Sheila Gunn-Reed and Corey Morgan critique Canada’s supply management system, calling it "Soviet-style" for limiting chicken ownership to 300 birds (Alberta) or 100 (other provinces), forcing factory farming over humane alternatives. Morgan cites Quebec’s illegal cheese smuggling rings and a Liberal leadership candidate’s past criticism of the system, arguing it raises prices unfairly while stifling market diversity. They also dissect Calgary Mayor Nahid Nenshi’s $20M police defunding vote, his push for multi-generational COVID-19 quarantine facilities, and Alberta’s potential PST, warning it could deter investment and worsen economic struggles. The episode underscores how government price-fixing and progressive policies undermine both ethics and economic freedom in food production and public governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
Tonight, my guest is Corey Morgan of the Western Standard, and we are talking about a bunch of things, including the calls from Calgary City Council to defund the police, the potential of a GST being floated here in Alberta, as Corey describes it.
That's blasphemy.
And the fact that the supply management system here in Canada might not be all that great for animal welfare if you care about that kind of thing.
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Is supply management detrimental to animal welfare?
It's an interesting argument.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Canada is one of the few remaining places in the world where we still have supply managed milk.
Now, we do also have supply-managed other things, too, like poultry and eggs.
And we know that while supply management does protect the wholesale price to the farmer, it also artificially inflates the price to the consumer of the most basic foodstuffs.
And it limits choice.
And it also limits the ability of new farmers to get into the game.
But does it do something else?
Does it, in some instances, end up being bad for animals?
Then Calgary City Council has voted to defund the police by $20 million at the urging of a small handful of radical activists.
What could possibly go wrong?
And still in Calgary, left-wing Mayor Nahid Nenshi has asked Justin Trudeau to help him get access to multi-generational quarantine facilities.
And still in Alberta, are we getting a PST?
There's a lot to talk about.
My guest tonight is Corey Morgan.
He's a columnist for the Western Standard Online, and he joins me in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
So joining me now from the Western Standard offices in Calgary is Corey Morgan.
Corey's a columnist with Western Standard and he's also the podcast editor.
Corey, thanks for joining me.
There's so much to talk about in Calgary news.
But before we get into that, I wanted to talk to you about the swipe that you took at the, I guess, it's one of those things that you can't talk about in Canadian conservatism and really get elected at all.
And that's supply management.
And you have a great article that I really appreciate saying that Canada's Soviet-style supply management system encourages inhumane factory farms.
Why don't you give us the premise of your article?
Sure.
Like I've always been outspoken about supply management, just on the economic case of it, because Soviet style is the best term to describe supply management.
I mean, the government issues quotas will only allow you to produce a certain amount.
My wife grew up on a dairy farm where they had a cream quota and literally they'd pour milk in the ditch afterwards because it was illegal for them to sell it.
They could only sell the cream.
Like it's just absurd and ridiculous and just about every country has gotten out of it.
But the left seems to stay silent on that.
They like large government controlling policies.
But perhaps, you know, going into the animal welfare aspect of it, because that's a valid case as well that nobody really talks about.
Supply management really, you know, pushes to have larger commercial operations, great big ones that have bought those quotas up and they're doing production on economies of scale.
I mean, I'm a capitalist.
I understand it.
You're keeping your expenses down.
You're getting a cheaper product out to market.
You're going to sell more of it.
And I'm not even talking about banning that kind of production.
But people like to see alternatives sprouting, but they're more expensive and they can't get quotas.
And I use that premise just because this year, like a lot of people, we've gotten in new hobbies and almost a bit of survivalism.
I live on a small acreage.
We thought we'd get a little more independent.
So we built a chicken coop and brought in a bunch of chickens.
And it's been fun.
They leave more eggs than we could ever imagine consuming.
So we just put a thing out on social media saying, hey, we've got a bunch of excess free-range eggs.
Who wants to buy some?
And boy, we were sold out in a heartbeat.
And we've got regular people grabbing those.
And a lot of the premise is it's not a matter of, I mean, they taste great.
They're fresh.
That's part of it.
Part of it is people feel more comfortable knowing that these birds at least are raising in a humane environment.
They're living as good a chicken life as a chicken could.
