Shaun Newman Podcast - #276 - Cory Morgan

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Opinion & Broadcast Editor of the Western Standard hops on to discuss Alberta independence, censorship & warning labels on ground beef packaging. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Support here:⁠ https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast⁠

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Now, let's get onto that tale of the tape. He is the opinion and broadcast editor of the Western Standard. I'm talking about Cory Morgan. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Corey Morgan. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on.

Oh, happy to. Thanks for the invite. Now, I know a lot of people here in Western Canada are going to know you from the Western standard and triggered and your columns and everything else. But I thought we might start with just a little bit background on you, Corey. I was curious. I was saying it before we started, you know, it's funny. Usually you hop on the internet and maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. That could be fair.

And, you know, you dig into somebody. And certainly I found some things. But normally it's almost like a personal history is just sitting there. And I found Corey Morgan to be a little bit of a gray zone. So I thought maybe we could start with a little bit of your background, Corey. So people certainly, if they haven't listened to you before, can get a feel for who they're listening to here. Sure. I mean, I'm a lifelong Albertan.

I guess to start with, I've always been a bit of a political dork. So I've always been heavily into the news, keeping up on the issues and political involvement. So I was tickled pink when I was 18 years old and managed to get a Reform Party membership and volunteered for Preston Manning and caught the political bug, but it was always on the lower levels, and I was always involved and active, and I guess you can say engaged, but just a lower level volunteer.

Aside from that, I worked in the oil field for almost 20 years. I guess part of what may be stand out a bit is eventually I get to a point, it's perhaps one of my strengths or one of my failures. When I get a notion to do something, I just go ahead and do it. I don't wait. I don't talk about it. I just carry on. So I guess the biggest jumping point, though, I'd been involved in some party politics and the executives was when I decided when I was 29, you know what, Alberta needs an independence party.

I don't see one out there. So, damn it, I'm just going to go out and form one. And I did, and it managed to make a lot of news, actually, make a lot of ripples for a few months. And then we ripped ourselves to shreds because we still didn't really know what the hell we were doing. But it kind of entrenched me into a kind of a higher level of politics and activism. And I don't know how far down the rabbit hole you want to go, but over the years, there have been a number of political involvements, whether again it's stuff on the executive level of parties or running for parties just when they need spots filled or even just some of the activist things I've done stunts such as with Occupy Calgary and things that kind of made some waves as well. And once I left the oil field, I realized I guess I had some degree of, at least some people that knew of me or are familiar with me. and it sort of transferred into a media position

where I've been writing now for the Western Standard and for some other publications as well on a freelance level and I've settled in from there. Well, let's rewind the clock. Let's go back to when you're 29. You talk about just jumping kind of headlong in, jumping into the fire, so to speak. What year are we talking?

Like this is right around the year 2000, yes? Yes, yeah. So I guess I'm not a political junkie. I, people who've listened to me for some time, you know, I'm a sports guy, I'm a hockey guy, and I started this not to talk about politics at all, although I never put that constraint on me. I started this to, I don't know, scratch an itch, so to speak, and then that itch kind of just kept growing. And then, you know, as you start talking more and more people, and then COVID hits, and you're like, what on earth is going on? And now I can't turn my eyes from it because, you know,

as you start to learn, politics controls an awful lot about a country. So if you rewind the clock, with this separation, probably autonomy in there as well, they kind of go hand in hand. Here, coming from a newbie or a relative newbie,

has it been frustrating then to have thought about it, had it torn to pieces then, and have it come almost full swing back, because, you know, here we are 20 years later, and it's being talked about just as much, if not more so. And I can't put myself back in the year 2000. I was pretty young back then.

But, you know, you've been around it then for a long time and thought about it for a long time. Heck, tried to form something to do it. Yeah, well, there's frustrations in how long it seems to be taken and how circular. There's no doubt. Something I bring up its speeches or presentations often is there's a cartoon called the Milch Cow. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but I believe it's from like 1905, and it shows a cow straddling the whole country of Canada. and all the Westerners are feeding this cow

while Central Canada is drawing all the milk out of it in the middle. And it just shows that that issue as us being resource workers and Central Canada is sort of just draining us has been going on for over 100 years and still we're running in circles on it. But I don't find myself totally frustrated because I think it's a progression.

I feel the system's broken. I don't think it personally. I don't have a beef with Central Canadians themselves or things like that. I feel our system was created wrong. and little by little, I guess, incrementally, we got to work and making enough people realize that, and the only way to fix it is sort of to tear it down and rebuild it.

And I couldn't see another approach aside from having a constitutional crisis, such as a province either right on the brink of secession or getting out. So my step, when I was 29, that was a step towards it. It was a learning experience for me. It woke some people up. The issue faded a bit. It rose again. It faded a bit.

But it's all moving, I think, towards the right direction. So it can't get frustrated from past failures. They were learning experiences and making progress in a way, even if people don't see it as such. Well, what did you learn back then? What was some of the things you took out of that experience, trying to form something that would be very divisive? That isn't, you know, the Amiton Oilers being in the playoffs,

although them beating the flames, you know, certainly brought a province together for a short stint and then certainly divided them all over again. But something like separation, even for myself, right? I love Canada and talking about it, I'm conflicted just because I certainly understand the issues, but as a whole sense, you know, I always considered myself Canadian almost first before anything else. So it's a hard thing to break. It doesn't mean it shouldn't maybe eventually happen. I guess I'm just trying to understand the whole thing maybe more. But I go back to maybe some of the

things you learned back then as people talk about it more and more all over again. It seems like a cycle almost. Yeah, I understand. And it's, it's where I've learned also to, emotions are real. And attachments that people have to the concept of a nation are real, even if there's not a tangible thing somebody could see. If you look at it coldly and rationally, it's not hard to make the case on how systematically bad Canada is for the West. But still, that doesn't mean that it's important for people on the ground who just they don't want to rip this nation apart just to fix a system that's broken. So it's a difficult balance to attain. So I don't shoot at the notion of Canada itself or Canadians themselves. Again, it's the system we've got to remain focused on.

