Corey talks about the NHL playoffs, cellophane tape day and National Grape Popsicle Day, and what's going on with Brian Jean in the Alberta caucus. Plus, a look back at some of Canada's worst trade deals of the 20th century.
00:07:23.720And as long as that state holds a large population,
00:07:26.240it's going to have challenges with water supply.
00:07:27.980In most of the world, desalination has been developed in nations with coastal access in order to tap the oceans for supply.
00:07:36.300Israel, Australia, and North Africa, they're all benefiting from these projects.
00:07:40.940Desalination is expensive and energy-intensive, but it's getting cheaper,
00:07:44.620and it beats the hell out of dying of thirst or associated hunger when crops fail due to drought.
00:07:50.160California has a massive coastline along the largest ocean on Earth.
00:07:53.360The state's a natural candidate for large-scale desalination projects.
00:07:58.620Some plants are already in operation, and they're providing water to urban areas.
00:08:02.320In light of recent developments, though, it looks unlikely that desalination facilities will be developed further in California.
00:08:08.700Boy, there's a lot of tongue twisters in that one, though.
00:08:10.800A large project in Orange County, California, called Poseidon, would have provided 50 million gallons a day to the parched Huntington Beach area.
00:08:19.420Due to environmental and anti-capitalist lobbying, the project application was rejected.
00:08:24.680Millions of dehydrated citizens just turned their backs on an abundant supply of water in an act of pure idiocy.
00:08:31.300The environmental case against the plant was weak.
00:08:33.740The impact of such a plant on a massive water body like the Pacific Ocean is negligible, a literal drop in the bucket.
00:08:40.980Modern facilities dispose of brine effectively, and the ocean level certainly won't be dropping due to the minuscule removal of water in desalination plants.
00:08:48.820The reason opposition to the project was successful was due to the demonization of private involvement in utility provision.
00:08:55.080Much like the Council of Canadians did in the 80s, American leftists created a myth that corporations would gain control of water and would bleed consumers dry.
00:09:03.880Indeed, it was projected that water bills might raise in California as much as $6 a month for some consumers due to this plant.
00:09:12.800They shout, water's a need. We should never allow it to be sold for profit.
00:09:16.680Well, food and shelter are needs as well.
00:09:19.240So who provides either of those better?
00:09:21.020How good is state-funded housing, guys?
00:09:24.160How well did the state control of agriculture work for the Soviet Union?
00:09:27.900Just because it's a need doesn't mean the government should run it.
00:09:30.660In fact, they should be less likely to run it.
00:09:32.800If people want treated water provided efficiently and affordably,
00:09:35.740they need to let the private market provide it.
00:09:37.780Apparently, in California, they'd rather die of thirst.
00:09:41.520Populations are growing, and we need to embrace new technologies in order to sustain them.
00:09:45.960Nobody can pivot to suit the changing of needs for consumers better than private businesses,
00:09:51.240yet we continue to shun them. We're in a battle of ideologies and we're losing.
00:09:55.560The politics of fear and envy are winning and we're all paying that price.
00:09:59.240Don't think that we're immune from this idiotic ideology here in Canada. Far from it.
00:10:03.720People in Canada would apparently rather die on a waiting list than let private involvement
00:10:07.400in healthcare expand. Turning away private medical investment while our system crumbles
00:10:11.560is no more idiotic than turning away a glass of water while you're dying of thirst.
