Western Standard

00:00:00.000 G'day, today is June 18th, 2025.

00:00:28.720 I'm Derek Pildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, and you're watching The Pipeline.

00:00:33.460 I'm joined by two of my favorite people here, Nigel Henniford, Western Standard Opinion Editor.

00:00:39.880 Good to be back.

00:00:40.820 And Corey Morgan, Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist.

00:00:44.120 I had to be the fixture at the end of the table.

00:00:46.760 That's why we put you over there.

00:00:48.120 Yeah.

00:00:48.280 We're going to be talking about the Alberta government's decision to end taxpayer funding for your 139th COVID booster shot.

00:01:01.760 That means from now on, if you want to keep on getting COVID boosters, you're going to finally have to pay for it yourself, like almost any other vaccine.

00:01:11.320 That's created some predictable brouhaha from the predictable people that you'd expect it from.

00:01:17.120 We're going to talk about the G6 meeting just west of us in Kananaxkis, just west of us here in Calgary.

00:01:26.380 It was supposed to be the G7, but Donald Trump pretty much flew in and flew out.

00:01:31.200 He kind of did the Frankfurt thing where he just kind of, I think he was just transferring to another location or something as he was flying through, essentially.

00:01:37.800 G6 and a half.

00:01:38.900 There you are.

00:01:39.280 Well, we'll talk about what happened there.

00:01:42.760 We have Western Center reporters on the ground, and we'll talk about what developed and didn't develop.

00:01:49.480 And is it our war?

00:01:51.280 That's where we're going to start.

00:01:53.200 Israel has attacked, as I already know, this is not news.

00:01:58.600 Israel has attacked alleged Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities for building a nuclear warhead.

00:02:07.800 And we're going to talk about Israel's decision to do it, but also the larger discussion around, is it our war?

00:02:15.520 Our war being, you know, the broader Western alliance, NATO, NATO plus.

00:02:21.080 Right now, Donald Trump is weighing what to do.

00:02:26.260 Just before we walked in here, I saw him speaking at the press.

00:02:30.000 He says, maybe I will, maybe I won't.

00:02:34.160 Nice enrichment facilities you got.

00:02:35.940 Be ashamed if anything were to happen to them.

00:02:37.800 Um, it's a question that is very much dividing the mega coalition.

00:02:46.180 The mega coalition is very different from, you know, kind of the older neoconservative coalition, you know, that you'd see under George Bush.

00:02:54.100 And then it kind of petered out in the McCain and the Romney years, uh, you know, where the Republicans were the hawk party.

00:03:00.640 They're going to export democracy, uh, as I forget who said it, but someone eloquently put it.

00:03:05.900 We're going to free the shit out of them.

00:03:07.120 Um, you know, you know, these kind of endless wars in the Middle East, um, large, you know, ostensibly to make the safe war, a world safer democracy as, as was attempted in the first world war.

00:03:22.240 Um, Israel's hit these facilities, um, but it, it seems likely they probably have not finished the job.

00:03:30.940 Um, they're, uh, the, the big facility of most concern is buried beneath the mountain.

00:03:37.140 And most experts say that only the Americans have the bunker buster bombs that were literally designed for that facility.

00:03:44.160 They designed new bombs 20 years ago to blow up that facility.

00:03:48.120 The Americans have got them, uh, so they need those bombs.

00:03:51.300 They need B2 bombers.

00:03:52.800 Big question now is, will the Americans intervene?

00:03:55.480 There's a lot of ways to come at this.

00:03:58.120 I want to start with it first about, was this attack justified?

00:04:03.940 I come from the position that if in fact Iran, uh, was an imminent threat of obtaining a nuclear warhead,

00:04:13.220 that it was building a nuclear warhead and that it was on the cusp of doing so,

00:04:18.500 then I think Israel's strikes would be justified.

00:04:21.660 But, uh, the, the, the evidence provided so far is far from definitive.

00:04:30.220 It's, um, you know, not good enough, I think, just to take the Mossad's word for it

00:04:35.520 after the 2003 invasion of Iraq on the same pretext.

00:04:40.560 Um, the Iranian regime is, you know, the, the usual chicken hawks on Twitter say, uh,

00:04:47.540 well, you know, you're just backing the mullahs, you must be an Islamofascist or something.

00:04:52.400 No, uh, the Iranian regime is about the most odious and evil regime on planet Earth.

00:04:59.680 And the world would be better for every dead mullah that we've got.

00:05:04.140 But there's a lot of bad regimes in the world, always has been, and there always will be.

00:05:07.400 And Iran is, it would be a lot harder than Iraq.

00:05:11.580 It is many times the size geographically.

00:05:14.660 It's about three times the size by population.

00:05:17.300 Its military is considerably larger.

00:05:19.460 Most estimates put its full forces at around 900,000, shy of a million men under arms.

00:05:26.080 Uh, this would not be even, I guess, a war.

00:05:31.060 This would be a cataclysmic region-wide war.

00:05:34.720 God knows, maybe even draws in some of the other great powers.

00:05:37.160 But even if it doesn't, it could be, it would be a cataclysmic regional war.

00:05:42.080 Um, I think, I'd, I'd put it that it's incumbent on Israel to provide hard evidence

00:05:50.340 that Iran was building a bomb and that they were on the verge of a bomb to justify these strikes.

00:05:56.280 It's a little, uh, little post-facto justification.

00:06:02.000 The thing is that they've already gone and, and done it.

00:06:04.840 You know, when you're looking at the burden of evidence, you say,

00:06:09.660 do we have the evidence that they were on the cusp of getting a bomb?

00:06:14.100 I don't know.

00:06:15.120 But I do know that with their own lips, they have contend the great Satan, which is the U.S.,

00:06:23.120 and the little Satan, which is Israel, for the last 50 years,

00:06:27.180 since we have that nasty little go-around with Jimmy Carter and the deposition of the Shah,

00:06:32.700 the hostage-taking of the American diplomats.

00:06:37.060 That's all they have talked about.

00:06:39.020 We are going to destroy you.

00:06:40.660 That's addressed to Israel.

00:06:42.440 But it's also addressed to the United States, just Israel first.

00:06:48.260 So if you're going to have 50 years of rhetoric saying we're out to kill you,

00:06:52.680 at some point, when does it not just become stupidity to ignore it and say,

00:06:58.140 oh, that's just those guys, they're blowing off steam.

00:07:00.120 They have to say that for their own people.

00:07:02.180 Well, they don't have to say that for their own people.

00:07:04.280 Their own people hate them.

00:07:05.760 So this is very much...

00:07:06.960 Some of their own people hate them.

00:07:08.240 They do have a lot of support in Iran.

00:07:09.840 There's a very large westernized liberal minority in Iran.

