The Western Standard's weekly live broadcast discussing issues relevant to Western Canada and some strange news from the Wexit movement. This week, we discuss the Speech from the Throne from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, BC Premier John Horgan breaking the province's fixed election law, the implications for breaking that law, and what we expect to shape up in the early election.
00:00:00.000Welcome to The Pipeline, the Western Standards weekly live broadcast discussing issues relevant
00:00:15.660to you in Western Canada and maybe informative for our friends outside of the West who need
00:00:20.160to understand what the hell is going on here. Much of today though is not just discussing
00:00:24.600exclusively what's happening in the West. We'll be discussing the speech from Trudeau's
00:00:30.720throne. We'll be discussing closer to home BC Premier John Horgan breaking the province's
00:00:39.240fixed election law in the early election taking place there. The implications for breaking
00:00:44.160that law and what we expect to shape up in the early parts of this election. And strange
00:00:49.640news from the Wexit movement changing their name from the Wexit party to the Maverick party.
00:00:56.820And we'd really like your input on all three of these topics. You can go to the comments,
00:01:02.520you can contact us on Twitter, although the best way for us to see this, make sure we don't
00:01:07.760that we can actually see your question is to get us on Facebook. Before we get going, please
00:01:13.300remember to go to westernstandardonline.com and go to the membership section if you're
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00:01:23.000that we can have an independent, genuinely independent media here in Western Canada that
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00:01:33.840the other private media outlets of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal. Your support ensures that we
00:01:38.720can continue to make sure that we have a genuinely independent Western media here. Joining me today,
00:01:44.480well, I'm Derek Ful, the brand publisher of the Western Standard. Joining me today is Dave Naylor,
00:01:48.800the news editor of the Western Standard. Hi, Dave. Beautiful. Can't you tell from the beautiful weather on this
00:01:59.760completely live shot behind me? Yeah, it's actually a beautiful day here in Calgary. Also joining us, but not on video today, due to technical issues,
00:02:13.760but joining us by audio is Corey Morgan. Corey Morgan, do you want to verbally wave to the camera?
00:02:18.760Normally, Corey leads off the kind of hosting referee role in this podcast and live broadcast, but without him available by the video today, I'm gonna try and take my hand and see how well it does.
00:02:28.760Okay, well, let's start off a speech from Trudeau's throne. Trudeau prorogued parliament a bit over a month ago for reasons that had nothing to do with the we scandal and inquiry.
00:02:43.760Dave, why don't you lead us off and set the table about what really what were the contents of the speech from the throne?
00:02:50.760Well, let's start off a speech from Trudeau's throne.
00:02:52.760It was Trudeau prorogued parliament a bit over a month ago for reasons that had nothing to do with the we scandal and inquiry.
00:02:58.760Dave, why don't you lead us off and set the table about what really what were the contents of the speech from the throne?
00:06:12.920Corey, what was your take on the throne speech and the contents of it and how the politics is going to play out?
00:06:22.720Did Trudeau want another party to support this so there wasn't an election?
00:06:26.840And do you think he's got any hope from the NDP or the Bloc?
00:06:32.180Clearly Trudeau doesn't want an election.
00:06:34.640So anybody who's wondering about that, I mean, he put out an NDP statement, basically.
00:06:40.440He promised spending on everything with absolutely no mention on how he's possibly going to fund it.
00:06:47.280You know, Jagmeet Singh could have written that throne speech.
00:06:50.000So, I mean, I understand that the Trudeau government have been a free-spending, left-leaning government as it is anyways.
00:06:56.760But in light of that throne speech, it's clear that he modeled that to make sure he kept that NDP support so we don't have to go to the polls.
00:07:04.800And the other thing that was odious about it is then he used that as a point to leap off with that addressing the nation.
00:07:10.920So he got, you know, the entire mainstream media up and sitting in watch, a lot of Canadians up and sitting in watch time.
00:07:17.460And this is usually only done if there's a constitutional crisis or an act of war or something serious.
00:07:22.740Boy, Trudeau has to be saying something of significance.
00:07:25.220Is he going to resign or does he feel that we do have to drop the writ over this throne speech or something of the sort?
