Western Standard - The Pipeline： Ottawa says register rifles not, rapists

00:00:00.000 Good evening, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard. You're watching The

00:00:23.520 pipeline. Today is November 2nd, 2022. I'm joined, as usual, by my friends, Western Standard

00:00:31.580 Opinion Editor, Nigel Henniford. Nigel, getting to work was beautiful today, eh?

00:00:37.320 What a peach. I was late. Didn't you notice?

00:00:39.820 You were a bit late.

00:00:40.960 Yeah.

00:00:41.780 Yeah. I think most of us were late. Some people remarkably... The people who don't drive were 1.00

00:00:47.420 here on time. People who can walk to work mostly, people who take the train, stuff like that.

00:00:52.820 People with four-wheel drive trucks were on time, too.

00:00:55.520 I've got a four-by-four.

00:00:56.740 I was still late.

00:00:59.220 Not that late, but I was late.

00:01:01.520 I had to borrow my wife's four-wheel drive, so there you are.

00:01:04.780 Got that in the end.

00:01:05.760 One man who made it from way outside town,

00:01:08.340 Western Standard Senior Alberta Columnist, Corey Morgan.

00:01:12.180 Corey, you took the dog sled in all the way from Pritis.

00:01:15.420 That's right.

00:01:16.080 I beat that thing and ran it up McLeod Trail all the way downtown.

00:01:19.180 You should try to capture the bears that keep on attacking your house.

00:01:22.140 strap them to a dog sled oh if i could train that frustrating animal that's i don't know 0.83

00:01:27.560 probably less illegal than if you just shot the thing true it'd be more he may not just give him

00:01:31.800 a job and get you know let him get that just make him a productive member of society yeah

00:01:34.980 we've got to tie him up outside when i'm here at work though sled bears yeah tie him up uh you

00:01:39.960 might have a problem getting parking in downtown calgary for your sled bears but i'll tie him at

00:01:44.540 city hall excellent idea excellent idea okay uh before we get going i want to thank my favorite

00:01:50.600 sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. You're probably sick of hearing me say it, but

00:01:55.960 it's important. I've been a member of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association for over a decade

00:02:00.240 because they are absolutely vital to protecting our gun rights in Canada. The Canadian Shooting

00:02:06.120 Sports Association is Canada's leading firearms rights group. These guys are taking the fight to

00:02:10.740 Ottawa, doing everything that can reasonably be done to talk a modicum of sense into the federal

00:02:17.240 government when it comes to reasonable firearms legislation and regulation. And importantly,

00:02:22.220 they're a big part of firearms education in Canada. You ever wonder why the federal government likes

00:02:26.300 to ban guns because they look scary? Well, it's important that people understand that just because

00:02:31.780 you put a carbonite stock on a rifle, it doesn't mean that Rambo would use it in the jungles of

00:02:36.740 Vietnam. So if you're not yet a member of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, go sign up

00:02:42.420 right now. Don't pause us. Just open another window. Go to CSSA-CILA.org, click on membership,

00:02:51.500 and sign up right now. Make it a membership if you're not yet a member of the Western Standard.

00:02:55.780 Go to westernstandard.news and click on membership. It's only $10 a month or $100 a year

00:03:03.480 to get you unlimited access to all Western Standard content, giving you one of the only

00:03:08.520 media sources left in Canada that refuses to take the federal government's media bailout money.

00:03:15.300 We're the leading media organization in Western Canada right now, the only media organization I'm

00:03:21.780 aware of west of Mississauga that's got its own reporters on Parliament Hill, for God's sake. So

00:03:26.460 go sign up right now if you haven't already. Oh, geez, I didn't even get people a preview of what

00:03:31.540 we're talking about. Well, here's what we're talking about today. Supreme Court of Canada

00:03:35.960 has ruled that it's unconstitutional to put pedophiles and rapists

00:03:44.260 mandatorily on the sex offender registry.

00:03:48.480 Very bad.

00:03:49.600 Very cruel of us.

00:03:51.600 So sex offender registry or mandatory sex offender registry, unconstitutional.

00:03:57.600 Long gun registry, that's okay. 0.98

00:03:59.800 So we're going to talk about that.

00:04:00.720 We're going to talk about speaking of Supreme Court and things like that.

00:04:05.960 We're going to be talking about the federal government's hypocrisy around the use of the notwithstanding clause.

00:04:10.640 You may have heard the Ontario government invoked it, kind of casually, in dealing with a contract with Ontario government teachers, imposing a contract.

00:04:22.840 Well, everyone's lost their minds about it.

00:04:26.220 Trudeau's lost his mind about it.

00:04:28.180 Jagmeet Singh's lost his mind about it.

00:04:29.840 Not a big loss.

00:04:31.560 I don't remember hearing them say anything when it came to persecuting Anglophones, Muslims, Jews, and Sikhs in Quebec.

00:04:40.600 Maybe I just wasn't reading the news that day. I don't know. So we're going to talk about that.

00:04:45.300 And speaking of rights, today's a lot about real rights and fake rights.

00:04:49.480 Here's a right that hasn't had a lot of defenders in government lately.

00:04:53.100 Alberta Premier Danielle Smith talking about back pay for people who were government workers

00:05:00.200 in the last two, two and a half years who were fired for the terrible crime of being unvaccinated.

00:05:06.560 You'd think that makes sense.

00:05:08.120 But obviously the Alberta government's not been talking about that until very recently

00:05:11.540 because it was the Alberta government that did it.

00:05:14.740 So very interesting, and the usual suspects are lighting their hair on fire over it.

00:05:19.120 Okay, so let's start with the Supreme Court of Canada.

00:05:23.100 has ruled that putting people, we'll go back a little bit, 2011, Harper government passes a bill

00:05:30.260 that says that if you have two or more, if you commit a sexual offense, it's mandatory that you

00:05:38.840 go on the National Sex Offender Registry. And if it's two or more offenses, then it's for life.

