Western Standard - May 16, 2026


THE PIPELINEļ¼š When the ethnic vote votes ethnic


Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

161.32552

Word count

7,885

Sentence count

330

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

27

sentences flagged

Hate speech

32

sentences flagged


Summary

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

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 day, I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard.
00:00:27.540 Today is May 13th, 2026, and you're watching The Pipeline.
00:00:31.840 I've got our normal crew of misfits here, our former opinion editor, Nigel Hannaford.
00:00:37.760 Former because I'm a misfit, I guess.
00:00:40.600 Nah, you retire. 0.99
00:00:41.680 I'm still here because you're a misfit. 0.99
00:00:43.720 Yeah, that's too fit. 0.98
00:00:46.020 Senior Alberta columnist, Corey Morgan.
00:00:47.960 And news editor, Dave Naylor. 0.86
00:00:51.100 Head misfit. 1.00
00:00:52.980 Head mistress.
00:00:53.660 all right you know sometimes it kind of fits with the business right uh we are going to talk
00:01:00.440 about uh alberta's big carbon tax sellout uh confirmed today that uh the alberta ucp government
00:01:10.540 has agreed to pay a carbon tax of 130 per metric time getting to that by 2040 in exchange for well
00:01:21.020 We'll get the details of it tomorrow, unless it leaks out earlier,
00:01:24.260 but we'll get the details at least officially tomorrow.
00:01:26.780 Friday.
00:01:28.300 Oh, yes, Friday, not tomorrow.
00:01:29.940 I'm ahead of myself.
00:01:31.100 But Friday at a press conference between Daniel Smith,
00:01:34.520 Premier Daniel Smith and Prime Minister Mark Carney,
00:01:37.660 where I guess there'll be some kind of announcements of a pipeline
00:01:41.320 or towards pipelines.
00:01:42.940 We'll see.
00:01:44.020 But either way, Alberta has had to sell the farm to get this.
00:01:47.820 So we'll talk about it.
00:01:48.720 um the canada haters are rallying to save canada from alberta the only uh the only thing that
00:01:58.720 canada haters hate more than canada it seems is alberta uh efforts by some in the foreign-owned
00:02:07.400 and eastern-owned uh mainstream media press to paint every every alberta independent supporter
00:02:15.880 as a hater of Canada while conveniently overlooking the people who genuinely hate Canada, people who
00:02:21.840 topple statues of our founders, people who change the lyrics of O Canada, people who denigrate the
00:02:27.560 military, that kind of thing. So we're going to get into kind of the hypocrisy around that.
00:02:31.600 But first, what happens when the ethnic vote votes ethnic? We've had, it's a thing not just
00:02:42.120 in Canada or Alberta. It's really
00:02:44.000 everywhere in the Western world that has
00:02:45.740 mass migration. You get
00:02:47.880 kind of balkanized
00:02:49.840 pockets of
00:02:51.240 people from different ethnicities
00:02:54.460 and they'll
00:02:56.220 often vote, normally vote
00:02:58.260 for someone of their own ethnicity
00:02:59.780 once they reach a critical mass
00:03:02.220 of the voting public.
00:03:05.060 But there's a very interesting
00:03:06.420 case we want to zero in on
00:03:08.340 from Ontario, I think Scarborough
00:03:10.120 in the GTA
00:03:11.520 where Nate Erskine-Smith, he is a Liberal member of Parliament,
00:03:17.260 and he's trying to become a Liberal member of the Ontario Parliament
00:03:19.980 because he's seeking the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party.
00:03:23.080 He has spent his entire political career supporting open border,
00:03:27.560 virtually unlimited mass migration, Dave.
00:03:30.820 There's video clips of him going back a decade
00:03:33.720 and a mile long of him pandering to that local ethnic community,
00:03:38.660 which is Bangladeshi primarily.
00:03:41.520 And I guess he was expecting a little gratitude for the support he's given them.
00:03:47.480 And it didn't pan out so well when he was running for the Liberal nomination, which is kind of a precursor for him to become Ontario Liberal leader, right? 0.99
00:03:53.740 Yeah, be careful what you do in case it comes back and bites you on the ass, I guess is the way to look at it. 0.96
00:03:59.800 But yeah, he, in the nomination race for Scarborough, he lost to a gentleman called Ashanal Hafiz, who is a local Bangladeshi businessman, owns 15 Domino's pizza outlets. 0.99
00:04:15.860 And he lost, Erskine Smith lost by 19 votes.
00:04:21.020 And it was just, it looked like a mess.
00:04:24.180 I mean, it looked like Northeast Calgary politics at its worst. 0.78
00:04:28.980 They were handing out Bangladeshi voting cards and telling them, you know, basically having these people.
00:04:35.760 I don't mean these people like that, but not in a Don Cherry way.
00:04:40.900 But, you know, he got the Bangladeshi community motivated and they came out and supported their Bangladeshi client, you know, or candidate.
00:04:52.200 So, yeah, Liberals all for mass migration, but now it's turning into, you know, 0.98
00:04:57.700 hey, we can't even get elected in Toronto right now because of the ethnic group. 0.94
00:05:02.940 And apparently he doesn't speak very good English.
00:05:04.740 So I'm sure he'll be a worthwhile member of the Ontario Parliament.
00:05:10.500 I think there's a good headline in there about the dominoes falling or something along those lines. 0.74
00:05:17.380 Corey, you know how ethnic politics works.
00:05:23.500 We've got our pockets here in Alberta.
00:05:25.880 Northeast Calgary is one spot.
00:05:27.980 Southwest Edmonton is another.
00:05:30.740 And those enclaves continue to grow into other quadrants of both cities,
00:05:34.960 even areas outside of both cities increasingly.
00:05:38.400 And all parties play this game.
00:05:41.380 The Conservatives are absolutely no better on this.
00:05:45.740 you know conservatives
00:05:48.200 often
00:05:49.420 Doug Ford just the other week saying
00:05:52.140 hey I wish I could snap my fingers
00:05:53.640 and you could all stay and then become
00:05:56.020 citizens. Everyone plays
00:05:58.260 this game. I think the liberals probably play
00:06:00.160 it. They probably lean into it the hardest
00:06:02.180 but the conservatives do it
00:06:04.100 pretty well. They don't get any pass
00:06:06.360 on this kind of thing
00:06:07.640 but the assumption
00:06:10.160 has generally been
00:06:11.980 you're
00:06:14.380 going to support the politician
00:06:16.120 that lets you in. Our party
