Western Standard - Triggered： The establishment is crumbling and panicked

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Good morning. It's January 28th, 2022. Getting close to the third year of the plague. Welcome

00:00:40.040 to Triggered. I'm Corey Morgan. This is the Western Standards live daily show. We're going

00:00:44.720 to be coming Monday to Friday at 1130 AM Mountain Standard Time. I love live. You know, we're still

00:00:50.800 debugging, but we're getting better and better all the time. And what I like about it is we can get

00:00:55.200 comments, we can get interaction, we can get feedback. So comments are welcome. Again, I won't

00:00:59.220 necessarily read them all out. I tend to watch them all. I see them all anyways. You can debate

00:01:04.540 with each other on there. Some of the comments can get forward to the guests, you know, either

00:01:08.940 Ashley and, you know, we can have a good interactive thing, filling that void that talk radio has left

00:01:14.840 because it's just gone terribly bad. But again, keep the comments civil. You know, let's say I've

00:01:18.740 watched some debates in the comment scroll and sometimes they get a little heated and I know

00:01:22.760 these are heated times, but you know, we can be somewhat civil to each other while still scrapping

00:01:26.400 it out a little bit and not letting ourselves get too triggered. That's my job. Today's guests,

00:01:31.580 I've got Jim Mason. He wrote a very detailed column in C2C Journal about taking a new approach

00:01:38.440 to equalization or working on reforming at least the formula because otherwise we have to change

00:01:43.820 the constitution. So it'll be, you know, a very important conversation because we're upset with

00:01:48.180 equalization, but nothing is happening. Yes, there is going to be an update on what happened

00:01:52.500 with the rest of the Kemper interview, Laura. There was a tech issue. It's been addressed,

00:01:58.180 actually, and the remainder of that video is going to be coming up a little later. We will have a

00:02:01.420 portion of that video popping up later in the show, I believe. I wasn't a part of putting that

00:02:05.440 together, but there will be an update. As well, we got Western Standard columnist, Mike Thomas.

00:02:09.620 He's been writing a lot of stuff for us. He's been writing for a long time on real estate and real

00:02:13.380 estate trends, which is a big and important issue. I mean, anybody who lives somewhere

00:02:17.060 is impacted by real estate. He also wrote one on the Canadians cheering on truckers. Mike's a

00:02:22.140 flexible sort of guy. And he's actually gonna

00:02:24.080 be in studio,

00:02:28.020 not remote. It's nice.

00:02:30.700 Now, Jay Hill of the

00:02:32.140 Maverick Party, he'll come in quickly towards the end

00:02:34.120 just because there's been a lot of misinformation about the Truckers

00:02:36.200 Congo Boy and supposedly funding

00:02:38.280 his party, things like that. He can correct the record

00:02:40.160 on that sort of stuff and make

00:02:42.140 sure it's all clear. As we

00:02:44.140 start to get ready to roll, I'm going to speak

00:02:46.100 to our sponsor, of course, because that's how we

00:02:47.980 pay our bills. We don't get any tax funding like

00:02:50.140 that wretched CBC or

00:02:52.080 some of those print journalists who keep taking bailout money over and over and over again.

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00:03:37.200 to enter the digital currency world. So what's got me triggered today? You know, it's a positive

00:03:45.040 of triggering again, though I get worked up while I go. So I'm going to go on with some backstory

00:03:48.600 here. Back in 1999, the Alberta Independence Party was founded by myself and a handful of others,

00:03:54.300 a bunch of young folks. We had a shell of a website, a few bucks, and a lot of ambition.

00:03:59.040 With months of work and promotional effort, we amassed a couple hundred members, but were

00:04:02.480 generally unheard of. There was no way for a modest movement like ours to get into the public eye.

00:04:07.140 That changed when our website caught the eye of a journalist with the National Post who wrote a

00:04:11.320 column about us. Suddenly things snowballed and I spent weeks doing interviews with media outlets

00:04:15.300 across the country. Our membership quickly swelled into the thousands and donations began rolling in

00:04:20.560 as Albertans discovered we existed. The vast majority of the press about us was pretty negative.

00:04:25.480 I recall one column with the Globe and Mail that began with Cory the Kid and his pipsqueak party

00:04:29.360 and then it started getting negative from there. I did a CBC appearance in a Calgary studio. They

00:04:34.660 sat me on this tiny uncomfortable stool right in the middle of the newsroom with a green screen

00:04:39.500 behind me. And then I had a panel in Toronto that I couldn't see, spending half an hour basically

00:04:44.540 explaining why I was an idiot and an extremist. I remember leaving that studio feeling very 0.99

00:04:49.760 pummeled when I finished that one. And I took the abuse and absorbed that negative press back then

00:04:54.580 because it worked for us and there was no other way to reach the public. We would see a surge in

00:04:59.340 memberships and donors after every appearance in the mainstream media anyways because viewers saw

00:05:03.180 through that bias. It quickly became apparent there was a massive appetite out there for an

00:05:07.940 Party in Alberta at that time, but until the mainstream media took notice of it, we just

00:05:12.580 couldn't tap into that base. There was no way to bypass the established media, and they were the

00:05:17.880 gatekeepers of information to the public at large. Now that's all changed. So let's just look at that

00:05:22.560 explosive growth of the Truckers for Freedom convoy. I mean, at first, they were totally

00:05:27.280 ignored by the media for the first week or so when they were trying to get organized. Later,

00:05:31.360 the media were eviscerating them. They were coming after them. They were attacking them. In fact,

00:05:34.500 they still are. Didn't matter. The movement's raised $7 million in just over two weeks from

00:05:40.020 almost 100,000 people. Having a grassroots movement like that grow in such short order

00:05:45.600 it would have been impossible 20 years ago. Alternative media has given the public a means

00:05:49.860 to bypass the establishment media, and the citizens are flocking towards it. Just look

00:05:54.000 at podcaster Joe Rogan. His viewership now dwarfs CNN. And despite years of efforts to

00:06:00.180 the woke establishment to try and cancel him. Spotify paid a hundred million dollars for the

00:06:04.440 exclusive rights to Joe Rogan's show. They see where the future is going. And there was a debacle

00:06:09.660 and it was laughable and a little sad when Neil Young got upset. He gave an ultimatum to Spotify

00:06:14.220 and demanded that either they dump Joe Rogan or dump Neil Young. Well, Neil seems to have forgotten

00:06:19.300 he hasn't been relevant for almost 30 years. So Spotify immediately pulled all of Neil Young's

00:06:24.060 music without hesitation. And some of the irony is Young made his career by writing songs in

00:06:28.540 opposition to the establishment. Now he's fading away as a sad defender of the establishment today.

00:06:34.900 Maxine Bernier's PPC. I mean, they failed to win a seat in the last election, but they still gained

00:06:38.960 considerable support across the country for such a new party. Again, this sort of movement would

00:06:42.960 have been impossible to create so quickly anyways, 20 years ago. When we were organizing the AIP,

00:06:48.260 only 25% of our members even had email accounts. We had to reach out by mail and phone while

00:06:52.900 donations came slowly by check. I can only imagine the growth we could have had if we'd had the

00:06:57.900 communication and fundraising means provided by social media today. The AIP ended up flaring out

00:07:03.180 and faded away within a year, doing no small part to my own inexperience in leading and organizing

00:07:07.260 a party. Perhaps we could have created something more enduring, though, if we'd had access to the

00:07:11.540 types of networking and communication tools available today. As the growing Truckers for

00:07:15.820 Freedom Convoy continues as, you know, march towards Ottawa, the panic from the Canadian

00:07:21.680 establishment has just been palpable. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed them as being

00:07:25.560 a collection of extremists, and has since gone into hiding since he apparently came into contact

00:07:29.600 with a person who tested positive for COVID-19. Yeah, right. Mainstream media is alternating

00:07:34.600 between trying to frame the convoy as being extreme, dangerous, and even racist for some

00:07:38.920 reason, or just being a small, tiny group. Neither of which are true. All the establishment efforts

00:07:44.740 to slow this juggernaut are failing. If anything, the efforts to hinder this convoy are only

00:07:49.500 galvanizing the supporters further. Now, time's going to tell how productive the convoy efforts

00:07:54.740 actually are once it reaches Parliament Hill. I'm watching with eager anticipation and some

00:07:59.460 trepidation. I don't want to see anything violent or negative breaking out on this,

00:08:03.220 and there's always a risk of that, even if the vast majority of the participants are rational.

00:08:07.940 This convoy has already changed Canada forever. It's proven that no efforts from the political

00:08:12.820 or media establishment can stop a movement anymore if that movement has popular support.

00:08:17.620 Communication, organization, and fundraising are all impossible to stop, as a myriad of options

00:08:22.500 now exist in the digital world.

00:08:24.440 Canada's power brokers are shaking right now.

00:08:26.540 They are scared.

00:08:27.680 They don't know what to do, and it looks good on them.

00:08:29.700 It's about time. 1.00

00:08:30.560 The Laurentian elite needs that kick in the ass. 1.00

00:08:33.080 Modern technology has truly taken the power 1.00

00:08:35.040 from the establishment and put it squarely

00:08:36.800 into the hands of the citizens.

00:08:38.480 Now, we just have to learn how to use that power positively,

00:08:41.220 and that's the next big step in this turning point

00:08:43.720 in the world with modern communications

00:08:45.700 and moving away from the old establishment media.

00:08:49.940 So, getting to alternative media

00:08:51.760 and people who give good coverage to stories and balanced coverage to stories,

00:08:55.480 let's talk to our news editor, Dave Naylor, from the newsroom.

00:08:58.480 He's been running like crazy in there.

00:09:00.840 Bring him on in, Nico.

00:09:02.060 And how are you doing, Dave?

00:09:03.740 I'm doing well.

00:09:04.760 Happy Friday, Corey.

00:09:06.280 Oh, thanks.

00:09:07.000 Yes, it's going to be an exciting weekend.

00:09:09.020 It will be.

00:09:09.700 It will be.

00:09:10.240 I think a lot of my weekend, we'll be taking up watching the truckers

00:09:14.040 and keeping our readers and viewers informed of the goings-on in Ottawa.

00:09:19.440 So it should be interesting, that's for sure.

00:09:22.620 It will so.

00:09:23.320 So what's topping the news the last little while, and what do we got coming up, Dave?

00:09:27.660 Topping the news is a Linda Slobodian column looking at the CBC's coverage of the trucker convoy.

00:09:35.040 And as you can imagine, Linda's not very complimentary towards the CBC, who seem stuck on the fact that some people donate anonymously.

00:09:46.380 And apparently the CBC thinks this is a big scandal.

00:09:50.400 And even though, you know what, CBC uses anonymous sources, anonymous sources too.

00:09:56.100 So Linda is definitely well worth the read.

