Nuanced. - 74. Darryl Plecas: UNCENSORED on Corruption, Policing & Politics in Canada

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

During the first interview with Darryl, the court case against the Clerk of the House Craig James and Sergeant-At-Arms Gary Lenz was still proceeding, so Darryl had to be tempered to avoid interfering with the investigation. Now, Darryl Plecas comes on for the second time to discuss the findings of the investigation, and corruption within the BC Legislature. Aaron Pete and Darryl also discuss Brenda Lucki, Justin Trudeau and other scandals in Canada. Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Because we have to remember that these problems that we're witnessing right now with homelessness, addictions, people hurting for a zillion different reasons, where did that all start? Did that start under the NDP? Not even close. That started under two decades of 16 years of liberals basically doing nothing about it. Cheers. Cheers.

Thank you so much. How come you have more than... We've already begun. Yeah, we've already begun, yeah. I've noticed I'm being cheated in this interview. Oh, I forgot it. It's your scotch. You chose the limit.

Yeah, no, that's right, because I don't want to be drinking more than an ounce. Because when I leave, I'm going to be driving. Operating a motor vehicle. Yeah, that's right. It's a good way to start. That's right. Absolutely. I don't have anywhere to drive so I can have more.

So how's life been? Pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good. You know, doing university professor kinds of things, working on research projects. Right. Just finished a project on looking at minority attitudes towards police and looking at how those compare to non-minorities. And looking at, you know, how that has changed or not changed.

over the last two and a half decades in Canada and United States, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and 27 countries within the European Union. Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, that was an interesting study. It's one I did with my good friend and colleague Yvonne Dandarand. I've heard of him. Yes. No, you have heard of him. He's, yeah.

Yeah, he's one of your biggest fans. and then, you know, working on another project with Erwin Cohen. Right. Who's always fun to work with and doing a project on Restortive Justice. Awesome. And, yeah, seeing how that's changed. So the big selling point for around policing minorities' perceptions is bringing on individuals from that culture. So in BC, it's indigenous people, is seemingly the focus, is creating those tripartite agreements, bringing on indigenous officers.

Is that the fix? Is this just what we're waiting for? Is it more complicated than that? No, I'd say it's much more complicated than that because it's, and we always want to be careful because there's the first thinking is that, you know, we're talking about systemic racism and, you know, of course, you know, there's that. But, you know, it's probably better described as discrimination against. people who are different. So the discrimination doesn't just rest with people from various ethnic minorities. It's also true for people who are from the LGBTGQ community. It's also people who are handicapped. It's anybody who's different is going to be treated differently by police. At least

that's been the case up until now. So what started this whole project was looking at what police have done over the last two decades to try and address this problem of negative attitudes of minorities towards police and diversifying the police force, outreach programs, sensitivity training, cultural sensitivity training, and for the most part, all of it is shown to be for not, like it's not effective. We know it's not effective because attitudes of minorities towards police in Canada and elsewhere in the world have done. decline steadily over the last two decades. The one exception to that is probably the UK, where generally, quite remarkably, attitudes

of minorities towards police is better than it is for non-minorities, except for people who are Africans. And so it's not quite clear why that's a case, but for every other group of people, the The situation is quite opposite the United States or Canada or elsewhere. So we're thinking, and the recent research indicates this, that a primary driver of this is police officer behavior. Because what drives attitudes towards police? It isn't so much as people think, oh, are police effective at doing their work?

Are they solving crime, that kind of thing, or police presence? It's really more than anything is how people are treated by police. And one of the things which is clear, particularly from research in Canada and surveys in Canada, is that if you have a negative experience with a police officer, then that's going to translate into a negative view of police. Pretty simple, really. And then if you have a positive interaction with police as a victim or otherwise, then that's going to generate positive attitudes.

And there have been some studies done recently, significant studies, which have demonstrated just how true that is and how important it is. If police officers are nice to people, I know that's a difficult concept for people to understand. But if they're nice, it's like in any other endeavor in life. treat people nicely and they will respond accordingly. And so, but what's also important to understand, it doesn't mean that all police officers are, you know,

not being nice to people. You know, it's probably more accurate to say it's a few bad apples, a few officers. But those officers generate negative attitudes because people live vicariously through the experience of their friends and neighbors who have been mistreated by police, like the Floyd situation in the United States. Like, you don't have to be the victim to be outraged by that.

You just have to see it on the news. And then that helps form your opinion of police. So we would probably say at this point that police, number one, you know, all of the stuff they're doing and thinking, that, you know, gee, we're going to diversify our police force, and all of a sudden, magically, we're going to have, you know, more positive attitudes towards police. That hasn't happened, and it's not likely to happen. You need to, they need to be doing very different kinds of things.

And one is to, it's been suggested, is to give police empathy training. You need more empathetic officers, more understanding officers. And then, of course, there's a whole debate about whether or not you can actually teach somebody that. But assuming that you can, I think you can, then I think that will have a remarkable impact on improving attitudes. And then, of course, it's not just being sensitive to minorities. It's engaging with minorities. Like, it has to be genuine. Like people, they can see through phoniness

and they can see through officers who aren't approachable or when they're not sincere. So it's all manner of things. It's how police officers stand when they're approaching somebody. You know, you don't need to have your arms crossed. You don't need to have your hand on your revolve. That doing all of those things. and then training officers very specifically to be nice.

Again, it sounds simple, but they've done some recent studies on this and found that it works remarkably well. And then the spinoff, of course, it's that people are more cooperative with police. But that whole business of, you know, has been the case in recent times, where police have had these charges of being systemically racist.

You know, not that that's not true, and there's systemic racism throughout society, because if you ask minorities how they're treated in the grocery store or people who are handicapped, how they're treated, they all have the same kind of story. It's a more negative view. They can still feel the prejudice, the discrimination, even if nothing said.

And so we've got a lot of correcting to do in society in general. But I think, again, it's important to remember that, or at least I would have the view that, not to take away from systemic racism, but to think in terms of discrimination. Because basically that's what it comes down to. Racism is discrimination, and it is all manner of discrimination. So these people discriminate against women as well. And we know it's not all officers again. It's a small number.

So there's a benefit to erring our dirty laundry in society. There's a benefit of trying to understand what the heck's going on. But to me, we're in this weird kind of time where it's a currency to call out the differences and to say it's because I'm indigenous. that you're not helping me out, opening the door, doing something like that. And that's, I just sat down with William Johnson, who's a writer for the Vancouver Tech Journal. He was brought from Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica, I think. He was an orphan there left at a police station on Payne Avenue, crazy story, brought to Canada,

raised by a single white mother, and talked about how he has never really experienced racism in his life. And given the opportunity to assume that he was mistreated for something, both him and I agreed, we wouldn't default to it being race first. But other people aren't always like that. We default, oh, you bumped me in line. It must be because I'm indigenous, because you don't care about indigenous people. There's a danger in opening the floodgates too much because then we don't critically think, maybe that person's just having a piss poor day, like they're not being considerate.

Like, there's a danger in making it too much of a currency where that's people's kind of mental default. Well, that's such a good point because I would argue that with respect, to systemic racism, it, again, never, and we should never be saying that it's not critical and it doesn't happen, but you don't want to take away from, well, what is the underlying problem here? It's discrimination. And one part of discrimination is racial discrimination. So it's a bigger thing. So that person who's discriminating against someone because of their race, is apt to be the same person who's discriminating against a handicapped person. They're more likely to mistreat women, more likely to mistreat gay people.

So there's all kinds of things that go on. And so if you just say, oh, everybody's, you know, the system is systemically racist, well, you know, where do we go from there? That's a huge thing. It's not just police, it's institutions in general, it's governments. It's public policy. It's just a whole series of things. So if you say, no, I want to start by being able to tap into things that can genuinely make a difference

and ultimately erase systemic racism, experiences of racism. Because I think at one level, too, like we talk about systemic racism, for every person who's discriminated again, it's about individual racism. Like, it's about they're being impacted. That's where the greatest harm is felt. So it's just, you know, it would be nice if we could have a situation where people would say, we're going to look at it in a more comprehensive kind of way and do that in a way, which still respects all that needs to be said about systemic crisis.

I couldn't agree more. How do we address this? Do we give police officers more time to be in community? do we hire the big fear right now I sat down with a nurse after I spoke to you and she said we're investing probably too much in policing in comparison to health care and supports for the elderly seniors supports that we've diverted a lot of money there's a lot of resources for police but those other areas seem in her opinion to be lacking and she didn't say cut funding from police but she said we have this problem right now where the police don't they're not lacking in resources to like, practice their tools the same way that there's no nurses in, like, hospitals right now. Right. Well, I think, you know, police, in fairness to the law enforcement community in general, is being asked and has been asked for a long time to do more and more with less. Like, you know, we would at one time, we've done research on this ourselves, where we,

we would look at how many steps are involved in doing an impaired driving case and how long does it take. And at one time it used to take like four hours. Well, before that it was like two hours. Then it became four hours. And then it's eight hours. And then it's ten hours. It used to be that it took nine steps to investigate a trafficking case. And now it's 64 steps.

And, you know, I haven't looked at it in recent years, but it's probably more than that. And so then on top of that, we also say, no, I don't want you as a police officer to show up somewhere. by yourself, I want you to have a partner. So we keep piling on what we ask police to do, to do the same task they did previously with less resources and less people. So now, of course, and this isn't going to go away because we keep piling it on. And then on top of that, we have these layers and layers of oversight. Not that oversight isn't important, but at some point,

you know, it seems as though we have this amount of oversight, which once again just makes everything so, makes everything so difficult and timely and costly. And then the other thing, of course, of course, so what happens is, like, we have social problems today that we haven't had, you know, that we never had to anywhere near the degree all over the Western world. Well, like, for example, homelessness

and people in encampments and no place for them to stay. And then that gets complicated because you have people who are not only homeless, but they have mental health issues and they also have addiction issues and they all come together to, you know, make the whole situation incredibly complicated.

