Cory Morgan critiques Calgary’s $80B climate plan, calling it ideologically driven and counterproductive amid 34% downtown vacancy and post-pandemic suburban trends, while Rocky View County thrives under lower taxes. He dismisses Trudeau’s "mobbed" Stampede appearance as a staged media illusion, praises Kenney’s Alberta Day move, and analyzes the UCP leadership race—Smith leads with controversy avoidance, Taves risks Kenney’s legacy, Polyev’s debate shunning undermines his credibility. The episode champions Western Standard Online and Rebel News for their unfiltered reporting, contrasting with CBC’s misrepresentations like the February 2022 Ottawa convoy coverage, framing them as essential for truth in mainstream media’s echo chamber. [Automatically generated summary]
City of Calgary's new climate scheme is going to cost over $80 billion.
And Justin Trudeau had a whistle-stop tour of the Calgary Stampede.
And if you got all your news from the mainstream media, it went well.
It did not.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Calgary remains one of the most conservative places in the entire country, but you would never know it if you paid careful attention to municipal politics there.
The new mayor, a far left-wing, I guess I might call her a bit of an extremist as far as her politics go, Giodi Gondik, has recently signed on to a climate scheme that's in excess of $80 billion.
They're really giving the city of Ottawa a run for their money there.
But do the people really want to pay for this nonsensical virtue signaling?
And then Justin Trudeau, he was recently in Calgary for the Stampede, as politicians tend to do.
They go to pancake breakfast and they gladhand and they politic and they campaign there.
And the mainstream media said that it was just a love-in for Justin Trudeau.
He was beloved by the public and the people, but the lie detector test determined that was not true.
There's so much to talk about in Calgary and with regard to the Conservative Party leadership race and then the race to replace Premier Jason Kenney here in Alberta as the leader of the United Conservative Party.
And so I thought I would call a bit of an expert on Calgary politics and politics in general.
So joining me tonight in an interview we recorded earlier in the day is my friend Corey Morgan.
He's a columnist at Western Standard Online and the host of Triggered.
Take a listen.
Joining me from the Western Standard offices in Calgary is my friend Corey Morgan.
Corey, thanks for agreeing to come on the show.
I know you're a very busy guy.
Before we get into, you know, the politics of, well, everything right now, it's just nothing but leadership races.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the Western Standard federal conservative debate.
I think it was great in spite of itself.
And I don't mean that, you know, critically.
I mean, you know, it was canceled because he didn't have Pierre Polyev coming.
And then Leslie Lewis didn't come.
And then Patrick Brown was sneaky Patrick and he was unceremoniously booted from the race.
But I think in spite of all of that, with Derek pivoting to a fireside chat, I think it went off great.
And I learned things about Jean Charais' position that left me saying, well, you know what?
He's a red Tory, but he's right on that.
What was the feedback that Western Standard got on the debate?
Yeah, that was sort of a lot of it.
It was hard for the people who'd signed up because we were constantly changing the format.
But when you're working with something fluid, you know, what can you do?
It was a brilliant idea initially.
We know they're all going to be in Calgary for Stampede.
Heck, we can get them all in one spot and do a debate.
But then when Polya was unavailable, we moved it by a day and that made it, yeah, as you said, Leslie couldn't make it.
And then with Brown being dumped, we had to change it because the debate with just three out of five candidates would have been pretty dull.
So it was, that was changed basically that morning into a fireside chat.
We had no idea how well received it would be.
But as you said, I think being able to get some extended answers unpressured from three of those candidates was good.
And people also like the informal nature of it.
You know, there was only a couple of hundred people in the room.
You could actually join them for cocktails afterwards.
It was a different sort of event.
So as you said, it was successful despite itself.
And we learned a lot.
Well, and I liked the fact that it was Western focused.
So often, even when these things are held in Edmonton or Calgary, it feels like a space alien is asking the questions.
And I guess in, you know, in the case of Edmonton, that may or may not be true.
But these were questions that I think Westerners cared about.
And we don't often get that.
So I really appreciate the Western Standard for bringing forward those Western concerns because they pay a lot of lip service, the candidates, to Western issues.
But a lot of times it seems surface and talking points.
And I think Derek did a good job of drilling down on what they really think about those things.
Yeah, we're unapologetically Western around here.
And that was the goal.
I mean, if we didn't have that, we would be just like any other, I guess, you know, interview or debate.
We stick to what our audience wanted to hear about and it came out well.