They get to hop around the yard and chase bugs and stretch their wings out and do chicken things.
I mean, I don't have them named.
I don't cuddle them to sleep at night or anything.
They're birds that produce eggs.
But I do feel better knowing that at least, you know, I think our responsibility as people who eat meat is to at least humanely raise what we're going to consume.
Now, supply management makes it illegal to own more than 300 chickens for purposes of laying in Alberta.
In some provinces, I believe it's down to 100.
And that's just a purposeful way to make sure that it's absolutely impossible, though, for a cottage industry to start up to provide these kind of free-range things.
If a person at a quarter section wanted to raise a few thousand birds and have them range around, it could be done.
And the demand is there.
I mean, I've seen that.
But they'll never get a quota.
There's no way that those large producers jealously guard those and the government protects them.
So I wanted to make that case.
Just one more facet for people to put pressure to the government, conservatives and liberals alike who are just terrified of the Quebec dairy cartels to say, let's get rid of this odious system and allow more diverse production for the sake of the animals then, if not just for the sake of your wallet, because we pay a lot for the supply managed goods too.
Yeah, and I think it stifles diversity in the marketplace.
We see this all the time with cheese.
You know, when you see the cheese offerings from other countries compared to the government-controlled cheese we have here in Canada, not only is our cheese sort of boring, and this is not an attack on the industry.
I mean, they're trying to make, um, you know, they're trying to make profit with what they've got, but our choices are boring.
And, you know, there could be so much more done if the government and this expensive quota system got out of the way of small startup entrepreneurs.
Oh, absolutely.
Not to mention the price.
Yeah.
It was an embarrassment a few years ago.
Talk about a purely Canadian story.
I don't know if many people caught it, but there was actually a cheese smuggling ring that got broken up over, I believe it was Quebec or Ontario.
But Big Cheese was buying up cheese and sneaking it across the border to supply restaurants and pizzerias.
And actually, as a person who owned a pub that sold pizza, I was, and it was small.
I was spending thousands a month on cheese.
And those big restaurants, they actually created a black cheese market, which is just absurd.
But that's what this system has done.
It's ridiculous.
And, you know, aside from the lack of variety, I mean, even some liberals have come out.
Boy, I shouldn't forget her name, but she was a liberal leadership candidate federally.
And she's done a great deal of writing against supply management.
I think she's with the Canada West Foundation now.
I'm just brain farting on her name.
But it's a terrible policy.
It just is.
And it just doesn't hit the news enough.
And the politicians are terrified of taking it on.
Well, yeah.
And it makes those staples, those dietary staples, so much more expensive for the people on the lower socioeconomic spectrum.
And, you know, there are a lot of people, for example, in the lower mainland of BC who'd probably be more inclined, since they are that sort of people there, to stay a little bit closer to home, buy milk from the local guy.
Instead, they flood across the border and clean out the Costco down there because milk is just cheaper there.
And, you know, it's stripping entrepreneurs right out of the marketplace.
Absolutely.
And again, it shows if the demand is there strong enough, people will find a way, whether it's if they're lucky enough to live close enough to a border to get it, they'll get it.
Or even literally, the mafia will smuggle cheese if there's good enough margin in it.
So yeah, I just thought I'd take another approach to it because there's just so many arguments against supply management.
But the production aspect of it is one.
I mean, in modern chicken facilities, those birds live their entire life in a small cage.
They've changed it now.
They used to call them battery cages where the bird was actually on something about a square foot.
And now they said, okay, we're going to end that.
It's grandfather, though.
Any place that had them before still has them.
But now they have to be able to allow to spread their wings.
So now they've got about two square feet to live in for their entire life.
Again, I'm not talking about banning that and things like that, but I'd feel better buying things knowing the bird's been running around a bit.
Same with pork and some other options.
But we got to get government out of the way.
There's producers willing to do it.
There's consumers willing to buy it.
Government Out Of The Way00:13:07
Why aren't you letting us?
Yeah, I am by no means an animal rights activist, but I thought this was a phenomenal way of, I guess, taking some of the ethical oil arguments and placing it on top of supply management to make the case that there are just better ways or different ways of being a producer.
And again, get the government out of the way and let the consumer decide.