And then you say, oh, who's going to be attending to those situations? Who's going to be first on the scene? Well, thank you very much, social workers. You're only working nine to five, or you're not working weekends. And it's not like fire departments have other things they don't have to attend to, or emergency responders otherwise, like paramedics. Everybody's hands are full. As you will know from our recent times in British Columbia, like we have cases where people, you know, live across from the.

ambulance station and still can't get an ambulance in a timely manner with very tragic consequences. So it's everybody is so overburdened and then police as part of those, that overburdened group collection of people responding is being asked to spend enormous amounts of time dealing with people who are living on sidewalks, dealing with people who are, you know, have drug issues. And they can say, the police will say, well, yeah, no, I have this person. I want them to go somewhere.

I want them to go into treatment, but then there's no treatment. Or it's not treatment in a timely way. Or it's not an approach which is sophisticated outside of police, to genuinely move the person to a better place in life. But the initial burden with all of that, and especially when it comes to a problem, it's police officers who have to carry that burden. And we've all heard first responders talk about

how difficult and heart-wrenching that job is in dealing with people who have this mix of no-shelter, drug-addicted, mental health issues, is just incredibly draining. Well, what's interesting? You don't normally hear that from police, you know, and they have to deal with as much, if not more than anybody else. So I think we need to be a little more sympathetic to what, you know, the average police officer has to deal with today and how often they have to do with it.

Like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, police officers were going to say, well, you know, at some point on my shift, today I'm going to be dealing with a, you know, somebody's got an addiction problem and no place to go. That just wasn't happening. Well, now they're not going on shift without that happening. So, and then you say, well, why aren't they investigating other kinds of crimes? Why aren't they doing these other things? Well, of course, after a while, there's just no time to do everything that needs to be done. It's this whole problem we have right now, this social problem, which I think it's probably fair to say is one of the most significant problems in North America today.

And getting worse, because, you know, there's all kinds of signs that there's many people who are one check away from being homeless. And then, again, if you put that into the mix, it's you say, well, okay, who's going to deal with it? And especially when people talk about defunding police, well, we know how fast that evaporates. You know, once people see, oh, gee, we don't, we don't, we didn't really mean it, you know, because there's obviously a need for police. And I think people would be incredibly surprised to know how few officers are on the street at any one time.

So, you know, you could say one thing we could do is have more officers working on the street. But again, you know, you can, I would say is, and where do those officers? come from. You know, where are you going to take them from? You can't keep draining from other parts of the policing exercise, although, you know, I'm reminded that I said there's one place in the world where there's more positive attitudes towards police across the board and particularly among minorities, and that's the UK. And what does the UK have? It has a long history of the police officer on the beat. unarmed police officer, and then they, for, I don't know if they still have it, but they have second tier policing and they have other means to have a greater police visibility. Now, having said that, they have all kinds of other things to help them out too. But, but so, so I would say, you know, the other part of it we know is you can't make crime go down by adding more police. You know, that's just not going to happen.

You need to be looking at, well, what are root causes? And you also need to be looking what happens with the criminal justice system. Like you can't have, as police are complaining about, cities are complaining about people who are habitually in trouble, people who are repeat offenders with hundreds of prior convictions. And then they show up in court and they walk out a free person. this is not helpful, not saying they have to be incarcerated, but to say that, you know, you have 50 prior convictions, and then we're basically doing nothing, which is what's most fair to say. Our system does nothing. The only place it begins to do something is when people get a serious amount of prison time. I'm not saying that prison should ever be a first choice, but one of the things we know for certain is that.

that people who do get prison time, at least in Canada, people who do, you know, who enter the federal system have a remarkably low rate of recidivism. It's a night and day difference between that and somebody who gets, you know, an average of a three-month sentence, which is a case otherwise. So our system is pretty crazy right now. We seem to have a shortage of nurses. We have a shortage of doctors. We don't have as many police officers.

The RCMP is constantly recruiting. Feels like we're failing on a lot of fronts right now. Just where do we start? What are your thoughts as seeing government working behind the scenes? Obviously it takes time. Like the housing issue came about. Now we're starting to see these locations pop up and resources be put towards them. I just listened to Minister Eby talk and he was talking about the idea of bringing back co-op housing.

Something that faded away a while ago. and he's like, well, we haven't invested in this for years. Do we attribute this to the legacy of the BC liberals? Is the NDP just hard at work trying to fix the gaps that were left? How do we think about this problem? Because it just, it feels tough to be proud of our health care system in BC right now, in our criminal justice system in BC right now. It doesn't seem like an optimistic time to be a British Columbian

if you look at some of our governmental organization. Right. Well, one of the things I wonder about and worry about is that we don't spend enough time projecting what the future is going to look like. Like, let's just take our health care system. Like, we are so burdened down. We don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough bed space. We don't have enough facilities for people who are needing residential care.

Like, once people get, you know, over 70 and 80, then we're. more likely to need special care. And that care becomes very, very expensive. The older you get, the more an individual cost the health care system. So here we have a situation in BC where we are going to literally double the number of people over 65 in the next 10 years. So all of a sudden, you don't even have to increase the population. You just increase that group of people over 65.

And then you say to yourself, well, how are we ever going to pay for that? Because never mind residential care, people begin to have, they begin to have more health problems. And some of the other things which cost money are, you know, special drugs. Like somebody will have a disorder, you know, a type of cancer or whatever. And I can recall when I was an MLA, somebody come into my office and the drug they needed cost a million dollars a year. And not only did they have the problem, his two children had the problem. So it's, you know, like he's $50 million, and his kids are $80 million each. So, of course, we would want to say, look, you're part of society, and we want to pay for that too.

But then at the same time, we have to say, where is that money coming from? Well, that money was never an issue 20 years ago because nobody had the cure. Nobody had the pill to fix it. So we have all of this increase in pharmaceuticals. We have all of this increase in the cost of building hospitals, and we could never build a fast enough. We could never build residential care facilities fast enough because we have people getting old too fast.

And so you pile all that on, and then people say, well, all of a sudden things are falling apart. Well, they aren't falling apart because we quit doing things. It's demographics. It's just the nature of our... our population. And it's going to get more critical unless, which is leading to an answer to your question, like how do you solve it? It's going to get worse for everybody unless we get serious about immigration. Now, we are somewhat serious. In fact, we can pride ourselves in being the

most desirable place to come in in the world to get a post-secondary education. We accept more students on student visas than anybody else. So more people want to come here from other countries. So, but it's still not enough. Like we admitted, I think, in recent times, like 400 plus immigrants every year of students who want to study here. So we need to ramp this up. We need to have more immigrants because if we don't, we're going to have a situation,

which we're moving to, where we have all of these old people, and unfortunately, I have to consider myself one of those. You know, we have this population of people who are increasingly going to drain the economy and spend less money. And because they're spending less money, living in smaller properties, downsizing all things, paying less taxes, costing more, paying less taxes,

and who's going to foot that bill? And many of them on pension plans, which are, you know, they go up every year with inflation. They're geared to the cost of living. They've got these clauses in them. So, and then so you have more people drawing, more people causing expense, and fewer people to pay for. And that's got to be fixed.

So you could say to young people like yourself, I could say, Aaron, I don't know what you're paying for taxes. No, but I need you to double it. I need you to pay double to make up for the law. of people under 25, more people over 65, fewer people under 25, and this is happening all over the world, like the situation in Japan, where they have zero population growth. And so you say, you know, how do you produce product? How do you compete on a world stage if you don't have people? Well, there is one way to do it. And that is to say, we need to invite

more people to come to Canada, and it better be a lot of them. And by doing that, too, and if it's done in a very diverse kind of way, like historically in recent times, we have disproportionate numbers of people from India and China, and while those immigrants are great, we might say, well, let's have more immigrants from Mexico, let's have them from other parts of South America, let's have them from Southeast Asia otherwise, and let's do that. And more and more countries are doing that. The countries that don't embrace immigration are going to be left behind by 2040, 2050. They are going to be having a hard time making ends meet. So if you said, well, what could we do? Well, and I understand the government

is now seriously thinking about this. Yes, let's build another medical school in BC. I think it's going to be SFU, it'll be in Surrey, and then part of what they do there is to train doctors from foreign countries, or people have already been educated at medical schools, and then they do some upgrading to make sure they're certified to practice in Canada. So you reduce the cost of, you know, what it would normally cost to educate a doctor, and then you have more people. And then the bonus is we get this rich diversity of people. So you get, so you get a a double whammy kind of effect. Like you have a, it's this collage of, you know, many different ethnic cultures and people, which is to the great benefit of everybody. I mean, we're

already moving there. But, so that, I would say that's one huge thing we can do. You want more police officers? Start attracting them from the UK and elsewhere in the world, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, wherever. Can I ask a politically incorrect question? Sure. The challenge I think some people feel is we are bringing people here, but they don't, they're not integrating. They're not joining our community, our sense of what it means to be a Canadian.