But that's a tough case to make it a doorstep. That's a lot of what we learned then was our own naivety. I mean, we got slaughtered in the election for a number of reasons. One of which was, of course, we just didn't know what the hell we were doing. We were a party. It was only a few months sold and going into an election against Ralph Klein. I mean, come on. But all the same, we made some inroads. But when you go out door knocking and talk to people too, a lot of it, the term I've always used is Albertans, you know, I'm sure it's the same as Saskatchewan, a B.C., or reluctant separatists. We're frustrated. We're ticked off with the status quo, but if we can find an escape hatch, we'll always grab it. Like, we don't want to go. But,

you know, more and more, every time one of these surges comes and fades away, it leaves behind more people who realize that half measures aren't working. And this system still remains tragically broken. And, you know, we're running out of options on how we're going to try and fix it or just accept that we're always going to be almost a colony-style province in the West to a dominant central government. So, I mean, there was lessons, like I said, and how unprepared I was to lead a party, but also just lessons I did learn.

I mean, I was much better prepared afterwards or into activism and learned a lot. And I think we brought the issue to the forefront a lot. people looked at secessionism back then as this is the domain of pitchfork waving cowboy hat wearing Christian lunatic well here's this this 29 year old non-Christian urban living young man making the case for it he didn't fit the stereotype so maybe this is getting a broader appeal what I'm curious what led you to uh you know 29 was obviously a pivotal year where you jump in and and and I would assume that event really shaped your, you know, the next 10 years or how, or maybe even until now. But what led you to wanting to do that? Like, were you watching certain things? Were you studying

something? Were you having conversations? Like, it's a different world back then. Yeah, it was a frustration. And again, being a bit wonky and a bit of, you know, I'd read things like the Constitution and policies and realize what I felt at least to be the flaws within it, but seeing that it just seems like nobody else is doing something effective about it. So if somebody else isn't going to, as I said, that's one of my things, well, damn it, I'll all get out and try and do something about it. And the irony of it is one of the final things that got under my skin was that it's going back for political people who remember that far back was the Vreen decision.

And that's where actually people, LGBTQ community were involved or written into the Alberta human rights legislation, which ironically, again, I had absolutely no problem with. It's fantastic development, actually. We were way overdue to, I mean, we hadn't even started talking about gay marriage yet or things like that. This is a great move. The problem I had was it was a federal court forcing it on Alberta, though. These decisions should be coming from us from within. we should evolve to these things from ourselves. And the province opposed it and it lost because the federal government could tell us how we mandate our provincial legislation.

So, I mean, I'm kind of torn. Like I said, I kind of agreed with the government's ruling. I just didn't agree with the government's ability to rule that way. So you would rather have the provinces take care of themselves? I would, yes. I would rather have been saying than joining people from the LGBTQ community rallying on the steps outside of the legislature, demanding that Ralph Klein entrenched this in Alberta legislation, then have a federal government come in and force the province to do so.

Because even if the federal government might have been making the right choice at that time, it was the mechanism that was a problem. That's what I keep getting back to is it's the system. That's the issue more than the particular issues. Well, then I'll ask a really dumb question or maybe a naive question. I assume it isn't just like you press a button and everything's fixed. I assume this is a giant problem. This is 20 years plus in the making.

This is 100 years in the making. What event has to happen to send it over the brink? And then once it's over the brink, how much chaos ensues while you try and rebuild a system that, you know, for most Canadians, frustration is there, but it isn't boiling over, so to speak. No, it's not there. And maybe it'll never get there. It depends on the mindset. The anarchist in me, I guess I don't fear a little bit of time in transition where things are going to be a little nuts.

I mean, we've already been through a couple of years of semi-insanity as it stands. As I said, I mean, I was just getting into politics and watching things when attempts of constitutional reform, systemic reform happened with Meach Lake in Charlottetown. Those were relatively modest proposals to change the Constitution, and they failed. They didn't even come close to coming in. So what you have to accept is moving through the regular mechanisms if you want to change the Constitution to Canada is pretty much impossible. So you have to accept that either it's never going to change or you have to change the rules. A piece of legislation that came out shortly before I formed that Alberta Independence Party was called the Clarity Act, actually. Kretchen brought it in.

