Western Standard - September 02, 2021


The Pipeline： Week 3 Election Madness and Self Balancing Budgets


Episode Stats

Length

34 minutes

Words per Minute

156.8618

Word Count

5,427

Sentence Count

331

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

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

In this episode of The Pipeline, Derek Fildebrandt and co-host Corey Morgan talk about the race in Alberta s Banff and Airdrie riding between Conservative incumbent Blake Richards and the Maverick Party's Tariq Elnida.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 .
00:00:30.000 .
00:01:00.000 .
00:01:30.000 .
00:02:00.000 Thank you.
00:02:30.000 Thank you.
00:03:00.000 Good day. I'm Derek Fildebrandt. Today is September 1st, and you're watching The Pipeline
00:03:13.760 with the Western Standard. I'm joined today by our Alberta political columnist, Corey Morgan.
00:03:19.980 How are you doing, Corey?
00:03:20.980 Very good. Thanks.
00:03:22.660 I'm also joined by a special guest today, Western Standard, British Columbia contributor,
00:03:28.620 Reid Small out in Vancouver. How are you doing, Reid?
00:03:33.980 I'm doing very well, thank you.
00:03:36.720 Dave Naylor is away on vacation today. So, Reid has been doing yeoman's work, helping fill in on the news department.
00:03:46.000 We've been a bit short-staffed, so we appreciate everybody's patience you've shown with us, but we're working hard trying to stay on top of election coverage here.
00:03:53.440 Before we get in, I want to thank all of our current Western Standard members for your continuing support and encourage those of you who are not yet members to go to WesternStandardOnline.com and click on membership. You can try it free for 15 days. See if you'll like it.
00:04:08.700 The Western Standard is bailout free.
00:04:11.500 We refuse to accept Justin Trudeau's media bailout.
00:04:14.400 And we need people to step up to support genuinely free press, private sector media.
00:04:20.700 So we'd be grateful and I think you'd enjoy it if you give it a shot for 15 days.
00:04:26.600 Try your membership.
00:04:27.600 If you don't like it, you can cancel it.
00:04:30.000 So we're going to, we'll get into the show here today.
00:04:32.280 Today we're going to be discussing the curious case of Banff Airdrie, a very curious race
00:04:38.500 shipping up there. Conservative incumbent Blake Richards taking a lot of heat from his right
00:04:44.540 flank with Derek Sloan, the People's Party and the Maverick Party all coming at him.
00:04:50.560 We're going to discuss in that context as well, Maxime Bernier of the People's Party
00:04:56.140 and Jay Hill of the Maverick Party. Words, words between these men, not very friendly
00:05:04.380 right now. And of course, we're going to get into Aaron O'Toole's balanced budget plan,
00:05:10.600 or I should say his plan to have a plan. We're going to get into that.
00:05:15.140 So let's start with Banff and Airdrie. So that's a constituency for those of you not
00:05:20.780 from Alberta. Banff Airdrie is a constituency immediately west of Calgary, stretching all
00:05:25.580 the way to British Columbia. And it goes a little north of Calgary into Airdrie, of course.
00:05:31.560 And there we've got a very interesting race, Blake Richards had some ungodly sum total
00:05:38.700 of the vote in the last election.
00:05:40.440 71.4% I believe.
00:05:41.440 I thought it was more, I thought it was in the 80s.
00:05:43.440 No.
00:05:44.440 71.4?
00:05:45.440 Yeah.
00:05:46.440 Okay.
00:05:47.440 Still a pretty healthy vote.
00:05:48.440 So not too crazy for a conservative in rural Alberta.
00:05:50.440 Okay.
00:05:51.440 So, an absolutely solid lock of a conservative seat.
00:05:55.700 The Conservatives could run Satan himself there, and most people would still vote for
00:06:01.740 the Conservative candidate.
00:06:02.940 Having the blue sign is a big advantage in that constituency, I'd say, but we've got
00:06:08.820 a very interesting race shaping up there.
00:06:11.540 We've got, what's the name of the Maverick candidate?
00:06:14.660 Tariq Elnida.
00:06:15.660 Who you've just interviewed, I think we're going to have that up soon after the show.
00:06:19.220 We'll have that up in a little while, yeah.
