Western Standard - Triggered： Where are Alberta’s ICU beds？

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Hey, it's January 11th, 2022.

00:00:41.480 Welcome to Triggered.

00:00:42.760 I'm Corey Morgan.

00:00:43.700 This show is going to be coming to you daily every morning at 1130 a.m.

00:00:48.220 Mountain Standard Time, or at least Monday to Friday.

00:00:50.540 We're going to be covering the issues the mainstream media won't

00:00:52.940 and talking about the things they don't.

00:00:54.680 I mean, that's the great thing about the Western Standard.

00:00:56.400 This is a new way for us to discuss the stories we're covering

00:00:59.480 get some great guests on and have some interaction and in again talking about things that the others

00:01:05.400 won't comments are welcome this is part of the thing about being live i like them i won't

00:01:09.280 necessarily respond to every one of them but i do try to bring them in i can put them forward

00:01:13.080 to the guests when i can we just of course want to keep it civil you can discuss with each other

00:01:16.560 in the comment scroll as well uh we are on rumble and it's a popular spot we're still working out

00:01:21.260 the tech issue so i can see the rumble comments so i'm not ignoring if you're commenting on rumble

00:01:24.980 i just can't see them yet and i will look at them later uh for what that's worth i just won't catch

00:01:29.460 them right on the show. Today's guests are going to be Ernie Sue of the Alberta Hospitality

00:01:34.980 Association. He's going to talk about of course the challenges for restaurants, bars, everything

00:01:40.660 that's been going on with the pandemic restrictions, supply chain issues, I mean all of this together.

00:01:45.780 They're just having a terribly hard time and Ernie's going to be able to expand on that and

00:01:50.980 hopefully point out some things we can do to ease those problems. Then I'm going to have a community

00:01:54.580 advocate Jacob McGregor come on. Jacob ran in Ward 1 in the last election. He's a young man

00:02:00.420 and he wrote a column for us recently on universal basic income and he doesn't want it. He's a young

00:02:07.840 man with ambition who's saying, hey, you know, this might be well-intentioned, but it's not

00:02:12.620 where we need to go. It's not what I want as a young man. I do need some help as I go forward

00:02:16.460 in life, but not that way. So it'll be a great chat with both of them. Now, before I get to my

00:02:20.640 rant. I'll get to a rant and I'm going to check in with the newsroom after that. We're going to

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00:03:29.640 transactions quickly and safely while still being in control of your own Bitcoin. So the show's name

00:03:35.860 is triggered. I trigger other people all the time. That's nothing new. I get triggered all the time

00:03:40.480 and that's what I go on about. So what's got me triggered today? Alberta's ICU beds. I mean,

00:03:46.240 the omicron case numbers are mounting sort of the panicked calls for lockdowns well the symptoms of

00:03:51.600 omicron appear to be little more than those of the common cold the sheer volume of cases has

00:03:55.680 people concerned due to the pathetically low hospital capacities we have here in alberta

00:04:00.000 currently there's 72 people in alberta icus due to covet 19. there's 635 in hospital with covet not

00:04:08.000 necessarily due to it and despite evidence indicating that typically half of the hospitalizations

00:04:12.320 in canada being attributed to covet aren't actually due to covet infections health officials

00:04:17.840 seem to appear reticent to correct those numbers for some reason even ontario's chief medical

00:04:22.160 officer he admitted that it's likely near 60 of the admissions admit you know that have been listed

00:04:28.400 as coveted related aren't actually coveted related he vowed to correct the record but that was weeks

00:04:32.800 ago and so far there's been no corrections in alberta dr dina hinshaw has been questioned on

00:04:37.440 this and she admitted they don't really know who's been admitted because of COVID or people who just

00:04:43.440 happen to test positive with it after having been admitted. Why is this so hard to determine?

00:04:48.480 Anybody who's been admitted into a hospital emergency room knows damn well they take

00:04:53.440 meticulous records. I mean what's that bored looking duty nurse behind you know that glass 1.00

00:04:58.160 window actually typing as she monotonously asks questions while you bleed out 1.00

00:05:03.840 answering them in hopes of being admitted for the roofing nail protruding from your forehead.

00:05:08.720 I mean, assuming you don't need immediate emergency treatment upon admission to a hospital,

00:05:12.320 the first thing they're going to do is test you for COVID. If indeed you test positive,

00:05:16.220 you're going to be added to the list of people hospitalized with COVID, despite that roofing

00:05:20.120 nail being what you actually were inspired to come in with in the first place. Now, this terribly

00:05:24.300 skews the numbers. It's becoming clear that tens of thousands of us are walking around with the

00:05:28.460 Omicron variant right now, and we don't even know it. That's how weak this variant thankfully is.

00:05:33.880 I mean, people still are getting injured due to other reasons, however.

00:05:36.900 And those COVID tests make it appear that there's a wave of hospitalizations due to the virus when there aren't.

00:05:42.980 Still, even if it's only a tiny fraction of people who do need treatment for an infection with that variant,

00:05:47.300 and Delta is still out there too, we do have to be concerned.

00:05:50.620 And when we're talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of new infections,

00:05:53.600 this could put pressure on our health system.

00:05:55.420 Okay, that's fair enough.

00:05:56.200 So that brings us back to the ICU and hospital capacity issues again.

00:06:00.840 We're nearly two years into this pandemic, and if we learn nothing, we keep talking about the

00:06:05.140 pandemic becoming endemic. You know, that means we'll go back to living normally and just moving

00:06:08.960 on and dealing with it, with the virus being among us, and we'll just have to cope with it.

00:06:13.040 But in order to do so, we got to make sure our medical facilities are ready and able to withstand

00:06:16.480 these waves of infection as they come and go. Now, right now, we have fewer than 100 people in ICU

00:06:22.080 with a province of 4.3 million citizens, and apparently it's threatening to crush the system

00:06:26.660 again. What the hell's happening out there? I mean, here's some comparisons though. In the

00:06:31.340 United States, there's roughly one bed per 4,100 people, one ICU bed. In Canada, there's one per

00:06:37.840 6,000. That's a huge difference, a very significant difference, and it makes a big difference in what

00:06:43.360 we can handle and what we can't when it comes to such acute care. When it comes to regular hospital

00:06:48.000 beds, Canada fares no better. There's a list which ranks all the developed nations. We're 36th

00:06:53.140 with 2.5 hospital beds per thousand citizens.

00:06:56.580 Number one is Japan with 13 beds per thousand.

00:06:59.240 I mean, look at the spread, the difference. 1.00

00:07:02.080 Now, we need to stop looking at these panicked

00:07:03.760 and clearly ineffectual lockdowns and restrictions

00:07:05.880 and start asking frank questions 0.94

00:07:07.380 about why our system sucks this badly.

00:07:09.560 Our hospitals were sitting around 96% capacity

00:07:12.180 even before we'd ever heard of COVID-19.

00:07:15.020 It doesn't take a lot to bring a system like that to its knees.

00:07:18.160 Now, the governments can be forgiven

00:07:19.060 for not being able to change that

00:07:20.060 during the first six months of the pandemic.

00:07:21.500 They can't move on a dime.

00:07:22.600 we didn't know what was happening. But we can't forgive them for doing nothing during the subsequent

00:07:25.960 18 months. I mean, we've been talking, talking, talking for 18 months in a pandemic, and apparently

00:07:31.520 our capacity is as bad or possibly lower than it was when this thing started. What's going on? Why

00:07:36.700 can't we change it? Why can't we get more beds? Why can't we get more capacity? Is it the rigid

00:07:41.560 socialized system? Is the unions in the way? Is the way the infrastructure is and everything's

00:07:45.940 centralized in hospitals? I don't know. We got to start that discussion. It sure as hell isn't for

00:07:50.620 lack of money because we've been borrowing and spending like crazy. Now it's time to gore that

00:07:54.900 sacred cow of Canada's failing health care system, and it's failing, and start examining it with a

00:07:59.600 critical eye. I mean, clearly vaccinations alone aren't going to stop the spread. Well, it doesn't

00:08:03.120 stop the spread. It reduces the symptoms of COVID-19. So we've got to look at how we're going

00:08:07.020 to treat people who are seriously impacted with it, and that means health care facilities.

00:08:11.080 We're two years into this nightmare. Governments are still running around like decapitated chickens

00:08:14.520 every time an infection starts to surge. There's no excuse for this. We need to set the goal of

00:08:19.780 increasing hospital capacity and find a way to do it no matter how it might shatter some people's

00:08:24.020 illusions with Canada's health care system. Otherwise, we're never going to return to

00:08:28.340 normal living. Okay, so that's what's got me triggered today. Now, I'm going to check in

00:08:34.980 with our news editor, Dave Naylor, and see what other news items are topping the list right now

00:08:40.680 and what else is going to get me triggered for the afternoon. How are you doing, Dave,

00:08:43.620 and welcome back to Calgary. I'm doing great, Corey. I'm not sure why I heard all this complaining

00:08:49.060 about weather while I was gone. It's beautiful here. Yes, you did have the magic timing to avoid

00:08:55.880 the deep freeze and get here for the slush bowl. So it probably feels a lot like that west coast

00:09:00.440 weather you were enjoying before you got back here. Yeah, my timing was perfect. I left just

00:09:07.300 before the minus 30 hit and got back when minus 30 left. So couldn't have planned it any better.

00:09:13.080 Right on. So what has been sitting on your desk greeting you? What stories are topping the scroll

00:09:18.700 in the newsroom today we've got a very emotional story at the top of our website right now

00:09:25.000 Corey about a Saskatchewan father who has basically kidnapped his seven-year-old daughter

00:09:31.100 because the the ex-wife wants to to give him the give the daughter the COVID vaccine

00:09:37.100 and now he's been hiding he's living on the run so a really emotional story about what a father

00:09:44.140 the lengths a father will go to to uh to try and keep his daughter from having the vaccine

00:09:49.540 so that's uh that's on the top of the website right now uh it's been a really busy morning

00:09:55.560 uh cory you remember the uh the story that broke around christmas where it was revealed that

00:10:01.580 the government was uh was tracking 33 million canadian cell phones uh and using them to monitor

00:10:08.420 their movements during the uh the pandemic nobody was told about this of course nobody knew a thing

00:10:13.760 So the opposition has banded together and they've been able to get the whole situation going to the Ethics Committee.

00:10:21.160 So we're going to hear some reasoning behind the public health agency and what they were doing, snooping on 33 million of us.

00:10:31.520 Also happening today in Quebec, the province's chief health czar has resigned after 12 years.

00:10:41.700 He had a controversial reign during the COVID pandemic in Quebec.

00:10:46.280 And as you know, Corey, they're locked down tighter than a drum out there.

00:10:50.860 So it'll be interesting to see what Premier Legault says at his press conference this afternoon.