00:10:02.240 If you're not into the truckers, and there's a few of you out there who aren't,

00:10:07.360 we've got an interesting story on a Saskatchewan police officer,

00:10:11.580 a veteran officer, 18 years on the service in Moose Jaw,

00:10:15.620 who was known as Captain Death because he came across so many grisly scenes from homicides and traffic accidents and stuff like that.

00:10:25.440 So in 2016, this officer took his own life, and the WCB has now been ordered to consider whether or not it's a workplace fatality.

00:10:35.700 So that'll be interesting to see how that winds its way through the Saskatchewan system.

00:10:41.880 Our legislature reporter, Amber, has got a story on the nurses' agreement. 0.81

00:10:46.660 That's a four-year agreement that we'll see nurses get a more than 4% wage increase over the term of the deal.

00:10:56.320 And that keeps them as Canada's highest paid nurses.

00:10:59.520 And with the job they've been doing the last two years, exactly where they should be.

00:11:05.880 A little bit of the woke cancel culture is striking, Jasper.

00:11:11.520 They've got a campground up there called Pocahontas.

00:11:15.800 And apparently Parks Canada thinks that is not a respectful name to Canada's Indigenous.

00:11:21.460 And they're going to change that and remove all references to Pocahontas.

00:11:27.780 So that's what we've got on the site right now, Corey.

00:11:30.700 Lots of good stuff to come.

00:11:32.560 You've mentioned the Kemper interview.

00:11:35.820 He's the half-brother of Justin Trudeau, who spoke at length last night with our Mel Risden.

00:11:41.080 One of the interesting things he said was that if he had to vote today, he would be supporting Maxime Bernier's PPC.

00:11:49.300 It just turns out Maxime had a press conference this morning and Mill was on the phone to ask him about what he thinks of at least one member of the Trudeau family throwing support his way.

00:12:02.200 And needless to say, he was kind of chuffed by it.

00:12:05.320 Our reporter, Eva, is on top of the truckers as they move slowly but surely towards Ottawa.

00:12:16.020 She's got a piece coming out now just on the worldwide exposure this is now getting.

00:12:21.680 You know, Corey, we had a story about Elon Musk yesterday tweeting his support.

00:12:26.840 Russell Brand, the British comedian, has now put out a message of support.

00:12:31.760 And we've got these trucker convoys apparently going on around the world in numerous places.

00:12:40.560 So, yeah, it's another busy Friday.

00:12:44.180 And I just want to say that sometime during your show, we may have a little bit of a celebration in here as we reach our two millionth click for the month.

00:12:55.020 Really a staggering figure for us, our little team who have been busting the gut all month.

00:13:01.480 So that's a great, great tribute to them and a great tribute to our members, Corey, who are the only reasons we get to do what we do today.

00:13:12.480 Absolutely. That's great. You got your hands full and it's good.

00:13:15.440 Yeah, I know everything's being driven by all things trucking and it's, you know, with that convoy.

00:13:19.880 But it's easy to forget. There's a whole lot of important things still going on out there.

00:13:22.720 That nurses agreement is big. I mean, they've been without a contract for, I believe, a few years now.

00:13:27.620 And that's really led to a lot of tension between them and the government at a time when, well, right now our health care is in enough mess as it is.

00:13:35.240 So this is one more thing off the plate.

00:13:36.760 So hopefully we can start working our way out of this pandemic mess.

00:13:40.340 If you remember, the negotiations kept being pushed back because of the pandemic.

00:13:45.200 And, yeah, it's great to see that they finally they finally done a deal.

00:13:48.400 So I think it's just doctors to go and, yeah, the good chunk of the health care system will be taken care of for the next handful of years anyways.

00:13:58.860 Great. Well, thanks for checking in. I'm looking forward to hearing that gong.

00:14:02.120 I could probably hear it through the studio wall when we hit the record number of views in a month here.

00:14:07.780 And, yeah, things onward and upward. We're doing great.

00:14:10.780 Thanks, Corey. Have a good weekend.

00:14:12.480 Thanks, Dave.

00:14:14.280 So, yeah, I mean, it's just I know some people might already be getting tired of it.

00:14:17.360 Not everybody, of course, is supportive of the trucker's convoy or what they're standing for.

00:14:21.180 But I mean, it is a right to demonstrate and it's unique.

00:14:23.920 And that's what's just been fascinating watching this.

00:14:26.800 I mean, it's turned into a phenomenon.

00:14:28.380 I mean, we're seeing it around the world.

00:14:30.780 Different personalities are speaking in support of it.

00:14:33.020 Little breakout protests are happening now in European countries with truckers and things like that.

00:14:38.400 Again, I mean, I'm watching, as I said, with strong interest and optimism

00:14:44.560 and being tentative with what's going to happen on Ottawa at Parliament Hill this weekend.

00:14:49.580 I really hope it comes out as a good, productive, peaceful gathering.

00:14:54.380 You know, I mean, I've been watching news reports and they're cherry picking.

00:14:58.120 They're finding somebody, people waving controversial flags and things like that.

00:15:02.660 But again, when you get thousands of worked up people, you're going to get a handful of

00:15:06.020 crackpots in there.

00:15:06.820 And I know the media likes focusing on them. 0.93

00:15:09.240 The only cure for that is to make sure the rational people outnumber the nuts.

00:15:16.280 You know, the left wing, the right wing, it doesn't matter.

00:15:18.120 When you've got a demonstration, you have to try to control your own.

00:15:22.760 And it's difficult with a large amount of people.

00:15:24.320 It's difficult when there's a lot of emotion involved.

00:15:27.200 And boy, we're in emotional times right now.

00:15:29.740 But let's hope that this just goes off without a hitch.

00:15:32.160 And it's really broken some ground.

00:15:34.400 As I said in my opening rant, I mean, I've just been fascinated by how this took off.

00:15:39.120 like this in just two weeks. I mean, the fundraising alone, yeah, passing $7 million.

00:15:44.600 Tamara Litch, who I know her, I've interacted with her in the past through political things,

00:15:49.600 and she started thinking, I'll raise $10,000 or $20,000 to help these guys out. And it just

00:15:54.040 exploded over $7 million so far, which any leftovers is apparently supposed to go to

00:16:00.140 veterans organizations. So it'll go to a good cause. But I mean, a lot of Canadians are stepping

00:16:04.380 up. I mean, they aren't necessarily going out to this protest, but they're reaching into their

00:16:07.180 wallets and throwing a few bucks at it. I mean, it's striking and it can't be dismissed. It

00:16:12.600 represents a general discontent that people, I think, just want to push back. And it's gone far

00:16:17.120 beyond just vaccination requirements at the border and things like that. So we'll certainly be

00:16:21.740 watching with interest. But again, as I said, other issues haven't gone away and they're still

00:16:26.420 important. Yes, my guest Jim Mason is going to be coming up quite soon here and he's going to talk

00:16:30.840 about equalization. And that was, of course, a huge issue. Well, it's been a huge issue in Alberta

00:16:34.280 for decades now. And it came to a bit of a head last fall with the referendum we held on it,

00:16:42.620 but it was almost a bit anticlimactic. I mean, we held it and then never really heard much about it

00:16:46.960 and it just kind of went away. A reality that, well, we'll talk about with Mr. Mason. He wrote

00:16:52.680 a piece in C2C Journal, very long detailed one, but it's fantastic. Just talking about how to take

00:16:58.100 perhaps a common sense, rational approach. If we're going to go under the assumption that we

00:17:02.240 can't change the constitution and get rid of equalization, then let's see how we can fix the

00:17:06.820 formula that we have right now and in a positive way, if it can be done. I know a lot of Albertans

00:17:11.180 are doubtful, but he's written in great detail on that. So I'll talk to him shortly. Before we

00:17:16.240 get to Jim, I'm going to speak of one of our sponsors again, because again, we are not tax

00:17:20.820 funded. None of those equalization dollars come to media outlets either. So let's talk about the

00:17:27.140 Canada Shooting Sports Association. These guys have been one of our sponsors for a while and

00:17:31.680 And they're great if you enjoy firearms, whether for collecting, whether for target shooting, whether for hunting, whatever you like, you know, these guys are a resource for you.

00:17:40.980 If you go to CSSA-CILA.org or just search Canada Shooting Sports Association, you'll find them.

00:17:47.560 They have all kinds of resources, again, for the safe, responsible use of firearms.

00:17:51.500 And that's the main thing.

00:17:52.600 You know, some people who don't enjoy firearms have a problem with it.

00:17:55.860 Fine.

00:17:56.400 But they try to smear legitimate firearm owners as being dangerous or presenting a problem.

00:18:01.680 And they don't. We know that. We have no interest in harming people. And we want to encourage other

00:18:06.340 firearm users to responsibly exercise their rights and use those firearms as well. And that's what

00:18:11.200 these guys give us resources for. They also have some legal challenges out on behalf of firearm

00:18:17.000 owners against the federal government over some of those moves to change the rules, illegalize guns,

00:18:22.260 take away your property and firearms. And we need to push back. I mean, as with the truckers or

00:18:27.080 anything else, if we don't stand up for ourselves, nobody else is going to do it for us. So get out

00:18:31.600 there. Check them out. Canada Shooting Sports Association. Consider taking out a membership

00:18:35.580 with them because that's how they can keep helping you. All right, let's get on to Jim Mason

00:18:41.120 and a description of his background because this is a very, very well-educated man. He earned a

00:18:47.140 BSc in Engineering Physics and a PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics. He's retired

00:18:52.220 after 37 years with one of Canada's leading defense electronics companies, including a

00:18:57.320 So, I mean, quite a resume there, and now he's dedicated his time to a long study and paper on equalization.

00:19:05.320 So, let's bring him in and see how we're doing. How are you doing there, Jim?

00:19:09.320 Hi, Cory. I'm just great. How are you?

00:19:11.320 Very good. Thank you. I know through the emails, yes, you've written such a large in-depth piece,

00:19:17.320 that it's going to be hard to kind of cover all of what's important in just the 15 or 20 minutes we have.

00:19:21.320 But I think we can certainly...

00:19:23.320 People just have to go to the C2C Journal website to read it.

00:19:27.320 Exactly. That's where you can get it in full detail there. And for people looking, you know, after the interview, I want you to listen to them first. It's C2C, which is the letter C, the number two, the letter C, journal.ca. That's their site and his articles right there. It's called Too Hard to Kill Towards a Fair, Equitable and Science-Based Equalization Program. So I guess I'll just let you get started here, Jim. What inspired you to write that and what was the basis of what you're getting towards?