00:05:44.200 It can't come off. There was a case, guy raped two girls in Calgary, or sexually offended them,

00:05:50.500 I'm not sure the details of it, but bad things.

00:05:54.320 And the Supreme Court of Canada just ruled that it was unconstitutional,

00:05:58.600 very cruel of us, not in keeping with our constitutional values here,

00:06:03.860 that he be on for life.

00:06:09.400 Nigel, give us a little background.

00:06:11.980 What the hell was the reasoning here?

00:06:13.760 So here's the thing.

00:06:15.000 The Harbour government took the view that the government was there to protect people.

00:06:19.340 And so we try to be fair to criminals, we try to be just,

00:06:24.760 but we are primarily interested in protecting people.

00:06:28.420 So this does not seem to be the consensus in what we've come to refer to as the Laurentian elites

00:06:36.680 from which the Supreme Court justices tend to be drawn.

00:06:41.300 So it was only a matter of time as the liberals have been taking apart everything that the Harper government did.

00:06:48.000 It was only a matter of time before eventually a case came up where they would have a chance to look at this issue again.

00:06:57.000 And in fact, it's taken 11 years. I'm surprised it took that long.

00:07:01.460 So it's a simple valid judgment.

00:07:04.440 They have decided that the rights of the criminal are more important than the rights of people to know who is moving into their area,

00:07:12.500 who is a person that they should keep their children away from

00:07:15.940 and should be kept away from their children.

00:07:18.880 To put it another way, you don't want these people getting jobs as school bus drivers.

00:07:23.660 And how else do you patrol this?

00:07:27.560 It's unfortunate, but then people shouldn't do this kind of thing,

00:07:30.260 and then it's not a problem for them.

00:07:32.820 Corey, the federal government – actually, I'll back up.

00:07:36.760 We'll talk about some provincial examples with the notwithstanding clause in a bit here,

00:07:40.740 a different segment, but you have the Alberta government has called for the federal government

00:07:47.380 to invoke the notwithstanding clause here. That would end this, that would strike down that

00:07:52.640 Supreme Court decision, and it would keep the mandatory rapist registry, as we might call it,

00:07:58.980 in place. But the federal government's never actually used the notwithstanding clause before.

00:08:04.740 Do you think that this would be a reasonable use of the notwithstanding clause to begin with? And second, how politically possible would it be? Do you think, because remember, it's not the conservatives who would be doing it. It would be the liberals who would invoke the notwithstanding clause in this case.

00:08:23.720 it would need the consent of all parliament and they would probably get it from the conservatives

00:08:27.940 probably maybe the NDP wouldn't or maybe the block I don't know but first how reasonable do

00:08:32.720 you think it'd be to evoke the notwithstanding clause here do you think the liberals with their

00:08:36.120 voter groups would actually be able to get away with this politically well we'd have to have the

00:08:40.760 will to do it I mean I think they have a valid case in saying public safety is at risk and we

00:08:45.440 need to fix the legislation you can even politically spin it and say hey Harper buggered it up but we 1.00

00:08:50.000 need to close that door right now, invoke the notwithstanding clause and get in and redraft it

00:08:55.140 and fix what the justices found wrong. I mean, there's a political way through, but they won't

00:08:58.760 do it. Particularly with the pissing match they've got with Doug Ford going on right now, they've

00:09:04.160 really gone on about how apparently extreme the notwithstanding clause is. And I mean, I was

00:09:08.540 looking up, if you look past too, with Ann McClellan, you might remember there was a case with Sharp,

00:09:13.040 his name was, he was a pedophile. And he actually, self-representing, got our child porn laws struck

00:09:19.040 down. Not many people realize that. And we did. He was definitely a pedophile and convicted.

00:09:25.560 Yes. Yes. No, no, we're not getting in trouble for that. Okay. And he was a noteworthy one.

00:09:30.860 It was all Corey. It was all Corey. If that's not true. And Ann McClellan was justice minister

00:09:36.680 at the time and the reform party was outraged and they did eventually close that and bring

00:09:41.020 in a new law, but it was a six month lapse of technically not having child porn laws for

00:09:45.680 possession, at least. It was still illegal to make it and create it and a few other things.

00:09:52.920 Like when we get to these sex offenders, I was looking it up. There's some really good stats

00:09:55.840 online with the federal government. And they're some of the worst, most dangerous recidivists 1.00

00:10:00.320 of any criminal category. And it takes some time. And the stats with a convicted sex offender, I

00:10:06.360 mean, it varies by the category, but within five years, it's something like only 10% of

00:10:10.820 re-offended, which is still discouraging. Within 15 years, 24% have re-offended.

00:10:17.180 And it's even higher with pedophiles.

00:10:19.340 Yes.

00:10:19.940 They tend to be much higher.

00:10:21.020 The worst one is actually pedophiles into boys, and that gets up into the 49% range.

00:10:26.480 But so we're talking about people, and I understand when you take the whole average,

00:10:30.260 75% won't re-offend, or at least won't be caught re-offending.

00:10:32.860 Yeah. I put the public safety first. I mean, 25, one in four of these people is going to reoffend. We have to know who they are. We have to prevent this as much as possible. And it's just ridiculous that they take this ability to track these guys away. It's dangerous.

00:10:52.100 Nigel, the liberals have kind of, it's odd. The liberals like to own the charter. They like to own the Constitution Act 1982 under Pierre Trudeau, but they don't like to own the notwithstanding clause. It's like they consider it the bastard child of the Constitution.

00:11:10.640 Now, to be fair to the Liberals, it wasn't in their initial drafts.

00:11:14.220 It was a part of the negotiations and the backs and forth to get it in,

00:11:17.840 because a lot of some of the Premiers didn't want a charter period.