00:10:57.640 What else is on our list?

00:11:00.320 Banks, if you're fed up of paying service charges to banks,

00:11:03.820 it looks like they're finally going to be starting to pay a bit more of their share in taxes.

00:11:09.360 Banking industry representatives said, hey, it's no big deal.

00:11:13.680 We're looking at maybe an extra $3 billion in taxes, and we earned $73 billion.

00:11:19.060 So, you know, just a drop in the bucket for banks.

00:11:24.840 And Abbotsford, the first claim has been filed for a lawsuit against the city of Abbotsford

00:11:32.100 and the province of BC for basically not giving people enough warning.

00:11:37.000 Residents just across the border in Washington state, they got two days warning that this flood was coming.

00:11:43.580 No such luck for the people in BC, so they filed a class action there.

00:11:50.360 And the cute story, I guess, if you want to call it that, of the morning, Corey, is condom sales around the world have fallen flat.

00:11:59.280 people are not having sex during the pandemic apparently and the world's largest manufacturer

00:12:06.220 of condoms says their business is down 50 so they're going to change from making condoms to

00:12:12.120 making rubber gloves so that's uh that's what's on the website this morning cory being a busy uh

00:12:18.560 being a busy morning and uh lots of stuff coming this afternoon we'll keep an eye on

00:12:23.780 Alberta COVID figures again. We had a record yesterday, I think it was 5,200. And we had

00:12:31.280 a good chunk of change of more people in hospitals. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. And that's

00:12:37.380 just goes to what you were talking about, Corey, with ICU levels. So another good day, another busy

00:12:42.420 day here in the newsroom. Great. Well, thanks for checking in with us, Dave. And for people that go

00:12:47.700 to westernstandardonline.com to see the stories Dave was talking about that they've already been

00:12:52.540 written and uh they're going to be following up with uh particularly that condom one i want to

00:12:56.960 know is it a matter of people stopped having sex or maybe they just stopped using condoms i mean 0.66

00:13:01.180 we might see a baby boom coming up here pretty soon they've just given up you know they're sick

00:13:05.760 of masking and they're sick of washing their hands and everything else it's just one part of their 0.98

00:13:10.440 body where the the health administrators can't get into your bed and find out that you didn't

00:13:14.520 actually cover maybe it's an act of rebellion it could be it could be but uh you know people have

00:13:20.880 been staying home all over the world, right? People haven't been going out. They haven't

00:13:24.200 been going to clubs. So I think that's probably more a case of that people are having less sex.

00:13:31.920 Well, and that is just sad all around. I mean, we're having a social consequence of this whole

00:13:36.560 pandemic nightmare as it is. I mean, one of the most free and blessed activities we've had

00:13:41.000 historically in humanity has been that. And for us to be giving it up is tragic indeed.

00:13:46.260 exactly all right thanks dave i'll uh talk to you a little later then thanks gory right on

00:13:53.880 so yeah that's what we've got happening in the newsroom today uh and again things as they break

00:14:00.880 and such uh as dave said there's going to be the tuesday updates from uh the the alberta government

00:14:06.660 and the medical officers uh yeah we got chronicles cartoon there that's a good one he gives these

00:14:11.740 cartoons to us now and then uh you know why not why can't we identify as vaccinated and say that's

00:14:17.320 enough and we can identify as everything else and apparently that's enough to convince authorities

00:14:21.960 on things sometimes um vaccinated why not i see carrie ann uh boy you know carrie ann i'm gonna

00:14:28.620 leave that hyphenated the name there well i'll give it a try uh gelsis canes i think the canes

00:14:35.200 part looks easy either way carrie ann was asking uh you know if we can get a link for the video

00:14:39.600 montage from yesterday, all of the promises that the vaccination was going to end the pandemic.

00:14:47.400 I'll see if I can find that later. Follow me on Twitter at CoryMorgan.com or at Cory B. Morgan,

00:14:52.760 things like that. I'll tweet it out. It wasn't us who made it, but it's a great montage. And for

00:14:56.860 those who didn't see it, it just listed through all of those public figures from Bill Gates to

00:15:01.940 President Biden and others

00:15:04.040 basically

00:15:06.280 saying that transmission

00:15:07.840 will be ended through vaccination.

00:15:10.480 And we've seen that that isn't the case.

00:15:11.920 I'm not anti-vaxxed by any means. We get enough fights

00:15:14.100 with my commenters over that as it goes.

00:15:16.100 I do believe vaccination is a good idea.

00:15:18.880 Completely against forced vaccination.

00:15:20.500 Separate issue altogether.

00:15:22.180 But we're stepping beyond

00:15:24.080 that myth that it stops transmission. It doesn't.

00:15:26.420 And I'm forcing those people to eat their words

00:15:28.020 a little bit. They said it was going to stop transmission.

00:15:30.100 They sold it based on that. Obviously,

00:15:31.760 it's not the case, and I wish they would walk it back, but instead they're almost pretending that

00:15:34.880 they never said that. No, they said it, and we're going to remind them of it. Should be coming up,

00:15:40.940 ooh, Jamie Buchan says the condom market is softening. These condom stories always leave

00:15:46.060 so much room to make jokes about. I mean, there could be an underlying serious issue,

00:15:52.500 but there's also a lot of things we can laugh at. God, we need a few laughs these days, don't we?

00:15:57.160 Everything's been too bloody serious. I mean, I rant and rave all the time, but for those familiar

00:16:00.580 with me. I like my dark humor as well. So I'm going to go quickly. Ernie's coming up in four

00:16:08.760 or five minutes. I'm going to cover our sponsor, another one of them anyways. And you know,

00:16:13.060 one of the nice things with us being independent media, we rely on you guys taking out memberships

00:16:17.360 at WesternStandardOnline.com, you know, subscribing. And also we have advertisers

00:16:22.840 and they reflect kind of our following and viewers. So the Canada Shooting Sports Association.

00:16:29.060 these guys have been a sponsor of ours

00:16:31.560 I mean their name kind of says it all

00:16:32.920 they're an association of people who

00:16:35.240 participate in shooting sports

00:16:36.940 and their website is

00:16:38.720 cssa-cila.org

00:16:42.180 a bit of a mouthful

00:16:43.200 but if you google Canada

00:16:44.620 shooting sports association you'll find them

00:16:47.100 and they've got legal challenges out right now

00:16:49.180 on behalf of firearms owners

00:16:50.460 they're standing up for you because

00:16:52.120 you're having your property rights taken away

00:16:54.840 you are getting infringed upon

00:16:56.840 the liberal government wants to take away

00:16:58.700 your ability to responsibly and safely enjoy firearms they're slowly but surely you know

00:17:03.480 getting them out of your hands and we need to push back so these guys are doing so plus they've got a

00:17:07.860 lot of other resources just on good shooting sports you know proper practices like any other

00:17:11.960 association of hobbyists or people who get together on something then they're protecting

00:17:15.880 your right to collect or own or hunt or use firearms so check them out the canada shooting

00:17:21.580 sports association and take out a membership with them you know they're helping you so you can keep

00:17:26.540 possessing and owning your firearms

00:17:29.180 as you should be allowed.

00:17:31.300 I was just at the Albertan

00:17:32.380 true, that's what's called

00:17:35.340 a teaser story when it comes to

00:17:37.320 the condom thing. Yes, yes.

00:17:41.400 I don't know if it's that much of a tease,

00:17:43.480 but I mean, yeah, what a bizarre world, you know,

00:17:44.980 and things we've got going on. And one of the things I'll be talking

00:17:47.340 with Ernie Sue when we get him on here

00:17:49.120 is how supply chains have been

00:17:51.280 impacting things and affecting things.

00:17:53.400 I mean, we've got all sorts of

00:17:54.780 consumer products, food items, and things that are getting hard to find all of a sudden. And

00:18:02.860 they're unpredictable. We don't know what's going to show up one week or another. We have a story,

00:18:08.600 Dave didn't touch upon that with the newsroom check-in actually, about we've got thousands

00:18:13.280 of truckers now who have chosen not to get vaccinated and the hammer is coming down.

00:18:17.400 This is in North America. They won't be able to cross the border into Canada. That deadline's

00:18:23.280 coming up. Boy, I had to remember the story. I believe it's within just a few days. And now

00:18:28.800 these truckers won't be able to get into Canada. Now, with our already difficult supply chain

00:18:36.100 issues, with our difficulty in costs for food items, particularly things that get trucked up

00:18:40.700 from the south, I mean, you know, we're not getting that romaine grown locally when we have

00:18:45.680 our Caesar salad in January. We now take thousands of truckers out of the mix and their ability to

00:18:51.560 bring it up, I'm afraid we're probably going to be in for yet even more shortages of some items

00:18:57.640 and cost hikes. It's just a dire outlook all around. But that ties in a bit with, I'm going

00:19:03.680 to talk to some items with Ernie Sue about because he's in the hospitality sector and he knows as

00:19:08.180 well as I do from when I used to own a pub, it's a narrow margin business. And then when your inputs

00:19:13.120 go up, boy, it makes it a heck of a lot harder to get by, especially if you've got insecure

00:19:17.600 supply. So let's bring Ernie in and see what's going on out there. Hey, Ernie, how you doing?

00:19:21.980 How are you, Corey? Good, good. So yeah, you're the president, just to make sure I've introduced

00:19:27.380 you earlier to, you're the president of the Alberta Hospitality Association, and you're

00:19:30.400 the owner of Trolley 5 in Calgary, right? That is correct, yes, yes. Yeah, so I appreciate you

00:19:37.820 coming on. As I've mentioned as well, I mean, I owned a bar for a few years there. We managed to

00:19:42.560 make money, but boy, it's a workout to make money doing it. And I know your time is precious. So

00:19:47.920 getting you on for a little while to talk to us is really appreciated. Well, thanks for having me on

00:19:52.300 and thinking about our association. Yeah, well, it's important, you know, and I mean, I see it.

00:19:59.340 It's funny. I come at things with a different perspective now that I've been in that industry.

