Corey and the gang talk about universal basic income, International Beer Day, and why you should be wearing a thong on public display. Plus, a rant about how the extremes are starting to sound pretty similar to each other.
00:04:11.280Because, yes, the extremes are starting to sound
00:04:13.680pretty similar when you get somebody over on the fringe on one side they tend to actually behave
00:04:18.960quite similarly to the fringe on the other he's uh calling for a correction on it we're also going
00:04:23.560to have western standard reporter jonathan bradley he's going to be here in studio he's been in
00:04:27.980calgary for a while working on things he puts a lot of stories out and uh he well we'll talk about
00:04:33.160a few of his stories but one of which is last weekend he went on sort of a field assignment and
00:04:37.880attended a drag show. So we'll see what he observed there and what he thought of it. I'm
00:04:44.460sure it was an interesting time. I don't have a problem with drag shows. Part of the problem with
00:04:48.120these though is sometimes they just insist on bringing kids to them. And you know, they can
00:04:52.220get a little racy, but I'm not sure in the case of this. And we'll talk about and see what's up
00:04:55.180with it. All right, let's get on to what I'm going to talk about today to kick things off with my
00:04:59.780thoughts. So recently we had a man go out in a rampage with a hammer in Calgary and he caused
00:05:04.500hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the Calgary Peace Bridge. Then last week, another guy
00:05:09.360broke into Calgary City Hall and did extensive damage to the building as he lit fires. He couldn't
00:05:14.720be immediately restrained because he was carrying a large knife and he got injured when police
00:05:19.680arrested him. And the City Hall is still closed now due to the water and fire damage. In Montreal,
00:05:25.120last Tuesday and Wednesday, even worse, three people were shot and killed in what appeared to
00:05:28.980be random killings. A suspect was located on Thursday yesterday in a motel and he was shot
00:05:33.620been killed by police as they tried to apprehend him. Now the common denominator in all three of
00:05:37.620these incidents is that all three of the perpetrators were known by authorities to
00:05:41.300have serious mental disorders, but they'd been released into the public anyway. With the tragic
00:05:46.100incident in Montreal, the killer had been released from a mental institution last March, despite the
00:05:50.720psychiatrist at the hearing saying he presented a significant risk to public safety due to his
00:05:55.180mental state. They knew he was dangerous. So if an expert felt this man was dangerous, why was he
00:06:00.040released? Well, it's because of a policy trend essentially over decades called deinstitutionalization.
00:06:05.780And that's a big mouthful, that one. And that movement came to a head at the end of the 20th
00:06:09.760century. The rationale was it was inhumane to keep people incarcerated for mental health disorders
00:06:14.420and that with proper community supports and medication, they can be safely and productively
00:06:19.140living freely within the public. And in most cases, actually, this is true. In many cases,
00:06:23.720though, it's wrong. And the price of failed community integration can be pretty high,
00:06:27.460as we've seen. The push to keep people out of long-term mental health facilities is understandable.
00:06:31.880Nobody likes to think of incarcerating somebody for a disease which is no fault of their own.
00:06:36.120Just because a person can't be faulted for their mental illness doesn't mean they don't present a
00:06:41.100hazard sometimes to themselves or the others around them if they aren't under control. I mean,
00:06:45.420mental institutions used to be horrible places where patients were warehoused under terrible
00:06:48.940conditions. They were often abused and they were subject to experiments even. In the 20th century,
00:06:53.340that did change, though. And in the developed world, institutions were reformed to become more
00:06:57.240treatment-oriented and with efforts to improve the standard of living for patients. When the
00:07:02.300deinstitutionalization movement took hold, though, and I blame kind of the one flew over the cuckoo's
00:07:07.600nest. It really started in the 70s and so on, people having this thought of how terrible it is
00:07:11.180to be in a mental institution. The goal of reformation of the institutions, though, changed.
00:07:16.340It went to one of elimination. And that movement was successful in that the populations of
00:07:21.100institutions have dropped and many have even closed. In the long term, though, it's becoming
00:07:25.120evident that the movement's been a failure. Many people found themselves on the streets that really
00:07:28.760don't belong there. We have a terrible homelessness and opioid addiction epidemic, and it's killing
00:07:33.600thousands right now. The solution to that crisis is going to be complicated and multifaceted.
00:07:38.920One important facet of that puzzle, though, is the number of homeless and addicted people with
00:07:42.200serious mental health disorders that never should have been on the street in the first place.
00:07:46.400In a proper institution, medication can be supervised and regulated for patients.