00:11:21.580 They wanted to keep more of the common law British tradition

00:11:23.980 rather than a more American codified Bill of Rights style.

00:11:28.260 But it is a part of the Constitution.

00:11:30.020 And I think the Liberals have tried to make the case over quite a period of time

00:11:33.740 that it might be there, but it's not ever supposed to be used.

00:11:37.560 Do you think there's any reasonable political argument for the Liberals to make that, well, it's not generally supposed to be used, but it's a break glass in case of emergency case?

00:11:51.060 Well, geez, I think keeping pedophiles on a list and rapists on a list might be the case.

00:11:55.900 Do you think the Liberals could make a case that would not offend their base too much?

00:12:00.040 I actually don't. I don't think that it's that kind of a party anymore.

00:12:03.740 The Liberal Party that brought this in, first of all, you're absolutely right.

00:12:07.620 It was a deal. It was a thing that broke the logjam in the constitutional negotiations that took place in 1982.

00:12:15.760 It's actually to the credit of an Alberta Premier, Peter Lockheed, that we have this.

00:12:20.440 He, of course, had just come off the dust-up with the federal government over the national energy policy.

00:12:28.180 I doubt that he was thinking about pedophilia registries.

00:12:31.320 he was more thinking about energy legislation, but he said, we need something to stop

00:12:37.600 when the Supreme Court rules something that is very much against the interests of a province.

00:12:45.840 So this was the deal. Now, could they do it today? Well, I mean, theoretically they could,

00:12:51.080 but look who the liberals were back in 1982. Half of them were big-time lawyers,

00:12:57.460 people who had connections in business,

00:12:59.700 people who had met payroll,

00:13:01.860 they actually used to wrap themselves in the flag in those days.

00:13:05.660 It was a liberal government that gave us the maple leaf

00:13:08.180 and retired the old red ensign.

00:13:11.040 So they were the party of patriotism.

00:13:13.620 The conservatives thought they were,

00:13:15.060 but the liberals had the opportunity to do it,

00:13:17.980 and they did do it.

00:13:20.060 And so people went along with them.

00:13:21.840 That is not the liberal party of today.

00:13:27.000 I don't think there are two people in that caucus sitting there in Ottawa now who have ever met

00:13:32.840 payroll. What are they? They're academics. They're activists. We've got a...

00:13:38.760 Drama teachers. Part-time drama teachers.

00:13:41.560 What have you got against drama teachers, I ask?

00:13:44.120 Nothing. I just don't want to put them to be in charge of my life.

00:13:47.480 You just don't think they should be acting the main parts. I would agree with that.

00:13:52.760 All of which is to say that the center of gravity of what everybody reckons is common sense is very different in the Liberal Party today than it was back in 1982.

00:14:07.760 In 1982, you could have found liberals who would support hanging, you could have found liberals who were pro-life.

00:14:16.220 You won't find any of that kind of thinking these days.

00:14:19.440 Some of it is specifically excluded.

00:14:21.500 Certainly, the general sympathy, they don't think, just don't think about the common man.

00:14:27.040 They think about the exception, the victimized, the criminal, the marginalized.

00:14:31.600 Hence all this talk about equity, diversity, and inclusion.

00:14:35.520 That's where they're comfortable.

00:14:37.180 I've got a column that came out today titled, Register Rapists, Not Rifles.

00:14:44.320 And, you know, for me, I just, I felt like I was going nuts that, like, I don't know, I'm in my mid-30s.

00:14:51.780 I don't think I'm a curmudgeonly old man, but maybe I am.

00:14:54.720 Maybe I am the crazy one.

00:14:56.200 We're in Canada.

00:14:57.440 You register your gun, but we don't register rapists.

00:15:00.400 And that just, for me, crystallized so much of what's happened with postmodern, postnational Canada.

00:15:08.640 It just seems so detached from reality that this is where we are.

00:15:14.120 Some of it's ideology, some of it's political expediency.

00:15:17.260 So let's take the conversation now into areas where the notwithstanding clause is actually being used.

00:15:24.020 So over the last few years, the government of Quebec with France Lagos, the CAC, his party, weird name, invoking the notwithstanding clause pretty casually on some issues around taking away the rights of Anglophones to learn and use English in their lives,

00:15:46.880 taking away the rights of muslims jews sikhs and other uh religious minorities who have a visual 1.00

00:15:53.920 display of their faith from uh partaking in public life in many ways um and you heard very very little

00:16:02.240 from you know justin trudeau you'd hear some kind of navel gazing like well you know i'm concerned

00:16:08.720 by it uh we have to defend the rights of these minorities but wouldn't say anything about what

00:16:15.200 he would do to do it uh wouldn't commit to challenge did the same thing afraid of offending

00:16:20.640 quebec nationalists and certain xenophobic corners in that province even jagmeet singh

00:16:28.880 a sikh man who wears a turban has very visual displays of his faith good on him

00:16:35.120 was fairly muted, I would say, in his attacks on the Quebec government, afraid that that would

00:16:46.700 affect Quebec nationalists, which, you know, when the NDV had their one wave, they relied on Quebec

00:16:51.500 nationalists taking out the bloc. So very little, I'd say, muted criticism of Quebec when it uses

00:16:57.720 the notwithstanding clause to nakedly strip away real rights. But Ontario, the Ontario Doug Ford

00:17:05.180 government, just invoked the notwithstanding clause preemptively to impose a contract on

00:17:10.540 teachers to avert a strike and keep kids in the school. Well, all shit went down. It's raining

00:17:18.980 hell. The entire NDP caucus in the Ontario legislature was thrown out for breaking the

00:17:25.400 rules and being too disruptive during the debate on the bill. Jagmeet Singh has called for an

00:17:31.040 emergency debate on Ontario using the notwithstanding clause in a union contract and