00:10:15.640we're not any better and we got to start thinking harder that's what's got me wound up today let's
00:10:21.080bring in our news editor dave naylor and see what he's got uh to keep me with my vein pulsing there
00:10:26.760hey dave how's it going all right i figured i'd give you one more look at this glorious beard
00:10:33.080shaved off tomorrow i'd forgotten we're certainly going to miss that around here yeah i know you
00:10:38.360are hey i hear jane's not happy with duke the wonder dog i don't know if it was duke or volstag
00:10:43.800but yes they're probably the two of them she just gotten some new shoes on a recent visit to
00:10:47.480vancouver and the dogs consumed them today she sent me the picture she's not impressed no and
00:10:54.520i hear they had some fun in the bathtub the other day yes you know these are what a 90 pound dog
00:11:00.680and a 50 pound dog pretending to be purex kittens and got into the toilet paper roll so i spent
00:11:05.400yesterday morning picking up toilet paper from throughout the house and this isn't making it
00:11:08.760easier i've got a guest coming on from an animal rescue guys it's a bit of work taking these
00:11:13.560dogs in but it's worth it in the end but yeah you got to protect your shoes and toilet paper
00:11:17.800you know what you can't beat the love of a of a dog and you have to treat new dogs just like
00:11:22.440babies you have to dog proof your house and make it clear i mean how many sandwiches do you have
00:11:27.240to lose corey before you figure out that's don't leave them on the side i only lost one no two two
00:11:33.080okay two times it's happened but it hasn't happened a night you know every day so i'm getting better
00:11:36.920they're training me yes exactly as you say it's worth it to have an animal in your life they're
00:11:41.480they're just unbelievable so uh leading off our website at the moment is a column from our
00:11:47.480ottawa political watcher david creighton talking about the world economic forum and how
00:11:53.800that organization has stiffed prime minister trudeau at davos uh after criticizing his
00:11:59.800authoritarian ways so that's going gangbusters on our website right now corey uh labats people
00:12:06.280are celebrating a quarter million dollar grant from the government to fix up a boiler in their
00:12:12.540brewery in Newfoundland. Keep in mind, this is Labatt's, a company, you know, their overall
00:12:18.460company is Anheuser-Busch in the States. But they get, you know, they earn billions and
00:12:25.900billions of dollars selling beer. I consume a lot of it. But they're getting some of our
00:12:32.200taxpayers' dollars to fix up a boiler. Controversial ruling, or what will be a
00:12:38.880controversial ruling out of the Supreme Court of Canada this morning, Corey. If you remember the
00:12:44.440guy with the gun who shot up the Quebec mosque, killed six people. Well, he was sentenced to 40
00:12:51.260years after Stephen Harper's government brought in the fact that you could not kill for free.
00:12:58.120If you kill one person, you're going to get 25 years, and if you get killed two, you're going to get 25 years added on for a possible 50-year sentence.
00:13:07.120The judge in Quebec sentenced this guy to 40 years, and the judge says, no, no, no, that's unconstitutional.
00:13:17.220So law and order people in Canada will not be happy with that one.
00:13:21.860Our Christopher Oldcorn is at the Western Premier's Conference today in Regina.
00:13:27.020He'll be filing several stories out of that.
00:13:29.900Our Lee Harding, the biggest Oilers fan that I know, has gleefully written a column basically bragging about how good Edmonton is and how bad the Flames are, I suggest.
00:13:45.180If you're a Flames, if you're an Oilers fan, you might like it.
00:13:48.180Our Mel Rizdin's done a story on 18 major U.S. airlines are being sued and the FAA in the States is being sued over COVID mandates down there.
00:18:53.940That's one of the great things about our economy is that we have so much specialization that we can basically delegate anything that we're not good at, you know, including the car or working on your own teeth, as an example, right?
00:19:07.120There was an old SATB skit about that, actually, that was quite funny for greater folks like us who might remember it.
00:19:13.400Just to bring up a side note, so you brought up and you sent me a link to an Adam Carolla podcast, and it was talking on the gun control thing.
00:19:19.040I just thought that's funny because I went to Idaho and back last weekend with my wife.
00:19:22.320And when I drive, I download and Corolla is my favorite go-to. So it was just spooky timing on
00:19:26.560that. I shouldn't be plugging other podcasts so much, but if you want a good lesson and he's
00:19:31.200funny and he's conservative, actually, Adam Corolla is fantastic for that. So good common
00:19:36.560sense there. All right. So where do we begin? I mean, it's a lot of the issues you've talked about.