And it did entrench, actually, the right of a province. And it said that the rest of the country has to negotiate the secession of a province in good faith if that province votes to secede in a clear referendum question. That I could see as the catalyst, the thing that would bring the nation to the point where constitutional change could happen. Whether it's, as I said, if a province, whether it's Alberta or Quebec or Newfoundland for that matter, is really that close. If things have really gotten that acute that they're on the break and saying, hey, we're out of here, then maybe people will be receptive to saying, well, how can we change the system so this doesn't happen. Or maybe the province votes and then it is 60% says we're

out of here. Well, now we do have a heck of a constitutional crisis. And again, according to the legislation, doesn't mean that province is out overnight, but it means we're now into a negotiation period legislatively where the country has to negotiate in good faith. And again, that might be the mechanism where we can start changing how things are laid out. Well, here in Alberta, we got an interesting thing playing out. Obviously, Jason Kenney. stepping down and you're going to have a leadership race here. You know, some of the names, Gene and Taves and Smith and I assume there will be others. There's been rumors of different people. Maybe there's a few that have even confirmed now. I'm not sure. One of the things,

I don't know, you talk about the insanity in the last two years. That is exactly what it's been. It's been absolute insanity. Otherwise, I'm not sure Kenny has the, the voting. against them and everything else. It's the two years, I would say, that lead to where he ultimately steps down. When the new person gets voted in, isn't this something that they're going to, like, I feel like I hear them talking an awful lot about it. I hear an awful lot of this being talked about Alberta pulling back, you know, police force, pension taxes. I'm sure I'm butchering it, but you get the point. Do you look at that and go, oh, that's possible? Or you go, it's not that simple? Well, a bit of both. I mean, it's not simple, but these are things we can do.

And these are things we've been talking about for 20 years. One of the factors that that actually brought about the end of that party I'd founded was that, as I said, people look for a life hatch rather than wanting to succeed. I mean, they're reluctant secessionists, as I've always said. Stephen Harper and a number of other political scientists back then, this is previous to him leading the Conservative Party, put out a paper called the Alberta Agenda, and others called it the firewall letter, and it called for exactly all of those things.

It called for Ralph Klein to bring in a pension plan, a police force, to take control of health care, take control of local taxation, all of the same things you just mentioned. And that's what really depleted this, because a lot of people said, oh, Corey, we don't need to go with the nuclear option of secession. We can get all of these things

through these individual policy things and fix the problem. But even since then, Stephen Harper even had a majority federal government. He didn't address any of those things. Not a single provincial government has addressed any of those things. Yet none of those things are extreme. There's not a single thing in that Alberta agenda or now it's been kind of redrafted. You see the Buffalo Declaration. You see all of these other versions of it, all calling for the same thing.

Quebec has their own pension plan. They control their own taxation with coming in and out. A number of provinces have provincial police forces. why is it considered extreme whenever Alberta wants to do some of these things when other provinces have already been doing so for decades? And that again in itself kind of exposes some of that national double standard we're suffering under in this country. Yeah, that's an interesting point. I think that's probably a little bit of the media portraying it along with politicians, I'm sure. But if there's anything we've learned over the last, certainly this guy has learned over the last two years is how media can,

really paint a picture. And so when you talk about Quebec having it, and it's not extreme, but Alberta wants it. It is extreme. Well, to me, I come back to a guy who was on here a long, a while back now, Shane Getson and an MLA here in Alberta. And certainly he's made news in the last little bit with Mr. Gene, but he talked, he talked about politicians do what the public want. and politicians do the public opinion, public opinions formed by media. And I mean, media in our country, I mean, the Western standards beginning to do a pretty good job of informing people that are looking for that voice. But up until, you know, not that long ago, it's been one word, one message, and nothing to counteract it. Geez, with Bill C-11, you know, being pushed hard by the government, that kid, well, I was actually wondering how many more days Cory Morgan gets to say what he says or Sean Newman gets to have these conversations if something like that comes in.

Well, it's very telling the things that this government, and I think nobody can argue that even if it was a thing that developed, I mean, Justin Trudeau is the most authoritarian prime minister we've had in generations. He wants to control things. I mean, whether people say that's for a good reason or a bad, that's a separate debate, you know, whether he had to quell insurrections, which I found laughable, but all the same, he wants control. And people within that government do recognize information. If you can control the information, you can control the messaging and control the people to a degree. And C-11 and C-18 should be chilling to people. They should really understand.

As you said, there's alternative media like your podcast, like the Western Standard, like my own personal podcast I used to have. If those get shut down, you start to. get a very narrow amount of information out there. I had a formative experience at the end of the 80s. I actually got to tour the Soviet Union when it was still Soviet. And I've told the story a number of times, but it really impressed upon me because we got searched as we crossed the border, had our bag searched as you typically would. But they weren't looking for drugs or things like that. They were looking for books and cassettes. And they would seize them if you had. Because they wanted to make

sure that people only got their information from Pravda. They only got their entertainment music from Russian produced, you know, producers of music or anything else like that. And that's because they needed to maintain that control. It's, it's, that's how important the control of information is to an authoritarian government. So it's pretty disturbing when we see how the, the links that our government's going to to control it. And this is what makes me optimistic about things changing down the road because we didn't have these alternative medias in the past. So if we got a moment, I'll tell a learning story I had about media when I left at Alberta Independence Party, because it really as I said, there's a lot of naivity I lost at that time. So we hit a lot of news. We had a founding

convention. There were some members of parliament showed up there. It shook things up. You know, Kretchen's calling everybody traitors and the conservatives are fighting. Good old stuff. Nothing different than today. And I got invited to do an interview on CBC News World. So I knew they weren't exactly going to be friendly with me. They never had been. But I mean, we'd need to take the press where we could, particularly then, because you had no alternatives. You had to reach out to people. I mean, email, you know, even a quarter of our membership only had me email addresses, so you really had to get the messaging out. So I went to the CBC studios in Calgary. They're gone. Now they've actually torn that building down. And they sat me in the middle of a newsroom on this

stool with no back on it and hooked me up with an earpiece and a camera was in front of me and a green screen was behind me and said, okay, somebody will be on with you soon, and then just left me So I'm sitting on this, it's perched on this stool and people are walking back and forth, left and right of me, I'm getting uncomfortable, I'm starting to sweat. This camera's staring at me, I don't know what the hell's going on. I can't get up because I'm actually hardwired through my earpiece to the ground here. Finally, when I'm just aching, suddenly a voice pops in my head from a Toronto producer. They say, oh, you're going live in 30.