00:17:35.920 Justin Trudeau condemning it terribly. I suppose I don't need to ask you both if this is hypocritical,

00:17:42.960 but we'll start with you, Nigel. What would drive naked hypocrisy of this level? Like,

00:17:48.820 how are they going to try and square this? That one is regrettable and you can muse about how

00:17:55.140 not great and the other one well we may as well invoke the emergencies act so uh i'll give you

00:18:00.180 two one would be that as far as the ndp is concerned it's the teachers union that is

00:18:07.460 one of the protagonists the ndp and the teachers union may as well be joined at the hip

00:18:12.500 they are best buds so of course they're going to go to bat for the for the union the other

00:18:19.300 the other reason that may appeal to mr trudeau at the moment is while we are talking about that

00:18:24.660 we're not talking about what's coming out of the inquiry into the trucker convoy some of which

00:18:30.900 doesn't make the government look too good at all so better to have a few if there's going to be

00:18:35.780 stuff in the papers let's have it in something which is we're not the all the bad guys we can

00:18:41.620 even represent ourselves as the good guys um i don't know corey how does the ndp square this one

00:18:49.700 Like, you know, they, you know, they're probably the most extreme in this saying Doug Ford is, you know, the new Hitler for imposing a contract on teachers.

00:19:01.340 But they have to.

00:19:02.500 That's what they are.

00:19:03.520 I mean, their money, their driving is from the unions.

00:19:07.120 If you look in the NDP constitution, I'm the dork who read it up with the provincial one and the federal one.

00:19:11.560 They have guaranteed seats on their provincial boards for all of the union heads in Canada.

00:19:15.940 They are a union party.

00:19:17.660 Most, not every single union, but yeah.

00:19:20.180 Pretty much, yes.

00:19:21.200 And Canadian Federation Labour, Alberta Federation Labour have guaranteed spaces, all of that.

00:19:24.900 So, I mean, they cannot not take a union side.

00:19:28.320 Likewise with Trudeau, he's got that alliance.

00:19:29.900 That's what's holding his government together right now.

00:19:32.180 And this is the only sort of deal breaker that could come with Singh.

00:19:36.640 They can't push back on a union.

00:19:39.640 Singh will have to break away from his liberal alliance at that point.

00:19:43.080 That would be the end of it.

00:19:44.140 So, Trudeau can't take another side on this one.

00:19:47.380 And I got a feeling they're getting some pressure.

00:19:48.840 There's a lot of Toronto parents, liberal voters,

00:19:51.160 who are not thrilled of having their kids held hostage by the teachers union right now.

00:19:54.820 But Trudeau is in a rock and a hard space.

00:19:56.760 And plus, as Nigel said, it's a nice distraction from these emergency act hearings

00:20:01.080 that they really don't want people focusing on right now.

00:20:07.040 Well, let's talk about the foreign government.

00:20:10.540 I don't think any of us are great sympathizers with government unions

00:20:16.200 that try to establish a monopoly over our kids' educations. 1.00

00:20:20.560 But I will say I'm a little concerned with how casually the notwithstanding clause is used here.

00:20:26.560 You know, in my column I was saying today, the notwithstanding clause, if it's going to be used, should be used rarely.

00:20:33.520 It shouldn't be used flippantly.

00:20:36.180 And I think the federal government used it pretty casually here.

00:20:39.540 Now, the federal government, to be fair, has been very casual about violating people's rights over the last few years.

00:20:44.960 The difference is now with someone else's rights. The NDP cared not when they were violating the rights of vaccine refusenix or people who didn't want to shut down the businesses and go bankrupt.

00:20:55.240 They didn't care there when rights were flippantly violated. This is being used fairly casually.

00:21:01.260 Now, I know Howard Englund, he writes for The Hub, you know, he was saying he had an argument. I'm not sure if I agree with it, but I thought it was at least worth thinking about that since the advent of the charter, the courts have been very casual about pushing into the legislative space out of their own spheres as the judicial review and oversight and making themselves effectively alternate legislators.

00:21:26.380 And so because the judiciary has been casual about butting into legislation, well, perhaps it's appropriate then that we do use the notwithstanding clause casually to push the courts back into their own spaces.

00:21:39.900 I'm open to the argument, but I'm not sold on it yet.

00:21:43.100 What do you think, Nigel?

00:21:44.000 Do you think, first, is this a casual use of the notwithstanding clause?

00:21:47.540 Is it a little too casual for comfort, first?

00:21:50.300 And two, do you think it's appropriate to use it casually to try and push the courts back into their own space?

00:21:55.820 Well, okay, on the last first, I'm all for pushing the courts back into their space.

00:22:00.700 Not sure that this is what does it, but at any rate, back 40 years ago, it was pretty obvious that if you wanted to get something done, once the charter was in place, you'll find yourself a lawyer, never mind your Member of Parliament.

00:22:15.480 That's not where the locus of authority is anymore.

00:22:18.920 um as for whether ford did this casually i don't think anybody drops the notwithstanding clause

00:22:27.640 casually it is considered to be the nuclear option i should let me rephrase that nobody outside of

00:22:32.840 quebec the very first thing no no seriously the very first thing that quebec did in 1982 was it

00:22:38.520 repealed all its legislation you find this on a government of canada website if you really

00:22:43.880 you know you think this is a surprising thing to learn but they repeal all of

00:22:49.380 their legislation and immediately replaced it with legislation that had

00:22:53.780 the notwithstanding clause in it all other language legislation yeah no no

00:22:58.460 everything oh everything everything oh wow everything then had a five-year

00:23:02.600 limit on it and it's all explained in the in this federal document so so they've

00:23:10.440 always just said oh yeah that we don't like that notwithstanding what the courts have said we're

00:23:17.560 going to ignore it so they did they have they've set the pattern on this if you think that any use

