00:07:34.460Tamara Leach has been a political prisoner.
00:07:36.760The judge ordered the shackles to be removed from the grandmother and that she be released.
00:07:41.660She hasn't been found not guilty by the courts,
00:07:44.140but she still presents no risk to society in being free while she awaits trial.
00:07:50.240Only the most fanatical of people would think she presents any real risk to the public.
00:07:54.180Leach's travails are far from over, but another of the absurd assaults on her freedom has been
00:07:58.120lifted, at least for the time being. We're witnessing political persecution and travesty
00:08:02.100of justice in real time in a nation that used to pride itself on freedoms. History is not
00:08:06.840going to look kindly upon this year's events in Canada with Tamara Leach.
00:08:11.660All right, that's what's got me going today. Like I said, welcome to Freedom, Tamara. Glad
00:08:16.660to see you're out. Hopefully there's no little petty thing that gives them an excuse to lock
00:08:20.740you up again before trial time. Let's check in with our news editor, Dave Naylor, and see what
00:08:24.480else is happening out there. Holy cow, Corey. Look at you speaking Latin and all. Yes, yes. Two words
00:08:31.380in a row, but I had to look up the translation. Well, you're old enough. You probably studied it
00:08:36.140at school, right? I think they put me through a little bit of it at Seanigan Lake, but it's hard
00:08:40.240for it to kind of stay in the memory. Has your email inbox slowed down with all the hate venom
00:08:48.300moon that you were getting yesterday? It slowed down, yeah, but the crazy internet squirrels had
00:08:53.060a lot of love to share with me because I dared give a critical commentary on one of the UCP
00:08:58.860leadership candidates. You know, sometimes I don't like our listeners. No, sometimes they can be very
00:09:07.700cruel and hurtful. I too have felt their vitriol. So, you know, I feel for you, Corey. Hopefully
00:09:16.140it'll it'll stop soon but we got a really busy day going we got a really busy day going on uh
00:09:22.220i'll start first with the breaking news that is uh that is not up on the website yet uh rcmp in
00:09:28.060surrey have announced an arrest in the murder of excuse me if i mispronounce it uh rip you don
00:09:34.540donaman malik he was gunned down in surrey a couple weeks ago you'll remember he was
00:09:39.740acquitted of helping bomb the air india flight killed more than 300 people back in the day
00:09:46.060a 23 year old and a 21 year old have just been arrested and the rcmp will give out
00:09:51.180more details this afternoon we've also got a breaking story on leslin lewis the cpc
00:09:57.340leadership candidate she's again questioning why this this third official debate from the party is
00:10:03.740going ahead basically saying she's got better things to do and also not up on the website but
00:10:10.060But coming within moments, Hockey Canada admits they have used their sort of savings fund to pay off nine separate sex accusers of various Hockey Canada teams.
00:10:23.100More than $8 million, I believe the figure was.
00:10:26.220So Hockey Canada scandal continues to grow.
00:10:29.540All of that will be coming up on the website soon.
00:10:32.180Already there we have a bit of breaking news on the UCP campaign trail where the Lethbridge East MLA Nathan Newdorf has come out along with I believe it's Peace River MLA Pat Wren and they have thrown their support behind Daniel Smith in her bid to become Alberta Premier.
00:10:52.760We've got a David Creighton column on the aforementioned Tamera Leach and the ridiculous ordeal that she went through.
00:11:03.100And we've got a story on everybody's favorite professor, Jordan Peterson, saying that, sorry guys, but the worst is yet to come under Trudeau.
00:11:12.840And we all know how popular Jordan Peterson is, so I'm sure that'll be highly read.
00:11:17.600We've got a major study of North American cities and how they're rebounding after COVID.
00:11:24.180And because of the strict lockdown rules that were enforced in places like Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto,
00:11:32.100those places are performing some of the worst in North America.
00:11:36.480They're right at the bottom of the table for economic recovery,
00:11:39.400and the strict COVID lockdown requirements are being blamed for that.
00:11:44.620And we've got a David Parker column on the state of the aforementioned UCP leadership race.
00:11:52.480And a good story from our friends at the CTF.
00:11:56.060You know, if you want to get rid of a weapon, have it destroyed,
00:11:59.060all you have to do is take it to your local police station,
00:12:02.080and they'll handle that for you for free.
00:12:04.120But with the Freedom of Information request papers,
00:12:07.240they've discovered the Canadian government,
00:12:09.300the Liberals paid more than $1,000 to destroy one shotgun.
00:12:13.420So if you want to see what a boondoggle that all those new gun laws are going to be, this is just sort of the first example of it.
00:12:21.880And we've got the Ethics Committee in Ottawa voting to hold an investigation to see whether they're being spied upon by the RCMP.
00:12:30.140And we've got yet another story on how police forces were able to get a blacklist of people who had supported the Freedom Convoy as it rolled into Ottawa.
