Sheila Gunn-Reid and Michelle Sterling expose Ottawa’s role in Alberta’s Jasper wildfire crisis, where Parks Canada’s 23% budget cut and bureaucratic failures—like incorrect hydrant fittings and seven conflicting emergency plans—worsened the disaster amid 150,000 hectares of deadwood. They blame ideological environmentalism for neglecting natural forest cycles and practical mitigation, despite climate policies costing $476B globally with minimal temperature impact (0.007°C by 2100). Alberta’s independence could shield seniors from pension risks and healthcare inefficiencies, while breaking federal control over Western prosperity. [Automatically generated summary]
We dig into the federal blame game that's going up in smoke.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Recently released after-action report into last year's devastating Jasper wildfires making headlines, but not for the reasons you'd expect.
Instead of holding the federal government accountable for mismanaging a fire that started in a federally controlled national park, the report tries to hang the Alberta government out to dry.
Never mind that Parks Canada has long neglected proper forest management in Jasper National Park.
And never mind that it was federal jurisdiction from the get-go.
Never mind, the feds cut the wildfire budget in the park by 23% in the year of the fire.
Never mind, the feds installed the wrong fire hydrants in the Jasper town site.
Never mind all of that.
Just listen to the agenda.
Joining me tonight to cut through the smoke and mirrors is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
Michelle has been following the eco-politics behind wildfire policy for years.
And she's here to expose how ideological environmentalism, bureaucratic cowardice, and liberal scapegoating are now putting lives, livelihoods, and entire communities at risk.
You don't want to miss this one.
Let's get right into it.
So joining me now is good friend of Rebel News and good friend of science, I think, according to the name of her organization.
And I think a good friend to truth and objective reality.
Michelle Sterling, the communications director for Friends of Science.
And I wanted to have Michelle on because Michelle is really great at just drilling through the hysteria, the nonsense, and the agenda of the other side of the argument, getting straight to the facts.
And as they say, a lie can get around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
And some of that has happened this week with the official after-action review of the Jasper Wildfire commissioned by the town of Jasper.
And although the report says directly, it says this is not about assigning blame.
And then they go on to assign blame to the Alberta government, who actually was, for a lot of it, at least for the beginning, bystanders and not decision makers in the Jasper Wildfire.
Michelle, thanks for coming on the show.
This after action review says that the Alberta government was difficult to work with, and that made the situation in Jasper worse.
And when I read that, knowing what I know about what happened during Jasper, that sounds like Alberta was working too hard to fix the problems in Jasper created by the mismanagement of the federal government through their agency, Parks Canada.
Well, thanks for having me on the show, first of all.
And secondly, I think there's something that people don't realize.
You know, there were three levels of government kind of all converging on a very extreme and difficult situation.
So we had Parks Canada, which manages Jasper National Park.
We have the municipality of Jasper, which is actually an Alberta town site.
It's like under Alberta's jurisdiction as a town.
And then we have the Alberta government and the national park is in Alberta.
But the jurisdiction is really under Parks Canada.
And, you know, it notes in the report that Alberta was already fighting 149 wildfires at the time.
So on the surface, people might say to themselves, well, yeah, why would they want to get involved in yet another wildfire?
But we have a video explainer coming out today that looks at some of these issues.
And first of all, you have to realize that what goes through Jasper?
Well, there's the Trans-Canada Highway, the CNCP rail line, and both of those are the main conduits for goods and services going in and out of Alberta, you know, in huge volumes, billions of dollars worth of supplies, equipment, grain shipments, whatever, going in and out.
So, you know, that is a critical pathway for, say, Edmonton and all the industries around it.
And Edmonton is a gateway to the north.
And there's also a very big intermodal inland port for the rail line at Edmonton, a distribution point that goes like all across North America.
As well, the Transmountain Pipeline goes through Jasper and there is a transfer station there, a pumping station.
So, you know, that's a piece of critical infrastructure.
There were at the time about 20,000 domestic and international travelers there.
So just imagine you're Alberta, your Alberta Emergency Management Agency dealing with existing evacuees from other wildfires.
