Western Standard - Trudeau’s unAlbertan Alberta senators

00:00:00.000 good day today is september 4th 2024 i am derek phillibrand publisher of the western standard

00:00:30.000 you're watching the pipeline i'm joined as always by western standard opinion editor

00:00:35.360 nigel henneford good afternoon again good afternoon and western standard senior alberta

00:00:39.760 colbus cory morgan always a pleasure i always say oh we got a good show for you but today i really

00:00:47.040 really mean it we had zero trouble coming up with the topics today uh in fact the biggest top story

00:00:54.080 The main story we're going to leave off the top came and just broke as we're cooking, coming up with our agenda for today, Nigel.

00:01:01.960 And we'll be starting to show off with Jagmeet and Justin break up.

00:01:07.560 That's right. The formal coalition agreement between Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party and Jagmeet Singh's NDP is over.

00:01:15.480 Huge news. Are we headed to an early election?

00:01:18.940 God, I hope so. We'll discuss.

00:01:21.760 And B.C. United. Remember the B.C. Liberals became B.C. United?

00:01:26.300 Well, B.C. is now united, but under the Conservative Party.

00:01:31.040 They ran up the white flag, folded like a cheap tent, but ultimately probably did the right thing for British Columbia and the Conservative movement.

00:01:41.420 And very unprecedented, just stood down. Stood down.

00:01:46.620 And through their support behind the BC Conservatives, absolute earthquake in BC political news that's going to have national ramifications.

00:01:57.440 Speaking of national ramifications, Justin Trudeau has appointed two very un-Albertans to represent Alberta in the Senate.

00:02:08.480 Christopher Wells, an activist whose time is mostly spent pushing puberty blockers on children

00:02:14.940 and ensuring that men can go into the same washroom as women and play in the same sports league as them.

00:02:19.360 He will be representing Alberta in the Senate alongside Daryl Findhandler,

00:02:26.560 who is most notable for donating lots of money to the Liberal Party.

00:02:30.560 They will take their spots in the Chamber of Silver's Second Thought 0.83

00:02:34.900 over the two women, the two conservative women who were elected to that position not that long ago.

00:02:41.660 And if we have time, we're going to get into a very important thing going on.

00:02:45.080 Justin Trudeau's big 100% tariff to protect electronic vehicle manufacturing

00:02:51.960 that is already subsidized by the federal government in Ontario

00:02:55.080 and a 25% tariff against Chinese steel inevitably has drawn a huge backlash from the Chinese,

00:03:04.520 as one would expect but they're not going after evs they're going after western canola farmers

00:03:12.280 almost all the canola in canada is produced here in the west and that is where the consequences

00:03:17.240 of this policy designed to protect eastern ev manufacturing as follows uh i don't know why

00:03:25.160 uh justin just doesn't call him some favors to his friends i mean they're they're happy to help keep

00:03:29.000 them in power they're happy to help send guys to help them win re-election i don't know why they

00:03:33.240 They just, you know, just don't sort this out, my gentleman.

00:03:36.700 Okay.

00:03:37.820 So let's get into our big top story.

00:03:41.140 Nigel, you and I were sitting in the boardroom this morning talking,

00:03:45.540 what are we going to talk about on the pipeline today?

00:03:48.200 And we had most of the show figured out.

00:03:50.480 And all of a sudden, our news editor, Dave Naylor, piped in and says,

00:03:54.600 Jamie just pulled the plug on Trudeau.

00:03:57.380 Now, that's not necessarily true.

00:03:59.880 He's pulled the plug on what they technically call the confidence and supply agreement, effectively building a coalition government for all intents and purposes, that gave the liberals essentially long hold on power in exchange for certain policy goodies, most of which come with a very high price tag.

00:04:18.280 Before we get into where this is going to go, let's not talk about election, you know, the next election yet, if they're going to get to an early election.

00:04:27.460 But maybe just your first thoughts on why Jake Bietzing felt the need to pull the plug, at least on the formal coalition agreement between his NDP and the Liberals.

00:04:39.080 Well, Derek, he knows there is an election coming later than October next year.

00:04:45.040 what he has done since march of 2022 when the confidence and supply arrangement that you speak

00:04:54.240 of came into effect is keep afloat a government that nobody likes even he doesn't like it

00:05:01.920 and he is well he sold that cheap he should he probably doesn't like it i mean here's a guy who's

00:05:08.600 sold his political soul

00:05:11.060 and what has he got for it?

00:05:12.560 A dental program that serves the needs

00:05:14.860 of half a million very low-income

00:05:16.960 Canadians and he doesn't

00:05:19.000 even get the credit for it. The liberals

00:05:20.520 are saying, I think you've

00:05:22.980 made a point in your own column

00:05:25.000 today that he's sitting on the slide saying

00:05:26.940 hey, that was actually me.

00:05:29.160 Well, he doesn't get the credit for that

00:05:31.060 or anything else that has happened

00:05:33.040 that he has made possible.

00:05:35.280 Now, at some point he's got to face

00:05:37.000 his own voters

00:05:37.940 and he's going to say, I split, you know.

00:05:43.120 Finally, I did the right thing when there was no other option.

00:05:46.720 I did the right thing, and I'm not really like Mr. Trudeau at all,

00:05:52.180 even though I kept him from there.

00:05:53.940 To leave it any later would make it impossible even to say that little bit of an excuse.

00:06:00.580 So it had to come. It came.

00:06:03.380 Corey, I mean, they had their supply and confidence slash coalition agreement.

00:06:09.700 There was a bunch of goodies.

00:06:12.080 I mean, you know, the NDP, they could promise the world.

00:06:15.320 They never really have to worry about delivering anything because they know they're not going to win federally.

00:06:19.700 But, I mean, they were promised a lot in this, and they got a lot.

00:06:23.420 They got unrestricted mass migration.

