Western Standard - Triggered： A provincial police force is worth the investment

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Good morning. It's Monday, August 8th, 2022. Welcome to Triggered. I'm Corey Morgan. Yes,

00:00:42.340 we're beginning another week. I think these weeks get kind of, the work week gets a little

00:00:46.060 longer as the summer goes on. You know, you're just enjoying those weekends so much in the good

00:00:50.080 weather. It's hard to get back into your seat for that other five days, but we're kicking off

00:00:54.380 another week. We'll get through it. We'll survive and we'll bitch about it. That's part of the fun

00:00:59.680 of having live shows and the ability to speak up. So it's good to see you guys in the comment

00:01:04.620 scroll. I got a DS from Toronto and others. This being a live show, I like to remind everybody,

00:01:11.820 use those comments, guys. Let's get back and forth. Let's be interactive. That's what it's

00:01:15.740 about. Send questions my way, have discussions with each other, send questions for my guests.

00:01:20.340 I won't necessarily read them all out loud, you know, or pass them on to the guests, but I do see

00:01:25.160 them all and it makes it worth doing these live productions versus canned recorded ones which

00:01:30.660 there are so many out there already so uh again though i always got to remind you i've seen some

00:01:34.960 pretty big scraps break out now and then just keep it somewhat civil we can get upset but we don't

00:01:39.540 have to be terribly rude there's good polite ways to be rude if that sounds odd it is possible

00:01:45.260 all right a couple of daily observances to get through and let's see what's going on here it is

00:01:50.180 this one's I like, and I understand this so well. It's sneak some zucchini onto your neighbor's

00:01:55.300 porch night. And this sounds absurd, but if you've ever done gardening, you'll understand there's

00:02:01.560 something that happens with zucchini. I'm a terrible gardener. I mean, every few years,

00:02:04.540 Jane and I try, we plant some stuff. We get some stuff. One thing though, you wash the zucchini and

00:02:09.380 it gets bigger and bigger. It eats up half of your garden with these giant leaves, but still doesn't

00:02:12.720 seem like much is coming along. And then all of a sudden, one day you lift the leaves and you got

00:02:16.160 all these giant bloody zucchinis everywhere. I mean, these things are just huge. You can only

00:02:19.820 eat so much zucchini and it only keeps so well. So you take a bag, you bag it up, you sneak out in

00:02:24.880 the night, you dump it on your neighbor's doorstep. Don't want to waste it, right? Hey, it's a nice

00:02:29.660 neighborly thing to do. And well, if somebody's creeping around, you know, leaving something on

00:02:33.860 your doorstep, you could do worse than a bag of zucchini. So if you've got a spare zucchini,

00:02:38.500 this is the time to go out, choose carefully on your porches. I live in a rural area now. I think

00:02:42.460 it might not be good sneaking around on people's porches at night. I could get myself in trouble,

00:02:46.740 but all the same, this is the time to get rid of your spare zucchini. All right, it's also

00:02:50.440 International Cat Day, so I don't know what you do to observe this one, because you know your cat

00:02:56.720 really doesn't care, but all the same, observe your cat, appreciate your cat, pet your cat.

00:03:03.200 We got Makachuk and his semi-famous cat that makes its appearances when I interview him,

00:03:08.160 or he's even used for some of his basis for choosing candidates and leadership debates.

00:03:15.380 Today's the day to celebrate those cats, though. Those of you who do love cats, this is the day for it. I don't know. Buy it some extra catnip and watch it bounce off the walls a little.

00:03:23.980 Okay, getting on to the guest today. I got Bacchus Berua. He's from the Fraser Institute. He's their healthcare chair, I guess, or whatnot in there.

00:03:35.100 He's written a lot of articles and studies about it. We're seeing so much in the news right now with health centers closing, hospitals reducing hours.

00:03:42.100 I mean, it's crazy. We don't, we don't, we don't manage to just get injured and sick in nine to

00:03:47.140 five hours, but our health facilities can't keep up with the realities and it's across the country.

00:03:51.260 So we'll discuss healthcare reform and some of those things, what could be done if we ever find

00:03:55.600 the will to do it. And Franco Teresano is going to pop on. They wrote a column, him and Chris Sims

00:04:01.080 did with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, talking about how Pierre Paulyev or I guess any

00:04:05.160 conservative leader could really do a lot of good with direct democracy. And I'm talking about

00:04:09.960 citizens initiated referenda and of course recall there's always a lot of talk about it but very

00:04:15.060 rarely when we'll actually get functional uh legislation for those things so we'll talk a bit

00:04:20.420 about that see if maybe we can coax those candidates to embrace some of that stuff for real

00:04:24.900 and uh yeah susan's saying the only time rural folk lock their doors so they don't get a backseat 0.98

00:04:30.120 full of zucchinis yeah those those things i mean they tell you they're like an invasive weed

00:04:34.040 and i mean i like zucchini but there's limits somebody else says zucchini bread yeah that's

00:04:38.200 good, but you can still only eat and preserve so much. All right, let's see what's got me going.

00:04:43.700 I want to talk about an Alberta provincial police force. So, I mean, last week I interviewed Kevin

00:04:48.160 Halwa of the National Police Federation on their initiative opposing the formation of a provincial

00:04:52.420 police force in Alberta. He made some good points, but for the most part, I felt they were pretty

00:04:56.560 weak. I mean, he is with a police union and it's focused on the interest of the union rather than

00:05:01.180 the public. And I don't fault them for that. That's just what their job is and that's what

00:05:03.840 they're about, but it does make me question their motivations. Although I did point out some reports

00:05:08.820 claiming, you know, the formation of a provincial police force would come at a high cost. And

00:05:12.440 this is true. I mean, everything from new branding to training facilities, to cars, to

00:05:17.860 office facilities, I mean, it all has to be created or transferred and it's going to cost

00:05:21.880 a lot of money. That cost will be worth it though. I mean, to begin with, the RCMP don't come free to

00:05:28.040 the province. They're not some kind of gift, you know, from Ottawa. They're a contracted force

00:05:32.460 and Alberta taxpayers have to pay for it.

00:05:34.900 They're leased, essentially.

00:05:36.840 We don't own them, but we pay for them.

00:05:38.780 Some people maintain a misconception sometimes

00:05:40.940 that the RCMP is some sort of federal expense

00:05:43.940 and we would be giving something away

00:05:45.260 by not maintaining them as our primary force in the province.

00:05:47.700 And that's just not true.

00:05:49.180 Every dollar spent on the RCMP services right now by the province

00:05:52.220 can be dedicated to a provincial police force, and it should.

00:05:56.800 The RCMP wouldn't be going away totally.

00:05:59.200 They'll remain as a federal force,

00:06:01.280 at least while Alberta's still within confederation, and scaled down a great deal.

00:06:05.340 They'd be something more akin to the American FBI than a regular police force that's on the ground.

00:06:10.580 And the RCMP, I mean, let's face it, they've been hopelessly politicized.

00:06:14.460 We've seen that in their reticence to follow through on criminal charges with the prime minister

00:06:18.260 over the Aga Khan affair, despite their statements from the RCMP saying they felt there were reasonable grounds

00:06:23.380 that fraud was committed. But they said it wouldn't be in the public interest to follow through

00:06:27.300 with charges on the prime minister. Well, isn't it in the public, you know, it isn't in the public's

00:06:32.520 interest to have a prime minister who escapes criminal charges due to being the one who

00:06:37.220 directly appoints the head of the national police force. That's what the problem is. The public

00:06:41.580 interest had nothing to do with the RCMP decision. It was the interest of senior members in the force

00:06:45.920 and knew that charging a prime minister would cost them their jobs. We've seen evidence of

00:06:49.880 political interference from the prime minister's office into criminal investigations, whether it's

00:06:54.240 the Nova Scotia shooting, or, you know, quite recently, or the SNC-Lavana affair, we have a

00:06:59.380 government that doesn't think twice about violating rules and laws as they pursue their own and mask

00:07:04.200 their own corruption. If members of the government are above the law of the land, we don't live in a

00:07:08.180 democracy. A provincial police force won't be able to hold the federal government responsible for

00:07:12.840 itself, but it will free Alberta police, Alberta from the police actions directed by the federal

00:07:18.380 government. Why should Albertans pay for a force that's going to act against the interests of the

00:07:22.060 province at the direction of the feds. I mean, for example, it's clear the federal government

00:07:26.220 wants to disarm the nation. They're doing it incrementally through orders in council,

00:07:29.820 as we've seen with the handgun freeze. And rest assured, there's going to be a seizure of firearms

00:07:34.300 coming. And when it comes to that, let the government, federal government, spend every

00:07:38.440 penny then to track down and try and take the property from those law-abiding firearm

00:07:42.000 owners in Alberta. We might not be able to stop the seizure while being within confederation,

00:07:47.320 but we sure don't have to aid the government in doing it.

00:07:50.980 Let their little RCMP force try to deal with it.

00:07:53.520 It's their job.

00:07:54.260 Our provincial force could then just focus on real crime in the meantime.

00:07:57.900 Localized policing would be more effective for the province anyways,

00:08:01.300 particularly in rural areas.

00:08:02.760 Mandates and priorities would be based on provincial needs

00:08:05.360 rather than federal ideologies.

00:08:07.620 Police members wouldn't constantly be parachuted across the country

00:08:10.120 into regions where they have few connections

00:08:11.580 and no understanding of the local culture or community

00:08:14.320 or community that they're they're now with as the rcmp then a new provincial force can be crafted

00:08:20.160 with a more modern mandate too i mean you know morale is terribly low among rcmp members right 0.98

00:08:25.680 now and the workplace culture has put pressure on a lot of them particularly women this mess might

00:08:30.640 not be repairable with the rcmp but can be addressed and avoided if a brand new force takes these things

00:08:35.680 into account upon its creation so yes a provincial police force would cost more during its initial

00:08:41.280 formation, but it'll be worth every penny. The status quo is going to cost us a hell of a lot

00:08:45.400 more in the long run if we let a government obsessed with control of citizens continue

00:08:48.980 to control our local policing. And that's what's got me going today. Okay, let's check into the

00:08:55.440 newsroom with our news editor, Dave Naylor, and see what's happening over there. He's made it just

00:09:01.540 in time from that wonderful traffic on the Deerfoot this Monday. Have I mentioned how much I love

00:09:06.300 Deerfoot Trail, Corey. It's just the best designed road in the entire world. Oh, yeah. It's something

00:09:12.780 to be proud of. Oh, man. Hey, I hear there might be some positive news for change on your bee front.

00:09:20.960 Well, yeah, I've set up, I was pretty excited about that, a swarm trap. I put it up quite a

00:09:26.280 while ago. What it means is you put up kind of a box with some bee scent in it and a little bit of

00:09:31.660 a comb in there and a few things. And if a swarm happens to come by, they might say, hey, this is

00:09:37.000 a good place to set up shop. And suddenly you get a whole bunch of free bees. And it's pretty much

00:09:40.460 been ignored all summer. And yesterday there were a bunch of scout bees hanging around the entrance.

00:09:45.560 So, I mean, I lost a bunch of bees in the swarm recently. I might actually gain from somebody

00:09:49.760 else's swarmed hive and regain my losses there, but I'll be watching carefully.

00:09:54.100 So this isn't your bees coming home?

00:09:56.560 No, after this much time, it wouldn't be mine. So it's somebody else who's suffered the fate

00:10:00.640 that I did and lost half their piece to a swarm.

