Western Standard editor Dave Naylor and editor-in-at-large and co-host Derek Filip Filipuk are back after a brief hiatus. Today, we talk about the impact of the blizzard in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the potential replacements for Rachel Notley as Alberta's next premier, Jordan Peterson getting sensitivity training, and more!
00:00:00.000good day today is january 17th 2024 happy new year i'm derek philip rent publisher
00:00:29.920of the Western Standard and you're watching The Pipeline. I'm back again. I've been unknowingly
00:00:38.160poisoning myself daily. I found out just yesterday that Quaker is poisoned. It's delicious harvest1.00
00:00:44.640crunch that I eat for breakfast two out of every three days and so I'd be sick for a few days.
00:00:50.560Be so sick I couldn't eat. I get better and as soon as I was hungry again I'd eat some harvest
00:00:56.160crunch and poisoned myself all over so I've I've been absent for a bit but we figure out
00:01:00.960figured out what is uh what's it called um when someone uh weird thing when you think someone
00:01:06.000might poison a child yeah that's it uh Monkhausen uh something by proxy yeah that's it yeah so I was
00:01:14.160just poisoning myself to take care of myself and feel good about doing so so uh I'm back but so is
00:01:21.760Western Senate opinion editor. I was better away. Well, yeah, but you're back always.
00:01:28.720Also joining us, kind of like old times, Western Senate news editor, Dave Naylor.
00:01:32.960It's been a while since we've done a pipeline together.
00:01:34.960It has. It has. Let the good times roll.
00:01:38.000You're normally on the pipeline when I'm not here.
00:01:40.240Exactly. We should say Cory's not here.
00:01:43.920Well, this time it's because Cory's not here. Our beloved Cory is away for some well-deserved
00:01:49.520time off, I think. Down while we're not even gonna mention where he is somewhere warm,
00:01:54.640somewhere warmer than here, which is anywhere here. We've got a good show today. Ottawa says,
00:02:02.400let the Western bastards freeze in the dark, Ottawa not backing down from its plan to impose0.97
00:02:10.560net zero policies on Alberta and Saskatchewan by 2030, essentially requiring that we just use
00:02:17.920wind and solar, which will go so great in weather like this. Alberta's grid being pushed to the
00:02:24.240absolute breaking point with an emergency alert going out, I think two days in a row.
00:02:31.520Just one. Just one? Early grid alert. But yeah, good warning. Yeah, good warning.
00:02:38.880When we came to the absolute breaking point where we could have seen some rolling
00:02:41.920outages, which would have been pretty bad in weather like this.
00:02:45.360I would have just had to build a campfire in my living room or something. I don't know. But also closer to home here, Alberta NDP leader and former Premier, Rachel Notley, announcing her coming retirement just yesterday, announcing that she'll be stepping down as NDP leader.
00:03:07.260Not very surprising. We've talked about it before, but now it's official. The machinery of the party is going to begin rolling.
00:03:14.160And I know maybe some of you might roll your eyes. It's NDP leader. But Alberta is now a competitive political environment and this matters.
00:03:21.920So we're going to get into it. Who are potential replacements might be, what the race might look like.
00:03:26.000Someone who I don't expect to be running for NDP leader, Jordan Peterson, losing a court battle, which seems to now confirm he's going to be headed to sensitivity training to be nicer to liberals on Twitter and things like that.
00:03:43.860The court upholding ruling of the Ontario College of Psychiatrists.
00:04:22.880Before we get into it, though, we want to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports
00:04:26.880Association. I've been a CSSA member for over a decade, trusting them to defend my rights
00:04:32.080as a firearms owner in Canada. The CSSA is on Parliament Hill and across Canada defending your
00:04:37.680rights to own and safely and legally use firearms in Canada. Without the CSSA, God knows how few
00:04:45.200gun rights we'd have left by now. It's important for all gun owners to be members of this great
00:04:50.480organization if you're not yet a member go to cssa-cila.org and join up today just do what I do
00:04:58.560though it's much easier just just google these guys and join a member it's important that all
00:05:02.400gun owners get together and fight for the common cause on this one all right well you know the old
00:05:08.480saying the old bumper sticker was let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark coming you know in the
00:05:12.800the fights between Peter Lougheed and Pierre Trudeau, you know, when we shut off the oil and gas to the east during fight over the national energy program, you know, the saying was, well, let them let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark.
00:05:27.860So, you know, we actually did turn off the oil and gas for a bit to let them freeze in the dark, let them stew in their green, still Alberta's energy wealth.
00:05:37.040But I think the saying might have some applicability in the other direction right now.
