Western Standard - August 29, 2026


THE PIPELINE： Is Carney’s trade war hurting Canadians more than Trump？


Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

172.08

Word count

8,211

Sentence count

414


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Good day, I'm Corey Morgan, I'm a columnist with the Western Standard, sitting in to host
00:00:29.320 in place of Derek Fildebrandt today and this is the pipeline. Well we've got a interesting panel
00:00:35.240 lined up uh we've got I'll start from our distant uh person dialing in Alex Zoltan from out in BC
00:00:41.860 he's put on his best hat for us today how's it going Alex? It's going well how are you? Very good
00:00:48.160 good it's nice to see a Canadian flag content on the shows where it's usually you know crabby
00:00:53.480 independent supporters like myself it adds some color to things. Forgive me I'm doing a renovation
00:00:58.560 So quite all right.
00:01:01.900 And then in studio here on the end, we've got our news editor, Dave Kneeler on the end.
00:01:05.920 Hey, Corey, how's it going?
00:01:06.560 Very good.
00:01:07.700 And again, former opinion editor, still current columnist, Nigel Hannaford.
00:01:12.280 You bet.
00:01:12.720 Nice to be here.
00:01:13.840 Glad we're all gathered here together.
00:01:16.580 I guess I thought you were going to do a land acknowledgement there.
00:01:19.880 Land acknowledgement.
00:01:20.820 This is forever ceded land under Treaty 7.
00:01:24.620 Chief Crowfoot signed it all away and we're enjoying it to this day.
00:01:28.460 So thank you, Mr. Crowfoot.
00:01:30.620 Uh, and when I get through my trespassing
00:01:32.460 charges for visiting your grave and
00:01:33.920 putting it on video, we'll discuss it
00:01:35.720 further, uh, yeah, that was one of the
00:01:38.000 spots I got charged for too.
00:01:39.940 All right.
00:01:40.420 So we're acknowledged, we're set.
00:01:42.380 Might as well get right to the meat of
00:01:43.420 things.
00:01:43.620 There's a trade war I heard.
00:01:45.000 There is.
00:01:46.260 What's going on?
00:01:47.580 Uh, we, well, Trump, uh, they, they
00:01:52.680 walked away from negotiations,
00:01:53.960 prime minister, Mark Carney.
00:01:55.500 Uh, the, uh, then he imposed, uh,
00:01:58.340 equal tariffs yesterday, uh, Tuesday and war of words between, uh, Trump
00:02:04.520 and Doug Ford and, uh, uh, uh, pictures out today of, uh, bald
00:02:10.420 eagles killing, uh, uh, Canadian geese.
00:02:13.940 Yes.
00:02:15.900 Really calming down.
00:02:17.000 Like Nigel, what happened?
00:02:18.920 I mean, things have been kind of shaky and rough and back and forth for months,
00:02:22.660 you know, and ups and downs, but just this last week, I mean, it's, it's hit the fan.
00:02:26.000 Well, you're not really going to know what's happened until you know the details of the deal that they actually said no to.
00:02:32.260 There's all sorts of hints that it was something terrible.
00:02:36.020 There's also hints that maybe the Americans wanted us to walk away so that they could do their own thing.
00:02:41.640 So we really are talking about this in a bit of a vacuum as far as information is concerned.
00:02:47.200 But one thing that I do notice is that Mr. Carney himself must be able to comfort himself
00:02:55.380 with the thought that his polls have never been higher.
00:02:59.000 Canadians generally are reflexively anti-American, especially in eastern Canada.
00:03:04.920 Some people here in Alberta too.
00:03:08.300 But he's up around 65% in terms of approval ratings.
00:03:13.300 and it's based not on any achievement, any good thing that he has done that's been announced
00:03:23.460 that's making work for people or anything like that. It's entirely based on the anti-American
00:03:29.840 reaction. Mr. Carney, you go tell him, sir. And that is working very well for him at the moment.
00:03:35.620 And that alarms me a little for the future. Well, President Trump has definitely been a
00:03:39.560 political gift for Mark Carney, whether it was intentional or not. I mean, it just gave him that
00:03:43.980 ability to fire forward in the polls because you had a foreign enemy, you had to rally the troops
00:03:49.140 around to, you know, stick with and keep the attention on that. I mean, we can only speculate,
00:03:54.760 but I mean, it crosses my mind a little that he has it in his interest to keep this war flaming,
00:04:00.080 you know, as long as that is going on in there, he remains well up in the polls and he can do
00:04:05.120 whatever the heck his, his agenda might be.
00:04:07.640 Yeah.
00:04:07.820 I wonder if he's thinking about an early election.
00:04:10.760 You know, uh, he says his polls are never going to go higher.
00:04:14.240 Um, you know, we're one of the interesting things I thought was, uh,
00:04:18.980 he dangled, uh, Keystone pipeline apparently.
00:04:21.980 And that's been one of Trump's pet projects ever since he came into office.
00:04:26.280 He wants to restore Keystone so then he can go out and say,
00:04:29.440 sleepy Joe killed it.
00:04:30.920 I've restored it.
00:04:32.420 So apparently Trump dangled that.
00:04:34.220 It's not Trump, Kearney dangled that, and then according to the New York Times, pulled
00:04:39.040 it off the table at the last minute.
00:04:41.520 So that would have got Trump a little upset.
00:04:43.460 So there we go, as you know, we're reporting on what the New York Times reported.
00:04:49.560 I don't know whether they know for sure themselves.
00:04:51.500 Well, we're on rumors, and it's difficult.
00:04:54.620 So I mean, it's the headline news everywhere, and attitudes are different regionally.
00:04:58.100 But Alex, what are you getting on the ground out in BC on this whole thing?
00:05:01.940 How are people feeling out there?
00:05:03.540 I would describe the mood in BC as fairly anti-Trump, probably similar to what the mood is in Eastern Canada.
00:05:11.940 BC is set to be struck the hardest by these tariffs, by all metrics, especially our softwood lumber industry, our forestry industry is already taking a beating.
00:05:25.040 And yeah, so people are pretty anti-Trump, generally speaking.