00:07:13.900 But I don't think it's fair to say that the Iranian people broadly hate the regime.

00:07:17.840 I don't know.

00:07:18.280 That is a divided society.

00:07:20.080 It certainly is.

00:07:21.240 It certainly is.

00:07:21.720 It certainly is.

00:07:22.720 Yeah, you have to be a little careful.

00:07:24.780 But, I mean, some people really put their lives on the line in some of the public demonstrations.

00:07:28.460 And it's very clear that that regime is not universally loved.

00:07:33.900 So, all of that saying, if you think, if you were an Israeli prime minister and you think that Iran,

00:07:41.540 having developed the technology to drop a rocket in your backyard,

00:07:47.560 is also saying we're working on a nuclear bomb.

00:07:49.840 And when we've got the two together, we're going to destroy you.

00:07:55.220 There is a very solid argument, whether they're a week away, a month away, or 10 years away,

00:08:00.740 we're doing what you can to slow them down.

00:08:02.960 And I think the Israelis have already accomplished that, by the way.

00:08:06.060 Well, they've been slowed down, but it's not stopped.

00:08:07.800 That's why they want American intervention.

00:08:09.120 And that's why they want.

00:08:09.880 And, I mean, there certainly is an argument, all right,

00:08:13.240 you guys have done what you've done, and it's worked.

00:08:17.320 So, now, instead of being a year away or a month away, it's 10 years or 15 years.

00:08:22.120 Okay, but the Israelis have claimed that the Iranians are on the verge of getting a bomb for 30 years now.

00:08:27.520 Now, maybe they're right this time.

00:08:30.200 Well, it's the first time they've actually gone and done anything about it.

00:08:32.580 So, they obviously have some.

00:08:33.980 Like, this would not be likely undertaken.

00:08:35.740 Sure, but we can't take their word for it.

00:08:37.480 I mean, George Bush going into Iraq in 2003, I would like to think, was not lightly undertaken.

00:08:45.280 You know, the Saddam Hussein regime was nearly as odious, maybe not as extreme as the Ayatollahs,

00:08:52.940 but it was an odious, murderous, and genocidal regime.

00:08:56.820 Pretty much par for the course for an Arab country.

00:08:59.520 Yeah, well, actually, it was one of the worst on the block in a very bad neighborhood.

00:09:03.540 But, I mean, the Israelis have claimed this.

00:09:07.480 For a long time.

00:09:09.640 So, what would you accept as being the trigger moment?

00:09:14.100 We need evidence.

00:09:15.200 Now, I understand the need for a preemptive attack.

00:09:18.580 Bob?

00:09:20.880 Like, seriously.

00:09:22.440 The Iranians are going to come back and say, oh, no, we're just...

00:09:25.840 I'm a fairly sympathetic...

00:09:27.800 I think I'm a fairly sympathetic guy to the cause.

00:09:31.080 I detest the regime.

00:09:33.060 But we'll become better when they're eventually gone someday.

00:09:37.080 I'm a pretty sympathetic guy to hear the argument.

00:09:39.960 I just haven't seen the convincing evidence yet.

00:09:42.580 But, you know, the same with Saddam Hussein.

00:09:46.700 I, you know, I was a teenager when it happened.

00:09:49.640 I grew up in military towns, and this was a very big thing.

00:09:54.300 But the evidence failed to materialize.

00:09:56.740 And I get the need for a preemptive strike.

00:09:58.400 The Seven Days War was a preemptive strike.

00:10:01.360 And Israel provided the evidence for that post-facto.

00:10:04.180 So, I get that.

00:10:05.860 But you better be pretty ironclad in that...

00:10:08.640 You better have it to provide post-facto if you're going to make a preemptive strike.

00:10:12.860 Well, there's a fear that the evidence would be a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

00:10:17.400 I mean, there's the other part that could come afterwards.

00:10:20.020 But I know.

00:10:21.000 I mean, Mossad, CIA, I mean, they do some good things.

00:10:24.660 But they're also organizations you can't trust necessarily anything.

00:10:27.280 By nature, they're intelligence agencies.

00:10:29.160 By nature, they do some shady shit.

00:10:30.960 And, you know, there's open secrets of the Middle East.

00:10:33.480 I mean, technically, Israel doesn't have nukes either.

00:10:36.420 But everybody knows they have them.

00:10:38.800 Iran says they're not working towards a nuclear program.

00:10:41.480 We all know they're working towards it.

00:10:43.320 The question, actually, is how far along are they?

00:10:46.360 That's the question.

00:10:48.160 And, you know, Israel's saying it could be as much as just a couple of weeks away from having that capability.

00:10:52.820 Or it could be another 20 or 30 years.

00:10:55.380 How do you prove that?

00:10:56.860 I don't know.

00:10:57.680 Israel's got other motivations right now.

00:11:00.340 I'm generally pretty supportive of Israel.

00:11:02.520 But Iran's also been proxy funding the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas.

00:11:09.080 And basically keeping those terrorist groups that are picking at Israel from the sidelines all this time.

00:11:15.000 Israel's happy to have an excuse, I think, to just give them a bit of a slapping around to remind them that there's going to be a price to continue to mess with Israel.

00:11:24.780 But, yeah, we're going to, I think, especially with the potential for this to turn into a kinetic, larger ground war.

00:11:32.860 I mean, it's a big army.

00:11:34.100 It could turn bad.

00:11:35.660 We would, I guess, hope then that there's justification.

00:11:38.540 Well, all of it has to go on faith because we can't trust any of the organizations that they're worried on this.

00:11:42.560 You know, we're sitting here in Calvary, so, yeah, we can afford to say, show us the evidence.

00:11:46.500 But if you're sitting in Tel Aviv, you don't know when it's that platter.

00:11:49.780 This is getting too close for comfort.

00:11:52.160 Let's go and do something about it.

00:11:53.320 Look, if I was sitting in Tel Aviv, I'd be likely to just more blindly trust whatever my government's telling me.

00:11:59.540 But I'm not sitting in Tel Aviv here.

00:12:01.260 I'm sitting down in Calgary.

00:12:03.180 And, you know, my son is too young to fight in a war, but I'm concerned this turns into a bigger war and young Alberta, Canadian, American, French, German sons get drawn into a war and we have to die.

00:12:20.140 So what are the sort of mirrors and levers that would involve Canada in this?

00:12:25.340 Perhaps not Canada because we have no capacity to fight an unperceived war.

00:12:28.540 But I'm talking about the West, Western blood and Western treasure more generally, even if it's not Canada.

00:12:34.580 I still feel a kinship with Americans, French, Germans, Poles, Italians.

00:12:40.000 And I don't want to see any of our blood and treasure spilt for another forever war in the Middle East unless it was absolutely necessary.

00:12:49.640 And I have not seen the evidence yet.