Potentially another 20,000, 25,000 people might be evacuated into your province.
So you've got to be ready for that.
Now, from what I understand, from the letter that was issued by Jasper Municipality on July 21st, you know, sort of trying to make things right, where they outlined all the things that Alberta actually did.
It looks like, you know, Alberta was on standby, that they had actually moved a lot of potential services to the park boundary or nearby, where if called upon, they would rush in and help.
So you can imagine that, you know, Alberta had a lot of very important things going on while the park was dealing primarily with the fire there and the specifics of the Jasper evacuation.
So, you know, these are competing needs, but they're all equally important.
And in such a crisis situation, I'm sure that Alberta Wildfire could see this looming catastrophe.
And I don't think the public realized that the municipality of Jasper had issued a climate change risk analysis report about six months earlier.
And I ran across this when I was looking for the after action report.
I ran across it on the Jasper website.
So I had a look.
The Alberta government paid $79,500 for this study.
And you can imagine why Alberta Wildfire was probably a bit concerned about parks management, because this is what it says in that report, that even though the public cited wildfire as their greatest fear, Parks Canada said that, first of all, they are the sole authority for FireSmart program, which is how individuals can protect their homes.
And they said that Parks Canada expressed that the actual risk of fire is less than the public perception.
Like, that's just mind-blowing.
I'm sure that people who are listening to this may not know, but Jasper was sitting in the midst of 150,000 hectares of standing deadwood from the mountain pine beetle.
And during that wildfire, I think it's 32,000 hectares of that deadwood went up.
And, you know, we did another video explainer last year where our wildfire forestry consultant, Rob Scagell, provided a lot of technical information.
But apparently on July the 1st, the vapor pressure deficit, it's kind of like a measure of relative humidity, just skyrocketed, skyrocketed.
And you can see on the wildfire maps at that time on July the 1st, sort of that area of the province looked kind of blue.
But 12 days later, it was all hot red.
The risk was extreme.
So that combined with this extremely dry atmospheric condition is that is definitely a huge fire risk.
And our wildfire consultant suggested that the park should have been closed at the time and all the backcountry people brought in no more activity out in the woods.
And that didn't happen.
So I'm sure that Alberta Wildfire, you know, could see this extreme rising risk.
And then we had the big winds come up.
So that made it literally impossible to fight the fire because you can't use water bombers to any significant extent when there's that kind of condition, the wind and everything else.
So, you know, I think that Alberta had very deep concerns, especially when you read the climate change risk report.
It's astonishing that anyone would ever suggest that the wildfire risk in Jasper was lower than the public perception of it.
Yeah, I mean, I sort of made a list of the things that I thought the feds did wrong.
And that's not, I guess, I mean, I say I thought, but I watched those environment committee hearings.
And I watched the testimony of Ken Hodges, who said that, and he had been writing letters for the longest time.
Same with the local MP, Jim Oglinsky.
He had been saying for the longest time, they have failed to mechanically clear parts of the forest that were hit by the pine beetle.
And one of the reasons Parks Canada said, and this is in documents uncovered by Black Locks, they said, well, you know, it kind of looks ugly.
And we have a lot of visitors to the parks.
We don't want to do that.
Parks Canada also cut the fire budget in 2023-2024 by nearly a quarter, 23%.
We do know through testimony from private firefighters that they were turned away when they went to the staging area.
They were hired by one of the resorts there to come in and defend the resort and they were turned away.
I think they were turned away because they didn't want any outsiders to show the mismanagement happening in the fire response because they were also, once they were eventually let in, told, okay, you can go defend the resort that you've been hired by the insurance company to stage near, but you can't get any water from the rivers and the lakes.
And as it turns out, they couldn't hook to the municipal fire hydrants because Parks Canada had put the wrong fittings or maybe the right fittings, depending on who you ask.
But it meant that outside municipalities outside of Hinton, which is just up the road to the east, nobody could really connect to those.
So you couldn't have this influx of firefighters from across the province converge on Jasper to save this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
They couldn't do it because their pumper trucks didn't have the right fittings.