Now, I wanted to ask you about Pierre Polyev skipping the debate, but he's been skipping these things.
He's skipping scrums all over the place.
And I'm having a difficult time reconciling the fact that he will go and speak to Jordan Peterson about the value of independent media and how he's going to defund the CBC.
But when he has the opportunity to speak directly to independent media and the people who watch independent media and consume independent media, there's just tumbleweeds blowing past where he's normally standing.
I get why he's doing it.
He's the frontrunner and it's too risky.
I probably, according to his hangers on, but I want to see where the rubber meets the road and I'm just not seeing it right now.
Yeah, it's been frustrating.
And it's definitely strategic.
You know, when you're the perceived frontrunner, then it's sort of like nobody moves, nobody gets hurt, you know, or the ragging the try and get to the end.
You know, you won't gain any support by going to these events, but you could step on your tongue and lose a bunch of support if you did something wrong.
He did sit down with me actually the other day for an interview, but, and it was good.
But again, it was very canned and cagey.
It wasn't the Pier Polyev we know from Parliament who's throwing out those great one-liners and shots.
It was all very careful answers and it's frustrating.
It's the campaign polyev, I guess you could say.
And it leaves people wondering what he would be like, I guess, after the leadership comes in.
I mean, he's still very popular.
And I think he's still got all that Pierre Polyev in him, but he's being very restrained in the later part of this campaign.
Yeah, it's weird because if the concern is that Pierre Polyev is going to step on his tongue, I've never seen it happen, never once seen it happen.
So why would it start now?
I think these are opportunities for him to shine and show people that he's doing things differently, but he keeps just doing everything the same.
Yeah, and I think it's advice probably from those around him.
You get to meet the Ottawa staffer crowd on the go and eventually they knock you down.
I mean, the rhetoric's changing.
You can tell with the media used to be looking at him as a curiosity, but letting him go.
And of course, it's already shifting to the old tried and true.
Well, he's clearly dog whistling to the racists or the extremists or the insurrectionists or whatnot.
And I guess they're trying to insulate themselves from that, but it won't work.
They're going to attack him with that no matter what you do.
Yeah, that's the thing.
That's the thing.
You're never going to turn those enemies into friends.
And I'm sure his, you know, his Venezuelan wife will be surprised to find out that he's a white supremacist and probably his little children.
His children will be disappointed too.
Now, I wanted to talk to you.
You know, you're in the heart of Stampede.
Trudeau was in town the other day for Stampede.
And if you got all your news from the mainstream media, it was just an absolute love fest.
I think one of the headlines was that he was mobbed, throngs of supporters, which is an overused phrase you see in the mainstream media.
But that's fake news.
Why don't you break that down for us?
Yeah, it was laughable.
I mean, it's as I said the other day, too.
I don't knock the liberals for doing it that way.
Look, you don't want to have the prime minister show up and be surrounded by a thousand angry, screaming Calgarians.
It just doesn't make for good optics.
So they snuck him in basically with no warning.
The only person who knew was their lone member of parliament out here, George Shahal, and one or maybe two hand-picked media members who they knew would be friendly were tipped off to show up and cover this thing.
And that one from the Canadian press put out that article, you know, with, hey, yeah, Trudeau mobbed by adoring supporters or whatever it was.
And the part that was really stomach turning, though, was just watching every major news outlet in Canada just cut and paste that story and stick it in there.
I mean, if you even looked at the picture closely, you could see that mob outside of that 30 people, it was an empty parking lot.
Like this was that staged event.
As you said, it was fake news.
And I just love seeing the mainstream media embarrass itself.
Keep working on it, guys.
We're here to replace you.
Well, it's the thing.
Like they really don't seem to like you and me, the mainstream media, but I will never go away if you don't start doing your job.
Hey, they're giving us the void to fill.
So carry on, guys.
Yeah, I do appreciate the job security.
And it's funny because the liberals really, every time they come into town, they just throw everything they got at old George the Porch pirate.
And it's odd because you think they would be distancing themselves from him, but not at all.
No, well, he's the only one they got.
They've got to try and polish that individual.
And, you know, it's a liberal toehold in Calgary.
So even if he's got such an embarrassing history, and unfortunately, voters and news watchers are myopic.
You don't hear about that anymore.
This was a liberal incumbent who got charged, you know, for stealing mail.
This is not a minor thing.
And it's been forgotten by most outside of Calgary.