00:12:52.380 So why does it have to be a forever war?

00:12:54.900 You go in, you drop the bomb, it's over.

00:12:57.260 Well, you want to drop the big one.

00:12:59.760 Okay, well, that, sure.

00:13:01.280 Or you're talking about the bunker buster.

00:13:02.540 No, no, no.

00:13:03.240 Okay, well, if you say it's a bomb, that means a big bunker buster.

00:13:06.540 That's a capital T.

00:13:08.140 The bomb we're talking about is the bunker buster.

00:13:10.520 You drop it, it destroys the facility.

00:13:13.420 Okay, but Iran domestically would be then well within its rights to consider that an act of war.

00:13:19.580 And we could very much then, the possibility of a much larger kinetic ground and air war becomes an extremely real possibility.

00:13:28.940 And I mean, Donald Trump used the term unconditional surrender when he was leaving the G7.

00:13:34.180 I mean, I think it's, I think it may be just to blow it on the ground when he said it.

00:13:37.680 Yeah, we talked about this briefly just the other day.

00:13:41.200 I'm hopeful he does not understand the proper meaning of that in the Yalta, Atlantic Charter sense of the word.

00:13:48.820 Meaning we have to launch a ground invasion of this huge and militarily powerful country.

00:13:54.800 If we thought Iran and Iraq were difficult, we're in for a whole new order of nightmare.

00:14:01.800 If we want to go fight one of these kinds of wars in Iran, could they be defeated in the field with relative ease by the Americans if they fully mobilize?

00:14:10.900 Yeah.

00:14:11.580 But if you want to defeat them and occupy them, you know, set up McDonald's and strip clubs and give them democracy.

00:14:18.940 I mean, for another 20 years, well, anywhere in Iran or Afghanistan or Iraq and Afghanistan.

00:14:24.860 But I mean, the hard part is there's a real fear, though.

00:14:28.640 I mean, if there's any country in the world, I don't lose sleep over Russia having nukes, even though Putin's a crazed dictator as well.

00:14:35.280 Or, you know, China having nukes because they still don't seem to really use them.

00:14:41.700 If any country would actually potentially push that button, Iran's among them.

00:14:46.900 And that's one you really kind of got to worry a little more about than you do with other countries as well.

00:14:51.960 Like, could you, hindsight's 20-20, could you imagine the hindsight again if these lunatics did manage to pull it off and go and fire somewhere?

00:15:00.700 No, I actually do agree with the premise.

00:15:02.880 You know, if the Israelis are telling the truth, I actually agree with the premise of their casus belli.

00:15:08.640 Iran must not have a bomb.

00:15:11.360 I'm not that.

00:15:12.620 I'm a general non-interventionist, but I'm not a doctrinaire under no circumstances non-interventionist.

00:15:20.520 Iran must not be allowed to have a bomb.

00:15:22.540 These guys have an apocalyptic world vision in their theology.

00:15:28.760 Even if it was suicidal, they're a martyr-type culture.

00:15:31.360 So, hey, well, it was for Allah we blew up Israel.

00:15:34.000 Yeah, the communists may have been evil and terrible, but they didn't want to die.

00:15:37.920 They therefore acted as rational actors, and, you know, you could game these things.

00:15:41.720 As terrifying as those games were, you could game it out, and we didn't nuke each other.

00:15:45.480 Good.

00:15:45.980 These guys, I don't think the math quite applies, so I'm in agreement.

00:15:49.700 Just as an argument when it comes to a regular war, too.

00:15:51.840 They're not easy to battle because it hits my path to 72 virgins, because the ones I found here are terrible.

00:15:57.680 They've just lowered the threshold of evidence required considerably with that state.

00:16:02.100 No, no, no, no.

00:16:02.520 I don't think I have.

00:16:03.500 No, I'm saying they must not be allowed to have a bomb, but we have to have convincing proof that they were about to get the bomb

00:16:10.740 before we were willing to potentially trigger a massive regional war that could kill millions in the end of this escalate.

00:16:16.580 Perhaps we'll get it, but we need to have some limb-wourliers demanding it, I guess.

00:16:21.100 Or if they're presenting that evidence to anybody, I would think maybe behind closed doors to Trump and the others.

00:16:26.100 One thing about Trump, as much as he talks and blusters, and I'm not a fan of his, never have been,

00:16:31.300 but he's never been a hawk.

00:16:33.060 He's never actually been all that keen on getting into American soldiers on the ground.

00:16:39.180 So I think, to some degree, he could be reasoned with if he could find a way to avoid those things.

00:16:43.860 I think they would have to present him with evidence before he's ready to...

00:16:47.020 Yeah, but I'm not willing to take any leader's word for it.

00:16:49.880 Even leaders I like or not or have a respect for.

00:16:52.800 I mean, J.D. Vance is trying to make this argument.

00:16:54.760 He had an extensive post on X, you know, saying like, look, Donald Trump is the least interventionist president in the post-war era.

00:17:01.780 Uh, I think that's correct, so far.

00:17:05.540 Uh, so this, you know, he's earned a little trust on this.

00:17:07.820 Sure.

00:17:08.160 Okay, maybe, you know, he's got more credibility than your brother-in-law, Republican, and Democrat.

00:17:12.680 But I'm not willing to take anyone's word for it that, like, guys, I've seen the evidence.

00:17:16.940 Trust me.

00:17:17.540 George Bush said the same thing.

00:17:19.060 And at least George Bush presented some false intelligence to us.

00:17:21.680 Well, maybe they've learned from that, I guess.

00:17:23.780 Well, they're gonna have to show us the money.

00:17:25.780 I don't think...

00:17:26.780 What would the money look like?

00:17:28.140 I mean, Corey...

00:17:29.040 Some kind of evidence.

00:17:29.960 Corey said it's in the mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv.

00:17:32.480 Well, I mean, that'd be more evidence than we want.

00:17:35.700 Well, how much would you...

00:17:37.460 What would convince you?

00:17:39.400 I don't know.

00:17:40.220 Photos?

00:17:41.020 Uh, people who have worked inside?

00:17:43.380 I don't know.

00:17:43.900 I'm not an intelligence source.

00:17:45.540 Uh, I'm not an intelligence agent here.

00:17:48.000 But we need evidence.

00:17:49.140 If you're going to launch a war that could potentially become something much bigger and could potentially kill millions of people.

00:17:57.360 We've got to go on more than someone's work.

00:17:59.600 We can reverse that onus.

00:18:00.660 I know it's trying to reason with the unreasonable.

00:18:02.520 But maybe, uh, if Iran wants to avoid this, they could say, well, we'll bring in some outside observers to our facilities and prove we don't have this.

00:18:09.040 I know it's forcing them to prove a negative, but...

