00:01:51.500Well, apparently he put out a survey, which I actually got because I signed up for the Forever Canadian thing to keep an eye on what was going on, and he's asking a whole bunch of questions.
00:01:59.700I actually took down a couple of them here.
00:02:02.160One of them he asked is actually, should Forever Canadian get more involved in Alberta politics and furthering Alberta's interest with the federal government?
00:02:08.360That's the very first question on this survey that he put out there, and I think I have two days left because he just sent me a reminder email earlier today to finish the survey, which I might just do just to see how many questions there are and whatnot because I haven't looked totally.
00:02:18.660But this is interesting because, as you said, he was getting into politics.
00:02:21.720He gives a whole bunch of different things that Forever Canadian could do going forward.
00:02:24.840One of the options was studies and polls on Alberta's place in Canada, policy papers, maybe start a research institute.
00:02:31.400This is a weird one. Scholarships and essay contests for students.
00:08:59.760It's not like he could join with Guthrie or join with the NDP because he's not been one who plays well with others traditionally, which doesn't make for good political leadership.
00:09:08.440Well, you know, if he's got a massive database of hundreds of thousands of names, email addresses and phone numbers, willingness to take loan signs, he has probably a good excuse for saying, I think I'm going to go alone on this.
00:09:22.700Why would he give – what has Mr. Guthrie got?0.73
00:09:25.940With all due respect to the man, I don't know him, but, I mean, he's got, like, two members, and both of them are floor crossers, including himself, so.0.91
00:09:52.280I mean, and he had his forever Canadian old motor home that he toured and he just put a post up, which of course I had to put up on my Facebook page and mock, uh, that I called the purring mobile because of that, uh, weird, creepy video he did while he was laying on his side, like a school girl talking about purring and still get the willies when I think about that.
00:10:10.660But all the same, he was saying, uh, oh, we're putting it away for the winter, but I got exciting plans and it'll be back on the road this spring.
00:10:16.760So, I mean, he's, he's dropping some really big hints.
00:10:20.540Do you think you can maybe actually pull any candidates from other parties, like maybe the Liberals or the NDP, into a forever, I guess we could call it a forever Canadian party?
00:10:29.080I could see the Liberal end of it, you know, potentially.
00:10:32.440I mean, there was one of the things that the country saw by election, and that Liberal leader, I forget his name, you know, John something, Rogan or something.
00:10:43.280I should be better at pronouncing those, but I'm not.
00:10:44.840But they actually, for the first time in quite a few years, made almost inroads, an almost respectable amount of votes, at least in Shaw, that people might be looking for a closer to center-right Mark Carney type of option rather than the NDP, which is on the left.
00:11:03.180So he might be looking at a constituency to target there.
00:11:08.480Well, you know, if he pulls from the NDP, good luck to him.
00:11:11.420But I do find the, you know, the thing that has been on my mind for the last month is how quickly people who say they're conservative will back away from the UCP on a single point of principle.
00:11:34.360I mean, this is not to say, somebody else can say it,
00:11:38.900but I mean, this is not to say that Daniel Smith
00:11:42.520has done everything right from beginning to end.
00:11:45.860But there has to be a degree of forgiveness.
00:11:51.180Otherwise, you will find yourself with an NDP government
00:11:54.840or you'll find yourself with a forever Canada government,
00:11:59.780which will do a lot of things that you will not like as a conservative.
00:12:03.360So maybe the people who say, well, she owes her position as premier to us because we, the separatists, we voted for her.
00:12:30.200But, you know, when you look at the foundational things that Smith has accomplished, you know, setting up the wealth fund on an entirely different basis, making significant interventions into health, which were unfortunately exactly the same time as they jacked the population up by about 20 percent.
00:12:54.760It makes it kind of hard to reform anything when the targets are constantly shifting.
00:13:01.420But taking the positions that she's taken with the federal government, standing up for all of her,
00:13:06.000these are all good, solid, foundational things that are to the credit of her government.
00:13:12.060And yet the criticism is, well, she let us down on separation, she owed us, and now we're pulling our support.0.98
00:13:43.980Now we're going to do the books and file.
00:13:45.340I'm not turning it into something future, you know, further in the future.
00:13:48.120But I was astounded when I opened that up and suddenly thousands of inquiries, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, but it was just a single issue sort of thing.
00:13:58.420It wasn't, and that's all that really Lukasik has.
00:14:01.800So is that enough to build a party on?
00:14:05.140Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't ever heard him talk much about like oil and gas or anything like that.
00:15:25.460It doesn't mean it's gone, but let's talk about health care and taxes and economic development, immigration.
00:15:32.800I was going to say as well, too, I think a lot of people in the conservative side have kind of started to back Daniel Smith, obviously, after independence.
00:16:08.820But Red Deer, I think, was six or something a couple of years ago.
