Western Standard - The Pipeline： Guilbeault says no more roads

00:00:00.000 Good day, I'm Derek Fulibrand, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:00:28.220 Today is February 14th. Gentlemen, if you haven't already, order your flowers for your lady, because it's Valentine's Day.

00:00:35.660 If you're already watching this, you're actually probably already up Schitt's Creek at this point.

00:00:40.200 I'm joined, as usual, by Western Standard Opinion Editor, Nigel Hannaford.

00:00:44.900 I remembered.

00:00:47.100 You would. From everything I can tell, Judy is very happy with you.

00:00:53.020 At least she appears so when she's around here.

00:00:54.660 She certainly knows the right thing to say.

00:00:57.620 And so do I.

00:00:59.620 A man a little less studied, but I think does a decent job.

00:01:04.620 I like to think so.

00:01:06.620 And as Dave said, I'll probably hit the 7-Eleven on the way home to grab a chocolate rose or something.

00:01:10.620 That's normally what I do.

00:01:11.620 This year, I actually ordered flowers for one of our reporters years ago when a family member passed away.

00:01:20.620 And that good deed came back to help me, because I got a text from the flower company yesterday.

00:01:27.740 And I was like, oh, geez.

00:01:29.680 So hopefully my wife is not watching. 0.97

00:01:31.360 She just thinks I just did this remembering.

00:01:34.200 Spontaneous.

00:01:34.760 I don't remember these things.

00:01:36.280 I'm not very good.

00:01:36.900 All right.

00:01:38.040 Well, we've got really interesting topics today, good headlines.

00:01:42.700 Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo says, no more roads.

00:01:47.000 Cities should stop building roads to encourage people to walk more.

00:01:50.880 Get out of your car and walk from Calgary to Edmonton, because that's good for the environment.

00:01:56.760 You didn't say that exactly, but more or less saying that the federal government should stop using the gas tax fund to transfer money to municipalities for roads.

00:02:07.180 And instead, just use it on bike paths and sidewalks, that kind of thing.

00:02:11.800 The Auditor General's report into the arrived scam app is out. How could the budget balloon from about $80,000 to what it turned out to be? $57 million approximately?

00:02:27.800 approximately. 59 and change I think the last count. Yeah that's a that's a little over budget.

00:02:33.640 How did costs given to this liberal aligned firm manage to explode by, I can't even do the math in

00:02:43.160 my head, how many times is that? The leader of the opposition said it was 750%. I checked his

00:02:50.040 math, it was actually 746. I think that's more than that. 80,000 to 59.5. We're gonna have to

00:02:59.800 do the math on that because it's just so many times over I'm having a hard time. Have the operations

00:03:04.280 manager check it out. Yeah. Justin Trudeau says that Pierre Polyev wants to make Canada great

00:03:11.080 again and Canadians do not want Canada to be great again. A very interesting and bizarre exchange in

00:03:17.800 in the House of Commons. I mean, it's one thing

00:03:19.980 to go after MAGA. You know, liberals

00:03:21.840 don't like the MAGA thing, and

00:03:23.400 you know, it's fine. I guess

00:03:25.900 fair game to go there, but saying

00:03:27.960 Canadians do not want 0.97

00:03:29.840 Canada to be great again.

00:03:32.980 It's an interesting

00:03:33.860 line of attack. One thing's for sure,

00:03:36.060 the war room in the Conservative Party

00:03:37.880 has already got that clipped out, and it's working

00:03:39.920 on the ad. Oh, it's already done. I'm sure they've

00:03:41.960 already got five versions of that ad

00:03:43.980 done. And

00:03:45.360 And, well, Ed Pierpoliyev says he's going to kill the media subsidies.

00:03:49.200 We'll see if we have time to get that far.

00:03:51.440 Before we get into it, Corey, why don't you tell people about my favorite sponsor?

00:03:55.000 I'm guessing that must be the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:03:57.480 It must be.

00:03:58.380 Yes, with Tony Bernardo.

00:04:00.040 Those guys do a fantastic job.

00:04:01.740 If you own firearms, plan to own firearms, you're a hunter, you're a target shooter, you're a collector,

00:04:06.600 you have to be a member of this association.

00:04:08.320 I mean, these guys stand up for you.

00:04:10.860 They provide you resources to make sure you can protect your right ability to use those firearms.

00:04:14.880 And they, like any other association, provide all sorts of resources as well, whether it's for local shows or events and things such as that.

00:04:21.640 So check them out, Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:04:24.320 Their website is cssa-cila.org, or you can just Google them, Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

00:04:31.780 It's a membership well worth investing in for yourself.

00:04:34.860 You know, Corey, you probably saw this in our pages just within the last two weeks.

00:04:38.660 We had an article there from Tony updating our readers on what was going on in the government with regard to firearms.

00:04:46.780 Oh, yeah, they're on top of it.

00:04:47.980 Just search Bernardo and it'll come right up.

00:04:50.880 All right. Well, let's start here.

00:04:53.360 So Federal Environment Minister Stephen Gilbo, he says all sorts of funny things.

00:04:59.680 And he gets away with it most of the time, at least outside of Alberta.

00:05:05.100 But he seems to have really stepped in it on this one.

00:05:07.380 And he wants the federal government to stop funding.

00:05:13.580 So the federal government collects billions of dollars every year in the gas tax.

00:05:17.320 So that is a tax paid on fuel, presumably mostly by drivers.

00:05:23.600 And it's supposed to be used to be put towards roads for those drivers.

00:05:28.880 And he says, well, we need to stop that.

