Western Standard - November 07, 2026


THE PIPELINE： What do the US midterms mean for Trump and Canada？

Rempel Takes Aim at the Big Immigration Lobby Why a US Political Shakeup May Not End Tariffs

Episode Stats


Length

46 minutes

Words per minute

193.01

Word count

9,069

Sentence count

377

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

26

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Good evening, it is November 4th.
00:00:27.080 I'm Cory Morgan, a senior columnist with the Western Standard, and this is The Pipeline.
00:00:32.240 Our usual host, our publisher, Derek Fildebrand, is indisposed right now, so you're treated with me.
00:00:38.660 We've got a bit of a different lineup of folks for this today.
00:00:41.640 This is our weekly show, though, where we'll break down some of these top issues going on in the news
00:00:46.720 and offer you our interpretations of it.
00:00:49.080 So on my right is one of our regulars here, though, another senior columnist, Nigel Hannaford.
00:00:55.620 Not many people sit to the right of you, Corey.
00:00:57.320 No, not too many, but it can happen occasionally, even farther right.
00:01:01.080 We've got our deputy news editor, Dave Winnick.
00:01:04.680 How's it going, Corey?
00:01:05.440 Good, good, good to have you in on the pipeline.
00:01:07.300 We don't get you in on this too long.
00:01:08.660 This little skeleton crew here.
00:01:09.840 Yeah, well, no, sir, we have enough opinions and hot air within the three of us to cover this show,
00:01:14.660 even without the usual regulars.
00:01:16.520 I think so.
00:01:17.260 All right, well, let's get right into it.
00:01:18.420 Something I think is kind of on the fun side, though it might have serious consequences.
00:01:22.760 Um, Thomas Lukasik, former Redford era MLA, uh, former halal mortgage specialist, uh, now
00:01:32.300 former forever Canadian advocate in the, uh, uh, referendum campaign, uh, despite him having
00:01:41.420 said over and over again, that he's not going to get into politics or start a political
00:01:45.000 party.
00:01:45.260 It looks like he might be starting a political party.
00:01:47.900 I mean, this was starting in the news department.
00:01:49.560 I'll get you begin, David.
00:01:50.740 What happened here?
00:01:51.500 Well, apparently he put out a survey, which I actually got because I signed up for the Forever Canadian thing to keep an eye on what was going on.
00:01:58.140 And he's asking a whole bunch of questions.
00:01:59.680 I actually took down a couple of them here.
00:02:02.160 One of them he asked is actually, should Forever Canadian get more involved in Alberta politics and furthering Alberta's interest with the federal government?
00:02:08.340 That's the very first question on this survey that he put out there.
00:02:10.960 And I think I have two days left because he just sent me a reminder email earlier today to finish the survey, which I might just do just to see how many questions there are and whatnot because I haven't looked totally.
00:02:18.640 But this is interesting because, as you said, he was getting into politics.
00:02:21.700 He gives a whole bunch of different things that Forever Canadian could do going forward.
00:02:24.840 One of the options was studies and polls on Alberta's place in Canada, policy papers, maybe start a research institute.
00:02:31.400 This is a weird one. Scholarships and essay contests for students.
00:02:34.120 Got to get them young, I guess.
00:02:35.780 And I think another one was debates and partnerships with universities were a bunch of the options he had.
00:02:40.140 So, yeah, it does seem like he still wants to stay in the political arena for the time being.
00:02:44.560 I think it was Gil McGowan from the Alberta Federation of Labour
00:02:47.900 who kind of talked about this and said that he,
00:02:50.300 Lukasik personally told him that he was not going to do anything like this
00:02:53.100 or start a political party with, I guess, the email list
00:02:55.460 he's gotten from everyone signing up for EverCanadian.
00:02:57.360 But I guess it looks like he might just be doing that
00:02:59.900 or something close to that.
00:03:01.740 Well, of course, he's going to deny that.
00:03:03.520 And nothing out of the list you read there actually says,
00:03:07.760 and by the way, the next move is a political party.
00:03:10.900 One of the questions did say, though, as one of the options,
00:03:13.760 to potentially form a political party.
00:03:16.000 It wasn't okay.
00:03:16.560 I missed that in your speed read.
00:03:18.980 But, you know, I guess if you see your neighbor digging a hole
00:03:24.580 and timber arrives and he says he's not building a fence,
00:03:28.240 you think, well, why else would you build a, you know,
00:03:30.740 why else would you order timber and just start digging holes?
00:03:33.180 So a lot of this stuff seems exactly the kind of preparatory work
00:03:36.340 that you would undertake to sort of leverage your existing profile
00:03:41.480 into something more ongoing.
00:03:43.400 And you'd have to be a very generous soul to think, well, no, no, he's not starting a political party.
00:03:51.020 This is all about scholarships for students.
00:03:53.740 Well, and some of the folks on the left are pretty upset with him.
00:03:57.120 Shannon Phillips, a former MLA with NDP, pretty ticked off about it.
00:04:02.500 And Gil McCowan seems a little upset.
00:04:04.660 You know, Corey, I don't know why they would be, because if he starts a political party, he's not going to be drawing from their people.
00:04:09.540 Oh, sure he will.
00:04:10.540 This is Lukasik.
