Western Standard - Triggered： Savoring the progressive meltdown over Musk’s purchase of Twitter

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Good morning. It's April 26, 2022. Welcome to Triggered. I'm Corey Morgan. This is the

00:00:39.080 Western Standard's daily live show. We run Monday to Friday, 1130 a.m. Mountain Standard

00:00:44.060 until about one o'clock usually. Being live, we get the commenters. I see Brad commenting

00:00:49.580 already saying it's another beautiful day in Alberta. It is indeed. We seem to finally

00:00:53.980 have some spring hitting. I think Saskatchewan and Manitoba are still getting pretty beat

00:00:57.440 up, but we're doing pretty good around here. I'll take it. My bees, I've gotten into beekeeping this

00:01:03.060 year. I've been delayed by another month, so I won't be able to show off all the stings and

00:01:06.340 perhaps videos of me running around screaming like a little girl when I screw up, but it's

00:01:10.300 something you can look forward to as things get warmer. It's also apparently International Flamingo

00:01:14.980 Day for those who were wondering. There's a title for everything. Every day has got to mean

00:01:19.900 something apparently, and that one is coming. So I just would not want you guys to get through

00:01:24.060 the day without knowing that that is going on see it's an important informative show so yes keep

00:01:30.220 those comments going i see lots of you there gary curly may nice from ontario mike connelly pat all

00:01:36.680 you guys it's good to see on there in the live scroll i like to encourage that discourse i've

00:01:41.180 seen some great commentary going on in the in the comments scroll and i've gotten some great

00:01:45.700 questions ideas all sorts of stuff from you so keep it coming guys it's a great week for free

00:01:51.260 speech. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. And the speech can happen in here. Again, though,

00:01:55.020 let's just try and keep it civil. Somewhat. We can be angry. We can differ. We can get crabby.

00:02:01.420 I do it all the time. And you can still be respectful to a degree, and that's important.

00:02:05.900 I got a couple of good guests on today. Marcella, too. She's going to be talking about

00:02:09.320 general government accountability. I've had him on before. He often speaks to municipal issues.

00:02:14.860 People in Calgary are very familiar with him. He used to be on Daniel Smith's show all the time

00:02:18.140 when she was on the radio. And he's just, he's written a number of books and he's very good to

00:02:23.080 talk about those things. I particularly want to start off with, apparently our prime minister

00:02:27.280 doesn't even get criminally charged when he commits crimes. Talk about a level of accountability that

00:02:31.960 is lacking in a really big way. So Mr. Latouche, I'm certain we'll have lots to add on that.

00:02:37.040 And I'm going to have Kelly Melnberg on. He's an agricultural producer, farmer, as you would say,

00:02:41.560 just down south of Calgary there. We're going to talk about agricultural issues because we're

00:02:44.840 getting into the spring planting season and we've got a lot of, well, farmers, it's not an easy

00:02:49.680 biz at the best of times. And we've got some challenges coming from our government as usual

00:02:54.720 against that, it seems. They've moved their climate thing, you know, their obsession and

00:02:59.620 emissions reduction away from oil and gas. I mean, oh, it's still there, but now they're setting

00:03:04.020 their targets on farmers and going after their fertilizer. I'm sure there's other things I could

00:03:07.900 talk to Kelly about, but I'd really like to get his thoughts on that. Of course, top of the news

00:03:12.200 right now though is Elon Musk has, well, so far it's not a hundred percent cleared. I know I'm

00:03:18.280 getting all the, the pedantic people on Twitter saying it's not done yet. Well, it's, it's pretty

00:03:23.780 damn near done guys. He's purchased Twitter and it's got the progressives going bananas. And I

00:03:30.500 love it. This guy is just an amazing disruptor, if nothing else, whether you like him or dislike

00:03:35.280 him, he sure sets things up. So why are they going so nuts though? Well, let's go into a bit of it.

00:03:40.860 Now, Twitter has about 339 million daily users.

00:03:44.680 And that's a large number,

00:03:45.900 but it's actually dwarfed

00:03:46.900 by a number of social media platforms.

00:03:49.180 Like Facebook has over 2 billion users.

00:03:52.600 Instagram has a billion.

00:03:54.160 Even TikTok has more than Twitter.

00:03:56.100 And I don't even really fully understand TikTok,

00:03:57.900 but they got 650 million followers.

00:04:01.520 Less than a quarter of North Americans

00:04:03.300 use Twitter daily.

00:04:04.780 So, I mean, if it's a smaller social media outlet,

00:04:06.660 why are the progressives losing

00:04:07.900 their collective minds so badly

00:04:09.440 over Elon Musk's purchase of the platform.

00:04:12.820 Well, it's not so much how many people use Twitter

00:04:14.880 as who uses Twitter.

00:04:17.020 Like, while most typical citizens,

00:04:18.780 obviously three-quarters of them and more,

00:04:20.240 don't use Twitter at all,

00:04:21.600 pretty much every politician, media member,

00:04:23.860 and celebrity does.

00:04:25.820 Twitter punches above its weight and influence

00:04:27.920 among media and policy makers.

00:04:30.420 So, while political discourse can be found

00:04:32.840 on any social media platform,

00:04:34.700 Twitter by far was the most political in nature.

00:04:37.440 Now, it becomes inevitable whenever something becomes

00:04:39.240 politically influential that the politically unprincipled will, of course, want to control it.

00:04:44.580 The ownership and prior management of Twitter began with a somewhat left lean,

00:04:48.600 and they continued an evolution towards a sharp left leaning. The editorial leaning of Twitter

00:04:53.880 went from subtle manipulation of content through methods such as shadow banning to being overtly

00:04:59.160 left-leaning and banishing even moderately conservative parody news sites like the Babylon

00:05:03.140 Bee. Shadow banning, for those not familiar with it, is an odious practice where Twitter will

00:05:08.800 throttle the reach of influential conservative voices without actually banning them. Tweets from

00:05:13.140 these people won't reach the scrolls of their followers and won't be widely shared, so it gives

00:05:17.440 the illusion that the platform allows for open speech, but these voices are actually being

00:05:22.820 suppressed. There was no veneer of balance, you know, any longer. Twitter's become an influential

00:05:28.480 platform dominated by leftists, and conservative voices were becoming stifled constantly, if not

00:05:33.780 band altogether from the platform for the most minor of apparent transgressions.

00:05:38.980 Elon Musk, you know, he's an erratic and interesting character, to say the least.

00:05:42.780 There really hasn't been any indication of some sort of hard right inclinations on his part

00:05:46.380 historically, though, and I doubt he leans that way. He is, though, a self-described free speech

00:05:51.120 absolutist, so I can understand how he'd be annoyed in seeing an influential social media

00:05:56.280 platform stepping on open discourse so blatantly. Now, there's millions of free speech absolutists

00:06:02.360 in the world, but of course, Musk happens to be the richest man on the planet while he's at it.

00:06:06.540 So rather than sitting back and being annoyed like the rest of us had to, Musk decided to do

00:06:10.220 something about it and bought Twitter. Now, Musk has been launching idea balloons for weeks about

00:06:14.740 what he may do with Twitter, but he hasn't committed to anything solid yet at this point

00:06:18.120 of his purchase. It's only been a day after all. It can be safely assumed, though, that Musk is

00:06:22.280 going to be acting quickly to take the restraints upon discourse from Twitter as one of his first

00:06:26.540 courses of action. I mean, this was a big move. He's not just going to buy it and sit on it and do

00:06:29.900 nothing. Now the response to that, for many leftists, it's been nothing less than hysteric.

00:06:35.620 The usual accusations have already begun, accusing Musk of being a white supremacist.

00:06:39.360 Of course, there's utterly no evidence of this. Those guys, their playbook is so thin,

00:06:44.120 it's almost microscopic. Others are claiming the world is going to descend into total chaos and

00:06:48.920 Nazis will surely become a dominant political world force. I wish I was exaggerating the rhetoric.

00:06:54.800 The left really has, they're getting totally unhinged.

00:06:58.020 And they must have a really ugly worldview if they really believe 0.99

00:07:01.020 that there's a massive world population of Nazis and white nationalists 0.97

00:07:05.520 who are only being kept in check through control and manipulation of social media platforms.

00:07:10.880 Now, many people have already decried Twitter as being something of a cesspool of political discourse,

00:07:15.440 and there's some truth to that.

00:07:16.780 Twitter's loaded with anonymous troll accounts bent on nothing more than attacking other users

00:07:21.220 and being offensive without purpose.

00:07:23.660 The thing is, though, it is and always was easy to block these accounts.

00:07:29.020 It only takes a second.

00:07:30.460 The problem, though, is blocking takes a tiny measure of effort and personal responsibility.

00:07:35.080 And both of those principles are things that run contrary to the basis of progressivism,

00:07:39.880 especially personal responsibility.

00:07:42.240 More things that can be done to improve the Twitter experience, though.

00:07:46.100 And Musk has hinted at some of them.

00:07:47.920 I mean, no troll is more bold or annoying than one who can wrap themselves in the cloak of

00:07:52.200 confident anonymity. The worst of accounts are almost always anonymous. When a person has to

00:07:57.620 attach their name to something, it's amazing how much more thoughtful and respectful their

00:08:01.100 discourse often suddenly becomes. Musk isn't talking about eliminating the ability to be

00:08:06.220 anonymous, but he's spoken of creating ways for users to verify their identities online.

00:08:11.120 Right now, the only people who have any form of verification of identities that the platform

00:08:15.580 considers to be, or was that the platform considers to be people of public interest. The process for

00:08:21.540 gaining that status is arbitrary and nebulous.

00:08:23.540 Nobody's quite sure who qualifies for

00:08:25.780 and can gain the precious Twitter blue checkmark.

00:08:28.700 Not everybody who has such verification

00:08:30.280 is necessarily nice or polite.

00:08:32.020 I think I'm an example of that,

00:08:33.520 but they're trackable at least.

00:08:35.720 Now, a system can and should be created

00:08:37.600 where a person can choose to verify their identity

00:08:39.400 while keeping their public identity private.

00:08:41.680 This would stop the spawning of multiple accounts

00:08:43.680 and add a layer of accountability.

00:08:45.480 And there's good reasons why some people

00:08:47.000 may choose to remain anonymous,

00:08:48.360 and we don't want to lose all those voices.

00:08:50.240 Maybe a different colored checkmark

00:08:51.560 could be applied to accounts.

00:08:53.700 I'd be more inclined, though, I can say,

00:08:55.440 to take suites more seriously from an account

00:08:57.140 that had verified itself

00:08:58.260 than one that was created with no verification,

00:09:00.140 even if it remained anonymous.

00:09:02.240 So Musk has talked about also flushing the bots

00:09:04.780 and fake accounts from the system as well.

00:09:06.900 That's easier said than done,

00:09:08.340 but if he can find a good way to do it,

00:09:09.900 it would certainly help clean up the platform.

00:09:12.120 There's lots of other things

00:09:13.180 that can be done to improve Twitter,

00:09:14.280 and I hope Musk succeeds in doing them.

