Western Standard - Why should Alberta stay？

00:00:00.000 Good day and welcome to the

00:00:29.980 Welcome to the Corey Morgan Show.

00:00:32.700 Welcome, everybody, except that weird beekeeper up north named Mike with Freedom Honey,

00:00:36.720 who's just spamming my thing with that sub-rate honey he produces up there.

00:00:41.700 But, you know, he works for good causes, so we'll let it go.

00:00:44.040 If you can't get the good stuff down south, I'll fix you, you know,

00:00:47.720 he'll fix you up with some mediocre honey up that way. 1.00

00:00:50.940 We've got a good show coming up, guys, and it is live.

00:00:52.800 So, yes, I've seen you all there, Lynn and the others checking in.

00:00:56.880 Use that comment scroll.

00:00:58.080 send me questions, ideas, notions. I appreciate it. I don't read them all on the air necessarily,

00:01:03.240 but I do see them all and it keeps things flowing. So just, I know it's a lot to ask,

00:01:08.300 but try to keep things somewhat civil. We usually can. I've got a good show coming up. We'll talk

00:01:12.380 about a few things. I'll check in with Dave in a moment. I'm going to rant about, well,

00:01:16.800 unity and independence as I often do. And I've got a guest coming on, Dr. Michael Bonner of

00:01:20.820 the Aristotle Foundation, talking about repairing the immigration system. And it's good. He's done 0.99

00:01:26.540 a great long paper on it. You know, it's easy to complain about things. God knows I do it a lot,

00:01:32.460 but laying out the solutions is more complex and more important, and he's laid out a lot of good

00:01:37.940 ones. So it's going to be a really good conversation in a little while too. So let me talk about some

00:01:43.660 of the problems, the areas of my specialty. So Westerners saw it coming, even though Canada

00:01:49.040 appears to have been shocked when support for provincial independence exploded after Eastern

00:01:53.520 canada which chose to reward the liberals with a larger government in a general election and at

00:01:58.480 first the federalists dismissed the provincial sovereignist movement as a fringe minority you

00:02:02.640 know just a few loud cranks they were confident it was a little more than a collection of vocal

00:02:06.800 malcontents on social media and there was little of substance to the movement when a poll from

00:02:12.000 angus reed indicated support for independence had swollen to 37 percent federalists did wake up and

00:02:18.640 responded by turning up the vitriol they realized the movement was real and decided to fight it

00:02:22.400 through insulting independent supporters and telling them they have no right to leave.

00:02:26.040 Airtime was given to selected indigenous chiefs who wrongly claimed that independence referendum

00:02:31.360 would violate treaty rights, while washed up musicians such as Jan Arden released video 0.91

00:02:36.460 tirades calling Albertans everything from hillbillies to pricks. Smugly, the Canadian 0.98

00:02:41.340 establishment types then leaned back and maintained confidence they'd slap down those uppity 0.86

00:02:45.300 westerners and the movement would surely fizzle out in short order. Meanwhile, groups were

00:02:49.820 organizing throughout Alberta and holding rallies for independence. The halls have been packed and

00:02:53.560 the databases have been filling with the names of people ready to sign a petition to invoke a

00:02:57.420 referendum on Alberta independence. With the election now a month behind us, public support

00:03:01.480 sentiment for independence has shifted upward. Leger found an eye-popping 47% of Albertans

00:03:08.440 supportive of independence. Admittedly, that was a small sampling, but still interesting. With only

00:03:13.560 a three-point margin to cover for a winning referendum and with clear momentum on its side,

00:03:17.540 the independence movement is stronger than it's ever been.

00:03:20.200 To dismiss this populist prairie fire at this point would be foolhardy, to say the least.

00:03:25.000 To say a positive independence vote is impossible is to deny reality at this point.

00:03:30.060 Might still be unlikely, but it's far from impossible.

00:03:32.760 I'm going to offer a bit of free advice to the Federalists who don't want Alberta to vote to leave the Federation.

00:03:37.680 For starters, stop telling Albertans they can't leave.

00:03:40.840 They can.

00:03:41.800 The Clarity Act laid out the legal pathway to provincial independence,

00:03:44.420 and Albertans are already well on their way to a referendum.

00:03:47.540 When you tell a Westerner they can't do something, you don't discourage them.

00:03:50.720 You just inspire them to work harder to get the job done.

00:03:53.520 Again, shows how you don't understand Western attitudes.

00:03:56.120 Next, stop insulting Albertans.

00:03:58.500 Debasing and belittling Albertans doesn't endear them to the Federation, guys.

00:04:01.860 That sort of tactic feeds the analogy of Alberta being part of an abusive relationship 0.97

00:04:05.920 with a spouse who would only assault rather than listen.

00:04:10.180 Nearly half of Albertans have decided they'd be better served if their province left Canada.

00:04:14.360 This isn't a short-term flash in the pan.

00:04:16.200 Pan. This isn't a decision Albertans came to lightly. This is the culmination of decades of

00:04:21.100 regional abuse under a broken system. People won't go back to the concept of the federation easily.

00:04:26.980 I remember when taking marketing long ago, I was taught that the toughest person to win was one

00:04:31.320 who's already had a negative experience with you or your product. Albertans won't come back to the

00:04:35.620 federation without some coaxing. They've been burned too many times and for too long. They see

00:04:40.160 a brighter future for themselves and their children in an independent Alberta right now.

