Western Standard - UNDRIP can’t be ignored. It must be actively opposed

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 we'll try that again good day and happy new year and welcome to the cory morgan show

00:00:48.300 2026 and it looks like we won't be starved for any news this year i guess last year was similar

00:00:54.160 we kicked it off with the resignation of prime minister trudeau so that central canada can just

00:00:59.780 put a smarter older liberal in power rather than the last one but now we've got uh yeah madness

00:01:06.340 down south of the border with uh president trump and uh venezuela and greenland and who knows what

00:01:11.940 else is going on good stuff up here on our side of the border the uh referendum is almost a sure

00:01:17.700 thing to be happening in 2026 i mean how the referendum ends well that's a a lot to be decided

00:01:22.660 yet but there's gonna be one that means a whole year of discussing alberta's place within canada

00:01:27.940 or at least a better part of it.

00:01:29.620 This is a live show, guys.

00:01:30.960 Good to see you checking in.

00:01:31.980 Prayer handle and Paradoxy.

00:01:34.340 Use those comments, discuss things,

00:01:36.860 send questions my way, my guests' way.

00:01:38.320 And I got a guest coming, Mitch Sylvester

00:01:39.780 of the Alberta Prosperity Project

00:01:41.340 on this referendum petition.

00:01:43.560 And it's actually through stayfreealberta.com.

00:01:46.120 There's a lot of bureaucracy and headaches involved

00:01:48.640 with this whole thing, petitioning to get it done right.

00:01:51.200 And they're just trying to really make sure they,

00:01:54.160 again, you know, cross all those T's, dot those I's 0.53

00:01:56.860 and make sure there's no way or reason a person can stop that referendum from coming.

00:02:01.300 All right, let's talk about something else that's going to be big this year, and it's big every year.

00:02:05.260 We've got to talk more about it.

00:02:07.120 The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.

00:02:10.940 Yeah, undrip. I like that. It's got drip in it.

00:02:13.880 Probably, you know, it talks about how good that is.

00:02:16.920 It was a resolution adopted by the United Nations in 2007.

00:02:20.780 Canada was still under sane government at that time.

00:02:24.340 It was one of the few UN members actually voted against it, but Canada shredded those pretenses

00:02:29.620 of sanity in 2015 and endorsed UNDRIP in 2016. Now the nation's paying a terrible price for that

00:02:36.800 endorsement. The UNDRIP is not legally binding. Its principles, though, have contributed to the

00:02:42.920 catastrophic Indigenous policy Canada has been enduring the last 10 years. UNDRIP isn't just

00:02:49.660 an aspirational document that could be ignored. Provinces actually have to get up now and denounce

00:02:55.040 this thing, openly oppose recognizing the plan. This document entrenches a sense of victimhood

00:03:00.500 and entitlement within a minority population that's already a socioeconomic basket case within

00:03:05.780 Canada. Reserve corruption and appalling living conditions are never going to be addressed in a

00:03:10.720 country binding itself with the absurd mandates of UNDRIP. To begin with, UNDRIP calls for the

00:03:15.160 full autonomy and self-government of Indigenous people on reserves.

00:03:19.040 Well, that sounds dandy, except that all efforts of self-government

00:03:22.240 within Canada's reserve system have been an abject failure.

00:03:25.780 Under-inspired Trudeau to remove the provisions for fiscal oversight

00:03:30.020 on Native reserves, and the results have been predictable.

00:03:32.340 Blank checks given to bans have not led to improvement of any conditions

00:03:35.320 on the reserves, except for those sitting on top of the local hierarchy.

00:03:38.380 People are living in squalor while a bandit class lives the high life,

00:03:41.580 and there's no way to correct the issue.

00:03:42.840 Giving all the authority to the reserves for self-government while giving them none of the responsibility for it has failed the people living on the reserves and the people off the reserves who have to pay the bills.

00:03:53.520 UNDRIP affirms Indigenous people's rights to traditional lands and resources.

00:03:58.540 The traditional land refers to every square inch in North America.

00:04:02.500 This path has led to the crippling of economic development in the resource sectors across the country.

00:04:07.600 Indigenous leaders feel they have the right to block all developments while extorting fees for any developments that go ahead. 0.98

00:04:13.640 It's killed employment opportunities for Indigenous people in remote regions, and it's hampered Canada's productivity.

00:04:19.420 Wondering why our GDP per capita is in free fall when compared to other developed countries?

00:04:23.420 See UNDRIP.

00:04:24.340 The belief that Indigenous people have the right to call all traditional lands has also led to the endless and massive land claims,

00:04:33.040 which are tearing the lower mainland of BC to shreds.

00:04:35.640 People are suddenly finding their homes and businesses valueless as banks refuse to refinance

00:04:40.540 mortgages and investors bail out from developments in Richmond. Things are only going to get worse,

00:04:44.680 guys. Canada endorsed UNDRIP, but BC, they went a step further and enshrined their own Declaration

00:04:49.660 on the Rights of Indigenous People Act, DRIPA, and more DRIPS. With the power of legislation

00:04:55.820 behind it, UNDRIP is creating a catastrophe in BC. The Cowichan Band created a garbage dump,

00:05:00.700 which is going to cost tens of millions of tax dollars to clean up while non-native people are 1.00

00:05:05.480 being banned from provincial parks. This is all from that crap, guys. What do you expect, though? 0.99

00:05:09.940 When a race of people has been granted rights based on ancestors, theoretically walking lands 0.98

00:05:15.020 a thousand years ago, and having a right to self-govern without responsibility. Canada

00:05:19.880 foolishly entrenched Indigenous rights into the Constitution, which is bad enough. But at least 1.00

00:05:24.780 Section 35 of the Constitution only contains an obligation to consult Indigenous people before

00:05:29.680 doing anything. Activists have been wrongly claiming that the requirement for consultation

00:05:34.160 is actually one for consent. Now, UNDRIP does expressly say any state must get Indigenous

00:05:40.100 consent before pretty much doing anything. Consent's becoming nearly impossible to attain

00:05:44.860 as the demands for payoffs and extended consultation continue to escalate. Canada's

00:05:49.180 Indian Act is a vile piece of racist legislation that must be scrapped if we want to pretend to be 1.00