00:06:18.520 has been in power for 10 years.
00:06:20.360 We let you guys in. We let your cousins
00:06:22.420 and your uncles and your grandparents
00:06:24.120 and all of these people in, and we've
00:06:26.020 provided generous benefits.
00:06:28.180 I'm such a good guy. I show up to
00:06:30.280 the cultural events. I put on the costume.
00:06:32.260 I do the dance. I eat the food.
00:06:35.780 And they expect an electoral reward
00:06:38.380 for that. Well, they might still be willing to vote for the party,
00:06:40.640 but they still want their
00:06:42.280 guy in.
00:06:44.380 And that seems to be the lesson of Nadir Smith here.
00:06:50.080 His campaign put out a video detailing what it sounds pretty fraudulent,
00:06:54.520 but none of it sounds surprising.
00:06:55.840 You know, they got people voting without proper ID.
00:06:59.700 They're like the flimsiest of stuff that they're allowing to take place.
00:07:03.020 Sounds like people got to vote more than once.
00:07:05.000 It sounds totally fraudulent.
00:07:07.240 But it's kind of a, what else did you expect when you're playing? 0.53
00:07:12.280 This is Tammany Hall politics.
00:07:14.380 just in 2026. What else did you expect?
00:07:17.940 Yeah, well, the ethnic 1.00
00:07:19.100 game is totally different, as we've all 1.00
00:07:21.000 suffered through it. I'll just kind of quickly go back
00:07:22.960 to a past story. We had a nomination
00:07:24.920 in Northeast Calgary with the Wildrose Party
00:07:26.860 when it was up and coming. We had five people,
00:07:29.460 four people running in it. Three were
00:07:31.080 of ethnic minorities and one wasn't.
00:07:33.320 The three who were running
00:07:34.780 immediately submitted thousands
00:07:36.840 and thousands of brand new memberships, and
00:07:38.800 we quickly determined that
00:07:40.840 actually all three had sold to the exact same
00:07:42.840 group members over and over the duplicates were out of control so our executive director actually
00:07:49.020 went door knocking and documenting and checking on these we had households with supposedly 20
00:07:52.820 people in them uh things like that and we disqualified all three of the others and kept
00:07:57.360 the white guy i tell you the backlash looked awful but what are you supposed to do they play politics
00:08:02.880 differently in blocks and they play the nomination game heavily so on the liberals what looks good
00:08:08.720 on you. You backer towards it. You didn't put in the controls and you learned another hard lesson.
00:08:15.420 It's also a symptom though, I think of not having good policies of multiculturalism. But when these
00:08:20.600 blocks and these enclaves are starting to turn so predominant for one group or another group or
00:08:25.200 another, we're going to see more of that, whether it's conservative or liberal, because you don't
00:08:28.360 play based on policy any longer. You've got to play based on finding community leadership and
00:08:33.540 whatever that particular ethnicity that dominates a riding is. And I don't think it's healthy for
00:08:38.360 Canada democracy, but we're just
00:08:40.460 seeing it starkly with the Liberals now, having it
00:08:42.220 happen to them, and we're going to see
00:08:44.440 more. So, a ton of
00:08:46.500 people voting in this,
00:08:48.020 it's claimed, were not citizens,
00:08:50.400 which is allowed under the Liberal Party, but
00:08:52.000 many of them were even temporary foreign workers,
00:08:54.680 like they're not even permanent residents.
00:08:57.220 But the Conservatives really
00:08:58.460 can't get on their high horse here. The Conservatives
00:09:00.360 don't, at least officially, allow temporary
00:09:02.700 foreign workers to vote, but
00:09:04.420 the Conservative Party voted against
00:09:06.480 limiting membership and therefore voting in the Conservative Party federally
00:09:10.280 to Canadian citizens at their most recent convention here in Calgary. The Conservatives
00:09:14.220 voted against it. So they've got, they don't really have any
00:09:18.340 horse to stand on here themselves. But I think
00:09:22.340 one of the lessons here is, I don't know how to put it,
00:09:26.200 in a way that's not going to get me in trouble, so I'm just going to get in at least some trouble
00:09:30.300 here. I'll have to discipline myself. You know, regular
00:09:34.140 Proviso, not all migrants are cheats and engage in Tammany Hall-style dirty politics, but a lot do. 1.00
00:09:43.860 If you import people from the third world, you cannot act surprised and shocked when you get third world politics. 0.99
00:09:52.160 Some people do leave that behind, and they want nothing to do with it here, but a lot don't. 0.90
00:09:58.380 These are multi-generational habits.
00:10:00.920 Democracy is not just the flip of the switch.
00:10:03.580 You know, everyone sounds nice on paper, but it's a culture. It's a practice. It's something that often takes generations to be truly inculcated with.
00:10:14.240 And then there's the other side, which is where I probably get in more trouble for saying that every other group in the world plays tribal politics.
00:10:26.980 In the West, white people, we've generally been told that's a bad thing. We don't play tribal politics.
00:10:33.580 we're colorblind you know a brown guy could represent a white riding an asian guy could
00:10:38.940 represent a black riding and none of it should matter because it's you know we're not playing
00:10:44.140 tribal politics but the fact is that is a uniquely european idea among european descended peoples 0.89
00:10:53.260 that we don't do that the rest of the world didn't get the memo so nader skin smith uh you know
00:11:02.140 Now, color him surprise, no pun intended, that his opponent showed up playing tribal politics. 0.78
00:11:12.740 I don't know where this leads.
00:11:14.260 I don't know how we get other groups to stop playing tribal politics without eventually everybody playing tribal politics.
00:11:21.440 And when we get to that, that's a bad spot to meet.
00:11:23.440 look this this is the triumph of everything that the liberals have done since pierre trudeau
00:11:28.160 uh father of the father of the unfortunate justin trudeau's first started opening
00:11:36.320 immigration offices in non-traditional areas back in 1967. they have always tried to play the race
00:11:44.080 card play the cultural card in order to weaken conservative holdings we go back to the 1970s
00:11:50.320 when joe volpe prominent liberal mp at the time uh basically stole the the uh ridings along the