00:04:44.820 Federalists who want to prevent the dissolution of the Federation must woo Albertans back into 0.58

00:04:49.220 the fold. Albertans are increasingly seeing why they're better off leaving. They know why they

00:04:54.100 should go and nearly half of them are ready to make the leap. Life is a series of cost-benefit

00:04:58.260 analysis when making decisions. The cost of remaining within the Federation has become a

00:05:02.060 lot higher than the benefits it's offering. That ratio must change if the wave of independent

00:05:06.500 support in Alberta is to recede. Albertans have tried for decades to achieve change within the

00:05:10.900 system and they've been stymied with every attempt. And now they're looking, they're getting

00:05:14.380 ready to leave the system altogether. So that ball is in the court of the rest of Canada now.

00:05:18.920 Change the system dramatically or accept the departure of Alberta and possibly other Western

00:05:22.740 provinces. Those opposing independence of Alberta, they're going to ask, they must answer this

00:05:27.520 question and they better answer it effectively. Why should Albertans stay? I can lay out the

00:05:31.700 reasons why to leave. It's now on you guys to tell us why we should stay. Anyway, that's where

00:05:36.440 sitting with those things right now let's get on to the broader issues and uh somebody from the

00:05:41.320 nice peaceful and stable parts of the world are recently there our news editor dave kneeler fresh

00:05:46.040 back from israel how you doing yeah i'm doing well it was a great trip uh length and breadth

00:05:50.520 of the country seeing lots of uh uh lots of eye-opening things that we'll talk about on

00:05:55.480 the pipeline later on all right well not much in the throne speech to uh sway alberta for staying

00:06:02.920 is there no no i alberta didn't really the west didn't come up much uh i guess they just sort of

00:06:08.840 ran that throne speech under the assumption that canada's unified they don't need to talk to us

00:06:12.040 exactly exactly so i saw a great video of you when i got back from israel uh planning for the uh

00:06:19.320 100 meter dash or training for the 100 meter dash yeah yeah i set a personal record the other day

00:06:25.160 uh i i didn't listen to my own advice i i do beekeeping and yes i i bought a new nuke which

00:06:31.160 which is like a starter beehive.

00:06:32.680 And I thought, you know, I don't need to put my bee suit on.

00:06:36.280 I can get this set up and just walk it over there.

00:06:38.000 And I put it down and the bottom fell out and the bees came pouring out.

00:06:40.380 And I got stung as I sprinted back to the house.

00:06:44.800 Ouch, yeah.

00:06:46.160 Jane 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.

00:06:55.460 Nice.

00:06:55.940 I encourage everybody to go look for it if you want a smile of the day.

00:06:59.660 Yeah.

00:06:59.960 Well, I wasn't smiling, but I got over it.

00:07:02.180 Ah, there we go.

00:07:03.260 Oh, there he is.

00:07:03.920 Look at him run.

00:07:04.600 Look at him run.

00:07:05.360 It's not bad for a 54-year-old.

00:07:07.140 You know, when you've got 1,000 bees behind you, though, it's amazing the inspiration you can find.

00:07:13.280 That's not bad running at all.

00:07:15.620 While swiping at your head and trying to beat the bees off yourself.

00:07:18.680 Yeah, there you go.

00:07:19.680 Got my steps in that day.

00:07:20.680 There you go.

00:07:21.440 Good.

00:07:23.160 So, yes, we have today in about 20 minutes, Mark Carney's first question period as Prime Minister.

00:07:30.580 So we'll be watching that and we'll be getting clips and stories up there.

00:07:36.300 There's a big arms show going on in Ottawa and the pro-Hamas crowd decided they were going to protest that

00:07:43.540 because some of them are dealing arms to Israel and arms components and that sort of thing.

00:07:49.820 And already 11 arrests and the protests are going on.

00:07:55.080 Speaking of Israel, the new president of the Treasury Board, a liberal cabinet minister

00:08:01.140 by the name of Shafquat Ali, has admitted that he took a free trip to Jerusalem by a

00:08:08.840 Muslim advocacy group to get photographed praying.

00:08:13.540 So that'll bring peace to the Middle East.

00:08:15.320 Oh, sure.

00:08:16.320 Settle them right down.

00:08:17.320 Oh, exactly.

00:08:19.180 And our new finance minister, Mr. Champagne, has introduced table legislation to give Canadians

00:08:26.360 a small tax break of $6.1 billion.

00:08:28.940 I guess better than a kick in the knee with a speed skate, but hopefully more to come.

00:08:35.560 We'll take what we can get.

00:08:36.680 So, I mean, what is the parliamentary schedule now?

00:08:39.560 I mean, it's going to be a relatively short session, but they're…

00:08:42.060 Yeah, I think it's like two weeks.

00:08:43.860 They're going to fix the country, and then they're going to take like four months off.

00:08:47.180 Yeah.

00:08:48.180 So there's going to be a number of bills, though, I tabled in the next week or so.

00:08:52.220 I guess we'll be watching for hints for when they're going to bring those out so we can scrutinize.

00:08:56.440 Exactly, exactly.

00:08:57.480 And, yeah, certainly everybody out west will be waiting to see if there's any movements on things like pipelines

00:09:04.120 and various needed stuff, infrastructure, stuff like that.

00:09:07.680 And we've got a First Minister's Conference with the Prime Minister in Saskatoon next week, I believe.

00:09:13.940 And Chris Olkorn will be there covering it for us.

00:09:16.540 Well, it does say a little, I guess, that they did decide to hold that first first minister conference in Saskatoon.

00:09:22.520 And I mean, I'm just trying to, you know, from my perspective, almost play devil's advocate, but showing some optimism.

00:09:28.260 I mean, Justin Trudeau hated those conferences. He rarely ever even held them.

00:09:32.280 If Carney's willing to get into the same room in the West and talk to all those premiers, maybe there's just going to be some love.

00:09:40.520 You know, as Doug Ford says, it's time to show Alberta and Saskatchewan some love.