00:07:31.900No, no, he mumbled a little bit about a spike in the COVID deaths and, or not even deaths, infections, I should say.
00:07:39.040And then just went on with a grandstanding, self-serving political speech.
00:07:44.480Talk about a slap in the face to the media who danced to his tune and gave him that free airtime.
00:07:49.260I hope the next time that jackass calls for a state of the nation address like that, they tell him, no, sorry, we got to run out of the throne speech when his nice breathless voice while he was at the media learned their lesson from giving Trudeau free airtime.
00:08:09.460Fat chance of that, but certainly many of them were a bit upset.
00:08:13.740You know, they might work for him now and take tax dollars handed out from him, but they, you know, they had their knickers a bit in a knot.
00:08:22.780It doesn't necessarily have to be on the scale of the declaration of war, but it generally has to be an issue of major national significance.
00:08:29.820And it was generally just saying, please download the app, social distance, wear a mask and vote for Justin.
00:08:36.100It was pretty, pretty simple stuff that he just wanted airtime for that all 13 premiers have already said ad nauseum, some of them at the point of a gun.
00:09:24.200But, you know, when there's been pure Trudeau or Justin Trudeau in power, it's very difficult for the NDP to stay relevant.
00:09:30.240So even though the NDP could have written this throne speech, and I doubt there's really nothing they could genuinely disagree with in there, they have to try and find little things to nitpick.
00:09:38.840And because they haven't closed the door on voting for it yet, it seems like they're setting the table to get some minor amendments to the throne speech so they can claim victory, that they got something out of it.
00:09:50.900And I doubt ideologically Justin Trudeau would have very much of a problem with anything they would propose.
00:09:56.580So I'm expecting that the government's going to survive the throne speech here.
00:09:59.620There will be no fall election unless something very strange happens.
00:10:03.680But it won't happen on the throne speech.
00:10:05.260I think we're now looking at a spring election rather than everyone panicking as the media perennially, like the naval gaze, about a fall election here.
00:10:14.580So there's a bit of a bit of breathing room.
00:10:18.700Derek, the government announced today that they were going to be increasing the benefits for unemployment people who were on CERB from $400 a week to $500 a week,
00:10:32.360which meant that would be enough for the NDP to sign on.
00:10:37.960Yeah, one of the key demands was the extension of CERB.
00:10:41.220I don't see the Trudeau government having a problem with that.
00:10:44.360They're now trying to float utopian ideas of a permanent guaranteed basic income, whatever you want to call free money.
00:10:52.720And so, you know, the left have been having wet dreams right now about the idea of turning CERB into a universal basic income.
00:11:02.380So I think it's highly likely that we're going to see it.
00:11:05.020I don't think CERB goes away until the election's over.
00:11:09.300People are going to, people enjoy having the money come from thin air in Ottawa, as people believe it tends to, tend to believe it comes from.
00:11:17.020So I think the Liberals will be very willing to sign on to an extension of CERB as a key NDP demand.
00:11:25.040I think that's something the Liberals would do anyway, but they probably left that out of this throne speech so that they have something that they can give the NDP, make it look like the NDP got a win out of it.
00:11:37.240Yeah, well, just, you know, going further, I mean, some of the things he also dipped into that I kind of didn't expect, but I'm not shocked with.
00:11:45.620Like he was talking about National Pharmacare program.
00:11:48.000He was talking about a national child care program.
00:11:50.780Like these are huge, multi-billion dollar initiatives that aren't even fleshed out.
00:11:56.220And then he hinted at a whole pile of other things.
00:11:58.760I noticed Nahed Nenshi made sure to jump right out with his hand and say, if he can just get enough from Trudeau out of this, he's going to end homelessness.
00:12:06.000This is just an unbelievable kind of open commitment to everything.
00:12:12.280It'll be interesting to see, I guess, as it goes through Parliament when they actually try to make legislation to follow up on these broad promises.
00:12:19.100Thankfully, the Liberals have promised a national daycare program, a national pharmacare program for about 40 years and not delivered it.
00:12:25.860So that is the only silver lining is they're probably lying about it again, hoping that their voters are dumb enough to believe it.
