This week, Cory, Nigel and Dave are joined by the Western Standard's Editor-in-Chief, Dave Naylor and Opinion Editor, Nigel Hannaford, to discuss the Alberta premier's State of the Province, Alberta's climate change strategy, and Alberta's new zero-emission grid.
00:04:32.140They're going to milk it to death.0.75
00:04:34.000You bet they're going to keep attacking,
00:04:35.320And they're going to tell the people in central Canada and further east that they're sticking up for you against the rebels in Alberta and possibly Saskatchewan as well.
00:04:48.840Well, to be honest, that bogeyman goes both ways, though.
00:04:50.880I mean, politically, it serves Premier Smith quite well to be able to have a foil in Ottawa that you can always point to.
00:04:55.880and the much loathed Justin Trudeau, and to keep telling voters, we're going to stand up for you
00:05:01.840against the nasty socialists, or at least environmentally ideological government in
00:05:09.280Ottawa. It's almost a, I know neither would like to ever admit it, but they actually
00:05:13.560complement each other in the political sense. Yeah, Trudeau's plunging in the polls. Nothing
00:05:19.660he does is right. It all turns to crap these days. So that's obviously going to be his major
00:05:24.980election issue he's going to pit alberta as the bogeyman and the rest of canada the government
00:05:31.620of ontario today cory wrote a letter to the liberals saying you know you got to put a stop
00:05:37.460to this alberta leaving the canada pension plan because it would hurt people in ontario and it
00:05:43.620would hurt them in the pocketbooks by having to cover more of the uh the premiums so can alberta
00:05:50.100Yeah, as public enemy number one fits lovely for what Trudeau would like to see and do.
00:05:56.240And that's actually going to be a tough one for Pierre Poliver to stick handle too, isn't it?
00:06:00.960Yeah, well, he's already said that Alberta should stay.
00:06:04.540So he's made his position pretty clear.
00:06:08.300But yeah, I think Ontario is just going to be the first of many provinces.
00:06:13.000Saskatchewan has said they're not overly enthused by it.
00:14:37.220When the energy industry does well, everybody does well, so lead with that.
00:14:41.780Yeah, well, back in the 90s when I was in the oil field, there were two nice visible examples of how well that worked out with being open for business in a sense,
00:14:47.740because Alberta was flanked by NDP governments in B.C. and in Saskatchewan.
00:14:52.220and uh you know you look at lloyd minster right down the middle of it there's the border and you
00:14:57.660looked at the industrial area developing off to the west on the alberta side it was just going
00:15:01.980and going and going great guns guns on the east side you had a motel i think the postal
00:15:07.660and a few other things like the growth with a city that should be bisected you know maybe grows
00:15:12.460somewhat equally no no it was dramatically sticking to the alberta side and that's because
00:15:16.700the businesses we're realizing the regulations dollar stores and cash flow yeah not necessarily
00:15:22.140nice things but all the same they are businesses and likewise in bc i used to survey seismic
00:15:28.220up in the chinchaga area and there's a big cut line on the bc alberta border and that's where
00:15:32.220i would survey and stake out the boundary of our program literally to the inch right to the bc
00:15:37.340border where we would not step foot an inch onto that side because suddenly the costs and regulations
00:15:42.540went through the roof. So we see those things. If Premier Smith is really opening Alberta up more
00:15:48.780to encourage, you know, that development here, we will certainly bring in those
00:15:52.700investment refugees from the other regions and provinces.
00:15:59.100Okay, well, let's get on to, I guess, something a little more global and a little more national1.00
00:16:04.860though, and just the ugliness we've been seeing on the streets of Canada, around the world. We're
00:16:13.040seeing it in the United States. We've seen it in Michigan. We're seeing it everywhere. It's just
00:16:17.260this rise of anti-Semitism. I mean, I'm going to start with a bit of a rant on it because people
00:16:21.620keep saying being critical of Israel isn't anti-Semitism. No, it isn't. But celebrating
00:16:28.440a terrorist attack, slaughtering thousands of Israelis is. People saying protesting against
00:16:34.000Israel is an answer which is no it isn't but having a mob go side of a Jewish daycare center and intimidating parents and children is and then you know the examples just keep coming there's a function up in a couple of days in Toronto with a Palestinian group saying glory to our martyrs where they're going to get together and celebrate the terrorists who murdered babies raped women and committed horrible acts of atrocity and torture I just get sick of the people trying to soft sell this and say well
00:17:03.980this is just about Palestine and criticizing Israel. It is not. I mean, we're seeing an ugly
00:17:09.040head rear itself that's been kind of underground for a while. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better,
00:17:15.560Corey. I've never seen anything like it in my lifetime. Academia is also, seems to be a place
00:17:23.780where the left is celebrating the Hamas attacks. You mentioned the Jewish daycare. There was a
00:17:32.240Jewish restaurant that was picketed. They've been packed to the gills ever since. So that
00:17:40.140certainly backfired. We've had protests in Calgary where Israeli supporters were arrested
00:17:46.980and taken away. And, you know, Palestinians by the thousands marching in Toronto in support of
00:17:58.120Hamas. And you look at the way Canada, the government is handling it, and then you look
00:18:02.700at the way governments in Europe are handling it. Whereas, you know, like in a place like Germany
00:18:10.840and France, they're making it easier for Hamas supporters to be deported. You know, go back there
00:18:16.960then, where you came from. In Great Britain, police have been ordered to arrest people,
00:18:23.180You know, with Islamic flags and stuff like that.