And I think they only had like seven fittings, like adapters to help with the fire response.
It was just mismanaged for years in advance.
And then when, you know, push came to shove and an emergency was upon everybody, they couldn't even get the outside help that was ready to show up and help.
And I know, I know this is a Parks Canada.
It was Parks Canada's jurisdiction, but I understand why Alberta wanted to help, because I don't think that we think of Jasper as anything but ours.
Well, yeah, it's part of Alberta.
It is a national park, but it happens to be in Alberta.
And as I mentioned, it's a very important cross point for everything in Alberta, for our economy, for the food security of our people, everything, industry.
So, you know, that part can't be ignored.
And when you mentioned Ken Hodges, I was just looking at the standing committee from October 9th, I think it is of 2024.
And he's a forester.
He said he's a professional forester out of BC.
He's not a scientist, but his view of the Parks Canada staff was that they were insufficiently trained in the situation of the Beatles and the fire situation that existed in the park at the time.
They're park rangers.
They're not trained, experienced, professional foresters.
So, and when you look at the after effect report, you find that there were seven different emergency management plans that they had to navigate in a split second.
And of course, you know, initially the fire began quite far away and they thought they'd have like three or four days to deal with evacuation and such like.
Then the wind came up and very rapidly, you know, it was an extreme emergency situation.
So you can imagine if you're trying to navigate all these different emergency plans when you really actually don't have time to read one.
You know, you just have to, there should have been like one consolidated plan.
Of course, hindsight's always 50-50 and I wasn't there on site.
So some of the things I'm saying may not be fair, but obviously, based on the testimony of Ken Hodges, they just, and based on the climate risk report, you know, they just did not realize that the actual worst case scenario, God forbid, is that all exits of the town could have been blocked by wildfire.
Everybody could have died.
Urban Wildfires Lesson00:06:55
There's only one road in and out through the Trans-Canada and then the Highway 93, the Banff-Jasper Highway.
You know, and the fire jumped to the south of the city or of the town.
So that kind of precluded exiting into Alberta and they ended up going to Valemont.
But what would have happened had it jumped to the other side as well?
And when you look, if you go on Google Maps and you look at pictures from around the town, you're quite right about the whole idea of not wanting things to be ugly.
You know, there's lots of still standing deadwood.
You look at pictures of beautiful the entryway to Malign Lake.
That's the opening image on our Jasper Wildfire explainer from last year.
It looks fantastic.
There's these beautiful green trees, and then there's these interesting, beautiful red conifers.
And, you know, they just look like some other type.
Well, they're all dead.
Those are dead trees.
They're firecrackers waiting for somebody to light them up.
And yes, it would have looked ugly to go in there and mechanically remove them all.
Probably the tourists wouldn't have liked it.
But, you know, then perhaps you could do some sort of cosmetic landscaping with some bigger planted trees just to, you know, cover that up and then let the forest renew.
You know, in fact, it's kind of interesting because Jasper the bear, you know, the iconic emblem of Jasper, survived the fire.
But when Sean Amato was tweeting about it, he said this is the biggest fire in the park in 100 years.
That is precisely the problem, according to our wildfire and forestry consultant, because the trees in the park, they have a lifespan of 40 to 60, maybe 80 years.
They need to die.
They need to be burnt out.
And then the forest renews itself.
And if you look at the landscape of Jasper National Park going back to, say, 1900s, you find there's lots of deciduous trees, you know, that they don't have the same resin and chemical content that conifers have, so they're less likely to burn.
They don't have branches way down to the ground.
So you don't get that crowning fire that you do with conifers, where once the fire is at the top, then it just jumps.
And if there's a big wind, it goes everywhere.
So, you know, the fire suppression in the park over the hundred years is a big part of the problem.
Yeah, when I was watching the committee testimony about this, they actually brought in the Forest Products Association, I believe it was, to offer testimony.
And they said, we would have come in to the park, but there's this perception that you don't want professional private industry loggers inside the park that, you know, it just wouldn't, there would be no public buy-in.
