Sheila Gunn-Reid and the Saskatchewan Soapbox panel—Lise Merle and Michael Kouros—examine how the province’s $349M budget deficit stems from a $172M revenue drop after scrapping carbon taxes, yet criticize the SASC for failing to cut spending. They warn the party’s center-left drift risks losing conservative voters by 2028, citing Alberta’s past shift under Redford. Immigration concerns dominate, with Gunn-Reid and Kouros slamming unplanned labor programs and healthcare strains, like overcrowded classrooms and hallway treatments lasting over a decade. Premier Scott Moe’s proactive China trip contrasts Trudeau’s focus on Ukraine, while Saskatchewan’s coal plant refurbishments defy federal net-zero mandates, framed as practical energy solutions over ideological fantasies. The episode also highlights the backlash against Sean Foyt’s concert, where protests—including anti-Semitic slurs—were dismissed as federally funded activists on vacation, and debates nicotine regulations, accusing big pharma of inconsistent, profit-driven restrictions. The discussion underscores Saskatchewan’s resistance to federal overreach while exposing perceived hypocrisies in progressive policies. [Automatically generated summary]
Saskatchewan just posted a deficit after promising a surplus and Scott Mo is headed to China to fight back against canola tariffs.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
I'm going to cut right to the chase.
I'm going to try something a little bit new today.
I thought there's a lot of news happening in Saskatchewan, and I talk a lot about Alberta or things that touch on Alberta on the gun show, but I realize that Alberta is not the only place on the prairies where news happens.
We just happen to do the news a little bit bigger with a little bit more swagger.
But our friends in Saskatchewan are just as conservative as us, and they are facing so many of the exact same issues as we are here in Alberta.
We are a united West.
So I thought, why don't I make a show every few weeks, maybe a month that's Saskatchewan-centric?
And maybe going forward, I'll bring in some Manitoba issues because Wab Canoe is the NDP premier there, and someone should be holding him to account from the right.
And I think maybe that someone should be me, I guess.
I just, I guess I just give myself a little bit more work.
But moreover, to the point of the show, I thought, oh, I know some people in Saskatchewan.
My best friend lives there and she's a regular contributor to Rebel News.
And we also have a friend, Michael Kouros, who used to be on the radio in Saskatchewan as a conservative commenter.
And I thought, let's convene a panel I am calling the Saskatchewan Soapbox.
So this is the interview that I recorded with them yesterday.
Take a listen and let me know.
Here it is that I think we are tentatively workshopping, focus grouping to be called the Saskatchewan Soapbox is our Tuesday, Wednesday.
Rebel News live stream co-host Lise Merle, my real-life best friend from Regina, Saskatchewan, and a regular contributor, I hope, to the Wednesday Buffalo panel.
We call it Western Wednesdays on the live stream, Michael Kouros, who is a political commentator, man about town in Saskatchewan.
Michael, thanks for joining us, both of you guys.
This show, as I said, it's the Saskatchewan soapbox.
So we're going to focus on Saskatchewan issues.
I talk about Alberta issues all the time, but there is not one prairie province.
I don't want to be like the people in Toronto thinking that Alberta is the center of the prairie universe.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
So I thought I would get right into it.
And also, I'm learning technology on the fly, as so many of us are today.
I'll start by sharing my screen.
First thing I wanted to talk about.
Saskatchewan's budget taking a big hit.
So they anticipated a $12 million surplus.
And it is now a $349 million deficit.
And if you dig down into this, it says the province is tying the reversal to a $172 million drop in revenues, most of it from its crown agency, Saskatchewan Power, because not only did they remove the federal carbon tax, but they also removed the industrial carbon levy from Sask Power and other heavy emitters.
Now, for me, I think this is actually a good reason to be in deficit.
But at the same time, also they should have cut the spending knowing full well this money wouldn't be flowing in.
And it also shows that these so-called carbon levies are just a big dump of money into the government coffers.
It doesn't actually go anywhere except for the government to spend on other things.
It is just a tax.
It doesn't save the environment.
Michael, I'll go to you first.
You know, it's an odd thing.
You know, obviously I'd like to see a balanced budget because I think that's the right way to run a province.
There are going to be years that it's going to be in deficit.
There are going to be years that are going to be in surplus, right?
What annoys me more than anything else about the opposition is ultimately when you balance the budget, they refer to it as an austerity budget, meaning there's no new money for programming, that sort of thing.
And when you make a surplus, they basically say, well, the surplus isn't large enough because ultimately we could have done better.
Like it's an annoying thing.
One deficit does not bother me.
Now, one of the things that has not been mentioned in this report is what has our population increase been over the last little while?
And how much has the new population used our social services, our healthcare, et cetera, our services that are contributing to this deficit?
Because that's nowhere to be seen.
