The government that stole Christmas is in full lockdown across the western provinces, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and the rest of the East. Christmas is canceled, and we're here to talk about it. Featuring: Western Standard News Editor Dave Naylor, Managing Editor Derek Fildebrand, and Editor-in-Chief Corey Morgan.
00:03:25.900Federal Finance Minister and pseudo-prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, warns that Canadians have too much money right now and that they need to spend it.
00:03:36.420Talking about ways that the government can unleash the heavy pockets of Canadians.
00:03:42.400And Krampus, the German Christmas monster, reigns terror in Calgary, terrifying people, leading to police calls from people with nothing better to do.
00:03:55.780So we're going to start with, I think it brings back to stealing Christmas, the government that stole Christmas.
00:04:04.200We've got lockdowns in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the rest of the East on the advice of Ottawa.
00:04:13.320Alberta now following the lead of British Columbia with a total and complete lockdown.
00:04:19.280Dave, why don't you tell our viewers what exactly is happening?
00:04:26.760And what does this really mean for the holidays?
00:04:30.500If you could talk about it in Alberta here, where it's probably getting the biggest news, but also across the West, where similar measures are now in place.
00:04:38.760Premier Kenney announced them last night, Derek, calling them, quote, dramatic measures.
00:04:45.460And what it means is basically the end to anything Christmassy in Alberta.
00:04:51.420Christmas gatherings in your home are now banned.
00:04:55.940Any outdoor activity whatsoever is banned.
00:04:59.940So there'll be no caroling through the streets of Stephen Avenue Mall.
00:05:06.880A lot of stuff mirrors the earlier lockdown that we had in the spring.
00:05:11.620Pubs and restaurants will be closed as of 12.01 on Sunday morning.
00:05:18.180They'll be closed for in-house dining and drinking.
00:05:22.800But curbside menu takeouts are still being allowed.
00:05:31.440He says that Alberta has handled the pandemic better than most jurisdictions.
00:05:37.980He's been under a lot of pressure to bring in more restrictions as the numbers have soared in Calgary recently.
00:05:45.680We're averaging, I think, about 1,700 a day, which is an absolutely incredible figure with a positivity rate of close to 10 o'clock.
00:05:57.640Casinos are now shut as our fitness centers, hair salons, any sort of personal service like that are closed.
00:06:06.080Bingo halls are closed, pool halls, legions.
00:06:11.000Malls are going to be allowed to remain open, but they're going to be cutting their capacity to only 15%.
00:06:17.440So that's going to mean some crazy Christmas shopping lineups.
00:06:21.480And I cannot even imagine what the lineup at Costco is going to be.
00:06:25.560It'll be several blocks long, I'm sure.
00:06:29.600That capacity limit is also in effect for funerals and weddings at a 10-person limit.
00:06:38.580They say that single people are allowed to have two contacts that they can have into their house, but those two contacts have to stay the same.
00:06:46.960Things like libraries, museums, galleries are all closed.
00:06:51.620You can still go skiing, though, if you want, as long as the resorts maintain the social distancing required.
00:07:00.200And Alberta has finally ordered a mandatory mask across the entire province.
00:07:06.260We were the last province to bring in those mandatory mask orders.
00:07:12.840Schools, there'll be no changes to the way it's operating.
00:07:17.400Grades 7 to 12 will still stay in homeschooling.
00:07:22.480And grades 1 through 6 will still continue to be allowed to have in-school progress.
00:07:29.260They did have an announcement that they're updating their small business grant program.
00:08:17.860I think these measures are pretty much what we're seeing right across the West.
00:08:21.160Obviously, we're more familiar with what's happening in Alberta here.
00:08:25.540But we're seeing a pretty much uniform set of lockdowns everywhere.
00:08:31.580Corey, Jason Kenney has been probably the most reticent of the premiers to impose these kinds of lockdowns, mandatory face masks and things like that.
00:08:41.780I'd like your take on why do you think, first, he held off on doing this, and second, why he is doing it now.
00:08:50.060Is it primarily he believes it's necessary, or is this caving to political pressure?
00:08:57.440Yeah, well, I mean, he's made it pretty clear.
