Western Standard Opinion Editor Nigel Hannaford and Senior Alberta Columnist Corey Morgan join me to talk about the latest hostage crisis in Alberta, Justin Trudeau's strange privacy tour, and the Canadian Shooting Sports Association's new attack ads.
00:00:00.000Good evening, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching
00:00:17.280The Pipeline. Today is August 9th, 2023. I'm joined as usual by Western Standard opinion
00:00:25.420editor, Nigel Hannaford. Great to be back. Gonna be back here too. We've also got, as always,
00:00:31.960Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist, Corey Morgan. How you doing, Corey? Very good, thanks.
00:00:38.960Okay, well, we've got a fun show today. First, a hostage crisis.
00:00:46.060Ottawa has been taking hostages from Alberta for quite some time. The tech oil sands mine,
00:00:52.040pipeline approvals, natural gas exports to Germany. They've taken a lot of hostages. But
00:00:57.780all of a sudden, new twist in the story. Alberta's taken some hostages. The Alberta government has
00:01:04.060put in place a six-month moratorium on so-called green energy products. That's windmills,
00:01:11.540solar panels, hipsters on exercise bikes, different things like this.
00:01:17.720ostensibly so that they can do a review around land use stuff, which makes some sense.
00:01:26.320But I'm actually hoping that there's a bigger agenda at play here.
00:01:30.940And that's that, well, if Ottawa is going to be shooting our prisoners,
00:01:36.780then perhaps we should start shooting some of their dear green prisoners as well.0.99
00:01:41.180Just for the Facebook, YouTube, and Facebook, mostly Facebook and YouTube censors.
00:01:47.020we're not actually talking about shooting people, metaphorical projects. We're going to be talking about housing prices, housing, housing, or house building and immigration, immigration levels already at massive record levels continued to be planned to go to even higher new record levels. And whatever else you might think about immigration, good thing, bad thing.
00:02:14.180It's definitely far, far outpacing new home construction in Canada.
00:02:19.080So we're going to be talking about that, particularly comes from a column that Corey wrote.
00:02:24.040We're going to talk about Justin Trudeau's privacy tour.
00:02:27.060Of course, I'm sure you've all seen the news.
00:02:29.820Justin Trudeau and Sophie Gregor Trudeau have split, and they both issued a very, I think, reasonable plea for privacy to leave their family out of this.
00:02:42.800And I think most reasonable people among us said, that seems reasonable to me.
00:02:48.120And about two days later, Justin Trudeau trots out his Barbie son on social media,
00:02:54.700doing anything but keeping his family life private from what's going on.
00:03:02.000So I'm going to talk about Justin Trudeau's kind of very strange privacy tour here.
00:03:07.700A little on the nose, but trying to contrast himself.
00:03:10.220uh uh conservative leader peer poly of the conservative leaders new clothes a new set of
00:03:17.900positive advertisements about the conservative leader uh released about how he is a great family
00:03:24.840man and the regular guy and wink wink nudge nudge his family's together i think that part was a you
00:03:32.760know a little maybe a little on the nose but uh we're going to talk about these new attack uh it's
00:03:37.180not attack ads, the opposite of attack ads, positive, flowery, nice ads, meant to perhaps humanize Pierre Polyev as he continues to climb in the polls here.
00:03:48.820Before we get started, though, we've got to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
00:03:53.140I was actually just talking to these guys this morning.
00:03:56.640I've been a member of the CSSA for more than a decade because we need the Canadian Shooting Sports Association there to defend our rights as free firearm owners
00:04:06.260In Canada, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association is kind of leading firearms rights organization and is absolutely necessary.
00:04:15.260If we are to retain any right to own and use firearms legally in this country without the CSSA.
00:04:22.260By this point, I'm sure we'd all still be gun owners.
00:04:25.260We'd just be criminals for doing it at the same time.
00:04:28.260So if you're not yet a member of the CSSA, you need to stop free riding and join up with them.