You ready? Like, I guess so. And the light pops on on the camera and suddenly I'm on with Ben Chin. who I believe now was actually working for the liberal government, ironically. And they spent 20 minutes just beaten the hell out of me on that interview. It was just, it was him and a couple other panelists, and they would ask a question, and then spend five minutes to explain everybody why I was in imbecile and ask another. And I was so twitchy and uncomfortable by then, and people, like I said, are distracting and they're walking.

But nobody sees that. All they saw on their screen is this guy with a mountain scape in the background coming from Alberta, and they're saying, why is this distracted, awkward, twitchy guy talking? What's the matter with him? I mean, they had a full studio, as I learned later when I've gone more times to the CDC, 50 feet away from me that I could have sat in a comfortable chair at a news desk and done an interview with full concentration and my eyes on the camera, but they chose to sticking in the middle of a newsroom on a stool.

That's the sort of stunts our establishment media pulled back then, and I suspect now, but let me know just the links they will go to to slant messaging, and it carries on to this day. Well, I've always wondered, you know, when I go back to the last federal election and they didn't allow Maxine Bernier on. Now, everybody can have their thoughts on the PPC. That's not what I'm here to debate.

But you have a federal election debate. You have, and I forget his name from Quebec, he says openly in the debate, I'm not running for prime minister. I don't want to win. like so why are you up there you have the green party who can't answer half the questions because that's not their agenda like well well what are they doing but you had maxine bernier who had some some some voice there and actually some umph behind him somewhat not sitting here saying he would

have changed anything but it would have been an interesting person to have on stage and by them removing that that's controlled right that's controlling who steps on there we just saw you know with the with the conservative federal party the federal conservative party uh with joseph borgot and then there was two others that you know by all means made signatures made money both or all three of them don't get to uh um actually run and debate it's an interesting little slight a hand almost right where and that's i think that's no different than what you're talking about right this is this isn't just new This isn't just in the last year and a half and all of a sudden people are talking about it. It's actually been going on for quite some time.

There's just never been the opportunity for different media outlets to talk about it. And, you know, podcasting has certainly been on the rise and has allowed for this type of conversation to get out and really dodge some of the mainstream outlets and let you hear some of the stories that actually go on. Yeah. information is leaking out that they can't be controlled. And again, for authoritarian-minded people, even if they think they're doing the right thing, that disturbs them. If you can't control it, that that makes them uncomfortable, it worries them. And, you know, in the past, debates used to carry a heck of a lot more weight.

You know, you went to the 90s, it was a most people, a lot of people, the undecided vote would be huge until the official English debate hit. Because everybody would tune in, the ratings would be huge, because that's where people would really sit there and give a good look at all. all those leaders and actually make up their mind. But that's changed. Ratings on debates are horrific. They're terrible.

They're low. Only already decided people tend to watch them. They don't swing the needle very much one way or another anymore because people are getting both entertainment and information from 100 different directions now. Curious. When you talk about the debates from the 90s till now, have they changed? Because no, they've been the same garbage? Pretty much.

They haven't changed very much. As I said, they used to have more impact. A lot of people talked about a turning point, getting back to the 80s even, when Brian Mulrooney won the election back then, it was when he gave a knockout punch to Turner during a debate, like just nailed him. But it was also a vitriolic debate. That's where you're talking to you. This is supposed to be nuanced policy and everything, and everybody's celebrating the knockout

punch. It was still out of control. You still had debates where they would shout over each other. You still had the discord. the only difference was there were a lot more people tuning into it. And now they don't get that many people, particularly undecided people. So these debates don't have the strength that the media likes to attribute to them. I obviously doing long form interviews, every time I watch a debate, I'm like, they're not really saying anything.

You know, like they have their little grandstand for a minute and a half and then they go on to the next and they get cut off and they get this. And, you know, I watched the one in Emmington with all the conservatives. And that one just made me chuckle. I was like, I eventually just turned it off. I was like, this isn't informing me on anything at this point. Yeah, well, that one was bizarre. I mean, that one I can't compare to any past ones. I'd never seen anything where they played sad trombones or had the host yelling

and schooling the audience. That was an outlier. But as you said, it was nonproductive. Another thing that unfortunately is a consequence, I shouldn't say, you know, they haven't changed altogether. candidates know that because there aren't so many undecided people watching these events anymore, they don't have as much to win in trying to strive in these debates. So, I mean, as you know from hockey, you know, if you're winning, you're going to pull it tight.

You're not going to take chances. So that's why they don't say a lot anymore. You're not out to score a knockout punch because you won't win the election with a debate, but you can lose it if you screw up. So, Corey, let's think about that for a second. Why or where, or maybe both, are undecided people. people going? Where are they going? And how are they deciding who they're going to vote for? Well, you know, and there's no single source anymore. And I think that's fantastic. It's forcing

these politicians to get out and find those undecided. They have to try and engage them. If they want to win these things, they've got to find these people and get them out. And I don't know if they're doing a good job of it yet. I mean, look at the Ontario election results. What was it, 41% of people actually bothered to come out as not a good development for democracy. But it's also showing that these aspiring politicians then they have to do more, they have to do better. So sitting there talking in an echo chamber at a leadership debate isn't going to cut it. They're going to have to get out to some of these independent media sources. I mean, a lot of the viewers who watch the standard or, you know, even on the left wing ones, get their information from Canada land or listen to your podcast,