00:09:45.380 Yeah, and as Gilbo says, we don't need pipelines.

00:09:47.560 Exactly.

00:09:48.260 We'll see what comes out of this.

00:09:49.620 You know, I felt sorry for Prince Charles that the last face in Canada he saw 1.00

00:09:54.980 was that simpering idiot at the airport as he flew out. 0.99

00:09:59.480 Well, I mean, did you say Prince Charles? 1.00

00:10:02.800 King Charles.

00:10:03.260 King Charles, yes.

00:10:04.200 King Charles.

00:10:04.700 I don't know.

00:10:05.940 He's got a promotion.

00:10:07.000 It shows the longevity of Queen Elizabeth so long.

00:10:09.700 I mean, our whole lives, and we're getting a little long in the tooth now,

00:10:12.620 it was still always Prince Charles.

00:10:13.880 i was just thinking as i was driving today it's just hard to wrap your head around that

00:10:17.320 holy cow he made it he's now the king he got the job he's been waiting for all this time

00:10:21.400 yeah well good for him i guess yeah good work if you can get it all right well i'll let you

00:10:28.840 head on back to the newsroom and then yeah we'll see you tonight on the pipeline you bet

00:10:33.960 thank you thank you all right so yes that is uh dave nailer our news editor and lots of stories

00:10:40.520 is on the go. I mean, it's starting to do a little of the summer slowdown, but there's going to be a

00:10:44.580 lot going on. It'll be interesting to see if they're going to walk some of the talk. That's

00:10:49.840 when, you know, things get rolling in the House of Commons. We want to see bills. We want to see

00:10:55.720 legislation. We've heard a lot of platitudes. We've heard a lot of high-level planning ideas,

00:11:02.340 notions. I mean, that's part of the nature of an election. I know some people were going on about

00:11:06.400 the throne speech too and saying it wasn't specific for this or that, but remember, throne speeches

00:11:09.940 aren't really supposed to be. They're just kind of to set the tone of a new session.

00:11:17.260 And they're a weird, I mean, it's just part of the pomp and circumstance and tradition. I mean,

00:11:23.200 we know the governor general, and in this case, King Charles, I mean, they don't write those,

00:11:27.500 they're just reading it on behalf of the government. The power held by the throne is

00:11:32.480 nothing but theoretical. It's been interesting listening to and watching the interpretations

00:11:37.780 on social media from a lot of people,

00:11:40.560 particularly now we're talking about an independence movement,

00:11:42.600 talking about referendum being held

00:11:44.680 and people saying, no, that land is actually owned by the crown.

00:11:48.020 It's King Charles' land.

00:11:49.120 There really are people saying that sort of thing.

00:11:51.580 A province can't become independent

00:11:53.140 because the crown itself owns the land.

00:11:55.980 Yeah, people need to read a little more.

00:11:57.760 But King Charles is what he is.

00:12:00.320 He's now gracing our currency.

00:12:03.200 He's a figurehead.

00:12:04.220 He's a part of a long, long tradition,

00:12:06.400 a family that's been around a long time and certainly no shortage of controversy wrapped

00:12:12.200 around them as well. I don't know. I think tradition's important and history is important.

00:12:16.700 I just never want to see them formally empowered with leadership over us anymore either. I don't

00:12:21.540 like that entire concept of somebody being our better due to the fact of which family they may

00:12:27.540 or may not have been born into. We've evolved past that. We still have a long ways to go in

00:12:32.200 being a proper functioning democracy, but I like to think we're better than that. But whatever.

00:12:36.400 Charles was out here. It was unusual. Nobody'd done, we hadn't had a sitting monarch sit in the

00:12:40.900 parliament and give a throne speech since Queen Elizabeth back in the 70s. And I think she was

00:12:44.420 out here for the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton. I could be wrong. I believe that's when that was

00:12:48.900 held. It was an interesting choice on the part of Mark Carney. He's got a lot of things to take

00:12:56.140 care of in the next little while. We got the upset Westerners like myself out here on his case and

00:13:01.940 you know, a budding independence movement, and you've got questions of Canadian sovereignty due 0.92

00:13:06.060 to President Trump just constantly lobbing bombs our way and that ridiculous America, you know,

00:13:13.320 51st state conversation, things like that. So bringing King Charles out to set off the parliament

00:13:20.380 was an interesting political move. I mean, it was definitely showing, hey, we are a constitutional

00:13:25.620 monarch. We have nothing to do with being a 51st state, though it's not insulting. It wasn't

00:13:30.880 giving a middle finger or an elbow up to the United States. It was just asserting ourselves.

00:13:35.300 Yet there was some irony in it as well, in that we're saying we're a sovereign nation, yet you

00:13:41.740 brought the head of a nation from across the sea, who ostensibly is our head of state, to speak to

00:13:47.680 us. So we're not exactly as sovereign as he would like to make it out to be, though again, it's a

00:13:53.120 technicality at this point. So let's get on to some, oh yeah, I don't want to remind folks one

00:13:58.080 more time. I should do that one. Got to pay the bills. So yes, Dave Naylor and our news crew out

00:14:02.700 there and things being covered. G77 coming up, all sorts of stuff. The reason we can do it is

00:14:07.320 because you guys have subscribed. This is where I got to nag. Yeah, westernstandard.newslash 1.00

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00:14:28.700 and it keeps us from having to reach out and ask for government dollars, which we don't take.