00:11:59.760 the shore of the lake there by importing portuguese immigrants and eventually they managed
00:12:05.760 to get the the the majorities that they needed he was italian okay well he was but if they use the
00:12:13.200 portuguese immigrants so uh you know like everything they have done has been to expand
00:12:19.520 the influence of immigrants at the expense of the conservatives. Lord knows Jason Kenney did a 0.99
00:12:26.320 hell of a fine job trying to reverse that for the time that he was in office. You know,
00:12:31.760 Mr. Curry in a hurry was the joke around the hill, but, you know, it didn't stick.
00:12:37.440 So what do we got? We are now seeing the start of the full flowering of all of those policies
00:12:44.480 over a period of some 60 years and you get somebody like erskine smith who by the way
00:12:50.880 is not a particularly sympathetic character for people like us i'd say no more and i went through
00:12:57.120 the how many stages of grief is it five i you know three seconds i was done and so uh so there you are
00:13:06.320 the thing is this is a little bit unique in the sense that after the war we had a lot of ethnic
00:13:13.040 communities from europe displaced dps displaced persons uh coming here germans austrians italians
00:13:22.880 they didn't get into politics they showed up they got the job they did it uh took the paycheck went
00:13:29.440 home to their families what's different is that the uh this particular group of uh immigrants from
00:13:36.160 bangladesh and others like them do get into uh into politics because they have actually bought
00:13:43.120 the package they think that this is a good thing this is how you get influence this is how you make 0.99
00:13:47.120 things happen so let's play the game it's just that they play dirty uh you know i i forgot we
00:13:54.240 should have shown it earlier let's we got to show that picture uh someone captured this picture was
00:13:58.800 on social media and it really just it captioned both nade erskine smith's and perhaps the liberal
00:14:04.160 party maybe even western civilizations uh predicament here perfectly it's uh you'll see
00:14:11.720 it's it's nate walking out of the hall the building where the nomination was held there's
00:14:16.820 trash all over the ground it doesn't look like a first world country it's gloomy out in the
00:14:23.020 distance that he's walking to and there is a with the canadian flag flying there's the weird uh 0.99
00:14:30.820 trans pride
00:14:32.600 progress flag
00:14:35.060 flying at the same time.
00:14:36.500 Whoever captured that photo, I don't know
00:14:38.840 if that was intentionally meant, but
00:14:40.340 it's almost like a
00:14:42.820 renaissance painting in its significance
00:14:45.080 and the symbolism
00:14:47.200 captured right there.
00:14:49.300 I'll tell you one thing, Derek, I bet it wasn't 1.00
00:14:50.880 the Bangladeshi community 1.00
00:14:53.000 who put the trans flag there.
00:14:55.440 No! 1.00
00:14:57.200 I think that's a fair...
00:14:59.040 uh you might be prejudging things here but i think it's probably a fair prejudgment uh yeah you know
00:15:06.480 the thing is i would actually maybe i'm just being very very british about this but i would rather
00:15:12.320 have somebody like shoach majunder or javan divani who are respectively of salvation origin and
00:15:20.640 jamaican origin who are true conservatives i would rather have them representing me in ottawa
00:15:28.000 then i would have somebody uh who is of the same persuasion as mr eskin smith who has totally
00:15:36.560 on conservative ideas and is actually part of the problem of how this country is going down
00:15:43.200 to the point we can come out of a nomination meet and seal trash on the ground on a trans flag 0.86
00:15:48.640 that's give me the give me the guy with the right ideas every time yeah but as we're quickly 0.64
00:15:56.240 discovering though uh the rest of the world didn't stop playing tribal politics just because
00:16:02.480 you know we kind of collectively decided as european societies some did break out i guess
00:16:07.200 you could see like shoo he's in calgary heritage i think isn't it i mean he's not going to get a
00:16:11.360 block of south asian voters that's not an ethnic right he's he's won it based on his own merit and
00:16:16.000 campaigning and uh he's a very popular member of parliament down there so we can we can break out
00:16:20.240 of that that that thing and to be fair i think if shoo ran in northeast calgary he would probably
00:16:25.200 collect some of your support based on your your ethnic community but but you've won a non non-ethnic
00:16:32.000 writing yes i said you want to oh he's actually harper's right yeah it was harper's old writing
00:16:36.080 preston manning's writing at one point um for lack of a better term he wanted a white rotting
00:16:41.280 based on values you know people like what he stood for he won the nomination he won the general
00:16:45.520 bunch of people like us voted for him yeah yeah uh but i don't think uh even if we shared the values
00:16:53.520 I think it's highly improbable
00:16:54.960 any one of the four of us at this table
00:16:56.940 would get elected in Northeast Calgary.
00:17:00.280 I'm willing to say that
00:17:01.240 with a fair bit of confidence.
00:17:02.440 Well, part of the way that game works is if we did,
00:17:04.300 it would mean we would have had to get some endorsement
00:17:06.160 from some community leaders in those ethnic...
00:17:09.240 It gets into that whole intricacy
00:17:11.600 of Northeast Calgary politics.
00:17:12.700 Yeah, we would owe them a favor.
00:17:14.700 It would have been the last one.
00:17:17.440 And you know, I know some people
00:17:19.080 are going to watch this and they're going to try
00:17:20.520 and play it back to us at some point,
00:17:21.980 and lord it over us, and I'm not going to say
00:17:23.920 this is so awful, how can you be saying it?
00:17:27.060 Maybe some know
00:17:27.940 nothings will not know better, but
00:17:29.300 political operatives in left-wing
00:17:32.120 parties, you might condemn us
00:17:34.140 for saying this, but you know what we're
00:17:35.960 saying is true. You play
00:17:38.180 these games, you know it's true,
00:17:40.940 you know that this is just
00:17:42.300 the way it works. So,
00:17:44.420 save us the
00:17:45.800 self-righteous condemnation
00:17:47.940 when it comes for saying the truth
00:17:50.200 out loud that