But now we have 40% of the historic Jasper town site up in smoke.
So what's uglier?
You know, having the forest industry come in and do the job that Parks Canada just wasn't trained to do or, you know, the town in rubble and desolation.
Well, and I think also something that people, everyone who lives in Canada should be aware of the FireSmart programs in Canada.
People who are watching from the States, there's a program called FireWise.
So if we're going to look at this as lessons learned, then let's learn a lesson.
Look at the FireSmart materials and see what you can do around your house, because houses don't burn up because of a big wall of flame.
They burn up because ember storms, firebrands land on, you know, patches of fallen leaves, grass, stuff like that by the house on the roof, and they light a fire there.
And then that tiny fire takes your house out.
And if you look at the recommendations for how to fire smart your house, the exclusion zone where you want to get all of the flammable materials, shrubs, trees, etc., you know, meters from your house.
And they show you a little plan.
And that's in our video that's going up today so that you can see.
So everyone can look around their house and say, hey, wait a minute, you know, if there is wildfire season and there's a wildfire in my area, should I really have these materials on my deck?
You know, because if those things on your deck, if you're storing junk on your deck that's flammable, your deck goes up and so does your house.
So, and these, most of these are very simple.
things that people can do that really change the risk ratio for your home.
So that's a lesson learned and it's a hard lesson.
But this also goes for urban wildfires.
Like last fall there was a call by the fire chiefs in urban communities.
They're concerned about urban wildfires and remember how Calgary had the big water main break last fall?
Well suddenly lots of people's landscaping was drying up and dying.
So what used to be beautiful, lovely neighborhoods, suddenly you got lots of dry grass, dead trees, stuff like that.
Well, how are you going to fight that urban wildfire?
And especially if people have landscaped their homes with flammable shrubs and such like right up against the house?
Or sometimes even, you know, a wooden fence and mulch is an invitation to disaster.
People don't think about that, but they have to.
Right.
I mean, just look at LA, you know, if they want to worry about urban wildfires.
And again, some of that was the nonsense of the environmentalist movement.
They had these eucalyptus trees that had died.
And they had these huge stands of dead eucalyptus trees that were ultimately standing deadfall and incredible fuel load.
You know, we don't think enough about urban wildfires.
You think that that's something that happens in Slave Lake, but it could happen in Calgary just the same.
Any city, yeah, any city, depending on the conditions.
And, you know, it's interesting that just about the same time as this report came out, Tim Hodgson, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced that they're putting together this G7 Cananaska's Wildfire Center to promote resilience.
Sable Island's Erosion00:13:34
They're going to spend $11.7 million over four years.
You know, we already know what to do.
We don't need another layer of bureaucracy, another advisory committee.
We need practical, real things.
And one of the points that we make in the video that goes up today is provincial and federal governments are spending $476 billion on climate change.
And they're spending paltry millions on wildfire management.
And then when there's a crisis situation like what happened in Jasper, they turn around and say, oh my gosh, that climate change wildfire cost the insurance industry $1.5 billion.
Look at that.
Let's spend more money on climate change.
And it's like, no, let's spend more money on practical, real things that we can do right now today that you can get everybody participating in for the benefit of everyone.
And let's stop spending these billions of dollars on climate change, which even if Canada met all of its climate commitments, the reduction in global warming would be 0.007 degrees Celsius, seven thousandths of a degrees Celsius by 2100, which is ludicrous because every day China is emitting more, India is emitting more,
whatever sacrifice we make will not stop climate change.
And frankly, if you read the climate declaration on the Clintel website, you'll see that really there's no climate emergency and Mother Nature is the more stronger force than humans.
And we see that in Jasper.
Mother Nature did her thing and people were powerless.
Let's bump ahead to one of my personal muses, David Suzuki.
You guys have a new video out about David Suzuki.
He was on Front Burner.
You also have Seth Klein on Early Edition.
Now, both of them are lamenting the lack of climate action.
When they mean climate action, they mean taking money from regular people and giving it to climate schemes.
They don't actually mean making your communities more resilient to, well, acts of nature, which is, I was going to say extreme weather, but I mean, these are just acts of nature.