00:18:12.340 I know you heard all the time, our agency's been trying to get in there for years.

00:18:15.160 They've not let them in.

00:18:16.140 They've been a little less than...

00:18:17.820 A little spish.

00:18:18.760 I think, you know, there were...

00:18:19.660 There were similar problems with Iraq.

00:18:23.260 Uh, Saddam Hussein was less than entirely cooperative.

00:18:26.780 But in the end, he did not have the bomb.

00:18:28.720 He was not building the bomb.

00:18:30.480 Well, the bomb wasn't the issue because they destroyed the Osiris plant years before.

00:18:34.400 Yeah, but they were claiming he was...

00:18:35.500 But they did a whole bunch of other stuff, too.

00:18:37.960 They claimed that he was restarting these other weapons of mass destruction programs.

00:18:41.060 I've heard that could not be true.

00:18:42.060 But he had been less than cooperative.

00:18:43.680 So, failure to cooperate is certainly suspicious.

00:18:46.320 It certainly should set off alarm bells.

00:18:48.080 But in and of itself, I don't think it's casus belli for a potential cataclysmic war.

00:18:54.700 Well, the toothpaste is out of the tube now, though.

00:18:57.100 So, the only thing left, again, as they're saying, is whether or not the Americans do that final...

00:19:01.660 So, let's talk about that.

00:19:03.980 To finish the job, they...

00:19:06.160 Finish is maybe the wrong word.

00:19:08.280 To finish destroying the nuclear facilities, they need the American B-2s with bunker buster bombs.

00:19:14.440 Now, that doesn't necessarily mean the job's done.

00:19:16.920 Iran might take this as a full state of war, and we're going to have to fight it through to some bloody conclusion.

00:19:22.980 So, destroying those facilities with B-2s does not necessarily mean the end of the war.

00:19:26.620 Maybe it does.

00:19:27.560 I don't know.

00:19:28.480 But the Israelis appear to have bet.

00:19:33.200 Trump said not to...

00:19:34.560 He told Netanyahu not to do this.

00:19:36.660 Netanyahu went ahead and did it anyway.

00:19:39.340 On the assumption that the Americans will be drawn in and will do it.

00:19:42.640 Now, that is not a sure thing, but that was the gamble that Netanyahu has made.

00:19:49.780 Put it to you, Nigel.

00:19:51.300 Should the Americans intervene here?

00:19:53.160 First of all, I'm not sure that that was a gamble, because like we said in the previous segment,

00:19:58.600 whatever state that program of developing nuclear weapons had reached,

00:20:04.040 what has happened in the last week has set that back a very long time.

00:20:10.060 So...

00:20:10.420 But it was Netanyahu who took the gamble that the Americans would intervene to finish them off in the end with B-2s.

00:20:16.880 Well, maybe...

00:20:18.660 He did not have a guarantee they would, but he...

00:20:21.480 But he has already achieved, on behalf of Israel, security from an Iranian nuclear attack.

00:20:29.520 I'm not qualified to judge, but probably for 10 years, you know?

00:20:34.200 Maybe it's only 5, maybe it's 20.

00:20:35.980 But what they've already done without that facility being destroyed is already thrown the Iranians seriously off.

00:20:45.640 And by the way, if it's thrown it off for Israel, it's also thrown it off for the United States,

00:20:51.000 because you don't need a nuclear...

00:20:53.440 You don't need a missile that can go from Tehran to New York.

00:20:56.680 You just need a means of delivery.

00:20:59.800 Well, that could be a container on a cargo ship.

00:21:02.260 So that's...

00:21:03.520 So America has an interest in making sure...

00:21:07.140 But should America intervene here?

00:21:08.420 Because if they do, you know, the Iranians are then likely to more directly target American assets,

00:21:14.660 and it increases the chance that this becomes an all-out regional war.

00:21:19.520 I guess that depends on their own intelligence at this point.

00:21:21.780 I mean, as we've said, it didn't seem like Trump's too eager to jump in unless he sees something he feels might justify it.

00:21:30.180 Something else that's interesting in development out of this, though,

00:21:32.360 was Jordan stepping up when Iran was responding and knocking out some of Iranian hardware coming over their country.

00:21:40.840 So Iran has lost a lot of friends around themselves, too.

00:21:44.180 We're not talking about it as necessarily going into a full-out regional war.

00:21:47.420 Jordan's got no love of Israel, but at the same time, they don't want to get a whole...

00:21:50.760 Well, all of the Gulf Arab states and then some in the Levant, like Jordan,

00:21:54.980 these guys hate Iran.

00:21:56.120 This is a Sunni Shia, largely, because these guys are terrified of Iranian hegemony in the region.

00:22:03.260 And if Iran does get the bomb, well, then the Saudis are going to buy a bomb in the next week from Pakistan or something.

00:22:09.660 And it really is opening a door into a dark room as soon as Iran gets the bomb here, but equally so, a potential regional war.

00:22:21.060 But does American intervention lessen the chance of this expanding to a bigger war, or does it increase the chance?

00:22:27.900 Well, it depends on how definitive... If Americans intervened and they definitively splattered things enough in Iran in short order,

00:22:35.660 I don't think other regions would be eager to raise their hand and say,

00:22:38.100 let's jump in and play in this sandbox with the rest of them.

00:22:40.960 I mean, wars change, too.

00:22:42.600 I mean, we're not going to see a bunch of alliance in all the tanks rolling across the desert like we saw, you know, 30 years ago.

00:22:48.900 And in some ways, it makes it more likely for them to jump into it.

00:22:51.560 But you're not putting as much manpower on the ground as you're used to.

00:22:54.120 You're doing a lot more remote control, almost video game style.

00:22:57.200 I'm not sure Iran is really in a position to fight a war, even if it wanted to.

00:23:01.460 Like right now, they have... The Israelis have total control of the Tehran skies.

00:23:06.820 They don't actually have any people there.

00:23:09.400 So who are you going to shoot if you're an Iranian?

00:23:12.440 So Iran would be just in a position of saying, we hate you.

00:23:17.120 We hated you before. Now we hate you even more.

00:23:19.980 There's not much they can do about it.

00:23:21.260 I'd be concerned about Iraq, because Iraq was the implacable enemy of Ayatollah, Iran.

00:23:28.760 Saddam Hussein was there because it was the Sunni minority-dominated country that was majority Shia and with Kurds.

00:23:36.440 Although it's kind of how we don't want the Kurds in either of them.

00:23:38.280 Really, what do you want us to Kurds in a separate issue?

00:23:41.520 But it's now, now that it's democratic, it is ruled by Shiites with Iran.

00:23:51.260 It's hard to say, because Sunni, Saddam Hussein was Sunni, and he still didn't get along with Iran by any measure.

00:24:00.540 No, no, that's my point.

