Corey Morgan rants about why Alberta should vote to leave the federation, and why it would be a good thing if they did. He's got a guest, Dr. Michael Bonner of the Aristotle Foundation, to talk about fixing the immigration system.
00:06:46.160Jane kindly, yes, you know, in being helpful, isolated the video and posted it to her social media feed so the world can enjoy my adventure.
00:12:04.220He's a part of a long, long tradition,
00:12:06.400a family that's been around a long time and certainly no shortage of controversy wrapped
00:12:12.200around them as well. I don't know. I think tradition's important and history is important.
00:12:16.700I just never want to see them formally empowered with leadership over us anymore either. I don't
00:12:21.540like that entire concept of somebody being our better due to the fact of which family they may
00:12:27.540or may not have been born into. We've evolved past that. We still have a long ways to go in
00:12:32.200being a proper functioning democracy, but I like to think we're better than that. But whatever.
00:12:36.400Charles was out here. It was unusual. Nobody'd done, we hadn't had a sitting monarch sit in the
00:12:40.900parliament and give a throne speech since Queen Elizabeth back in the 70s. And I think she was
00:12:44.420out here for the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton. I could be wrong. I believe that's when that was
00:12:48.900held. It was an interesting choice on the part of Mark Carney. He's got a lot of things to take
00:12:56.140care of in the next little while. We got the upset Westerners like myself out here on his case and
00:13:01.940you know, a budding independence movement, and you've got questions of Canadian sovereignty due
00:13:06.060to President Trump just constantly lobbing bombs our way and that ridiculous America, you know,
00:13:13.32051st state conversation, things like that. So bringing King Charles out to set off the parliament
00:13:20.380was an interesting political move. I mean, it was definitely showing, hey, we are a constitutional
00:13:25.620monarch. We have nothing to do with being a 51st state, though it's not insulting. It wasn't
00:13:30.880giving a middle finger or an elbow up to the United States. It was just asserting ourselves.
00:13:35.300Yet there was some irony in it as well, in that we're saying we're a sovereign nation, yet you
00:13:41.740brought the head of a nation from across the sea, who ostensibly is our head of state, to speak to
00:13:47.680us. So we're not exactly as sovereign as he would like to make it out to be, though again, it's a
00:13:53.120technicality at this point. So let's get on to some, oh yeah, I don't want to remind folks one
00:13:58.080more time. I should do that one. Got to pay the bills. So yes, Dave Naylor and our news crew out
00:14:02.700there and things being covered. G77 coming up, all sorts of stuff. The reason we can do it is
00:14:07.320because you guys have subscribed. This is where I got to nag. Yeah, westernstandard.newslash1.00
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00:14:28.700and it keeps us from having to reach out and ask for government dollars, which we don't take.
00:14:33.760All right. So yeah, I've been looking forward to this with Dr. Bonner, with the Aristotle
00:14:38.740Foundation talking about repairing the fray, improving immigration and citizenship policy
00:14:43.980in Canada. It's a discussion we need to have. Immigration, poorly managed immigration has
00:14:48.980really made a mess this last decade to say the least and but I mean like so many things there's
00:14:55.880no simple solutions to these we need some nuanced approaches to it there's people saying shut down
00:14:59.380all immigration and there's others saying we shouldn't touch it I think the answers are1.00
00:15:02.580probably quite somewhere in the middle I'm certain Dr. Bonner will expand on that for us so thank you
00:15:07.740very much for joining us today Dr. Bonner. Thanks for having me. So kind of as I lined it up you
00:15:14.260know we've had finally some frank discussion on immigration for a long time there was almost a
00:15:18.820denial that there's a problem and anybody questioning the rate of immigration or the
00:15:23.400means of integration is perhaps being intolerant or shallow, but the government's acknowledging,
00:15:30.900wow, okay, we kind of overshot, we kind of blew it. We have to fix some aspects of the
00:15:35.920immigration system. And I guess with this new parliament, the opportunity might be here,
00:15:39.920but they need some planning. So you've laid out kind of an 11-step plan to repair Canada's
00:15:47.320immigration system. Can you expand on that?