00:05:31.140 We're not going to stop collecting the gas tax.

00:05:33.920 We're obviously going to keep collecting it.

00:05:35.720 but that money should be used for things that are explicitly not for drivers paying the gas tax.

00:05:41.480 This will encourage people to walk more. He's not incorrect about that. No roads means less driving

00:05:46.120 and presumably we can walk to Lethbridge from Calgary if that's really what he wants.

00:05:56.120 Nigel, he seems, actually you were just telling me before we started, he held a presser just a few

00:06:01.720 hours ago and he's trying to back away from that position. Well I would hope he would.

00:06:05.720 I mean, the trouble with Mr. Gilles Baud, he's one of these very, very sincere people.

00:06:10.660 Well, you said it right.

00:06:11.660 I've been practicing in front of the mirror.

00:06:15.720 He says he's very sincere, and every now and then the problem that sincere people have

00:06:21.800 is that they tell you what they honestly really think.

00:06:25.720 And he actually thinks that we should get out of our cars and walk more or ride a bicycle.

00:06:33.720 Now, to some degree, there is a limited argument in favor of that.

00:06:39.340 I think we could all afford to take a walk for the sake of our hearts and our constitutions during the lunchtime.

00:06:46.320 But I live, you know, you live, what, 10 miles from the office?

00:06:50.340 I live 6.2 miles from the office.

00:06:52.780 You come in from Prentice, for heaven's sake.

00:06:54.840 You're dating yourself using miles.

00:06:58.420 It's all I use.

00:06:59.500 I have no idea how many miles I am from the office.

00:07:01.100 well 16 and in my case about nine but anyway however you do the maths it's too far to walk

00:07:08.540 and it's too far to ride ride a bike unless you're one of these keeners

00:07:13.420 i have a suspicion and i think i first had that suspicion when it was one of your columns in about

00:07:19.660 april of last of 2022 when you were speculating this was all about actually getting people to

00:07:28.540 drive less and making having car a car a luxury and we're all going to be in our 15 minute cities

00:07:36.540 we weren't going anywhere and sure enough that it is now emerging that the electric cars aren't

00:07:42.780 suitable for the environment there's never going to be enough of them because people won't buy them

00:07:47.820 there will be less cars and then he will be happy so it all makes perfect sense but i thought you

00:07:53.820 you were off on a conspiracy theory about time. Well, sometimes I am. Well, you weren't this

00:07:58.780 time, were you? Seems to be proving out a bit. Yeah. Well, as usual, today's conspiracy theories

00:08:06.040 are tomorrow's government policy, something we saw too often during COVID. Corey, is this

00:08:13.220 did he give any indication about how much he wants federal government to act on this? Is this

00:08:19.940 going to be federal policy that the gas tax transfer cannot be used towards roads, or was he

00:08:26.640 just going to enable-gazing? He didn't give specifics, but I mean, he certainly, you know,

00:08:29.620 the veil dropped for a minute, and we see the kind of direction he wants to go. I don't know if he's

00:08:34.920 going rogue, or if it's represented in the whole government. It does seem almost as if Justin

00:08:39.600 Trudeau has just kind of given him free reign and environment, and he's, the thing people have to

00:08:44.880 realize that Gilboa, he's the real thing. He's a nutter. He's an environmental extremist. If you

00:08:50.940 might remember a long time back, I doubt Derek would, but there was a Edmonton experimented with

00:08:55.700 like a graduated ballot sort of thing for their city council. And this fellow named Tucker Gomberg

00:08:59.920 managed to actually get a council position, which never normally ever would have happened.

00:09:03.860 He proposed things like flooding the city streets so people could skate to work. This was an actual

00:09:08.840 council. I mean, sadly, he was actually quite disturbed. And he took his own life at the

00:09:15.280 Confederation Bridge some years later. So which was tragic. I don't want to jump on the grave of

00:09:19.780 the man. But he was an example of when you take a truly extreme activist and put them into a

00:09:24.120 position with a little bit of authority. But that was still Edmonton City Council.

00:09:28.020 Gilbo is like the Gomberg of federal politics. And he's in a very position of serious federal

00:09:33.080 authority. And that gets a little more scary. Because not only would he want to spread the

00:09:38.140 streets with ice, perhaps, but he's got the ability to force it, and

00:09:41.980 I think we're seeing a hint of where he'd like to go.

00:09:46.540 I mean, the man is nuts.

00:09:50.480 He is a true believer, eco-fanatic.

00:09:54.500 He's the guy who would scale the CN Tower.

00:09:58.520 Ralph Klein's house.

00:09:59.700 He invaded Ralph Klein's private residence.

00:10:02.760 stuff that would normally make you, put you off into a silo where you can play with your little friends,

00:10:14.240 but you're regarded as so far outside the mainstream that you're not welcome in a so-called mainstream political party.

00:10:21.280 But here he is in one of the most senior positions in the federal government,

00:10:25.420 wants to essentially shut down the electrical grid in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

00:10:30.600 I know the Premier of Alberta had a pretty robust response to him yesterday.

00:10:37.660 Well, I think, yeah, about the roads, she said he just wasn't realistic.

00:10:42.340 She made the same arguments that we're making here now, that the distances are too much,

00:10:47.740 people have to be mobile, and he's just not accepting the grim realities.

00:10:52.820 I mean, maybe you could reconstruct some large Canadian city like Toronto

00:10:56.400 So it was a kind of a place where everybody gets around in public transit,

00:11:01.600 but it's just plain not going to work in the rest of the country.