00:07:50.680In a street setting, many people with serious mental disorders are self-medicating with products they get from predatory street dealers.
00:07:56.200And this compounds the person's problems as they now have an untreated mental illness and an addiction to feed.
00:08:01.540Let's quit pretending the homeless person shambling around, pushing a shopping cart while talking to themselves, just needs a new apartment or a job.
00:08:07.660We won't hesitate to put a person who's physically injured in a hospital.
00:08:10.660We've got to stop being so squeamish about putting people with mental health disorders into proper care facilities as well.
00:08:16.320And yes, the difference is the person with a mental illness might lose personal choice,
00:08:19.920and I'm talking about secured facilities, but we don't have to like the necessity to accept it.
00:08:25.080Harm mitigation, it's a popular concept these days when it comes to addictions.
00:08:28.120Well, that term should be applied to people with mental health disorders as well.
00:08:31.240And the means of mitigation will be institutionalization for a lot of them.
00:08:35.320Existing mental health facilities are already overwhelmed.
00:08:38.260Conventional hospitals have mental health wings, but they're full,
00:08:40.540and they don't provide good or comfortable long-term care.
00:08:43.240They're meant to be transitional and patients are often discharged, not because they're healthy again, but because the space and resources are needed.
00:08:50.420Many people with mental health challenges have been housed in senior citizen care facilities as well because the units housing residents with dementia are secured and there's nowhere else to put people.
00:08:58.900This is unfair to the seniors, the staff, and of course the people with the mental health illnesses.
00:09:02.900And finally, many of those with serious mental health issues end up in our prison system.
00:09:06.960They're often abused there and they don't get the treatment they need.
00:09:09.940Let's accept that a number of people with mental illnesses just can't be treated,
00:09:13.580at least not at this time, and must be secured within an institution indefinitely.
00:09:17.740The facility doesn't need to be a place of punishment or harsh living.
00:09:21.040Facilities should be well-funded and comfortable as possible while allowing visits with loved ones
00:09:24.620and as much supervised public interaction as safely possible.
00:09:28.320I'm sure many families who have lost members to the streets because of mental illness challenges
00:09:31.720would have preferred it if the family member had been secured in a facility
00:09:34.200rather than exposed to the elements and lost on the streets.
00:09:38.340If patients truly can be stabilized and eased into society, that's the best outcome.
00:09:42.180It has to be accepted, though, that many can't or won't stick to their medication or they're untreatable,
00:09:46.380and they're going to have to remain insecure.
00:09:51.760Deinstitutionalization. It's a big one.
00:09:52.940It's a well-meaning but naive and failed policy.
00:09:56.460It's time to tackle the issue of serious mental illness with a mixture of harsh realism and compassion.
00:10:00.960That means expanding the capacity of our long-term secured mental health facilities and accepting they'll always be needed.
00:10:06.180for the sake of patients and society as a whole.
00:10:09.740That's what I wanted to talk about today
00:10:11.020when we're seeing so many of these terrible outcomes lately.
00:10:14.100All right, enough about the nuthouses.
00:10:16.000Let's talk to our news editor, Mr. Dave Naylor,
00:10:19.120and see what else is going on out there.
00:13:48.940We have people across the country writing for us.
00:13:51.340And this is where I remind everybody the reason we're doing that is because you guys have been
00:13:55.280subscribing. This is why independent media is blossoming. Not just ours, but other ones. But
00:13:59.400I'm not here to plug the other ones. I'm talking about the Western Standard. And thousands of you
00:14:03.580guys have subscribed. It's been fantastic. And we refuse to take tax dollars. So if you have
00:14:08.880subscribed already, I want to thank you. And if you haven't yet, guys, $10 a month, really. $99
00:14:13.360for a year. You get full, unfettered access to all of the columns, the news stories as they break,
00:14:18.840the watches. Melanie's been making some fantastic productions with her series,
00:14:22.760Linda Slobodian and her documentary. All of this stuff is thanks to people who have subscribed
00:14:26.440and our advertisers too, of course. But please get on there, westernstandard.news
00:14:30.960slash membership and take out a subscription so we can keep expanding and getting better at this
00:14:34.880and covering it because it's so important. You know, going back to some of the
00:14:38.900discussion, a very fair question out of Ashley Ellis, you know, on my opening round,
00:14:43.100who exactly is going to decide I have a mental illness? And yeah, it's not an easy question.