00:24:01.540 Oh, yeah.

00:24:01.740 When Saddam Hussein was removed, and the Americans pulled out, the Iraqi regime became a lot more friendly with Iran.

00:24:08.160 Iran is extremely influential right now in Iraq.

00:24:12.440 And that gets you awful close to the borders of Israel at that point.

00:24:17.060 I don't think the Canadian military could do much to stand in the way if they had both of them.

00:24:20.540 If we're waiting for the peace in the Middle East, I guess we're going to be waiting a while.

00:24:23.760 We're just going to hope for the best.

00:24:25.060 This is, that's all we can, I know you're saying.

00:24:28.460 We're never going to get, I mean, the thing is they come up with evidence.

00:24:30.820 You don't know if you can necessarily trust that either.

00:24:32.280 Or Geiger counters came up and found this material from blowing up that mountain.

00:24:35.800 We know there was.

00:24:36.320 I want something between a mushroom cloud and taking a politician or intelligence agency's word for it.

00:24:42.900 I want something in between those two.

00:24:45.360 Maybe we'll get that.

00:24:46.920 So say, well, have the research assistant look that up.

00:24:49.760 Yeah.

00:24:50.380 We'll put a reporter on.

00:24:51.520 Yeah.

00:24:52.940 Okay.

00:24:55.380 Well, it segues nicely to where we're going next.

00:24:59.300 Uh, leaders of the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Canada.

00:25:09.220 Matt, for the G7.

00:25:10.960 Uh, short drive from where we're sitting here in Calgary, just, just west of us in Canada's country.

00:25:17.880 Um, a couple ways to stab at this, but the meeting was, I think, significantly disrupted by Donald Trump.

00:25:26.840 Um, uh, pretty much touching down Sunday evening.

00:25:31.100 Um, yeah, actually I, I, I was in, I was sitting down to watch TV for the evening.

00:25:35.860 It was, you know, like nine o'clock ish.

00:25:38.680 My house started to shake and that was Donald Trump and, uh, Donald Trump's helicopter Marine One.

00:25:45.300 And then his Osprey helicopter escorts rolling right over my house.

00:25:49.160 Pretty, pretty low, um, on the way to the G7, uh, coming from the Calgary airport.

00:25:54.440 Um, so he duches down.

00:25:56.840 Sunday night and he left not too long into the day, Monday.

00:26:00.820 I don't know, it may even have been before noon.

00:26:02.680 But he was pretty much in and out, touching down like he was just a quick little layover at an airport,

00:26:07.060 switching, uh, switching flights.

00:26:08.660 Went back to the States to deal with the evolving war in the Middle East here.

00:26:12.300 Uh, without the American president or this, uh, uh, I don't know.

00:26:19.560 Is there any point to the G7 without an American president present?

00:26:23.180 It's not so much the person of the president.

00:26:25.620 It is the strategy that whoever is president is following.

00:26:29.600 The issue here is that the G7 was formed at a time by democratic countries interested in free trade with the idea of pursuing those objectives, democracy and free trade.

00:26:42.140 Without going as deep as a bunker buster bond takes us, it is simply the fact that the United States is the biggest part of the G7 in terms of product, gross domestic product production.

00:26:59.740 Well, they're not interested in free trade anymore.

00:27:03.040 They are interested in protection.

00:27:04.680 Well, that removes right at the root, the whole point of the G7.

00:27:10.540 We are actually, you heard it here first.

00:27:15.460 You, we are actually living in a few years during which the whole, uh, new era of international affairs is going to be rewritten.

00:27:25.920 It was rewritten at the end of the second world war.

00:27:28.580 It was rewritten when we went into the, the free trade era of the 1970s, 80s, 90s, all the liberalism represented by Reagan, Bush and, uh, Bush too.

00:27:42.880 And now we're coming out of that and we're going into big power blocks.

00:27:48.640 So the United States, China, particularly, uh, the G7 doesn't have a place in that because nobody is interested in what the G7 has been doing for the last 40 years.

00:28:00.580 They're interested in doing something completely different.

00:28:02.520 So Trump wasn't particularly interested in the business of the G7.

00:28:06.880 I don't think he came in, he signed a, he signed a deal with the British.

00:28:10.520 He batted Mr. Carney on the arm and said, everything will be all right in a few weeks and left.

00:28:15.340 And that, I think, is the end of the G7.

00:28:19.560 I don't even think there's a G6 to be solviced out of it because the Americans are not part of it.

00:28:24.160 Well, I mean, the G6 is essentially the main European countries plus Japan and Canada and Canada is increasing.

00:28:29.740 So we, the only reach Canada has ever included in the original G7 was...

00:28:34.320 Courtesy.

00:28:34.960 It was courtesy.

00:28:35.820 They were being nice to us.

00:28:37.480 Um, I hate to say that, by the way.

00:28:40.080 I mean, when I came to Canada in 73 and 74, I thought it was a great place.

00:28:45.780 It was rocking.

00:28:46.540 Things were going well.

00:28:47.940 I was proud.

00:28:49.180 It's just what the last 10 years have done, sadly, and bitterly reduced us.

00:28:54.480 Well, we're bored in Italy now, which makes us, I think, uh, effective.

00:28:58.240 We're a rich, second-world country at this point.

00:29:00.800 Yeah.

00:29:01.060 Yeah.

00:29:02.060 Uh, to Nigel's point, both for and against it, at the same time, oddly, the G7 doesn't deal just with major economic issues.

00:29:12.680 It kind of depends on what's dominating the news cycle at the time that the G7 is held.

00:29:19.160 You know, often it's dealing with foreign policy.

00:29:21.500 You know, you know, Zelensky was there.

00:29:23.680 Um, you know, sometimes it's dealt with COVID, et cetera.

00:29:27.140 Uh, the Americans do have a different agenda on trade, it would appear, than, you know, the other G7 members at this point.

00:29:35.180 Um, but its relevance on foreign policy must also be diminished if it ever really had an influence, because this is a key moment in foreign policy.

00:29:44.360 And Trump decided not to stay there with other major leaders in, uh, in the Western world plus Japan.

00:29:52.660 Um, he decided that that was not the most relevant place to be.

00:29:56.100 It was just in Washington, in the situation room.

00:29:58.860 Um, what is, did anything of any significance come out of this meeting?

00:30:05.040 I don't think so.

00:30:05.980 As I just said, it was kind of a beginning of an end, perhaps.

00:30:08.240 Trump snubbed it without much, uh, regard.

00:30:10.760 I mean, the claim was that, oh, things are escalating in Israel and, uh, you know, Iran, but I haven't seen any action out of Trump since then that was telling me that he really needed to be in Washington to make some of those decisions or be briefed on issues or, you know, be there in person or anything of that sort.

