Western Standard - You don’t hate the mainstream media enough

00:00:00.000 G'day, welcome. I'm Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard. Today is February 26th.

00:00:30.000 And you're watching the pipeline.

00:00:35.000 Be a bit more somber than usual, at least for our first segment.

00:00:43.100 Probably going to take twice the regular time for it.

00:00:46.160 Coming on the heels of the mass shooting in Tumblr, British Columbia.

00:00:55.000 We've been on it since word first started to come out of Tumblr last night.

00:01:00.000 uh we've had reporters doing really really great work i've been extremely proud of what they've

00:01:07.440 done um but there has been a lot of obfuscation deliberate i would think in many of the cases in

00:01:16.240 this from both the rcmp and the legacy mainstream media um and this was really a time for independent

00:01:23.200 of media like the western standard to shine um yeah i guess it was a lonely job uh not many

00:01:30.700 outlets uh out there doing it a few of our independent competitors doing their jobs but

00:01:34.840 none of the legacy guys we're going to be talking less about the substance of the issue i already

00:01:39.260 covered that in a hour-long uh live stream earlier this morning but i want to well i think we're

00:01:45.260 going to talk more about how the media of this and the rcmp's handling of this in the media

00:01:52.420 we're also going to take some time

00:01:54.960 more chipper note

00:01:57.200 marking the 20th

00:01:59.680 anniversary of Stephen Harper's

00:02:01.320 first election victory and

00:02:02.980 I think it was January

00:02:04.440 2006

00:02:05.320 2006 I remember it

00:02:09.160 I was a young lad

00:02:10.440 we're going to talk about that

00:02:13.760 Nigel Hannaford

00:02:15.140 worked with Stephen Harper

00:02:17.960 you were his chief speechwriter for many years

00:02:19.480 and you were in Ottawa

00:02:21.640 for the celebrations of that, so we'll get to that

00:02:24.340 after.

00:02:26.160 Still coming down.

00:02:28.200 Yeah, still coming down from the wild party.

00:02:31.000 Yeah.

00:02:33.240 Traditional, yeah.

00:02:35.620 And we've got

00:02:36.100 Dave. Dave is going to be tired

00:02:38.140 up late last night coordinating our

00:02:40.360 news team on

00:02:41.880 mass shooting in

00:02:44.340 Tumblr.

00:02:46.360 But yeah, thanks for the work you've done.

00:02:49.040 No worries. Tumblr Ridge.

00:02:50.280 Tumblr Ridge. Did I say Tumblr?

00:02:52.880 Yeah, okay, Tumblr Ridge.

00:02:54.500 And coming to us from an 1.00

00:02:56.360 undisclosed location,

00:02:58.360 we have Jeffrey Epstein

00:03:00.380 returning to us.

00:03:02.260 Now he looks a little less.

00:03:04.140 Still hiding in the desert,

00:03:05.760 I believe, playing Fortnite.

00:03:08.480 You're in between a game of Fortnite, right?

00:03:10.440 That's right.

00:03:12.720 Secretly controlling the world.

00:03:15.000 Yeah.

00:03:17.180 That's less crazy

00:03:18.460 than it sounded not long ago.

00:03:20.280 It's less crazy.

00:03:22.220 Less crazy.

00:03:23.280 Okay.

00:03:26.580 Okay, so I don't want to talk,

00:03:28.480 really spend much time on

00:03:29.720 really what everybody knows,

00:03:32.520 but I guess, Dave,

00:03:34.960 maybe just set up.

00:03:38.520 I guess Western Standard

00:03:40.040 and a few of the other independent media,

00:03:43.940 really zero legacy media,

00:03:46.360 have done anything here.

00:03:48.860 Their excuse has been,

00:03:50.280 Well, the RCMP have not said, therefore, there is no news until they say.

00:03:56.380 That sounds like the opposite of what a reporter's job is to do.

00:04:00.540 It's to verify what official sources say.

00:04:04.080 And then when you suspect that there's more to the story, go out and find it and corroborate it with multiple sources, multiple different facts.

00:04:13.000 But the media have just been totally silent and just said, it's not our job to actually find anything out.

00:04:18.500 Our job is to passively pass on what the RCMP tell us.

00:04:22.300 And the RCMP have said very little, beginning with the identity of the shooter yesterday.

00:04:28.660 Yes, it's been a strange 24 hours.

00:04:33.060 Right from the start, the RCMP, some strange language.

00:04:38.660 They initially said the suspect was a woman in a dress.

00:04:43.120 And then they referred to as a gun person.

00:04:48.080 I've never heard gun person.

00:04:49.640 I don't think you have.

00:04:50.480 It's a new word.

00:04:51.420 New word.

00:04:52.080 Gun person.

00:04:53.560 So obviously the red flags were raising, and we did, as our job is to do, is to dig into it.

00:05:03.440 We found the identity of the shooter.

00:05:05.800 We confirmed it with several sources, and it turned out that the 18-year-old had been transgendered.

00:05:15.800 But he was, RCMP confirmed today that he was born a male and started to become transgendered about six years ago.

00:05:24.100 And they referred to him as she throughout the press conference.

00:05:27.860 Always she, she did this, she did that.

00:05:31.140 They didn't want to dead name the shooter.

00:05:32.940 No.

00:05:33.560 And they were asked about it at the press conference and they said, well, that's what the shooter was.

00:05:39.620 That's what the shooter identified as, as a woman. 0.99

00:05:44.060 So you eloquently put it in your rant, all the statistics for a trans shooting, 0.99

00:05:53.420 and they're quite extraordinary.

00:05:56.340 And, yeah, you're right about the – if the mainstream media had wanted to do it,

00:06:03.480 they could have done it quite easily.

00:06:04.780 But this story confused them and scared the hell out of them.

00:06:08.420 And basically they just didn't know how to handle it, so they didn't.

00:06:12.300 They just left it until the RCMP finally came out and said it.

00:06:16.960 And they didn't say it.

00:06:19.180 In the release, they had to be questioned about it.

00:06:22.700 Nigel, when this happened last night, I mean, they said it was a woman in a dress.

00:06:29.640 And then the RCMP, that was in the alert that went out on people's phones.

00:06:32.600 And then the RCMP said in kind of a brief little, in a little kind of press conference,

00:06:38.080 they said it was a gun person.