00:19:56.620 well it was about three years ago now that i really got interested in this and i can't

00:20:00.700 honestly remember uh why i did but it's it's always been in the news for a long time so i

00:20:07.980 thought i'd take a look at it and see if there was some way you could tinker with the existing

00:20:13.500 formula to maybe give albertans a little bit more comfort that it actually was fair and equitable

00:20:19.900 but I pretty soon came to the conclusion that it's a very complex formula and it's not easily

00:20:26.300 adjusted. There's a lot of ad hocery going on in there, so I decided to take a step back

00:20:31.660 and take a look at what the actual constitutional requirements are and see whether or not it was

00:20:37.340 possible to develop from first principles a new formula that might address some of the issues that

00:20:44.940 particularly albertancy are is wrong with the current one and there are basically three things

00:20:51.500 in in the formula or in the constitution need to be addressed it talks about levels of public

00:20:56.940 service it talks about levels of taxation and it talks about things being reasonably comparable

00:21:03.340 but it doesn't tell you what any of those are so i set about to try and identify metrics that you

00:21:09.020 use it would be easy uh easy to understand easy to compute and fit for purpose if you like they

00:21:16.540 would actually measure what they were supposed to and they could be used to compare across

00:21:20.540 provinces for level of public service and level of taxation and and i settled on a couple of those

00:21:26.860 that i thought were fairly reasonable so then i addressed uh tried to address the reasonably

00:21:31.260 comparable thing and i went to my science background for that because in science

00:21:37.100 there's a there's a widely used universally used method for doing that where you're dealing with

00:21:43.980 stochastic data stuff that varies you you measure a range about the mean in within which

00:21:51.820 things are considered to be not sufficiently different from the mean that they can be said

00:21:56.220 to be different so they're reasonably comparable and that is plus or minus one standard deviation

00:22:02.220 in fact you hear this stuff in polling all the time where they say the poll number the percentage

00:22:09.100 has a margin of error of plus or minus a certain percentage 19 times out of 20.

00:22:14.300 so it's a pretty common approach and and then what i did was use those and worked

00:22:19.180 worked in example using the 2017 financial data from all of the provinces and found some really

00:22:25.260 interesting things actually okay and yeah just to get you know before we go a little further with

00:22:30.220 that. And it's a lot. And it goes on that premise, which I think is true. Like within

00:22:34.620 confederation, most Albertans or even people in Saskatchewan don't mind helping out other

00:22:38.900 provinces. You know, I mean, if we're doing well and another one's having a hard time,

00:22:42.480 you know, we're a confederation, we can reach out. It's just, we found this formula seems to

00:22:46.740 particularly go towards Quebec, even if they might not necessarily seem to need it when that formula

00:22:53.160 comes in. And again, it doesn't seem to back off us. I mean, we've had hard times for a number of

00:22:57.040 years yet we still keep paying in and in so uh it's one of the one of the drawbacks of the

00:23:02.580 current formula is that it compares each of the provinces in a number of different fiscal areas

00:23:09.180 with the national average and anybody who's below the average qualifies for equalization and

00:23:15.820 anybody who's above the average doesn't so you can get two provinces whose metrics and whatever

00:23:21.980 it is they're measuring differ by two dollars one a dollar above the average the other one a dollar

00:23:27.660 below the average and they're not considered to be reasonably comparable and so that's what doing

00:23:33.580 this other approach of saying well let's look at the random variation and consider what's reasonably

00:23:40.060 comparable it gets around that that issue and and with the current approach there will always be

00:23:46.300 provinces that are below average so there will be always be equalization turned out

00:23:52.780 one of the say i found out some surprising things the the metric seemed to make sense for measuring

00:23:59.500 the level of public service was the own source revenue per capita that's the amount of money

00:24:05.100 that a province can raise on its own with within its own jurisdiction that it has to spend to

00:24:13.820 provide public services for each person resident in the province and so if you've got reasonably

00:24:19.340 comparable amounts of that you should be able to provide reasonably comparable amounts of public

00:24:25.100 reasonable comparable levels of public service turns out that when you look at the province

00:24:31.580 provinces they all have pretty reasonably comparable levels of own source revenue per

00:24:37.420 capita. There isn't a bunch of really poor province and a couple of really rich provinces.

00:24:44.380 They're all more or less the same. It does get complicated. If you're going on a straight

00:24:51.500 per capita dollar by dollar with people, some provinces have a different cost of living going

00:25:00.460 on. That could be applied even if it's straight dollars. It might be more or less expensive to

00:25:06.620 provide some of those services in one province versus another yeah that could be a consideration

00:25:11.420 i didn't actually take that into consideration but that could be a possible consideration but

00:25:15.260 i think it's like a second order effect uh on top of what you need to get started so you need to kind

00:25:23.020 of get off the current point of using only the average and look at something that looks at

00:25:27.740 variation and what's a reasonable variation from province to province yeah so a very um

00:25:36.620 complex type of issue. So proposing solutions, would it take the cooperation of a number of

00:25:43.180 provinces or is this a federal thing altogether? I know this gets into a much more complicated

00:25:49.020 mire. Yeah, it's a federal program instituted by federal legislation. There are the constitutional

00:25:58.780 requirements, but the program itself is embodied in legislation at the federal level. So a federal

00:26:06.300 government could do it they could just say this do and they could do it probably wouldn't go over

00:26:11.020 very well so there's probably got to be a lot of discussion going on and i think it realistically

00:26:17.820 the impetus for it probably has to come from the provinces and realistically within the provinces

00:26:26.940 alberta with probably some um support from suspension and but because i think if you kind

00:26:34.220 to leave it somebody's got to pick up the ball and run with it and and the most logical uh

00:26:40.860 province to do that is alberta in my opinion yeah well and i i again it is unfortunately

00:26:48.220 looks a little self-serving when alberta does it because we tend to be the ones who pay in

00:26:51.260 the most but i mean i i think if anything though the um the referendum did definitely clarify is

00:26:57.180 the majority of albertans are not happy with the formula as it stands right now they're not content

00:27:01.820 with it uh we can't change the constitution or well boy it's just that would that would make

00:27:08.220 tinkering with the formula look easy that's for sure uh so has there been uh any communication

00:27:14.220 or have you spoken at all like in all that work you've done with uh legislators in alberta or

00:27:18.540 saskatchewan other areas where they're showing concern with equalization way back when when i

00:27:23.180 when i first got around to it i produced a paper and i and i sent it off to uh the government of

00:27:29.980 Alberta it was just after they'd been elected so I think they they had their attention was focused

00:27:35.580 on other things but with the referendum now I think is an opportune time for them to pick up

00:27:41.820 with something new and and proceed with it and and you know it I think the the idea the approach

00:27:48.860 would be well here's an idea if you don't like these these metrics what do you think would make

00:27:54.060 more sense and if you don't like this reasonably comparable approach what do you think would make

00:27:58.060 more sense. And then we can talk about principles rather than, well, I think this particular fraction

00:28:04.060 of this revenue stream ought not to be a good or whatever, get kind of mired down in the details

00:28:10.460 when you do that. But if you can talk about what's the appropriate principle approach to this,

00:28:15.660 and I think probably we could get somewhere or maybe not. I don't know.

00:28:20.860 Well, and we have to start the discussion somewhere. I mean, that's the thing. We're

00:28:24.700 at an impasse right now um a lot of people like pointing out well you know alberta elected i mean

00:28:30.380 jason kenny was in government in the last federal one when they rejigged the last formula and that

00:28:35.820 that formula didn't do any favors for alberta at that time so there's a bit of mistrust perhaps on

00:28:40.620 on how much will there really is to change that well i think when you get down to the level of

00:28:47.900 tinkering with the existing formula it gets very complicated and very difficult and not a lot of

00:28:53.740 people can understand it but if you take a step back and say okay this is what the constitution

00:28:59.500 requires how can we address that in the most straightforward simple easy to do approach that

00:29:06.860 is rational and that's what i've tried to do yeah and and getting to that uh beginning basis of

00:29:13.340 agreement i mean that those beginning principles what most people don't have a problem with if we

00:29:17.100 feel that we're as your term uses equitably uh want to distribute you know for people in the

00:29:23.100 the harder and better times, but we don't want it to be an ongoing thing. I guess some of that

00:29:26.720 debate comes, the ongoing debate forever of whether it's a hand up or a hand out. I guess

00:29:32.740 in convincing the population that it's just a hand to our neighbors versus a chronic program

00:29:37.400 might help. Yeah, and I didn't really actually talk a lot about that, although I guess I did

00:29:46.520 allude to it a bit, that any program like this ought to be designed to help a province get through

00:29:52.940 a particular awkward time so that they can make whatever policy changes are necessary

00:29:59.100 to get going again. But it shouldn't just continue forever. This should be designed

00:30:07.140 to not be continuous and forever program. It should be designed to help and then stop.

00:30:15.160 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, I think, part of what, I guess, digs some people's heels in.

00:30:21.080 And again, I'm speaking from an Albertan perspective all the time, but just this feeling that it's interminable and no matter what we do, it's going to keep taking and taking.

00:30:31.060 I mean, if the formula at least shows that if the other province is doing better, things will back off a bit.

00:30:38.540 And great, we helped our neighbors and now we're all doing better in one big happy confederation.

00:30:42.080 As I mentioned earlier, one of the issues with the current program is that there will always be provinces that are below average.

00:30:49.500 so there will always be an equalization program excuse me and i understand now there's a provision

00:30:56.000 in it that it'll always keep growing so we'll have more and more money always distributed

00:31:01.620 even though as i said earlier the metrics for two provinces might be only different in a very

00:31:09.100 small amount so there really are reasonably comparable yeah well and then we go event by

00:31:15.740 event. I mean, I remember going back, you know, for example, when the cod fishery collapsed on

00:31:20.420 the East coast and that just devastated the Maritimes. And I think most Albertans were fine

00:31:25.140 with, you know, we've got to help our neighbors in the Maritimes out. I mean, that was a sudden

00:31:29.480 loss of revenue. A lot of them have recovered, you know, and diversified their economies and

00:31:34.220 moved on to other things. And they would have had a much harder time doing it without equalization

00:31:37.820 at that time. We don't begrudge that. It's just, well, Quebec tends to be the big point that tends

00:31:43.500 get us worked up out here yeah and and again i've i i've not in in the article i've uh tried to avoid

00:31:51.740 doing anything that might resemble quebec bashing in fact in all the analysis i present in the in

00:31:56.540 the paper none of the provinces are actually identified because i think that would just

00:32:02.780 detract from what it the message that is trying to be conveyed oh absolutely and as i said i'm

00:32:08.060 speaking to a predominantly western audience and speaking of what our our issues are with it uh

00:32:13.500 and don't want and i don't expect or want you to get into this the province by province thing what

00:32:17.420 you're putting out is a proposed way to we could reform that formula that hopefully we aren't at

00:32:22.220 each other's throats so much in the future going forward exactly exactly we we can talk about

00:32:27.340 things at the level of the principle rather than the detail you know does this make sense

00:32:31.820 from a principal perspective, as opposed to, is this going to be good or bad for my province,

00:32:39.860 which is where we are now. Yeah. We would like to think we're looking at a bigger picture rather

00:32:44.380 than smaller, immediate snapshots. And if the formula could be part of the problem, is there

00:32:49.840 room to cut the legislation perhaps in the formula though? Because as you said, it's terribly

00:32:54.820 complicated. Can it be simplified somewhat? Well, the bills that contain the formula are simply

00:33:00.740 bills, right? So they can be altered by a majority vote in parliament. They could be totally repealed

00:33:07.700 and replaced with something else by a simple majority vote in parliament. And they've been

00:33:12.500 amended previously. They haven't been cast in stone forever. So it is technically possible

00:33:19.640 to do it and to do it easily if there is an agreement on what the replacement needs to be.