Election meddling.
That's what it would be called if a conservative did it.
It would be, you know, they would be questioning the integrity of the electoral process if a conservative looked wrong at a liberal lit drop, but this guy could snatch it from somebody's mailbox, get caught on a ring video doorbell, and they're like, you know, who knows?
It happens.
Yeah.
Frustrating.
Now, I also wanted to ask you, Jason Kenny, he's doing a very, I don't know.
I want to say it's smarmy, but in a good way.
I don't know what the word is.
He's stealing Labor Day from the unions, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Why don't you break that down for us?
Yeah.
So Jason Kenny did the big announcement at the Premier's Stampede breakfast the other day that September 1st will always be Alberta Day.
And it's a day to celebrate Alberta, just its greatness and its entrance into Confederation, which some people might be mixed on.
But of course, yeah, that lands rate smack pretty much where Labor Day is going to be all the time.
I mean, second only to May Day for our local socialists to celebrate organized labor and communism.
So yeah, I think it was definitely on the way out the door, a finger in the eye to Alberta's left.
You know, a little bit of legacy Premier Kenny can leave behind is this celebration of Alberta on the day when we're all supposed to be singing Solidarity Forever.
So I think it was a beautiful move on Premier Kenny's part.
Me too.
I've been a Kenny skeptic and a Kenny critic from time to time, but this is one of his better trollings that he's done.
And I couldn't be happier about it.
I wanted to ask you about Calgary's climate plan because these, you know, when people, people told me to settle down when Calgary declared a climate emergency.
But these things flow from each other.
Climate Plan Revealed00:05:25
First, you call, you declare a climate emergency, and then you introduce the multi-billion dollar climate plan to address it.
And these sort of things are happening in cities all across the country.
Ottawa did the same thing.
I think Ottawa's is 80 billion.
How are the citizens of Ottawa going to come up with 80 billion?
I guess in the same way that the citizens of Calgary are going to come up with a similar number.
Yeah, it's ludicrous.
And again, it shows that legacy media dropping the ball.
This should be making news across the country.
A civic government, a municipal government has come up with a plan that will cost $175,000 a household when you break it down.
I mean, it's insane.
This should be making headlines.
They should be questioning the mayor.
They should be questioning council.
How do you feel we're going to accomplish these crazy proposed changes when we're already hearing the recession word?
I mean, we can't take more pressure right now.
But the crickets, the silence, oh, look at that.
They've embraced a climate plan.
Yeah, an 87 billion with a B for one city.
I think it's bigger than the federal plan right now.
And I mean, it's all the people say, oh, it's spread out over 28 years.
Oh, good.
A slow death.
That works out to 3,000 per taxpayer every year for 28 years, and you know they're going to go beyond the budget.
Yet again, it's not making waves.
It's astounding.
Well, and Jody Gondik, your mayor, she's acting as a scarecrow for investment.
The oil patch is just starting to recover.
You might see some people move into the downtown core.
You guys are sort of downtown your offices.
You know how vacant things are down there.
Landlords are throwing things at you to get you to move into a building.
And she's not making it any better.
When you see, you know, as an oil patch company, the opportunity to move to a city where they have this over $80 billion climate policy, or you could just go to Midland, Texas, where taxes are low and they want you there.
I don't know how the downtown ever recovers from her.
It's not going to.
And it just got reported the other day.
We broke a new record of vacancy down here.
I mean, the oil's been back for a bit.
We're up at 34% official vacancy.
Now, that's just what is actually open and vacant.
There's a lot of empty space all over in these buildings.
It's just in long-term leases.
So these companies can't get out of it yet, but they're not coming back.
And yeah, Gondeck, well, you've had almost a year to work on this.
Ninja, you've had years to work on this.
It's 2015.
You've poured $100 million into a slush fund with Calgary Economic Development to try bring in investment, and it's failing.
We've got a ghost town in one of the most major urban centers in North America.
And they're oblivious.
They're just oblivious.
If you're going to keep scaring away investment, as you said, who's going to move there when you've got this 87 billion plan hanging over your head?
When you've got a city council that plans on punishing businesses and households for existing and using power, I got a feeling that 33% that we're sitting at right now is just the tip of the iceberg.
Well, yeah.
And the true people who will benefit from it are likely places like Airdrie and Okatokes.
Oh, yeah.
The growth in the county of Rocky View, just outside of Calgary has been fantastic.