00:11:07.220 Good for the Premier for making that point, for sticking with it,

00:11:12.980 and for, once again, holding up Mr. Gilbo to derision,

00:11:19.940 the derision that he so richly deserves.

00:11:24.240 Bless your heart.

00:11:26.400 All right. Well, a little less crazy, but a little more traditional liberal corruption era.

00:11:35.000 I mean, it's rarely a week goes by without some form of liberal corruption coming up, but the Arrive can, dubbed Arrive Scam now.

00:11:45.680 This is, this has got the sniff of the sponsorship scandal on it.

00:11:50.760 This one, this one smells like pure old fashioned liberal corruption. So the arrive can app was originally contracted by the federal government to them. What's called GC strategies, GC strategies. Now, fun little fact. If you're following along at home, look up their Twitter account and look at who GC strategies follows. They follow only one person.

00:12:19.000 Justin Trudeau. They have one person they follow, Justin Trudeau. Now, if I was setting up

00:12:25.000 a corruption scheme, and I was going to create a Twitter account to try and give the appearance

00:12:30.140 of being a legitimate business, I don't know, I'd probably follow at least three people.

00:12:35.820 Three people, maybe. But not just the one guy who butters my bread. So I did the math quickly.

00:12:43.100 We were talking about in the opening here about how over budget this is. It's not 738% over budget. It's 737 times over budget.

00:12:55.280 Yes.

00:12:56.580 Yeah.

00:12:57.380 Like, if something goes over budget around the office here by 30%, I might get a little pissed. But maybe there's reasoning for it.

00:13:10.940 Maybe, you know, some things aren't predictable.

00:13:13.800 Your legal bills, your marketing budget.

00:13:17.240 You know, if something is more than 20% over budget, I answer to our board of directors over it.

00:13:23.140 And, you know, if something was double the budget for the year, I'm going to get some hard questions.

00:13:30.540 And maybe there's a legitimate reason for it.

00:13:32.160 But 737 times, so 738 if we're running up in the decimal here, 738 times over budget.

00:13:43.140 I can't think of anything in the history of the world that has been that far over budget.

00:13:48.420 The entire American space program, the Saturn program, the put a man on the moon was over budget.

00:13:55.540 But it was not 738 times over budget.

00:14:01.320 Nigel, what's been the Federal Liberals' response to the Auditor General's report here?

00:14:07.920 Well, they don't really have one. And I noticed that the response is in question period. Yes,

00:14:13.800 they were very downbeat. They said what they had to say, but they weren't really trying to defend

00:14:18.420 it. And in fact, the minister actually got up and said, well, just because there was a national

00:14:23.880 emergency doesn't mean to say that people get to just throw the rules out. I mean,

00:14:27.960 things were done wrong here. That's about as complete an admission of guilt and defeat as

00:14:33.000 you're going to get from the Liberal Party. You know, the problem where I think things went off

00:14:42.940 the rails there, remember when this was put together. It was put together over a period of

00:14:49.260 about five weeks in April of 2020. This was the period of time when all levels of government were

00:14:57.900 speaking the language of war we had to stick together we have your back it's going to take

00:15:04.540 everybody uh we're all in this together we're all in this together and it was um there there was a

00:15:11.100 tremendous degree of hype to get people who once the initial two weeks had elapsed during which

00:15:19.740 we were going to smooth the curve and it was very clear that their the policies were going to extend

00:15:26.060 and that the lockdowns were coming and the masks were coming,

00:15:30.020 they needed an atmosphere of intensity and alarm and widespread fear.

00:15:36.580 And in that atmosphere, this thing was conceived.

00:15:40.320 And I think that it was just, look, do whatever it takes.

00:15:44.080 Like, you got it, run with it, get this thing done because we need it.

00:15:49.420 It's a national emergency.

00:15:51.160 This would not have happened in more peaceful times.

00:15:55.200 You mentioned GC strategies.

00:15:57.740 One of the pieces of evidence that to me seemed indicative of the state of mind

00:16:03.060 was that the initial news story came out.

00:16:05.800 It was this plucky little gang of amateurs who put this thing together in their garage

00:16:10.360 and done it for $80,000, and here we are with a ride-can Canadian genius to the rest of it.

00:16:16.080 Well, that's not exactly what happened.

00:16:18.240 They were anything but amateurs.

00:16:19.800 They were smart operators.

00:16:22.280 They got the contract, and then they found people who could do it for them,

00:16:25.880 subbed it out, took a cut.

00:16:28.220 This is what came out in the Auditor General's report.

00:16:31.960 And then, I guess, as the whole situation moved forward, well, you know,

00:16:38.580 you've got to upgrade.

00:16:39.380 You've got to keep up with the latest upgrades to the phones,

00:16:42.180 and there's five different kinds of phones that you can do it for,

00:16:45.480 and they kept on spending money on this app.

00:16:49.980 And the big thing that went wrong within CBSA was that nobody kept tabs on the expenses.

00:16:57.980 And the app didn't really work.

00:16:59.980 It was a disaster the whole time.

00:17:01.980 Which is amazing because really it was nothing more than a form.

00:17:04.980 You know, high school students kind of do that sort of stuff just for the yearbook.

00:17:10.980 So, Corey, how much do we know about who GC Strategies is?

00:17:15.980 They have a very opaque public profile.

00:17:18.980 It has the appearance of kind of a shell corporation.

00:17:23.980 It's got a Twitter account, which follows one person, as I said, just Justin Trudeau.

00:17:28.980 So it's not really...

