Western Standard - September 09, 2021


The Pipeline： People's Party Rising, Leaders debate, O'toole supports Liberal gun grab


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

156.90457

Word Count

5,296

Sentence Count

364

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Maxime Bernier's rise in the polls, the People's Party gaining ground, and a new position on gun rights from Erno Toole. All that and much more on this week's Western Standard Pipeline.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:02:00.000 Thank you.
00:02:30.000 Thank you.
00:03:00.000 Good day, I'm Derek Fildeburn, publisher of the Western Standard, and today is September
00:03:30.000 I think it's the 8th. Yeah, it's the 8th.
00:03:32.000 Welcome to The Pipeline.
00:03:34.000 I'm joined today in the studio by Western Center,
00:03:38.000 Alberta political columnist and host of The Cory Morgan Show, Cory Morgan.
00:03:42.000 Hey, how's it going?
00:03:44.000 Not bad. Good.
00:03:46.000 Not bad, although stamps keep losing.
00:03:48.000 Stamps keep losing.
00:03:50.000 I brought, they were playing the Elks,
00:03:52.000 our illiterate animal friends from Edmonton.
00:03:56.000 from edmonton yes yeah and i brought my elk mating call to the game calling ian uh luckily no actual
00:04:04.000 elks came at me that's normally what i'm trying to do is get the elks at me yeah didn't work um
00:04:09.520 and of course we're joined by western standard news editor dave naylor who is out in beautiful
00:04:15.040 british columbia today how you doing dave i'm good guys i was a bit worried there derek you were gonna
00:04:19.840 to make some sort of comment about the Edmonton cheerleaders. I actually didn't. I didn't hear
00:04:26.200 that. You said something about Edmonton cheerleaders. All I heard was something about cheerleaders.
00:04:29.520 Now I'm aroused. Sorry, I was just thinking with your elk calling apparatus, I thought that's what
00:04:38.240 you may be getting into. Just wanted to stop you. Whatever floats your boat. Yeah, if you could draw
00:04:43.300 those across the field. There we go. Today we're going to be discussing the rise of the People's
00:04:49.620 Party, moving from a party that's been in the margin of error, essentially, in polls
00:04:56.040 since it was created in the kind of the 1% to 2% range, really into an area now where
00:05:02.620 it's easily surpassing the Green Party, matching or sometimes surpassing even the Bloc Quebecois.
00:05:08.920 So we'll be discussing what's happening with the People's Party.
00:05:11.960 Very interesting story there.
00:05:14.380 And tying that in, we're going to talk about the leaders debate coming up tomorrow.
00:05:17.440 I should say the one English debate.
00:05:19.000 We've had at least one or two French.
00:05:21.420 There's another French one, and we're going to get one English debate tomorrow.
00:05:27.140 But, yeah, Maxime Bernier of the People's Party, not invited despite their strength in the polls.
00:05:32.620 Pretty interesting stuff.
00:05:34.780 And we're going to be discussing Erno Toole's latest position on gun rights.
00:05:42.200 Not one I'm a fan of.
00:05:43.980 No.
00:05:44.400 No.
00:05:46.240 It's a real shame.
00:05:47.440 But Aaron O'Toole flip-flopping on gun rights, he's like a fish on the dock right now, different positions every day.
00:05:53.340 One day I... his position's okay, one day it's just the same as Justin Trudeau.
00:05:58.800 We're going to talk about that, what it could mean for the campaign.
00:06:02.320 But before we get in, I want to thank all of our Western Standard members for your continued support.
00:06:06.940 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, check out westernstandardonline.com and click on Membership.
00:06:12.780 You can try a membership free for 15 days for free.
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00:06:24.900 That gives you access to bailout-free Western media, owned, operated, and focused on Western Canadians.
00:06:31.620 Check it out, westerncenteredonline.com on membership.
00:06:34.860 Try it free for 15 days.
00:06:37.200 Today's show is sponsored by...
00:06:39.360 Is Resistance Coffee still...