00:05:29.320 so there isn't really a downside for mr carney in this at the moment because the demand is going
00:05:36.640 to be for support people whose incomes are threatened by the tariffs they're going to say
00:05:42.560 well what are you going to do for us so he really has license now to borrow and borrow and borrow
00:05:47.800 and present himself and his government as the savior of people which is i guess why i'm really
00:05:55.840 concerned about money on my credit cards to get me through this situation, but I
00:06:00.640 can't go much longer here.
00:06:02.560 My grandchildren's grandchildren won't be really paying this off.
00:06:05.500 I mean, the standard, that story out, I believe with Dominic LeBlanc saying
00:06:09.640 it was seven and a half billion, they're estimating for these aid
00:06:11.680 packages for the trade war, but they won't tell us how much their counter
00:06:15.020 tariffs are going to cost.
00:06:17.080 That's the frustrating thing he's being kept in the dark.
00:06:19.340 Well, it is a frustrating thing because when we place a tariff on
00:06:22.360 American imports, who is it?
00:06:24.340 who's paying it Canadians who want to buy American product now I mean if it's
00:06:30.100 if it's American wine and liquor I I guess you can switch to something else
00:06:34.780 if you don't like that but if it is something that you've got to have
00:06:38.500 apparently toilet papers top of the list of toilet paper very expensive it's you
00:06:44.060 know next time you go to Costco it's gonna be there's gonna be $30 instead of
00:06:48.460 25 you know so that kind of stuff it really works against canadian citizens so it's not a retaliation
00:06:58.220 you're you're punching yourself and then telling yourself you're punching trump
00:07:02.300 that's not working it's interesting to see the two sides uh in terms of talking about alberta oil
00:07:09.260 and whether or not to uh to put tariffs on it you've got jason kenny you got naheed nenshi you
00:07:14.780 You got Alison Redford, you got Doug Ford, all saying that it should be on the table.
00:07:21.620 And you've got Danielle Smith and you got Scott Moe saying no.
00:07:26.260 And Danielle Smith on this one seems to be the only adult in the room where she's saying these terrorists will do no good whatsoever.
00:07:34.460 Trump's going to hammer us.
00:07:36.440 Come September, he's going to hammer us.
00:07:39.000 And let's get back to the negotiating table.
00:07:41.240 Mark Carney, pick up the phone.
00:07:42.380 Well, to that point, Dave, in Mr. Carney's statement on Saturday morning, where he was explaining why things had fallen apart, as he would have us believe, he specifically referenced cultural issues, Quebec, and farm management.
00:07:59.700 So you can't put butter and eggs and cheese into the negotiating pot, but they would all have you believe that Alberta oil, well, yeah, of course, cut that off.
00:08:12.380 By the way, that's not a terribly useful tool in the bargaining kit
00:08:17.740 because the Yanks are actually exporting oil.
00:08:21.800 So it's threatening to cut ours off.
00:08:24.960 Telling the oil, the thing is, we only have one bloody customer.
00:08:28.160 You know, if we'd have diversified our markets, maybe we could say,
00:08:31.840 well, fine, we're going to increase our exports to India or China or Europe
00:08:36.300 if we had pipelines, but guess who shut those down?
00:08:39.300 But, I mean, I guess getting on to the other things,
00:08:41.840 So we talked about toilet paper, we talked about softwood.
00:08:44.420 Why is BC so awkwardly positioned Alex in that?
00:08:48.020 I mean, I know that the United States is right next door, but you've got a huge
00:08:53.000 port and an export market for a lot of goods all around the world, besides
00:08:57.060 just the United States.
00:08:57.960 You would think that would shield BC a little bit.
00:09:00.740 Well, I think you hit the nail on the head with the pipeline comment.
00:09:03.540 We, this is really BC's decades of failure to create an east to
00:09:09.200 west pipeline coming to fruition.
00:09:11.140 We don't have many trading partners other than the United States.
00:09:16.460 And so B.C. is also very reliant on its forestry industry and sending its product to the U.S.
00:09:24.660 We don't have any refineries, even though they're refining the oil right across the border.
00:09:28.980 And so we're kind of beholden to the United States.
00:09:32.060 And that wasn't an issue until Trump came along.
00:09:34.500 I do want to take aim at Trump a little bit here and I and I just want to preface that by saying
00:09:42.820 that just because I criticize Trump doesn't mean that I love Carney but I do sympathize with
00:09:48.840 Carney slightly because if you take Trump at his word and the reasoning behind his tariffs at his
00:09:54.640 word there is no way for Carney to satisfy him because what Trump wants is a zero-sum trading
00:10:00.940 relationship and that will never happen there's about a 200 billion dollar trade surplus that
00:10:06.300 canada has with the united states because of all the energy that we send there in order to make
00:10:11.020 up the difference even if we flooded the canadian market with american dairy it would require every
00:10:16.380 man woman and child to eat a 25 pound industrial bucket of wisconsin cheddar every week in order
00:10:23.740 to make up the trade difference so you can't reason somebody out of something that they didn't reason
00:10:29.900 themselves into to begin with. And what Trump wants, which is a balanced trade relationship,
00:10:34.540 is almost technically impossible. Yeah, no, it's difficult all around. And I know viewers get
00:10:41.320 upset with me when I put it out, but again, I've never been a big fan of Trump. The man's full of
00:10:45.680 crap often. How do you negotiate with a man with such a propensity to lie without hesitation? And
00:10:51.920 I know Carney lied about the Gordie Howe bridge as well. So now we've got two people who are prone
00:10:58.020 to fabricating things, won't share information with the public on what the deal is. And I'm
00:11:02.520 presuming probably aren't sharing good information with each other. This is just a recipe for a bad
00:11:07.080 deal. Well, it is, but it's one of the reasons why I'm able to keep my hair on through the whole
00:11:12.160 thing. Because what we forget, we think that the tariffs are on everything, but the actual amount
00:11:21.480 of trade that is affected by this this tariff dispute was relatively small i think it was
00:11:27.960 something like four percent or maybe five percent of our exports are affected by the tariffs that
00:11:36.280 mr trump has put on eighty percent of our uh of our goods continued across the border duty free
00:11:44.040 can't speak to the other 15 in this in this equation but um you you know everybody needs
00:11:50.760 to take a volume on this and just see how this is going to work out i don't think the last uh
00:11:56.680 the last word has been had on this whatsoever but certainly it's a there is a general misconception
00:12:02.920 that everything is tariffed yeah no you're right and it's not uh you know bc is going to be the
00:12:09.000 hardest hit alberta gets off quite easy when you look at you look at the facts and fairies
00:12:13.480 oh yeah we're laughing uh we're laughing uh quebec and ontario they're going to get hit
00:12:18.360 you're going to get hit hard. The Ontario auto industry. It's scary to be an auto worker.
