The Western Standard's new columnist, Nigel Henniford, joins Derek Fildebrand and co-host Cory Morgan to discuss the return of Triggered and the Handshakegate scandal. Plus, why Canada should be exporting natural gas to Europe.
00:03:16.960We've got some interesting topics today.
00:03:21.000You know, we've been saying it for a while,
00:03:22.820that, you know, Europe, Germany in particular, but Europe in general, is captive to the real0.65
00:03:33.240cudgel that Russia holds over it, which is natural gas. Europeans will freeze without natural gas.
00:03:38.280A lot of us have been talking, not just in the Western Standard, but just anyone with common
00:03:42.580sense saying, well, why doesn't Canada, which is a natural gas superpower, export to Europe? And
00:03:49.100And we had the German Chancellor in Canada just yesterday, and he was quite explicit that he wants to see Canada exporting liquefied natural and national gas to Europe.
00:04:05.400And Justin Trudeau just says, no, no, no, you're going to keep getting it from the Russians or you're going to freeze in the dark.
00:04:11.620So we're going to talk about that. As well, we're going to talk about a very, very serious scandal. Everyone talking about Handshakegate. You see, Pierre Trudeau shook the hand of a guy at a campaign event. And it doesn't matter, there was one of several thousand people. This guy, the media say, is a bad guy. And therefore, Pierre Poliver is a racist and sexist and misogynist and Islamophobe, whatever these things are.
00:04:41.620The media have absolutely had a meltdown over Handshake Gate.
00:04:45.440We're going to talk about what the hell this controversy is.
00:04:48.220Is it a real controversy? Spoiler, it's not.
00:04:51.480And what's it saying about the state of the media and the more leftward political parties right now
00:04:57.220as they absolutely wring their hands over Handshake Gate.
00:05:00.480Before we get into it, though, I want to thank my favorite sponsor, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.
00:05:05.780I've been a member of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association for... I can't even speak today.
00:05:10.060I've been a member of the CSSA for over a decade because I trust them with my membership duties to protect my rights as a law-abiding firearms owner in Canada.
00:05:20.240Without the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, the federal government would have seized our lawful firearms long ago.
00:05:28.900They're now, the federal government has shut down the ability to import handguns into Canada.
00:05:34.120Thank God I may have theoretically, but not confirmed, bought a lot of handguns right after I announced that they're going to bring in the bill to do so.
00:05:41.860They have now, without even passing legislation, using some regulatory loophole they used to ban us from having free trade and cheese,
00:05:49.220used that to stop us from bringing new lawful firearms into Canada so that only the criminals can have handguns in Canada.
00:05:56.520And the CSSA is on the front lines of this, making sure not just that the politicians are as educated as they can hopefully make them,
00:06:04.120But making sure that the public is educated, that the public understands as much as we reasonably can, that the government can't solve crime by taking guns out of the hands of registered, lawful and licensed firearms owners.
00:06:17.080You're not a member of the CSSA yet? You should be. Go to cssa-clia.org and become a member right now.
00:06:25.100It's worth every penny. Without them, you'd already not have any right to lawfully own firearms in Canada.
00:06:32.080So, hey, soon enough, maybe I'll just be a criminal and I'll just have to own my guns illegally.
00:06:37.360I think we'll all be that way soon enough.
00:06:39.380But thankfully, we've got groups like the CSSA that are standing on guard for thee.
00:06:48.740We've been talking for a very, very long time now about building energy infrastructure pipelines to get Western oil and gas from here to there, to the East Coast,
00:07:01.500that we could export to European and African markets. We had Energy East, and that was,
00:07:09.820they pulled the pin on it themselves because the federal government destroyed any business case
00:07:13.900for it. Now we had Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, and this is not a very conservative
00:07:22.780guy. He's a social democrat in a coalition with the Green Party. And I tell you, you think our
00:07:27.020Greens are crazy. You should see the German Greens. This is literally the original Green1.00
00:07:30.460party in the country. These guys make Elizabeth May look like Stephen Harper. They're absolutely
00:07:36.540nuts. And even that government is saying, we need Canadian liquefied natural gas.
00:07:43.020Justin Trudeau says, no, there's no business case for it.