00:19:42.320You've got a webinar coming up to help people through financial things. I mean,
00:19:46.400the things that are scary right now, we've got this volatility, we've got inflation,
00:19:50.800interest rates, they're starting to creep up. That's going to change the picture on things.
00:19:55.760People are kind of worried, they're scared, they would work in decades, and they're maybe nearing
00:19:59.200retirement, and now they're not sure what to do. Well, the first four, four and a half months of
00:20:03.8402022 has been basically one of the worst starts to the year for equity markets in a very, very
00:20:10.400long time. Nasdaq's, you know, from peak to trough was down about 32, 33% intraday. TSX has held up
00:20:18.240pretty well, better than, say, the Dow and the S&P 500. But the only reason that TSX has actually
00:20:24.960held up is because of energy stocks. And it was interesting, your earlier story on the desalination
00:20:32.080plant, this Orange County, and actually the lead guy was actually on Adam Carolla as well,
00:20:38.320a few weeks back talking about that and basically that's another example of of how ideologically
00:20:45.520driven policy decisions get us into trouble really really quickly and we're seeing that
00:20:50.720here in canada we're seeing it as a result of the sanctions on ukraine different things like that
00:20:56.240and so in any situation where you know there's basically some type of volatility or a crisis
00:21:02.000that's created. There's danger, but there's also opportunity. And so, you know, starting like 14
00:21:08.060months ago, we started investing very heavily in commodities, as an example, for a portion
00:21:12.660of client portfolios, because we could see coming the things that have been happening in the last
00:21:19.280year as a direct result of policy decisions. So there's another example of it. But I mean,
00:21:26.320so far this year has been pretty terrible for people who are just passively investing,
00:21:30.440or if they're with like a generic broker or in mutual funds or anything like that,
00:21:35.080because they don't have downside risk control. And so that's a key part of what we're going to
00:21:40.120talk about on the webinar tomorrow at noon, is actually stocks you can tolerate managing
00:21:45.400downward volatility in stocks. But of course, everybody's also talking about inflation,
00:21:50.360which is eroding the purchasing power of their capital. And then of course, there's this big
00:21:56.840problem with bonds. And this is a secular bear market for bonds, because we are now in a secular
00:22:03.880bull market for interest rates going up. And of course, the two are negatively correlated.
00:22:08.520And so people have typically relied on bonds for 30%, 40% of their investment portfolio to be their
00:22:16.280quote unquote, safe money. And that money is basically guaranteed to go down in value,
00:22:22.440because when interest rates go up, the value of their bonds go down. And so a lot of people find
00:22:26.680themselves between a rock and a hard place on that one. Well, yeah, and that's hard too. I
00:22:30.360imagine though, I mean, if your money's in something and inflation goes up, the value of
00:22:34.200it in a sense goes down as well. If you don't have an interest rates building the equity within it
00:22:38.760to counter that. So it's always a balancing act with those types of savings.
00:22:43.160And longer term, we know that, you know, things like real estate and stocks are great ways to
00:22:47.960outpace inflation, but that doesn't mean there can't be downward volatility in the short term,
00:22:53.480right? And we think that interest rates going up are going to actually be a bit of a headwind for
00:22:57.880real estate because with super low interest rates, payments become more and more affordable. So the
00:23:04.080prices of homes can go up. But when the price of money goes up, when the payment or when the
00:23:09.720interest rate goes up, people don't qualify for quite as big a mortgage. So the price of homes
00:23:15.140is going to moderate a little bit as well. And so there's that dynamic. But stocks are
00:23:22.560stocks are the best long-term hedge against inflation, but a lot of people get pushed
00:23:27.900past their financial pain threshold. And as you said, right now, you were pushing
00:23:33.360recently on commodities because you saw them coming and they went up. But a couple of years
00:23:37.680ago, boy, they were in the toilet. They were terrible. So, I mean, you want to make sure
00:23:40.880you're in and out at the correct times with investments. And that takes some skills to
00:23:45.320try and navigate. Yeah, it's funny because a lot of the investment community says, well,
00:23:49.940you can't time the market. We might not be able to time it perfectly, but it's really important
00:23:55.300to understand that the lower the price you buy something at and the higher the price you sell
00:23:59.520it at, the better your return is. And those transactions, when you're buying or selling,
00:24:04.620they take place in the medium of time. So for someone to say the timing doesn't matter
00:24:09.880means that they don't really understand how time works.