00:09:16.600 Twitter is a valuable platform for discourse

00:09:18.820 and amplifying issues. It morphed into a left-wing echo chamber with no regard or respect for free

00:09:24.580 speech. The only way to maintain balance is to open speech up. I don't want to see a conservative

00:09:29.980 echo chamber either. I mean, that's what happened with Gab and Parler. They just didn't quite take

00:09:34.940 off because they were so dominated by conservatives. So it looks like Musk is going to do that. He's

00:09:38.740 going to open speech up altogether and let the chips fall where they will. Time's going to tell

00:09:43.620 if Musk's move is going to improve the platform. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing

00:09:48.000 how it goes. I mean, I'm really enjoying watching the progressives holding a public temper tantrum

00:09:52.720 over the very concept of free speech. They're exposing themselves for the insecure authoritarians

00:09:58.100 that they are. I mean, if their case is that strong, they shouldn't need to suppress the speech

00:10:02.220 of others in order to make it. Perhaps progressives will pool their own money and buy their own

00:10:06.740 platform. There's nothing stopping them from creating the little echo chamber they desire.

00:10:11.580 Ah, but who am I kidding? They only know how to spend other people's money. So the left's next

00:10:15.960 move is going to be to push further to have government controlling speech on all those

00:10:18.940 platforms. Let's hope that Elon Musk plans to push back against that too. There's no such thing as

00:10:24.280 democracy without free speech, and I only wish that leftists would learn this lesson. That's what's

00:10:29.820 got me going today. As I said, it's kind of a positive thing, and I'm just dancing on the

00:10:33.280 grave of the leftist echo chamber that used to be Twittered. Now, let's check in with our news

00:10:39.600 editor, Dave Naylor from the newsroom. Hey, Dave, how's it going? Good, Corey. How are you? I'm

00:10:45.020 pretty good actually good i hear there's been some uh some twists and turns in the

00:10:50.140 tale of duke the wonder dog yes duke the wonder dog looks like he's going to become a permanent

00:10:55.260 residence of the the morgan household and prittis we're not terribly sad about that development

00:11:00.780 we'd hope to find him uh uh his forever home somewhere else as we were fosters and we could

00:11:05.900 keep turning over more dogs and having him in but uh duke just doesn't seem to be settling in

00:11:09.980 anywhere else so i guess he's gonna have to stay with us and become a morgan but it's it's not such

00:11:13.820 a bad outcome. You're just a big softie, Corey. Anyways, making news this morning. Top of our

00:11:21.620 website at the moment is Tamara Litch. You remember she was one of the organizers of the

00:11:27.560 Truckers Freedom Convoy, ended up being thrown in jail, spent a couple of weeks behind bars before

00:11:34.320 getting bailed. She's been awarded the JCCF's George Jonas Award, goes to a freedom fighter

00:11:41.680 every year. She's set to be given the award in Toronto in June, but a bit of a problem there,

00:11:47.700 Corey, because her bail conditions say she's not allowed in Ontario. So maybe they'll have to do

00:11:53.240 a presentation here or figure something out. Conservative leadership candidate Jean Charest

00:12:00.080 this morning revealed his climate change plan, says he would scrap the current liberal carbon

00:12:08.680 tax which he says penalizes families and instead bring of it bring in a more of a large emitter

00:12:14.760 tax so still lots of questions that need to be uh answered there our christopher old corn has

00:12:21.160 discovered a story out of the university of waterloo they are looking for a tenured professor

00:12:27.320 position in in research uh you and i cannot apply though corey uh no in fact no men comply

00:12:34.520 the university says it's limited to transgender non-binary people and and women so males need

00:12:44.280 not apply for that position and self-identification though i mean i i could just uh identify as

00:12:51.720 whatever the hell i want while i fill it out and and we'll deal with what i identify once i'm in

00:12:56.120 exactly exactly you would think they might want to do some investigating into the people that the

00:13:00.680 that apply for it. I mean, there have been a few cases in Canada of Indigenous professors

00:13:08.220 who have been found to be basically frauds. So, yeah, interesting times. Christopher's 1.00

00:13:14.820 also got a story on COVID booster shots, the fourth shots, now available to people in

00:13:21.120 Saskatchewan over 50. We've got a two-year anniversary story Arthur Green has done in

00:13:28.340 northern Alberta, second anniversary of those terrible Fort McMurray floods. And he is speaking

00:13:34.380 to the writing MLA, Brian Jean. Chris has got a story on Saskatchewan, toughening up their human

00:13:43.100 trafficking laws, talking to the justice minister there. Interesting story out of Ottawa, or even

00:13:51.640 though Dr. Theresa Tam at the time said they were doing everything as quickly as they possibly could

00:13:56.680 to get COVID testing kits out. Six months, Corey, it took six months before the first unit was sent

00:14:03.120 out. And our Mike Thomas, our real estate guy, has a look at a RBC report showing mortgages are

00:14:13.220 heading up. And obviously, that's of no great surprise to a lot of people as the Bank of

00:14:19.780 Canada continues to hike their rates by half a percentage point at a time. So that's what's on

00:14:25.460 there at the moment uh our political columnist linda slobodian is working on a couple of good

00:14:30.400 ones uh just about to publish one on uh the fact that there's half a dozen or so kenny allied

00:14:37.180 ucp mlas who aren't facing any nomination challenges at all in their writings uh this

00:14:43.440 is coming after uh there was some controversy in uh rimby rocky mountain house area over tim

00:14:50.480 Hovind and challenging Jason Nixon and down in Cartston, Siksika. So she says it's not a great

00:14:57.500 surprise because people see the trouble they have to go through and trying to deal with the UCP.

00:15:03.140 She's also got an upcoming column on Airdrie UCP MLA. Peter Guthrie has launched an astonishing

00:15:11.140 withering attack on Jason Kenney's office staff and some of their actions on social media

00:15:18.760 uh the last little while so a couple of interesting pieces to come uh from linda cory oh great yeah

00:15:25.460 linda always digs into the interesting stuff out there so lots to look forward to uh you know good

00:15:30.880 bad any different we report it all anyways you bet all right well thanks for checking in today

00:15:36.880 dave and we will uh see after the show then all right give duke a pet for me i will yes duke he

00:15:44.240 is a big, goofy galoot, but he'll fit into my house well enough, I'm certain. Jane and I'll

00:15:49.960 take good care of him. You know, with that plug out for people, there's an overload of foster dogs,

00:15:56.240 dogs that need fosters out there, actually, from a number of rescue societies. We had a lot of

00:16:01.380 irresponsible people taking in pets during the pandemic, and then, of course, now it's become

00:16:05.600 inconvenient for them, so they're surrendering them to rescue places. So, hey, you know what?

00:16:11.580 If you're interested at all in that sort of thing, reach out to me.

00:16:14.360 Send me an email.

00:16:14.920 We can talk about that because we do need people to really help out in that backlog of dogs.

00:16:18.740 There's a whole lot of them stuck in kennels right now, just looking for someone at least to hang on to them until they find an adoptee.

00:16:24.700 There's my self-serving charity plug for the day.

00:16:27.940 Now, let's talk about some of the other stuff.

00:16:30.160 So I should remind everybody, and actually I'll start, though I've got to do that, with letting them know.

00:16:36.080 I mean, as you can see, Dave was listing a whole pile of news stories.

00:16:38.880 We've got all sorts of stuff coming out, opinion stuff.

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00:17:19.000 help support independent media. It's important for all of us. It really is. And again, I really do

00:17:25.960 appreciate those who have subscribed already. So I'm going to speak to one of our sponsors. I see

00:17:34.120 Marcel, in the lobby already. So I'm going to talk about that too, because the other thing that

00:17:37.580 helps us pay the bills and is very important are our sponsors. And a big one has been Bitcoin Well.

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00:18:30.440 bitcoinwell.com they're a great sponsor and they're providing a great service okay let's get

00:18:36.360 on to our first guest i want to talk about accountability a big loaded word on a giant

00:18:41.160 issue on something that is just lacking so much and too much all over at every level of government

00:18:47.240 let's bring in marcel latou she's been on the show before hey marcel how you doing i'm doing fine

00:18:52.840 corey i finally decided to retire from the institute everything has gone by very smoothly

00:19:01.080 we've been doing this for some 20 years now but it's time for me to retire however i think

00:19:08.920 there are a number of people nowadays who can take uh the mantle i mean there's uh franco uh

00:19:16.440 for the from the ctf and peter mccaffery from common sense and macbeth william mcbeth from

00:19:25.560 north uh you know and so on and so forth there are some very good young people to take my place

00:19:31.960 however i'm still going to contribute to people like you the western standard either by writing

00:19:37.080 columns or if you decide to invite me i'll be happy to be uh contributing uh as a private citizen

00:19:46.440 Right on. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, once we've got it in the system, you know, we can retire from the formal groups and organizations we're with, but it's still in our blood. We're still going to watch the politics happening and still going to have our views that we want to share. So I appreciate getting you on to continue talking about it.

00:20:02.180 Ori, you're one of those who are going to take the mantle to move this country forward.

00:20:07.380 And I am very, very happy to have connected with you over the years, and we've done some

00:20:13.660 great work together, and I hope this continues from your side.

00:20:17.740 Let me say, you know, government accountability is still my belly wick.

00:20:21.580 I still will talk about it, I still have thoughts about it, especially in those times where

00:20:27.680 every level of government is having a problem today. My view is that we have too many politicians

00:20:38.960 who tell you about their principles before the election. As soon as they get elected,

00:20:48.080 all those principles they embrace disappear because what they want to do nowadays

00:20:56.640 is to look at the next election and how they are going to get re-elected.

00:21:02.240 I mean, I'm not going to be talking about individuals, but every single level has shown

00:21:10.240 that we have a problem. Calgary's municipality, it has already started.

00:21:15.920 Gondek doesn't like somebody on council, so let's shut his mic off.

00:21:21.520 At the provincial level in Alberta, we have many problems. Not all of Kenny's doing. There are

00:21:31.280 certain things that have happened in the economy and in the geopolitical arena that have affected

00:21:38.560 his government. However, he is in charge and the buck stops with him. At the federal level,

00:21:47.360 accountability has disappeared completely. Now that we have the coalition between the NDP

00:21:53.120 and the liberal, we have a one socialist government. Accountability has disappeared

00:22:01.760 in this country at every single level. And the younger people should be very, very worried about

00:22:09.040 this. Because unlike the United States where they have a balance of power every two years,

00:22:19.760 where they can have a midterm where things can shift, in Canada we don't have this system.

00:22:27.200 We have somebody who's been elected in Ottawa now for years and it just continues. We can no longer

00:22:35.280 accept accountability from the government if there is no transparency. I mean too often

00:22:43.680 we have fractured political parties at every level right now. We see a number of people

00:22:52.400 entering the fray for leadership or for candidacy who have no idea but one thing. In my point of

00:23:00.880 you they have only one thing in mind is their selfish position in the years to come once they

00:23:08.720 get elected and this is very very dangerous for a nation which is struggling to find its its

00:23:19.040 position on the global arena today because with trudeau canada is no longer respected

00:23:27.440 like it used to be, as a honest broker. How can we be a honest broker when cozy up with China?

00:23:36.820 I mean, we can't do this. The economy of this country is going to the dogs because of the 0.97

00:23:45.060 inability for this government to see that we cannot continue to spend at the level that it

00:23:53.260 has been doing for the past six years and we have no way to get out of it well and that gets back to

00:24:01.100 like the whole thing and on every level is the accountability between elections and you know one

00:24:05.500 of the areas that this part of why i wanted to bring you on was something that got revealed

00:24:09.180 recently in a story as at the highest level i mean we'd still think that politicians would be

00:24:14.300 held accountable should they breach the law and we found out that rcmp had considered investigating

00:24:21.180 and laying charges on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

00:24:24.080 over the Aga Khan affair.