00:30:27.940 It sounds more like a pretense to me.

00:30:29.620 Uh, and anything that would have been sticky diplomatically is Zelensky being there.

00:30:34.880 And he maybe just wanted to avoid the headache, which shows again, the indifference he kind of treats the G7 with though, that it's a headache.

00:30:41.560 I don't want to bother with it.

00:30:42.800 I'm just going to kind of bow out after making a token appearance, shake some hands, smile, get a picture.

00:30:47.600 I feel like he treated it the way most Canadian prime ministers treat at premier's meeting.

00:30:50.960 Yeah, pretty much.

00:30:51.900 You're the senior guy in the room.

00:30:53.340 You want to show up for a picture, but you don't want to be pestered by these.

00:30:56.200 You didn't even get the picture.

00:30:57.740 The tradition of having a group picture, he wasn't there for it.

00:31:02.640 To your point, you asked, well, was there anything significant?

00:31:05.840 Uh, diligent readers of the Western standard will already be aware that there were in fact six, uh, statements that were agreed upon.

00:31:13.820 And this is what they were.

00:31:15.780 Securing high standard, critical mineral supply chains that power future economies.

00:31:20.940 That's one.

00:31:22.540 Uh, driving secure, responsible, and trustworthy AI solutions.

00:31:27.740 Boosting cooperation to unlock quantum technologies, full potential to grow economies.

00:31:35.660 So, that can start tomorrow.

00:31:39.620 Number four, mounting a multilateral effort to prevent fight and recovery from rising wildfires.

00:31:45.860 I wouldn't, I won't even bore you with the other two.

00:31:49.840 They are in the Western standard in a thoughtful editorial that, uh, we published yesterday.

00:31:58.800 Um, it's not worth the effort that goes into preparing these meetings if you're not going to deal with the big money issues.

00:32:07.780 And that's now a thing of the past.

00:32:10.060 This is stuff that could have been done by a committee of bureaucrats on through email.

00:32:13.760 Well, actually, you know, as funny as you think.

00:32:15.280 I mean, all this stuff is a problem.

00:32:17.040 The bureaucrats, they work on this.

00:32:19.280 They're already working on the next year's one.

00:32:21.480 They haven't been told that the game's up.

00:32:22.820 They're already working on this for next year.

00:32:26.100 And all that happens is they get all the paperwork together.

00:32:28.940 The leaders fly in.

00:32:30.520 They shake hands.

00:32:31.860 They sign the paper.

00:32:33.120 Make a few statements.

00:32:34.100 Get the group photo.

00:32:35.140 And everybody goes home.

00:32:36.880 And in this case, Trump said, if that's all it is, I'm out of here.

00:32:40.120 It's one small victory.

00:32:41.540 I mean, with, uh, we know that, uh, a former prime minister was pining away because he desperately wanted to be the man to host that.

00:32:48.420 If only for his final act as a prime minister, if he knew he was on the way out the door, but he couldn't cling that long.

00:32:55.120 And whatever Carney might have done, at least he didn't do anything to embarrass us.

00:32:58.580 There was always that risk with our last prime minister.

00:33:00.520 He was going to feel a stunt.

00:33:01.720 Well, he didn't pull his socks off.

00:33:03.540 Yeah.

00:33:04.340 He's at least doing mean girl gossiping.

00:33:06.780 He's got some dignity about himself and diplomacy, whereas our last leader didn't.

00:33:11.820 Because we'd always cringe whenever our last prime minister went overseas or was hosting something like this.

00:33:16.800 Because, you know, what's he going to do this time?

00:33:18.660 And, and again, I'm not a Carney fan by any means, but, uh, at least you don't have to worry about that.

00:33:24.700 So a small victory.

00:33:26.020 Yeah.

00:33:26.500 The other, uh, I was disappointed mostly because, uh, so we had, uh, two of our reporters, uh, two of our new staff on the ground at the G7, G6, uh, meeting in Kananaskis there.

00:33:39.260 Um, I was really looking forward, we were trying really hard, uh, we were actually in contact with the White House to get into the pool to ask questions of Trump.

00:33:48.880 One really, really relevant question.

00:33:52.320 I was really hoping that would get.

00:33:53.500 Oh, it would have been so good, uh, because this is in Alberta.

00:33:56.840 This isn't seldom in Alberta.

00:33:58.200 He's close to the epicenter of the independence movement in Alberta.

00:34:03.200 And we wanted to ask Donald Trump that in the event that Alberta does vote for independence and the likely coming referendum we're going to have, will he recognize Alberta's sovereignty?

00:34:15.380 Because any answer other than no would have been an earthquake.

00:34:21.580 It would completely upset the calculus of the federal government, which would hope that it could simply rag the puck on negotiations and Canada stay, uh, Alberta stays within Canada no matter how it, uh, votes.

00:34:32.460 Um, but that, our, our best laid plans for that were kiboshed when, uh, Trump took off to go back to Washington.

00:34:39.400 See, up, up until you put that thought to Catherine Leavitt that he was going to stay for the whole show.

00:34:47.660 Uh, but I, you, you have to wonder if you use beautiful Kananaskis and the Rocky Mountains.

00:34:52.000 I don't want to answer the question.

00:34:53.360 Yeah.

00:34:54.260 Uh, but you have to wonder if Trump, uh, you know, didn't stay too long, but he's flying out looking at the place, I think.

00:35:01.320 These boys are pretty nice.

00:35:02.880 Casino go there.

00:35:04.520 How far?

00:35:06.180 He actually flew over, uh, casino.

00:35:07.940 He flew over two casinos on the way there.

00:35:10.160 Yeah.

00:35:10.380 He's like a Trump grade at all.

00:35:12.240 And, uh, yeah.

00:35:13.180 Trump national.

00:35:15.220 Oh, God.

00:35:16.300 Yeah.

00:35:16.540 Yeah.

00:35:16.760 You just have to wonder how much he was like, oh, this place should be, uh, this place would be real nice.

00:35:23.380 Okay.

00:35:23.740 Uh, so we're, we're taking it from the international to the international locally to the local.

00:35:31.460 Uh, Corey, um, ever since COVID boosters became available, I'm sorry, COVID vaccines and then boosters,

00:35:37.940 uh, became available, uh, governments everywhere in Canada have been paying for this.

00:35:41.760 Alberta, I believe is the first government, uh, that has said it's going to finally stop paying for this.

00:35:46.760 COVID is really getting in the rear view mirror now.

00:35:49.280 It is not a significant threat, uh, particularly if you're not a senior living in a communal living home.

00:35:55.880 And even there, it's pretty low now, but if it, wherever it is a lingering remaining threat of any kind, that would really be only it.

00:36:02.020 So the Alberta government said it's ending taxpayer funded COVID boosters.