00:10:03.520 But maybe it would be like an exchange program.

00:10:05.440 There you go.

00:10:07.040 Arthur Green in Edmonton's had a busy morning also, Corey,

00:10:10.860 with the UCP leadership race.

00:10:13.440 He's talked to Brian Jean about the issue of a provincial police force.

00:10:18.060 And Jean said he'd almost like to see a hybrid

00:10:20.460 where cities and towns can take over policing in the cities

00:10:26.500 while the RCMP just takes care of rural Alberta.

00:10:31.100 So you'd have the provincial police within towns and cities

00:10:34.620 and then that would free up the RCMP

00:10:36.700 to put more boots on the ground in rural areas.

00:10:40.060 So that's Brian Jean's take on it.

00:10:42.560 Danielle Smith has put out a policy 0.99

00:10:45.000 on how she's going to protect our kids, she calls it. 1.00

00:10:48.820 Basically, no more lockdowns 0.59

00:10:50.800 and lots of more mental health help for them.

00:10:54.980 uh this weekend cory was the 25th anniversary of the saskatchewan party so they held a big

00:11:02.040 celebration uh out in davidson saskatchewan uh attended by no less uh luminary than uh former

00:11:09.240 prime minister stephen harper and he was there with current premier scott mo and 25 years they've

00:11:15.820 now been a political force in saskatchewan so uh some interesting political news on the website

00:11:24.100 this morning. Our Dave Makachuk has just filed a good exclusive, Corey. He's talked with a

00:11:29.540 Manitoba farmer who is just back from the Ukraine, where he assisted in teaching Ukrainian farmers

00:11:38.920 how to hold and fire a rifle and get ready for the Russians coming over the hills. So

00:11:45.000 a very interesting column, and we'll get that up shortly.

00:11:48.120 right on well it's a good kickoff to the week uh sort of a little slow in the political news i

00:11:54.720 guess we're into those doldrums into the end of august they're they're kind of uh all doing

00:11:58.940 constituency work or taking a breather before the fall uh whirlwind begins i guess it yeah but it's

00:12:04.540 it's good that we have the two leadership races the federal conservatives and the provincial ucp so

00:12:10.220 there's enough copy to keep us busy yeah well then just that good time to remind everybody

00:12:14.760 I'll segue that fast.

00:12:15.940 You'll be there tomorrow as well.

00:12:17.260 We've got our debate happening at the rooftop tomorrow in Calgary

00:12:20.500 with the frontriners and the UCP debate for people who want to get that chance

00:12:24.500 to see them firsthand and see what they've got to see.

00:12:26.820 Yeah, it should be a good event.

00:12:27.740 I'm looking forward to it.

00:12:29.480 Right on.

00:12:30.080 Well, thanks, Dave, and I'll see you after the show.

00:12:33.140 Thanks, Corey.

00:12:34.620 That is our news editor, Dave Naylor.

00:12:37.080 And, yeah, running through the stories of the week,

00:12:39.460 lots of stuff still always going on.

00:12:41.060 We've got people all over.

00:12:42.100 As we said, Arthur Green.

00:12:43.000 We've got Matthew Horwood out in Ontario, that poor fella, and Reed Small out in BC.

00:12:49.580 Christopher Oldcorn, Saskatchewan.

00:12:51.080 We're just spreading across this country to give you good, independent news coverage.

00:12:55.600 And the reason we're doing it, guys, is because of you, because you've been subscribing.

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00:13:36.720 We really appreciate it, and it's good for all of us.

00:13:39.840 All right, let's talk about some of this other stuff.

00:13:41.540 Sylvia is saying, well, so why keep the RCMP?

00:13:43.180 It's either one or the other.

00:13:44.120 We can't afford both.

00:13:44.800 No, actually it's not.

00:13:46.260 We can't get rid of the RCMP unless we get out of confederation,

00:13:49.580 which is a discussion I'm always happy to have.

00:13:51.980 But they are a federally mandated force.

00:13:54.740 Every province, even if they have provincial police, still have RCMP.

00:13:58.580 The thing is, though, we wouldn't have thousands and thousands and thousands of RCMP.

00:14:02.620 They'd just be a small federal force.

00:14:05.100 And yeah, we won't spend a nickel.

00:14:07.360 We won't dedicate a nickel towards them.

00:14:08.900 If the feds want to send them here, they can, but on their dime.

00:14:11.260 And I know it still comes out of our pocket in the end anyways, but it would be a much, much smaller presence with a much, much more limited mandate and area that they're going into.

00:14:21.660 So, no, we wouldn't get rid of them.

00:14:23.280 And saying we already have RCMP and sheriffs get crimes on the rise.

00:14:26.100 Well, that's bigger other issues.

00:14:28.760 Absolutely.

00:14:29.780 The bottom line is, though, if we have Alberta police, they aren't answered to Trudeau.

00:14:34.380 You know what?

00:14:34.860 That's worth a lot.

00:14:35.960 That's worth a hell of a lot.

00:14:37.760 Though, the mandate has to be carefully made.

00:14:40.700 if we just make a provincial copy of the RCMP and they aren't well accountable, they aren't,

00:14:46.760 as somebody else I saw in the commenters was saying, you know, it has to be accountable to

00:14:50.660 the citizens. And that's true. Like this force has to be done right, or we're just duplicating

00:14:55.160 something else that's gone bad. And I'm not one of those who's going to say that every RCMP officer

00:15:00.000 is bad. No, not necessarily. There's a lot of very good officers out there, dedicated ones. I think

00:15:04.140 if a provincial police force was formed, a great deal of those current RCMP officers would probably

00:15:09.320 transfer over to it, actually, maybe be happier in a new force. But, you know, it's funny how

00:15:15.820 this debate has gotten so heated. Guys, they've done it in Ontario and Quebec, and I think New

00:15:24.640 Finland even has their own. Why is it always, why are Albertans always assholes when we're the ones 0.99

00:15:28.460 who want to try to do something that other parts of the country are already doing? That's what gets 0.99

00:15:32.520 tiresome. That's what helps build that movement for an independence movement, because all we're

00:15:37.520 asking is to do the things the other provinces are doing. And somehow we're, we're radicals and

00:15:41.840 we're, we're, you know, we're, we're hicks and we're wrong for wanting to do it. Provincial

00:15:46.440 police forces, again, they're not perfect. The OPP has all sorts of problems. What I see with it,

00:15:51.120 though, is an opportunity. When you get a brand new force, think of that. If you can create a

00:15:54.900 force from scratch, you can build and learn from the mistakes of the other forces. Find out why

00:16:01.660 then it wasn't so good with the other ones and see what you can do with them. And yeah, Brian

00:16:06.100 Gene's been talking about that, uh, Heco or Heco saying, a commenter saying, uh, idea on hybrid

00:16:11.640 policing isn't going to work. RCMP overreach from the federal government must be eliminated entirely.

00:16:15.120 Well, again, there's only one way, only one to completely eliminate the RCMP and that's

00:16:22.000 independence and people aren't ready for it yet. But we can certainly start moving towards it a

00:16:26.340 lot. And one big step is getting rid of that force, at least as the prime one in the province.

00:16:30.860 Uh, let's see where else I'm just going through the comment scrolls. Guys, that's why I'm

00:16:36.080 My head's turned off to the side.

00:16:38.400 And Alberta's, Canada's, Texas.

00:16:40.560 Yeah, I think in a lot of ways.

00:16:42.320 But Texas has a good deal, more independence.

00:16:45.100 I mean, they're certainly respected within the United States a lot more than we are.

00:16:50.100 But they have to because Texas has a couple of senators just like any other state.

00:16:55.580 It's not like Alberta where we have fewer senators than, you know, PEI.

00:17:01.040 Well, not quite, but terribly.

00:17:03.240 We're not represented right.

00:17:04.480 We can't stand up for ourselves.

00:17:05.640 Thus, the independent movements.

00:17:07.540 Okay, let's see what else we've got going on.

00:17:09.360 Talk about some news things.

00:17:11.420 This one was interesting.

00:17:13.240 And, you know, it's not making headlines as much as you would think.

00:17:15.960 But two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia recorded actually the highest amounts of coral cover in 40 years.

00:17:24.160 So, I mean, that's always been an area that the climate alarmists are like always warning us.

00:17:29.000 But we're going to run out of all our reefs.

00:17:30.360 The reefs are all going to die.

00:17:31.300 They're all going to bleach out.

00:17:32.100 We're all going to die. 0.99

00:17:32.760 We're all going to die. 0.99

00:17:33.300 Blah, blah, blah. 0.97

00:17:33.580 We're always going to die.

00:17:34.300 I saw that in the news last night when they were giving the weather forecast for the week in Alberta.

00:17:38.440 Of course, the whole province is all deep, deep red.

00:17:41.760 I mean, I'm surprised they didn't actually put little flames and smoke and everything.

00:17:45.140 It shows cooking.

00:17:46.120 It's just a run-of-the-mill heat wave like we've seen every summer for the last few thousand years or so.

00:17:50.500 But we've got to make it scary.

00:17:52.340 Well, they've been doing that with the reefs and, you know, making a scare.

00:17:55.660 We're never going to have reefs again, and then the world's going to die.

00:17:58.500 Yet, two-thirds of it now have got the highest amount of coral cover in 40 years.

00:18:04.080 And it's not saying necessarily that climate change isn't even happening.

00:18:07.480 What it is saying is the world's more adaptable than these alarmists like giving it credit for.

00:18:12.180 You know, things change.

00:18:14.380 How much we can impact them positively or negatively is debatable.

00:18:18.480 But they change.

00:18:20.260 And in this case, it's changed.

00:18:23.120 The reefs are growing back.

00:18:25.220 And I think there's other reports that come up quite often that we see more ice cover in our Arctic areas year by year and less on others.

00:18:32.620 It changes.

00:18:33.240 But, you know, of course, they only report on the scary stuff, not on the positive stuff.

00:18:37.960 So reefs are sensitive, absolutely, you know, and there's things to do to try and preserve them.

00:18:44.280 But they're obviously not nearly as much at risk as, of course, the climate alarmists like us to be.

00:18:52.480 And that's what I get sick of, the fear, fear, fear.

00:18:54.700 You know, CTV, speaking of legacy media, if we're going to talk, you know, and pat our own backs here at the Western Standard and the independent abilities we have.

00:19:03.240 CTV, man, they've just gone brutally bad.

00:19:06.880 I mean, I still tune into them on the weekends and the evenings just to see what's up on the headlines.

00:19:11.780 Eventually, we'll get big enough that maybe I'll have the Western Standard Channel on my regular TV and I'll be able to watch that at night.

00:19:18.420 But they are just right up there with the CBC, with their alarmism, fear, fear, fear, everything, COVID, monkeypox, global warming, you name it.

00:19:27.780 We're all going to die.

00:19:28.680 We're all going to die.

00:19:30.140 It's exhausting.

00:19:32.120 It's exhausting.

00:19:33.240 We won't do that. We're just going to report on facts. So I'd like to remind everybody. So the next time you hear somebody saying the reefs are all going away, actually, no, no, they aren't. Yet another alarmist prediction that didn't happen. Al Gore gets a Nobel Peace Prize for lying, saying our polar bears are all going to be drowning by now. Well, aside from that, you know, we've also got the coral reefs are not all vanishing on us, contrary to what some people would claim.