00:04:55.960were about to be banned from Google. And this is all because of federal legislation meant to help
00:05:01.780us. You know, we've talked about Bill C-18 before, the latest media bailout bill imposed by the
00:05:08.020federal government designed to bail out legacy publishers and broadcasters by making Google
00:05:14.580and Facebook give them money for helping them find readers and viewers. A strange crime. Well,
00:05:21.660So this is obviously blown up in their faces. And the Western Standard, we've been at left holding the bag. We don't take the bailout money, but we have to deal with being banned on Facebook and Google because of federal government legislation.
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00:06:05.080Okay, let's jump into it. Hostage exchange. For a very long time now, at least since the Trudeau government came to power in 2015, they have been outright cancelling energy product, generally fossil fuel based energy products in Canada.
00:06:24.660And, you know, we remember just a few years ago, the Tech Frontier Mine, a massive oil sands project, billions and billions of dollars of investment, tens of billions of dollars in economic activity and royalties over the projected life of the oil sands mine, just canceled by the Trudeau government.
00:06:46.680No good reason other than we don't like it.
00:06:52.940All sorts of, you know, the no more pipelines bill, the no more tank, the West Coast tanker ban, all of these things designed to kill the oil and gas industry in Alberta.
00:07:01.600So they've been taking hostages and shooting them to boot.
00:07:05.560Well, all of a sudden, just a few days ago, a very interesting announcement in Alberta here.
00:07:12.740The government's put in place a six month moratorium on wind and solar projects.
00:07:19.940projects. Now, a lot of people who actually live near where they build these things don't like
00:07:24.520them. They make the landscape look like crap. A lot of people live in the country because it's
00:07:28.080beautiful and it's natural. It's a big reason to live in the country. Well, it doesn't look so
00:07:33.960beautiful and natural when you've got giant mirrors for solar farms and wind farms polluting the
00:07:39.500landscape. People who want them tend to live where these things aren't. So it disrupts landowners.
00:07:46.020just helps their way of life. So they put in place a six month moratorium on that.
00:07:50.020But I think there could be, I mean, critics of this are saying, well, maybe they're trying to strike back at Ottawa.
00:07:57.020And I thought, oh, that's a great idea if it's true. I don't know.
00:08:01.020Let's start with you, Corey. Is this a bit of column A, part of column B?
00:08:07.020It is partially concerned of landowners having their landscapes polluted by these projects without any consultation with them.
00:08:14.020Or is this primarily Alberta taking some hostages now and saying, geez, you killed our projects.0.99
00:08:21.440It'd be a shame if this wind farm was killed too.
00:08:24.700Well, I think there's a bit of both going on.
00:08:26.740It's the government saying, you know what, we're not part of this almost craze for renewable energies.
00:08:33.300We actually want to start appraising these and treating them as we do with other conventional energy projects for feasibility, environmental impact, things like that.
00:08:40.920The icing on the cake, though, is telling Ottawa, well, yeah, we're not going to play your game with this.
00:08:47.300We're going to develop our industry, as is our provincial, right, how we see fit.
00:08:51.760We can debate whether it's a good idea or a bad idea to develop that way.
00:08:55.780But she's, I think, sticking out the line, too, though, saying it's our choice whether it's good or bad.
00:09:01.320And what are you going to do about it?
00:09:03.960And as you said, the hostage exchange might be pending.
00:09:06.940Yeah, Nigel, the idea of the hostage exchange, you know, Alberta taking hostages to come back at Ottawa, didn't really strike me too much until this morning.
00:09:17.200The discussion was mostly around, you know, on one side, while they're protecting landowners in rural areas from polluting their landscapes with, you know, wind and solar farms everywhere.
00:09:28.360On the other side saying, oh, how dare you? This is a thriving industry.
00:09:32.140You know, it's subsidized up the wazoo.
00:09:37.220They're just doing this because they don't like green energy.
00:09:39.840I'm not convinced that they don't like so-called green energy.
00:09:43.820But it struck me that this could be a hostage exchange.
00:09:45.980When I was walking by in the hallway, we've got some kind of covers of our older issues here.
00:09:51.040And headline, one of our earlier issues was, you know, if Trudeau kills the tech frontier mine, it's war.