00:06:41.360 No, no, we're, Resistance Coffee is, we're done with our contract.
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00:07:31.640 All right.
00:07:32.160 Well, let's jump into it.
00:07:33.560 We're going to begin with the rise of the People's Party, Maxime Bernier's party.
00:07:38.540 really coming up in the polls.
00:07:41.640 Dave, why don't you set the stage?
00:07:44.200 If you remember, Derek, before the election,
00:07:47.060 Bernier was hosting rallies of, oh, good, half a dozen people,
00:07:51.180 including one in Manitoba that he got arrested for
00:07:54.220 during the COVID crackdown.
00:07:57.160 Now he's drawing hundreds and thousands of people.
00:08:00.480 He did a tour across the West last week,
00:08:04.620 which started out in B.C., and the crowds were fairly large,
00:08:09.240 and he ended up in Manitoba on a farmer's field,
00:08:12.840 and there was, by some estimates, 5,000 people there.
00:08:16.920 It just looked like a huge crowd.
00:08:19.360 Obviously, his support is growing amongst the non-vaccine passport crowd,
00:08:27.220 which Bernier is firmly against.
00:08:30.040 His popularity is rising across the country.
00:08:33.120 In Alberta, he's taken over second place in some areas.
00:08:39.000 In Quebec, I think there's a chance that he may even take his seat,
00:08:46.360 which is an incredible increase when you think over the last three weeks
00:08:50.980 when he's gone from speaking to a small crowd, a handful of people,
00:08:56.100 to literally thousands and thousands of people.
00:08:59.180 He's really on an upward growth.
00:09:00.760 It, uh, Corey, it's quite remarkable, uh, how much they've grown, uh, I mean, the last
00:09:08.300 election, they were approximately 2%. They've been bumping around 1% to 2% in most polls
00:09:13.360 since, actually, a lot of pollsters even stopped polling for them. They were so low. Um, they've,
00:09:19.420 he's, Bernie has been largely ignored by most of the media for the last two years, but since
00:09:24.100 the last election, I mean, he didn't have a seat, so he didn't have a, uh, a place in
00:09:27.760 the House of Commons, that really hurts your voice, and leader not having a seat is a pretty
00:09:31.960 tough spot for a lot of, obviously, especially newer and smaller parties.
00:09:36.640 But now he's polling consistently, the lowest polls have him at four, which is higher than
00:09:41.920 the Green Party at three. But most polls have him between four and six. Some are even showing
00:09:48.580 them growing towards eight. It's quite an increase. At this level, he actually would
00:09:53.900 stand a chance of taking his seat back in
00:09:55.940 Beauce in Quebec.
00:09:58.520 I'd personally be surprised
00:10:00.080 if they would win anything outside
00:10:01.960 of that, but they, you know,
00:10:03.520 at 8%, they're probably going to get some
00:10:06.080 second places in Alberta, maybe
00:10:07.840 Saskatchewan, odd little pocket
00:10:10.160 here and there across the rest of the country.
00:10:13.020 What do you think is
00:10:13.940 driving these numbers
00:10:15.640 when, you know,
00:10:18.160 I think it's probably fair to say the average
00:10:20.240 PPC supporter
00:10:21.340 hates Trudeau with the fire of a thousand furies, but they're not voting Conservative,
00:10:28.740 which is the, you know, if your only goal is just to get rid of Trudeau,
00:10:32.560 Conservative is probably the easiest way to do that.
00:10:35.520 What do you think is driving this?
00:10:37.320 Well, and I mean, Maxim's run a very good campaign.
00:10:40.060 It's surprisingly solid.
00:10:41.080 He's crossing the country, speaking to people.
00:10:42.880 He's consistent.
00:10:43.800 He's a skilled, intelligent guy.
00:10:45.700 So, I mean, you know, it's not a fringe leader coming out of nowhere,
00:10:48.000 and he's been around.
00:10:48.660 He's a little more familiar this time to people.
00:10:50.340 But the main thing is the other parties created a base for him.
00:10:54.140 Like he didn't pull it in himself.