00:23:24.360 of the uh the notwithstanding clause is too casual go to quebec they've got something there that will

00:23:30.840 make a case for you so now come back to ontario if this was quick if that was if that whole

00:23:36.600 situation had unraveled in Quebec they would have done the same thing if they thought it suited their

00:23:41.160 interests and nobody would use it in language or kind of racist ethnic stuff Quebec supremacy well

00:23:49.080 they don't tend to use it on this kind of thing at least that I recall only because the situation

00:23:54.600 hasn't presented itself in quite the same way but I mean here you've been in Ontario

00:23:59.080 so you have as I understand the situation correctly the two sides can't agree

00:24:03.000 ends up in court the court says makes a decision the ontario government doesn't like it so well

00:24:09.000 notwithstanding the court's decision you guys are going back to work and all the parents say hurrah

00:24:14.520 everybody worries about the rights of the teachers i wonder what the rights of the parents are the

00:24:18.440 kids or the kids well both actually but you know the kids need their education i mean is this is

00:24:26.520 Is teaching one of these occupations that you're not allowed, shouldn't be allowed to strike?

00:24:32.560 I don't think we've had that discussion, but now that we've seen what two years when the kids had very intermittent education,

00:24:40.260 now we've seen what that looks like.

00:24:42.200 My introduction to politics was in the fifth grade in Ontario.

00:24:44.820 I remember Mike Harris was the premier, and the teachers went on strike.

00:24:49.280 And I was one of those kids who didn't like school.

00:24:51.680 I didn't necessarily get along with some of my teachers at least.

00:24:54.780 And I was thinking, like, well, when I don't go to school, I get in trouble.

00:24:58.280 How come the teachers don't have to go to school?

00:25:00.280 And I heard the teachers tried to brainwash all the kids with a bunch of union propaganda to go home and tell the parents Mike Harris was this evil man.

00:25:08.040 He must be stopped.

00:25:09.460 And I was just thinking, like, something's wrong with that.

00:25:12.720 That was kind of my first time I became politically aware is when those teachers went on strike and tried to use the children as pawns.

00:25:18.740 Because they tried to use me as a pawn.

00:25:20.080 And it was kind of the first time I really started to think, I think someone's using me, and it's not my best interest they have at heart here.

00:25:27.960 Interesting that you should raise that, the way the teachers were propagandizing the kids.

00:25:34.440 We have a columnist, and I'm going to give him a shout-out now.

00:25:38.840 His name is John Hilton O'Brien, and in the last week, he has written two articles about recent school board elections in B.C. and in Ontario.

00:25:48.820 and how the unions, the teachers' unions, have been running a slate of candidates for school boards.

00:25:57.920 So the body that is actually supposed to negotiate the school contract

00:26:03.640 is now being taken over by the people who will benefit from a favorable distribution of that contract.

00:26:11.540 Not all of their candidates got elected, but a huge number of them did.

00:26:15.720 And that is now the strategy.

00:26:18.180 Well, and they're often very successful in those school board elections because they have incredibly low voter turnout.

00:26:22.700 57 out of 82 in Ontario, I believe is the number that Mr. O'Brien was putting.

00:26:27.540 It's out there now on our website.

00:26:29.800 Very few people vote in these things because you don't know who they are.

00:26:32.440 But the unions get very actively organized because they have a huge interest in it.

00:26:36.640 I never even know who to vote for.

00:26:38.780 Like, it's held during municipal elections.

00:26:40.280 I show up to the polls.

00:26:41.680 I'm like, I know who I'm voting for for mayor and for my councillor.

00:26:43.700 And they're like, shit, school boards.

00:26:45.260 What I do is I pull out my phone, I see who the Alberta Peters Association has endorsed, and I vote for the next name on the list.

00:26:50.880 All right, I want to come to you.

00:26:53.520 I'll put the main question to you.

00:26:56.700 I mean, I doubt you're very sympathetic with the union here.

00:26:59.940 We probably like the idea of keeping kids in school, but do you think this was perhaps a little too casual use of it, or do you think it was justified?

00:27:07.380 You know, it's a hard one.

00:27:08.540 I mean, I am not a fan of unions.

00:27:09.940 Never have been, that's for sure.

00:27:11.000 But I do understand the reason for the right to collective bargaining.

00:27:14.900 And it is a right.

00:27:16.740 And when a government feels that they can just keep invoking that,

00:27:20.300 if they don't like the deal they're getting, I think, is an abuse of the clause.

00:27:23.060 That wasn't supposed to be an escape hatch to get you out of a difficult negotiation with a union.

00:27:28.620 And you do have to go to court first.

00:27:30.840 Yes.

00:27:31.800 You have to lose once first before you can.

00:27:34.480 Well, no, but they did it preemptively here.

00:27:35.920 They didn't even go to court to lose.

00:27:37.900 They probably knew they would.

00:27:40.460 I suppose some of that is, though, based on some poor Supreme Court rulings that give undue powers to government sector unions.

00:27:48.100 It's a complicated issue.

00:27:49.460 I mean, what I'd rather see, that's just me blue-skying, but I'd rather see work towards school choice than give people an option away from the unions.

00:27:56.960 Hey, you want to go to those schools where they go on strike every few years, you put your kid there.

00:28:00.620 But if you don't want that, you can put your kid into the good school.

00:28:03.800 Or sorry, they're not in union school.

00:28:06.360 But that's a hard task, and that's years of work, and that's fighting the unions.

00:28:09.460 uh you know pulling the pin on the notwithstanding clause was was easier for the short term it probably

00:28:15.100 does make more sense in the long term just to build more school choice to break them but not

00:28:19.180 like ontario's got much more of a we have a semi-monopoly from the government schools here

00:28:24.720 in alberta but in ontario it's much much stronger uh you don't get the charter schools private

00:28:30.640 schools are limited do only the genuinely rich because none of the money follows the kids so

00:28:35.300 you in alberta you've got middle class people who send their kids to private school i mean it's hard

00:28:38.920 for families, but they can do it because some of that money can follow the kids.