00:06:40.000 And immediately, suspicious minds say, this is a bit odd.

00:06:45.840 I didn't know the stats at the time, but I've pretty much never heard of a female mass school shooter.

00:06:52.400 It happens, but it is exceedingly rare.

00:06:56.500 There was one case in the United States two years ago.

00:06:59.080 Yeah, it pretty much doesn't happen.

00:07:00.940 I ran some numbers on it.

00:07:02.840 I want to fine tune a bit more, but the number is I was able to come up with is in the last decade,

00:07:08.900 for mass school shootings.

00:07:11.040 So there's different ways you can wake up

00:07:12.500 around this exercise.

00:07:14.840 But I had

00:07:16.460 ran the numbers on

00:07:18.820 likeliness

00:07:20.200 of committing, relative

00:07:22.860 to their size of the population, of committing

00:07:24.760 a mass school shooting.

00:07:27.520 For males,

00:07:29.600 they are 1.4 times

00:07:31.120 more likely than the average student

00:07:32.780 to commit a mass school shooting.

00:07:35.840 Females are 0.99

00:07:36.620 0.1 times more likely,

00:07:38.720 Which means much less likely than the average person.

00:07:41.420 So, credit to ladies.

00:07:44.760 Females who identify as males are 18 times more likely to commit a mass school shooting.

00:07:53.200 And males who identify as females are, I think it's, if I remember correctly, 54 or 58.

00:07:59.260 54 or 58 times more likely.

00:08:02.600 So, you know, we're seeing, as I talked, you know, we'd all gone home at this blind eye, but I called Dave the Eye Set.

00:08:08.720 20 bucks this is not a one like it's just david not take me up on the bat uh you know it would

00:08:15.880 have been throw good money out for that but we knew and so we we got our team on this we had

00:08:21.380 jared yager in bc we dragooned uh some others from calgary and skatchewan onto the story

00:08:26.160 and we pretty quickly found from multiple sources that uh that we got the name of this person it

00:08:33.360 goes by Jesse Strang. The RCP today said it's Jesse Van Rootsalar. There's some confusion about

00:08:41.620 is maybe using a maiden name of a mother or a father. There's some confusion around

00:08:46.700 the legality of it, but this person seems to go by Jesse Strang. We were able to get the name,

00:08:52.920 and we were able to confirm that no, this was not a woman in address. That was misinformation

00:08:58.260 from the RCMP. They deliberately obfuscated around this, and they didn't mention the real

00:09:05.720 sex of this person until asked about it at the press conference. They didn't even proactively

00:09:08.960 say it. They really downplayed it. But the media, like the CBC, has a $1.4 billion budget,

00:09:15.200 roughly. They have helicopters. They bragged on the ground there first. There was no curiosity

00:09:20.200 around finding this at all. They should have beat us to the punch. They're reporting it now

00:09:24.880 that the rcp have said so 15 hours later well you know you say there's no curiosity i'll bet there

00:09:30.100 actually was it's just that that particular organization is so deeply steeped in dei and

00:09:36.400 that comes from the top down to be fair cbc wasn't just the cbc it was ctv it was global it was post

00:09:41.860 media all of them all of them i mean remember that hassle i had a couple years ago with the

00:09:47.200 prayer breakfast that wasn't that was global they all have this fixation about uh trans and this is

00:09:53.800 thing they care about and uh you know what's really going on is is sort of secondary you know

00:10:00.200 i first i heard was um a woman in a dress and i thought what is this sort of oscar night for

00:10:06.280 mass murders and of course you the first thing i thought of was exactly what you two came up with

00:10:12.840 and congratulations on the story by the way and so here we are you know if the if a favored

00:10:22.680 category of humanity does something dastardly you're supposed to go really easy on it not uh

00:10:29.080 you know don't make too much of it because it might mess things up for the rest you know the

00:10:33.320 rest of the category that's outrageous but anyway here we are question started you got it uh cory um

00:10:44.680 what what do you think explain you know the the media i mean we can attribute agenda to them they

00:10:49.400 they could have gotten this before us.

00:10:52.580 I mean, we were working with contacts in the area.

00:10:55.280 We were actually able to get some people working for us

00:10:58.100 on the ground in Tubler Ridge.

00:11:02.080 We've actually got some of our regular full-time reporters

00:11:04.860 on the ground now there.

00:11:06.620 I think they've just arrived in the last couple of hours.

00:11:11.480 But like CTV, Global, CBC, these guys have helicopters.

00:11:17.200 You know how much I want a helicopter?

00:11:18.600 nothing else than the pure

00:11:20.760 ego aggrandizement alone, let alone

00:11:23.040 what we can do with it for work. If we

00:11:24.960 had a helicopter, we would have said someone there.

00:11:26.980 We did the best we could, and we're

00:11:28.920 still probably amongst the first there.

00:11:30.840 But these guys seem to have put no effort into

00:11:32.820 finding this out.

00:11:34.940 Legacy Media did not ask any questions

00:11:36.760 about this. This came from questions from independent media

00:11:38.940 at the press conference.

00:11:40.700 Zero disclosure of it. Why do you think

00:11:42.920 it was that the RCMP

00:11:44.720 was playing along with this?

00:11:46.920 Like, they arguably, I can't say for sure, but they arguably put people's lives at risk by being politically correct here.

00:11:52.540 When the warning that came out on the phone was a woman in a dress. 1.00

00:11:56.480 I don't know.

00:11:57.720 Most of these, I don't mean to be disrespectful or, you know, I'm not trying to have a hot take here.

00:12:02.360 But most of these people are not very convincing.

00:12:05.580 So if I'm looking for a woman in a dress, this is not what I am seeing, at least in most of these cases.

00:12:12.240 I don't know what the person looks like.

00:12:13.180 We'll have to wait for video footage to come out.

00:12:15.040 That arguably put people's lives at risk, and then later on they're inventing terms like gun person. They don't proactively disclose it. We've been asking them for a day here nearly. They're not telling us. Why the hell would the RCMP go to such lengths to protect this person's mental illness delusions, even after they're dead?

00:12:41.180 Yeah, well, they're terrified. They really are. The media, the legacy media, the RCMP, they're terrified. They're terrified of being labeled anything but what the woke standard is, even when relaying outright facts upon things.