00:14:33.760 All right. So yeah, I've been looking forward to this with Dr. Bonner, with the Aristotle

00:14:38.740 Foundation talking about repairing the fray, improving immigration and citizenship policy

00:14:43.980 in Canada. It's a discussion we need to have. Immigration, poorly managed immigration has

00:14:48.980 really made a mess this last decade to say the least and but I mean like so many things there's

00:14:55.880 no simple solutions to these we need some nuanced approaches to it there's people saying shut down

00:14:59.380 all immigration and there's others saying we shouldn't touch it I think the answers are 1.00

00:15:02.580 probably quite somewhere in the middle I'm certain Dr. Bonner will expand on that for us so thank you

00:15:07.740 very much for joining us today Dr. Bonner. Thanks for having me. So kind of as I lined it up you

00:15:14.260 know we've had finally some frank discussion on immigration for a long time there was almost a

00:15:18.820 denial that there's a problem and anybody questioning the rate of immigration or the

00:15:23.400 means of integration is perhaps being intolerant or shallow, but the government's acknowledging,

00:15:30.900 wow, okay, we kind of overshot, we kind of blew it. We have to fix some aspects of the

00:15:35.920 immigration system. And I guess with this new parliament, the opportunity might be here,

00:15:39.920 but they need some planning. So you've laid out kind of an 11-step plan to repair Canada's

00:15:47.320 immigration system. Can you expand on that?

00:15:50.740 Yeah. Well, what I would say, first of all, is that we have to look at not just, you know,

00:15:58.080 not just immigration at this precise moment, but also what it is going to look like, what it may

00:16:04.940 look like, you know, in years to come. Canada has had historically a difficult time, you know,

00:16:12.540 maintaining um maintaining a healthy population getting the population to grow this was always a

00:16:19.340 struggle and we have depended for this on immigration we need to look into the future

00:16:28.060 and see where we think that's going i don't think we're going to be able to count on high levels of

00:16:33.740 immigration um long into the future simply because most of the world is is not reproducing at the at 0.90

00:16:41.260 the at the rates that it once was high levels of mobile populations and especially young populations

00:16:47.900 aren't going to be there for much longer we need to take that into account first of all

00:16:52.060 and second we need to make sure that the immigration that we do have because i'm in

00:16:56.700 favor of immigration i think it's been you know on balance has been very good for our country

00:17:01.260 but we need it to serve our national interest those are the two guiding principles that i

00:17:05.580 have from my recommendations yeah well and some of the areas you made recommendations were areas

00:17:11.180 that get a little sticky but you're talking about uh looking to uh discourage immigration from

00:17:16.860 anybody unwilling or unable to respect our founding cultures uh people could label that in a sense of

00:17:23.180 being intolerant of people with different cultures but and that's not what you're getting at with

00:17:26.940 this right that's correct i i would reject any such uh characterize characterization like that

00:17:34.300 um what i have in mind is is the damage that was done the damage that was done by

00:17:41.180 the former Trudeau government with their insistence that there's essentially no Canadian culture

00:17:46.180 and that therefore there's nothing to assimilate to. I mean, this is demoralizing for everybody

00:17:53.420 who lives here, first of all. And, you know, it's good to see, I'll give credit where credit is due,

00:17:58.380 it's good to see that the Kearney government seems to have sort of put a stop to that.

00:18:03.860 But we still need to make citizens, we all need to be good citizens ourselves, and we need to

00:18:11.080 we need to make good citizens of other people we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard

00:18:16.860 and we have to understand that there is a sort of a settled uh Canadian culture there's more than

00:18:24.900 one there are there are um you know several historical peoples that have always lived here

00:18:30.840 and then there are others who have come uh later and that our constant the evolution of our

00:18:37.340 constitution, our languages and so forth, that these matter. They're very important to the

00:18:41.560 people who live here. And it's also very important to those who come to newcomers that they be

00:18:48.100 not only respectful, but also that they integrate fully and comfortably into Canadian economic and

00:18:56.440 cultural life. Yeah. So an area you covered as well was international students. That's kind of

00:19:02.520 a spot where I think the floodgates got a little out of control. A lot of institutions were sort

00:19:07.320 of pouring in international students and some were using it more as a foothold for future

00:19:12.060 permanent immigration rather than studies. You're talking about prioritizing, you know,

00:19:17.680 because again, it's great to have international students come in and they pay a much higher price 1.00

00:19:21.000 to attend our institutions. So, I mean, it can help a lot of things in general, but more to have

00:19:28.260 it, I guess, prioritizing the ones with, as you said, studies of high importance to our labor

00:19:32.820 market and supply chains like we don't need more uh liberal arts graduates perhaps necessarily but

00:19:38.100 we could certainly use a lot more uh chemists farmers engineers uh things like that right

00:19:43.060 so there are two points there one is is the the economic immigration and labor market uh realities

00:19:52.500 uh if if we're bringing in the best and brightest from around the world which i'm 100 in favor of

00:20:00.980 um you know getting getting them trained up educated and and and sort of uh uh get get

00:20:08.180 attached into the labor market get integrated there you know that everybody wins that's great

00:20:13.060 that's that's that's a combination of uh economic uh positive economic outcomes and integration

00:20:19.860 together uh i i you know i can't think of almost any better way to to integrate into another country

00:20:28.660 young person than going to a career college or to a university. So I'm 100% in favor of that.

00:20:37.580 What I'm not in favor of is the sort of fraudulent, fly-by-night, fake credential mills that have

00:20:48.180 cropped up here and there that give a bad name to the whole process that have essentially

00:20:55.440 recruited people to to do these sort of fake courses of study or if they're not if they're

00:21:00.620 not actually fake they're of kind of a lower caliber and then to work low wage uh jobs and to

00:21:08.940 you know add to the to the problem of uh stagnant wages uh a sort of depressed uh labor market and

00:21:18.660 working very often under conditions that are deplorable, dangerous, uncomfortable, deplorable,

00:21:25.780 and basically shackled to a fake educational institution and to essentially a borderline

00:21:35.340 fake, borderline indentured servitude type of job. That must stop. And, you know, we need to

00:21:44.040 make sure that we are distinguishing between those two things rigorously. I don't think it's

00:21:50.220 too late to salvage it by any means, but there's certainly been a great deal of damage done there.