00:12:39.600the police had all the names of their supporters on hand given given to them by a by a federal bank
00:12:45.780so really a lot of good stuff on there uh cory already and i've mentioned those new the new
00:12:50.620breaking ones to come they'll all be up within moments so lots to read today right on well
00:12:56.040looking forward to it and uh appreciate the update i'll let you get back at it we'll see uh who else
00:13:01.940comes out in this crazy ucp race as they go around i mean it's a little different when one changes
00:13:05.580endorsements. You know, it's one thing to come out with a new one, but sort of crossing the
00:13:09.620endorsement floor, showing that there's some shifting views out there. Sure, there is. And
00:13:14.520I'll remind everybody, the first official UCP debate takes place tonight. It's in Medicine Hat
00:13:20.180starting at five o'clock. The Western Standard will be providing a live stream of it. So just
00:13:25.340click back here at five o'clock and you'll be able to watch it. And our Arthur Green in Edmonton
00:13:30.700we'll be uh doing a doing a story on it excellent well lots to cover i appreciate it dave and i'll
00:13:37.880talk to you after the show i'll discuss those tear stains on my pillow from some more of the
00:13:41.360emails i get from the upsets i'm sure it'll be very very nasty people all right dave thanks
00:13:46.760that is our news editor dave naylor giving the updates as i said lots coming out lots
00:13:52.460breaking in the news we're getting it up there as fast as it happens this one i remind everybody
00:13:57.140the reason we can do this, the reason we have people across this country reporting, coming up
00:14:02.780with original content, columnists giving you original opinions is because you guys have been
00:14:06.820subscribing in droves, in the thousands. This is how we beat the legacy media, guys. This is how
00:14:12.100we don't have to consume that stuff anymore is through subscribing for independent media like
00:14:17.420us who refuse to take any tax dollars. So you guys who have subscribed already, thank you very much.
00:14:22.940And hey, if you haven't subscribed yet, come on, get on there, guys.
00:14:25.78010 bucks a month, 99 bucks for a year.
00:14:27.480If you're going to take it out for a year, it's a good deal.
00:14:29.680It's cheaper than a newspaper subscription used to be when you used to get it delivered
00:14:50.900And this happens during leadership campaigns.
00:14:52.620People get emotional, they get very attached to their candidates, and they don't like hearing
00:14:57.280any critique, whether constructive or not. And they can get pretty wound up. So yesterday I
00:15:02.720opened up and I talked about that issue with Daniel Smith and what she said. And you know,
00:15:06.500the funny thing was most of the people going haywire did it over the title of my monologue.
00:15:12.120They obviously didn't actually watch it because I wasn't going after Smith in the monologue.
00:15:18.880I mean, I did say I felt she made a mistake with how she phrased things.
00:15:22.520I talked about how as a former talk radio host, she's got to change her approach, perhaps strategically, if she wants to avoid stepping into the mire further.
00:15:32.780And, you know, the news cycle for the last couple of days has been dominated by her statement.
00:19:25.720If you don't sponsor, you don't support us.
00:19:26.960Well, it doesn't mean you don't support us.
00:19:28.140maybe you don't want to sponsor. So you can see why they get under the nerves sometimes if you get
00:19:31.220too pushy a salesperson. But don't respond like that. Either way, it'll be interesting to see if
00:19:36.480they can recover from this or not. It's just a terrible action on the part of a business against
00:19:41.920themselves. As Sylvia is saying, yes, Corey, it's an opinion broadcast, so you shouldn't call out
00:19:46.140your commenters for their opinion when it differs to yours. Of course I will, Sylvia. Yes, this is
00:19:50.240my show. When I differ from you, I'll debate you and I will call you out on it. That's what it's
00:19:54.200about. It's the interactivity. I mean, I don't expect everybody to always agree with me. But
00:19:58.660when they disagree, we will get at it. That's the way it goes. That's part of what's the fun. That's
00:20:02.700part of why we're live. Because, you know, when you do recorded shows, those are good. And you
00:20:07.940can sanitize things and watch for it. But it's not nearly as fluid or interesting as when we do
00:20:12.160these live interactions and things such as that. So, hey, get on there. You don't have to agree
00:20:17.420with me. But yeah, when you get on my case in the comments, I'll come right back at you. That's
00:20:23.660half the fun. Okay, let's get to our guest, though, so you guys don't have to listen to me
00:20:27.400babbling interminably, and that's Ian Miller. He's an author of Unmasked, the Global Failure of
00:20:33.960COVID Mask Mandates, and he's been writing some great stuff in Brownstone Institute, and I've
00:20:38.160been looking forward to having him on. Hello, Ian. Thank you very much for joining us today.
00:20:42.000Oh, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
00:20:44.320So you're down in the States, but I mean, there's a whole lot of parallels between our countries.