these are people often who have given up on all the rest of the mainstream media. So these politicians are going to have to find ways to reach them through our outlets. And I think it's a good development. Not all of them have learned how to do that yet. Other ways to get changed. It's funny, I was on my show today. I was speaking with a paramedic, and he's been frustrated with the status quo of paramedic services in Alberta. He's been an activist as a paramedic for 13 years, and nothing has changed. And one of the times when politicians I said to him are very receptive is right now because they're in the middle of a leadership race, particularly with the UCP. The next winner is going to be our next premier, maybe only for a few months, maybe for a few years. But when I get

them on the show and chances are because of our outlet we'll probably get all or most of those candidates on. I have Daniel Smith next week. I'm going to ask every one of them that question. I'm going to say, what are you doing about this? Why do we have paramedics doing hospital care in hospitals while people are dying, waiting for an ambulance to show up? How are you going to address it? And this is getting saved on video. They know this now. It's not like the old days of TV. It's going to be forgotten in a year. It's going to hang up there on YouTube and rumble and everywhere else. And if you get elected and become the Premier and you don't do these things, we're going to rub your face in that. We're going to pull that interview up. We're going to say you promise this.

Why didn't you do it? We've got a whole new means now of holding them accountable that are still developing. I think, you know, we're getting better at it as broadcasters and hopefully these politicians will get better at it and responded. Well, and the other thing is the Western standard isn't getting funded by the government. That'll be an interesting. You bring up Daniel Smith. She's been on the show multiple times. And that's actually what I said to her. last time was like you win like you've literally just said you're going to do all these things i i don't know any different like i'm about as you know i'm told this is what politicians do they tell you one thing they get elected and they go on with their day and they do something else well i'm going to

be pretty pissed off when uh things don't change because i was having this debate uh a podcast or two ago about i'm very optimistic like i'm very optimistic Like, I mean, the last two years have been horrific. Like, it hasn't been good at all here in Canada, right? Like, I got family down in the States and, you know, like some of the views looking up, but everybody's wondering what on earth is going on here, specifically now, maybe not in the early days, but specifically now with, you know, travel mandates and everything else. Trisa Tam talking about the 18th wave and all that good stuff.

But I don't know. I guess I just look at it and I go, I got. optimism coming for this upcoming election. Do you think that optimism is in the wrong place? Or do you look at what's possibly about to happen? You mentioned with having maybe different means, I would argue that Western Standard not being financed by them would be the different means. It isn't a conflict of interest to hold people accountable. I feel like government should always be held accountable, whether it was 100 years ago or now. But now you have all these independent little, kind of little spots interviewing them because they have to, because they got to go

and talk to the audiences from the different areas. So we all got it on film and everything else at our disposal. Is my optimism misplaced in that, that maybe change is coming? No, I don't think it's misplaced at all. It might not happen as fast as we'd like it to. You know, it's in evolution. It's in flux. I mean, all of this is so new on so many levels. But I see the direction it's going. And I hope these politicians see it. I won't be shocked to see somebody, though, winning, even after blowing sunshine up our arses during our interviews and then going the other way, two years from now. But we're going to have a whole new means of grabbing them. I mean, if they did that on a CBC interview two years ago, nobody can dig up, you know, 20 years ago, you wouldn't be able to dig up those old words and feed them back to them.

Or not easily. Now they're going to be held to account. And that leaves the, there's where I get a little worried, you know, is with an apathetic and comfortable public. You'll have the means now to hold it against them, but will you do it? will you, if this politician's totally flip-flops on what they said on the way in, will you fire them four years from now? Because that's what you've got to do. You can't let them get away from it.

So some of that's incumbent upon the public in general. We've got these new tools now in order to do it and expose them. But we as a public have to pay attention and do something about it when the time comes. And I'm not quite as optimistic about that, but I do think it may happen. Well, accountability is, you know, in any occupation, whether you're at the Western standard or sitting here, certainly in government, accountability is, well, I mean, without that, I mean, you just get away with things and you never, you know,

like we've been hearing all the different stories coming from. It doesn't matter what parts of government, the spending, the loss of money, the, the project's not getting done, the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's something that I think when you look at it, you go that just, it makes so much sense that it needs to be there, but how do you impose that on, you know, once again, I go back to a few interviews ago,

talking about politicians wearing body cams, no different than cops. That way, whenever they're in a meeting, everything is filmed. That way they're held accountable to every word they say at all times of, you know, obviously you're not going to have it in the debrief of some military thing,

but just so the public has, there's a level of protection that dirty dealings aren't happening, essentially. Yeah, and I love that concept. And then we kind of have that in a smaller way. I mean, not to their internal cabinet or caucus meetings, but we have that in general, again, when they're constantly doing these public interviews, when they're constantly getting candid on Twitter or Facebook or other means, you're seeing them and it's being documented. And again, and it's being remembered in ways that we didn't have before. One of the things that they used to get away with all the time

was they would say one thing in the French debates to Quebec for their campaign and say a totally different one in the English ones. And everybody would forget because nobody did tune in to both. They would just be one of the other. But now, Pollyev, who I like is a conservative candidate. I mean, I don't have a membership, but I've liked a lot of what he said. But he pulled that stunt with the Quebec French Debates versus English. and it got recorded and you got called out on it.

And it makes that more difficult. These guys are facing more scrutiny and follow up. And I think that's a good development. You know, you can't talk out of both sides of your mouth anymore because even that little podcast you did out in Newfoundland might bite you in the butt later on. It can be shared later.