00:04:11.400 he's he he was the red of the red uh he's going to be he's going to be taking more from uh the
00:04:17.160 ucp than he is from i don't believe that he's persona non grata with the ucp people he he's
00:04:24.840 you don't think he'd draw votes just because it's a different no more than uh what does it sound
00:04:29.720 like a conservative organization no more than guthrie who's got the progressive uh uh whatever
00:04:35.480 he's calling it well he couldn't use it because of toria because he couldn't use it so he's kind
00:04:41.480 of he's trying to own that red tory area but lukasic's always been actually even on the left
00:04:46.680 end of the red tories so i mean potentially he could pull some i guess you know there's a lot
00:04:51.080 of people that were ndp supporters too that were most of them were on his the base of his support
00:04:56.680 was np yeah a lot of it so and when we're talking about parties fighting over one or two percent
00:05:02.040 differences in the cities then i guess it would matter which one he pulled more from if he did it
00:05:07.320 okay interesting speculation i would have thought as a former you know he was a he was the conservative
00:05:13.560 party of redford you know yes and progressive conservative of redford that would be people
00:05:18.440 would associate him with that and um people don't associate redford with conservatism too terribly
00:05:24.600 much you don't i don't but you're right though i mean potentially because there's a volatile
00:05:30.760 electorate and if some are sour on the the ucp for one reason or another might see it as another
00:05:35.160 alternative to to put a ballot if you think he's going to pull from the ndp let's give him a hand
00:05:39.000 well that's what i've kind of said along to be the worst idea and to be fair like when i saw him at
00:05:42.760 the rally in calgary and whatnot he likes the spotlight when he was up giving a speech before
00:05:47.320 he introduced carney he likes the spotlight so i wouldn't be surprised if he actually does want to
00:05:51.000 run a political party as a leader of a new political party it would not surprise me in
00:05:54.520 the least well part of his problem is he needs a job uh that's uh you know i wasn't just joking
00:05:59.240 around with the halal mortgage thing that was his last little uh side trade was setting up
00:06:04.280 halal mortgages and and uh premier smith's new legislation i think about a year ago made his
00:06:08.920 company obsolete uh but he he found uh forever canadian to be a very lucrative uh enterprise to
00:06:16.680 get into it certainly would and it's interesting too because i don't know what the whole like
00:06:20.920 support in terms of demographics was for forever canadian but i was just i keep thinking about that
00:06:24.520 rally i went to in calgary right before the referendum this huge rally they said they got i
00:06:27.480 I think he said 7,000 people, a lot of them, I'm going to say 60 and up.
00:06:34.080 It was a lot of what you would say were boomers that were at that rally.
00:06:36.980 And I think a lot of boomers apparently, like Mark Carney, from what I gather from all the polls I've seen and whatnot,
00:06:41.340 I don't know so much about the NDP, how they're pulling in that demographic in Alberta,
00:06:44.880 but he definitely has a lot of supporters that historically are probably, and federally, are definitely liberals, I would say.
00:06:51.540 Well, you know, I think one of the things that Mr. Carney has going for him there is he actually looks like a prime minister.
00:06:57.480 You know, if you were making a show and you said to Central Casting, send me down a bunch
00:07:02.840 of guys, he's got the look, you know, and he speaks those warm, reassuring terms that
00:07:11.640 defy analysis, but nevertheless sound good, and all the old ladies, you know, stroke their
00:07:18.720 cats and smile provingly at the television.
00:07:21.860 you know there's a there's a demographic there that um doesn't actually really think much about
00:07:28.820 politics but knows what it likes and he fits fits him with that very well agenda yeah definitely
00:07:33.940 that's the bill so bill the kazakh would really fit i mean it's it's typically eastern european
00:07:39.540 i don't know interesting he's he was very aggressive with forever canadian and making
00:07:44.420 sure to data mine which is also good advocacy it doesn't mean you're starting a political party
00:07:48.660 But if that's your goal, you certainly want that.
00:07:51.180 I mean, some people were commenting on that.
00:07:52.960 If you wanted to get a lawn sign for your place, it was quite mandated, though.
00:07:57.540 You give all of your information to fill out before you're going to get that.
00:08:01.040 Or if you're attending an event, he wants it all.
00:08:04.260 And that can be flipped into, or an advocacy group or something else from there.
00:08:09.300 It could be just smart politics.
00:08:10.960 You're building a database, make use of it.
00:08:13.760 But if it turns out.
00:08:15.360 He's gone into merchandising, too, because he's had stuff on his website
00:08:18.060 about a license plate frames or whatnot there were basically anti-daniel smith strong and free
00:08:23.820 that whole slogan now he's doing ones that i think it's basically i think it was forever canadian on
00:08:26.940 them yeah business plates so he's on the merchandising side anyway already in his website
00:08:30.780 it's uh well it's strong you need a source exactly yeah well strong and free is a provincial motto
00:08:37.100 not premier smith so if he wants to keep being anti-alberton i'll see how that works out for him
00:08:42.540 but it's interesting you see there's part of the issue though when we're seeing this
00:08:46.300 what could be you know an election with a pizza parliament sort of thing almost going on with a
00:08:50.460 whole bunch of parties coming in uh guthrie and and perhaps lukasic and others kind of reflects
00:08:56.700 a little bit of uh the the nature of mr lukasic as well though it's not like he could join with
00:09:00.700 guthrie or join with the ndp because he's not been one who plays well with others traditionally
00:09:06.380 which doesn't make for good political leadership well you know if he's got a massive database of
00:09:10.940 hundreds of thousands of names, email addresses and phone numbers, willingness to take loan
00:09:16.720 signs, he has probably a good excuse for saying, I think I'm going to go alone on this.
00:09:22.720 Why would he give, what has Mr. Guthrie got?
00:09:26.060 With all due respect to the man, I don't know him, but I mean, he's got like two members 0.95
00:09:30.400 and both of them are floor crossers, including himself, so. 0.99
00:09:33.480 He doesn't even have that.
00:09:34.720 The other one went back to the UCP.
00:09:37.620 Like what has he actually got to bargain with?
00:09:39.880 I mean, a bit Trumpy in here, but what do you, you know, what cards have you got here?
00:09:43.600 Well, I've got all these names and you, sir, you know, well, I got, I got, I got 700 votes
00:09:49.400 in the Calvary Shoal by-election.
00:09:51.480 It's an asset.
00:09:52.460 I mean, and he had his forever Canadian old motor on that he toured and he just put a
00:09:57.480 post up, which of course I had to put up on my Facebook page and mock, uh, that I called
00:10:01.480 the purring mobile because of that, uh, weird, creepy video he did while he was laying on
00:10:05.600 his side, like a school girl talking about purring and still get the Williams.
00:10:09.880 i think about that but all the same he was saying oh we're putting it away for the winter but i got
00:10:13.960 exciting plans and it'll be back on the road this spring so i mean he's maybe he's dropping some
00:10:19.560 really big hints uh do you think he could maybe actually pull any candidates from other parties
00:10:24.440 like maybe the liberals of the ndp into a forever i guess we call it forever canadian party i could
00:10:29.240 see the liberal end of it you know potentially i mean there was one of the things that the country
00:10:34.120 shaw by election and then that that liberal leader i forget his name you know john something rogue
00:10:38.840 Rogen, that's a Dutch name, having a man with a Dutch wife.