00:07:46.620And I say, if there is no business case, then it is because of the policies and the actions
00:07:54.140of the Canadian federal government. Under the Harper administration, there was every incentive,
00:08:01.100every encouragement for Western producers to drill for oil, drill for natural gas,
00:08:08.300to build the pipelines that it took to get to market. As soon as the present liberal government
00:08:14.140came into office, the first thing they did was scrap the Northern Gateway gas pipeline
00:08:21.660that would have taken natural gas from Alberta, northeastern BC, to the coast for sale offshore.
00:08:29.740It was fully permitted and ready to go. It was just cancelled. The second thing they did was to
00:08:36.140review Energy East. That was TransCanada's pipeline to take gas in the other direction.
00:08:41.820And what did they do? They basically ragged it to death with regulations.0.53
00:18:03.360And then the lefties alleges a lot of much worse things
00:18:06.860And I don't know if those things are true or not. I have a hard time believing a lot of what they say.
00:18:12.120But let's just assume for a second here, he is a really bad guy. He's a real racist.
00:18:18.840Well, he shook Poliev's hand. There's a picture of him shaking his hand.
00:18:23.680And the media blew up. Press Progress, a Marxist propaganda site, went nuts about this.
00:18:31.360Global News has gone nuts about this. Most of the mainstream media has gone absolutely nuts of this.
00:18:36.860Um, Corey, do you think there's actually a real story here?
00:18:41.180Not at all. It's, it's, uh, purely media created BS. And, and, uh, I don't know. I'm so sick of
00:18:48.880the legacy media. You know what, when they overreach and they embarrass themselves like
00:18:51.980this, cause they really have, I, I, your, your average common sense Canadian, I'm sure they even
00:18:56.260know. I mean, if they, if they don't like Polyev or they think this man is, or he's realized it's
00:19:00.840a guy shaking a hand. How's he supposed to know? None of us knew who this guy was he shook a hand
00:19:05.240with. And to hold that against him is just beyond the pale. And, you know, it's poor media. I mean,
00:19:13.280that was written as a news with Rachel Gilmore. So, you know, behind the man who shook Paulyov's
00:19:18.480hand. I mean, that was the title for this thing. Where are you guys going? And that's when I
00:19:23.140responded to her and showed a picture of Trudeau with a close-up picture smiling next to Mr. Lowe,
00:19:29.960who was a, Terry Lowe, who was a, not Terry Lowe, either way, he was a notorious pedophile who got0.58
00:19:35.440convicted in Alberta. Oh, I remember this, yes. And said, do you want to carry on with this game?
00:19:40.920That makes Justin Trudeau a pedophile then, right? Yeah, and of course it doesn't. I got all sorts of
00:19:44.640beefs with Trudeau. I'm just showing the ridiculousness. If you really want to go down
00:19:48.460this rabbit hole and play this game on where every association is going to be smeared on the other
00:19:52.940person, let's play with your buddy Trudeau and do that. And of course, she wasn't impressed with
00:19:57.300that. But it's it's just petty and ridiculous. And I'm getting
00:20:01.300sick of it. I think a lot of Canadians are all right. You're
00:20:04.320so right. A lot of Americans too. It's not like this is a
00:20:07.380problem that's exclusive to north of the border. But you know,
00:20:13.200having put 34 years into the legacy media, in one form or
00:20:18.360another, it really saddens me that this has become so common.
00:20:23.820And the reason it saddens me, now that I'm in independent media, these are our competition.
00:20:29.740I suppose we shouldn't be too sad if they make a mess of things.
00:20:34.760But if you care about democracy, if you care about good government, then you have to have people watching what politicians are doing.
00:20:47.160and if they do it in a way that is unfair patently ridiculous as this is you do not have to be
00:20:56.840a partisan for one side or the other to say well at a big rally somebody comes up and shakes your
00:21:04.320hand and a picture is taken there is no commitment in that there is no nothing to explain and if you
00:21:10.780pretend that there is well you're not helping you're just undermining taking the bricks out
00:21:19.020from the platform from which you speak and which from frankly we need you to speak if the system
00:21:26.280is going to work so you know the media uh as it is today driven by clicks and no one's immune from
00:21:35.560that even the western standard we need people to read our content watch our videos it's the
00:21:40.640lifeblood of media. The downside is sometimes you could become a little too slavish to it,
00:21:46.240that you're willing to do anything to get to it. You know, Corey's been around here and he's seen
00:21:50.860me say no to headlines or stories that we think are going to get a lot of clicks, but I just don't
00:21:55.520think are correct newsworthy stories. And we've nixed them, even though that would be maybe a bad
00:22:00.400business decision. We saw it as appropriate editorial decision. And I think we're just not
00:22:05.540seeing that kind of responsibility in newsrooms now. And you've been in this position in the
00:22:15.760legacy media. I mean, it's difficult to say no to a salacious story that's maybe just not actually
00:22:22.460real news, though, right? Well, it is, but sometimes you have to. And even, like, what's
00:22:29.620salacious i mean this isn't even salacious it's just it's this is just foolish anybody could look
00:22:36.520at that and say well i don't know i don't just look like they know each other they shook hands
00:22:40.620they were 3,500 other people behind him or whatever it was in nova scotia there like when
00:22:46.160even people who don't follow news and see how stupid a story is then you really have done a
00:22:51.160stupid story but then the media they're seeming to they actually seem a bit sheepish about it now
00:22:56.440I think they're doubling down. They're doubling down because they know they're wrong rather than say, you know what? We flubbed this one. Maybe we are just being a bit too slavish to try and get clicks. You know what? Maybe we flubbed this one. They've got they have doubled down saying this is absolutely important. He deserves answers.