00:33:26.040 Yeah, which, again, is always easier said than done. But I mean, the point, I guess, being made is legislation is still a heck of a lot easier to adapt and change than constitutionally entrenched things. So we can't get rid of it, but we can certainly tune it up.

00:33:41.160 Yes.

00:33:41.380 that would that would be my perspective i i sort of lost your sound sorry okay i sort of started

00:33:52.760 the whole thing from the perspective that the constitution would never get changed so let's

00:33:58.220 look at the possibility of changing the formula and but let's not look at it like well let's make

00:34:04.380 a tiny change here and a tiny change there let's look at what would be a formula with the

00:34:10.240 constitutional requirements, and we could all agree is a fair and equitable way about going

00:34:15.480 about determining it all. Great. Well, I mean, and again, it's, and you wrote at length, and it's

00:34:22.720 a fantastic piece, and you've got some charts and graphics that can, you know, help people along on

00:34:26.520 what is a complicated thing. So before I let you go, I'll get that URL out there so people can do a

00:34:32.000 deeper dive into the whole thing. As I said, it's hard to discuss in such a short period the depth

00:34:36.100 of what you put together and that article's at c2c that's the letter c number two letter c

00:34:42.020 journal.ca if you just google c2c like that it'll come up and look up jim mason and you'll see it

00:34:48.360 too hard to kill towards a fair and equitable or fair equitable and science-based equalization

00:34:54.220 program and you can see a great deal more detail on the work mr mason's done uh on this this

00:34:59.660 ongoing issue that just seems to keep our province is always at each other's throats so thanks for

00:35:04.780 coming by and explaining some of that to us and for writing all this up Mr.

00:35:08.380 Mason. Thanks for having me and I hope it'll generate some interest and people

00:35:12.100 will start talking about it. Yeah I really do appreciate that. Where can we

00:35:15.280 find out more information on what you're up to? Do you write in other places

00:35:18.160 besides C2C or is there a website you frequent? No I don't know I don't have a

00:35:23.200 website. C2C that particular equalization article on C2C was the

00:35:29.620 second article that C2C has published that I've written and and that's

00:35:33.760 basically it. Great. Well, thank you. And I hope you can make some progress towards an equitable

00:35:41.040 solution to this basically standoff we've had going on for decades now. I think that would be

00:35:46.400 wonderful if we could. Great. Thanks again for coming on. I hope we talk again soon. Cheerio.

00:35:53.520 All right. And I know among, of course, our listeners, and as I talked about my opening

00:35:57.360 rant, we have a lot of people who say, hey, it's broken. We can't do anything. And that leads to

00:36:02.960 to the people pursuing the secessionist option,

00:36:06.000 which I am, you know, I tend to lean towards quite often,

00:36:08.660 but still in the meantime, and we could be a long ways

00:36:10.600 or maybe never from having a dissolution of Confederation.

00:36:15.120 Well, then can we fix what we've got?

00:36:17.920 And we need some of that discussion.

00:36:19.240 I mean, right now it's been kind of all or nothing.

00:36:21.140 That was part of the problem.

00:36:22.880 I mean, the referendum held in Alberta,

00:36:24.760 which I think made a good statement.

00:36:26.040 It showed our general discontent

00:36:28.720 with the equalization system as it sits,

00:36:31.720 but it was calling for essentially removing it from the Constitution. We know it's just not

00:36:36.160 going to happen. But again, it could spur and show, well, if we can't pull it out, what can we

00:36:42.280 do to work towards fixing it? Because it's just not sustainable right now. It's a flashpoint for

00:36:48.760 us, and we're getting more and more upset. So again, check that out at C2C Journal there. And

00:36:54.680 just C2C Journal in general, they got some fantastic columns and articles on there on a

00:36:59.640 number of things. Again, you know, I was speaking earlier on alternative media, talking in depth on

00:37:03.800 things that we just don't often see from the mainstream. So where are we now? I've got another

00:37:11.680 guest coming in a little while. I've got some news things I want to talk about. You know, we'll break

00:37:15.640 away from the trucker's convoy a little. That's always going to come up some more, but just something

00:37:18.700 I heard on the radio this morning, we've talked about that a lot before, is Calgary's LRT stations.

00:37:25.600 we've got quite a mess going on out there. We've had a huge issue with homeless people,

00:37:32.620 with crime. And now the city of Calgary has actually completely shut down five LRT stations

00:37:39.340 in the city of Calgary, like 24 seven citizens are not allowed to go into them. You have to use

00:37:43.800 an outdoor entrance because they have been overrun with addicts. And something that got to me during

00:37:49.140 the discussion when I heard that, and I was listening to it on the radio on the drive in

00:37:52.220 this morning, though, was I'm getting tired of the language that's putsy-footing around some of

00:37:57.820 what our issue is going on right now. You know, one term I'm getting sick of? Vulnerable people.

00:38:03.740 They're using that for the homeless people, the addicts, the others we're seeing on the streets,

00:38:07.340 and it's a blanket thing. But what it does, I think, is sugarcoats the reality. The ones who

00:38:13.240 are in those LRT stations, yes, they're vulnerable. Absolutely they are. But let's not piss around,

00:38:19.000 they're addicts. They're almost exclusively addicts. We have an opioid addiction epidemic. 0.99

00:38:25.380 It's a problem. I've written on this a number of times. I encountered an overdose that probably

00:38:31.100 led to a death just outside of our office last fall. I wrote about that. It was horrible. It

00:38:36.380 was a young man. It was awful. This is a big problem. I don't want to vilify the addicts. 0.82

00:38:43.200 I understand they need help. I feel for them. I understand they're sick. But let's quit

00:38:48.600 pretending they're something else. They're not just vulnerable people. In fact, they're dangerous

00:38:52.720 people. And that gets to the next use of language that the city of Calgary and others use. They talk

00:38:58.680 about social disorder because that's what they said. The reason was to shut down those stations

00:39:04.200 was the social disorder. Well, say that. It's crime, not just social disorder. They're robbing

00:39:11.340 people. They're stabbing each other. They are intimidating people. They are breaking into

00:39:17.100 neighborhood houses in the area. They're stealing catalytic converters from people's vehicles.

00:39:22.000 That's not just social disorder, it's crime. Use the real word. Don't be a chicken about this.

00:39:27.420 We're not going to solve the issue if you keep coming up with this woke crap to talk about 1.00

00:39:31.300 an issue. We understand what's going on. Let's talk about it for real if we're going to fix it. 0.98

00:39:37.180 Vulnerable people. Yes, I know they're vulnerable, but they're also addicts. And we don't like

00:39:42.380 facing that. I mean, it's funny, it's this back and forth with the woke and the left with

00:39:47.020 talking about how we have the problem, addressing it, we need safe consumption centers. Yes.

00:39:53.320 But at the same time, they say we're not supposed to talk about the addicts as if it's a problem.

00:39:58.380 There was a piece the other day, and my wife Jane was talking about it, and I heard a bit of that

00:40:01.740 on the radio with some woman who was talking about how she needs the safe consumption centers

00:40:06.020 because she's a student and she's pursuing her career, but she wants to be able to safely consume

00:40:10.920 the the opioid that she's addicted to and it was this long piece on that about I mean talk about 0.99

00:40:16.040 normalizing hey we can be just fine and we can have all these people addicted to this garbage 1.00

00:40:20.140 just as long as they can safely consume it somewhere no guys you can't the crap eats you 1.00

00:40:24.920 alive it will kill you it will kill you eventually people who have addiction problems need help not 0.98

00:40:31.480 facilitation I know this I'm an alcoholic I haven't had a drink for years but I'm one of those people

00:40:38.600 who doesn't manage, you know, consumption of substances responsibly. Some can, some can't.

00:40:47.400 And there's no way to responsibly consume meth. There's no way to responsibly consume heroin.

00:40:54.360 There's no way to have an ongoing life and be a functional heroin addict. Yet that was the

00:40:58.960 narrative and crap that was being put out by that stuff before. Yeah, Nico pulled up that image

00:41:03.680 because I want to go further and that's perfect. I'm glad he grabbed that. You can see that map

00:41:07.160 of the city of Calgary. You see those darkened lines going up and down? For those who are

00:41:11.220 watching, you see dark, or who are listening on the podcast, there's darkened lines up and down

00:41:15.900 the side of the city of Calgary, and what they are is the crime rate. And the darkest are where

00:41:19.380 the crime rate is the heaviest, and the lightest where it isn't. And it is a perfect match for the

00:41:23.740 LRT lines. The crime follows these LRT lines. The criminals get on the LRTs, they ride out into

00:41:30.060 residential areas, and they commit their crimes. These vulnerable people. So I mean, again, yes,

00:41:35.640 they're vulnerable but they're dangerous so let's quit pissing around with this and what do we got

00:41:39.100 going on at the same time in city hall they're talking about the green line they want to build

00:41:43.620 another one that's got to be thrilling for people living in southeast calgary thinking

00:41:47.300 oh boy they're going to build a line into our neighborhood so that these addicts can all come

00:41:52.500 into my part of town too and commit crimes here because i'm not going downtown because calgary's

00:41:58.240 downtown is empty right now and overrun with vulnerable people and social disorder so we're

00:42:04.560 going to have more empty trains transporting nothing but vulnerable people committing social

00:42:08.580 disorder. Fix the problem and address it for what it really is. They're addicts and they're committing

00:42:13.460 crimes. And it's terrible. I'm not talking about taking them all and locking them up, but we need 0.95

00:42:17.680 control, not cowardice. Shutting down these stations. How does this stop this a bit? What

00:42:22.540 does it do about it? Building more stations. How does that help? What are you going to do? Have an

00:42:26.380 addict section and non-addict section like the old smoking ones, a little glassed off wall,

00:42:30.480 Rob people here.

00:42:31.260 Don't rob people there.

00:42:32.860 Let's get some realistic things going on.

00:42:35.540 Oh, I hear our gong going wild.