00:19:59.240 Here's a neat one.

00:20:02.680 Yeah, all legacy media in Canada.

00:20:04.660 Oh, this is from Jay there.

00:20:07.560 All legacy media in Canada is propaganda.

00:20:09.700 You get what you pay for. 0.68

00:20:10.520 Yeah, unfortunately, we got to pay for the crappy propaganda too,

00:20:14.560 as well as if you pay for things with the standard

00:20:17.440 or other independent outlets.

00:20:18.880 The difference though is if you don't like our stuff,

00:20:22.420 you don't have to pay for ours.

00:20:24.420 So, I mean, we're user-based.

00:20:26.600 And I talk about that all the time.

00:20:28.000 when it talks about media, because you are always accountable to who pay yours to your bills. You

00:20:33.380 know, you dance with the one who brung you to a degree. So as long as we're independent, we have

00:20:38.160 to answer to you. Maybe we'll have ups and downs. Maybe we'll piss off our subscribers and lose

00:20:41.600 some subscribers at some point. So far, it's been a good growth. We're obviously providing what

00:20:45.520 people are looking for. But if we stop providing that, our ratings will sink. We'll have to

00:20:51.200 contract, and we'll figure out where to go from there and improve it. When it is, yeah, Jay was

00:20:58.080 saying, no, Justin paid for it. I mean, yeah, I know, yeah, kind of what you're getting there.

00:21:01.720 And so, I mean, it allows that proper evolution of what you guys want to see is what we're going

00:21:07.860 to learn to provide, or we'll get, you know, off to the wayside because we won't be able to sustain.

00:21:13.720 But it's artificially rigged. And this happens with every business when it gets subsidized.

00:21:17.680 It no longer reflects the needs of the market. It reflects what the government wants. And the

00:21:23.240 government's interests are rarely the same as our interests, unfortunately. So we get left by the

00:21:29.940 wayside. And with media, it gets very scary because, I mean, again, we've got to get our

00:21:34.880 information from somewhere. Not everybody's out on the streets to find out what's happening in

00:21:39.260 person and firsthand. And it's got to spread out. So, I mean, we've got a good trend though.

00:21:46.780 We know that's why the government's terrified. It is working well right now because, you know,

00:21:52.820 we got independent outlets like us or Rebel or Epoch Times or True North. I mean, they're out

00:21:57.780 there and we're getting the news to people despite what the government thinks. But then we see the

00:22:02.720 government response is Bill C-11, C-18, they want to control information. But the fact that they're

00:22:08.840 trying so hard as well lets us know we're over the target, guys. The government's scared. They

00:22:14.740 can't control things. So they're trying to find new ways to do it. But we'll keep finding new

00:22:18.360 ways to get to you. And independent media is going to be the way we're going to do it.

00:22:23.180 So here's a beauty that shows the attitude of government, the attitude of the world these days,

00:22:28.520 hero medallion for everyone. This sounds like a joke story almost, right? Like,

00:22:33.360 so yeah, the public health agency, you know, who screwed up so many things

00:22:39.680 with COVID mismanagement, and they're giving the pandemic hero medallion to every single employee.

00:22:46.760 Look at that, guys. You get a ribbon for participation. You're a hero. Good for you.

00:22:52.900 Come on. These are tax dollars at work. These guys are incompetent. Our civil service,

00:22:58.540 this is an area where we are in grave, grave trouble as a country, and we need to reform it.

00:23:08.180 And that's something that's also came out in the news recently is that the civil services is a lot of the workers aren't coming back to work, which shouldn't be such a shocker, I guess, in some ways.

00:23:22.080 But we've got a real problem.

00:23:27.440 I mean, passport renewals, you name it, all these different services are in the toilet.

00:23:31.880 But a lot of the area that it seems that which is leading to this problem right now is that a lot of these civil servants aren't eager to come back and do the job in the first place.

00:23:42.580 So, OK, I've been talking a little over time.

00:23:44.720 I see my guest is in the lobby there and let's bring him in and have a conversation.

00:23:48.500 We'll pivot back into some healthcare talk, because I've been kind of rambling on the

00:23:53.180 civil service.

00:23:53.760 It's tied into government expenditures, but this is a bigger one, and I've been looking

00:23:57.020 forward to speaking to him.

00:23:59.460 So this is Bacchus Berua from the Fraser Institute.

00:24:01.980 Thanks for joining us today.

00:24:03.720 Good morning, and thank you so much for having me on the show.

00:24:05.780 Sorry I had a little trouble getting connected.

00:24:08.060 Oh, that's okay.

00:24:08.880 It happens to all of us now, and then I'm glad you made it.

00:24:11.440 Though once in a while, you know, being live, sometimes people don't show, and then I've

00:24:14.040 really got to babble incoherently for, you know, another 20 minutes until the next guest

00:24:17.280 gets on.

00:24:17.700 So you made it. Let's talk together. So, I mean, as I kind of said earlier in the show, I mean, we're seeing it right now. It's headlines across the country. Our health care resources just seem to be incapable of keeping up. We've got in Calgary, an urgent care center that's been reducing its hours. One in, you know, north of the city that's shut down for weekends. I believe in the East Coast, we're seeing again, hospitals and such that just don't have the staff or the ability to keep up.

00:24:45.480 But still, we aren't hearing discussion on the system.

00:24:49.160 That's where I get concerned.

00:24:51.200 You know, we're in a very, very difficult situation right now.

00:24:53.800 As you said, you know, there are years closing across the country.

00:24:57.540 We have many, you know, physicians who are leaving the system.

00:25:02.820 There are situations where nurses are burnt out.

00:25:05.220 And, of course, none of it is really their fault.

00:25:07.400 They've had an incredibly difficult two years.

00:25:10.340 But it is a tough situation right now that should not be taken lightly.

00:25:16.020 It's probably, you know, the first reaction would be to kind of put all of the blame or the onus on COVID-19.

00:25:22.340 And certainly COVID has pushed the system to its limits and exacerbated a lot of the problems.

00:25:27.400 But to really understand what's going on, we actually need to roll back the clock a little bit to 2019 before COVID was there.

00:25:33.900 Because then we can start to disentangle what's due to COVID and what's actually due to our system.

00:25:39.460 And one of the things that we can do is look at one of our studies, actually quite a few of our studies in 2019 that look at data for Canada compared to other countries in the OECD, specifically countries with universal health care.

00:25:52.580 And what we find is that Canada for the longest time is routinely ranked amongst the top spenders, but we aren't seeing value coming out of that spending, at least not to a commensurate level.

00:26:04.220 We routinely rank either second highest as a percentage of GDP after adjusting for age

00:26:10.460 or eighth highest in terms of per capita.

00:26:13.780 Again, that's out of 28 universal health care systems, so really amongst the top.

00:26:18.260 But when we look at the numbers for physicians, we were right at the bottom.

00:26:21.740 We were ranked 26 out of 28 for physicians.

00:26:24.200 We were ranked 14th out of 28 for nurses, and we were ranked 25th out of 26 for beds.

00:26:28.940 So even in 2019, this is the picture of the system that was already pushed to the limits

00:26:34.480 and we experienced those limits during COVID-19 and it seems like we're starting to fall off

00:26:40.540 that precipice.

00:26:42.200 Yeah, it's unfortunate that, yeah, you know, COVID's kind of exacerbated a problem we already

00:26:47.040 knew we had, or at least those of us watching the system knew.

00:26:50.680 But I mean, so if we're going to look at systemic reform, hopefully some people are ready to

00:26:54.000 start, you know, at least poking into it because we turned it into a bit of a sacred cow and

00:26:57.620 people don't discuss it but we've got to accept that there's got to be some changes but that

00:27:01.540 key word that a lot of people miss is universal i mean that that's the value everybody wants i

00:27:06.580 believe in canada they don't want to move away from that they're fearful that we can move into

00:27:10.500 a system where they wouldn't be covered any longer but that's not what anybody's proposing at any point

00:27:15.780 no and you know one of the things we've done very purposefully in our report is only looking at

00:27:20.180 countries with universal healthcare and i think uh it's it's a little uh it's a little sad that

00:27:25.380 that the discussion in both canada and the united states tends to focus on each other a lot of the

00:27:30.180 time uh you know the united states loves to you know well i'm not saying the united states in

00:27:34.340 general but a lot of a lot of defenders of their system seem to uh you know want to reel against

00:27:39.540 canada's wait times very specifically and say well that's how all universal healthcare systems look

00:27:43.620 and in canada you say he looks out of the board and say oh you know we don't want to import the

00:27:47.300 problems that we see in the united states and really we're just putting blinders on ourselves

00:27:51.140 I mean, there are countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, all of these

00:27:55.780 countries have universal healthcare. They're spending about the same as we do, but they have

00:27:59.220 remarkably more doctors, they have more nurses, they have more beds. And of course, all of them

00:28:04.500 had the same struggles with COVID-19, maybe to some varying degree, but they were starting at

00:28:09.220 a very different baseline. I have some interesting numbers when we're looking at wait times for

00:28:14.660 elective surgery. This is from the Commonwealth Fund, and it reported that in 2020, 62% of

00:28:20.980 canadians were able to get surgery within four months for elective surgery by contrast in

00:28:26.020 switzerland 94 percent of patients were able to get treatment within that time frame and in germany

00:28:32.020 99 and before even then you know 2020 is again getting into covertary territory but if you look

00:28:38.180 at 2016 the numbers were basically almost the same in fact in 2016 zero percent of german patients

00:28:43.620 were waiting uh longer than than four weeks um for elective surgery so so these are all countries

00:28:48.740 with universal healthcare that don't seem to have the long wait times that we do and in some cases

00:28:54.900 are actually spending the same or lower than canada is so the key really is is not about

00:29:00.180 spending which is unfortunately what a lot of the not a lot well all the current premiers are

00:29:05.860 advocating for with their increased um chd transfers but it's really about what is happening

00:29:10.980 to this spending why aren't why is it not translating into more doctors why is it not

00:29:14.980 translating into shorter wait times and what can we change in our policies and what's stopping

00:29:20.980 us from changing those policies right now yeah well i imagine the answer to the question of

00:29:25.620 what's stopping us is the canada health act it needs some changes to allow the flexibility to

00:29:30.100 make some policy changes but let's say assuming you know the the government's receptive to opening

00:29:35.460 the act uh and changing some of these things what sort of changes could we implement then that that

00:29:40.420 would help us move more towards those sorts of outcomes like germany you know in a universal

00:29:44.020 system? Well, when we look at the basket of countries that generally perform better than

00:29:49.760 Canada, there are three things that they do very differently. The first is their general attitude

00:29:55.180 towards the private sector, and that is looking at the private sector as a tool, either as a partner

00:30:01.360 to deliver on the universal healthcare promise or as a pressure valve to kind of serve as a way out

00:30:08.240 once the public system is overburdened. The second thing that they do differently is that they

00:30:12.400 generally expect patients to share in the cost of treatment now this is you know something like

00:30:17.440 maybe a three to four hundred dollar deductible it could be ten percent of the cost of treatment

00:30:22.480 of course they understand that they need to be limits so that there's never a financial burden

00:30:26.000 so there's an annual cap on payments there are exemptions for vulnerable populations and the

00:30:31.120 third thing that they do differently is they fund their hospitals based on activity and what that

00:30:34.960 does is that ensures that money is actually following the patients with the system in Canada

00:30:39.680 because we have this sort of you know for lack of a better word a government monopoly over the

00:30:43.760 financing and delivery of care um we have these global budgets which the incentive structure is

00:30:49.600 such that patients are treated as a cost to the system because every time a patient comes in

00:30:53.920 they're eating into that budget contrast that with activity-based funding and money is following the

00:30:58.400 patients the problem is that you know you can't implement any one of these and expect um healthcare

00:31:04.400 to be magically fixed it's probably a palette of these options because each of them temper each

00:31:08.720 other. The cost-sharing sort of tempers demand, the activity-based funding ensures that supply

00:31:13.200 is reacting dynamically. But the thing is right now we're in such a risk-averse environment

00:31:18.400 because of the Canada Health Act that you know if provinces even try to do something you know

00:31:24.560 the federal government usually is coming down and clamping on them and saying hey you're violating

00:31:29.600 the act or you may violate the act and we're going to penalize you for it. And that's very unfortunate

00:31:34.080 because one of the most successful experiments was in Saskatchewan with the Saskatchewan

00:31:39.520 Surgery Initiative where they partnered with private clinics to deliver third-party

00:31:44.960 day surgeries within the public system. They also had a pooled patient referral system where

00:31:50.880 you know patients go into a central pool and they're referred to the physician with the shortest

00:31:55.280 wait time and they had a number of other changes and that actually resulted in Saskatchewan going

00:31:59.680 from a province with one of the longest wait times to one of the shortest by 2014 or 15.