00:05:53.480 a country that values equal rights for all races. For politicians to find the courage to take such

00:05:58.280 a course of action, though, the nation must embrace a change of attitude when it comes to

00:06:01.920 indigenous bands. We've got to stop pretending we can have a functional country when five percent of 1.00

00:06:06.480 the population holds a veto authority over the nation, especially when the authority is based on

00:06:11.680 race. The world is supposed to have grown beyond that. To begin that journey to changing the course 0.95

00:06:16.240 of the country though, we've got to start actively opposing the empowerment of a racial minority over 1.00

00:06:21.040 the majority. Nothing less than full equality of status and authority between all races can be

00:06:25.440 accepted. That means not just ignoring UNDRIP, we have to denounce it and any other foreign-crafted 1.00

00:06:31.200 initiatives to try to divide our nation based on race. The passive and cowardly approach of letting

00:06:36.140 things slide is no longer acceptable. So yeah, people, undrip sounds boring and dry, but you know

00:06:40.380 what? Got to get rid of it. All right, that's what's kicking off the year for me. Let's see

00:06:45.220 what else is going on in the newsroom with our news interview. How's it going? Good. Happy New

00:06:49.560 Year. Yes, how do you? Have a good holiday season? That was pretty good. I see you're almost packed

00:06:55.080 up to get ready to go out of town. You got your hitch on the truck. Pretty close. Yeah, I'm still

00:06:59.580 sore from that those fifth wheel hitches are are brutal but uh i'm cheap well that's good and you 1.00

00:07:05.020 doing your art bell memorial tour to the desert we will be doing some shows from the desert in

00:07:11.180 arizona in a few weeks yes okay you're not changing the time to midnight or anything are you no no i

00:07:16.700 won't do the night shift like valley used to but uh i've already got some tips on perhaps we'll

00:07:21.020 have some interesting subject matter coming from out in those uh where the hills have eyes excellent

00:07:25.180 well you're certainly right the news isn't stopping holy cow uh we just got the uh big

00:07:30.700 report into the uh city's water main woes and it offers a a scathing look at various administrations

00:07:38.940 and uh throughout the last 20 years they basically says they've known it's going to be a looming

00:07:43.820 disaster for 20 years and and didn't do anything to to try and stop it and makes a whole bunch of

00:07:49.820 recommendations and our city hall reporter mike thomas will be getting some reaction on that

00:07:56.540 we got rioting breaking out in minneapolis this comes after an ice agent was almost run over and

00:08:04.380 and shot a woman to death who was driving the car some amazing scenes coming out of there 0.99

00:08:13.020 Drama on the high seas this morning with US troops backed by British help took over a

00:08:22.460 Russian flagged oil tanker that had escaped from Venezuelan waters and they captured it somewhere

00:08:28.860 between Iceland and the coast of Scotland and they also took over another ship somewhere in

00:08:35.100 the caribbean uh so and that's uh being diverted to uh the united states uh the or you know you

00:08:43.980 know these recall petitions core and we've we've predicted that they ain't going anywhere and the

00:08:49.660 the organizer of the one to recall uh dimitri nicolaitis calvary ucpl mla admits basically

00:08:56.860 she's going to fail she's only got 6 000 signatures and needs to get another 10 000 0.52

00:09:03.340 in the next two weeks uh for it to become valid so i don't think that's going anywhere and uh

00:09:10.380 today's story on uh useless government spending by the liberals they're spending 1.7 million dollars

00:09:18.380 on quote indigenous climate projects unquote in colombia and zambia well that's money well spent

00:09:27.020 isn't it uh it just zambia like come on well ironically that ties right back into that

00:09:34.860 undrip crap right you know countries are all supposed to pour into these indigenous things 1.00

00:09:38.380 well all we know that probably a few tribal leaders in zambia and columbia got very very rich 0.97

00:09:44.860 and maybe they put a windmill somewhere maybe they did hey let's hope for the best for those

00:09:49.020 good people of zambia well we only have what five or so months before tax freedom day comes along so

00:09:53.900 So these are the things to keep in mind that all these things are going to be taking your money from you.

00:09:58.420 The left wing loses their minds when they say we're going to cut off foreign spending.

00:10:04.520 But this, I mean, some of it is needed.

00:10:06.760 Most of it is not.

00:10:08.860 Indigenous stuff in Zambia is an example of wasted foreign money spending, surely. 1.00

00:10:14.700 Well, I don't know.

00:10:15.540 Sometimes they invest in rocket launchers and helicopters and things like that so that they can better entrench their governance methods out there.

00:10:22.300 So some would see that as a positive.

00:10:24.260 I mean, the left apparently loves dictators, you know, looking at their response to the deposing of Maduro.

00:10:30.680 Exactly.

00:10:31.380 Make sure you, before you leave, enter the new Western Standard newsroom pool.

00:10:37.100 We're taking bets on who Trump will attack next.

00:10:41.140 Oh.

00:10:41.740 And it's everything.

00:10:43.160 You've got Canada.

00:10:44.240 You've got Greenland.

00:10:45.600 I myself have picked Iran.

00:10:48.080 Ah, yeah.

00:10:49.440 Well, it's a big world.

00:10:50.340 It's a big world.

00:10:51.120 So target, not too much sympathy if you go.

00:10:53.200 You know, you got Cuba potential, Colombia's a potential, you know, there's no place off limits to Mr. Trump.

00:10:59.900 Well, that's funny with, you know, Iran has got the demonstrations going on right now from women and so on, and the riots are happening.

00:11:06.580 It looks like the people might be getting to rise up.

00:11:09.080 Some people are paying attention finally, like John Cleese. 0.98

00:11:11.480 Love the man, love, you know, the work of his past, but his leftism since then is, well, typical celebrity garbage. 0.86

00:11:18.280 But even he's been ripping into the BBC saying, 0.93

00:11:20.760 why are you not covering anything in Iran?

00:11:23.260 What on earth is going on?

00:11:24.460 There's some amazing scenes coming out on Twitter.

00:11:27.300 It looks like rebel forces have gained control of two cities now.

00:11:32.960 So, yeah, all sorts of money being bet that Israel is going to attack

00:11:37.660 before the end of the month again.