00:09:57.460And I thought, maybe there's a bigger, higher level politics to this, that this is Alberta frustrated that, okay, we can't do, this can't seem to do anything to force Ottawa to allow us to develop our industries as we see fit.
00:10:14.980So perhaps we'll strike at them on our own soil, because we've got these little green, you know, these little solar and energy farms that Ottawa likes.
00:10:23.180they're on our soil, and we can stop new ones from being built. We can play the
00:10:28.280same game. I don't know, am I reading too much into this, that this is a hostage
00:10:32.840exchange, or is this just more or less what it is on its face, that it's just
00:10:36.740maybe they just don't like them, or maybe it is just a review for landowners?
00:10:41.060So, I would say that the conversation that went, you know, we should start
00:10:47.980stopping new green developments until they start allowing some new oil
00:10:53.080developments was probably never that explicit because there are enough good
00:10:58.600reasons which I may come to just to put a lid on the amount of new green
00:11:06.360whether it's solar or wind development in this province. However I think everybody
00:11:13.260sat back once they made the decision and said something along the lines of what
00:11:17.360you saying that's kind of interesting actually we can do it too can't we it's sort of like the
00:11:22.640sovereignty act only it's proactive instead of reactive but i i do strongly believe that
00:11:30.880that this government would have been motivated by genuine reasons of of public concern they nearly
00:11:39.120had a blackout before christmas we came that close and they are very aware that you cannot summon up
00:11:48.240renewable energy on demand if the wind doesn't blow or if it's dark if it's cloudy whatever the
00:11:53.360problem is you can't just say all right turn on the turbulence because nothing happens they also
00:11:58.880articulated a number of other reasons that these things have got like a 20-year lifespan
00:12:02.960and they're not recyclable so what do you what's the exit plan going to be and they say well this
00:12:07.520is something we're not going to have any more of these things until we've developed that in six
00:12:10.880months gives us a reasonable amount of time to do it but this is a province which lives four months
00:12:18.800of the year below zero and tough you know it's it's you need power all the time and the idea that
00:12:27.040the power could ever go off in the middle of the winter is something that provincial government
00:12:31.760that allowed it to happen should be crucified for they're not going to lay themselves open to that
00:12:36.960charge. I think it's kind of interesting that they've actually picked up and run with this
00:12:41.200when so many previous provincial governments have not brought us this close to the brink.
00:12:47.520Yeah, it's sort of Ottawa's, Ottawa doesn't really care how reliable this stuff is because it feels
00:12:52.160good. They're happy to let the western bastards freeze in the dark. They don't care if this stuff
00:12:55.840is reliable or not. And it was, you know, most of this stuff began in a really big way under the NDP.
00:13:02.160They completely changed the way they did the power grid, introduced massive new subsidies in addition to subsidies that were already there federally and from the previous Allison Redford and Stelmack governments.
00:13:15.340But the Kennedy government didn't really change anything on it.
00:13:18.900They more or less just kind of left it in place.
00:13:22.100And so far, this is early days for this UCP government.
00:13:25.560Smith has only been premier in her own right since the elections, you know, May 31st, really.
00:13:32.160They haven't had even a city of the legislature since the election, but it'll be telling if they start pulling the subsidies on these things.
00:13:40.000Now, the old ones, there's old contracts signed to be very, pretty much impossible to get rid of the old contracts.
00:13:45.740We're going to be stuck paying those for generations, just as Ontario is stuck paying them for generations back from the McGinty government.
00:14:03.600If you don't like something, you probably don't subsidize it.
00:14:05.020I mean, the whole case of whether they're viable or not is whether they could exist with just private investment.
00:14:09.300I mean, you know, we would agree in this room anyways.
00:14:11.400So I could say, yeah, the thumbs up is going on, but we're yanking our portion of it.
00:14:15.740If you can bring in the private capital and follow the proper environmental hoops, go to town.
00:14:20.380But in the meantime, we're done backstopping this because we have to bring more reliable things onto our grid, such as gas or, you know, dare I say, who knows?
00:14:29.240Maybe, you know, modular nuclear and a lot of other options out there.