00:12:55.800 And that's what's happened with, you know, decades of DEI hires, people getting into senior bureaucratic positions within police forces, you know, the communications positions, people getting into those positions in legacy media.

00:13:08.600 We've seen some pretty senior legacy media members canceled over what, stepping over the wrong line.

00:13:15.080 Look at Wendy Messley from the CBC.

00:13:16.860 I mean, you'd think somebody as established as her would be cancel proof. 0.99

00:13:20.240 She was ruined.

00:13:21.140 So there's a culture of terror where they would set aside facts rather than take a chance on accurately reporting on something if it involves anything in those hot-button areas, particularly trans.

00:13:33.400 And as you said, when it was breaking, that's when facts have to matter.

00:13:38.260 We saw that not too long ago with a sex offender in Edmonton who'd been released, and the Edmonton Police Service issued a warning saying this person's a high risk to re-offend, this woman is a high risk to re-offend.

00:13:49.100 and it had a woman's name and unless you clicked on the article and you opened it up and saw the

00:13:53.540 man there with five o'clock shadow who was a repeat sex offender you would actually be looking

00:13:58.920 for a woman well you're not making anybody safer by lying to them and saying otherwise but again

00:14:04.660 they feel that if a person identifies as such as contrary to reality as that may be we must refer

00:14:10.440 to them as such and it's doing a disservice to everybody uh as you said too when you put it out

00:14:17.940 the statistics i mean it's it's a microscopic thankfully amount of people who decide to take

00:14:23.800 up a gun and start shooting others but we want to look for precursors and what may be somebody a

00:14:29.080 little more likely than others to be you know have that inclination inclination and clearly there's 0.99

00:14:34.960 there's some mental instability with trans males to a degree that makes them more inclined which 1.00

00:14:41.340 again still puts them perhaps at one in a thousand versus one in 55 000 for everybody else but if

00:14:46.640 we're going to actually think about trying to prevent these things, then we have to look at

00:14:50.780 things without political correctness, with an unvarnished view, and see what the heck led up

00:14:56.340 to this. And as long as legacy media and the police are going to wrap themselves around hiding

00:15:00.180 facts through political correctness, we aren't going to get real answers. Nigel, I mean, I guess

00:15:05.240 that's why we should ban hunting rifles, right? Yeah, or shotguns. This is a shotgun. They said

00:15:10.300 long gun. It's unclear. It was a hunting rifle or a hunting shotgun. Hard to say. Yeah, that

00:15:16.620 would make a difference uh look um to your point corey about how these things why these things

00:15:22.460 happen earlier this morning i was chatting with somebody i worked with in ottawa all those years

00:15:27.780 ago and we were talking about the dei culture in the canadian armed forces and i was hoping that

00:15:36.200 maybe there would be a change of heart within the armed forces now that mr carney has made it very

00:15:42.480 clear that he cares about military matters. I mean, Mr. Trudeau did not, said he didn't.

00:15:48.980 Mr. Carney's message is that he does. So what about the warrior culture? Are we going to get

00:15:54.940 that back? And my friend, who you can see on the Hannaford show tomorrow night, says, look,

00:16:01.620 this stuff is at the top. It comes down from cabinet. It goes into the senior levels of the

00:16:08.780 bureaucracy then looks after the military and by the way bureaucracy is the work i look after the

00:16:14.220 rcmp as well and they are committed to it they didn't get the top job by saying that they

00:16:19.900 disagree with this stuff so they own it and they will see that it is enforced that's why the rcmp

00:16:26.300 won't come right out and say what every one of us now knows a troubled young man and by the way

00:16:31.900 off so i have all kinds of sympathy for people who have to deal with this particular uh persuasion

00:16:42.700 but that's why they won't come right out and say look we had somebody who went off the deep end

00:16:49.020 here terribly sorry there was a young man he wanted to be a woman and he went out and shot

00:16:55.580 people there's a story now i want to know obviously mentally challenged or mentally disturbed rcmp said

00:17:03.820 they've been to his house many times including on firearm complaints they've seized the fire

00:17:08.220 they've seized firearms before they've taken them away and locked them up under the bc uh mental

00:17:14.220 health act obviously they knew he was uh problematic so how did uh how did uh jesse get get his guns

00:17:22.940 uh you know i'm sure that's going to be part of the uh the investigation he apparently had a

00:17:28.220 license but it expired in 2024. uh so here we have a young mentally disturbed man able to get guns 0.59

00:17:36.060 yeah and you know that the government is going to draw the only obvious conclusion that firearms

00:17:40.780 should all be confiscated you know every every time the flags are already hauled down to half

00:17:47.660 masked in ottawa and like i said i feel sorry for the people involved here but this is not really

00:17:54.220 our thing our problem if somebody's got to get a hold of this the rest of the world goes on

00:18:00.940 i want to talk about some of the reactions here uh for the most part at least that i've seen

00:18:05.580 uh official reactions you know politicians etc have been kind of thoughts and prayers stock

00:18:11.660 stuff you know liberals conservatives eb everybody what you would expect um let's go through some of

00:18:18.900 the hot takes uh let's go through um cory's uh favorite here uh rachel gilmore that's always a

00:18:26.220 fun one to pick on she says you effing ghouls out here layering hate onto tragedy for your own 0.68

00:18:32.420 disgusting political purposes the shooter's gender identity does not effing matter it only matters to 1.00

00:18:38.620 sick Fs trying to exploit a mass 1.00

00:18:40.920 strategy to drive an agenda out of hate 1.00

00:18:42.840 that will kill more kids. Monsters, 1.00

00:18:45.560 all of you. 0.94

00:18:47.760 Clearly, Rachel would

00:18:48.840 never, you know, just group together

00:18:51.140 white straight men as

00:18:52.960 a group, to make a

00:18:54.860 political point.

00:18:56.460 No. I mean, she misses the point here

00:18:58.780 entirely. No, like

00:19:00.940 trans people as a group

00:19:02.360 are not responsible for this at all.

00:19:04.740 There's one person responsible for it, and that's

00:19:06.560 Jesse Strang or

00:19:08.360 Van Resseler, depending which name this person's going by, that person's responsible. But it is

00:19:14.580 clearly statistically significant when biological males who identify as females are 54, 58 times

00:19:22.600 more likely to do this kind of thing than the average student. It's clearly statistically

00:19:29.040 relevant. But, you know, of course, everybody says don't make a political point. These things

00:19:32.540 are kind of inherently political. It's inevitable they're going to get politicized to some degree.