00:09:02.460I mean, he wants, I think ideologically, he really does believe in trying to leave business alone as much as possible.
00:09:08.600He does understand we need to try and keep what little we can of this economy moving.
00:09:13.920And he understands that this is going to castrate and completely bankrupt a great number of businesses.
00:09:18.780But the political pressure became too much.
00:11:03.640But we're now seeing a policy dictated, I think, by polls.
00:11:08.200The mainstream media have been uniformly demanding lockdowns.
00:11:13.680Probably the most loud of these voices would be the Calgary Herald's Don Braid, who I think provides generally good political analysis as, you know, analysis of the landscape, the horse race, that kind of thing.
00:11:24.400But has been taking a particularly political and ideological track in his columns of late, saying that the premier will have blood on his hands for all of these deaths.
00:11:36.020You saw a reporter in a press conference with Jason Kinney.
00:11:39.700I forget which outlet was this, where that rather loaded question came, Dave?
00:11:56.100It's a preamble about why the government's so terrible.
00:11:59.620His question to the premier sounded very much like that.
00:12:02.700And I thought Jason Kinney was actually right in calling him out and saying that sounds more like an NDP question in the legislature than something that should come from the press.
00:12:12.040I think it's a case of where a reporter wants to be the story himself rather than the contents of the story.
00:12:17.500I'm trying to make a name for himself.
00:12:19.420And you saw the mainstream media kind of rally around this guy, where I think it was, you know, the question itself, when he finally got to a question, it's a fair question.
00:12:29.340You know, do you take responsibility for these deaths?
00:12:32.460I don't think the premier is responsible for it, but I think it's a fair question.
00:12:36.900But I think there's a little preamble around it.
00:12:38.920The media feel very righteous in what they're doing, and their line is indistinguishable from the NDPs right now.
00:12:45.340But it is funny, just roughly a week ago, it may have actually been exactly a week ago, we had Rachel Notley, she was on Danielle Smith's show, 770 CHQR, saying that bars and restaurants should be cut down.
00:12:58.700And Jason Kinney pilloried her for that statement.
00:13:03.700And one week later, if I'm not mistaken, this is now official government policy.
00:13:37.120If the answer is no or anything other than yes, close the door and have no for the conversation because you're not required to.
00:13:43.540But it is an extraordinary measure for the government to be telling people that they can't even have close family and friends over for Christmas in their own homes.
00:13:52.080But I think this is a case where politics has gotten the better of it.
00:13:56.400If Jason Kinney truly feels that while it's unfortunate but necessary for these actions, he should have stuck to it.
00:14:02.740Right now, we're kind of bouncing between Sweden and Ontario.
00:14:06.800We're going between extreme lockdown and having relatively more liberties.
00:14:12.760And we're getting the worst of both worlds.
00:14:15.480We're not getting deferred immunity that would come with a more laissez-faire model.
00:14:19.640And we're not getting the lack of transmission that you would get from a total lockdown.
00:14:24.560We're getting the worst of both worlds.
00:14:26.460So now we're likely to have a longer lockdown than something like Ontario.
00:14:31.180Lockdowns only work when everybody does it.
00:14:33.060And I don't think there's going to be that kind of compliance for it anymore.
00:14:35.460The governments across Canada and across the world have just lost the trust of their people to too much of a degree.
00:14:42.040But Alberta's been bouncing around from one extreme to another.
00:14:46.580And while it might be at one extreme very grudgingly, it's got to pick a lane.
00:14:50.480And I think we've got the worst of both worlds for that.
00:14:53.100And it's now cost us Christmas and could go well into the new year.
00:14:57.720Derek, you bring up a good point when you mention the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:15:01.980I was talking to John Carpe at the Calgary Rally.
00:15:06.600He's the head of the Canadian Centre for Constitutional Freedom.
00:15:11.400His group has now filed a lawsuit against the Alberta government,
00:15:16.260specifically looking at whether these measures are an infringement of the rights and freedoms.
00:15:23.760He says that lawsuits will also be coming before Christmas against the government in B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba.