00:12:22.040 Oh, if you're an auto worker, you might want to start looking for another career.
00:12:25.480 Aluminum in Quebec is going to be, going to be hit hard. So yeah, it's depending on where you
00:12:31.960 live, it's going to hurt if, but I think we don't have much to worry about here in Alberta.
00:12:36.600 Well, getting back to Alberta, a little more of our domestic politics here before I go into the
00:12:41.880 real, you know, ordered politics of British Columbia, where everything's going smoothly
00:12:46.680 throughout the Conservatives. Nahed Nanshi jumping in now saying that we should cancel
00:12:52.440 the referendum in light of this trade dispute. What the hell? Should we postpone elections too
00:13:01.720 whenever? It's just bizarre but they're giving him a lot of air. He's just trying to be relevant
00:13:08.280 in any way possible and it's not working. No, I mean there's no real relation. There's not,
00:13:15.720 Put it this way, if there is a relationship between the trade dispute
00:13:19.360 and the referendum, and it's one that takes so much explanation
00:13:23.280 that he would have lost his audience by the time he's got there,
00:13:26.620 it was a stupid thing to say.
00:13:30.180 What was the other thing that he came out with
00:13:32.120 that Smith was not a good team player
00:13:37.140 because she wouldn't go along and put Alberta oil on the table?
00:13:41.220 Well, like I said earlier, if they don't want to put supply management
00:13:45.660 on the table, precious to them, well, what's the argument that we take something that's
00:13:50.660 precious to us and make that a part of the negotiations?
00:13:54.080 So he's the most unconvincing leader of the opposition that we've had.
00:14:00.440 And it's been a gift for Premier Smith, because she's had a hard time with a whole lot of
00:14:06.080 things, but thankfully, Nenshi has been so inconsistent, poorly communicated, and unlikable
00:14:11.360 that she's still doing fine, because there's no threat there.
00:14:15.660 But I guess, speaking of unlikable,
00:14:18.740 unaffected politicians and everything,
00:14:20.620 there's a tall, morose-looking man
00:14:22.200 in British Columbia named David Eby
00:14:23.880 who's trying his very hardest
00:14:26.500 to make sure the NDP doesn't win the next election,
00:14:29.940 yet the Conservatives seem to be trying
00:14:31.400 their very hardest to make sure
00:14:32.860 he doesn't succeed in that.
00:14:34.860 They won't let him lose.
00:14:36.360 I don't get what's going on.
00:14:37.820 Mr. Zoltan, what the hell are the BC Conservatives doing now?
00:14:40.380 I'm seeing their members dropping like flies.
00:14:42.160 Yeah, it's about one MLA per day is leaving the BC Conservative Caucus. So at that rate,
00:14:49.760 by the end of next month, it will just be Carrie Lynn Finley and her husband left.
00:14:56.560 It's pretty bad. And I can provide a little bit of explanation. I mean, I'm obviously not in the
00:15:01.600 room, but I do have sources within the party. And they have informed me that the main issue is not
00:15:07.680 Carrie Lynn Finley, but in fact her husband and the new chief of staff, Chris Delaney.
00:15:13.400 Apparently he's not well liked.
00:15:17.300 But I mean, boy, you know, there's lots of people don't like each other within political
00:15:21.800 parties.
00:15:22.360 That's not uncommon.
00:15:25.740 How we're getting to a point though, where they feel we're going to leave and start a
00:15:29.100 caucus of two, which we found again with conservatives, we had that prior departure
00:15:32.840 of two and they had a caucus of two and that only lasted a few weeks before they split
00:15:37.260 up again i mean it's not just a bc it's conservatives we do this to ourselves alex correct
00:15:42.540 me if i'm wrong but i have not heard one mla who has departed giving a specific policy reason
00:15:49.980 as to what they disagreed with with finley i disagree with her on this or i disagree with
00:15:55.500 her on that is that right i would describe that as mostly accurate yes and it's the most perplexing
00:16:01.980 part about this development is during the bc conservative leadership race the phrase was
00:16:06.300 repeated many times that all of the candidates were in violent agreement with each other
00:16:10.300 on policy. So it appears that this is mostly personal, if not entirely personal and not political
00:16:16.920 at all. Well, so, you know, Nigel, you've been through the party wars as a journalist or inside
00:16:27.480 parties and watching. I mean, this is nothing new. Stockwell Day dealing with the Conservative
00:16:33.680 Reform Alliance party across the aisle for, you know, splitting, coming together, UCP, Wild Rose,
00:16:40.160 progressive conservative. Are we ever going to get through this? Well, so in the situation you
00:16:45.680 have just alluded to, two things were different. One is that the problem person was prepared to
00:16:55.520 admit that he was the problem when i speak of doc stockwell day um who was a very fine man and i was
00:17:03.840 able to see that he if he wasn't able to do it then he should stand back and let somebody else
00:17:10.960 and that is the second thing there was somebody else namely stephen harper uh there was a leadership
00:17:17.680 review as you know and or leadership race and other people put their names forward for the job
00:17:24.160 But in the end, it went to Stephen Harper, and you know what happened after that.
00:17:28.460 So what's different here is, first of all, nothing that I've heard or nothing that Zoltan has said has indicated that there's any acceptance of liability in the party leadership.
00:17:47.440 The problem is not us. It's those freewheeling guys out there.
00:17:52.540 And the other is, if not her, then who?
00:17:58.880 There were other people who ran for the leadership, but that was quite recent, and they didn't win.
00:18:05.360 So there's not a Stephen Harper person out there.
00:18:10.400 I mean, it's just a great shame.