00:19:36.660 and both sides are going to do it

00:19:40.220 so I mean it's impossible to not happen

00:19:42.400 so I would just say that we should operate

00:19:44.060 trying to understand

00:19:46.180 the other side

00:19:47.100 at least understand them

00:19:48.940 operate within some facts 0.91

00:19:50.600 and not be hypocrites about it

00:19:52.640 my favorite though 0.95

00:19:54.720 comes from this guy

00:19:56.360 John let's put it up on the screen

00:19:58.000 you remember this guy

00:19:58.840 Mark Slapansky

00:20:01.560 this guy

00:20:03.980 I just said let's be respectful

00:20:05.580 but I can't help it on this one. 1.00

00:20:06.720 This guy's a douchebag. 0.99

00:20:09.140 He kind of fashions himself 0.99

00:20:10.620 as the most influential conservative guy

00:20:12.460 online in Canada.

00:20:13.820 I hardly ever seen this guy.

00:20:15.680 I have no idea who he is.

00:20:16.360 Hey, who is this?

00:20:17.280 Mark Slapansky.

00:20:18.820 Okay.

00:20:19.260 And he fashions himself a conservative, 1.00

00:20:21.380 but I think he has the dumbest. 1.00

00:20:22.840 I think, Mark, 1.00

00:20:24.120 you beat Rachel Gilmore for dumbest take. 1.00

00:20:27.140 You beat Rachel Gilmore for dumbest take on this. 1.00

00:20:30.060 Do you know what kind of an achievement that is? 0.98

00:20:32.540 He says, let's put it on the screen,

00:20:34.000 if the shooter of today's uh mass shooting in canada turns out to be trans i'd blame maple 0.64

00:20:39.740 mega these people have promoted hatred against this tiny minority of people pushing them to

00:20:44.020 their breaking point okay so he's correct the trans people more broadly are not responsible

00:20:49.040 for the actions of this one trans shooter but who is responsible is right-wing populist 0.97

00:20:54.100 conservatives they're responsible for the actions of this madman um 0.99

00:20:59.740 it's the internet people are gonna say dumb things but like i don't know just let's all 0.90

00:21:08.360 do ourselves a favor and just take five minutes before we hit send on on things at this time you

00:21:13.820 know yeah really yeah that's uh i'm afraid that uh do you think uh do you think anybody would um

00:21:22.580 read miss gilmore if she didn't utter profanities because when you take the f words out of it 0.98

00:21:27.960 there's not really much there well fuck you yeah uh i mean like okay i mean well okay when you're 0.99

00:21:34.200 upset sometimes you drop an f-bomb i mean she has three in one tweet it's yeah it's a lot of 0.99

00:21:41.680 there's a lot of fucking category of people like her uh nora loretto is another one she was dancing 1.00

00:21:47.760 on the grave of the humboldt uh hockey players when they they got killed uh and that's lepanski 0.98

00:21:53.320 guy or whatever, they, well, with Nora and that Slipansky guy, I think they do it purposely to 1.00

00:21:59.940 get clicks. I think Rachel's actually kind of just special, but she doesn't learn. She's 0.96

00:22:04.260 incapable of learning. She doesn't seem to care what the pushback she gets and she inflames things 1.00

00:22:08.460 and actually causes the problem. She says she's trying to prevent, uh, and we might, you know,

00:22:13.100 might as well. I mean, it was like a month or two ago when she falsely accused me of driving

00:22:17.780 a trans person to suicide, turned out never actually happened. Of course, there was no

00:22:21.980 retraction apology or anything of that sort out of her but she did use that term to call me a monster

00:22:26.420 uh i may be a monster overeating that kitkat bar like i did the other day but she's got no principles 1.00

00:22:32.980 no guile and we have to remember in this modern world though between those three accounts there

00:22:37.760 are a couple hundred thousand followers so they do have an influence and an impact and that's

00:22:42.020 frustrating people say we should ignore them i wish we could but when they spread stuff like that

00:22:46.880 to such a large audience we do have to pay attention to them if only to just remind people 0.95

00:22:51.160 not to listen to them yeah um and you are a monster cory why would you eat a kit kat that way 0.99

00:22:59.020 it just called out to me i'm seeing jeffrey epstein is a monster check his uh check his 0.96

00:23:06.480 facebook feed for it uh okay well let's turn a bit more towards what's inevitably coming here

00:23:12.300 you're already seeing it from some of the usual suspects online but we're gonna see it real soon

00:23:18.480 you know never let a good crisis go to waste and this is going to be used not to reassess

00:23:28.980 hey perhaps we should not as official government policy require that people buy into the you know

00:23:36.540 gender dysphoria delusions of mentally unwell people who need our help instead they're going 1.00

00:23:43.160 to take the lesson well now we need to ban more guns now we it's not yet totally sure what guns

00:23:49.340 were were used here uh some are saying a shotgun and that would be odd weapon of choice uh for this

00:23:57.300 but okay um perhaps a rifle but all they've said is long gun from the rcmp we're hearing

00:24:03.560 under modified handgun a modified handgun again i'm not sure what that means so it's it's unknown

00:24:10.980 But what we do know is, you know, every shooting in the past has been used to try to seize the guns of Waffle gun owners.

00:24:23.040 Polytechnic was used for it with the long gun registry.

00:24:27.700 The Dartmouth-Vancouver area mass shooting was used.

00:24:33.000 Banning guns the guy did not use, and every one of the guns that guy used were illegally brought into Canada from the United States.

00:24:40.020 probably with the wink-wake-nudge-nudge of the RCMP,

00:24:43.920 because there's a lot of dirty poo on what went on there 0.87

00:24:47.020 that has been totally swept under the rug.

00:24:50.800 Here, we don't know enough of the circumstances of the guns themselves,

00:24:54.320 but there's been pictures of what is alleged to be the gun locker.

00:24:57.220 All pretty basic stuff.

00:24:59.600 Nothing I'd show off to my buddies if I'm showing them my gun locker.

00:25:05.280 They're going to use this.

00:25:08.000 It's their playbook.

00:25:09.020 They're going to use this not to have a serious discussion.