00:17:29.980 It seems to be two people.

00:17:31.980 There's no history of them being an app development company or those individuals having app development skills.

00:17:37.980 As I just said, it turned out they farmed it out.

00:17:39.980 They took... I mean, it reeks. It reeks to high heaven.

00:17:43.980 heaven. My wife, Jane, is a bookkeeper. When she was hearing this news, you could hear the veins

00:17:48.560 popping in her head. She gets upset when I mess up with $20 on one of my forms for books or

00:17:53.640 something, and just something like this to happen in the scope of millions. It reeks. There was no

00:17:59.700 bid tendered even. These guys were just given it. I mean, they didn't even have to show that they

00:18:04.360 had a plan. According to the AG, I believe that when they applied for this contract, they cut and

00:18:11.540 pasted the requirements from the government.

00:18:14.460 So you can hear the frustration from the Auditor General.

00:18:17.900 She said this, you know, 59.6 million or whatever.

00:18:21.240 She says this is just a ballpark estimate because the documents are missing and the emails have all been deleted.

00:18:28.320 Like now it's reeking of cover up to we're getting into the criminal realm here with some of the stuff that's coming up.

00:18:33.720 And I think the liberals would be wise to get on this and try to play the victim.

00:18:38.920 I mean, just get up and say, we're going to clean this up.

00:18:40.980 They took advantage of Canadians because there's so far, there's no evidence that is tied to the party.

00:18:46.280 So well, they would if there's no blood on their hands, because, you know, they could say, hey, you know, it was wartime.

00:18:56.800 Yeah. And, you know, some bad things are going to happen.

00:18:59.240 Some people are going to take advantage of us.

00:19:02.660 But they gave this clearly was not a very proper competitive process.

00:19:10.400 There is a place for some sole source contracting in very limited specific circumstances.

00:19:16.840 This was not one of those circumstances.

00:19:20.560 But I think they, is the victim card available to them to play?

00:19:26.480 I mean, they attempted the victim card with the sponsorship scandal in the early 2000s, we recall.

00:19:31.920 That didn't work very well.

00:19:34.780 I mean, Paul Martin tried to essentially blame his liberal predecessor.

00:19:37.400 The public just saw liberal.

00:19:39.400 liberal. They didn't really care which faction of liberal within the liberal universe, they're like, well, those are different liberals. Canadians are, yeah, but they're liberals. Is the victim card here available for them to play? Or if they play that card, though, you know,

00:19:56.400 You can only do it if you're not tied to it.

00:19:59.040 Exactly.

00:19:59.340 I mean, even then, as you said, it's under their watch.

00:20:02.320 They're still going to wear some of this no matter what.

00:20:05.280 But to date, there's been no evidence tying it to any liberals.

00:20:08.020 It looks like, you know, some senior bureaucrats and CBSA.

00:20:10.300 And then again, the buck stops in the prime minister's office.

00:20:14.020 But yeah, their quiet lack of indignation on this, I guess, may spell it.

00:20:21.200 Or maybe at least they're scrambling just to make sure they don't have a connection somewhere before they take the offensive.

00:20:26.020 because this stinks. This stinks bad. So Nigel, we have the Auditor General's report. Where do

00:20:32.720 things go from here? You will recall that... No one's been held accountable. No, you will recall

00:20:40.160 that the Auditor General was asked specifically about corruption, and she deflected the question

00:20:46.840 by saying that certain things have been referred to the RCMP. That is where it has gone. So we will

00:20:54.700 see you will see fairly soon i should expect that if anybody gets charged uh and they may well be

00:21:02.860 the the scapegoats in them in the issue but i come back to my original point once you create an

00:21:09.180 atmosphere of panic you can get away with anything and that's the serious lesson that this this

00:21:14.460 incident much more than the money the money's bad but if you want to put something across canadians

00:21:20.620 you just scare them and you make them afraid. And then you do whatever you want.

00:21:24.620 And something may illegal may have happened. But the thing is, you know, with these kinds

00:21:28.940 of arrangements, it might be illegal in any other circumstance, except when the government does it.

00:21:36.780 Like, you know, for example, it's illegal. I remember so when I was finance critic of the

00:21:41.820 Wildrose, the provincial NDP broke the law by busting through their artificial debt ceiling.

00:21:49.020 And the question was, well, what happens when they break the law? The answer was nothing. It's a law, but there is no punishment to it. And so I'm not sure, perhaps something, you know, maybe something illegal happened here.

00:22:05.080 But when the government does it, it's just almost de facto legal unless someone circumvents very specific areas in criminal law.

00:22:14.540 So I'm not sure anyone gets held, has held the responsibility here.

00:22:19.200 We'll see. Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a case to be made if there's fraud that has been committed.

00:22:23.540 And on the surface, it looks like there's some evidence of it.

00:22:26.800 But it's a matter, again, of whether there's going to be the government will to go after and scapegoat who's responsible or if they just want to try and make this go away.

00:22:34.640 And if they go after them, the worry is then, well, then they're going to have to defend themselves.

00:22:39.440 And if they're going to defend themselves, they're going to speak about what the government said to them.

00:22:44.020 And I'm not sure that's in...

00:22:45.940 Do the liberals really want these guys on the stand spilling all the beans?

00:22:52.240 Not before the next election.

00:22:53.800 No.

00:22:54.380 Right about the time that we get some action on the China interference inquiry, we will get some action on this.

00:23:02.620 Yeah.

00:23:03.460 All right.

00:23:04.640 Well, just the other day, there was a very interesting exchange in the House of Commons.