00:15:33.460So he's taking his crusade across the country.
00:15:36.940And Premier Kenney actually briefly mentioned the Charter of Rights in his lockdown statement yesterday,
00:15:43.080saying, quote, unquote, some of the rights are, quote, being adjourned, unquote.
00:15:48.200So I don't think he feels overly comfortable with some of the measures himself.
00:15:53.360And it'll be interesting to see what the courts say.
00:22:11.780I mean, people aren't spending it, but that's due to necessity.
00:22:14.760Yeah, people are looking for different alternatives, you know, to get out.
00:22:20.520And that's why it was popular for everybody to go out for the Christmas trees.
00:22:24.280I watched that interview a couple of times.
00:22:26.360And, you know, I had to listen because the language is really important in that and what she was doing.
00:22:31.320You notice she also didn't just say Canadians are saving too much money.
00:22:34.260She said, made a point of saying the well off.
00:22:37.360Like she's playing the politics of envy.
00:22:39.620And the other thing she did in that interview was invite people, say, how can you, ideally people will just do it on their own.
00:22:47.200But if not, listeners, please let me know, how can we unlock that money?
00:22:53.060I mean, this is political, frightening political gamesmanship.
00:22:57.080I mean, if you're going to do something and then try and claim it's because it's the will of the people, this is exactly the crap you pull.
00:23:02.680You say, look, I invited people and they said what we should do is have a tax on these well-to-do people
00:23:07.400that are saving too much excess capital.
00:23:10.080You know, they're realizing that they're against the wall.
00:23:12.540They're realizing that the spending is unsustainable.
00:23:15.280They're realizing there's nothing going on to keep this economy rolling.
00:23:18.280And they're looking to where somebody might have some money squirreled away.
00:23:21.820And they're starting to play those games.
00:23:23.560If anything, it's a boom to cryptocurrencies and many other things.
00:23:27.000People are going to be scrambling to find ways to hide their money from this government
00:23:31.080because this is a desperate government that have spent themselves blind that are going to continue to do so.
00:23:36.520And they're going to come after our savings.
00:23:39.640You know, you hear that when they talk about inheritance taxes and going back into capital gains and things like that, too.
00:23:44.940They don't want us to build up too much and they're going to punish us for it.
00:23:47.700It was a very striking interview and distressing, to be honest.
00:23:51.840Well, I suppose Canadian governments, federal and provincial, have a very poor record when it comes to saving themselves.
00:23:59.260Most of the country are running deficits.
00:24:01.060The federal government, Alberta, are running record deficits.
00:24:05.380Record deficits doesn't even do it justice.
00:24:07.360These are far beyond even previous record deficits, even adjusted for inflation and GDP relative to the First and Second World Wars.
00:24:15.840We're going to take on more debt this year than it took to fight Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler.
00:24:22.020You know, these are staggering sums of money.
00:24:25.360And governments like the idea of borrowing and spending and not saving for themselves.
00:24:30.900Now it seems to be the official government policy.
00:24:33.540This is what they want to see elsewhere.
00:24:35.000Not that it's anything necessarily new.
00:24:39.940But governments have been incentivizing borrowing and spending and punishing savings for a long time by debasing the currency, by printing free money to go to major chartered banks.
00:24:54.160This is policy across most of the Western world, not just in Canada.
00:24:59.480But our governments are hell-bent on making sure we're not saving, but that we're borrowing and spending right now.
00:25:05.480And the only ones who are going to like this are the banks.
00:25:10.040Well, let's, in the spirit of more bad news at Christmas, let's bring it closer back to home to the Western Standards offices in Calgary, Alberta.
00:25:20.560We have had the terrifying prospect of a Krampus going door-to-door in Calgary's Currie neighborhood.
00:25:31.820Dave, why don't you tell us about the latest terror in Calgary and what have been the response from local residents who have been faced with a Krampus?
00:25:41.740Yeah, certainly my favorite story of 2020 so far, Derek.
00:25:56.540And what he does, it came about in Germany and Central Europe.
00:26:00.920He and St. Nicholas go and visit the kids.
00:26:04.080And they determine which kid has been naughty and which kid has been nice.