00:18:11.700 Well, shame doesn't do the justice.
00:18:14.120 It's a tragedy because B.C., frankly, is circling the drain.
00:18:17.620 And the leadership that they have will just accelerate that.
00:18:22.960 And the opposition's just simply can't get it together.
00:18:26.860 I'm so glad I don't live there anymore.
00:18:29.080 Hey, look what happened in Alberta when the conservatives were fighting each other.
00:18:32.200 We had the Rachel Motley for five years, whatever it was.
00:18:36.400 Alex, if Shirley Finley is not a dumb woman, surely she knows that people are
00:18:42.040 leaving because they don't like certain people around her.
00:18:46.000 Why doesn't she just get rid of those people?
00:18:48.520 The husband.
00:18:49.040 Well, I think that the familial relationship between her and her husband, Brent Chapman, makes this somewhat unique. It's easier to admit one's own fault publicly than it is to admit the faults of your spouse for obvious reasons.
00:19:03.040 and the the rumor going around and i think that it's well established at this point so it's beyond
00:19:08.120 rumor is that brent chapman basically installed his decades-long friend as the chief of staff
00:19:15.540 and so finley would have to go against her own husband essentially and that that's very awkward
00:19:21.760 thing for anybody to have to do how exalted has obviously never been married because when you
00:19:27.020 said just a moment ago that it's very difficult for a wife to speak ill of her husband
00:19:32.700 And we'll bring Jane on the show sometime.
00:19:39.660 Well, maybe, maybe not in private.
00:19:42.000 Festival of the others to get back to us.
00:19:46.100 Well, it is an unusual dynamic.
00:19:48.260 I mean, when you, when you get that, an actual relationship going on and that close within,
00:19:53.740 I mean, you know, talk about closed groups around a premier.
00:19:57.400 I mean, that's a complaint that's often among conservatives is, you know, they'll, they're
00:20:00.480 the leader has their own little close circle and they don't speak to anybody outside of it.
00:20:04.640 And when that circle's literally gotten into the bedroom, uh, you could really feel like
00:20:09.360 you're an outsider looking in on, and that frustrates partisan people pretty quickly.
00:20:15.120 Yeah. But what are you there for? Are you there to feel good? Are you there to do a job?
00:20:19.040 And that's, uh, you know, a lot of people take the personal stuff and make that most important.
00:20:26.160 The thing is, you're there to resist the NDP, which is driving the province into the ground.
00:20:35.020 Forget the other stuff.
00:20:37.060 We can sort that out later.
00:20:39.180 This is always the problem with conservative parties, especially in B.C.
00:20:43.160 We just seem to let the personalities get in the way.
00:20:46.160 If they could get their act together, they would win.
00:20:48.780 They would.
00:20:49.200 They would be government in next election.
00:20:51.820 So that's just so frustrating that they can't get their act together.
00:20:57.380 And that pragmatism and humility is quite rare, as you point out with Stockwell Day.
00:21:01.320 I mean, the other thing with Stockwell that was very unusual is you've left the top position,
00:21:04.700 but still said, no, I'm going to continue on and participate, even if I'm not the top dog any longer.
00:21:10.260 And he became a very effective cabinet minister, actually.
00:21:13.440 He was very good in that position provincially earlier and then federally later.
00:21:18.940 But that's the exception in conservative politics.
00:21:21.260 You know, usually they're out the door and they don't come back.
00:21:23.560 I think it's the exception in politics generally, actually, but maybe we shouldn't draw too much from Staple Day's example, but let it be said, it was a good example.
00:21:31.700 It's a good example.
00:21:32.940 Alex, do you see, is today's the end of it or is there more defections coming up?
00:21:39.760 I am quite confident that there will be more defections coming up.
00:21:42.800 I reached out to some of the BC Conservative Caucus yesterday by email.
00:21:47.320 I asked them fairly simple questions.
00:21:49.580 They weren't confrontational.
00:21:50.560 they were fairly polite. I said, do you still have confidence in the leadership? Do you have
00:21:53.920 any intentions of leaving? One of the recipients of those emails, Teresa Watt, did not respond to
00:21:58.740 me. She instead left the party this morning before she probably had a chance to read my email.
00:22:03.060 And all of the others responded, no comment. So do you get the sense that the defectors
00:22:09.300 could actually establish an alternative group within the legislature, or are they just going
00:22:16.980 to sit there on their own and feel hard done by?
00:22:20.440 Peter Milibar, who actually ran against Carrie Lynn Finley in the leadership race, he has
00:22:25.480 stated his intention to establish a new centrist party with Ian Payton, who also left this
00:22:30.920 week on Monday.
00:22:32.120 That would be the second or the third, depending on how you count centrist parties in BC.
00:22:38.020 There is rumors that Rosalind Byrd could start her own party or she could join them.
00:22:42.300 but it's looking like we might end up with a healthy and robust 32 party system by the time
00:22:47.960 we're done. Well, I mean, we've got that here with Pete Guthrie and his centrist party. He had a
00:22:54.880 caucus of two for a little while and that split when one left him and he's just kind of the
00:23:00.560 forgotten member in the corner over there. But when it's one guy, it doesn't hurt the UCP. When
00:23:05.860 you get the conservatives, as you said, shattering into dozens of people all over that, that's
00:23:11.880 No, and the happiest man in BC has got to be Mr. Glum himself.
00:23:15.360 It doesn't show, but he must be smiling somewhere deep down inside.
00:23:19.220 He was actually pretty happy at his liquor store presser yesterday, but I think that the silver lining and the good news for our conservative friends in BC is that the Green Party could end up eating some of Evie's lunch in the next election.
00:23:32.480 I think that that's a good possibility.
00:23:33.800 And I also think that some of these centrist parties may cannibalize more of the vote share for the NDP than the conservatives, because, I mean, Peter Milibar, he only received 10 and a half percent of the vote on the first ballot in the B.C. conservative leadership race.
00:23:48.440 So he doesn't seem to have a lot of support within the grassroots of the party.
00:23:53.480 Is there any federalist or federal operatives hanging around?
00:23:59.700 That was one of the things that was kind of unusual in the B.C. race, too.