00:17:50.960 You know, until very recently, people only said in hushed tones.
00:17:57.400 Okay, well, I mean, that's a sort of...
00:18:00.600 Derek's never said anything in hushed tones, has he?
00:18:03.180 Never.
00:18:05.740 Touche.
00:18:07.040 All right.
00:18:08.360 Fairly decent segue then, I think, into our next segment here.
00:18:16.160 The Canada haters rallying to save Canada against Alberta.
00:18:19.360 so I don't mean to pick on him
00:18:21.520 he's actually a decent writer
00:18:22.840 I don't often agree with him
00:18:24.160 but the Calgary Herald's Don Braid
00:18:26.980 wrote in his column
00:18:29.600 the Alberta independence people
00:18:31.840 hate Canada
00:18:32.960 they have to show hatred and contempt for Canada
00:18:35.160 he quotes some people
00:18:36.560 saying
00:18:38.220 I don't think anything really hate
00:18:40.100 I don't know how in front of me
00:18:41.100 an independent Alberta would probably seek
00:18:44.420 American recognition
00:18:45.360 which I don't know any country in the world
00:18:47.820 seeking independence, seeks American
00:18:49.660 recognition, all the more so one that
00:18:51.760 borders it. I don't know
00:18:53.520 how that's a newsy thing, but he says,
00:18:55.560 you know, these people hate Canada.
00:18:57.760 They have hatred and contempt for Canada.
00:19:02.300 Okay.
00:19:03.020 Oh, no. Anyway.
00:19:05.540 And that got me thinking,
00:19:07.560 Nigel.
00:19:09.620 The Canada haters.
00:19:11.480 I'm sure there are a few, but
00:19:13.100 it's a vanishingly small number.
00:19:15.520 When I think of Canada haters,
00:19:17.320 I think of people who toppled the statues of Sir John M. Macdonald.
00:19:20.360 I think of the people who changed the lyrics of Old Canada to make it gender-neutral and politically correct.
00:19:25.220 I think of the people who either cheered or stood by as 112 churches were burned to the ground or significantly vandalized. 0.54
00:19:32.440 I think of the people who kneel ritualistically for Black Lives Matter,
00:19:37.200 people who lowered the flag on Parliament Hill for five months, 0.66
00:19:40.000 people who put down the history of Canada as a genocidal state founded on stolen native land.
00:19:48.040 When I think of Canada haters, those are the people I'm thinking of,
00:19:52.840 not people who, for the most part, have been patriotic Canadians their whole life.
00:19:58.360 They might be born in Alberta or born elsewhere, love Canada, love what it stood for.
00:20:04.860 They don't hate Canada, at least as they were born into,
00:20:07.520 but they might hate what canada has become and what canada is becoming well i've had 50 years
00:20:12.640 plus to observe the difference between canada that was and the canada that it has become and so i can
00:20:19.760 100 uh see where you're coming from that on uh derek and actually agree with you um you know
00:20:27.760 people are always going to put the best go into a back room well what are we going to say now
00:20:32.720 obviously somebody like mr nenshi a one-time mayor of calvary now a leader of the oppositions well
00:20:39.760 how are we going to fight daniel smith on this one well we'll be very pro-canadian well this is
00:20:43.840 the same guy who tried to take one of the canada day celebrations and then turn it into a provincial
00:20:49.920 lament for all the sins of racism colonialism i don't know there was a long list i mean he didn't
00:20:57.360 want to do canada day he wanted to he wanted to make it a day of protest so when you got people
00:21:01.840 like that you have to wonder about the sincerity of it and you know because this came up i ended up
00:21:08.460 looking around uh to see where where we were going with this and um you know there's something
00:21:16.620 on facebook i'm sorry instagram from one court ellingson he's a an mla and this is the kind of
00:21:25.720 ndp oh yeah very ndp so he says a few weeks ago this would be last week a few weeks ago
00:21:31.700 the Alberta NDP organized a day of action to fight against the Alberta separation.
00:21:36.500 Here's what they got. 75 people in Calgary and 200 people across our province showed up on a
00:21:45.140 snowy April day to talk to neighbors about why Alberta is better leading Canada than leaving it.
00:21:52.660 After all the sound and fury and all, frankly, the BS, they managed to get, according to this
00:22:00.740 individual 275 people out so i don't think the tide is flowing their way because i think the
00:22:07.780 what derek has just said about who it is who actually really hates canada and the kind of
00:22:14.900 things that the ways that they choose to express it don't fit well in alberta um yeah sure go on
00:22:25.540 take it from there but dave um you know i i uh i wrote a column on this and you know i kind of
00:22:33.360 very broadly try to put alberta nationalists in two camps one is probably disproportionately
00:22:39.860 alberta born uh that understands the very long history of alberta struggle with ottawa
00:22:45.860 structural constitutional issues going back forever um all of these things and that's one
00:22:53.960 group and the other one i called redoubt uh canadians they're and my guess is they probably
00:23:00.040 come disproportionately from other provinces uh because those other provinces are going to hell
00:23:04.920 and they came to alberta for an opportunity they come to alberta because of what it stands for um
00:23:11.320 and they're they're not anti-canadian at all they they're patriotic canadians but they see that
00:23:17.520 canada has gone to hell and it's continuing to go further down into hell and there does not appear to
00:23:23.320 be any real sign that that is being reversed right now. And so the idea is that you're actually able
00:23:32.760 to save a slice of Canada by leaving it, essentially. The rest of Canada is irreversibly,
00:23:40.300 I think it's roughly 125, 127% debt to GDP, $4 trillion of debt. These things are never,
00:23:48.540 ever getting paid by us, our children
00:23:50.300 or even our grandchildren
00:23:51.940 context, we're still literally
00:23:54.600 paying debt taken out by
00:23:56.380 Pierre Trudeau before I was
00:23:58.540 even born
00:23:59.040 the idea is to save a piece
00:24:02.560 of Canada, save Canada
00:24:04.460 by saving at least a little piece of it
00:24:06.440 I don't see this being
00:24:10.580 a deeply anti-Canadian movement
00:24:12.380 the way they say that even Quebec would be
00:24:14.560 I'm not even sure Quebec is necessarily anti-Canadian