So again, we're moving in the right direction. Those cameras are, the virtual cameras are starting to appear. Can we, I want to switch gears. I want to talk about Calgary for a bit. I know you're in the area. Every time I feel like something odd happens in Alberta, I feel like it centers around Calgary.

Did I just say, yeah. Every time something odd happens in Alberta, it feels like it's Calgary. Hope I said that right. And you're right in the heart of it. You know, when it comes to, I go back to the charging, ticketing people for honking,

but now it's an $87 billion dollar climate change plan. and different things like that. And you start doing the math on that and you're like, holy dana, like what is going on there? Not that some of it might not be, or might be good. I'm sure there are parts that are. There always is. But overall, that seems a little bit wonky. Oh, that's that's an understatement of the year.

And I mean, we, Gary, I wouldn't even say we. I just live just outside of town in Prittance now. But all the same, I was in Calgary for 20-some years, like it certainly, and I worked here. we've got a split personality thing going on. I mean, you know, politically, if on the federal and provincial level, we tend to be the most conservative turf in the country, you know, in an urban setting. But municipally, we vote in the most progressive, crazy left governments down there, contrary to everything we vote on otherwise.

And we get these kinds of outcomes. But again, this is where the voters have to stand up. I'm hoping to see some change come this time because we're seeing a very classic example of this. Mayor Jody Gondek was just elected last fall. She did not campaign on a climate emergency. She did not campaign on shutting down the arena deal. She did not campaign on pretty much anything she did in her first four months in power. She, again, as I said, blue sunshine up the butts of Calgarians for a solid campaign,

won the mayorship, and did a total flip-flop. None of us voted for what we're getting. So the question now is, and it is well documented, and we're going to be able to show that quite well. I mean, you've got all sorts of footage and interviews and things from the campaign showing. You did not say you were going to do any of this stuff on your way in, but are the voters going to kick her out because of that? Unfortunately, it's still three and a half years from now before they get that chance. But will they do it?

If they do, we've seen a very, very positive development finally. We've seen through the extremists and maybe it tells the next ones, if you want to stay in for more than one term, you're actually going to have to start being honest for a change. and because I mean she knew that she wanted to do these things but she knew she'd never get elected on platform with that she couldn't come in and say you know I'm going to torpedo the arena deal and I'm going to bring in a tax a carbon plan that adds up to over a hundred thousand dollars per household there's no way she would have gotten in as the mayor but within four months she did and now she's lagging she's sitting i think at 48% support that's the lowest a new mayor in

Calgary has ever had in their first six months in power. That's a new record has been set. And I hope then that we fire her in three and a half years for having done this to us. But if we don't, well, it's like the old saying, you know, in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Yeah, it's scary though, isn't it? You know, like, I, me and 222 minutes, a guy you probably bumped into on Twitter before. Yeah, I was with him last week.

We joke about it all the time. right? Like what a job to have, Corey, where you get to say one thing, do something completely different. You get to say you're going to do all these things and never accomplish it. You get to, you know, and that's the job. You get to pretty much lie through your teeth at times and get paid, I consider very good money for it. And then you go, I hope the public holds them accountable. And I go, the problem is with the public then, right? Like, you know, as bad as one person is, I go, this is society, you know, got to find a way to, I don't know the answer to that, actually. It's like, I like to think the answer is what we've been kind of talking around all the way, though.

Technology and new media has changed the whole game. You know, a mayor or any politician doesn't have to just pander to four outlets in order to sort of maintain an illusion or or keep things from being exposed any longer. they've got people watching and scrutinizing and holding them from account from dozens and dozens of directions. And this is so new. This is even 10 years ago there was nothing like this going on. So if this will galvanize the public, if this will be what that turning point is, if this was 10 years ago, I got a feeling Gondek would be happy to be in for 20 more years because she could just carry on, you know, as they always have with mayors in Calgary. They just retire when they're tired of it. But in this case, she's going to be facing a whole different wrath of people. and getting their information from the whole multitude of sources,

and maybe she'll finally, you'll see a politician pay a price for that double speak like that. That's well put. There's a little optimism for the future. You know, you do the show triggered, and I always chuckle, it reminds me of a family guy, Peter, when he used to do, and I'm forgetting the segment,

but that's exactly what it reminds me of when you get going on your rants. like do you find it absolutely absurd? I flick on the Western Standard or I literally open up the computer, type in Western Standard, right? And the first headline is talking about Health Canada proposing health warning labels on the front of ground beef. And I'm like, this is like this must be the easiest job for Corey to have where it's just like triggered.

Well, every day there's something new to trigger you. Yeah, I know that the world feeds me all the content I'll ever need. We have an editorial meeting at 8.30 every morning in the boardroom and all the news stories are being pitched and people are putting it out. It's very rare when I can listen to all of that going around the table and not latch on to once. Oh, man, I got to rip somebody a new butthole over this. So getting the vein pulsing on the side of my head isn't terribly difficult. I mean, that is just the opening five minutes of run along of my show and I tend to comb things a little afterwards. I think it's grinds my gears.

Grinds my gears, that's right. So it's pretty similar to that. And I vent, it's for the sake of my wife, so she doesn't have to hear it out of me when I get home. But, you know, the show calms down and we get guests and everything later on. But yeah, there's just so much absurdity that's so easy to rip into and get worked up over that, yeah, I have an easy job when it comes to that. Now, I meant to, I jotted this down and then forgot about it. I started listening again. Well, I was listening in the entire time.