00:05:42.800Maybe just tee up what the situation is, Dave, with Ottawa appearing to have zero willingness to budge on its imposing federal regulations on Alberta's exclusively provincial energy grid, showing no willingness really to budge in the face of extreme cold weather like we're seeing right now.
00:06:05.800No, and it, you know, it was let the Westerners almost did freeze in the dark.
00:06:10.780You know, temperatures were dropping to record lows, minus 50 with the windchill factor.
00:06:16.520Temperatures I've never experienced in my lifetime.
00:06:19.400I'm not as old as Nigel, but I'm still pretty old.
00:08:24.060but I don't think that is or ever was the plan this is actually worse it is
00:08:30.780that they don't understand or that they understand but think that somehow it will
00:08:37.300all just work out if we give it another 13 years we take their approach just
00:08:42.360throw infinite money at it you can fix anything so so really this just
00:08:50.100illustrates the pure dumb folly of federal policy i'm not even sure given that daniel smith says
00:08:58.100yeah we can do it but give us until 2050 i'm not even sure that's great policy but certainly the
00:09:03.620idea of trying to push all of this through by 2035 is just not on the solid facts are that during the
00:09:12.020NDP years we overbuilt solar and wind and then we took the main plate capacity of those plants and
00:09:21.620said oh we have this much more generating capacity without ever contemplating a situation such as we
00:09:30.100have just experienced where it's the middle of the night so there's no solar and the wind isn't
00:09:36.500blowing because you've got a particular form of air mass that doesn't generate any wind suddenly
00:09:42.500you're back to a little bit of coal and a little bit of natural gas that you've still got left
00:09:48.660plus what's over the border in saskatchewan that they were kind enough to generate
00:09:52.900we just have it out of balance this can be fixed but it's not going to be fixed by bringing in
00:09:58.580more solar more wind yeah and the you know the coal phase which a lot of
00:10:10.100people blame Notley for and she accelerated it but I mean let's be fair
00:10:14.420here we actually have to go back to the Harper government that that phase this
00:10:17.860out which was overreaching federal government has no business in the
00:10:22.080regulation of any provincial power grid but the you know Harper seemed to get
00:10:26.600away without without too much fuss at the time. But it does go back to that. And I think the Harper government was doing it as a, you know, a something they can show they were doing on global warming stuff without going full Kyoto full full cop kind of stuff. So it was a political maneuver, but it was still the wrong maneuver. Notley accelerated the coal phase out more aggressively than even that was.
00:10:50.980But, you know, now we're in this argument, well, should Alberta be net zero by 2030 or 2050?
00:10:58.980Ottawa is supposed to have nothing to do with our grid at all. Zero, period. The Constitution's clear.
00:11:06.480I think Alberta's position needs to be to stop bartering on this, that, hey, if you're not going to accept our 2050 targets, we're going to rip it up completely.0.98
00:11:13.380We're just not going to have a net zero target. We're going to do what we want because you have no say in it whatsoever.
00:11:18.480I think we should stop this bickering.
00:11:20.660I think we should completely rip up our net zero targets if Ottawa is not going to accept.
00:11:25.100It may be the only way to go because they do think they have a say.
00:11:28.660They ignore court ruling after court ruling.
00:12:02.120I'm renewing right now with direct energy.
00:12:04.760My five-year fixed term contract is up, and I'm facing rates three to four times.
00:12:14.360what my my rates were even going into a new fixed contract it's like the prices right now are crazy
00:12:22.120and but frankly we're just lucky to have enough energy and there's just no way to do it if we
00:12:27.880were to do do what Ottawa says here so I think you're bang on Nigel that while it was terrible
00:12:33.480that the grid got as far as it was it demonstrated the Alberta government's point here I think better
00:12:40.520than they possibly could have with words or videos or commercials because we saw in real time. We can
00:12:45.960only imagine the disaster that would have been the last few days if our entire grid would be
00:12:53.240you know wind and solar and unicorn farts. You know one of the sad things about this
00:12:58.200is that there are idiots out there now saying it was all fixed you know they actually cut0.87
00:13:02.840backwards and they sold power to Montana and they did this they wanted it to look bad.
00:13:08.120Well, there's conspiracy theorists on all sides and the grannies have got theirs.1.00
00:13:11.960Nothing could be further from the truth. That was a close call. Thank you, Saskatchewan.