00:28:42.940 That would probably seem to be a better way to, you know, hey, fine, you know, you want

00:28:46.360 to keep sending your kids to a school where the teachers are on strike every few years

00:28:49.560 and they've got poor outcomes and tests.

00:28:52.000 Yeah, well, fine, but let's make it more available for parents to send their kids to 0.63

00:28:56.120 real schools, not run by the unions.

00:29:00.220 Huge number of people homeschooling now, too.

00:29:03.940 Ten percent or something in Alberta.

00:29:06.120 So, okay, we talked about a lot of hypocrisy. I think there's a bit more hypocrisy that we can use to pivot into the next one. Well, you've got the government unions in Alberta here, and then the Alberta Federation of Labor, which is kind of the umbrella, kind of a Marxist umbrella organization of the unions here, that didn't really say boo when the Kenney government started firing people from their jobs for not being vaccinated.

00:29:35.580 This is one of the few times the ATA seemed to really get along with the Kennedy government.

00:29:39.420 They probably, I don't think they actually give it any credit, but at least they didn't criticize it.

00:29:43.820 They were not protecting their own workers.

00:29:46.080 Their own workers were being let go from their jobs for nothing to do with performance,

00:29:52.040 nothing to do with not doing the hours, just for their own health care choice.

00:29:56.400 But we've got a new premier here now, and Danielle Smith, yeah, isn't committed to it, 0.98

00:30:00.820 But she has mused publicly about the potential of back pay for people who worked for the government or AHS, things like that, who were let go from their jobs for being unvaccinated.

00:30:13.660 They may have been furloughed or fired, a combination of these things.

00:30:16.540 But people who suffered financially for their jobs because of government mandates.

00:30:22.640 Corey, one, I think I know what you're going to say.

00:30:26.360 It's a good idea.

00:30:27.080 I'm going to assume you think it's a good idea.

00:30:28.920 but so let's go something maybe a little stick here do you think it's a good idea politically

00:30:34.660 because uh smith has you know one of the big groups that put her into the premier's office

00:30:40.980 in the ucp leadership race where people angry about mandatory vaccination lockdowns things like

00:30:46.980 this but you know as much as that might animate the three of us here a lot of people just they

00:30:52.560 don't want to fight about this anymore she's already doing a lot on this front do you think 0.92

00:30:57.120 it's too politically risky for her to go down this path. I just hope that maybe politically, 0.99

00:31:01.860 she's trying to get all this out of the way now so that after Christmas, she can focus on policy

00:31:06.540 and winning the next election. Because if she is going to keep hanging up on mask mandates on

00:31:11.020 the vaccination, which I know are important. And I know some people were terribly wronged and they

00:31:15.300 lost their jobs. And she based her leadership on talking to that. But politically, people do want

00:31:20.620 this behind us. And I know those who were kicked out of their jobs still take it very seriously as

00:31:25.300 they should, but she can't keep focused on what a lot of people are seeing as being in the rearview

00:31:31.340 mirror. The NDP are going to rip her to shreds. We are now looking at economic recovery, worried

00:31:35.940 about inflation. We're worried about cost of living, healthcare. And if we're constantly

00:31:42.180 seeing the news about vaccination and masking, which aren't really contemporary issues now,

00:31:47.160 they're still pressing again for the damage they've done. It's going to cost her politically. 0.99

00:31:51.800 Like I said, I understand why she's doing it. I just hope that maybe she's just getting it

00:31:55.240 done now then so that she can move on to the other things because uh it's not going to help

00:31:59.480 her in the long run i think nigel is this um i mean there's kind of a whole there's a lot of 0.52

00:32:05.760 people still pissed off about this i'm still pissed off about it even though a lot of it

00:32:09.840 probably affected me a lot less but people have a right to be angry about this but it is

00:32:15.120 i think the majority of albertans unfortunately not maybe as big a majority as the mainstream

00:32:21.220 media would say, but I think at least a very large number of Albertans, they don't want to

00:32:26.060 re-litigate this anymore. And she does have to win over a broader audience. Do you think this is just

00:32:32.800 not a good idea politically, or it's a good idea politically, but she has to do it now and then

00:32:37.480 move on? Or is this just a bad idea, or just a great idea, and she should ride this all the way?

00:32:42.820 I'll take your second option. The time to have the discussion was before you ever opened your

00:32:48.960 mouth now that that expectation is out there if it is not met it is the people who voted for her

00:32:55.820 who will be disappointed she's got to go through with it otherwise you know we've seen a lot of

00:33:03.480 we've seen a number of instances where people who we have voted for and trusted to do what they said

00:33:12.040 they were going to do, have gone into power, and I guess the fashionable word is pivoted.

00:33:19.840 We hate that.

00:33:21.600 And if she sends a message to the people who were voting for her, who were animated by

00:33:30.320 this issue, that, well, okay, maybe it's politically not so smart after all, there will be disappointment.

00:33:37.880 can only do that so many times before that disappointment turns into staying away from

00:33:44.760 the polls. She needs them out there next May. So she's got to go through with it now.

00:33:50.820 Well, let's talk about, let's say she does this. And also, you know, in her interview with me a few

00:33:55.520 weeks ago at the ECB convention, she talked about essentially pardoning people who, you know,

00:34:00.660 pastors or restaurant owners, people who were jailed, arrested, ticketed, fined for the crimes

00:34:06.320 of going about their lives and doing their jobs.

00:34:09.580 Let's say she gets all of that done.

00:34:11.480 I think there's going to be a short session of the legislature

00:34:13.380 after she's expected to win her by-election next week. 0.64

00:34:17.240 Then she comes in.