00:42:37.460 Okay, let's get on to something quickly positive here.

00:42:40.100 Dave has been banging the gong in the newsroom.

00:42:43.420 We have a number of rooms here, and I can hear it through the wall, though.

00:42:47.820 We have hit a record number of people visiting our website in a month,

00:42:52.660 and the month is not over yet.

00:42:54.880 Well, there he is.

00:42:56.300 Dave's on the screen here.

00:42:58.460 Nico pulled him in.

00:42:59.880 I don't know if he was expecting it, though.

00:43:01.720 Hey, Dave, how you doing?

00:43:02.660 I'm doing okay, Corey.

00:43:03.900 No, this is a bit of a surprise.

00:43:06.560 Good, yes.

00:43:07.680 Well, we just, you know, we were so celebratory with your joyous gonging there on our new record being set.

00:43:12.900 Maybe you want to give us a couple words on it before I unceremoniously kick you off the feet again.

00:43:19.540 Yeah, no, just a tremendous tribute to all the guys and gals working in our news division,

00:43:25.100 from, you know, from Linda to Reed to Mike out in BC, Eva here, Amber's just joined us

00:43:34.800 in Edmonton, Mel Risden, you know, interviewing her little heart out here. It's just, it's been

00:43:41.660 a really, really busy month, a really, really satisfying month. And it's great to see our,

00:43:49.020 it's great to see all of their hard work being recognized with people clicking on it. So very

00:43:54.000 nice to see. And thank you to all the members who are clicking.

00:43:58.640 Excellent. Well, thanks for coming in to let us know about that new record. Maybe next month,

00:44:02.640 we'll be banging on the gong, even though it's a short month and beating this month's record.

00:44:07.120 That's onward and upward, right? You betcha. That's the motto.

00:44:11.380 Right on, Dave. So yeah, getting back to that, you know, and I haven't done our self-serving

00:44:15.500 plug yet, which is important. You know, we rely on subscribers. We aren't getting those tax

00:44:20.040 dollars. So, I mean, it's been fantastic. I mean, getting millions of reads in a month on a, on a

00:44:25.600 two-year-old media outlet with a, yes, some people complain of paywall. It costs $10 a month

00:44:31.520 to come in and get full access to our website, to the columns, to the news articles, all of that

00:44:37.960 stuff. You can try it out. If you aren't subscribed already, you know, you can get two weeks for free

00:44:42.960 before you have to commit to an ongoing subscription. You know what? Our conversion

00:44:46.320 rate's fantastic. People who try it out for two weeks, almost always, like we're talking over 90

00:44:50.640 some percent, stay on. They keep that $10 a month. They realize it's well worth $10 a month for good

00:44:56.940 clear news. As I mentioned with the mainstream media before, come on, it's garbage. I mean, 1.00

00:45:00.680 I know you're still stuck paying for it through your taxes, but it's not worth watching. So for

00:45:05.640 $10 a month, you help us. And then we get more reporters. As Dave said, that list of names of

00:45:09.820 people we have involved all over the province and all over the country now is great. We're expanding.

00:45:16.120 Speaking of hearing a gong through our studio wall,

00:45:18.800 we're moving into a bigger studio and that's great.

00:45:21.740 I mean, our tech stuff is we've been improving our equipment.

00:45:25.180 This is, even though we have our issues occasionally,

00:45:27.160 this is much a world ahead of where we were a month ago

00:45:29.840 and it's only getting better.

00:45:31.540 Nico and I are quite tightly packed into a little room here

00:45:34.360 when we work together and we're really looking forward

00:45:36.080 to stretching our legs out in the new studio in a week or two.

00:45:39.740 Thank you to the people who have subscribed already

00:45:41.940 and, you know, keep spreading the word.

00:45:44.160 This is how we bypass things. This is how the establishment loses control. As I was ranting

00:45:49.460 about before, right? We bypass them. They can't gatekeep information anymore. News outlets like

00:45:55.980 ourselves, or I'll give credit to some of the other ones, you know, True North, Rebel,

00:46:00.140 C2C Journal I was talking about, they're all over the place. We don't have to,

00:46:05.060 that narrow little handful of heavyweight media outlets don't control the information anymore.

00:46:09.360 We don't even have to pay attention to them, but we do need you to do it. We can't do it

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00:47:35.580 communicating with me for some time. His name is Scott Kellogg, and he's been working on this for

00:47:41.140 a few years. He's just got one notion that he thinks will help in healthcare, and he's really

00:47:45.880 been pushing it for some time. And he's talking about, and he asks a valid question. You know,

00:47:51.020 we were always low on money for healthcare. We always want to use more money in the system or

00:47:54.400 get more money into the system. I mean, our nurses just got to raise things like that. 1.00

00:47:59.020 why don't we advertise? I know it sounds crazy, but why not allow advertisements in hospitals?

00:48:06.600 I know it sounds a little crazy, but why not? And as this video is going to show that I'm going to

00:48:10.000 have as we bring in our guests, you know, we do it in public institutions all the time. We have it

00:48:15.600 on buses. We have it on trains. We have it in building lobbies. You know, why can't we use

00:48:22.440 some of our healthcare space? I mean, if we get over some of that prejudice against profit we have

00:48:28.200 and just look at if somebody wants to pay us or pay money into our health system with some sort

00:48:33.440 of passive, you know, hopefully tasteful branding or something. Why? We're fools not to. He's been

00:48:39.280 shut out everywhere he went. So either way, he's been on this for a while and he made a video

00:48:43.760 to try and promote it. He made that a couple of years ago. He was, he was pushing with the NDP

00:48:47.860 and he's been hitting a bit of a wall because everybody's scared of this, but why not? Why not

00:48:51.100 an idea that brings millions of dollars into a system? So I just want to give credit where it's

00:48:55.700 do. We're going to run that video so you can watch it and see what Scott Kellogg was up to with

00:48:59.180 a creative idea because there's so many out there. And again, we can promote these sort of things and

00:49:03.620 go outside of the normal channels to make change. And then we're going to have our guest coming in

00:49:07.500 right after that. Mike. There is an emergency going on right now. And it's all of us Albertans

00:49:17.160 that need Alberta Health Services to get in the game. The game of using our public asset,

00:49:22.540 my parkade, your parkade, to generate revenue for health care in this province.

00:49:28.080 Look around. We see it every day.

00:49:30.260 Advertising on trains, buses, LRT platforms, hockey rink boards.

00:49:34.720 We only need to look at our own Calgary Airport to see how public space,

00:49:39.500 coincidentally a parkade, is used as a platform to generate advertising dollars

00:49:44.400 to offset the operational costs of maintaining and expanding our airports.

00:49:48.640 I've been told by bureaucrats, the policy is clear.

00:49:52.640 We don't want advertising on public property.

00:49:55.640 Otherwise, we'd have advertising all over our schools, libraries.

00:49:58.640 We don't want that.

00:50:00.640 Oh really, how contraire.

00:50:02.640 We advertise on many publicly owned structures that enable us a benefit.

00:50:07.640 How much does Calgary Transit benefit from ads on buses, platforms, trains?

00:50:12.640 Why would Alberta Health Services not look at the potential revenue from doing the same as our municipal transit systems or our federal airport?

00:50:22.640 Why not a themed mural depicting respect and appreciation to healthcare with corporate sponsorship opportunities?

00:50:28.640 Don't worry about the millions that we've lost by not doing this sooner. Change the policy and do it now.

00:50:36.640 Now, Alberta Health Care cannot afford to have money continue to leave the province in the form of federal taxation that could stay in the province for health care for Albertans.

00:50:50.240 Okay, so that was something a little different there and something to chew on.

00:50:53.500 If people want to find out more about Mr. Kellogg's effort, you can email me at cmorgan at westernstandardonline.com.

00:51:00.680 And now, yes, digital magic.

00:51:02.860 Suddenly I have a guest in studio.

00:51:04.420 Just like that.

00:51:04.780 we do we have mike thomas who's been writing columns for us for a little while now a couple

00:51:08.620 weeks you've been writing stuff for many years uh if you're past your 20s uh yeah i'm approaching 24

00:51:16.060 oh good good times two plus 12. yeah yeah so no it's great to get you in and it's it's been great

00:51:23.340 you know broadening our stuff and getting some more well no you know what it's been it's been

00:51:26.860 fun doing it it uh i like writing about real estate i've been doing it like i said 22 years

00:51:32.380 And so getting an opportunity to get back into it purposely is really enjoyable.

00:51:39.700 And this is a great group up here.

00:51:40.940 Really great, great.

00:51:42.500 Glad to have you on board.

00:51:44.100 So I'll start with, yeah, Nico's pulling up a couple of your more recent columns.

00:51:49.180 Actually, I'm going to, yeah, I'll end with that.

00:51:51.080 We'll start with the real estate and then we'll talk about your bit on the freedom thing

00:51:54.600 as well, because you're more than just a real estate writing guy.

00:51:57.260 That's just kind of your specialty, I think.

00:51:58.880 Well, yeah, because just the background, I was at the Calgary Sun for 22 years as the

00:52:03.420 homes editor, so I was focused on that, but even then, I would write other stuff.

00:52:10.400 That's great, and it's just the more voices, the better.

00:52:12.480 So you wrote, and in real estate, I mean, it is important, as I said earlier in the

00:52:16.460 show, I mean, everybody, whether you own a home, whether you rent a home, it impacts

00:52:18.960 you, whether you want it to or not, and we're all interested in it, or sometimes we don't

00:52:24.060 pay attention to it, but we better, we have to, and you've been talking, so your last

00:52:28.080 column was about the forecast and how COVID's impacted it and in different areas. Maybe you

00:52:32.540 can kind of go into the COVID impact. I remember two years ago when the market, when they,

00:52:41.340 when they put the lockdowns in place, the market just seized up all across the country. Real estate

00:52:46.640 agents, home builders, developers, I was brand new for them because their, their business is

00:52:52.280 pretty much predicated on traffic like any other retailer. Real estate agents have the open houses,

00:52:57.880 the builders have the show homes um but they had to shut them all down and rejig how they did things

00:53:04.760 april 2020 was the nader i mean it was the worst month just about in the history of real

00:53:09.880 estate across the country everything just came to a halt but then in august of that year

00:53:16.200 boom everything just took off like a rocket and everybody was was really surprised i mean last

00:53:22.440 year in calgary edmonton well all the major markets are across the west record sales numbers

00:53:28.760 calgary was 76 increase year over year the other markets averaged 37 increase uh in sales last

00:53:36.680 year record year uh and everybody's going what the heck is going on but you think about

00:53:42.920 uh a couple of things covet scared the heck out of people and up until that time people

00:53:49.160 builders uh in particular really broadened their product in terms of multi-family housing

00:53:55.640 uh and mostly most of that was dictated by cities uh planning departments that's a whole different

00:54:01.160 story um but people were getting and living closer together high-rise buildings they're

00:54:06.280 traveling in elevators they're uh even in attached homes are this close to their neighbors and stuff

00:54:11.320 like that and yeah everybody's saying covid you gotta stay away from people so people also the

00:54:16.440 other thing is they're staying at home i mean ordinarily i think your average person stay

00:54:20.840 who's working is staying at home maybe seven eight hours a day you know in the morning and then in

00:54:25.800 the evening after you get home from work i don't count sleeping because you don't know where you

00:54:29.080 are the rest of the time you're not there you're out traveling you're back and forth from work

00:54:34.280 uh maybe going out to dinner theaters stuff like that that are all eating up money so all

00:54:39.560 of a sudden this money that you were spending on that is piling up uh canadian savings account

00:54:46.440 grew quite well. And so people were going, I can't stand, I'm afraid to be in an elevator

00:54:54.160 with all these people. Martha lets you and I go find a nice little house in the suburbs.