00:15:50.740Yeah. Well, what I would say, first of all, is that we have to look at not just, you know,
00:15:58.080not just immigration at this precise moment, but also what it is going to look like, what it may
00:16:04.940look like, you know, in years to come. Canada has had historically a difficult time, you know,
00:16:12.540maintaining um maintaining a healthy population getting the population to grow this was always a
00:16:19.340struggle and we have depended for this on immigration we need to look into the future
00:16:28.060and see where we think that's going i don't think we're going to be able to count on high levels of
00:16:33.740immigration um long into the future simply because most of the world is is not reproducing at the at0.90
00:16:41.260the at the rates that it once was high levels of mobile populations and especially young populations
00:16:47.900aren't going to be there for much longer we need to take that into account first of all
00:16:52.060and second we need to make sure that the immigration that we do have because i'm in
00:16:56.700favor of immigration i think it's been you know on balance has been very good for our country
00:17:01.260but we need it to serve our national interest those are the two guiding principles that i
00:17:05.580have from my recommendations yeah well and some of the areas you made recommendations were areas
00:17:11.180that get a little sticky but you're talking about uh looking to uh discourage immigration from
00:17:16.860anybody unwilling or unable to respect our founding cultures uh people could label that in a sense of
00:17:23.180being intolerant of people with different cultures but and that's not what you're getting at with
00:17:26.940this right that's correct i i would reject any such uh characterize characterization like that
00:17:34.300um what i have in mind is is the damage that was done the damage that was done by
00:17:41.180the former Trudeau government with their insistence that there's essentially no Canadian culture
00:17:46.180and that therefore there's nothing to assimilate to. I mean, this is demoralizing for everybody
00:17:53.420who lives here, first of all. And, you know, it's good to see, I'll give credit where credit is due,
00:17:58.380it's good to see that the Kearney government seems to have sort of put a stop to that.
00:18:03.860But we still need to make citizens, we all need to be good citizens ourselves, and we need to
00:18:11.080we need to make good citizens of other people we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard
00:18:16.860and we have to understand that there is a sort of a settled uh Canadian culture there's more than
00:18:24.900one there are there are um you know several historical peoples that have always lived here
00:18:30.840and then there are others who have come uh later and that our constant the evolution of our
00:18:37.340constitution, our languages and so forth, that these matter. They're very important to the
00:18:41.560people who live here. And it's also very important to those who come to newcomers that they be
00:18:48.100not only respectful, but also that they integrate fully and comfortably into Canadian economic and
00:18:56.440cultural life. Yeah. So an area you covered as well was international students. That's kind of
00:19:02.520a spot where I think the floodgates got a little out of control. A lot of institutions were sort
00:19:07.320of pouring in international students and some were using it more as a foothold for future
00:19:12.060permanent immigration rather than studies. You're talking about prioritizing, you know,
00:19:17.680because again, it's great to have international students come in and they pay a much higher price1.00
00:19:21.000to attend our institutions. So, I mean, it can help a lot of things in general, but more to have
00:19:28.260it, I guess, prioritizing the ones with, as you said, studies of high importance to our labor
00:19:32.820market and supply chains like we don't need more uh liberal arts graduates perhaps necessarily but
00:19:38.100we could certainly use a lot more uh chemists farmers engineers uh things like that right
00:19:43.060so there are two points there one is is the the economic immigration and labor market uh realities
00:19:52.500uh if if we're bringing in the best and brightest from around the world which i'm 100 in favor of
00:20:00.980um you know getting getting them trained up educated and and and sort of uh uh get get
00:20:08.180attached into the labor market get integrated there you know that everybody wins that's great
00:20:13.060that's that's that's a combination of uh economic uh positive economic outcomes and integration
00:20:19.860together uh i i you know i can't think of almost any better way to to integrate into another country
00:20:28.660young person than going to a career college or to a university. So I'm 100% in favor of that.
00:20:37.580What I'm not in favor of is the sort of fraudulent, fly-by-night, fake credential mills that have
00:20:48.180cropped up here and there that give a bad name to the whole process that have essentially
00:20:55.440recruited people to to do these sort of fake courses of study or if they're not if they're
00:21:00.620not actually fake they're of kind of a lower caliber and then to work low wage uh jobs and to
00:21:08.940you know add to the to the problem of uh stagnant wages uh a sort of depressed uh labor market and
00:21:18.660working very often under conditions that are deplorable, dangerous, uncomfortable, deplorable,
00:21:25.780and basically shackled to a fake educational institution and to essentially a borderline
00:21:35.340fake, borderline indentured servitude type of job. That must stop. And, you know, we need to
00:21:44.040make sure that we are distinguishing between those two things rigorously. I don't think it's
00:21:50.220too late to salvage it by any means, but there's certainly been a great deal of damage done there.