00:06:25.780 We have had insane levels of unrestricted, unverified mass migration coming into Canada.

00:06:31.980 That's something the NDP wanted. It's something they got. They got new social welfare programs. Maybe not as big and far along the implementation as they like, but they got them. And they got new higher taxes, carbon taxes, capital gains taxes. These are all things they wanted. And then more debt to pay for it all.

00:06:52.640 They got a lot.

00:06:53.500 There's a lot of policy.

00:06:54.720 From the left's perspective, there's a lot of policy achievements to plant their flag on here.

00:07:00.840 Why would Singh pull the plug right now?

00:07:04.520 Well, part of his problem, too, though, was the labor.

00:07:07.060 The labor wing of the party is not happy with the liberals or with Singh.

00:07:10.220 I mean, we can't forget that the liberals just imposed binding arbitration on that rail strike with the Teamsters.

00:07:15.480 And the Teamsters are not happy at all with that.

00:07:18.020 Well, Singh has to wear some of that because he's propping up this government.

00:07:22.480 He can keep wagging his finger at Justin Trudeau and saying it's intolerable.

00:07:25.580 But, well, you've got the power, Jagmeet.

00:07:27.500 You can stop this any time you please.

00:07:30.280 He can only keep drawing lines in the sand and jumping back over them so many times.

00:07:36.520 So, I mean, that's part of where the problem is coming in.

00:07:38.580 Another part is, you know, the NDP support mass migration, but trade unions are so thrilled with it.

00:07:44.360 They are so happy with these jobs coming in.

00:07:46.640 And that's the only wing left for the NDP.

00:07:49.200 Well, it dilutes the negotiating power for lower wage people when there's always someone cheaper to do the job for you.

00:07:56.520 Oh, yeah. And Justin Trudeau has owned the left.

00:07:59.240 I mean, he's taken it.

00:08:00.800 He has shifted left.

00:08:01.940 He hasn't had to have his arm twisted that hard to bring in a dental plan and daycare and lunch programs for schools and all the other stuff he's constantly announcing.

00:08:09.560 So where does the NDP retreat to?

00:08:11.880 What can they do anymore?

00:08:12.820 Well, they supposedly, ostensibly are the Labour Party.

00:08:15.700 and Labour just got stepped all over.

00:08:18.920 So he's got to, and I still think he's just posturing,

00:08:21.860 but he's got to do some more posturing right now

00:08:23.940 because the union leaders, I'm sure, are calling him up

00:08:26.680 saying, like, what good are you, Mr. Singh?

00:08:28.880 He's got a caucus retreat coming up in about, what, two weeks, is it?

00:08:33.820 And a by-election in Winnipeg.

00:08:37.900 And in Montreal.

00:08:38.820 And in Montreal.

00:08:39.680 Well, I don't think Montreal is what's on his mind,

00:08:42.600 but there's a real tight fight in Elmwood-Strafkona in Winnipeg.

00:08:47.460 No, no, Montreal's tight too, but it's a three-way between the Liberals, NDP, and the bloc.

00:08:51.940 You know, he actually owns the one in Winnipeg at the moment.

00:08:55.020 If he loses that, that's going to look bad on him, and this is a step in, I guess, in rallying the troops.

00:09:03.000 So how much – okay, Pierre Polyev, he's been a bit – you can see this,

00:09:10.000 like a better term, the shitted grin on his face

00:09:12.640 as he 0.93

00:09:13.920 taunts

00:09:15.920 J. B. Singh, calling him sellouts, saying

00:09:18.480 the reason you're not

00:09:20.520 the reason you're still working for Trudeau,

00:09:22.300 the reason you're not willing to vote non-confidence

00:09:24.660 and trigger an election to get rid of this guy

00:09:26.380 is because you sold out. You're waiting on

00:09:28.500 your pension. You're waiting for your pension

00:09:30.360 to vest. And that is, liberals

00:09:32.560 were very smart. They moved the election back

00:09:34.360 one week for

00:09:36.520 all their guys to vest and their pension.

00:09:38.580 And Jagmeet Singh, very smart, because if they wait till that fixed election date, they all get their big pension.

00:09:46.020 I mean, can you imagine you've served six years in Parliament and you're short one week from that sweet pension?

00:09:52.580 I mean, it doesn't matter your politics. You've got to be pissed.

00:09:57.000 And it doesn't matter your politics. There are about 80 members of Parliament to whom this applies from all parties.

00:10:03.660 Yes. Now, the Conservatives aren't worried about it because every single Conservative is extremely likely to win their seats back.

00:10:11.600 The Bloc, not all of them, but most of them.

00:10:15.660 But the Liberals and the NDP, a bunch of them are going to lose and their pensions are on the line.

00:10:20.220 So it applies across parties, but it really only matters if you're going to lose your seat.

00:10:23.940 If you're going to win your seat, you're fine.

00:10:27.000 So Paul Yev has been kind of twisted in the knife, calling him sellouts, saying this is about his pension and whatnot.

00:10:31.620 So with you, Corey, is that fair? And do you think that it really got under his skin? You think that was, was that a major reason for saying, breaking off the, their formal agreement with the liberals now? Or was it everything else we've already been discussing?

00:10:52.620 been discussing. Well, I think it was everything else, but that adds to it. I mean, and I don't

00:10:56.720 know if it's necessarily fair, but it's effective and it's getting under his skin. There's no doubt

00:11:02.860 about it. Because to be honest, and a lot of people have that discussion, I don't think

00:11:06.100 Singh's himself, and he was that motivated by the pension. It's a rich one. He's going to win a seat.