00:12:32.180This is a regular ploy by the Liberals to show up their left flank, to keep swing voters between them and the NDP in their camp, believing that their voters are Charlie Brown, that they're going to go for it again.
00:12:45.500It's kind of like conservatives promising balanced budgets.
00:12:49.180They tend not to deliver it, or at least with very much gusto.
00:12:52.360So it's kind of, it's equivalent of balanced budgets on the left.
00:12:57.140They'll promise it every time they don't deliver it.
00:12:59.380And thankfully for, at least from my perspective, that's a good thing that they're lying.
00:13:03.480Okay, well, let's move to more craziness, but where an election actually has been called on the West Coast.
00:13:14.200In B.C. last week, B.C. Premier John Horgan has broken both his pact with the NDP for a kind of quasi-coalition government,
00:13:30.580which was supposed to last four years in their agreement.
00:13:32.820And he's also broken B.C.'s fixed election law, which dictates that there is not supposed to be an election right now.
00:13:40.260But, you know, fixed election legislation in Canada, in Canada's quasi-Westminster parliamentary system, is a bit of an odd fit,
00:13:49.400because Parliament exists at the confidence of the House, governments exist at the confidence of the House,
00:13:56.880and you can't force a Premier or a Prime Minister to continue governing if they want an election.
00:14:03.840So, you know, while you don't go to jail for this kind of breaking the law, it certainly breaks the spirit of it,
00:14:09.820and wrecks any confidence people have that there'll be a fixed election date that the government will respect.
00:14:15.240Jim Prentice's wantonly throwing out of the fixed election date in Alberta in 2015 shattered confidence in that legislation that people can have in a fixed election date in Alberta.
00:14:25.120For all four years of Rachel Notley's government, people speculated that she would not respect it as well.
00:14:33.540I mean, there was speculation that she would call an early election to preempt a merger of the Wild Rose and P.C.s,
00:14:39.680That was a perennial boogeyman, not one that I ever personally believed in.
00:14:43.180I thought it was always more likely, and I was speculating, that she would delay the election to the fifth year,
00:14:49.060which they can do constitutionally, but not legally under the Elections Act,
00:14:52.960that she would delay it in hopes that, you know, more scandal would come out from the various issues the UCP and Kenny had,
00:15:01.140or at the very least, just to get an extra year in hopes something, the economy turns around or something.
00:15:06.080But Prentice's breaking of that law in 2015 shattered everybody's confidence in that.
00:15:10.480I generally think in Alberta that Kenny will live by the fixed election date,
00:15:15.780but no one has complete confidence in that anymore because trust in that law was so completely shattered by Prentice in 2015.
00:15:23.180I think the same thing has now happened in B.C. where Horgan's been riding high in the polls.
00:15:28.420He couldn't help himself but to take advantage of the situation.
00:15:31.400Very similar has happened with Alberta in 2015.
00:15:35.120And all the polls show that he's going to cruise his way to a huge majority government.
00:15:40.480Dave, do you want to, maybe I preempted you a little bit, but do you want to maybe set the table about, you know,
00:15:50.660the reaction to this in B.C. and what the implications are right now?
00:15:55.440I guess the lure of a majority government was just too much for Premier Horgan.
00:16:02.040As you mentioned, he is riding high in the polls, enough for a majority government.
00:16:06.460Right now he sort of governs at the pleasure of the Green Party.
00:16:10.200Interestingly, it's going to be a COVID pandemic.
00:16:14.960He's called the election for October 24th, which is a Saturday.
00:16:18.860OK, 44 percent of polling stations last election in B.C. were at schools.
00:16:24.320So they've got they're going to have the election on Saturday.
00:16:27.220Then they've got a day to scrub all the schools out before the kids come back.
00:16:31.740They expect 40 percent of voters, that's 800,000 votes, Derek, to be mail-in ballots.
00:16:40.160And they cannot even legally start counting the mail-in ballots until 13 days after the election is held.
00:16:47.880So that takes you into November before they even start to count those ballots.
00:16:52.360Then they've got to properly register.
00:16:54.880It's probably counted in the writing that they represent.