00:24:27.700 It did sound like he had broken the law,

00:24:30.040 but they felt somehow that it wasn't in the national interest

00:24:33.920 to follow through on charges on the Prime Minister in that case,

00:24:37.040 so they didn't do it.

00:24:38.400 That's very scary.

00:24:39.580 That's a police force, a national police force,

00:24:42.220 saying that we will not charge people of a certain caliber

00:24:45.780 and level in society, whereas we would charge others.

00:24:49.480 I mean, if we don't even have the criminal justice form of accountability in this country, what have we got?

00:24:54.460 And this is where the problem is, because a lot of the situation we have at the federal government is because our judicial system has disappeared in its true role of holding politicians accountable.

00:25:13.980 Many of the decisions being taken

00:25:17.020 under the charter of this country

00:25:20.420 is now mostly political as opposed to be judicial.

00:25:25.360 Today, I see that Trudeau has appointed somebody

00:25:29.280 who used to be a contributor to the Liberal Party

00:25:32.860 as the person who is going to investigate

00:25:36.060 his role in the Emergencies Act.

00:25:39.680 How accountable are we going to have

00:25:42.980 this government held to when we have this kind of situation.

00:25:48.040 We appoint people who have been contributors

00:25:50.480 to our political agenda,

00:25:53.520 and then we ask them to give you our actions.

00:25:57.280 We are in a very, very dangerous situation.

00:26:01.540 So what are some solutions we can do though

00:26:03.780 to bring government into accountability?

00:26:05.420 Like even a lot of people are frustrated with UCP,

00:26:09.220 they're on both sides,

00:26:10.060 but I mean, one of the areas I've kind of said is,

00:26:11.480 join a party get involved and perhaps you can have some influence from within but as we see with the

00:26:16.040 ucp they're fighting like cats and dogs from within too and i think more and more citizens

00:26:20.680 are just throwing up their hands and that leads to even less accountability like how do we solve

00:26:25.320 this problem that's the first thing is conservatives have got to stop being so afraid of stating that

00:26:34.200 they are conservatives they've got to stop saying that we have principles but once elected we don't

00:26:41.480 apply those principles. We are too timid. Our politicians are being too timid in

00:26:49.280 the application of their roles and we've got to ask them to be accountable. Now

00:26:55.400 people talk about recalls and so on and so forth. It's costly. What we've got to

00:27:00.980 do is, I believe, limited terms in elections and electoral process in this

00:27:07.760 country. We can no longer have this kind of rolling years after years of the same people

00:27:15.520 going in there. I mean, the United States has a president for eight years maximum and is gone.

00:27:23.040 We have Trudeau now for too long and we cannot do anything about it. At the provincial level,

00:27:30.800 is the same thing. We must have a system which is very equivalent to either a midterms, like they

00:27:40.080 have in the United States, a rotation every two years out of a four-year term, or we have limited

00:27:48.480 terms for our leaders. People continuously tell me, oh, Marcel, we can't do this because, you know,

00:27:54.320 People are not going to put their names out there because they are not committed for eight years.

00:28:01.240 Well, if you really are committed to providing a service, to responding to the electorate's desires,

00:28:10.580 you should be able to do it in eight years.

00:28:13.380 If you can't do it, why are you still there?

00:28:16.240 That's one way to bring accountability.

00:28:19.100 You reverse the role.

00:28:21.140 It's not them making the rules, but you ask the people to tell you what you want.

00:28:27.360 People are talking about Poiliev now as the frontrunner in the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:28:37.180 And the left, of course, are branding him as a populist.

00:28:41.700 But they forget.

00:28:43.120 What is a populist?

00:28:44.460 A populist is some...

00:28:48.140 And the electorate.

00:28:50.260 that's what populism is about and if you don't have politician listening to the electorate you

00:28:57.700 don't have accountability yeah well that's almost it's so insulting when they spit out populism as

00:29:04.180 if it's a bad term populism means they're reading the crowd and they're reflecting it rather than

00:29:09.780 directing it i mean it's the very basis of democracy and when we see the people in power

00:29:15.380 chafing under the whole concept of democracy happening that's a dangerous approach for them

00:29:20.500 to take oh absolutely and this is what we are getting nowadays more and more and if you get

00:29:26.580 social media censoring what you are supposed to be saying we are losing the value the democratic

00:29:34.580 value of the freedom of speech and what is happening is we are continuously seeing government

00:29:41.620 trying to censor people through the use of giving money or allowing social media to control the

00:29:51.380 censorship uh system which is good now that musk has going as has taken over twitter we shall see

00:29:58.180 how how this works out but i really like the fact that people are beginning to on to to look at

00:30:05.220 the liberal uh mass media and how they are reacting to this takeover of twitter

00:30:13.300 i mean he's branded as oh he's a dictator he's not going to like freedom of speech and so on

00:30:18.580 and so forth have you noticed that for the past six years well no i'd say a bit more than that

00:30:25.860 a decade or so the left has been the ones who define what freedom of speech is supposed to be

00:30:34.100 and in their view freedom of speech is that only their views is acceptable and that is another

00:30:43.260 kick in the pants of accountability well and that's uh one of the things that's interesting

00:30:51.660 is that if a person is unapologetically conservative and nobody seems to have

00:30:56.420 tried that in quite some time uh it seems to be well received by a lot of people that's what has

00:31:01.600 a lot of them afraid right now. We have Pierre Polyev really taking, you know, Canada by storm

00:31:07.260 right now in a lot of ways, big rallies. And it really isn't that secret of formula. He's speaking

00:31:12.880 pure, straightforward talking points from conservative philosophy. But of course,

00:31:18.760 they're turning around, they're labeling him as an extremist, as a populist. Even I've seen,

00:31:23.060 you know, the Nazi, the white supremacist, it gets tiresome when they throw that out. 0.58

00:31:26.680 But it's effective too, unfortunately.

00:31:28.520 But that's the only way that the left can answer to any attempt to challenge them.

00:31:36.360 Everybody is labeled by the left as a misogynist, as a homophobic, and so on and so forth.

00:31:45.140 That's their only defense in what they are proposing.

00:31:49.780 The problem that we have today is that, as you say, Poilievre is running a campaign as an unapologetic conservative.

00:32:01.120 That's what we need to see.

00:32:03.260 We need to see this at every level of politics in Canada right now.

00:32:09.160 I mean, it doesn't matter.

00:32:10.820 To me, a democracy means that the public will be able to choose.

00:32:15.800 The electorate will choose how they respond to the politician, but the politician who comes in must ensure that they give their true value and their true personality to the electorate to allow them to judge and inform themselves before they vote.

00:32:37.860 The mass media is going to be the key to giving this information.

00:32:45.160 Unfortunately, in Canada, we have so much sponsored government subsidies to the media

00:32:52.940 that they've become so biased that we need people like you and independent media

00:32:58.820 to be the informer of news and information to the general public.

00:33:05.660 so getting back to accountability i guess in legislative measures we could do uh recall is

00:33:13.000 something i mean is that a tool that's feasible i mean unfortunately once somebody gets in it's

00:33:17.640 sort of the problem is people campaign conservative and then they govern left when they get in we see

00:33:21.820 that a lot municipally and then with others but there's not much we can do and there's not an

00:33:26.220 interest on the part of an elected official to give us good recall policy as we saw with premier

00:33:31.340 kenny he put out a recall policy finally but it's not really one that's viable or usable

00:33:38.140 i have never been a proponent of recall okay because recall to me is a waste of money

00:33:44.940 you know so this is why i always say limited term because you know the fact is a recall you need to

00:33:52.540 get a number of signatures and so on and so forth who are going to sign it are the same people who

00:33:58.620 voted for the other candidate and so therefore what what are you doing is you're getting a new

00:34:04.220 election for nothing i mean recall to me is a misnomer it has been bandied as a panacea for

00:34:13.420 our problem i prefer limited term a two term limit of four years for every single position in politics

00:34:23.500 to me is far more than enough then what you do is you sit out one term after your two terms

00:34:31.500 you are allowed to sit out one term and then what happens is you can come back again and be re-elected

00:34:39.420 if you you so wish oh it was a mistake and we want him back but sit down for one term

00:34:49.180 and see what happens well a two-term limit is the best thing for accountability yeah and it does um

00:34:57.440 i guess bring it about i mean that the person has to go in with an idea of some sort of ideology

00:35:03.600 of changes they want to make things they want to do rather than always worrying about re-election

00:35:07.860 i mean if you know that eight years is your maximum you've already won your your four-year

00:35:12.800 re-election you're going to be theoretically hopefully sticking on principles and making

00:35:17.400 political change rather than just worrying about keeping your seat longer absolutely because after

00:35:23.960 in our system right now at all levels it becomes pensionable time they get those huge pensions

00:35:31.080 they get rewarded for doing nothing for for agreeing with everybody for compromising there's

00:35:37.480 the problem here in in the system that we have nowadays even principal politicians compromise

00:35:46.200 to get re-elected because they're looking at a huge pension down the road after 10 12 12 15 years

00:35:56.520 which is no problem there you have eight years you go your pensions because i i think they

00:36:02.040 deserve a pension don't get me wrong i mean after eight years so it'd be smaller you go away when

00:36:09.400 you come back, you get another start again after the term that you sat away from politics. If you

00:36:17.080 get re-elected, you start again. So your pension will be eight years and eight years if you get

00:36:22.840 back in. But not these long-term pensions of staying in there and actually of saying, hey,

00:36:32.600 I'm just going to be in there. I promised the electorate to do certain things, but now I

00:36:38.120 compromise with my colleagues what we do is we have to have bipartisanship in in in certain

00:36:45.800 issues there is no such thing about bipartisanship bipartisanship is the killer of accountability

00:36:55.560 yeah well and that's been a an issue i guess i mean it's it's it gets bigger we're going to run

00:37:00.120 out of time before we can get into it but i'm sure we'll get a chance to talk again on it that

00:37:03.560 whipped votes, you know, representative, I mean, having local representation versus just party

00:37:08.600 representation is another area of dispute. I mean, a principal person, you know, wouldn't be voting

00:37:14.700 the same necessarily in a rural constituency as a person in an urban constituency because their

00:37:18.960 constituents might have different needs. But with whipped votes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you're

00:37:25.040 absolutely right. I mean, that's what's going to happen. I mean, if you have limited terms,

00:37:29.700 people are going to be deciding every eight years as a maximum on the role that the representative

00:37:38.060 has done for them. Now, if the representative is good enough, he will mentor somebody to take

00:37:45.180 his place with the same principles, with the same ideas. But don't tell me that there is nobody to

00:37:51.340 take their places. That's untrue. Because every time you have an election, you've got hundreds

00:37:57.840 of people putting their name the last municipal election we had so many people who wanted to be

00:38:02.620 mayor i mean it was a dog's breakfast yeah no there's there's no shortage of applicants for

00:38:09.060 the job i guess the goal is just to try and get the best ones we can and i mean as you said a

00:38:13.240 pension is reasonable it just has to be a reasonable level and they should be paid fairly well i mean

00:38:17.340 we got to get people from uh you know the business community and the trades and others that are you

00:38:22.280 know you're not going to draw them in if we're paying them in a minimum wage uh but we don't

00:38:26.220 to overpay as well that's always a balance we have to seek well absolutely absolutely you can't tell

00:38:30.780 people to do things for for nothing uh as long as it is a fair wage and uh they they they are

00:38:37.980 respected and they they deliver the the services and uh uh how they they treat their their their

00:38:45.100 citizens i mean it's a fair wage i have no problem with that at all great well thank you for coming

00:38:51.900 in to check in today as i said it's a big subject we only talked about a bit of it i hope we know we

00:38:55.900 We can talk again some more down the road as you're,

00:38:58.460 I know it's going to be harder to corner you

00:39:00.220 because the outdoor tennis and pickle of all seasons are approaching,

00:39:03.320 but I'm sure we can manage to pull you on some more in the future.