00:11:10.820 His own seat, he's going to win a game. Yeah, and he's already rich. He's the Rolex leader of the

00:11:15.280 socialist seat. He wears two Rolexes. Yeah, his wife sits on the, what, $20,000 breastfeeding

00:11:20.680 chairs or whatever other stuff they've done. The pension, I mean, I'm certain he doesn't want to

00:11:24.560 turn away money, but he's not hard pressed no matter how you look at it. So I'm sure that has

00:11:30.040 to be actually all the more galling when that's not part of your motivation for this, but you got

00:11:33.820 to sit there and keep taking that needle. And what's he going to say to his own voters? I don't

00:11:38.120 need it. I'm already rich. Are you really going to say that as the NDP socialist reader? So it's an

00:11:42.760 effective way to get under his skin. I mean, how good a politicking in general it is for Polyev,

00:11:47.820 I don't know. But that's been kind of his style. It always has been. Even when he wasn't leading the party, he was the badgering, pestering opposition member who would really get on them in committees and things.

00:11:57.680 So he's just turned his sights at Singh and Singh's vulnerable.

00:12:03.560 OK, so let's turn now towards what's going to come from this.

00:12:07.940 My best bet, as I wrote my column this morning, is that on the very first day that Parliament comes back this fall,

00:12:15.460 Pierre Polyev is going to stand up, take one look at Trudeau.

00:12:19.660 He's going to take another look, look down the aisle a bit at Singh, and he's going to table a motion of non-confidence.

00:12:25.720 And he's going to look Singh in the eye the whole time he does it and say, let's, you say you're done your agreement with Trudeau.

00:12:33.940 Let's see how serious you are.

00:12:35.820 Stand up and be counted.

00:12:36.980 Let's have a vote of non-confidence.

00:12:41.520 Nigel, where do you think that would go?

00:12:43.940 Because I think it's good money.

00:12:45.320 First day of Parliament, we're getting a non-confidence motion tabled by Polyev.

00:12:49.540 Does Singh pick up the bait?

00:12:52.240 No, not in the slightest chance will he pick up the bait.

00:12:56.920 He cannot afford to.

00:12:59.360 There is no money in the NDP.

00:13:01.700 They have only just finished paying off the $22 million that they borrowed to fight the 2021 election.

00:13:11.400 The contributions to the party have been contaminated by the confidence and supply agreement.

00:13:18.480 NDP supporters don't like it.

00:13:21.160 They have taken in something like $6.9 million in the first two quarters of this year, which is nothing.

00:13:30.500 the conservatives have taken in $20.5 million

00:13:37.580 and the liberals about half of that

00:13:41.680 the same pattern repeats in 2023

00:13:46.600 the people, the supporters are not stepping up to a plate

00:13:51.840 to pay for it

00:13:53.120 so he has no money to fight

00:13:55.200 and even if he borrows again

00:13:56.940 he starts from a situation where in the polls

00:14:00.940 they are way way down so they are not popular

00:14:04.820 and there are all sorts of good reasons for it which we've just gone over

00:14:08.560 so I think that he will actually stretch this out as long as he possibly

00:14:12.960 can and possibly all the way until

00:14:16.860 October of next year all the while saying well

00:14:20.240 we're with you on this or with you on that if Mr. Trudeau really wants an election

00:14:25.000 and he'll have to put out something that Mr. Singh can't support.

00:14:28.860 Well, and we know Joseph Trudeau most certainly does not want an election right now.

00:14:33.800 He would get utterly nuked by Polioff.

00:14:38.960 And I think there's a few other reasons why, if I was Jameet Singh, I would not trigger an election.

00:14:44.480 Yeah, it's embarrassing. Yeah, you have to walk around with your tail between your legs.

00:14:49.700 But what's the old saying? That discretion is a better part of valor.

00:14:52.560 And right now, I think that really applies to J.B. Singh.

00:14:55.540 If I was advising J.B. Singh, I'd say, sir, you would be crazy to do it.

00:14:59.980 They're probably going to lose some seats.

00:15:02.160 The NDP is roughly equal to where they were in the polls in the last election, maybe ever so slightly down, but they're about where they were.

00:15:08.360 But the conservatives are so much higher, having sucked up half the liberal vote nearly, that a little less, I'd say 40% of the liberal vote, that they're not just going to take seats from the liberals.

00:15:19.320 They're going to take seats from the NDP as well.

00:15:20.840 So the NDP is going to lose seats. And very importantly, they're going to lose all their influence.

00:15:25.900 So even without their supply and confidence coalition agreement, they're still the unofficial junior partner to the Liberals in Parliament.

00:15:33.940 They have influence. Justin Trudeau does not want an election. So he's got to keep the NDP happy.

00:15:39.040 Well, if there's an election with a high degree of probability, there's going to be a massive majority conservative government.

00:15:46.680 And the ND people have zero influence in that.

00:15:50.160 All they'll be able to do is sit in the cheap seats of Parliament and scream, please stop.

00:15:54.940 For the love of God, please stop.

00:15:56.400 And they're going to watch in the first few months of Apollyo government as he essentially legislates away everything they achieved with Justin Trudeau from their perspective.

00:16:06.680 If he can get it past the Senate.

00:16:09.920 True.

00:16:11.220 We'll come to that.

00:16:12.280 Yeah.

00:16:13.700 Well, there's ways.

00:16:14.420 you essentially you load everything into the into the budget you essentially only do budgets

00:16:18.500 because the senate can't kill budgets you just put everything into a budget big omnibus bill

00:16:22.980 senate can't kill budgets that's that's the one rule that's probably the one real way around the

00:16:27.060 senate is put or at least put money bills into every piece of legislation you do so the senate

00:16:32.180 can't kill it um that's that's an interesting thought for writing there remind me to bring

00:16:38.660 bring that to me after. Let's do some running on that. Corey, is there any good reason for Singh

00:16:50.600 to pull the plug? We've talked about all the negatives. Well, from his perspective,

00:16:55.040 he probably shouldn't. Well, he probably won't. Is there anything in the plus column?

