Cory Morgan of The Western Standard exposes Alberta’s UCP leadership hypocrisy during 2021’s pandemic lockdowns, where MLAs like Tracy Allard and Tanya Fur traveled abroad despite urging residents to stay home—some even covering trips poorly. Jason Kenney’s weak response (demotions instead of bans) mirrored past scandals under Allison Redford, like the $3M "Sky Palace" controversy. Morgan, now leading Suits and Boots, shifts focus from corporate lobbying to worker advocacy, vowing counter-protests after criticism over CAP’s cautious stance. Sheila Gunn-Reed contrasts this with federal Liberals’ swift resignations or distancing of Trudeau, arguing conservative leaders must demand stronger accountability to regain public trust amid persistent outrage. [Automatically generated summary]
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Tonight, my guest is Corey Morgan of the Western Standard and of Suits and Boots, and we're talking about high-flying political hypocrisy over the Christmas break.
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Do as I say, not as I do.
High flying hypocrites and lockdown liars.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Someone joked on Twitter late last week that the reason Canadian politicians were advising us normals to cancel all of our non-essential travel during the holidays was to prevent us from
running into the politicians in places like Hawaii or Cancun.
In Alberta here, several UCP MLAs, including the Minister of Municipal Affairs or former Minister Tracy Allard, took Christmas vacations out of the country while the Alberta government advised the rest of us unfortunate regular people to, I don't know, shelter in place, remain under house arrest, and cancel all of our non-essential travel over the holidays.
It took three days of shame and intense public pressure before Premier Jason Kenney really understood what was going on here and demoted all of those MLAs.
Saskatchewan's highways minister Joe Hargrave resigned after spending Christmas in Palm Springs to, as he describes it, wrap up a real estate deal.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay, sure.
Now, as the scandals were breaking, Mayor Nahid Nenshi in Calgary was pretty tight-lipped, which is kind of unusual for him, until news broke late yesterday afternoon.
So after I had recorded my interview with today's show guest, unfortunately, that Nenshi's chief of staff had also traveled outside of the country as well.
During the pandemic, Nahid Nenshi had been calling for stronger lockdown measures to come from the province.
I suppose those stronger lockdown measures were meant for the rest of us and not for those closest to the big purple mayor himself.
And it's a great hypocrisy from Calgary's leadership, especially since every single weekend, people are protesting the lockdown in front of Calgary City Hall.
And those same people are receiving $1,200 fines for protesting the lockdown.
A pastor named Archer Peloski has received at least a dozen tickets for what the city of Calgary calls unauthorized gatherings.
But in reality, what Archer's doing is feeding Calgary's homeless, and we're helping him fight those fines at fightthefines.com.
It's one rule for me and one rule for thee.
Now, joining me now is Corey Morgan of the Western Standard and of Suits and Boots.
And we recorded our interview before all the Nenshi news broke.
just bear that in mind as you're watching joining me now from his home in prittis i guess just outside of calgary is cory morgan of the western standard and of suits and boots but But we'll get back to that towards the end of the interview.
Corey, thanks for joining me.
I wanted to have you on because I would suggest that not only have you been a conservative activist for a very long time, but I guess sort of a conservative insider from the outside.
And I wanted to talk to you about this.
It's like a mushroom cloud that is set to consume the entire UCP caucus.
This out-of-country travel scandal while the government had the rest of us locked down and were openly advising everybody to cancel non-essential travel while they were engaged in the most non-essential of all travel, Christmas vacations, I guess.
Do you know how this story broke?
Was it mainstream media politicians or mainstream media journalists fishing around for information?
Or did it come from disgruntled staffers who leaked it?
How did this all come to be, if you know?
Yeah, I don't know where ground zero of this mushroom cloud actually is.
It just started.
And as soon as even mainstream media and alternative media like ours, you know, smelled the blood in the water, we started looking around.