There is the carbon tax.
I get that.
But I think the reporting needs to be a little better than what we're seeing here.
Well, I think it's real important to talk about, it is one of the founding principles of our SASC party to have smaller governments and to never be in the hole, really.
That is the goal of the SAS party.
And according to the Fraser Institute under Premier Scott Moe, 2021, 2022, and 2023 have been the three highest years for per-person spending on record.
This is inflation adjusted, even if COVID-related spending is excluded.
So we are spending a great deal of money in Saskatchewan that we don't quite have.
And as a conservative, as both a social and a fiscal conservative, too many of these in a row is a real area of concern for me.
And let me just pop in here as someone who has lived with the Conservative Party dribbling towards the center.
And then all of a sudden they don't make the NDPs, they make the NDP seem all that not crazy because there's not a lot of daylight in between them and fiscal issues.
That's how you end up with an NDP government for a while.
That's what happened under the Redford Tories here in Alberta.
You know, we had a balanced budget under Ralph Klein and we were really proud of that.
We had a law preventing deficit spending and then the Redford Tories repealed it and then they spent like crazy.
And then that whole idea of fiscal conservatism wasn't even the thing that the conservatives held.
So the NDP, their spending proposals didn't seem all that far off the conservatives.
And this is problematic.
And that is a real danger for the government of Saskatchewan and the reigning Saskatchewan Party.
They saw incredible losses to the NDP during this last provincial election.
And if they continue on this path, where there is no daylight between SAS party and the NDP, and there isn't in so many areas, right?
Whether it is nuclear development, SAS party and NDP are on the same page.
Whether it's education, it's SAS Party and NDP are on the same page.
Healthcare policy, NDP and SAS party are on the same page.
If the SAS party doesn't make moves right now to put some daylight between them and the NDP, we could see an NDP government in 2028.
Like, God forbid, Like obviously that would be a worst case scenario, but that is absolutely a risk given the current state of affairs in Saskatchewan.
One of the hardest things I think in politics would be particularly in Saskatchewan and Alberta is this government was elected November 7th, 2007.
They have been in power for almost 18 years.
And one of the toughest things, I think, with any political party is actually renewal while you're in power.
Sure.
Because all government, and I can't remember the person who said this, but all governments that are not conservative eventually start shifting towards the left.
Right.
And we're seeing it more and more.
We're seeing it more in, you see it in cities particularly.
It's not that the SAS party has gone full-blown center left, that sort of thing.
But in terms of the bureaucracy and sort of the insular nature of the party, they're really, they're closing ranks and it doesn't seem like they're taking a lot of advice or they're not really listening to their friends and members.
They're just kind of doing things saying there's a bit of a paternalistic attitude right now going on.
And it's not really helpful.
And the thing is, I'm a longtime SAS party supporter.
I'm going to continue supporting them.
But I see what's happening and I see the constant erosion towards the left.
And if they don't pull themselves out, it's up to them to pull themselves out.
Nothing else.
If they don't, we will eventually see another NDP government here.
Yeah, I think that's why it is incumbent on conservatives to offer their conservative parties honest criticism.
As you rightly point out, all the forces of the universe are pulling them to the center and then to the left.
Correct.
The culture, the bureaucracy, the public service, the media, they're all going to drag them towards middle and then across the middle.
And so there needs to be something to the right dragging them back to the other side.
And I think that's sort of my role and your role, everybody's role in all of this, either as conservative journalists or as conservative activists.
That's where we are.
We're supposed to keep them honest.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead, Elise.
Go ahead, Michael.
We give them permission.
We give them social permission to say, to support policy that is going to be wildly popular to conservatives.
We give them the permission to do.
And so in this moment, we're just giving the government of Saskatchewan permission to do.
Because, Michael, I'm so happy you sort of mentioned the break.
I call it being a, there being a, or I describe it like there being a break in the feedback loop with the government with the with SAS party and the government of Saskatchewan right now.
Whereas we see next door, the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, holding Alberta Next panels with hundreds of Albertans in every room, hearing every single one of them.
And this is something that the SAS party is not only not doing, but they are so insular, so insular in the advice they're getting.
They're sort of missing the boat as it pertains to conservatism in Saskatchewan.
So it would be great if they blew open those doors to having conversations again about determining the next steps for Saskatchewan and for really empowering the people of Saskatchewan to have those conversations with the government again.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
One of the problems that they have is, or it seems to me, is there's two parts to the advice game.
There's giving the advice and then there's actually taking the advice.
Now, of course, as a layman, I don't know all the inner workings of the government.
So they could be doing something that I'm not aware of.
Might be information that i'm sure always yeah, there's always this.