We don't have more extreme weather anymore than we ever have had.
And in fact, I think we're more better equipped to deal with extreme weather than ever before.
Fewer people die from extreme weather than ever before.
And instead of focusing on things like you say, like fire smarting your house, we're just supposed to offer up these tithes to David Suzuki's climate gods.
Anyway, I'm just going on in a crazy rant.
I'm sorry, you know, this is why at this point, to everybody who believes that, you know, the systems, the legal, economic, and political systems, they're what have to be changed or altered or refocused, but we can't destroy them.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I did a little video about that because, you know, they really disgust me because Seth Klein has this book called A Good War.
And this works along the same theme as the Climate Emergency Mobilization Unit in the States, which is from Margaret Klein-Solomon, who's a clinical psychologist using clinical psychological tactics to scare you into climate compliance.
And probably her most famous invention is, our house is on fire.
So you can see that all of the climate activists love to jump on the bandwagon.
They're doing that with Jasper.
They did it last year with Jasper.
The Canadian Climate Institute, for instance, just issued a whole bunch of wildfire climate change reports.
They often cite Jasper in it.
And of course, the Climate Institute, the Canadian Climate Institute, is funded by the federal government for 79.76% of their budget.
So while you're at the food bank, can't pay your bills, here's your tax dollars going to these fear mongers who are conflating wildfires and climate change and trying to force you to agree to the idea of building, I don't know, a 66 gigawatt wind farm off the shore of Nova Scotia or building an east-west power grid, which would put us at risk of national blackouts.
So, you know, these guys are bandwagoning all this stuff.
In fact, Chris Hatch of the National Observer, which is also government funded, he just wrote kind of an editorial about the wildfires and how he mentioned Catherine Hayhoe and a new report that suggests that, you know, when people face a disaster like the Jasper Wildfire, they don't automatically connect it to climate change.
But if you in the media, you know, connected to climate change, then they see it, then they understand, oh yeah, it was climate change that burnt down Jasper.
So that's what they're recommending.
And you have to realize that there are a number of nudge units that are funded by the federal government here in Canada, also in Britain, I think also in the States.
But the whole purpose of these nudge units is to try and come up with psychological tactics that will coerce you into compliance on ridiculous things like climate change, and they're spending billions of dollars on this.
So you know, personally I wonder if, say the, the switch from plastic straws to paper straws was kind of a compliance test.
You know, i'd love to foipe those groups and find out.
Okay, which campaign was it that you guys used to test people's climate compliance and how much of my tax dollars went to?
Um, you know, twist the narrative against me and my freedoms, because basically that's what they're doing.
You know, with the David Suzuki and Seth Klein, they want to use World War Ii uh measures.
They want to.
They want the wartime measures act effectively to force you to ration your consumption, perhaps limitations on your movement.
This was published uh, also in the journal Metro in september of 2021, actually long before the Freedom Convoy.
They were already planning how can we use covid lockdown tactics and apply them to climate change?
So you know, i'm really opposed to what Suzuki and Klein are doing, because my mother was a an ATS driver in World War Ii.
My father was a dispatch rider.
My uncle one uncle was a Halifax bomber pilot who was lost in a raid over Essen, and my other uncle was in the tank brigade.
So those people fought for our freedoms and Suzuki and Klein are twisting that and twisting the wartime effort to actually try and impose climate tyranny.
So they really make me sick.
Actually they really disgust me.
I can't even tell you how angry it makes me when I think of what they're doing to our heritage of freedom.
You know, really it's sickening well, and you know, David Suzuki is just so insincere in all of this.
The man lives like there's no climate emergency.
He wants me to live like there's a climate emergency, but not him.
I mean, when he stops buying beachfront property, I might think he's sincere about the oceans rising.
When he doesn't have to circumnavigate the globe to go to his vacation property in Australia, I might.
I might think that he's sincere in his belief about the impact of a climate footprint.
I wouldn't agree with him, but I might think that he holds a sincere view.
But I mean, the man lives larger than almost everybody.