00:23:17.280uh then there's the the politicians on the other side now give a little bit more grace there yes
00:23:24.380i am saying give a little more leniency to sing and trudeau but hear me out hear me out first
00:23:30.000this is just what they do politicians are programmed to attack the politicians on the0.94
00:23:36.020other side no matter what it's what they do the odd rare times say the liberals are correct on
00:23:41.660something conservatives attack them anyway often very often there's just not a lot of charity given
00:23:47.140but sometimes it can rise to a particular level of hypocrisy. So let's talk about the liberals
00:23:52.560and the NDP here. We're going to come to the liberals in a bit, but let's talk about NDP
00:23:57.260leader Jagmeet Singh. Jagmeet Singh, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but I was reading
00:24:02.800it today as I was writing a column on this. You know, he was saying, Poliver knows who he is.
00:24:09.240He needs to denounce him. If he doesn't, he is winking with white supremacy. So Singh says,
00:24:15.900If you shake someone's hand, you're responsible for what they say, unless you very particularly denounce them, even though this is like a nobody.
00:24:25.540Funny thing, though, because in 2015, Jagmeet Singh, he went all the way down to San Francisco from Ontario, Brampton, Ontario, goes all the way to San Francisco, speaking at a Sikh Kalanistani independence rally.
00:24:41.480where you've got guys brandishing swords in a crowd
00:24:44.160and you've got a big, giant poster of a known terrorist
00:27:03.600he hasn't been gaining anybody new. But what I'm looking at with this whole denouncement trend too,
00:27:08.900and it's part of the cancel culture mob, they've got the pitchforks out, they've got them lit,
00:27:12.520it's social media people, it's politicians, it's media, and they're on Polyev's case saying,
00:27:17.020denounce this guy, denounce this guy. If you don't denounce him, you support him.
00:27:19.940That's moving the goalposts again. That's not even just you were shaking hands. Now you are
00:27:24.200obligated to denounce. And I really hope, and so far, that Polyev maintains his ground. He says,
00:27:29.580I don't support racism. That's all he's going to say, case closed. Because you start dancing like
00:27:33.020a monkey for them and that's what they want. Well, I denounced that one. Well, then they're
00:27:36.200going to go through all pictures and find it. Why didn't you denounce that? Oh, I denounce that too.
00:27:39.200You've lost the narrative forever. You're done because they're just going to come. It's never
00:27:42.880enough. He's got to hold his ground because there's a precedent getting set here. And if
00:27:46.820they get away with this, he's going to be that much weaker. So before I come to the liberals,
00:27:50.300I want to talk about this maybe in the broader context of cancel culture and the woke mob on
00:27:57.400social media, that kind of thing. Most conservatives in Canada, in the United States,
00:28:03.860Britain, really around the Anglosphere, when there's any allegation made from the other side
00:28:09.600that you're a racist, you're a sexist, you're a misogynist, an Islamophobe, a homophobe,0.98
00:28:14.260a transphobe, whatever your isomerist or phobe is, conservatives instantly scurry under a rock
00:28:20.960and they cradle, you know, they curl up and they scream, I'm not a racist. I'm not a racist.
00:28:27.000Hey, look, here's my token, insert X group friend. And they kind of go out of their ways. And it's just pathetic. It's grubby and demeaning. And the left wins every time because they're playing their game. They are playing their role in the denouncement game. They're playing the role of the sinner in the church awoke, seeking forgiveness, seeking absolution. And only they can give it. And they'll never give it to you regardless.