00:21:56.740Yeah, and it's good that you point out, I mean, some of the people victimized, it's not just
00:22:01.160people already in Canada, but this is pretty darn hard and unfair to some people coming over thinking
00:22:05.440they were coming into something better, and as you said, find themselves virtually indentured.
00:22:10.480uh something else with part of Canada's system has been probably is uh our bureaucracy is difficult
00:22:17.020for people trying to follow actually the rules it's very uh convoluted and time consuming but
00:22:21.600you call for lengthening the the time requirement for citizenship in some cases except for citizens
00:22:26.340with pure English and French speaking countries uh could delaying though the the citizenship
00:22:32.520process lead to other problems I mean there are always trade-offs part of what I also
00:22:40.040So part of what I also recommend, though, is just greater sort of public and democratic oversight.
00:22:46.300I mean, this is the kind of, you know, the length of time I recommend a longer period.
00:22:51.240I recommend I recommend something akin to, you know, our our our peer countries where, you know, after permanent residency, it's, you know, in some cases, it's five to 10 years.
00:23:03.380I think something on that order would be better for us.
00:23:07.160But this is the kind of public conversation that we should have in this country.
00:23:12.740You mentioned bureaucrats. The Minister of Immigration and many senior officials have enormous power as to who gets let in, when, how, how to assign points, what kind of skills are supposedly weighed heavily, which not, in what manner and so forth.
00:23:35.280And all of this is entirely opaque to nearly all Canadians.
00:23:41.800In fact, I would almost go as far as to say that even when you have members of the public who take a great deal of interest in this subject, the decision making is closed off.
00:23:53.800There's no public discussion or consultation about this sort of thing at all.
00:24:00.320And levels and so forth are set by cabinet.
00:24:03.540So I recommend a longer period of time, but this is the kind of public conversation that we need to have. How much do we value our citizenship? How much do we value the significance of being a Canadian? That's what we need to ask ourselves.
00:24:27.980Absolutely. Another issue that you cover, I mean, a lot of it is you're not even calling for what you're calling for getting a better control of the immigration or best utilizing it. And one of the issues that's happened a lot over the decades really is with credentials. You're talking about establishing a standard credential regulation and recognition because we get people coming here who may be very highly skilled, but they're having difficulty finding work in their trade and they find themselves in low skilled trades.
00:24:54.440And often they'll bounce off to another country if they can't find work in their profession here.
00:24:59.600Yet we seem to never be able to get around to fixing that.
00:25:02.040We bring it up every few years, but it never seems to change.
00:25:05.160Right. Well, this is the proverbial doctor from abroad who drives a taxi.
00:25:11.420Right. I mean, there's no there's absolutely no reason why that should why that should ever happen if we're talking about, you know, well-trained doctors from, you know, from reputable countries with strong hospital systems and public health and so forth.
00:25:30.960There's absolutely no reason why it should be such an ordeal to be recognized here.
00:25:56.800One is that our labor markets are sort of fenced off from one another, and this feeds into the discussion about trade barriers between provinces, these sort of little monopolies.
00:26:08.980They've got to go. We need to be able to address labor shortages or skills mismatches or however you want to describe it from within Canada first.
00:26:20.860We should be able to predict or notice or whatever it is where we need people, where the qualified people are, and then see if we can, you know, see if we can get them to work there.
00:26:40.300The old example of this would be the Newfoundlanders going to the oil patch.
00:26:47.540unfortunately the first resort uh now seems to be to look abroad this is not a good system
00:26:57.060partly because we are sort of neglecting our own people first and foremost but also because
00:27:03.120the credentials are not are not always um are not always recognized as you say so this is this is
00:27:10.000an example of a kind of multi-dimensional problem that it doesn't have a simple straightforward
00:27:17.960solution. It is something that we need to start taking this as seriously as we have been taking
00:27:24.780the question of interprovincial trade. So kind of bouncing back to one of the things in the early
00:27:31.480part of it too, with coping with immigration, immigrants that haven't fit in well or they've
00:27:37.340cause problems. There's been difficulties. Talk about strengthening the process of deportation.