00:06:21.060 Yeah, so Tariq, he is the Maverick Party candidate, very interesting, self-described
00:06:26.700 Arab redneck, I've never seen a guy, he's a very unique candidate for the Mavericks
00:06:33.640 there, definitely getting a lot of attention, just the profile of the candidate himself.
00:06:41.080 We've got Nadine Wellwood for the People's Party, she ran last time, that was the People's
00:06:46.260 second best showing in Canada after Maxime Bernier. Still wasn't too high, but it was
00:06:52.600 their best showing outside of that riding. And then Derek Sloan. The election was called
00:07:00.160 and Derek Sloan has vacated his seat in Eastern Ontario and said he's running to make Alberta
00:07:07.160 great again in Banff Airdrie. Interesting race, Corey. Try to help us make some sense of this
00:07:16.280 mess. Yeah, well, I mean, I think all of these alternative parties, of course, you really want
00:07:20.440 to target an area where the biggest defense against anything you're going to run is that
00:07:24.360 there's going to be vote splitting. And a person can very clearly point to, I mean, the liberals,
00:07:29.660 the NDP rarely break 10% in that riding. So you don't have to worry about vote splits there. You
00:07:35.400 could run five conservative candidates, you're still not going to get a liberal or an NDP person
00:07:39.940 in there. So they've really all focused on that. Now we've got that splitting going on. So yeah,
00:07:45.760 each has their little bit of turf and they're kind of unique within the conservative movement. I
00:07:49.040 mean, Bernier is really playing to the smaller government, personal freedoms, you know, the
00:07:53.720 libertarian approach. Derek Sloan, unapologetically socially conservative. I mean, he's got a church
00:07:59.880 based support going on out there. He's been parachuted from Ontario, though, and I don't
00:08:03.840 think he's going to be very well received. Tariq is running for the Maverick party and he's a
00:08:09.760 strong, bright character, you know, knows the issues. He's coming from the regionalist point
00:08:14.300 of view with Jay Hill. And yes, we have Nadine Wellwood in there who's, this is her second run
00:08:20.860 at it again, another smart, well-spoken candidate, knows the issues. These aren't just
00:08:24.680 names on ballot. They're all out there. They're campaigning hard and heavily and the leaders are
00:08:28.700 now on the ground and getting pretty hot and bothered with each other as this campaign
00:08:34.120 progresses. So it's quite interesting to watch and a writing that normally would just be
00:08:37.300 a boring lock. Well, unfortunately, I think it's probably still going to be a lock, probably
00:08:44.660 just a little less of a boring lock. I mean, it's just hard for anyone who does not have
00:08:50.140 the conservative name beside them on the ballot to be able to win in Alberta. Albertans, I
00:08:55.480 think are more conservative in the rest of the country on aggregate. But, you know, there's
00:09:00.080 people equate conservatism with conservative party. And I don't know, I'd be pretty shocked
00:09:07.680 if anything changed there. I just think his insane margin of error might come down. It'd be
00:09:11.800 unlikely, but it's a spot where one of these guys could really make a mark and establish themselves
00:09:15.080 though, and these parties really need to do that right now. Yeah. Reid, do you think there is any
00:09:22.240 chance of anything other than conservative incumbent Blake Richards getting reelected in
00:09:27.360 this writing? I don't think so. I think, as you said, you're going to see more votes shifting
00:09:34.660 towards these alternative parties. I think a common dilemma people face is whether they want
00:09:40.080 to vote strategically, or whether they want to vote purely in line with their values. And I think,
00:09:45.460 you know, the last 18 months in particular, a lot of people have sympathized more from a value
00:09:51.660 perspective with, you know, for example, Maxime Bernier or the Maverick Party, but I still think
00:09:59.380 that it's going to be, there's not enough people that are going to shift in that direction to make
00:10:05.400 a real significant difference. Well, if there is a vote split taking place, it's actually probably
00:10:14.200 between the PPC, the Maverick Party, and Derek Sloan. Well, I like how Bernier said it, you know,
00:10:20.180 Well, I mean, maybe O'Toole swung so far left in emulating the Liberals that there'd be some splitting between O'Toole and the Liberals.
00:10:26.500 But the Liberals were pretty insignificant in that writing.
00:10:29.140 Yeah.