00:32:04.720 But ultimately it started to, their wait times started to go up again after that because they

00:32:09.920 couldn't do any more reforms because governments, the federal government started to say, hey if you

00:32:14.160 try anything now we're going to actually penalize you by building the Canada Health Bank. That's

00:32:20.000 not the sort of incentive structure that you want. You want provinces to try the best that they can

00:32:25.840 to experiment with different policies to try and see what they can do, because they really have

00:32:30.320 the interests of their residents at heart. So, you know, don't stop them, encourage them to try

00:32:35.520 things that will result in better or quicker treatment. Yeah, well, it's unfortunate the way

00:32:41.360 our country's kind of laid out, I guess, with jurisdiction, the federal government is the

00:32:46.400 regulator with the Canada Health Act, they sort of impose the rules, but then they dump it on

00:32:50.240 the provinces, okay, but it's up to you guys to deal with everything else, you've got to deliver

00:32:54.000 it you've got to set up the infrastructure you've got to recruit the staff and it's just sort of a

00:33:00.000 catch-22 as it sits there each can kind of deny responsibility i mean likewise a province can

00:33:04.880 also say well it's not my fault it's the the health act and the federal government say well

00:33:08.960 it's not our problem it's the province but of course it's the consumers always lose in the end

00:33:13.520 you're right you know i mean there's actually a lot that provinces can do within the confines

00:33:17.440 of the cha as well some of the things like activity-based funding it says no problem

00:33:21.360 And there are provincial legislations that actually sometimes go far beyond the Canada Health Act.

00:33:27.340 But I would go back to it because the thing is, ultimately, the Canada Health Act is so vague that it can be interpreted by the federal government of the day to be contributing any aspect of it, particularly with the section about reasonable access.

00:33:39.560 So it's just, you know, you don't want a risk averse environment when you're talking about policy.

00:33:44.120 You want a policy where you say, look, what we care about is the patient and the system comes secondary.

00:33:49.800 Unfortunately, we're in a situation where the system is given priority and the patients come secondary.

00:33:54.720 It's backwards.

00:33:56.260 So, I mean, you know, I know this gets you work more into the policy and the alternatives.

00:34:00.780 But I mean, I believe, you know, politicians are typically driven by demand from the people they want to get reelected.

00:34:06.360 I mean, if we could see more public will, people saying, hey, we want to see some systematic reform, the politicians are going to act on it.

00:34:13.420 But that's a really, there's some really entrenched mythologies, I guess, about our current system and a few things that have to be chipped away at before enough people are ready to say, yeah, let's try some different stuff out.

00:34:24.800 Yeah, you know, I'm not a political funder at all.

00:34:27.460 And, you know, I often am reminded of those New Yorker cartoons where politicians are leading from behind and saying, hey, you know, I see where the crowd's going and let me please lead you there now.

00:34:38.260 But I do think that there is a lot of reform coming from the ground up.

00:34:42.160 Because the thing is, at the fundamental point, once Canadians have information, once they understand that there are other ways to do it, once they understand what's happening with the system, they start to demand change.

00:34:53.500 And you see this happening in a variety of different ways.

00:34:55.600 You see it happening, you know, with things like the Camby court case in British Columbia,

00:35:00.160 where Dr. Brian Deo, the former head of the Canadian Medical Association,

00:35:04.880 is fighting alongside a number of patients to simply get the right to treat them within his

00:35:11.600 hospital. And you see it, you've seen it already in Quebec with the 2005 Chevrolet decision. And

00:35:18.560 And then you also see it happening at a real, you know, just a normal reactionary level with, you know, Canadians starting to look towards things like virtual care and video appointments, which in many ways really circumvents the entire restrictions of the CHE.

00:35:36.400 And you're starting to see, I would say, a lot of defenders of the status quo now starting to clamp down on virtual care and private care, which really had been quite a lot, a huge help during COVID-19.

00:35:51.740 But the thing is, I think that that will be a futile fight because the thing is, you can perhaps try and clamp down on these appointments within a doctor and a patient within Canada.

00:36:02.100 But there's nothing that's going to stop a patient in Canada trying to get an appointment with a doctor in South Africa, if that's the only way that they're going to get that consultation, unless you build, you know, some sort of a firewall, which would be an entirely different story.

00:36:15.240 So, yes, I'm a firm believer in Canadians and their ability to embrace and process information and demand change, because, you know, fundamentally, this is about their healthcare and they are the peers for it.

00:36:27.360 Well, that's it. When times get tough enough, well, people suddenly can become more receptive

00:36:32.320 to changing anyways. It's unfortunate that it has to go down before it can come up. But

00:36:36.080 when you realize you can't get yourself a physician or can't get treatment in a timely manner and,

00:36:41.700 you know, you can start looking at things and realize, well, it's not for lack of expenditure.

00:36:45.560 I mean, you know, Canadians aren't fools. They'll start pressuring the right way, hopefully. So I

00:36:49.300 guess more conversations we can have and showing people like there's, again, it's not that polarized

00:36:53.740 thing. There's much more than a Canadian American world out there.

00:36:57.340 We could start getting our policymakers examining some more innovative options

00:37:00.580 soon, I hope.

00:37:02.140 Absolutely. You know, this is this is really about, you know,

00:37:05.380 universal health care that is that is trying to trying

00:37:09.460 to ensure that there's timely access to treatment, regardless of financial

00:37:13.300 ability to pay. And there are at least, you know, it's sort of like Baskin

00:37:16.220 Robbins, it's like at least 27 other flavors of universal health care.

00:37:19.820 And we're just we have the blinders on.

00:37:21.260 We're focused on Canada versus the United States.

00:37:23.740 it's you know betting on the two horses that are coming lost in the race and forgetting about you

00:37:28.380 know the top three or top four of the performances uh unfortunately you're right we're in a situation

00:37:32.940 where we're now being forced to make these changes in because because our healthcare system isn't

00:37:38.620 isn't uh you know able to uh keep up with it and we've been talking about this for 10 years and

00:37:43.820 unfortunately there's the situation that's that's brought it to uh brought it to the fore but um

00:37:48.700 but you know again we have an ability to work on it right now and i would say start doing it right

00:37:54.940 now before wait times go even further than what we're you know our our last measure of wait times

00:37:59.660 is 25.6 weeks between referral from a gp to getting treatment um according to our national

00:38:05.740 survey we've been doing that since 1993 and at that time that wait time was 9.3 weeks that's an

00:38:10.780 increase of 175 percent if you want to take out cover from that the wait time in 2019 was 20 point

00:38:16.380 I think 20.6 weeks, this is a fundamental systemic issue

00:38:20.460 that has been really pushed and exacerbated by COVID-19.

00:38:24.100 And we've got to tackle it before it really becomes,

00:38:26.620 you know, a dangerous situation in the future.

00:38:29.240 It's not going to get better with it

00:38:30.360 without some effort without doubt.

00:38:31.620 Well, thank you very much for the work you do

00:38:33.920 and, you know, putting those studies out there and such,

00:38:36.220 and then for speaking to us today.

00:38:37.660 So before I let you go,

00:38:39.060 where can people find more information

00:38:40.460 on the work you've done and, you know,

00:38:42.140 see some of those alternatives

00:38:43.220 for healthcare provision out there?

00:38:45.120 All of our information is free and publicly available at fraserinstitute.org.

00:38:50.060 Great. Well, I thank you again. And well,

00:38:52.740 hopefully we'll start seeing some positive changes soon.

00:38:54.820 I really do appreciate your work and hopefully we can talk again down the

00:38:57.820 road.

00:38:58.820 Thanks so much for having me on the show.

00:39:00.320 All right. Thank you.

00:39:01.760 So that was Bacchus Barua from the Fraser Institute.

00:39:04.180 And as you said, fraserinstitute.org for more information on the whole thing.

00:39:08.260 And it's huge, you know, it's healthcare. It's,

00:39:10.000 it's one of our biggest expenditures. It always has been. And we've, you know,

00:39:14.760 people are concerned about it, but they're scared of change. And we got to start having

00:39:17.900 those discussions about other systems, other means, other ways to do it. Hey, I'm going to

00:39:21.800 speak. You know, it's not just the subscribers that help us pay the bills around here. It's the

00:39:25.240 sponsors. And this is a great one. I'm so happy to have these guys back. And it is resistance

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00:40:42.720 resistancecoffee.com slash triggered all right let's get back to some of this discussion here

00:40:49.060 uh you know tiggy uh cat saying uh how about enabling naturopaths instead of tying their

00:40:54.880 hands you know there's one of the things in medicine that's a little different his alternative

00:40:58.020 was i'm not huge on naturopaths but if it's a grown person wants to do that and if they feel

00:41:02.500 that works for them than they should, but you're limited by this box of where you're going to get

00:41:06.660 what type of care you're going to get and not an expansion. I know Daniel Smith was talking about

00:41:11.240 giving the healthcare savings accounts to allow people to purchase stuff on the sides and things

00:41:15.640 like that, more flexibility in where they might choose to get their care or what kind of care

00:41:19.760 they want to get. I'm not opposed to giving people those options. Again, we're grown up.

00:41:24.200 We shouldn't have a gun to our head and that's what it is. It's illegal to get any other care

00:41:27.720 essentially aside from, you know, what the government mandates. I mean, you can get some

00:41:31.660 of the other ones. But the bottom line is, it's illegal to open a private hospital. Why? Why?

00:41:40.200 And, you know, we're suffering from this. How far does the suffering have to go? How bad does

00:41:44.600 it have to get? And we've got to get over that squeamishness when it comes to, you know, profits.

00:41:50.520 So what? Payment for things. Like, one of the number one things that gets me all the time is

00:41:58.360 blood donors. You know, in Canada, they're always low on blood, always low on blood. They're always

00:42:06.040 nagging for more and more. And if you look out there, and Jane, actually, my wife has a rare 0.91

00:42:10.040 blood type. We give blood occasionally and everything, but she looked into, they're always

00:42:13.420 sending emails. We want that blood. We want the blood. Great. Well, we can schedule you up there 0.80

00:42:17.500 two weeks from next Tuesday for maybe on the night. It's so impractically inconvenient to do it now.