How many kids does he have?
Five, uh.
But meanwhile telling the rest of us that humanity is an inherited plague upon the face of the earth, what he means is we're the plague, not him.
Yeah well, I always remember that famous line that dr Willie Soon showed in UH in his UH presentation to us.
Um that David Suzuki said that people are like maggots defecating all over the place.
That's what he thinks of you and me.
What a bizarre anti-human worldview and a perfect synopsis of the radical environmentalist movement.
I want to talk to you about one last thing, and that is this use of the courts to advance the climate scare agenda.
I know we had a group of kids doing the same thing here in Alberta.
Now the nation state of Vanuatu is trying to use the court system, I think, to wring a bunch of money out of the rest of us.
Explain this.
Right.
Well, Vanuatu put forward a motion to the UN General Assembly about probably two years ago to ask if they would then ask the International Court of Justice for an opinion on climate obligations of countries.
So, of course, the small island nations make the claim that they're not responsible for climate change.
It's all the large emitting industrial Western nations who are rich, therefore give us money.
So they're claiming, you know, that sea levels are rising.
And like in one of the articles that came out today, they said that sea levels are rising six millimeters a year.
So, you know, like that much, right?
Okay.
So don't be scared.
Anyway, but they're talking about Vanuatu is also sitting on a tectonic plate.
There was a 7.3 earthquake there, which affected how it sits in the water.
Dr. John D. Harper, who was one of our consultants in an interview with him, he said, you know, a lot of these small island nations that are on corals are actually growing, but the ones that seem to feel that their island is sinking, typically these places are eroding.
You know, and to someone who lives there, it looks like the sea level is rising, but in fact, the land is eroding.
And that's simply from the motion of the sea.
And in fact, sometimes some of the things they've done to supposedly prevent the erosion has actually, you know, changed the motion of the sea and increased it in some places.
You know, you have to wonder what's going on there because Vanuatu, while claiming that the West is responsible for this sea level rise, they run a marine registry, you know, and marine ships are big polluters and big users of oil and of marine diesel.
Also, the Marshall Islands has, I think, the second or third largest marine registry in the world.
Same thing.
And they also, they were the ones who gave Catherine McKinna that little palm fronde.
Right.
And when she came back from, what was it, COP21 saying, oh, you know, we need 1.5 to stay alive.
These little islands, they're actually sinking.
Well, they're sinking because of tectonic plate movement.
Nothing to do with us.
But the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, is going to be issuing or reviewing the Vanuatu case.
And interestingly enough, if you look at our report, Manufacturing a Climate Crisis, the West Coast Environmental Law Association, the charity, has been working with Vanuatu.
So I suspect that we have the hand of the tar sands campaign floating through the background of the Vanuatu case.
Because, you know, if you're a child on an island, a young person, I think the person who made the application was like 16.
I don't think you wake up one morning and go, I know.
I'm going to take the rest of the industrial world to court.
Right.
I think someone helps you come up with that idea.
I could be wrong.
I could be wrong.
No, I think you're exactly right.
And if people want an example of this, you know, ocean erosion being falsely linked to climate change, we don't have to go to more exotic locales of the world.
Recent Press on Sable Island00:07:07
We've got a little island here closer to home, Sable Island.
Just go onto the CBC website, Google Sable Island, and they will tell you that it is linked to your SUV and climate change, which is causing the shoreline of Sable Island to change and erode.
But in the same article, they always accurately describe Sable Island as not really an island, but a sandbar, which would be eroded by the changing tides of the ocean.
And it has always eroded and changed.
And apparently it's my SUV, what done it, according to the CBC.
Yeah, so you should pay.
Well, for people who want to counter those things, you know, people should get our book.
We're doing a new campaign, The Race from Net Zero.
And so if you want to counter all these crazy arguments in a simple little book, here it is.
You can order it on our website.
It's $15 a copy plus shipping.
And lots of people are buying, you know, four or five copies and sharing them with family members or other people who are influencers.
You know, it's straightforward, just the facts and really refreshing.
So very popular book.