00:10:29.940 Okay, well, we're going to continue on in this vein, kind of in this incestine warfare on the right here. 0.82
00:10:36.420 But before we do, I want to thank one of our sponsors, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.
00:10:42.860 The CCFR is a fantastic group fighting for your right to own, buy, and bear firearms responsibly in Canada.
00:10:50.820 They're actually doing really important work, particularly right now.
00:10:53.880 Today, the Liberals released their platform.
00:10:58.080 And they keep on trying to take away my military-style assault rifles.
00:11:03.540 I don't know.
00:11:05.160 I don't recall buying any military rifles or assault rifles, but they're coming for them.
00:11:09.300 They're now promising extra crackdown.
00:11:15.300 They have this buyback program and essentially nobody has taken the government up on it.
00:11:19.300 I got my letter in the mail that says, Derek, your guns are now illegal.
00:11:24.300 And I took it and wiped my arse with it, as I think most people did.
00:11:30.300 Is that a good image?
00:11:34.300 Not really.
00:11:36.300 But, you know, you're complaining of stomach upset, so I'm just getting all sorts of...
00:11:39.940 Yeah.
00:11:41.320 You know, so the CCFR, they're doing great work right now, doing advocacy work.
00:11:47.360 I think the Liberals are probably a lost cause when it comes to gun rights.
00:11:51.020 They're doing what they can within the Conservatives.
00:11:54.180 The Conservative platform on firearms is better than the rest of their platform.
00:11:59.620 They're not bad.
00:12:00.100 They've taken a bit of a good defensive stance for us there, but still.
00:12:03.560 It's not solid, but it's at least significantly distinguishable from the liberal platform.
00:12:11.200 They talk about undoing this reclassification, arbitrary reclassification of firearms
00:12:16.840 that just banned guns randomly because the liberals think they look scary.
00:12:24.700 Banned all sorts of funny things like the Panzerfaust anti-tank guns.
00:12:33.560 I didn't know I could buy one before.
00:12:37.400 That's what I'm upset about, is that I didn't buy my Panzerfaust before they outlawed it.
00:12:41.560 That would be great for clearing the snow off the driveway.
00:12:44.560 Oh, wonderful.
00:12:45.560 So anyway, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights is doing great work, breaking down
00:12:51.260 the parties' platforms on this stuff, lobbying parties to be as un-terrible as possible,
00:12:57.520 and they're quite effective.
00:12:58.600 So check them out at firearmrights.ca.
00:13:01.320 why join to learn more about why you should become a member of the CCFR, the Canadian Coalition for
00:13:06.760 Firearm Rights. Okay, speaking of people who like guns, Maxime Bernier and Jay Hill. So we had,
00:13:18.240 you know, we're just talking about banfare degree. It's kind of a microcosm of things. It's
00:13:21.040 particularly crazy because they've got Derek Sloan in the mix as well. But Bernier and Hill,
00:13:26.120 They are not on the best of terms right now.
00:13:31.340 Maxime Bernier, actually, you did the interview with Maxime Bernier in the studio here.
00:13:36.120 And he had some words. Why don't you tell us about these words?
00:13:40.000 Well, yeah, he referred to Jay Hill and the Maverick Party as being the Muppets of the Conservative Party of Canada.
00:13:49.540 And just wasn't very kind about that run.
00:13:52.400 You know, and Jay Hill was actually Bernier's campaign chair in the past, I believe, back in 2019.
00:13:57.600 So they were close.
00:13:59.180 There's certainly been a rift between them now.
00:14:02.040 And they both feel, I guess, entitled to really make a full go of that riding.
00:14:05.700 But neither of them clearly is going to back off.
00:14:07.700 So the war of words is just escalating.
00:14:10.220 Yeah, it's odd.
00:14:13.580 Bernier had, you know, I like Max.
00:14:15.960 I supported when he ran for a conservative leader.
00:14:18.300 I've, you know, I share a lot of his values.
00:14:21.500 things, but he seemed a little off on a few things. He did accuse the Maverick party of
00:14:26.960 supporting mandatory vaccination. And that one had me scratching my head. I know our
00:14:34.260 Dave Naylor, our news editor, he called Jay Hill, asked for some response to this stuff.