00:55:00.300 It's got a backyard for the kids to play in because I'm sick and tired of them sitting here

00:55:04.380 on my computer. And I'm stretching this a bit. Yeah, it's a space to breathe. If you're going

00:55:09.400 to be there all day, you want a little more. So that caused the markets to take off.

00:55:13.120 And they were taking off at a time because it slowed right down.

00:55:19.280 It was taking off at a time when the prices had gone down.

00:55:22.500 And so it was easier to buy a house back then.

00:55:25.740 But the forecast getting to that now is for 2022 to be exactly the same in terms of busy, busy, busy.

00:55:35.440 If there's a problem, and there is a problem, a big one, and that is supply.

00:55:39.500 um at whatever your market you're in watching this if you go to your local real estate board

00:55:45.860 and look for the number of listings on mls uh they're way way down the the demand is way higher

00:55:53.520 than the supply so that is going to cause prices to go up uh how much i don't know but uh it's a

00:56:02.940 supply and demand thing yeah it always is in the end and but i mean something we've had too is the

00:56:07.600 market's been stunted. I mean, as you touched upon, people wanted to kind of move out from the

00:56:10.880 center. I live actually just in Prittis there. I got lucky we got into a little acreage out there.

00:56:17.340 And during that boom you were talking about, we had a few neighbors, you know, who were hitting

00:56:20.520 the point where they wanted to downsize or retire, move on. It was perfect for them. They put a

00:56:24.360 shingle out front for sale and it was sold within like eight hours. It was insane. There were bidding

00:56:28.760 wars for those places. I think it's kind of stabilized now, but there's still not, as you

00:56:33.160 not a heck of a lot of appetite like for inner city living or as there was anyways no no there

00:56:38.360 isn't uh and and that's directly related to covid i mean that's a that's a as far as i can tell

00:56:45.000 that's a coveted effect um the other thing that plays into it i shouldn't downplay it is that

00:56:53.160 you know when when two people get married young couple gets married uh they might be living in a

00:56:58.360 condo downtown somewhere uh 1100 square feet or whatever but it's close to the action um

00:57:04.760 but then all of a sudden they start having kids and it's like well we're not going to the night

00:57:09.160 club as much anymore and and the bar and we just we need a place for the kids to go your interests

00:57:14.280 change well yeah your priorities change yeah so now you need a place for the the kids to play

00:57:20.280 and so you want to go to places where there are playgrounds maybe you've got a backyard i mean

00:57:24.680 downtown there's none of that stuff well downtown's got other action going on right now unfortunately

00:57:29.560 and i was kind of talking a bit about that before with our unfortunate you know that massive

00:57:34.120 commercial they can see um this almost dystopian feel down here yeah and a a great number of uh

00:57:40.040 you know addicted and homeless people on the streets i mean it doesn't feel safe in the

00:57:43.080 inner city anymore that impacts people's decisions where to live greatly i mean more so when you have

00:57:47.880 children than when yourself you know i mean well i'm i'm a beltliner in calvary which is downtown

00:57:52.840 for you who are in calories it's technically downtown um and one thing i have and i've been

00:57:58.840 down there for 12 years i guess um and i have noticed there are not as many kids walking around

00:58:07.880 with their parents uh now as there were say five years ago which which is people vacating and and

00:58:15.080 nobody's filling that the vacancies yeah and it's unfortunate again it's one thing as an adult okay

00:58:20.200 I mean, I used to live in the Beltline.

00:58:21.880 I loved it, you know, the end of the 80s because, yeah, I could walk to Electric Avenue and party it up and all that.

00:58:27.160 But, I mean, I couldn't envision walking, well, when my children were young with them down there now because it's typical to find discarded syringes and people in a bad state of mind.

00:58:36.520 Yeah, it is dangerous.

00:58:37.960 It's too bad.

00:58:39.040 I mean, that's a bigger issue.

00:58:40.260 It's happening with a lot of cities.

00:58:43.120 So getting back to the supply, though, you know, Calgary's got a lot of ideological battles going on.

00:58:47.780 we've got a city council that's uh uh and the past one that don't really seem to like outward

00:58:52.580 development but they can't seem to stop it but they're really hindering the market in trying well

00:58:56.660 yeah you know it's it's i've i've written about the the relationship if you will between developers

00:59:04.980 and and city hall quite a bit and it's it's interesting joe public thinks that the developers

00:59:13.820 have got city hall in their pocket that they're running city hall and nothing could be further 0.98

00:59:18.400 from the truth the hoops that those guys people women who have to jump through uh to get building 1.00

00:59:24.640 permits is unbelievable uh the amount of money that they pay to the city to get developments

00:59:31.500 done is unbelievable people believe that uh a new community a suburb being built costs the

00:59:39.500 sitting money because of infrastructure, and that isn't true. The developer pays for all of the

00:59:44.260 pipes, the wires, everything underground, plus they pay for all of the what they call off-site

00:59:49.980 infrastructure, which connects the community to the city services. So the developers are paying

00:59:57.760 for all that, and that's a lie. The homebuyers are paying for that. Yeah, in the end, it comes

01:00:01.440 to the consumer. But that's the truth of the thing. So we've gone through a number of years

01:00:07.520 here where it's been like this, it's been like this. A couple of years ago, city council approved

01:00:13.540 14 new communities on Calgary's outer edges, which was good. I mean, kind of a shock, actually,

01:00:21.200 that they approved. They approved them all in one meeting. So that's good. So Calgary has a land

01:00:26.300 supply. I think that is probably good. I don't know if it meets what the demand is right now,

01:00:32.420 But the other problem is the supply thing.

01:00:35.020 Builders, I know some builders in town who have been told to stop selling houses because they don't have the wood, they don't have the tile, they don't have the materials to build these houses.

01:00:46.160 That's a whole other issue, the supply chain thing, things like that.

01:00:49.160 I mean, we had that lumber shortage last year.

01:00:51.720 Jane and I, Looney, tried to build a deck out in our place and it was going to cost us more in a garage.

01:00:58.080 But that seems to have eased.

01:00:59.420 But, I mean, this is up, as you said, it might be tiles this week.

01:01:02.160 It might be insulation next week.

01:01:03.660 It might be –

01:01:04.060 Well, and labor.

01:01:04.860 Yeah. 1.00

01:01:05.440 Labor.

01:01:08.640 It's an industry that a lot of people don't look at to get involved in to go work in.

01:01:12.420 And I would highly recommend that if you're looking for a career working in construction, stuff like that, number one, it pays great money.

01:01:22.400 Oh, yeah.

01:01:22.700 It pays really good money.

01:01:24.340 It's steady.

01:01:25.140 The companies are solid.

01:01:26.280 They're really good people.

01:01:27.200 and it's a, it could be a very good career for you. Yeah. Well, that's another much bigger

01:01:32.500 discussion in that sense. I mean, there's a, it's been ongoing. I, uh, something I like talking

01:01:35.980 about now and then I finished high school in Banff and you know what, when I came out of there,

01:01:39.840 I honestly had no idea what a trades person was. I didn't know what an apprenticeship was. If I

01:01:44.700 were going to be interested in it, I didn't know what the path would have been. Where do you even

01:01:48.180 start? Because I was taught you're either going to go to university or you're going to be a janitor.

01:01:53.260 Well, you know what? I'm not seeing a lot of carpenters and electricians and plumbers

01:01:56.420 driving beat up old cars. These guys are doing very, and women are doing very well for themselves

01:02:01.340 and, and it's a great market. So, I mean, it's, it's another thing worth addressing. We keep

01:02:04.820 talking about education. Well, let's quit focusing always on the universities, which are still great,

01:02:09.920 but boy, our trades really need some people in there. Well, yeah, it's like I say, it's steady

01:02:14.040 work, especially right now. I mean, even, even in the downtimes, the, the builders, developers,

01:02:19.120 that's when they really get active in terms of planning and, and looking at what they need,

01:02:24.120 because they're, that's a focus for them to keep a long window.

01:02:27.720 They have to look at.

01:02:28.680 So, um, like I say, it's a very, it's, it's, it's not easy.

01:02:33.080 Sometimes it's grueling.

01:02:34.360 You're doing working outside.

01:02:36.360 Um, but they, they, the, the, the people who own the companies really

01:02:40.440 look after their people.

01:02:41.640 Oh, absolutely.

01:02:42.680 And to get into that timeline, you know, a bit more of the development.

01:02:44.920 I talked to Shane Wenzel a while back on that.

01:02:46.560 And one of the shows you referenced that in your column.

01:02:48.240 And, uh, I'd broken it down.

01:02:50.400 I haven't gotten a bunch of numbers.

01:02:51.480 Like it's the timeline for a developer.

01:02:53.120 they're looking from concept to starting construction as an average i think about eight

01:02:57.040 years like think of the investment you have to tie up and risk it's a risk or big gamble millions

01:03:03.520 and millions of dollars study after study after permit after permit and unfortunately we've also

01:03:07.920 got you're going to go through two city councils for that period of time at least and you can get

01:03:12.160 a hostile one who's going to pull the rug out from under your feet so i mean i we're not a safe place

01:03:16.880 to invest i mean it's it's so that adds to the price because the only way they're going to invest

01:03:21.120 is that if they're going to risk that capital, they've got to expand it.

01:03:25.100 If we could shorten those timelines, it would certainly help with supply, I would think.

01:03:30.300 Shorting that means sitting down and trying to have a conversation with the city planners

01:03:36.460 and stuff like that, that nobody's on the same page right away.

01:03:40.500 It's really an interesting dynamic of how they get along with each other.