00:20:48.640we're seeing the same moves the same sort of motivations uh the fear mongering is being put
00:20:53.680on it seems particularly with schools saying we've got to mask our children we've got to mask them up
00:20:59.040and disaster is going to come but we can't pretend that we don't know uh how effective masks are
00:21:05.520anymore can we right well and schools especially are really bad because there's been a lot of
00:21:11.520research done showing that there's no impact to masking in schools uh one study that was just
00:21:16.240released that was really well done was about two compared to school districts in north dakota that
00:21:20.400were right next to each other they had very similar demographics some more vaccination rates
00:21:24.800basically as identical as you can get without it being a randomized controlled trial
00:21:28.480and there was absolutely no difference in cumulative case rates during the omicron surge between
00:21:34.080the district that had a mask mandate and that the one that didn't so you know we made these
00:21:38.000comparisons over and over again i've done this myself repeatedly showed that school districts
00:21:41.840states or locations that have mask mandates to those that don't. And there's just no benefit to
00:21:46.900it. So it's a very consistent pattern. And yet these politicians just keep coming back to it
00:21:50.840because I guess they just don't have any other ideas of what to do or what to say.
00:21:55.100Well, and that's what the kind of the question is, you know, what is the motivation here? I mean,
00:21:59.500what's the benefit of going forward and imposing masking on kids? I mean, here we're seeing it's a
00:22:04.480lot of union push. We have a local federation of labor who's actually got a legal challenge trying
00:22:09.320of force masking in our schools. I mean, there's no medical basis for it, but they still are
00:22:13.300obsessive with this. Like, I just don't get why they're so hung up on it. I mean, if there really
00:22:18.440was some measurable benefit, even a small benefit, I can understand, but they can't pretend there is
00:22:22.740anymore. Right. I don't really, you know, look, we'll probably never get a perfectly straight
00:22:28.220answer from these people about what their motivations are. I think it's fear from
00:22:32.300themselves, among themselves. I think it was also this desire to be seen as being one of the smart,
00:22:38.500you know, enlightened, intelligent people that follows the science and follows the experts.
00:22:42.720And, you know, there's some kind of internal credibility, I think, that comes with that
00:22:47.060from some people where they kind of get some sense of self-worth from saying, I follow science,
00:22:52.640and that makes me a smart person. Whereas those, you know, those anti-maskers, they don't listen
00:22:57.560to the experts. You know, I think some of them also just do believe that it works, despite all
00:23:02.360the evidence. They get their news exclusively from a couple places that all have maintained
00:23:07.080this kind of fiction that masks have worked and mask mandates have worked um and so they don't
00:23:11.400they haven't really ever had to engage with the uh with the evidence and the data suggesting the
00:23:15.560exact opposite and i'm guessing that um with some of it i mean probably with a mask too is it's a
00:23:22.760visible form of at least looking like you're doing something right it's a it's a virtue signaling
00:23:27.480it's wearing the wristband at least when a uh a legislator of some sort or somebody else can
00:23:32.680impose this he can say look look how much this is benefiting people just because at least people
00:23:36.440could see a visible sign of their policy in action not necessarily the results exactly it's a very
00:23:42.600visible intervention i think politicians especially grabbed onto it as well because it was seen as
00:23:47.080something that was low cost whereas you know closing businesses and closing schools would be
00:23:51.000a high cost intervention but telling people to wear masks in their mind doesn't have a lot of
00:23:55.160harms so they figured well why not you know we might as well look like we're doing something and
00:23:59.720it won't be uh be that destructive to our economic future but i don't think that that's accurate i
00:24:05.400think there are immense harms to it uh both kind of soft social harms as well as physical harms to
00:24:11.080some in some instances and um you know it's also just not how we should be making decisions you
00:24:15.820should be making decisions based off of evidence and data and science which is what they claim to
00:24:19.360be doing uh instead of just these these feelings of oh well it's a visible reminder that we're in
00:24:24.020a pandemic and it shows you if i wear a mask i care about you and that makes me a good person
00:24:27.960so that's not how we we should be making decisions as a society and it clearly it hasn't worked
00:24:33.180anyway. No, and I mean, as you said, in a sense of soft social harms, I would even pretend that
00:24:38.300those harms aren't necessarily that soft. I mean, people often say it's harmless. Well, no, actually
00:24:42.780there are measurable harms, particularly with kids. I mean, we're expressive creatures. You know,
00:24:47.180when you mask up half of a person's face, I mean, that's where we display a lot of our nonverbal
00:24:52.300communication through, you know, facial features. I mean, it's part of our development. It's what we
00:24:57.020do. And when you cover that, this causes harm. Absolutely. You can't avoid that.
00:25:03.180Yeah, definitely. There was a research done in Germany where researchers basically just
00:25:07.880asked parents for a survey of, you know, have your kids complained about mask wearing or
00:25:12.000come home and said anything to you about mask wearing? And the comments were pretty stunning.