They're staying in bubbles, in groups. They're buying properties and saying this is now, everything is the same, but we're now our own little community. we don't need to integrate with you we don't need to what is the boiling pot idea we don't need to participate in that we will stay us

and you can stay over there and there's this feeling that you hear people make comments and they're again politically incorrect but like why don't you speak English and there's this feeling that there's a disconnect in our culture growing and I don't know if we've found

the solution to that but there is a feeling in certain stores that I've shopped at where it's like I am not your ideal customer and I feel it because you don't really care if I buy anything and you're kind of looking at me like, why aren't you leaving yet? There is some sort of disconnect that I feel and I learned about this in multiculturalism in Canada that our goal is to have this pot melt and have you keep the best parts of your culture and I'll keep the best parts of my culture, but we'll integrate, we'll share the best of both of them and we'll learn

from each other. And I love that idea of Canada. But it seems like some people get to come here and say, I'm good. I don't need to learn anything about your culture. I don't need to do anything that you guys do. Your viewpoints on these issues, too progressive for me. I'm not going to participate. I'll just stay over here. I'll buy my house.

We'll get neighbors that are all similar to us. And you can do you and we'll do me. And that's one of the concerns, I think. Right. And then, you know, what sometimes happens is ethnic minorities get ghettoized in effect. Like they're, you know, parceled out into different neighborhoods, whatever. But in the overall scheme of things, I think multiculturalism is such an incredibly wonderful concept. And I'm reminded when we talk about, you know, it is different in the United States.

You know, where they, you know, it's the so-called melting pot. Well, it's interesting that they have this situation in the United States, which is different. But when Americans think in terms of more I rather than we, Canadians think in terms of we, So we still have that on our side. And why can't you have a situation? Why can't we look at multiculturalism and say, you know, the concerns you've expressed about, you know, there's people drifting off where, you know, it's not that we're embracing different cultures in that. We have people who are saying, look, it's my way or the highway, and I'm going to do my own thing over here and stand in my way. And by the way, I'm speaking my own language.

Well, one of the things we could do to ensure that we maintain our Canadian identity and as a multicultural nation where we have common ground and common interest is follow the lead of Quebec. And Quebec is insistent, like you will speak French. Like we can say, or some of us would say, if you come to Canada, one of the things you need to do is, speak English or French. You need to do that because we need to communicate. I have to tell you what I like. I need to be helpful to you. I need to be able to dialogue with you to disagree. Well, the moment that you say, you don't have to speak our language and you can go live somewhere where you can live your life out and never speak English, then that gets to be a problem, I think. I think that's what upsets people. But on the other part, which I think is sometimes

upsetting, which has got all kinds of complications, is where we have schools which are geared strictly for a particular ethnic group, or a particular religious group. Some people might say, if you want to really build on diversity and differences, like, why wouldn't you have everybody in the same room? Speaking in the same language. Now, that's not to say we should ever say you can't speak your own language at home, or you can't, we don't love your other, these other languages. One could argue they also create great opportunities for Canadians to learn these other languages. Like we always say to them, learn my language, but don't ask me to learn yours, right?

But, so, so I think, like, when you think of how wonderful it is that we have so many different, cultures to draw on in terms of foods, arts, friendships, all kinds of things. If we were this country which said, look, there's only one way to go here, and that's going to look pretty boring after a while, you know, we can't eat the same food all the time, we can't, you know, listen to the same music. We need, we need diversity. And the other thing I would say to people who have a concern about that is we're headed that way around the world anyway, like the world's becoming multicultural, and those countries, which are the most multicultural, are going to enjoy the greatest success, and I think people need to take a lesson

from Europe, like, you know, very multicultural, and thank you very much. They've adjusted relatively well, oh, I'm reminded that the U.K. is the one with the least amount of discrimination. How did that happen? And there's more ethnic diversity in the U.K. than we have in Canada. And yet, they're making it work. So I think what we should all be saying is, if we all work from the premise that everyone is equal and everyone deserves a sense of belonging, then any kind of notion that I don't want you because you're different should be off the day. you know like we don't we're not we shouldn't even be talking about we should it should all always be about how can I give you a greater sense of belonging because that's the other part of the equation we say to people well gee you're off on your own you don't want anything to do with me well would they still say that if we extended ourselves to say I'm going to encourage belonging I'm going to encourage inclusiveness then I think you would have you know less of these kinds of concerns that are expressed.

And I understand why people do it, but I just wonder if they've really had an opportunity to give it the thought that it deserves, or they've had an opportunity to, you know, be in a country where you are, you know, the only Caucasian person and know what that feels like. Like, oh, you're scrambling around for somebody to speak English, you know. So they suffer the same kinds of things.

Now, again, fortunately, one of the things I'm very proud of as a Canadian is that since the Second World War, you know, we've really been a leader in the world in terms of immigration. And that's coming at us like a freight train. Like the government has given all kinds of signals, that is the federal government. that they are going to be going full blast with more immigration. And now British Columbia is one province, which is going to be looking to the federal government to say, look, you know, yeah, we need to make it easier.

We need to make it easier for people to come here and be a nurse and a doctor and a first responder of some kind and all kinds of other kinds of workers that we need. I mean, we also want to remember even for unskilled workers, people picking fruit, people working in the fields. Some of these people come from Mexico. Well, aren't we lucky, you know? And in some ways, I thought it's kind of embarrassing that we say,

come here, help us out in the summer, you know, work. You know, so we can benefit by all of this. But, oh, by the way, you know, get out of here as soon as the season's over. You know, we could probably do a lot better there. And the quality of life is not something to be admired of of the fact that, first of all, we don't want to do those jobs. That is why we have to bring people in to do those jobs, is because it is clear we think ourselves above those jobs for the most part. Nobody wants to be doing that job. And then we're very ungrateful in how they're paid, in the quality of living that they have to go through,

and the fact that they don't have any real recourse if they have issues with their employer. Right. I don't think you could have said that any better, and there was nothing politically incorrect about it. Yeah, that's true. We just do not treat them very well at all. So how do you feel about the NDP right now? John Horgan's stepping down.

What are your thoughts, coming from someone who started the other side of the spectrum, you're seeing they're probably going to be fighting for a re-election, but they're replacing their leader. I'm just, do you have hope that they're steering the ship in a better direction? Well, you know, I've, you know, had the opportunity to see all parties, right? At least the ones that have been in office in British Columbia in the last decade. And so there's the liberals, there's the NDP, and there's the Greens.

And one of the things I always said, you know, when the NDP came into power, you know, one of the things that you could take to the bank as the Premier was a wonderful world. well-meaning person. You might disagree with NDP policy, but no one would ever look at the Premier and say, I think he's going to cheat us. I think there's something else going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of. The guy had integrity in his bones. Well, he still does. He's still Premier. And I would say the same for David Eby. David Eby is, like, as a human being has qualities which we should admire in a leader. Like when you think about his handling of the ICBC file, before David Eby came along, you and I were paying hundreds of dollars more every

year for money which we shouldn't have been paying at all. And we did it for years on, we did it for years on end. And then he, you know, we had the liberals taken money out of ICBC without telling us, and putting it elsewhere, we were basically being cheated by that government. And most of those people are still in government. They're still not in government, they're still elected officials. So not much has changed there. On the other side of the equation with David Eby and the NDP, again, I would say you might disagree with some of their policies.

But I see no signs that you should challenge their integrity. And if there's one thing we're lacking in government today, it's integrity. We should always believe, I think I've said this to you before, if you're an elected official, you are an extension of the people who put you in office. And people have the right to expect that you are going to approach your tasks, you're governing, with the greatest respect to that. You are going to allow differing differences of opinion.

Well, the liberals just recently had somebody who disagreed with them. John Rustad, you know, had a, made a statement about climate change. And if you really drilled down on what he said, it wasn't like he was saying, oh, there's no such thing as climate change. He did say stuff like I myself would say,

I disagree with that, his view on it. But he was, as much as anything, just questioning the whole thing, just raising questions. Well, the liberal leader didn't like that and said, you're out of here. And worse, he did what they normally do in the liberals. He went on to vilify him.

He didn't just say, we're kicking you out because we disagree. He said, he can't be trusted. Well, the individual just didn't deserve that. But that's the mindset, the way they have a history of treating people. If you don't agree with them, you're gone. Is that the kind of government we want? Do you want a government that says it's either my way or the highway?

Well, you can't possibly have that and say you represent all views. It's always just one view. I think there's less of that in the NDP. And I think the other thing I'd say is very characteristic of David Eby is he's got the nerve to stand up, even amongst his own peers, like lawyers. He did it with the whole ICBC insurance thing, like, you know, the whole lawsuit thing, and said, you know, we're going to do this. Well, he had to take a beating from his colleagues for that. Like, he basically said to lawyers, I'm taking a huge part of your income away.

We're going to do business differently. Well, that would take a lot of nerve. And I'm reminded where he's running. You know, he runs in, you know, West Point Gray. Well, it's not exactly, you know, a neighborhood which would normally be associated to David Eby, like, because he's, you know, fighting for the underdog, you know, human rights, civil rights, that kind of thing. And yet he does it. He's not afraid to back down on anything, and he's not afraid to speak his mind. He is absolutely concerned about doing the right thing.

And I've never had the whole time I saw him in government. He never wavered from that. I think, you know, if I was a betting person, I would say he will absolutely win the leadership, and he will be an absolutely spectacular premier. He will be, he will do good things. He will do good things in an incredibly difficult environment, because you've got the housing file, you've got the whole addiction thing, all of that. And that's worse than it's ever being.