00:14:32.600Ottawa killed the subsidies for oil and gas, which was precisely zero dollars.
00:14:38.600So in response, we have to kill the subsidies for Ottawa's green projects, which is a lot more than zero dollars.
00:14:45.560And there's a reason to, just for cost-benefit analysis, like I did a comparison, that Traverse Solar Project, it's already generating, it's in the grid, it's, the numbers offhand, I think it's 340 megawatts it generates, which is sizable, but it takes up 3,200 acres of land down there.
00:15:03.700Now there's the Calgary Energy Project, it's a newer energy plant that was built, it's natural gas fired outside of Calgary, which generates about 320 megawatts, a little bit less than that one.
00:15:13.700But it only takes up about 10 acres. So when you're talking environmental footprint too, I mean now the gas one has emissions, the solar doesn't, but there's more to be discussed.
00:15:22.700There's not a lot of emissions in natural gas.
00:15:24.700No, relative to a lot of other forms. So tapping the brakes, because there's 50, if you go to the
00:15:32.220Alberta website, it's very good for the government, 50 large renewable energy projects in the
00:15:37.600application or pending construction stage right now. Like there's a lot and that's ones that are
00:15:42.200five million dollars or more. They're usually in the hundreds of millions. It's a good time to
00:15:46.060rethink those things. Of course, this will be totally misrepresented to the Central Canadian
00:16:07.000Like, I hope that the Greenies' worst fears here is actually true,1.00
00:16:10.780that this was a very intentional and strategic move to retaliate against Ottawa.
00:16:16.820And maybe if it wasn't intentional to begin with,
00:16:20.680Maybe it was just, oh, we just need to, you know, for land development stuff, we need to look at that.
00:16:25.440It seems to actually be a potentially great move for the province to make if they want to strong-arm Ottawa,
00:16:31.060because Ottawa seems to have held all the cards, the Supreme Court stacked.
00:16:34.400It's chosen exclusively by federal politicians, which is Trudeau and before them Harper.
00:16:41.700Do you think this is an effective strategy, if in fact it is a strategy, to strong-arm Ottawa and to relenting on canceling Alberta projects?
00:16:49.080Hard to say. On the surface, yes, it is. We can play that game, too. Under the surface,
00:16:59.160what will the federal government do? What will the Liberal Party, more to the point,
00:17:04.200do with this narrative of an obstreperous, obstructive Alberta government?
00:17:08.920Will that be a bit rich? Oh, Alberta's stopping energy projects.
00:17:14.600I would love to see them say that. It'd be hilarious.
00:17:17.400Well, it would, but it would sell very well to the central Canadian electorate,
00:17:23.080which doesn't believe the best of Alberta in the first place, and would probably react quite
00:17:27.720strongly to an emotional pitch from the prime minister. And Lord knows he's going to need some
00:17:33.400effective emotional pitches in the two years' time.
00:17:36.520Well, let them hit on Alberta. Who cares?0.84
00:17:38.600whether that will actually force them to relent the thing that we need to be building more natural
00:17:49.000gas generators now that's what we know how to do that's what we know works and we have
00:17:54.920the natural gas to do it with it is the nuclear nothing against nuclear but i think there's a
00:18:01.320little bit more of a time lag between saying yes we'll do it and actually turning it on it also
00:18:07.560happens to be that we have all hell for a basement of natural gas we have virtually infinite natural
00:18:14.920gas under us and it's cheap but you made a point about the ndp a few minutes ago about how this
00:18:20.120started they were the ones who actually started decommissioning the coal fire generating plants
00:18:23.880which is the by far the cheapest way to generate electricity and all that had happened is that
00:18:31.400they have completely bought the program unthinking unquestioning an emotional appeal oh we must do
00:18:38.200our part too so let's get you know more harm is done by stupid people than evil people i don't0.66
00:18:46.040think the ndp were evil but they certainly were stupid on this whole file and now we've got a
00:18:53.560government that is i think trying to pick up the beat well not think it is manifestly obvious
00:18:57.880they're trying to pick up the pieces and make sure that the lights don't go off.