00:10:43.260 I should be better at pronouncing those, but I'm not.
00:10:45.360 But, uh, they actually, for the first time in quite a few years,
00:10:48.880 made almost inroads and almost respectable amount of votes, at least in
00:10:52.360 Shaw, that people might be looking for a closer to center right, Mark Carney
00:10:58.040 type of option rather than the NDP, which is, is, is on the left.
00:11:03.120 So he, he might be looking at a constituency, a target there.
00:11:07.720 Possibly.
00:11:08.280 Yeah.
00:11:08.480 Well, you know, if he pulls from the NDP, good luck to him.
00:11:12.120 But I do find the, you know, the thing that has been on my mind for the last month
00:11:20.900 is how quickly people who say they're conservative
00:11:27.320 will back away from the UCP on a single point of principle.
00:11:33.340 I mean, this is not to say, somebody else can say it, but I mean, this is not to say
00:11:41.720 that Daniel Smith has done everything right from beginning to end.
00:11:45.840 But there has to be a degree of forgiveness.
00:11:51.160 Otherwise, you will find yourself with an NDP government, or you'll find yourself with
00:11:56.380 a forever Canada government, which will do a lot of things that you will not like as
00:12:02.760 a conservative.
00:12:04.300 so uh maybe the people who say well she owes she owes her position as premier to us because
00:12:11.740 we the separatists we voted for her so she owes us yeah that attitude is uh getting tiresome
00:12:18.860 it's most unhelpful and it could lead to an ndp government and then there are the other people
00:12:23.580 who make their decisions on i'll say the price of gas we'll be talking about trump later but
00:12:30.620 When you look at the foundational things that Smith has accomplished, setting up the wealth fund
00:12:42.940 on an entirely different basis, making significant interventions into health, which were
00:12:49.740 unfortunately exactly the same time as they jacked the population up by about 20%, it makes it kind
00:12:55.900 of hard to to to reform anything when the targets are constantly shifting but taking the positions
00:13:02.380 that she's taken with the federal government standing up for all of her these are all good
00:13:07.580 solid foundational things that are to the credit of her government and yet the criticism is well
00:13:15.260 she let us down on separation she owed us and now we're pulling our support i mean these crazy these
00:13:20.220 people are crazy yeah i was going to say that kind of brings me back to lukasik what would he even
00:13:23.580 run on then? Well, it's part of it. Like Mark Carney's, like what United Canada, what exactly
00:13:28.820 would he run on? He built support on a wedge issue that people wanted to take a side on,
00:13:34.160 but it's not, it doesn't have the depth or everything. I mean, it's just as I started my
00:13:37.420 third party organization, which I did as is expected. I opened it, we did our thing,
00:13:43.060 it's closed, now we're going to do the books and file. I'm not turning it into something future,
00:13:47.020 you know, further in the future. But I was astounded when I opened that up and suddenly
00:13:51.400 thousands of inquiries, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, but it was just a single
00:13:57.260 issue sort of thing. It wasn't, and that's all that really Lukasik has. So is that enough to
00:14:02.940 build a party on? Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't ever heard him talk much about like oil and gas
00:14:08.520 or anything like that. Pipelines really recently. He doesn't know that kind of depth.
00:14:11.180 Reprendum, independence, independence all the time. So yeah, I don't know if he'd be like
00:14:14.920 liberal light or what exactly deals. Like you said, red Tory, I guess, but does that really
00:14:18.780 entail now. Whatever seems to work
00:14:21.040 for him tends to be Lukasik's path on
00:14:22.840 things, but we'll see. It's an interesting
00:14:24.740 development. I like seeing some of the
00:14:26.700 scrapping going on on the left, I have to admit.
00:14:28.840 We've got the self-destructive tendencies
00:14:30.360 of the conservatives kind of ripping around the UCP.
00:14:33.080 Well, let's let Shannon Phillips and Gil
00:14:34.820 McCowan and Lukasik
00:14:37.000 go at it for a little on the other side.
00:14:38.720 You should have Gil McCowan on your show.
00:14:40.680 Gil doesn't talk to me.
00:14:43.260 No, once I start calling him
00:14:44.880 Fabio, that was the end of that.
00:14:46.200 for such thick hair he's got very thin skin
00:14:51.260 oh well i earned most of the blocks i've gotten online well we'll watch with interest anyways
00:14:58.480 we're in for a heck of a year i think the premier really i think the cgm she has to try though and
00:15:03.780 bring the party back into focus she's been doing that by getting rid of the the true fruit loops 0.61
00:15:08.860 on the edge which i'll say you know is jeffrey raff and some others uh but not alienating the
00:15:13.960 independence set too hard she's got to be careful there it's still a an active group within the
00:15:18.700 party but i think next year and i think the electorate wise is they don't want to talk
00:15:23.480 about we did the year of the independence it doesn't mean it's gone but let's talk about
00:15:27.280 health care and taxes and economic development immigration i was going to say as well too i think
00:15:33.960 a lot of people in the well conservative side have kind of started to back danielle smith
00:15:38.180 obviously after independence like keith wilson i know has i think jason levine as well i think
00:15:41.400 he's running i think for the ucp board i think well there's and chris scott is as well so there
00:15:46.660 were some pretty overt uh separatists running for the board of the party so she hasn't done a purge
00:15:51.220 she's just saying that's not what we're running on yeah so we'll see it's going to be quite an
00:15:55.540 agm though i got a feeling yeah yes biggest one in history probably yeah probably so well for the
00:16:01.980 whole country i think yeah seven thousand yeah seven thousand i thought there was how many were
00:16:06.520 there last year in edmonton so there's only three thousand or so but red deer i think was six or
00:16:10.720 something the a couple of years ago so holy levels though these things that
00:16:14.380 they never were unimaginable 20 30 years ago soon we'll see all right well let's
00:16:19.000 get into some scene politics south of the border Nigel the midterms were held
00:16:24.100 let's you just open it up what do they mean now what do we got well let's go
00:16:29.800 all right so the president lost control of the of the House of Representatives
00:16:36.640 and of the senate so the assumption has been in the all the intelligent people who comment on
00:16:42.800 these things oh well for two years he's now a lamed up president i take exception to that point
00:16:48.400 of view trump has the full scale of executive orders at his disposal he can veto legislation
00:16:58.960 at any time and although there's a mechanism to undo a veto you need two-thirds of the house to
00:17:04.800 do it so the chances of pulling that off are pretty slim so i think what you're going to find
00:17:13.520 is that mr trump is going to pursue his own domestic agenda just as vigorously but now he's
00:17:20.160 going to have to do it with people trying to impeach him and the people closest to him at the
00:17:25.600 same time but you know what the lawyers will they'll lawyer up they probably got it all all the
00:17:31.760 files in order ready to go because this is not going to be a surprise to anybody
00:17:36.320 and they will carry on so the you can make the argument that it was time for
00:17:46.000 mr trump to be reprimanded by the electorate for some of the things that he said but i would argue
00:17:52.480 not for many of the things that he's done that country has changed in two years
00:17:57.520 the economy is roaring there are a million non-government jobs created
00:18:07.520 the debt's a problem but it was a problem before and it won't be less of a problem
00:18:12.480 if the democrats take charge of it because they have bills to pay
00:18:18.080 the and above all he re-established the rule of law on the border americans said they wanted that
00:18:25.760 back in in 2024 in the november election well he got into office closed the border
00:18:33.760 and repatriated some of the worst of the people who got in when they shouldn't have
00:18:39.040 the crime rate is down murder rate is down like what is them these are significant achievements
00:18:47.040 and they seem to have gone unnoticed because the price of gas is up the price of gas is up
00:18:53.280 because he took a strike at Iran. Well, fair enough. For a president who said he wasn't into
00:18:59.280 wars, that's a very significant move to make. You can discuss that, and you can call the names
00:19:06.000 over that if you wish. Nevertheless, as he himself put it, if it prevents Iran from achieving a
00:19:15.280 nuclear weapon, paying a little more for gas now is probably worth it. So my quick take on the
00:19:23.280 And on the midterms, we saw it coming.