00:21:56.740 Yeah, and it's good that you point out, I mean, some of the people victimized, it's not just

00:22:01.160 people already in Canada, but this is pretty darn hard and unfair to some people coming over thinking

00:22:05.440 they were coming into something better, and as you said, find themselves virtually indentured.

00:22:10.480 uh something else with part of Canada's system has been probably is uh our bureaucracy is difficult

00:22:17.020 for people trying to follow actually the rules it's very uh convoluted and time consuming but

00:22:21.600 you call for lengthening the the time requirement for citizenship in some cases except for citizens

00:22:26.340 with pure English and French speaking countries uh could delaying though the the citizenship

00:22:32.520 process lead to other problems I mean there are always trade-offs part of what I also

00:22:40.040 So part of what I also recommend, though, is just greater sort of public and democratic oversight.

00:22:46.300 I mean, this is the kind of, you know, the length of time I recommend a longer period.

00:22:51.240 I 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.

00:23:03.380 I think something on that order would be better for us.

00:23:07.160 But this is the kind of public conversation that we should have in this country.

00:23:12.740 You 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.

00:23:35.280 And all of this is entirely opaque to nearly all Canadians.

00:23:41.800 In 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.

00:23:53.800 There's no public discussion or consultation about this sort of thing at all.

00:24:00.320 And levels and so forth are set by cabinet.

00:24:03.540 So 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.

00:24:27.980 Absolutely. 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.

00:24:54.440 And often they'll bounce off to another country if they can't find work in their profession here.

00:24:59.600 Yet we seem to never be able to get around to fixing that.

00:25:02.040 We bring it up every few years, but it never seems to change.

00:25:05.160 Right. Well, this is the proverbial doctor from abroad who drives a taxi.

00:25:11.420 Right. 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.

00:25:30.960 There's absolutely no reason why it should be such an ordeal to be recognized here.

00:25:38.000 We have to do something about that.

00:25:40.060 What we also have to do is we have to make sure that the provinces recognize those credentials mutually

00:25:50.100 and that they recognize one another's credentials.

00:25:53.880 There are two sides to this problem.

00:25:56.800 One 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.

00:26:08.980 They'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.

00:26:20.860 We 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.

00:26:40.300 The old example of this would be the Newfoundlanders going to the oil patch.

00:26:45.760 You know, that was great.

00:26:47.540 unfortunately the first resort uh now seems to be to look abroad this is not a good system

00:26:57.060 partly because we are sort of neglecting our own people first and foremost but also because

00:27:03.120 the credentials are not are not always um are not always recognized as you say so this is this is

00:27:10.000 an example of a kind of multi-dimensional problem that it doesn't have a simple straightforward

00:27:17.960 solution. It is something that we need to start taking this as seriously as we have been taking

00:27:24.780 the question of interprovincial trade. So kind of bouncing back to one of the things in the early

00:27:31.480 part of it too, with coping with immigration, immigrants that haven't fit in well or they've

00:27:37.340 cause problems. There's been difficulties. Talk about strengthening the process of deportation.

00:27:42.760 I mean, at the times when we realized this person or these people do not belong here,

00:27:46.500 they're not fitting in well, they're causing issues. And we have a terrible time getting a

00:27:50.900 person out once they've gotten here. We saw that with an activist on the West Coast a little while

00:27:55.180 ago. His activities were just beyond the pale for years. And finally, finally, he was deported. But

00:28:01.500 that's just one example. But we could also run into a heck of a lot of issues with the courts

00:28:06.600 on that. So I mean, would that take legislative change? Or is it just a matter of the will of the

00:28:10.640 courts? First of all, it's a matter of enforcing the laws that we have. And there are, you know,

00:28:21.320 we now live, as everybody has been saying forever, we live in, you know, a globalized world,

00:28:28.600 the global village, whatever you want to call it. But it isn't, it isn't always a nice place.

00:28:33.640 There are people who have been interfering in our elections from abroad or who manipulate our political or attempt to manipulate our political life.

00:28:43.160 We saw this in the last election.

00:28:46.400 The question of one candidate trying to have the other candidate turned over to the Chinese consulate to collect a price on his head.

00:28:58.840 You know, like this is unacceptable.

00:29:00.580 now if you are not a citizen

00:29:06.660 and and this is the kind of thing that you know you get up to i think this is a very serious

00:29:11.620 problem that we need to address and if if we have our diaspora communities that are subject to

00:29:18.020 manipulation from abroad this is something that we have to take much more seriously than than we

00:29:26.020 do now there are of course um you know everyone is entitled to due process some people uh may be

00:29:35.140 falsely accused the crimes need to be tested in court and of course this has produced problems i

00:29:42.420 mean we it took something like 20 years to remove one of the architects of the rwandan genocide

00:29:48.900 20 20 years you know most people find that i think outrageous and unacceptable the person

00:29:58.480 in question was entitled to due process and he got it took a long time but it happened and we

00:30:04.660 need to you know there may be legal remedies that we can explore here to make that thing

00:30:10.120 make that process go faster. But, you know, once that has been done, once the cases have been

00:30:20.460 heard and the process is over, criminals have to leave. Absolutely. Well, I mean, there's so much

00:30:29.340 to cover and so little time, but you covered a great amount even just in your executive summary

00:30:33.760 online. Before I let you go, you know, what else might you like to add and where can people find

00:30:40.060 more information and support your work go go to the aristotle foundation online um you can you can