00:19:01.240Well, I think we've got Nigel's slogan, more harm is done by stupid people than even evil people.
00:19:06.200Well, it's not original. I'm sure observed it.
00:19:09.560Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to switch it up to another federal provincial issue here.
00:19:18.440That housing, the relationship between housing and immigration.
00:19:23.240People watching are probably gonna have different views on immigration.
00:19:26.520But, you know, Canada was populated, other than the very first people here, by immigrants.
00:19:31.380We've, you know, and our birth rates are low that probably can't be forced that much higher through whatever incentives.
00:19:38.980Immigration is a pretty important part of the economy here, especially as we have this upside down pyramid scheme of the welfare state between health care and pensions and things like that.
00:19:48.580But whatever you level you think immigration should be at. We have to agree that I would think that if you know housing prices are already so stratospheric that it's your only way if you're a young person today to get a house is that your parents give or lend you the money or you win the lottery that at a minimum we should at least be building enough new homes in Canada so that it stays roughly equivalent with with availability.
00:20:18.580relative to immigration. Well, that's very much not the case. Corey, you had a column on this.
00:20:24.180Yeah, I did, or the column is coming out soon anyways, and I did talk about that on the show,
00:20:29.700I did. Yeah, I mean, the numbers, it's just straight math. The Trudeau government is
00:20:34.100stubbornly sticking to their 500,000 a year target for immigration of people to come into Canada.
00:20:39.220That was one of the first things asked of the new immigration minister. Will you, even progressive
00:20:43.220outlets are starting to question, would you start considering slowing it down? We've got a problem.
00:21:06.640It's not straight across, but it's certainly not enough.
00:21:09.520Plus, if they're coming in, either whether the immigrant can't find a new home or they get into the bidding and the costs go up.
00:21:16.320because we're having difficulty with citizens here now, affording to get into either buying
00:21:20.660a home, as you said, or even renting. It's eating a larger and larger part of people's incomes.
00:21:25.320This is a collision course going on, and it's going to lead to some very, very big challenges.
00:21:30.840I looked up some of the numbers because we were talking a bit earlier, you know,
00:21:33.600what's the incentive? Why is the government so stuck on this? Well, it's according to the IMF.
00:21:37.600So if Canada sticks to its immigration targets, we will see our GDP increase by 1.5% because0.61
00:21:43.600in incoming immigration does generate activity and GDP. But of course, when you break it down
00:21:49.840to per capita GDP, that's where the difference lies, because that will drop not by 15.5%. But
00:21:57.380they're predicting 0.2% to 0.5%. Because sure, you've increased the economy by one and a half
00:22:02.360percent, but you're spreading it amongst 500,000 extra people every year. And so let's, you know,
00:22:08.000more people will have less, but it helps them balance the books, it helps them avoid the R word,
00:22:13.020there's no recession as long as the GDP is ostensibly growing. But this again, as you said,
00:22:18.740it's a pyramid scheme, and it's going to crash eventually. We can't just keep maintaining this
00:22:23.320by pumping people into support to the population demographic changes we have, we've got to get the
00:22:28.640housing. Nigel, you don't have to be anti-immigration to have legitimate concerns about
00:22:35.380this stuff. I mean, you can be very pro-immigration, say, well, first of all, I'm not sure any society
00:22:41.820in the world can absorb this proportion of people. I mean, I think reasonable people would agree
00:22:47.940that a society can absorb a certain number of newcomers from foreign languages, foreign
00:22:56.120religions, foreign cultures. We can absorb a certain proportion every year. What is the
00:23:01.400proportion we can absorb and what point does it tip over that we can't? I don't know. I mean,
00:23:07.360There's a lot of examples in Europe that they have absorbed a lot more than they can handle. Canada's been relatively successful-ish in absorbing people, but at some point it's going to tip over.
00:23:21.020But now it's getting into a very beyond the traditional cultural arguments, which dominate discussions of immigration. It's now getting into basic economics of it.
00:23:30.360And that is much more difficult for the liberals to argue with, saying, yeah, housing is a problem, but we're going to continue to bring in many more people every year than we're actually building the necessary homes for.