00:26:07.800Krampus, when he finds a naughty kid, beats him with bags of sticks or bundles of sticks.
00:26:16.000The really, really bad kids, they get kidnapped and taken straight to hell.
00:26:20.800So you can imagine the poor children of Germany.
00:26:24.520This would have put the fear of God into them.
00:26:27.140So somebody this week in Calgary decided to put on the Krampus outfit and go knocking on some doors.
00:26:37.800The picture we had up earlier of him knocking at the door was actually taken by a resident who was quite rightly terrified, didn't know what the hell was going on, and ended up calling the police.
00:26:50.300So I'm sure the guy had quite the explanation for them when police arrived.
00:26:56.660But he ran into some other kids down in the Curry neighborhood.
00:27:02.160And he explained to their parent who he was and what he was doing.
00:27:08.460And I'm not sure if he threatened to beat kids with a stick.
00:27:11.480But I'll tell you what, if he showed up at my door, I may be considering, and if I didn't know who he was, I might call the police too.
00:27:21.340Yeah, I might be one of the few parents in Calgary who intends to raise their child with Krampus as a character in his child's Christmas memories.
00:27:32.080I think Krampus is the reason the German children are so well behaved.
00:27:35.840If you're bad, you get beaten with a bundle of sticks.
00:27:38.700And if you're really bad, he puts you in a bag and takes you straight to hell.
00:27:42.300I've got a Bavarian friend who was raised on this.
00:27:58.000It's not just the German in me speaking.
00:28:00.340I think we would all be well served by terrifying our children into behaving.
00:28:04.720You need both the carrot for the reindeer and you need the stick from Krampus if you want the kids to be good or if you want your kids to be nice.
00:28:14.200I think bringing out Krampus at Christmas may get social services called on you, though.
00:31:43.720If Kenny's admitting to a mistake, it must be a pretty serious one.
00:31:48.160James Kays in the same route, potentially even replying to the last comment,
00:31:54.500says he sure did and actually tried to apologize more than once.
00:31:59.400There's nothing genuine about him other than being another liberal follower.
00:32:03.580I mean, this, you can make the argument one way or another about how necessary or not this is.
00:32:12.360But Kenny does seem to be getting it from both sides here.
00:32:16.400The left who are demanding a total and complete severe lockdown early on.
00:32:21.680And then people who are disproportionately within the UCP voter coalition who resist this and are resisting it pretty vehemently.
00:32:31.720It's I guess I've already asked Corey this, but I'd like your take, Dave.
00:32:36.220How much of a political problem do you think this is for Jason Kenney in that a lot of his core followers do seem to have a sense of betrayal about this?
00:32:47.180He's really in a no-win situation with this, I think, Derek.
00:32:50.020Many people are questioning why, you know, why aren't we just coming out of the lockdown instead of just going into it?
00:32:58.260That he should have done this two weeks ago, three weeks ago when the numbers started to skyrocket.
00:33:03.860So, yeah, he's under fire in a lot of his base.
00:33:07.640I think actually a lot of UCP supporters are thinking that, okay, this is the time to do it.
00:33:13.900Let's get it over and let's get it done with and let's actually, you know, try and get this thing under control.
00:33:21.100There will always be people that he won't be able to please by doing this.
00:33:25.420And certainly whatever he does, he could find a cure for COVID and the NDP will be blasting him on a daily basis.
00:34:52.500If you're going to do a lockdown, if you're going to take the statist control route here, you do one lockdown and you eradicate things.
00:35:00.720I guarantee you if the government's going to probably lift this as soon as things ease up a bit, but then we're going to be back into another lockdown.
00:35:08.820They've shown that they're going to respond to media pressure.
00:35:11.120They're going to respond to polls and this is probably not the end of it.
00:35:16.520We have a strange comment from Jacqueline Martin who says, bullshit, the deaths in ICU are going up.
00:36:25.920I mean, we could go down that rabbit hole for a long time.
00:36:29.040Another thing I think that the Alberta government has done has been at least has been very transparent about their numbers, their hospitalizations.