00:14:46.960And it shouldn't be taken lightly. When I'm talking about possibly putting somebody against their will into a mental health facility, that that's a very serious move to be done.
00:14:56.420But we do have some very serious examples. We're not talking about somebody who has some OCD, you know, anxiety or depression to a minor extent or things like that.
00:15:05.800There are people where it's pretty clear, as I said, when you see that person whose personal health is clearly at risk, they're living on the streets,
00:15:12.360They're getting exposed to the elements, exposed to crime, things like that.
00:15:17.160And they're clearly not grasping reality.
00:15:39.040And, you know, we get a lot of that when you say that with people
00:15:41.820who have committed some bad crimes. They're not criminally responsible because they were
00:15:45.260mentally unstable. Fair enough. I'm okay with that. But it doesn't mean they aren't dangerous
00:15:50.000necessarily. So, I mean, again, I guess, you know, Ashley, I'm just saying there's not an easy
00:15:54.940answer. You have to have a, hopefully, some sort of objective system to try and determine with
00:15:59.540people where there's most safe to themselves and for others to be out. Because that is the last
00:16:04.260resort. If they can be safely out, let's have them out. But the trend right now has been to
00:16:09.600try and get everybody out. And it's just not realistic. Not everybody, unfortunately, is that
00:16:13.760stable. And it's not doing them any favors. They're living in misery on the streets or in jail, as I
00:16:18.040said, or in regular conventional hospitals that aren't facilitated, you know, not well set up for
00:16:24.280long-term use. But no, there's no easy answers to things. But this whole trend of deinstitutionalization
00:16:32.460is really not a good one. It was well-meaning, but naive. And it's not doing favors to people.
00:16:38.940I mean, part of it was almost an over-belief, too, in how effective medications are, because they did find a lot of things, lithium, well, and a whole long list of antipsychotic medications that have really stabilized a lot of people.
00:16:52.180Prior to the medications, there was no stabilizing them.
00:16:54.740The problem is a lot of people who need those medications won't necessarily stay on them once they're on their own again.
00:17:01.640And those who can, great, but those who can't, the outcome, again, if they go off their meds, can be tragic for themselves or others.
00:17:08.680And that means some of those people have to be kept under secure supervision.
00:17:16.840In fact, these are people who are sick.
00:17:18.720I think we should be treating them as well as humanly possible.
00:17:21.820But we have to take the whole picture and the safety, again, of everybody, the patient and the public in general, into consideration when doing these things.
00:17:29.900And right now, again, it's just releasing them all the time.
00:22:46.280Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't think highly of Trudeau, and there's many, many things he can
00:22:50.920be critiqued for. I think there's a strong streak of authoritarianism within him that's of concern,
00:22:56.600but you sort of lose your case when you reach to the very extremes to try and describe somebody.
00:23:03.480Well, it's word inflation. I mean, if everybody's a fascist or a Nazi or a communist,
00:23:07.560then what does that mean when you encounter a real Nazi, fascist, or communist, right?
00:23:12.120So let's get to some clear examples. I think there's been dear leader worship ever since
00:23:15.880Donald Trump came onto the scene, at least in politics, since 2016. And I think it's
00:23:21.640abhorrent what happened on January the 6th, so 2021. And I think that showed who Donald Trump was.
00:23:28.680Nonetheless, even before that, I think there was evidence that here was a fellow who didn't really
00:23:33.000respect American institutions set up by Thomas Jefferson and others two and a half centuries ago
00:23:39.020or almost two and a half centuries ago. And so one has to be careful not to take sides,
00:23:44.500take your own side, so to speak, at face value and the language these days. So again, look,
00:23:50.520I think the Emergencies Act was a gross overreaction. It was a violation of civil rights
00:23:55.600and by the current federal government. There's no question about shutting the bank accounts and
00:24:01.540using the Emergencies Act to deal with blockades at the border, the trucker blockades at the
00:24:06.100border was a vast overreaction. And I don't agree with the blockades at the border. I didn't in
00:24:10.700February. I don't now. I mean, those of us on the right who are, you know, we could be considered
00:24:15.140smallest and conservative, and I don't mean this in a partisan sense. I mean, those again, who kind
00:24:19.080of hew to conservative ideals, you know, open markets, open trade, the rule of law, the importance
00:24:23.860of institutions, the importance of civil society, of little platoons, as Edmund Burke called them,
00:24:28.500You can't cheer on truckers at the border shutting down trade and commerce just because they're on your side and talking about freedom.
00:24:36.480If you also don't like it when indigenous folk do this, when environmentalists do this to pipelines, when other acts of the shutdown city cores.