If there is no market for this, and if everybody likes supply management, then this will fail.
But give people the ability to find out.
And I'm not against people finding things out the hard way.
Oh, and I wouldn't want to shame people who still get the lower priced regular because those would remain.
And, you know, personal budget.
Hey, if you've got a family to feed, you know, get those eggs or chicken and so on.
But there's a lot of people willing to pay a premium.
Yep, yep.
Yeah.
Like everything.
I mean, if we're if we're fine with, you know, um, fair trade coffee, then, you know, and there's a niche market for that, then why isn't there a niche market for all other ways of getting our food?
Um, I wanted to talk to you about something else.
Um, and I didn't suggest it to you when I was sort of setting up the interview with you, but it sort of popped on my radar since.
And it is this idea that Finance Minister Taves here in Alberta, Travis Taves, he has not ruled out the prospect of a PST to dig us out of this financial hole caused by the pandemic and lack of market access for Alberta oil and gas.
I don't think this is going to sit well, and I think it's already not sitting well with the conservative base.
This is something that Rachel Notley would propose and conservatives would lose their mind over, but we're not hearing a lot of anger from true blue Tories over this, and I think it's simply tribalism.
Yeah, well, and I interviewed Jason Kenny last week for a podcast, actually, and I wish this had come up prior to it because that would have been a question I would have loved to have tossed to him at the time, but I didn't figure it was on the table.
And a half hour goes pretty fast.
You know, as we know, sales tax is blasphemy in Alberta.
I mean, at least among the conservative base.
I mean, that's just, you just don't go there.
And they keep dipping into it.
You know, every government seems to at least test the waters for it.
I mean, if you listen to a number of economists, conservative and non-conservative alike, they'll say that consumption taxes are an efficient way to go and they're a better way to tax.
And I don't think that is so much of the issue.
The thing is, we don't trust the bloody government.
I mean, if it's just one more tax, it's not helping us on the ground any.
It's just taxing us further.
If you guys, if we trusted you to make it revenue neutral, like you like claiming, then we could perhaps accept that.
If you got rid of provincial income tax and then replaced it with a sales tax, that might be palatable.
But they don't look at it that way.
They're just looking at one more way to get us, and that's not good.
And these tax ourselves into prosperity people, you know, always seem to neglect to look at that's money taken out of the economy.
I mean, it's not money generated or created.
It's taken from somebody.
So that pool is finite and we're going broke already.
You raise our cost of living.
We consume less.
People get laid off.
It has a consequence.
But yeah, to hear that being floated by the finance minister is distressing because they know darn well how Albertans typically react to a sales tax concept.
Yet they're still trying to put it out there.
And yeah, as you said, with some tribalism, some conservatives were afraid to speak up on it, perhaps.
But I'd like to hear more.
I mean, they're in a budgetary crisis, but we're not going to be able to tax our way out of it.
We need to see some serious spending cuts.
Yeah, I have some pretty serious concerns with this in that part of the beauty of Alberta, I guess, is that we have this tax structure that is attractive to people who want to live and work here and start businesses here.
And really, what sets us apart in the country is that we don't have a PST or an HST.
So to propose this, I mean, it acts as a scarecrow for business investment and for people who want to come here and work in those new businesses.
And secondarily, it makes me wonder, you know, are they the conservatives?
Are they fine with this?
Because they expect us to be fine with it because, well, at least they aren't the NDP.
And that's the sense that I'm getting here.
Some of that is going on.
And part of the problem with, and again, I talked to Kenny about that last week.
I was glad to get the chance to talk to him because he's getting no questions from the right.
When you go in the legislature, it's a two-party system right now.
So, question period is all knotty, all tax more, tax more, spend more, spend more.
They don't have a voice in there that used to be like the old wild rose or even like reform federally that at least is giving some balance and pressuring the leadership to say, well, wait a minute, there's other ways to deal with our fiscal crisis, and they don't necessarily involve taxing everybody more.
It involves spending cuts, and they're not getting that voice right now.
And of course, you look at Twitter and it's just a barrage cesspool that's been taken over by the left.
I almost wonder in their political bubbles if they're forgetting what their roots are sometimes because all they hear is just that that blast from one end of the spectrum.