00:14:39.660 And he was pretty categorical that, no, the Maverick party does not support mandatory
00:14:45.560 vaccination. I don't know, Reid, does it?
00:14:49.540 Mad Max is maybe a force of nature when going after opponents to his left, the Liberals and the Conservatives and the NDP.
00:15:05.280 But why do you think Max would be saying stuff like this about the Maverick Party, which is ideologically pretty similar, is obviously more regionally based?
00:15:15.640 i think it's uh you know it sums up our current time pretty well you know the most people that
00:15:24.420 should be ideologically aligned are now at each other's throats um so it's it's not surprising
00:15:30.280 to me what is surprising is that he didn't exactly come correct with his facts and uh
00:15:35.880 i mean i i i was surprised when i heard that because i had never heard any anyone in the
00:15:41.360 maverick party mention uh support for mandatory vaccinations or or mention anything about being
00:15:47.440 in favor of strict lockdowns or anything like that so um the fact that you know people who
00:15:55.340 should be like-minded are at each other's throats is not surprising but what is surprising is that
00:15:59.980 he just obviously didn't do his homework on that or or let emotion get the better of him in that
00:16:04.980 moment and just threw that out there without really knowing.
00:16:13.680 Corey, I'd be shocked if either the People's Party or Maverick won any seats in the West
00:16:20.020 this election.
00:16:20.840 I mean, I suppose Max has got an outside chance in his own seat in Beauce and Quebec, but
00:16:25.360 I'd be pretty shocked if either Maverick or PPC managed to successfully win seats out
00:16:31.020 here.
00:16:31.280 I think they're going to get a fair number of votes combined, but I'd be surprised if
00:16:34.820 win seats um what do you think is driving this kind of enmity between between the two i think i
00:16:42.100 mean they're fighting for the same base they're fighting for the same people they've got some
00:16:46.100 differences but they've got to create some wedges to try and draw from that one pool they do know
00:16:52.180 that i mean they strategically they realize that they're just going to dice this three ways
00:16:55.940 if somebody doesn't come out so they're getting a little uh rough in their play with it i mean
00:17:01.380 If you think of the base of people, and they've got some pretty solid bases they can tap into.
00:17:06.500 I mean, there are some people who are very dead set against getting vaccinated, set against vaccine passports, restrictions.
00:17:13.740 And the PPC has been very effective in reaching out to those groups of people and drawing them in.
00:17:19.060 Meanwhile, we've got some people who are very dedicated to regionalism or even soft secessionism.
00:17:23.460 And the Maverick Party has been grabbing that chunk out of the CPC because they've been very weak with the carbon tax and in standing up for Alberta.
00:17:31.380 If those two groups were actually combined into one vote,
00:17:34.160 that might be a real significant chunk
00:17:36.360 bitten out of Richard's support.
00:17:38.900 Again, enough to disrupt him and cost him a seat?
00:17:41.140 Probably not.
00:17:42.220 But it's really not going to look as significant
00:17:44.120 if these two or three conservatives really duke it out
00:17:47.140 and keep splitting that discontent conservative vote.
00:17:50.060 Yeah.
00:17:52.520 All right.
00:17:54.760 We're going to go to O'Toole on the budget,
00:17:56.300 but before we do,
00:17:57.360 I want to thank another sponsor, Resistance Coffee.
00:18:00.260 Actually, I always put this straight to Corey, since Corey is the resistance coffee drinker.
00:18:05.320 Yes, well, you can tell my hands are always shaking from the coffee and I drink.
00:18:08.940 Though they have the Empty Promises decaf, which I should actually indulge in more,
00:18:13.380 so I won't be quite so well.
00:18:14.420 Corey Morgan decaf, so it's still strong.
00:18:16.860 Yes, yes, still strong.
00:18:18.780 But maybe I'll be a little less nasty on Twitter if I wind down on the caffeine a little bit,
00:18:23.560 but I don't really want to be.
00:18:24.600 But these guys are great.
00:18:25.540 Yeah, I mean, it's a non-woke company.
00:18:27.260 You know, it's nice to see the counter-woke coffee company out there not trying to virtue signal.
00:18:33.440 Well, I guess maybe they are, but they're doing it on the other end of the spectrum.
00:18:36.180 They're giving 10% of any of your purchases to causes to stand up for your rights, like the JCCF, which does have John Care Pay back at the head and working really hard.