00:16:12.280So whole new levels, though, of these things that never were unimaginable 20, 30 years ago.
00:16:17.800We'll see. All right. Well, let's get into some scene politics south of the border.
00:16:22.300Nigel, the midterms were held. Let's just open it up. What do they mean? What do we got?
00:16:28.940Well, let's go. All right. So the president lost control of the House of Representatives and of the Senate.
00:16:37.620So the assumption has been in all the intelligent people who comment on these things, oh, well, for two years, he's now a lamed up president.
00:16:46.920I take exception to that point of view.
00:16:49.980Trump has the full scale of executive orders at his disposal.
00:19:34.220And for people who don't watch that closely, it is worth noting, yes,
00:19:36.820he never really bothered himself with worrying about what Congress thinks,
00:19:41.180even when the Republicans had control of it.
00:19:42.820He worked through executive order predominantly.
00:19:45.180He had one piece of legislation, the big, beautiful bill.
00:19:47.380Yeah. And aside from that, so I mean, his practice won't change. He's not going to be seeking more of a mandate from those houses anyways. But there's going to be other distractions now that the Democrats can lead the agenda in those.
00:20:04.720No, I was just thinking about a bunch of his support that I was looking at.
00:20:07.480A lot of people are still mad about the Iran war because a lot of people are saying, well, your whole agenda was America first.
00:20:12.200How was a war with Iran putting America first?
00:20:14.160Because basically you have several generations, like my generation, that basically their whole lives.
00:20:18.260America has been in some conflict in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq.
00:20:21.820Now Iran, they're just like, why? How does this benefit us?0.98
00:20:24.300Like you said, I think the biggest thing I saw from people that were talking about this in the States was definitely the rising cost of living.
00:20:39.040But as you know, the logistics of that are ridiculous.
00:20:40.840But people just want everything right now, now, now.
00:20:43.740So I think from what I can gather, it seems some of the people on the right just wanted to send a message on those two things.
00:20:49.460Like he's not doing enough quickly enough.
00:20:51.540And obviously, when you have an office with that much power and that grand of a scale, you can't do things overnight for the most part.
00:20:58.260So I really don't know what people want.
00:20:59.440But, I mean, is it surprising? Because I can't think of any party in power that doesn't lose the midterms in my life, at least lose the Senate or maybe the House or both. I can't think of one that usually doesn't. Midterms are usually lost by the party that's in power, usually.
00:21:13.020It's a little hard. It's when people want to send a message. But, I mean, this was pretty brutal. I mean, we've got a Democratic governor in Texas. There's a Texan Democratic senator there. What was the other state?
00:21:25.520I think there was a Georgia was one I heard, I think, as well.
00:21:28.300Georgia, there was one that hadn't had a Democratic senator since the 30s.
00:21:31.840Some of the Carolina, too, didn't have one for a long time.
00:21:34.280So that's a bit more than just a bit of the midterm correction.
00:21:37.040That's some people saying, we want to shift, whatever you may feel on things.
00:21:47.800This does have to do with Trump in the midterms.
00:21:52.220Stephen Harper's book on his time in power was released today.
00:21:55.520And needless to say, I was down there at the front of the queue with my money, you know, and didn't have a lot of time to go into it.
00:22:04.740But he makes a very interesting point towards the end where he addresses the question of whether he is disappointed that so much of the work that he did in the nearly 10 years that he was in office was very quickly undone by the liberals.
00:22:19.620And he says, obviously it's a bit disappointing, but he did what he thought was right, and that's his contribution to Canadian government and democracy.
00:22:34.440The other guys have to do the same, don't agree with what they did, but this is the way the system works.
00:22:39.860Now, you take somebody like Trump, who, in my view, has a list of accomplishments, things that he actually quietly got done, which have hugely benefited the American people.
00:22:54.140And he would be entitled to bridle at the ingratitude of an electorate that turns him down at the midterms.
00:23:03.660well the lesson that I took from my own experience in Ottawa
00:23:54.800And if anybody's going to have a legacy focus, perhaps,
00:23:58.800in his last two years, as you said, you know, Harper accepted.
00:24:01.660Well, unfortunately, a lot of things got undone, but I did what I could.
00:24:05.420I think President Trump's going to want to put in a lot of things to make sure they're as hard as possible to undo after he leaves.
00:24:11.540Well, as a matter of fact, I mean, our liberal government is doing the same thing now.
00:24:15.740The next conservative government, if in fact there ever is another conservative government, is going to walk into a lot of things that have been set in concrete and extremely difficult to undo.
00:24:27.960You know, if you're a destructive government, it's a lot easier to break things than it is for a constructive government to make them.
00:24:37.880You know, it's just the way things are.
00:25:00.220Yes, well, I don't know if he'd want to share it with those other presidents.
00:25:03.080I think he'd get his own mountain and go.