Like, one thing you'll notice when you talk to people, you can run this by municipal officials everywhere and say, you know, they'll all stamp their fist on the table and say, we've got to do something about homelessness. What people need to say, and what exactly do you propose that we do? And they'll all come back with the same answer. Well, it needs to be comprehensive and it needs to be wrap around service. Well, thank you for your little bit of intelligence there. But, you know, we knew that a long time ago. The question is, what are you doing about it? So I think, you know, what you'll see under, this is my prediction under David Eby,

you will see more efforts to get where the provincial government will be not demanding, but one step short of demanding, that municipalities start being more cooperative, like to start doing their part. Like you can't have situations like they have in Maple River. where basically people say, not in my backyard, you know, or that people want to get rid of it, but they're not willing to provide the land and the space to help solve these problems. So I think he will do it, and I also am reminded that the other, his colleagues, if you will, and I think you can see this in their voices when they talk.

They have a heartfelt interest in the welfare of British Columbians, and we must. I might disagree on how to get there. Get there. And I say to myself, having had my experiences with politicians, observing politicians around the world, politicians who are incredibly self-centered, corrupt and everything else around the world, I'm willing to say, I'm willing to go for not getting everything I want if I can at least have an honest person. I do not want to see another dishonest, integrity lacking, demanding person in government anywhere. So I tell people who are running for municipal office this time, yeah, I'll support people.

I'll support anybody I think is going to be a decent person. That's what we need is more decent people. Would you do anything differently? Would you have, looking back on your experience, would you run for the BC liberals again, or would you have maybe looked at the NDP and said, maybe I can be the hard voice for fiscal responsibility in that group? Have you thought it all just as a thought experiment to reflect on your time there? It seems like you could have been...

Well, if I ever get to a place where I even remotely show some kind of interest in having, you know, being part of the B.C. liberals, then I would say, shoot me now. because that is, I could not do that with a clear conscience. And I don't want to lose my security clearance. You know, like, just my experience with so many of them in the party are so completely unfit for public office. And I really do mean that. Like, to say that they're unfit, I'm tempering my words.

a cancer on society would be a better description. If people knew the half of it, knew just a scintilla of what really goes on and goes on behind the scenes and the bullying. Are you able to talk about it now because you're not there anymore? Is there things you can give us some light on? You did before,

but you wanted some things to come to a close. Well, I think I gave you some examples. I gave you one about the treatment of Mary Ellen Trappel. Yeah, I'm trying to have her on. I'd be interested to have four of them. And, I mean, an absolutely discreet. graceful display of how they regard people. And, oh, by the way, that was an all-party committee.

Their attitude towards, you know, the Supreme Court decision on right to die, like saying to hell with the Supreme Court of Canada. Like, excuse me, your lawmakers and what makes you above the Supreme Court of Canada, but they didn't mean anything to them. There are attitudes towards various minority groups, like, Like, you know, they didn't say it out loud at first, but boy, did they let Laurie Thronus go do his thing for a long, long time. You know, these bigoted views.

And anybody who wasn't one of them, you know, you're gone. You're done. Can you talk a little bit about, you almost described it as like there's henchmen. How does this system function? Because it seems like some of the worst. actors aren't the people who get elected. They're not the people we know about. There's almost this whole group of people who do the bidding of...

Well, they're behind the scenes. There's absolutely that. I call, you know, there are textbook examples of bullies, party organizers, party leaders behind the scenes. So just this overriding party for the party and God help anybody who disagrees with that. Just the whole concept to me is so absolutely ridiculous. Where do you think it comes from?

How do you think you raise a child to become a type of person who will bully, who will step on people? Like you talked in our last conversation about how you could never imagine treating someone differently and you believe we're all equal and we need supports and resources to all achieve whatever our potential is, but how do you think a person, we like to just demonize? We like to just say reprehensible person, get rid of them. But how do we get here? How do we deal with a person? Yeah, well, I would say one of the things, I think I might have mentioned this before when we talked. You know, people get elected to office, not because people know them, but because they

don't. People elect an image of a person. So it's all about image. So what the person's really like is, you know, people don't see that. They don't see those MLAs who are sleeping every day in the house, you know, like we're supposed to be representing British Congress. They don't see what goes on between an MLA and a minister where, you know, the MLA has told a big, fat lie to their constituents, and then, you know, does whatever the minister wants them to do. The huge number of people won't stick their neck out for anything.

I mean, I would give you one example, as you recall, you know, we had a time here where we had wanted to have a ban on grizzly bear hunting. Well, duh, us and 95% of the world, like, who thinks it's okay to shoot a grizzly bear in this day and age, right? So you can put its head on a trophy in a room. Well, no, there are some, you know, hunters, people come up from Texas, et cetera, and they pay 25 grand, and then they go to places in the north, and guide outfitters are, and the lodges that house them are making huge amounts of money off of this. So you have this situation where you say, well, you know, there is a small group of people who would disagree. But even though the liberals knew that, even though the liberals knew that, even though. the liberals knew darn well that 95% of British Colombians wanted a ban, they refused to do it.

This is the fear around the 1% right? It's only 1% of people could afford to do something like that. Well, it was the liberal's view was, oh my God, if we allow this, some of these people will turn out to be conservatives. You know, they'll abandon the party because some of the conservatives wouldn't mind the idea of, you know, killing grizzly bears to put their head on the wall. but most of us say a responsible elected person would say you know what who are we here for we're here for British Columbians

and I don't even need to have a discussion with you if 95% of people want this and whenever I would raise that issue about why we should have a ban they wouldn't even respond to me they wouldn't even respond in a caucus meeting they were just like the usual tactic well okay he said We better watch out for him. He's another thing he's going to cause trouble about. But they just wouldn't. It was all about them.

And it comes back to it, say, politicians doing stuff for nothing more than a political game. I never saw a decision made while I was a liberal that wasn't made where the first consideration wasn't political advantage. So it wouldn't matter how good your idea is. So there you get situations they can say, well, why didn't they do something about this homeless situation years ago? Why weren't they on top of that? Why weren't they helping people in need way back then, even though I was yelling and screaming about it? Because the liberals would say, why would we help them? Why would we help them?

They don't vote. You know, there's not enough of them. It's like they used to tell me with elderly people and people in care homes. It's just noise. They can't get to the polls. Isn't that the people who usually vote for them, though, elderly people? Not if you're in a residential care home. Oh, okay.

You know, or you're incapacitated to some degree. So it was always about, is that a vote? And if it's not a vote. So, because we all, we have to remember that these problems that we're witnessing right now with homelessness, addictions, people hurting for a zillion different reasons, where did that all start? Did that start under the NDP? not even close that started under two decades

of 16 years of liberals basically doing nothing about it you know they weren't helping so of course the problem just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger no money for treatment centers

you know no initiatives to recognize that you know housing first is a huge thing You can't, and you can't just provide housing. You've got to do all kinds of other things. So, you know, we would have lots of land to build this housing on

if the liberals didn't sell so damn much of it during their term in office. Oh, I wonder who bought that land. Oh, that's another story. You know, and how much did they pay for that land? And what did they resell up for shortly thereafter? So, so all of that, you know, it also, says to me, when I look at all of the things that they're trying to do now, like the ambulance service, all of a sudden, gee, we have an incredible problem in the ambulance service.

Well, that just didn't start in five years. You know, what moron would think that was the case, right? All of these things were systemic and started long before the NDP came to power. And and the NDP is saddled with trying to do something about it without the resources and the people to do it. We could all say, well, where were the liberals where we needed to be training paramedics? You know, where were the liberals when we needed to be training nurses?

What was happening there? Why wasn't that happening? Why weren't they opening the doors to doctors from around the world? Why weren't they doing that? and of course it'd be interesting to see what their answers were to that

but we know what the consequences would you ever sit down with Rich Coleman, Christy Clark and some sort of discussion format it would just be fascinating to see how they handle just you being reasonable and

talking like I just I don't obviously agree with how they approached things I just I don't like the idea that they just get to disappear into the background. And obviously, if Rich is running, then he's got his own challenges. But someone who knows, because the problem with sending Joe Blow journalist to go interview them, is they're not going to know what you know. They're not going to be able to lay it out the way you just laid out the problems that we're facing

and asking these simple questions. But you see, part of the problem is I've never had a discussion with Rich Coleman or Christy Clark, or most of those people in the Liberal Party. What I have had is I've made statements, and they've made statements back. We've never had a discussion because they operated in a manner where they were not interested in discussion. It was like our caucus meetings over and over again. Caucus meetings are supposed to be a place where you have an exchange of views. Nobody gives their ideas. You know, what a bunch of crap. You know, the caucus meetings were 90% gobbled up with, you know, cabinet ministers or invites from the Premier's office and then

ten minutes left at most for MLAs to say what they thought, you know, or raise the question. And then the caucus chair would say, thank you very much, you know, and move on to the next thing. It wasn't a discussion. And I always viewed it as, no, you don't really care what I have to say or what somebody else, oh, you care about us saying, gee, we've identified that person as a potential troublemaker or somebody who has a different view on this, you know, let's deal with them in some other way. So what would you do if you had the opportunity you get Christy Clark right in front of you?

Well, how would you approach that conversation? Because the challenge we have is the world is becoming so polarized. The two sides, they don't communicate anymore. And so if you had that opportunity, what would you want to do with that time? Well, I would say it's laughable that she appeared in Alberta a few weeks back. on behalf of the Conservative Party and was talking about how they had to be less polarized and their opinions and I thought

oh my God, like you know like this is just people have not had enough connection to the Liberal Party to understand what's going on what's going on there and I mean again here's the other thing that I'm always

reminded of I'm someone who becomes speaker and identifies significant wrong doing. Saying, you know, somebody's cheating taxpayers here. And, you know, people haven't seen the half of it, but the half of it that they can see that it's exposed. And what does the liberal party do? Nothing. In fact, just the opposite. They said, let's kill the messenger. Let's stop this. The leader of the liberal party, Andrew Wilkinson, stands up in front of a camera

this, stop this nonsense, how dare you do this to these poor, poor people, and, you know, you know they have to know what was going on. It was under their watch. That whole era of corrupt activity happened under their watch. And then, of course, what happened was to this day, not one single liberal has come forward and said, you know what? That was a good thing. You know, the courts found that he was guilty. The Sergeant Arv was so guilty in the police act, that was appropriate to leave. Not a word, not a word. And so you have to say, what kind of integrity is that?