00:18:27.660But none of that stuff is happening in Canada.
00:18:30.420You don't see any sort of pushback, really, against the left.
00:18:36.200I'll give the Ontario Ford government credit.
00:18:39.540They all went and had their caucus lunch at a Jewish restaurant in Toronto.0.79
00:18:45.200But, you know, union leaders, I mean, they're falling over themselves to support Hamas.
00:19:30.040Well, that may not be completely over yet, because you've touched on a number of things there, Dave.
00:19:38.360But you sort of, you say wonder how anybody could be that way.
00:19:45.300But I think it was Aldous Huxley who made the, I found it, here we are.
00:19:51.720Now, the surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating somebody else.
00:20:04.100To be able to destroy with a good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior righteous indignation, this is the height of psychological luxury, wrote Huxley, the most delicious of moral treats.
00:22:49.440But an Orthodox Jew or a Hasidic Jew, I mean, they're going to, they can't, while continuing to be observant, go on the streets, you know, and hide their religious needs.0.99
00:23:02.540And the problem is, it's going to get worse. The war in Hamas is going to be incredibly violent, incredibly bloody, and incredibly costly on both sides. So, you know, you're going to have the weekly pro-Hamas demonstrations, and those demonstrators are going to get angrier and angrier as more orgasms are killed.
00:23:26.000So the time to put the foot down legally, though, and it's difficult.
00:23:29.560I mean, with the protests waving Palestinian flags in the streets, that's free expression.
00:23:33.280I don't like perhaps the side they're taking, but that in itself isn't crossing the line.
00:23:38.440It's when they start chanting from river to sea.
00:23:42.180And again, not everybody necessarily understands what that reference means.
00:23:44.800But what it means is from the river in Jordan on the West Bank all the way to Gaza on the sea.0.94
00:23:50.120And they want to wipe every Jew out of the middle and turn it on the land of Palestine.0.87
00:23:53.980It's a call for genocide. So you cross the line from, again, waving those flags, but how do police separate the fly poop from the pepper?
00:24:02.620When you've got a thousand people out there waving those flags and 200 of them are of that nature, you can't cancel the whole project. It's a difficult issue.
00:24:10.980It's very difficult, and it looks like the conflict is set to widen. You've got U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria being shelled.
00:24:20.980uh there's a report today in the wall street journal i was telling nigel about earlier uh
00:24:26.800that the some of the hamas fighters that did the attack that went to iran for for for training uh
00:24:33.620so you got to think the american administration is is you know thinking about what to do to try
00:24:39.680and you know if you're talking about taking this the head off the snake the head is iran that is
00:24:46.220what a lot of people fear and i i think there's again legitimate critique i mean i think a lot
00:24:49.860people, whatever you might think of Israel, they want to keep this contained there, as horrific
00:24:53.620as it is. I mean, if we start seeing American strikes into Iran or, you know, Syria or any of
00:24:59.880those neighboring, this could really turn into a much bigger thing. Yeah, but it may not be Israel's0.67
00:25:03.300decision if Americans keep being attacked and missiles kept being shot towards their ships
00:25:09.360in the sea there. You know, the Americans are right now madly rushing to get defensive systems
00:25:18.540in the area, like the Iron Dome stuff, to be able to protect their own. And all it takes is half a
00:25:27.140dozen US troops to be killed in a blast, and they have to respond. They would have to take revenge
00:25:34.220on somebody. The time to call out the hate is now. And I wrote a column, it's going to be out
00:25:40.420Sunday on a bit of this. Going back to World War II, I mean, I certainly wasn't born yet, but
00:25:44.540all these similar warning signs were happening. The anti-Semitism was springing up. The atrocities
00:25:49.920were beginning to happen at the end of the 30s and into the early 40s. The people in North America,
00:25:54.400they would question and deny every bit of it. Oh, that's not really happening. That's not going on
00:25:58.160out there. And of course, the horrors that actually were happening because people were
00:26:02.520shielding themselves from it became worse. We could have perhaps, I mean, there was a big front
00:26:07.520to fight, but intervened earlier if people had actually believed what was going on.