00:42:23.720 Plus, of course, it's illegal to pay somebody to donate,

00:42:26.540 and that and plasma, even more importantly.

00:42:29.300 So what's happening?

00:42:30.420 Well, for one, in blood, they're running short.

00:42:32.720 With plasma, because they don't pay for it,

00:42:35.700 what they're actually doing is buying plasma from the United States

00:42:39.240 and bringing it here to Canada for our healthcare system.

00:42:44.160 And why do the Americans have spare plasma? 0.64

00:42:47.180 Because they pay the donors.

00:42:49.460 So here's the irony.

00:42:50.400 You're not avoiding people who get paid for providing it.

00:42:55.140 We're just giving the money over south of the border when at least there could be some Canadian donors a great deal more.

00:43:00.280 I hate to say it.

00:43:00.900 That's just the reality.

00:43:02.020 If you pay a few bucks for it, a hell of a lot more people are going to come out and give it.

00:43:05.980 That's just the way it works.

00:43:06.980 So we're paying it anyway.

00:43:09.400 Let's do it here.

00:43:11.240 But we can't.

00:43:12.160 We won't.

00:43:12.660 Our acts won't allow it.

00:43:13.740 It's illegal.

00:43:15.520 What happened to my body, my choice?

00:43:17.220 It's my plasma, my blood.

00:43:18.900 I should be able to sell a kidney, to be honest.

00:43:20.760 It's my kidney.

00:43:22.680 Or, you know, sperm donors.

00:43:26.920 Let them sell it.

00:43:28.020 Hell, I mean, how many was lost in college sweat socks in the past?

00:43:31.380 Anyways, if somebody wants to pay for it, let them sell it.

00:43:33.600 It's their bodily fluids.

00:43:35.980 And it reduces that overwhelming demand.

00:43:38.480 And, I mean, blood is critical.

00:43:39.800 Plasma is critical.

00:43:40.740 A lot of this stuff.

00:43:42.120 Bone marrow transplants, kidneys, things that people can give out.

00:43:45.280 A lot of people do it altruistically.

00:43:47.180 And, hey, great on them.

00:43:48.120 I mean, I give a lot as well.

00:43:49.600 I'm not one of those who gives chronically, I guess you could say,

00:43:52.400 but I've done it a number of times when I think about it and it's practical.

00:43:55.920 But if you start paying, it's amazing how much difference it is.

00:44:00.420 Just get over that squeamishness with it.

00:44:02.680 You know, oh, well, a person shouldn't have to.

00:44:04.220 Well, whatever.

00:44:05.400 Whether they shouldn't have to be paid or they should.

00:44:07.960 The reality is our current system isn't keeping up.

00:44:10.520 So let's just face some reality and work based on that.

00:44:13.600 And so, but this healthcare standoff we got, it's just brutal.

00:44:21.740 Meanwhile, you know, again, as the guest was saying, people, the wait times are just intolerable

00:44:29.540 and they're getting higher and higher and higher and higher.

00:44:34.060 Why can't we face that reality?

00:44:35.600 It's not working.

00:44:37.200 But I tell you, one of the words that scares them all is keeping it unions.

00:44:41.320 It's the unions, guys.

00:44:42.700 we've got a big bloated system controlled by unions, dominated by unions, and politicians

00:44:49.340 are terrified of unions. They don't want to bring in private delivery options and stir up those 0.93

00:44:55.340 unions and then suddenly run themselves into a nurse's strike or a custodian strike or any of

00:45:00.520 those very important skills. But they've got that stranglehold on the system. And I tell you what,

00:45:05.100 it's kind of like we were talking before, the union's interest is in the union, not the patient.

00:45:09.400 So let's not pretend that you're going to get better off when those guys are calling the shots. 0.89

00:45:14.980 And until somebody gets the huevos to take them on, it's going to be getting worse and worse. 0.95

00:45:23.080 Here's an interesting thing, too.

00:45:24.240 So this kind of shows it.

00:45:25.440 And I remember that because I used to work in the oil field.

00:45:27.520 And I listened to a lot of talk radio back then and things like that.

00:45:30.480 I worked in Saskatchewan a lot in exploration.

00:45:32.900 So it's been 25 years since the Saskatchewan party came about.

00:45:36.320 Now, for people going farther back in Saskatchewan history,

00:45:39.640 the reason they came around, this is the way it's done right, guys.

00:45:42.180 You know, the UCP is still trying to figure it out, I guess.

00:45:45.280 But Saskatchewan had NDP, NDP, NDP, well into the 90s.

00:45:50.860 It was costing them a fortune.

00:45:51.980 They got such a massive amount of bloated crown corporations there.

00:45:54.560 They still have a fair amount.

00:45:55.980 Again, it's that union thing.

00:45:58.520 But the conservatives, the progressive conservatives,

00:46:00.720 were so corrupted and so bad under Grant Devine

00:46:03.700 that it took that long for the Conservatives to get it together with a new party,

00:46:07.860 which was the Saskatchewan Party, and took power finally down the road.

00:46:13.160 And if you remember far enough back, I remember the saying about Grant Devine's government,

00:46:17.600 I think it was, to screw up is human, but to truly F up is divine.

00:46:21.660 Or to err is human, truly F up is divine.

00:46:23.900 And it was bad. His cabinet ministers were corrupt. It was just a disaster. 0.99

00:46:27.000 So they sunk Conservatives in Saskatchewan for years.

00:46:30.200 Those days are behind them.

00:46:32.020 But the things back then, it's like some of it, the NDP in Saskatchewan were fighting against

00:46:36.680 private diagnostics, hard and heavy. I mean, we had these parallels. We had Ralph Klein in Alberta

00:46:40.800 and you had the NDP in Saskatchewan. So we had all these new MRIs that were coming in and Klein

00:46:46.420 was fighting with the federal government about that because they were bringing in private MRIs

00:46:49.440 and things. And Saskatchewan said, no, we're sticking to the socialist system.

00:46:53.800 I believe the MRI weights in Saskatchewan got as high as 22 months. Yeah. If you needed an MRI,

00:47:00.200 you're going to be waiting almost two years for it. But hey, it's free. Worth it, isn't it? And

00:47:06.000 you think about how important diagnostics are. I mean, the faster you can get these tests done,

00:47:12.280 the better the chance you might catch some sort of condition that's treatable while it's still

00:47:17.640 treatable. You put these things off and oh, okay, yeah, 22 months later, you get your MRI and you

00:47:24.980 say, yeah, yeah, you've had this slow growing cancer on the go and you, we could have treated

00:47:28.320 it 10 months ago, but I'm afraid we've left it too long. Get your affairs in order. That's what's

00:47:34.640 happening. Once the SaaS party came in, started pushing back, got more innovative, they're back

00:47:39.300 down. Meanwhile, Alberta's diagnostics, the wait times were going down and down and down and down.

00:47:44.560 We've got to face reality. And some of those other creative things the guest was talking about,

00:47:48.960 you know, what about a lot of consultations, things that can be done remotely? Again,

00:47:53.640 you see, this is where unions don't like this sort of stuff, right? It just cuts into,

00:47:56.960 if you do a remote consultation with a doctor,

00:47:59.860 you don't get all those levels of nurses

00:48:01.360 and administrators and all that busy on this.

00:48:03.240 So you lose those jobs. 0.96

00:48:04.080 That's all they care about is their frigging union jobs, 0.98

00:48:06.020 not you. 0.98

00:48:07.340 Because how many of your times seeing a doctor

00:48:10.080 were just a simple question?

00:48:11.700 You know, it was just a couple of things

00:48:13.860 to put your mind at ease

00:48:15.300 or maybe it was something more serious

00:48:16.960 and the doctor says,

00:48:17.760 okay, you're reporting these symptoms,

00:48:19.000 these things, you know,

00:48:19.580 you're doing it virtually online.

00:48:20.880 Go in, book an appointment,

00:48:22.380 get in there in person.

00:48:23.580 But if you could wipe out 20% of the consultations

00:48:26.440 and have them done virtually and online, why the hell not?

00:48:31.660 Same with a lot of things like prescription renewals,

00:48:35.220 you know, minor things can be done through a phone call

00:48:39.160 or even, you know, more so online.

00:48:41.380 Here, have a look at my camera.

00:48:42.720 I got this big mole on my back.

00:48:43.960 Should I get it looked at, doc?

00:48:44.840 I don't know.

00:48:45.160 There's things that we can look at,

00:48:46.540 but our rigid system fights them.

00:48:49.740 And it's hurting us all.

00:48:52.180 And we've got to get the courage to take on

00:48:54.600 defenders of the status quo with the system. It's nothing sacred, people. Nothing. I know I get the

00:49:02.860 religious folks stirred up when I point out I'm certainly not, you know, aside from that flying

00:49:07.060 spaghetti monster guy that had drunkenly tattooed on one arm. That's the closest I come to being a

00:49:11.380 faith-based person myself. So I don't look at anything as sacred. I just look at what's going

00:49:15.440 to be important for us right now. And I tell you one thing that is most definitely not sacred is

00:49:19.400 our healthcare monopoly. We've got to start realizing it's not serving us well. It needs

00:49:24.880 to be challenged. It needs to be reformed, or we're all going to lose. Now, I'm going to bring

00:49:31.000 in my next guest, and he's not talking about that today, though. I think he's of similar mind with

00:49:34.280 those sorts of things, but that's a different discussion for a different day. And it's Franco

00:49:37.720 Tarizano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, because we're talking about political accountability

00:49:41.660 through direct democracy and recall. So, yeah, how's it going, Franco?

00:49:46.420 Corey, I'm doing great, man.

00:49:47.520 Thanks so much for having me on today.

00:49:49.420 Oh, no problem.

00:49:50.460 So we had a column from you and Chris the other day that went in.

00:49:53.800 It was talking about how Pierre Polyev, or I guess I could kind of read into it, any

00:49:58.480 of the leadership candidates could have an opportunity to really bring in some good policies

00:50:02.880 of accountability through things like recall and referenda.

00:50:06.200 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:50:07.720 Now, the reason that it was addressed mostly focusing on Polyev is just because that's

00:50:12.660 essentially what he said that his campaign is focused around.

00:50:15.600 Now, we'll get to that in a second. But Corey, let me just provide a little background. I'm sure most of your watchers and listeners understand what recall and referendum legislation is. But let me just really drive the point home. So recall legislation, it allows people to start a petition if they're angry at a politician. And if they get enough petition signatures, then they can force a by-election to boot that politician in between elections.

00:50:41.940 Now, referendum laws, which is typically known as citizens initiative, is very similar. Essentially, if you want to propose a piece of legislation or you want to axe a piece of bad legislation, then you can start a petition drive.

00:50:56.840 If you collect enough petitions, then you can force that legislation to be voted on in a referendum across a province, across a city or, of course, across a nation, which is what we're hoping that the next conservative leadership hopeful will bring in if they're elected prime minister is a national recall and referendum legislation that we've been pushing for for like 30 years.

00:51:21.380 Yeah, I mean, with those referendums or those legislations as well, I mean, another part of the puzzle, too, though, is to make sure that they bring ones in that are workable.