00:39:08.020 You can always contact me personally.

00:39:11.420 I will contribute maybe some economy for you guys down the road sometimes.

00:39:16.620 Excellent.

00:39:17.040 Actually, I will reach out on that for sure, Alison.

00:39:19.500 About the equity and equality one.

00:39:23.160 But I was really glad to see Mark Milkey come back and talk about the same subject. And this is something that you should be watching very carefully, because the social justice system is going to once again be a catalyst to overthrow accountability in government. And you should pursue that. And maybe we'll come back and talk about this down the road later.

00:39:47.000 Absolutely. Social justice, that's a whole ball of wax on its own and a whole new interview. We'll have to do that. All right. Well, thank you for joining me today, Marcel. It's good to see you. And I will send an email. We'll talk a bit after the show.

00:39:59.160 Always a pleasure, my friend.

00:40:00.540 Right. That was Marcella too. She's an author. There's a number of books. If you Google it,

00:40:06.480 you can find his publications online. And he was with the Public Sector Institute for Public

00:40:13.160 Sector Accountability. And he's retired from that. But he's still, as you can see, very active and a

00:40:18.740 very dedicated man to accountability. Just some political principle, those core things that we're

00:40:24.800 just lacking so much on so many other levels right now. I noticed a couple of questions. I'll

00:40:30.720 talk a little more about that. Some people were asking about Bitcoin and minimum purchases and

00:40:36.340 things like that. I don't know the full details of that. I'm pretty certain there's no minimum

00:40:39.920 purchase of 350. I saw somebody in the comment scroll saying that. That's the point of that

00:40:43.880 Bitcoin. Well, I'm not going to go into the whole ad here again, but check them out, go online,

00:40:47.900 and they can really break down what those are and reach out to them. It's not just my plug for

00:40:51.660 sponsor, though, of course, I plugged them, but they are a resource to answer those questions

00:40:56.400 better than I could as well. Like, that's what they're all about is making you informed on how

00:41:01.440 those things work. You know, one of the things I saw some discussion and one of the news items was

00:41:07.260 the testing and, you know, these delays and delays on testing and people are seeing that scandalous,

00:41:11.420 you know, Dr. Tam and it took so long to get tests open. It was one of the things out of this

00:41:16.920 whole pandemic, I couldn't understand. I still don't. Is this obsession with testing? Like,

00:41:23.580 okay, you know, we got all these asymptomatic people. I mean, it's the next virtue signal. 1.00

00:41:28.300 It's the next big thing is to show your positive test online. I mean, I always have to look twice.

00:41:33.140 Is this a pregnancy test? Is that piss running down their fingers? No, no, it was a COVID test 0.93

00:41:37.880 because they look very similar, but make sure not to pee on those. It's a different means of testing.

00:41:41.660 either way, I don't care. I really don't care. I mean, almost everybody has tested positive at

00:41:49.480 one point or another. What does it change? Usually they don't have any symptoms. If they do,

00:41:53.000 they're minor, but it's not getting rid of the condition. It's not chasing it away. It's not

00:41:59.740 making it stop. Crazy old Dr. Joe, an NDP Vipond, he put his test up the other day in a big

00:42:07.180 diatribe. He even wears goggles everywhere he goes. He says he got it on a plane. He's confident

00:42:11.820 of it. Of course, he was jet-setting all over the place. He's a climate crusader who flies back and

00:42:15.940 forth across the country all over the place and then comes and talks to mainstream media as an

00:42:20.100 expert in saving us all from ourselves through more lockdowns and personal restrictions on

00:42:24.260 freedoms. He's nuts, but he gets all sorts of mainstream time, that guy. He's their medical 0.75

00:42:29.120 expert. He's fixated on testing. I mean, he's done everything presumably right. He wears goggles

00:42:36.580 even. He wears his scrubs everywhere he goes. He's something special, that guy. And he's still

00:42:41.840 tested positive. Maybe, maybe we just have to let this thing run its course. Crazy thought.

00:42:49.580 And again, I'm not going to go down the whole thing of whether vaccines are a good idea or

00:42:55.160 bad idea. I mean, I think they're good. I feel it should be a free choice thing. And I think

00:43:00.300 it'll reduce your symptoms, but choose not to, so be it. But obviously it doesn't stop the spread.

00:43:06.580 doesn't by pond did everything else and it doesn't stop the spread so i mean testing if

00:43:10.980 it's asymptomatic i mean again where are you going with this so we got to test each ourselves daily

00:43:14.740 to find out if we have it or not or if you do have symptoms you know what how about doing the common

00:43:18.900 courtesy you don't need a test you're feeling sick you're sneezing you're snotting you're coughing

00:43:24.020 stay home don't go spread it in your workplace even if it's not covet even if it's just the flu

00:43:29.380 don't spread it come on it's just a good idea not to do wash your hands you know these little things

00:43:34.660 We don't need restrictions on our personal freedoms in order to avoid a lot of these

00:43:38.880 things, guys.

00:43:39.340 We just need some common sense, which common sense isn't terribly common.

00:43:42.580 I understand that.

00:43:44.280 We got to keep pushing.

00:43:46.380 So speaking of people admitting they're wrong, the governor of the Bank of Canada acknowledged

00:43:50.440 missing repeated inflation targets, and he's warning that there's going to be higher interest

00:43:56.380 rates coming soon.

00:43:58.320 So he said, we got some things wrong.

00:43:59.760 I mean, I don't know.

00:44:00.880 I shouldn't always knock people in senior positions when they admit they're wrong.

00:44:04.080 If they don't admit, then we just keep doing more.

00:44:06.660 But this is what's going on.

00:44:08.760 I mean, it's not like they weren't warned about the inflation.

00:44:11.280 Why are these guys acting like it caught them off guard?

00:44:13.980 It's a, you know, economics 101 to know that when the government is spending and borrowing

00:44:19.420 and the Bank of Canada is printing money like mad, you're going to get inflation.

00:44:22.500 It just, it happens.

00:44:23.840 It's like predicting the sun's going to rise in the east, guys.

00:44:27.420 So he's saying, did we get everything right?

00:44:29.020 No, but we were surprised by the pervasiveness of supply constraints.

00:44:34.380 Well, what did you think?

00:44:35.780 You locked down the world.

00:44:37.020 Of course there was inflation.

00:44:38.460 Of course there are constraints in supply.

00:44:40.940 These are the top people running this country.

00:44:43.360 I tend to get very concerned about this.

00:44:45.920 Now, they're talking about raising interest rates

00:44:48.480 because that's the only way they seem to know

00:44:49.900 how to get inflation in check.

00:44:52.420 And it is a means of doing it.

00:44:53.800 It'll slow down the economy.

00:44:55.120 But that's the thing is you slow the economy down too much.

00:44:57.480 You're into recession.

00:44:58.600 That's what we need right now, isn't it?

00:44:59.920 Let's go into a recession.

00:45:01.840 They're in a bad place.

00:45:02.820 one of the things that doesn't seem to be crossing the government's mind is cutting the bloody 0.99

00:45:06.240 spending, you know, just cut the damn spending. But they won't do that. And that will help bring 0.99

00:45:14.020 inflation down. I mean, you might still have to raise some interest rates a bit. They're unusually

00:45:19.120 low. But you know, as long as the government's pouring that money into the system, the currency

00:45:24.460 is going to get devalued. And that gets a little bit back again to why you might want to examine

00:45:27.580 and digital currencies and things like that.

00:45:30.560 Tiggy Kate's saying, just the flu,

00:45:33.580 the flu is also a killer.

00:45:34.700 Yes, and that's kind of what I was talking about before,

00:45:37.540 actually, just responding to a commenter.

00:45:39.860 It's a good comment.

00:45:41.120 Many people die of the flu.

00:45:42.420 If you're vulnerable, if you're immune compromised,

00:45:44.700 if you're a senior, the flu is very often

00:45:48.160 what unfortunately is sort of the final usher to the door.

00:45:51.300 I mean, there may be a whole pile of other conditions.

00:45:53.040 You're very sick and then that's what leads to pneumonia

00:45:55.880 or whatnot, and you pass away.

00:45:57.880 The flu should be taken seriously.

00:45:59.240 And that's what I'm talking about.

00:46:00.400 If a person's feeling sick and fevered

00:46:02.340 and nasty in the morning, it doesn't matter.

00:46:05.440 They shouldn't bother with a test.

00:46:07.260 They know they're sick, stay home, just stay home.

00:46:10.580 You don't need a COVID test to figure that out.

00:46:12.560 Just don't, don't go spread it.

00:46:15.060 But no, we were fixated on these bloody tests, you know?

00:46:20.060 So yeah, you know, back to that news earlier too,

00:46:22.700 speaking of accountability and things of concern,

00:46:24.740 and Marcel brought it up and Dave. So we've got an inquiry as to whether or not the use of

00:46:29.340 emergency powers, you know, I don't even like that term. It was martial law. Okay. It was martial

00:46:34.800 law. It was a form of what used to be the War Measures Act. And I know it drives progressive

00:46:39.620 nuts when I bring that up all the time, but that's what it was. They changed it into something else.

00:46:44.740 They called it, you know, the Emergencies Act, but it's the same thing. It was an act designed to say

00:46:48.860 we are going to suspend civil liberties in order to address an emergency or issue,

00:46:55.160 whether it's aliens invading or a natural disaster or meteorites, or in this case, bouncy castles.

00:47:05.300 And martial law, if you look it up, you look at the definition, it is the suspension of those

00:47:11.440 civil rights. I mean, there's levels and levels of it. So certainly there wasn't the whole country

00:47:15.540 loaded with people on street corners with guns, but they did have the ability now to arrest people

00:47:20.620 without charge and hold them for extended periods of time. They had the ability to seize people's

00:47:25.160 properties, their bank accounts. They had the ability to force labor. Again, not enough people

00:47:30.260 are talking about that. I don't think they ever actually used it, but they could have taken tow

00:47:34.840 truck drivers, others, and said, hey, by force of the law, you have to work for us. Whether you like

00:47:40.060 it or not, you have to, you have no choice. That's scary. That's scary government power.

00:47:45.880 That's forced labor. So we'd better examine and talk and look and see whether this was justified.

00:47:52.560 I'm sure myself and I know, but I'm sure most of the viewers on this kind of show agree it wasn't

00:47:57.040 justified, but let's have an examination because there is an obligation that was built into the

00:48:00.980 law. At least whoever wrote that act realized that this is very serious and very important.