00:24:14.540But some things, I guess, I mean, you're talking about a diversified portfolio. You're going to
00:24:17.760have some things you're going to put money in and you want to sit on that and just leave it alone
00:24:20.920for a longer term. But there'll be other things perhaps that you would want to go into and out
00:24:25.320of throughout the course. Like these things I honestly don't understand a lot about. You want
00:24:29.440stability and part of that savings, but you also want some opportunity for growth, I guess.
00:24:33.640That's correct. Now, when it comes to how our managers manage portfolios, it's based on the
00:24:39.460idea of setting up an asset mix that will suit their long-term objectives, but also their risk
00:24:47.620tolerance. But then within each of those categories, within the asset mix, our managers are actively
00:24:54.480managing them. So they're overweighting into certain areas, underweighting in certain areas,
00:24:58.980and taking advantage of trends in the market. Okay. And I imagine another variable in that
00:25:04.320is where that person is in their working life. I mean, you would have a different sort of
00:25:08.580portfolio you would put together for somebody who's, say, just getting into their early 30s,
00:25:13.100and they've got a lot of working years ahead of them, or somebody like me in my 50s, and I'm
00:25:16.640starting to think about retirement and things down the road. Yeah, absolutely. Every client
00:25:22.020portfolio is built on a custom basis. So it's all, you know, very customized to individual client
00:25:29.500needs, to their time horizon, income needs, and sleep at night factor is a big one.
00:25:35.760Yeah. So where, you know, maybe that's the magic question. We've got so many things we never could
00:25:41.120have imagined before coming out recently. I mean, the war with Russia and Ukraine and
00:25:45.240the pandemic, of course, and now we know that these things can continue to potentially happen
00:25:49.320in the future. Like there's going to be impacts that we can't avoid and things that we can't see
00:25:53.780coming, but where can you secure the future? Where can you feel at least a portion of your
00:25:57.740investment is going to still be there down the road for yourself? Well, if you're talking about
00:26:02.440kind of a safer part of a portfolio, I would go with the diversified basket of private alternatives.
00:26:07.620That's a combination of private debt and private real estate. But if you're thinking more on the
00:26:12.300stock side or the opportunity-seeking side, where you're going to have to put up with some more
00:26:16.340volatility, but you're going to get a higher return to outpace inflation, I would say that
00:26:20.400the commodity markets and the companies that produce them are probably the best bet. I'll
00:26:25.320use an example right now. Here in Calgary, we have what I would call basically a perfect storm.
00:26:32.020And the perfect storm has been created by the ESG movement, right? Basically, there have been
00:26:38.000supply constraints that have been created by regulation in Canada, by cancellation of pipelines
00:26:44.380in the States, by cancelling leases and the sort, and then creating basically over-reliance
00:26:53.320on one type of power over another. And it's basically destroyed a lot of supply. But as
00:26:59.820demand has rebounded post-COVID, basically price is going to go up. So invest in the things that
00:27:06.120benefit from terrible policy decisions. Well, that's it. So you've got to watch policy decisions
00:27:10.960too, though. You got to watch the politics. Like people and decision makers do counterintuitive
00:27:15.720things. As for my earlier rant, I mean, California, you're parched, you're running out of water.