00:24:46.660But I'm seeing increasingly on the right, some even think tank leaders will refer to the prime minister again as a communist or Nazi or Premier Kenney as that in Alberta.
00:24:54.920that is, that's inflationary language is the best way to put it. And it's not helpful. It's also not
00:25:01.680accurate. Look, again, I have huge concerns. I think the Emergencies Act was a hammer to deal
00:25:07.300with, you know, trade issues or border issues, border closure issues that obviously could have
00:25:12.760been dealt with and were dealt with through legislation at COOTS. So I think there's been
00:25:16.640a vast overreaction on all sides. And it doesn't help small C conservatives then to just throw
00:25:22.100away their brains or their tact or their prudence and join in kind of the crusade of overreacting
00:25:29.200or using hyped up language. I just don't think that helps. Well, yeah, and I understand frustration,
00:25:34.640but, you know, it pushes some people too. I had some, you know, Twitter's always where I like to
00:25:38.360sink into the lower depths of debate, but there's some good points. And there was an incident
00:25:42.500recently with a restaurant where the owner had posed, I guess, Justin Trudeau was doing some
00:25:46.380sort of PR thing there and he had pictures with Trudeau and he was swarmed, the restaurant was
00:25:50.760swarmed on social media. They took his Google reviews all the way down to, you know, 0.5 or
00:25:55.900something. And people went after that business. And I just, I said on Twitter, this is ugly to
00:26:02.100behold, guys. This isn't the right way to deal with it. You got a problem with Trudeau, fine,
00:26:05.400but lay off a business owner who had a prime minister visiting. And of course, they were all
00:26:08.880saying, well, look what happened with Polyev when he went to Steam Whistle. Okay, but two wrongs
00:26:12.940don't make a right. And that's kind of what the mentality some people are taking on. And that's
00:26:16.980just making it, as I said, two wrongs. We're not benefiting at all when we go that route.
00:26:20.760No. And again, I think it shreds the ability to have a reasonable debate or respond appropriately. And again, we don't like it. Those of us who, again, are considered on the right, and I think those are very wide general terms, but let's go with it.
00:26:35.720you know, and I did in my column for the sake of, you know, some some context, those on the right
00:26:41.760who don't like like it when some some businesses is boycotted because what they say something on
00:26:47.980Twitter, you know, or they host a prime minister like, you know, former prime minister Stephen
00:26:52.240Harper or something. Nobody likes it when when that happens to our side. So yes, I don't I don't
00:26:57.580think it's helpful to do it to the other side. I mean, there are egregious instances where you may
00:27:02.180decide not to work with business. I mean, maybe if they're engaged in slavery in some third world
00:27:07.920country, okay, let's boycott that business. But I mean, to jump on the bandwagon, or like you
00:27:14.940mentioned on Twitter, to attack a restaurant, I mean, this is nuts. I mean, let me give you an
00:27:19.900example from New York that happened, I think it was about a year and a half ago, where some
00:27:23.920restaurant that, I don't know, failed to properly do something on some, I think it was a Black Lives
00:27:30.740matter issue or something. It was a couple of patrons who happened to be black showed up at a
00:27:35.660New York restaurant. And I can't remember if they were asked to put on like proper attire or
00:27:39.720something. It was more upper class restaurant or whatever it was. Or maybe they refused seating
00:27:44.780because they didn't book in advance. I can't remember what it was, but it turned into a
00:27:47.620cause for BLM. And the poor restaurant owner, who was just trying to enforce some standards or,
00:27:52.440you know, book reservations in advance or whatever it was. I don't remember all these
00:27:55.440got attacked on Twitter. Same thing as you just mentioned. I mean, it was a vast overreaction.
00:28:00.040was unfair to the restaurant owner. But all of a sudden, people are becoming targets. It's a bit
00:28:04.260of a revolutionary sentiment, actually. And again, on the conservative side, we used to believe that
00:28:08.580reform mattered, that you take a gradualistic approach to change. It's the Edmund Burke
00:28:14.760approach. You don't overthrow your monarchy in 1789 like the French do. We don't do this in
00:28:19.220English-speaking countries. We modify things over time. And I think that's a much better approach.
00:28:24.300I mean, Canada was founded on a reaction to the revolution in 1776 in the United States.
00:28:30.300We have plenty of people who said, we don't really appreciate being chased up by, you
00:28:33.560know, and tarred and feathered in New York and Boston, and who ended up as refugees in
00:28:37.520what we now call Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada.