00:48:04.860 I don't think whoever wrote that law figured that we'd have an imbecile of a prime minister 0.97

00:48:07.840 who would implement it for bouncy castles, but they did. He did. So now let's look back on it. 0.99

00:48:13.500 And unfortunately, the prime minister gets to pick who heads the inquiry. And it's a liberal

00:48:18.940 appointed judge. Jeez, who'd have thunk that, right? He was a partner in a law firm that

00:48:23.480 included Pierre Trudeau. Yes, the probable daddy of Justin. And they're saying they're looking

00:48:32.080 forward to this being a nice, unbiased examination. Who knows? Perhaps Justice Rouleau

00:48:37.280 is still very principled and stuck on ideology and wants to dig into this and ensure that there

00:48:43.960 is a follow-up. I mean, it's not impossible. But again, this guy's worked as a partner at a

00:48:49.140 Montreal firm that also had associates. Yeah, Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, former MP and

00:48:54.200 Liberal Party president, Don Johnston and Roy Heenan. I mean, he's liberal to the core. So

00:49:00.020 are we really supposed to believe that this guy is going to do an in-depth investigation as to

00:49:06.420 would happen. And even if he does, none of us are going to believe it. Again, the word for the day,

00:49:13.900 it's like if it was Sesame Street or the letter for the day or whatever. Accountability, that's

00:49:17.560 the big one. And unfortunately, in Canada, it is lacking. It is lacking terribly on every level.

00:49:24.160 Okay, I'm going to shift a little though to still a big and important issue. I'm going to talk about

00:49:28.620 a sponsor first before I bring Kelly in. He's in the lobby there. And that is the Canadian

00:49:33.600 Shooting Sports Association. Again, Tony Bernardo is fantastic. There's an interview I had with him

00:49:39.560 at the gun show a couple of weeks ago in Calgary. If you go on YouTube, you can see that. Him and I

00:49:43.460 chatted for a few minutes talking about what his organization does and what they're up to.

00:49:47.880 You can see all these images that Nico's brought up on the screen. You can see it's all shooting

00:49:52.780 sports, you know, target shooting with cowboy action or black powder and all those things.

00:49:57.100 It's a resource. If you want to enjoy firearms in any sort of way, whether it's collecting them

00:50:03.320 or shooting targets or whatever you want.

00:50:06.380 It's your business.

00:50:06.880 As long as you're legal about it,

00:50:07.920 you're not hurting anybody.

00:50:09.100 This is the place to get,

00:50:10.600 to find the resources,

00:50:11.600 network with each other,

00:50:12.600 see where there's events,

00:50:13.440 things going on,

00:50:14.940 videos on safe use.

00:50:16.840 Plus, they have moves,

00:50:19.300 they're lobbying on your behalf

00:50:20.740 to make sure the Liberal government

00:50:21.700 doesn't take away that ability

00:50:22.940 because they're always trying to take it away.

00:50:24.560 It's always under threat.

00:50:26.800 The Canadian Shooting Sports Association

00:50:28.160 has done legal challenges on your behalf,

00:50:29.900 but they need you in order to do it.

00:50:32.560 Nothing's free.

00:50:33.160 I'm afraid, guys, unless you're a socialist, then it's free because you've got to steal it from

00:50:36.700 somebody else. Either way, you've got to stand up for yourself. Take out a membership with the

00:50:41.060 Canadian Shooting Sports Association. If you enjoy firearms, I really can't stress this enough. It's

00:50:46.920 very important. You have to stand up for your rights because nobody else is going to do it for

00:50:50.320 you. These guys will do it on your behalf, but you still need to join. So check them out.

00:50:54.080 Canadian Shooting Sports Association, their site is cssa-cila.org. All right, let's get on to some

00:51:01.960 agricultural issues. I'm going to bring in Kelly Malmberg. He's been on the show before and spring's

00:51:07.560 coming along. Once things get rolling, it gets hard to get anybody who works in the agricultural

00:51:11.520 sector on because they're too damn busy. So I've managed to corner Kelly for a little bit here and

00:51:16.360 we can talk about some of these issues pressing. Hey, Kelly, how's it going? Good, Corey.

00:51:21.700 Good, good. Good to see you back. So I guess, I mean, the first thing, that's the last time we

00:51:27.820 talked about it you know really impacted producers uh out uh west i mean in general was the lack of

00:51:34.120 moisture the drought it's still looking pretty dry out there this year i'm afraid yeah that was a

00:51:38.860 weird storm like uh pretty well north of you guys they got some huge snow there what two weeks ago

00:51:44.880 a couple you know guys and out west the cochran country i think they had a couple weeks uh feet

00:51:50.360 of snow but once you get north south of that bow river um it petered out i think but it got we

00:51:56.680 live just about 10, 12 miles south of the bow there between Cars Line and Calgary. And we got

00:52:02.500 maybe an inch of snow and then from then on it just petered out. So yeah, we're really dry. It's

00:52:06.720 the whole South country is pretty dry. There's not much we can do about that, but it's going to be

00:52:11.300 one of the things impacting yields and crops. And, you know, we've got inflation is going rampant

00:52:16.980 to particularly with food items. And we just got to make sure people understand this is the way

00:52:21.200 the chain of supply comes and there's the source as one of the pressures that's coming on. I'm

00:52:26.660 we've got a number of them uh the russia ukraine war i mean on international commodity prices is

00:52:32.100 having a very strong impact because they're aside from canada among the lead grain producers in the

00:52:37.540 world there too right yeah like the russians in the ukraine like ukraine's probably the one of the

00:52:44.180 wealthiest agricultural countries in europe uh they supply between them and russia they supply

00:52:50.580 pretty well the whole west you know pretty well western europe to all the grains mostly wheat

00:52:56.580 wheat barley um yeah oil they're uh that's that's been a major disruption to the world doesn't

00:53:03.380 affect us too much the only thing it really helps us with is uh price of grains gone up like grain

00:53:08.900 prices grain prices in usually in april may are pretty you know for all cash price crop is pretty

00:53:17.300 low because you know we're going into a lot of uncertainty we might have some big crops

00:53:22.100 but yeah 23 bushel canola right now for fall delivery 14 wheat you know usually those are

00:53:28.980 half going into a new crop here so you know you hate to see what's going on but you know if we

00:53:36.580 get some rain these farmers can make some pretty serious money this year in in canada us yeah and

00:53:43.380 And I wrote a column on it recently, and it's of something of big concern.

00:53:46.820 A recent report from the federal government, I mean, they haven't implemented anything yet,

00:53:50.320 but it looks like they're moving towards cracking down on the use of chemical fertilizers in the future

00:53:54.900 because the emissions it could cause, that could be extremely, I mean, a very large impact on crop yields

00:54:02.500 and ability for farmers at this point.

00:54:05.220 I mean, what's the agricultural community think of this as they're hearing about it?

00:54:08.340 well you know what it's yeah obviously um yeah we put a lot we probably put more fertilizer on now

00:54:15.580 than we ever have and because fertilizer equates to bigger yields but you know we just talked here

00:54:23.520 two minutes ago the world's grain supply is very low due to um not so much the war but you know we

00:54:31.040 had a pretty wicked year last year for drought um there's just no grain out there i don't know how

00:54:37.020 what they're defining 30 reduction on what's what is what is uh i don't know where they're

00:54:43.140 getting their numbers how are they going to enforce that uh how do they know what 100 of

00:54:48.200 normal is um but yeah if this goes through i don't know number one i don't even know how they do it

00:54:54.040 and two if they do figure out a way to reduce uh synthetic fertilizers by 30 you know it's

00:55:00.880 quite obvious we're going to be reducing their yields i don't know how and with weather events

00:55:06.040 it could just make things much worse but fertilizer grows crops and that's that's why we use them

00:55:12.680 yeah i mean it's just stands to reason i mean people know that on a micro scale with their

00:55:16.920 own gardens and such but when we get on to a a larger scale with with commercial agriculture i

00:55:22.120 mean it's just essential i mean if you were forced i mean how does that formula kind of work you know

00:55:27.080 just if say there was a shortage of fertilizer just whatever if you cut back by the amount you

00:55:31.000 applied by 30% in one year. What sort of impact would that have on the yield, you know, that fall

00:55:36.240 potentially? You know, that's a good question, Corey. I really don't know that. I would look at

00:55:43.540 it the way they're cutting it. If you're taking 30% of actual nitrogen and phosphate, most of it's

00:55:50.480 nitrogen. It's the phosphate. When we're talking fertilizers, their biggest concerns probably on

00:55:56.460 nitrogen output. I would assume 30% reduction is going to probably result in 30% reduction of crop

00:56:03.240 yield. So that's a pretty big number. And when you've got $14 wheat and $10 barley

00:56:09.460 by the bushels and a grain shortage, you've just added 30% more grain shortage. And I could be

00:56:18.460 wrong with that. But you know, just from how I see it would be delivered, that's kind of what I see

00:56:23.760 would happen. If you reduce 30% of your crop fertilizer, yeah, you're definitely going to have

00:56:28.160 probably a 20 to 30 to 40% reduction in crop yields. Yeah, well, I just wanted to bring that

00:56:34.280 up and talk to people about it so they understand the threat and what's going on. It seems this

00:56:38.140 government is just so ideologically driven. They identify something and they say, we've got to get

00:56:43.180 rid of this, we've got to get rid of this, but they don't develop the alternative before they

00:56:46.540 bring in the legislation. I mean, we're seeing that with petrochemical production and things

00:56:50.800 like that. They're saying we've got to cut back the use of it by this and this, but they haven't

00:56:54.480 come up with the alternative yet. So all we're going to do is damage ourselves and the costs go

00:56:59.600 through the roof for everybody. You know, the biggest thing I've seen, you know, and I'm not

00:57:04.840 going to beat up provincial or federal government, but over the last 10, 15 years, there's been a

00:57:10.240 huge disconnect of grassroots knowledge at the federal level. I don't even know what we have

00:57:17.020 for federal government employees in Ag Canada out of Lethbridge.

00:57:22.100 You never see these guys.

00:57:24.000 I don't know where they're getting their information from,

00:57:26.140 but I'll tell you, they're not visiting the farms.

00:57:28.900 And I think there's such a disconnect with agriculture nowadays

00:57:32.120 that they don't have a clue.

00:57:34.000 I don't even know how they're going to do this.

00:57:37.760 It's getting worse.

00:57:39.120 We used to have a lot of involvement with the feds on some good programs,

00:57:42.760 and they've axed them all.

00:57:44.440 And agriculture really is an afterthought.