00:23:12.920 Justin Trudeau and Pierre Polyev.

00:23:15.640 And, you know, rather than me explain it, why don't we just show the video from that explanation?

00:23:22.280 Under the previous Conservative government, everything was perfect.

00:23:26.100 And what he is proposing to do is to make Canada great again.

00:23:31.340 That is not what Canadians want.

00:23:33.840 He is pining for a nostalgia that, quite frankly, Canadians do not feel.

00:23:38.840 They remember what he did as part of Stephen Harper's failed housing minister.

00:23:44.160 He remembers the rights of Indigenous peoples violated, 1.00

00:23:49.720 the ignoring of environmental responsibilities

00:23:52.660 and the lack of an environmental and economic plan for the future.

00:23:56.260 We're going to continue on.

00:23:57.300 Canada is and always has been our country.

00:24:05.260 And we want Canada to be a true north that is as strong and as free as it can be in every

00:24:12.380 way that matters.

00:24:13.440 The best country in the world.

00:24:15.240 That's why we're here.

00:24:16.300 That's why we strive.

00:24:17.580 That's why we serve.

00:24:21.600 Canada must reflect the true character of the Canadian people.

00:24:25.620 Honourable in our dealings, faithful to our commitments, loyal to our friends

00:24:32.120 By turns, a courageous warrior and a compassionate neighbour

00:24:36.500 It is our purpose that Canada must be great

00:24:40.560 It must be great for all Canadians

00:24:42.980 It must be a country of hope and an example to the world

00:24:46.660 And only when it is these things, when Canada is all that it can be

00:24:51.780 Only then can we say that our work is done

00:24:54.920 So long before anybody thought of Donald Trump as president of the United States, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada is great and will be great, etc.

00:25:04.260 So using the word great and Trudeau says, well, this is clear that Pierre Polyev, who was a junior minister at the time, was aware that Donald Trump would be U.S. president and campaign on a slogan of making America great again.

00:25:22.340 And Canadians do not want that.

00:25:24.160 They do not want Canada to be great again.

00:25:28.400 I mean, you can, I mean, the liberal voting base is generally not very sympathetic to

00:25:33.280 mega and Donald Trump policy, language, et cetera.

00:25:37.700 So that's fine.

00:25:38.220 He can make the argument, I think, against, you know, the conservatives picking up on

00:25:45.540 mega themes and that.

00:25:47.060 But to phrase it this way, the Canadians do not want Canada to be great again.

00:25:53.320 That seems like weird politics to me, Nigel.

00:25:56.420 It's very weird politics, Derek.

00:25:59.740 But I do think that in moments like this, Mr. Trudeau is telling you what he really thinks,

00:26:06.500 just like Mr. Giobot gives away what he really thinks in our earlier segment.

00:26:12.400 Mr. Trudeau, not six weeks after he was elected in 2015, gave an interview to the New York Times,

00:26:20.740 which he said that Canada was a post-national country.

00:26:24.840 And in the eight years that have elapsed since then, we have seen ample evidence

00:26:29.180 that the symbols of Canada before 2015 that we all responded to,

00:26:37.180 he's systematically removed and replaced with other symbols more to his liking or simply no

00:26:44.540 symbols at all he actually does not regard canada as he does not treat canada as a great country

00:26:53.500 so really when he says canadians don't want canada to be great i think he's telling you what he

00:27:00.060 thinks he is projecting what he thinks onto a population of about 40 million and he may well

00:27:05.740 will be very, very wrong in that. I'm actually not sure he's wrong in a sense, not maybe in the way

00:27:12.340 he thinks, but well, then I hope you're wrong. Yeah. Oh, I wish I was wrong. But I mean, Canada

00:27:17.660 isn't a nation by most definitions of nation. It is a state. But I mean, if I like the thought

00:27:26.100 experiment of if the world had amnesia, we woke up tomorrow, and we lost all of the atlases,

00:27:31.640 we had no idea what the national borders were uh are what how would we draw the the borders around

00:27:36.840 the world today and i i don't think canada would exist i think quebec would exist as a state um

00:27:43.240 but i don't think canada would because we'd speak the same language as our southern name

00:27:47.080 our southern neighbors uh similar cultures canada is the product of old colonial european politics

00:27:56.920 We were just the part of North America that didn't want to govern itself by the late 18th century.

00:28:02.880 So in a sense, Canada isn't a traditional nation state, the way, say, France or Germany or Britain is.

00:28:11.600 But I think he conceives it in another way, that we're not a people in any sense, and we should have no real self-identity.

00:28:20.140 We should be multicultural entirely.

00:28:23.860 And that's where he goes.

00:28:26.920 You know, you go back to the Second World War, and you see what a little nation of 10 million people was able to do in the fight against fascism.

00:28:39.580 But even then, that was two nations in one state. Quebec is its own nation.

00:28:44.100 Well, they would certainly tell you that, but the simple fact is in the name of Canada, with Canada on the shoulder patches, 900,000 people out of a population of 10 million put on uniform and came out of the end of the war as one of the significant military.

00:29:01.100 And they were mostly Anglos. Quebecers, by a large measure, either opposed the war or did not participate until conscription.

00:29:08.200 When I am in my cups, I do like to say that. But the truth of the matter is that the French-Canadian contribution to that war was significant.

00:29:18.260 It was, but it was in significantly lower numbers than an Anglo-Canada.

00:29:20.800 There were significantly less of them to offer their services.

00:29:24.060 No, I'm not saying proportionally.