00:11:40.920 The news just never stops, Corey.

00:11:42.620 It never stops.

00:11:43.640 Well, it keeps us working anyways.

00:11:45.260 We'll find some good news things to report on eventually.

00:11:47.500 sure plane land safely at calgary airport all right except everybody had sore knees because

00:11:53.020 it was a west jet there you go there you go i uh that video today prompted me to go and select a

00:11:59.340 seat uh for an easter flight out there so i didn't want to sit in that that row no it looks pretty

00:12:05.340 brutal here we get the the oh i almost said the m word little people can book those seats uh at a

00:12:12.380 a discounted rate, perhaps. There's ways we can work around this. You can't use the M-Word,

00:12:16.560 just so you know. Well, I didn't, but I'm thinking it. There you go. All right. Thanks,

00:12:21.040 Dave. You bet. All right. There's our news editor, Dave Naylor. And yeah, that newsroom

00:12:25.160 is hustling. I can hear him barking across the room to David number two to make sure to get on

00:12:30.340 those stories and get them rolling. And this is where I nag and do the cup rattling to get some 0.91

00:12:35.760 fundraising. Guys, the reason we have all these reporters out there, we've got a fella full-time

00:12:39.840 I'm in Toronto now.

00:12:41.180 Jeremy Borg is out there.

00:12:42.540 We've got Will up in Edmonton, Jared up in BC.

00:12:47.240 It's because you guys have been subscribing.

00:12:48.880 We're subscriber-based.

00:12:50.120 So I see Mike is looking to put $20 down on Columbia for being invaded.

00:12:53.900 That's fine.

00:12:54.480 But if he hasn't bought a subscription yet, perhaps he'd be better placed in there.

00:12:57.880 We'll see.

00:12:58.960 But check it out, westernstandard.news.com.

00:13:00.780 Get past that paywall and help fund us to keep covering all these news stories as they break.

00:13:06.080 And, boy, they're breaking just hard and heavy and fast.

00:13:09.840 The one Dave was mentioning, you know, for those outside of Calgary, maybe not as familiar with it,

00:13:15.120 but we've just had massive water main problems in the city for a couple of years.

00:13:21.180 Now, it happened in the spring of 2024.

00:13:24.480 This thing burst out in the west side of Calgary.

00:13:26.840 It turned out the whole city had to go on water restrictions for just about the entire summer.

00:13:31.540 Cost a pile to repair all these news conferences and discussions.

00:13:35.080 And this pipe was supposed to last 100 years and it only lasted 50.

00:13:38.620 and they were going to get all these experts in to test it and check it and do a report on it,

00:13:44.040 which apparently they did. But then we kind of forgot about it. Well, lo and behold, what a few

00:13:51.080 weeks ago, bang, it burst again, which is even worse in winter. So people almost got killed.

00:13:56.020 This thing was flooding roads. It was coming up like a geyser. And now that they're repairing it,

00:14:03.240 word is coming out and they're trying to say, well, what happened to the report?

00:14:07.180 What did happen to it?

00:14:09.020 City Council never got to see it yet.

00:14:11.540 And, you know, it should have been just sitting on the city manager's desk or in a drawer for once.

00:14:16.920 You know, okay, it's kind of hit the fan.

00:14:18.940 I'm just going to give it to the mayor because the mayor was demanding it.

00:14:21.860 Mayor Farkas said, give us the report.

00:14:23.480 What happened to it?

00:14:24.400 They've dragged their feet all the way till today before even giving them the report.

00:14:30.180 The report that millions were probably spent to create that was supposed to answer some of these questions.

00:14:35.620 and city council has to beg and fight and threaten to get it. Some heads have got to roll.

00:14:43.700 This is nuts. And yeah, Paradoxi saying, thank goodness, Gondek announced, what was it,

00:14:49.860 80 billion for climate crisis nonsense. Yeah, something like that. The last mayor,

00:14:54.140 she was hung up on, you know, again, a climate emergency and spending billions and billions of

00:14:58.600 dollars on that. And she did nothing with infrastructure. And then for 11 years prior to 0.86

00:15:02.640 her. Nahed Nenshi did nothing on it because nobody wants a water pipe. They want public art.

00:15:08.300 They want a city park. They want to have nice, pretty things to talk about that they can put

00:15:13.460 their name on. They can put a little bronze plaque or do a ribbon cutting or something.

00:15:18.580 And these things, you know, aren't, water pipes don't provide that sort of goodness for them.

00:15:24.680 So either way, now it's still gushing. Calgarians are still on water restrictions,

00:15:29.880 But some of the word out of the mayor's office with Jeremy Farkas, the mayor there, is that, yeah, you know, they're going to have to basically replace that entire line.

00:15:41.020 It's huge.

00:15:42.240 And this kind of speaks to the whole thing on city councils in general on two fronts.

00:15:49.320 For one, city councils and mayors go way off into 100 directions of what they don't need to.

00:15:57.840 They go into areas that aren't their jurisdiction. 1.00

00:16:01.160 They waste time and money on stupid vanity projects. 0.99

00:16:05.320 Somebody else was pointing out the library that was built in Calgary. 1.00

00:16:09.700 I don't know what that costs, a couple hundred million dollars or something.

00:16:12.680 And very few people go to it for two reasons.

00:16:15.320 Because we don't really need libraries like we used to.

00:16:17.960 Community halls and things, fine, but not libraries.

00:16:20.460 Books are kind of, and I love books, but they're going obsolete, guys.

00:16:24.280 So who has taken it over? Well, it's basically turned into kind of a giant homeless shelter

00:16:28.940 because the area they put it in is pretty rough. But that's where hundreds of millions went. Right

00:16:33.860 now, I think people would rather be able to flush their toilets multiple times rather than have a 0.66

00:16:39.380 big public library that only addicted people tend to go to. But this is what happens. But the other

00:16:44.600 part is that relationship between the elected officials and the administration. And this

00:16:50.740 this applies to other levels of government too. The city manager, that's the one he makes more

00:16:57.060 money than any of the elected officials. That's the name that a lot of people, unless they're

00:17:01.440 close watchers, don't even know who it is. It's Duckworth right now. And a lot of those other

00:17:05.720 senior managers within city administration, these people, they're like deputy ministers

00:17:11.020 in the provincial government. It's the same person. They stay election to election. People

00:17:16.880 don't hear their names. They like it that way. They hide in the dark. They make six figures.