00:19:28.660 Trump will carry on.
00:19:30.540 Well, and I'd read your column that you put in today that kind of covered a lot of that.
00:19:34.200 And for people who don't watch that closely, it is worth noting, yes, he never really bothered himself with worrying about what Congress thinks, even when the Republicans had control of it.
00:19:42.840 He worked through executive order predominantly.
00:19:45.160 One piece of legislation, the big, beautiful bill.
00:19:47.380 Yeah.
00:19:48.240 And aside from that, so, I mean, his practice won't change.
00:19:51.760 He's not going to be seeking more of a mandate from those houses anyways.
00:19:58.940 But there's going to be other distractions now that the Democrats can lead the agenda in those.
00:20:03.640 Oh, totally.
00:20:04.700 No, I was just thinking about a bunch of his support that I was looking at.
00:20:07.460 A lot of people are still mad about the Iran war because a lot of people are saying, well, your whole agenda was America first.
00:20:12.180 How was a war with Iran, putting America first?
00:20:14.140 Because basically you have several generations, like my generation, that have basically their whole lives. 0.65
00:20:18.140 America has been in some conflict in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq.
00:20:21.820 Now around there's like, why, how does this benefit us?
00:20:24.300 Like you said, I think the biggest thing I saw from people that were talking about this in the States
00:20:28.380 was definitely the rising cost of living.
00:20:30.060 That was the big one.
00:20:30.960 And even like you said, Nigel, about the immigration and the border,
00:20:34.060 there's a lot of his base that are saying, not enough.
00:20:36.640 You promised millions of deportations.
00:20:38.380 We haven't got that. 0.70
00:20:39.040 But as you know, the logistics of that are ridiculous.
00:20:40.880 But people just want everything right now, now, now.
00:20:43.740 So I think from what I can gather, it seems some of the people on the right
00:20:46.760 just wanted to send a message on those two things like he's not doing enough quickly enough enough
00:20:51.720 obviously when you have an office with that much power and that like grand of a scale you can't do
00:20:56.760 things overnight for the most part so i really don't know what people wanted but i mean is it
00:21:00.120 surprising because i can't think of any like party in power that doesn't lose the midterms in my life
00:21:06.200 at least like lose like the senate or maybe the house or both i can't think of one that usually
00:21:10.040 doesn't midterms are usually lost by the party that's in power usually it's a little hard it's
00:21:13.800 when people want to send a message but i mean this was pretty brutal i mean you know we've
00:21:17.800 got a democratic governor in texas there's a texan uh you know democratic senator there
00:21:23.880 uh what was the other state uh there was a georgia was one i heard i think as well there
00:21:28.360 was one that hadn't had a democratic senator since the 30s and uh carolina too yeah didn't
00:21:33.240 have one so that's a bit more than just a bit of a midterm correction that that's that's some
00:21:37.640 people saying we want to shift whatever you may feel on things. You know, bear with me here,
00:21:47.640 this does have to do with Trump in the midterms. Stephen Harper's book on his time in power was
00:21:54.760 released today. Needless to say, I was down there at the front of the queue with my money, you know,
00:22:01.640 and didn't have a lot of time to go into it, but he makes a very interesting point towards the end
00:22:07.240 where he addresses the question of whether he is disappointed that so much of the work that he did
00:22:13.720 in the nearly 10 years that he was in office was very quickly undone by the liberals and he says
00:22:23.480 obviously it's a bit disappointing but he did what he thought was right and that's his contribution
00:22:31.560 to Canadian government and democracy. The other guys have to do the same, don't agree with what
00:22:37.240 they did, but this is the way the system works. Now, you take somebody like Trump, who in my view
00:22:43.880 has a list of accomplishments, things that he actually quietly got done, which have hugely
00:22:50.520 benefited the American people, and he would be entitled to bridle at the ingratitude of an
00:22:59.880 electorate that turns him down at the midterms. But the lesson that I took from my own experience
00:23:07.560 in Ottawa is that you have to, if you're going to be engaged in politics, you have to do it
00:23:14.760 because you believe in it and you do the best that you can and that is all you can do. You're not
00:23:22.680 rewriting history or resetting the stage forever. If you did what you thought was right,
00:23:29.880 and it was successful for as long as you were there and he will be saying the same thing to
00:23:35.480 himself, then you, then you can congratulate yourself if nobody else does. They're very
00:23:41.860 different leaders. Oh, that's for sure. I mean, Stephen Harper was very much a modest man and,
00:23:46.740 you know, not looking for those sorts of things. President Trump is anything but modest. He's as
00:23:53.420 vain as we've ever seen. And if anybody's going to have a, a legacy focus perhaps in his last two
00:23:59.560 years. As you said, you know, Harper accepted. Well, unfortunately, a lot of things got undone,
00:24:03.600 but I did what I could. I think President Trump's going to want to put in a lot of things to make
00:24:07.860 sure they're as hard as possible to undo after he leaves. As a matter of fact, I mean, our
00:24:12.720 liberal government is doing the same thing now. The next conservative government, in fact,
00:24:18.000 if in fact there ever is another conservative government, is going to walk into a lot of
00:24:22.720 things that have been set in concrete and extremely difficult to undo.