00:25:11.780 Like, I'm not proposing to ban trans people. 1.00

00:25:13.820 That's a stupid idea. 1.00

00:25:15.080 That doesn't fix anything. 1.00

00:25:16.260 I think we should have a realistic discussion about it.

00:25:18.560 We should not ban psychologists from having them ask real questions of their patients.

00:25:24.100 Like, are you sure you're really a woman?

00:25:29.120 That's what I'm proposing there.

00:25:30.160 But they're going to take it completely on the opposite side.

00:25:32.740 Dave, they're going to use this to come after guns again. 0.66

00:25:36.820 Oh, any excuse.

00:25:37.980 any excuse for gun grab gary and i'm not even going to try and say his last name but any excuse

00:25:44.000 that they can use to uh take guns they will you know that's that's the bottom line uh so uh yeah

00:25:51.700 i would think in a couple of weeks they'll be announcing some sort of new crackdown

00:25:54.540 yeah well i mean they're the the line you always use on the conservative side you know where you

00:26:01.200 who are you going after uh gangs with illegal weapons or law-abiding duck hunters with their

00:26:07.080 shotguns well you know if it turns out to be a shotgun there goes that that mean that used to

00:26:12.040 be a pretty easy throwaway line and now well you've got to go back and say look it's not the

00:26:17.500 gun it's the guy who pulled the trigger you about to yeah and that's what you're going to say i mean

00:26:22.560 i mean in this case gosh how many times did they go to the house yeah several times okay there's a

00:26:27.980 failure of law enforcement here how much of it like again we don't know enough on this side yet

00:26:32.540 And we're not going to do as the entire legacy media and CBC, they do and say, well, we're just going, we have to wait until the RCMP tells us what is the story.

00:26:41.400 After Vancouver, sorry, after Halifax, I think that RCMP has lost all credibility on being a reliable source in reporting on these kinds of things.

00:26:50.580 And that's the real danger of when the ideology takes over from the top and makes, you know, these guys aren't stupid and they're decent, they're decent people.

00:27:00.400 but it makes them afraid to do the job the way the job needs to be done.

00:27:04.640 That's where we're losing in this country.

00:27:06.780 It was just a few months ago, the RCMP said, I'm paraphrasing here,

00:27:12.620 but the RCMP said, you know, signs that someone you know might be getting radicalized

00:27:18.360 is maybe they believed in gender equality and they don't anymore,

00:27:23.020 and maybe they all of a sudden believe in traditional family values.

00:27:25.960 Yes, they are the people who are at risk of committing acts of terror and mass murder, not people with a rap sheet who have regular police visits to their house, clear mental health issues, firearms violations.

00:27:41.900 Still confirming this, but it appears to be a pretty long track record online of dreaming of violent acts.

00:27:50.020 When you're talking about a senior official, Derek, it shouldn't be an act of courage to identify somebody who has just shot umpteen people as a gunman rather than as a gun person.

00:28:07.840 It shouldn't be an act of courage to say a gunman in a dress.

00:28:11.380 That would have been perfectly fine.

00:28:13.260 And you're not necessarily trying to be insensitive.

00:28:16.420 You're not being like, oh, we're politically incorrect.

00:28:18.420 We're based.

00:28:18.900 no it's a gunman in a dress yeah look i've been covering school shootings for four decades now

00:28:25.140 uh first one that comes to mind is tabor a little table i heard at a school shooting

00:28:29.860 uh justin lang was the kid's name uh he was shot to death in the school hallway from columbine

00:28:37.220 uh that was sort of the big the big first one and now they're they're a weekly occurrence in

00:28:41.860 the united states we never think that they're gonna happen here but in every single case it

00:28:46.740 goes back to the mental health of the shooter and the mental health of the young people involved.

00:28:53.220 And there's usually some signs of it and whether it's parents not picking it up or

00:28:58.900 classmates not picking it up, teachers not picking it up, police not picking it up,

00:29:04.020 no one picks it up until it's too late. Is it that they don't pick it up

00:29:07.140 or that they're frightened to death of being labeled a racist, a misogynist, all the other

00:29:12.820 nasty words could be it could tell me he's got a problem yep could be that you know i mean it's uh

00:29:21.060 some of the stuff that we found that we haven't confirmed this is yet it is very very disturbing

00:29:27.540 and obvious cries for help and the kid was locked away for goodness sake and he was he was let out

00:29:33.700 he still had guns right i mean it's it's whether you're trans or not or whatever it all goes back

00:29:39.620 to mental health and it goes back to the disgraceful lack of funding that all levels

00:29:45.540 of government have put into mental health uh since uh since i was born and the willingness

00:29:52.180 to do something about it when you identify it yeah yeah that's along with the money that's a

00:29:57.620 problem all of these people even the guy who uh allegedly shot charlie kirk known to authorities

00:30:04.500 mental health issues again some alignment he had a trans boyfriend who identified as a girl i guess

00:30:11.060 so he thought that made him straight and that hard to keep straight now unintended but uh

00:30:16.980 there's so many common threads it's always these people are known to authorities and i i don't

00:30:22.500 weigh too hard on authorities because you know just because someone's on your notice list doesn't

00:30:26.980 mean we could just walk you up in case you might be a mass casualty shooter that's also not a

00:30:33.380 reasonable way to deal with this but what we're doing is clearly not working uh you know when

00:30:38.660 you used to you know take your crazy aunt martha and just drop her off at uh panoka those days are

00:30:44.420 over you can't just commit someone easily but maybe we're not committing people easily enough

00:30:49.540 at this point maybe like there's dangerous disturbed people out there that we're not

00:30:54.660 getting off the street uh i'm not sure what the balance is to strike to minimize abuse of that

00:31:00.820 system the way you know it used to be but this is clearly not working there's crazy people known to

00:31:05.940 authorities that we allow to have guns i've got to take our guns away but they're allowed to have

00:31:11.260 guns this is clearly madness they probably have cars as well so if you take the guns away there's

00:31:16.420 always it you know and i drive into a crowd or something i can do the old-fashioned london mass

00:31:20.980 stabbing yeah you know okay uh there's so much more that we can sit on that but i already spent

00:31:27.960 and now I'm ranting about it this morning.

00:31:29.880 I was ranting about it to my wife.

00:31:31.200 I was actually thinking that after the malware

00:31:32.980 you had to calm down, though.