00:17:21.400 They call the shots. And that attitude got so much worse when they had Nenshi was mayor.

00:17:29.420 I remember that. I remember watching council meetings. If he wanted to see Nenshi scream

00:17:33.140 at a council member in a council meeting, and it happened quite often, his eyes would bug out and

00:17:36.460 everything. It was pretty comical to look at, actually. But it would always be, if any of them

00:17:40.740 dare to question city administration. That was sacred. You don't dare tell them what to do. Well,

00:17:47.620 wait a minute. That's exactly what you're elected to do. As a matter of fact, you're there to

00:17:52.320 provide oversight. You're there to question them. Part of the risk, true enough, you don't want city

00:17:57.960 council and mayor micromanaging things. It used to be for basement suites, for example, in the city

00:18:02.780 that every single application for basement suite went through city council. It did.

00:18:09.240 secondary suites, you know, that they called at the time. That was a big debate. It took

00:18:12.880 years of debate to take it from the point where you'd have a whole mayor and council discussing

00:18:17.760 every single legal secondary suite application. While city administration was thrilled to see

00:18:25.200 the mayor and council wasting all that time pissing around in their meetings with that

00:18:27.980 and not paying attention to what they're actually doing and what they're not doing and what they

00:18:33.300 weren't doing was pointing out as this report that finally just came out, which is scathing,

00:18:39.240 saying that they've known for 20 years that this pipe is going to fail.

00:18:43.940 But they didn't do anything about it.

00:18:45.580 I guess they'll just kick the can down the road, hope for your money,

00:18:48.760 and I'm sure there'll be a generous severance package if you get fired.

00:18:52.680 That relationship needs to be rejigged in City Hall. 0.99

00:18:56.900 Mayor Farkas has been interesting coming in.

00:18:58.640 He really has, and seems to be coming on with an attitude of reform,

00:19:02.240 and I hope he holds on to it.

00:19:03.360 And that means fighting with city administration and ensuring that things are going to get done, that the city administration answers to him and council.

00:19:14.480 And if not, fire them. Fire them. 0.95

00:19:16.420 There are many administrators and managers and people who would love an upper six-figure jobs with massive pensions and massive vacation time and heated parking spaces and would do that job far better than the dead weight built up in City Hall.

00:19:30.860 so let's hope that this comes to a head and then Jeremy's talk isn't just talking tough provincially

00:19:37.340 as well and I'm not seeing it that much and I know you get a new premier you get a new prime

00:19:41.720 minister they don't want to go to war with the civil service but you know what you need to

00:19:44.740 you have to I'm not sure where Mitch is supposed to be here by now but he did text a while ago

00:19:51.220 saying he was going to be in hopefully it's just some tech problems he'll come in soon

00:19:54.200 so let me talk about the issue a little bit with that as we're in that segment

00:19:58.260 So Mitch Sylvester is one of the principals of the Alberta Prosperity Project.

00:20:03.380 And the referendum, I mean, it's been a long road to get there.

00:20:07.460 The APP has been holding meetings, it's been gathering names, it's been, you know,

00:20:14.020 organizing, getting ready for this for years.

00:20:17.460 And they've gathered the names of hundreds of thousands of people.

00:20:20.340 It's something that's odd.

00:20:21.460 So, you know, and again, the legislation came along and it looks like the province

00:20:26.820 underestimated or basically just wrote bad legislation, gave an out to allow the electoral

00:20:31.540 officer to toss it into the courts rather than deal with it. So they basically, the federal,

00:20:36.740 the provincial government was forced to bring in bill 14, which fixed the legislation, which again,

00:20:40.820 for all the people claiming Smith doesn't want this. I don't know. She sure did a heck of a lot

00:20:45.380 of work to make sure it's possible. And then once 14 was through over the Christmas holidays quickly,

00:20:51.460 The petition was approved. Mitch was told, I believe that by January 2nd, they'd be able to

00:20:57.660 start working on it. And they've gotten the people applied and accredited to be able to

00:21:04.840 start petitioning. Last night at a town hall meeting, which was packed, I guess, up in Water

00:21:08.980 Valley, little tiny town of only a couple hundred people, had a few hundred people show up for the

00:21:13.260 meeting there. And they started signing the petition. But there's some differences and

00:21:18.140 people who are interested in taking part in that should look at some weird stuff kind of. And I

00:21:21.860 was hoping Mitch would be able to come on to clarify some of that. So this can't go through

00:21:25.060 apparently the Alberta Prosperity Project. It has to run through Mitch Sylvester himself as a

00:21:31.240 proponent. I don't know. They feel that, or the legislation does say, I don't know, that it can't

00:21:36.880 be a group. It has to be an individual. It sounds like it's just kind of semantics or something,

00:21:44.120 but they do want to make sure that there's just no possible way for this to be declined or called

00:21:49.740 unofficial or unacceptable or anything like that. So Mitch is now the proponent and the site is

00:21:55.560 stayfreealberta.com. That's where to go. That's where to get information on how to become accredited

00:22:01.660 to petition and get, you know, the petitioning forms or find out the areas, the meetings and

00:22:08.660 places where petitioning is going to be happening. And there's meetings. This is one thing the APP

00:22:13.280 has done excellently with. It's holding hundreds and hundreds, I think thousands over the last

00:22:19.120 few years of meetings. I've been a guest speaker at dozens and dozens of them. I'll be at one in

00:22:23.840 Calgary and Queensland this Saturday. I'm doing one in Bentley on Monday. And then after that,

00:22:28.200 I'm taking off to Arizona for a bit, but I'll still be supporting from afar as much as I can.

00:22:32.020 But what a year we're heading into. I mean, this is, history is getting made in Alberta this year.

00:22:39.620 So there's never been an independence referendum in the history of Alberta.

00:22:44.120 Never.

00:22:45.200 This year it's going to be held.

00:22:46.920 Will it be a winner?

00:22:48.400 If people voted tomorrow, I've said this before.

00:22:50.020 No, not a chance.

00:22:50.820 Not even close.

