Corey Morgan, Sean Polzer and Dan Hannaford join me on The Pipeline to talk about all things Canada. Budget announcements, the Canadian housing crisis, the announcement of a new AI factory and much, much more!
00:01:16.440And we don't have to cover too many names.
00:01:18.040I'm sorry, during my show earlier, I have to point out the reason I started laughing at one point,
00:01:21.600There was one story you went through, but I do it too, so I'm not getting on a high horse, but you slaughtered the pronunciation of all three political names of the people you had in that story.
00:01:32.580I was trying to think, should I interject? No, I was probably going to throw them off even more, but I'm going to book you about it now.
00:01:38.640Usually in fun, we usually do it deliberately.
00:01:41.460Oh, yeah. I'll probably mess up somebody's name by the end of this show, too, just to show how I'm just as well capable.
00:01:47.700It's worse when I get the live guests and I screw it up and they're looking at me.
00:05:04.460But the other thing is, it's hard to wrap your head around numbers when it gets into the billions.
00:05:07.860I mean, that's been discussed on shows before.
00:05:09.280The reason a $16 orange juice could take down a minister in the past, even though we overlook badly appropriated billions of dollars, is because your average citizen doesn't think in billions.
00:05:19.780We do understand going to a restaurant and you would be appalled by a $16 glass of orange juice.
00:05:25.240but it just doesn't run in your head in the billions it just doesn't quite on the other hand
00:05:29.240you don't go to the kind of restaurants and i don't go to the kind of restaurants where they
00:05:33.000would charge sixteen dollars and by the way that happened a long time ago back in the harper era
00:05:37.800so probably that sixteen dollar orange juice is more like 25 now but uh if you're traveling on
00:05:43.160government business you have to stay in those places they don't let you pull into the well
00:05:46.840that happened to me when i was in spain at the herald i had to bill for 18 orange juice
00:05:52.840in madrid and it was like i really you know and then it was like i had a little bit of sympathy
00:05:57.380for these people because i couldn't really get around it yeah yeah they actually did you know
00:06:03.300the beer was only seven dollars the orange juice it was like 18. thinking of a helsinki airport
00:06:08.060many many years ago and myself and another fellow who was layover before one of moscow
00:06:12.160it was 32 for two soups and a beer because they dinged us on the travel that's how long it was
00:06:18.020traveler's checks, cashing, and then the conversion,
00:07:42.900If they can. Well, yeah, I think you still can in Calgary, actually. But anyway, be that as it may, how do you go back? Well, you go out and you make all of these grand announcements about how you're going to put money out there for housing. You're going to make loans available. You're going to interfere with the CMHC.
00:11:39.380That's this blanket rezoning that people are up in arms against here in Calgary.
00:11:44.380You know, so-called retrofitting of these construction module things to make them energy efficient and meet their emissions caps and all that kind of thing.
00:11:57.060And a lot of that money is conditional on that.
00:12:01.340And Trudeau basically said, you know, if the Alberta government doesn't want to, you know, do these things that we want them to, then don't take our money.
00:12:08.860Yeah, well, we'll get on to that, the interjurisdictional mess that's being created out of all of this.
00:12:14.240and then a lot of the intergovernmental ire.
00:12:16.160Maybe we'll start things before we break on with a light note.
00:12:19.040Our finance minister heading out to Ottawa,
00:12:21.060looks like we're on a plane there to deliver the budget.
00:12:24.360And she got to meet a social media celebrity, Cat Canada,
00:12:27.260though perhaps Chrystia Freeland didn't realize who she was chatting with.
00:12:31.340So here's a little video clip of Cat Canada and Chrystia Freeland
00:12:35.400enjoying some quality time together on one of our flights in Canada there.
00:13:20.840And it sounds like they're considering legislation just to stop the federal government
00:13:26.180from going directly to municipalities.
00:13:28.840Well, it's something, some people call it an oversight, but municipalities aren't recognized
00:13:35.360as a distinct level of government in the Constitution.
00:13:38.040So maybe for some of these cities like Toronto and Vancouver, you know, arguably they're almost kind of like city-states more or less unto themselves.
00:13:47.740But for regular old cities and towns, you know, like we have here in Alberta, those are the purview of the Alberta government.
00:13:55.920They're basically just an extension of the Alberta government.
00:13:59.180The Alberta government can withdraw these people or, you know, take away their spending power.
00:14:04.840They basically can tell them what to do.
00:14:08.040a mayor and some council members out of power.
00:14:10.180I mean, admittedly, in a small municipality,
00:14:12.060but it showed the government does have that authority
00:14:14.240if they ever had test a mirror, medicine hacked.
