Western Standard - January 28, 2026


Western Standard News Update ｜ $885 million on health for illegal immigrants, refugees ｜ 27 Jan 2026

Topics
Surrey extortion crisis
Mentioned
Michael King Michael Thompson YouTube Music Leah Muschett Brenda Luckey
Western Standard News Update ｜ CSIS flagged security risks on immigration decades ago ｜ 27 Jan 2026 What the hell is wrong with the Manitoba PC Party？

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

119.03

Word count

279

Sentence count

18


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the last year, Ottawa has spent nearly $885 million providing a wide range of health services to illegal immigrants and refugee clements, which includes hundreds of millions for services not typically covered under provincial health plans. Surrey City Council has unanimously passed a motion introduced by Mayor Brenda Locke calling on the federal government to declare a national state of emergency over the extortion crisis in the city. Nearly 40 extortion-related incidents have been reported in Surrey this month alone, many of them violent. Team Canada s Olympic flag bearers for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics have been announced.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 From the Western Standard, here's your news update.
00:00:08.540 I'm your host for today, Western Standard reporter Leah Mushett, and here's what you need to know.
00:00:16.140 In the last year, Ottawa has spent nearly $885 million providing a wide range of health services
00:00:23.000 to illegal immigrants and refugee clements, which includes hundreds of millions for services
00:00:28.340 not typically covered under provincial health plans.
00:00:34.320 Surrey City Council has unanimously passed a motion introduced by Mayor Brenda Locke
00:00:39.860 calling on the federal government to declare a national state of emergency over the extortion crisis in the city.
00:00:47.080 Nearly 40 extortion-related incidents have been reported in Surrey this month alone, many of them violent.
00:00:53.080 Team Canada's Olympic flag bearers for the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics have been announced,
00:01:02.920 naming Mikhail Kingsbury a mogul skier and Marielle Thompson a ski cross skier as the pair to do it.
00:01:09.740 Ottawa spent nearly half a billion dollars on its now-canceled 2 Billion Trees program,
00:01:18.960 only to fall dramatically short of its own planting goals, according to federal records tabled in Parliament.
00:01:26.240 That's it for now. Join us next time for more Western Standard News updates.
00:01:34.080 You can follow us on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Podcasts,
00:01:39.940 and don't forget to visit our website at westernstandard.news and have a great day.
00:01:46.080 You've heard the headlines, you've watched the narrative shift,
00:01:54.980 and you can feel it when the truth is being rewritten in real time.
00:01:59.300 But not here. We don't make the powerful comfortable. We make them answer.
00:02:04.960 No scripts, no gatekeepers, no permission needed.
00:02:08.900 If you're done with polished spin and state-approved storylines,
00:02:13.160 stand with the voice of Western Canada. Join us today.
00:02:18.100 Go to westernstandard.news.