00:17:00.320 There's none. There really is none. He's been riding with Trudeau so long, and Trudeau's

00:17:05.100 support has collapsed, and he's collapsed along with it. They haven't been able to capitalize

00:17:09.660 from the Liberal, you know, unpopularity. If he'd have been there, some degree of separation from

00:17:15.000 the Liberals, perhaps, even if Trudeau is losing popularity, some of that would drift to the NDP,

00:17:20.160 but it hasn't. And, you know, the formula for pulling the pin on a parliament means,

00:17:24.920 whether we like it or not, not for the good of the country, it's with the good of your party.

00:17:28.160 And there's just absolutely nothing on the plus side of the column for Singh to look at and say,

00:17:34.660 this would be a good idea i mean there's no chances at least as things look right now that

00:17:39.920 you know that they would gain seats unless there was some sort of phenomenal campaign they held

00:17:43.560 as much as he is going to be galling to sit for this next year and constantly just talk big and

00:17:49.220 and then act weak uh it's still better than than going to the polls at this point and just as you

00:17:55.100 said losing seats there's no reason for him to go so he's going to talk a lot but i'll be pretty

00:17:59.660 darn shocked if you ever actually now there is this thing to mention that you sit here and we

00:18:05.540 work it out and we parse it out and we think well if this then that doesn't make any sense won't 0.65

00:18:10.300 happen but sometimes accidents do happen we've been wrong before i mean we can't get into his

00:18:15.980 mind necessarily it is actually very very close if you look at the seat distribution liberals have

00:18:21.560 got 154 the conservatives have got 119 you know the bloc quebecois would be enough to do it

00:18:27.980 And you just need one liberal member of parliament taken to hospitals with the symptoms of a heart attack and another one stuck in traffic.

00:18:39.920 And then you are down to the situation where when the bells goes, they lose by one vote.

00:18:45.260 These things don't happen very often, but they have happened. 0.99

00:18:48.960 So all of our speculation here, which I think is right.

00:18:52.540 I don't think there will be an election. For all the reasons that Korea has advanced and that you have talked about, it could still happen by accident.

00:19:01.720 Okay. Well, speaking of by accident, let's try to make some sense of what the hell has been going on in British Columbia. 0.77

00:19:10.940 For the longest time, B.C. politics has been utterly uninteresting to me, and I think to most people outside of B.C., maybe even most people in B.C.

00:19:19.560 You had the left party, and then you had the B.C. Liberals, which on some days were a center-right party, on some days a center-left party.

00:19:29.820 You didn't have any real big disagreement between the major parties since at least Gordon Campbell.

00:19:36.460 Gordon Campbell's first two terms were, I think, definitively on the center-right, kind of in the Mike Harris, almost Ralph Klein mold that you saw coming through the...

00:19:46.460 I guess he was picking up at the very end of it, but coming out of the late 90s, early 2000s, and, you know, Christy Clark had her moments, but no one would call her a conservative standard bearer by any measure.

00:19:59.840 You've had John Rostad, did I say it right?

00:20:05.000 Rostad?

00:20:05.540 Rostad.

00:20:06.240 I keep on saying Brunstead, but it's Rostad.

00:20:09.200 It's a German.

00:20:09.780 Yes. John Rostad kicked out by Kevin Falcon for disagreeing with orthodoxy around global warming. And boy, oh boy, did that turn out to be one bad decision.

00:20:25.240 I mean, if you could point to one, you know, where did the butterfly flap its wings that created the hurricane?

00:20:34.320 It was Kevin Falcon kicking John Rostad out of the BC Liberals slash BC United Caucus.

00:20:41.380 And there's many reasons, I mean, confusing brand changes.

00:20:45.940 It all goes from disaster to disaster.

00:20:48.260 And it culminated last week with the formal, effectively nearly unconditional abdication of the BC United Liberals to the Conservatives.

00:21:00.620 So we now have a BC United Party, just not very much in the fashion that Kevin Falcon and the BC United expected.

00:21:08.320 So essentially they're not formally abolishing the party, at least not quite yet.

00:21:13.500 It's just standing down. They're suspending the campaign. They're not going to run candidates.

00:21:18.260 I mean, so I suppose if the Conservatives were to lose the election, BC United could revive itself after the next election, at least on paper, but it would have a hard time at that point with no MLAs.

00:21:33.260 Start with you, Nigel, you've written on this.

00:21:37.260 Does this mean it's completely in the bag for the Conservatives?

00:21:41.260 Or does this just give the Conservatives maybe the edge over the NDP?

00:21:46.260 The latter. For all the reasons that I was saying about the other situation, accidents happen. You never know what's going to happen in an election campaign. Somebody could, an uncomfortable truth could be produced about somebody that just changes voter perceptions.

00:22:04.600 the so-called bozo eruption you have an inexperienced slate of candidates there

00:22:11.080 in the conservatives in summer experience they're already mlas but there's a lot of people who

00:22:17.180 haven't really learned how to campaign so i would never say it's in the bag but it definitely

00:22:25.420 they definitely have the edge on the ndp at this moment because the ndp has done so many things

00:22:33.060 that have made people so angry, let me name just a couple,

00:22:39.100 this whole safe supply thing.

00:22:41.120 We don't have that issue here in Alberta, but in B.C.,

00:22:45.360 people are absolutely furious, but a drug addict ends up in hospital

00:22:49.660 and the nurse is obliged to provide him with his pipe

00:22:53.620 and whatever goes with it.

00:22:56.040 That's a huge one.

00:22:57.220 Another one is the sort of abandonment of provincial authority

00:23:02.360 essentially to native interests, giving away the land.

00:23:08.280 I mean, you can have that discussion as to whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

00:23:12.220 What is clear is that people don't like it.

00:23:15.720 They have, the NDP, has put BC in the kind of debt that it has never seen before.

00:23:22.820 Again, people understand that.