00:10:55.440 They gave it to him.
00:10:56.800 Every party now basically is supporting some form of essentially mandated or coerced vaccination.
00:11:02.900 They're talking about passports.
00:11:04.860 They're, you know, people who are concerned about those things have nowhere else to turn.
00:11:08.860 And the PPC is there saying we will not, without doubt, like they're saying clearly we don't support that.
00:11:15.340 We support individual rights.
00:11:16.580 And that's a very motivated voter group.
00:11:19.440 I mean, these are people who feel they have no other home.
00:11:21.860 He's providing them one, and he's not drawing just from the conservatives.
00:11:25.700 You know, the Greens collapsed, and I mean, I'm writing about that,
00:11:28.100 but those had, you know, your person who would go to the naturopath
00:11:31.540 for their healing and things like that,
00:11:33.640 and now it sounds like they might lose their job if they don't get a vaccination.
00:11:37.060 They're cornered, and the Green Party obviously isn't going to help them any,
00:11:40.580 so again, they're coming to Maxime Bernier.
00:11:42.380 And then among traditional conservatives, he's getting that as well
00:11:45.520 because O'Toole is pivoting farther and farther left all the time
00:11:49.240 in response to everything, whether it's the carbon tax or the gun control and firearm
00:11:56.420 rights.
00:11:57.420 Again, he alienates little pockets of conservatives every time he does that.
00:12:00.980 And Maxime's happily pulling them all in.
00:12:02.960 It's going to be interesting because momentum is everything.
00:12:04.620 I mean, it's not like he's going to sweep and get a majority out of this race, but he
00:12:08.140 is really on the move right now.
00:12:10.740 It does look right now as if there's only two parties with any momentum.
00:12:16.400 The Conservatives with Erin O'Toole are, you know, they've come from no chance of winning
00:12:21.080 to, you know, a very slim lead.
00:12:23.920 As it is right now, I mean, they stand a small chance of winning the most seats, even though
00:12:29.200 their vote's not very efficient.
00:12:31.120 It's clustered in the West.
00:12:32.120 Even though they've come down in the West, they were coming from such a high that the
00:12:38.320 vote's still relatively inefficient.
00:12:40.300 But they're nowhere near a majority government right now in most polls.
00:12:42.960 Some polls have them a little closer.
00:12:43.860 No, like the way the votes lay out, we know that they need to significantly pass the Liberals in popular support in order to actually even win a minority government.
00:12:51.860 And they're getting there, but they're not there yet.
00:12:53.820 Yeah, so, you know, the Conservatives got some momentum.
00:12:56.320 Well, that appears to be perhaps stalling a bit.
00:12:59.580 Seems to have capped.
00:13:00.080 I mean, it may have hit a bit of a roof.
00:13:04.600 The PPC, though, they have had steady growth throughout.
00:13:08.620 Obviously, they've got no chance of forming government, but, you know, a lot of people don't understand their own system.
00:13:12.840 You don't actually vote for a government. You vote for a member of parliament.
00:13:17.020 And the member of parliament actually votes for who is the government.
00:13:20.260 I mean, the default is the biggest party gets to be that, but that's not actually how the system works.
00:13:25.200 And I'd say probably less than 1% of Canadians genuinely understand how the system works.
00:13:32.660 Dave, I know you're on the news side, but from your observations, what do you think is driving this?
00:13:37.680 And do you think that that support is going to hold up on election day?
00:13:41.080 or do you think a lot of those people are just going to get scared of Justin Trudeau and kind
00:13:44.960 of run back to the Tory mothership? Yeah, we've still got two weeks to go, Derek, and two weeks
00:13:52.020 is a lifetime in politics. I think it's purely being driven by vaccine hatred. You've seen these
00:14:00.320 crowds building over the years, over the last couple of years. And in Montreal, they had tens
00:14:06.180 of thousands of people marching in the streets last weekend against COVID passports.