00:24:16.700 it just wants to be its own thing
00:24:17.960 um i don't know you used used to work with these guys uh what plan are they living on thinking that
00:24:24.400 this somehow canada hate fest well you gotta you gotta remember dawn who like consider a friend
00:24:31.380 is very left-wing very left-wing uh uh writer has been for for decades but but just look i mean the
00:24:38.020 facts tell the story people are moving to alberta en masse uh people thousands of people from bc
00:24:44.620 are fleeing the wacky government of david eby uh thousands of people are leaving uh ontario
00:24:50.780 uh wacky government of uh doug ford and where are they going to go into alberta which is causing
00:24:56.060 stresses for us in terms of education and school building and getting enough teachers and stuff
00:25:01.580 like that but i don't think all the people coming here are coming here as okay albert is going to
00:25:07.260 separate let's go to alberta you know they're coming here you know to try and get the best
00:25:13.100 quality of life for their families and uh you know i'm sure some of them would probably vote
00:25:19.820 for independence but i think most of them would still be happily canadian or happily say they're
00:25:24.940 canadian um all right okay uh corey um the um it makes for i mean neither the the nationalist
00:25:39.180 camp or the Federalist camp are homogenous,
00:25:41.620 as you and I well know.
00:25:44.860 We can't agree on much really often,
00:25:47.480 even within the Nationalist camp.
00:25:49.320 But the Federalists,
00:25:51.320 there's odd
00:25:53.280 bedfellows. I mean,
00:25:55.000 give the devil
00:25:57.240 his due here.
00:25:59.100 Jay Zkenny, I don't consider to be a
00:26:01.080 Canada hater. He's Canada first,
00:26:03.040 not Alberta first. 0.88
00:26:04.440 And that's a legitimate position to take.
00:26:06.840 That's fine. That's his choice.
00:26:09.180 But he's not a Canada hater, but he has to share a campaign and a stage, essentially, here with people who do hate Canada or at least demonstrate contempt for it.
00:26:21.960 Yeah. You know, you've got, you know, depending on the poll we look at, we'll say 35% of Albertans support independence, 30% at the low end, 38% at the high end, depending on the polls you're looking at.
00:26:34.360 We'll say 35% split the difference here.
00:26:39.180 So among the roughly two-thirds that are currently opposed to independence, a majority of those are on the left, and they're backing parties that stood by as churches were burned down.
00:26:50.880 They vote for politicians that wanted to change Canada Day from a celebration of Canada into a ritualistic self-flagellation of national guilt, voted for politicians that kept the flag at half-mast for five months for a genocidal hoax.
00:27:09.180 I don't know, maybe I'd like your thoughts on how can those people now drape themselves in the flag as the patriotic defenders of Canada when two, three years ago, they were calling Canada an illegitimate settler colonial slave state founded on stolen native land.
00:27:33.660 It's hypocrisy and a purposeful cognitive dissonance.
00:27:37.600 You know, I like stirring things up.
00:27:39.120 When I'd get bored on X, if I just wanted to get things worked up,
00:27:41.800 and that still works now.
00:27:43.080 I've posted that about five times over the years.
00:27:45.580 I just, a simple, Canada is not a genocidal country.
00:27:49.680 And the hornet's nest is poked.
00:27:51.740 I'm a racist. 0.93
00:27:52.860 I'm a denier.
00:27:54.020 I am, you name it, this and that.
00:27:56.160 The people who get so upset for me daring just to say that the country isn't genocidal.
00:28:02.180 their idea of where we're supposed to be sitting and where we're supposed to be thinking is we're
00:28:05.400 always staring at our shoes. Canada is an awful place that did terrible things that probably
00:28:09.740 shouldn't exist. It's a post-national state. We're settlers, we're colonialists. And then when we see 0.84
00:28:15.960 independence movements blossoming on each side of the country, all I had tried to ask these guys,
00:28:21.460 what the hell did you think was going to happen? You've been undercutting any sense of pride or
00:28:26.500 identity or unity in this country for years. And lo and behold, some people said, well,
00:28:31.720 I'm not about to stand up and hand it all off to the indigenous bands, 0.98
00:28:34.920 but I don't feel any connection to this god awful state. So yes, 1.00
00:28:37.920 I won't feel bad for a second saying, you know what?
00:28:39.660 I might embrace an independence movement because you guys told me this country
00:28:42.680 is not worth saving anyways. So yes,
00:28:45.000 it's not helping them when they suddenly have cloaked themselves in this flag
00:28:47.760 that they were so recently burning and pissing on. And I got no use for them.
00:28:51.400 As Samuel Johnson said two centuries ago,
00:28:54.600 patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
00:28:57.820 He was of course speaking of the Americans, but it applies equally.
00:29:01.720 today? Well, I think it's contextual. I think the scoundrel can rely on patriotism to cloak
00:29:10.180 his actions. But I would reject that patriotism is a negative thing to begin with. I believe in
00:29:18.600 nationalism. I believe patriotism. It is often a force for good. But people doing bad, you can
00:29:24.860 fall back and you use it as a cloak. That's exactly what Johnson was talking about. People
00:29:29.900 with dishonest or selfish motives
00:29:31.680 will often use patriotic fervor
00:29:34.160 to cover their tracks.
00:29:35.340 It's a tried and true method.
00:29:37.880 Yeah, you know, I guess
00:29:39.760 it doesn't need to be said,
00:29:41.680 but I'll say it anyway, to be fair.
00:29:43.920 Not everyone in the Federalist camp 0.97
00:29:45.760 is a hypocrite here. 0.71
00:29:47.580 Not everyone in the Federalist camp is a hater. 1.00
00:29:49.980 That would be less ridiculous
00:29:51.760 than I think what Don Braid was arguing 0.82
00:29:54.060 that the Alberta nationalists hate Canada.
00:29:56.540 There's just not particularly
00:29:58.040 much evidence to support that.
00:29:59.900 You know, there are plenty of people in the federalist camp who are not self-loathing, self-flagellating, who think Canada is an illegitimate state.
00:30:10.220 But what I am saying is it makes for awkward bedfellows when your goal is to save Canada.