00:24:30.680 If you're a destructive government, it's a lot easier to break things than it is for
00:24:35.460 a constructive government to make them.
00:24:41.740 It's just the way things are.
00:24:44.900 You're probably right.
00:24:45.900 Trump will try to embed his policies, but boy, oh boy, they're going to...
00:24:49.720 Well, I don't think about embedding policies is looking at Trump. I'm waiting to see him put a new statue of himself on top of the Statue of Liberty or something. And I'd put nothing beyond the man. Yes. Well, I don't know if he'd want to share it with those other presidents. I think he'd get his own mountain and go on the shores of Lake America looking north.
00:25:08.480 yeah yeah no i just think i'm trying to think of what trump's legacy is i mean i think a lot of
00:25:16.060 people just always thought he was something he's not like i remember when he was first elected
00:25:19.900 everyone thought he was going to become american caesar and i'm like that was never going to happen
00:25:23.620 and i think they've just been let down by something that was never going to happen in general
00:25:26.420 i just like i said i do think that the iran war was the last straw for a lot of people it's like
00:25:30.780 what have you done for me personally like i said like rising housing rising housing markets garbage
00:25:36.060 in the US, rising costs of everything and that were probably just the big ones. And there was
00:25:40.100 people that I heard, I don't know if this is totally true, but people that were, I guess you
00:25:43.500 could say young conservatives that just wanted to vote Democrat to send a message to the Republican
00:25:47.500 Party because they looked at the Republican Party as a whole and thought, you've had the House, you've
00:25:50.940 had the Senate for two years, and you've done nothing, nothing for us. So they basically just
00:25:55.480 a big F you to them. And it's like, we're voting Democrat, even though we hate the Democrats,
00:25:59.180 we're pissed off at you now. Yeah, well, politics, you know, one of the things, if anything moves
00:26:02.960 the vote though. They're pretty simple when it comes down to it. Can I pay my bills and do I
00:26:06.780 feel safe? You know, if I've got crime in my neighborhood or if I can't make the mortgage
00:26:10.540 or I'm sweating things, I'm going to look for change. Can you get a job? Yeah. So the cost of
00:26:15.900 living is going up. I don't think people are feeling too unsafe necessarily, but that cost
00:26:20.100 of living hits fast. Yeah. Yeah. And the roots of that are not necessarily amenable to government
00:26:27.180 intervention as we are finding here in canada no it's i mean there was a story that came out
00:26:35.180 yesterday from from a relief agency i don't know whether it was the salvation army or well it was
00:26:42.060 something like that saying that one-third of canadians are missing a meal because they can't
00:26:47.260 afford it now that there's a self-interest in that story and that of course people who are in
00:26:54.940 the business of providing aid would say things are bad send us money but I do
00:27:01.660 believe that the issue of inability to afford groceries is a real one for a lot
00:27:10.120 of people in Canada you know just around the corner from where we're sitting we
00:27:13.640 got a food bank that was not there two years ago this is a this is the sort of
00:27:18.040 thing that happens when fuel inflation hits the grocery stores and we go the
00:27:25.800 prices I just despise the Statistics Canada numbers that come out saying oh
00:27:31.480 yeah inflation is just a modest 2.9% or something like that well if you're
00:27:36.440 gonna throw into the basket that you're measuring 72 inch TVs you know which you
00:27:41.920 buy once every 15 years yeah maybe you're right but if you actually just
00:27:46.900 take the grocery bill uh man even i know we're paying those are things you can't do without i
00:27:52.880 know beef i've forgotten what it's like to order beef anymore i i go to the grocery store and i
00:27:57.300 like beef but oh wow you know that's just too much off to the pork aisle i go i thought you
00:28:03.780 had a cow in your backyard oh yeah that's your next thing i should get one yeah exactly jane 0.97
00:28:08.740 was a goat that's a different discussion home together i mean one of those rotten things too 1.00
00:28:12.580 bad. They don't smell very good. Well, either way, you know, segueing into those issues, I mean, 0.69
00:28:19.880 in Canada and poor management and costs and economic things, the budget's coming out tomorrow,
00:28:25.240 a trillion dollar debt in a country this size. That's just unimaginable. It's actually more
00:28:33.220 than that. It was 1.2 trillion when he took over. Yeah. It's going to be 1.6 trillion now?
00:28:37.700 And I mean, the other thing was that poll from most Canadians saying, you know, what's the big deal?
00:28:42.960 The economic illiteracy of Canadians doesn't help us any, I think, with some things.
00:28:47.260 That's going to impact our economy. 0.88
00:28:49.340 That's going to impact our credit rating.
00:28:50.460 That's going to impact so many things.
00:28:53.660 It's going to impact the cost of borrowing.
00:28:55.280 We're already seeing the Bank of Canada moving its interest rates up.
00:28:58.900 you know this is to go back to that stereotype of the elderly woman with her cat this is the
00:29:10.960 problem why don't they not understand that when the government borrows money they're paying for
00:29:17.200 it shows everybody else some are better able to pay for it than others but this this country is
00:29:23.680 unfortunately going down and even as the United States notwithstanding them
00:29:28.960 faults we've discussed of the president the United States is on an uptick we
00:29:34.360 are doing something very different here and it is not working it is odd how that
00:29:38.560 works when I think the America's debts of what 41 trillion I think or something
00:29:42.280 I think is the last number yeah they're just saying but they of course also
00:29:46.360 though are dealing with a population of a few hundred million people versus our
00:29:50.120 tens of millions. Ten times the population of Canada. But I mean, it's still, it is a problem
00:29:54.980 down there too. I mean, deficit financing just seems to be entrenched in modern budgeting.