00:22:51.840 30%, 35 maybe.

00:22:53.840 Hey, don't dismiss that.

00:22:55.680 That's a massive amount to start with.

00:22:58.260 That's, you know, one in three people saying, I've had it.

00:23:01.440 I'm done.

00:23:02.280 I'm ready to go.

00:23:03.180 I'll vote yes.

00:23:04.160 but there is still 65% of people who aren't ready to go yet. I think, I like to think there's a good

00:23:13.360 20, 30% sitting in that bunch, but they need to be convinced. So now the campaign's on. You've got

00:23:20.480 nine months to work on that. And the petitioning, they will need, they've got four months to work

00:23:25.380 on it, just to clarify some of these timelines and stuff too, since I don't have a guest.

00:23:30.040 they'll have four months to petition and then they're supposed to get I believe 177,000 signatures

00:23:39.500 in that time they're shooting to get hundreds and hundreds of thousands and I'm certain they will

00:23:43.020 and then it goes before the electoral office then they go through it they scrutinize it they make

00:23:48.200 sure it was correct then they tell the premier's office okay this thing has passed it's been

00:23:52.200 proper and then it's on the government to schedule a date for a referendum which most people are

00:23:56.960 finger, and it's probably going to happen in October. Now, we got other stuff with the

00:24:01.820 opponents. They're getting worked up. They're seeing this is happening. They're seeing no

00:24:04.460 matter what. I see Mike, you know, with Freedom Honey pointing out, how do we deal with the

00:24:09.260 shenanigans, the bad players trying to sabotage the campaign? And yeah, we've already seen that.

00:24:14.620 We saw some people talking on Thomas Lukasik's little Forever Canadian site,

00:24:21.240 talking about how they want to sign up and sabotage things, maybe pretend to get signatures,

00:24:26.040 but never actually go to get them or just sign up and take blank sheets and don't do anything.

00:24:30.660 You know, a few nuts are going to do that. 0.98

00:24:34.820 They'll do a little bit of damage.

00:24:37.040 And it's good to point them out just to stir people up on social media,

00:24:39.860 just to show how unprincipled some of the opponents of independents are.

00:24:44.020 As for how much damage they'd actually do, I don't think they could do much.

00:24:51.880 So how to deal with it?

00:24:52.840 Well, the bottom line is just overwhelm them.

00:24:54.160 You know, when, when one out of a hundred people who have actually signed up and gone through the process and gotten accredited and started petitioning, 99 out of a hundred are genuine, that 1% aren't going to be able to do that much damage. They're just wasting their own time and energy. In fact, energy that they would better be able to spend campaigning for the other side, if that's what they really believe. So, yeah, let them piddle around. I mean, you want to watch for them. You want to stop it.

00:25:19.480 I worry about some of the other things. I worry about some of the other stunts that can be pulled

00:25:24.140 off. And we're going to see it all in this next eight, nine months. One will be, and I think a

00:25:30.160 danger zone is the open microphones at town hall meetings. So people can go up and say whatever

00:25:38.920 they please, as they should be able to. Now, if I were looking to sabotage, get up, take that

00:25:45.860 microphone, claim to be a supporter and say something absolutely horrific. Say something

00:25:51.480 that will just mortify and horrify everybody else and claim to be speaking on behalf of the

00:25:56.240 independence movement. That's how you can do a lot of damage. I guess I shouldn't be giving tips

00:26:00.000 out to other people, but the bottom line is if we're going to prevent these sort of things,

00:26:02.360 we've got to watch for it. If somebody gets up there and says, we want to bring back slavery

00:26:06.700 or something stupid like that, you know, whatever, you know, there's all sorts of things people could 0.98

00:26:09.700 see, right? The room has to denounce, take that person out of the room. I'm not talking about 1.00

00:26:15.340 assaulting them, but get them out and make it clear. You are not welcome here. Whatever they

00:26:19.040 just said, that is not acceptable. That's not welcome here. Get the hell out of here. We're 0.98

00:26:22.680 here about independence. Not that crap. It's funny. I had some discussion just this morning 0.99

00:26:30.120 on semantics with people because some people will say, oh, well, that's not free speech. Even if the

00:26:34.060 guy says something beyond the pale, we should allow him to say it. No, you shouldn't. This is

00:26:38.060 a campaign. Everybody has the right to say things, but they don't have the right to your microphone

00:26:42.160 to do it. So that person can go out and say it down the street. It's not a matter of political

00:26:47.380 correctness. It's a campaign now. All of those things are going to reflect on the whole movement.

00:26:52.800 Kiko Stocks, one of the commenters there, said media will run with it too. Exactly. They're

00:26:57.300 watching. They're waiting. So if some whack job gets up and says something beyond the pale,

00:27:02.580 that's what they're going to report on. Something I've ranted a bit about, like last spring when

00:27:07.960 the independence movement was, it was going, you know, really exploding. I did a couple of, I guess

00:27:12.320 I do interviews if people ask, whatever, wherever it might be. I did a long one with the walrus,

00:27:17.740 long one, scheduled time to sit down with that guy. And in the end of it, you know, my name never

00:27:23.500 came up in his big, long extended piece even once. He dedicated 40 minutes talking with me.

00:27:30.400 Perhaps I was just too boring to be worth quoting. Fair enough. I think the reality is he was hoping,

00:27:36.060 because if you looked in his article, it was very, very negative. He was hoping I'd say something to

00:27:39.500 be able to hang us with. And I didn't give him that. So I just didn't get in there. Likewise,

00:27:44.140 when I was at a rally in Red Deer and I spoke with a person who was there from the Washington Post

00:27:51.180 and same thing spoke for about 20 minutes there. And then the post put out a hit piece about the

00:27:56.540 lunatics and so on on the movement and quoted a whole bunch of other people and I never popped up.