New Amazon centers and shopping malls and light manufacturing.
They're setting up all around the border of the city.
And it drives Gondeck bananas.
It used to when she was a counselor.
But what do you guys expect?
You can't cork that bottle.
And likewise for households, people are fleeing outside of the cities into the bedroom communities.
They're exacerbating the problem.
They keep saying they want high density.
They want everybody to live downtown.
Yet they're driving everybody out of it.
But they just don't get it.
They won't accept it.
They're ideologues.
So you can't reason with them.
Well, and you would think that people would sort of be over this, you know, this drive for us to be high density.
We're one of the most sparsely populated countries on the face of the earth, by the way.
There's a lot of open space around Calgary.
Yeah, I get the pressure not to use up arable farmland, but that's not what that's not what's motivating these sort of policies.
They want everybody stacked on top of each other in these 600 square foot coffins.
And you would think you just came through COVID where everybody was locked in their homes.
Maybe you would want to make a home a place that you would have a little bit more room for the next time China tries to kill everybody.
Well, yeah, and that's part of what they don't understand or won't understand too.
And yeah, there will probably be a next time.
There's always a next time.
Yeah, people's outlooks have changed.
They don't, there's the other thing with Calgary's transit is down 40% in return ridership since the beginning of the pandemic, but that's because they've let it be overrun with junkies and garbage.
As well, on top of that, people's attitudes have changed.
There's no appetite to get jammed onto a public transit unit, squeeze yourself into a packed elevator, work yourself up to a big, busy, bustling office with public, you know, shared washrooms.
People have learned that if it's possible to work from home, they're going to do it.
And if they're going to work from home, they don't want to be, as you said, in a 600-square-foot coffin.
They want to be in the suburbs or even a bedroom community where they got a yard and fresh air and a little bit of space.
And the city council can't accept that.
But I mean, it doesn't matter whether they can accept it or not.
The city is bleeding.
Danielle's Lead?00:04:27
Yeah.
It's like they don't understand human nature whatsoever.
And they don't understand that they just spent two years telling everybody to stay far apart from each other.
And then they want you to literally be warehoused in these little, like I said, 600 square foot coffins.
Now, I wanted to ask you about the UCP leadership race.
You guys are watching it really closely.
We are too over here at Rebel News.
Who do you think the frontrunner is?
Is it Gene?
Is it Danielle Smith?
I'm not seeing a lot of polling yet.
There hasn't been a lot.
There was one recently, and I think it showed Danielle with a slight lead and Taves farther back.
And I think that's somewhat accurate.
I'm just going by feel because there hasn't been a lot of polling.
I don't think Brian Gene is actually really a strong contender at this point.
People sort of hung around him because they dislike Kenny so much, they wanted Gene to help knock him down.
But now that Kenny's stepping aside, they're like, well, we don't really like you that much either.
There seem to be other options than Gene.
At the time, it was just Gene.
And we'll see.
It's still relatively early in the campaign.
I mean, Danielle's hit the ground running.
I think part of the strategy is because, well, her biggest handicap, of course, was her floor crossing and her history there.
And as long as she's constantly putting out releases and forcing discussion on things such as, you know, autonomy and sovereignty acts, there isn't time to question her on her past thing.
She's leading the news cycle and it's pulling people to her and she's standing out.
Taves, on the other hand, for people who do want a feeling of stability, he's the establishment candidate.
There's no doubt about it.
And that's a significant number of people who don't want to rock the boat.
They just want what they feel to be secure, steady government.
So I think it's a race between those two at this point.
And as much as there's a very broad field of other contenders, they're still in an also-ran status.
You're just not hearing anything about them.
Yeah, I think the beauty of Danielle Smith's campaign is she's leading with her chin.
You know, she doesn't do what we see a lot of politicians do when they have a past scandal and they say, well, I've already addressed that.
You know, I've already answered that question.
She never says that.
She takes all these questions about her past and continues to answer them and also apologize.
She keeps admitting she was wrong.
And I think she's reading the room well in that she's looking at the things Jason that probably cost Jason Kenny the leadership probably knocked about 15% off.
And that's the civil liberties, the people who care about civil liberties couldn't bring themselves to vote for, to vote to keep them on the job.
She's looking at that and saying, okay, that was a major issue for people.
It's going to be a major issue for me.
Yeah.
And she's, I guess, you know, gathering certain core groups of supporters and very motivated ones, like the people with the civil liberties over the pandemic lockdowns, as well with people who are, you know, Western alienated individuals, whether they're looking for full independence or at least just chafing under Confederation.