Yeah, but one of the suggestions I gave the party um last year or two years ago, before the last election, I said, when you've got MLAS that are driving to their home constituencies which could be sometimes hours away from Regina oh sure, pick up your membership list, dial everybody on that membership list and ask them one simple question, how are you doing not?
How are we doing not?
What do you need?
It's like how are you doing?
Right, and that would be voter outreach.
Now the thing is, my suggestion was never taken up for some reason, but the reality is it seems as though many SAS Party supporters have become tired of the government because it seems the only time they get a call from them is when they're actually asking for money or donation.
I was just gonna be like I was rubbing my fingers under the desk.
I was like that's that's, that's exactly right and what you're?
What you're describing there, Mikey is a very Rob Ford move.
Rob Ford gave his phone number to absolutely everybody and spent every waking moment where he wasn't like in person politicking on the phone with his constituents.
It didn't like it didn't matter to Rob if if, why you were calling was you needed a garbage can.
Okay, Rob wanted to hear from you and actively engage.
Actually, Rob Ford and Danielle Smith have a have a lot in common in that regard and um, and I don't, I don't think that there would be any person on a membership list that wouldn't be happy to hear from their elected representatives at this point.
It would just be so good, it would just be such a good idea.
It's such, it's such an easy thing to do and I and I really truly hope that the SAS Party maybe doesn't get annoyed with us, but but maybe does get annoyed with us, because what we're trying to do is we're trying to say hey listen, we see this thing going down, we see where this path ends, and this path ends without you being elected.
Well, and that's that's the crazy thing.
Right is that is that the SAS, the SAS Party, right now needs to be listening to its base absolutely and doing the things that its base tells them to do, or else, or else we will be walking four years.
I could you, i'm sorry, it's preposterous for me to even think about.
Could you imagine having premier Carla Beck?
I mean, i'll be, i'll be an Alberter so fast.
I mean, I will just.
There will just be no dust, no dust on my shoes.
I'd be gone so fast.
But that's that's what we're, that's what we're being faced with, because we and we as a conservative base have to make sure that that doesn't happen by directing the SAS Party in the right direction.
At this point.
You can direct them, but they need to listen, they need to be able to do that sort of thing and right now things are going against them particularly.
This may become the only conservative voice for Saskatchewan politics in the entire province, because they don't have anymore.
That that's gone, that that is absolutely gone.
So I it's it's, it's this, it's this mediocre sort of non-thinking radial show that they have now that basically I, I don't quite get right, but it's like okay well, if I want my mind full of mush, I can just tune it in here, I guess.
Saskatchewan's Carbon Tax Controversy00:12:37
But the reality is, it doesn't make you think, it doesn't make you it.
There's no real values there that are being expressed right, one way or the other, left or right, there's no real values being expressed.
So the SAS Party, I think, have really really taken a hit, because the thing is, I think their media has not, is not helping them right now.
Yeah, the media Saskatchewan's media presence is compared to, comparatively to other places is is very, very weak, but we have absolutely no conservatives doing.
We have no conservatives doing a mainstream show and we're, you know, we're just thinking about maybe changing that.
Maybe a little bit Should change it, because it needs to be done.
You know, you've got you've got the brainy accident chorus basically saying, Well, you know what?
We should be just a little bit to the right of the CBC.
And, you know, you take a look at where the chorus stock price, how does that help them?
Like, come on, give me a break.
Yeah.
Okay, let's jump ahead to the next one because I have five topics and I hope we can get to all of them.
Okay.
One is NDP, all of a sudden, being fiscal hawks in Saskatchewan.
Now, they say, so the, you know, according to my read of it on the outside looking in, this is the SAS party is saying that we missed a mark on our budget because we made Saskatchewan carbon tax-free, including the industrial levy to make life more affordable for Saskis.
And the NDP now casts doubt on the claim that Saskatchewan is carbon tax free.
They say it's pure fantasy.
The NDP played a video in which Premier Scott Mow declared Saskatchewan a carbon tax free province.
Then Young zeroed in on the line item for output-based performance standards.
That's a provincial carbon tax in the update.
And it was listed as being nearly a half a billion dollars.
So explain this to us because I was reliably informed by Scott Lowe that Saskatchewan is carbon tax free.
And I don't understand why the NDP are suddenly annoyed that that might be the case.
But I can't tell.
Do they want a carbon tax?
Do they not want a carbon tax?
Are they only trying to call Scott Lowe a liar?
I haven't quite figured this out.
Well, it looks like the Saskatchewan NDP is claiming that Saskatchewan has a provincial carbon tax that is still being levied against the people of Saskatchewan.
So it wasn't enough that we just got rid of the federal carbon tax, but we must get rid of the provincial carbon tax too.
And if we do have a provincial carbon tax, if we do, Michael has another question.
Michael is saying no.
Michael shakes his head no already.