00:30:18.120 I'm not sure what Canada they're trying to save.
00:30:20.020 It seems to me that the Canada I was born into was just long gone.
00:30:23.800 Let me just say this. What I notice about the people who I encounter in the Alberta independence
00:30:31.720 movement is that there isn't some culture or language that binds them together, as would be
00:30:37.560 the case with Quebec. It is a set of values that they hold and all seem to hold, which is
00:30:47.720 where we entered this discussion, talking about the people who say they're patriots
00:30:53.000 for Canada are the ones who have said everything about Canada is wrong, but those things that they
00:30:58.840 say about Canada being wrong are the things that Alberta patriots, if I can use that expression,
00:31:05.960 they're the ones they're trying to hold on to. Fair play, decency, parliamentary democracy.
00:31:13.560 They're rejecting the socialists.
00:31:16.840 Okay. We got a nice flow. One topic's actually going to another fairly well today.
00:31:23.000 We're going to talk about Alberta's carbon tax sell-out.
00:31:29.020 So in November, I think it was the day before the UCP convention,
00:31:33.160 Daniel Smith and Mark Carney signed an MOU,
00:31:36.680 Memorandum of Understanding,
00:31:38.500 about working together if some give and take on environmental policy
00:31:42.240 in exchange for fixing the situation around pipelines
00:31:46.260 and possibly tanker access on the West Coast and things like that.
00:31:50.120 um i had a pretty open mind to it cory um i was actually shocked when we you know we all showed
00:31:58.080 up to the ucp convention covering that there and i uh in a very awkward moment found myself to be
00:32:04.000 the squishy moderate in the room most people were were very much opposed to it but i said
00:32:09.940 you know i mean we should encourage the premier to make a good faith effort
00:32:15.840 on these files
00:32:18.040 I mean it's just an MOU
00:32:19.700 let's see how it goes
00:32:21.800 negotiating good faith
00:32:23.020 maybe she can make some progress 0.99
00:32:24.920 but I mean she can't sell the farm to do it 0.98
00:32:27.460 this Friday 0.99
00:32:30.360 there's going to be a press conference
00:32:33.320 I believe here in Calgary
00:32:34.500 that's what we understand
00:32:35.880 we'll be covering that live
00:32:38.260 where I guess
00:32:40.300 the results of this will be put forward
00:32:42.620 we don't yet know
00:32:44.260 is there going to be a pipeline built
00:32:45.660 Is it just fixing the process to potentially get to a pipeline? I don't know.
00:32:50.080 One thing we do know that's come out early is that the Alberta government has now signed on the dotted line.
00:32:57.980 It's agreed firm that Alberta will agree to increasing the industrial carbon tax to $130 per metric ton, elevating up to into 2040.
00:33:08.880 Corey, I went into this with an open mind
00:33:15.560 I took some guff for being too soft
00:33:18.960 which is a pretty rare thing for me to have to take
00:33:21.960 but I don't think it was wrong to keep an open mind
00:33:26.100 but I think we know enough now
00:33:29.580 Alberta has now agreed to completely capitulate
00:33:32.860 on the carbon tax and we are going to accept the legitimacy
00:33:35.480 policy, Ottawa dictating our own internal environmental policies. To me, this looks
00:33:41.760 like a total salad. Yeah, I'm not going to celebrate this. I understand in the role of
00:33:46.720 Premier, your job isn't to walk right into a room with the Prime Minister and just give him the
00:33:50.700 finger right off the bat. You know, okay, well, let's see what we can do to potentially find
00:33:54.480 mutually beneficial agreements for the country and for the province. But the carbon tax, I mean,
00:33:59.800 come on, we've talked about this for a decade. It doesn't do a damn thing to save the environment.
00:34:04.160 it never will, it's a tax. That's all it is, is something Premier Smith has always been very
00:34:08.820 clear about, whether it's the consumer one or the industrial one, and it puts Canada at a
00:34:14.420 disadvantage around the world in trying to sell its products. Now, it puts Alberta at a disadvantage.
00:34:21.500 The baloney we're seeing from guys like Corey Hogan, you know, that lone liberal MP, 0.99
00:34:26.760 talking like the rest of the world is demanding decarbonized oil, this fictional imaginary crap. 0.99
00:34:34.160 No, they aren't. And in fact, Canada isn't demanding it as they get Venezuelan, Russian, 0.85
00:34:38.480 Saudi Arabian, and every other tanker to the East Coast they could possibly can get. But Alberta is
00:34:43.840 the one and only beacon that apparently has to decarbonize its oil. She capitulated. I think she
00:34:50.560 should have told him to go to hell. It'll be interesting to see on Friday. I imagine they got 0.99
00:34:54.700 something else, but let's see where this proponent is then. Do you have a proponent? Have you got
00:34:58.580 rid of the tanker ban? Have you said that the indigenous don't have a veto? There's a whole
00:35:02.760 lot more things i expect out of this if you're going to call it a victory so maybe she's letting
00:35:07.200 something out and has a big announcement coming i don't know but i gotta see there there is
00:35:11.200 reporting now coming out of ottawa that uh prime minister carney will declare this a project of
00:35:16.440 national interest which basically means the indigenous lose all their rights to complain
00:35:21.180 and bitch and block it but that's what in theory is going to happen but what's going to it's going 0.82
00:35:26.760 unleash a tidal wave of protests uh and we're going to have uh highways blocked and uh railways 0.98
00:35:33.400 blocked and uh but but you know hopefully at the same time it's getting built but uh you know
00:35:39.880 obviously still years away from uh uh being constructed and and and completed so the whole
00:35:47.720 thing about the uh you know the shipping bans and and whatnot can be dealt with at a bit of a later
00:35:53.800 time because because nobody's going to invest a nickel that's true unless they know what's gone
00:35:58.360 that's that's that chicken and egg game that's been great though now that would be a relatively
00:36:02.680 easy thing for him to do now and say look we're making progress you know we've got rid of the
00:36:06.680 plankton there are no pipelines we've eliminated that legislation yeah you've still got the
00:36:12.920 promises you have hinted at to the indigenous peoples to deal with but the things that we could 0.93