And I think it's very smart because when it comes to a leader, a membership-based race, these are people who will buy memberships and they will come out to vote, which is critical.
As much as Taves is targeting the people who want steady as she goes, those are also people who aren't terribly angry or upset.
It's going to be really hard to get them out to take the time and cast that ballot.
The worry is, will that translate into a winnable base of support if she becomes the leader of the party?
Because then the general election is coming and that gives a whole lot of wedges for Notley to start attacking.
And she will.
And as much, you know, you can't underestimate that NDP.
We certainly learned that lesson.
So hopefully she doesn't come into a winning the battle and losing the war scenario, but we'll see as things unfold.
Yeah, I think also Taves has, I guess in some circles, the stigma of being one of Jason Kenney's right-hand men.
And Jason Kenney is unliked by a lot of the party membership, but also the mainstream media.
Yeah, but Taves, of all the cabinet, senior cabinet members, he seems to have cathered the least of it.
I mean, he was also one of the ones sitting on the Sky Palace, but nobody remembers that.
They remember Jason Nixon.
They remember, you know, the other cabinet, but Taves always kind of slides under the radar.
I mean, he's a smart guy.
He's a solid guy.
He's got no personal scandal attached to him, but he's dull as dishwater.
He's boring.
But that's an advantage sometimes.
Stephen Harper spent 10 years in government being boring.
Viewer Feedback Revealed00:03:43
Yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, you can't call it a full disadvantage.
It depends.
I mean, Justin Trudeau is a lot of flash and fireworks, or he was.
And look what that got us.
So, you know, Taves is a, it's a serious campaign, absolutely.
And I, he's definitely going to be tied to the Kenny administration, but he's, he's, I guess of all the senior members of it, he was the best place to break free from that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He doesn't have the full Kenny stink.
Now, Corey, I know that you've got to get going and so do I.
But how do people find the work of the Western Standard?
And more importantly, throw some support behind the Western Standard to keep independent journalism going.
That's much appreciated.
Yeah, we're at WesternStandard.news and we're subscription-based, just like you guys at Rebel, which keeps us accountable to the viewers and readers rather than the government like the other ones.
So just head out to westernstandard.news, check out what we've got, and a person can take out a trial subscription and see if we're worth following up on.
I believe you are.
Thanks, Corey.
Have a great day.
We'll talk again very, very soon.
You bet.
Thanks, Sheila.
Well, this is the portion of the show wherein we actually welcome your viewer feedback.
Unlike the CBC and the mainstream media who just want your money, but they don't want to hear from you and they close your comment section.
We leave our comment section wide open, including our email inboxes.
If you want to send me an email directly to be read on the show, it's really easy.
Sheila at rebelnews.com just put gun show letters in the subject line.
So I know that it is viewer feedback.
Also, let me encourage you to leave comments on our Rumble videos or on YouTube because I do go looking through those comment sections too sometimes for viewer feedback.
But this week it's from the email and it's from Sandy who writes to me, Hi, Sheila, I wanted to express our tremendous appreciation for all you and the Rebel News gang provides in the way of alternate journalism from the mainstream nonsense we've been subjected to.
As many Canadians, I was not cognizant of how far the media has swung to misinformation until the events of February 18th to 20th in Ottawa, especially after having enjoyed the incredible atmosphere with the Truckers convoy on February 5th and 12th.
Witnessing the unbelievable actions that occurred and the scandals and hypocrisy from the government and all is nothing short of astonishing and criminal.
What has happened to Canada?
We are in the midst of moving and very busy, but I listened to much of Rebel News programming and wanted to let you know to please keep up the great work.
Thank you again, Sandy and Steve Cree.
You know, Sandy and Steve, I don't think you're alone in your sudden epiphany about just how bad the mainstream media really is.
I think people know that the mainstream media was bad, but a lot of people saw it firsthand.
They saw the lies unfolding around them.
A lot of people had visited the convoy in Ottawa or visited other smaller convoys and demonstrations in their own city, and they were able to see for themselves what the media was showing them were lies.
And that's why it's so important that our Rebel News team was there on the ground to bring you the other side of the story.
And a lot of the times their work was just simply live streaming the things that they saw in front of them so that an accurate record was put down, contrary to the mainstream media's pro-Justin Trudeau narrative.
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 and in the same place next week.