00:23:44.780Do you think, you know, if the government continues on this, and the conservatives haven't, the conservatives have been so shy around this because they don't want to get painted as anti-immigrant.
00:23:55.760I mean, saying, well, we're not going to bring in half a million a year.
00:23:58.320We're going to bring in 4.5, you know, 450,000 a year.
00:24:02.340The liberals are saying, well, you're racists.
00:24:04.320Even if Canada still had the highest immigration levels in the world, it's less than the liberals.
00:24:08.860The conservatives have been very tepid around this.
00:24:11.140I don't know where they're going to go with it.
00:24:12.660But do you think, regardless of what parties in power, this housing issue with immigration poses a risk of causing an anti-immigration backlash
00:24:23.600that could maybe turn to a naster form of xenophobia?
00:24:27.580I hope it doesn't come to that, Derek.
00:24:29.400I really hope it doesn't come to that.
00:24:32.360But you are going to be seeing more stories
00:24:34.540about immigrants living in tense cities.
00:24:37.680Because if there literally is no place for them to go,
00:25:51.620And we could not depend, like this generation could not depend on the generation that's following to, frankly, pay the bills, to pay the CPP, to pay the OAS, to pay the GIS, to pay the cost of health care.
00:26:06.520You know, so you bring in more immigrants, you have more taxpayers, and now we've got enough money, and I'll be somewhere else by the time that all this comes home to roost.1.00
00:26:18.780I have to wonder whether that's really what it's all about.
00:26:22.760Well, that's maybe where I want to go next.
00:26:25.200And this one's going to be a bit more politically sensitive by its nature.
00:26:29.600Immigration, the politics of immigration in a lot of countries is sometimes set by ideology,
00:26:36.240but often it's more just practical politics, stacking the deck one way or another to favor one political party or another.
00:26:44.900And some of that will overlap to an extent. But like you look in the United States, generally Democrats favor immigration more than Republicans do. Both are generally fairly pro-immigration, but, you know, Democrats more so.
00:26:59.580But one of the big reasons for that is that recent immigrants and visible minorities vote in significantly larger numbers, proportionally Democrat.
00:27:09.940So the Democrats have a political incentive for higher immigration, whereas Republicans have a political incentive for lower immigration.
00:27:19.920And there's a similar, although maybe not as strong, correlation in Canada that, you know, how many, you've all heard it before with some older immigrants.
00:27:28.900Well, I, my family came here under Trudeau, senior Trudeau, so I feel obliged to vote liberal. The liberals have painted themselves very effectively as the party of immigrants, rightly or wrongly, they have.
00:27:42.120You know, Mulroney opened Canada up to record levels of immigration. He passed the official multiculturalism act, but somehow did not steal the political star as the party of immigration from the liberals.
00:27:52.840The Liberals have retained it. The Conservatives closed the gap quite a bit when with the Harper majority victory in 2011, you know, with Jason Kenney's work and things like that.
00:28:02.480But that was fleeting. That seemed to have been largely a one-off kind of thing.
00:28:07.180The Liberals do seem to have a strong partisan interest in higher immigration because there are people who are more likely to vote Liberal once they can get their citizenship than not.
00:28:21.520Is that what's driving this and the consequences of these kind of insane levels of immigration be damned?1.00
00:28:28.040Or is it just that they think it's the right thing to do?
00:28:50.880Because the bringing in more people also brings in more carbon dioxide emitters.
00:28:58.260It's not going to make the net zero any easier to meet by 2035 if between now and then you bring in, what, another 6 million people?
00:29:10.180That's counterproductive in a lot of ways.
00:29:13.500Carbon dioxide emitters, that is what we should just call humans now.
00:29:16.940Well, consumers and carbon dioxide emitters, that's right.
00:29:20.040Corey, same thing to you. Do you think this is driven by, rightly or wrongly, this is driven by the partisan political incentive for the liberals that, you know, immigrate, at least more recent immigrants, it's less of a withholder, more established immigrants, but this, that they're more likely to vote liberal and that's why they want to bring these people in in such numbers?