00:20:03.380 And when I go to a restaurant and I have to wait extra long to get seated and it takes a while to

00:20:07.440 get there and perhaps some menu items aren't available, I have to admit prior to owning a

00:20:11.240 place. I might not have been as sympathetic. I might've got annoyed and frustrated, but

00:20:14.740 now I can understand like the challenges and unprecedented things hitting these restaurants

00:20:18.740 and bars, there's things beyond their control and they're having a really tough time. So I want to

00:20:23.360 get it out there to people on what's going on and why they should hopefully be patient and keep

00:20:28.140 supporting our restaurants and pubs. Well, I mean, you just led into it. I mean, we're on a massive

00:20:34.280 supply chain issue right now as as all industries are um if the trucking industry loses 30 of its

00:20:41.800 workforce um it's going to put our industry into a lot more stressful times here especially than

00:20:48.280 in quarter one uh but on the staffing side um you know this the shortage of staff has been real

00:20:56.440 it's been real in all senses and now with the omicron variant uh you're seeing a lot of

00:21:02.440 of restaurants have to cut back their hours or you know you've got owners or general managers

00:21:08.000 that are working basically seven days a week uh long long hours uh just to try to keep the doors

00:21:13.600 open yeah and those fixed costs just don't go away i mean that that's that painful thing when

00:21:19.180 your sales go down when things get slow you've still got to pay a lease you've still got a number

00:21:23.940 of items uh well in my place we we leased a lot of kitchen equipment uh items and had commitments

00:21:30.060 for chemical and so on that we had to pay even if we were slow as all get out and and it's it's just

00:21:35.100 a grind for you guys right now um are you hoping though that like a lot of people are down right

00:21:39.900 now just because they're sick and they're being responsible you don't feel well don't go to work

00:21:42.700 i mean we you know that is one of the things we can certainly do to help with this but a lot of

00:21:46.780 places are anticipating that this might pass perhaps once people feel better well yeah that's

00:21:51.660 our hope you know restaurants have done such a great job across the province of doing their own

00:21:55.900 contact tracing so if you know they've had um a staff member that has come in close contact with

00:22:01.980 someone that's tested positive uh it's it's an immediate isolation we just can't run the risk of

00:22:08.460 of an outbreak happening within the store our store or any other restaurant across the province

00:22:13.980 that would cause us to have to close for a few days yeah and uh you know there's been one of

00:22:20.940 the frustrating things we've watched and we see that in albert and we see it all over the place

00:22:24.060 it seems as governments feel pressured to look like they're doing something and it's an easy

00:22:28.620 target when they want to bring in a restriction you know they keep saying well we got to hit the

00:22:32.220 restaurants we got to hit the bars you got to hit the i mean there really hasn't been much evidence

00:22:37.100 to show that this is where transmission has been high necessarily and and restaurants and bars as

00:22:41.660 anybody who's been going to know they're doing everything possible i mean they're dividing seating

00:22:45.260 they're spreading people out they're using hand sanitizer they're using the passports and scans

00:22:49.820 and apps and uh is there signs that they might lay off you a little soon well i don't think so i

00:22:55.760 mean right now we're the only industry with any type of restriction on the 11 o'clock curfew

00:23:01.640 um tables of 10 no mixing and no mingling which caused a massive amount of cancellations across

00:23:09.440 the province for uh corporate bookings obviously new year's was devastated this year um with the

00:23:16.660 know, mixing and mingling. And that's been our message with the government is, you know, where

00:23:21.040 is the evidence and data that shows that, you know, any of the COVID waves have come straight

00:23:28.000 from hospitality sector. That's where it's been the toughest pill to swallow is that you can say

00:23:34.520 that socialization causes, you know, the transmission. But when we look at any of the

00:23:41.940 larger venues, they're operating the exact same way. And now, you know, now they've only been

00:23:47.480 hit with restrictions, which we don't want either. We don't want this to be an industry versus

00:23:51.360 industry situation. It's just, it's just terrible when we really aren't given specific data as to

00:24:00.920 why we're hit with restrictions or lockdown. Yeah. I mean, you want to know that it's an

00:24:05.840 evidence-based restriction. I mean, that it's actually going to do something. I mean, it's

00:24:10.220 something that makes it questionable I mean the mixing and mingling that's a reality that's part

00:24:13.660 of why people go out I mean you know why you don't make a meal and drink at home I mean some

00:24:17.400 of it's nice to have it prepared for you but it's the social aspect and that's what people

00:24:21.040 keeps people their past supper and into the later hours and it's integral to the industry now

00:24:26.340 theoretically the vaccine passports should have made it safe so people could do so when it would

00:24:32.000 reduce the spread it appears that's not the case now you think there's any sign though that they

00:24:36.460 might back off on the passport requirements if those don't seem to be making a difference to

00:24:39.840 anything well we haven't heard anything of that of that nature coming down you've heard the opposite

00:24:45.440 is that you know they want the government wants more people getting boosted um whatever it takes

00:24:50.800 to keep the hospitalizations down uh you know and we we've maintained on our end we're not we're not

00:24:56.840 we're not scientists or doctors but we do know what extent hospitalities had to go through

00:25:03.060 throughout these last three to four lockdowns we're talking about you know tech that had to

00:25:08.700 be purchased from iPads to the purchasing of PPE, all of the plexiglass, sanitizer, everything that

00:25:17.640 restaurants have gone through has, you know, really put us into a hole. And quarter one is

00:25:24.920 going to be looking even tougher if the supply chain management issues continue as well.

00:25:29.820 Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's such a bleak outlook. And that's why, again, I just wanted to get you

00:25:33.840 on and remind people, you know, January, February, these are tough months for our hospitality sector.

00:25:37.880 And then, you know, get out there and support them.

00:25:39.820 And we need them.

00:25:40.420 They're a part of our community.

00:25:42.660 And part of what I want to talk about, too, is just that customer patience and things.

00:25:46.200 The reason with the passports, I mean, you guys have already invested in the scanning

00:25:49.940 abilities and set up the work routines to check people.

00:25:52.900 I mean, it's not the end of the world to do it, but it does reduce a bit of a pool of

00:25:55.940 the customer base that you could have had and puts more pressure on the business and

00:26:00.180 unfortunately can lead to some of the things that we heard so many stories about, particularly

00:26:04.560 earlier with unfortunately customers getting belligerent with front end

00:26:08.040 staff and being a pain and it's a tough job already you know they don't need

00:26:12.060 that no and and I think you know what's so important for the public to understand

00:26:17.280 is these restrictions have come down from the government the REP program is

00:26:22.260 an Alberta government mandate we have no choice you know that if we do not if

00:26:28.920 we're not part of the REP program then we are patio service only which means

00:26:32.960 that no one can open right now you know in these temperatures it's just ridiculous um the public

00:26:40.280 needs to understand that these are the restaurants that have always been there for them too whether

00:26:44.900 it's donating to the local charities hosting your local sports fundraisers or your minor hockey league

00:26:50.900 uh fundraisers i think that's all come back to light and we have seen great support from the

00:26:56.280 public. But for the guests that are out there that don't understand that this is, this is not

00:27:02.500 a restaurant's choice. This has been mandated by the Alberta government. The REP program is

00:27:08.100 mandated by the Alberta government or we close our doors. Yeah. And some people just don't

00:27:13.000 understand. I mean, others are saying, well, just dig your heels in like, you know, the fella up in

00:27:17.060 Bashaw and stay open in defiance. Well, you know, you can bankrupt yourself that way and not

00:27:22.160 everybody's in a position to do that or nor do they want to they just want to run a business

00:27:26.620 and and as we know aglc and ahs can shut you down very quickly and and then who wins i mean the

00:27:33.920 customers still have nowhere to go i mean we need the government to back off on the regulations we

00:27:37.360 just can't have these restaurants martyring themselves trying to fight it yeah and that's

00:27:41.660 and i think that's another such an important point you know i mean yes we could there's a number of

00:27:46.780 restaurants that wanted to stay open in defiance but at the end of the day if your liquor license

00:27:51.300 is pulled um and then the enforcements continue to happen then you're arrested where do you go from

00:27:57.620 there you've lost your business and now you're charged so and that's the reality of it all and

00:28:02.500 i think that's what we really need the public to understand that these mandates that have come down

00:28:07.780 have come down from the government um we have to follow them if there's no you know there's no

00:28:13.860 gray area there yeah and we've already lost a lot of businesses there was a story that came on the

00:28:18.420 the standard today that of the businesses that shut down at the beginning of the pandemic,

00:28:22.980 50% of them actually have never reopened since. So, I mean, these are lost. These are lost parts

00:28:27.860 of the community. These are people who lost their entire investment. I mean, again, you know,

00:28:32.900 people are invested in these businesses. I mean, as I learned, the service industry is a labor of

00:28:37.860 love. If you want to make money, there's a lot of better areas to go into. That's a very low

00:28:43.300 return grind to get into that so it's just tragic seeing these places getting crushed

00:28:49.240 outside of the pandemic though then there's been other challenges maybe if we kind of go into that

00:28:54.840 a bit because I mean city hall regulations things like that I mean I know there were

00:28:59.840 things like places getting regulated to death trying to open a patio and rebuilding walls and

00:29:04.920 other ridiculous things you know presuming this pandemic comes to an end what are some of the

00:29:09.460 things we could do though to help facilitate you know problems we had even before the pandemic

00:29:12.640 to help these businesses do better in the future?

00:29:15.420 Well, I mean, the commercial property tax just went up again.

00:29:18.120 I'm sure everyone is well aware.

00:29:21.120 You know, commercial property tax has gone back up

00:29:24.040 with businesses that are still trying to fight their way out

00:29:27.460 of the last two years of this pandemic.

00:29:30.860 You know, when we look at what the city can do better

00:29:34.220 and, you know, all of these councillors

00:29:36.540 and this new mayor have all campaigned

00:29:39.200 that they're going to work harder at reducing red tape

00:29:42.340 Well, you know, we're hoping we see that a lot of them campaigned on a 1% tax raise.

00:29:48.860 We see a 4% tax raise and, you know, there's no emotion in those numbers, except for the

00:29:54.540 fact that the businesses that are still standing, that are still paying this commercial property

00:29:58.920 tax are now like set back even more.