And I think the fact that none of these guys were even really trying, well, some are making an effort to try and hide it, which is what really ticked people off all the more because they knew they were doing something wrong, but it wasn't like they did a really good job of it.
So it didn't take a lot of detective work to find out how many of these people were out of the country.
And it exploded very quickly.
Yeah.
And it was funny because as this was breaking, I said to my boss, if these people were smart, and clearly they're not, they would be telling on themselves and at least taking the air out of the CBC bubble.
And they didn't.
They just kept letting it get broken by the mainstream media.
And then it's a scandal as opposed to what, and I hate to say it.
I hate to commend the liberals on anything.
But when the federal liberals are doing this and they are doing this, they are not pushing Justin Trudeau out front to fall on his sword.
They are telling on themselves and resigning.
And that's the end of the story.
Whereas with Jason Kenney, he came out, took responsibility, and then it just kept growing and growing and growing.
Who's managing the media crisis here?
Or is anybody?
I don't know.
I mean, it's out of control.
I'm guessing maybe all their media communicators are out of country too.
So they're having a hard time trying to get onto this message.
But I mean, on Friday, Kenny came out.
And again, it's Keystone coppish or something.
I think he didn't know that there were more out there.
He thought he had it done.
So, okay, let's put this out on a long weekend Friday, tear off the band-aid.
I'll say, I'm sorry, I did something wrong.
And we're going to work on this in the new year.
But of course, over the weekend, then more of them surface.
Plus, the rage just built more because just saying I'm sorry that it happened wasn't enough.
People wanted to see some sort of sanction.
And that's when he had to come out now.
But he's chasing it now.
So to pull some people from cabinet and associate ministers' positions and what, some committee work, some people are just not feeling that it's enough.
So I'm not sure how much he could do to calm the rage.
I mean, there's so many of them now.
You can't kick six members out of caucus.
Well, you can, but it's really going to cripple you.
I don't know how he's going to put it.
It just gets hotter and hotter.
The hypocrisy, though, is just so deep and it's rattled so much trust and confidence.
I mean, as you said, you know, nobody would think these are elected people.
They aren't stupid.
Well, apparently some of them are.
I mean, how did you not see this coming?
It really shows that disconnect elected officials have with those of us in the real world.
Like they didn't think for a second that people who have given up family traditions of meeting and doing things or memorials or church services, all sorts of very personal things.
And then to have these guys just go off and do it on themselves.
I mean, they just didn't even know how much that was going to outrage us.
And well, they're certainly finding out now.
Well, I think the two most egregious ones were Allard, because of her ministerial position, and Tanya Fur.
And I think the two of those, they didn't really understand why everybody was mad.
They basically said, well, it was allowed, so we did it, which is, I suppose, well, you're allowed to fart an elevator, but it's not a good idea.
Well, I suppose it's an excuse.
It's not a good one, especially from an elected official.
Allard's excuse was, well, it's been a family tradition for 17 years.
Well, yeah, a lot of people had family traditions going back 17 years that they weren't able to do because of her government's rules.
And I look at small business owners and I think, well, their family tradition is being in business and you put them out of business.
And Tanya Furr, you know, she said she went to Las Vegas to visit her sister.
And she thought that was a reasonable excuse while at the same time, people in Alberta couldn't visit their sister if their sister lived in a different household.
They basically outlawed that which they flew to Las Vegas to do.
And they didn't understand the problem with it.
It was more like, I'm sorry that I got caught.
I'm sorry you're mad.
But they couldn't really grasp what they were sorry for.
And I think at the beginning, Jason Kenney also didn't grasp the problem.
And I noticed that when he did his little speech about how important the airlines are.
Yeah, I agree.
Airlines are important.
I want everybody to go back to traveling and flying and all those things.
And WestJet is definitely important for the Western economy.
But that's not why people were outraged.
We weren't mad that they traveled to visit with their family.
We were mad that they told us that we couldn't do it.
Do you think Jason Kenny finally gets it?