00:18:46.680 Those guys are busy as all get out standing up for the rights of Canadians right now.
00:18:50.440 They give 10% of your purchase towards that.
00:18:52.700 They got some fantastic coffee they ship right to your door.
00:18:55.080 Or if you order over a certain amount, we know because we ordered enough.
00:18:58.460 You get free shipping, it's quick, it's within a couple days, it's good coffee.
00:19:02.540 And if it's your first order, you put Western Standard all in one word in the promo code
00:19:07.520 and you'll get another 10% off.
00:19:08.840 So 10% goes towards a good cause, 10% comes off the price, you get good coffee, you'll
00:19:13.960 keep ordering from them, I assure you.
00:19:16.400 Sounds like a plan.
00:19:19.200 Alright, so viewers will recall, right at the beginning of the election, I think first
00:19:25.080 day of the election, first full day of the election, at least, Aaron O'Toole released
00:19:28.900 the full conservative platform. In it, there was a promise to balance the budget over a
00:19:33.720 decade, and he said, just hold on. We're going to have the costing for you. We're going
00:19:38.960 to tell you how we're going to do it. And yesterday, well, Aaron O'Toole did release
00:19:45.740 some words, 225 words, which was a roundabout way of saying, well, if you elect us, we will
00:19:56.820 then create a plan that plans to balance the budget. So they have a plan for a plan to
00:20:03.180 balance the budget. Absolutely zero numbers. I have never seen in the history of the Conservative
00:20:10.200 Party of Canada under Stephen Harper, under Andrew Scheer, provincially, you know, you
00:20:14.920 you see Doug Ford, Jason Kinney,
00:20:16.720 even if their numbers are a little bit questionable at times,
00:20:20.000 they at least release some semi-plausible numbers
00:20:23.240 about how they're gonna add up all the cost
00:20:25.500 of their platform commitments,
00:20:27.200 how that's gonna fit into the budget
00:20:28.960 and how that will balance the budget
00:20:30.740 theoretically over time.
00:20:33.640 Aaron O'Toole will do us no such courtesy.
00:20:37.360 He's just said, trust me,
00:20:38.800 if you elect me for three majority consecutive
00:20:41.540 back-to-back-to-back governments,
00:20:44.260 I will have a plan to balance the budget.
00:20:47.500 Corey, should we take this seriously at all?
00:20:51.060 I think he might wanna go for it,
00:20:52.280 but the thing is right now,
00:20:53.840 if he puts any kind of cost of plan together,
00:20:56.240 one thing that none of the major party leaders
00:20:57.920 want to admit, if you're actually serious
00:20:59.940 about balancing the budget,
00:21:01.180 is you're gonna have to use the C word.
00:21:03.000 And not the C word some people might be thinking of,
00:21:05.180 I'm talking about cut.
00:21:07.020 Don't add a letter to that.
00:21:08.640 And that is something that they don't want to get into,
00:21:13.380 then that gives a target. If there's any area that he's going to reduce spending, the liberals
00:21:17.480 are going to go and they're going to fearmonger with whatever that group is that the spending
00:21:20.760 reductions are going into. So he's put out, yeah, as you said, a release that has, you
00:21:25.100 know, five statements of fluff that are talking roundabout way for doing it, but they will
00:21:30.020 not get into the nuts and bolts of what actually will have to be done if they seriously actually
00:21:33.720 want to balance that budget. Yeah, it seems to me that he is going to, if he was to win,
00:21:39.740 and he'd have to lie one way or another.
00:21:41.280 Either he's going to lie and not balance the budget,
00:21:44.340 or he's going to have to lie and make spending cuts,
00:21:47.780 significant spending cuts to balance the budget.
00:21:50.220 What he's got now has got a 0% chance.
00:21:52.540 And also, I suppose he'll never be held accountable for it,
00:21:55.440 because he would need three majority consecutive back-to-back-to-back governments.
00:22:01.020 And as I've said before, the last conservative leader to do that
00:22:03.600 was Sir John M. MacDonald in the 19th century.
00:22:07.200 So I'm not holding my breath that he'd even have the chance to do it.