00:30:04.120 You know, it's one point that I wanted to bring up, 50% of those businesses that you

00:30:08.560 brought up that closed almost 70 percent of those businesses were open for a longer than a period of

00:30:14.400 five years so it isn't like these flash in the pan businesses that opened up and closed and in our

00:30:20.140 industry um it is a labor of love you know we our industry is is tough it's long hours and

00:30:27.280 more importantly the profit margins are very thin but we do it because we love it and we love being

00:30:32.220 a part of the community. And, you know, we can, we're only hoping that we, that this 2022 can be

00:30:39.100 a lot better. I sure do hope so. I mean, and, you know, the whole sector has evolved into something

00:30:45.100 so much better than it used to be. I mean, there were always great restaurants, but I mean, we've

00:30:48.640 got all these brilliant, you know, now brew pubs, all this variety of beers. Unfortunately, I abuse

00:30:53.340 my privileges. I can't consume liquors any longer, but I don't begrudge the people to get out there

00:30:57.720 and enjoy them. I mean, I grew up in the AGLC days where you had your choices between three

00:31:01.940 different types of warm flat beer and uh you know a long island iced tea was as as uh creative and

00:31:08.660 exotic as a drink was gonna get and now we just have so many awesome creative places so many new

00:31:13.000 types of food even though you got those supply chain challenges making it hard to get it on the

00:31:16.840 tables uh you know we we don't want to lose all this well we don't want to lose this and we have

00:31:21.720 to remember so many of the restaurants out there support local we're talking about our local

00:31:25.420 farmers uh you know our local producers you know everything from dairy to to proteins you know um

00:31:33.580 restaurants and and hospitality you know is a fabric it's you know we're the number three

00:31:39.340 private employer in the province and uh and we're seeing so many restaurants get devastated through

00:31:45.660 these last two years of the pandemic um and now with subsidies drying up we're going to see some

00:31:51.500 some more casualties, I would say too, by the end of Q1. Yeah, I mean, that's another thing with

00:31:56.780 some of the rents. I mean, and again, the landlords, you know, we like to demonize them,

00:32:00.300 but I mean, hey, they've got bills to pay too, and they can't just keep having tenants, you know,

00:32:05.020 coming in at a loss. I mean, they try to do what they can, but you know, that we're far from being

00:32:09.200 out of this hole, unfortunately. So hopefully things turn around, but I just like to keep

00:32:16.500 talking to the viewers and listeners and, you know, asking patients and asking them to get out

00:32:19.840 and support it. The thing to remember, I mean, part of what inspired me, I live in Prittis,

00:32:23.980 to buy that pub was that it shut down for six months. And it's the only place that services

00:32:28.100 that area of actually a few thousand people. And we missed it. I mean, how do you go out to see

00:32:32.300 your neighbors? When do you get to socialize and do those things? Or, you know, if you want to have

00:32:37.460 a drink or two, so you're not 10 miles from home, there it is. And we entrenched as part of the

00:32:42.440 community. We sponsored hockey team things. There were community meetings happened in our pub,

00:32:46.860 things like that and when you lose it you really miss it i mean it's one of those things you don't

00:32:50.700 realize till it's gone but when you don't have it holy cow that that restaurant or that bar or

00:32:55.520 whatnot was really a part of our community and it's not easy to get it back yeah i mean i got

00:33:00.320 my start in middipore at the seahorse pub and restaurant so i'm well well aware of the south

00:33:04.940 community and uh um that's where i developed a lot of the passion for this industry was seeing

00:33:10.120 how many of the neighbors would be out at after the hockey game or you know the fundraisers that

00:33:15.500 were held there or the charity you know the charity events you know uh restaurants your

00:33:20.680 local pubs um you know they're they're fabrics they're fabrics of the community uh very rarely

00:33:27.260 do you see a restaurant or a local pub say no if you need a gift certificates for your fundraiser

00:33:33.140 or if you need to host a fundraiser or or to help the minor hockey league or basketball leagues

00:33:39.180 we've always been there and and that's where it's been very positive is that the public has

00:33:45.160 remembered that. And we've still seen some pretty great support from the public in this last couple

00:33:50.840 of years. Well, great. Well, I appreciate you standing up for the industry and speaking out

00:33:55.600 for it. I mean, that's one of the harder parts, too. There's a lot of disparate and busy restaurant

00:33:59.440 and pub owners and other people in the hospitality sector just don't have time or the ability. So

00:34:03.300 having an association that can bring those issues to light and pass it on to our elected officials

00:34:08.400 and remind them of how their policy impacts things is very important. So maybe a little

00:34:12.780 more about you before we send you off where can we find more information on what you and your

00:34:16.380 association are up to and uh maybe a little about trolley five yeah i mean you can find us on alberta

00:34:21.340 hospitality association instagram or facebook um you know we also have our website as well

00:34:28.380 so any anyone that wants to reach out and get more information about us definitely contact us

00:34:33.500 through any of those channels and uh membership is growing and you know we've got board members

00:34:39.660 from across the province on our board it's uh it's been uh it's been a trying time but it's

00:34:45.180 been great to uh galvanize with some of these other owners across the province great yeah that's

00:34:50.860 another point to put for any of those uh restaurant and bar owners who were watching as well i mean

00:34:55.020 hey it's an association you got to take part for them to help you as well so uh check them out and

00:34:59.740 thank you very much for coming on to talk to me today ernie i hope we can talk again soon and

00:35:03.180 maybe we'll be discussing how we've got a new uh restaurant and bar boom breaking out of this rut

00:35:08.300 and looking forward to good better times.

00:35:09.860 Yeah, here's hoping.

00:35:10.880 And thank you so much for having us on today.

00:35:13.080 Right on.

00:35:13.360 Thanks, Ernie.

00:35:15.760 So there we are.

00:35:16.580 And yeah, it's hard to keep, you know,

00:35:17.540 positive with a lot of things in these shows

00:35:19.020 when you get those realistic outlooks

00:35:21.960 that are coming from that sector.

00:35:23.560 And that's why I really did want to speak to Ernie

00:35:25.180 because I just know how tough it was making bucks

00:35:28.700 when it wasn't pandemic times.

00:35:30.500 I don't think I would have had the energy to get through it.

00:35:32.600 I mean, to be able to put in that extra time

00:35:34.840 and have those shutdowns

00:35:35.940 and the instability and insecurity.

00:35:37.480 so I mean those people who are hanging in there still they are tough tough business owners and

00:35:42.300 isn't Ernie Ernie said too like these are businesses that have been there for a long time

00:35:46.180 these aren't just startups that just got rolling I mean these guys were established they knew what 0.99

00:35:49.580 they were doing I mean I've seen some insensitive idiotic comments out there that was more and I 0.96

00:35:54.180 didn't want to get into it with Ernie but back on the the when the minimum wages were going up which 0.98

00:35:58.200 is a whole separate discussion but people giving that well if you can't pay a living wage you don't

00:36:02.000 deserve to be in business yeah but you know often the person saying that's the same one who's going

00:36:06.220 to complain if their plated nachos cost 50 cents more the next time they come in or, you know, 25

00:36:11.980 cents more on a jug of draft. Like you got to pay for these things. It's a tough business. It can be

00:36:17.160 a fickle one, unfortunately, with some customers. And you can only raise prices so hard to put up

00:36:21.620 with more expenses. And it's difficult. And I know, you know, Ernie didn't want to corner him

00:36:28.340 on it. As others are pointing out, they can't go because of the passports. And that's a difficult

00:36:32.640 area for them because you also get the the crazed panic protesters I mean if it looks like you're

00:36:36.700 pushing back you can lose a bunch of your other customers on one end it's polarized you want to

00:36:41.080 run a business you don't want to get in the middle of a ideological battle over what's good or what's

00:36:45.900 bad or what you should be doing or what you shouldn't be doing when it comes to the pandemic

00:36:49.920 you just want to serve people food enjoy the business the dream that you built and got rolling

00:36:54.420 it should be the government that's saying you know what these passports aren't doing what we

00:36:59.400 hope they would. Let's just lay off, back off, and let businesses get on without them. We did

00:37:06.720 that with the contact tracing. Remember all those stupid apps we had forced onto our phones, 0.99

00:37:11.380 federally and provincially? We've kind of just forgotten about those things, haven't we? They've 1.00

00:37:14.560 just fallen by the wayside. Why'd they let them go? Because they didn't work. So they said,

00:37:21.100 they never did it. They never said anything. They never announced it. We spent tens of millions of

00:37:25.940 on it and they're gone. Well, we can phase out this passport requirement. If we can't see a

00:37:31.900 measurable benefit from them, why are we bothering with it? You know, the part where the hostess at

00:37:37.360 the front of the pub or restaurant is going to get most likely to get abused by a crabby customer

00:37:41.620 is when they're asking them to sign in with a passport to get into the place. Don't blame him

00:37:46.420 or her who's standing there being that gatekeeper. They've got a job to do. They shouldn't be put in

00:37:51.600 that spot in the first place. The next crabbiest one is at the end of the night when you're trying

00:37:56.140 to explain to a drunk that they got to be cut off, but that's a separate discussion altogether too.

00:38:00.100 That's apart from the hospitality industry. I don't miss it all when I was bartending.

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00:39:25.000 Now, I'm going to go on a side note, a story that broke recently.

00:39:29.160 People might have heard of her.

00:39:30.480 There was a, and I want to talk about academic tenure.

00:39:35.480 It's a concept. 0.94

00:39:37.060 Now, Frances Widdowson was just fired by Mount Royal University in Calgary last December.

00:39:43.620 And she had been in a battle.

00:39:45.440 There was actually a big story in the Western Standard about it back from last September.

00:39:50.520 She spoke back against some of the woke push and identity politics in particular.

00:39:56.220 And some of her views were pretty controversial and it stirred up a lot of people, got them going.

00:40:00.760 After the Western Standard article on it, some students and then some other fellow professors started a petition to have her fired.

00:40:09.780 And it looks like eventually they got to.

00:40:11.640 She's not commenting now because it's still live.

00:40:13.400 she's still pushing back and still trying to salvage her career. But what people don't

00:40:21.040 understand is what the university just did is they bypassed tenure. Now, tenure is something

00:40:26.060 that came about. It's throughout the world and in a lot of developed nations and academia. I looked

00:40:30.720 it up more in the 40s is when it came in. The main thing was, it's a system where a professor

00:40:37.280 gets to a certain point, you get entrenched, you gain tenure, it means you're permanent at this

00:40:43.160 institution. You will not be fired or discharged for going against the flow for having different

00:40:48.440 points of view. And some of this was even on academic matters. Like I guess with physics,

00:40:52.620 string theory was controversial for a while. And a professor could get punted from a university for

00:40:57.760 discussing those sorts of things. If they had tenure, at least they could examine it. If you

00:41:01.140 break against the orthodoxy, tenure protects you. And nobody likes it when you push back against

00:41:07.380 the orthodoxy of anything. That's life. That's human nature. That's the way it is. You dig your

00:41:10.980 and you don't like hearing about other people wanting to do something different and you push

00:41:14.660 back. So universities came up with this system and not every professor gets tenured. I mean,

00:41:20.640 this is quite a thing. They've got to feel that you are of strong academic value and it's worth

00:41:26.100 giving you that honor and entrenching you into it. But the tenure did not protect Whittowson

00:41:31.560 at Mount Royal University when she pushed back against identity politics and she's been fired.