00:27:20.320Here's this proposal for a plant that's going to provide you with stable, secure water supplies,
00:27:26.420and you shut it down. It just makes utterly no sense. But again, if a person was investing in
00:27:31.780that proposal and in that plant. You want to see the political climate and know the risk you're
00:27:37.500taking on, even if it seems like a no-brainer from an economic point of view. It wasn't a safe
00:27:43.240investment, obviously, from a political point of view. Right. And another ideologically driven
00:27:48.700decision. And I mean, I didn't think it was possible, but there's a dumber politician than
00:27:53.380Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden, and that's Gavin Newsom. Oh, my God, he's an empty suit.
00:27:59.420But it was just painful. It just floored me. Actually, the first hint I got of it was when
00:28:06.460I was driving back with Jane because Carolla was talking about that. He lives in California.
00:28:09.580It's like, oh, man, what are these doing there? But again, it makes it difficult to figure out
00:28:15.260what's safe or what's not. Okay, the world wants a bunch of oil, but we got a local company that's
00:28:19.500about to be shut in by a ridiculous domestic policy. Well, then you still don't want to invest
00:28:23.260in that company necessarily. You guys have got to be pretty busy all the time watching all those
00:32:25.160I guess that helps with your relationship with ranchers and such.
00:32:29.380Though you don't mix your politics with your investment advice.
00:32:32.340We don't mix the politics with the investment advice, but it's important to have, I would say, a similar worldview for the advisor that you're working with.
00:32:40.260Because if I show up with ear gauges, a beard, and a Vote Liberal sticker on my car, well, we're probably not going to see eye to eye.
00:32:52.680Well, it's part of it. It's a relationship. I mean, the goal is long-term investment.
00:32:55.960It means they're theoretically going to be dealing with you guys for a while.
00:33:01.600I mean, some people are willing to take a lower return if they go into, they feel, I guess, investments that are more woke-based, I guess you could say.
00:33:10.260Yeah, and it's interesting because that whole ESG idea has actually started to be, I'll say it's becoming more obvious that ESG is a bit of a, I'll call it a scam.
00:33:21.620It's basically just like a social credit score for companies, and while it's been popular, it's not necessarily effective, and frankly, I think it's a fad that is quickly passing by, and ultimately what you need to do is you just need to be a little bit agnostic and apolitical, and certainly our portfolio managers,
00:33:48.440they're far less concerned about the carbon footprint of a company
00:33:55.000than they are about their financial performance, right?
00:33:58.620Basically, as long as they're not doing obvious damage to the environment
00:34:03.400and getting in the news, then it's really a moot point.
01:09:56.840they were just applying to open a checking account
01:09:58.740and they were encouraged to buy overdraft protection or insurance they never asked for.
01:10:03.000And it's kind of like those car undercoatings and things like that those salesmen always hit you
01:10:06.780with. Like, you know, you want to pay some massive gross interest? Yeah, have overdraft. Get into
01:10:13.440that. Overdraw a little bit and see how hard they hit you. You might as well go to the check cashing
01:10:18.420place down the street as far as those loan sharks go and with what they'll nail you for.
01:10:22.240it. So, uh, yeah, let's go into some more bad finances. Okay. The Freeland tax, or at least
01:10:28.980finance minister, Christia Freeland's luxury tax on planes, boats, and automobiles will cost jobs
01:10:34.480and generate less revenue than expected. Not too shocking. That's when you get frivolous, uh, uh,
01:10:41.280you know, using tax as a tool, as an ideology, it's the low hanging fruit. You know, we want to
01:10:45.500tax the rich, tax those people who deserve it, uh, tax those darn people who drive those nice cars,
01:10:51.280those private planes, get into those nice boats. They don't deserve those things. Let's hit them
01:10:55.860hard. But what does it really turn into? Well, it doesn't bring in the revenue you thought it would.
01:11:02.140And it just costs jobs. I mean, this is an industry. This is things. There's people who
01:11:08.000sell these boats. There's people who maintain these boats. I know they're boats. Set aside
01:11:12.100the envy and look at the real outcome of the tax. So this is one of her big selling points. Oh,
01:11:17.240this big 10% tax on these luxury items, them telling you what you should or shouldn't own,
01:11:22.460what is moral and not a moral. And they think it might, might raise $163 million. That's the thing
01:11:29.520too, when you get the NDP lines and the tax, the rich and the vacuous, empty politics of envy.
