00:01:12.720And joining us for a very special day, you're going to find out in a second why we've got Western Standard's VC Bureau Chief, Jaron Yeager.
00:01:26.760So, we'll be talking about Bill C-9, a bill in Parliament right now, which is designed to make sure you can't hurt people's feelings online.
00:01:37.540But now is going to quite explicitly strip people of freedom of speech and freedom of religion around saying, quoting things from religious scriptures, which, you know, the Bible, that could be construed by.
00:01:55.680Some has, hateful, removing any provisions that were in that bill.
00:02:20.280I'm not convinced one way or another yet, but it's not quite as shiny and pretty as we were hoping it would be.
00:02:27.240But first, the reason we've got Jared Yeager on the program today.
00:02:33.380BC Conservative leader, John Rostat, walks the plank.
00:02:37.580Like earlier today, our BC Bureau Chief, Jared Yeager, broke the story that a majority of the BC Conservative caucus signed a letter declaring non-confidence in him.
00:02:52.460And then just moments ago, the board of the BC Conservative Party voted to remove him as leader.
00:02:58.940Jared, why don't you add a bit more detail about what's been going on?
00:03:03.220There's a lot of moving parts of the story.
00:03:04.480It's just developing as we're talking, but why don't you just give us a little background and what's been going on today?
00:03:11.200Yeah, so it's been a pretty busy day, but for anyone who's been paying attention to BC politics over the past few months, this shouldn't come as too big of a surprise.
00:03:19.860So more and more people have been calling on Rostat to resign from both within and outside the party.
00:03:25.900And today was kind of the kind of the final nail in the coffin.
00:03:29.02020 out of the 39 MLAs in his caucus signed on saying that they no longer supported his leadership.
00:03:36.900And so once that came out, he held a press conference and basically said, I'm not going anywhere.
00:04:05.720So there was the letter released by the majority of the BC Conservative Caucus declaring they had no confidence in Rostat as leader and requesting the employment of interim leader.
00:04:17.120Rostat then held a press conference after that saying, doesn't matter if a majority of my caucus have voted to remove me, I'm still the leader, right?
00:04:22.780Yeah, someone asked him, like, does this put you in an untenable position?
00:04:44.500But when it comes down to it, there's not much you can do as a party if you're not united.
00:04:51.460And if there's all this stuff going on inside, it takes time away from actually tackling the issues that matter.
00:04:58.640So, well, look, Corey, I mean, John Russ, that blasted his heart.
00:05:03.800I mean, like he did obviously incredible things for this party, getting it to where it is.
00:05:08.320But his leadership ran into really tough waters.
00:05:11.420He appears to have become paranoid trying to fire everyone from caucus that he suspected of anything or disagreeing with him on things, which is ironic because that's how he got kicked out of the BC Liberal Caucus, very strangely.
00:05:26.620But he doesn't seem to understand the simple.
00:05:29.540I don't think most people understand the Constitution, but the leader of a political party and the leader of an opposition should understand one of the simple parts of our Constitution.
00:07:38.340Stockwell, they had a pretty messy one, but he did manage.
00:07:42.020He was a tougher one, but he did manage to stay on as a member of the Alliance and then Conservative Caucus federally and as Captain Minister.
00:07:49.960Brian Jean did not initially with Jason Kenney because there was so much bad blood there, but he did come back.
00:09:48.560And I don't see that in Mr. Rostat's response here.
00:09:52.480Jared, so he refused to step down unconstitutionally when his caucus had voted non-confident.
00:10:02.420So a lot of this is just kind of behind the scenes.
00:10:05.920But I've had people, pretty senior people, well-placed people in the B.C. conservatives tell me that members of caucus for quite some time had been trying to bring a vote of non-confidence against him in the caucus.
00:10:16.520But then the caucus, John Rostat's caucus chair, was just refusing to allow a vote to take place.
00:10:24.020Which, I mean, I really wish I had a boring book of Robert's Rules of Order to give to them.
00:10:28.740You could then impeach the chair at that point.
00:10:31.220You just impeach the chair if the chair is not allowing a vote.
00:14:18.340But even with Rustad gone, they wouldn't, like, I don't know.