00:34:18.340 She's going to do Sovereignty Act, Bill 1. 0.70

00:34:20.900 That's the clearest expectation.

00:34:22.880 I think that's what we're still expecting.

00:34:25.360 Let's say she goes boom, boom, boom.

00:34:26.860 She knocks all this stuff off.

00:34:30.520 She gets it out of the way.

00:34:32.540 What do you think she should do then when she comes out of the gate

00:34:35.760 in January and February, after the Christmas break here.

00:34:41.260 Is it a pivot that she should undertake or just kind of a focus?

00:34:44.320 She said, I delivered on these things, now focus on other issues.

00:34:46.960 What does she do to try and pull the UCP back up from the crappy poll numbers 1.00

00:34:51.080 that it's suffered from for the last few years?

00:34:53.680 Well, the thing that everybody, there are a lot of people who care about the things

00:34:57.520 we've just been talking about.

00:34:58.940 Get it done by Christmas, yes.

00:35:01.240 And after that, what are the other things that we all care about?

00:35:04.060 Inflation.

00:35:04.780 What's she going to do about that? 0.80

00:35:06.200 Is she going to drop the provincial tax on gasoline, for example?

00:35:14.220 That's a relatively easy thing to do.

00:35:17.140 What else can she do to bring down the cost of living in Alberta? 1.00

00:35:21.780 Maybe adjust the flat tax.

00:35:24.380 I don't know what the budget will be.

00:35:25.820 Well, we don't have a flat tax anymore.

00:35:26.980 We haven't since Prentice killed it.

00:35:28.960 10%, isn't it?

00:35:29.980 Not anymore, not since Jim Prentice.

00:35:31.260 He made it progressive.

00:35:32.180 Jim Prentice made it progressive.

00:35:33.240 Notley made it more progressive, and Kenny made it even more progressive by bringing in bracket cream. 0.99

00:35:40.520 I was in Ottawa.

00:35:41.860 Actually, yeah, Jason Kenney had the highest income tax rates of any premier, including Rachel Notley.

00:35:48.300 So maybe we bring back the flat tax.

00:35:51.380 Maybe we can bring it back to the 10%. 1.00

00:35:53.420 That would help a lot of people.

00:35:55.380 I would say 10% is good enough for God.

00:35:57.020 It should be good enough for the government.

00:35:59.380 I would have to agree with you all that.

00:36:02.660 I would say amen.

00:36:05.040 Preach.

00:36:05.880 Okay.

00:36:07.020 No, that's the next thing.

00:36:08.720 It's the cost of living.

00:36:09.840 It's giving people a sense of hope, getting those who want to work back to work.

00:36:14.140 And let's hope there's some money in the kitty from oil prices because that makes a lot of things possible.

00:36:23.700 Otherwise, it doesn't matter how good a premier you are.

00:36:26.760 You just can't do what you know you ought to.

00:36:29.860 Corey, let's say she does Sovereignty Act. 1.00

00:36:32.220 She does, you know, a Mensa Human Rights Act to protect unvaccinated people from being fired and things like that. 1.00

00:36:39.320 She does back pay. 0.98

00:36:40.440 She pardons the pastors and small business owners.

00:36:43.640 She gets all these things done.

00:36:45.200 These are things that people like us like.

00:36:48.220 That's red meat stuff.

00:36:49.560 We like it.

00:36:50.680 But I recognize, you know, the three of us aren't the only voters in the province here.

00:36:54.820 There's other people who are, you know, not quite so hardcore.

00:36:59.520 coming into the new year what do you think is the big thing she can do to try and win back some of 0.96

00:37:05.480 those people who have walked away from the uc because it was not uh it was a combination of

00:37:09.780 kind of center and center left voters who walked away from the ucp but obviously a lot of people

00:37:14.620 on the right they walked to the wild rows those people polls are coming back in pretty big numbers

00:37:18.720 but she's still going to bring back the other side too yeah well like nigel said don't you can't 0.64

00:37:22.540 turn her back now on these things they're out get them done but that's interesting take a get it 0.99

00:37:26.160 done, go to the Christmas holidays, people calm down, because we know the media and everybody

00:37:29.640 going to go wild when she brings these in, they'll cool down, we get into the new year. And it's the

00:37:34.100 now it's the session before the election. And I think it's going to be economy, economy, economy,

00:37:38.760 people are worried about their bills, making their mortgages, the interest rates are expected to keep

00:37:43.280 going up. And as Nigel said, too, she's going to have a good pool of probably energy royalties to

00:37:50.560 stand upon plus standing up to Ottawa, because as we build up that pool, while the rest of the

00:37:55.460 countries hurt under high energy prices. I still think, I wrote a column to say such today,

00:38:01.060 there's going to be a grab soon. They're not going to let us just keep prospering like this.

00:38:04.640 He's going to seem just like Biden. I'd say more of a grab than there already is.

00:38:08.380 Yes. So they grab automatically. She's going to have her hands full. But I think, again,

00:38:12.660 I mean, a lot of it divided and a lot of what really hurt the Kennedy government and the UCP

00:38:15.740 in general was the pandemic was divisive. There were people, there were very conservative people

00:38:21.060 who were still very supportive of vaccine mandates. There were very conservative people

00:38:24.740 who were, you know, supportive of the masking mandates.

00:38:28.600 It crossed the bounds of political ideology.

00:38:31.680 But people got, they were deal breakers and they left.

00:38:34.260 That's why I'm saying she's got to get this pandemic thing off the table 1.00

00:38:37.040 and bring people back to conservative values

00:38:39.740 and quit fighting and relitigating the last two years.

00:38:42.600 The only thing somebody else wrote about that,

00:38:44.640 that was she's also banking on,

00:38:47.100 let's hope there's not a big resurgence of COVID

00:38:48.980 because if that comes along,

00:38:50.760 then it's going to be the top issue again

00:38:52.640 and it's just going to be hard.