00:57:46.540 when it comes to especially the liberal government they just we they you know we're out west you know

00:57:52.700 and i know i'm sounding like a true typical westerner but we get nothing from the feds

00:57:57.040 for anything in it we haven't for the last 10 years anyways yeah well that's an unfortunate

00:58:02.760 thing i don't want to pull you too far into the political weeds it brought you in more for the

00:58:06.640 the agricultural aspect but i think some of it's an evolution of just uh and i don't know how to

00:58:11.060 fix it necessarily. You know, even if the liberals wanted to bring in more agriculturally skilled

00:58:16.520 members of parliament on committees and issues or in cabinet, they don't have a lot to draw from

00:58:23.400 because they just aren't terribly popular in agriculturally producing writings. That's just

00:58:27.700 not the way the liberals have their strength and it leads to a weakness in policy, but we're all

00:58:32.540 paying that price for it. Well, you know, the worst thing about this 30% synthetic fertilizer

00:58:39.920 a reduction because i don't think people realize that agriculture we've gone to a no-till farming

00:58:45.600 system so all our crops are direct seeded we're not exposing soil agriculture no-till farming is

00:58:52.240 one of the biggest carbon sequestration like we suck in so much carbon from not disturbing the

00:58:59.680 soil like our crops you know so then they turn around and say well we're going to cut you 30

00:59:04.160 of your fertilizer those crops when they're growing and we're not disturbing the soil and

00:59:08.000 working them up and releasing carbon is a major carbon sink and yeah it's just a head scratcher

00:59:14.160 that's for sure corey yeah so getting further i mean this has been a challenge for every industry

00:59:19.280 on the planet and particularly in north america i mean the term we know most people never even

00:59:23.360 mentioned supply chains three years ago and we're all much more aware of uh at least to a degree of

00:59:28.400 what's happening with them uh how are things looking uh with rail i mean rail is very important

00:59:33.040 in the agricultural community there's always been challenges when the oil prices go high suddenly the

00:59:36.880 rail companies are filling up with all the the chemical cars and and sometimes uh uh needs for

00:59:41.840 for agricultural uh things get set aside are things looking all right on the rail front or i i honestly

00:59:46.880 don't know yeah you know what was that about a month ago cp rail had that that strike you know

00:59:52.880 with the union guys we're gonna we're gonna go on strike that lasted one day thankfully because

00:59:58.160 i think the last time we talked um we had there's not a lot of feed grains in our province right now

01:00:03.760 we're getting down to feedlot alley so a lot of corn was coming up and distiller corn grain the

01:00:08.960 you know the end product from ethanol um was coming up via rail and a lot of these feedlots

01:00:13.920 render a jackpot at that rail line stop thankfully that only lasted a day but um from what i've heard

01:00:21.120 i think it's smooth sailing there's not a lot of grain to be heading to ports right now i don't

01:00:24.560 think a lot you know typical amount but i'm sure it's below typical that's heading to vancouver but

01:00:30.160 But things are good on the rail front from having heard any hiccups.

01:00:34.340 Well, that's at least one thing that's good.

01:00:36.060 You know, one less headache that could potentially come.

01:00:38.720 Again, I mean, everybody's worried about inflation.

01:00:40.700 That's the thing, and it's a reality.

01:00:42.200 If we could try to address some of these factors, there's only so much we could do with world markets,

01:00:46.620 but there are domestic things we can do to quit kicking ourselves in the shins with these things, it seems.

01:00:52.620 Getting perhaps a little into the cattle producers, that's another area that seems to be sensitive.

01:00:57.220 They're always having a hard time.

01:00:58.320 I mean, I know there's a lot of policy challenges going on there between processors and distributors and the producers themselves.

01:01:05.800 How are things looking on that front?

01:01:07.280 I know hay has gone through the roof lately, and that has an impact that some people don't necessarily realize as well until they see the price of the store for a steak.

01:01:15.220 Yeah, I know some positive out of this.

01:01:18.360 It was a pretty good calving season.

01:01:20.060 You know, we didn't have a super cold winter.

01:01:23.680 most of these guys start calving late february full-on march and april so good calving season

01:01:30.300 um there's optimism out there i think the cattle markets are you know guys you know it's it definitely

01:01:37.100 hasn't gone up like the grain commodities but uh yeah the big thing is is feeding these cows and

01:01:43.180 you alluded to that um hay stocks are low um i think there's a lot of guys breathing a little

01:01:48.940 easier north of calgary that snow these late winters really help set up pastures and hayland

01:01:54.860 and but when you get south of calgary um some of these guys out in the east country you know brooks

01:02:00.060 loman country um man you know a lot of guys rely on native we've got a lot of crown land out east

01:02:05.660 that um the province has in some of the counties and boy the grass looks pretty rough out there

01:02:11.500 dugouts are empty not there was no runoff so feeding these cows is going to be tough this

01:02:16.540 year but you know it's early i think most guys are optimistic you know if we could get some rain

01:02:21.420 rain is going to be critical for the cattle guys here probably in the next week to two weeks

01:02:25.900 if we can get a little bit just to keep things growing but um yeah feeding issues and summer

01:02:30.860 grazing is going to be really tough south calgary north i think they're you know that snow did a lot

01:02:35.740 for them but uh yeah tough year to be in cattle if you got to feed them this south of calgary

01:02:42.060 yeah well that's it's always been the nature of agriculture production is all you can do to a

01:02:47.140 degree is cross your fingers and hope for good weather sometimes it's your friend sometimes it's

01:02:50.640 your your enemy uh in areas of policy you know before i let you go in these last few minutes

01:02:55.340 though what are some areas you think we can address what are areas we can do to to make

01:03:00.360 things better for producers and of course consumers in the end oh that's a tough question

01:03:05.680 cory you know i think like the grain farmer um you know it's this covet thing has really made

01:03:12.560 no man's land for you know for inputs shortage input shortages like herbicide this this ukraine

01:03:20.240 war um has um really jumped you know stuff like fertilizer um so there there's been a real scare

01:03:27.360 on inputs i don't know what kind of policies could be changed to uh to um yeah that's a good question

01:03:34.560 and I, um, cattle guys would probably like to see some, some assistance on, you know,

01:03:39.900 if they could bring back some of these, uh, yeah, I don't know. You caught me off guard. I don't,

01:03:44.720 that's okay. I don't really think there's much, the pro the money's there. The guys are making

01:03:49.660 money. The government can't make it rain. Um, it's just, uh, yeah, I, I just don't know how

01:03:57.000 to answer that. Sure. Well, I'm kind of wondering a little bit, like when it comes to say producer

01:04:03.400 to consumer though i i see a lot of complaints because we've got very very few uh meat processors

01:04:09.000 i mean on a large scale is there perhaps deregulation you think could be done or

01:04:14.360 things that might encourage a little more local processing on a smaller i like i i have bought a

01:04:19.560 couple of steers over the last few years you know we live in printis we know some producers but i

01:04:23.160 don't save anything going that route it helps bypass the processing a little get more money

01:04:28.040 direct to the producer that way but you think maybe there's there's ways we can allow a little

01:04:32.040 little more innovation in production or bringing those things to market? Oh, for sure. The cattle

01:04:39.100 guys, the feeder guys are always at the mercy of basically two packing plants. That's Brooks

01:04:44.520 in High River. If you can support your local butchers, that's great. I know it's really hard,

01:04:51.620 very costly, a lot of regulations. Some of these guys have tried over the years like that

01:04:56.620 up at Balzac they were trying to get another packing plant started so yeah and that's that's

01:05:03.140 a world I don't know a lot about but I know there's a lot of regulations a lot of red tape

01:05:06.760 but packing capacity at the meat plants here is definitely a bottleneck for our cattle producers

01:05:15.120 and yeah we're at the mercy of basically two companies so that yeah that's a good point Corey

01:05:20.220 there could be a lot of work done on the end use of getting these cattle processed for market

01:05:25.840 um uh the grocery prices you know uh carbon tax going up yeah you know uh there's a lot in i see

01:05:34.800 where you're going with that um there's a lots of things the government could be doing reducing

01:05:39.120 maybe the carbon tax on getting this stuff to market uh that's a lot of that's being passed

01:05:43.680 on to our our consumers in the grocery stores food prices are insane and you know and nothing's

01:05:49.600 grain shortages are there the cattle are lower but the cattle are still there wise meat prices

01:05:55.760 so high. There's a lot that the government could be doing to lower these great food prices.

01:06:01.400 Yeah, well, hopefully we get some more pragmatic action. I mean, you know, when consumers are

01:06:05.540 getting it in the pocketbook, that's when they suddenly pay attention. You know, you can

01:06:08.900 scream from the wilderness, but if people are getting good prices, they don't necessarily

01:06:13.060 watch the issues that closely. Right now, they don't have a choice when they're realizing,

01:06:16.380 holy cow, when I go to the store and fill up my grocery cart for a couple hundred bucks,

01:06:20.640 there's there's not much as much in that card as there used to be so uh sometimes though the hard

01:06:25.640 times can spawn some creativity and we'll make some advancements so i appreciate you checking

01:06:30.020 in with us today though it's such a big issue we just don't talk enough about in the west you know

01:06:33.980 it's a big part of our economy and there's a lot of guys like you out there producing and uh i just

01:06:38.780 want to keep our viewers up to date on what's happening down there yeah it's like i say hopefully

01:06:43.080 it'd be nice just to have a normal year hopefully we can get some rain um that heat snapped last

01:06:48.580 year i hope that doesn't come back to uh and it'd be nice just to see some regularity they like i

01:06:53.800 say going to a grocery store right now and trying to get produce up from the states um it's tough

01:07:00.200 gonna be tough and it's gonna get tougher that that carbon tax is um it's just killing people

01:07:05.700 at the grocery store you know supply management i know you did a great talk the other day on that

01:07:10.680 i enjoyed that um you know they're sure setting their rates up pretty high too and boy it's tough

01:07:16.300 to feed a family right now yeah no i was gonna keep you clear the supply management issues like

01:07:21.460 i said earlier in the show every time i touch that my email inbox just gets slammed by uh dairy

01:07:25.960 producers you get upset with me but i'll keep you out of that fight uh sounds good but uh okay well

01:07:32.900 i appreciate you coming on today kelly it's always good to talk to you like i said we need that

01:07:37.080 viewpoint you know we get too urban centric sometimes and forget where our food comes from

01:07:40.800 so i like to uh remind everybody where it is at and uh just see what's happening down there so i

01:07:45.940 I hope we can talk again sometime soon, maybe a little later in the season.

01:07:50.040 Yeah, let's catch up about June.

01:07:52.380 June will probably be about mid-June.

01:07:54.860 We'll kind of see where we're at for this year.

01:07:56.700 Hopefully we got some grain in the bin and price of bread goes down and meat goes down.

01:08:01.580 But yeah, let's talk in a couple of months and give you an update.

01:08:04.520 Right on.

01:08:05.040 Yeah, maybe we'll be celebrating what looks to be a good season coming up.

01:08:07.660 As you said, we're due for just a good one for a change.

01:08:10.760 You bet.

01:08:11.740 All right.

01:08:12.280 Well, thank you.

01:08:13.220 So that was Kelly Malmberg.

01:08:14.440 as I said, he's been on before. He's a producer in Southern Alberta there and just getting that

01:08:18.960 nuanced voice. I live in a rural area, but I can't pretend to be a farmer. And, you know,

01:08:23.880 I can see some of those frustrations we get as consumers, things like that. Like when I stand

01:08:26.940 on my patio, literally quite often, I can hear cattle in the distance from neighboring fields,

01:08:32.080 you know, they're lowing away and making the noise. Yet I go to superstore and a cheap old

01:08:37.320 rubbery blade steak is costing me $9 or something. Like why is it that I'm in the heart of cattle

01:08:42.500 country and I can't get a good price on meat, but it's everything. Everything is on the rise

01:08:47.980 terribly. And as Kelly said, some of it, well, it's just a matter of the weather. There's only

01:08:52.940 so much you can do. They've had a hard time when you've got to feed those cattle. Hay is expensive.