00:28:01.980 But the thing is, as long as we're giving them, I guess, sane comments, they won't be able to

00:28:07.140 write anything. Don't give them low-hanging fruit. Don't give them ammunition. Somebody came into an

00:28:11.700 area, screamed, said something beyond the pale, denounce it, get past it, move that person on and

00:28:17.340 out. And yeah, sure, some of the media run with it anyways, but you'll show them, no, we didn't put

00:28:21.860 up with that. The same sort of crap like we saw during the convoy with the swastika flag that 0.98

00:28:26.000 sprung out of nowhere. Nobody knew where it came from. A few pictures showed up and nobody else 0.99

00:28:31.180 saw it, but of course that picture is still used even today. These are the tricks they're going to

00:28:35.460 do. We can't stop all of them, but you can try your hardest to counter them. Another aspect when

00:28:43.480 it comes to moderating, a little more commenter pointing out too, too many people take the mic

00:28:48.820 to air their personal grievances and waste everyone's time. And that's true too. That's

00:28:52.320 up to the moderators in the room. The worst damage those people will do though is typically just

00:28:56.040 boring people and, you know, wasting time, but at least it won't do heavy damage. Getting back to

00:29:01.740 what I was talking about, a discussion I had online, I spoke with somebody who was using the

00:29:06.100 term separatist. I just politely, I just said, look, we're campaigning. Most independent supporters

00:29:10.920 don't, just don't use that term. We use independence, we use sovereign test because

00:29:14.260 there's negative connotations with separatist. You got to remember, we're thinking on the basis

00:29:20.560 of a campaign. Are you thinking of winning or not? Oh, say whatever the hell I want. Oh,

00:29:25.260 he got all uptight, or she actually, and all wound up, called me all sorts of things, said I was new

00:29:29.140 to the independence movement. That was pretty funny, actually. Look, you can say whatever you

00:29:33.460 want, but do you want to win or not? You don't hear the pro-choice movement saying they're pro-death

00:29:40.160 or pro-abortion even. They say pro-choice because you get support with something that's positive.

00:29:47.480 Tar sands. You want to know, as soon as you read an article or hear from an activist, if they oppose

00:29:52.660 the energy development of Alberta, they'll say tar sands instead of oil sands. Little thing,

00:29:56.960 minor thing. But why? Why do they do that? Because one's negative and one's positive.

00:30:02.000 And it means something. It works towards something. So separatists, people think of Basque

00:30:09.220 separatists, people think of Georgian separatists. They think of a lot of separatist movements

00:30:12.480 or even the FLQ in Quebec where they get violent, where they blew people up, where they were crazy,

00:30:16.600 where they were communist. Independence is positive. Sovereignty is positive.

00:30:22.660 separatism is negative. I'm not trying to nag people into political correctness. I'm just saying 0.80

00:30:26.920 that this is the difference with this campaign, because this doesn't have a single leader

00:30:32.180 individual speaking for the whole thing. This is a campaign of tens of thousands of Albertans

00:30:36.800 getting out, volunteering, going to the doors. And a lot of them have never done it before.

00:30:42.020 And they don't need to be perfectly politically correct, but I'm just passing along

00:30:45.620 that we need to look at things from the lens of a campaigner, which means you always want

00:30:50.940 to bring people into the movement. But if you're going to dig in your heels and give me the middle

00:30:55.620 finger and say, I'm going to use that word as much as I want to and scream it from the hilltops. I

00:30:59.020 mean, I can't stop you. You have the right to, but you aren't doing the movement any favors.

00:31:04.980 Either way, these meetings, you know, that that's a good way to get people together and help train

00:31:08.620 them. And there's a lot of that training. Somebody else, a commenter had asked, I'll say it again.

00:31:14.000 It's stayfreealberta.com. That's where to get the information on petitioning and how to do it. And

00:31:20.540 all of that good stuff. Again, I wish Mitch had made it, but apparently

00:31:25.220 he's tied up. All right. Well, let's talk about some

00:31:29.220 of the other stuff that's going on, though. As Dave said, so much going on

00:31:32.700 in the world. Venezuela. That one's

00:31:36.280 bizarre. And it's kind of funny watching

00:31:40.680 the discussions going on between people throughout the whole thing.

00:31:45.560 I think nobody's saying, but again, there's a lot of insane people out there, but 0.98

00:31:48.780 nobody saying would say maduro was a decent person he was a dictator he was a criminal he was a drug

00:31:55.140 runner all of that's true uh suddenly though i mean i i love some of the memes you know the

00:32:02.260 people who are holding the palestine flags have now switched to venezuelan flags oh you know

00:32:06.960 maduro was a hero he was brilliant he was beautiful the cbc called him a man of the people

00:32:11.040 i speaking of lunatics our tax-funded trumpet for socialism the cbc called him a man of the people

00:32:18.640 He ignored the results of two elections. The winner of the election got put into exile.

00:32:24.320 That is not a man of the people. But, and we're going to discuss that a lot more in the pipeline.

00:32:30.080 We have Nigel and Derek and I sitting here, you know, it's going to come on tonight.

00:32:35.160 It should be fair game to discuss though whether Trump's move was the best move.

00:32:41.420 I don't know. Most people on the right feel he did the right thing. Okay. Like I said,

00:32:45.640 it's not a matter of thinking Maduro should stay in longer or that he was decent or anything like

00:32:50.300 that, but just we've got to watch some of the precedents get set when a country will pop over

00:32:55.080 and take a leader out of another country. And it's not that it's unprecedented. This has happened

00:32:59.580 many times around the world with many different countries before. Some people have pointed out

00:33:03.560 that under Obama's administration, he killed quite a few foreign leaders, actually. So killed them. 0.96

00:33:09.620 Trump brought this one back for trial. What is going to happen over there? 0.96

00:33:15.860 The thing, you know, at first, the way Trump was talking was like, we're in control of you now.

00:33:20.520 We've got this country and we're going to bring it back to, you know, oil production and peace

00:33:25.340 and prosperity and all the good stuff and apple pie. But the vice president's now in charge.

00:33:32.140 Maduro's out. But what's changing exactly yet? I think a lot of people, again, they don't miss

00:33:38.540 Maduro, but is anybody better in yet? So what's going to happen next? Is there going to be a coup?

00:33:43.080 Is the government weakened that much? I don't know. But then the other people talking about,

00:33:49.180 again, usually liberals, often people, and some on the conservative side, oh no, this is going to be

00:33:53.540 a death nail for Alberta oil. Oh, oh, this is, all this oil is going to come on stream from

00:33:57.680 Venezuela and nobody will want Alberta's oil anymore. Oh, spare me, spare me. Guys,

00:34:04.300 every oil expert who's come on already to be talking about these things. Venezuela is a mess.