01:11:36.540In reality, it doesn't bring in the income they think it will. And it just makes people feel good
01:11:41.640because they're sticking the thumb in the eye as somebody who did better than them.
01:11:44.060All right. So we've got Rachel in studio, Rachel Emmanuel, and we had a story that was really got
01:11:51.560some feathers ruffled. It was over an apparent incident in the very long caucus meeting after
01:11:57.060Premier Kenney had tendered his resignation as UCP leader. And it sounds like things got pretty
01:12:04.020raucous between Brian Jean and some other caucus members. Yeah, absolutely. So the caucus meeting
01:12:09.020was six hours, as you know, and I think following the caucus meeting last week, Thursday, so that
01:12:13.880was May 19th many of us in the media were trying to get as much information as we could about what
01:12:18.220happened but most of the MLAs that were present in the meeting were being very tight-lipped about
01:12:22.860what happened so then I got a leak earlier this week that there was a bit of an altercation that
01:12:27.720had happened I had actually heard about it prior but and then I heard from a second source so I
01:12:32.060thought you know this is something to pursue so essentially what had happened according to the
01:12:36.340sources I spoke to which is five MLAs who were present in the room in the caucus meeting was
01:12:41.100Brian Jean arrived at the meeting and he was very worked up in the words of one source he came in
01:12:45.900looking for a fight so he came in he was already really worked up just probably maybe about rumors
01:12:50.540that Kenny might not resign he wanted Kenny to be gone immediately he did not want the premier to
01:12:54.540stay on in the interim and so he was repeatedly interrupting the proceedings of the meetings and
01:12:59.020making snipes at his colleagues calling them names and what they told me were saying some pretty
01:13:02.780outrageous things and it ended with MLA Shane Getzen saying you know Brian Jean I think that
01:13:08.220that you should stop talking because every time you open your mouth you lose support
01:13:12.060and Brian Jean did not like that and then asked Shane Getson if he would like to take things
01:13:17.440outside his exact wording was let's take this outside so he wanted to move the fight elsewhere
01:13:23.100so and then you know some MLAs said well actually all the MLAs I spoke to said he actually had to
01:13:27.700be restrained from from getting up and going over to what looked like maybe to attack Shane Getson
01:13:32.880so definitely pretty crazy time in caucus people did tell me things get very lively in the UCP
01:13:37.560caucus meetings, but certainly nothing to that extent.
01:13:40.020No, and I mean, it's unfortunate. Things get heated in caucus meetings. Things get heated in any organization sometimes, but it shows that there's still some serious divisions that the UCP has to deal with. You can't point all fingers at Premier Kenney. Well, now Premier Kenney is out of the picture, or will be, but they're still, they've obviously got some very serious internal issues that they're going to have to sort out.
01:14:02.260I think so, exactly. But I think, I mean, that's one of the things that's nice about a leadership race is it's an opportunity for someone to come in with a new vision, someone to be unifying. I don't think it's overly surprising that things did get so heated at that caucus meeting. I mean, Brian Jean has been calling on the premier to resign for a very long time. And I think for people that wanted Kenny gone, after he announced that he was resigning, everyone thought, oh, good, this is what we've been hoping for. But then, you know, Kenny decided to stay on in the interim, which is being lauded by the UCB members that supported Kenny.
01:14:30.140either saying, well, this is so gracious of him and self-sacrificing for him to stay on during the
01:14:33.800interim period. But then people who wanted him gone think it's self-serving and that he's just
01:14:38.240trying to fulfill some sort of legacy. So Gene being on the camp of people that wanted Kenny
01:14:42.360gone was, you know, undoubtedly very ired and irked up about this decision. Yeah. And it's just
01:14:47.260of, you know, it's problematic. I mean, this is the way we're kicking off a leadership race that
01:14:50.680hasn't even officially started yet. I mean, I'm looking at the federal conservatives have been
01:14:54.500critical of that just with how vitriolic and divided they're getting. I mean, you might have
01:14:57.520a new leader, but you could be irreparably split and broken when the race is finished with it.