00:23:25.880 They feel the ramifications of it in the tax bill.

00:23:28.680 So there is a tremendous amount of disgust, disappointment, and despair over the NDP.

00:23:37.660 David Eby, the man who became premier after John Horgan, is not John Horgan.

00:23:45.200 Horgan, you know, he was NDP, probably didn't agree with him on a lot of things,

00:23:49.700 but he was actually not a bad sort of guy.

00:23:51.520 If you were to fortuitously arrive, see him walking past the window,

00:23:54.780 then come in and sit down at this table.

00:23:56.980 You would enjoy John Horgan.

00:23:58.680 But you would not enjoy David Eby in the same way.

00:24:04.380 So the NDP have got a lot against them.

00:24:07.420 Rustad doesn't have much baggage when you're a new party.

00:24:11.060 You have that luxury.

00:24:13.080 And there is something appealing about somebody who gets kicked out of the party

00:24:16.900 because he doesn't follow the bromide of the day, in this case about global warming,

00:24:23.780 and sort of comes back and does a reverse takeover.

00:24:26.980 appeals hey that's kind of cute i like that everyone kind of fantasizes about getting kicked

00:24:32.340 fired by your boss then you come back you become the boss of fire it's a seven stone weekly you put

00:24:38.180 muscles up with the charles atlas program you know it's uh i don't know whether that's a relevant

00:24:42.180 cultural reference these days but at any rate he's the comeback kid and a lot of people will

00:24:48.020 find that appealing so the short answer yeah they're in with a good chance um

00:24:53.380 Um, I'm having, part of me thinks like, haha, you're sticking it to Kevin Falcon.

00:25:02.700 He had it coming.

00:25:03.740 He kicked this guy out for no good reason, and now he is given his abject total political surrender.

00:25:12.440 But there's also a part of me that thinks Kevin Falcon did the noble thing here.

00:25:16.480 Because, you know, I'm generally like, I like political diversity, where there's actual differences between the parties. But the BC, BC United slash BC Liberals exists or existed for one reason and one reason only. And that is the traditional BC role of the British Columbia's stop the Socialist Party.

00:25:40.480 And, you know, we've talked, I think we talked about this last, we've talked about this many times before.

00:25:44.800 It's taken the form of the conservatives a long time ago, and then it took the form of social credit, and then it took the form of the liberals.

00:25:50.940 And now it's taking the form of the conservatives again.

00:25:53.520 The conservatives are just a much more robust version of it than, say, the liberals were.

00:25:57.000 This is more in line with maybe the earlier liberals or versions of social credit, Van Der Zand, guys like that.

00:26:03.120 The BC United Liberal Party existed only for the sole purpose of keeping the NDP out. Its continued existence was working to achieve the exact opposite of its stated purpose of existence.

00:26:19.120 So how do you think Kevin history is going to look at Kevin Falcon here and let's just say for for argument's sake the conservatives do win because I'd say at this point I'd favor them to win up slam dunk but I'm making a bet I'm gonna say it's probably conservatives.

00:26:36.120 Is it going to view him as this hapless disaster of a leader who tried to kill their leader and was just you know had to surrender and humiliation on the way out or.

00:26:49.120 The man who, yeah, maybe screwed up, but did the right thing to help defeat the socialists.

00:26:54.860 How do you think history of BC is going to remember Kevin Falcon?

00:26:57.520 I think for the most part, people won't remember him at all.

00:27:00.400 Well, it's not saying he hasn't been in that terribly long.

00:27:07.660 And it was a lackluster leadership.

00:27:10.420 He did step in it.

00:27:11.840 I mean, people currently are saying thank you for taking one for the team because this was putting a real risk of putting the NDP back in.

00:27:19.120 Uh, but realistically, they still kind of in the back of their minds are saying, but you put us

00:27:23.220 here in the first bloody place to begin with. So I noticed he's, he stepped right out too. He said,

00:27:29.120 you know, I'm not running. I'm not doing, I'm gone. I'm done. Uh, I can imagine there's been

00:27:33.900 some backroom discussions. I remember when the wild rose and the Alberta Alliance came together

00:27:37.260 and I was on the board back then it took till our donors. Basically we're smacking our heads

00:27:41.280 together saying the book, you're not getting any money. You're not getting any support unless you

00:27:45.120 get it together. We're not telling you how to do it. We're just saying, do it or you're broke.

00:27:48.600 And I'm certain the discussions got to that point in BC. It wasn't a point of principle,

00:27:53.940 I think so much with Falcon to step aside. It was a realization that it still would look better

00:27:59.720 doing this now than going into an election, getting obliterated, but being known as the

00:28:03.780 spoiler who put the NDP back in for four more years. So he's, yeah, not to be too cruel,

00:28:10.800 But I think he's going to be viewed as a political blip, you know, a footnote for political wonks like us.

00:28:15.760 But people in general, he just kind of came and went.

00:28:18.900 I think in large measure, you're right.

00:28:22.060 I mean, he had no choice, but I think to surrender.

00:28:26.660 But to make, to actually do it, I've never seen anything like,

00:28:30.780 some people have tried to compare it to Daniel Smith's floor crossing from the Wild Rose of the Peace season in December 2015.

00:28:38.020 Sorry, 2014.

00:28:38.700 It doesn't hold up there. There's there's there was no game for him here. He lost his leadership. He lost. He's not even running as an MLA. He can't. I mean, what's he going to do? Sit as a backbencher in Rudstad's caucus after he got kicked after he kicked Rudstad out. He came back and ate him alive.