00:14:13.400 It's a huge groundswell of anger against these things that are basically being brought in
00:14:20.720 across the country. British Columbia was the latest one to bring them in yesterday. And there
00:14:25.960 is a good chunk of the population that hate these things, that vow to never take part in the
00:14:32.480 program. And to me, that's what's driving Bernier's popularity at the moment. So whether that stalls
00:14:38.120 or whether it increases, I think remains to be seen over the last two weeks. Yeah. Well, let's
00:14:45.420 then turn it towards the leaders debate. I think that's a pretty easy segue. I think all three are
00:14:51.180 pretty easy segues today. The first English, the first and only English leaders debate is coming
00:14:57.760 up tomorrow. Invited by the federal government's debate commission is Liberal Prime Minister
00:15:07.680 Justin Trudeau, Conservative leader Aaron O'Toole, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, Bloc-Québécois
00:15:14.120 leader Yves-something-something-Blachette, and Green leader NMA Paul, although Paul is
00:15:24.360 running less, well, of course the bloc leader doesn't run a national campaign, of course.
00:15:31.280 He runs a campaign in Quebec as expected, but at least he's moving around and doing
00:15:35.900 stuff. But the green leader, Anna Mae Paul, has not left her downtown Toronto constituency
00:15:42.600 once that we're aware of in the entire campaign. She is invited and she is in some polls running
00:15:47.920 at half of the popularity of the People's Party right now, yet Maxime Bernier is not
00:15:53.600 invited. Of course, the Maverick Party is not invited, but their popularity is, I think,
00:16:00.860 maybe we'll actually, we're going to have to talk a bit about them at some point here, but
00:16:03.820 they've really, the Maverick Party has seemed to have kind of failed to really catch much traction.
00:16:09.840 They're not really catching on with voters right now. That kind of discontented vote across Canada,
00:16:16.040 but particularly in the West, seems to be going more to the People's Party. So obviously,
00:16:19.660 maverick is not invited but even uh maxime bernier is not invited uh dave uh what's the reasoning
00:16:27.020 behind that why do you think uh why is it that maxime bernier has been uh excluded from the
00:16:32.220 leaders debate and what what can we expect tomorrow well the the the the community that oversees this
00:16:39.180 has said they have a set policy on who they invite obviously the prime minister and the
00:16:45.180 opposition parties get in. You have to have a seat in Parliament, which is the big thing that's
00:16:51.580 keeping Bernier out. And, you know, they have a list of their own criteria that Bernier at the
00:16:57.980 time failed to meet. I think if they had gone back two more weeks or gone ahead two more weeks,
00:17:04.120 they may have reconsidered it and let him in. But the Canadian federal debates are,
00:17:10.760 they're hit and miss uh there are some that uh that produce a punch you know a good punch line
00:17:17.940 like uh uh you know the the uh there was a mulrooney and you sir had a choice to uh to john
00:17:25.100 turner over his uh his patronage can we talk about a single debate once anywhere in the media that's
00:17:30.560 not the mulrooney turner you had a choice debate that is the go-to for absolutely every canadian 0.95
00:17:36.100 it is such an exception. Debates in Canada suck. They do. And that was my point. That's the only
00:17:42.060 one you can think of. And how many years ago was that? The debates in Canada are a terrible format.
00:17:48.100 I wasn't born. That just don't allow a good debate. They should be limited to maybe three
00:17:55.860 people maximum to try and get some back and forth going between the political leaders.
00:18:02.540 But the way they've got it now, it's just a mess.
00:18:05.820 And for me, the biggest travesty is the English debate tomorrow night.
00:18:10.240 They're not going to talk about foreign affairs.
00:18:13.020 And what was the biggest question during the first two weeks?
00:18:15.240 What could be going on?
00:18:16.560 What was the biggest question during the first two weeks of the campaign?
00:18:19.840 It was the Liberals' mess in Afghanistan.
00:18:22.600 And Trudeau calling the election the day the country fell back into the hands of the Taliban. 0.94
00:18:27.140 And all the Canadian, some Canadian citizens and Afghans who helped Canadians now stuck there. 0.98
00:18:33.820 It was an absolute mess.