00:25:16.460I think it was something like 70, 65, 70% of parents said their kids had increased feelings
00:25:21.160of anxiety. They were more nervous. They were stressed. They said it made learning more
00:25:25.080difficult um seeing facial cues is incredibly important we know this and and so covering
00:25:30.180teachers faces covering other children's faces in schools uh is really it's just inexcusable
00:25:35.260and it's going to cause demonstrable harms going down the road and as far as just i mean the soft
00:25:39.660social harms meaning you know we need to see that even with strangers interacting on the streets
00:25:43.140and that's that's not just uh it's in every walk of life you need to see people's expressions
00:25:47.900and again like you said it might be a little bit more defensible if there was some demonstrable
00:25:51.820benefit. But every time we do these comparisons, that's what I did in the book, you know, there's
00:25:55.460no difference in areas with mask mandates often do worse. Well, that's it. I mean, you know,
00:26:01.820to some degree, perhaps people could have been excused two years ago when we really didn't have
00:26:05.900the numbers and we weren't sure. People are in a bit of a panic. This is a new virus going around.
00:26:11.480I mean, it is real. So, yes, let's get out there and mask people and see if it knocks it down. But
00:26:16.380at this point, I mean, you show it very well in your book and just in your recent Brownstone
00:26:20.740piece like the parallels are undeniable the the impact masks are having is negligible
00:26:27.540right and one of my favorite examples of this which was actually a recent one
00:26:31.540and i'm i live in southern california so this is kind of near and dear to my heart but los
00:26:35.220angeles county in december of 2021 went around to 1500 businesses over the course of a week
00:26:40.500and measured mass compliance and it was over 95 of people they said were wearing masks in the
00:26:46.180stores and then cases immediately skyrocketed 20 times higher than they were before they did the
00:26:51.540survey so you know one of those kind of arguments that we hear is oh well it didn't work because
00:26:55.060not enough people were complying but now you have an official public health department doing this
00:26:58.980measurement doing a survey saying 95 plus percent of people are wearing masks and it didn't matter
00:27:03.700immediately immediately didn't matter so you know they and that's los angeles is about ready to
00:27:08.580bring back another mask mandate so it just kind of goes to show you how little data actually matters
00:27:13.300to these these people making decisions how much of it is just about you know whether these other
00:27:18.100motivations fear panic as a measure of control you know it's really disheartening to see how little
00:27:23.380data actually matters to them well it does help give that dystopian feeling of fear when you're
00:27:28.740on the streets i mean i remember the early stages of the pandemic you walk around and see everybody
00:27:32.580around you masked like that i mean it it felt like you're in something of some sort of horror
00:27:37.060movie from 10 15 years ago and and uh i mean that imprints upon us that keeps us uh uncomfortable
00:27:42.980and scared. And it's not a good development societally, I mean, in general. Absolutely.
00:27:48.040It can't be something that we tolerate as a permanent feature of life going forward. Although
00:27:51.880I feel like there's a lot of places around the world that are already kind of suggesting that's
00:27:56.020going to be the case. Germany has said they want to bring back mask mandates this fall. I think
00:27:59.980Ireland also said it. We've seen it in Los Angeles now and a couple other places across the
00:28:04.620United States. And I'm sure there's been plenty of calls in Canada as well for the return to it.
00:28:08.880And yet, you know, we look at Japan right now, where we know that everybody's wearing masks in Japan, and they're breaking records. The cases are the highest they've ever been. They're much higher than they'd ever been previously in Japan, even with, you know, 95 to 100% of people wearing masks. So it just is really something that cannot be tolerated for all these societal harms, especially in schools. And it also has no significant benefits that we can tell. But it's just kind of this safety blanket, I think, for a lot of politicians to come back to.
00:28:38.860What about physiological harm? I mean, I know that's a debatable area, but I mean,
00:28:45.020is there some harm that can be done for people trying to breathe if they are masked up?
00:28:52.540Yeah. And there hasn't been as much great research done on this as you would like, because I think
00:28:58.220there's not been a lot of willingness to tackle the subject for fear of being ostracized by the
00:29:03.020research community or scientific community. But from what I had seen, there are definitely
00:29:06.700possibilities of you know breathing difficulties and and uh and also a lot of these if you go back
00:29:11.500and look at pre-pandemic planning a lot of documents from the world health organization
00:29:14.860and others mention the possible harms of mask wearing of course that's all forgotten now
00:29:19.020because it's politically beneficial but um yeah you know there's breathing problems you can have
00:29:23.820anxiety you can have uh increased stress i think there's also so you know you can inhale things
00:29:28.940that that come in they get trapped in the mask that can be damaging um you know and as well as
00:29:34.460as many other environmental impacts with masks as well. So it's really kind of inexcusable and
00:29:41.040indefensible that a lot of these harms have just been ignored because they want to promote the
00:29:45.480policy and not engage in a trade-off discussion over what are the benefits and what are the harms.
00:29:51.960Yeah, and I mean, some of the discussion, I mean, potentially masks could have some benefit,
00:29:56.020but it would have to be, you know, a particular kind of mask. It would have to be very disposable.
00:30:00.880You'd have to be constantly washing and changing because that's what happens in a hospital setting, say, with a surgeon or something like that.
00:30:06.460But it's just not reasonable to expect people in the public to be able to use and maintain those kinds of devices in an effective way in that circumstance.