Oh, he's getting something.
He's got to be.
I mean, that's the thing that's surprising people because Kenny's not stupid, whatever he may be.
He's smart.
So somewhere he just totally dropped the ball on this.
Of course, he's been in parliament for a long time, but he was never in a leader position.
Maybe he underestimated just how bad that herd of cats he's trying to manage is.
I mean, part of his first response was, it's kind of my fault because I didn't explicitly tell them not to go.
And of course, everybody else's immediate response was, well, you shouldn't have had to.
Told us not to go.
Like, it's on the government website.
He's recommended.
So, it's just, and it just keeps burning.
I think what they're praying for now is some sort of explosive issue to happen somewhere else in the world to distract people from it because this thing just keeps feeding itself.
People are furious.
Uh, he's pulled out the magical combination.
He's got everybody mad, left, right, and center at him.
I mean, the pro-lockdown people are furious because, well, again, you're pro-lockdown, we want to keep everybody safe from this bug, and you guys are traveling all over the world.
The anti-lockdown people who grudgingly at least accepted that we're locked down for now are even more furious because, again, we're doing this crap that we never want to do in the first place, and you guys aren't.
So, it's just hypocrisy cuts deeper than anything else in politics, it really does.
And some people don't understand that, they really don't.
They're figuring it out.
Yeah, uh, I didn't think we would get back to Allison Redford country as quickly as we have.
Like, this feels a lot like Sky Palace.
This also feels a lot like when they were using the government airplanes like they were the family minivan.
This feels a lot like we are going to live one way and we're going to do one way, things one way, and you're going to live a completely different way, you normal people.
But, you know, based on some Western Standard reporting, a story that broke last night, and again, I say that Western Standard has been doing some great work on this.
And I think it's, I think, you know, you and I were talking off camera, it has a lot to do with the relationships that you've built within the UCP caucus, and you know, that goes back quite a ways.
Um, but Dave Naylor's story: um, the premier's staff say he never saw the travel memo from Allard saying that she was leaving the country.
So, maybe Jason Kenney was truly in the dark about whether or not she was out of the country.
Um, but if that's the case, then you need to clean house with all of your staff because they're either incompetent and not telling you information that you need to get out in front of, or they're colluding with the travelers and you know, the locker downer hypocrites.
Um, but you know, either way, Jason Kenney wears this as a millstone around his neck.
Yeah, I mean, when you're on top, you're in charge.
Someone Needs to Speak Up00:09:55
So, now they're giving him a shield of plausible deniability in it.
Well, that still doesn't make people feel comfortable in how much in control he might have been in the situation to begin with.
And some of it's just hard to believe.
Now, I can understand he's not paying attention to every backbencher who's popped off for a vacation.
He's only got so much time.
But when his chief of staff sneaks, and it was sneaking, I mean, he routed it through the states to get past travel bans to go into the COVID hotspot of the planet.
And this is the chief of staff.
This is a person you're typically in communication with every day.
It's just defies belief that he wouldn't have been aware that he'd gone off to the UK in the midst of this.
And again, you should have known better, but they're blinded.
I'm still astounded by this.
And I don't know how they're going to get this under control.
As I said, only something that might distract and push it down the news scroll, but they're going to wear this for a long time.
I mean, Aloha Allard is going to be wearing that in the next general election, assuming she runs in that one.
Like whoever's campaigning against her is going to rub her nose in it.
Jeremy Nixon, Tanya Furr, all of these guys.
I mean, political bruises like this last a long, long time, if not for the party as a whole, for those individual candidates.
So they really screwed up.
That's all I can say.
Well, how does Kenny get this under control?
Does it go away?
Does he sit down and have a caucus meeting and say, okay, everybody, tell on yourselves, get out in front of this and resign?
I don't know what the way out of this is.
I think that I guess the first thing is just plug all the holes.
I would hope, because even now, I wouldn't be shocked if there wasn't another one hiding out there somewhere.