00:36:36.880Again, you know, it's a totally separate discussion of whether it's effective or not or whatever.
00:36:42.420But the numbers coming from the government say that the deaths are going up.
00:36:46.020You know, there's daily deaths of 18, 20 people that the ICU beds are starting to fill.
00:39:20.980Dave and Corey, both of you have covered some of the Freedom Walk demonstrations in downtown Calgary.
00:39:29.560There have been similar demonstrations elsewhere in Alberta, across the west, and even in parts of Ontario, particularly where apparently barbecue is illegal.
00:39:39.500Although, I guess now barbecue is illegal in Alberta as well.
00:39:41.780So, I think there is a difference between – well, first of all, there are different kinds of anti-maskers.
00:39:48.620There are people who believe that you shouldn't wear a mask, and there are people who believe that the government shouldn't mandate you wear a mask.
00:39:56.340And I think there's a big distinction between them.
00:39:58.860I think responsible people should voluntarily wear a mask in certain circumstances, in crowded places.
00:40:04.860If you're, you know, if you're on a train, if you're on an LRT, you should probably wear a mask.
00:40:10.980I think that's good courtesy, and that's responsible citizenship.
00:40:16.620I think a mask mandate in a place like an LRT probably makes sense.
00:40:21.580I don't think the government has any right to mandate masks on private property.
00:40:25.280I don't think the government has the right to mandate much of anything on private property.
00:40:28.280I think – but there's a difference between that kind of anti-masker, if you will, where you probably put me as an anti-compulsory mask on private property, and then anti-maskers who believe that they're outright bad.
00:40:41.100And there are reasonable people who fall into both categories.
00:40:44.360And there are reasonable people who believe that they should be mandatory.
00:40:47.920I disagree with those people, but there are reasonable ones, and there are extreme ones.
00:40:51.400Corey and I were – Corey and I went together to the anti-restriction rally in Calgary on Saturday at the Olympic Plaza.
00:41:02.020There are about 500 people there, none of them wearing a mask.
00:41:05.780I was, I think, the only one in the square block area that was wearing on.
00:41:11.020And there was a large percentage of those people that just think this is all a hoax.
00:41:14.660They were carrying signs saying, you know, the pandemic is not real, the pandemic is a hoax, and it's a creation of the media.
00:41:27.480I wouldn't say it's a huge percentage of the population, but it's a good percentage of those people that were down on the municipal plaza this weekend.
00:41:38.780Corey, before we go on to Clint's second question, let's just deal with kind of the anti-mask thing.
00:41:44.880And I think there's a lot more nuance to it than most of the media are saying.
00:41:49.260I think we're trying to give a bit more nuance to it here that there are very different kinds of anti-maskers, just as there are different kinds of pro-maskers.
00:42:01.800I think, you know, you spoke about it on previous Pipeline broadcasts.
00:42:04.780What's your take in terms of the anti-maskers or people believing that the virus actually doesn't exist?
00:42:12.000Yeah, well, I mean, what we've got is a lot of stressed people and a lot of mistrust of government and people who have areas of concern in general.
00:42:20.500I think that the downtown rally just turned into a place where they could all get together at the same time and vent.
00:42:27.000Some are similar to us, I guess, in that, you know, I'm not fully against masks, but I just don't want the government legislating it.
00:42:32.100Or another thing, and, you know, I stirred up the social media hordes last Sunday and Monday on that, is that I was disappointed with when I went to the rally.
00:42:41.300And their second speaker started down the rabbit hole of vaccines causing autism and all that, you know, conspiracy crap.
00:42:48.600And I'm sorry, I'm calling it conspiracy crap.
00:42:50.340The autism thing, it's long been disproven.
00:42:56.620And, you know, we've got people saying it's a hoax, it's planned.
00:42:58.600And, okay, well, whatever, some people are going to believe that, but the majority don't.
00:43:02.460And that's why there's only 500 people on a Sunday, Saturday at one of these rallies.
00:43:08.300There's legitimate concerns out there.
00:43:09.940There's people are concerned about a rushed vaccine.
00:43:11.980There's people are concerned about possible effects from wearing a mask or things when you're doing workouts.