00:14:16.980You know, there's been kind of a few cases
00:14:18.780or implementing some of these ridiculous, you know, bylaws,
00:14:22.660like the single-use ketchup bylaw, you know,
00:14:25.440like when municipalities are overstepping their bounds, right?
00:14:29.360So I think that this is just kind of a...
00:14:33.280You know, and it seems deliberate part
00:14:35.780on the on the federal government to try to bypass the you know so they kind of
00:14:40.340leapfrog right over the provincial legislature and land rate and city halls
00:14:43.340and show up with money yes yeah so put dollars and how are you supposed to say
00:14:47.180no to it so what do you think nods although with this legislation it's
00:14:53.800being framed terribly already of course but that's not unusual in legacy media
00:14:57.080Quebec already does this you know if people are a lot of people not
00:15:00.540mentioning that Quebec's had this legislation in place for a long time
00:15:02.800Of course, they're a province that has never hesitated to say, no, we'll deal with our affairs.
00:15:07.040You stay out, and that's all there is to it.
00:15:09.620I don't see why it's unreasonable for Alberta to do the same.
00:17:39.360Well, I think that applies more to say cities
00:17:42.260like Toronto and Vancouver, like we're saying,
00:17:45.400They almost are kind of like entities into themselves, and then they have certain specific needs.
00:17:51.160And if you're going to donate federal money to Toronto, like, why wouldn't you want to have some kind of condition on it that they're actually going to build houses with it?
00:17:59.300But, I mean, it's one right, not the other.
00:18:01.360I mean, it's recognizing one of the problems we have, too, with getting more housing.
00:18:05.320Like, with the city of Calgary, I believe, it was the data I got from Shane Wenzel.
00:18:10.000uh seven years from concept to development you know to get a new development built because of
00:18:17.160the amount of hurdles and red tape and applications and licensing and all of that garbage you got to
00:18:23.280go through in this city and the amount of people who have to study this and approve that and at
00:18:26.580any time they could pull the rug out from under you uh you know polyev is recognizing these
00:18:32.740municipalities have got to step up and get out of the bloody way just used a liberal buzzword step0.99
00:18:38.300You have been listening to too much news lately, I'm sorry, it's starting to, how can you do that?
00:19:33.100We've got mass immigration. It's mass. And they need immigrants when they come here, whether they're temporary or long term. They need a place to stay. They need health care. They need those resources. I'm not faulting them that, but we're letting in more than we're able. Even Trudeau kind of admitted that.
00:19:48.460But what we need then, we also know that we do need a degree of immigration to keep up with just pretty much everything.
00:19:54.320It's the nature of our system. We need to start targeting them.
00:19:57.600We don't need more senior citizens. We don't need more, you know, I hate to be cold and heartless.1.00
00:20:02.340We don't need more children coming in.
00:20:03.780We need working age people who can put in some time and into the working world in some of the areas of need.0.70
00:20:11.180And maybe if we could stabilize our economy, then you can start talking about bringing in Uncle George and Aunt Martha
00:23:24.500that's where I think this clash is inevitable
00:23:26.220I mean, just looking from a hard political strategy point of view, it's good for Toronto to fight with Alberta and it's good for Premier Smith to fight with Ottawa.
00:23:35.780I mean, so, you know, it's made for them to be adversarial, just hopefully not to the point where the fall is really actually hurting people when they get into battle.
00:23:44.700well the animosity is mutual for sure because uh they asked him as well in the uh in front of the
00:23:51.180calgary economic development uh you know uh what about these tensions between alberta and
00:23:57.900ottawa and then so he went into this spiel about how he's worked with three u.s presidents and
00:24:03.500he's worked with uh three alberta premiers you know and and then it was kind of like the implication
00:24:09.580was like by far you know you know i've worked with donald trump and i've had to work with daniel
00:24:17.180smith you know and jason kenney might have added that he got so much work with donald trump has
00:24:23.900got worked over by donald trump because he was foolish enough to say something unkind behind as
00:24:29.820soon as trump had gone snickering on the sidelines i mean again that was just that was a whole
00:24:35.900separate affair it showed how disrespected he is on the federal on the international scene though
00:24:41.500i mean even people who didn't like president trump when they see that kind of behavior going
00:24:47.340on at a summit it's not surprising when you see trudeau on the outside looking in at further i
00:24:52.300mean it's a terribly disrespectful behavior from supposed to be a world leader and he's uh making
00:24:57.820fun of the the president of the that's just the figures of trudeau but we were still dealing with
00:25:03.100this guy. I could be doing it again, too. Come November. Well, I'm not talking about Trump. I'm
00:25:09.720talking about Trudeau. Well, no, I'm talking about Trudeau. The whole return of Trump is a whole
00:25:14.980separate show for us to talk about, which is interesting. I mean, I would have said a year
00:25:19.160ago, there's no way that Trump's going to be president again. And boy, I would have been
00:25:23.720very wrong. It's certainly looking like he's going to be there again. So I was going to offer
00:25:28.380you odds but it doesn't seem like you're inclined to take them up no no I'm bad with those long-term
00:25:35.500bets it seems so I'm going to stay out of that market well let's take it a little closer to
00:25:39.740home I mean the adversarial and how hyped things up are getting in the legislature a pretty bizarre
00:25:46.620interchange between Schmidt and Jackie Lovely. Yeah. Well, it actually boggles the mind,
00:26:03.580you know, I mean, adults don't usually behave like that. No, they don't. So there they are,
00:26:09.100there's a lounge outside the legislature. Lovely has just been speaking about, I think she was
00:26:16.940making some remarks about how Edmonton should do things. She's an MLA. Everything that goes on in
00:26:21.820the province is fair game. Seems to be. Should be. And out comes an Edmonton MLA Schmidt.