So they must be investigating, calling, contacting.
Are there absolutely no more out there?
I mean, you can't go for closure until you're confident there's not going to be another one pop up and throw it back on the top of the scroll.
Lay down the law.
And I honestly don't know.
I mean, the strategy they're doing now, obviously, is to try and hunker down and just hope that it blows over, but it's just blowing up.
And if I had the answer on how we could get it under control, I could probably apply for some great positions as issues manager with the UCP.
Speaking of which, which was a funny thing, and it shows our mainstream media, though, that the state broadcaster there had to put out a tweet specifically to point out that Matthew Wolf, Matt Wolf, went on a traveling trip and visited, but actually he stayed within each and every rule all the way around out there.
Like, so why do you even report it?
But I know.
It's just they despise him that much that we just want to make sure that maybe a little bit will stick to him while they're out there.
But yeah, yeah, I saw that.
Matt Wolf followed not only the letter of the law, but the spirit of it too.
And CBC reported it as though it were a scandal.
And I was like, well, thanks for letting me know that there's a couple good ones left.
Appreciate that.
They just completely got it wrong.
That's a whole other disconnected world.
That one.
Now, I wanted to ask you: now, you are a contributor with the Western Standard, which is fantastic.
And I love the work that Western Center is doing, particularly on this issue, but on many other issues.
But you are also now in charge of the goings-on over at Suits and Boots.
And a lot of people might not know what Suits and Boots is all about.
So why don't you start there?
Sure.
So Rick Peterson founded Suits and Boots a couple of years ago.
It was mostly in a response.
That came about when the Transmountain basically went into limbo.
And when Kinder Morgan said, you know what, we're out.
We can't work in this country that's opposed to us, which is the truth of it.
And he felt that an organization needed to be put together to defend our industries, our pipelines, and speak up and more actively, a little more in your face.
So they did things, you know, counter-protesting later on with Camp Cloud and, you know, flying a banner around Ottawa.
So a bit more of an activist, but it was speaking up also for the it was a great name, you know, suits and boots from our petroleum engineers up top to the righan down on the on the bottom to speak for them and defend this industry.
Rick then though has moved on to things really slowed down in the COVID year.
That's just everything's been on hold.
You can't hold rallies.
You can't get out on the ground.
Rick also ran for the conservative leadership and then has been going for a federal nomination.
So he's handed it to Rick Grafton, who's another very well-known individual in the energy sector.
And Grafton held on to it for six months and kind of moved it along.
But now it's time to kind of reinvigorate.
We're going into 2021.
So yeah, they approached me when you need some fresh energy.
And I sold my pub, so I've got some time because we've got a real critical year ahead of us for the energy industry.
We've got, you know, a president elect in the United States who wants to shut down Keystone.
We've got an imbecile in Ottawa who won't say it, but he wants to shut down Keystone.
We've got Trans Mountain, which nobody believes is going to be built until we actually see oil coming out of the other end.
We've got carbon taxes.
We've got fuel standards.
I mean, we are embattled here and we need somebody to speak up and push back on this.
So yeah, they've approached me.
I've taken that on.
And that's something I've always kind of been as an activist in politics over the years.
I'll take it to them.
Yeah, you have.
I remember when you protested, I think it was Occupy or you visited Occupy back when Occupy was around.
And I thought that was great because, you know, there's these squatters just taking up space illegally in a park.
And nobody had bothered to just do the same to them.
And I still remember that.
That's, I think, when you first came on my radar, was hey, that guy's actually doing something back to them.
And I'm so because of that, I'm excited to see the direction you take suits and boots in.
I'm excited to hear something a little more in your face because bless the folks at CAP, they sure like to keep their hands clean.
Well, that's it.
And then they are.
Those are industry associations.
And a problem the energy sector's had for a long time is that they won't speak up.
I mean, energy professionals are usually introverted engineers, you know, not to knock them.