That sounds bad. But you mentioned a trip to the Soviet Union. I was curious. Why back then were you heading to the Soviet Union? Was that like? A long time ago, I was involved in a lot of things in athletics and so on. And we got some training trips prior to the 88 Olympics. There was a lot of funding going around for, well, things such as ski jumping,

which is what I was into. I grew up in BAMP. That's my hometown originally. So we got sent around for some of those things, theoretically, to train prospective jumpers for 88, but I didn't have the talent level to reach that point nor did most of us. I was at a provincial level. So it was just a really good opportunity. So you went to the Soviet Union to do ski jump? Yes, mentor. Yeah. What did you think, you know, you talk about the, I lived in Finland for just a brief moment. And so certainly

you got to border Russia and everything else and hear them talk in their history in Finland with Russia and everything else. What did you think of the Soviet Union back then? Like, is there anything that sticks out to you? I mean, you would have been a young man, but anything, I mean, obviously the border, are you talking about going through there and cassette tapes and books and that type of thing, which, I mean, Lord above, I hope we never get to that point. Like, that seems absurd to me.

But when you look back on that trip, was there other things that stick out to you? Because that's a rate towards the end of a regime. But I mean, even now as we sit there, you know, at war with the Ukraine and I mean, there's a whole list of things going on there. What springs to mind from the 80s? Well, it was drab. People weren't miserable. People weren't suffering, but people weren't happy. It was a very basic place.

I mean, the Kremlin was outstanding in some of the architecture and the armory. And then later to what was, you know, called Leningrad, the hermitage, a lot of touring was fantastic and the artwork and the treasure is fine. But what you really got strict by was the row housing, you know, endless, just apartments, as far as the eye could see. I mean, it really was the socialist dream. Nobody was without a roof over their head. Nobody was without a job.

But nobody had a luxury or a pleasure either. Like this was existing, not living. And I don't want to knock the people. They had a lot of things they celebrated and enjoyed themselves. and did as well. I mean, it wasn't like some of the horror stories. I mean, I grew up with some of the propaganda from the United States, you know, talking about red lines going around the block.

And I imagine that happened in the 50s and 60s. There were long lineups there then, too, but it would usually be for, you know, again, well, things that we took for granted, but they consider luxury items like a Walkman, which was huge end. If a store managed to get 10 in, yeah, a thousand people would get in line to try and get that.

Or they didn't just want, you know, plain old blue jeans, but if you could get some brand name blue jeans in there, they definitely wanted those, anything to stand out rather than that regulated, plain, functional world. You know, it was, it was the end game of hard socialism. And that really imprinted a lot on me and my political outlook today, that's for sure.

Again, I think it starts with well-meaning people. I don't think Lenin really wanted suffering for people. He thought it was the best thing for them. I mean, there were a lot of evil people and actions, Stalin and things that they did later. Curse, Jeff, but if you really want to get to a world of that kind of equality, that is how it would have to happen. You have to drag everybody down to sort of an equal level of existence rather than raising everybody up to a level of, you know, enjoying themselves with a broad selection of food, consumer products, though it means some people fall through the cracks and fall into poverty. Some people might say the Soviet system was still better, but I just, it was a lot of people just existing and not living. Yeah, that's, I don't think too many, existing not living.

That's a good way to put it. That does not sound like a place I want, you know, a place I want to see society go is existing and not living. That's kind of the way the last couple of years has felt. You know, I'd hate to, I always hate bringing this, it feels so nice, you know, when the, when the oilers and flames were going. certainly while the Oilers were still in the playoffs. It was nice to have something to kind of galvanize a population. And I don't want to talk too much about COVID, but then again, I saw in one of your rants.

And then, of course, I saw it on one of the headlines, Health Canada talking about being fully vaccinated a third shot. You're a guy who's spoken very openly about everything in regards to that. What's your thoughts on? I mean, I assume I know exactly what you're going to say, but at the same time, I'll give you the opportunity to talk about a third shot to be vaccinated when, you know, the rest of the world seems to be moving on. Yeah, well, these are all, I think it's indicative of a government.

I mean, Health Canada is a branch of the government and it's directed by the government, even if indirectly. And Justin Trudeau has a chip on his shoulder. I do think that the trucker's convoy, ironically, if it had never had happened, we probably would have actually have more freedoms right now because he would have gone around with the rest of the world and started dropping. I'm not getting, I still think the convoy was a great example of Canadians standing up for themselves and pushing back and it set a precedent. But what it also did was took a prideful, not terribly sharp prime minister and made him dig his heels into the ground. And

that's why he will not back down on these bloody mandates, even though in the rest of the world leaving us behind, because he feels it would mean that he's admitting that the truckers convoy and the protesters were right. So now empowered like that, yeah, Health Canada, I mean, it's so counterintuitive, and I've ranted about that. If they brought that in, it would mean more than half of the Canadians would now suddenly be considered not vaccinated and technically wouldn't qualify to get on a plane to leave the country

because it's only 48% of people have gotten that third shot. And it's ludicrous. I mean, the pandemic has become endemic. The world has accepted this. Vaccination doesn't stop spread. We've certainly established and accepted. to that. But this government and its associated bureaucracies won't let that go and it's distressing. It's, you know, when you talk about Justin Trudeau, there's a man that I might,

I think I disagree that. I think if the truckers don't go, I'm not sure we're out of this sucker. To me, his actions on this entire thing seem just, I have a hard time other than he's a narcissist or something along those lines, his pride's hurt. But I feel like you just go back to it. All he had to do is, you know, you wonder if he just went and talked to him. Maybe this ends differently. But he's got a chip on his shoulder that nobody knows better than him, and they're not going to push him around.