00:26:11.240we get these denials. But I mean, I just think people need to watch, you know, the extent of
00:26:16.880how much they have to dehumanize somebody, that's what's happening. They don't believe that the
00:26:20.960Jewish victims are human. And you hear some of the things from Hamas where they, you know,
00:26:25.780they had the GoPros on, I mean, the reporters watched it. And one of the stories where they
00:26:31.000blew up with a hand grenade, the father of two children, and then were casually in the kitchen
00:26:38.800while the two children were there mortified, crying and horrified after the murder of their father.
00:26:42.820And they're drinking water from the fridge from the family's house.
00:26:45.800Like these, they don't believe their victims are human.
00:26:49.460And that's the most dangerous, dangerous and horrible attitude to take with anybody.
00:26:55.760That's usually the first thing that you do when you go to war with somebody
00:26:58.580is try and point out how absolutely worthless the people on the other side really are.
00:27:05.900I mean, the rage and horror of Israeli IDF members, I mean, that builds the vengeance and atrocities will be committed by IDF members when they get in, which could be mis-targeted on the innocent Palestinians who got caught in the middle.
00:27:18.700I mean, that's the nature of such a horrific conflict is this.
00:27:22.520Yeah, there are, and that's the key to keep in mind, there are innocent people on both sides and a lot of them are going to get killed, already have been killed in those terror strikes and in Gaza.
00:27:34.260You know, the thing, coming back to where we started on this, though, is how surprising it is that it is the left that has made anti-Semitism its own.
00:27:50.280I mean, before the Second World War, it tended to be, I don't really buy the spectrum of left-right so much.
00:27:58.140If you're going to call it such, it was the fascists.
00:27:59.400It would be the fascists and it would be the rightists, you know.
00:28:02.480and if you were a good communist, you weren't on their side,
00:28:08.540so you supported the, you were not anti-Semitic.
00:28:12.500In fact, many of the leaders in the communist world were of Jewish origin.
00:28:57.220And I have to think that, speaking strictly of the unions for a moment, that that is a consequence of the fact that they're no longer really about what we think they're about, which is wages and conditions for the working man.
00:34:43.240Well, you know, Churchill once put it very well that a fanatic is somebody who not only won't change his mind, but won't change the subject.
00:34:50.860And I think that is our environment as to...
00:36:20.300so it sort of depends on Mr. Jagmeet, yeah.
00:36:25.660You can break something that will take somebody else 20 years to rebuild in a week.
00:36:33.680And I think that they think, well, we've got the reins of office.
00:36:39.060We have the chance to make our green dream come true.
00:36:43.200And if you are a single-minded ideologue, as Mr. Gilboa appears to be, I don't know the man personally, I can't say that he is, but from his public presentation and his lack of interest in any other subject,
00:37:03.160I have to assume that he is of the mind that we can just finally put in place a set of regulations
00:37:13.900that will so destroy the interest in investing in natural gas, not just in Alberta, but anywhere.
00:43:20.840Let's redid a U-Haul and head for Wyoming.
00:43:23.600But, you know, it's so much dependent on just getting past, dragging it out until you get past the next election
00:43:32.340and hope you've got a different crew to deal with in Ottawa.
00:43:34.980Yeah, you know, the problem is these big companies, they've got all their, they've got their capital expenses and they're looking at it and yeah, it would be, it would be tough to, a tough sell to the shareholders that they're going to invest X number of billions in Alberta.
00:43:48.240Well, it would be, but Smith is already on record with that. If they can't get anybody else to do it, they'll figure out a way and maybe it'll be public ownership again or it'll be a, it'll be a contract between the government and backstopping.
00:44:03.380loan guarantees or things such as that which never worked in the past for keystone uh well it ain't a
00:44:10.020good business plan but if it gets something built that actually works and keeps the lights on
00:44:14.580then it has done its job well i guess it kind of comes full circle to our very first topic where
00:44:19.220premier smith was very much focused on alberta being the place to invest the place to do
00:44:23.060business the safe place to come in spend your dollars make your money i i guess you know that
00:44:28.260that kind of ties in with that tactic then we're going to assure you you know hold on a couple
00:44:31.860years don't worry about those guys over there we'll make sure your investments are secure here
00:44:36.580please come here and drill those holes and lay that pipe yeah i think sure the message was aimed
00:44:43.140at a much broader audience than the oil and gas companies too right she's talking about all the
00:44:47.860you know small businesses and uh non-oil and gas businesses that uh you know alberta is open ready
00:44:54.100for business and the best place to do business. You know, it actually has been, it's always been
00:45:02.760a pretty good place to do business. Even the very fact that you've got a fixed income tax rate
00:45:08.940is a great attraction to people. They know exactly where they stand. But notwithstanding the fact
00:45:16.800that they put a couple of pastors in jail, my recollection of life under COVID was that
00:45:23.780Of all the places in Canada where you wanted to be, while that was going on,
00:45:30.120Alberta was probably the best place to be.
00:45:32.960And just look at the migration figures from the Stats Canada, record migration every month.
00:45:36.940So the message is getting out, the message is being listened to,
00:45:39.940and we're, you know, we're a deluge of newcomers.