They're important, hardworking people, but they don't want to get out front and center and make noise.
These industry associations, it reminds me of, well, I've been speaking to some degree to Calgary home builders and developers.
They're afraid to speak up for themselves because they feel they're going to get punished further.
So somebody relatively bulletproof needs to speak up for these industries.
What are you guys going to do?
Fire me?
Yeah, good luck.
There's nothing else you can do to me.
I'm in alternative media now and in activism because we need to speak up and push back.
I mean, speaking again to the UCP, the war room was supposed to speak on behalf of our industry.
It was a catastrophe.
It's been a joke.
It just puts out press releases of fluff.
So Suits and Boots can fill that role.
It will speak up.
It'll speak up on our behalf unapologetically.
I'm afraid, you know, you're not going to shut down Morgan Incorporated.
So I will happily go out and counter protest and do things like that.
And I guess like a lot of other things, you know, the industry professionals can certainly send us information and we will be the loudspeaker for it.
Yeah, I think that's great.
I think that sometimes the corporate interests tend to be a little bit more politically cautious, I guess.
They don't want to make just and true no bad.
We saw that with, you know, the CEOs who sort of, well, not sort of, they absolutely did suck up to Rachel Notley over the carbon tax.
In the meantime, round after round of layoffs were happening in their own companies because of the policies of Rachel Notley.
And so I'm happy to see that Suits and Boots will have that more worker boots on the ground to, you know, engineers, to geologists, sort of focus outside of, you know, the corporate silo.
It'll be more about the worker.
So I'm very happy to hear that.
And I think you're probably just the exact right guy for the job.
I'm really looking forward to it.
Yeah, Corey, where else can people find the work that you're doing?
So I've mentioned the Western Standard Online, which is great.
Suits and Boots, I'm excited to find out where that goes and what happens next.
But where else can people find you?
And for that matter, support the work that you're doing.
Absolutely.
Well, again, the Suits and Boots, I mean, please, you know, go on to the website.
It's simple to find.
Just Google it and you can sign up for the newsletters and information to keep up to date on what we're doing.
Of course, my favorite playground is Twitter, Corey B. Morgan.
If you really want some interaction and have me call your names and such, that's where to do it.
And CoreyMorgan.com is just my own site where I tend to promote other things, of course, whatever I might be involved in, groups or alternative media and things such as that.
That's it.
Podcast.
That's right.
Podcast.
Well, I've got the podcast.
I figure if you get to all those other things, you'll find some of the other stuff.
I've got my toes dipped into the water.
I have a weekly show with the postmillennial as well, actually, called The Western Voice.
And yes, I do my own podcast, which would always be posted on CoreyMorgan.com as well.
Corey, you got to get better at shameless self-promotion front.
Oh, I know.
As you see, I've got my hands in so many different things too.
I don't want to take up a quarter of this valuable time by just going into all the crazy stuff I'm into.
Suits and boots will be taking up a larger part of all of that.
It's a much more important task.
Great.
Corey, thanks so much for coming on the show.
I know, obviously, you just listed everything you're doing.
So you're a very busy guy.
Thanks for being generous with your time.
And I can't wait to see what you do next.
Thanks.
Always happy to talk to you, Sheila.
Liberals Smothering the Firestorm00:01:07
It's one of those rare times where I really have to hand it to the liberals.
They are handling the scandals of their politicians traveling outside of the country over Christmas a lot better than we are on the conservative side of the aisle.
The liberals are not trotting out their mental lightweight leader, Justin Trudeau, to fall on his sword.
Instead, they're telling on themselves and resigning before public pressure turns into a firestorm.
In fact, the liberals are just smothering the firestorm with a wet blanket before it gets out of control.
And that's definitely not at all what's been happening on the conservative benches now, is it?
And it's pretty out of touch for the conservative leadership to let these things fester when so many of us are conservatives because we believe in personal responsibility and personal accountability for our choices.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.