00:51:30.000 You know, that was one of my big disappointments with Premier Kenney, is he promised it.

00:51:34.520 He dragged his feet on it.

00:51:35.680 He waited a long, long time, then finally put it out.

00:51:37.600 But he set the bar in places where we know damn well that those are not going to be functional pieces of legislation.

00:51:45.480 A person can't realistically initiate that kind of action.

00:51:49.440 So Corey, maybe we might disagree here a little bit, but let me start with the good and the bad,

00:51:54.060 right? Or because there's both. I think it's a bit of a mixed bag what Premier Kenney did. I mean,

00:51:59.020 first, I think it's important to recognize and give kudos where kudos is due. And where the

00:52:04.140 kudos is due is that we do have some form of recall in Alberta, some form of citizens initiative in

00:52:09.740 Alberta. I mean, that's something that guys like you and me have been pushing for for a long time,

00:52:14.380 the CTF for 30 years. And another thing that we have to talk about is that another good part of

00:52:19.860 the legislation is that it's extended to the municipal level, right? Because we know, Corey,

00:52:25.600 more than anyone else, that those councillors sitting on City of Calgary, for example, they

00:52:30.980 need to be held accountable outside of elections as well. But to your point, Corey, let's talk

00:52:35.840 about the mixed bag issue. So some of the downfalls. Now we and myself presented to the committee at

00:52:42.380 Alberta government and we were recommending the Alberta government um set the recall rules at

00:52:47.740 about 25 percent of votes cast in the last election so a lower threshold to your point

00:52:54.940 than what Premier Kenny brought in because they brought in something that was what was it but 40

00:52:59.900 of eligible voters what we pushed for was 25 percent of votes votes cast in the last election

00:53:06.140 which would have been a little bit easier for citizens to actually hold their politicians

00:53:10.060 accountable. Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, credit where due, as you said, at least if the

00:53:14.620 legislation's already in too, then it's easier to amend the existing legislation than starting

00:53:19.320 from scratch. I mean, the principles there, it's just, if we can make the case that the bar is set

00:53:23.020 too high and there should be a bar. I mean, we don't want frivolous referendums held on everything

00:53:28.080 or recall initiatives just every time you don't like who got elected. But I think a lot of people

00:53:32.880 don't understand too, 25% of the votes cast, that's a big chunk of names to get on a piece

00:53:37.620 of paper in a real petition. You know, some people say, oh, it'll be done easily. No, no, no. If you

00:53:41.980 petitioned before, that's a lot of work. It's got to be serious before you get that. Well, and that's

00:53:47.120 the type of balance that we were trying to strike, Corey, with a recommendation, right? On the one

00:53:51.420 hand, we wanted type of legislation that actual people can actually use, right? So if their

00:53:56.680 politician gets caught dipping their hands in the taxpayer cookie jar, we wanted a tool that people

00:54:01.900 could actually use to give them a pink slip. But on the other hand, to your point, we also have to

00:54:08.480 strike the balance so that political chaos doesn't ensue and that there's not recalls every other

00:54:13.200 day, which might be entertaining. But of course, that's not how the system would work. Now, one

00:54:18.440 thing I want to point forward, Corey, is that we have seen a lot of success in Canada with recall

00:54:25.440 and with referendums. BC was actually the first province to put in recall and initiative all the

00:54:31.380 way back in 1995 there was one successful recall campaign when they had an MLA who got caught

00:54:37.660 sending fake letters to the editor and then there was a successful recall campaign uh that collected

00:54:43.660 enough signatures and he finally stepped down when the writing was on the wall was on the wall

00:54:48.040 but there was also a successful referendum campaign in British Columbia because of this

00:54:52.900 type of legislation and it was when the BC government bungled the process and tried to

00:54:58.100 raise taxes when trying to harmonize the federal and provincial sales taxes. So that piece of

00:55:03.700 legislation allowed voters to say no to that deal when the government bungled it. But also we have

00:55:10.480 seen two other examples of referendums that have been very successful, even though they weren't

00:55:15.360 triggered by provincial legislation. Of course, number one, I'm talking about the Calgary bid

00:55:19.920 boondoggle where the people were able to say no and really fight back against the establishment

00:55:25.700 who wanted to raise taxes and spend money in such a frivolous way on the on the Calgary Olympics so

00:55:30.360 very glad that we we won that plebiscite but also in British Columbia the voters were able to strike

00:55:37.100 down a new transit tax that governments were trying to to shove down their throats. Yeah I mean

00:55:43.900 there's successful ones and unsuccessful I mean just going all the way south for an example though

00:55:49.260 I guess for politicians you know for excuses if they fear it Gavin Newsom dodged being

00:55:55.200 thrown out of office through a citizens initiative and most conservatives weren't too happy to

00:55:59.620 to see that happen but to be fair as far as democracy goes he's got a stronger mandate now

00:56:05.720 than ever he's had to face the electorate yet again and he made his case well so I mean you

00:56:11.140 know allowing the citizens to get that chance doesn't mean a doom for the politician necessarily

00:56:16.000 it can mean a stronger mandate. Yeah that's right and to that point building on it a little bit

00:56:21.240 is that you don't need recall campaigns or you don't need an actual recall by-election

00:56:26.440 to really force politicians into behaving better, right? Sometimes the stick is enough.

00:56:32.140 If you know that you might have to face your voters tomorrow rather than four years down the

00:56:37.720 road, you're probably more likely to behave a little bit better, right? So there's that

00:56:42.800 incentive built within the recall and referendum type of legislation that should force politicians

00:56:49.220 to actually behave better, because look, man, if you have to go to the doors tomorrow to sell your

00:56:54.380 case on why you behave badly, you're probably less likely to behave badly in the first place.

00:56:59.640 Yeah, no, you don't want to face that. I mean, there's other things you could be doing. Now,

00:57:04.440 something, I don't know if this could be legislated. I guess you'd have to worry about

00:57:07.920 the political fallout. But I mean, Alberta had that legislation a long, long time ago. You're

00:57:11.460 probably familiar with it. Social credit was in power. And it looked like a successful one was

00:57:16.380 about to happen. So the government just scrapped the legislation. And how can you prevent that

00:57:20.500 from happening? Well, Corey, I mean, the only real answer to that is that can happen with any

00:57:25.520 type of legislation, right? That can happen with any type of legislation. But at least then

00:57:30.680 the people, the politicians who did that would have to answer for it in the following election.

00:57:37.880 Let me give you another example. I believe it was Manitoba. I believe it was Manitoba,

00:57:42.180 but certainly a prairie province where you had some form of Taxpayer Protection Act,

00:57:46.100 they decided to at least water it down or alter it.

00:57:49.380 And they were held accountable big time in the last election.

00:57:53.260 So, I mean, certainly you can make that argument about any piece of legislation.

00:57:57.300 Okay, granted, but at least there's that extra check on the power, right?

00:58:01.840 Right now, essentially, we just have to wait for whenever the next federal election is

00:58:06.760 to be able to give politicians a pink slip.

00:58:09.140 But even let's just put recall legislation to the side.

00:58:14.300 We could have used citizens initiative or referendum legislation.

00:58:17.880 We could have been using that over the last little while.

00:58:21.320 And let me give you some examples.

00:58:22.680 I mean, we have seen the carbon tax go up three times during the pandemic.

00:58:26.780 We saw the carbon tax go up again April 1st of this year while inflation was already sky high.

00:58:32.040 I think there's a case to be made that someone could have launched a citizens initiated referendum to stop those carbon tax hikes.

00:58:40.580 At least now we would have been able to put pressure on the government about their carbon tax.

00:58:44.820 Because remember, Corey, these politicians have not been honest with us at election time about carbon taxes.

00:58:50.980 Remember, before the 2019 election, you had then Environment Minister Catherine McKenna tell voters that the government had no intention to keep raising the carbon tax beyond 11 cents per liter of gas.

00:59:02.220 Then following the election, what happened?

00:59:05.180 Well, Truro says now that they had a new mandate, well, we're going to keep raising it all the way up to, what is it, 40 cents per liter of gas.

00:59:12.460 So I think that this type of legislation would give people a better tool to actually hold their politicians accountable and to actually get important policy issues on the tables all across Canada.

00:59:25.380 Yeah, another aspect that needs to be put into the legislations, I think, with these two is not just citizens initiated referenda, but binding citizens initiated referenda. Because if there's not a binding clause for it, then still all it is is a poll. And even if it might be politically dangerous for government to do, they could ignore the outcome of a referenda more easily in that case.

00:59:47.180 Yeah, they could for sure. I mean, they didn't Calgary. Remember, that wasn't exactly legally binding. So I totally agree with what you're saying. There needs to be even more strict limits on what politicians can do or not do after referendum. But even if that's not included, it's still better than not being in. Right.

01:00:05.820 but Corey one thing I do want to circle back to is kind of where you started the conversation off

01:00:11.520 like why is the piece targeting Mr. Polyev of course we want all parties all political leaders

01:00:18.380 to run with recall and initiative but the reason we focused on Mr. Polyev in this op-ed is because

01:00:24.600 his whole campaign he's been talking about putting people back in charge making a Canada where the

01:00:30.580 government is the servant, not the master. He's right when he identifies that there's an

01:00:35.820 accountability problem in Ottawa. But we think that one of the key solutions to that then is,

01:00:41.280 okay, if you want to show that citizens are the boss, then input recall and referendum laws.

01:00:46.820 And so far, we haven't heard him make a firm commitment to this piece of legislation.

01:00:53.020 Yeah, well, and you want to, this is the time to get those commitments. I mean,

01:00:56.740 And I guess you see why they fear making those commitments.

01:01:00.100 It didn't work out very well with Mr. O'Toole on the carbon tax when you guys got his signature on it.

01:01:05.080 But it's important times like now when they're running to get them to make a statement on that.

01:01:09.660 So I imagine you'll keep putting the question to Mr. Pollyov as long as you can.

01:01:14.000 Yeah, absolutely.

01:01:14.600 Well, and we do want to get them on the record because, hey, when they lie to Canadians, they get held accountable.

01:01:20.100 Right. Unfortunately for Mr. O'Toole, Canadian voters aren't stupid. 0.99

01:01:24.460 He said one thing in the leadership race. 0.97

01:01:27.040 He broke his promise.

01:01:28.480 He lied to Canadians and he was held accountable,

01:01:30.620 not just by Canadian voters, but his own caucus as well.

01:01:34.580 And well, in recall, I mean, it should hold some appeal

01:01:36.720 for people on any end of the spectrum.

01:01:38.720 I mean, if you just look at it on the surface with a good policy,

01:01:40.900 I mean, I know speaking for Calgary City Council

01:01:42.980 in the last two councils, there were a couple of candidates

01:01:45.760 I suspect might've had recall initiatives brought up against them

01:01:49.820 or at least attempted.

01:01:51.200 And these were conservative leaning candidates,

01:01:53.060 It's not left-leaning ones, but they don't have the mechanism right now either.

01:01:56.700 So they're stuck with these, or were stuck with one and are stuck with another until

01:02:00.520 the end of this term.

01:02:01.540 I completely agree.

01:02:02.480 And I think you're talking, what was it, Councillor Joe Magliocca when he was caught

01:02:05.780 sticking his hands in the taxpayer cookie jar, Corey.

01:02:07.860 I think that's who you might have been referred to.

01:02:10.080 Yes.