00:31:34.700 Oh, I actually got the worst of it out of my system.

00:31:38.540 That's why me a little forgiving Rachel Gilmore's F-bombs. 1.00

00:31:40.820 I think I dropped a couple this morning.

00:31:43.280 Okay.

00:31:44.840 Nothing like a guilty conscience to keep you straight.

00:31:46.940 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:48.060 Okay.

00:31:49.260 Kind of.

00:31:51.620 All right.

00:31:54.240 Hear about Mr. Harper?

00:31:55.500 Yeah, 20 years.

00:31:57.360 I remember I was a young university student when it happened.

00:32:00.300 Actually, going to university in Ottawa, so it was a big to-do.

00:32:05.020 But, yeah, you were his chief speechwriter for many of those years,

00:32:08.320 involved kind of in the heart of the government.

00:32:10.140 And you were in Ottawa for the celebrations of the 20th anniversary.

00:32:13.540 And what celebrations they were.

00:32:15.140 This was the week of Harper, and the media suddenly discovered the man that they had,

00:32:20.540 they ride it, mocked, and unappreciated when he was actually in power to do something about it.

00:32:25.260 So, it started off with the unveiling of the official portrait, which is, you know, it's a very nice bit of work, and there's been lots of, but Harper obviously made a speech of that, and he took the opportunity to point out that the preservation of Connitor's existence must be our highest objective.

00:32:47.780 he was totally sincere about that

00:32:50.160 and I'm looking back on those years

00:32:52.020 that Harper was always

00:32:53.700 100% Canadian

00:32:55.960 patriot

00:32:56.380 so he came through and then

00:32:59.460 I guess now the media likes to hear that

00:33:01.880 so he obliged

00:33:04.220 in space

00:33:04.800 then the second thing was

00:33:07.260 the party

00:33:08.980 it started off

00:33:12.120 as a very small thing

00:33:13.160 they were just going to get a few people together

00:33:15.120 who were in on it and I bought my ticket

00:33:17.620 like four or five months ago and well actually if you still want a ticket you can get one

00:33:22.900 if well it's going to be 500 people there now then it was 800 then it was a thousand in the

00:33:28.020 end there were 1200 people packed into the rogers center there and and uh it was a whooping and

00:33:33.620 hollering and a happy time for for conservatives generally and uh you know harper made a very

00:33:40.340 interesting speech that i had nothing to do with it by the way he had he wrote a very it was good

00:33:46.420 speech in the sense that he criticized the liberal government, not by saying they have done anything

00:33:53.060 particularly wrong, but pointing to what the conservative government did right in the 10

00:33:59.060 years that it had power. And just having something like, well, crime in our time fell down to 30%

00:34:09.060 of what it was when we took office. And then people who are very aware of crime around them,

00:34:13.860 they're saying, well, wouldn't mind a bit of that. We lowered taxes. Sheepers. Imagine a government 1.00

00:34:20.100 lowering taxes. And as he went through the list of our accomplishments, there, I'm going to own it,

00:34:27.940 along with 1,200 other people, you know, you couldn't help but say, well, actually,

00:34:34.260 that was a pretty good government. And he never had to say, and it was followed by a really lousy

00:34:39.540 government it was just obvious so and then finally there was i'll let you get in here

00:34:47.140 one more thing that was great about that whole week but all right i don't keep going on the

00:34:53.620 finally the archives okay how boring are archives but there's an event at the at the archives you

00:35:02.180 lost every one of the word archives yeah 390 wellington street and they had something like

00:35:08.340 6 000 boxes of paper records in addition to the electronic file which was you know

00:35:17.140 four gigabytes than we'll use in 10 years if that government was meticulous in writing down

00:35:25.220 everything that it did even small purchases small decisions were reported as a consequence um

00:35:33.380 And Harper's record in government is going to be one of taking government seriously, that if you do it, it matters, and you keep a record of it, and it helps.

00:35:48.280 It's a model of managing a large organization, and he was the manager.

00:35:54.040 I'm going to have to take a little exception with that last part.

00:35:56.640 2006 i was a wee intern working on parliament hill he brought the interns in to the prime

00:36:03.560 minister's office we're all in awe of this building the langevin block and i i forget who

00:36:08.860 was i wouldn't say their name if it was it's kind of the kind of chat a mouse rules on this thing

00:36:12.780 the first thing we were taught the very first day was if you don't want to see it on the front of

00:36:16.640 the global mail don't write it down it was the first lesson on the first day and i'm sure you

00:36:21.360 were taught that you were actually right about that and that was part of the narrative i didn't

00:36:24.900 want to get too lost in the weeds with it but there was a time about 18 months into the uh

00:36:31.740 into the administration for the ministry as we should properly say in canada uh where this isn't

00:36:38.200 working guys and there was a change in uh chief of staff and after that the situation that i

00:36:43.960 described came in okay so all right you're you're you're you're actually right yeah on that okay so

00:36:50.040 So, I mean, the reputations of leaders very often, probably most of the time, improves and softens with time.

00:37:00.020 Brian Mulroney is a pretty big example of that.

00:37:02.700 Utterly despised and almost universally hated by everyone but his caucus, at least, when his prime ministership came to an enemy left office.

00:37:11.880 With a lot of hindsight, people have a much kinder view of him.

00:37:17.420 I'm not sure I'm one of them.

00:37:20.040 I think he screwed the West, and the party got what he deserved for it.

00:37:24.300 But I can at least appreciate the statesmanship of the man.

00:37:28.000 And he tried to do big things, even if he failed.

00:37:30.800 And I don't necessarily even agree with the big things he was trying to do.

00:37:33.100 That was a big thing.

00:37:34.740 Yes.

00:37:35.380 Made a lot of people wish.

00:37:36.740 Yeah, that one was pretty universally considered.

00:37:38.200 And the GSD was hated for.

00:37:40.020 Within two years, everyone accepted it, and it was kind of baked in.

00:37:42.620 Okay.

00:37:45.200 I'm trying to think about how I think of Harvard.

00:37:46.860 I think I was more kind towards Harper as Prime Minister as he was Prime Minister than I think I am now.

00:37:54.660 Not because he did something necessarily wrong.

00:37:58.040 He did some things wrong, but he got a lot of big things right.