01:08:58.040 The price gets passed down to you. But there's other things that I think we can do. As he was

01:09:03.000 saying, the carbon tax, it adds. I mean, these are fuel intensive industries. These farmers,

01:09:09.200 they get some credits on the carbon tax, I understand that, but there's all sorts of other

01:09:12.980 areas of input. The grain dryers, or as you're saying, the stuff that gets brought up in winter

01:09:17.800 time. It's funny, some of the irony of most of our hipsters and leftists who scream about cracking

01:09:23.220 down on the, you know, for carbon taxes and things like that, yet they're the ones who are vegetarians

01:09:27.100 who want to make sure they get all those fresh greens and everything in January in Canada.

01:09:31.860 Well, guess what, guys? They get trucked up here, and that burns a whole lot of diesel,

01:09:36.300 and that is what your carbon tax is hitting.

01:09:40.620 So don't whine about your expensive avocados in February.

01:09:44.500 It's your own fault for pulling that sort of stuff on.

01:09:47.060 It puts pressure on imported stuff

01:09:49.000 and it puts pressure on domestic stuff.

01:09:52.640 But as we said, hopefully we get a decent year.

01:09:55.160 And it is scary with that ridiculousness though

01:09:57.300 of the government talking about

01:09:58.520 making them reduce fertilizer by 30%.

01:10:00.660 I wrote a column on that.

01:10:01.940 It's on the Western Standard.

01:10:03.400 I broke down some of the numbers

01:10:04.480 because fertilizer advancements are one of the biggest advancements we've had in making such

01:10:11.600 large crops that we're feeding everybody. I mean, when you relied on old school fertilizing and

01:10:16.080 crop rotation and things like that, again, I'm not a massive expert, but from what I can read on it,

01:10:20.720 you know, it limited your ability to produce so much stuff per acre. And chemical fertilizers,

01:10:27.340 modern ones, they have dramatically increased what can be done on a plot of land. And of course,

01:10:33.940 It brings things into affordability.

01:10:35.380 It brings us surplus food that we can share with the rest of the world and leave it to 0.99

01:10:39.120 our idiotic federal government to actually go after that advancement we have and try 1.00

01:10:47.380 and cut it down. 1.00

01:10:48.100 It's actually quite distressing.

01:10:50.860 So let's see here.

01:10:52.180 We got, I'm going to speak quickly again that we've touched some digital currencies and

01:10:56.520 some other things too.

01:10:57.240 I'll hit Bitcoin well one more time because they're a great sponsor and it's what I want

01:11:02.320 I talk about it twice a day, and it's important.

01:11:04.520 But Bitcoin Well, some people,

01:11:06.180 somebody else was asking who owns it.

01:11:07.640 They're a publicly traded company,

01:11:09.440 though I believe they got a fair amount of transparency

01:11:11.180 and information about their directors and the board and so on.

01:11:14.500 Like they earned a company, Bitcoin Well,

01:11:15.940 isn't a company that holds onto your Bitcoin at any time

01:11:19.640 or your money.

01:11:20.480 As they say it on their site, it's non-custodial.

01:11:23.120 And that's what keeps you safe.

01:11:24.160 You see, there's a lot of the ripoffs out there.

01:11:25.640 There's a lot of the scams, and that's what people worry about.

01:11:28.600 And they should.

01:11:29.100 You work hard for your money.

01:11:30.100 It just seems like there's always somebody

01:11:31.240 trying to steal it from you one way or another, including the government. That's part of why I

01:11:35.020 like the idea of digital currencies. BitcoinWell is just there to facilitate getting you connected

01:11:41.960 with Bitcoin, assuming that's for you. They lead you through the process. They are great for

01:11:46.600 answering questions. As I said, it's one-on-one. You're not talking to a call center across the

01:11:50.440 planet. You're not talking to a little chat window that pops up when you're going to your website.

01:11:54.020 You can sit face-to-face with a real person and discuss these things, not even just on a Zoom

01:11:58.580 meeting. We're talking white glove personal service. They got ATMs all across the country.

01:12:02.800 Like this is a well-established local digital currency company, bitcoinwell.com. Check them

01:12:10.220 out because yeah, I see a lot of, and I appreciate that. I appreciate those questions coming through

01:12:13.880 the comment scroll because I'm familiar with them, of course. And we're taking part in that

01:12:17.660 with our payroll program here at the Western Standard, actually a portion of our check gets

01:12:21.580 voluntarily put into a Bitcoin account and the Western Standard matches it. We'll get a nice

01:12:26.240 little savings off to the side. But still, I'm not an expert in all those things. That's what

01:12:32.020 they're about. And if you've got questions, get on there, bitcoinwell.com, ask them. They're very

01:12:37.080 responsive. That's what they're about. They will answer those questions and find out if it is

01:12:41.240 indeed for you. Okay. Let's see. Let's look into, again, we were talking about accountability and

01:12:48.080 ripoffs and lack of trust with the government. Here's a beauty. The Canada Revenue Agency,

01:12:52.160 everybody's friend, paid half a million in rent subsidies to a phantom company that had no leases

01:12:59.440 and never filed a tax return. How the hell does this happen? How is it that if you file your

01:13:06.280 return and you're 500 bucks short on your taxes, somehow the CRA becomes incredibly efficient. 0.89

01:13:11.080 They'll almost beat your door down to get that $500 and beat the crap out of you with

01:13:15.020 extra charges and interest. But they can't track half a million that they paid out

01:13:20.180 to a company that didn't even file a return.

01:13:24.160 Oh, you know how it happened.

01:13:25.260 It's corruption.

01:13:26.120 We got fraud going on, guys, somewhere in there.

01:13:29.100 So, you know, this is your money.

01:13:31.140 This is the money you work hard for.

01:13:32.280 And this is what our government does with it. 0.99

01:13:33.600 These are the clowns that manage it. 0.99

01:13:35.320 Again, they can't even get their bloody payroll system right. 0.99

01:13:37.740 And this happens on a lot of levels.

01:13:39.040 You know, we got more corruption in Canada

01:13:40.240 than people realize it.

01:13:41.560 People envision developing countries,

01:13:43.620 third world countries, you know,

01:13:44.500 where you got to bribe your way around. 0.81

01:13:46.260 And it's very direct.

01:13:47.060 It's very in the open with the actual corruption

01:13:48.520 with government officials.

01:13:49.840 Ours is a little more underground, but it still happens.

01:13:52.720 There's a big question I've had for a lot of years about a group called Civic Camp.

01:13:57.100 It was a municipal lobby group that people know the history of it and everything else.

01:14:01.360 It was basically Ninchy's little pet lobby group.

01:14:03.500 We can't prove it because that group had no name.

01:14:05.520 It had no directors.

01:14:06.880 It had no president, no treasurer, no bank account.

01:14:10.260 Yet they were giving budgetary presentations to the city of Calgary.

01:14:14.280 They got a $5,000 grant from the Calgary Foundation.

01:14:19.280 but they don't exist. They had no people. How did this city of Calgary charitable foundation

01:14:24.320 give $5,000 to a group that doesn't exist on paper? And I know this because for people who

01:14:29.560 know me and know the history, I registered that company as a nonprofit myself. And I was the

01:14:35.340 president of Civic Camp and oh, Ninchy's eyes almost popped out of his bloody head when it

01:14:39.360 happened. This was a, if you Google it, Cory Morgan Civic Camp, you'll see the media mainstream

01:14:44.160 came after me hard for that. But what I did was blew up a shell organization, a sham organization,

01:14:49.280 organization and registered it. But how are they getting money? This happens right in front of our

01:14:55.220 faces. The government tracks every nickel you've got, yet somehow they take that money and they

01:14:58.940 can give it out to completely unregistered organizations with no names attached to them.

01:15:02.440 It's happening on every level of government. These are just the ones we hear about. These

01:15:05.120 are the ones we find out about. This is scary stuff, guys. No wonder the government can't

01:15:11.040 balance its bloody budget, eh? So yeah, it looks like the records show the agency took only weeks

01:15:16.280 to pay more than $480,000 in subsidies to this applicant.

01:15:20.560 Wow, that's pretty fast.

01:15:23.400 You know, again, they don't do anything in less than months

01:15:25.100 when we have to deal with them.

01:15:27.540 There should be a criminal investigation

01:15:29.820 when these things start to happen.

01:15:31.320 They really should.

01:15:32.820 Now, here's another story that got some people

01:15:34.140 that didn't wound up recently.

01:15:35.340 There's a Florida sheriff urging homeowners

01:15:37.480 to shoot intruders as it can save taxpayers money.

01:15:40.960 He says, if someone's breaking into your house, 0.98

01:15:42.920 you're more than welcome to shoot them in Santa Rosa County.

01:15:45.640 We prefer that you do, actually, said County Sheriff Bob Johnston at a press conference as he spoke to the public. 0.50

01:15:53.280 He was addressing an unidentified homeowner who shot at a home invader. 0.96

01:15:58.600 And this was a career loser. 0.97

01:16:01.180 Brandon Harris was his name. 0.96

01:16:02.380 He had 17 prior arrests.

01:16:04.940 And he's basically saying, you know, when we got these guys coming and going and coming and going 17 times, it's pretty expensive for the taxpayer putting people at risk.

01:16:12.340 Maybe if they're breaking into your house, you just blow their brains out.

01:16:14.460 Now, I'm not recommending that advice here in Alberta,

01:16:17.000 but I'm saying it's a change of attitude

01:16:18.240 that probably is welcome on a number of levels.

01:16:21.820 We do need castle doctrine.

01:16:23.420 We need the ability to protect ourselves.

01:16:25.520 Here's where the evolution,

01:16:27.220 I think of a lot of things that got to go,

01:16:28.320 and they really do.

01:16:29.420 And it's funny, when I fight on social media

01:16:31.520 with the defund the police crackpots,

01:16:32.980 and there's a lot of them,

01:16:34.700 one of the things I say, fine, is defund them.

01:16:37.520 No problem.

01:16:38.640 As a libertarian, I can live with that.

01:16:40.540 But I'm going to get together with my neighbors,

01:16:41.760 and we should be able then to pool our money

01:16:45.120 and get our own private police force

01:16:46.460 for just our neighborhood.

01:16:48.600 Fair enough, isn't it?

01:16:49.500 If we defund the police, I want the tax break.

01:16:51.060 It's my money.

01:16:51.880 I'm not getting police for it.

01:16:52.900 I want the money in my pocket.

01:16:54.100 And then I can get together with my neighbors

01:16:55.260 and we'll put it out there.

01:16:56.400 And let's change the laws.

01:16:57.420 Let's put the responsibility on me then

01:16:59.120 and my neighbors themselves

01:17:00.240 and say, I can protect my property.

01:17:02.900 And we theoretically have those rights

01:17:05.080 to protect our property.

01:17:06.740 But when we do,

01:17:08.000 you get dragged through the judicial system.

01:17:10.340 and they make the process into the punishment.

01:17:11.840 We saw that a while back with Eddie Maurice.

01:17:13.540 I was very active in getting support for the protests

01:17:17.600 and things like that outside of the courtroom.

01:17:19.480 Eddie Maurice was a young man out in Okotoks area.

01:17:23.240 People might remember him. 0.90

01:17:24.640 He had a chronic loser, a pair of them, actually. 0.96

01:17:27.900 They both had long, long criminal records. 0.94

01:17:29.880 He didn't know that at the time, of course.