00:30:15.440Right. And that's one of the chapters I read in the book was kind of debunking the, you know, well, if masks don't work, why do doctors wear them?
00:30:23.960You know, in 2019, you weren't going to see an ear, nose and throat specialist with them wearing a mask.
00:30:28.120it was surgeons and surgeons wear them in theory to prevent bacteria or droplets from their own
00:30:34.120mouth getting into an open wound during a surgery or from potential blood or anything else splattering
00:30:40.360up and hitting them in the face. However, research has shown that that's not really that effective
00:30:44.460in doing that even where there was a study done that said that the rate of post-op wound infections
00:30:50.300was higher in a group that wore masks compared to those that didn't. So even in that specific
00:30:56.480purpose which is not viral transmission they don't do a great job of doing what they're supposed to
00:31:00.800do that's obviously vastly different because like you said they're not the surgeons are using them
00:31:04.560properly they're disposing them after every use they wash their hands general public doesn't do
00:31:07.920that and never is going to do that so even if they were ever going to work it was unrealistic to
00:31:12.960expect them to work in the general public considering nobody can use them properly
00:31:17.680and then there's something else that somebody pointed out you know they're just sick of seeing
00:31:20.320the pollution from it like these are other costs i mean yes most responsible people would
00:31:24.480properly throw away a mask. But unfortunately, that's probably almost the most common piece of
00:31:28.880garbage you see laying around nowadays are discarded masks. And there's an actual cost,
00:31:34.120even if masks are relatively cheap. When you're talking about hundreds of millions of people
00:31:37.900wearing them, this is expensive. I mean, we got better things to spend our resources on.
00:31:42.800Yeah, obviously, we're going through a lot of economic problems right now, especially in the
00:31:46.700United States and obviously elsewhere around the world. And, you know, spending billions and
00:31:51.120billions and billions of dollars on something that didn't work and has demonstrable harms to it is
00:31:55.060about as big of a waste of money as you can get. And, you know, as you say, it's like these are
00:31:59.680environmental disasters and many environmental disasters. They're not biodegradable. They're
00:32:04.400filled with plastics. And, you know, for people that claim to care so much about this, that,
00:32:08.480you know, we want to ban plastic water bottles or, you know, ban plastic bags in California.
00:32:14.080You know, they have no problem with billions of plastic masks ending up in oceans, ending up in
00:32:18.960lakes and streams and uh and through you know wildlife and nature and it's just kind of it's
00:32:24.560hypocritical honestly and it's really frustrating that there's been little discussion about the the
00:32:29.840you know all these downsides to it yeah so uh getting yeah well you know another downside i
00:32:35.660just like to bring up and remind people of too like i don't hear very well and i kind of supplement
00:32:39.660my hearing a bit with i know my wife gets up a case i should get a hearing aid fine but with a
00:32:43.420little bit of lip reading and i tell you when somebody's wearing a mask of course i can't do
00:32:47.120that at all. And for people who are fully hearing impaired, this last couple of years has been hell
00:32:51.320on them. I mean, they rely, you know, a great deal in conversing with people and masks have taken
00:32:57.620that away from them. I mean, I'm just saying these costs, you know, that people don't like talking
00:33:01.280about them, but we got to list them out before we talk about bringing in new mandates.
00:33:05.480Yeah. And that, again, that's one of the biggest things I think that the media as well has really
00:33:09.560abdicated. A lot of major media outlets have completely avoided having any discussions about
00:33:14.760these harms and trade-offs because they have been supportive of the policy. They've personally been
00:33:19.900scared. They also kind of want to believe in the experts and follow the science, quote unquote. And
00:33:24.980so I think there's been a general avoidance of discussing any of these trade-offs and they are
00:33:30.180significant. And that's a really great point about bringing up people that need to see faces
00:33:35.920in order to communicate well and how we've kind of abandoned them out of fear and panic without
00:33:41.180really any evidence or data to back it up. You know, I'm hopeful that a lot of places are never
00:33:46.740going to go back to mandates, but you do see that there's going to be a temptation because once you
00:33:50.820let this out of the box that, oh, mass stop respiratory viruses, there will always be a
00:33:55.540reason, an excuse to bring it back. COVID's never going away. The flu is never going away. We're
00:33:59.960always going to have respiratory virus transmission. And so now kind of pretending that mass work sets
00:34:03.860it up to be a semi-permanent thing. Well, the rallying call has always been to follow the
00:34:08.640science. They seem to love that when we want to jump into intrusive government policies. But in
00:34:12.600this case, I mean, it's pretty stark and you don't have to be a specialized scientist to take numbers
00:34:18.180and comparatively look at them. The science is pretty clear on this. They're not offering a good
00:34:22.560benefit. I mean, is this a way maybe we can finally push back though and say, well, let's follow the
00:34:26.820science then and just not bring in these bloody mandates? Like what can we do to stop them from
00:34:31.000coming in? It's a great question. I wish I had a, you know, a one-stop answer. I think that
00:34:37.040But continuing to further the discussion about the harms, continuing to show, you know, show these comparisons to to speak back forcefully against mandates, show the data, show the science, show the evidence.
