemic.
00:31:01.640 And, of course, the other two that have no residency lablet and We Charity, notable for
00:31:09.260 their political notoriety since last year.
00:31:15.120 We Charity is interesting because they've left Canada or announced that they're leaving
00:31:20.480 Canada.
00:31:21.480 So, you know, the taxpayers have been subsidizing a registered charity, which some of the investigation
00:31:29.880 went on to We Charity suggested was primarily a real estate investment company. They've been
00:31:38.040 subsidizing this company and for the purpose of keeping jobs and now the company has left
00:31:44.840 left Canada entirely or is leaving Canada entirely. SNC-Lavalin as well is a global joint
00:31:51.880 in engineering and construction, and it's probably capable of paying their own bills.
00:31:58.040 Yeah. Corey, obviously the federal government's handing out a lot of cash right now. It's
00:32:05.880 running deficits that are far in excess of even previous records set by Stephen Harper during the
00:32:13.160 2008 financial crisis, or William Lyon McKenzie during the Second World War, or Robert Borden
00:32:19.800 during the first world war uh you know so i i suppose at this point the federal government
00:32:25.320 might just not care about how much money is going out uh these programs though are set up not as
00:32:30.600 targeted bailouts like you see for bombardier or gm every few years uh these are kind of more of an
00:32:38.120 open door application program that anyone can apply for um do you think that uh there's going
00:32:46.280 going to be any kind of political fallout from the liberals being seen to give money to the Bank
00:32:52.820 of China, SNC-Lavalin wheat charity, or do you think this is just going to be another thing that
00:32:58.560 they can brush off? I wish there'd be bigger fallout, but I think it'll be something they'll
00:33:03.840 just brush off again. I mean, they've brushed off so much already and gotten away with impunity.
00:33:10.000 And as can be said, I mean, SNC-Lavalin, I mean, it's clearly a bit of a corrupted, parasitic type of company, much like Bombardier and some of the others.
00:33:18.780 And they have a sense of entitlement and they're going to take tax dollars however and whenever they can.
00:33:23.460 And they use liberal connections to do it.
00:33:25.440 But at the same time, they are employing people and they probably are suffering from the COVID fallout and government lockdowns like anyone else, like any other company.
00:33:34.580 And if you're going to give to one company, you can't start slicing and dicing.
00:33:38.080 I think the bigger fallout, though, is going to come when we start auditing where all the money is.
00:33:43.400 This is just the tip of the iceberg.
00:33:45.020 I mean, the Liberals have just been throwing money out there on essentially an honor system,
00:33:49.340 and we know it's been taken advantage of, whether down to the individual levels on CERB or many, many of these companies.
00:33:55.440 And something that's going to be really interesting is all those no-interest loans with the forgivable $10,000 that were thrown out there as well.
00:34:04.220 Our numbers are going to be horrific when we start digging into it for real.
00:34:09.080 All right.
00:34:11.080 Well, before we wrap up, I'll just open the floor up if anyone else has anything to add on any of the topics we've covered today.
00:34:18.920 Well, I'd like to agree with Corey on that.
00:34:21.920 It's difficult to envision this having any more impact than any of the other scandals that the Trudeau liberals have gotten away with to date.
00:34:33.060 So I think this picture is going to get much larger.
00:34:36.480 And in the end, I think it's not going to have that much impact.
00:34:42.780 All right.
00:34:45.060 Well, I want to thank everyone for tuning in today.
00:34:48.060 Especially we want to, well, actually, before we go, we have a little bit of breaking to do.
00:34:52.140 We have had our first one million reader month.
00:34:56.940 Western Standard in December has beaten our all-time record.
00:35:01.220 And we have now hit a million readers just this December, an absolutely incredible number
00:35:08.700 I'm very proud of.
00:35:10.740 I want to thank the staff, our writers at Western Standard, in particular, news editor
00:35:16.320 Dave Mailer, who's driven so much of this.
00:35:19.300 We've actually now hit 1.1 million since we put that graphic together.
00:35:23.280 We had our goal of having our first million reader month this fiscal year.
00:35:27.500 That is October to October.
00:35:28.720 We hit it right in December.
00:35:30.620 So we're going to have to move the goalposts again.
00:35:32.280 We're going to need our first 2 million reader month at some point this fiscal year for us.
00:35:38.340 So absolutely fantastic.
00:35:40.200 So I want to thank our members who are really the bedrock of the Western Standard.
00:35:44.760 We want to thank you from the bottom of our heart for your support.
00:35:47.120 If you enjoy the Western Standard, if you think it's important to have independent Western media that refuse to take government bailouts, please consider becoming a member.
00:35:55.860 Go to WesternStandardOnline.com, click on the membership section, sign up.
00:35:59.820 For just a couple bucks a month, you can help to support having a genuinely free press that doesn't take the Trudeau media bailout money.
00:36:08.540 And that makes a big difference in our press coverage.
00:36:12.100 We're some of the very few media in the entire country that refuse to take government money.
00:36:17.600 So thank you very much for joining us today.
00:36:19.800 It's been a real pleasure.
00:36:20.620 And thank you, everybody, who's commented.
00:36:22.720 And just a reminder, if you're commenting and you like your comments on the screen, please don't type it in all caps.
00:36:28.020 All caps, we're not going to put up.
00:36:29.520 Please don't swear in it.
00:36:30.960 If you're swearing it, we're not going to put it up.
00:36:32.520 Shit, I suppose we say shit enough here.
00:36:34.860 We even dropped an F-bomb today, but we were quoting the Calgary Police Service.
00:36:39.860 And don't make your comments too long.
00:36:41.920 If they're going to fill up half the page and cover up my glorious beard, I'm sorry.
00:36:46.840 We're not going to cover my beard.
00:36:47.880 Your comments have to take up just a small part on the bottom of the page.
00:36:51.040 But we appreciate all the interaction from everybody today.
00:36:54.200 If you think this is important, make sure you like it, you share it,
00:36:56.960 get it out there for people to see.
00:36:58.360 But thank you very much for all your support and for joining us today.
00:37:02.300 God bless and Merry Christmas.
00:37:04.480 Merry Christmas, everyone.
00:37:06.000 Merry Christmas.
00:37:20.480 You