And certainly that is where we're at right now, because we're in La La Land with everything going on. And the fact they're holding, sticking to their guns is just insanity. Like it's straight on insanity. Oh, it is. And it's hurting us. It's hurting us around the world. It's hurting us domestically.

And it trickles down to all of those other aspects of the mess that they've made. And, you know, it was great when it broke with Ryan Watson. Not Watson. Whitney. Live documentary is misery in Pearson there. Because that is all directly caused by the extra work that they have to do with all of these mandates and tracking. the fact that they lost a whole pile of staff because you fired all the unvaccinated workers

and now you got this horrific nightmare going on and we're embarrassing ourselves around the world with it. And it's hurting us. It's killing our tourism industry. Nobody wants to come here right now. Who wants to endure that? Yeah, what Corey's talking about for the listener is Ryan Whitney, one of the hosts,

Spitting Chicklets, was stuck at the Pearson Airport in Toronto and had several live stream videos go extremely viral talking about how basically the airport was a disaster and the worst place in the world because they didn't have enough workers and he had to go back through customs and they were canceling, delaying flights, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And a bunch of that comes back to exactly what you just said, Corey. And it might be, in my mind, every time that happens, especially with a platform the size of spit and chicklets and a guy like, you know, Ryan Whitney, who isn't afraid to say what's on his mind,

is the best thing that can happen to the rest of us because that's what needs, you know, people need to continue to talk about. As much as I'm done with talking about, like I don't want to talk about COVID anymore. I want to get on with life. I want to move on. But here we are. We're in, we're closing in on July 1st. And there is a large chunk of the population that can't get on a plane, train,

bus, can't leave the country, et cetera, et cetera. And they seem like they're sticking. their guns on it, which is, well, I think we've used the word insanity enough, but that's, that's kind of where we're at. Well, and again, kind of on a theme of what we're talking about, it shows that new empowerment we have, that an individual could broadcast that and let the world know. You know, if this had been 20 years ago, at best, it would have been a footnote in a local newspaper that, hey, it's really crowded at the airport and people are pissed off. Now, there's no controlling that word is getting out. People are seeing live video of how bad it is in there.

So they're not getting away with stuff like they used to. I mean, they're still getting away with a whole lot and it's driving us mad. And we see it as insanity. But maybe they don't realize that they're being held accountable. We do have something going on. There is an inquiry. Like, I'm seeing some changes. I'm always so negative.

I'm the renter. My gears are ground, as we said. But some things are happening. Like I watched the committee hearings on invoking the Emergencies Act in Parliament and in the Senate. You know what? Liberal senators are starting to rip into Trudeau. Like they're realizing they pushed it too far. And there's a judicial inquiry that is coming.

A lot of people initially dismissed it and said, ah, it's just going to be rigged and that they're going to make sure that the liberal government doesn't get held to account. I'm not so confident because there's not much of a case to be made. It's falling apart. As we're seeing, the police didn't ask for the Emergencies Act to be invoked. There were no arsons. There was no real insurgency. It was just some nutcase with a Facebook message.

You said they wanted the governor general to step. move the prime minister aside, they just can't make a case in committee for having invoked this act. And I don't see how they're going to make it in this judicial inquiry. And I'm kind of looking forward to this. I mean, just because a judge was appointed by a liberal doesn't mean they have no principles. They could take their job very seriously and say, look, I'm looking into this and I'm not liking what I'm seeing. Is that, I was going to say, what is Corey Morgan watching?

Is that what you're paying attention then to? I do. I'm a geeky sort of guy. And I read committee summaries. I get a lot from Blackhawks reporter. That's a new media, you know, almost newswire for us. We get a lot of our stories from there, and they dedicate a lot of people to reading committee notes. I mean, if you read the transcript from a committee meeting, unfortunately, you're going to have 20,000 words of garbage.

But buried within there, there's going to be three paragraphs in gold. And people need to dig into that. I don't expect the public in general to do so and to bring those highlights out. And Blackhawks has been doing it, and then by extension through the Western Standard or even myself, when I get a note on something. And again, with modern technology, I mean, 30 years ago, you'd have to have somebody actually sitting in Parliament who would have to go into the archives

and dig through those papers and find those transcripts. Now you could do a, you know, Control F in the hands art of Parliament or a committee meeting and search for particular keywords and find stuff. So things are getting better. Like they can't hide stuff like they used to. Well, once again, that's a hopeful thought, and I hope you're right. Before I let you go, we always finish with the final five brought to you by Crude Master show to Heath and Tracy McDonald. Heath was on the podcast.

It's probably been over a year now at least. And he said, if you're going to stand behind a cause that you think is right, then stand behind it, absolutely. What's one thing Corey stands behind? The individual. Empowerment and rights are the individual. I trust people to take care of themselves, or at least to be given the right and the ability to not take care of. themselves. We have the right to be wrong. I don't like centralized government, so I want to see, again, the individual valued as being sacred with their individual rights because they're

really under threat. Well, I appreciate you giving me some of your time, Corey. This has been thoroughly enjoyable. I plan to come hassling you someday at the Western Standard, of course, in Calgary and come say alone and shake your hand. But it's nice getting a face to the Twitter name that I've been following. And of course, I've been listening to you, somewhat as well. So I appreciate you hopping on and giving me some of your time. Oh, more than happy to. It was a great chat. And yes, you're more than welcome to come on down here anytime. We'll throw you on my show for a segment. Sounds good. Thanks, Corey. Yep.