Yeah, and not purposefully complicated because I think that's what the other side of this dispute does, is they purposefully complicate ideas so that normal people are like, you know what?
I just throw my hands up and assume the other side is smarter than you.
And really, it's not all that complicated.
Taxes don't change the weather.
The big burning ball of gas in the sky is more responsible for the changing weather than you are.
And you can't even accurately measure the average temperature of the surface of the earth because you can't accurately measure the weather in your own backyard.
Just try it.
Michelle's got a video where she tries it.
You should throw a clip of that video in.
It is really funny, though.
You know, if you just put a whole bunch of thermometers around in your backyard in different locations, you'll find there's like 20 degree difference in temperature from one location to the next sometimes.
And then they want you to be worried about 1.5 to stay alive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I saw an article today saying we've got three years left to fight climate change.
Oh, yeah.
And it was four years seven years ago.
Like I don't know.
Am I dead?
Are we dead?
I don't know.
Yeah, I think it was 10 years in 1989.
So you know what?
Climate change will get us one day, apparently.
Well, you know, our most, our most recent press release also shows that there are two opinion polls showing that the climate, that the public are really done with climate change.
And so one is in the States and only 40% of the people are interested in climate change anymore.
It's like way down the list.
I think it's 15 out of 18.
And in Canada, only 14% of the public listed climate change as one of the top three priorities.
And it's also way down the list.
It's, I think it's, I don't know, eight out of 10 or something like that.
I can't remember off the top of my head.
So that press release is also on our website and also on our blog.
So you can see those polls.
People are done with it.
They're sick and tired of it.
They want practical things.
And again, going back to the Jasper wildfire, practical, on-the-ground things, real things that will make a real difference.
That's what we have to concentrate on.
You know, that 40% number in the United States seems high to me.
But if those people had to pay a carbon tax for a couple of years, it would drop down to Canadian levels of not caring about climate change.
They just haven't had to pay for the effects of the climate ideas yet, and hopefully never, by the way.
Michelle, tell people how they can get involved in supporting the very important work that Friends of Science does.
Sure, you can become a member.
So it's $40 for one year or $80 for three.
And you'll get our email newsletters like Extracts and CliSci.
Extracts deals with sort of more of the political aspects of climate action around the world.
And many of these policies that are popping up in other countries eventually end up here.
So, you know, it's kind of an early warning system, if you like.
Most of the issues covered in extracts are not covered in the mainstream press.
And CliSci is a review of recent climate papers or gray papers and studies.
So it summarizes some of the recent findings.
They're both part of your package.
When you become a member, we have newsletters four times a year.
You get a member discount on our events.
And we're going to be having an event this fall, actually.
We haven't publicized it yet, but it's going to be a good one in Calgary.
So keep your eyes open for that.
So yes, you can do that.
You can donate.
And if you, you know, are not financially able to donate, you can share our material.
But even a small donation helps.
We've been doing this for 23 years.
We are a small nonprofit.
We operate on about $150,000 a year from our members.
And our board is all volunteer.
You know, we operate on a shoestring budget and yet we pump out reports, videos, interviews, press releases.
We try to inform the public.
Our entire purpose, really, is to advocate for open civil debate on climate and energy policies and full cost benefit analysis, preferably before the policies are made into law.
So that's what we're trying to do for you.
So if you can help us do that, that would be great.
Thank you.
23 bucks for 23 years, I think, is a fair donation from the public to our friends at Friends of Science.
And I mean, your YouTube channel is just a wealth of information.
It's short rants.
There's stuff to, you know, encourage kids to chill out about climate change instead of having the education system induced climate anxiety.
And then larger PowerPoint presentations that take big topics and break them down for the normals of the world.
So anyways, this is my recommendation from me to my viewers.
Please support our friends at Friends of Science.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Michelle.
Thank you.
Have a good one.
Viewer Feedback Matters00:02:18
All right.
As always, I turn the last segment of the show over to you because without you, there is no rebel news.
For 10 years, I was going to say 10 long years, but it actually seems really quick.
We have been kept alive only through the support of our viewers at home.