00:13:16.760Indeed. All right, well, close to home here. Alberta NDP leader, former NDP Premier of Alberta,
00:13:25.640Rachel Notley, announcing she'll be stepping down as leader. I don't think she's set a time yet,
00:13:31.160but she informed her caucus, apparently over kind of a rushed Zoom call, which leads one to think
00:13:37.720that the timing was a bit out of her hands on something something something had gone wrong
00:13:42.760because the caucus intends to meet in person next week so and normally something like that
00:13:46.840you want to do in person you know everybody stands and harrumbs the leader and pats you on the back
00:13:53.160and hugs and whatnot it's uh so it's a bit strange time so something obviously happened internally to
00:13:58.920to bring this up perhaps leadership campaigns wanting to get going or i don't know someone
00:14:03.720have a story, etc. But in any case, stepping down, she's led the NDP since, I believe, I guess it would have been 2014. So 10 years now, she's been the leader and she's been an MLA, I think about 10 years before that, roughly 2004. I mean, going back, that would have been the end of the client government. So she is, she's been around a long time. In fact, I guess she was in the legislature the last time in Alberta Premier was
00:14:33.400reelected, which would have been Klein in 2004. I would have been, geez, I would have been in high
00:14:40.360school, the tail end of high school at the time. Just kind of reminder of how turbulent and
00:14:46.360the lack of job security in the job of Alberta Premier. But she's been around a long time. I
00:14:54.360don't think this is unexpected. She's had three leader, three elections as leader, two in a row
00:14:59.480now a loss, but nonetheless leaving the NDP in a remarkably stronger position than she found it.0.72
00:15:06.680When she became leader, four seats and four seats was actually a fairly good accomplishment for
00:15:12.840the NDP historically. Her father was the NDP leader. He was often just by himself, one MLA.
00:15:20.760I think his high watermark was two MLAs. That was his high watermark, Grant Lotley. When she took
00:15:27.720over it was four MLAs she leaves it now with I don't know 35 38 a very significant very large
00:15:34.520opposition caucus the biggest opposition caucus in Alberta history and so while coming off of
00:15:39.080two losses she leaves the NDP in a remarkably stronger place than she found it but still
00:15:44.680while as likable as she might be she still had a pretty rough four years as premier some would0.99
00:15:49.880say disastrous I suppose that depends on one's point of view but obviously not able to break
00:15:54.760through and time to ride into the sunset, at least as Alberta leaders. So with you, Nigel,
00:16:01.720your thoughts on Notley finally making it official that she's stepping down?
00:16:07.400Well, first of all, that means lots of people can now collect on their bets. So that's a good
00:16:14.200thing. Don't forget, I got a pat ourselves on the back right here. We were the first to report it
00:16:18.600last year. Yes. Okay. But to be fair, it was a pretty good bet she was going to step down.
00:18:56.180So Nigel is correct in that she sidelined some of the most extreme.
00:18:59.780most, they weren't purged, but sideline them out of being front row center in the party, the more
00:19:06.100fringe extreme left characters. But at the same time, I think it's fair to say she both mainstreamed
00:19:12.900a lot of harder left ideas, made the ideas more mainstream, which is a sign of a good leader,
00:19:17.860regardless of if you agree with those policies or not. It's not moving to the center, but moving
00:19:21.860the center to whichever side you're at. And I think she succeeded somewhat in doing that on
00:19:26.660only certain issues but at the same time I think even more this is not I think
00:19:36.320focused enough on by the commentary it is that she united the left I mean you
00:19:44.240know Daniel Smith got what was it was about 50% 51% of the vote in almost any
00:19:50.840jurisdiction in Canada that gets you a ridiculously big majority government
00:19:56.400there's a multi-party system. This would have been, under any other conservative premier,
00:20:01.680one of the biggest majorities in Alberta history. But in fact it's not a huge, it's not a big big
00:20:07.040majority. It's a comfortable but not a big majority because Notley completely eliminated
00:20:12.880her competitors on the left and the center left. That began with the Liberals and the Liberals were
00:20:18.560removing themselves from the political gene pool long before Notley came along.
00:20:22.400She benefited from their own terminal decline, but then she sped that up, brought it along, and then in the last cycle, eliminated the Alberta Party, which, despite all its claims, was a center-left political party.0.83
00:20:34.180So she united the left without any mergers or whatnot.
00:20:37.020She just proved to be the stronger horse in Darwinian terms.0.99
00:20:43.540It was survival of the fittest, and the others were just too weak.
00:20:47.520What do you think were the main things responsible for Notley being able to both win power in 2015, but then also position the NDP as a permanent and strong contender for power?
00:21:15.980And you sort of see that already by the sort of lack of no name candidates that people really don't know. So her force of personality was so strong, she was able to will it, you know, and get her way through that.
00:21:33.620But you know what? A lot of people say it was a fluke one-time election, and people were not voting for the NDP. They were voting against the arrogance of the Progressive Conservative Party, and they would have voted in the Rhinoceros Party if they were on the thing.