00:22:11.300 Reid, do you think this is actually going to be a problem for O'Toole,
00:22:18.220 or do you think conservative voters are going to just give him the benefit of the doubt
00:22:23.160 and say, well, it's not as bad as Trudeau, I suppose?
00:22:26.960 I think some people will do that.
00:22:30.080 Another thing, too, is he said that he's going to balance the budget
00:22:32.920 without uh without cuts to public services as well um but as you guys said in the budget
00:22:41.000 as as you guys said before um you know there's really no real data to look at nothing to
00:22:49.400 to really showcase how he plans on doing it um so will will will some people vote for him of
00:22:57.000 course i think most people will vote for uh erin o'toole just because the thought of justin trudeau
00:23:02.360 getting elected again is just too painful of a thought. So yeah, again, I don't really know what
00:23:10.500 to say about that because there's just no, there's really nothing to say. Where's the beef?
00:23:16.940 Yeah, where's the meat? You know, Justin Trudeau is not even promising to theoretically balance
00:23:24.960 the budget, although there's something a bit more honest about that because there is a pretty much
00:23:29.420 There's a 0% chance that Aaron O'Toole will balance the budget.
00:23:32.980 He's not going to get three majority consecutive governments, and no government, no party has
00:23:38.060 ever balanced the budget over three terms.
00:23:40.300 In Canadian history, it's always been done with a promise to do it over a single term.
00:23:46.680 That was Jean Chrétien with his finance minister, Paul Martin, as terrible as they were on many
00:23:50.580 fronts.
00:23:51.580 They were actually pretty good on the budget.
00:23:52.580 They made spending cuts, balanced the budget, and they did it in one term.
00:23:56.760 Stephen Harper, when he got his majority government,
00:24:00.180 he did it in one term,
00:24:01.120 although he created the deficit to begin with.
00:24:03.960 But his plan to balance the budget was done over one term.
00:24:07.840 The problem is that if you're not gonna,
00:24:10.200 at the end of a term, you have to be able to go back
00:24:11.920 to the voters and say, okay, that was tough.
00:24:15.100 We tightened our belts, we made some cuts,
00:24:17.240 but here's the result.
00:24:18.140 We balanced the budget.
00:24:19.580 Now reward us for those tough decisions.
00:24:22.360 Well, how are you gonna make tough decisions
00:24:24.260 and three times go back to voters and say,
00:24:26.700 We still haven't got the results.
00:24:28.580 It's not going to work politically, it just doesn't.
00:24:32.000 So today the Liberals released their full platform, as I mentioned earlier.
00:24:37.040 Absolutely bonkers stuff, $70 billion in new spending beyond all the new spending they've
00:24:42.520 already made and is already budgeted to be made.
00:24:45.460 It's bonkers stuff.
00:24:47.420 But I'll say this one little bit of credit for the Liberals.
00:24:51.220 At least they released some numbers.
00:24:53.260 They gave us some numbers.
00:24:54.380 They're bullshit.
00:24:55.500 They're not going to add up.
00:24:56.880 They're never going to stick to it, so don't think for a second that I'm hailing the Liberals
00:25:05.440 for coming up with some concrete plans, but at least they released some BS theoretical
00:25:10.660 numbers to make it add up, whereas O'Toole's is just, you know what, I'm not Justin Trudeau,
00:25:16.940 and trust me, I'm not even going to do you the pretense of giving you some BS numbers.
00:25:23.580 It's wild.
00:25:25.580 All right.
00:25:27.580 Well, on to Trudeau.
00:25:30.580 C-word again.
00:25:32.580 Oh.
00:25:33.580 What's C-word?
00:25:34.580 None.
00:25:35.580 Don't worry about it.
00:25:36.580 Something popped into my head there.
00:25:38.580 Put it back in.
00:25:39.580 Okay.
00:25:40.580 All right.
00:25:43.580 So when Justin Trudeau called an early election here,
00:25:46.580 we all knew it was coming.
00:25:47.580 We could see it coming from a mile away.
00:25:48.580 But the liberals were riding fairly high in the polls.
00:25:50.580 Things have tightened up.
00:25:52.580 The NDP have gone up, largely at the expense of the Liberals.
00:25:55.960 The Conservatives have come up pretty much exclusively at the expense of the Liberals.
00:26:01.580 BBC has come up.