00:24:02.120 it turned into a bit of a proxy battle for some ambitious federal strategist types to piss around
00:24:10.000 with and so on. And I imagine that lent itself to a lot of division within the remaining party
00:24:14.560 when the leadership was done. The prevailing conspiracy theory is that those people have
00:24:20.400 fled BC and are likely to never come back. And then it's actually the BC Liberals or the now
00:24:26.620 defunct and shuttered BC Liberal Party that is attempting to make a resurgence. I don't find that
00:24:31.020 to be a particularly convincing conspiracy theory on account of the fact
00:24:35.380 that Rosalind Byrd, who left yesterday, is not a B.C. liberal.
00:24:40.720 So I think, again, that this is not necessarily political.
00:24:43.280 It appears to be mostly personal.
00:24:45.440 And, yeah, it's just people not being able to get along.
00:24:49.400 It's as simple as that, really.
00:24:51.120 We need a coalition of concerned conservatives.
00:24:54.380 We need Aaron Gunn to come in from Ottawa and say that.
00:24:56.900 Oh, yeah, he's a United.
00:24:57.860 I like Aaron, but he doesn't, he's not one to pull a bunch of people together.
00:25:03.300 Well, who knows?
00:25:04.740 Doesn't seem to be working for family.
00:25:07.180 I don't know if it would have worked for Elliot either though.
00:25:10.120 I think that you may have had the same problem just in different direction
00:25:13.140 because many people saw her as being too liberal as opposed to too conservative
00:25:17.200 and people had personal issues with a lot of her staffers as well, right?
00:25:21.340 So I don't know if this was maybe inevitable regardless of who won.
00:25:26.340 Well, you've still got a, what's the projection
00:25:28.680 for the next general election you guys are
00:25:30.100 facing, a couple of years now?
00:25:32.500 Yeah, I think it's, if it goes to the end of
00:25:35.200 the full term, it'll be about three years.
00:25:37.400 When was the last election?
00:25:38.460 2020, it wasn't that long ago, it was 2024.
00:25:43.760 So two more years, perhaps.
00:25:45.360 I mean, maybe they can, it gives them some
00:25:47.240 time to rally things or shatter further, I guess.
00:25:49.660 We'll see.
00:25:50.600 Well, let's move on to more sane politics and
00:25:52.740 that being the, the BC Teachers Federation.
00:25:55.880 You've been attending some courses.
00:25:58.440 Tell us all about that.
00:26:00.620 Yeah, so I went undercover.
00:26:02.260 I've been pretending to be a BC Teachers Federation Union member for months in order to gain access to their anti-racism training program.
00:26:09.260 And it's about every bit as crazy as you'd expect it to be.
00:26:13.620 Well, come on.
00:26:14.480 Give us some examples.
00:26:15.600 Some details, please.
00:26:17.440 Sure.
00:26:17.840 So actually, Corey, you did a great synopsis on the first part of the first module, which is that it starts with the Anishinaabe creation myth.
00:26:26.580 And I think that you made a good point.
00:26:28.420 I mean, all creation stories tend to be a little out there.
00:26:31.220 But what the hell does this have to do with racism?
00:26:34.300 I mean, like it starts with religion and then it instructs you to adhere and promote and use your agency to fight for UNDRIP, DRIPA and the Land Back movement, as well as Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution with no information provided to teachers on what any of those things are.
00:26:54.560 it also
00:26:56.640 so I've always been of the assumption
00:26:59.980 that race was
00:27:01.260 in my opinion the unfair and unethical
00:27:04.060 prejudgment of others based off
00:27:06.000 of their biological immutable
00:27:08.220 melanin complexion
00:27:10.020 essentially I think that you
00:27:11.960 should give everybody a fair chance regardless of
00:27:13.900 what their skin color is but now I'm not
00:27:16.000 so sure I know what racism is
00:27:17.640 because the course tells me that
00:27:19.940 that isn't racism instead
00:27:21.940 what it says racism is is a
00:27:23.840 It's non-scientific social construct that permeates everything.
00:27:29.820 Well, I don't see color, so I must be, uh, you know,
00:27:33.660 Are you color black?
00:27:35.580 No, no, just, just, I choose to be.
00:27:38.080 I mean, you know, I can't tell the difference between a gentleman
00:27:40.660 fresh over from Somalia and somebody from Sweden.
00:27:43.600 I, I'm a woke.
00:27:45.280 I see your part in woke terms.
00:27:46.940 You're part of the problem.
00:27:48.800 I don't know what the hell I am anymore.
00:27:50.920 you know you you are so white that you can't see your own uh whiteness yeah your own prejudice
00:27:57.480 uh the irony is that you're a jew so that's and these these won't
00:28:05.000 nightmares they come up with there's no winning right i mean they talk about it i don't know if
00:28:08.680 they care about that and of course you were inherently racist apparently if you aren't of
00:28:13.000 a certain color to begin with uh no not necessarily it says that racism and white supremacy is the
00:28:21.480 process of treating white as normal oh and and it says that the the way to the antidote to this
00:28:29.640 and this is not me you know analyzing the course and giving you my own opinion on it this is
00:28:34.840 directly from the course this is verbatim it says that the process of pursuing anti-racism is the
00:28:41.080 the redistribution of resources and rights, which sounds a lot like Marxism to me.
00:28:48.520 Well, it's, it's always been a, it seems with a lot of these issues that all roads lead to
00:28:52.940 Mr. Marx.
00:28:53.720 I mean, it's the same with the environmentalism.
00:28:56.060 They don't actually talk about picking up the garbage or stopping things.
00:28:59.060 They're just saying, if we could just have a big enough intrusive government cracking
00:29:01.820 down on capitalism, everything will go green.
00:29:05.700 To me, it shows that the rot in B.C. schools caused by the teachers is the same as the rot in Canadian universities.
00:29:14.500 You know, it's just another level of DEI and wokeness that, you know, if you're a kid in B.C., what kind of chance do you have in the real working world after going through 12 years of that crap?