00:43:16.360But when it's the less rational folks at the front of the parade yelling, you're not going to draw your middle of the road people into these things.
00:43:25.900And right now, those protests are dominated by people, I guess, who are just kind of on a farther outreach, you could say.
00:44:00.060I think we give radically more balance than the overwhelming majority of the mainstream media do.
00:44:05.020Some of you, you know, Kate Swan says this is all a hoax.
00:44:12.300No, it's not a hoax to get every single government on the planet and the overwhelming majority of subnational governments like states and provinces all to believe this is to get it on a hoax together is you're giving government far too much credit to be competent.
00:44:28.040That's one reason I don't believe 9-11 was an inside job.
00:44:31.040Government is far too incompetent to pull something like that off and keep thousands and thousands of people singing from the same songbook.
00:44:39.380Look right here in Alberta at a caucus.
00:44:42.280It's hard to keep, you know, 50 MLAs in a caucus saying the exact same thing.
00:44:47.540And they try extremely hard and have a lot of penalties if you don't.
00:44:50.820Imagine doing that with thousands of people who disagree vehemently.
00:44:55.060Donald Trump, a nationalist, you know, a nationalist populist doesn't believe it's a hoax and neither does China, a communist dictatorship.
00:45:05.940I don't see what kind of common cause they could have.
00:45:08.580Now, there is a very good argument that there's been a lot of misinformation from governments and from super national organizations like the World Health Organization.
00:45:21.560There is a there is a lot of bullshit that's come from governments and they put out a lot of bad information is often put out false information.
00:45:28.900You know, there's been wild censorship on social media from anyone dissenting from the official line.
00:45:34.560You know, if you're if your take on things don't comply with the WHO, you get taken off of social media.
00:45:41.180There is a lot to be skeptical of, but that does not make this a hoax.
00:48:02.200But they are overwhelmingly a positive force for human health.
00:48:06.840They have eliminated things like polio.
00:48:08.620They have eliminated things like malaria.
00:48:12.280Things that used to kill millions of people every year are virtually extinct across the planet because of vaccines.
00:48:18.000Now, new vaccines should be taken with a bit more of a grain of salt.
00:48:21.840They have not been tested sufficiently.
00:48:25.600But, you know, Corey's said before in his columns that a vaccine is going to be our only way out of this.
00:48:32.440We're going to continue in more bloody lockdowns with high suicide rates, people losing their homes,
00:48:37.640people losing their businesses, people feeling socially isolated, not living like human beings were intended to live until we can end this.
00:48:45.040And the vaccine is the best way to do it.
00:48:46.640That said, there's a big difference between supporting vaccines and supporting mandatory vaccines.
00:48:53.480And we are seeing a lot of people and a lot of governments supporting some form of mandatory vaccines.
00:48:59.960And all of these people who, you know, will put a bra on their head and march in a parade saying,
00:49:05.400my body, my choice to resist a government ban on a medical procedure.
00:49:12.480A lot of these very same people are calling for the government to mandate a procedure with people's bodies.
00:49:50.740And that is effectively making it mandatory, saying, you know, we're not going to we're not going to tranquilize you and administer the vaccine.
00:49:57.880But you can't live as a human being unless you have it.
00:50:00.380That is a terrifying prospect and should be resisted with everything people have.
00:50:05.280Again, between the government doing that and the private sector doing that, I controversially believe in the right of businesses to discriminate.
00:50:14.720I don't think they should in most cases.
00:50:16.780But, you know, you can have dress codes.
00:50:19.060Businesses have a I don't think governments have a right to mandate masks.
00:50:22.100But I think businesses do if they feel that that is necessary.
00:50:25.560And if a business wants to require a vaccine, I think that's their choice.
00:50:29.280But there's a big difference between a business requiring it because it's private property and the government requiring it.
00:52:18.840But I tell you, if you're going to scream from a crazed conspiracy theorist's point of view on it, you're not changing the hearts and minds of the majority, which is what you're going to need to do.
00:52:31.360Well, Dave, Corey, thank you very much for joining us today.
00:52:34.620And thank all of you watching for joining us.
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