00:26:03.560 It's, again, probably not to the point where it wins seats, maybe outside of Bernier's.
00:26:07.500 But it's, you know, it's hovering 4%, 5%, sometimes even 6%.
00:26:10.580 It's now registering there.
00:26:13.640 But the polls are still much closer now than they were when the election was called.
00:26:20.020 Trudeau's significant lead has evaporated.
00:26:22.460 polls have the conservatives roughly 1%, sometimes 2% ahead of the liberals. Pretty much in the
00:26:29.820 margin of error, but they're consistently on the upper side of that margin of error.
00:26:34.060 Still very far from a majority government at this point, potentially in the position to win a
00:26:41.040 plurality. But right under these chances, I mean, there's still a good chance of a liberal minority,
00:26:46.740 but it appears no chance of a liberal majority if these numbers were to hold up to election day.
00:26:52.180 Corey, do you think Justin Trudeau was regretting having called an early election?
00:26:56.300 I think at least they're regretting the strategy they took, which was really astoundingly bad.
00:27:01.780 I mean, Canadians never like going to the polls.
00:27:03.860 That's nothing new.
00:27:05.020 And when it's an early election, usually, though, they go to the early election.
00:27:08.200 Everybody grumbles and gripes about it.
00:27:09.460 But 10 days later, they've forgotten about that, and they're back into the policies.
00:27:12.320 But Trudeau came into this and then releases his policies halfway through the campaign.
00:27:17.760 You had two and a half weeks of other parties being able to say,
00:27:22.120 you're holding this election for nothing but your own purposes.
00:27:25.000 And he had nothing he could point to to say otherwise.
00:27:27.120 Like, if you're going to call an election,
00:27:28.800 if you're going to dissolve the parliament early,
00:27:30.300 whether minority or majority,
00:27:32.020 usually your strategy is going to be,
00:27:33.320 look, we've got a plan that is so important,
00:27:36.020 so profound that we have to take it to Canadians
00:27:39.360 to get them to give us a mandate on it.
00:27:41.800 The Jim Prentiss strategy.
00:27:43.160 Well, it doesn't always work,
00:27:44.720 but I'm just saying you've got to have something to point to.
00:27:46.640 a reason to say, this is why I'm taking you to the polls.
00:27:50.060 This is what it is.
00:27:51.380 And we're going to talk about it for the next five weeks and please put us back in.
00:27:55.080 But he came into it just basically saying, look at my hair.
00:27:58.320 We're going to have an election.
00:27:59.880 Give me a majority.
00:28:00.720 I'll make the world a better place, but I'm not going to give you specifics as to why.
00:28:04.220 And they've just pummeled him on that for the last two and a half weeks.
00:28:07.060 This is an election about Justin's vanity, an election just to get himself a majority.
00:28:11.560 And Canadians don't see that as a good enough reason in a time of crisis to head to the polls.
00:28:16.640 Reid, it has seemed like Justin Trudeau called an election, but didn't really know why.
00:28:25.140 He didn't have a good reason when he stood in front of the cameras to say,
00:28:28.860 this is why I'm calling an election, other than, well, Canadians need to give a government a mandate
00:28:34.720 to make big decisions right now.
00:28:37.300 There really didn't seem to be any reason for it.
00:28:40.100 The NDP was very comfortably propping up Justin Trudeau on anything,
00:28:44.380 Even on corruption issues that weren't a left-wing, commonality, ideological issue, it was the NDP just didn't want an election and the NDP was supporting the Liberals no matter what happened in Parliament.
00:28:56.740 Do you think Justin Trudeau's had any difficulty, has he had a lot of difficulty in framing a ballot question about why we're voting and what question you should be voting around?
00:29:07.300 Well, I think him calling the election was essentially a Hail Mary, because he knew his popularity was reducing. And I feel like this was sort of a last attempt before things got really bad, because I really do think, you know, three, four months from now, a lot of things are going to come out about Justin Trudeau and some of the decisions that have been made over the past 18 months.
00:29:34.760 and he would have had no no chance of getting reelected so i i think this was essentially a
00:29:43.360 hail mary and it it may have well i mean he's being literally everywhere he goes he's being
00:29:49.300 mobbed by angry protesters and run off the streets so i think he was a little bit late uh in doing so
00:29:56.940 Yeah, I mean, we have an article up today from Lee Harding, our Saskatchewan correspondent.