00:29:29.040 but is this albertas any better we haven't had anybody go undercover in alberta to find out
00:29:33.520 what they're teaching the alberta teachers either or ontario i mean we do hear some of
00:29:36.960 the glimmers of wokeness coming out of our public schools yeah well i actually uh about two years
00:29:42.640 ago i did an interview with kaylin ford who's gone on to establish her own classical education
00:29:48.640 academy and has a waiting list of thousands but she was explicit that in the teachers training
00:29:56.080 colleges in Alberta, they use revolutionary tracks, such as the Pedagogy of the Oppressed
00:30:04.460 by Freire, the highly articulate and intelligent and completely wrong analysis of society.
00:30:14.460 There are teachers who want to teach in Alberta and have to go through a one-year course.
00:30:20.220 This is part of the course, and they're all invited to consider their white privilege
00:30:24.040 and how the pedagogy of the oppressed applies to their situation in prosperous Alberta.
00:30:32.500 So that kind of meant my disappointment, if I have one, with the Smith government
00:30:38.020 is that they have not been able to go in and root that stuff out of there.
00:30:44.640 They are aware of it.
00:30:46.920 I think there are things that are being done that are aimed at it,
00:30:50.680 but I have yet to see the torpedo hit and explode.
00:30:55.100 Right now, that's the kind of rubbish that they're still teaching in B.C.
00:31:00.360 Of course, they give it their own unique B.C. indigenous twist.
00:31:05.800 You know, if you were to go into a classroom
00:31:09.620 and introduce the Christian concept of creation in six days
00:31:14.060 with God saying, let there be light, let there be this, let there be that,
00:31:17.860 let's make a couple of human beings,
00:31:19.460 people will say, you can't teach kids rubbish like that. What are you talking about?
00:31:24.320 We're a scientific society. Well, what is it? The world island is a gigantic turtle or something.
00:31:32.860 You know, and the sky wouldn't, you had some art on this. It was all Alex's. Yeah,
00:31:38.600 there was some sort of giant turtle floating around. I didn't quite understand it. It sounds
00:31:42.320 like you paid very careful attention to what you were being told there, Alex.
00:31:45.640 Well, yeah, I mean, I'm trying to approach it with a reasonably open mind and in good faith, but it is honestly quite crazy. A lot of it is pretzel logic, and it is cultural Marxism. It basically says as much without saying it.
00:32:01.680 the redistribution of resources and rights based off of a dialectic conception of the world between
00:32:08.320 the powerful and the powerless, the oppressor and the oppressed, is literally Marxism. That's all it
00:32:13.400 is. There's nothing about racism in the course. I've been working on this for months and I haven't
00:32:17.820 received one resource on what to do if I witness one child being racist to another child. So what
00:32:23.760 use of this is to the teachers other than as an indoctrination program into Marxism? It's bizarre.
00:32:29.560 Well, let's get to the source of it, too.
00:32:31.860 This is something I've always noted with teachers.
00:32:33.500 They love to deny that their union is a union.
00:32:35.960 That's the BC, you know, Teachers Federation.
00:32:39.440 In Alberta, it's the Alberta Teachers Association.
00:32:42.100 They're unions.
00:32:43.120 They cloak that, though.
00:32:44.320 And part of the problem, I don't know about BC, is there a separate teachers association there?
00:32:48.120 Because in Alberta, the association and the union are one and the same, which is a terrible conflict of interest.
00:32:53.420 Because I would think a professional association would be looking at curriculum standards and looking a little more out for the outcome of the students.
00:33:00.400 A union's mandate is all around the teacher.
00:33:04.020 And when those instructional things are coming from the union, rather than an organization that's focused on the needs of the children, we're going to get that ideological crap passed down.
00:33:16.780 Okay, well, Alex, is it a separate, I'm wondering, is there a separate BC Teachers Association or do they pack it all into the union?
00:33:23.100 like we do here.
00:33:24.280 To be honest with you, I have no idea.
00:33:26.340 I mean, full disclosure, I actually wanted
00:33:28.060 to be a teacher when I graduated from
00:33:29.920 university, and after taking this course,
00:33:31.920 I'd now like to stay as far away from the
00:33:33.640 profession as humanly possible.
00:33:36.460 Well, that lends itself, though, to the
00:33:38.100 things you were talking about, like with
00:33:38.840 Cailin Ford's one.
00:33:39.600 I mean, as part of the solution, it could be
00:33:40.780 school choice, more chartered schools, more
00:33:43.260 independent schools, things like that, where
00:33:45.900 they aren't tied in with these.
00:33:50.480 What's your guess that you had on this
00:33:52.640 morning uh talking about reporting a teacher hotline you know that's what's got to be done
00:33:57.360 in bc too you know if uh if a parent comes across you know inappropriate teachings report them you
00:34:04.440 know and harass the government or the teachers association to investigate well and that's an
00:34:09.780 issue and yeah i don't know if you'd caught that alex i had a guy who's known out here a social
00:34:13.440 media type uh bird a proud dad his name is lawrence mcgee but boy he stirred the pot he started a
00:34:18.200 site saying report a teacher and if you saw them going into political conduct and such that they're
00:34:23.340 not supposed to here's where you can report it and perhaps have it rectified and uh wow they they got
00:34:29.520 wound up but we've seen some pretty awful cases where the union circles the wagons and not just
00:34:35.420 in woke stuff i mean we need a mechanism for parents and i think it's a failure on the part
00:34:40.020 perhaps of the government then to not provide it leaving it to a social media guy to do it
00:34:44.440 Uh, there was that case with the teacher, he ultimately killed himself,
00:34:48.680 but he'd been abusing children inappropriately.
00:34:51.940 I mean, of the worst possible way.
00:34:53.500 Is there an appropriate way to abuse children?
00:34:55.180 Oh yeah, I guess.
00:34:55.840 I mean, I'd rather the verbal abuse type of abuse I'm talking about, I guess,
00:34:59.600 if there was to be any, and the teachers union worked basically to cover it up and
00:35:05.200 to protect that teacher rather than the interests of the students.
00:35:07.860 And it's just horrific.
00:35:09.280 And that one didn't make nearly as much waves as I think it should have.
00:35:13.000 Uh, well, here in BC, the reporting system works the opposite direction.