00:30:47.720 google it you got the address right down there aristotlefoundation.org find me on x formerly

00:30:53.620 known as twitter dr michael bonner or at dr michael bonner look this is about this is about making

00:31:01.080 a great country better this is about looking into the future and seeing that uh you know we are

00:31:11.460 entering a period of uncertainty such as people might not have foreseen in the late 20th century

00:31:17.840 and this is about how you know being being prepared we must be open to uh immigration

00:31:24.680 from the rest of the world we must be welcoming and uh willing and able to to integrate uh

00:31:33.160 newcomers retain them and build a better country but we cannot count on the enormous numbers 1.00

00:31:40.680 that we have seen uh in in recent years they are politically uh uh

00:31:47.000 politically unfeasible now. And looking into the future, I see lower numbers of mobile people

00:31:57.460 from abroad. We need to prepare for that. And this is what my study is all about.

00:32:04.480 Excellent. Well, thank you very much for coming on to share that with us today and for putting

00:32:07.940 it out there. As I said, we've just had a change in government. So if there's ever an opportunity,

00:32:11.600 perhaps, where they're going to be receptive to reimagining how things are going to be done in an

00:32:16.020 like immigration, I think now might be the time. I hope your work lands on the desks of some of

00:32:21.600 the people who are important and I appreciate you starting this conversation. Let's hope so.

00:32:26.200 Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you. So again, folks, yes, that was Dr. Michael Bonner

00:32:30.960 with the Aristotle Foundation. As he said, aristotelfoundation.org. And there's a lot

00:32:35.220 of great stuff on that site. It's a great group. These guys, Mark Milkey got it going there.

00:32:40.980 And his piece is repairing the fray, improving immigration and citizenship policy in Canada.

00:32:46.900 And I was looking forward to talking, Dr. Bonner.

00:32:51.720 I really enjoyed reading this because we do have to avoid being too reactive.

00:32:56.140 I mean, I see some of the commenting, you know, which is fine.

00:32:58.920 You know, Donovan says we're full.

00:33:01.620 Yeah, but we aren't.

00:33:04.120 For a functional economy and in general, we do need a degree of immigration. 0.99

00:33:10.920 But you see, the problem is like with anything else.

00:33:12.980 You can do it right and you can do it wrong.

00:33:14.760 And we've been doing it wrong for a long time. And we need, you know, quality over quantity,

00:33:21.860 I guess is a better way to put it, right? I mean, Trudeau just opened the floodgates. And the reason

00:33:25.960 that dingbat did it was because our numbers were terrible. Canada's, I keep talking about it, 1.00

00:33:31.480 you know, Canada's GDP per capita is just plunging. It's terrible. The relative wealth per individual

00:33:37.240 in Canada is low relative to developed nations and getting lower. So what Trudeau did was pump

00:33:44.680 immigrants because what it does is it raises our GDP in general, which makes it look as if we've 1.00

00:33:50.740 got good economic growth. But what it actually is doing, of course, is splitting up that GDP among

00:33:57.580 even more people. So yes, the broad numbers look better. The numbers as an individual and anybody

00:34:03.980 knowing that paying their bills realizes they become worse. And it's caused a lot of damage,

00:34:08.700 you know, millions and millions from a government afraid to make the hard decisions. So just opening

00:34:13.140 the floodgates, hoping to kind of patch over their poor governance. And now we're paying that

00:34:17.400 price. But as I said, Dr. Bonner was pretty blunt in saying some of the stuff that what we've got

00:34:22.320 to do to do it right. You know, we want to bring in the people who are going to best serve our

00:34:31.080 needs over here, the types of trades we need, the types of professions we need. We need to get rid

00:34:36.160 of the ones who aren't integrating and are causing trouble and not waste time dragging our feet on

00:34:41.460 it. As far as I'm concerned, if a person doesn't have citizenship and they've committed a violent

00:34:44.760 crime, they should be on that jet back to wherever the heck they came from so fast their head should

00:34:49.300 spin. And I mean, he's not saying as bluntly as I am, but he's talking about that because we need

00:34:54.440 good nuanced discussion on it. We got to get past, and I think Dave mentioned a little bit

00:35:01.760 of that earlier, you know, Trudeau's post-national Canada, right? We aren't actually a country.

00:35:07.600 We don't have a culture.

00:35:09.980 And, you know, Carney's trying to turn that around a little bit.

00:35:13.440 That's where he's saying, oh, we are a culture.

00:35:14.980 We have one.

00:35:15.580 And that's why we get King Charles and things like that.

00:35:17.360 Either way, we have a culture.

00:35:18.680 There's no doubt about that, whether Trudeau said it or not,

00:35:20.580 whether it's a healthy culture, that's debatable.

00:35:24.240 Something people screw up with with cultures.

00:35:28.280 Cultures aren't supposed to be static.

00:35:30.380 They aren't supposed to stay exactly the same all the time.

00:35:34.720 Cultures should evolve.

00:35:35.800 They 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.

00:35:59.920 And I'm talking about the people who practice, for example, primitive Islamic practices. 1.00

00:36:05.060 You know, not all, but I mean, it's like everything.

00:36:07.960 When you get fundamentalism, it gets pretty bad.

00:36:09.520 And the bigger issue tends to come with Islam, the treatment of women, the treatment of gay people. 0.97

00:36:14.860 You look the other way. 0.52

00:36:15.960 They keep looking the other way on that.

00:36:17.460 You know what?

00:36:18.220 Islam needs to change, at least the people following the fundamentalist view of it. 1.00

00:36:22.260 Doesn't mean you lose the whole culture of Islam, but it needs to adapt.