00:29:59.460 You can't do it in your household. You know, you can't go for too long. Eventually
00:30:02.980 things are going to crash. Well, they will crash with us eventually if we keep up. But how do we
00:30:07.960 turn this around? You know, the question that you want to ask, Corey, is do they want to turn it
00:30:16.900 around. I mean, what is the sense of Mr. Carney actually planning to run deficits of this size?
00:30:28.180 It is one thing for the economically illiterate Mr. Trudeau, 10 years, to come in and promise a
00:30:35.780 slight $20 billion deficit for three years, and then we'll balance the budget, and then go
00:30:41.380 hopelessly wrong and end up with a couple of hundred billion dollars deficit in that period
00:30:46.500 of time. That's what you get when you do not understand or think it's actually beneath
00:30:54.940 you to understand monetary policy. Remember that famous quote?
00:30:59.140 Kearney should, though. That's the difference.
00:31:00.900 Kearney has run two banks, two central banks. So he does not have Mr. Trudeau's excuse
00:31:08.180 of economic illiteracy. Therefore, there is an intentionality about going out and running
00:31:15.200 a large deficit budget that needs to be accounted for now you know if i had to write his speeches
00:31:22.400 for him i i would probably come up with some line about it's an investment in the future
00:31:27.600 and we'll get it all back and more and that's kind of more or less what he is saying except
00:31:32.640 it never seems to work out that way and it certainly didn't work out in the 10 years
00:31:36.720 when mr trudeau was running things so he knows better why is he doing what he's doing
00:31:42.080 yeah just like you said i have no idea what the deal is it's very odd to me why he keeps doing
00:31:47.460 stuff like that running deficits and at the same time antagonizing what's historically been like
00:31:52.080 our one of our biggest sort of you know trading partners economic partners in the u.s well he's
00:31:55.840 trying to pivot towards other countries like china for example i'm and it's very odd to me
00:32:00.420 because with mark carney too in that sense most of his assets are in the u.s which i find very
00:32:05.680 interesting how that works and i think i can't remember what it was it was an article i saw a
00:32:08.780 while ago, a bunch of contracts in Canada have been awarded to American companies too as well
00:32:12.780 that were, I think, originally Canadian or something. If I remember correctly, this was
00:32:16.220 about a month or so ago. I'm like, is this all part of one big plan to do what exactly? How does
00:32:21.180 he benefit from tanking basically Canada into more and more debt is what I'm trying to figure out.
00:32:25.220 Well, and to stimulate the economy then, fine. If let's say the Americans are sour,
00:32:28.520 you can't cut a deal, we've got a problem, it's not going to build. Then you would think he would 0.80
00:32:32.940 feel the urgency and again, have the economic understanding. Well, Canada is a resource economy.
00:32:37.020 I mean, that's our main asset, and that's the one we can move the fast.
00:32:39.340 It's easier than building a new tech economy or pharmaceutical or something.
00:32:43.180 We should be having the ships just bumper to bumper going to those developments.
00:32:47.120 And not Europe.
00:32:48.480 Come on.
00:32:48.940 We know where the developing markets are.
00:32:50.800 Indonesia, India, China, throughout there, they want lumber.
00:32:55.040 They want precious metals.
00:32:56.500 They want energy products.
00:32:58.080 They want coal.
00:32:59.320 And instead, he's just as obstructionist with getting all of that stuff out.
00:33:03.320 All these major developments he's talking, announcements on announcements
00:33:06.280 and announcements.
00:33:07.020 while the food bank use is going up.
00:33:09.760 I mean, he seems to feel no urgency on doing what you would have to do
00:33:14.800 to actually change this economy then.
00:33:17.680 And that's disturbing too.
00:33:19.520 So I guess the question is how long, Corey,
00:33:22.360 before he runs up against the expectations of the Canadian people?
00:33:28.060 He has been saying now for almost the entire length of time
00:33:32.140 that he's been in office, which is now more than 18 months.
00:33:35.320 Almost getting closer to two years now.
00:33:36.480 that is he's been saying we're going to have this office of special projects they will expedite
00:33:44.080 key developments meanwhile we are borrowing money we are running deficits so you would think that
00:33:52.080 the deficits were intended to finance these projects that would be the only reason to do it
00:33:59.920 yeah there's only two of those projects now i think are started construction of all the projects in
00:34:04.640 They've been approved. I don't even know if they've started.
00:34:08.540 They didn't start as a highway and I can't remember what the other one was off.
00:34:10.940 They were sort of in the hopper before this.
00:34:12.940 Yeah, exactly, before he was in the office.
00:34:14.440 So this particular organization that he has established has yet to process a single major project.
00:34:21.640 Oh, they're just dragging their heels.
00:34:24.640 It's like saying, I'm going to borrow money to start a construction company,
00:34:29.440 and you borrow the money, but you don't do any construction.
00:34:33.640 meanwhile you're on the hook for the for the deck what what is the plan and my question new gory
00:34:39.800 if you i probably don't have an answer this one right i i sort of asked this to myself i say he's
00:34:45.480 got till you know just after christmas to show something what do you i i don't know his support
00:34:52.440 just continues to climb i mean we seem to scream into the wilderness you know and then and paliev
00:34:57.000 tries to do what he can and we try to put it's got to get worse i don't know how much worse it's
00:35:01.080 got to get for people but it's got to get worse and i don't know if christmas will be fast enough
00:35:04.680 i think it might take another year i was thinking too i think i saw something economic growth was
00:35:08.600 only like 0.9 this year or something and obviously like the workforce is getting a lot older because
00:35:13.240 there's a lot of obviously boomers that are retiring that so now if he wants to reopen like
00:35:16.440 the immigration floodgates which everyone's against i don't know what that's going to do
00:35:19.640 as well for the country now as well because youth unemployment is still i think above 10 i think so
00:35:25.240 i mean it's very high it's very high and uh well let me move on you know we can move along because
00:35:30.520 these kind of tie in uh this was in the list you had as well though that the ndp there's their
00:35:35.640 solutions i guess this is true to being a socialist you know we got the high cost of
00:35:39.800 living people are having difficulties buying groceries so let's get the government into the
00:35:43.640 grocery business oh boy you know i there's a generation that lived in the soviet union that
00:35:49.720 is fading away i think and then people have forgotten
00:35:51.880 yeah well i i noticed that the last person to seriously float the idea of governments having
00:36:00.660 their own grocery stores was uh the mayor of new york mr mandami and i noticed that that idea has
00:36:07.720 just been allowed to die not seeing them opening anywhere i haven't seen those at all yeah so i i
00:36:14.000 have a suspicion that when the officials who are going to make this happen are told to go and make
00:36:20.480 it happen and here's what you have to work with they say it can't be done they
00:36:26.060 get transferred and in the end it doesn't get done I think Toronto was 0.96
00:36:29.840 planning on doing a few too and they went and reelected chow chow here we go 1.00
00:36:35.480 I'm not actually totally surprised at that no but again I mean how bad's it 1.00
00:36:39.180 got to get Toronto's crime-ridden expensive high-tax and they're saying
00:36:44.840 give me some more please I think the Canadian attitude I don't understand no
00:36:49.400 Well, you know, the NDP, they've got to say something.