00:35:17.200 As you're probably aware, we have a fellow named Jim McMurtry, who was
00:35:20.900 reported for speaking out of pocket, um, on the Kamloops residential
00:35:25.180 school issue, and he was let go.
00:35:27.940 And of course, Frances Widowson is another one, although she's not BC based.
00:35:32.840 Well, the whole thing is just trying to keep the damn politics out of the
00:35:35.560 classroom whenever possible.
00:35:36.920 I know it's always going to happen.
00:35:38.160 I mean, we've had it on the far other side that was pretty bad.
00:35:40.480 Jim Keekstra was teaching kids some pretty nasty stuff in Alberta
00:35:44.440 in the eighties and early nineties, which ultimately led to
00:35:49.000 his being unemployed.
00:35:50.200 I mean, people can debate his views or his free speech, but you've
00:35:53.480 got a different responsibility when you're teaching kids.
00:35:56.420 Yeah.
00:35:56.840 I mean, we, we get several stories a year of, of students who have, you
00:36:01.300 know, everybody carries a cell phone now and they've taped, you
00:36:04.300 know, teachers going on, on political rants and it makes for, for great,
00:36:09.760 great stories, but nothing ever happens to those teachers. Nothing.
00:36:14.220 I've got a question for you, Alex.
00:36:19.340 The Teachers' Union is doing what the Teachers' Union does.
00:36:23.280 You have this anti-racism course.
00:36:26.200 Let's say everybody buys the package and you have this generation of young people
00:36:31.900 coming out and taking seriously the indigenous creation myths
00:36:38.300 and vigorously advocating for the declaration of the rights of indigenous people, the undrip
00:36:50.740 and dripper that you were talking about.
00:36:54.000 Who actually is the ultimate beneficiary of all this?
00:36:58.860 It won't be the students.
00:37:01.340 Somebody else is going to use that as their route to power.
00:37:07.180 are those people i believe that it's probably those who are already in positions of power at
00:37:13.740 the university level i mean a lot of these concepts are extraordinarily complex difficult
00:37:20.940 philosophical concepts to wrap your mind around even if you know you're like myself like i'm in
00:37:26.060 my mid-30s and i can barely do it so i don't know how children are supposed to learn this but
00:37:30.940 But basically, I think the intention is to validate the lessons that are being taught at the university level so that the people who are teaching those lessons can maintain the positions that they have.
00:37:43.620 And they say as much.
00:37:44.720 They say it's all about power.
00:37:47.600 About what, sir?
00:37:48.580 Power.
00:37:49.380 Power.
00:37:49.720 Okay, well, university professors have a certain power, but they don't have ultimate power.
00:37:56.300 Is this about keeping the NDP in power forever, for example?
00:38:00.940 i don't know i mean i think that this is not necessarily entirely unique to bc but maybe
00:38:09.040 i'm wrong about that no it's a it isn't entirely about bc but it's the bc teachers federation that
00:38:16.900 is doing this at the moment and so i think i think you're onto something i think you're
00:38:24.700 onto something actually, right?
00:38:25.900 Because it's enforcing the leftist orthodoxy.
00:38:30.460 And so...
00:38:31.460 All unions seem to support the NDP, don't they?
00:38:33.860 Well, it's building a support base for the future.
00:38:36.100 If you're looking longer term, I mean, where better to start than the kids who
00:38:39.460 in, you know, less than a decade will be voting.
00:38:42.200 And well, if they've been well-trained throughout school, they might vote the
00:38:46.380 way that the teachers union would prefer.
00:38:47.860 Well, this does take us back to that book.
00:38:50.940 What is it, Zelensky was his name, Rules for Radicals?
00:38:53.580 back in the 1960s, Saul Alinsky.
00:38:58.080 Saul Alinsky, yeah.
00:38:59.300 Rules for radicals.
00:39:00.520 And he laid all of this out, that you work through society.
00:39:04.900 As a leftist, you know, you start here and you move into teachers
00:39:09.840 and then you get the kids and then you take over the universities
00:39:13.540 and then eventually you build this structure of common sense.
00:39:19.420 And people, I said common sense, I did not mean that,
00:39:23.580 of common thought.
00:39:27.000 Most of the population doesn't really know what's going on, because they're not that
00:39:30.720 interested in theory and concept, but the people who do know what's going on help themselves
00:39:35.900 into the positions of power, and then they are, in a sense, able to set the terms of
00:39:42.340 the debate and politics generally wherever they hold power.
00:39:49.500 What you are looking at in BC, where first they take over the universities, then they
00:39:56.460 take over the teachers' training colleges, and then the indoctrinated teachers take over
00:40:01.500 the classrooms, and then finally the product of the classrooms tends to have a certain
00:40:06.960 political point of view that gets translated into government, and Marxism gets voted in.
00:40:14.400 Is this a piece of that?
00:40:19.440 I would say that that's a fairly reasonable take.
00:40:23.080 Yes, I, yeah, absolutely.
00:40:27.040 Well, and, uh, let's just hope for the best for the children
00:40:31.140 of British Columbia, I guess, because I mean, the only remedy
00:40:33.940 is getting the NDP out of power.
00:40:35.360 And as we kind of started earlier, the conservatives are determined
00:40:38.200 not to get themselves into position to do that.
00:40:40.840 So hopefully their, their official opposition can turn themselves
00:40:45.360 into a government in waiting within two years.
00:40:47.280 Tomorrow you need to write another book, Rules for Conservatives.
00:40:50.820 If I had all the answers, I'd certainly be wearing better cut suits than this sport coat I throw.
00:40:56.580 You look fine.
00:40:57.120 Well, thank you.
00:40:58.420 I'll keep that in mind.
00:40:59.900 I got more answers to figure out.
00:41:01.380 That's why these are good shows, because I got a lot of questions to go with my own bloviating.
00:41:07.160 Bloviator in chief.
00:41:08.140 Yes.
00:41:08.640 Keep on going.
00:41:09.240 All right.
00:41:10.000 Well, let's get on to some parting shots and see what else is going on out there.
00:41:13.480 I'll start over on our left coast over there with Alex.
00:41:18.000 What do you got to share with us before we wrap this all up?
00:41:22.100 I would say that the main story going on here is the implosion of the BC Conservative Party.