00:34:09.820 It's a basket case. It is a creation of socialism, which means that despite having the most oil

00:34:15.440 reserves on the planet, their infrastructure and ability to actually get the oil out of the ground,

00:34:22.600 dilute it, get it out to tankers to ship it around the world is a mess. We're talking at best five to

00:34:29.940 10 years before they really start getting it back on stream. And I hope they do.

00:34:33.700 It's an energy source. The more energy for the world, the better, even if it puts a little

00:34:37.400 downward pressure on the world price. Five, 10 years from now, who knows what other oil

00:34:41.080 powers are going to come and go. We've seen these spikes up and down with oil producing

00:34:44.520 countries and wars for the last 60 years. It's not going to change things. One of the things

00:34:52.020 that is interesting, though, all the same, if there isn't trust for Trump, and if you really

00:34:56.320 do believe that the reasoning, and maybe that played into it a little, basically what Trump

00:35:00.700 is looking at is bringing in a diversity of energy sources to provide energy to the United States.

00:35:05.680 You know, you want more customers to bring it in. Well, cool. We should be looking then at

00:35:13.160 diversifying our customer base out. And that's where we talk about getting a bloody pipeline

00:35:20.180 to the West Coast. Holy cow, what a concept. Has anybody been mentioning this? Yes, we've been

00:35:25.280 trying for 20 years in Alberta. And, you know, Northern Gateway, that should have already been

00:35:31.860 done. Trans Mountain, that should have been done by Kinder Morgan with no tax dollars involved.

00:35:39.380 You just needed that dingbat Trudeau to get out of the way. Energy East, that could have gone all

00:35:46.300 the way out there and could have been, look at that. We could have been exporting to both coasts,

00:35:51.060 selling to whoever we please. India, by the way, because people say, oh, every oil is different.

00:35:55.040 Yeah, India has some of the largest heavy oil refineries on the planet.

00:35:58.980 Guys, it's not unique to Alberta.

00:36:01.040 Lots of countries more than happy to get our oil, but we have to get it to them.

00:36:06.560 Phillips Deb, a commenter saying, why is no one talking about the fact that Eastern Canada does not buy Alberta oil?

00:36:10.320 Oh, we talk about it a lot.

00:36:11.760 And that's what I just kind of mentioned.

00:36:13.500 There is a lot of Alberta oil does get there.

00:36:16.260 Ironically, the bulk of it goes over and then south into the United States and then back up into Sarnia for refining.

00:36:23.580 a lot of it, but they also buy a whole pile of oil, yes, from Saudi Arabia, from Venezuela.

00:36:30.320 Tankers come up and down the East Coast, all over the place, getting foreign oil in while we shut in

00:36:35.580 Western Canada's oil in Alberta, which is part of why Albertans are pissed to the point where

00:36:42.860 one in three, and hopefully growing, you know, more, are going to be looking to just say to

00:36:49.740 heck with Canada. They've had enough of it. But what's going on out there too? As Dave said,

00:36:56.500 I mean, we're joking about it. And Mike said, but where's Trump going next? What is going to go on

00:37:02.660 next? Is he going to go into Colombia? Is he going to go into Iran? Or Greenland? And that

00:37:09.300 one, I got to admit, it's got me a little stumped. Why? Why are you poking that hornet's nest?

00:37:13.480 There's very little for strategic use of that spot.

00:37:19.400 I mean, if it was some big world war, rest assured, the American forces could come and just take the few developed spots of that island in a heartbeat if they felt they had to.

00:37:27.900 Nobody else was setting up a base or something that was threatening Greenland.

00:37:31.240 And it's not like Greenland has a whole pile of oil or fish or anything that really makes it worth taking.

00:37:36.200 I don't get it.

00:37:38.260 Though, I mean, I guess if I was the person who understood what Trump is going to do, I should be buying, you know, lottery tickets or betting on racehorses or something.

00:37:46.240 Obviously, you know, I've got a brilliant ability for prognostication.

00:37:53.700 All we do know is things are upset, unpredictable and unusual going on right now.

00:38:00.460 and then likewise so some people have talked about it if if trump made a move on greenland

00:38:07.040 for some reason like he's saying though he says stuff all the time that could undercut nato because

00:38:13.200 you know we're going through denmark and things like that if nato falls apart ukraine's in a big

00:38:18.400 pile of trouble i know there's people with different views on the ukraine russia thing fine

00:38:21.800 but then look at what the americans are doing as well the ship dave talked about that was

00:38:27.000 intercepted with British help was bringing oil to Russia. So if they're cutting off energy

00:38:36.360 exports to Russia, just what is going on? Prayer Handel saying Greenland has a lot of critical

00:38:44.180 minerals. Yeah, a bit. Not enough worth turning the world upside down to try and take it though.

00:38:48.200 I mean, it'd be easier just to buy it off them. If they're mineable and worth it, just buy it off.

00:38:52.180 You don't have to take them for it.

00:38:55.440 Mike, mentioning Freeland in Ukraine, there's just some other lunacy going on too, right? 0.99

00:39:01.880 Chrystia Freeland, candidate, you know, for the leader of the Liberal Party, 0.98

00:39:07.900 deputy prime minister for a long time, finance minister for a long time,

00:39:11.340 Trudeau's right-hand person, that twitchy, tweaky, strange, strange lady,

00:39:15.740 is now, as a member of parliament, is taking on a full-time job as a close advisor

00:39:21.640 to the president of Ukraine.

00:39:26.200 Well, a couple of things.

00:39:27.180 I don't care.

00:39:28.180 You know, fine.

00:39:28.880 They can have her.

00:39:30.800 I feel sorry for them

00:39:32.300 if they're trying to fix their economy up.

00:39:34.500 Talking to the woman who ran Trudeau's finances

00:39:36.280 for the better part of 10 years

00:39:37.560 might not be her best bet,

00:39:38.620 but whatever, take her.

00:39:39.700 The thing that pisses me off

00:39:40.780 is she's still a member of parliament.

00:39:43.020 She said she's going to resign,

00:39:44.160 but she still hasn't.