00:36:06.720 You know, if you're on your, how many hundreds of boosters you're into at this point, uh, you're limping around, um, perforated.

00:36:13.780 Yeah.

00:36:14.140 Yeah.

00:36:14.380 And you're, you know, demanding more boosters.

00:36:15.980 So unless you're the immunocompromised people living in, uh, communal, uh, seniors homes, they're still covered, but everybody else you got to pay for on your own.

00:36:24.240 Uh, it's been a pretty predictable reaction from the predictable people on that.

00:36:28.120 Yeah.

00:36:28.660 If it had been, uh, any other premier, they would have said, well, they're being pragmatic with changing times, but it is the great devil, Daniel Smith.

00:36:34.720 So thus there's an underhanded anti-vax motivation behind it.

00:36:38.840 Not the fact that only what, 14% of Albertans are partaking in that, uh, vaccination any longer.

00:36:45.460 Is it as high as 14% still getting COVID boosters?

00:36:48.160 I think it was 14.

00:36:49.100 I could be, uh, to be corrected on that.

00:36:51.620 But too many stupid people still here.

00:36:53.040 Well, there's still some vulnerable people, seniors, others who could find some benefit from vaccination with that.

00:36:58.640 Yeah.

00:36:58.800 Uh, as well, a whole pile of it, I mean, it has a shelf life and has been pointed out.

00:37:03.360 We've been throwing millions of dollars down the drain because we've had this big backlog of, of, of, uh, vaccinations that nobody had to pay for.

00:37:11.880 And they're choosing not to go in and get them.

00:37:13.920 So why on earth do we continue to offer them?

00:37:16.300 It's a common sense statement.

00:37:18.320 There's a, I'm supposed to end, uh, I'm constantly getting encouraged by my wife to bother going and getting the shingles vaccination.

00:37:25.340 That's 400 bucks.

00:37:27.140 Uh, it's, I caught shingles a month or so ago.

00:37:29.820 I didn't even know what it was until I was well.

00:37:31.760 And, and for people who get badly infected with it, it can have some terrible long-term consequences and, and, uh, make them very, very ill.

00:37:39.500 And, uh, after a certain age, you're encouraged to get it.

00:37:41.840 But even with that, they say you're encouraged to get it, but this is one of those things you'll have to reach into your pocket and pay for to get by yourself.

00:37:49.760 We can't pay for everything for everybody all the time.

00:37:52.540 I mean, I understand that our socialists in office feel that that's plausible.

00:37:56.500 That's part of why we have a healthcare system that's overwhelmed and waiting lists that are interminable because we are trying to be everything to everybody all the time.

00:38:04.300 So yeah, if there's only demand from 14% of the populace for a particular service, why are we funding it for a hundred percent?

00:38:12.280 It was a common sense decision, but the establishment's going to paint it as, again, as, as Smith just being, uh, the, the evil wicked witch into the West.

00:38:19.600 So, uh, the, the Western standard actually had, we, uh, just to pat ourselves on the back.

00:38:25.160 We had this, uh, story, uh, first before the government announced that we had, it was a nice little scoop.

00:38:29.860 Um, but there was a very predictable reaction.

00:38:33.680 You know, one is, well, what's the politics of this?

00:38:37.440 I think, you know, people who are against the COVID vaccination, they're obviously happy to see this gone.

00:38:43.380 I think most people generally don't care because most people are not taking their 300th booster at this point.

00:38:50.400 It's, it's a pretty small number at this point.

00:38:52.620 As Corey points out, some of those people I think actually is fairly legitimate.

00:38:56.120 You know, you're in a communal assist living home for seniors, you're immunocompromised.

00:38:59.840 Those people, I get them.

00:39:01.100 And for them, it's still covered.

00:39:02.760 Um, but you know, what, what would, what's the, the NDP's political calculus, do you think?

00:39:09.740 And, you know, screaming, uh, ringing the alarm bells about this one, almost no one's taking it at this point.

00:39:17.180 Who's not immunocompromised.

00:39:19.220 Well, I mean, I think the political calculus isn't any more sophisticated than if Danielle Smith is for it.

00:39:26.360 We're against it.

00:39:27.800 And if she's against it, we're for it.

00:39:29.900 So that's, you know, at the very basement level, whatever she says, they're going to disagree.

00:39:34.480 But I, I actually have a theory that the NDP honestly believes that you need to have a, a kind of a nanny state approach to public health and that they were very happy with the situation.

00:39:51.520 And back in 2020, 21, where everybody had to do what they were told.

00:39:56.700 And if they couldn't, then there would be penalties and, uh, you know, take your medicine.

00:40:01.340 Well, they still think that, and it's remarkable that they do so because, uh, there's no strong evidence that these vaccines were neither safe nor effective.

00:40:15.140 Um, we published a graph, I think it was yesterday, it's, it's in, uh, Murray Lytle's column on the subject and it shows, what it shows is at first there was this spike in deaths from COVID and then it, it kind of got a little better and a little better.

00:40:35.140 And then you hit 2021 fall when everybody was encouraged to force really to take vaccines and there is an almost vertical spike like that massive increase in the number of COVID deaths after the introduction of the vaccines.

00:40:54.920 Now I'm not saying that the vaccines caused the deaths, but what I'm saying is it didn't prevent them.

00:40:59.520 And so people said, whatever, you know, meanwhile, I've, you know, plenty of people tell you what a rough ride they had when they had the vaccine.

00:41:07.580 And there's some evidence that I'm not qualified to judge, but, uh, I certainly, it needs to be investigated by somebody who is that there were adverse outcomes from people who did take the vaccine because they were, they were ordered to.

00:41:22.520 So my, my, my, my thought on the whole thing is that Albertans generally are pretty skeptical of the vaccine.

00:41:30.700 They have good reason to be, but if you're a member of a party that believes in top-down control, you haven't got that message yet.

00:41:38.580 Well, let's remember, uh, the UCP under Kenny was opposing exactly that kind of top-down control, uh, when, when he was still in power, the NDP's only problem was he did not go far enough for what they wanted.

00:41:52.160 But he essentially did everything that they wanted.

00:41:54.240 They would just then layer more things on top of their demands.

00:41:57.520 Well, and, and it's, uh, it'll be in the column that I have coming out this week, but I write on that just that, you know, when now we're seeing measles popping up, we're seeing a whooping cough popping up.

00:42:05.460 And I attribute a lot of the people who are choosing not to get these well-established vaccines now due to the authoritarian untrustworthy push that the government did.

00:42:15.820 And it made such mistrust that now, unfortunately, people are choosing not to get the vaccines, which were proven to be safe and effective.

00:42:23.540 It's backfired and it's actually made us more unsafe.