00:36:26.320 I mean, anybody who wants to live their life, and there's fundamentalists who do,

00:36:29.520 on the Old Testament version of the Bible, you can justify a whole lot of intolerance in there, too,

00:36:34.500 if you want to take a bunch of literal interpretations.

00:36:36.440 But there was the Reformation.

00:36:38.100 We've moved forward.

00:36:38.940 We've gotten beyond it.

00:36:40.560 The religion adapted.

00:36:41.620 The culture adapted.

00:36:43.580 It changed.

00:36:44.160 People don't like cultural change, but we need cultural change.

00:36:47.500 Another area is First Nations, indigenous reserves.

00:36:49.740 That one really gets me with people.

00:36:52.660 What are you expecting?

00:36:53.700 because they say we need to keep these reserves to preserve their culture. Really? Really? Get

00:36:58.620 out there and check one out. Have a look. See what's left of the culture you're trying to

00:37:03.200 preserve. And there's definitely a different culture there. And there's definitely aspects

00:37:07.620 and trappings of the older indigenous culture among the people there. But for the most part,

00:37:13.720 you've created enclaves of misery, where the culture is being lost. And it's turning into

00:37:19.380 a culture of potato chips and substance abuse for many, many people, not all of them.

00:37:26.560 It's a couple of things for, you know, so assimilation, they use that as a dirty word,

00:37:30.420 you know, fine, forced assimilation is poor, but allowing cultures to naturally adapt,

00:37:36.960 and it turns out some practices move to the wayside, that's the way it goes, that's natural.

00:37:41.920 Assimilation, cultural evolution isn't assimilation, it's just moving ahead.

00:37:47.720 so when you artificially

00:37:49.380 mess with a culture

00:37:51.840 you tend to make a dysfunctional culture

00:37:53.680 when, and it did

00:37:56.020 happen to a degree, in residential schools

00:37:57.800 when you're taking children and trying to kind of

00:37:59.820 push out the cultural practices 0.84

00:38:02.240 you know, stop the

00:38:03.620 speaking of their original languages

00:38:05.420 change some of the practices, that had a rebound

00:38:07.860 effect and it made a lot of embittered

00:38:09.940 troubled young people 1.00

00:38:12.020 growing up and we're seeing the

00:38:13.880 social challenges of a lot of those efforts today

00:38:15.920 now and the consequences of that. But on the other side of the coin, artificially trying to preserve

00:38:22.120 a culture can cause damage too, and that's what's happening on these reserves. That's what I think

00:38:26.960 people think, you know, some isolated reserves, northern reserves, you know, people living in

00:38:30.860 Toronto or Calgary or Edmonton who've never been to reserves, they get, oh, they're beautiful little

00:38:34.020 places and we're preserving the culture. What do you think it is? Is this a zoo to you? Is that

00:38:37.160 what it is, a zoo? You can keep this little Neolithic population of people preserved and 1.00

00:38:43.800 sort of a snapshot in time with a cultural that isn't ever going to change. It doesn't work that

00:38:49.340 way, but we can sure make a mess trying. So this comes to the immigration thing too.

00:38:58.360 We should be encouraging people coming here to adapt to here, not losing all of their cultural

00:39:04.400 practices, not by any means, but they do have to set aside the ones that don't work well here,

00:39:11.720 the ones that clash. What did you come here for? There's something you were leaving behind. Don't

00:39:15.240 bring that here then. If you didn't like it over there, why the hell would you think we would want

00:39:19.220 it over here? These are questions we got to be blunt about. And you get accused of, again,

00:39:24.640 usual, you know, accused of intolerance and this and that. It's just BS. I mean, an admirable

00:39:30.160 population to watch are the Chinese. And I'm not talking about the Chinese Communist Party over

00:39:34.500 there. No, they're a very problematic group of people. They're the one of the world's biggest

00:39:38.200 problems. But I'm talking Chinese people in general. I mean, Canada treated Chinese people

00:39:42.100 historically pretty damn badly. We brought in many, many, many of them to work on the railway, 1.00

00:39:47.520 use them as virtual slave labor. Once the railway was done, they started mass deporting them,

00:39:52.980 kicking them back over the ocean, treated them terribly. They couldn't find decent jobs over

00:39:57.880 here. It was awful. But look at the Chinese culture in Canada still today. Every large city 1.00

00:40:05.080 has a Chinatown that still celebrates their cultures, that still preserve them. There's

00:40:09.900 people of Chinese descent who are two, three generations removed from the immigration aspect,

00:40:15.820 but they still often are fluent in Mandarin or Chinese. They still practice some of the cultural

00:40:21.640 things of it. And it was despite the government, not because of the government. If a culture is

00:40:27.660 strong and wants to preserve their practices, they will. And don't rely on everybody else to do it

00:40:32.940 for you. Just leave it alone. That's what I'm coming down to out of all of this for the most

00:40:37.120 part. Most of us are civilized. Leave it alone. Cultures will evolve for the better, for the

00:40:44.380 most part. Yeah, easier said than done, I know. But yeah, it's difficult. Let's look at some of

00:40:54.920 the other stuff from the throne speech, stuff from the government. Oh no, I've got a hit on this.

00:41:00.980 We're going to talk about that in the pipeline a little later too, but this is the insanity

00:41:04.200 of the woke, the levels of the left and the sickness among many in the left.

00:41:12.860 And that's over this bloody porn that has been discovered in the libraries of Alberta schools. 0.82

00:41:18.300 I'm not talking figurative porn. I'm talking literal hardcore pornography was on the shelves 0.84

00:41:24.920 of kindergarten to grade 12 school libraries.

00:41:29.800 And now that the Daniel Smith government

00:41:31.980 has responded by actually just having

00:41:33.520 a public input session.