01:15:03.360UCP doesn't have much time. They've got a year before a general election
01:15:06.480and they seem to be, this race could rip them to pieces.
01:15:10.880Yeah, absolutely. I think that for any conservative leader in Alberta, they actually
01:15:14.060have one of the hardest jobs in the country because you have more of like a libertarian
01:15:19.080and small C conservative movement in Alberta than you have really elsewhere in Canada. Like
01:15:23.020think about it in Ontario which is where I was living when COVID-19 happened and all you had so
01:15:28.780many shutdowns and lockdowns it was actually quite a bit worse than it was in Alberta but
01:15:32.560Ontarians are just a little bit more complacent and so that's why we see Doug Ford doing very
01:15:36.500well in the polls now whereas many Albertans were out for Premier Kenny's head and now we're having
01:15:40.740a leadership race as a result of that so it's definitely very hard to unify the Conservative
01:15:45.140base here in Alberta it's an incredibly difficult job I mean even everyone who was critical of
01:15:50.060Penny said, you know, he had a hard job.
01:15:52.460The crown, Heather wears the crown is very heavy.
01:16:42.520Like, I'm not willing to be flexible in my views.
01:16:44.840Whereas exactly to your point, like, we don't see that with the NDP super often.
01:16:47.720And even within like the Liberal caucus, we have seen some breaches this year in Justin Trudeau's government, people that didn't agree with his COVID policies, but they were very few and far between nothing like what we see in the conservative movement, whether that's federally, whether that's provincially.
01:17:00.860And actually, House Leader Jason Nixon even commented on that yesterday when he was announcing the end of the legislature.
01:17:05.780He said, you know, yeah, we have some internal fighting.
01:17:11.580Well, and when I'd heard that, you know, something going on with Brangina, I hadn't heard the details, you know, and challenging somebody to a fight.
01:17:16.600I know one person I was pretty confident wasn't involved and it would have been Jason Nixon or we would have seen the stretcher taking Mr. Gene out of the legislature or the McDougal Center at that point.
01:17:26.580But all the same, I mean, yeah, there's this, it's going to be an interesting summer to say the very least.
01:17:31.220So at least something that is our, you know, Legislative Bureau Chief, it looks like they're closing up their session for the season probably because it's going to be hard to concentrate on anything policy wise when you're in the middle of a leadership race and things like that.
01:17:42.380But you're going to have lots to keep you busy in following this now.
01:17:45.340yeah absolutely i'm not complaining we have the ucp leadership race here provincially and the
01:17:49.180conservative race federally so there will definitely be a lot going on which is often
01:17:52.780a problem in the summer there's just not a ton of news so certainly won't be an issue this year
01:17:57.020right on well thanks for coming in to give us the update on it and for writing the story and
01:18:01.500of course you're following up and seeing if anything more develops out of this and
01:18:04.860just to throw out to you were that lone oilers fan who went to the game last night so yes and
01:18:29.460And just that reminder, westernstandard.news.0.89
01:18:31.600She writes, she's got that nice little office up there in the Edmonton legislature.
01:18:35.180I think we displaced McLean's magazine.
01:18:37.660I guess Jason Markosoff used to reside in there or something. I'm not sure, but we do have a
01:18:43.620presence. And again, just that reminder of thanking all those subscribers and advertisers. That's how
01:18:47.660we can do it. Getting out there, getting that news. I know some people, somebody was saying,
01:18:51.520I didn't know this was the National Enquirer. Now, well, no, but you don't report just always
01:18:55.680on straight out policy. We talk about events and things that happen. These are personalities.
01:19:00.960These are people. And some of it might sound a bit gossipy. As was said, if you look at the story
01:19:05.920too. This was not just a rumor from one person or two in there. This was corroborated by over
01:19:11.340five elected officials and other people who were there at that time when this eruption occurred.