00:26:33.100and he starts to berate her. And she said, okay, thanks very much. I've had enough of
00:26:42.740you. Gets up to leave and he's blocking her way. Like this kind of behavior at a nightclub
00:31:28.320I mean, it'd be nice if they tone it down.
00:31:29.620It builds a bit with the cynicism of voters sometimes if they get too heated and they're spending more time, you know, trying to score shots at each other than actually accomplishing anything.
00:31:39.600But either way, is there going to be any other sanction for Schmidt, though, other than the Speaker saying don't do that again?
00:31:45.580Well, you know, hard to say, and I'm not a member of the NDP, so I don't know what goes for, you know, decent behavior in that party.
00:31:54.960But I would think if that was a member of the UCP that had done something like that, there would be two things.
00:32:01.640One, there would be a chat with the Premier.
00:32:05.600And secondly, there would be a chat with the Constituency Association.
00:32:13.620If that's how you're going to represent us, sir, maybe we will find somebody else.
00:32:19.680That would be a very fitting response.
00:32:24.960I don't expect it, but that's what should happen.
00:32:28.020We'll see what turns out with this, too.
00:32:29.560I mean, if this was a conservative member, well, they'd be demanding a resignation.
00:33:41.400And he sent me this article that was talking about how drug addicts were now permitted to take their drugs into hospital with them, that they were also permitted to keep their weapons with them.
00:34:03.700now i was aware that the government of british columbia about a year ago
00:34:10.800had received an exemption from ottawa so that possession of small amounts of illegal drugs
00:34:18.460would not be a criminal matter and the idea was that if you destigmatized drug use well then it
00:34:26.920would make it easier for a person to seek help they wouldn't feel embarrassed to show up at
00:34:32.940emergency okay so that was the idea didn't think it was going to work didn't think there was any
00:34:39.740that it was a good idea to destigmatize drug use it should be stigmatized but that's what they were
00:34:45.820doing in bc and then the next thing that came along was that they needed safe supply so that
00:34:53.020people could depend on the stuff they were putting in their arms and not be worried that it was going
00:34:58.060to kill them because fentanyl overdoses are very common and the bc is i think the highest per capita
00:35:05.420in the country followed by alberta followed by alberta so this was going all that we already
00:35:12.220knew but what paul was describing was testimony from the bc nurses unions that had been shared
00:35:23.020in the legislature by the by the opposition health clinic which was saying that nurses
00:35:30.940were now physically afraid for their safety because these people were drugged up they had
00:35:39.020more drugs they were not allowed to remove or confiscate the drugs which would to me seem like
00:35:47.100the first thing that you would do and even more they were though they couldn't go through the
00:35:53.020possessions of the person as a consequence of which some of these people actually have knives
00:35:59.660and other weapons with them in the hospital bed and the testimony of one of these nurses
00:36:06.540and i refer you to paul's column we ran it about 10 o'clock this morning go look for it
00:36:11.260and and it it talked about how there was one fellow you know how everybody's in sort of shared
00:36:17.940rooms these days they go to bed in each corner well you imagine yourself being in there you've
00:36:22.280just had your appendix out or whatever you whatever's been done and there's a guy in the
00:36:27.320other corner threshing around naked in the throes of a a drug session and you don't know what he's
00:36:35.760going to do next i mean they have security but jeepers man what can happen between the
00:36:40.300pressing the button for security and somebody actually showing up it is astonishing so i
00:36:46.180here's the thing i called a doctor i know who works in the bc system it's all true that's the
00:36:53.640damnable thing this is not an exaggeration this is not a politician taking swipes at the ndp
00:37:00.060government this is just what's going on in bc now maybe now that i hate to say you know that
00:37:07.040a positive coming from a negative. But now that the unions have to step in because nurses and1.00
00:37:11.880other health practitioners are being put at risk, there's this enablement ideology that I rip into
00:37:16.860on a regular basis, this ridiculousness, this delusional approach to addicted people where
00:37:23.740they try to say they're harmless. They're harmless. They're just addicted. No, that's a load of crap.