00:38:01.380 But, Corey, my view of the Harper government, I think, has gotten a bit worse with time

00:38:08.100 because it seemed to be focused on short-term incrementalism, being the term of the time,

00:38:15.860 incrementalism gains

00:38:17.660 all of which

00:38:19.780 or nearly all of which were completely

00:38:21.960 undone in the first six months after

00:38:23.780 Trudeau defeated the Conservatives

00:38:26.180 to form government to become Prime Minister

00:38:27.640 because the Harper government didn't seem to focus

00:38:30.200 on, for lack of a better term, the

00:38:31.700 meta-politics, changing the overall

00:38:34.180 political culture, dismantling

00:38:36.500 leftist institutions

00:38:38.040 going into the universities, cleaning

00:38:40.420 out the rot, putting our

00:38:42.400 people in, going into the CBC

00:38:44.620 firing the top five levels of management, putting our people in. These institutions all stayed

00:38:51.300 effectively the same at the end of a decade of conservative rule. And so when that rule

00:38:57.520 inevitably came to an end at some point, it was completely washed away. So my, I think my view of

00:39:04.060 the time of the Harper government, however well-intentioned it was, I think it's gotten

00:39:07.560 worse over time. I don't know. Am I just being crotchety-er and more cynical than even you?

00:39:12.720 Well, maybe a little. And I think part of it, maybe the Harper administration had some optimism. I mean, they didn't have a crystal ball to realize after they're finished, it would be 11 possible. Who knows if we're ever going to get another conservative government back in again? I mean, it's been over a decade and, you know, we got the most woke and, you know, terrible of leaders to follow up with them.

00:39:36.300 if they'd have known that and had a crystal ball it would have been more like well let's get in

00:39:40.140 and get everything done while we can before uh we get thrown out so that uh it is more difficult

00:39:45.660 for them to pull that loose but they thought incrementalism will will get them there and they

00:39:50.760 just didn't have the time to follow through long enough to to make those changes a little uh more

00:39:54.820 entrenched i mean part of it was too i remember you know the lost elections and things like that

00:40:00.180 it was that incremental drift towards the left what brought them within electoral viability

00:40:05.720 within central Canada. Those are the factors that lead me into being the independent supporter I am.

00:40:11.240 The futility of trying to get responsible government in this country, and the efforts

00:40:15.840 that the Harper government had to do to get there, and then couldn't follow through once they got

00:40:20.060 there. So I don't fully fault them for it, but when you look at it with hindsight, and I'm pretty sure

00:40:25.580 Mr. Harper, if he'd known he was only going to get that one shot, probably would have thrown in some

00:40:30.880 bigger changes before he left, but they were

00:40:32.880 hoping for more.

00:40:34.340 I think this is the problem with every politician.

00:40:37.160 They kind of assume,

00:40:38.860 for the most part, that they're never going to

00:40:40.980 lose. That's why no one

00:40:42.840 actually knows really when to... Radwall is

00:40:44.800 maybe one rare, rare example of

00:40:46.880 knowing when to leave. Like, you know, leave on a

00:40:48.840 high note. No one does the George Costanza

00:40:50.920 and leaves while everyone's applauding and laughing.

00:40:53.200 Everyone waits too late. It's

00:40:54.460 almost universal. But

00:40:56.560 they seem to... Everyone seems...

00:40:59.060 And I remember the attitude in that government. It was

00:41:00.840 Justin Trudeau is a joke of course we all thought he's a joke but they thought

00:41:04.920 we're never gonna lose we're gonna govern forever so we'll just continue

00:41:08.580 small slow incrementalism and we'll just continue that for all time we're the

00:41:13.740 new the feeling was we are the new natural governing party of Canada well

00:41:18.720 you know there's a certain amount of truth to that and let's face it in 2015

00:41:24.180 and for the 10 years that followed mr. Trudeau actually was a joke it's not the

00:41:30.700 we underestimated or misestimated him it's just that we underestimated the willingness of eastern

00:41:36.360 canada to vote for a joke to your point about the incrementalism i also have to say there were

00:41:42.200 limits to what could be done in a minority uh you know the kind of slash and burn that you're

00:41:47.300 talking about there we all wanted to do it but you had a minority government and then that was

00:41:52.240 no trippy well there i'm with you i i'd bit my tongue for years voting for them when they had

00:41:58.380 say just wait till we get our majority they got the majority that not much changed with the majority

00:42:03.400 i just i felt like they just wasted it but here's if i'm if i may indulge a very brief anecdote maybe

00:42:08.600 at the expense of my parting shot i had a conversation with mr harper in 2001 when he

00:42:14.160 was contemplating going to the going for the leadership of the new entity the reform canadian

00:42:18.960 alliance and i said why would you do that you're in the national citizens coalition about a great

00:42:23.180 job everybody respects you listens to what you say says i want to beat this country and i want

00:42:28.940 to see if good government is possible and i would put it to you both that he demonstrated between

00:42:36.060 2006 and 2015 that good government was possible lowering taxes stimulating industry fighting crime

00:42:44.220 all those things the northern this was good government and it just wasn't exciting enough

00:42:49.980 for the canadian people and then we lost yeah okay i don't think we'd be having the tariff troubles

00:42:55.500 that we're having now if uh harper was still i don't think there'd be two major independence

00:43:00.860 movements pulling this country in three different directions right now that that much i could say

00:43:05.820 with relative certainty okay um so we'll put a plug in the main ones we'll do our our parting

00:43:13.420 shots uh dave you actually didn't get in on the last segment so you get the first parting shot

00:43:17.660 Got to give a shout-out to the world's best football team, Seattle Seahawks.

00:43:22.220 A massive crushing victory over the New England Patriots on Sunday.

00:43:27.420 And the building of a potential dynasty there. 0.99

00:43:30.940 That game sucked.

00:43:33.080 They were 18-1. 0.99

00:43:34.120 All that matters.

00:43:35.020 I didn't really have a dog in the fight.

00:43:37.160 I technically rooted for them because I had to pick someone.

00:43:40.380 And I was like, yeah, it's popular.

00:43:41.340 I hate the Patriots.

00:43:42.000 I hate the Patriots.

00:43:43.240 But what?

00:43:43.660 Just a bad game.

00:43:45.120 That's defense. 0.73

00:43:46.240 Stifling defense.