00:36:17.720 do now that we could do easily we're doing so this is the way it's gonna we don't see that 0.98
00:36:22.600 Yeah, well, Nigel, even if, let's say it's, there's a bunch of victories on those fronts, the West Coast thinker band gone, it's a project of national importance, all of these things.
00:36:37.140 I know, and it looks likely, okay, we could get a pipeline of this. I don't care if we get a dozen pipelines or if they build them to the moon. Alberta will have signed away its sovereignty.
00:36:47.720 What happened to, you know, Premier Danielle Smith has said she's not backing independence for Alberta.
00:36:54.260 She's backing a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada.
00:36:57.360 This doesn't sound like a sovereign Alberta.
00:37:00.640 The carbon tax is a matter for Alberta to decide.
00:37:04.120 This is an Alberta carbon tax, yet it's being dictated in terms of these negotiations to buy Ottawa.
00:37:10.620 That doesn't sound like a sovereign Alberta within a united Canada to me.
00:37:13.240 No, and you know, if I were Danielle, I don't know whether I'd be doing that.
00:37:17.720 But I have to go back to where Corey started in this segment
00:37:22.860 when he said she can't go in there with boxing gloves
00:37:26.040 and you've got to try to make it look like you're working along.
00:37:31.820 But she really has the world against her on this one
00:37:34.760 for all the reasons we've just talked about.
00:37:36.980 The cost of burying carbon dioxide to make decarbonized oil
00:37:41.600 is going to put $50 a ton or two onto oil.
00:37:45.620 this is what they tell me about people who know more than I do $50 a ton and
00:37:50.180 you're gonna go out and try and sell this overseas what exactly you know how
00:37:54.440 long do you think the round war is gonna last it's this is not gonna work but she
00:37:59.540 goes in and says what she has to say I got a feeling that the thought may be by
00:38:04.820 2040 Carney will be gone somebody else will be in charge it is
00:38:11.600 inconceivable that the liberals should govern for another you know 14 years they've done it before
00:38:18.720 we'll get well that would be a 24-year run you're starting to get back into mckenzie king territory
00:38:23.200 but anyway you know this can't possibly last we've even what al gore saying like global warming which
00:38:29.360 is the foundation of all this is going to be replaced by global freezing i mean i don't know
00:38:35.440 who takes al gore seriously anymore but al gore is prepared to stake his reputation on being wrong
00:38:41.520 This, I think, is going to go away.
00:38:45.120 Meanwhile, as long as she's talking, the Western, you know, the Alberta independence crowd cannot use that as a wedge against her.
00:38:54.960 I don't know.
00:38:55.940 I do agree that she, you know, can't walk into a meeting with Carney and just punch him in the nose.
00:39:01.860 As good as that would all make us feel that is not what she should do, she should be negotiating in good faith.
00:39:10.640 The problem is she's negotiated us $130 a ton carbon tax.
00:39:16.660 And maybe Carney has gone by then.
00:39:18.680 Maybe he is replaced by a more radical liberal. 0.99
00:39:22.160 Maybe he's replaced by a crappy conservative. 0.75
00:39:26.060 Because many conservatives won't take a standing even against the industrial carbon tax. 0.94
00:39:31.040 They're going to hem and haw.
00:39:32.760 They don't want to rock the boat too much to win votes in central Canada.
00:39:37.360 So can we, I don't think we can rely one bit necessarily on the conservatives being committed to repealing the carbon tax.
00:39:43.800 Conservatives changed their mind about a bunch of things in the last two weeks of that last campaign when they thought it would maybe save the election for them.
00:39:49.860 Didn't.
00:39:51.800 So she has then agreed to the principle that Ottawa has legitimacy in dictating this to us.
00:40:02.420 That is a moral loss.
00:40:05.980 That is a loss on an important principle.
00:40:09.780 So, you know, yeah, it's 2040 is, I guess, a ways off.
00:40:16.160 Maybe Carney's gone by then.
00:40:17.700 Maybe things change, but I wouldn't bet on it.
00:40:20.040 I mean, we're still dealing with the disastrous policies of Justin Trudeau 10 years ago.
00:40:26.600 You can't really bet on this.
00:40:28.180 I think this is a strategic mistake.
00:40:31.280 I don't think it's going to appear.
00:40:32.920 I think this is,
00:40:34.420 Carney needs this to keep the Stephen Gilboa wing
00:40:36.880 of the Liberal Party in the tent,
00:40:40.660 keep the NDP down, keep the Greens down.
00:40:44.440 But this is, in Alberta,
00:40:47.040 I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of people
00:40:50.540 on our side who are upset about this.
00:40:54.040 I think this should be on the ballot in October.
00:40:57.480 There should be a referendum question at this point.
00:40:59.680 We have five questions on constitutional reform,
00:41:03.960 which I generally more or less agree with,
00:41:06.000 but that are never going to go anywhere
00:41:07.720 because the rest of Canada will not say yes to it.
00:41:10.240 We've got, I think, four questions on immigration.
00:41:12.840 One's four, one's five.
00:41:14.360 That's fine.
00:41:15.160 And then probably independence as well.
00:41:18.040 Let's put this one on.
00:41:19.760 Let's see where Albertans stand on this.
00:41:22.940 Maybe I'm wrong,
00:41:24.040 but this is not a deal I think I would vote for.
00:41:27.300 so look i think that mr carney has an incentive to to at least appear to offer a pipeline because
00:41:37.860 if enough people believe that it's a real prospect that is going to subtract from the independence
00:41:45.940 movement so he is not totally unmotivated to do something good or at least appear to do
00:41:51.940 something good for daniel smith on friday that would have an impact now whether it's real
00:41:58.980 that's a whole different discussion for next week but um i wouldn't write it off just yet
00:42:05.700 all right all right uh party shots dave uh very disturbing video this week of uh gang of girls
00:42:14.900 and uh yeah we'll show some the video very disturbing uh uh poor girl in red deer beaten
00:42:22.180 senseless swarmed kicked in the head repeatedly elbowed in the face repeatedly and then when she 0.95
00:42:28.820 was unconscious she was dragged to a group of nearby trees and and dumped um disgusting behavior 1.00