00:16:58.180So it's going to be at least three weeks, say, elections officials, until the results of the October 24th ballot are made public or made official.
00:17:09.980I mean, that's some city of Calgary election counting going on right there.
00:17:14.380That would actually make the city of Calgary look good.
00:17:16.820That's that's third world stuff where we have to win a month for a result.
00:17:21.040Yeah, the city of Calgary, I think, uses abacuses to count their ballots.
00:17:25.520It's going to be an interesting election because of the you know, all the campaigns have to abide by coronavirus rules, you know, so you can't have the big election rallies and and stuff that you're normally used to in an election.
00:17:42.020So it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks on the campaign trail there.
00:17:47.460Corey, what's what are your thoughts on the on the early call here?
00:17:50.760Do you think that voters, you know, generally the thought on early elections from political strategists is, yeah, people be upset for a day and then they move on.
00:18:00.580The exception not to beat this dead horse, but an exception to that was in 2015 when Jim Prentice called an election a year early.
00:18:08.820But that wasn't some particularly unique circumstances surrounding the shelf life of that government and a lot of other nasty political stuff that had been taking place in the province.
00:18:17.780Do you think, Corey, do you think that voters in BC are going to punish the government for for this or are they just going to move on?
00:18:29.800Yeah, well, I don't think we could compare it to when Prentice went, because, as you said, that was also coupled with a lot of issues that, you know, really questioned his principles and his motives.
00:18:41.680I mean, with the floor crossing and a great number of issues that really shattered confidence in pretty much everybody who was sitting in the legislature at that time.
00:18:49.460Horgan doesn't have that going on. And it's kind of, as you said, it's people like us or close political watchers who get annoyed when things like fixed election dates get abused.
00:19:00.740But your average voter has close attention to it. And by the end of the campaign, it's not going to be that big a factor with them.
00:19:06.800Horgan's riding high and I don't see a real powerhouse coming out of the Liberals to to challenge him, though we will see.
00:19:13.860I mean, campaigns are crazy times. As Dave said, it's kind of unprecedented, though.
00:19:18.700I got a feeling that the limited campaign is going to reduce the amount it could swing.
00:19:23.580You don't have live rallies that'll build some hype.
00:19:26.000You can't even really get your candidates door knocking to try and get some of those upsets that could get out there and really work the ground and take a few seats or something.
00:19:34.040I mean, this is all going to be based on the leaders and, you know, almost digital campaigning and how much that impacts the status quo.
00:19:41.300I don't think it will very much. And Horgan probably will cruise to an easy reelection.
00:19:45.820I don't mind being proven wrong when the time comes. And due to the late counting.
00:19:50.420Yeah, I don't know if we'd want to do a live event to try and cover that sucker.
00:19:53.300We'd have to sit online for a couple of weeks.
00:19:55.460The Tory leadership race was bad enough, about roughly six hours overdue.
00:20:01.140I'm not sure we can sit around for the better part of a month.
00:20:04.040But I do think that despite the delays that will come in with the huge numbers of mail-in ballots,
00:20:10.900I think we're going to have a pretty good idea of who's going to win for the most part on election night.
00:20:17.660Because the mail-in ballots, they tend to favor, to a small extent, parties of the right.
00:20:25.560Because mail-in ballots are going to be older people, because they're going to be more concerned about COVID.
00:20:31.920Mail-in ballots in normal elections outside of a pandemic, they're also disproportionately used by older voters who might be on, you know, they might be snowbirds away.
00:20:41.340Although I'm not sure how much BC has snowbirds, because at least in the lower mainland, it's so much warmer there than the rest of Canada.
00:21:22.520So, you know, they might be able to make a little bit of a dent in a couple of interior BC ridings.
00:21:27.860But those are likely ridings, for the most part, that the liberals already have a lock on and the NDP can't win.
00:21:32.400And so on election night, I still think we're going to get a pretty good idea, expecting that the mail-in ballots are more or less going to follow the pattern of the ballots that are cast in person at polling stations, and that things could shift a few degrees.
00:21:49.180So, you know, the ridings that are within 5%, maximum 10%, we have to keep an eye on that.