00:29:24.460 Well, it was a national effort, Derek, and I do strongly believe that at that particular time,

00:29:35.500 a concept of Canadian nationhood had taken hold and was strongly supported by the people who lived here at that time.

00:29:44.540 Now, the 70 years since, it's been taken apart.

00:29:49.760 You know, we lost the flag, they changed the Constitution, they increased the...

00:29:56.760 You've even changed the anthem.

00:29:58.160 Demographic mix, changed the anthem, you know, these kinds of things.

00:30:02.760 But in all of those cases, people would still argue, I think, that it was in order to reconstruct a nation, not necessarily to change it.

00:30:12.940 There's only in the last few years that you've really seen the whole idea of the nation of Canada held as a secondary consideration and treated with contempt.

00:30:24.980 Corey, I know you and I have maybe different conceptions of Canadian nationhood than Nigel does, but I suppose we've maybe got a little off track.

00:30:35.720 I think we're kind of, well, yeah, we're a little off track. But to what Trudeau said here, that

00:30:41.800 Canadians do not want Canada to be great again. Was this him just kind of getting away with his

00:30:48.080 own rhetoric against Mega? Or was this? We might be reading a bit too much into a simple man.

00:30:54.300 I mean, he's not good when he goes off script. And he's been told, and we can see that from

00:31:01.160 the government lately, they've been failing when they try to go after Polyev. So the instructions

00:31:05.400 have been, whenever you can, go after Trump, campaign against Trump, campaign against Premier

00:31:11.260 Smith, campaign against others, they feel that there's a weaker spot to go against there.

00:31:15.860 And the point I think he was just trying to make was a sidelong, unscripted way to try and tie

00:31:21.460 things to Donald Trump. But he tripped on his own tongue. And of course, it came out sounding

00:31:27.360 horrific when you're saying Canadians don't want to be great. And, you know, I believe it's I mean,

00:31:34.260 I agree he's got this warped vision of a post-national state and things like that. But

00:31:39.400 I think in this particular statement, maybe there was a bit of a Freudian underpinning to that. But

00:31:45.200 for the most part, I think he just slipped up. But it's a terrible slip up to make when you're

00:31:49.940 talking about national unity. I think you made an interesting point there about how he wants

00:31:54.340 to campaign against others because Polyev has turned out to be a hard target to land a punch 0.99

00:31:58.700 against. And it's not uncommon that liberals will campaign against the U.S. president if that

00:32:04.300 president is Republican. Republicans are the more nationalistic party in the United States, so

00:32:08.640 obviously if you're not a national of the United States, you're going to feel less attraction to

00:32:14.340 American nationalism. You know, Paul Martin would regularly campaign against George Bush, even

00:32:20.800 though George Bush was not running for Canadian prime minister, he would campaign against Bush.

00:32:24.100 That was fairly common. So I would I would certainly expect him to campaign against Trump.

00:32:29.860 So let's talk about maybe how a Trump presidency, second Trump presidency or restoration, Trump restoration, let's call it, could affect the next election.

00:32:39.380 It's not for sure. But if I'm putting money down, I think Trump is going to be president again.

00:32:44.280 Biden was the boring, safe candidate in the last election.

00:32:48.420 maybe a collectocrat establishment democrat but he wasn't seen as crazy but now he is undeniably

00:32:57.300 heavily senile he cannot operate as commander in chief in the united states he just simply

00:33:04.660 can't do the job regardless of what you think of his politics uh some people think trump's crazy

00:33:10.500 And maybe he is, but he is not senile. And Biden doesn't know what room he's in. You know, if you have like a major car accident or something, they'll ask you three questions like, what year is it? What's your name? And who's president United States? And I'm not sure that Joe Biden can answer any three of those questions at the same time on any given day. So I think there's a very good chance we're going to have another Trump presidency.

00:33:37.060 Yeah. But something different this time is that Trump's not the unknown boogeyman. He might not have appealed to a lot of Canadians. We also know during the four years he was in power, he didn't do much to harm Canada. I mean, what are you defending us against? I mean, perhaps, you know, people may feel he'd do some damage in the American area, but he's no more protectionist than Biden was or is. And, you know, he's not an expansionist president. He's not going to send the army after us or something.

00:34:02.660 So I don't think those shots of trying to say we're going to protect you from Trump are really going to land that as well as they think they might.

00:34:10.240 Not that. But I think the accusation is that Polyev would govern like Trump.

00:34:16.440 And I think they're there. And the biggest knock against Trump is his own personality.

00:34:21.280 A lot of people like myself like Trumpism, but we don't I don't like Trump, the man, the individual.

00:34:27.320 So it was really the individual character and I don't think Polly if there's anything like him as an individual character.

00:34:33.320 But I think it's the accusation isn't that you'd be supporting Trump Trump is going to hurt Canada.

00:34:39.320 I think the accusation is that you'll govern Canada like Trump governs America.

00:34:43.320 How much do you think a Trump restoration for lack of better term will hurt the chances of Polly have in the next election? 1.00

00:34:55.080 No, I don't think it will.

00:34:57.600 People are already starting to line up

00:34:59.900 which side of the political spectrum they're going to land on.

00:35:03.780 And if you like Poilier now,

00:35:07.220 you're not going to buy the accusation

00:35:11.040 that he's really just Trump in waiting for Canada.

00:35:13.920 And if you do like Poilier, well, whatever.

00:35:16.960 Things were pretty good with Trump for four years,

00:35:19.160 so let's hope they're pretty good with Mr. Poilier.