00:37:27.660Go and see the stabbings and the numbers and the things that are happening in the shelters and the
00:37:31.860train stations and the places where they congregate. Not every addicted person is dangerous, but a lot
00:37:36.580them are in the terms meth induced psychosis when they particularly with meth fentanyl usually knock
00:37:42.340them down yeah they're pretty harmless but the meth you take that too much too long you snap and
00:37:47.940you can become very very dangerous and they're not themselves like you know maybe they are nice
00:37:52.260people i'm i'm sure everybody is but when you're in the throes of an addiction like that you are
00:37:56.820not you're not you're right you're right and that's the whole rationale between premier smith's
00:38:02.180policy here about the treatment right is that these people are unable to make these
00:38:06.980rational choices for themselves but you know it's funny because we were talking about it on your
00:38:11.380previous show at lunch there about uh how you know these people are smoking crack in
00:38:16.340in the hospital rooms you know but if you lit a cigarette you'll be arrested they'll
00:38:23.060drag you over there faster and find you yeah i mean that's exactly that is exactly the case
00:38:28.900Yeah. And the response of the health minister, Adrian Dix, to all of this was, well, we'll set up a task force to look at it.
00:38:37.380But that's, now that it's been at least exposed and the union's speaking up, that's where I see perhaps,
00:38:44.000and the NDP doesn't like listening to citizens and commoners or common sense.
00:42:01.480I've got some issues going on within my own family where we're dealing with some of that.
00:42:04.760I've been learning some interesting things and some of the limitations we're sitting at right now, which, you know, I'll expand on more at another time.
00:42:12.280You know, just before the show, I think you and I were talking about it.
00:42:15.500And didn't you say that really this is from the B.C. government point of view, we're just making it easy on themselves.
00:42:22.220If you don't have to arrest people and if you don't have to put them through the court system, you don't have to send them to jail.
00:42:29.280Well, you just don't have to do all those things at vast expense.
00:42:32.720and furthermore it's unrecorded so you can say crime is going down yeah yeah that's like holland
00:42:38.720dude it's pretty tough to get arrested in holland because nothing's illegal but it doesn't mean the
00:42:43.120crimes aren't happening it's just like the insanity in california where they basically
00:42:47.120legalized shoplifting so cold business districts are closing because lo and behold people started
00:42:52.800shoplifting and i get tired of that it's the same sort of delusion well it's for the the single mom0.93
00:42:57.520who needs bread and milk for her children well no that that quote unquote single mom is stealing1.00
00:43:01.120nikes and televisions guys she's not going for for the uh well and in the case of bc you'd think0.93
00:43:06.720that okay so you know obviously the toxicity of the drug supply is is one issue but if this program
00:43:14.480was really working and it was such a success then why are people still dying i mean all you have to
00:43:19.360do is to get your drugs is to walk in and get a prescription increasingly so it's not working
00:43:24.480there's there's no beating around that bush it's not working no well and even in oregon like what
00:43:29.200they did they were and oregon was really bad i don't know i like portland i've been to portland
00:43:33.520quite a few times and when you know like the last few years it was getting pretty scary well i think
00:43:38.080we have abandoned that whole approach in oregon they have to and it started off as kind of a
00:43:42.240compassionate thing i'm hoping maybe bc's hitting that tipping point where at least the reality is
00:43:46.640going to soak in and they'll start backing off we're not going to have to start putting something
00:43:49.760into treatment yeah you know i got a feeling there's a lot of tipping points that are starting
00:43:54.160to tip they're starting to i think the wave is finally hitting the crest and people are saying
00:43:59.360wow this is you know where there's trans issues and other things people are just getting enough1.00
00:44:03.280is enough extreme isn't this that's great there's hope yes oh get on there is no there is yes we
00:44:10.880got to maintain that we complain so we'll get on to drunks uh since we're on the drugs we'll finish
00:44:15.920up with uh oh the vodka uh hey alcoholism serious i'm aware of that and i'm open about that as well