01:02:10.980 Yeah.

01:02:11.480 But here's the thing, right?

01:02:12.600 A recall and initiative, it's not really a right, it's not really a left type of issue.

01:02:17.260 I mean, you can get any type of, you can get any type of policy in a referendum.

01:02:22.400 And when you look at recall, recall usually isn't about a specific policy per se.

01:02:28.380 It tends to happen.

01:02:30.180 These type of recall by-elections tend to happen when you have politicians misusing public trust, right?

01:02:37.400 Or I should say abusing public trust.

01:02:39.560 So, for example, in British Columbia, it wasn't a specific policy per se that led to the recall campaign.

01:02:44.720 It was when their MLA was caught sending fake letters to the editor, right?

01:02:48.880 So the recall tool, I think, would be more for making sure politicians aren't abusing the public purse and, quite frankly, just aren't trying to mislead Canadians and mislead taxpayers.

01:03:01.920 Yeah, well, and as you said, the preventative power potentially anyways, maybe some of these guys

01:03:06.240 think, okay, well, if I pull this off, I could, you know, have to answer for it. Because a lot

01:03:13.600 of what happens too is they pull their stunts, but they just hope that the public forgets by

01:03:17.600 the time they get another chance to get to the polls. And the recall is always hopefully at the

01:03:21.440 back of their minds saying, you know, I better keep a clean nose here or we're going to be in

01:03:27.280 trouble. Hey, and one more thing I need to add, right? We we've seen some success here in Canada

01:03:31.900 with recall and initiative. You mentioned the fact that, uh, a lot of this happens in the States

01:03:36.640 already, already about half of the States in the U S have either some form of recall or some form

01:03:41.980 of initiative legislation. But also, uh, we found that there's about 19 countries, at least that

01:03:46.860 we've identified that have some form of, uh, of recall legislation, uh, countries similar to us,

01:03:52.720 or at least peers like Japan. You've got Swiss, you've got some Mexican states that also have

01:03:58.240 recall. I believe there is some type of recall process in Germany as well, maybe even at the

01:04:03.580 local level. But then initiative, the referendum legislation, we've identified 36 different

01:04:08.900 countries that have some form of direct democratic process that allows their citizens to influence

01:04:14.900 legislation. You've got Italy, where there's something like that. You have New Zealand.

01:04:18.540 And of course, the one that everyone knows about is Switzerland.

01:04:22.000 So I just want to make clear is that there's so many different examples to choose from where you can strike the right balance federally between more accountability and making sure political chaos doesn't ensue.

01:04:33.240 Yeah, we can't pretend that it's unprecedented or there aren't working examples to go from.

01:04:39.520 Well, I appreciate that, Franco, and thanks for coming on today.

01:04:43.120 Where can people find more information about what you're pushing and encouraging out there in the taxpayers' world?

01:04:48.540 Well, hey, head over to taxpayer.com, check out our newsroom, sign some petitions,

01:04:53.180 follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And Corey, thanks so much for having me on.

01:04:56.560 Always good to have you here, Franco. I'll talk to you later.

01:04:59.480 Sounds good.

01:05:01.420 Remember that, guys? Taxpayer.com. That's Franco Terrizano. And yeah, it's not all just the

01:05:05.440 economics and numbers and pencil sharpening and all that. When we're talking democracy and

01:05:11.320 initiatives such as that, like recall and referenda, they're supportive of that too.

01:05:16.300 And, yeah, they were very strongly involved in that Calgary referendum with the Olympics.

01:05:21.000 That's one of the few things I'll give Rachel Notley credit for as a premier, because Nenshi had his Olympic dream.

01:05:26.880 He wanted his vanity project, no matter how many billions it was going to cost.

01:05:31.040 And Notley realized that this was going to turn into a boondoggle, you know, if not just for Calgary, but for herself as a provincial government.

01:05:37.880 She says, fine, we will help fund it. But first, we need permission from Calgarians, run a plebiscite in that case or a referendum.

01:05:46.300 And Calgarians said, no.

01:05:49.400 And despite a lot of roundabout ways of tax dollars and Calgary economic development people

01:05:55.000 and things all pushing, firing from all guns to say, oh, let's embrace that Olympics bid.

01:06:00.480 It went in the toilet, thankfully, thanks to Calgarians and getting the chance.

01:06:04.000 And people like the CTF and Franco lobbying on that at that time.

01:06:08.240 And hey, if it was a good idea, maybe, you know, 70% of Calgarians have said, yeah, let's go for it.

01:06:12.540 But how would that look right now after this pandemic mess?

01:06:15.200 with where our budgets are, with where our taxes are.

01:06:19.060 Just imagine right now we'd be sitting four years away

01:06:21.620 from an Olympic Games coming over here.

01:06:24.200 We probably would be already way out of budget,

01:06:27.140 way behind on all of our scheduled construction.

01:06:30.200 It would have been a disaster and we averted it

01:06:32.320 and direct democracy did that

01:06:34.400 because no other amount of reasoning was going to stop Vinci.

01:06:36.860 He had to be stopped in his tracks.

01:06:39.140 All right, let's talk about one of my sponsors again

01:06:41.580 and that is the Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

01:06:45.200 you know, we're seeing that in the news a lot, right? The Trudeau government has turned around

01:06:48.860 and said, you know, we're going to speed this up. We're going to rush out. We are immediately

01:06:53.400 imposing the handgun freeze, essentially, at least stopping them from coming in legally across the

01:06:58.500 border from legitimate companies, things like that. They are on the move. They are ideological

01:07:03.960 and they're almost hysteric with it. They want to take away your property. Even if you don't own

01:07:07.880 handguns, you own a 22 rifle, or you like skeet shooting, or you like hunting. They're coming for

01:07:13.700 all that next, guys. And if you don't stand up for yourself, they will win. They will take your

01:07:17.580 property. They will steal it. So you've got to get together. Safety in numbers. And that's what 0.98

01:07:22.120 these guys are about. It's an association of firearm owners. Canadian Shooting Sports Association.

01:07:28.440 Take out a membership with them. That's how they can keep these actions up and push back for your

01:07:33.220 rights. Plus, there's a lot of resources for you as a firearm owner there, as you should be with

01:07:37.040 any association, something to take seriously. Check them out. They're at cssa-cila.org and

01:07:44.100 get a membership, guys. It's an investment in your rights. All right. What else do we got on the go?

01:07:50.500 This was an interesting one I saw coming through the Twitter scrolls. Jagmeet Singh is warning

01:07:54.800 Trudeau their deal is dead if no dental plan is in place by year's end. Yeah, well, it's,

01:08:01.560 their deal was never all that real anyways. I mean, it's a marriage of convenience at best.

01:08:05.760 uh singh is too weak to fight another election trudeau can't run into another um status quo

01:08:12.940 outcome it's ugly i mean singh is scared to death of actually going to an election i see this as a

01:08:18.660 bluff but who knows who knows i mean the thing is he can only bend over for trudeau so many times

01:08:24.900 before the ndp gets so weak that his own membership's going to turn on him because i mean they

01:08:29.820 do want to stand they are distinct from the liberals to a degree anyways you know uh what

01:08:33.880 they're just, as I say, liberals in a hurry or socialists. Either way, we don't have the money

01:08:40.360 for a dental plan. Again, let's fix our healthcare system. That's something I talked about the other 0.95

01:08:44.540 day. And I saw a meme about that. People say, oh, Canada's got the best healthcare system in

01:08:48.440 the world. Oh, good. Can I go to an optometrist? No. Can I get my teeth done? No. What about my

01:08:54.620 pharmaceutical? No. Mental health? Psychiatrist? No. Guys, our system doesn't cover a hell of a

01:09:01.940 lot, even though we spend more per capita than most of the other countries on the earth on it.

01:09:06.420 But again, why add more things to cover under this system if we don't fix the system first?

01:09:13.460 Then it's just making the system that much more expensive. In fact, we could end up with

01:09:17.140 dental service being similar to the rest of our health service. At least dentistry is expensive

01:09:21.760 right now, but you can go out and see a dentist in a very short order. There's no trying to find

01:09:28.000 one who's available, who's taking patients. There's no shortage of them. There's no giant

01:09:32.060 long waiting lists for dentists. And as Pamela Jones-Kenny saying, poor dental care can lead

01:09:36.980 to bad health. Yeah, it is a part of your healthcare and it's an important one. So let's

01:09:41.480 look at systems where we can help manage all of our health then. And we can't just make the current

01:09:48.040 system bigger because it's not working. We need to look at how we're doing it. And then perhaps

01:09:53.900 will have the efficiencies to be able to ease those costs in other areas like dental optometrists

01:10:00.160 or mental health, of course. As with Pamela saying, with dental care leading to other bad health,

01:10:06.100 same with mental health, of course. I mean, people end up in getting injured or in hospital care or

01:10:11.480 all sorts of other areas because they have mental health issues that should be treated outside of

01:10:15.940 that. But we aren't treating it because our system isn't as universal as a lot of people like to

01:10:19.520 think it is. And those dollars are going out. I've talked about that before last January. I went

01:10:23.740 down to the States and, uh, uh, we crossed into Mexico and Algodones there. And then it's a molar

01:10:31.080 city and Jane got, uh, so a bunch of dental work done for basically 25% of what it would have cost 1.00

01:10:36.580 up here. Um, but that's what we have to do. Cause we don't have coverage plans up here to try and

01:10:43.320 keep it local. And, uh, Jerry, uh, our song price saying, yeah, you know, Dennis will let you pay

01:10:46.980 as you go if you ask. Yeah. I mean, being private, at least with Dennis, they, they got more options

01:10:51.040 to find ways that you can pay your bills and things like that. But if we just do as Jagmeet

01:10:58.720 says and just bring in yet another big bloated government funded system, it's not going to end

01:11:02.920 well for us. I mean, yeah, sure. Suddenly we will get universal dental care, which will mean we

01:11:09.480 probably won't be able to get it in a timely manner. And even more of us will be going south

01:11:12.640 of the border to get it done. Linda Gibson saying, I talked to some British people and they said their

01:11:16.820 socialized dental was horrible. Well, I mean, yeah, you think of all places that would learn 0.68

01:11:21.320 to value dental care, it would be grand old England. I mean, come on, you guys, fix those

01:11:26.680 choppers up. But they've had difficulty dealing with that. Maybe it's just because the cost of

01:11:31.040 fixing all them English teeth was too much for any system to cover. But again, there are other

01:11:36.500 examples to look at. And Chris Gibson saying, we do need to reduce our dental costs. And that's

01:11:41.020 true. I mean, hey, it's very important to have good dental health and it's very expensive right

01:11:46.920 now. So, I mean, Jagmeet might be onto something saying we need a plan of some sort, but not under

01:11:52.160 this current system. The system can't afford, we can't even get doctors in emergency areas. We

01:11:57.260 can't be expanding our healthcare system to encompass even more services that we probably

01:12:03.320 wouldn't deliver efficiently either. Let's see what else we got. Yeah, here's one. So this shows

01:12:11.200 how the government is just wiggling and weaving any way they can to get their stuff done.