00:41:36.920 and she's appealing it. We'll see what happens. But the precedent is really frightening. You

00:41:44.540 shouldn't be ever kicked out of a university for a controversial point of view. That's the

00:41:48.640 university is the place of discourse. That's where you go back and forth on it. Even if it's

00:41:52.640 controversial, even if it makes people uncomfortable. I mean, tenure protected left-wing professors in

00:41:59.740 the past. Ones who talked about things like integration and universities. You know that

00:42:04.660 if you were a professor in the American South in the 50s and 60s, an unpopular view that could 0.98

00:42:11.380 get you kicked out in your butt was saying, hey, why don't we allow more than just white people in 0.98

00:42:15.280 here? That was considered unpopular then. And you would have to be tenured to withstand the pushback 1.00

00:42:20.340 for daring to say such a thing. And it's just because of that, the ability to push back against

00:42:26.180 institutional things, whether right or wrong, is so important. Now, our universities are already

00:42:33.020 dominated by the left. They're dominated by the woke. And when we start tossing people out for

00:42:37.780 pushing back against that, we're going to have a terrified academia out there who are afraid to

00:42:45.160 push limits, to push boundaries. I mean, we're going to be in a world of mediocrity. I mean,

00:42:49.440 maybe Whittowson was wrong. Who knows? The bottom line is that you've got to discuss it.

00:42:53.700 You've got to be able to go back and forth on it. You've got the right to be wrong.

00:42:58.460 And now she doesn't even have the voice to make her case.

00:43:02.500 That's not good.

00:43:03.920 This is not healthy.

00:43:04.840 This is not the way we're going to raise better students.

00:43:07.700 This isn't the way we're going to get better academic papers, studies, things like that in the future.

00:43:13.720 Professors now, if they have to fear for their jobs, even if they have tenure, are going to be afraid to ever poke into anything that's outside of what the establishment norm is.

00:43:23.840 How do we discover anything new if we don't have somebody daring to push against the limits of the establishment?

00:43:31.580 That's very strongly concerning, and we have to be worried about this.

00:43:35.740 So maybe, you know, we should reach out a bit, have people speak up, talk to universities, send letters.

00:43:44.640 I mean, in support of her, even if you don't like her.

00:43:47.040 See, that's the thing that people lose in discourse.

00:43:51.220 The sign of an extremist, if there's going to be any sign of extremist,

00:43:54.520 it's when you try to shut down other voices rather than debate them.

00:43:58.520 And stand up for her even if you don't like her.

00:44:02.360 Stand up for any left-wing professor who's kept in or being fired

00:44:06.480 or threatened to be fired for being too far left.

00:44:08.420 I mean, there's no shortage of Marxist ones that a lot of people, I'm certain,

00:44:11.980 would love to have fired.

00:44:13.300 But tenure protects them, and it should.

00:44:16.640 We've got to fight them with debate, not with cancellation.

00:44:19.180 And if even tenured university professors aren't safe from that, who is?

00:44:27.800 Speaking of, you know, I'm speaking against the orthodoxy, by the way.

00:44:30.800 Barbara Kay, she's a very well-established columnist.

00:44:35.800 You know, she's been around for a long time.

00:44:37.220 Her son, Jonathan Kay, is very prolific in columns and news publications as well.

00:44:42.300 And she puts out occasional columns to the Western Standard.

00:44:45.260 And she wrote one on the CBC.

00:44:47.000 you know and then the CBC's been in the news a lot lately because they canceled one of their own

00:44:52.100 and her name is escaping me but that news reporter Tara Henley who left the CBC and

00:45:00.980 explained on what a just a rotten woke culture that place has it's no longer a good news

00:45:07.240 organization Barbara Kay wrote a great long column it's on westernstandardonline.com about it

00:45:12.680 and of course she goes back farther because she said it was great what Henley said and wrote

00:45:17.640 about the CBC on her way out but she should go further and realize because Henley was just talking

00:45:21.600 about her experience in the last 12 years and she was saying it was good you know 12 13 years ago

00:45:25.660 and Barbara's saying it's not the CBC sickness runs a lot farther back than 13 years ago

00:45:34.420 unfortunately and particularly when it comes to their reporting on Israel and of course the ever

00:45:42.160 ongoing conflict over there, you know, between Palestinians and Israelis and so on. If anything,

00:45:47.740 if you're going to have a publication that's going to try and cover something as nuanced and

00:45:51.320 complicated as the circumstances in the Middle East and Israel in particular, you want to have

00:45:56.320 some degree of balance. And the CBC has just been horrific when it comes to their coverage over

00:46:01.800 there. And they've been slapped for it. And they've had like something like 50 times they've had to

00:46:06.040 retract and correct their own pieces on that and things in Israel. So Barbara spoke out on that

00:46:13.520 and it complements, yes, Linda Slobodian's piece, which broke down and detailed a lot on what the

00:46:19.760 sickness of that place is as well on the Tara Henley thing. But again, these are people breaking

00:46:24.280 out of the orthodoxy and that's why it's important. You know, this is how we get higher thinking,

00:46:31.520 you know, get moved farther on. I'm going to get Jacob on pretty quickly here to talk to me

00:46:35.800 before i do i'll just again bring up our sponsor there with the canadian shooting sports association

00:46:41.480 uh just to remind you one more time those guys are out there standing up for you speaking of

00:46:45.640 things that are politically incorrect now i mean look at some of the lunacy if somebody even talks

00:46:49.880 about wanting to enjoy a firearm responsibly somebody who wants to go target shooting

00:46:54.200 uh wasn't there some olympic athletes who uh got kicked out of some team or something because they

00:46:59.400 took selfies with firearms at a safe shooting place in in las vegas one time like that's how 0.86

00:47:03.640 ridiculous it is. They've demonized firearms when they can be used perfectly responsibly

00:47:09.220 and enjoyed, collected, traded their property. The Canada Shooting Sports Association is out there

00:47:16.300 promoting the safe, responsible use of firearms and they're standing up for your right to do it.

00:47:20.320 So go to their site, cssa-cila.org or just Google Canada Shooting Sports Association and check out

00:47:28.240 what they're doing for you and all the resources they got for other, you know, people who enjoy

00:47:31.880 using firearms responsibly safely. That's all we want to do. We're same people and see what they

00:47:36.680 can do for you. So it's a little early, but I see Jacob waiting in the lobby there. So let's not

00:47:42.140 hang on much longer. We'll bring him into the show and have a conversation about universal basic

00:47:47.360 income. Hi, Jacob. How are you doing? Hey there, Corey. Doing good. Doing good. Great. Yeah. So

00:47:53.440 just to recap, and I gave it a little bit of background before you have been an active,

00:47:58.100 i guess community advocate in calgary uh you ran for city council in ward one uh sonja sharp

00:48:05.380 ended up taking that but she's doing okay so far i like to think you would have been better but

00:48:09.460 yeah i'm i'm i'm pleasantly surprised surprised with how things are going uh in terms of ward one

00:48:18.740 but yeah and i have to get out there and still be still be a voice for people so well absolutely i

00:48:26.500 I mean, if nothing else, and I'm familiar with losing elections.

00:48:29.120 I've lost a number of them.

00:48:30.120 People who don't like me like to remind me of that all the time.

00:48:33.260 There's more to running in an election than just winning, even though, you know, winning

00:48:37.440 is probably still the goal and the most important part.

00:48:39.440 I mean, you're getting messaging out there, you're interacting with people, and I think

00:48:42.640 you come out of a campaign, you learn a whole lot.

00:48:44.880 You're a much better person after a campaign than before it.

00:48:47.620 I would like to think so, definitely.

00:48:50.980 Yeah, you can't go through that for a year and not learn a lot.

00:48:54.540 No, no, no. I hope you're running in future ones, perhaps. I mean, some people, one taste is enough

00:48:59.960 and others carry on until they win a seat or a spot somewhere. I'm still around. We'll see.

00:49:06.940 We'll see. So as you've been contributing otherwise, I mean, you're very active on social

00:49:11.020 media and you've submitted a couple of columns to us. And the one I want to talk to you about

00:49:15.340 was your recent one, because, you know, something that's been talked about since the supports came

00:49:20.640 in with the pandemic and people in, you know, in need because they got put out of work and

00:49:25.500 things like that. So there were CERB and such was a lot of people really talking about, well,

00:49:29.440 we should have a universal basic income structure so that there's always a support that's there for

00:49:34.620 everybody all the time, no matter what. And you wrote a column saying that isn't necessarily a

00:49:40.300 good plan to go forward. Well, no, I don't think it is. I have a bit of a background in this

00:49:45.620 because before the conversation became a bit more universal with COVID, I am a person with

00:49:53.800 cerebral palsy. I'm wheelchair bound. So I end up doing a lot of volunteer work within disability

00:50:02.180 circles. And in these circles, it's widely seen that universal basic income is this boon to be

00:50:13.660 granted upon all of us with disabilities it'll raise many many many people out of poverty and

00:50:23.500 all of that what my colleagues in these circles seem to forget is this is going to be an 85 billion

00:50:35.420 dollar expenditure and when you're creating that expenditure the money has to come from somewhere

00:50:44.300 and generally when it's coming from somewhere one of the places it comes from is built environment

00:50:52.620 improvements and things that make our everyday lives more accessible so yeah and the risk i

00:51:02.380 I mean, as you said, and that's what I like.

00:51:03.880 It's the common sense coming out of you.

00:51:05.740 I mean, there's only one pool of money.

00:51:07.120 We can only prioritize and utilize it as well as possible in certain areas. 1.00

00:51:11.740 And if you take away the built environment for, for people with disabilities to get 1.00

00:51:16.000 out and get to work and do things, you definitely are moving towards a model of 0.99

00:51:19.840 paying people to sit at home.

00:51:21.000 And that's not what you want to do at all.

00:51:22.780 Oh, exactly.

00:51:23.680 I called it, I called it an empty calorie existence.

00:51:27.380 I can be lifted above the poverty line artificially.

00:51:33.460 I have tons of spending power, but no purpose, nothing to spend that money on,

00:51:43.140 nothing to do to contribute to the community, which is what people want to do.

00:51:50.300 I don't just want a check from the government every month.

00:51:54.460 I want to participate in society.

00:51:58.980 Absolutely.

00:51:59.880 And not every job lends itself to remote access.

00:52:04.220 You have to get down there.

00:52:05.380 You have to get in.

00:52:06.780 And if you don't have that access, it limits the opportunities in areas for both employers and for people with disabilities to take part in what could be a good relationship.

00:52:18.520 We have a labor shortage.

00:52:19.680 We should be encouraging as many people as possible to get into this workforce right now.

00:52:23.080 Oh, exactly.

00:52:23.940 we're talking about um employment shortages and things like that and we're cutting out

00:52:32.400 a percentage of the population and hand waving the problem by giving them a check um

00:52:40.800 here's what we end up with is a group of people sidelined who could be doing more

00:52:50.760 Yes, and it's a bad outcome. And as you said, though, I mean, you differ with some of your, I guess you say, compatriots in the community as well, but that's fine. I mean, you can have different views of what needs to be there.