00:38:53.700 it's nasty. Yeah. What do you think about school vouchers? I love it. Yeah. Think she should do 1.00

00:38:59.060 that? I maybe after winning a majority. Actually, so actually, let's put it back in. Let's,

00:39:09.000 it's a hypothetical, but you're not politicians. So you're allowed to answer a hypothetical.

00:39:15.400 Let's say, I mean, we're already in the phone stuff. Like we're indoors. I mean,

00:39:19.760 when we had the last wave, when we saw the vaccine mandates, like mandatory vaccines and

00:39:24.840 return of masking and all this stuff, that was like end of August, like literally even before

00:39:30.020 the best summer ever was technically over, it happened. But let's say there was a resurgence

00:39:36.600 on par with that. Can, would Smith survive more than a few weeks if she reimposed mandates 1.00

00:39:48.160 of any kind, of any kind.

00:39:51.580 Do you think she wouldn't survive?

00:39:52.820 No. Not a chance.

00:39:54.800 That's why I'm saying resurgence. Well, she might not

00:39:56.660 survive a resurgence no matter how it goes

00:39:58.740 because she's in a corner. This is

00:40:00.720 what she built herself on. She can't. 0.58

00:40:02.780 Well, that would be assuming that

00:40:03.960 she couldn't survive

00:40:06.820 not doing it.

00:40:08.640 I feel like at least her caucus would probably

00:40:10.640 stand by her. She'd have to try it. So the model 1.00

00:40:12.520 for that is Mr. Kenny.

00:40:14.740 I know we sort of disagree a little bit

00:40:16.780 about Mr. Kenney, and I'm perhaps a little more sympathetic to him than you are, but there is no

00:40:23.620 question that COVID was the thing that killed him because he didn't do what we figure is the right

00:40:31.620 thing on that. So if what Mr. Kenney did, which was to give in to the experts, experts should be

00:40:39.560 on tap, not on top. And Mr. Kenney allowed them to be on top. Well, certain experts. He did not

00:40:48.000 have the economic experts. He did not have the social experts. One kind of expert. That is what

00:40:54.680 Premier Smith cannot afford to do. She does what Jason Kenney did. She'll go the same way that Jason

00:41:01.340 Kenney did. Let me put it another way. Could she survive going full Ron DeSantis? We have a wave. 0.88

00:41:06.340 and she says, you know what?

00:41:08.860 We're not doing what Ottawa's doing.

00:41:10.220 We're not doing what the rest of the country is doing.

00:41:11.900 We're going our own way.

00:41:13.160 We're not shutting down.

00:41:14.300 We're going to have a bunch of rapid testing

00:41:15.580 and community health care stuff.

00:41:16.720 We're going to do all these other things to react to it,

00:41:19.100 but we're not locking down.

00:41:20.720 We're not doing forced masking.

00:41:22.240 We're not doing mandatory vaccination.

00:41:24.300 Could she survive that?

00:41:26.500 If things didn't turn worse here

00:41:29.200 than in other areas where they did in force,

00:41:31.640 which I think a lot of us believe it's negligible,

00:41:34.020 the impact that masking mandates had or some of these vaccine passports.

00:41:37.720 So if she took that approach and the increase, if there was even one,

00:41:42.820 in Alberta of deaths or infections wasn't perceptively higher than other provinces,

00:41:48.460 she'll have made her point and I think actually kind of glide in.

00:41:51.240 But if we're even 5% higher in deaths than other provinces

00:41:54.200 and she hasn't locked things down, she'll pay the price for it.

00:41:57.220 Yeah, and you know, one of the things that would drive that,

00:41:59.400 there would undoubtedly be a federal and provincial response.

00:42:03.500 you would find that we've already seen the issue of BC keeping RCMP at the border

00:42:09.700 and saying, do you have a valid reason for driving west, out of Alberta?

00:42:13.960 I'm going to go and see my property on the island.

00:42:16.680 Well, no, sir, not today. You're not. Go back.

00:42:19.080 We've seen that already.

00:42:20.320 And that was when everybody was playing the official tune.

00:42:25.360 So step away from that, and who knows what you might see.

00:42:28.200 But I think she has to try it.

00:42:30.500 That's the thing. Only a year ago, we had internal borders like we were East Germany.

00:42:34.040 It's just wild. Okay. Well, we're going to wrap it up there. Nigel, Corey, thank you very much.

00:42:41.620 Thank all of you for joining us as well. But stay tuned. At the end of this, we have got the

00:42:47.060 agriculture report from market commodities. Stay tuned. Get the latest prices and the lowdown on

00:42:53.680 what's going on in the Western Canadian agricultural commodities market. Thank you very much. God bless.

00:42:59.280 Here's today's ag report from Wintry, Lethbridge. Cash barley is trading at $4.55, feed wheat is off a couple bucks at $4.73, and corn is lower at $4.75 for metric ton.

00:43:09.720 In the milling wheat markets, December Minneapolis futures dropped 41 cents at $9.48, with local harder at spring bid for November-December movement at $12 per bushel.

00:43:19.240 In the oilseeds, nearby canola futures are higher $7.70 at $8.91 per ton, with delivered

00:43:26.780 values for December movement at $20 per bushel. In the pulse markets, nearby red lentil prices

00:43:32.480 are trading at $0.34 per pound and yellow peas remain at $13 per bushel. In the cattle markets,

00:43:39.020 December live cattle are lower $0.47.5 at $1.51.48 per hundredweight. For more information on Fob

00:43:46.120 farm options, give me a call at 403-394-1711. I'm Matt Busiekum at Marketplace Commodities,

00:43:53.980 accurate real-time marketing information and pricing options.

00:44:16.120 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - November 03, 2022

The Pipeline： Ottawa says register rifles not, rapists

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