We'll never take a penny from any level of government to do the work that we do to bring you the truth and to hold the government to account on behalf of you.
So, without you, there's no rebel news.
So, of course, I let you have your say.
That's why I give you my email address right now.
It's sheila at rebelnews.com.
Put gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're emailing me.
But also, if you are watching a free clip of the show, leave a comment.
It does two things.
It lets me know what you think, but it also helps us get up on the YouTube and or Rumble algorithms.
If you engage with our work, the platform serves our work up to more people.
So, I know if you're watching this right now, you are a premium subscriber.
But if you do come across a free clip of the show, this show, leave a comment because I'll go looking over there too for your ideas and your viewer feedback.
Now, today's viewer feedback does come from the mailbag, and it is from someone I correspond with almost all the time.
He sends me feedback all the time on whatever show that I'm doing.
Regular viewers of the show will know that it is Bruce in beautiful downtown Radway, Alberta.
Bruce is a loyal viewer and supporter from very nearly the beginning, he and his cat Delta.
And he always sends me viewer feedback, and I appreciate it.
So, I always read it, and I frequently will talk about it on here.
So, this is on my interview, I believe, with Jeffrey Rath from the Alberta Prosperity Project on the tax savings that Albertans would receive personally if they were independent of Ottawa.
Alberta Prosperity Project Insights00:04:00
And it was enormous.
And so, anyway, that was a very engaged show that I had with Jeffrey Rath.
He's a constitutional lawyer.
He helped get the COVID mandates ruled illegal here in Alberta.
And the clips of the free clips of the show that we put out did exceedingly well.
People enjoyed them.
They had lots of fun and interesting things to say.
But this comes to me by way of Bruce in the mailbag.
And he says, Hi, Sheila.
I wish I could convince my senior friends about how good it would be to live in an independent Alberta.
I'll have to get one of those books about the amazing amount Ottawa takes from us.
You can get it actually on the Alberta Prosperity Project website.
It's not a book, it's a document.
And take that out into the world because the Alberta Prosperity Project, they didn't come up with their own numbers.
They actually took the government's numbers and then worked those in such a way that, you know, if we didn't have to give a bunch of money to the feds, this is how much we could keep closer to home while still maintaining the services that we expect.
But I was going to say the services we enjoy, but we definitely don't enjoy the services that we pay for in this province because if you have tried to use the healthcare system lately, you know that you're hardly using it, right?
Like you, wait times are out of control, access to a physician out of control.
You pay a lot for very little in return.
And that would change according to the Alberta Prosperity Project if Alberta were free and independent.
And I know, and I'm glad that Bruce brings this up because a lot of senior citizens think, oh, well, what's going to happen to my pension?
You paid into your pension.
You think the feds are going to steal your pension?
luck to them on that.
You know, a lot of people live in other parts of the world but receive their Canadian pension that they paid into.
Why would Albertans be treated any different?
And I mean, if you're an aging Albertan and you want to use the healthcare system, wouldn't you like to have a fully functioning healthcare system that is not bound by the constraints of Canada's Soviet-style health laws?
Even if they don't believe it, Bruce writes, at least they'll read the truth.
Our legacy media is so biased against the West.
I'm old enough to remember Pierre Trudeau and how he despised the West even in the 70s, but it wasn't until the 80s that he implemented the national energy policy, which decimated our economy.
Yeah, he hated us.
Well, since always, I think the Laurentians do hate us because our power doesn't come from legacy.
It comes from hard work.
And a lot of times, the Laurentian elites didn't actually earn their power and wealth.
We earned our power and we will earn our wealth.
We are earning our wealth.
Your faithful viewer and correspondent, Bruce.
It's true.
If you have aging relatives who are concerned about their pension, show them that APP document.
If you have aging relatives that are concerned about access to health care, show them that APP document because wouldn't you want to actually have a healthcare system that you could use where you pay into it and then actually have a family doctor?
Wouldn't that be great?
Wouldn't that be great?
Instead, we have universal access to wait lists instead of universal access to care.
Okay, everybody, that's the show for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.