00:18:35.700 But guess what they're not talking about tomorrow night?
00:18:38.380 Afghanistan.
00:18:39.380 And to me, that's a disgrace, Derek.
00:18:43.400 Corey, this is actually only the second time in Canadian history there's been any actual rules around who gets into a debate or not.
00:18:53.040 Normally, it's just been a consortium of media and they get to pick who's in or not.
00:18:56.100 It's very ad hoc.
00:18:58.760 You know, I remember when I was in politics, they literally changed the rules to keep me
00:19:02.260 out from about 40 years of precedent, but Alberta had no debate commission.
00:19:08.500 I actually don't have that much of a problem with there being a debate commission, but
00:19:13.680 the rules have got to be fair around it.
00:19:16.300 And the debate commission seems to get to make up its own rules for who gets in and
00:19:21.680 who does not.
00:19:22.760 I mean, obviously, if it's just done by the media, then that actually gives the party, the big party leaders more say about who gets in or not.
00:19:32.900 You know, because then Aaron O'Toole could say, well, I'm not going to go if, you know, Bernier or Maverick is there.
00:19:40.740 I think it's actually good to take it out of the hands of the politicians to decide.
00:19:44.060 They shouldn't get to decide who they get to debate.
00:19:47.860 But it's inherently, I think, a tough task.
00:19:50.340 I mean, are we going to invite the rhinoceros?
00:19:53.600 I'd actually like to see the rhinoceros party there.
00:19:55.520 But, you know, it's probably not a very serious thing if you're going to have a decent debate.
00:19:59.580 Are we going to have, like, there's like 50 or 80 registered political parties out there.
00:20:05.600 You can't invite every single one.
00:20:07.360 Otherwise, everyone gets 10 seconds and no one's going to bother watching the thing.
00:20:11.960 But do you think the debate commission is out of line in excluding Bernier here?
00:20:17.360 I don't know.
00:20:18.600 I mean, you know, just in the hindsight, seeing how much support he's gaining, I think it would
00:20:23.660 have been worthwhile to have him in because clearly he's representing. I mean, you know,
00:20:27.060 when you're looking at 8%, that's millions of Canadians. That's worth them seeing what he's
00:20:31.140 talking about. But they did set some criteria weeks ago and they made it public. You know,
00:20:37.500 it wasn't a hidden shadowy thing. And as far as anybody could tell at that time, he didn't meet
00:20:42.100 the bar. Kind of as Dave said, you know, we don't get good debates because I mean, when we did have
00:20:45.680 five candidates in the other one, it's difficult to have a good exchange of ideas. It's difficult
00:20:50.340 to have something that draws you in and draws your attention with that many people in a
00:20:54.760 room. It's unfortunate that he got locked out of it, but I can kind of see what happened
00:21:01.660 here anyway.
00:21:02.640 Well, I mean, if the goal is to keep the debate to a more manageable number, then perhaps
00:21:08.320 what they should do is kick out the green leader, who's running at about 2 or 3 percent
00:21:11.980 and hasn't left her constituency.
00:21:13.520 If we can go in hindsight, she is adding nothing.
00:21:15.520 She really is adding nothing.
00:21:16.820 BBC's even running more candidates than the Greens right now.
00:21:19.400 Their party is in such disarray, the reason she hasn't left her riding is her own party has defunded her.
00:21:23.720 She can't afford to leave her own bloody riding. 0.84
00:21:26.280 She's going to be there all alone.
00:21:27.360 Defund the leader.
00:21:29.100 She's going to have no party mechanism supporting her. 1.00
00:21:33.140 She will really, to be blunt, add absolutely nothing to the debate.
00:21:37.580 Yes, if you could swap her for Bernier, I think it would make much more sense.
00:21:40.860 I understand the hornet's nest if they tried at this point, but it would have been a much better debate for it,
00:21:45.860 much more representative of people that are actually running in a serious campaign in this country right now.
00:21:51.020 Yeah.