00:25:06.080On the shores of Lake America looking north.
00:25:08.820Yeah, no, I just think I'm trying to think of what Trump's legacy is.
00:25:14.860I mean, I think a lot of people just only thought he was something he's not.
00:25:18.720Like, I remember when he was first elected,
00:25:19.980everyone thought he was going to become American Caesar.
00:25:22.240And I'm like, that was never going to happen.
00:25:23.660And I think they've just been let down by something
00:25:25.000that was never going to happen in general.
00:25:26.680Like I said, I do think that the Iran war was the last straw for a lot of people.
00:25:30.660It's like, what have you done for me personally?
00:25:32.640Like I said, like rising housing markets garbage in the U.S., rising costs of everything and that were probably just the big ones.
00:25:39.580And there was people that I heard, I don't know if this is totally true, but people that were, I guess you could say young conservatives that just wanted to vote Democrat to send a message to the Republican Party.
00:25:47.820Because they looked at the Republican Party as a whole and thought, you've had the House, you've had the Senate for two years, and you've done nothing, nothing for us.
00:25:54.860So they basically just a big F you to them.
00:25:56.680And it's like, we're voting Democrat, even though we hate the Democrats, we're pissed
00:26:30.860I mean, there was a story that came out yesterday from a relief agency.
00:26:39.180I don't know whether it was the Salvation Army or something like that saying that one-third of Canadians are missing a meal because they can't afford it.
00:26:47.900now that there's a self-interest in that story and that of course people who are in the business
00:26:55.440are providing aid would say things are bad send us money that but i do believe that the issue of
00:27:05.260inability to afford groceries is a real one for a lot of people in canada you know just around the
00:27:12.480corner from where we're sitting we got a food bank that was not there two years ago this is a this is
00:27:17.560the sort of thing that happens when fuel inflation hits the grocery stores and we go the prices
00:27:26.200i just despise the statistics canada numbers that come out saying oh yeah inflation is just a modest
00:27:33.5602.9 or something like that well if you're going to throw into the basket that you're measuring 72
00:27:39.580inch tvs you know which you buy once every 15 years yeah maybe you're right but if you actually
00:27:46.600just take the grocery bill uh man even i know that we're paying those are things you can't do
00:27:52.420without i know beef i've forgotten what it's like to order beef anymore i i go to the grocery store
00:27:56.900and i like beef but oh wow you know that's just too much off to the pork aisle i go because
00:28:03.060i thought you had a cow in your backyard oh yeah that's your next thing i should get one yeah
00:28:07.860exactly jane was a goat that's a different discussion all together i need one of those1.00
00:28:11.760rotten things too bad. They don't smell very1.00
00:30:10.540You know, the question that you want to ask, Corey, is do they want to turn it around?
00:30:18.000I mean, what is the sense of Mr. Carney actually planning to run deficits of this size?
00:30:26.800It is one thing for the economically illiterate Mr. Trudeau 10 years to come in and promise a slight $20 billion deficit for three years and then we'll balance the budget and then go hopelessly wrong and end up with a couple of hundred billion dollars deficit in that period of time.
00:30:46.940That's what you get when you do not understand or think it's actually beneath you to understand monetary policy.
00:31:00.900Kearney has run two banks, two central banks.
00:31:04.420So he does not have Mr. Trudeau's excuse of economic illiteracy.
00:31:09.660Therefore, there is an intentionality about going out and running a large deficit budget that needs to be accounted for.
00:31:20.100Now, you know, if I had to write his speeches for him, I would probably come up with some line about it's an investment in the future and we'll get it all back and more.
00:31:29.660And that's kind of more or less what he is saying, except it never seems to work out that way.
00:31:34.100And it certainly didn't work out in the 10 years when Mr. Trudeau was running things.
00:31:39.440So he knows better why is he doing what he's doing.
00:31:43.240Yeah, just like you said, I have no idea what the deal is.
00:31:45.980It's very odd to me why he keeps doing stuff like that, running deficits, and at the same time antagonizing what's historically been like one of our biggest sort of trading partners, economic partners in the U.S.
00:31:55.600while he's trying to pivot towards other countries like China, for example.
00:31:59.420And it's very odd to me because with Mark Carney, too, in that sense, most of his assets are in the U.S., which I find very interesting how that works.
00:32:06.480And I think, I can't remember what it was, it was an article I saw a while ago, a bunch of contracts in Canada have been awarded to American companies too as well that were, I think, originally Canadian or something.
00:32:15.080If I remember correctly, this was from about a month or so ago.
00:32:17.400And I'm like, is this all part of one big plan to do what exactly?
00:32:20.700How does he benefit from tanking basically Canada into more and more debt is what I'm trying to figure out.
00:32:25.220Well, and to stimulate the economy then, fine.
00:32:27.100Let's say the Americans are sour, you can't cut a deal, we've got a problem, it's not going to build.