00:22:46.780All the planets in the universe lined up. You had the PCs just absolutely begging to be taken behind the shed and shot.
00:22:57.140And you had the Wild Rose, which had gone through an unprecedented moment in the history of Westminster democracies where then Wild Rose leader Daniel Smith, two thirds of the opposition, crossed the floor, killed themselves.
00:23:09.180The Wild Rose was in bizarre chaos. Its leader at the time Brian Jean was on the job less than
00:23:15.900a week when the election was called, was not ready for that kind of profile at the time.
00:23:21.580She had a perfect storm and managed to come out and she handled it well. She took she capitalized
00:23:26.860on it but she had a perfect storm. In 2019 I don't think she could have won. People wanted her gone0.85
00:23:33.020and they were going to vote for the conservatives no matter what. If Jason Kenney had stayed around
00:23:37.020though she would have had her opposition doing her work for him again I think it's very difficult
00:23:42.300to see how she she could have won this last election if the conservatives had not made the
00:23:47.420leadership changes they they had so a bit heartbreaking for her she had spent four years
00:23:53.100preparing the NDP leading the polls leading fundraising she looked like she was going back
00:23:58.460to the premier's chair just this year until I guess technically last year until uh until the
00:24:05.340the Conservatives finally made some changes. So she could have very well come back. So
00:24:09.600she might have two losses in a row under her belt there, but it was a closer thing than I think some
00:24:15.240people remember. Let's turn towards what comes next for the NDP. We've talked a bit about this
00:24:20.740in the past. Start with you, Dave, on who do you think the main contenders are going to be? And
00:24:27.260then maybe who some of the, well, maybe not main contenders, but people who are going to throw
00:24:32.260their hat in and provide some entertainment. See what happens. I was talking to a top NDP0.72
00:24:37.640source today and here's the rundown he gave me. He says it's no doubt Ganley is going to win.
00:24:44.720No doubt she'll win? She'll win. Really? He says the, oh sorry I shouldn't identify the source
00:24:49.800by sex. They say. It's NDP. NDP. She does not mean he necessarily and she does not mean she
00:24:57.940necessarily. The source says Ganley's got large support already from caucus, and more importantly,
00:25:04.720caucus members who were in the cabinet when they were in power. Shannon Phillips, he predicts,
00:25:10.840is not running. David Shepard, a well-respected within the party, Edmonton MLA, is running,
00:25:18.680according to the source. Sadly, Gil McGowan is not running. Sadly, because we would have loved
00:25:26.220to have run the picture of him giving us the finger in every single story and involving.
00:25:31.880I'm going to have to write Gil. You know what? Gil, if you're watching right now, if you run,
00:25:38.120I will take out a membership and I will vote for you, just for you. So what the source says is
00:25:43.100the kingpins in the last leadership race was a family called the O'Halloran family in Edmonton,
00:25:50.880very key NDP, strong union supporters. They have not yet publicly announced who they are going to
00:25:59.320support, but the source says they will announce that it will be Ganley. And when you get the
00:26:05.260O'Halloran support, then you get the union phone bank that comes along with it. Then all of a
00:26:10.880sudden, you've got a dozen, two dozen people manning the phones to round up signatures for
00:26:17.140So it's going to be, you know, there may be some people that come out of the cracks.
00:26:21.780I think, Nigel, you were talking about David Egan maybe earlier on today.
00:26:27.640Will a federal, you know, will somebody from the federal party come back and take a run?
00:26:35.200You know, so it's going to be interesting, but I think right now it's Ganley's to lose.
00:26:40.380Well, Nigel, I think Ganley is going to be a major contender and very well could win.
00:26:45.160I'm I'm not at the point where I think it's it's hers to lose, but I think she's a strong contender and if I was a new democrat just from a win ability perspective, I think she'd be good to go with she's she's intelligent she's well spoken.
00:26:59.160I think she probably has some work to do in the charisma department, but that can be worked on. And actually her charisma has actually improved a hell of a lot since she was first elected and became justice minister.
00:27:14.660So she's grown a lot as a as a retail politician. But I think we're also going to see Sarah Hoffman in there.0.98
00:27:21.080She was deputy premier and health minister under under Notley, still a key right hand woman of Notley and since their time in government and a few others.
00:27:33.280Who do you think, other than Gantley, who do you think will be the big main contenders?
00:27:36.660So, well, certainly Sarah Hoffman, she was deputy premier for a while.
00:27:43.580She was a former teacher, and that's like being a minor or a railway locomotive driver in the old British Labour Party.