00:53:05.000 and well it's it's interesting that before i came on you were talking about breaking with the

00:53:12.840 orthodoxy because the orthodoxy here is that these social safety nets are automatically a good thing

00:53:22.040 when i have actually been turned away from job interviews and internship programs because i

00:53:29.640 couldn't get in the building so i think there's something else we can be doing here yes as far

00:53:37.720 as a return on an investment and that's the way you put it you know it's 85 billion dollars 80

00:53:42.440 billion dollars that's a massive amount of money uh for the amount of accessibility say even an

00:53:47.720 investment of a quarter of that across the country could do for people and uh you know even people

00:53:53.720 as they get later in life and seniors or even women with strollers i mean the more we make

00:53:57.480 getting around easier the better we all are for it and at a far lower price you you think so right

00:54:03.800 making things easier to do usually makes them cheaper as long as we design these things with

00:54:12.920 some common sense and don't automatically go for flashy options that don't have

00:54:20.840 and a real-life impact there's so much we could be doing yeah and you'd spoken

00:54:29.120 of age which is a program directed to people with serious disabilities and

00:54:34.040 it's an integral one I mean some people just just can't get to work or don't have

00:54:37.640 that opportunity and it's I think perfectly fair to target and support

00:54:41.180 people in there but if people want to try and be self-determining we we don't

00:54:45.320 want to hinder that in any way whatsoever either well exactly I'm a

00:54:49.520 a recipient of age right now it's very difficult for me to get a job i'd like that to be easier

00:54:56.640 um and these programs are designed for people who have um less ability to get into the traditional

00:55:09.040 employment market i'd like to think and i would like i'd like to think that i can be part of that

00:55:18.720 market so i don't necessarily think i'm the target demographic for these things they are important

00:55:29.200 but they shouldn't be the model for everything that we do oh and i i think it's in the name as

00:55:35.680 well i mean it's an income support but hopefully and theoretically it's just something you're

00:55:39.600 taking along the way somewhere or for a period of time or maybe supplementing another income

00:55:44.800 but i mean it shouldn't be an end and that that's what uh the fear is i guess you know it shouldn't

00:55:49.280 be just a where you go and stop exactly whereas a universal basic income program is that's built

00:55:56.720 right into it that's the whole thing it's it it's there it's an end i mean not just people

00:56:01.520 with disabilities i mean there's a much broader discussion of course that a lot of people who are

00:56:06.640 you know not disabled are still going to sit around and become career video gamers because

00:56:11.040 they can get that support absolutely this is this is what you end up when you artificially

00:56:19.680 inflate on people's bank accounts with programs like this it i and i've heard the argument that

00:56:29.360 it doesn't but you can't sit there and reasonably tell me that this doesn't de-incentivize

00:56:37.680 employment because it does well absolutely and not everybody's immune from it i mean we're seeing

00:56:42.720 this with people coming off sir when i when i used to work in the oil field i remember

00:56:47.840 we would hit spring breakup it's called where you get pretty slow for a few months every spring

00:56:52.160 quite often i'd be sitting around the house for sometimes as long as two months at a time

00:56:55.760 and i start out at home oh i'm gonna catch up on the yard work and i'm gonna do that the longer i 0.98

00:57:00.160 saw the lazier i tended to get and the harder it was to get off my butt and uh you know you you 0.73

00:57:07.360 the longer with serb and other things we get some people have become into a bad pattern 0.87

00:57:11.280 in dependency that that's not healthy for them or anybody outside of there well i was gonna say

00:57:16.320 even if you even if you take into account the lockdowns for say we all had to sit at home for

00:57:24.400 several months and even those of us who wanted to get back out there going again it's it's hard to

00:57:33.680 restart that engine once you turn it off so not necessarily for all of us but there were a large

00:57:42.560 percentage of people that got used to the um lifestyle that sir provided which i don't think

00:57:52.720 is a positive one for our economy or our health actually so no and and again i mean the goal of

00:58:01.920 it being just a temporary filler as with uh if a person's capable of working it should hopefully

00:58:07.440 just be something that's a support that's needed temporarily uh serve i mean i understand the need

00:58:12.720 for it i mean hey if the government made it illegal for you to work well then they are obligated to

00:58:17.200 to make it possible for you to pay your bills, but let's get people back to work.

00:58:22.300 And then we don't have to worry about the service and the same applies to age. 0.65

00:58:25.360 Well, exactly.

00:58:27.040 Imagine that the more of us that are employed, the less you have to pay us out of government coffers.

00:58:34.240 That sounds like a good idea to me.

00:58:36.880 Well, yeah, he's winning all around.

00:58:39.520 Um, I just do want to touch real quickly on the thesis of your, your show about

00:58:47.200 where the ICU beds are as well, because I did another column with regards to there needs to be a blueprint to get us permanently out of restrictions,

00:59:04.460 but that requires the government to actually have intellectual conversations with us

00:59:12.980 about the goals and the statistics that go along with the restrictions

00:59:20.180 and the problems with our health system.

00:59:25.900 And nobody seems to be wanting to have that conversation.

00:59:31.420 they seem to be content running around without a plan and it's just making more and more of us

00:59:39.860 tune them up yeah well an instability it's a killer for all of us i mean we don't know as

00:59:45.800 you said we don't see we understand the path could change but nobody's even determined to

00:59:52.140 lay out the path how are we going to get out of this when are we going to get out of this

00:59:55.720 uh you know let's have a talk about getting out of this and now we're just kind of writing it and

01:00:00.860 reacting all the time when something happens rather than planning for it before it gets here

01:00:05.100 well exactly and we've been doing this for two years like you said you'd think we would have

01:00:11.500 tried some things to improve the actual sustainability of the systems we're trying

01:00:19.980 to protect as well but again this implies that there's a level of intellectual integrity that

01:00:30.140 sometimes I don't think we're seeing. Well, we've got a complicated situation. I mean, I do think

01:00:36.840 that Premier Kenney was trying, you know, to get us back to normal. He burned, unfortunately, you

01:00:42.880 know, he said, we're going to have the best summer ever. We're opening up. We're backing off. This is

01:00:47.500 done. We're finished. He really invested a lot of political capital into it. And unfortunately, you

01:00:53.120 know, the pandemic surged in fall. He ended up returning to restrictions. Anti-restriction people

01:00:58.280 were furious the pro restriction where people were saying it never would have happened if he

01:01:01.800 restricted in the first place and now i think he's kind of afraid of trying to announce anything

01:01:05.800 more than two weeks out ever again because it might blow up on him well yeah you you've painted

01:01:10.600 yourself policy wires into a corner where no matter what you do you're wrong in someone's eyes

01:01:19.000 so it's better to do nothing which makes everybody mad at you yeah that's about it so maybe you know

01:01:27.080 if premier kenny gets to that point and realizing hey you're getting it on either side no matter

01:01:31.080 what you do you might as well pick somewhere and just go for it because spinning you know sitting

01:01:35.160 in one spot like this isn't doing anybody any favors exactly but yeah to get back to

01:01:41.240 the conversation originally don't be afraid to push against these

01:01:47.800 Because I did some research for the column on UBI, and 95% of the articles are all about what a great thing UBI is and how many people will be lifted out of poverty.

01:02:10.800 I think that's just an excellent way of fudging the numbers, where you can report that you've declined the level of poverty in your country by such a substantial amount, but the actual quality of life hasn't changed that much.

01:02:37.240 yeah no i mean we got to look at the real outcome and what the goals are as one of the commenters

01:02:43.340 is saying there brad uh how can i think it is or hoggan says your guest should coach kenny there

01:02:47.680 we go so maybe one of the jobs available would be uh as an advisor to our provincial government

01:02:52.640 they can certainly use it if you're listening i'm here i'm not gonna complain but yeah i i will keep

01:03:02.180 putting my opinions out there and if people want to listen to them that's excellent yeah no and

01:03:10.000 it's appreciated before we get going though um i i do want to close up with so as you're talking

01:03:14.280 about let's say in this world where they they set aside ubi and said to heck with that you're right

01:03:18.920 and decided to invest a large number into getting more accessibility and things uh what are some of

01:03:24.000 the target areas that are presenting challenges to you and and other people that that need

01:03:28.440 rectification right now well stairs are a natural enemy of mine and many of those like me um but

01:03:37.560 one people don't think about is uh snow removal usually when we're in calgary uh pushing the snow

01:03:47.160 from the middle of the road and just creating uh windrows that not only get me stuck and unable to

01:03:57.800 travel well throughout the city but getting untold numbers of cars trapped as well

01:04:07.080 it'd be better to invest the time not into snow and ice control but actual removal and

01:04:16.600 and things like that. But if more buildings could have ramps and elevators, some of them

01:04:26.600 can't even if you want help, you can't right now because our historical building code doesn't

01:04:35.600 allow you to renovate older buildings downtown.

01:04:40.600 So some building code improvements. I mean, that's not even necessarily an expensive thing,

01:04:44.600 though i mean it does put things on to the the building owners but i mean these are ways we can

01:04:48.920 change things so i mean appreciate that because there's things we take for granted and forget and

01:04:53.400 uh even then if somebody's being selfish now well don't forget if you're lucky enough to live a long

01:04:58.840 enough age chances are uh you're gonna need some help getting around later so invest for your

01:05:03.320 future you're gonna end up here eventually whether it's because you got gray hair because you were

01:05:09.000 born with it doesn't matter you're gonna end up in the same place there you go well i really uh

01:05:16.680 appreciate you coming on to talk to me jacob now you've got a podcast as well and and you put out

01:05:21.720 the occasional uh columns and such so uh before you go where can we find out more and what you're

01:05:26.920 up to your uh your podcast and your your twitter account and such yeah so the podcast called your

01:05:32.360 neck of the woods our humble host here was actually a guest on it rather recently so feel

01:05:39.680 free to check out that episode um my handle across social media is j mcgregor yyc um you're gonna

01:05:51.960 find the podcast episodes there i'm gonna amplify community voices and i post the columns there as

01:06:01.740 Well, working on a website for all of this, so it's all in one place, but I'd love to have more listeners and more people following what's going on.

01:06:16.540 Well, and I'm sure they'll grow. It takes a little while. You keep putting it out, but as long as you're putting out common sense and good ideas, those listeners and readers do build up.

01:06:23.800 So I'm looking forward to your future podcasts and columns as they come in.

01:06:28.940 And again, thanks for coming on to talk to us today, Jacob.

01:06:31.800 I'm sure we'll talk again soon.

01:06:33.320 Thank you, Claren.

01:06:34.760 All right. Have a good day.

01:06:37.720 As I said before, I think, you know, the term that comes to mind all the time with Jacob is refreshing.

01:06:42.160 You know, it's just good, solid common sense.

01:06:45.880 That's why I had him on.

01:06:47.140 I like people who can, you know, reason and put out solutions to problems.

01:06:52.560 I point out problems all the time.

01:06:54.720 That's what I focus on.

01:06:55.720 I like that.

01:06:56.140 It keeps me ranting.