00:28:40.340I mean, so the history of Canada is a little more, I don't want to use the word moderate.
00:28:44.400That's a, you know, that's a ridiculous word.
00:28:46.080It doesn't mean anything these days, but a more measured, prudent approach to changing
00:28:52.100So, yeah, I think we've got some problems here.
00:28:54.300And it's not like we have to ignore the issue of freedom. That was the second column you referred to in the National Post that I wrote. We do have a strong history of freedom in this country. And I do have concerns, massive concerns that it's being eroded. The Emergencies Act was evidence of that. But then let's think smartly how to push back on this kind of stuff.
00:29:10.360and that's one of the reasons I'm setting up a think tank and others are helping me and others
00:29:14.960do this, is because I think there's ways to push back and we should push back. But let's not
00:29:19.200imitate the most egregious, extreme measures of the left. I just think that's a recipe for
00:29:25.440disaster. And in fact, you know, it saves the left from smashing into a brick wall on some of
00:29:30.660these issues that they should be held to account for. Yeah, well, and as you pointed out in that
00:29:35.340second piece, I wanted to talk briefly about that. You know, you're pointing out we have a history
00:29:38.580of freedom. We, as a people, have a respect and, you know, an enjoyment of it. And it is
00:29:43.900threatened. There's no doubt about that. It's been infringed upon. So we should be concerned
00:29:47.500and pushing back. But, you know, kind of tying these two together, just because it's an important
00:29:53.660issue doesn't mean you have to pull out all the stops. I mean, in your first piece, you did point
00:29:57.240out, despite some of the hyperbole, we do have democratic mechanisms to change government,
00:30:01.400even if it feels frustrating, even if it feels like it's not working at times.
00:30:05.400Another area where I got into it with a lot of people was when protesters were showing up outside of the mayor's house in Calgary at her private residence.
00:30:12.280I said, no, I mean, I'm on Gondek's case all the time.
00:30:21.920Look, you are not doing your cause any favors when you go out and do stuff like that any more than when the left goes into the house.
00:30:28.420You lose the ability to argue that nobody should show up at your place if you err at some point in the future, or someone argues you err at some point in the future.
00:30:35.780And again, if you're going to picket the mayor's home, then you can't really complain about Supreme Court justices being picketed in the United States or here one day, or other politicians.
00:30:43.980Again, this is a very dangerous road to tread.
00:30:46.640On the freedom issue, again, look, I have great concerns about the erosion of freedom in Canada, which is why I wrote the second column.
00:30:52.880And so in the first column in the Financial Post, I picked on the right, said stop acting like the left.
00:30:58.020In the second column, I said, for those of you who are more liberal, progressive, woke, left-wing, whatever you want to call yourselves, who argue, you know, freedom is just a dog whistle, it doesn't have a tradition in Canada, wrong, it does.
00:31:09.820We were one of the first countries in the world, pre-Confederation, to abolish slavery.
00:31:14.200Governor James Sinco worked towards that end, starting in 1791.
00:31:17.820It was practically abolished by 1820, before the British Empire even abolished it, long before the Americans abolished slavery.
00:31:23.820We have a tradition of freedom from John Diefenbaker, the Bill of Rights that he in
00:31:28.060Parliament passed in 1960, which was an important milestone. And he restored the right to vote to
00:31:33.500Indigenous Canadians. That was important. Pierre Trudeau, who normally I would disagree with in
00:31:38.880almost everything, especially economically. Pierre Trudeau, for all his faults, understood
00:31:43.300that civil rights, rights belong to individuals first. They are not dispensed to you by government.
00:31:48.920that's an important thing to remind his son of these days and others on the left or progressives
00:31:54.580or woke. We do have a tradition of freedom. Rights begin with the individual. And Pierre Trudeau was
00:31:59.640no fan of identity politics. He hated nationalism in Quebec. He didn't like the idea that a small
00:32:05.140collective, you know, like Quebec nationalists or a large collective like Quebec nationalists
00:32:09.460in Quebec grew over a small collective English speakers. He hated that. He was in favor of
00:32:14.280individual rights. And he was eloquent in his defense of individual freedom, although I would
00:32:19.100disagree with him on some other issues. So we have a tradition of freedom in this country,
00:32:24.340whether it's James Sinco, whether it's Wilfred Lorre, who I mentioned in my column, or even
00:32:28.740Pierre Trudeau on some issues, that needs to be remembered as well. But I would urge my colleagues,
00:32:34.600so to speak, in the think tank world or in journalism and elsewhere, not to use hyperbole.