00:29:41.080I think secondary to the economic case, that could be part of it for sure, because traditionally, demographically, that's a better area.
00:29:46.880But those who came in and felt gratitude towards, say, Trudeau Sr. didn't come in and have to spend their two first years in a tent camp,
00:29:53.880waiting for a year to find a doctor for a checkup, and having an increasingly hostile citizenry,
00:30:00.300which is going to happen if, again, we don't properly integrate new Canadians.
00:30:05.240I don't know if they're going to feel such a sense of gratitude to the existing government for the situation they got put in
00:30:10.160as past immigrant, you know, immigrants may have had. So I wouldn't count on their support later.0.72
00:30:14.980Okay. Well, we're going to change from kind of federal government to Trudeau more personally.
00:30:21.380So everyone knows Justin Trudeau and Sophie Gregor Trudeau split. They put out kind of
00:30:29.940at the same time, simultaneous statements that I think were very, you could tell there was a lot
00:30:35.480of communication strategists behind this. The deal was already arranged to make it as neat as possible. And in there, they included a very reasonable and humane plea for privacy for their families that we try to, you know, keep
00:30:52.640try not to make the personal political here. And the media more or less do normally respect that, at least for liberals, liberals, private lives are generally considered more or less off limits.
00:31:03.380But then, and we're going to have to bring the picture up here. I think it was about two days later, Justin Trudeau posts this picture of him and his son. I didn't even know what his son looks like. He has appeared in photos. It's not like they've been totally sequestered and hidden, but haven't really been trotted out too much.
00:31:22.500To Trudeau's credit, you know, he hasn't used his kids' props too much, at least that I've seen.
00:31:27.940But then he trots out his son as a prop here, and they're both dressed in pink, and, you know, it's labeled Team Barbie.
00:31:35.620And, I mean, it's fine, go to see Barbie.
00:31:37.760I'm disappointed I couldn't take my daughter to see Barbie here.
00:31:40.680My wife took her instead, because I had to watch the baby.1.00
00:32:12.040But just, I can't put my finger on it, but it was just the look of them.
00:32:17.900I've used this term for Trudeau before we have a word in German for it it's very hard to pronounce
00:32:23.540which translates roughly a punchable face and he just had such a punchable face in it
00:32:34.420it's smug it's that smug little but did whatever else you think it was very clearly
00:32:40.160sending some kind of message using his son as a prop like less than 48 hours after he makes a plea
00:32:47.880for privacy and it just reminded me of you know uh harry and megan merkel touring around the media
00:32:55.260going on oprah screaming please respect our privacy you know just kind of like that uh that
00:33:01.060that south park episode and harry and megan's privacy tour gory well yeah i mean you know stop
00:33:09.080You know, give us our privacy. And they're holding signs and marching in front of the cameras. And within two days, there he is. And it wasn't a case of he'd gone to the theater and some individual had taken a picture with their camera and posted it. This was a staged, posed, hey, look at me. But you know, it's pure Trudeau. It's pure, it has to be about him. It's that shallow, you know, all eyes on me. Look at me. I'm the dad going through a separation.
00:33:37.060You know, somebody on social media pointed out an interesting thing.
00:33:39.640You know, maybe his messaging was actually more petty than that.
00:33:41.980Even it was actually directed towards Sophie.
00:35:20.960I mean, there haven't been paparazzi climbing the walls, trying to get pictures of the Trudeau family or tailing Sophie to see if she has a new date yet or anything like that.
00:35:30.540But again, at the same time, it would be more like, OK, I'm going to leave the family thing here and we're going to have the political thing here.
00:35:35.380But no, he's still got them quite well immersed in the public eye.
00:35:39.140Yeah. And I have a feeling that Sophie Grigor, you still call her Trudeau?
00:35:44.860Maybe she keeps the name because it's got some cachet.
00:35:46.820I don't think the court settlement is rich yet, so legally she's probably...1.00
00:35:51.280But who knows, maybe she keeps it because it's got some cachet, who knows.
00:35:56.600But I have a feeling she's not going to just quietly ride into the sunset.