00:32:31.840Then you would think he would feel the urgency and again, have the economic understanding.
00:35:46.920You know, there's a generation that lived in the Soviet Union
00:35:49.340that is fading away, I think, and people have forgotten.
00:35:52.720Yeah, well, I noticed that the last person to seriously float the idea of governments having their own grocery stores was the mayor of New York, Mr. Mandami.
00:36:05.540And I noticed that that idea has just been allowed to die.
00:36:12.280Yeah. So I have a suspicion that when the officials who are going to make this happen are told to go and make it happen and here's what you have to work with, they say it can't be done. They get transferred. And in the end, it doesn't get done.
00:36:29.020I think Toronto was planning on doing a few, too.
00:36:30.900They've heard something about that as well, yeah.
00:36:32.340And they went and re-elected. Ciao, ciao.
00:37:05.820It's fun and it's easy. But in all seriousness, much as I have said earlier that the people who are saying there's a crisis of food for people on lower incomes, you know, there's kind of a bit of an interest in them pointing that out.
00:37:23.100I actually think that they are right, even if the actual numbers are not exactly what they say.
00:37:31.760Food bank use in this country has shot up in the last two years.
00:37:37.640And as Christmas comes, I think there is an argument for anybody who does have enough to eat to think about how they can help people who don't.
00:37:48.940there are organized i mean center street church is one which is a very active hamper program
00:37:54.260you can give money there and uh and they'll see that it gets well used there are probably other
00:38:00.380organizations that do the same thing the salvation army uh but at any rate if you've got enough to
00:38:07.060eat be glad maybe you shared around a bit what are you saying oh no i 100 agree with that my
00:38:13.020problem with that is what i've seen i don't know if you guys have seen this but if you go by drive
00:38:16.680buy sometimes a food bank and you take a look at the park and you see what the cars are in there
00:38:21.820and you're going, hmm, really? I've seen Mercedes, Audis, you name it. And there's also been, well,
00:38:31.040there's piles of videos of these, I guess you could say people that have just come to Canada
00:38:34.840that are basically scamming food banks. There's like on YouTube and whatnot constantly, which is
00:38:38.440very odd to me. I was about to say, to be a little more politically incorrect, it's not just the
00:38:41.560vehicles, but the people in general. Now there's new Canadians come in and it's hard to get your1.00
00:38:45.620feet under you and some of them are going to be a little tight and struggling and that's what the
00:38:49.720food bank is for. But as you've said, some of them are pulling up into some six-figure vehicles.
00:38:55.580This gets into a bigger discussion about low-trust societies because that's the truth of it.
00:38:59.000It's just a different cultural thing. Well, if you're going to leave it out there, I'm going to
00:39:01.820take it. And food banks have to have a no-question-asked policy. They really do. I mean,
00:39:07.860you don't know how quickly somebody may have just landed on hard times and they're hungry today,
00:39:14.000not in three weeks from now after a means test and a bunch of things to see if they're qualified.
00:39:18.700So they'll give the benefit of the doubt to the applicant, but that's part of the overuse.
00:39:23.540Unfortunately, some people are really abusing that system.
00:40:11.320You lose the job and all of a sudden the income stops, the severance runs out, you still have the nice house, you still have the nice car, and you have no money to buy food.
00:40:40.460We've got youth unemployment, we've got the lower income.
00:40:43.160And I think most people understand immigration can be an asset when you're bringing skilled people in and filling jobs where there's need.
00:40:49.560But those entry-level jobs, those other jobs, we don't need more people to fill them.
00:40:54.520In fact, AI is wiping out a whole pile of other jobs where somebody will still be better off with a hands-on, whether it's working at a Tim Hortons or an apprentice in a trade or something.1.00
00:41:04.680And pumping more immigrants in, I don't think is going to be wise.1.00
00:41:08.340Well, I've been trying to figure out, too, because they keep going on about AI is going to take over all these jobs, automation is going to take over all these jobs.0.99
00:41:13.620And tell me what the purpose is of opening the floodgates of immigration and allowing more people in, like millions of people in.
00:41:19.160What does that do if all these jobs are automated in AI?
00:41:36.900I mean, that's what people have always asked for.
00:41:38.880Most reasonable people, though they get labeled as such, it doesn't mean you're anti-immigrant.
00:41:42.880It's just saying we want to be careful and make sure we have a need and an ability to foster the people who are coming in, no matter where they're coming from.
00:41:51.980But the liberal way tends to be just open the floodgates and we'll see what happens.0.99
00:41:56.520And they haven't vetted them all either because there was that whole, I think, story a few months ago that the Bizenoid gang basically used.1.00
00:42:02.780I think the student visas and temporary foreign worker visas1.00
00:42:06.420are basically just coming to the country.
00:42:07.680So how did these guys not, did they not get vetted?