Is that the kind of person we want in office? So, again, it all comes back to me for this matter of, are you somebody who's going to behave? I know this sounds crazy because we need political parties, but are you going to behave in a non-partisan way when it's important to do that? Like, as would be expected on an all-party committee. Would you behave in a non-partisan way? Well, to say that the Liberal Party does that

is just absolute rubbish, you know, in my experience, you know, quite the opposite, quite an affront the democratic process. And, you know, we have these people who are party whips. You know, and I always thought a party whip is to make sure you showed up on time and all of that kind of stuff. Oh, no. You know, a party whip is to make sure that you're not saying anything that the leader

disagrees with or you're not even raising the, you're not even raising an issue. That's the issue. It's one thing for the party to say, you know, this is our position. on something. But why can't you allow people to say, you know what, let me start by telling you, here's our party position. And this is why I don't particularly agree with that. It doesn't mean I hate everything that they do. I'm just disagree with this particular thing. But in the Liberal Party, you're not allowed to disagree on anything. It's either their way or the highway. And if you don't hear it from the Premier's office, you're going to hear from the henchmen

behind the scenes, you know, who act like mafioso, and, I mean, they're brutal. I mean, brutal, and I've been physically assaulted by one of those people. Can you say more on that? Well, I won't say more, but I hope he's listening, and there were witnesses to that assault, too. Oh, gosh. And it was when I first started. So, you know, that's just the way they operate. They're bullies.

May I ask why? Why can't you say more on that? Or why do you allow a shroud of... Because it was my first political speech, the first time I was at a nomination meeting, and I said something that he didn't like. I said, you know, I don't disagree with everything that the NDP does. You know, I don't like the way they spend money, but I think they do a lot of great things. And he came up to me and rammed his fist into my chest. and said, don't you ever say that again? Don't you ever say anything nice about the NDP?

And he was that kind of person. But in another world, he would have been dismissed immediately. Absolutely dismissed. He would have been walked off the property elsewhere. But, oh, no, he's a champion in the Liberal Party. He knows who he is. Let's just say he was extremely high up in the Liberal Party. Right.

And non-elected official. Yeah. That is part of the part that scares me the most is the people who, they've been called like the deep state, the people who don't end because their political career ends. They get to stick around. They get to keep those philosophies going, those attitudes, those approaches, regardless of who's leading the party. That's what a lot of people are afraid of when they're voting is a feeling that their vote doesn't matter because even the person who gets in doesn't get to make all the decision. They're influenced by these unknown voices who are taking marching orders. Well, yeah, but I think all you have to do is look at what happened to all of those people

who were with the liberals behind the scenes and all those party, you know, the people were ministerial assistants and that kind of thing, legislative assistance. Where did they go after the liberals were tossed? Well, there's an interesting exercise. How many of them went to Ottawa? How many of them went to the province of Ontario to wreak havoc behind the scenes there? I mean, it's the same, some of these people, that's all they've done in life. You know, they get out of university, and the first stop is, you know, politics, behind the scenes politics, and they never have a real job.

May I ask, do those jobs pay well to be a henchman? No, no, they don't. They don't pay because once you're working for a political party, it never pays well. Well, there's two parts to it. There's the people who are ministerial assistants and ministerial aids which pay reasonably well. A legislative assistant, which is a non-government job, well, let me rephrase that. If, you know, people really knew how that works, it doesn't pay very well. But, you know, here's an example of how they treat people.

You know, you couldn't make this stuff up. You know, we had a situation where a legislative assistant, you know, comes to us and says, Gee, you know, I believe this MLA is cheating on an expense claims. And, you know, there's just no way he did not have a prima facie case. He was the guy who filled out the forms. Like, and if, you know, I looked at it, others looked at it and said, oh, my God. Like, this isn't just a one-off. There's multiple indicators of cheating the system.

So as soon as he said that, what happened to him? He was fired. Within a week earlier, an MLA stood up in the house and said, what a wonderful employee was. A liberal stood up and said how great he was. And he was a great employee. And then as soon as he criticized, he raised this, worse, other MLAs knew about this. this inappropriate behavior by an MLA. And, of course, it went on from there

because we couldn't get the, you know, Sergeant Arms because he was so damn crooked to investigate. But the whole liberal party, you know, like people knew about it and did nothing. In fact, they did not at all want, make the slightest effort to correct that behavior, and they never made the slightest effort to deal with the inappropriate behavior. Instead, they said, did you just criticize us? You're fired. You're out of here. And by the way, let's trash him on the way out. Let's vilify the guy on the way out the door.

It's just absolutely, utterly disgraceful behavior, but that's the kind of people they are. And what's discouraging? What really is hurtful, and Canadians feel this more and more, day. Like, you have this inappropriate behavior, and somebody comes along and says, I want to do something about that. I want that investigated. And they just tell you to pound sand. They just say, well, I'm sorry, we're not investigating that. I think that people have noticed that's happened federally, do. You know, geez, you want to investigate us? You want to look into some? Sorry, you know, can't give you that information. It's privileged. You know, there's all kinds of mechanisms in place. It comes back to what I said about the, I think I was telling you earlier about the

president or former president of Brazil and who's saying, you know, corruption's okay as long as it's not investigated, you know, because you just have to have a mechanism. He wasn't saying it to be corrupt. He was meaning like, you know, this is how they get away with it. You just say, you're not going to investigate anything. And then they're off and running. And they thrive on this stuff. Okay, I got to ask you about Brenda Lucky, but first, I want to understand what ended up happening with the sergeant-in-arms.

In our last conversation, you said, certain things I can't talk about until the investigation's done, until the court is done, just to be fair to them to finish their investigation and not impact that. What ended up happening? What was the sentencing? What were your thoughts on it? Well, the clerk got sentenced to basically house arrest. and he had to make restitution on, you know, some of the money that he misappropriated. But, and, you know, it is what it is. You know, I would be the last person to be saying a judge, you know, made a wrong decision.

You know, they have taken into account so many variables. and they're sort of hung on one thing, and that's precedent. But we also have to remember that this is precedent, too. So the judge said in sentencing, you know, this is basically an egregious breach of trust. This hits at the heart of breach of trust. And by the way, you're going to get house arrest for a couple months or whatever it was. So I was kind of surprised about that Because if somebody else comes along

And government is involved in You know the same kind of activity The first order of business for defense and prosecution Is going to bring up this gaze As a what would be an appropriate sentence If they're found guilty Oh by the way this is what happened here And if you're homeless and you steal

The punishment is usually much more severe If you're struggling like this is my struggle is like, as a native court worker, I believe in the rule of law. I believe that if somebody makes a mistake, they need to first account for their actions and start to take steps to address it. But it feels like we're much harder on people who are barely surviving in comparison to embezzling, stealing money from people. Well, a big reason for that is the person who doesn't, who's homeless or whatever, doesn't have a lot of money.

In the case of the clerk, he had one of the most powerful law firms imaginable. Like he, I don't know how he managed to pay his legal fees. That'd be an interesting question for somebody to ask. But, you know, he had access to a very powerful legal team. the average person isn't going to have that. You're just going to go broke. I mean, even defending yourself,

like here's something that I didn't talk about, and I couldn't talk about before the trial was over. When I was telling you, there's a whole series of mechanisms that are in place at the legislature to facilitate corruption. And one of those would be is to prevent somebody from having a capacity

to mount a legal defense. or legal representation. So, just before I left, knowing that the trial was coming up, knowing that I would have to have legal advice as the trial went on, you know, I had wanted to make sure that there was legal fees to be paid. Because I'm an employee in a sense, right? I'm still... So anyway, but they passed.

Once that issue came up, they passed. a policy at the ledge to say that legal fees would be limited to $5,000 for anyone who is just leaving office. So all I had was $5,000. So if I wanted to have any other legal representation, all of that had to come out of my own pocket. Well, as it turns out, the defense calls up, the clerk's defense calls up and needs some information that related to my job as speaker, and I had to provide it. Like, I'm not even asking for the information. I'm just providing it on my job. And the legal bill was $8,000. So the ledge says, I'm responsible for the additional $3,000. And it's, I'm thinking, what is going

on here? But the big lesson is, it works, because that would make me very, very reluctant. to do anything, because they have this big machine that'll just come down and stomp on you and say, we'll sue you into the Stone Age, and you don't have the money to defend yourself. It was ironic because I'm thinking, well, here I am, you know, having to pay my own legal bills on something which has got nothing to do with me, you know, was them requesting the information. It's bizarre. And they paid a $6 million legal fee for the two liberal staffers who, you know, who were involved in the BC Rail scandal.