00:42:27.940 Well, what we're forgetting is that the thing that they gave you for COVID actually was the vaccine.

00:42:32.140 Yes.

00:42:32.540 They had to retroactively change the definition of the vaccine in order for them to be honestly able to use the word.

00:42:37.960 And it's, it could be, it's led to people losing trust in all of them, which is bad, bad effect on this.

00:42:43.980 Some of these are very long established and proven medical technologies that have saved millions of lives around the world.

00:42:53.000 Uh, yeah.

00:42:53.480 And I know there's a lot of reasons for the vaccine.

00:42:55.060 That's what I'm saying.

00:42:55.560 If you are, if you have a child, get the bloody vaccine, the measles vaccine, you know.

00:43:03.100 Yeah, mumps.

00:43:03.840 I mean, your temperature starts, things like that.

00:43:05.780 Yeah, but you're, but you're bang on that, you know, the authoritarian measures taken during COVID created a general distrust of vaccines.

00:43:12.280 And I can understand why it's, it's reasonable.

00:43:16.000 Yes.

00:43:16.560 But I think, I think it's the wrong conclusion to draw from, from the COVID experiment.

00:43:21.300 Yeah.

00:43:21.860 It was an untaxed consequence.

00:43:24.380 It was a conclusion.

00:43:25.140 Yeah.

00:43:25.400 And being more authoritarian, unfortunately, is their instinct on how to deal with them.

00:43:28.420 Hearing people talk about, we got a horse measles.

00:43:30.040 We want more mad.

00:43:31.000 Oh boy, you're not helping.

00:43:32.600 We're just going to go in the opposite direction.

00:43:34.700 Yeah.

00:43:35.260 Yeah.

00:43:36.380 All right.

00:43:37.040 Well, let's turn it now to our parting shots.

00:43:39.820 I'm going to give it to you first today, Corey.

00:43:41.580 Sure.

00:43:41.940 Well, I'm back on justice.

00:43:42.940 It's always a favorite of mine.

00:43:43.880 I just read stories, you know, that just make my hair grayer.

00:43:47.100 We saw the one recently with the judge saying the gentleman shouldn't do any time in jail because he had a, just a modest collection of child porn.

00:43:56.860 Now there was a.

00:43:57.740 It was tasteful.

00:43:58.680 Yeah.

00:43:59.120 Yeah.

00:43:59.380 Yeah.

00:44:00.980 So here's another one with a guy who pushed his girlfriend off a 50 foot cliff to her death where she wasn't found for three weeks until a friend of his finally ratted on him to say, hey, by the way, he killed his girlfriend.

00:44:13.340 She's at the bottom of the cliff.

00:44:14.040 He, uh, part of the defense was that there wasn't a guardrail there.

00:44:19.520 So I guess we should always put guardrails up, not to stop people from pushing girlfriends off cliffs.

00:44:24.320 His sentence got reduced though, on this to 698 days in appeal.

00:44:30.220 Uh, if, if we can't get 10 year sentences for people who do things like this, where are we going?

00:44:37.400 Meanwhile, I saw a story resurfacing in the standard covered that well.

00:44:40.080 Whereas we took a guy who sold eggs and put him in jail for a couple of days.

00:44:44.260 And Tamara Leach is still in the midst of the longest mischief, mischief trial in modern history.

00:44:49.900 Our justice system has just got priorities that are just completely out of whack.

00:44:54.140 So because you went there, I'm going to put myself second, uh, second for parting shots.

00:44:58.600 Cause it's a good segue.

00:44:59.760 Uh, you know, the egg farmer who got in trouble and they came to murderous chickens until he, you know, put them on the underground railway to get them out.

00:45:08.140 Uh, that was because of supply management and, uh, parliament just passed bill 202.

00:45:13.980 It is a blockade equal private members bill from the previous parliament that they managed to revive.

00:45:17.800 Uh, and it makes it illegal for the federal government to, uh, include any discussion of, uh, supply management.

00:45:26.160 That is Canada's Soviet style command and control price and supply fixing, uh, regime for primarily dairy, but also eggs and parts of poultry.

00:45:38.140 And things like that, uh, parliament just voted to pass it, including, and we expect the socialist parties to vote for that kind of thing.

00:45:46.260 Uh, the dairy cartel is so powerful.

00:45:47.980 We get it, but I want to shame half of the conservative caucus that voted for it.

00:45:53.460 Uh, half of conservatives, uh, stood on principle and voted against the bill.

00:45:57.920 Uh, even if all the conservatives would vote against it, it still would have passed.

00:46:00.700 Uh, so there's very little political risk, I think there, but half of them are still scared shitless of the dairy cartel, uh, and voted in line with it, voted with the bloc, the NDP, and the liberals, and the greens, uh, for this atrocious piece of legislation.

00:46:17.460 And it just shows that our political class, uh, the entire left, and at least half of the conservatives are not very elbows up.

00:46:25.840 If we are really taking this trade, uh, crisis seriously, we would put one of the weakest, most, uh, ridiculous parts of our economy on the chopping block in negotiations.

00:46:36.220 Because we're better off without it ourselves, and it's a huge barrier to trade, uh, trade agreements, which is why the grain growers came out today.

00:46:43.140 Because they know that that bill is going to mean less exports for actual competitive industries.

00:46:48.440 Uh, so I just want to take a moment to shame the half of the conservative caucus that voted for that bill.

00:46:53.200 Amen.

00:46:53.460 And as for me, I would say that whether you are at a G7 meeting or playing poker, if you won't get much done, if you don't have.

00:47:06.580 Of Trump.

00:47:08.300 Ooh.

00:47:09.000 Oh.

00:47:09.500 Oh.

00:47:09.980 Oh.

00:47:10.420 Well done.

00:47:11.700 Okay.

00:47:12.520 Well.

00:47:13.420 Mic drop there.

00:47:14.460 Yeah.

00:47:14.920 Finish it like George Costanza and go out on a high note.

00:47:17.860 All right, Corey, Nigel, thank you very much.

00:47:20.580 Thank you, John, for, uh, producing today's show.

00:47:22.840 Thank all of you for, uh, joining us on the pipeline today.

00:47:26.540 Remember, if you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, you really should be.

00:47:29.520 Go to westernstandard.news, click on subscribe.

00:47:31.560 It's only $10 a month or $100 a year for unlimited access to all Western Standard content.

00:47:38.060 We've got reporters in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Vancouver, pretty soon probably back on Parliament Hill.

00:47:45.180 Uh, we've got lots of stuff you don't want to miss and get past that pesky paywall.

00:47:48.980 And you'll be supporting the work that we're doing here at the Western Standard.

00:47:52.580 Thank you very much for joining us today.

00:47:54.260 And God bless.

00:47:54.840 We'll be right back.

THE PIPELINE： Not our war？

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