01:19:17.120So it really did happen. The basis of it, you know, the full thing, well, that leads it to a
01:19:20.860bit of speculation, you know, who was the real instigator, you know, what led to Mr. Gene losing
01:19:29.140control for a period like that. Was he goaded or was he just being too thin-skinned? I don't know.
01:19:34.960We're going to talk about those things. We're going to cover those things. We talk about, you know, important and bigger issues as well, of course. But hey, these are the people that are going to be leading us. This is the race that's coming up. And character is a part of the race as well, you know, not just policy. And this is indicative of some of the character of the people who want to be in charge there.
01:19:55.080But let's see a little bit of other news here.
01:19:58.460Yeah, Dave mentioned that the Beer King gets a nature grant.
01:20:01.160Environment Minister Stephen Gilball, everybody's favorite jumpsuit-wearing eco-lunatic,
01:20:06.220he approved a six-figure climate change grant to Labatt's.
01:20:21.960The government puts out billions to these heavyweights all the time.
01:20:24.640This is only $250,000, but still it's the principle of it.
01:20:27.360Billions to these great big businesses, and they have a terrible return rate,
01:20:31.300especially if it's guaranteed loans, things like that, and these businesses go broke,
01:20:33.740and they piss it away on other things.
01:20:35.100If you took a billion dollars, that's $1,000 million.
01:20:39.520Well, you could give $10,000 to 100,000 people as seed money to start small businesses
01:20:47.540if you broke it up that way, rather than a billion just to Bombardier or something.
01:20:52.120Out of that, how much more return would we get?
01:20:54.320how many more creative business ideas, how many need ideas, whether it's from a coffee shop to
01:20:58.540just a little software place that needed a little Kickstarter, whatever, or 10,000 people getting,
01:21:03.800what, $100,000. These things could get things going. But giving money to these multi-billion
01:21:09.200dollar companies, it doesn't seem to be paying off well. Again, I'd rather not give to either.
01:21:12.580But either way, yeah, this brewery got 250 grand, you know, small amount to some. But to me, when I
01:21:18.120owned a bar, for example, hey, 250 grand, I could do a lot of upgrades with that. But this was to
01:21:22.420Labatt, which is part of Anheuser-Busch. This is where our money goes, guys. And Minister Gil
01:21:27.380Bull says, you know, that's worth it because they're saving the world from climate change
01:21:32.020because apparently, you know, diesel boilers in breweries are a big part of our problem.
01:21:39.240Here's another interesting one. This was from the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. It's
01:21:43.120kind of a bit gossipy too, but the ruling was interesting. Vax status is nobody's business0.99
01:21:47.780and is fundamentally private, you know, and that's, so this was a radio announcer, I believe it was,
01:21:55.340and he outed a listener as being unvaccinated, Lachlan Cross. The choice, let's see, this is
01:22:01.420what the council wrote, the choice of whether or not to be vaccinated has been hotly debated on
01:22:04.700all media and has been the subject of public and personal recriminations. However, whether one is
01:22:09.380vaccinated or not constitutes medical information, and that's fundamentally private. So this cross,
01:22:15.200This announcer at CKEA Edmonton, an FM station, in a topic of the day broadcast last February, identified an equipment by name as unvaccinated.
01:22:44.500So he used his platform to shame somebody he knew.
01:22:50.180He used his radio seat to publicly name somebody and talk about their medical status.
01:22:55.880And thankfully, at least the broadcast council ruled the right way and said, no, you crossed a line.
01:23:01.200This is wrong. Medical information is private and confidential.
01:23:04.040It's bad enough with our workplaces and vax passports and all that going on.
01:23:07.040But to have some arsehole like him read out a friend's name because he's got a chip on his shoulder or I'm going to a Super Bowl party.1.00
01:23:14.500Again, that's an abuse of somebody's platform and reach in media.
01:23:19.020I mean, I get onto the media, you know, of course,