00:35:22.320 I can't see that.

00:35:23.680 I can see them trying but I can't see them I can't see it working as I think it's probability it's not guaranteed but I think probability wise it's a pretty good bet to bet on Trump coming back to the presidency in the United States it's looking that way yeah I can't for the life of me figure out why the Democrats can't say let's get someone else who's not entirely off the rocker

00:35:53.580 senile to be their candidate for president, but this seems to be what they've decided. They're

00:35:59.600 putting great grandpa up again, not letting him retire. To be fair, I can't see why the Republicans

00:36:04.960 can't find somebody sane either. Well, the difference is the Republicans like Trump. The

00:36:09.200 Democrats don't even really like Biden. He's just their guy. No Democrat is a thwalled about him.

00:36:16.200 The radical left of the Democrats don't like him because he's an establishment

00:36:19.760 I think it's just the Democratic establishment is afraid that the radical woke and socialist left of the Democrats will have their chance for a candidate this time if they put up someone who's not as old as Bernie Sanders.

00:36:33.760 But in any case, I think Trump is a pretty good bet.

00:36:36.760 that yes but it's but that's actually kind of dangerous because what happens when you've got

00:36:42.360 a candidate who is destined to lose is that you find a distraction and you have a national

00:36:49.000 emergency and you say well this guy is monica missiles something like that well no american

00:36:56.280 president's ever lost while at war i mean it's it's a good incentive for having wars and donald

00:37:01.960 Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to not have a significant war during his presidency.

00:37:08.520 I mean, Trump would have stood a very good chance of getting reelected if he had have had a war,

00:37:13.240 or if he would have leaned into COVID using wartime language the way other world leaders did.

00:37:17.320 Which war are you associating with Hoover?

00:37:19.880 I said he's the last president who didn't get America into a significant war.

00:37:22.920 Oh, I see. Yes. Too busy getting them into a depression.

00:37:26.760 No, generally speaking, if you want to get into a war, elect a Democrat.

00:37:31.500 You've got Woodrow Wilson in the First World War.

00:37:33.880 You have FDR in the Second World War.

00:37:36.800 You have Harry Truman for Korea.

00:37:39.000 You have Kennedy and Johnson for Vietnam. 0.57

00:37:42.840 Well, the Republicans were the war party, though, for some time.

00:37:47.340 By Nixon, they became the war party.

00:37:50.780 But didn't have to actually fight one.

00:37:52.740 Nixon was the guy that got them out of Vietnam.

00:37:54.940 Largely so, yeah.

00:37:55.660 And without Watergate, probably would have gone about a much better. But certainly through through Reagan. I mean, I love Reagan as much as the next guy. But Reagan was a hawk. Bush first, Bush the second. They were both hawks.

00:38:08.000 It's the old thing. If you don't want if you want peace, prepare for war. And that's what the Republicans have done. That's what the Democrats.

00:38:15.120 But Trump returned the Republicans to their traditional position as the peace party.

00:38:21.640 But for a long time, I'd say from Reagan on through the second Bush, they were the war party. 0.53

00:38:28.840 But it switched back to the way it was pre-Reagan.

00:38:32.320 I mean, just to head off the guys who are already reaching for their phones, I will concede that George Bush took the United States into the war in Afghanistan and the war against terror.

00:38:42.520 On the other hand, what else was he going to do after the trade center?

00:38:47.080 We're way off track, but I'm liking this off track today.

00:38:49.400 Afghanistan, I totally had to do, but Iraq was a pretty, that was an optional. 0.99

00:38:54.480 That was not a mandatory question on the...

00:38:57.140 It did backfire on them once things were investigated and realized.

00:39:00.740 And I think the result of that is one thing that propelled the return of the Republicans,

00:39:04.760 the position of the, not anti-war party, but the less imperialist of the two parties.

00:39:09.600 Yes, certainly.

00:39:10.380 Okay, well, we're going off a lot of tangents today, but I'm liking these tangents. But let's bring it back closer to home again here. So Pierre Polyev, when he ran for Conservative leader, promised to defund the CBC. Very popular. He's been very clear on that.

00:39:30.900 He gives these great speeches about, you know, he looks forward to the day when they can close down the headquarters of the CBC in Toronto,

00:39:39.780 when a family pulls up a U-Haul and moves into the C-suite.

00:39:44.800 But he has, until now, not committed to ending the government subsidies to the so-called private sector media,

00:39:54.640 the bailouts, essentially, that the Western Standard painfully has not taken.

00:40:00.900 Which is why you need to support us by becoming a member at westernstandard.news.

00:40:04.600 $10 a month or $100 a year.

00:40:07.100 But he has not yet committed until now to end the private sector subsidies.

00:40:12.960 And I've suspected it's because, well, it's pretty hard for a journalist to cover you fairly if you're promising to end subsidies that are paying for their jobs.

00:40:25.760 I mean, if I'm a reporter and 35%, 40% plus of my salary is directly dependent on keeping the liberals in power, I can't cover the other guys fairly.

00:40:40.540 I can't cover the liberals fairly.

00:40:42.320 And so I think he's been afraid of provoking the media against him by saying he'd get rid of these subsidies.

00:40:49.840 I suspect, Corey, that the reason he has just this week promised to do away with the subsidies to Toronto Star, National Post, Golden Mail, all these guys, is because he's finally realized that they're not going to give him a fair shake no matter what.

00:41:12.700 So he may as well promise to ax their jobs.

00:41:15.440 Yeah, I mean, I think there's two reasons.

00:41:17.020 That's one of them.