00:14:22.320I get the impression Brody would be a contender to win the leadership of the United Party.
00:14:27.060I could be reading it wrong, but I'm gathering this is the typical battle we have with any big tent Conservative Party, though.
00:14:33.280You know, you get your red Tories and your blue Tories, and they've really fractured to the far sides.
00:14:37.840I think a lot would depend on what the leadership race is, because I imagine there's going to be candidates sort of representing, you know, we're just getting ahead of ourselves, but still, like, presuming Mr. Rustad's gone, there's going to be a race.
00:14:48.960And there's going to be candidates representing each of those sorts of factions.
00:14:52.060They're trying to find a way to pull it together.
00:14:53.720And anybody who's on the outs with the party right now, I think, would be taking a wait-and-see as to, well, who's going to end up winning the party confidence?
00:15:11.320If Brody were to go back in and run for the leadership, do you think she'd be a competitive candidate?
00:15:18.600She's kind of thrown all her cards on the table.
00:15:20.960And like you were saying, Corey, it's hard to keep a party together when there are so many different factions.
00:15:26.140But I think the majority of those who have stayed in the BC Conservative Party haven't joined 1BC or split off because they kind of want to be a part of that Big Ten coalition.
00:15:39.540And bringing Brody back in, I think, would kind of, I don't know, just put the party back in the same place it was when it was more fractured at the beginning.
00:15:49.540Well, then it's not a Big Ten coalition if it's not got a place for people like Brody.
00:15:54.220Like, then it depends on how big you want to make the coalition, yeah.
00:15:57.760Well, I mean, it's a pretty fundamental part of it.
00:15:59.680If you're going to be the Conservative Party, you've got to have the Conservatives.
00:18:03.840I, well, you know what, this actually might, we're ever so slightly pre-recording here.
00:18:10.120This already might be answered by the time we're done.
00:18:12.820Jared, keep your Twitter feed open as we're talking.
00:18:15.420We'll come back to this if we get an update.
00:18:18.000But, uh, John, John, you know, you probably got other things to do tonight.
00:18:24.420But if you're watching this, for God's sakes, for the good of the BC conservatives and for British Columbia, I know you feel you've been wronged here and that you're on the right side.
00:18:34.880But, uh, it's time to fall on your sword and do the right thing.
00:18:51.740Uh, so last, uh, last Wednesday, last time we did the pipeline, uh, you know, our general comment thing was it's got to be pretty good because Smith is facing UCP members.
00:19:04.460It's Friday night at her, uh, the annual UCP convention in Edmonton.
00:19:09.760And, uh, I mean, for her to be able to do a peace deal with Ottawa with a party that does not like peace with Ottawa right now is better be pretty good.
00:19:25.640There's a lot of ins and outs of it, but there's, there's some odd stuff.
00:19:28.940Uh, but yeah, Corey, you, you, you know, you were with me at the convention and, um,
00:19:34.460I think to the shock and horror of the rest of Canada, Alberta conservative members were not glowing in their praise of this agreement on Friday, were they?
00:19:51.320And they expressed it and watching that parallel and talking to a lot of people.
00:19:56.180And we, we talked to probably hundreds of people over that two days.
00:19:59.200Smith is still wildly popular among the members.
00:20:01.680They love her, but they think she signed onto a stinker.
00:20:04.660And, and it's not just, there's two aspects.
00:20:08.120One is just, some people don't believe the pipeline is ever going to go anyways.
00:20:11.900And the other is some of a, you know, basically as you're putting out a, is, is a Faustian deal.
00:20:15.740Like we're looking at some of the commitments that have to be made in order to do this, a massive carbon carbon capture project, which could benefit some crony capitalists and possibly suck some subsidy dollars into certain directions, which blue conservatives aren't necessarily thrilled with that sort of trade-off.
00:20:32.320A large hike in the carbon tax industrial.
00:20:36.660What I see is actually a lot of junior operators in Alberta, probably not really happy with this whole deal at all.
00:20:58.260It's just getting uglier and uglier as we look at it.
00:21:00.400And then with our own Dave Winnick talking about some of this stuff with obligations, domestic purchases of materials for it, which could price this out of the range, you know, rather than having a wide option of areas to source your materials and so on.