00:32:39.600Again, if everybody's a Nazi or a communist or a fascist, then nobody's paying attention when a real version of that comes along.
00:32:50.260We'll be able to call it out when we can.
00:32:52.660I'm not sure if you're getting me clearly.
00:32:53.900I think we're having a few connection issues here, but we're hearing you quite well.
00:44:26.740And you have no choice because you're forced to deal with these guys.
00:44:29.860when you go through the airport. These are big problems. And this is what needs to be exposed.
00:44:33.820Paradox, you're saying chances are it was a sole source contract. Oh, you bet it was. You're
00:44:37.000darn right it was. And, you know, they open things up to bidding, of course. And suddenly,
00:44:45.080you know, you might start getting efficiency or a company, they'll say, hey, we'll actually
00:44:48.440protect it. So actually, I'm going further in the story. And I see that this was, hey, guess what?
00:44:53.320A company out of Quebec, there's a shocker. Yeah. And they got $68.3 million to run those
00:44:59.680tests at Trudeau International Airport. A lovely name for an airport, isn't it? And they're using
00:45:07.000that basically for data mining so that they can spam you with other commercial products. Welcome
00:45:12.260to Canada and your government serving you. All right. I've ranted enough. Hopefully the connection
00:45:19.220seems to be stabilized. We've got our guest in. This is the first time he's been here in person
00:45:22.760in studio, though he's been working in Calgary with us for quite some time now. And it's Jonathan
00:45:27.180Bradley. He's been writing. Boy, I looked up your past stories. You've already got a hundred and
00:45:32.240some stories or more archived with the Western Standard. I was trying to see what you've been
00:45:35.660on. You're a prolific writer. I think 200 something, but yeah. So I appreciate you coming
00:45:42.320in so we can chat. You know, we like talking about those. You did something that's a little
00:45:45.720different last weekend. I'll start with that one right off the bat. You went to, I believe it was
00:45:51.120a Twisted Element. Yeah, it was a Twisted Element. Okay. So just so people know, Twisted Element is a
00:45:55.180a gay bar in calgary it's a well-established one and and uh you attended a a family drag event yes
00:46:02.140there were children as young as two watching these drag performers get up dance around
00:46:07.020one drag queen stripped off her top clothes as she was performing it was rather disturbing to watch
00:46:12.460um i've just really felt uncomfortable at times that's uh you know unfortunate i mean it's it's
00:46:18.540one thing to have a drag event where you've got trans people or drag people around even if there's
00:46:23.420There's kids there. I mean, I don't think that's necessarily bad, but when it's a drag show, there's a degree of sexualizing. It's more of a stripper mentality or burlesque anyways and things like that, which I don't think, you know, we should be bringing young kids to a straight burlesque show either.
00:46:37.460absolutely and it was disturbing to watch uh these performers um some of them were even like doing
00:46:42.780some rather sexualized dance moves there was one point as well where i was kind of disturbed where
00:46:47.060the intermission was a drag story time and it was one of the drag king read the kids this book about
00:46:53.640this i think it was like a three or four year old child who ended up transitioning and three and
00:46:58.000four year old children like sometimes think they're superheroes or are princesses so making
00:47:03.940a gender transition like that is rather severe. Yeah. I mean, just, just let them be kids. You
00:47:08.300know, I mean, I, I've always been, well, not always, I had to grow up. I mean, I, uh, but I
00:47:13.480mean, I, I'm very tolerant. Uh, if person's trans, great, identify how you will, if that's what makes
00:47:17.660you happy, you know, gay, lesbian, I think your business, uh, by it's, I don't care if you're an
00:47:23.180adult and everybody's consenting, but there's that first part, the adult. And now it just seems we've
00:47:27.880found all the rights and brought them to a great spot, but there's the activist element that just
00:48:25.100I'm going to paraphrase it and probably ruin it,
00:48:27.340But in the sense of, you know, you wouldn't look at a run-of-the-mill stripper or porn star spinning around a pole as an example of a good woman.
00:48:35.920Why would you look at the ones who are performing at some of these shows as necessarily good examples for children of trans people?
00:48:41.940Even if a person's coming up trans, it doesn't mean they necessarily want to be a stripper and things like that.
00:48:46.980But they just seem to keep pushing that limit, and it's frustrating.
00:50:18.680I mean, you know, it was a big action.