00:42:36.180 our linda slobodian wrote about it today you know nothing's stopping these miscreant teens
00:42:41.620 uh nothing will stop because there's no justice no justice for them so uh rcmp under great
00:42:49.600 pressure to make some arrests i think it'll be quick but uh yeah go go and check out the video
00:42:54.940 because it really is really is disturbing you know i got to my share of scraps as a teenager
00:43:00.060 and uh we fought one-on-one and when someone lost it was over and if someone didn't stop
00:43:09.520 Your own friends dragged you off.
00:43:12.360 I forget even the law here.
00:43:15.700 Maybe there's just no code of how to have a proper scrap in high school anymore.
00:43:20.380 There's always going to be people fighting in high school.
00:43:22.100 It happens.
00:43:22.660 It's never going to go away.
00:43:24.340 But, yeah, there seems to be no common sense about how to have a proper scrap now.
00:43:29.420 No.
00:43:31.020 Corey?
00:43:32.420 So, I guess, due to good marketing and good branding,
00:43:35.480 Tim Horton's got practically a monopoly in the donut and coffee industry in Canada.
00:43:39.520 and then devolved into what I think was one of the most overrated institutions in the country.
00:43:44.000 So we're seeing that getting withered away with Dunkin' Donuts moving in
00:43:47.860 and some others moving into the country.
00:43:50.520 I'm just enjoying seeing competition come back.
00:43:52.860 And I just want to say, I miss Robin's Donuts.
00:43:54.960 I guess they still exist in other parts of the country,
00:43:57.820 but they aren't in Alberta anymore because they just couldn't compete against Tim Hortons.
00:44:02.400 Really? Just kind of took everything by wave.
00:44:03.940 But maybe we were reversing things.
00:44:05.640 I want to see some competition in the donut and coffee world.
00:44:07.980 so come on back Robbins
00:44:09.800 we missed you
00:44:10.480 so more work for temporary foreign workers
00:44:13.120 well you know
00:44:15.360 if you guys have a donut shop actually hired Canadians
00:44:17.460 that's a bigger debate
00:44:19.600 but I tell you as a serious industry owner
00:44:21.580 put out an ad and see how many show up for it
00:44:24.240 yeah fair enough
00:44:24.880 but yeah Tim Hortons really is
00:44:26.940 the Canadian healthcare of
00:44:29.240 food service delivery in Canada
00:44:31.240 it's something where we have no right
00:44:33.600 to be very proud of at this point
00:44:35.320 Nigel
00:44:36.400 Yeah, so I couldn't help noticing that story that we picked up out of Black Locks.
00:44:42.400 Black Locks does the research and puts it out, and we're happy to pass it on to everybody else.
00:44:48.720 But on World Press Freedom Day, Prime Minister Carney praised a strong, independent press.
00:44:55.200 What Black Locks revealed was that just about 10 days before,
00:44:59.040 officials in all of the most powerful ministries had got together,
00:45:03.380 and we're trying what they were trying to do is work out who's a real journalist who should be
00:45:07.740 allowed to go into it and i i'm just touting ahead i think we're going to put this out on
00:45:13.580 friday uh i did a little rap this morning because i was kind of mad so watch out for it on friday
00:45:19.060 talking about the hypocrisy of uh somebody who will stand up and say on one day that uh press
00:45:26.880 matters and freedom press freedom matters and meanwhile is trying to sort of ways find ways to
00:45:31.920 exclude people like us people like rebel news juno from being able to ask questions at government
00:45:38.120 meetings all right uh mine i've got uh call them up now uh we don't report on rumor here
00:45:47.540 but we ended up in a weird kind of twilight zone of information uh i've had some very good sources
00:45:54.340 tell me that alberta finance minister nate horner uh not sure the reasons around it but he'll be
00:46:01.120 stepping down or something to that effect
00:46:03.400 in the coming weeks
00:46:05.040 and he will be replaced as Alberta's
00:46:07.100 finance minister by Jason Nixon.
00:46:10.480 So I've got
00:46:11.240 pretty good sources telling me that.
00:46:13.020 But there's also pretty good sources in the government
00:46:15.180 who deny it to me.
00:46:17.240 And I've got other sources in the government who
00:46:19.080 deny it, but unconvincingly.
00:46:22.240 So
00:46:22.500 You read it here
00:46:25.240 first. You read it here first.
00:46:27.680 The column,
00:46:29.060 if you read it, you'll see. 0.97
00:46:30.140 i i i make i unambiguously hedge and try to cover my ass because i you can't this is not gospel you 0.57
00:46:37.720 can't take it to the bank because i've got official government sources denying it but i've also got 0.87
00:46:43.280 some pretty good sources in the government confirming it and then others who denied it
00:46:48.040 as i said very unconvincingly so uh take it for what it is if uh if you're put if this is on poly
00:46:57.240 bet. It's a good bet that
00:46:59.260 this is happening. Jason Nixon's going to be the next
00:47:01.220 finance minister of Alberta, and Nate Horner
00:47:03.240 is either retiring or moving out of a portfolio or
00:47:05.200 something. I don't know what's happening on that side.
00:47:09.580 It's probably a good bet
00:47:10.960 to roll the dice on, but
00:47:13.240 it's a roll of the dice. I hate
00:47:15.140 to have an unconfirmed story. We don't do
00:47:17.080 rumor, but in this case,
00:47:18.960 we're reporting what some
00:47:21.160 people confirm, and we're reporting
00:47:23.100 at the exact same time that others are denying it.
00:47:25.920 Such as it is.
00:47:27.240 so we'll see uh i think i'm right but we could have it i can have egg in my face time will tell
00:47:35.720 such is the world of political sometimes there it is yes okay dave cory nigel thank you thank you
00:47:42.600 john run in the studio and all of you who joined us uh give us your precious time today thank you
00:47:48.280 for your support if you're not yet a subscriber to the west standard and by subscriber i don't
00:47:52.600 me just getting our emails. I mean, you have a paid subscription for all access to Western
00:47:57.720 Standard content. Please go to westernstandard.news, click on subscribe. It's $10 a month or $100 a
00:48:02.980 year to get unlimited access to Western Standard content and support the work we do. Thank you
00:48:08.680 very much for joining us today and God bless.
00:48:22.600 We'll be right back.