00:28:57.240 I think he did do the right thing

00:29:00.700 and I think he did do it in large measure

00:29:03.240 for the right reasons

00:29:04.180 but I think he also did it at the end of the road

00:29:07.220 there was nowhere left to go

00:29:09.360 they were looking at zero seats

00:29:11.340 and he helped at the very least

00:29:13.400 save some of his colleagues seats

00:29:15.300 so part of this

00:29:16.600 it's not that

00:29:18.300 the reason I said earlier it was a nearly

00:29:20.880 unconditional surrender is because

00:29:22.280 there does seem to have been some conditions

00:29:25.660 The BC Conservatives have reopened their nominations, and that is to allow some of these BC United Liberals to come over and sit.

00:29:34.040 Well, you still want to keep your incumbents if you can get them.

00:29:35.640 Yeah.

00:29:36.000 Now, they're not taking all of them because some of them are real liberals, real, real liberals that probably don't belong in the BC Conservative Party.

00:29:43.640 But, you know, some of them probably do belong in there, and they want to bring them along.

00:29:47.920 And that's tough for people who won nominations to be the BC Conservative candidate, and all of a sudden the leader's saying,

00:29:55.080 hey, in the name of the greater good, I'm sorry, you got to go. We're making room for the BC United

00:30:02.380 Liberal candidate that you were opposed to just 24 hours ago. That's tough. So the BC Conservatives

00:30:08.560 are swallowing some here. In order for Kevin Falcon to wear, to be able to say with a straight

00:30:14.900 face, they said they're going to improve their vetting process because, you know, they were

00:30:18.180 going after some BC Conservative candidates that maybe said some embarrassing things. And, you

00:30:23.780 know, Cory and I, we came from wild rose in tough times. It's hard to do a thorough vetting of all

00:30:30.580 your candidates. So when you're small and you don't have huge resources to put a private

00:30:34.480 investigator to go through the toilet paper of every candidate. I mean, it's, you can end up

00:30:42.080 with some, as Nigel said, there's still some room for some eruptions. And you can imagine there's

00:30:47.140 probably already knowledge on the part of the BC NDP, but they're keeping their powder dry. You

00:30:51.680 don't blow these guys up now. You wait until two weeks before elections. You wait until the advanced

00:30:55.660 polls are about to open. They already pitched out the opening shot. They said, Mr. Rustad,

00:31:00.620 you should fire everyone who supported the convoy. Yeah. And that's a beginning, but there's

00:31:06.480 going to be some gems. There's going to be somebody who tweeted something truly, you know.

00:31:10.860 But the conservatives did put some water in their wine here. I mean, a hell of a lot less than the

00:31:15.680 see united liberals they i mean uh they drank the poison but the conservatives put some water in

00:31:22.560 their wine and and it seems to be a good deal for them i mean they've got them out of the way um

00:31:30.320 all right well let's uh speaking of elections let's talk about some of the only politicians

00:31:37.440 in the civilized world who were not elected in what are nominally a democracy canadian senators

00:31:45.040 So just the other week, Justin Trudeau appointed the very nonpartisan, totally not anti-conservative liberal, Charles Adler, to the Senate to represent Manitoba.

00:31:58.080 Well, Manitoba does not hold Senate elections, so whatever, you get to appoint whoever you want.

00:32:05.300 But it just sticks, I think, under all of our claws a bit that Justin Trudeau has the gall to call these people independent, that they're not anything but his servants.

00:32:13.700 But, boy, he really went out of his way in Alberta. He appointed people who could not get elected dog catcher in Alberta. First was Daryl Finhandler. If you haven't heard of him, that's okay. Nobody else has as well, except for whoever's keeping the roll call list of liberal donors in Alberta.

00:32:39.460 This guy is notable only for making some substantial financial contributions to the Liberal Party.

00:32:47.520 Now, to be fair, that is the single oldest criteria for getting elected, appointed to the Senate in Canadian history.

00:32:54.920 It started with Sir John A. MacDonald.

00:32:57.460 Give the Conservatives a little cash for Sir John A.

00:33:00.560 Good chance, you've really improved your chances of a Senate seat.

00:33:04.800 So, you know, that's not a new thing.

00:33:06.160 So that's a long and proud Canadian tradition of corruption, and it goes right back to our beginning.

00:33:14.400 But again, obviously not very independent, not very nonpartisan.

00:33:18.560 But the real one, I think the one that we all like talking about, is Christopher Wells.

00:33:25.600 Christopher Wells has got some BS job at a BS university.

00:33:31.720 I'm not sure if it's fair to call them all BS.

00:33:33.320 But it's certainly his department. It's a BS department at the university, and he's got a BS role there. He's the head of gender studies and various. Have you got his formal job title there?

00:33:47.720 I mean, so Dr. Wells is the associate professor in the Department of Child and Youth Care at McEwen University.

00:34:00.140 He holds McEwen's first Canada research chair for the public understanding of sexual and gender minority youth.

00:34:09.240 He is an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry.

00:34:13.420 He founded the McEwen Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity.

00:34:17.940 There is more, but I think that gives the flavor.

00:34:21.740 We get the point.

00:34:22.360 There is considerably more, actually.

00:34:23.840 So this guy, I mean, unfortunately, like many people in this area, went well beyond the perfectly reasonable demands of the gay rights movement for equality.

00:34:36.960 He's left that long behind him.

00:34:39.540 He has long since moved on to kind of the well beyond the bake my cake or go to jail or I'll see you face. 0.84

00:34:47.540 He is in the your children should be allowed to transition genders and sexes and the parents shouldn't know 0.55

00:34:56.880 that puberty blockers should be available to young children and the parents should know or have anything to do with it.

00:35:04.360 that men should be allowed to play on women's sports teams

00:35:08.840 and that men should be allowed in the same change rooms 1.00

00:35:11.980 as biological females. 0.92

00:35:15.460 That appears to be, those are the highlights of his career.

00:35:19.020 That is what he's known for.