00:50:20.820were a lot of staff on hand, you know, we're to believe they only had eight hour days throughout
00:50:25.920the course of that entire thing. Yeah. And it was funny saying that they
00:50:29.500said, oh, $527 in overtime pay. They did say in the ATIP request that they spent, it was
00:50:35.920$1.6 million on transportation, which seems reasonable given that all sorts of RCMP officers
00:50:42.460came in. And I think they spent something like $13,000 on accommodations, which could
00:50:47.460seem practical. And then it was like 6,000 on like food, which kind of seems a little low. But
00:50:52.380I mean, then again, these were just early government figures. But it was definitely
00:50:55.080interesting seeing that the RCMP had this information was willing to give it out to me.
00:50:59.460Yeah. And there were some other things I think that came up, though. There were some like buffets
00:51:03.120that they attended and things that were pretty expensive that got expensive. You got a lot of
00:51:06.420people traveling, those can add up. It just seems a little odd, though, when you're that many people
00:51:15.760there just isn't that much overtime. I got a feeling the compensation, because you're asking
00:51:19.120a lot for someone to travel across the country and spend a couple of weeks somewhere, they probably
00:51:22.880called it something else in the compensation and, you know, a travel bonus or extreme circumstance,
00:51:27.840or I have no idea what they'd label it. Another story I did recently that your listeners might
00:51:31.680be interested to know was I was going through some government expense reports from the Alberta
00:51:35.840government. And I found that Alberta UCP leadership candidate Lila here spent more than $1,000 on
00:51:41.600pies for a function she said this function was uh for hospitality purposes but it was rather
00:51:46.640interesting seeing that she spent more than a thousand dollars on pies for an event yeah that's
00:51:51.920it's a good chunk of pies uh going on and uh hospitality being you know this isn't the
00:51:59.040government's role to expense these sorts of things and if it's a party thing which i think this one
00:52:03.440wasn't but i mean she should be coming out of her constituency's pocket not uh the government's one
00:52:08.160with the expense, some of the most bizarre things.
00:52:10.400Yep. Like I was digging through some other candidates expense reports just to see if
00:52:13.840anyone had anything else that was rather large. Pretty much everyone else was clean. You know,
00:52:18.320there was like a few here and there where someone was like, oh, I spent a few hundred dollars
00:52:21.280for my staff on coffee and tea, or I've spent a few hundred dollars on candy for this event.
00:52:26.000But if you ever want to have like see your jaw drop, definitely go through some expense reports,
00:52:30.880you'll find some rather shocking findings.
00:52:32.480hey well yeah things to watch you know and this uh comes up i guess you know over the course of
00:52:38.660a leadership race that's going on right now um and uh basically i mean the other candidates
00:52:46.140some of the advantages of ones like i guess brian gene and daniel smith who weren't in office very
00:52:50.480long so they won't have records that somebody could pick right presumably they haven't done
00:52:53.620anything wrong anyways but you didn't find anything that untoward from the rest of them
00:52:56.360no nothing really that's good i mean it's good you got public disclosure of these expenses because
00:53:00.740i mean that's part of what you know it's important gets them i mean we uh lost a municipal politician
00:53:06.260in calgary because he ridiculously expensed a bunch of things and it was to the point of him
00:53:10.340getting charged for it i believe in the end so uh so what else you've been working on there
00:53:15.140well right now i've been working on a whole bunch of stories uh i'm going to be speaking with a
00:53:20.180saskatoon father uh probably today or tomorrow his son was refused health care because uh the
00:53:26.980the dad wouldn't allow the son to take a PCR test to get into the facility.
00:53:31.260I saw it on Twitter and I followed up with the person who posted it and we're
00:53:35.420going to be having a conversation soon.
00:53:37.200Good. Yeah. And I see other things. So we got an advocacy group.
00:53:40.360They're looking for testimonies for a trial. I mean, this is a, well,
00:53:44.720they're saying COVID crimes against humanity.
00:53:46.640There's a pretty loaded premise going on.
00:53:49.460Yes. That's the Canadian COVID Care Alliance.
00:53:51.520One of their board members, Philip Oldfield, I believe that's his name, I don't have it in front of me, he said that he wants to file this lawsuit with the International Criminal Court to try and hold provincial governments and the Canadian government accountable for alleged crimes against humanity.
00:54:10.400He said he was looking for people who had experienced serious harm or injury or just negative side effects from, like, vaccine mandates or COVID restrictions, things like that.
00:54:23.960And, yeah, it's on their website, so you can definitely check it out if you're interested.