00:30:06.240 He was interviewing Barry Cooper, a long-time professor at the University of Calgary.
00:30:10.440 No, no, no.
00:30:11.440 He was interviewing a different professor.
00:30:13.440 He had two different articles with professors, that's why I'm a little mixed up.
00:30:16.140 He interviewed, I forget his name, a professor from the University of Manitoba.
00:30:20.600 His theory in this article was that all this stimulus spending, we're now about to have massive inflation.
00:30:30.060 We already have inflation setting in in a significant way, and it's only going to be getting worse.
00:30:35.380 Taxes are going to have to go up to pay for this stuff because they're clearly not going to cut spending.
00:30:40.160 That we're probably headed for some very difficult times now.
00:30:42.820 That things are not going to be, we're not going to be building back better.
00:30:46.320 Things are probably going to be a lot worse on the other side of this for some time to come.
00:30:49.360 And that, so his theory was that Justin Trudeau wanted to get ahead of that bad news, called
00:30:54.960 the election to have it done now, so that when, you know, you're not voting in a year
00:31:01.320 from now when things are probably tougher.
00:31:02.920 Do you think there's much to that?
00:31:04.600 There definitely is.
00:31:05.600 I mean, that's part of why I think they're just spending or promising spending with wild
00:31:10.120 abandon.
00:31:11.120 They feel like they've got nothing to lose at this point.
00:31:12.520 They, I mean, there's people, I mean, Justin might not be the biggest, you know, luminary
00:31:16.540 in the bunch, but there are some smart liberals back there, and they know that there's an
00:31:19.880 economic freight train coming down the tunnel, and you can't keep borrowing like this without
00:31:24.640 consequences coming. So if you could refresh that mandate and weather that storm with four
00:31:29.220 years of a majority, they were willing to dive in and try and get it, but they might
00:31:32.520 not have done the right choice here. I figure it's correct. Well, we want to thank you all
00:31:37.940 for joining us today. We also want to especially thank our members. Oh, sorry, Reed. No, no,
00:31:45.100 there was a there's a delay so um yeah i was just gonna say uh regarding justin trudeau i i think
00:31:51.620 his only chance at getting re-elected is to focus on the emotion uh the cultural emotion surrounding
00:31:56.840 covid and climate change um because you can kind of tell by his tactics recently he's really he's
00:32:04.200 pitting people against each other and he's really focusing on this us versus them uh narrative and
00:32:11.300 if he can create enough emotion and enough division uh and hatred in society um then i think
00:32:16.980 he'll be able to sort of rally his side get them emotional enough emotional enough that uh they're
00:32:23.780 not really analyzing what he's saying they're just like yeah you know it's it's about we've got to go
00:32:31.060 after you know the unvaccinated versus the vaccinated um it's i think that's what we're
00:32:36.260 we're going to see him focusing on, and I think that's the big thing over the next couple weeks.
00:32:43.280 We're going to have to, we need to do a segment on where did all the pro-choicers go? Where did
00:32:49.140 all these people go who say, my body, my choice, and the government's got no right to regulate it?
00:32:54.080 With the very rare exception of people like Corey, they've disappeared. They've just gone
00:32:59.640 completely dark. Justin Trudeau, a vowed champion of right to choose what to do with your body,
00:33:06.260 has now become one of the most viciously authoritarian leaders
00:33:09.340 when it comes to telling us what we can do with our bodies.
00:33:11.880 Quite something.
00:33:12.620 I think that's a segment worth doing on itself.
00:33:16.780 Well, I want to thank all of you for watching and all of our members.
00:33:19.800 If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard,
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00:33:36.260 I'm about to burp, so I think we need to end the show here before we have any uninvited
00:33:49.340 sound effects.
00:33:50.340 So, Reid, thank you very much for joining us today from beautiful Vancouver.
00:33:54.540 And Corey, thank you for putting up with pre-recording burps.
00:33:58.600 We need a studio with windows that can open.
00:34:00.860 I'm too cheap.
00:34:01.860 Not happening.
00:34:02.860 Thanks for having me.
00:34:03.860 Thank you very much.
00:34:04.860 God bless.
00:34:05.860 Thank you.