00:36:53.020 Oh, yeah, the NDP, I understand.
00:36:54.440 The voters of Toronto, I don't understand.
00:36:56.860 Free stuff.
00:36:57.980 Free.
00:36:58.540 But there is actually, I love slamming the NDP.
00:37:04.700 That's easy to do.
00:37:06.020 It's fun and it's easy.
00:37:07.340 But in all seriousness, much as I have said earlier that the people who are saying there's a crisis of food for people on lower incomes,
00:37:20.040 You know, there's kind of a bit of an interest in them pointing that out.
00:37:23.100 I actually think that they are right, even if the actual numbers are not exactly what they say.
00:37:31.760 Food bank use in this country has shot up in the last two years.
00:37:37.620 And as Christmas comes, I think there is an argument for anybody who does have enough to eat
00:37:44.360 to think about how they can help people who don't.
00:37:48.920 there are organized i mean center street church is one which is a very active hamper program you
00:37:54.700 can give money there and uh and they'll see that it gets well used there are probably other
00:38:00.380 organizations that do the same thing the salvation army uh but at any rate if you've got enough to
00:38:07.040 eat be glad maybe you shared around a bit what do you say oh no i 100 agree with that my problem
00:38:13.340 with that is what i've seen i don't know if you guys have seen this but if you go by drive by
00:38:16.860 sometimes a food bank and you take a look at the park and you see what the cars are in there and
00:38:21.900 you're going hmm really was i've seen i've seen mercedes audi's you name it i'm sitting there
00:38:29.340 going and there's also been well there's piles of videos of these um i guess you could say people
00:38:33.980 that have just come to canada that are basically scamming food banks there's like on youtube and
00:38:37.260 why not constantly which is very odd to me but to say to be a little more politically incorrect it's
00:38:41.100 not just the vehicles but the people in general now there's new canadians come in and it's hard
00:38:45.260 to get your feet under you and some of them are going to be a little tight and struggling and
00:38:48.540 that's what the food bank is for. But as you've said, some of them are pulling up into some six
00:38:54.020 figure vehicles. This gets into a bigger discussion about low trust societies because that's the truth
00:38:58.400 of it. It's just a different cultural thing. Well, if you're going to leave it out there,
00:39:01.420 I'm going to take it. And food banks have to have a no question asked policy. They really do. I mean,
00:39:07.940 you don't know how quickly somebody may have just landed on hard times and they're hungry today,
00:39:13.980 not in three weeks from now after a means test and a bunch of things to see if they're qualified
00:39:18.680 so they'll give the benefit of the doubt to the applicant but that's part of the overuse
00:39:23.440 unfortunately some people are really abusing that system how do you deal with yeah i'm actually
00:39:27.000 curious to see what donations are like for food banks now if they've gone down or anything i
00:39:30.040 haven't seen any numbers on that i don't know anything about that but yeah i can just yeah
00:39:33.420 because like those videos are just gone viral online so people see that and maybe if they
00:39:37.060 donated to the food bank before they go not now well that's it i mean we get upset i don't you
00:39:43.120 You know, food banks are, I think, a good cause.
00:39:45.080 They're not money-in-pocket sort of things and so on.
00:39:47.540 They're something to feed somebody.
00:39:48.720 But none of us want to think that they're being used.
00:39:52.120 No.
00:39:52.740 You know, and it is awkward because to your point about the expensive cars,
00:39:57.320 I mean, it is perfectly feasible in this province at this time
00:40:03.120 for somebody to have a good job on the oil industry one day and have the big...
00:40:07.740 You're stuck in the lease.
00:40:08.980 I mean, you're still hungry.
00:40:11.320 You lose the job and all of a sudden the income stops, the severance runs out, you still have the nice house, you still have the nice car, and you have no money to buy food.
00:40:21.600 Cash poor.
00:40:22.300 You're cash poor.
00:40:23.540 Yes, you could sell the car, I suppose.
00:40:25.880 Is that our first reaction to somebody who just needs a handover for a few months?
00:40:33.080 Yeah.
00:40:34.720 Well, and then just to kind of cap it off there with the Kearney unveiling immigration targets.
00:40:39.480 I mean, this is part of the problem.
00:40:40.440 We've got youth unemployment, we've got the lower income.
00:40:43.320 And I think most people understand immigration can be an asset when you're
00:40:46.740 bringing skilled people in and filling jobs where there's need, but those
00:40:50.760 entry-level jobs, those other jobs, we don't need more people to fill them.
00:40:54.400 In fact, AI is wiping out a whole pile of other jobs where somebody will still
00:40:58.060 be better off with a hands-on, whether it's working at a Tim Hortons or an 1.00
00:41:02.260 apprentice in a trade or something and pumping more immigrants in, I don't 1.00
00:41:07.240 think is going to be wise.
00:41:08.300 Well, I've been trying to figure out, too, because they keep going on about AI is going to take over all these jobs, automation is going to take over all these jobs, and tell me what the purpose is of opening the floodgates of immigration and allowing more people in, like millions of people, and what does that do if all these jobs are automated in AI? What's the point?
00:41:23.860 Well, see, there you go again.
00:41:26.800 Always negativity, Nigel.
00:41:28.380 Trying to find logic in government announcements, you know.
00:41:31.360 Well, you know, how dare you?