00:41:17.600 It's a big one.

00:41:18.060 They're not going to give them a fair shake. They're on them like fleas on a dog. I've never

00:41:22.800 seen media so eager to keep the leader of the opposition accountable as I have in this last

00:41:27.580 year while giving a pass to the prime minister who prances out of the country or out of the

00:41:32.560 House of Commons every time a scandal comes up. The other part too, though, is I think it's

00:41:36.600 becoming evident to Canadians in general that the subsidies aren't working. The newspapers are

00:41:41.460 still contracting. The CTV and Bell are still doing layoffs. The subsidies aren't working.

00:41:46.920 They're trying to save outlets, you know, and I've got a column coming out in a little while on that from an inevitable despise, despise, I despise some of them.

00:41:58.520 And he's realizing that, you know, Canadians are also realizing this is just throwing good money after bad.

00:42:04.180 Something needs to change, but subsidizing isn't working.

00:42:07.140 So he's not afraid to go after it.

00:42:08.500 Nigel, why do you think he's declined until now to say he would get rid of the subsidies to the so-called private sector media, and has just now said he'll do it?

00:42:22.020 Well, timing is everything, and one thing is you don't want to put all your policies out there at the moment, but it just seemed like the right time to point out that the media,

00:42:32.420 Bell has just laid off, what was it, 5,000 people to get rid of a massive operating debt

00:42:42.180 that was piling up to what was basically a telephone company.

00:42:46.440 So he has no friends.

00:42:51.420 It's like Corey says, he has no friends in the media.

00:42:54.780 Why are we keeping this up?

00:42:56.720 Put it out there.

00:42:57.800 The base actually will love it, and they do.

00:43:00.500 and you can see that from the response that we've been getting.

00:43:07.320 20 months to an election.

00:43:10.200 What he is doing is taking them on.

00:43:13.880 Have you noticed this?

00:43:15.080 I mean, you kind of not noticed it.

00:43:16.800 Like, he doesn't just, Harper would go to the press conference,

00:43:21.220 take two questions, they would always be hostile.

00:43:24.460 They were never simply a request for information.

00:43:27.160 They'd leave and they went off and did what they did.

00:43:30.500 And Kaleev is not doing that.

00:43:33.100 He is going.

00:43:33.900 He'll take as many questions as he likes.

00:43:35.840 But, boy, if you were a reporter, you had better have your questions in order

00:43:40.480 and be based on solid fact or he will make a fool of you.

00:43:44.000 And I don't know why, but they keep coming up unprepared,

00:43:47.720 and he eats his apple or he mocks the toque or whatever it is, you know,

00:43:52.880 and they go off with their tails between their legs.

00:43:55.380 And now he has finally given them the kick in the rear as they leave.

00:43:59.560 By the way, I'm dropping this and you'll get a, you know, getting a job, make toast for old people or something. 1.00

00:44:07.480 Yeah, that's that's the end game here to actually diminish their their influence and the respect that people have for the media by just showing them up working.

00:44:19.280 You know, I've had meetings with politicians and, you know, not infrequently.

00:44:23.220 They'll ask me, I'll put it this way.

00:44:25.640 When I was testifying at the Senate last year on Bill C-18, the Online News Act, I was, I think by a liberal or technically an independent, but a liberal senator, what can the government do to help the independent media like the Western Standard?

00:44:43.860 And what I said was, leave us alone, and stop subsidizing our competitors. Stop subsidizing the legacy media, and stop trying to help us. Just leave us alone. And that's it. So if Pierre Polyev can end these subsidies.

00:45:00.720 more national advertising might have been. Well, yeah, I suppose so. Don't you think?

00:45:06.960 You know what, that's a good idea. But, you know, stop subsidizing our competitors, and stop trying

00:45:13.360 to pass things like the Online News Act to help us because all the Online News Act did was get us

00:45:16.960 kicked off Facebook. It costed us a lot of money. So what do you think it costs the mainstream media

00:45:23.360 because they were Facebook was paperboy for them to? Yeah, but not not in the same percentages. It

00:45:28.000 It was, because conservatives are more likely to be on Facebook, leftists are more likely to be on Twitter.

00:45:33.760 Twitter is still there, Facebook is not for us.

00:45:36.920 So it hurt everybody, but it proportionally hurt more conservative and right-leaning publications more.

00:45:42.820 Interesting. Okay.

00:45:43.860 Yeah.

00:45:44.160 And as a source of revenue, it hurt them a lot less because they're taking the federal government subsidies.

00:45:50.120 So, and they're not really in the business of growing.

00:45:52.200 We are.

00:45:52.560 But nobody won.

00:45:54.040 No, nobody came out of this looking good.

00:45:56.720 All right. Well, we're going to wrap it up there. Corey, Nigel, thank you very much.

00:46:02.480 I thank all of you for joining us today on the pipeline. Remember, the Western Standard is

00:46:06.280 federal government bailout free. We rely on advertising and memberships from people like

00:46:12.920 you. If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, go to Western Standard News right now

00:46:17.400 and become a member. It's only $10 a month or $100 for an entire year to get all access to all

00:46:22.900 Western Standard content. Without that kind of thing, well, we'd have to shut down or take the

00:46:27.880 subsidies like the other guys. So please do it. Thank you very much for joining us today, and God

00:46:32.420 bless. Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Without the CSSA, our gun rights would have been taken

00:46:38.120 long, long ago. These guys are on the front lines, helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms

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Western Standard - February 15, 2024

The Pipeline： Guilbeault says no more roads

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