Like, I'm thinking like crazy stuff, you know. Like, and I would wonder how much more legal bills they paid on other matters or managed to find a way to pay them. But in my case, on something so significant, they knew full well. They knew full well that this was going to go to court, knew full well that it wasn't realistic to expect that I wouldn't have legal representation. All those people appeared before the Collin Commission. had legal representation. But here they were going to make me pay it on my own. Now, fortunately,

I had a great law firm, a big law firm, and the law firm said, tell him to pound sand, we'll pay for to, you know, we're not going to make you pay the extra money. But I thought, God, I hope nothing else comes up. Because, you know, we're talking, it could, in a matter of months, go to a couple hundred $100,000. And, you know, who's going to pay for that? So, but it's another sign of how outrageously awful they are in their treatment of people. And I stamped up and down to it. I can't believe you're doing this. And, you know, that passed with the blessing of even people like the Green Party. Like I thought, this is crazy stuff. They know this is a way to facilitate corruption.

And I would say to all of them today, if they're listening, not that they ever listened to anybody, you know, because they're not looking in a mirror. But, you know, I would say that, I would ask them to justify why that would be a reasonable decision and why that wouldn't be a facilitator of corruption. Like it is a full-blown, like, I thought I had seen everything. I made a list of 30 things which facilitate corruption at legislatures. And I thought, and this is the ultimate. Because all of these other things you can crack, but this really stops you from talking. Like, so what could also happen?

I could leave and say, by the way, I want to tell you about five other things that I'm aware of that happened at the ledge which involved illegal activity. Well, the first thing I want to say to myself was, better not say anything. Somebody's going to sue me. And why will they assume me? Well, they don't care whether they went or not.

They're just going to sue me into this don't need to punish me. So once again, it comes back to God help the poor person because you're getting nothing. You know, the person who doesn't have money, who doesn't have the wherewithal isn't articulate, doesn't have connections, they're just going to steamroll over you. And again, again,

if people just knew the half of how they do it. So anyway, so the trial goes on, you know what, the clerk, going back to your first question, got off, I think it was too much of the Scotch movie, but, you know, the clerk's trial's going on, and I'm listening to the trial, you know, I wasn't there. And, you know, remembering that the person's, you know, getting charged for activities,

which happened before I even got there. You know, some of them were related to it, but the whole payment thing, you know, the 257 thing, you know, $1,000 was happening before. And I'm listening to people testify, and I'm thinking, you know, I wish I was there to wave my hand to the judge, you know, or ask everybody to take a lie detector. And, of course, we can't do that now because I'm thinking, I can't believe you are

so lying your ass off to a judge, you know, in front of a judge, about what transpired here. Like, just ridiculous stuff. And then, of course, it's really, you're, you know, screaming out loud because I'm thinking, not only did you just tell a big fat lie, but nobody's asking a follow-up question or checking out to see whether or not it was a lie. It reminded me of when the sergeant at arms was being interviewed by retired Chief Justice McLaughlin. You know, once again, he completely lied his ass off and was ultimately convicted for lying. to Chief Justice McLaughlin. But while he was telling it to her, she just lapped it all up and said, you know, he's a good guy. You know, it's the speaker we have to watch out for.

You know, her view was, she was very explicit that what would have been better is if I had gone to him, if I had gone to, you know, the clerk and through the clerk in normal channels, well, really, that would have worked well. You know, I've got a corrupt cop and I'm supposed to go to a corrupt cop and, you know, say, look, I want this fixed.

Well, that's precisely how it ended up as it is because he was a corrupt cop, and he wouldn't do anything about it, right? So that whole business of people lying to authorities, and of course the clerk doing the same thing, and other people lying. Whether it was McLaughlin or it was the court case of the clerk. I'm thinking, like, I just cannot believe my ears.

I can't believe I'm listening to this. But then, of course, what happens to the person who's making the accusation? It's out of your hands. You know, it's either the police are looking after it, the prosecutor's looking after it, and there's no place for an outsider to come in later in the middle of a court case and seeing, excuse me. And then, of course, all kinds of things gets left off the table. Like, one of the things I didn't tell you, but I certainly don't mind.

saying it now, because there's certainly plenty of evidence to show that it actually did happen. You know, the $257,000 payout, well, how did I ever find out about that? I found out about it because he tried to do it again. He absolutely tried to do it for a lot more money, and not just for him, but for the sergeant-at-arms. And when it came to me, I'm thinking, well, this total package amounted to more than a million dollars, so-called retirement benefit. And I thought, I better sign this so haven't righted. I have proof that he actually did it. Well, then it became a big deal later with lawyers that I signed this thing.

And I'm thinking, well, I'm only sign it. If I could sign it that fast, I can rescind it that fast, too. But normally, that would have had to go through a committee. It was very clear. The policies are clear. Well, he completely skated on that. Nothing ever happened. But it was further illustration about his deceptiveness and dishonesty.

Like, we'll get into the details, but he went to great lengths to try and protect that investment. So there's all this stuff that you also know about, and it never sees the light a day. Like, people look at it, okay, it's not clear whether or not he was entitled to it. He didn't really know, as the judge said, it was a conflict of interest. Well, you know, I'm thinking it was probably more than that because he tried to do it twice, you know. Does it impact, does the outcome watching it happen, did you have more faith in our justice system prior and go, oh, no, look at the holes?

Did you think it was going to go different than it did in terms of some honesty? Well, I've said to many police officers since, like, I have a greater appreciation of their frustrations in investigating something. That's for starters. Like in Canada, it's not an offense to lie to police. You know, that's one issue, which is a bit of a problem. I did not know that. No, that's true. You can lie to police.

You know, you just can't obstruct justice. But just put a nod in my stomach, like, I was just like, what? Make you throw up or what? But that's the case, right? So you can't obstruct justice, but it's not an offense to lie to police. So that's a problem. So people just lie their ass off. That's one.

And police told me that right off the bat. They know they're going to be faced with that kind of nonsense. And then, of course, everything that's considered by police in an investigation, is ultimately a package so that it's going to a prosecutor or prosecutors for consideration for a charge in BC. If it was in another province, the police themselves could recommend the charge.

But in BC it doesn't work like that. So then it goes to a prosecutor. And what is the prosecutor going to do? Well, number one, the prosecutor doesn't want to take on a case they're not going to win. So it's supposed to be, there has to be

substantial likelihood of conviction. Well, we know what really happens there. It's like there has to be an absolute likelihood of conviction. Otherwise, why would they do it, right? I'm not saying that they push it that far, but some people say that they would, or the danger is that they would. So you're hiving lots of stuff off the table right there.

And then once it goes to the court process, the judge will consider the charges, and, oh, well, let's narrow this down, narrow that down back and forth between police, between prosecutor and defense, and it gets narrowed down to where at the end of the day, the truth is on one side of the table, and the results of the legal machinery is on the other side of the table, and they don't necessarily match up. Now, that's not to say that at the end of the day, it's a dishonest result.

But it's never a full picture, full accounting. It's all colored by what's required by our justice system. Where does justice fit in on those two things? Truth, legal system. Where is the justice? Well, I've said goodbye to that. I would, I'm not, you know, I'm so disappointed in our criminal justice system. overall in terms of its capacity to do all the kinds of investigation that's needed?

And I don't mean that as a criticism of police because I'm saying their hands are tied by the system. We just keep piling it on. No, you can't just seize that. You have to seize it in a certain kind of way. And you better have 50 steps that are at. added on to that. And so it just adds time to it. Like, that exercise went on for four years, you know, for the clerk, you know, did he take money he wasn't entitled to him? Yeah, yeah, that's what they said after four years. It took four years and probably cost us an excess of a

million dollars to get to that conclusion. And then you have to say, is it worth it? Is it worth it? Do you know that million dollars that we spent to get there just to get to a place? of very small consequences. And in the case of the sergeant-at-arms, you know, because we could have had it proceed criminally, you know, because it was breach of trust, he was found guilty of breach of trust and deceit. But, you know, they choose to go a different route,

and he escapes a penalty too. Just as the clerk did in terms of his job. Neither of them got fired for what they did, you know. In other words, we said, de facto, your behavior did not worth your being, getting dismissed over. They both resigned. You know, as soon as the reports came down from McLaughlin, the clerk resigned. And as soon as the report came down from the adjudicator and the case of the Police Act for the Sergeant Arms, he resigned. So what was the consequence?

Well, nothing. No consequence. Well, I shouldn't say no consequence because they ultimately did lose their jobs. anyway, but, yeah. I don't usually ask, but how do you think that they'll be judged for these things, hopefully at the end of their life? Do you think that all of these decisions, all of these selfish acts, result in some sort of, like, emptiness in their heart at the end,

where they have to look back and think about the misspent money, the selfishness? Do you have any hope that there will be morally within their heart? some sort of weight that they'll have to carry. Well, I like to think, I hope I'm the kind of person, and I think I've always been like this, where I am, I can forgive in a nanosecond. Now, it may not sound like that, by the way, I've been talking about some of these clowns

in political office. But once I see that there's a change behavior or an apology? Remorse. Remorse. then I'm in a nanosecond, I'm ready to forgive. But I'm still waiting to see that amongst that collection of liberals. The word sorry or apologize is not in their vocabulary.

So that's not, you know, there's that. Now, and I always say, it's not so much that I look at it and say, you know, justice will be done at some point for you. You know, karma is going to come back on you. I don't ever think that. But what I do say to myself, and which I, it boggles me that other people don't have the same feeling. No one should want to die or go through the rest of their life, knowing that they've done something which hurt other people and is unethical. And so, like I always liken this one, you know, as a politician, you absolutely have the opportunity to do corrupt things.

People are going to come to you and say, look, you do this for me, I'll put money in a bank account. Like, that absolutely happens. I never would have believed that before I went into politics, but it does. And you think, like, who the heck is, are you crazy? I had people do that come to me and offer me money. even after I exposed all the stuff at the lead, I'm thinking, like, you know, really, you know, you obviously don't look at the news, right? Because, you know, I'm not about to take a bribe from somebody.