00:21:52.220 Okay, well, before we move on to the next segment, just a quick operating note for our team operating the cameras.
00:21:59.680 Let's zoom in on screens when one screen's talking and shrink the other one down a bit so people can see a bit more since we're doing split screen today.
00:22:08.200 Today's show is sponsored by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.
00:22:12.660 The CCFR is doing yeoman's work, defending your right to own, use, and buy firearms safely in Canada.
00:22:21.040 They are one of the important groups that are out there, sometimes successfully getting parties to adopt good policies around firearms.
00:22:31.500 I think groups like this actually had done a pretty good job with the conservatives, but we're literally about to talk about this in a second.
00:22:39.280 So I won't talk about it right now.
00:22:41.160 But CCFR is one of the really good guys who are out there lobbying politicians, doing advocacy work on behalf of firearm responsible and legal firearm owners,
00:22:51.620 making sure that you have the right to own used firearms safely in Canada.
00:22:55.760 You should check them out. Go to FirearmRights.ca and click Why Join to learn more about why you should become a member of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.
00:23:06.780 I know I do. Fantastic group. You should all join it, even if you're not a gun owner. It's great stuff.
00:23:13.040 Okay, well, that's super segue to our next segment.
00:23:16.620 But we did, the Western-Centered Editorial Board did a review of the different parties'
00:23:26.000 platforms.
00:23:27.000 We went through the conservative platform.
00:23:28.560 I got to say, there was not a lot that stood out that I liked.
00:23:32.100 We had to grade that thing on a curb. 1.00
00:23:34.140 But one of the policies in there that did okay was their policies around gun rights.
00:23:40.480 If you're on the other side of the debate, you call it gun control.
00:23:45.220 Hand control for me is just learning how to grip a pistol, but if you, we went through
00:23:50.560 it and it was, I mean, I'm not, no party is ever going to promise me the firearms policy
00:23:57.520 I want.
00:23:58.520 I understand that.
00:23:59.520 So, you know, being reasonable, we went through, I think gave it a fair look.
00:24:02.800 On firearms, we gave it a B. Aaron O'Toole, the conservative platform committed to undoing
00:24:09.000 the arbitrary ban of 1,500 firearms in Alberta, sorry, in Canada, that the Liberals called
00:24:16.240 military-style assault weapons. Some of them, I was shocked to see were not banned. Panzerfaust
00:24:24.560 anti-tank rockets, some Soviet anti-air missiles, AA missiles, like incredible stuff. I didn't know
00:24:33.580 I could be shooting down Soviet attack helicopters like I was in 1980s Afghanistan, incredible 0.99
00:24:41.200 stuff apparently the Liberals protected us from.
00:24:42.960 There was a time that a yard wasn't a yard without a surface to air missile installation.
00:24:47.040 Back in the day, good times.
00:24:49.460 But they also banned the Ruger Mini, the AR-15, which does not stand for Assault Rifle 15,
00:24:54.580 I think it's Armor...
00:24:55.580 Armalite.
00:24:56.580 Armalite rifle.
00:24:58.540 But you know, try telling that to a Liberal.
00:25:02.740 this stuff just because it looks scary, yet virtually identical hunting rifles were not
00:25:09.020 illegal. They just looked less scary. You know, ones that had a, you know, like Grandpa's
00:25:12.380 Woodstock, you know, 30-odd-6 or something. That's fine. But a virtually identical rifle
00:25:18.440 that just had more of a black carbonite stock on it looks scarier. Banned. Aaron O'Toole
00:25:26.480 said, no, that's ridiculous. We're going to undo that. Essentially going back to the
00:25:30.080 status quo. But then in the French debate, Justin Trudeau and the block leader are going after him
00:25:38.160 and he says, I'm going to maintain the ban on assault weapons. And what he was doing there was
00:25:44.640 trying to happen both ways. He was correct. He's going to maintain the ban from 1977 brought in
00:25:51.820 by Trudeau I against actual automatic weapons. Anything that would be used by the military
00:25:57.340 other than a sidearm, was banned in 1977, the day really fun guns died.