00:21:54.420But if the NDP perform anywhere close to what they're doing in the polls, which is pushing around 50% right now, the only question then from the mail-in ballots will be, do they have a majority or a huge majority?
00:22:07.800So I still think this is going to be worth covering on election night.
00:22:10.640Just a lot of asterisks and question marks wherever there's any kind of close race.
00:22:16.660Derek, I'm going to have to disagree with you here.
00:22:18.860I don't think that the mail-in ballots, for this election anyways, will just be strictly from older people.
00:22:25.300I don't think anybody wants to go stand in line and vote during COVID.
00:22:30.200I think the number of mail-in ballots will be huge across the age range.
00:22:37.380You know, if you're a young mother with a couple of kids, you don't want to go stand in line and expose your kids to COVID.
00:22:42.760You're going to go for the mail-in ballot.
00:22:52.600Before I get to that, there was also a poll before the election showing the majority of voters did not want an election during COVID.
00:23:00.800So that's also going to spike up the mail-in ballots.
00:23:04.620A poll released today showed 44% in favor of Premier Horgan.
00:23:08.680So I don't think there's much doubt, unless there's a major campaign issue or a campaign flub, that he will get majority.
00:23:18.140But I don't think it's going to be on election night.
00:23:22.780It'll take those three weeks to see how big a majority it is.
00:23:26.320Well, mail-in ballots have never been exclusively older people, but they are disproportionately older people.
00:23:32.080I think it's going to be used much more broadly by other demographics.
00:23:35.520But I think it'll still be disproportionately used by senior citizens because they are the most at risk of COVID by massive margins.
00:23:43.960They're the most likely to be – well, I'm not sure how many snowbirds are going to be gone at this time of year because it's still fall.
00:23:50.340And in B.C. it's practically still summer until December.
00:23:54.620But I think it's still going to be used disproportionately by them.
00:23:57.340But, you know, if we take your argument that it's going to be used in roughly equal measure by all the different demographics and all the different areas in B.C., that means that, for the most part, Election Day will be a giant poll.
00:24:10.480And it'll probably give a good indication of the way the results are going to come in.
00:24:16.100And the mail-in ballots, well, they'll be huge in numbers.
00:24:18.600If their votes are still in the same proportion as those that were counted in person on Election Day, all they're really going to do is only make a difference in close marginal ridings decided between 5%, maximum 10%.
00:24:30.380So the big thing to look at is not who's just leading in each of the ridings on Election Night.
00:24:36.340We're going to have to look at the margin of those.
00:24:38.400So it's going to take a much more detailed election analysis to be able to call the election on Election Night.
00:24:42.980But as I said, if they're anywhere close, if the NEP is anywhere close to what they're looking at for the polls they've got right now, they've got it in the bag.
00:24:59.500We're still going to get actually a pretty good picture of where the general thing is going to go and who's probably going to be in government.
00:25:06.400I mean, we might see an anomaly where it's just really tight and then we'll just have to sit on the edge of our seats for a few weeks.
00:25:11.700But more than likely, again, yeah, due to that sheer volume and the broad amount of people who are going to be using those ballots, I don't know if it'll swing the in-person vote that much one way or another.
00:25:22.240So we will certainly be watching closely on Election Night.
00:26:52.680Some of that is that their policies might not be working as well as they had expected because, you know, they're kind of a mishmash of capitalist free market, low taxes, but also huge mass of corporate welfare of the kind you saw from Getty, from Redford, and from Notley herself.
00:27:11.680So, you know, it's fair enough to say that she might be distracting from things.
00:27:14.840But then she's outright saying that Kenny shouldn't even – shouldn't be criticizing the speech from the throne, that it's bad for relations with Ottawa.
00:27:22.800It really just looks like the NDP has not learned the lesson that the biggest problem with the NDP, with voters in Alberta, isn't just that they're socialist or democratic socialist, depending on what kind of weird terminology you want to use.
00:27:35.460It's that they're viewed as doing the bidding of Ottawa, and they still haven't seemed to learn that lesson.
00:27:44.200I'll give it to you guys for a reaction for a second.
00:27:45.900I'll be back to the broadcast in one second.