And it's disturbing.
Yeah, that's an interesting point.
And I think that happens with all conservative parties.
And I think maybe I suppose I try to act as that.
And I'm sure you guys try to do that over at the Western Standard also.
That all the forces are pulling our conservative parties to the left.
The media, the Twitter activists, the opposition parties.
Federally, it'd be the party in power.
Everything is pulling them to the left.
And there needs to be something on the right that acts as that gut check that reminds them: no, this is actually the conservative position on this.
And the position you're taking is the let's try to make CBC happy position.
And yeah, so maybe there is some of that, that they end up caught up in this, you know, Twitter media bubble, and they don't really remember what the conservative position is.
So I suppose that falls on us, doesn't it?
To do the work of reminding them.
The unofficial opposition, I guess you could say.
And one of the things you'd floated in that same sense is City Hall.
I just wanted you-you mentioned defunding the police.
There's a stunt that came in in Calgary.
They did defund the police.
They put the vote through.
The usual suspects pushed it.
There's an even worse bubble because they don't have an opposition there to hold them to account.
They seem to listen to nothing but a slanted city administration when it comes to things.
And again, a media and social media that has a hard left slant.
So trying to hold those clowns to account is very difficult, particularly with Mayor Ninchy leading the pack there.
And, you know, you see them when they've got some backlash on it, but they say, oh, we didn't defund them.
We reallocated.
Kiss my ass.
Come on.
You took the money out of their budget.
That's defunding.
That's it.
There's no other way to polish that.
That's what you did.
Wherever else you put the money doesn't really matter.
I mean, if they'd use it on the context of generally trying to get the budget in balance and they were cutting all over the place, I could accept that.
But no, this was pandering to Black Lives Matter.
This was pandering to those extremist activist groups that have the ear of these politicians.
And again, nobody critiques them aside from people like us.
So I think that the people in positions of power and elected authority forget the realities out there rather than what they're hearing.
That is a really excellent point to make because to be clear, the city of Calgary took $20 million out of the city policing budget and they're giving it to social agencies, whatever that means.
Well, when you need a cop, I'm sorry, you're going to have to call a social worker now.
And they really didn't put this to the people.
You do point out that there really isn't much of a conservative opposition on Calgary City Council.
That's true.
I think there's two strong conservatives on the entire council.
There's not much that they can do.
They're loud, they're noisy, they're prickly.
They're doing everything they can, but they don't hold any real power any more than any other lone city councillor.
And this was entirely motivated by a handful of obnoxious, loud Black Lives Matter activists concerned about a problem that is taking place in some places in the United States.
None of this had anything to do with the Calgary police, but somehow the Calgary police are paying a $20 million.
They're paying the $20 million cost of this activism, and it's just going to serve to make the citizens of Calgary less safe.
And the citizens of Calgary, I would suspect, probably didn't want this.
I don't know if there was any sort of survey that was put to the public as a whole about any of this.
No, and there has been actually some internal city surveys that were done recently, and it was shown that the vast majority of the city wanted police funding to stay where it was.
Actually, there was some of that done, but they disregarded it.
They don't seem to look at their own data.
And I really wonder what kind of bubble they live in.
I watched Shane Keating, for people who are familiar with Calgary counselors anyways, who was the one saying, oh, we didn't defund.
We reallocated.
Yeah, whatever.
Okay, you're BSing.
Ward Sutherland is another creature in there going on saying he was expressing shock because, of course, the police commission said, well, they're hiring freezing because they don't have the money for it.
He was shocked that they're going to do that.
I didn't expect him to do that.
Well, what did you think we're going to do, you clown?
You took their money away.
I mean, they can only write so many speeding tickets.
But these guys are just blind.
You know, that is also probably an unintended consequence of all this that you're going to see police try to make that difference on their own through ticket and other fine enforcement.
Because they do.
They still have work to do.
And they have to raise money somehow.
I wanted to ask you, this just sort of came out over the last 24 hours.
Nenshi is calling for multi-generational quarantine and special isolation facilities for Calgary families.
Multi-generational.
What are we thinking about COVID-19?
It's not a multi-generational problem.
It's an old people problem.
And so I'm not sure why we need to lock up entire families, three generations of them.