00:41:33.580 But I mean, targeted immigration, I mean, I think that's what people have always asked for. Most reasonable people, though they get labeled as such, it doesn't mean you're anti-immigrant. It's just saying we want to be careful and make sure we have a need and an ability to foster the people who are coming in, no matter where they're coming from.
00:41:51.980 But the liberal way tends to be just open the floodgates and we'll see what happens. 0.94
00:41:56.500 And they haven't vetted them all either because like there was that whole, I think, a story a few months ago that the Bizenoid gang basically used, I think, the student visas and temporary foreign worker visas to basically just come into the country. 0.97
00:42:07.660 So how did these guys not, did they not get vetted? 0.93
00:42:10.060 How did they do that?
00:42:10.580 Well, yeah.
00:42:10.820 And then when the visas expire, we don't do anything about it.
00:42:12.980 They're known criminals.
00:42:13.980 And I'm like, hmm.
00:42:15.020 I'll say my other politically incorrect thing.
00:42:17.160 How about this? 0.92
00:42:17.620 If you want to open the floodgates, fine, but deport a few hundred thousand illegals first to make room. 1.00
00:42:21.880 Get on that first. 1.00
00:42:22.680 A bunch of them are too.
00:42:23.500 And now when you can say, look at that, we've sent all these boats full of illegals, and they're illegal.
00:42:27.960 When your visa expires, you're illegal. 1.00
00:42:29.380 Let's not talk around it, improper immigrant or any of that crap. 1.00
00:42:32.220 They're illegal. 1.00
00:42:33.040 Get them the hell out. 1.00
00:42:34.520 Then we can talk about bringing more in.
00:42:36.600 But that doesn't seem to be the way of it.
00:42:40.720 Ah, well, what are you going to do?
00:42:42.940 We'll figure it out.
00:42:45.100 We can figure it out.
00:42:46.480 It's getting the other guys.
00:42:48.100 The voters have got to figure it out.
00:42:49.660 and unfortunately the voters are all east of manitoba because our votes out here don't do
00:42:55.220 much once it comes to that all right well let's get to some parting shots we'll start with you
00:42:59.380 over there what do you got whipped out my phone here this is something i found that was interesting
00:43:03.280 apparently the edmonton communists had a meeting at night yeah i saw that yes it's very interesting
00:43:08.980 apparently i'm just looking at this they said hammer and sickle and everything hammer and sickle
00:43:12.060 i can't believe they're still even around but apparently join us tonight to discuss a marxist
00:43:15.580 perspective and solution to the climate crisis what exactly would be a marxist solution to the
00:43:20.060 climate crisis well if we all start to death exactly yes once we're gone yeah i don't understand
00:43:24.780 because there's photos and everything of them setting up a booth at nate i just find that
00:43:27.340 very odd that nate is basically a trade slash technical school what the hell is the communist
00:43:31.180 party doing at nate why are they even allowed workers and students man come on oh yeah it's
00:43:37.100 pretty sad yeah so there's a term i remember on the radio they used to i think it was weisbeck
00:43:42.700 could call them, or maybe Peter Warren, but I used to call them watermelons, the environmentalists
00:43:46.220 anyways. I mean, you know, they're green on the outside, but red in the middle. All you do is
00:43:48.940 scratch the rind. The environment was just a backdoor path into communism.
00:43:54.380 Yeah. So, you know, I, I think I gave my, my parting shot away earlier, but it was just a,
00:44:03.980 it has to do with, with the UCP. Let's judge this government on the stuff they did that matters,
00:44:11.980 Not on how they handled the referendum, which in any case, some people might say if 700,000 people are asking for a referendum, you probably should have one.
00:44:23.700 Let's just get back on track and make sure that the NDP don't take over government.
00:44:30.100 That's it.
00:44:31.100 Again, people talk about, you know, I'm sick of voting for the lesser of the evils.
00:44:33.780 Okay, but it's better than living under the greater of them.
00:44:35.860 And the NDP is most definitely that.
00:44:37.840 The parting show right there?
00:44:38.840 That is good.
00:44:39.360 Almost.
00:44:40.180 Either way, I got one more.
00:44:41.380 I just want to fire in just to stay on my political correctness that I've been on today so far.
00:44:44.880 This is a Western Standard story up there, but Saskatchewan Dog Rescue Group blames Northern
00:44:49.620 Communities, not RCMP, for stray dog issue because a woman had been attacked and harmed.
00:44:53.840 And these stories happen all the time. 1.00
00:44:55.400 They're half right.
00:44:56.820 So yes, the RCMP are not to blame for these feral, dangerous dogs attacking people.
00:45:01.820 And it is indeed Northern Communities. 0.99
00:45:03.720 But let's clarify, they're Indian reserves. 0.55
00:45:06.360 Quit beating around the bush. 1.00
00:45:07.680 There are plenty of Northern communities that don't have that problem.
00:45:12.020 The only ones that do, and all of them do, I've been in all the Northern ones, 0.65
00:45:16.440 are First Nations reserves. 0.93
00:45:17.720 So if we really want to deal with the issue, we have to say it out loud, guys.
00:45:22.020 Because, so these guys came close, but not quite over the line.
00:45:26.540 You know, you should grab your video camera and go up and do a video of that.
00:45:30.880 Yeah, it paid off well for me the last time.
00:45:32.640 My next trial date's in three weeks.
00:45:35.760 I'm certain I'll do a show on that one.
00:45:38.260 All right, that's the time we've got for today, guys.
00:45:40.740 Thank you very much.
00:45:41.840 We solved a few of the world's problems, I think.
00:45:43.720 It's just the world doesn't realize it yet.
00:45:45.960 We'll be able to say I told you so at some point, I'm certain.
00:45:49.260 All right, well, thank you very much, guys.
00:45:51.420 And thank all you viewers out there for tuning in.
00:45:54.060 Be sure to like, share, do all of that stuff, and by all means, subscribe to the Western Standard.
00:45:58.200 It's only $10 a month.
00:45:59.620 Come on, it's an investment in your well-being.
00:46:03.780 Buy one for that liberal neighbor.
00:46:04.860 They can't figure it out.
00:46:06.540 If they read our stuff, they'll get it through their heads.
00:46:08.440 So thank you very much for tuning in, guys.
00:46:10.400 And be sure to tune in next week when we'll break down a whole new set of issues.
00:46:29.220 We'll be right back.