00:34:48.100That's really all you can do. You know, you can try to vote out the politicians that have put in these policies and have maintained that they're going to bring them back.
00:34:54.880You know, other than that, there's really not that much.
00:34:56.740you can do. I think one thing that we've all learned, especially in the United States,
00:35:04.460is that you might not never have known who your local in the U.S. county. These advisors are
00:35:11.560county board of supervisors. That's really important because a lot of times these people
00:35:15.540have the authority to speak up against local public health bureaucrats who are overwhelmingly
00:35:19.100scared, ready to go back to mask at the first opportunity. So getting involved at a local
00:35:23.680level and trying to kind of drive change from the ground up and saying, you know, you guys are
00:35:28.680trying to mask our kids in schools. You've been trying to force this on us for the next, you know,
00:35:33.120for two years, and you're going to keep trying to do it forever. We're not going to let that stand.
00:35:36.520I think that will have the greatest impact on the most people's lives if they can kind of change
00:35:40.660at the, at this local level. Yeah, well, that's a good point. I mean, it's engaged people who
00:35:45.820weren't engaged before. And as you said, seeing some of these bureaucrats who were always actually
00:35:49.580there, you just never really paid attention to them or knew who they were, but now you know who
00:35:53.580to at least send your, your concerns to. So, I mean, I guess you want to send those concerns
00:35:58.260and be well informed. So before I let you go, you know, where can people find your book and,
00:36:02.640and where your other writings are on the subject? Yeah, it's on, it's available on Amazon,
00:36:08.180Barnes and Noble as well, basically anywhere eBooks as well, anywhere eBooks are sold.
00:36:13.440I've been writing for outkick.com. Just started that a couple of months ago. So I write about
00:36:18.640COVID there pretty frequently and I've been writing a sub stack as well. And obviously
00:36:22.800there's pieces that show up on brownstone too so kind of a couple different places excellent well
00:36:27.920i really appreciate your your work on it and coming on today to discuss and share a bit of it
00:36:31.840with us uh well let's hope we can win the battle in the long term here absolutely thanks again for
00:36:37.520having me all right thank you so that was author ian miller of uh the book was unmasked the global
00:36:44.800failure of covid mask mandates i mean the title kind of says it all and and it's you know we need
00:36:50.800to have these discussions we can't be shouted down i i said it before i i think we can excuse
00:36:56.720people who were afraid before you know people who didn't we never studied into the efficacy
00:37:01.200of masks five years ago nobody normal looked into that and when we hear about a pandemic
00:37:06.800going around and we're nervous and we're wondering how much this is going to harm us or seniors or
00:37:11.280vulnerable people the early part of the pandemic okay if this will help let's throw it on i mean
00:37:15.600we want to slow this down until a vaccine can be effective or something.
00:37:20.280The numbers are in. The numbers are in. We can't pretend anymore that we don't know. And the masks
00:37:26.220just don't help. It's kind of, as we said before, and as we were discussing, I mean, maybe in that
00:37:31.280circumstance, if you're constantly changing them, constantly sanitizing your hands, wearing those,
00:37:35.080whatever they're called, N95, but that's not realistic. And as well, the thing that a lot of
00:37:41.140people refuse to discuss is the cost. That's been the whole thing, whether it's the lockdowns,
00:37:45.860restrictions, and masking. Cost, benefit. I mean, right now we're getting hard enough time showing
00:37:52.300any benefit as it is. Even if there was a bit of benefit though, how does it weigh up against the
00:37:57.500cost? And there's a number of costs. And as I said, even the physiological cost of the mask,
00:38:02.980it's not a lot, but when you're talking about hundreds of millions of people, that's a cost.
00:38:05.620It's a cost in pollution. It's a cost socially with us looking at each other. It's a cost in
00:38:09.680the children's development. It's a cost in just us socially being afraid and then walking around
00:38:15.960in this bizarre masked world. If you want to debase and degrade somebody, mask them, cover
00:38:20.580their face, read up the man in the iron mask. I mean, this has been long known. Look at bondage
00:38:26.140fetishists out there. I mean, one of their favorite things is to mask a person up. It's
00:38:29.860demeaning, it's humiliating. And if I'm not going to see a benefit from it, I don't want to wear it,
00:42:20.900It is. It's not an exaggeration. Look up to the definitions and see martial law. That's what happened when you are stepping on individual rights to, you know, pass something along when you when you set them aside for a supposed emergency.
00:42:38.500see. So, you know, this government has just gone so beyond the pale and the convoy, that was just
00:42:46.480the latest thing. That was just the latest infringement, but it was huge. And the repercussions
00:42:51.280are still happening. And this government does not want to let go of power. So, I mean, here we are,
00:42:56.260yeah, you know, they're sharing your credit rating even with police officers and things like that.
00:43:00.760And searching out things from people who donated to, you know, GoFundMe accounts and that.