00:39:45.120 She's still an MP.

00:39:47.260 It should be instant.

00:39:48.640 You aren't doing your job here anymore. 0.79

00:39:50.820 Get the hell out.

00:39:51.640 It shows the politics going on because Carney doesn't want to lose his, basically, majority.

00:39:58.960 He can get anything done, you know, with the NDP won't pull the pin.

00:40:04.980 The Conservatives don't want to pull the pin the way the polls are sitting right now.

00:40:08.260 But still, he wants his majority and he's worried about that.

00:40:10.620 So he's just saying, hang on to your seat in case we need you to vote for something.

00:40:13.380 We'll get you out of there later.

00:40:14.740 So now she's double dipping, staying in Ukraine full time, but taking up a seat for the Parliament,

00:40:20.680 which somebody should be representing that Toronto riding

00:40:23.300 and she's not doing it.

00:40:25.060 Yeah, okay.

00:40:26.040 So Mike, again, good comment driven show today anyways.

00:40:31.360 What's with the recall petition with Demetrius Nicolaitis?

00:40:34.720 Yes.

00:40:35.680 So that started, that was the first recall petition.

00:40:39.300 That was back in October.

00:40:42.960 So when the teachers were legislated back to work,

00:40:45.640 all those poor darlings, you know, 1.00

00:40:46.880 they're 180 days of working for 120,000.

00:40:50.000 rough life. All they got was a 12% raise. Awful. So they got legislated back to work because they

00:40:58.340 were striking and having a temper tantrum. Well, they had a temper tantrum with the rest of the

00:41:01.400 unions after they got legislated back to work. And they thought they'd take it out on Nicolaitis.

00:41:06.920 And he was the education minister. So they said, we're going to recall him. We're going to use

00:41:10.440 Smith's own legislation against her. We're going to trigger a recall. Okay. And they did. You see,

00:41:16.700 the bar for trigger recall was to put in 500 bucks and write a hundred word essay on why you

00:41:22.200 think this member should be recalled. That's it. That's the news, the legacy media and political

00:41:27.800 scientists and the rest, Dwayne Bratt, of course. Oh boy, this is putting Smith in trouble. Oh boy,

00:41:32.260 she's got recall legislation going all over the place. They're going to take the government out 1.00

00:41:36.160 of power. They're going to call an early election in spring to get away from the recalls. Well,

00:41:40.720 we've got two weeks left in the petition period. They've had months to work on this.

00:41:45.260 Calgary Bow is where Nicolades is. And that one was probably like one of the most doable they had

00:41:52.220 because a lot of people were ticked off with Nicolades. And it was a tightly won one between

00:41:56.980 the NDP and the UCP. So now with a couple of weeks left, they need over 10,000 more signatures

00:42:05.920 to get it done. They haven't even got halfway. They figure they've got about 6,000 signatures.

00:42:10.820 There's no way on earth they're going to get 10,000 signatures in two weeks. In fact,

00:42:14.280 if you've done these petitions, you would know about 10% of the signatures in those kinds of

00:42:21.260 petitions get thrown out because they're illegible. Like you couldn't read it. The

00:42:25.320 person didn't live in the writing. Lots of reasons. So realistically, they need more like

00:42:30.700 11 to 12,000 signatures more. And everybody who lit their panties on fire and tried to feel that,

00:42:38.080 you know, make the impression that these recalls were going somewhere. I've said it on this show

00:42:41.480 before. Anybody who thinks that petitioning is easy has never actually petitioned before.

00:42:47.060 Real petitions, not online petitions, not any of that crap. Going out, getting a physical signature,

00:42:53.280 address, phone number, witnessed, very, very hard. And they couldn't do the same thing that Fabio did

00:43:01.360 with his Forever Canada petition. These are recall petitions. You have to have only people who live 1.00

00:43:06.900 in the constituency working on it. So they couldn't flood it all with union members and,

00:43:10.640 and just cherry pick. They couldn't pour a pile of money into it. They had to get local organizers

00:43:19.360 to hit the ground. Getting 6,000 is actually not half bad, but it's still not even half enough

00:43:24.200 to recall Nicolaitis. So now let's talk about that false rumor. And I've seen some people on

00:43:30.100 the right, some of the usual chronic malcontents. Oh boy, oh boy, Danielle's going to get

00:43:34.720 is enthroned. No, she's not, guys. Sorry, Cam. Not going to happen. If that one's not going to

00:43:42.260 pass, none of them will. None of them will. I mean, they did one against Premier Smith and Brooks.

00:43:48.060 Come on. I mean, they did it in High River. That was won by almost 80%. You're not going to get

00:43:56.120 tens of thousands of signatures opposed to the UCP and those constituencies, and it's showing

00:44:01.920 is not going to happen. Smith is secure with where she's sitting. The election will be

00:44:06.620 in the fall of 2027. She's not running scared of these recalls, but it's good to see that blow up

00:44:13.120 in their face. It's good to see not even the activists as we expect that of them, but as I

00:44:17.800 said, the pundits, the political scientists, the rest who were saying this is really going to turn

00:44:21.640 into something. These are people who never put their feet on the ground and worked on something

00:44:24.860 before. So they didn't know how tough it really is, or they just hoped, you know, but no, that's

00:44:31.620 with hope in one hand and spit or there's another term for it in the other and see which one fills

00:44:35.980 up first or wish is the term that's often used for it. It doesn't change things. All right,

00:44:40.360 well, thanks for tuning in to kick off this first one of 2026. Appreciate you tuning in. Make sure

00:44:47.100 to watch the rest of our channels. We got Leah in the newsroom and others putting regular content 0.88

00:44:51.140 up there. Dave pops in with news updates. The pipeline, I should know, it's a show. It's our

00:44:57.740 oldest show that's going to be on tonight. Subscribe, like, share all that. This is how

00:45:02.300 we get the info out. As I said, Legacy Media, it's not giving you good information, guys. We've got

00:45:06.340 it for you. So be sure to spread that good word. We can bypass it. We can get things done and we

00:45:12.640 can win the battle. So thank you again. We will see you all next week at this time.

00:45:27.740 We'll be right back.

Western Standard - January 09, 2026

UNDRIP can’t be ignored. It must be actively opposed

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