Were you ever afraid that there was a goal to tarnish your reputation, tie you to something, and discredit you by offering that money? Because if I'm corrupt and evil, I'm thinking, hey, you know what, Daryl's, He's stirring up a bunch of stuff. Let's offer him a couple hundred thousand dollars. Let's put it in a nice bank account in the Cayman Islands. And then if he ever does speak up again, well, we've got the key to keeping his mouth shut. Well, I mean, obviously when you think of why I shouldn't do something, why you should go on the side of right, you think of, well, there's a multiplicity of reasons.

And that thought, you know, because, you know, I'm a criminologist. I'm always thinking, well, what the hell is really going on? here, right? What is somebody trying to do? Because this is so bizarre. But I know what's happened to other people as well. When I went and talked to police about one incident, they said, hey, you know, stand in line, you know, you and every other politician has got a story to tell about that, right? And of course, people never get convicted. You know, the person who's offering the bribe, because they just say, well, they must have misunderstood me because I didn't mean that at all. I'm not that stupid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's sophisticated ways to

do it anyway if somebody wanted to do that. They don't have to be as blatant as some of these people were. But one reason for, you know, again, it comes down to doing the right thing. So it's not that I say to myself, gee, you know, one day you're going to regret this. Because I do believe they'll feel regret. You know, I can't imagine they wouldn't. Like, I mean, I feel regret just even thinking about it, right? You know, I would never want to be in a situation where I have to carry that.

Like, the other thing that really boggles me is what kind of person could live knowing that they did a corrupt practice? Like, you know you're corrupt. So there's a possibility it could come back to haunt you. It must be the same kind of feeling as killing somebody. You know, it's a similar kind of feeling. Like you've done something which, because it's not. it's not undoable. You can't be involved in a corrupt act

and then raise your hand three years later and say, guess what I did? You know, I didn't mean it. It was an accident. But then on the other hand, the kind of people that some of these people are, I would just say it's a way of life. They're just...

And you have to kind of create the mindset that other people are doing it. I'm just playing ball. I'm just getting along and this is an opportunity for me and you have to justify it in some sort of way that you're not unique, that you're not as bad as you think you are.

All politicians are like this, and this is just the norm. Yeah, but I don't even think they get that because I think they're dirty before they start. Like, one thing I'm absolutely convinced about is people do not get into politics because they want to help people. They want to make a difference.

They want to make things better. Like, are there some of those people? Absolutely. There's some of those people. But for the most part, the vast majority, they're in it completely and utterly for their own personal game. Without a doubt, at least that's my experience. Like the idea of saying I want to make a difference, I would ask some of them. Here would be an interesting study for somebody to do as survey former politicians and say, I need you to write me a list of all of the things you've done, contributions.

How did you as an individual make a difference? Who did you help? Give me some names. Give me some projects. Tell me about something that you did. And you'll find that most of them won't be able to come up with one damn thing. And the kind of stuff they come up with is really not stuff that they've done. It's stuff that it's, you know, it's people who work in the ministry behind the scenes, you know, that kind of stuff.

they could probably come up with a list fairly fast of the stuff they shouldn't have done because it seems to be very common for politicians when they leave office to say you know if I had to do it over again the one wish I would do thing I should have done was I should have spoke up more

I should have been more my own person well thank you for telling that after serving one or two terms right I think that's the problem also is that we make politicians be adaptable to so many different types of people like even just watching David Eby who obviously we've agreed is a pretty great person

has to adapt to some person complaining out of the problem that he might not have any control over fixing and but he can't go it's actually incorrect you don't understand the whole logistics he has to go right I'm so sorry to hear that and that's got to be really challenging for you and your family so what the NDP's platform is you have to be

smooth. You have to have to have some gravitas and adapt. And then you take that skill set and you go into a room filled with other people and some of them are hammers and want you to adapt and want you to do exactly what I have to say. And then you're bringing that same, oh, well, it sounds like you do have a problem there and I'd be happy to help. And you know, we could just take a few steps here, there, and the other place. And we can improve the circumstances. And so you're taking people who are very adaptable and putting them in a room filled with people who are maybe like sharks who are very strategic and commanding a room and now they're not the type of people who go, I'm going to disagree with you there and let's have a debate about it and let's go up on stage and let's go up on stage and

let's go through the issues. We're selecting people who make us feel heard and then it doesn't matter if they take action. It matters if they go and what they do with other people. That doesn't matter. Politicians' role is often just to make people feel heard. And as you mentioned before, you hate that. But that seems to be, because when I was there, it was like some people were complaining about things. I know he has, as like someone who's done political science and who understands the law, he has no control over this. But he's not saying that. He's not making that clear because he's walking that fine line. He doesn't want to push people away. So the act of being a politician is almost disingenuous to begin with. Well, yeah, like I think the whole, again,

I don't want to keep harping on the homelessness issue, but there's 75,000 people in British Columbia who have a need for a home and programming, which helps them through mental health and addictions. So we're talking a huge amount of money. Well, the average cost for each one of those 75,000 people is about $70,000 or $80,000 a year. That's, you're into the billions of dollars. So you could say to David Eby, you know, I want you to fix the homeless problem and, you know, come up with a program to deal with all of this. Well, he's not going to say, get your wallet out. Let me get my wallet out because we don't have that kind of money. And you can't get it up running fast enough.

It would take a number of years so you can do parts of it. So there would be an example where the Premier, whoever it was, has such an enormous task. So even if the NDP said, you know what, we're going to spend $2 billion on this and we're going to, we're going to fix this. We're going to spend, you know, more than that on it. Well, they're still going to, they're barely going to put a dent in it because the problem is so festered and gone on for so long. So they can help situations, but because they don't eliminate them, you know, they're

constantly going to be under attack. I can just see it four years from now, five years from now. people saying about the NDP will look at, you know, they were going to try and do something and they didn't do much of anything, right? The liberals already say that, which just isn't true. But, you know, especially if you did comparing time periods to time periods and say, well, okay, well, what did the liberals do under their watch?

But so I think it's people in political office are always faced with these enormous challenges. And just as you say, once you get into real, room and you're talking to somebody about them. Like, this is a tall order to make people, you know, have people appreciate, you know, what, you know, how difficult everything is. But again, I think with, at least in my experience, the liberal approach to that is, we don't give it down what you think anyway, just tell them anything, you know, we're going to do

her own thing. We're always going to do her own thing. Somebody should go back to the liberals and say, give me a list of all the things you did, which were sparked by a concern expressed by an individual citizen who had nothing to do with your party to begin with. Don't be faking and fudging people coming forward. And once again, it'll be virtually nothing because it's all stuff which they come up with at the top. And it's all controlled by a small circle of people. And you and are talking about the importance of having input and dialogue and how all of that's there. But I don't even think they know how to spell the word. Honestly, God. The idea of dialogue is not in their vocabulary.

Yeah. The other one is Mr. Trudeau and Brenda Lachie, the commissioner for the RCMP. So from my understanding, I read the Halifax Observer report, and it basically found that Justin Trudeau has a goal of trying to get guns under control and trying to bring in more gun legislation to address issues he sees in that area. And it sounds like he saw the shooting as an opportunity to push gun legislation through and say this is our spark. We have the fire now. Now we just need to push it through the house. All we need to do is center this around guns. My understanding is Brenda Lucky influenced how many victims were being counted and kept giving new numbers.

And there was very little coordination around how many people were victims of that. And that she was the one giving new numbers. And it was like 20 minutes, then she'd give a new number. And then 20 minutes later, she'd give another number. And basically all of the journalists were like, this is crazy. How many people are there? It keeps changing. And the concern was that she felt pressured to give information so that it would encourage discussions around gun use.

I don't know if I got all of that perfectly correct. But that overstepping between Mr. Trudeau, whoever's on his team, communicating with the RCMP Commissioner, is a dangerous line to walk, particularly if it's only for political gain of saying that you've got some sort of bill through and you're bringing out new legislation. Right. So what you're saying is there's a possibility that the federal liberals were seizing on this moment for a political advantage. I don't think they'd ever do that because they're such great, like they've never made a mistake

before, but yeah. Yeah. So when I'm saying, we can agree that some people would have that. Something like that. And then they put the political spin on it. And then, of course, the person who's been appointed, you know, as a commissioner for the RCMP, would, you know, would never want to be in a situation where they, you know, absolutely disagreed with the prime minister's office.

I mean, that's probably not going to have a healthy outcome at some point, right? Yeah. So there's a lot of pressure there. But, I mean, I guess I would step back, you know, on one thing with regard to the whole gun thing. And I'm the hugest fan of no guns. If it was up to me, I'd say, no guns. We don't need guns, right? But the reality is that we do need guns, right?

And people live in the North need guns for safety purposes. People need guns for target practice. I'm not a fan of punishing everybody for the behavior of a few. Like that whole package is pointed towards a belief, an assumption that somehow, because we have gun availability, that that's what's driving crime.

And that's just not true. Like, it's not like the guy who goes up and wax a gangbanger is saying, I'm going to make sure I'm using a registered firearm, you know. And, I mean, I think, again, I know there's a higher likelihood of, you know, somebody killed accidentally with a firearm that's being stored in a house and, you know, access to kids and all that. But anytime we have a situation where, you know, we're punishing every single person

who has good reason to have a firearm or wants a firearm because they're using it as a sport at a rifle club or gun club because we have a handful of people who abused it. Like, that's just nonsense. We might as well take cars away from everybody because we have some people who, you know, drive impaired, right?