00:52:24.700Oh, that's okay. As I always say on the show, we do live, you know, that comes with some
00:52:28.400different hiccups, but it still makes for a better interaction. So I appreciate you coming on to join
00:52:33.640us today. And, you know, there's just so much going on. I mean, we've got a world in an energy
00:52:39.400crisis. We've got a country that's sitting on some of the best energy resources on the planet,
00:52:44.600yet we still seem to be determined to shut ourselves in. Absolutely. And there's this
00:52:49.680new global baseline standard for sustainability and climate-related financial disclosures,
00:52:55.440which is basically ESG on steroids. And it's been drafted by this organization called the
00:53:00.840International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation. Now, Canada is one of the 140
00:53:06.580jurisdictions that follows the IFRS standards, and they're meant to provide some level of
00:53:12.460standardization of accounting standards in the world. Now, after COP26, a new International
00:53:18.620Sustainability Standards Board was created out of the IFRS and its goal is to create a global baseline
00:53:27.660for accounting for carbon emissions, anything related to sustainability, climate, and they have
00:53:34.060three building blocks, sustainability, climate, and then industry-specific standards. Canada has agreed
00:53:40.220to support this initiative. We lobbied for and we got one of the ISSB offices in Montreal. It was
00:53:47.900inaugurated at the end of June. Then at the same time, we created the Canadian Sustainability
00:53:54.060Standards Board. And its job, they said, is to work in lockstep with the ISSB to implement this
00:54:01.380new baseline in Canada. So right now, they've issued a proposed draft standard. It's open for
00:54:09.480comment until Friday. So time is quite short to put in your opinion about what this thing means.
00:54:15.960and although hydrocarbons are the main target right now, agriculture is affected and pretty
00:54:23.460much every industry that operates in Canada, there are 68 industries that fall under this
00:54:29.060standard for accounting for a person's climate footprint. Well yeah, they use the word
00:54:36.220sustainability, that's kind of been a loaded word for quite a long time because you can just read
00:54:40.640so many things into it to push a further agenda. And it's, it's pretty, you know, subjective as
00:54:47.320or I mean, objective, what somebody would define as sustainable. I mean, they can point to anything
00:54:52.880and say it's unsustainable and we need to reduce it, but they don't go any farther with that.
00:54:56.400And right now, as you said, it's hydrocarbons and, and yeah, there's quite a move on our farms.
00:55:00.080Like it's, it just seems like madness when we're all suffering from cost of living increases.
00:55:04.660Exactly. And the cost to implement this for small businesses or even large businesses,
00:55:09.760When the Security Exchanges Commission was doing something similar in the United States, their comment process ended in June.
00:55:17.340They estimated to comply with these new standards would cost a company up on average $644,000 a year.
00:55:27.100Now, how is a small mom and pop operation or a small oil producer or a farmer or a rancher supposed to pay $644,000 to comply with all these new standards?
00:55:38.600like one of the things that they include is the monitoring of scope three emissions now a lot of
00:55:45.260this a lot of this sounds arcane right you've got scope one scope two scope three what does all this
00:55:50.300stuff mean well scope three is everything so whatever a company produces they're supposed
00:55:55.420to follow it down the value chain who's using it how much are they using it how are they disposing
00:56:01.020of it how did the product get to somebody what happens with it down the road they're supposed
00:56:06.640to account all of that as part of their emissions profile. So the more you produce stuff, the higher
00:56:13.600emissions profile you're going to have, which would seem rather weird that you're trying to
00:56:20.480basically cut down businesses that produce things. So then we'll all become a service economy, I
00:56:25.280guess that works. Yeah. I mean, it's just seems so inane and unreasonable. I mean,
00:56:36.000the term we hear a lot too is that esg so environment uh so social and uh governance
00:56:43.040but i mean again and that's loaded as well i mean now you got to start talking about social impacts
00:56:48.080and they well that that's all over the map but i mean part of the problem i see is companies
00:56:53.360won't push back on this like they they're beaten into silence they're afraid to speak up and they
00:56:58.880keep complying and complying and uh to be honest i i think they're kind of somewhat the authors of
00:57:04.160their own destruction until they stand up for themselves here. Absolutely. And there's no way
00:57:08.960a company can comply out of this. You just can't. It'll permeate everything. And like with the oil
00:57:16.720and gas companies, if you're an exploration and production company, they want you to account for
00:57:22.780the embedded emissions in your reserves, which will count against a company because the standard
00:57:29.960is meant to be used by banks, by insurers and investors. So if they're trying to limit the
00:57:35.780amount of emissions in their overall portfolio, what are the odds they're going to support a
00:57:40.800company that has large reserves? Because those reserves will be counted against the company.