01:03:45.280 um the by my experience city planners are uh they they go to school they learn how

01:03:54.080 to help to lay out streets and stuff like that i'm making it sound awful simple but it's not

01:03:58.560 um but lately the the instruction has been build up not out so it's all high-rise towers and stuff

01:04:07.680 like that and it's that's where a lot of the friction comes in well and again

01:04:15.080 we're trying to cork this model it seems and I mean we've seen that in

01:04:17.880 Mayor Gondek as a counselor got very upset with developments that we're

01:04:20.580 building up just outside of city limits and but rather than saying well let's

01:04:23.920 make ourselves more affordable or reasonable market in the city she was

01:04:27.480 talking about finding ways to stop her development from being allowed to go 1.00

01:04:30.600 an authoritarian approach. 0.79

01:04:33.280 The city of Calgary chased

01:04:35.000 everybody to Balzac

01:04:38.140 because of the taxes.

01:04:41.980 There were

01:04:42.520 big plans for a shopping

01:04:44.660 complex on the east end of

01:04:46.500 the city that

01:04:48.440 moved outside the city because

01:04:50.940 I remember Nenshi berating them actually

01:04:52.900 at the time.

01:04:53.360 They're talking about why you're leaving the city.

01:04:56.840 The tax rate is so much different.

01:04:58.900 Yeah. Well, not just the tax rates, but the attitude. Like they vilify these developers.

01:05:02.820 And then she was going on about how ugly the development was going to be. And, you know, you should have a mayor who's...

01:05:08.240 Yeah, that's not territory for them to get involved.

01:05:10.700 So critical of, you know, I mean, I understand there's design needs and things like that, but to get so critical of the aesthetics.

01:05:17.400 I mean, you've got an ideology, unfortunately, that's battling this mess.

01:05:21.460 i remember years ago i went to i got invited to go to a uh a convention of city planners that were

01:05:27.780 gathered from across the country in canmore and i was asked to speak to them which i thought was

01:05:33.060 kind of weird because we're not we're pretty much opposed to each other but i got up and i said you

01:05:38.900 know it's my understanding i'm paraphrasing but you people you people careful yeah no um don't

01:05:47.940 you look at development as going up you don't care what the costs are you don't care what it's going

01:05:53.300 to cost the developers therefore you don't care what it's going to cost the home buyers you just

01:05:57.540 have this ideological idea of how to build things is that right and there's 250 people out there in

01:06:03.380 the audience every one of them is nodding their heads i just i was like whoa scary it's good to

01:06:09.060 know it's not hopeless then i mean you know i look at some new developments like quarry park for

01:06:13.860 example they've moved you know office complexes more into the suburbs so people can live in that

01:06:18.740 you know detached house and still have a short commute to an office complex yeah i think it was

01:06:23.700 imperial oil i think moved from downtown today i think cn did as well perhaps and uh uh no quarry

01:06:29.860 park did a really good job with that yeah well and it helps for these businesses if you're trying to

01:06:33.620 draw people to work for you i think you're going to offer a more comfortable environment uh than

01:06:38.260 the city core you know into that campus style uh office yeah and and well and the people who buy

01:06:44.500 houses or live in that area benefit because when you're bringing that many people who are working

01:06:49.380 in that area you have you got to build restaurants and and gas stations and all that stuff and that

01:06:55.780 that these office people can go to and then the local people have now a place to go to where they

01:07:00.500 don't have to go downtown yeah so i mean maybe we'll see a trend eventually kind of little city

01:07:04.500 centers building up more in the periphery of cities as opposed to such core centered uh actually

01:07:10.100 that's that's been going on more than more than i think you know yeah uh they're not big places i

01:07:15.700 mean they don't they don't rival downtown in terms of size well the point is not too well yeah and

01:07:21.860 the other thing it does is it takes traffic off the street because people don't need to drive a

01:07:26.180 long way to go to a restaurant or a movie or stuff like that it's right in their neighborhood yeah

01:07:31.860 That's interesting. I hope they embrace more of that. Before we finish up, another column you wrote, though, as I said, was just talking about, you know, you're comparing like Canadians being unified and cheering for something, waving flags for the Olympics.

01:07:42.560 And you wrote about the truckers convoy and how we got something to get excited about. What was that about there?

01:07:47.140 Well, you know, I'm watching the live feed from the Bearhug people, the Canada Unity people, and I got to say, I welled up.

01:07:57.520 I just was going, wow, this is so amazing.

01:08:01.120 This is so amazing to see people who've been locked up for two years finally go, that's enough.

01:08:07.720 And the way it's been managed, I don't want to get into that because it's complicated.

01:08:11.120 But that column wrote itself.

01:08:16.780 It really did.

01:08:19.300 Ordinarily, it's going to take a couple hours to research a column, write it, rewrite it, edit it.

01:08:24.400 That thing just came out like that, almost word for word.

01:08:28.040 I was so proud.

01:08:31.100 I'm doing it now.

01:08:32.560 So proud of the people lying on the highway, the restaurants along the way, feeding them, giving them free food.

01:08:39.840 The Hutterites in Manitoba, sitting at the kitchen.

01:08:43.000 That says a lot.

01:08:43.780 I mean, those are non-political people typically, and they're coming out to support this.

01:08:46.980 Totally non-political.

01:08:49.080 That's the perfect way to put it.

01:08:51.320 It's just people going, okay, enough is enough.

01:08:54.420 And I likened it, originally I likened it to the Canadian hockey teams, men and women.

01:09:01.680 How much they fight and work hard to get that gold medal, not just for them, but for the entire country.

01:09:08.660 Because they know that when they win that gold medal, the entire country goes, yes.

01:09:15.280 And that's what's going on now.

01:09:17.140 Yeah, we saw some positivity, people gathering together.

01:09:19.860 And I mean, there's a lot of, unfortunately, opponents, you know, trying to vilify this and everything.

01:09:23.480 If we just look at that positive, as I wrote in kind of my column today, I don't know what the end of this is going to be.

01:09:27.960 I don't know what's going to happen on Parliament Hill.

01:09:29.800 But I'm just thrilled already with what they've accomplished and just showing people getting up and moving towards what they feel is positive.

01:09:36.620 And again, they're waving flags.

01:09:38.120 They're cheering. They're not screaming. They're not giving negative slogans. They're happy and

01:09:43.140 they're united and we should be celebrating that. And I was happy to see your column celebrating

01:09:46.600 it because they've got so much, unfortunately, castigating it. My niece in Toronto sent me a

01:09:52.820 video of when the convoy arrived in the big smoke and I just couldn't believe it. They're on the

01:10:01.760 overpasses the OPP had to come up and and tell people we can't have this many

01:10:07.520 people on the overpasses they're gonna crack and fall this is Toronto yeah it

01:10:12.740 wasn't the OPP here they were they were just generally concerned for safety I

01:10:15.560 mean no no they weren't getting into the people they were there it's like it was

01:10:19.920 a safety thing and that's how huge this is yeah it's amazing just amazing to

01:10:23.900 watch and watching it develop and so many others as I said I mean that the

01:10:27.560 fundraising it doesn't mean everything but I tell you when you have almost a

01:10:30.420 hundred thousand individual donors now reached into their pockets and what's

01:10:33.920 been tight times for a lot of people. And some of those donations, I saw one

01:10:36.560 that was only $6 and I've seen some as high as 15,000, but most of them were

01:10:40.020 like 50, 75. They can't come out in person. They can't make it to a highway,

01:10:44.220 but they're saying, Hey, you go guys. I love this. Get out there, stand up and

01:10:49.140 let's make some change.

01:10:49.980 Well, you know, it's, it's, it's one of those things where, like I say, we've

01:10:53.760 all been locked down and restricted from doing what we normally do for so long.

01:10:58.680 And we kept going, yeah, okay, this looks like it's pretty serious.

01:11:02.480 We better follow the orders and keep in line.

01:11:04.740 But now the narrative, I think the COVID narrative is starting to crumble.

01:11:09.340 And people are looking at it and going, what do we do?

01:11:12.880 And all of a sudden, this group comes along.

01:11:15.240 And so now you've got leaders.

01:11:16.480 When you've got somebody making a parade, everybody gets in that parade because there's safety in numbers, I think, for a lack of a better way to put it.

01:11:23.920 Yeah, well, that's what I'm hoping for a positive.

01:11:25.400 And we know there's a few flakes in the bunch.

01:11:27.080 There always will be.

01:11:27.780 But as long as it's dominated by good solid people and I'm confident it will be you know on the hill

01:11:32.480 They should keep the nuts in line. I hope anyways, you know

01:11:36.300 Look, there's gonna be some confrontations. I'm sure just as long as they're minor, you know

01:11:40.940 If it just involves swearing at somebody excellent, but it's it's a concern that you know

01:11:46.780 There's a lot of anger. There's a lot of emotion and as I've tried to play as I could at least to the audience

01:11:52.020 So there's just try to keep it positive and police your own guys. This will help all of us, you know

01:11:57.820 if somebody's acting out you know don't stand back and let them go get in there and just say hey

01:12:02.220 come on this isn't well you know again watching the videos of the the people driving the trucks

01:12:08.620 and and doing live video and talking about talking to each other about what to do when we get there

01:12:16.220 and they're they're pretty well organized in terms of don't go messing with anybody if people start

01:12:21.660 getting mad at you or yelling at you ignore them walk away and so i think they've got that mindset

01:12:26.380 yeah well i sure hope so yeah all right well we got to move along that time went quickly but thank

01:12:30.460 you very much for coming in i hope we can do it again you know standard it was a great chat

01:12:34.940 and uh yeah we're gonna run a video shortly to let you escape in that so just to remind

01:12:38.780 everybody though this is mike thomas he's writing for the western standard those columns are coming

01:12:43.660 fast and furious on real estate and other positive issues yeah you never know yeah

01:12:48.460 looking forward to it all right we'll have you hurry that's great thank you very much great

01:12:52.060 Thanks. And Nico's going to run a video with, well, what happened? Some people were wondering

01:12:56.620 with Mel's interview with Justin Trudeau's half brother last night, we had a technical issue at

01:13:01.380 the end and lost some really critical content. So Nico, I'll run a bit on that while you escape

01:13:06.160 the studio here and we'll get on to Jay Hill. All right. And congratulations on the two mil.

01:13:10.720 Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. We're really rocking it. All right.