00:26:05.280 And that's what he technically meant, but I think he was trying to get away with sounding in French and in Quebec
00:26:11.420 like he was more against guns than he was.
00:26:13.920 And that ended up really muddling the waters and allowed the liberals and the bloc and the NDP
00:26:21.500 to pounce on him, saying that he is going to repeal Justin Trudeau's ban on military assault weapons,
00:26:30.260 which were not military assault weapons, other than the Panzerfaust, of course,
00:26:33.680 which was always legal in Canada, you know.
00:26:37.160 So this is all a long way of coming around to Aaron O'Toole's epic flip-flop just the other day.
00:26:43.640 um dave uh tell us where we're at what is aaron o'toole's gun policy as of 12 24 mountain standard
00:26:53.420 time today uh the bottom line derek is i don't know we've been on on the air now for 24 minutes
00:27:01.380 and he may have changed it uh but uh before we went to uh before we went online uh his policy
00:27:09.140 was basically the same as the Liberal one.
00:27:12.580 You know, it was only a matter of time
00:27:15.380 before the Liberals grabbed their playbook
00:27:18.160 and said, oh, gun control,
00:27:20.260 and threw it out onto the campaign trail.
00:27:24.580 They obviously waited until they were behind in the polls
00:27:27.360 and then threw it out with all sorts of hysteria
00:27:30.780 that the blood will be flowing
00:27:32.440 and running down the streets of Canadian cities
00:27:35.480 because of what the Conservatives have got planned.
00:27:39.140 And talking to Rod Galata, the head of the aforementioned CCFR, he said, basically said that O'Toole did the only thing possible.
00:27:49.440 He sort of agreed just to get it off the table.
00:27:52.580 And if you look at it, I think O'Toole was successful.
00:27:56.240 I know you're going to disagree with me, Derek.
00:27:57.900 I know you think guns are the be-all and end-all of the campaign and it's the only issue out there.
00:28:04.060 I'm going to disagree with you and say that it's not.
00:28:06.200 I think that the Tories, what O'Toole said, basically did diffuse the idea.
00:28:13.320 And certainly the mainstream media pack that follow the leaders have moved on.
00:28:20.960 They're not focusing on gun control for days on end like they used to.
00:28:26.240 They seemed happy with O'Toole's answer and have moved on to different topics now.
00:28:32.400 I think, you know, they're onto carbon tax and home equity taxes and other things.
00:28:39.080 So Giltaka's assessment that O'Toole did what he had to do just to get it off the table, I think is correct.
00:28:48.900 He said it was a typical ploy from the election playbook of the Liberals.
00:28:54.320 It was expected. I'm sure the Tories expected it.
00:28:58.460 And I think they dealt with it the best they could.
00:29:02.400 Well, I mean, it's one way to get it off the table.
00:29:07.740 I don't know.
00:29:10.540 If I was, well, I won't go there.
00:29:15.160 It is one way to get it off the table, capitulate, adopt the liberal position, not talking about
00:29:20.320 it anymore.
00:29:21.960 It seems to me that there's another way to get it off the table, and that's not muddy
00:29:25.520 the waters to begin with.
00:29:26.840 Don't say one thing in English and another thing in French.
00:29:29.160 Don't try to, you know, don't try to have it both ways on absolutely everything.
00:29:35.600 I think there was a way for O'Toole from the beginning to say,
00:29:39.640 I am not ever going to legalize military assault rifles in Canada,
00:29:44.700 but the liberals have been lying to you.
00:29:47.720 They've been misclassifying legitimate sports shooting and hunting guns,
00:29:52.780 and I am not going to maintain their ban on legitimate, safe, legal firearms in Canada.
00:30:00.900 But that would have required him, I think, to do it from the very beginning.
00:30:04.520 Once he muddled that water, though, was there any way out of this other than capitulation?
00:30:09.060 Yeah, I think there still is.
00:30:10.520 Standing on principle still has bloody room in politics.
00:30:13.000 I'm sick of these guys turning and running as soon as they feel some pressure.