01:06:57.540 The solutions part is always the more difficult one.

01:07:00.740 And I do propose solutions, believe it or not.

01:07:02.580 I write more nuanced columns at times and things like that.

01:07:05.020 But Jacob has done a good, that's why I like the balance in that.

01:07:08.520 It wasn't just, this is the cost of UBI, but hey, if we're going to spend it, we can have

01:07:12.480 better benefits over here.

01:07:13.740 Like here's something we don't do and here's the solution.

01:07:16.500 And that's important.

01:07:18.740 That's the kind of discussions we need to have.

01:07:20.500 And as he said, it's breaking the orthodoxy a bit. He's talking a little differently than some other people in the community might on on that issue. And as we discuss it, hopefully, theoretically, eventually, we'll get better policy. Now, you know, another area I'm going to go into quickly here is a video. If Nico's got it really cute. I mean, we're talking about access. We're talking about downtown. We're talking about getting people to work and and our transit system in Calgary. I want to give a bit of a warning with this video.

01:07:49.180 it's it's a mess i mean transit's terrible and that's what uh my rant was on yesterday was the

01:07:55.280 drug use problems we have on it the fact that they're now such a problem with homeless and

01:07:59.860 addicted people and in stations that they're closing them late at night uh starting last night

01:08:03.960 and people are scared to ride it transits to something like 30 percent of capacity as it is

01:08:08.260 already yet we're building a green line well coincidentally just this morning when i get on

01:08:12.760 i get on twitter and i see uh tom ross from city tv was riding the train last night in downtown

01:08:18.860 calgary at about 10 30 and he witnessed uh what uh appeared to be a stabbing uh and a terrible fight

01:08:25.180 uh we've just got a 40 second video because i just want to drive home this is just random this is what

01:08:29.900 happens this is a guy who just happened to ride it that night pulled out his phone because this

01:08:33.660 is happening all the time there's some swearing in this video and and uh you know there's some

01:08:39.100 violence so if if you know you might want to tune out for 40 or 50 seconds here but i really want

01:08:43.900 just people to see this is typical this is a problem and this is why we

01:08:48.540 cannot we people don't want to ride the train so have a look at this

01:08:55.500 The next Tuscan retreat will arrive in six minutes. 1.00

01:09:10.500 Get the fuck out of here! 0.99

01:09:15.500 now like there was another two minute video later uh you know i won't play but he took of 0.99

01:09:38.780 the police officers did show up and then split these guys apart and and arrested a couple of

01:09:43.780 them. And I don't know what the dispute initiated with. But I mean, basically, the first gentleman

01:09:50.420 got stabbed. He then tackled the other fella and was trying to disarm him and another jumped in

01:09:56.140 and they all beat each other up pretty badly. I think they're okay out of it relatively minor

01:10:00.720 injuries. And the video was turned over for evidence. But this is typical. This is what's

01:10:09.240 going on. I mean, if you remember the news a little while ago, that same strip that was on

01:10:12.520 fourth street station downtown in calgary on seventh at eight o'clock at night not really

01:10:16.740 late at night i mean you know this and hey you know for those i mean i know i'm stereotyping

01:10:20.760 but those of us who go downtown all the time you see the fellow running with his pants around his

01:10:23.660 knees and the outfits these are the addicted downtown homeless citizens these are people

01:10:28.420 that need help i mean i've written long articles on that this is a big complicated issue it's

01:10:34.920 nuanced you know you just displacing these people or arresting people doesn't help they need

01:10:39.800 treatment they need places to go uh you know but they're going to transit that's where they're

01:10:46.020 hanging out that's where it's warm that's where they can get around i have been right i had been

01:10:50.520 riding transit downtown here to work and uh this is where these are pictures i took this one with

01:10:56.120 the syringe that was at uh the westbrook lrt station on the floor and and yes i watched them

01:11:01.600 do the drug deals on the trains we have to do something about it i mean you're talking about

01:11:07.180 wanting to revitalize downtown we're talking about wanting to fill those office buildings

01:11:11.140 we want to get people to work back down here well who's going to ride that transit there was a large

01:11:17.900 calgary uh i believe it was the herald a large editorial from a reporter and people crapped all

01:11:22.680 over her because she had written late night on transit and hadn't in a long time and then got

01:11:27.980 to see firsthand just how bad it is and it's bad she was talking about the the you know ghosts of

01:11:34.440 figures and zombie-like people, you know, sprawled throughout the inside of the stations down south

01:11:39.920 at night. And yes, that's what it's become. It's a dystopian nightmare. And we can't keep putting

01:11:45.680 up with it. Just getting them out of the stations isn't a solution. And that's what I got upset

01:11:49.760 about. The city's response was to close the stations because, you know, they're sleeping

01:11:53.720 in there. They're using them as de facto homeless shelters, as consumption sites.

01:11:57.860 And they're inappropriate for that. They're trashing the place. They're threatening people.

01:12:00.980 They're scaring people. So they move them out, but they need somewhere to move them to.

01:12:06.000 And these are people very impaired. You can't just put them into another homeless shelter. 0.92

01:12:10.240 It's a mess. It's just a mess. And the city's responding poorly. But the part that I also

01:12:17.060 want to chip away at is just because these people are addicted and they're in trouble and they need

01:12:20.760 help, it doesn't make them any less dangerous. It doesn't make them less out of control. And that's

01:12:25.620 why I wanted to show that video. These are people in a violent state of mind. And if they aren't

01:12:30.800 attacking each other, yes, they very possibly could attack other citizens riding public transit.

01:12:36.560 And we can't have that. That's part of why nobody's riding the bloody thing. We're building

01:12:39.720 a green line for billions of dollars to this empty downtown when our current transit's almost empty

01:12:44.880 and the downtown's full of this. This is what's going on down here. And we got an idiotic mayor,

01:12:49.560 and I'm tired of her already, but she's focused on defunding the police. I mean, we saw an article 1.00

01:12:55.200 recently that police morale is at its lowest ever. I mean, can you blame them? Look at the

01:13:00.380 crap they got to put up with all the time. And they get crapped on either way they do it. 1.00

01:13:04.460 If they get physical with somebody, oh, it's police abuse. And if they back off and somebody

01:13:09.360 gets robbed or mugged, they say the police aren't doing their job. And I mean, there really are

01:13:14.180 police who abuse their role in authority. We've got to address that. But when have you ever seen

01:13:19.140 any kind of service that got better by defunding it? That's how stupid the base of that defund the 1.00

01:13:24.900 police movement is. Fix the police? Sure. I think there's a lot of room for improvement. Better 1.00

01:13:30.260 training, more staff to help to de-escalate situations so they don't always go into a

01:13:35.440 physical confrontation. You know, more sensitivity when it comes to dealing with people in minority

01:13:41.660 situations. But defunding is stupid. I mean, if we've got low educational levels and outcomes in 1.00

01:13:48.320 Alberta, is everybody screaming to defund the schools? Is that what's going to make them better?

01:13:52.720 Should we defund the health care to make the health care better?

01:13:56.880 Of course not. 0.99

01:13:57.740 But somehow these imbeciles think if we defund the police, it's going to make it better. 0.99

01:14:00.640 If I'm walking downtown in that dystopian nightmare that you see right down there at night, 0.99

01:14:05.080 I don't want to see police out there tackling these addicts and arresting them and handcuffing them,

01:14:08.900 unless they're getting violent like they did.

01:14:10.660 But I want to see a police presence around so I know I'm not alone if one of these guys has smoked too much meth,

01:14:16.560 popped a brain cell, and decided that a knife would look good between my ribs.

01:14:19.900 I mean, other Calgarians are thinking that, and I'm a medium-sized, you know, middle-aged man.

01:14:27.880 I don't have as much to fear as a smaller young lady might, or an older lady, or just a person in not the physical condition to be able to defend themselves from some of these things.

01:14:37.960 And we can't pretend that some of these addicted people aren't dangerous.

01:14:40.940 That's why I just had to get that video on there to remind you.

01:14:45.160 It's serious, it's dangerous, and it's an embarrassment.

01:14:49.780 I mean, that was one of the, you know, I used to travel a lot.

01:14:53.000 I mean, I've been fortunate.

01:14:54.540 I've, you know, the safest city I'd ever been to in my life.

01:14:58.140 So here's where we can talk about some of the balance of things.

01:15:00.380 I went to the Soviet Union back at the end of the 80s.

01:15:02.860 I think it was 87.

01:15:04.060 And going through downtown Moscow, got a little drunk as an underage kid,

01:15:07.620 because if you had American dollars, you'd get anything, and rode the metro, got lost.

01:15:12.220 Nobody hassled us, nobody at all.

01:15:14.480 But that's, of course, because they were absolutely terrified of the local authorities. 0.99

01:15:18.220 Yeah, Moscow was at least overly crime-free at the time, but that's because there was no such thing as individual rights, civil rights, and human rights, so nobody dared touch an idiot, drunk foreigner wandering down the streets. 0.99

01:15:28.740 But that's not a good payoff and balance between order and disorder. 0.95

01:15:32.640 So, no, I don't want a police state.

01:15:34.340 I don't want to see an old Soviet-style Moscow.

01:15:37.820 But on the same hand, I went to Guatemala City in the, I think that was 89, and they were in the middle of a civil war at that time.

01:15:45.840 and yeah there's where you had dead people in the alleys there's where the smell of urine was

01:15:51.180 everywhere you went there's where you went to the bank and there was literally a machine gun nest

01:15:55.740 out front and you didn't walk off of the path and outside of zones without your bodyguard or you were

01:16:02.240 going to be hurt that's the extreme of disorder now we got to find a middle and I mean Calgary

01:16:09.920 downtown is just

01:16:13.220 reminding me of the disorder

01:16:15.380 and where it's starting to get

01:16:16.780 I mean we're certainly not to Guatemala levels yet

01:16:19.200 but it's 1.00

01:16:21.220 getting ugly, it's getting bad

01:16:22.900 and we've got problems with it

01:16:25.080 where are we going to go with it?

01:16:29.420 So what do we got for the

01:16:31.240 commenters here?