00:27:50.280Just looking at Notley's speech, which you probably may or may not have in front of you, Derek, or Corey, I'm sorry.
00:27:57.040She calls Kenny's reaction a, quote, abdication of leadership – uh-oh, I think we're getting some whinny talk here.
00:28:09.480She says Albertans, quote, deserve a leader who will do the hard work of building a real economic recovery plan.
00:28:17.400A leader who will continue to do what it takes to get – and continuing on with a quote from Kenny,
00:28:24.080a leader who is – or sorry, from Notley, a leader who is laser-focused on the challenges facing Alberta, not fake fights with federal politicians.
00:28:36.960The NDP is, again, throwing their lot in with the federal Liberals.
00:28:43.000Well, I don't want to have to say Premier Notley ever again.
00:28:48.660Walk down the garden path hand-in-hand with Justin Trudeau.
00:28:51.520If she really thinks that's something that's going to help her out in Alberta, boy, Rachel, go knock yourself out.
00:28:57.700I mean, aside from, yeah, what they're kind of said, it's just a natural inclination for the NDP and the left to believe in central government as opposed to regional leadership.
00:29:08.200This is going above and beyond, though, and that's getting in bed with the Liberals and saying that we don't have a dispute with Ottawa when Alberta has had a dispute with Ottawa since 1905.
00:29:16.700So, yeah, carry on, Madam Notley, and the rest of us will work on supporting what Albertans actually want to see.
00:29:23.280Every time she does this, Kenny and his staff are popping corks in the Premier's office.
00:30:05.000And then he turned around and screwed them on a couple of big files on pipelines and stuff, left them hanging in the wind because, you know, Notley pitched a thing as a grand bargain.
00:30:14.180Well, we're going to have this carbon tax and Ottawa will be nice to us and give us this and give that on pipelines.
00:30:19.140And then Trudeau turned around, killed Energy East, killed Northern Gateway.
00:30:23.320He didn't lift a finger for for Keystone XL.
00:30:27.940So they feel deeply betrayed by this guy, but they they somehow still feel this loyalty towards central federal control in Ottawa.
00:30:37.740And I don't and I don't think it serves them well politically.
00:30:40.060But if that's what's in their hearts, that's what's in their hearts and they should speak their mind.
00:30:44.560But whenever they do, they're popping corks in the premier's office.
00:30:48.040Yes. Well, why don't we move on to what's going on?
00:30:55.620Well, speaking of a home team, let's let's deal with what's happening within the sovereignness movement right now.
00:31:03.560You know, Wexit Canada, which has undergone already some transformation.
00:31:06.620You know, several months ago, it earned a new interim leader in J. Hill.
00:31:12.500That was seen to give it huge credibility.
00:31:16.420It's you know, he was a former senior Harper cabinet minister and leader of the government in the House of Commons.
00:31:22.620It's a very key position in the government.
00:31:37.500It gives them a huge degree of credibility.
00:31:40.060It's been an open discussion for some time, knowing that they're going to be changing their name to something probably a bit more professional.
00:31:48.200Those of us who watch this kind of thing closely thought it would be something like the Buffalo Party or the Western Independence Party or Western Alliance or even Western Bloc.
00:31:57.180So many of us were very, very surprised when Dave broke the story exclusively with the Western Standard, when they announced that their new name was going to be the Maverick Party.
00:32:14.080It's unique at the least, and reactions have been pretty mixed.
00:32:19.620Dave, why don't we put it to you about, you know, what really went on here, how it happened, what their reasoning was.
00:32:26.520So then we'll get some comment from Corey.
00:32:30.940The Wexit Party or Wexit Canada had a Facebook poll, whether or not to change their name.
00:32:37.320And two-thirds of them had their first in-person meeting ever.
00:32:47.560And out of that board meeting came the name, the Maverick Party.
00:32:52.800It's either the most brilliant move in political history or the stupidest.
00:32:57.280I still haven't figured it out myself, Derek.
00:33:00.480But, and this is where I admit I'm the only guy in the Western world not to have seen the movie Top Gun.
00:33:47.220I was trying to play a bit of devil's advocate and polish that turd.