00:35:20.080 The legacy mainstream media paid for by Justin Trudeau

00:35:24.740 quote him ad nauseum, anytime anything comes up,

00:35:28.460 quoting him with extreme reverence

00:35:31.680 when Daniel Smith announced that

00:35:34.360 Alberta is going to restrict the use of puberty blockers for young children and that men will not be allowed to play on women's sports teams.

00:35:42.800 He came out and I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but I think I'm not going on a limb to say he said this is going to kill people.

00:35:50.680 You're going to kill. You're trying to kill LGTBQ plus ABCXY youth. 1.00

00:35:58.760 This man is an extremist and Justin Drudeau found him perfectly suitable to be appointed to the Senate. 1.00

00:36:04.360 Yes. He is also the author of a book, How to Form a Gay-Straight Alliance, which has been endorsed and issued by the Alberta Teachers Association, which seems to very much reflect his views in these matters.

00:36:22.840 Well, I don't even really care much about gay-straight alliances. They're a kid's club. My only problem there was the obsessive need for secrecy, to hide everything from parents.

00:36:34.360 Which, you know, once upon a time, I was sympathetic to the argument that, okay, well, some kids might not be welcome at home if, you know, they come out as gay or something.

00:36:43.640 But then the obsession with secrecy around this stuff just started to get a little too fishy for me now.

00:36:48.460 And I just don't trust activists like this.

00:36:54.860 Nigel, you called this a very deliberate insult to Albertan's disappointment.

00:36:59.420 Well, I did. And the reason that I did so was that Premier Smith has taken what I think is a widely supported position with regard to gender transition.

00:37:11.880 She has said that children 17 years old and under will not be able to do this.

00:37:19.560 They won't take the puberty blockers. They won't get the surgery.

00:37:22.780 and that recognizes that when they are adults if that's what they want to do they can do it

00:37:33.980 but as she said when she made the original announcement that period of life is one when

00:37:40.360 people often are quite confused and mixed up and the job is to get them through it later if they

00:37:47.500 are determined, then they can do it. So this, of course, is anathema to people who think in the

00:37:55.280 manner of Dr. Wells. They feel and have been actively pursuing, and that's a little bit part

00:38:03.080 where these gay-straight alliances led to, the idea that there was a secret life that a child

00:38:09.400 could have, and that the parents didn't have a right to know, and that the state could become,

00:38:15.960 in place of the parents and permit and allow these surgeries

00:38:22.080 and these puberty blockers to be issued.

00:38:25.220 So she's drawn that line in the sand.

00:38:28.780 That is a direct throwing, you know, mixing the metaphors a little.

00:38:32.340 Then she threw the gauntlet across it.

00:38:34.480 So she has challenged this whole way of thinking

00:38:37.460 in Alberta's academic establishment.

00:38:40.460 Well, Mr. Trudeau obviously is not a fan of our premier

00:38:44.900 and I said, I'll show you.

00:38:47.180 Here, have him for a senator. 0.98

00:38:49.340 It would be like taking a very activist, Roman Catholic nun, 0.99

00:38:57.700 strongly pro-life, and making her a senator in Quebec.

00:39:01.500 How do you think that the Quebec people who are,

00:39:08.740 and I'm not saying they're all pro-choice,

00:39:11.220 but they certainly, generally speaking, religion is on the downswing in Quebec.

00:39:15.920 Why this?

00:39:16.980 That person does not represent who I am, what I think,

00:39:20.560 and it doesn't represent my interests.

00:39:22.480 And I think when Dr. Wells comes up against the Alberta interests,

00:39:26.840 which are principally energy, energy security,

00:39:29.720 and the canola fight we're about to have,

00:39:33.560 he doesn't have a clue.

00:39:34.500 That's not his file.

00:39:36.100 So he's not a representative.

00:39:38.160 That's why I call him out on it.

00:39:39.920 Corey, your show earlier today, I didn't catch it yet, I'll watch it a rerun, but you interviewed Senator in waiting Erica Barutz, who was democratically elected by the people of Elbert, I think to be number two on the list of senators in waiting.

00:39:56.440 I'm sure she found the choice of this very extreme activist man, man to be curious, to be appointed over her who was elected.

00:40:08.960 I thought it was 2015.

00:40:13.740 What's that?

00:40:14.620 Because it's 2015, you know. 1.00

00:40:16.140 Oh yeah, women get, you know, got to be half in the Senate. 1.00

00:40:18.600 What happened to appointing women?

00:40:20.840 Perhaps the two that are elected rather than these extreme men who are wildly offside with even the middle of public opinion in Alberta.

00:40:31.560 He certainly wasn't looking for gender parity.

00:40:33.160 She also pointed out, though, that the prior appointment to the Senate, there was a woman that Trudeau did.

00:40:38.700 He made a point of doing it during our Senate election.

00:40:42.500 In the middle of the campaign, he picked out liberal Karen Sorensen, slapped a coat of independent paint on her and said, this is your new senator in Alberta.

00:40:52.760 You guys are all wasting your time on this election.

00:40:55.580 This is just another opportunity for him to do like his father did and give the finger to the West.

00:40:59.520 And that's what this is.

00:41:00.320 He's using the Senate to basically say, up yours, I don't care what you think.

00:41:03.900 And I can show you how I don't care what you think by picking senators who are truly the opposite of what the majority of your province wants to see representing you.

00:41:13.960 I mean, Eric, Rudy didn't seem surprised at all by this.

00:41:17.100 I mean, they go into it knowing their chances of being appointed by a liberal government are pretty much slim to none.

00:41:24.920 The other thing that was noteworthy, though, is that those seats have been vacant for years.

00:41:28.800 This isn't something that he needed to do.

00:41:31.340 Well, that adds another element to it.

00:41:33.940 Maybe he is worried about the security of his government when he's starting to fill these seats, when he's taken years leaving them vacant.

00:41:39.260 Well, one of the biggest mistakes of Stephen Harper was leaving so many vacancies at the end of his prime ministership to be filled by Justin Trudeau.