00:57:46.200So in a time of energy insecurity, as you mentioned, why are we adopting a policy or a
00:57:52.600standard that will basically compromise our oil and gas reserves. Well, they'll be counted against
00:58:00.220a company. Yeah. And some of those bars, I mean, one of the things that people forget, and it drives
00:58:05.340me bananas when I hear from some people saying, oh, Energy East was shut down because it wasn't
00:58:08.920financially viable. Well, no, it was shut down because the government made it financially
00:58:12.860unviable. It was always viable before that. And the big one was they were going to make the
00:58:17.820producers responsible for downstream emissions. Well, you don't know what the end user is going
00:58:23.260to do with that product. Maybe they're going to consume it in a non-emission sort of manner. But
00:58:28.440I mean, it's something you can't commit yourself to, so the investor's pulled out.
00:58:32.060Exactly. And honestly, for what's supposed to be an accounting standard,
00:58:36.520why would you require companies to account for something they're not in control of?
00:58:41.220Usually in accounting, you can only account for things for which you're responsible.
00:58:45.060and therefore if you misstate something or you omit something you can be held liable because
00:58:50.520that's under your control and you didn't report properly but with this it really leaves companies
00:58:57.460open to litigation for mistakenly say something or they omitted something that an activist investor
00:59:04.220thought they should have included so it'll open up a can of worms for litigation for the for
00:59:09.960companies. And it's really death by a thousand cuts. Well, and likewise, just like in the case
00:59:16.460of Vancouver with their lunatics and city council are suing oil companies for global impacts while
00:59:22.300overlooking all the benefits, you know, of those long lifespans and not freezing to death in winter.
00:59:26.920But I mean, it's the same sort of principle. They want to hold companies responsible for
00:59:31.800downstream emissions when they had no control over those to begin with. Exactly. And if I can
00:59:37.480just segue a bit into agriculture because with the new fertilizer ban or reduction that they that
00:59:44.000they that they're putting forward what this standard does is it says that if you're a livestock
00:59:49.620producer and you sell your livestock to say JBS or you know a big meat producer that meat producer
00:59:57.500will require you to say whether or not you operate in an area of high or extreme high risk water
01:00:04.360stress well if you look on and they and they use the world resources institute aqueduct program
01:00:10.360very controversial the data is not so good they don't use provincial data or anything um and if
01:00:16.120you're found to be in one of these areas you could be denied um funding from the banks or the the
01:00:23.160producers will say look we've committed to reducing our our sustainability stresses in areas of high
01:00:29.480to extreme high-risk water so i'm sorry we can't take your livestock we can't take your grain
01:00:35.720so it's yet another attack on agriculture at a time of food insecurity where these these poor
01:00:42.360ranchers and farmers are going to be held to account for emissions and operating in high to
01:00:48.360extreme high-risk water areas and if i can just point out that's pretty much all of western
01:00:53.000saskatchewan or western canada southern saskatchewan southern alberta southern manitoba all fall within
01:00:58.840that region and it also happens to be the region for fracking where the bakken plays are where all
01:01:05.000the major um shale plays are in the united states almost all of them fall within an extreme or high
01:01:12.360extremely high water stress area so it looks like we could be binding ourselves to this agreement
01:01:18.840or these policies in a few days uh what sort of enforcement though is is there if we sign on i
01:01:24.920mean we get a lot of these things they're aspirational they talk about it but they don't
01:01:28.200actually mean to follow through, or maybe they do mean to, but they've always failed. I mean,
01:01:32.720we've never hit even close to an emissions target yet. What sort of trouble could we get in if
01:01:38.500another government comes in the future and says, well, we're not going to comply with this?
01:01:41.820By doing the IFRS standard, the banks will do it. So it's a way for governments to get around
01:01:50.720the bad press and the anger that will come. It'll be left to the banks, the insurers,
01:01:56.580and the investors who sign on to this.
01:02:00.380If Canada, with its Sustainability Standards Board
01:07:02.040I've limited controls here while I've got the show on the go.
01:07:04.600But I would suggest the best way, like I said, is to look up Dr. Tammy Nemeth and you'll see, find her website and you can get all that information there as well. So yeah, lots of stuff to cover going on. Okay, I got to speak to a sponsor quickly before I move on to some more news items. And that is, speaking of rights, speaking of freedoms, the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. These guys are a fantastic group. You know, you don't even have to own firearms to take out a membership with these guys.
01:07:31.540If you support your neighbor's right to own, enjoy firearms, trade firearms, collect firearms, target, shoot, hunt, all of those things.
01:07:39.700These are the guys standing up for them.
01:07:41.440These are the ones sharing those resources.
01:12:21.480When it's not directly hurting us, when we're still getting by, we don't do anything.
01:12:24.960Canadians have prided ourselves on our politeness, on our, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, our apologies all the time, on being laid back.
01:12:34.060And unfortunately, that's not a virtue.
01:12:38.560I mean, being rude isn't a virtue either, but we have this thing about not standing up for ourselves.
01:12:44.000But I tell you what, and I said that on the show the other day when I was speaking with somebody too, when you can't pay the bills, nothing else matters.
01:12:52.720When you suddenly might be facing losing your home, whether it's a rental or a mortgage,
01:12:58.920you're not going to care if Prime Minister Dingbat wants to make more emissions targets and hold hands with people at UN meetings.