00:27:51.740You know, this is your core stocks over the NDP, a civil servant or a teacher.
00:27:58.940And by the way, to your point about Kathleen Ganley's charisma, none of the people who she is going to be running against are going to exceed her in charisma.
00:29:33.420Why she would have a special in, I don't know, but she keeps coming up in the conversation, but I'm not aware of anything particular that she's done.
00:29:44.420Well, she didn't serve... she's one of their rare stars among NDPs, New Democrats, who they consider a star.
00:29:51.420She's considered a star. I think she's the only major one who did not serve in the ADP government of 2015 to 2019. So she came after. She's young, telegenic woman, I think fairly well spoken. I don't really know much about her politics. Again, she didn't serve as a minister. So we didn't really get much of substance. You know, she's in opposition, not government. But I think she's expected to be a major contender and one who could possibly win.
00:30:17.540So one of the other things, this is coming back to what Dave was saying about the O'Halloran connection and the gift that you get if you receive that particular thumbprint of approval with the phone banks and everything.
00:30:30.680The way the vote is set up is that 75%, the membership vote counts for 75% and it's so weighted.
00:30:43.040The other 25% goes to the people you don't hear so much about, the institutional supporters of the NDP.
00:30:52.780So when you said O'Harran and you pointed that out, yes, if you get the unions and the ATA working for you,
00:31:00.220and that's that 25%, if you can win them over, you are in a much, much stronger position.
00:31:07.020You know, Nigel, this gets me thinking, and maybe you should put someone on this.
00:31:10.600We need to figure out how the actual voting in the NDP works, because it's not like most political parties with some version of one member, one vote.
00:31:19.540They have that for that 75 percent, but then there's the 25 percent there, largely from unions.
00:31:25.040And does this mean someone could vote twice?
00:31:26.820Like if you're a member of a union, you get to vote through your union for the NDP leader.
00:31:30.800Then you could also take out an individual membership and vote for a leader.
00:32:43.120Even though, you know, we all have phones and stuff for texting.
00:32:47.160The old tradition that, you know, you could write a little note and on a little page, you know, a 12 or 15 year old will move it around to someone in the gallery, other MLAs.
00:33:05.040because someone's going to carry my note. And furthermore, it's not searchable on the
00:33:09.200freedom of information because it disappears as soon as you read it. Well, I mean, they were
00:33:14.480sending it to me. I could have done whatever I wanted with it. But yeah, I wouldn't. Anyway.
00:33:20.240Okay, well, let's turn to one of our favorite perennial topics here, Jordan Peterson.
00:33:27.280Jordan Peterson, you know, a few years ago, said some mean things on Twitter, some people did not like and some someone or several people complained about him to the College of People Who Deal With Your Head stuff.
00:33:48.420and some of the things that they're upset about is that he said some mean things about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, among other things.
00:33:59.420None of these people were his patients, or I believe even former patients,
00:34:03.420but nonetheless the College of Shrinks orders that Peterson has to attend social media sensitivity training, something of the like.
00:34:13.420And this is Jordan Peterson, he says, well, bollocks that, I'm not doing it, takes it to court, loses, appeals it to another higher court, and has now lost there too. I think that was yesterday, right?
00:34:29.420Yes. So it seems he's got really two options. One, one day of his resign from the college and just not practice. And I don't think he's actually really practicing much anymore. He makes infinitely more money selling books and doing shows and talks and things like that.
00:34:52.420as a largely global celebrity at this point, or the alternative might be that he goes to it and probably makes a mockery of it in some form, says, okay, I'm going to go here, but so you know, I'm going to set my phone up in the corner and we're going to record what kind of weird 1984 reeducation this is.
00:35:24.420The Supreme Court is highly unlikely to hear a case like this.
00:35:27.420But I mean, if they would essentially have to, his lawyers would have to prove that there is a charter or constitutional issue at stake here, which maybe there is.
00:35:38.420But it would have to be on kind of precedent sending ground.
00:37:02.280Because the colleges of the professions, it doesn't matter whether you're talking about doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, real estate agents even, are all insisting on their members signing on to a particular world view.
00:37:20.220Right here in Alberta, the law society has demanded that all members of the Alberta Bar go through a course on indigenous affairs.
00:37:36.260And there is a certain perspective that you are expected to show.
00:37:39.300If you don't do that, it's called the path.
00:39:00.160Well, the answer to the first question is they can't force you.
00:39:03.660The second question, the answer to the second question, is that actually an employer can terminate an employee for any reason, if they give them enough severance.
00:39:12.140And if you refuse the instruction to go to one of these things, that might be cause and they wouldn't even have to pay severance.
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