00:27:42.760I mean, at the times when we realized this person or these people do not belong here,
00:27:46.500they're not fitting in well, they're causing issues. And we have a terrible time getting a
00:27:50.900person out once they've gotten here. We saw that with an activist on the West Coast a little while
00:27:55.180ago. His activities were just beyond the pale for years. And finally, finally, he was deported. But
00:28:01.500that's just one example. But we could also run into a heck of a lot of issues with the courts
00:28:06.600on that. So I mean, would that take legislative change? Or is it just a matter of the will of the
00:28:10.640courts? First of all, it's a matter of enforcing the laws that we have. And there are, you know,
00:28:21.320we now live, as everybody has been saying forever, we live in, you know, a globalized world,
00:28:28.600the global village, whatever you want to call it. But it isn't, it isn't always a nice place.
00:28:33.640There are people who have been interfering in our elections from abroad or who manipulate our political or attempt to manipulate our political life.
00:35:35.800They should change. They should adapt. And that's where we keep screwing up with a weird thought process in the world that one culture, for example, in the West should be open and accepting of every other cultural practice in the world, even when those cultural practices completely violate what we consider acceptable to our culture here.
00:35:59.920And I'm talking about the people who practice, for example, primitive Islamic practices.1.00
00:36:05.060You know, not all, but I mean, it's like everything.
00:36:07.960When you get fundamentalism, it gets pretty bad.
00:36:09.520And the bigger issue tends to come with Islam, the treatment of women, the treatment of gay people.0.97
00:43:25.700But you should at least agree that, holy crap, something went wrong in the current system that these books found themselves on the shelves in the first place.
00:43:32.360Those ones can go out the door and then let's talk about what we want to do to ensure, because I worry about that too.
00:43:39.180sure I don't want any government deciding everything that goes on you know micromanaging
00:43:44.480what happens in a library and it's a school it's important for kids to get out and read and find a
00:43:48.420diverse area of things but some of the lines are not complicated they're not blurry they're not
00:43:53.120fuzzy pornographic sex acts depicted don't belong in schools these things I mean when I went to
00:44:01.460school in the 80s if I'd have shown up with a penthouse magazine or a hustler magazine I'd
00:44:06.380probably get suspended you didn't bring them in and it the the fact that they were banning those
00:44:13.080from within schools didn't mean they were banning books didn't mean they were censoring it just said
00:44:16.980this isn't appropriate material for people of that age in this institution yet here we have a crisis
00:44:23.300and what gets me is the media behind it i i torture myself i listen to talk radio in the mornings and
00:44:28.160i listen to a host saying we're going to bring on a librarian talk about how it's awful what
00:44:31.680Daniel Smith's trying to do in Alberta schools with book bannings. Really? She's pulling pornography1.00
00:44:37.100out of the library. Legacy media, you're getting as sick as the hard left that you're continually
00:44:42.840supporting. If we've lost the narrative to the point where we can't even pull porn from the
00:44:48.480shelves of an elementary school, something's grossly wrong. Grossly wrong. You guys have
00:44:56.760got to get, you talk about losing the narrative. Peter McCaffrey, he's a person involved with a
00:45:02.660number of groups, Project Confederation, a few things. I saw him tweeted it recently and he showed
00:45:06.700the support for Ninchy, the leader of the NDP in Alberta, since he won the leadership and it's
00:45:12.720going down, down, down, down. And the funny thing is, you know, to be honest, the Smith government
00:45:16.500has not been doing a great job. They've been doing a lot of infighting and messing around and policy
00:45:19.960failures and problems. I mean, I think she still does a lot of good things, but there's challenges,
00:45:24.780but still, Ninchy's dropping. Why? Well, some of it's because you idiots decide to pick hills like
00:45:30.920this to die on. If you're going to stand up for the rights of porn in elementary schools,
00:45:37.940I'm not the best electoral strategist in the world, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a
00:45:41.900losing tact to take. Yeah, maybe it's for the better. But I would rather you guys were in
00:45:47.260effective opposition, and maybe that's what would help keep the Smith government governing properly
00:45:52.360and better than they have been so far to date.