00:41:35.180 Well, they pulled the odious books.

00:41:37.100 They were bad.

00:41:37.600 They were bad.

00:41:38.180 And I posted those on X.

00:41:39.300 If you want to see some of the pictures of those,

00:41:40.780 I won't put them up on here.

00:41:42.440 We're talking K to 12 schools

00:41:44.220 with guys blowing each other 0.81

00:41:46.100 depicted in the pictures in this book.

00:41:48.280 Yeah, that's what this was.

00:41:49.360 We're not talking about, you know,

00:41:52.860 mild discussions of sexuality or whether men you know should hold hands or any of that no

00:41:59.440 we're talking very graphic depictions of sex acts getting into schools with children as young as six

00:42:06.380 and the left is furious that these have been pulled they're calling it book banning

00:42:11.640 they're calling it intolerant what really and no let's talk about what censorship is let's talk

00:42:19.660 about what book banning is. A book banning means those books would be banned and burned and taken

00:42:24.020 away so nobody could ever see them. And then we're not talking about that. We're just talking about

00:42:27.880 not putting them in front of children. Is it really that complicated to you leftist nutcases?

00:42:33.980 Really? I mean, where do you draw the line? Well, for starters, when a guy's pecker's in another 0.71

00:42:38.360 guy's mouth, we should probably say that book doesn't belong in a library in an elementary

00:42:43.100 school. Do you really need a committee to figure that out? If you do, you don't belong on the

00:42:49.320 committee choosing the books. We're not talking about a debate of a historical novel that uses

00:42:55.780 the n-word or something that people are uncomfortable with and we're worried about

00:42:59.640 that. We're talking about graphic pornographic depictions of people in books getting to young

00:43:09.320 kids in the schools. Why is this so hard? What's the matter with you guys? You can agree to that.

00:43:16.260 You can agree to saying that, you know, I'm worried that the government will go too far and they'll pull too many books.

00:43:24.900 Okay, fine.

00:43:25.700 But 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.

00:43:32.360 Those 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.

00:43:39.180 sure I don't want any government deciding everything that goes on you know micromanaging

00:43:44.480 what happens in a library and it's a school it's important for kids to get out and read and find a

00:43:48.420 diverse area of things but some of the lines are not complicated they're not blurry they're not

00:43:53.120 fuzzy pornographic sex acts depicted don't belong in schools these things I mean when I went to

00:44:01.460 school in the 80s if I'd have shown up with a penthouse magazine or a hustler magazine I'd

00:44:06.380 probably get suspended you didn't bring them in and it the the fact that they were banning those

00:44:13.080 from within schools didn't mean they were banning books didn't mean they were censoring it just said

00:44:16.980 this isn't appropriate material for people of that age in this institution yet here we have a crisis

00:44:23.300 and what gets me is the media behind it i i torture myself i listen to talk radio in the mornings and

00:44:28.160 i listen to a host saying we're going to bring on a librarian talk about how it's awful what

00:44:31.680 Daniel Smith's trying to do in Alberta schools with book bannings. Really? She's pulling pornography 1.00

00:44:37.100 out of the library. Legacy media, you're getting as sick as the hard left that you're continually 0.98

00:44:42.840 supporting. If we've lost the narrative to the point where we can't even pull porn from the

00:44:48.480 shelves of an elementary school, something's grossly wrong. Grossly wrong. You guys have

00:44:56.760 got to get, you talk about losing the narrative. Peter McCaffrey, he's a person involved with a

00:45:02.660 number of groups, Project Confederation, a few things. I saw him tweeted it recently and he showed

00:45:06.700 the support for Ninchy, the leader of the NDP in Alberta, since he won the leadership and it's

00:45:12.720 going down, down, down, down. And the funny thing is, you know, to be honest, the Smith government

00:45:16.500 has not been doing a great job. They've been doing a lot of infighting and messing around and policy

00:45:19.960 failures and problems. I mean, I think she still does a lot of good things, but there's challenges,

00:45:24.780 but still, Ninchy's dropping. Why? Well, some of it's because you idiots decide to pick hills like

00:45:30.920 this to die on. If you're going to stand up for the rights of porn in elementary schools, 1.00

00:45:37.940 I'm not the best electoral strategist in the world, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a

00:45:41.900 losing tact to take. Yeah, maybe it's for the better. But I would rather you guys were in

00:45:47.260 effective opposition, and maybe that's what would help keep the Smith government governing properly

00:45:52.360 and better than they have been so far to date.

00:45:54.860 All right, either way,

00:45:55.920 that's what I've got today, guys.

00:45:58.060 Tune in tonight.

00:45:58.820 The pipeline is going to be on.

00:46:00.860 It's going to be Nigel, Dave, and I.

00:46:02.100 We're going to break down a few more issues,

00:46:03.560 cover a few more subjects,

00:46:05.700 share the YouTube, the X, all of the rest.

00:46:08.360 I know some people looking at the viewer numbers.

00:46:09.600 You got to remember,

00:46:10.020 this is streaming out to all sorts of platforms.

00:46:13.160 Don't just look at one.

00:46:13.980 We got it on Rumble.

00:46:14.740 We got it on X.

00:46:15.420 We got it on LinkedIn.

00:46:16.240 We got it on all of those.

00:46:17.180 Whichever way you're watching,

00:46:18.820 share it out there, stream it out there.

00:46:20.340 This is how we beat the old legacy media.

00:46:22.080 This is how we bypass the gatekeepers of information.

00:46:25.440 So thank you all for tuning in with me today, guys.

00:46:27.960 And I look forward to ranting at you on the next program soon.

00:46:32.540 Thanks.

00:46:52.080 You

Western Standard - May 28, 2025

Why should Alberta stay？

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