00:41:46.980 But the Senate's just such a sick and abused institution from many governments, not just the liberals, actually, that it's just a rotten system.

00:41:55.360 Disappointment system's terrible. 0.87

00:41:56.440 are sick and abused yes but it still has powers yes i want to draw attention to a column that

00:42:03.980 came in from one of our columnists we published it earlier this morning in which this is john

00:42:09.320 hilton o'brien and he makes the point that the senate is not without power we think it is just

00:42:14.200 a rubber stamp but in actual fact it does two things one is that it gives its members credibility

00:42:20.260 and now Dr. Wells can put on his business card,

00:42:24.980 Senator of Canada, people will listen to him

00:42:28.040 in a way that they would not have listened to him

00:42:30.580 when he was just the adjunct professor of who knows what

00:42:33.180 at McEwen, where?

00:42:34.700 Oh, Alberta.

00:42:35.920 You know, like he didn't have much clout.

00:42:40.940 But with this, if he wants to challenge the findings,

00:42:45.000 shall we say, and this is the point

00:42:46.220 that our columnist is making,

00:42:47.880 The Cass Report in Great Britain poured a lot of cold water on this whole matter of gender transition in teenagers.

00:42:56.100 Well, he's now in a position to say, oh, no, no, they got it completely wrong.

00:42:59.780 And he has the credibility of the Canadian Senate behind him to do so, which will be enough for some people to say, oh, well, the Canadian senator says.

00:43:10.020 The other thing he could do, I mean, it's not out of the question that he could have a private member's bill that would impinge on this matter.

00:43:18.500 Don't forget, we think that these certain things are provincial jurisdictions.

00:43:23.200 But, you know, the federal government moved in on health.

00:43:27.260 And what was once a provincial jurisdiction got mixed up in federal politics.

00:43:31.420 They're even trying to make school lunches now.

00:43:33.180 They recognize no boundaries.

00:43:34.580 Exactly.

00:43:35.420 Exactly. So somebody with that, driven by those priorities, seated in the Senate, is in a position to make all kinds of messy trouble that we're not going to enjoy.

00:43:47.540 So read John Hilton O'Brien. Read it.

00:43:50.480 Right on. I wish we had time to get to our last piece, which is, you know, Trudeau has been shoveling tens and tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money at subsidizing useless electric vehicle plants in Ontario.

00:44:09.420 and apparently not for the environment, just make work projects, really, as we've seen,

00:44:15.600 because then he slapped 100% tariff on electronic vehicles coming from China.

00:44:22.140 You know, not a lot of big government of China fans around the Western Standard offices here,

00:44:28.220 but we do trade with them, and we would expect very much, everyone expected they were going to retaliate.

00:44:35.740 And so now they're now investigating what they call illegal dumping of Canadian canola into China.

00:44:44.120 Essentially, it's a prelude for them to respond with the tariffs against our canola, which, I mean, of course, to protect an Eastern industry, which is already subsidized by Western tax dollars, the West is going to pay the price.

00:44:56.700 Western Canadian canola farmers are going to pay the retaliatory trade price for protecting these

00:45:02.700 BS vehicles made in Ontario that nobody wants to drive, paid for by taxpayers. Welcome to Canada,

00:45:08.280 history repeats. I mean, farmers used to have to pay to get implements shipped from the east

00:45:12.680 because the tariffs stopped buying them from the United States. Then they'd pay their taxes into

00:45:16.740 the east. Then they'd pay the shipping for those implements out here and pay the shipping to send

00:45:21.240 the crop to the east so they could sell it and make the profit. It's like the old national policy.

00:45:26.340 It doesn't change. Unfortunately, we don't have time to jump into it. But I just want to put it on the record that our poor Western canola farmers are going to get it hard, I think. And it's all going to be, thankfully, if you're a Western Canadian canola farmer right now, just know that your sacrifice is worth it so that some liberal voter in Ontario can work at their subsidized electronic vehicle plant to make cars that nobody wants to drive.

00:45:56.340 That's it for there. Gentlemen, thank you for joining. And thank all of you for joining us today. If you're not yet a member of the Western Standard, I would say get off your seat. You don't have to get off your seat. You're already on it. Just pick up your phone, pick up your laptop right now. Go to westernstandard.news and become a member. It's only $100 a year or just $10 a month for unlimited access to all Western Standard content.

00:46:17.320 The Western Standard is one of an extremely small number of publications in Canada that are not accepting Justin Trudeau's big media bailout.

00:46:26.560 We are supported by advertising and by membership subscriptions from people like you.

00:46:31.440 We need you to step up and support us to continue our work.

00:46:34.520 Thank you very much for joining us today, and God bless.

00:46:37.380 If the name Ted Byfield brings back fond memories, well, we got a party coming up for you guys.

00:46:41.780 On September 25th, Toasting Ted is what it's called.

00:46:44.980 It's going to honor a great conservative who published Alberta Report News magazine.

00:46:49.400 It's going to be bagpipes, singing, live auction stakes, speeches by Premier Smith, Preston Manning, Stephen Harper.

00:46:54.820 Quite a lineup.

00:46:55.840 The Western Standard is the final incarnation or the latest incarnation of Alberta Report that Ted Byfield founded.

00:47:02.640 And, I mean, he was a great Albertan.

00:47:04.560 He really made his mark on this province, and this evening of celebration for him is really going to be outstanding.

00:47:08.900 You get there, toastingted.ca.

00:47:11.340 That's the website.

00:47:12.400 You can get your tickets.

00:47:13.300 This one's going to sell out.

00:47:14.400 I mean, again, if you want to see Smith, Manning, Harper, all in one spot, one night, be sure

00:47:19.680 to get there.

00:47:20.240 You can become a Western Standard member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited

Western Standard - September 05, 2024

Trudeau’s unAlbertan Alberta senators

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