01:17:30.980 All he knew was it's five in the morning.

01:17:32.620 He's on a rural property,

01:17:33.740 and there's people breaking into his place.

01:17:36.440 and he's got his baby in the house.

01:17:40.760 Eddie was the only person home.

01:17:42.380 So he's the only defense

01:17:43.360 between these criminals on his property

01:17:45.360 and the baby in his house.

01:17:47.720 And he fired some warning shots.

01:17:50.040 And people asked a lot of questions.

01:17:51.440 I might as well expand on that.

01:17:52.220 And there's a video out there on Western Standard.

01:17:53.920 I went to Eddie's house and chatted with him

01:17:55.540 and we did some things following up.

01:17:58.560 And we got some good pictures showing.

01:18:00.740 Because people say,

01:18:01.140 well, why didn't he fire the shots in the air?

01:18:02.260 Because you see,

01:18:02.600 one of the intruders got hit in the elbow by a ricochet.

01:18:05.220 Why didn't you shoot in the air?

01:18:06.440 Well, he had a porch that was overhanging, and he was at his front door.

01:18:09.680 If he'd done that, he would have shoot holes through his own roof.

01:18:11.540 So he shot in the ground.

01:18:13.380 And he showed me where this homebreaker was.

01:18:16.640 This guy was on his front steps.

01:18:18.220 And again, that video, that interview I did with him, you can see that.

01:18:20.720 This guy was like 16 feet away from him.

01:18:24.440 Who wouldn't shoot?

01:18:25.920 What kind of parent in that circumstance wouldn't shoot?

01:18:30.160 Eddie showed quite the control, in my view, and not shooting the guy in the head.

01:18:33.620 And it was only a .22.

01:18:34.740 too. This guy, this loser, 0.99

01:18:36.860 this meth head was lucky 0.99

01:18:38.440 on a lot of levels. But what

01:18:40.720 happened? Well,

01:18:43.000 Eddie called the police. Of course, these

01:18:44.720 guys ran off after this guy got hit in the elbow, the

01:18:46.680 two of them.

01:18:49.400 The police suddenly arrived

01:18:50.940 like, well, suddenly. They arrived like a couple

01:18:52.660 hours later. And

01:18:54.480 Eddie wanted him to arrive suddenly. He had

01:18:56.520 people, you know, breaking onto his property, but they

01:18:58.600 didn't take it seriously until, until 0.77

01:19:00.700 the loser who was trying to rob him checked himself

01:19:02.660 into the hospital with an elbow injury. 0.99

01:19:04.740 and said, yes, I got shot.

01:19:06.320 Then the police arrived with the TAC team,

01:19:08.680 arrested Eddie, threw him in jail,

01:19:12.460 charged him with a pile of charges.

01:19:14.920 It took months to get through that.

01:19:18.000 Week after week, he was in and out of court.

01:19:20.520 The prosecutor would keep kicking the can down the road.

01:19:23.440 He'd keep saying, we need two more weeks.

01:19:25.120 We need two more weeks.

01:19:26.100 Eddie's life was on hold.

01:19:28.100 He was put through misery.

01:19:29.620 His wife was put through misery.

01:19:31.500 Everybody, family members.

01:19:33.240 And you know what the prosecutors were waiting for, though?

01:19:36.680 Every day at the, every time he went to court, every two weeks,

01:19:39.360 there were hundreds of us outside that courtroom protesting in favor of Eddie, supporting him.

01:19:43.640 The media was there.

01:19:44.440 Rick Bell was there all the time, all sorts of people.

01:19:47.260 They were hoping for it to cool down so they could prosecute this young man on the down low

01:19:51.060 because they hate seeing us defending ourselves.

01:19:53.740 But they realized that the hype wasn't going away.

01:19:55.880 They realized that he was going to go to jury,

01:19:58.220 and there was no way that citizens,

01:20:01.420 his fellow citizens were going to convict him on this.

01:20:03.760 So they quietly dropped the charges.

01:20:05.240 They said, ah, well, it was a ricochet.

01:20:07.000 It was unintentional.

01:20:07.500 We're going to let him go.

01:20:08.400 But they put him through hell for months in that.

01:20:10.020 That shows the attitude in Canada.

01:20:11.760 That has to change.

01:20:13.560 I live in a rural property too,

01:20:15.280 the same county as Eddie does.

01:20:18.320 The average police response time in my area is 40 minutes.

01:20:22.560 I'm not faulting the police officers for it.

01:20:24.480 They've only got so much for resources, okay?

01:20:28.160 The detachment for my area is down in Turner Valley.

01:20:31.200 Even if they're coming straight from Turner to my house,

01:20:33.460 it'd be 20 minutes at the least.

01:20:35.080 If they happen to be patrolling the south end in the night,

01:20:37.520 often there's only one cop on for the whole county.

01:20:40.660 It could be 40 minutes, could be an hour.

01:20:43.400 In that case, I should be fully within my rights to defend myself.

01:20:47.460 I shouldn't be afraid, and I'll tell you what, I'm not afraid.

01:20:50.560 If it came to defending my household and keeping my family safe,

01:20:53.980 I'm not going to worry about what the courts are going to do to me.

01:20:55.880 I'll deal with whatever the risk is being presented to my family first, and I'll deal

01:20:59.220 with the courts afterwards. But I shouldn't have to worry about that. And we had a lot of those

01:21:04.000 discussions during that period when Eddie was in and out of courts. There were huge town hall

01:21:09.820 meetings. That's part of what got the prosecutors all nervous too. RCMP came out. I remember one

01:21:13.960 in Pritis that we had, and every time somebody asked the officer, because all the RCMP were 0.74

01:21:19.160 allowed to say is, if you've got a homebreaker, all you can do is call, cower, and pray. That's 0.71

01:21:24.620 the term I use for it. You can go in your house, curl up in a corner, call the police and hope

01:21:29.240 they get there in time to save you from whatever this person coming into your house wants to do. 0.77

01:21:32.740 Hopefully they just want to steal your stuff, not rape you or murder you or torture you as some 0.95

01:21:37.020 crazed criminals are occasionally prone to doing. One guy said, well, what if I shot their vehicle 0.99

01:21:43.560 with a paintball gun at least when they're fleeing so we could identify the better? He said, you'll

01:21:47.320 be charged with discharge of a firearm, criminal discharge of firearms. He says, well, it's not

01:21:51.060 even a firearm. Yeah, but if they think it's a firearm, it'll be considered a firearm. It's just

01:21:54.480 lunacy. Somebody said, what if I pepper spray them? What if I stick my dog on them? Every question a

01:22:00.220 person made the police said, we will charge you. You are not allowed to defend yourself in any sort

01:22:04.500 of way. You will be eventually when you get to a jury, as we saw with the Colton Bushy case, as we

01:22:10.440 saw with Kessler many years ago in Alberta, if you want to look that up, and we saw with Eddie

01:22:14.500 Maurice. But the state hates giving you that ability to protect yourself, and they will punish

01:22:20.380 you as hard as they can when you try to. And it's got to stop. You know what? These losers,

01:22:25.040 these chronics, they know that. That's why they do it over and over again. They're not afraid of you. 0.98

01:22:29.220 They should be afraid of you. They really should. Rural properties are getting hit a lot. You know,

01:22:34.100 traditionally, they weren't in the past. Why were they not hit a lot in the past? Because we used to

01:22:38.080 respect the ability to defend your property and yourself. And criminals were smart enough, at

01:22:41.920 least not that they're typically smart, but they're smart enough to realize I'm going to get my brains

01:22:44.860 blown out if I break into that rural property. So I'll go mess around somewhere else. And we need

01:22:49.140 to bring some of that attitude back. So yes, everybody's all wound up over that sheriff in

01:22:54.660 Florida saying that you should be able to shoot these guys. Well, I'm all with them, guys. I'm 0.94

01:22:59.160 with them. You know, there's an easy way to avoid getting shot. Don't break into places. Holy crap.

01:23:03.420 Wow. What a wonder, eh? Crazy concept, personal responsibility. Just don't do it. I have had a 0.99

01:23:08.920 100% success rate in not being shot through choosing not to rob people. Lo and behold, eh?

01:23:14.300 So no, big white tear of sympathy running down my leg for homebreakers and criminals who break

01:23:19.740 into people's places and get shot. Sorry, guys. That is suicide, not an assault.

01:23:27.440 All right, let's see some of the other good news out there in Canada right now. 0.93

01:23:31.360 We set a new record for anti-Semitic incidents in Canada for the sixth consecutive year. It's 0.99

01:23:35.140 funny when we hear about racism and hate crimes and hate speech and many other things. This part,

01:23:41.760 you don't hear about a lot. You don't hear a lot about the anti-Semitic issue. Why do we not hear

01:23:45.840 about these so much? Well, part of the problem is a lot of these incidents happened

01:23:50.620 during protests that were going on. There were anti-Israel rallies going on during the Hamas-Israel

01:23:58.000 conflict. And on one of them, there was 250 recorded incidents. People holding Israeli flags

01:24:04.260 were beaten and hospitalized with serious injuries. Well, they don't want to talk about that 0.99

01:24:09.400 because this is getting a little more delicate,

01:24:12.240 because now we're talking about, well, yes,

01:24:14.000 but the people attacking them are also minority.

01:24:15.980 And when we start on the hierarchy of victimhood,

01:24:18.040 now it gets dicey and complicated.

01:24:19.960 So we'll just kind of leave that out of our hate crime concerns.

01:24:22.560 Well, this is setting the record year after year after year.

01:24:25.340 If you really want to get on the hate crimes,

01:24:27.140 maybe we should start looking a little broadly.

01:24:28.980 Part of the problem is, of course,

01:24:31.540 not every Jew is a visibly identifiable minority. 0.88

01:24:34.580 Not always going to be wearing the kippah.

01:24:36.180 you know, and they don't necessarily look Jewish. So often they will look white. And we don't want 0.90

01:24:43.220 to see talk about prejudices in that end. It takes away from that narrative of somehow it's this

01:24:48.240 white supremacist world that's trying to eat everybody down. We have real issues happening.

01:24:52.420 They're happening all over. And there are white supremacists, probably one in 100,000 people

01:24:57.080 might be white supremacists. That's still one too many, but all the same. It's not some

01:25:00.980 overwhelming thing. The world's not getting taken over by them. We got to take all of these things

01:25:04.580 seriously. And if they're going to prioritize hate crimes, they should be prioritizing. They

01:25:07.620 should be looking at them all and taking them all very seriously and looking at them. But somehow

01:25:11.260 the anti-Semitic stuff tends to fall by the wayside. Strange that. All right, I'm going to

01:25:17.260 wrap things up. Now, tomorrow I've got Drew Barnes on the show. He's the MLA for Medicine Hat,

01:25:21.300 independent one. And we're going to talk about his motion coming before the legislature soon on the

01:25:26.420 Alberta agenda and things such as that. And our BC reporter, Reid Small, is going to check in and

01:25:32.240 give us an update on things happening out in British Columbia. So thank you all for tuning

01:25:36.300 in today, guys, and I will see you tomorrow at 11.30 a.m. sharp.

01:26:02.240 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - April 27, 2022

Triggered： Savoring the progressive meltdown over Musk’s purchase of Twitter

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