00:28:54.660this. Poliev, though, took a very different tack in this. He said what you said there, Corey, you
00:29:01.400know, I don't know the guy. I denounce racism. I don't know the guy at all, whatever. But he also
00:29:07.560said one more thing. And this sentence was left out from a lot of the mainstream media. They only
00:29:12.500used the first sentence, a lot of them at least, used only the first sentence of his statement,
00:29:16.820and his statement was very short. The second statement was something to the effect of,
00:29:20.520just as I cannot be held responsible for the outbursts of racism from the Prime Minister
00:29:26.640because I've shaken his hand. I thought that was just a cutting and defiant way to come at this.
00:29:34.820It just puts it straight back on the left that you guys support the most well-known
00:29:39.340serial blackface wearer on the planet today. Nigel, I'm interested in your perspective on1.00
00:29:47.680because you know you've worked in the prime minister's office for quite a while you're
00:29:50.560involved in the communications as a speechwriter um this is a totally different tactic it's not
00:29:57.200the groveling that you would see from an o'toole kind of conservative or really almost any
00:30:02.960conservative now because conservatives are so afraid of this stuff um what do you think about
00:30:07.200this as a tactic um and an alternative tactic to how most conservatives respond to allegations that
00:30:13.200they're mean we'll see how it works out it needs to work out one day somebody has got to and i
00:30:19.120think this may be the the time that is happening somebody says no um i just reject your premise
00:30:26.000right at the start i don't know the guy i'm not a racist go ask somebody else no i'm not winking at
00:30:31.680it and he can say that because everybody knows that pierre polliver has never done said had a
00:30:40.880racist fault they won't give him any credit but i mean his wife was not born in canada
00:30:47.120uh this is not a guy who thinks in those best i know he's never worn blackface
00:30:51.840uh best we know he's no he never has and uh so he's clean so i think i think he really he's the
00:30:58.240one person one of the people who can really take that tack if he wants to and it appears that he
00:31:02.800does i applaud him for it so when you say it doesn't work anymore guys then it stops
00:31:09.440I, there's been a lot of unfair comparisons of Polyev to Trump. Most of them are pretty
00:31:17.360ridiculous. They're just radically different characters. There's some things a lot of Trump
00:31:22.460I like and some things I don't. But one thing I did like is that, you know, when they throw these
00:31:28.000isms and phobes at him, he was the first guy to weaponize it back at them. He just rejected the
00:31:38.260supremacist and went straight at him and turned it into an offensive weapon. He turned a shield
00:31:43.620into a sword. And I think we're seeing that in maybe a bit more classy way. I think Polyev is
00:31:50.260not quite as bombastic. But Corey, do you think there's success to be had here? Or is this too
00:31:57.940risky? Because the media seem to take what Polyev is saying as, well, maybe he is winking at white
00:32:05.480supremacists. My thoughts, I mean, I'm not so much in trying to turn it around in my view,
00:32:09.460rather than he should just dismiss it, it's done deal and ignore it. I know it seems like that
00:32:14.900they'll keep coming at you. But you know what, you defang them. If you just if you keep giving
00:32:18.460it oxygen, when you throw it back, you're keeping the issue going. And when you you know, he's made
00:32:22.820a statement, he said, I'm not a racist. I don't know this guy. I'm done with it. But he did throw
00:32:26.240it back. You know, I don't I'm not big on two wrongs making it right. Because we're just keeping
00:33:22.620But in this, you had just the whole full weight of the legacy media in Canada come down on them.
00:33:29.460You have the Liberals and the NDP coming down on them.
00:33:32.860I don't know. I think an offensive, you know, a counter-offensive is the right move here, because if you just try and dismiss it, they're not going to let it go.
00:33:41.760You've got to come back hard and demonstrate to people that you're not taking the guff.
00:33:46.360For Pierre, that is exactly the right approach to take.
00:33:49.540Because everybody who has supported Pierre this far would not appreciate, what was it, groveling, sniveling?
00:38:13.040The Western Standard, actually, as of this week,
00:38:15.660is the only Western-based media company in all of Canada, the only one west of Mississauga,
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00:38:45.660The Winnipeg Free Press just shut theirs down this week.
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00:39:48.100uh so incredibly over the last year that's it for today nigel corny great to be here thank
00:39:54.180you very much thank you great debut i thank all of you for joining us and god bless
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