00:56:26.240Oh, of course. We definitely saw serious violations of medical freedom in the last year
00:56:30.480with vaccine passports and vaccine mandates. It's rather shocking to see that people would
00:56:35.360be done at entry to a restaurant or a movie theater because they wouldn't take vaccines.
00:56:39.760So what else we got here? The former Supreme Court justice. This has been a big one. We
00:56:43.360haven't written a lot on it because sports is kind of a bit of our fringe, but it's big news
00:56:46.560is that that Hockey Canada review that's going on right now. And it looks like they're pulling
00:56:52.240out some heavy guns at least to try and review this thing and try and sort this mess up.
00:56:55.520Yes, former Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell will be leading the independent review and Hockey
00:57:00.800Canada said that Cromwell will be looking at their structures and systems. They want to get their
00:57:06.160structures and systems up to the caliber of similar national sport organizations and he's
00:57:12.000going to be assisted by these two lawyers, I can't remember from the law firm, that they're going to
00:57:15.120help with and all this stems from Hockey Canada with all the sex scandals and the sexual assault
00:57:19.520cover-ups. Yeah, well, we've got a lot of stories on the go. Let's talk a little health care for a
00:57:26.900moment here. That was an Ontario story, but we're seeing this breaking out everywhere. I mean,
00:57:31.380this was on a poll that showed seven in 10 Ontario nurses felt they were unable to provide
00:57:35.700adequate care. Yep. They talked about in the study how many nurses were feeling burned out
00:57:41.480or were missing meals to, you know, fulfill extra responsibilities, things like that.
00:57:48.460My best friend actually is a registered nurse at SickKids Hospital, and she was telling me all about how they've been really dealing with a whole lot of pressure lately because of the staff shortages, since many Ontario hospitals have vaccine mandates in place.
01:00:10.760So, I mean, you know, we've got a lot going on that's keeping us from getting good qualified
01:00:15.480people coming in to help serve these staffing shortages right now.
01:00:18.760I mean, I'm from Ontario, and we're well known for our long hospital wait times.
01:00:22.280I haven't been inside a hospital in Alberta yet, hopefully it won't have to be. But yeah,
01:00:26.760in Ontario, some of the wait times are really bad.
01:00:28.920Yeah, young and healthy. I mean, we always want to avoid a hospital whenever possible,
01:00:32.440you know, nobody really ends up there if they wanted to. But I mean, that's something I think
01:00:37.400it's always a top story in every provincial election always the top issue anyways if they
01:00:41.800pull healthcare is always in the top two and they're going to have to deal with that these
01:00:47.240leadership candidates are going to have to deal with it and they're going to have to deal with
01:00:50.040it going into the general election i mean the the next alberto election is coming up in april
01:00:56.120and we'll find it we'll see who the next premier is and i mean some of the candidates have really
01:00:59.960interesting proposals with uh healthcare like daniel smith wants to create health spending
01:01:04.040accounts and give $300 to everyone who, every Albertan to use on things like psychology,
01:01:09.480dentistry, chiropractic. I think that could be a worthwhile idea and it might allow her to pick
01:01:15.520up some momentum and maybe even win. With some people, I mean, some of the fear too is, I mean,
01:01:20.040people have built this, this is a sacred cow out of the healthcare system. And I can tell you right
01:01:25.560now, I know how, you know, the campaigning works and Rachel Notley and the others are going to be
01:01:28.820saying, you know, assuming say Smith won, well, she'll, they'll be saying it about no matter who
01:01:33.460wins as long as they're conserved they're going to say they're going to tear down and americanize
01:01:37.440the canadian system and you're going to die if you don't have a high enough credit limit and
01:01:41.120you'll you'll have to sew up your own wounds and and you know set your own leg and and you know
01:01:46.700we know that that rhetoric's coming but at least uh you know it doesn't always have to be effective
01:01:51.180i i'm kind of impressed in seeing somebody challenging it uh even if you know you're
01:01:55.200going to get the blowback i think it's time they do because they're going to get the blowback no
01:01:57.980matter what they say yeah like regardless uh whoever wins the alberta ndp will definitely
01:02:02.280They portray the winner as some evil, racist, bigoted monster, whether that be even, whether that be Daniel Smith or Travis Taves or even someone like Rajansani, who's a person of color.
01:02:14.820Yeah, they only have so many lines, it seems, in opposition.
01:02:18.700As we watch this develop, I just hope, I want to see from some of the other candidates in this race, because, you know, we've both been watching it.