00:43:47.660 It was like World War I, and everyone just sat in a trench.

00:43:50.100 No one scored any goals on the other side.

00:43:52.200 It was the Battle of Verdun.

00:43:54.160 Defense wins championship.

00:43:56.840 Terrible game.

00:43:58.240 Okay.

00:43:59.000 Corey?

00:44:00.820 Just to rub it in a little more and reiterate,

00:44:03.600 the direct democracy legislation is working.

00:44:05.520 As reported in the Western Standard,

00:44:08.020 the petition to end funding for private schools in Alberta

00:44:10.720 failed dismally.

00:44:11.740 Another union initiative abusing the system.

00:44:14.920 Petitions that have general popular support

00:44:16.980 we'll get through, but the union-led 0.95

00:44:19.820 whimsical crap is falling by the wayside. 0.93

00:44:21.540 Just reminding them, the legislation 0.99

00:44:23.880 is good. I actually am

00:44:25.780 kind of coming to like these guys

00:44:27.920 abusing the system because they get

00:44:29.780 failures. Like when they tried to recall

00:44:31.700 half the UCP caucus, every single

00:44:33.720 one failed. And so we get to

00:44:35.740 just celebrate their failures.

00:44:37.860 So, go ahead, keep abusing

00:44:39.720 the system, guys. It's,

00:44:41.420 yeah, it costs a little bit of money from the taxpayer,

00:44:43.620 but it's worth the lulls.

00:44:45.380 Nigel

00:44:47.160 So, you know, I'm really puzzled as to why

00:44:50.200 Jason Kenney would insert himself

00:44:52.060 Into the debate over whether

00:44:53.460 Bad Bunny was a good halftime show

00:44:56.060 In the...

00:44:57.020 I mean, whatever you think about it

00:44:59.720 Whether it was or it wasn't

00:45:01.040 What's the upside for Mr. Kenney

00:45:02.900 To get involved at all

00:45:05.320 And if he feels that there is an upside

00:45:07.540 Why on God's green earth

00:45:09.380 Would he ever say something like

00:45:11.080 That this was the best ever

00:45:12.460 If you go to the English translation of that

00:45:14.880 it's not the best ever. It's not even

00:45:17.520 close. Yeah, I'm not gonna

00:45:19.420 pile into the culture war on a thing. 0.99

00:45:21.300 I thought it was stupid, but 1.00

00:45:23.320 I think the last few are stupid because they're not 0.99

00:45:25.480 actually concerts. They're kind of live action 0.99

00:45:27.320 music videos at this point. It's meant for

00:45:29.180 right close-up faces

00:45:31.320 on the camera. It's not really...

00:45:33.880 If I had paid for a Super Bowl

00:45:35.460 ticket, I'd be upset because I

00:45:37.100 don't... I'd be an American and they're not speaking

00:45:39.200 America's main language.

00:45:41.460 Okay, whatever.

00:45:42.880 But it's the best.

00:45:44.880 No one besides Bad Bunny thought it was the best.

00:45:47.640 Well, actually, if you read the translation,

00:45:49.800 Rachel Gilmore would probably agree with you.

00:45:53.400 You'd agree with me?

00:45:54.920 That it was, oh, sorry, with Kenny, that it was the best.

00:45:59.140 It's full of expletives.

00:46:00.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:46:03.520 Yeah.

00:46:04.280 Okay.

00:46:05.260 Well, yeah, that's forgotten.

00:46:06.380 Yeah.

00:46:07.160 And I'll finish off.

00:46:10.340 I don't know, Dave, is the story out yet or not?

00:46:12.440 Maybe we're still working on it in the newsroom.

00:46:14.880 it's now been confirmed

00:46:17.540 that there was a data leak

00:46:19.420 from the National Gun Owners

00:46:21.640 Database.

00:46:22.380 The federal government

00:46:24.480 leaked or had hacked

00:46:26.920 the identities

00:46:28.880 of

00:46:30.960 millions of Canadian gun owners.

00:46:35.300 So, I don't know, criminals can do one of two

00:46:37.440 things with that information. They can say, okay, now we can

00:46:39.460 go target these people to steal their guns

00:46:41.500 or they might say, those are the wrong

00:46:43.360 houses to rob.

00:46:44.880 either way,

00:46:46.920 we can't trust these people

00:46:50.820 with absolutely anything.

00:46:52.940 They can't keep the identities 0.69

00:46:54.400 of registered gun owners in Canada.

00:46:57.660 Yeah, I don't think we should give them

00:46:58.860 any more powers on this.

00:47:01.220 In fact, if you don't store

00:47:02.900 your firearms exactly according

00:47:04.860 to regulations, and for the most part, they're reasonable,

00:47:07.140 but it depends. In some circumstances, it's not.

00:47:08.940 For the most part, it's fine.

00:47:10.380 But you get charged if you don't store your firearms

00:47:12.180 appropriately, and they're pretty serious charges.

00:47:14.880 I think the federal government should be charged with

00:47:17.380 unsafe storage of firearms data.

00:47:20.100 Amen.

00:47:21.100 Charge them. Okay. Dave.

00:47:23.780 Nigel. What's up?

00:47:25.400 Corey.

00:47:27.000 Thank you very much. And John on production.

00:47:29.380 Thank all of you for joining us on

00:47:31.180 the pipeline today.

00:47:32.920 Kind of a tough one to go through at some parts,

00:47:35.240 but we're going to be

00:47:37.140 living with this story for a while.

00:47:39.720 And you know what? We're all probably going to

00:47:41.300 move on from it way sooner than

00:47:43.160 we should because we're all just totally desensitized

00:47:45.460 and living in a 24

00:47:47.160 hour 24 7 news cycle

00:47:49.160 that's the sad reality of it

00:47:51.140 we're all going to move on to something

00:47:53.180 shiny soon

00:47:53.860 and that's bad

00:47:56.720 but anyway thank all of you for joining us today

00:47:58.940 remember to support the work we do

00:48:01.260 and to get all access

00:48:02.980 to western standard content go to westernstandard.news

00:48:05.740 click on subscribe

00:48:06.960 it's $10 a month or $100 a year

00:48:09.440 to support our work and get

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00:48:13.160 that it does thank you very much for joining us today and god bless

Western Standard - February 12, 2026

You don’t hate the mainstream media enough

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