01:12:16.180 And that's talking about banning guns under a cheese law. This is so Canadian, this article,

01:12:22.620 right? So handgun imports are going to be banned in Canada under the same law used to block dairy

01:12:28.320 products at the border cabinet said. So we use every tool at our disposal because that's how 1.00

01:12:34.000 stupid Canada's system is with its dairy cartels with illegalizing other products up here. And 0.99

01:12:40.560 that's why we pay through the nose for our dairy products and chicken and everything else. 0.97

01:12:47.080 And we actually had cheese smugglers. How embarrassing, how weird. We really, you know,

01:12:52.040 Google it sometime if you're bored because it's just so real and odd. But the mafia got into

01:12:56.900 smuggling cheese. If you make any commodity, you know, limited and get in there and screw with

01:13:02.100 the government, you will make an underground economy. And that happened with cheese. And they

01:13:06.180 had to bring in legislation to stop these cheese smugglers. So then now they're going to try and

01:13:10.600 use that same legislation to stop people from bringing in handguns. This government is a wreck.

01:13:16.020 It just is. But it also shows, you know, how many stupid acts we have that they can use to 1.00

01:13:21.240 try further to keep infringing on a right. Here's another one. Yeah, Facebook fired a shot across 1.00

01:13:28.820 the bow. That was the Trudeau government's plan to bail out mainstream media. I mean, Australia

01:13:34.660 has been back and forth on that for a long time. And basically, the federal government wants to

01:13:38.540 put the screws to the social media giants like Facebook and Google and others to force them to

01:13:44.060 pay media outlets. And then, of course, the government will determine which outlets get

01:13:47.140 paid which don't look guys it's all ways the government's trying to control the messaging

01:13:51.460 it's yeah we're dependent here at the western standard of those we're dependent on google

01:13:55.780 for people people to be able to find us we're dependent on facebook to get the word out twitter

01:14:00.220 all of those giants we need them it's it's a symbiotic relationship but we start putting

01:14:05.380 the screws to them and making them pay out to uh producers then we get much bigger problems

01:14:10.160 and facebook's saying to hell with australia and they've been fighting over that for a year

01:14:13.160 but you see what the government wants to do is make sure that it's only a handful of outlets yet

01:14:16.860 the mainstream exposure online

01:14:19.880 because then the government

01:14:20.940 can control that handful.

01:14:22.300 It's the same ones,

01:14:22.980 the CTVs, the Globals,

01:14:24.640 the newspapers that they are tax funding

01:14:28.100 and bailing out all the time

01:14:29.280 because then they can control the messaging.

01:14:30.880 We're in some very,

01:14:32.360 very dangerous waters right now, guys.

01:14:35.420 And I'm not sure how bad it's going to get

01:14:37.380 before we realize that and back out.

01:14:41.740 Yeah, online forums for public services.

01:14:44.260 This is what I was talking about earlier.

01:14:45.380 You know, have exploded in recent weeks

01:14:46.800 with comments about the prospect of returning the office with employees, comparing notes on

01:14:50.580 the hybrid work plans each department's planning to adopt. Basically, they don't want to go back

01:14:54.760 to work. I mean, God, come on, I've been able to work in my bathrobe and, you know, do what I like

01:15:00.680 in my household, I guess, all day. But if the outcomes were good, that's fine. But all of the

01:15:05.360 government services are falling behind. We got immigration processes behind by years. We've got

01:15:10.460 passports behind by months. These are simple renewals. Obviously, they can't do it from home,

01:15:15.520 not efficiently, at least a lot of them. And yeah, one comment by Health Canada manager urging

01:15:20.000 employees to return to the office in part to provide employees at a nearby Subway restaurant

01:15:23.500 with more hours blew up into a series of sarcastic memes. So that's what the case you try to make to

01:15:30.460 get them. Please, please come back because the Subway next door is going broke since you guys

01:15:33.760 are all working from home. By God, you guys are idiots. You know, in the real world, what happens? 1.00

01:15:39.040 Please come back or we're firing you. That's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work.

01:15:44.420 please come back or we will give your exceedingly generous pension plan and compensation and extended

01:15:50.980 vacation time and all those benefits to somebody else who will appreciate it that's how you deal

01:15:56.380 with these guys not by begging them not by saying please please you know get out you know take get

01:16:01.480 out of your bathrobe and come in and actually go to work for a change because the subway sandwich 0.98

01:16:04.580 artist next door might lose his job because you guys have been in the office pathetic 0.98

01:16:08.540 Okay. Ah, let's see. Well, these challenges will carry on. I'm not sure if Gil's still doing that 0.51

01:16:14.300 in Alberta, but the battle will still go on in the fact that it even makes news, but masks will not

01:16:19.820 be mandatory in Ontario schools this September, the province's education minister said. We'll see.

01:16:25.220 We'll see. If it spikes just a little and CTV says the world's on fire, they might rush out there

01:16:29.440 because Ford loves to panic and then mask up all those children who would otherwise be allowed to

01:16:34.820 smile and laugh with each other in school. It's not over guys. The fact that it even makes news

01:16:40.160 shows that it's not over. Uh, here's an odd one. You know, it'd be interesting to see what came

01:16:46.400 out of this one. So the Montreal pride parade, that's a huge one. And it was supposed to start,

01:16:51.160 you know, yesterday, uh, it was canceled. Like we're talking with hours notice, like a huge

01:16:57.160 event, a big affair. And they just said, no, we can't get it together. It's canceled. And I guess

01:17:02.580 it was for lack of security, but I mean, it didn't occur to these guys that you got thousands. I,

01:17:07.620 I guess, you know, internal disorganization can happen to any group, but holy cow, this is brutal.

01:17:13.800 I said they needed a hundred staff to monitor the parade route and they'd never been hired.

01:17:17.300 Now I wonder, and this is purely speculation and I could be wrong, but you see a problem we had 0.89

01:17:21.400 in Alberta is if you remember, Black Lives Matter protesters managed to stop the parades and stop

01:17:28.780 pride events in Edmonton, uh, because they had a problem with the police and it was just a lot

01:17:36.200 of pushing back and forth between some, some very extreme activists and, and, and it just turned

01:17:41.080 into a mess and it ended up shutting down pride events. But I wonder if the fact that, yeah,

01:17:45.160 they're saying they needed a hundred security staff to monitor this parade route if, and I don't

01:17:49.340 know, but I'm wondering if the Montreal pride ones had also told police to stay away. And if they

01:17:53.640 told police to stay away, then yes, they would need private security to deal with it. Cause

01:17:57.580 Unfortunately, there's also crazed, you know, anti-LGBTQ extremists who might come to try and disrupt the parade and things like that as well.

01:18:05.540 But something very bizarre happened over there.

01:18:08.140 And a very big event has now been put off.

01:18:11.120 It'll be interesting to see what comes out of that.

01:18:13.620 But when they go woke, go broke, it tends to apply to a lot of things.

01:18:17.200 And I suspect there's been some problems going on that led to their end.

01:18:22.560 Another story in the Western Standard.

01:18:23.700 Angela Pitt, she's the Airdrie East MLA, and she's leaving her role as Rajan Sani's UCP

01:18:29.620 chair of the campaign for Rajan Sani, UCP leadership. She says she needs to realign

01:18:36.200 with her constituents. That's just the old, almost, you know, leaving to spend more time

01:18:41.140 with the family sort of thing. She wants it for some reason or another. I suspect they're realizing

01:18:46.400 that Rajan Sani's campaign really isn't going anywhere, and you just don't want to be attached

01:18:51.620 to it at the end when she drops off in the first ballot with half a percent of the votes. 0.99

01:18:55.940 But whatever, we'll see what Ms. Pitt gets on with. But I mean, I'm sure she was probably 0.99

01:19:00.200 capable of being a chair of that campaign and still speaking to her constituents. But we're

01:19:04.020 seeing the race start to solidify, I guess, in some ways, you know, where the people are

01:19:08.540 realizing which campaigns are going to actually get somewhere and which won't. Let's see another

01:19:14.740 thing in the headlines, and it was just interesting, a buyer cut $49,000 off the price of an East

01:19:20.660 York three bedrooms out in Ontario. But I talked to our columnist, Mike Thomas, about that with

01:19:25.980 real estate and everything. He's been saying we're expecting a correction in real estate

01:19:30.740 to come pretty soon. I mean, it has been superheated in Ontario and BC and some markets

01:19:38.840 and everything. And it's just kind of coming back to where it belongs, perhaps. And maybe we're

01:19:44.280 seeing that correction start to happen. We just, we want to see a correction. And he corrected me

01:19:49.140 on that when we had him on the show, not bubble popping. He doesn't like that term and that's

01:19:53.280 fine. If it's fake, if it's really bad and it's a bubble, it will pop and you can have a real

01:19:57.100 catastrophe because people lose way too much equity, way too fast, and it really messes the

01:20:02.980 market for everything. But maybe that correction is starting to come along. But part of that

01:20:06.520 correction is also because we're probably moving towards a recession. I hate using that word,

01:20:12.840 but it's true. But I mean, it's almost unavoidable. The government's overspent,

01:20:15.340 overspent, overspent. They shut things down. They screwed the supply chains. Interest rates are going

01:20:19.380 up. What do you think is going to happen? I'd suggest to anybody, I'm not a financial advisor,

01:20:24.040 you know, we got some great ones out there, like with the Integrated Wealth Management and such

01:20:29.440 who've been on here before, and I trust them for financial advice. But either way, my little bit

01:20:34.420 of advice, I would say though, is looking at what's rumbling on the horizon. Hey, if you can,

01:20:38.900 pay down any debt you got, particularly unsecured stuff, as fast as you can. Because the interest

01:20:43.980 rates as Neil is saying, the commenter, yeah, they're rising and it's just hurting people and

01:20:47.640 they're going to rise more and the economy is going to slow down. So yeah, careful out there

01:20:54.740 guys. Okay. And so just that reminder again, tomorrow at rooftop in Calgary, there's going

01:21:00.600 to be a debate with the UCP top front runners. Those determined by, I know some people get upset,

01:21:05.520 but it was determined by a very large poll, not our online one. And it found that basically far

01:21:11.680 and beyond, as far as can be found, Daniel Smith, Brian Jean, and Travis Taves are the three top

01:21:21.980 contenders. And it's going to go from 5.30 until about 7. It's downtown. Check it out. Go to the

01:21:27.900 Western Standard online. You can see how to get tickets and how to get out to that. We'll all be

01:21:31.620 there. And it will be streaming. I've seen some people asking about that. Yes, it will be streaming.

01:21:35.260 So you'll be able to catch the whole thing streaming online. But it's nice to get there

01:21:38.700 person, meet with us, meet with the candidates and check that stuff out. And tomorrow I'm going

01:21:45.060 to have David McClellan on. He founded Social Catfish. This is basically a site that helps

01:21:50.160 counter a lot of those scams that have been kind of, well, reeling women in and robbing them and 0.99

01:21:55.700 ripping them off. And I'm going to talk with Melanie Riston for a little while as well tomorrow

01:22:00.520 because she's still keeping, well, those episodes are coming out with her series on freedom fighters

01:22:05.040 and COVID treated fighters, it's been doing really well.

01:22:07.440 And we'll discuss that a little further and see how it's been going.

01:22:10.400 Plus, I'll be ranting and bitching and moaning and doing my usual thing.

01:22:13.320 So thanks for tuning in today, guys.

01:22:15.800 I appreciate it, and I'll see you all again tomorrow at 1130 a.m. sharp.

01:22:35.040 Thank you.

01:23:05.040 Thank you.

Western Standard - August 09, 2022

Triggered： A provincial police force is worth the investment

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