00:36:00.160I mean, most people still remember Margaret Trudeau, and she used that platform into some kind of career.
00:36:10.760Sophie Trudeau is probably going to do something similar.1.00
00:36:14.660I doubt she's going to ride into the sunset.
00:36:16.040She doesn't seem to have that craving of attention that we see out of Justin, which I think he inherited from Margaret.
00:36:23.800Sophie likes the spotlight a bit, but she doesn't seem to be quite as obsessed with it.
00:36:28.800So I don't know if a comparison to Margaret is fair.
00:36:31.260But if she reinvents herself as a public figure, then...0.98
00:40:29.860I think it was better than it was with women.1.00
00:40:33.420But I think even a lot of men thought, he looks like a bit of a nerd.
00:40:37.660Not sure I could have a beer with him kind of thing.
00:40:39.880So I think, you know, he might be actually even, it's probably geared primarily at women, but I think also at men. You want to appear, you know, one of the famous, I think they started polling this in the 2000 US presidential election. Who would you rather have a beer with? George Bush or Al Gore? George Bush beat the hell out of Al Gore, which was funny because George Bush had quit drinking at that time and somehow seemed to become dumber when he was sober.
00:41:06.800but uh that really wasn't a fair fight come on like go to my way to avoid love to drape have a
00:41:17.120beer with george bush like that would be a good time yeah um but that was a that was an interesting
00:41:23.820kind of poll it's not saying how you're gonna vote but it said a lot about relatability and
00:41:27.640likability and i think this might also be a bit with the men that you know he's gonna seem a
00:41:34.800little less nerdy, you know, like, not doesn't look like a guy who's like, you know, a conservative
00:41:39.920intern and just worked just from there. Somebody's been a bit more in the real world.
00:41:44.300So what we've actually got to find out is who is advising him? Like, who's the wizard who is
00:41:48.820taking charge of the external profile and is making these decisions on behalf of him and the
00:41:56.200party? RuPaul. Oh, God. But I mean, popular, you know, as shallow as it is, it is a popularity
00:42:03.780contest. And if anything's been nagging them or hanging over them in the polls, the party's
00:42:09.340growing and growing and doing better. But personal popularity, he's people don't like him. He's been
00:42:15.660doing okay. Yeah, but he's not been matching the party. So I mean, they've maxed out what they can
00:42:20.940do with policy. Now let's soften the person. I think it's a good tactic. It's unfortunate that
00:42:27.080policy alone isn't necessarily enough, whether it's male or female, though, they feel with the
00:42:31.800person. We saw that with Preston Manning too, when he softened things up in the 90s, suddenly the
00:42:35.500glasses were gone, the hair was a little better. So he got rid of that, hi, Preston Manning voice.
00:42:40.320And he never became prime minister. But to be honest, as a younger Canadian voter at that time,
00:42:44.480I was already a reformer, but I found that more appealing. I was just a little more, a little less
00:42:48.680dorky, a little more human. So I think we're going to see more of it. The big question,
00:42:53.800like you're asking those, whether or not it's going to work, that we'll see.
00:42:56.340You know, Corey, it depends a lot at the election time as to what kind of a mess we're in.
00:43:01.800Like, if you've got a serious medical condition, you want a good doctor, and it won't necessarily be the personality doctor.
00:43:11.680It might be somebody who's a miserable sub to work with, but he knows where to put the knife, and he has a perfect record.
00:43:17.920So if farms are good, then the voters may well choose somebody who's likable and wears odd socks.
00:43:25.060But image matters, and it does say a lot.
00:43:27.140Like, when someone comes for a job interview with me, I'll admit it.
00:43:33.220Come in with a face tattoo, I'm going to have a really hard time getting over that, even if you've got great qualifications.
00:43:41.380I'm going to get sued now by everyone with a face tattoo who's applied for a job here and not getting more.
00:43:54.740Do you care about how you present yourself?
00:43:56.220So it's not just that. And, you know, we all don't think so, but we've, you know, there's ample studies to show how a politician looks matters. How someone applying for a job, men and women matters. Even men are more likely to hire handsome looking other men.