And why Mayor Need Nenshi wants Justin Trudeau to provide these things to him?
Because it's pretty clear that he's angry that Jason Kenny isn't cracking down hard enough to lock down Albert Burton fast enough for his life.
So now she's just gone around Premier Kenny and reached out to Justin Trudeau.
This is pure politics at its ugliest.
Nahet Nenshi is in a great deal of trouble.
He's polling terribly.
The shine has worn off election year.
There's a very good chance, and he's all tried.
There's a very good chance he's going to be voted out next year.
And assuming he runs again.
I mean, he's kind of in a rock in a hard place.
If he announces he's not going to run again, people like me are going to tease.
Oh, so Farkas scared you away.
Okay, good.
Good riddance.
And if he does run again and actually loses, of course, that would just brutalize him.
I feel if Kenny had done like Ford and done a heavy crackdown and locked Alberta down, he would be out there as the champion for small business talking about how evil Kenny is destroying businesses out here.
He's going to take whatever side can position him as the great defender against the great conservative provincial government.
Nenshi's been talking directly to Trudeau.
He was at a meeting with him recently.
I'm almost wondering, too, if he's looking to negotiate his soft landing if he leaves the mayoral chair, perhaps a Senate appointment or even an ambassadorship or something.
But it's just politics.
And when it comes to something that really is a pandemic that's harming and scaring people economically and physically, some people are still being killed by this bug, is repugnant.
And that's all Nenchie's doing is playing pure politics.
Yeah, it is, it's gross.
I can't even believe that, I mean, and he did it on CTV's question period.
So he told the nation that he wants Justin Trudeau to provide multi-generational quarantine facilities.
Stop Us With This00:02:38
There have been.
I think the numbers are from yesterday, roughly 407 deaths from the virus.
The majority of those are over the age of 80.
So the virus kills the dying.
Yeah, it kills the dying.
You die with it, usually not of it.
And, you know, this idea that he needs the federal government to allow him to lock up entire families, it's atrocious.
It's vulgar.
Yeah.
Now, I want to.
Go ahead.
No, I was just going to, I was just going to wrap it up.
I was just going to say, Corey, it's been fun.
It's been a fast 20 minutes or so with you.
I want to give you a chance to let all of my Rebel viewers know where they can find you over at the Western Standard and support the work that you do over there.
Great.
Yeah.
Well, there's the WesternStardonline.com.
That's our digital presence.
We do, you know, video stories, much like Rebel.
And of course, for more of my direct ranting and raving comes at CoreyMorgan.com.
And yeah, we cover Western issues from a conservative perspective that, as we both agree, needs to be put out there as much as possible.
And you guys also have a podcast platform.
I do, actually.
Yeah.
So it's called Core's Notes with the apostrophe.
And we're developing the podcast.
We're doing more video with Western Standard.
There is podcasts there.
So if anyone wants to listen to download and listen to one of our video productions, they can do so.
And we're still expanding.
Wonderful.
There's a real deficit on the right as far as news delivery and news coverage and commentary here in Canada.
You know, I look at the United States and see just how many small startups and conservative companies are making a go of it in the media landscape.
And there's, what, four of us?
Five of us here in this country.
It's getting there, though.
You know, they're springing up and the media is changing.
And I'm really actually looking a little enthusiastically forward to that, seeing post-millennia and true north and Rebel and such.
I mean, we're filling that gap.
The mainstream media doesn't know how to stop us.
So it's wonderful to watch.
It is until Justin Trudeau tries to stop us with his internet censorship laws that are barreling at us.
But I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Corey, on that frightening note, thank you so much for coming on the show.
And we'll have you back on again very soon.
I think it was far too long in between appearances with you.
Great.
It's always a pleasure.
Back By Popular Demand00:00:50
Now, with regard to the idea that a PST is being floated here in Alberta, I'm old enough to remember when conservatives were outraged, when they absolutely flipped their lids.
that the NDP installed a tax on everything that the NDP never campaigned on.
That was a consumption tax, a carbon tax.
It was a PST by another name.
Jason Kenney's government here in Alberta never campaigned on a PST.
And I am sure they will face the wrath of angry conservatives should they try to bring one in.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.