00:30:16.060 That's the first pressure O'Toole's felt in this campaign.
00:30:18.940 He's actually had it pretty good.
00:30:20.500 He's been doing all right.
00:30:21.900 And this, I'm sorry, but I'm sick of being lied to.
00:30:24.580 That was in clear writing in your platform,
00:30:27.180 not even the leadership, which you lied about
00:30:28.860 when you talked about the carbon tax.
00:30:30.800 You lied in your platform about repealing that bill
00:30:33.400 and you flip-flopped as soon as you got some backward pressure.
00:30:36.320 And I'm sorry, you know what?
00:30:37.560 You're a leader.
00:30:38.240 That means you stand up and you explain your position then.
00:30:40.940 You articulate it.
00:30:41.940 If you're getting beaten over the head a bit with it,
00:30:44.800 well, then you better figure out how to turn that around
00:30:46.940 and clarify it, as you said.
00:30:48.840 I mean, yes, politically, as Dave said,
00:30:50.420 probably the right move when you're looking at the path of least resistance but you know what
00:30:54.580 just because it works doesn't mean it's right and now again if you want to talk about i bet you
00:31:00.820 maxim smiled as his support numbers went up sure maybe only another two percent three percent it's
00:31:05.640 not winning in the election but those are points that come right out of the conservative party
00:31:09.520 there's a lot of conservative supporters who are very dedicated to their firearms whether for
00:31:14.020 hunting for hobby for collecting whatever reason they're very dedicated on that issue and there's
00:31:19.900 no way they're going to vote for a man who now has said, we're just going to adopt Trudeau's
00:31:24.520 position and commit to a review. That's kicking the can down the road. You know, I mean, he could
00:31:30.120 have done a better way of this. And I just, I have difficulty with this constant retreating. It just,
00:31:34.460 then you're indistinguishable from the liberals. I may as well vote for a liberal who's honest
00:31:37.560 about being a liberal, which I won't. Yeah. I don't know. It's damn disappointing. It was one
00:31:44.260 the few areas of the platform we could give the Tories decent marks. Already wasn't an A, it was
00:31:50.180 a B. I mean, to get an A, you need to do things that I actually don't expect any party to do.
00:31:55.540 Light artillery. I'm not asking for heavy artillery, just light howitzers, you know,
00:32:00.820 mortar. Bring back the Panzerfaust. I really, no backyard collections with that. For now,
00:32:06.500 I would have been satisfied with just at least, you know, again, sticking it or repealing that
00:32:09.780 policy and hey there's you know in saying it was a reactive piece of policy to a terrible tragedy
00:32:16.580 and mass shooting we had in canada which is extremely rare thankfully but insane we've got
00:32:21.140 room perhaps there are some firearms that may need new categorization it may change but the liberals
00:32:25.300 made a complete mess of that one and we're going to start from scratch and perhaps some some new
00:32:30.740 things are going to change but yeah legitimate hunting rebels like ruger mini just thrown in with
00:32:35.140 with machine guns that you'd see on an Abrams tank in Iraq.
00:32:44.140 Like, just wild stuff.
00:32:46.140 Yeah, it's frustrating.
00:32:48.140 Okay, well, I want to thank everyone for joining us today.
00:32:51.140 And of course, thank all of our Western Standard members.
00:32:54.140 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard,
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00:33:10.700 bailout-free Western media.
00:33:12.640 We've got a great team of journalists and opinionators, guys like Corey, you just give
00:33:19.940 your opinion.
00:33:20.940 Yeah.
00:33:21.940 Not always right.
00:33:22.940 Usually.
00:33:23.940 Sometimes.
00:33:24.940 I'll talk to Jim.
00:33:25.940 Well, we've got a great team working for you.
00:33:28.540 You can get all access for $10 a month or $99 a year.
00:33:32.060 for you for 15 days. Thank you very much all for joining us. Dave, keep safe in BC. We'll see you
00:33:39.180 back here in Calgary soon. And Cory, keep your stick on the ice. Thank you.