01:13:13.360 we must we must stand strong because and like you know and reject this fear and deception

01:13:23.360 that is being pushed upon us let's say justin's watching right now our um prime minister he's

01:13:30.740 watching right now what would you like to say to him what would you say to your brother i had a

01:13:37.880 feeling you might ask that question. Yeah. You know, I would say like, you know, Justin, like

01:13:44.060 enough. All right. So yes, that's something to look forward to. Watch our YouTube channel,

01:13:52.380 our Rumble channel, wherever you may be watching Facebook. The rest of Mel's work is going to be

01:13:57.260 coming up there soon with Justin's little bro there. Interesting times. So great. And now we're

01:14:05.920 ready. I'm going to pull in Jay Hill. He's still the interim leader of the Maverick party at this

01:14:10.860 time. I see him in the lobby there. Hey, Jay, how are you doing? Terrific. How are you? Good, good,

01:14:17.300 good to see you. We're certainly in some crazy and interesting times right now. I'm glad I could get

01:14:23.500 you on. Maybe I'll just start immediately with there's been a lot of misinformation about what

01:14:29.480 Tamara has been doing, where the fundraising has been going and people saying it's going towards

01:14:33.680 your party and things. So it's nice to speak to somebody who's outside of the rumor mill just to

01:14:37.960 say, hey, this is what's going on. Well, thanks, Corey. Yeah, there is a fair bit of misinformation

01:14:44.240 because of Tamara's connection to Maverick. I think a lot of people now know that she was one

01:14:52.340 of the original councillors on our governing council along with myself. In fact, it's only

01:14:58.420 the two of us that remained from the original eight that started back in June of 2020.

01:15:05.060 So yeah, she's been around and been with Maverick for quite some time. She currently serves wearing,

01:15:12.980 as many of us do, many different hats. She's the secretary for the governing council of Maverick

01:15:18.980 party. But in this particular instance, she requested of the council and of the party

01:15:26.180 for her to basically step aside for a bit of time and devote herself to helping to organize this

01:15:36.580 what's known as the truckers freedom convoy to ottawa and she's fully committed to that but

01:15:44.580 that is as an individual not directly committed although we have a number of mavericks that are

01:15:51.780 traveling along with the convoy and participating in that activity that protest and but it is a

01:16:00.420 non-partisan event as it should be yeah i'm certain there's members from all sorts of

01:16:04.900 parties involved in it and members at all sorts of levels in it i mean i just want to get it

01:16:08.500 equivocal unequivocable there is no money coming from this going to the maverick party absolutely

01:16:15.060 not. I think as with most Canadians, we were absolutely amazed at the level of support.

01:16:23.220 I mean, this started out, Tamara had told me that she'd hoped $100,000 or $200,000 initially,

01:16:32.180 optimistically looking to help offset some of the costs. Diesel fuel is not cheap. These big trucks

01:16:40.500 burn up lots of it. And so, yeah, you know, she was hoping to raise some money to help to offset

01:16:46.820 this trucker's costs of fuel, lodging, and meals, you know, as they travel across the country.

01:16:56.560 But now I've heard it's over $7 million. So it is a non-partisan event. It's not a Maverick

01:17:04.840 And I think that's why it's a big party event.

01:17:07.880 Although, as I say, we support the initiative

01:17:10.880 because we believe fundamentally in freedom.

01:17:12.880 And that is what it is.

01:17:14.880 And Tamara has been very careful to reiterate that

01:17:17.880 at every opportunity.

01:17:19.880 This protest, if you will, this convoy of trucks

01:17:22.900 across the nation is about reestablishing freedoms

01:17:26.900 and pushing back against government overreach by Trudeau.

01:17:31.840 And I think that's why it's gained the support from all levels that it has.

01:17:38.840 Yeah, I mean, we've had members from a number of parties.

01:17:41.840 Pierre Polyev was quite supportive of it on the news the other day.

01:17:44.840 Maxime Bernier has been supportive.

01:17:46.840 It doesn't mean that this represents any of their parties.

01:17:48.840 Those are individuals speaking out with a common cause of general freedom.

01:17:51.840 And I just appreciate your coming on because the rumor mill and the vitriol online,

01:17:55.840 you know, it's nothing new, but it's been whole new levels on this whole thing

01:17:59.840 this whole thing and a lot of BS going around out there.

01:18:02.540 So that's why I appreciate you coming on to give a statement

01:18:06.020 so we can absolutely push back saying, no,

01:18:08.060 that's not the case, quit spreading your baloney on this.

01:18:11.040 Well, and I appreciate that a lot, Corey,

01:18:12.860 you know, the underlying reasons for this protest,

01:18:17.820 and I've reiterated this every time a journalist has asked me

01:18:21.000 over the last week is what we're seeing,

01:18:25.240 thanks to social media and thanks to non-mainstream

01:18:29.820 I think it's important to think about the

01:18:31.860 same media like yourself, like Western

01:18:33.860 Standard and others, Rebel News, a few

01:18:35.860 others, is the reporting that is clearly

01:18:38.860 showing that Europe, the UK, Boris Johnson

01:18:41.860 has been saying they are lifting, well, just

01:18:44.860 today I saw an announcement by the

01:18:47.860 President of Denmark, or Prime Minister of

01:18:50.860 Denmark, that they are going to lift all

01:18:53.860 restrictions by the 1st of February, which is

01:18:56.860 coming up next week, that all the restrictions

01:18:59.820 And so quite rightly, people are asking, what is going on here, why is it that Europe that has been inundated with COVID and has suffered tremendously due to the virus, they're lifting their restrictions, at the same time Trudeau's imposing more restrictions.

01:19:29.820 And I think at its core, that's the very reason for this convoy.

01:19:34.760 And to draw attention to that, trying to get as much support from the general populace as possible.

01:19:41.700 And they are gaining that as the trucks move across the country.

01:19:46.120 And even trucks coming from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and joining in when they get to Ottawa.

01:19:53.420 So it's taken on a life of its own.

01:19:55.800 We're very supportive of that.

01:19:57.320 I say you look at the Maverick logo behind me, you can clearly see we put freedom in that eye of Maverick for a reason.

01:20:04.940 We believe in freedom. We've said that all along. And this is about the freedom of Canadians coast to coast.

01:20:12.340 Great. Well, thanks for that update and chat.

01:20:14.720 I'm hoping we can get you Monday morning because there's going to be a lot to talk about after this weekend when we see what actually happens down there.

01:20:20.460 So I'm hoping you're available then and people can look forward to talking.

01:20:23.420 we'll see with our well we'll see it'll probably still be going on but we'll know a lot more about

01:20:27.340 what it's going to look like by then that would be terrific and i just want to end uh corey as

01:20:33.500 i'm sure you do and when western standard does with just wishing uh all those participants

01:20:39.980 pon boy all the very best as we've done as they've proceeded across the nation uh and really hope

01:20:46.060 that their event tomorrow in Ottawa is successful and peaceful.

01:20:54.420 And it truly adds credibility to Canada as a nation

01:20:59.520 that the people can exercise their democratic freedom of expression

01:21:05.260 by coming together and telling the government that we're sick and tired

01:21:09.940 and we've had enough of their overreach.

01:21:12.000 absolutely and we're seeing history being made so thanks for joining me today jay and we will

01:21:18.100 talk on monday my pleasure look forward to it cory great thanks so yeah you know i wanted to bring

01:21:25.300 jay on also i mean i'll talk more with him on monday and thanks because jay was a member of

01:21:28.780 parliament for a number of years he knows how uh parliament hill looks and how it's going to look

01:21:32.900 on the weekend and you know he knows he was a reformer from the old days he knows about building

01:21:37.140 new movements and pushing back against government uh but at least we could put to rest anybody

01:21:41.980 watching. You see those ding-dongs on social media. Even some of them are mainstream media

01:21:47.080 people saying this is all a fundraiser for the Maverick. It's not. It's not. It's not related.

01:21:51.580 It's not for the PPC. This is all going towards that. And they've made it clear if there's any

01:21:55.180 excess, it's going towards veterans associations, which I think we can all support, even though

01:21:59.940 Justin Trudeau did tell one of our injured veterans that he just can't spare anymore to

01:22:04.940 help them. But speaking of privilege, nobody's more privileged than Justin Trudeau these days.

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01:23:02.460 about getting away from government control, getting your money away from the eyes of people

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01:23:11.760 Okay. I do want to, you know, Jay mentioned it. I like doing this. I've been doing it the last

01:23:15.900 few days. It's just fun to refresh and watch the fundraiser for the Freedom Convoy. So the last

01:23:21.060 time I had it, I've got the window open here and it was at the start of the show. So almost an hour

01:23:25.000 and a half ago, it was at $7,124,000 and 90.6,000 people donated. I'm going to refresh this. Let's

01:23:33.540 see what came up in an hour and a half. Okay. 7,286,580 by 92.4,000 people. I mean, you know,

01:23:43.280 a hundred and some thousand in an hour and a half. I don't know what this is raising about 50,000 an

01:23:47.380 hour now or something. People are supporting this. And I'm looking at the names, you know,

01:23:51.740 a fellow put in 50 bucks, Rita put in 50 bucks, an anonymous one put in $25,000. Something to

01:23:59.620 clarify, actually, for people who aren't familiar with GoFundMe, you can spoof people's names on

01:24:03.360 there. You can donate and then put somebody else's name on it, but you can't, uh, you can't put

01:24:09.420 another name up there unless you've actually put the donation in. You can't just put a fake one in

01:24:12.840 and then have a, uh, uh, you know, no donation, put a name. So for example, when Jagmeet Singh's

01:24:19.160 brother-in-law put in a $15,000, I believe it was, and he put his own name in on it. That really was

01:24:24.520 him. And even if it was somebody joking around, you know, somebody put in Justin Trudeau or

01:24:28.020 something. Yeah, that wasn't Justin Trudeau, I'm sure. But somebody really donated $50 to be able

01:24:33.480 to do that. Those dollars are really coming in. Those are really individuals. And there's thousands

01:24:37.800 and thousands and thousands of them. Yeah, Angela's talking about Tariq, perhaps. I've had him on as a

01:24:44.120 guest before, as a leader of the Maverick Party. We'll see. I got to talk to Jay a little bit about

01:24:49.060 that next week, too, because we just didn't have time today. But you know, what's going on with

01:24:53.080 their leadership race. Where are they going? And how it's all doing. Either way, I'm going to wrap

01:25:00.360 things up for today and come back on Monday. We're going to have another great action-packed show.

01:25:06.760 We'll be able to find out and talk about what has happened on the weekend with the Convoy for Freedom.

01:25:13.400 It's going to be fantastic. Go to westernstandardonline.com. Everybody's going to be

01:25:16.520 working hard to keep the news stories fresh and coming out. And thank you for tuning in. We'll

01:25:21.680 see you on Monday.

01:25:51.680 we must we must stand strong because and like you know and reject this fear deception that is

01:26:08.880 being pushed upon us let's say justin's watching right now our um prime minister he's watching

01:26:15.760 right now what would you like to say to him what would you say to your brother i had a feeling you

01:26:23.040 might ask that question yeah um you know i would say like you know justin like enough is enough

01:26:30.500 it's like i know like i don't whatever got you to this point you know whatever you know you've done

01:26:40.360 whatever they have like just like you know recognize you are in this position you've got

01:26:46.460 as i just mentioned before there's two options

Western Standard - January 29, 2022

Triggered： The establishment is crumbling and panicked

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