We don't punish everybody. But it seems on this issue, it's been flipped into a political discussion and I don't think people have been given an accurate picture of what's involved here because if they did I'm not sure that they would agree that we need a ban we have pretty strict gun laws now in Canada I mean you can't you know restoring a gun with you know an ammunition in the same place it has to has to be registered so you know what's going to happen now once we went through all this. Does this mean that all of a sudden, all those people who do these gang

hits are going to come forward and, you know, use a different kind of firearm? And, you know, it's just, it's just nonsense. It's not going to happen. And with that, the case that we're talking about surrounding Brenda Lucky, my understanding is all of them came from the U.S. and all of them were illegal. That's at least my understanding. No, no, that's right. So, so there again, Like it has nothing to do with a gunman. Like, there's no relationship between the two substantially. Right. So I'm saying I would even broaden that to say there's no relationship between what happens with guns used in crime and the availability of firearms in general.

And to what, I mean, obviously there's some because firearms are used. but to say that everybody should be punished because we have these few people like we're increasingly living in a world where somebody in government wants to punish us all wants to take something away from all of us because there's some little thing that they want to do so yeah

so I'm not I'm not a And again, personally, I'm not a fan because I say, why do you need guns for target practice anyway? Use something else. But, you know, I'm not a gun enthusiast, so it's a bit unfair for me to say. But in the case of the commissioner and the prime minister, I would just say this. it's my understanding when Pierre Elliott Trudeau was Prime Minister on his first or second day in office he made a point of calling up the then commissioner for the RCMP

and asking him to come over to his office in the Parliament buildings and when the officer arrived in the Prime Minister's office Trudeau said to him, you know, thank you for being here, but this is the last time I ever see you want to set foot in this office unless you're here to arrest me. You have your job to do, I have mine, and we should not be crossing paths. We should not be communicating with one another. Like, they're completely separate. Like, what a wonderful concept, right? But of course, over the years, there's all kinds of suspicion.

that that's changed to where, you know, yes, you're appointed as a commissioner of the RCMP and you expected to do your own thing. But wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You know, we don't really mean that. We still need you on side with government. And all I would say about that, whether or not there was anything untoward with a commissioner Lucky and the prime minister's office. And I don't know enough about it because I wasn't privy to the whole thing, but I was definitely privy to circumstances in British Columbia where you had appointees. And there was an invisible separation between these appointees. They were full-blown government appointees and definitely on the side of government. They are not going to do anything to

tick off the government. And part of it is the way the system works. You're appointed to be the conflict of interest commissioner for a period of years. Well, why are you going to behave yourself for five years? Because you're not going to get reappointed for another five years, right? That kind of thing. And so there's that pressure to keep from doing anything that the government disagrees with. And I would say in my experience, that's true for the ombudsperson's office. And even though the ombud's person is a person of great integrity, it's still the nature of the way the thing is set up,

that don't hold your breath that they're going to be coming out and doing anything, which is against the government. Another great example is auditor generals. Like, when is an auditor general ever said anything? that held anybody accountable. Like, that's the biggest joke on the planet. Like, I'm there to make sure the government hold them accountable on their financial expenditures

and on other matters related to finances. And then at the end of the day, they'll write the reports and say, I recommend this, I recommend this, slap, slap, I think you should do your job better, without ever mentioning a name, without ever saying somebody should be fired. You know, somebody was, should be removed from office for the way they behave?

No. And then the other thing is the auditor general chooses what they're going to investigate unless it's a specific request from government. And the government isn't going to request and say, please investigate us for wrongdoing, you know, because it seems something wrong. I couldn't remember going to our auditor general. and telling her to her face, as far as I was concerned, she should be in handcuffs. She should be in jail.

Fortunately, she resigned a few weeks after I told her that. But I asked her to do an audit. And, you know, because I figured there was, you know, this money was being misspent. Well, she said, oh, absolutely, I will do an audit for you. You can count on that. What a bunch of crap. There wasn't no audit. The audit was of my office instead of that.

It was the clerk's office, and it was just a gong show, and then that was followed up. Or am I going to her and saying, here, here's some evidence of fraud, and they're just ignoring me. Never mind her. It was people in her office just ignored me. And fortunately, that was one of the things he absolutely did get convicted of, was what the auditor general said, I don't have time for, it's got nothing to do with me. And of course she wasn't going to do that Because, you know, all our buddies were, you know, in the pool of, you know, doing these nefarious activities.

So, you know, the only way I think you could correct this problem, you could correct a lot of problems, is to say you have an oversight committee. We do so-called have that with the Senate, right? an independent Senate, which says, okay, you've just passed this legislation? Well, let's do a second look at it to see if it can pass mustard otherwise. But you could do, you know, have oversight committees of, you know, activities for BC Hydro, for example, because there's been lots of concern about, you know, the way they do business or the way the government asked them to do business.

Sight-see. Yeah. And then, or run of the river projects, which cost a few dollars, but not that that's VC Hydro's fault. You know, it's government, you know, getting them to do things. But if you had a committee,

like, just say, for example, I said, Aaron, I need you and 10 other people you know, I need you to be an oversight body for to make sure that they're not cheapness on our taxes, that it's money reasonably well spent. You can ask any questions you want, get any expertise you want,

and so if I ask you to do that, and I'm going to pay you a per diem to do that, what vested interest do you have? If I tell you, you're going to do it for five years and you're not getting reappointed, forget it, it's not happening. There's no reappointment. Well, you have no, you're not connected to any party. You're not, you know, you're just doing it.

Because it's a very clear thing, just like we ask a judge to look at a case. But the moment I say, I'm appointing you as a member of the government, that's a different situation. Because it's long term. And it's a political appointment. I'm saying there should be almost like an agency where you could say, I'm not, you know, an agency where you're not, it's not connected to anybody. And so that all, you get a very genuine view of things, a very genuine audit of many different kinds of what's going on.

We could do that. Eish, this is a heavy topic. I'm just interested. Do you plan on doing something more in the future? Your voice seems so important on these issues, and I'm just interested. You offer a lot of insight. You have an understanding of these issues

where most people can only make guesses on the kind of the internal structures of these mechanisms, these governmental organizations. Have you thought about hosting something being? No, not it's, I guess, you know, I still am busy doing my research, the academic stuff, which is all fun stuff, right? And, you know, with all of the people

you connect to on those research projects, you know, it's all well-meaning, you know, everybody has everybody else's interests at heart. It's just fun, fun, fun. It's academia. The other kinds of things, I think it's what I've come to think is it's important to be supportive of people that you think or have integrity to run for office because not everybody wants to do it it's not a pleasant exercise and so in fact I've said I know somebody here who's running for council

in Chilwaukee I don't even live in Chilawak but I heard he was running and I thought well I should I'll support that person financially and for no other reason that I have confidence in him I trust him And to take a guess on who that is? It might be Jared Mumford, but I don't know if that's who you were thinking of. That wasn't who I was going to guess.

I was going to guess Bud, just because he was the OCP. I haven't talked to him for a long time. Oh, Jared. I know Jared. It's great, yeah. So I think he's very sincere about what he does. So I'm thinking you can influence things that way. So in Abbotsford, I have people that I say, you know, I'm, I'll support you.

You can put a sign on my lawn Because I want to see you in office So Yeah, that's Interesting I just I hear CTV's hiring

They're just like Oh Lisa Lafam So I just I think of you as one of those voices That I just enjoy hearing from On these types of issues Well that's nice of you to say But I'm sure I'd be fired too

Because you know My hair all soon be going gray And I won't have I'll let my contract will be, you know, canceled because I'll be identified as an old person. But I, you know, I think I love what you do, you know, your podcast, they're just, you know, you're fun. And there's no pretense. You don't have any notes, right? We're not, it's just, we're just rambling on, right?

Maybe your viewers will say that too. But it's that kind of thing. And I just wish there was more of a way to get it out there. And I think more and more it's going to happen, right? Now, yours are long podcasts, right? But, and you sometimes wonder, well, gee, I wonder if Aaron did 10-minute things, right? Just all a bunch of 10-minute ones, right? Yeah, I know I can clip these to get the, to make it shorter and stuff.

It's just, it lacks something personally where it's like there's an authentic part of you. And then there's a shame I feel of like, say you say something really, bold 40 minutes in I'm like that's not the thing I hated about your representation was that like in this podcast earlier on you were talking about how everybody has potential and

we just got to support people in their development like you need to hear that and then hear your complaint about politics I so appreciate that yeah because in almost all media the editors have an opportunity to cancel that out like you know in the print

media TV media television, but yeah, it does, it's huge because, like, I don't feel awkward saying things to you, whereas if I had to parcel out some things I've said, and I was saying in another venue, I'm saying, well, I better not say that, because that's going to be taken out of context. You know, all of a sudden I think all politicians are evil. Well, that's just not true, right? It's only 90% of them. Well, I appreciate it.

I hope to have you back on whenever you like to talk about these things, because I think you just offer that lens that other people just don't have the experience of being in the rooms and seeing how business gets done to kind of give us an understanding of what's kind of taking place. So I appreciate you coming back on. Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks for having me here. And thanks for that little bit of scotch, you know. Was it peedy enough?

No, it wasn't a peedy kind of. It was a very good, very pricey scotch, actually. Yeah, my friend Jacob, who actually took it, who knows you as well, who bought it for me. Okay, yes, it's very good. And what a pleasure. I mean, first time I've done an interview where I've had a glass of scotch. But I want all viewers to know that I had, you know, one ounce, and that was an hour ago. So I'm safe to walk out.

Two hours ago, several hours ago, so I'm quite sober. Absolutely. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. You know,