00:33:52.380And I wrote that piece, you know, trying to at least lay out the name and the need for it and so on.
00:33:57.960And even then, feedback was just, no, that's just not the way to go.
00:34:02.720Part of why I did that, though, is I just, I really do want to see a decent, unapologetic, regionalist Western Party form.
00:34:11.880I'm really happy to see Jay Hill take the helm, see these guys build some steam and credibility.
00:34:16.440And I remember from going depressingly way back to when I led the Alberta Independence Party and then into the, on the executive with the Wildrose Party, you can get hung up so badly on some of what are still relatively little things.
00:34:30.220I remember spending hours after hours in meetings because some people wanted to develop the independent Alberta flag and they would fight over the colors that were going to be on the bloody flag.
00:34:40.060Meanwhile, our membership numbers are dropping, you know, we haven't paid this bill or something.
00:34:43.380But no, we're pissing around fighting over a flag or we're fighting over the motto or we're fighting over the party name.
00:34:49.960And the name is important, but you could be hung up on it forever.
00:34:53.600I think on Facebook to find out people want to change it.
00:35:11.500Make them feel like they're taking part.
00:35:12.480You don't have to put 100 names and go down that rabbit hole.
00:35:14.980Commit to five names, put it out there, engage them, and then get one and settle on it.
00:35:20.300I'm only guessing that they were sitting around a table probably fighting over it for a long time.
00:35:24.200And I'm still mixed up as to whether or not, you know, looking at the feedback, whether they should just admit they made a mistake, toss it in the garbage, and do that engagement I was talking about, and then move on.
00:35:34.200Or embrace this thing and hope people kind of forget and try to take this a little more seriously.
00:35:39.120But I don't think it was a wise move on their part.
00:35:41.840Yeah, Corey, I was shocked by your column.
00:35:43.840It was literally the only positive thing I had seen anyone say about the name change.
00:35:48.840The people most upset about it are a lot of their key supporters.
00:35:53.820I think their opponents, particularly conservatives who are worried about this, they were jumping for joy because it just doesn't sound credible.
00:36:01.500I mean, as someone who, I mean, to ring my own bell a little bit, was probably fairly considered a maverick in politics, I still don't like it as a party name.
00:36:14.700It doesn't sound like it's ready for prime time.
00:36:19.920I mean, of course their members said, when they polled their members, said that they wanted a new name, but they didn't ask them what the name would be.
00:36:26.260I think, considering the alternative they chose, people would have preferred their old one as insufficient as I think it probably was.
00:36:59.540So if they were going to change their name, which I think they should have, they should have stuck with something that at least people understood what it was about right in the name.
00:37:19.180You know what it is. Maverick party, you have no idea.
00:37:23.420And so they have no brand recognition whatsoever.
00:37:26.980People are going to see this on the ballot and not know what it is or what it stands for.
00:37:31.780So they're going to miss a lot of that protest vote, and I think it diminishes their credibility significantly.
00:37:38.620I really think that they should, if they're looking to establish themselves as a credible and real force on the political scene in the West, I really think they need to revisit this one.
00:37:49.380Paul Holmes, former digital editor of Western Standard, has commented, says, Top Gun was a terrible movie. Don't bother, Dave.
00:38:02.040Yeah, it's not a particularly good movie, but it's kind of just a part of the canon of Western pop culture that you're just going to miss too many references.
00:38:13.080It's like not watching The Simpsons and, you know, someone's going to talk about monorails and you're just not going to get the reference.
00:38:20.140So I think, Dave, that you need to watch it. If nothing else, you're just not going to understand all the gifs and memes of people posting on our pages if you don't watch this movie.
00:38:30.660It's quite necessary, I think, as subpar as the movie is.
00:38:36.560Well, not a ton of questions, but we do have a question from Andrea Kettle Burrell.
00:38:43.160She says, will this B.C. election influence oil transport via the B.C. border?
00:38:47.780Sure. Well, let's put you guys, let's start with Corey.
00:38:52.380Will the B.C. election influence essentially Albertans, Saskatchewan's ability to get oil through B.C.?