01:16:35.640 A link from yesterday's video clip about the

01:16:38.880 vaccine, stopping COVID in its tracks. Yes, Terry Newman pointing that out. And that's, again, I'll

01:16:46.360 have to get that on Twitter and some other areas to share that so you can find it. It is a good

01:16:51.080 little clip. For those who weren't here earlier in the show, that's where it listed a whole number

01:16:56.560 of politicians and news media people and so on talking at length about how vaccination is going

01:17:03.680 to stop the spread of infections but uh obviously it isn't and they aren't walking back their words

01:17:12.760 so they've got to be reminded of it and that video does it uh ab free pointing out venezuela

01:17:17.360 is a combination of both yeah i think i mentioned on a show a little while back um with uh venezuela

01:17:24.880 there was a great meme out there because i mean and that's a beautiful country much like guatemala

01:17:28.480 where i was at guatemala is much better now thankfully uh you know there's a whole show

01:17:32.080 there could be done on what was going on, what I saw down there. I mean, that was the Cold War

01:17:35.260 going on. So you had, the Americans were funding the government with their death squads that were

01:17:40.060 picking people up and, you know, disappearing them in the night. A village we'd visited after

01:17:45.380 we left a little while later, I think 20 people got slaughtered at that by the local guerrillas

01:17:49.000 because those locals had been talking to the government. A horrible, horrible state of affairs

01:17:53.620 down there. They've gotten better and worked their way out. Now, Venezuela moved hard towards

01:17:58.900 socialism eventually back in those days. They had much more resources than Guatemala. I mean,

01:18:03.160 beautiful, perfect climate, coastal access, an incredible amount of oil reserves. And there's

01:18:10.120 that meme that shows, you know, here we are, our labor force is great. And then the climate's great

01:18:14.540 and the resources are great. And let's just try a little pinch of socialism. And suddenly you're in

01:18:19.220 the hole. And that's how socialism, unfortunately, works as you let it spread. It's truly the virus

01:18:24.540 we got to worry about. It can destroy any economy, no matter how many resources you've got, how strong

01:18:29.880 it is, and you can turn into that mess. And that's what we're doing. Calgary's got a beautiful

01:18:33.940 downtown. That was one of the things when I came back from traveling, I could always marvel at. I

01:18:37.940 could walk in downtown Calgary at one in the morning. You didn't sweat it. You weren't fearful.

01:18:42.640 You weren't worried. I don't even like walking down by the train tracks now at three in the

01:18:46.280 afternoon. The stuff I used to see, you know, in larger centers, whether it's Pittsburgh, Waco,

01:18:52.940 some of the bad parts of town to those places, I'm starting to see coming into Calgary. And we've

01:18:57.320 got to head this off. And to have an idiot mayor again, thinking that defunding the police is the 1.00

01:19:02.720 way to do it. We were seeing that happening in other American cities that did defund the police 1.00

01:19:07.560 in response to, you know, the riots and BLM protests and things like that. And we've seen

01:19:11.640 what happened, the crime rates shot through the roof. Doesn't work. We don't want a police state,

01:19:18.420 but we can't define these guys. So think harder, Jody. Think harder. Because it's not working right

01:19:26.200 now. Yes. So what are we on to the condoms? Yeah, we talked about that earlier, though. That is

01:19:32.800 something. And it's, you know, every issue has a little more nuance to it. Where are we going?

01:19:39.060 You know, Dave was talking about that at the end with things. Condom sales are going down. What a

01:19:43.180 weird, bizarre supply chain world we're in right now. Yeah. Condom manufacturer sees limp sales.

01:19:49.520 Oh, okay. That's, that's, uh, our, our reporter there. Uh, uh, Eva that's good. It's quite the

01:19:55.840 title. And, uh, but I mean, it's also a reflection of the, the trends we're seeing right now. Like

01:20:02.580 what's going on? Why aren't people going out and, you know, socializing, uh, kind of, I was talking

01:20:07.360 Ernie Sue a bit earlier, right? Uh, people aren't allowed to get up and mingle at the bars. I mean,

01:20:11.920 I guess that's quite often where the interactions

01:20:14.760 are gonna happen that would lead to, theoretically,

01:20:17.280 somebody needing the use of a condom.

01:20:19.660 And now they aren't doing that.

01:20:21.540 Is it cyber get-togethers online?

01:20:25.340 Or what are they doing?

01:20:26.720 Are people not interacting like they used to that way?

01:20:29.440 Again, I don't think that's a good outcome.

01:20:31.080 I don't think that's healthy for society all around.

01:20:34.960 And what a weird measure for it,

01:20:36.380 but it's another one of those indicators

01:20:38.260 of how much we've disrupted our whole social structure.

01:20:41.920 people aren't screwing anymore. Might lead to some reduced population, save some money down 1.00

01:20:47.260 the road. I don't know. I need more people born to pay for my retirement later because our Canada

01:20:51.120 pension plan is a Ponzi scheme. So again, maybe they're just not using the condoms. And as I said

01:20:55.780 to Dave, we're going to see a baby boom, but we're in the crazy, crazy times. And we got the truckers,

01:21:00.360 as we said, you know, that are suddenly not going to be delivering goods and they're not going to be

01:21:05.260 able to get across the border. We're going to see more supply chain issues. We're going to see

01:21:08.660 more foods running out, clothing. I mean, you see the weirdest things running out at the grocery

01:21:12.940 store. What was it? Colored marshmallows. I had to go on a crazy quest for a recipe for Jane. I

01:21:17.020 need these bloody colored marshmallows. I know it sounds stupid, but it's so random, right? And 0.99

01:21:21.180 just for whatever reason, for about a month, those things just couldn't be found. And now when we're

01:21:25.160 suddenly taking thousands of truckers out of the mix, boy, we're going to be in some trouble here

01:21:30.880 getting our goods and services out. So this pandemic, the longer we're in it, the more

01:21:36.760 we're disrupting everything from our social to our supply chain to our communications to

01:21:40.300 everything and uh i i'm just worried about it that's why we got the show we can discuss these

01:21:47.360 things though because some of them aren't talking about it cbc they won't talk about this stuff 0.61

01:21:51.420 they're all doom and gloom they're all introverted woke crap i mean that's you know why the western 0.95

01:21:58.760 standard you know i mean yeah the cbc's had a biased woke problem for decades it was one of 0.99

01:22:03.340 those stories that the woman who left it said, uh, that, uh, they wanted to do a story on how

01:22:09.700 there wasn't LGBTQ equivalent terms in Tagalog, uh, in, in the Philippines. Interesting, I guess,

01:22:16.480 is a side note or something, but this, you know, is a general interest story you put in the back

01:22:22.560 of a publication on a weekend when you got nothing else to write. Very important to people who speak

01:22:26.080 Tagalog in the Philippines, but they, you know, all five of them in Canada in that particular

01:22:29.960 circumstance who were concerned about the lack of LGBTQ terms probably wouldn't have cared if the

01:22:36.840 CBTC did a story on it. And that's where the Western Standard comes in. So I'm going to give

01:22:40.480 our plug for ourselves while I am at it. You know, we aren't like, well, we're very much not like the

01:22:46.160 CBC. We don't take tax dollars at all. The CBC takes one and a half billion a year worth. A lot

01:22:51.120 of paper publications take tax dollars. You know, Trudeau made that quip, that joke about it, 600

01:22:56.240 million a year goes towards them to buy their opinions. He said it jokingly, but it really

01:23:00.560 does impact it. When someone's paying your bill, it impacts your outlook. It impacts what you

01:23:05.940 produce. It impacts what you do. It's just the way it goes. We're impacted by our sponsors and

01:23:11.460 our readers. So our members take out a membership, join up. If you haven't already, WesternStandardOnline.com

01:23:17.360 slash membership, 10 bucks a month. There's a free trial so you can get in and you can see

01:23:21.520 everything that's hiding behind the paywall. I mean, our conversion rate's fantastic for people

01:23:24.740 to do the free trial who stick with their subscription very high. They check it out and

01:23:29.140 say, yeah, this is worth 10 bucks a month to get that exclusive content to support the Western 0.99

01:23:34.500 Standard so they can keep producing the content we need, not that woke trash and garbage that they 0.85

01:23:40.400 have at our state broadcaster or even some of the other publications and broadcasters who take tax 0.94

01:23:47.300 dollars and just put up bad content. I mean, hey, I don't care. Any group or organization could be

01:23:52.360 as left as they want. As long as it's not taking tax dollars. You know, when somebody said before

01:23:57.860 that we're not biased, nah, we're biased. We have our slant. And the news isn't. Dave is

01:24:01.100 very critical about that. He's our news editor. He makes sure that news content is we report the

01:24:07.340 facts and we get them out there. But I mean, our columns and our hosts and things tend to be

01:24:10.820 conservative, libertarian. That's kind of the feel of the publication. And that's the way it goes.

01:24:16.020 And again, we can do that because we rely on you guys and we rely on our sponsors to keep things

01:24:21.140 going. This is from Claudette, two pages in the Trudeau Sun Edmonton News, something from the US

01:24:28.320 papers. Yeah, so there's, you know, we need variety, we need information. And we're in a

01:24:33.620 great new age where these new publications like us can spring up and get rolling. And the other

01:24:37.440 ones we rely on, of course, are our sponsors. So I'll finish up here with Bitcoin Well. And a

01:24:41.980 reminder, these guys, they have been a fantastic sponsor for us. And they've partnered with Power

01:24:47.200 ED, which is by the Athabasca University to create a free online curriculum about Bitcoin. So I mean,

01:24:53.420 that's the thing, if you're wondering about Bitcoin, you want to learn about it, go to

01:24:56.920 bitcoinwell.com slash learn. And you can enroll in what they call Bitcoin Academy. You can enroll

01:25:02.660 today. And from a corporate perspective, you can pay your employees in Bitcoin with the employer

01:25:08.220 Bitcoin savings plan. And you'll learn the benefits of buying and holding Bitcoin for your business.

01:25:13.240 Like it's, it's not just individuals are going to be doing this. It's, it's not just there.

01:25:16.860 This is a broad service that Bitcoin well provides everything from business needs to your personal

01:25:22.260 leads. If you're looking to get into it, check them out, bitcoinwellonline.com. This is a,

01:25:27.640 where you can learn about it, invest in it, get involved in it and safely. This is a good

01:25:31.560 responsible company. Now, uh, if you haven't subscribed, as I said, get on there, be sure

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01:25:51.720 helps get more subscribers and helps us keep providing this content. So come back tomorrow,

01:25:57.920 1130 AM. My first guest is going to be Michelle Sterling of Friends of Science. And she's going

01:26:03.780 to talk about a column that's just recently gone up. And then Marcella too. She's a local author.

01:26:10.100 You might have heard him on talk radio a lot in the past.

01:26:12.120 He's been very active in speaking up.

01:26:13.520 He's the president of the Institute for Public Sector Accountability.

01:26:17.500 And we'll just talk about governance in general.

01:26:19.340 He likes to talk about civic government,

01:26:20.640 but he talks on the broader issues of good governance as well,

01:26:23.660 of course, as rare as it may be, provincially and federally.

01:26:27.940 So it'll be a good conversation.

01:26:29.800 Thank you all for tuning in today,

01:26:31.740 and I look forward to seeing you all online tomorrow, guys.

01:26:39.720 Transcription by CastingWords

01:27:09.720 You

Western Standard - January 12, 2022

Triggered： Where are Alberta’s ICU beds？

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