00:41:27.540 It's an ongoing thing, and I don't think that it's going to be slowing down anytime soon.
00:41:31.640 So I would encourage people to stay tuned to that.
00:41:34.800 Okay.
00:41:36.100 Dave.
00:41:37.240 My pardon shot will be Ms. Pardon.
00:41:39.820 We lost Dolly Parton yesterday by all accounts,
00:41:44.380 the nicest woman ever to walk the face of the earth.
00:41:48.180 When I worked at The Sun,
00:41:49.660 we used to send photographers to her concerts in Calgary,
00:41:53.000 and they would all come back and say the exact same thing.
00:41:55.600 She is the nicest celebrity we have ever dealt with.
00:41:59.480 So as somebody on Twitter said yesterday,
00:42:02.580 this is the last person in the world that everybody loved from all sides of the coin,
00:42:08.080 and she's passed, so
00:42:09.760 R.I.P. Dolly
00:42:11.020 I agree with you Dave
00:42:12.960 back in the days when I was trucking on the
00:42:16.120 Alaska Highway and everybody had an 8 track
00:42:18.080 player, that's all you would hear
00:42:20.020 was Dolly Parton, so
00:42:21.260 it takes me back, it feels
00:42:23.500 what I was going to actually use for a parting shot
00:42:25.960 is what we got to earlier when we were talking about
00:42:28.060 the, you know, the things that
00:42:30.020 get put on the table, and I was just going to remark
00:42:32.160 that the
00:42:33.420 the rest of Canada
00:42:35.760 thinks that Alberta's oil
00:42:37.520 should be part of the
00:42:38.580 negotiating tool
00:42:41.460 but somehow or other
00:42:43.180 you couldn't possibly, anything that dealt with
00:42:45.640 the French language or anything that dealt with
00:42:47.520 the dairy industry
00:42:49.460 no, no, that's sacrosanct
00:42:50.940 put a fence around that
00:42:52.680 I don't know whether they actually
00:42:55.600 realize that if we got
00:42:57.160 nasty with oil
00:42:58.460 all we have to do is
00:43:00.740 give the governor of the state of Michigan
00:43:03.500 permission to shut line 5
00:43:05.540 and we're going to be looking for a half a million barrels of oil
00:43:08.660 in eastern Canada, like in two weeks.
00:43:12.900 Everybody needs to just back off on Alberta oil.
00:43:15.700 Oh, that's good.
00:43:16.300 And they better understand how integrated it is.
00:43:18.180 With the Trans Mountain, with what goes to the coast,
00:43:20.220 what a lot of people don't realize is most of what goes there goes,
00:43:23.080 Alex referenced it, to refineries in Washington.
00:43:26.100 And that's where the jet fuel for B.C. and the airports
00:43:28.940 and everything comes back from.
00:43:31.000 If we had a war where oil isn't moving down there,
00:43:34.780 it's going to cripple Vancouver within weeks, as well as I think the diesel to fuel the ships and
00:43:40.640 everything else as well. Like we cross border all over the place. It's not so simple as flipping a
00:43:45.580 switch or turning on a tap. I guess for my own parting shot, I'm going to be self-serving and
00:43:51.540 I didn't get to it much on my show, but just with the trial of the century yesterday on the Siksika
00:43:56.160 Reserve, where I had the good fortune of Justice Karen, yes, Karen Kroshue, and a bizarre hearing.
00:44:06.380 I'd never been, aside from some traffic tickets once a long time ago, in a court, as a defendant
00:44:11.020 anyway, and she started it right out with saying we're not accepting constitutional arguments in
00:44:18.980 this case. And the prosecution was taken aback. My own lawyers who were all there were taken
00:44:26.020 the back uh she was obstinate about it finally we went to a recess so we could discuss it and all
00:44:32.260 the lawyers discussed it and they came back and cited a bunch of cases yes indeed you're you know
00:44:36.980 justice you are obligated to hear these she's no i'm not and i won't and uh yes we sent our poor
00:44:44.340 reporter down there to cover it because in the end we came to an impasse and left having accomplished
00:44:48.660 nothing we'll have another hearing on tuesday to try and sort out how a judge can say she refuses
00:44:53.460 to hear constitutional defenses in a case doesn't bode well for my being found not guilty I think
00:44:58.560 at this point. She's the hanging judge of Siksika. I guess so so either way I did I did say to the
00:45:05.780 audiences I'm going to keep them up to date on this this ongoing it's obviously going to be
00:45:08.720 ongoing for a long time uh the longest trespassing case known to man but very strange I'll update as
00:45:17.060 things happen on that but if we can't defend ourselves with the constitution charter what
00:45:20.300 have we got? Are you in provincial court? This is provincial with the Siksika. She's a circuit judge
00:45:25.880 for the Siksika provincial court. What looks like will have to happen is I'll have to go in and be
00:45:31.740 found guilty as it appears to be predetermined and then we'll have to appeal it to a better court.
00:45:36.940 So are you saying that if you want to be a justice in an indigenous court, you have to be an
00:45:43.960 indigenous person? No, I don't believe so. She just happens to be that circuit judge. There's a
00:45:47.580 separate issue going on with that too where apparently she applied and wanted this particular
00:45:50.900 case for some reason which is very unusual and unprecedented too but i don't want to go too far
00:45:55.560 into those things because i'm still going to sit before that judge in the future but it's very
00:45:59.460 strange so far so uh keep an eye on it i think it just is a legal thing leave it to me to find
00:46:05.180 something that's unprecedented and weird that'll probably get written in the books hopefully in a
00:46:08.660 good way in the end may the force be with you yeah thanks i'm looking forward to your prison
00:46:13.480 memoirs. Don't keep me out there. I'm not popular out that way. All right. Well, thanks for joining
00:46:21.080 us today, Alex and Dave and Nigel. Another episode of the Pipeline Down, folks. Be sure to continue
00:46:28.700 to support the Western Standard. By the way, we are a subscription sort of service, you know,
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00:46:56.980 thanks for tuning in this week and I think Derek will be back to bend your ear on the next one so
00:47:02.320 thanks again see you then
00:47:12.920 We'll be right back.