00:38:59.260Oh, hey, Andrea, it's good to see you out there listening up.
00:39:02.540I don't think this election in particular is going to have much impact on it.
00:39:06.860The Trans Mountain thing has kind of been settled on as a federal thing.
00:39:09.760It's going through. It's being pushed. Horgan doesn't want to talk about it.
00:39:34.160Yeah, I think much like the throne speech, I don't think the word pipeline will be mentioned at all.
00:39:42.060As Corey said, the TMC, TMX pipeline is a done deal.
00:39:47.020And I don't think there's any more new pipelines on, you know, that's going to be close enough to being completed or even talked about for it to be an election issue.
00:39:56.840Yeah, I think you're right. You both are right.
00:40:00.320Essentially, the bargain that Trudeau has struck with himself and to a lesser extent, Rachel Notley, when she was premier, was we're going to have this carbon tax and we're going to give you a pipeline.
00:40:11.540That was very clear with the tank, the B.C. coast tanker ban legislation.
00:40:15.880It was very clear with the No More Pipelines legislation, Bill C-69.
00:40:21.560It has essentially made it impossible for new pipelines to go forward in any realistic way.
00:40:27.980I do believe Keystone is going to get built.
00:40:30.200It's just they're way too far into it to stop.
00:40:34.840I mean, even Jason Kenney would probably become a sovereigntist if they canceled that.
00:40:40.540So I think that Keystone XL is going to go through.
00:40:43.520But it's the last pipeline I think we're ever going to see in the foreseeable future, regardless of who is in government federally or in B.C.
00:40:52.880I think the bigger implication is a continued status quo of the very strange regional alignment in Canada right now.
00:41:02.960It used to be in the 90s that the Western premiers all worked as a bloc, despite some pretty significant ideological differences.
00:41:09.520differences. You know, B.C. had, you know, Glenn Clark, an NDP premier with Ralph Klein and then Lauren Calvert in Saskatchewan and whoever the hell was in Manitoba.
00:41:22.500I can't recall. Sorry about sorry, Manitobans.
00:41:24.820The Western premiers, despite vastly different ideological outlooks, worked as a bloc when dealing with Ottawa and on federal issues.
00:41:36.120Now, the alignments are very different.
00:41:40.560You have an ostensibly conservative government in Quebec with the with the CAQ, the CAQ, aligned with a socialist government in British Columbia on on the major issues right now, like transfers and and pipelines.
00:41:57.360Essentially, no, no changes, you know, Alberta and Saskatchewan are still a very solid block, but it's really just the two of them.
00:42:06.840Ontario, though, while it's aligned with Quebec, traditionally has been aligned with Quebec on most things.
00:42:12.840It's kind of tried to position itself as the honest broker in the country.
00:42:17.880Doug Ford has spoken favorably of Alberta's positions vis a vis Jason Kenney.
00:42:21.500But it really hasn't really done much.
00:42:24.240It hasn't forced any issues, but it has supported pipelines and it hasn't supported changes to equalization, at least that I'm aware of.
00:42:31.940But it has supported the very strange case that Kenney is making for the fiscal stabilization fund, which which is essentially equalization for half provinces, which is a very bad argument, I think, for Alberta to be making in general.
00:42:48.140But, you know, Ontario has been moderately soft.
00:42:51.120So now you have Socialist BC and Conservative Quebec on the same page against, you know, Conservative Alberta and Saskatchewan and very mushy, very Liberal-like Conservative in Ontario.
00:43:08.240So the Federation is making for very strange bedfellows right now.
00:43:11.300OK, well, I think that's that's it for today.
00:43:19.040Our technology is, I think, run smoother today than it that it has previously.
00:43:23.320It's still not good, as you can see from the constantly shrinking and enlarging head of Dave Naylor on the side and the fact that we haven't got Corey here.
00:43:32.560But that's because he's broadcasting to us from the boondocks today.
00:43:35.000I think that's more of a connection issue.
00:43:36.380But we really thank you for your time.
00:43:49.300We are one of the very few independent media outlets in Canada that refuses to accept government funding.
00:43:55.200And of the independent media outlets that don't take government funding, we're one of the only that don't take union funding either.
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