The NDP have absolutely no standing when it comes to the carbon tax issue.
Absolutely no standing.
Now all of a sudden they're upset there's a carbon tax when they were for it, but they realized it wasn't a winning election issue.
Then they go against it.
And now they're basically capped in carbon tax.
This is crazy, right?
You know what?
I'm not sure what the accounting is.
The thing is, there is carbon tax in Saskatchewan.
We can't get away with it.
Basically, it is there.
Now, how it gets reported is above my pay grade.
But the reality that the NDP are actually blowing the whistle on this, supporting like all of a sudden, they're the NDP, the no carbon tax party.
Are you kidding me?
They've got machine on this.
They're using this as a political cudgel, and that's all they're doing.
Because if they had their drothers, if they could convince the majority of people in Saskatchewan to have a carbon tax, they'd be right into that because that's what they are at their very, very core.
So don't, you know, so crime your river NDP that you guys are actually complaining about the fact that there's a carbon tax Saskatchewan when it's something they promoted all along.
Yeah.
That makes me crazy.
Me too.
I don't know what they're angry about.
Are they angry about that there's still a carbon tax if there is?
If they're angry, they're not in power.
That's what they're angry about.
And haven't been for quite some time.
That's some compounding lefty rage coming out of the coming out of the Saskatchewan NDP.
But anytime I see Elena Young, like Saskatchewan NDP MLA Elena Young, I just get this whole like body cringe.
You know what I mean?
I was just like, oh, here it comes.
Oh, here it comes.
Like she should come in on the music that the wicked witch of the east also came in on.
You know what I mean?
Because that's going to be the low.
That's going to be the level of commentary out of her.
But anyway, in any case, swing and a miss by the Saskatchewan NDP.
Yeah.
Okay, next one.
This is one that Michael already talked about a little bit.
And, you know, when we were talking about the deficit in Saskatchewan, and he pointed out, well, what the heck, how many?
How much is the population growth?
And it says Saskatchewan accepting more immigrants, but nominations remain well below past levels.
It sounds like CBC is disappointed that the federal government isn't helping to fill up every square inch of Saskatchewan with people.
Province's nominee program rises to 4004, sorry, 4,761 spots after Ottawa approves more allocations.
So it's up a full 25% from the year before.
And I'm not quite sure.
It says 25% of the new nominations will go towards jobs in trucking, accommodations, food services, and retail trade.
Healthcare, agriculture, and skilled trades will continue to get priority processing as the province tries to address labor shortages in critical sectors.
I refuse to believe that the province has a labor shortage.
It might have an inward migration shortage.
These are people unemployed in other provinces that could easily come to Saskatchewan to enjoy the good life.
And like accommodations, food services and retail treat, those are kids' jobs.
We don't need temporary foreign workers for that.
As a matter of fact, it's so bad in other provinces that basically there are entire segments of that young generation that are not getting jobs because temporary foreign workers are taking those jobs.
And the thing is it's quite bad here.
And I am concerned about the aspect of temporary foreign workers actually sitting behind the wheels of the big rigs.
It really concerns me because there are plenty of stories out of Ontario where the training schools are not their one-day training schools and you get people behind these big rigs and it is becoming increasingly dangerous.
Oh, and nobody knows this more than Saskatchewan, specifically the town of Humboldt.
That's actually, that is Michael's hometown.
Sheila Gunnrid is Humboldt, Saskatchewan.
Nobody learned that lesson harder than the people of Saskatchewan.
We already know that.
But to be completely honest, our schools are absolutely stuffed with kids, absolutely stuffed with kids.
We're talking 60 kids in a classroom, 60 kids in a singular classroom.
Our critical healthcare infrastructure is bowing under the pressure of all of, because all of the people that come to Canada on a temporary foreign worker visa get access to our health care.
And so even that, even that amount, I look at that and I go, where are we going to put 5,000 new people?
Where are they going to go at this point?
It's time to really reevaluate the entire thing.
And also, like when we see those intermittently in Saskatchewan, you'll see an announcement that we've hit a new population high.
Like, you know, it happened at 1 million, but every 100,000 or 50,000 after 1 million, we do it too.
It's like, we reached 1.1.
We reached 1.3.
Well, can we stop bragging about that?
Like, that's not necessarily a great thing, considering all of our public services are being stressed by those additional people.
And the thing is, one of the things that the NDP did is they actually did a survey because they managed decline very, very well.
The survey as to how many people would have to live into Saskatchewan and we could still run it.
I think the number they came up with is 700 or 800,000 people.
Now, Dad Wall was the one who came up with the idea of we need population.
But basically, it was in migration from other parts of Canada because technically it's a great place to be here.
Now, I can speak to the immigrant thing.
I'm the son of immigrants.
My parents came here as immigrants.
I grew up in an immigrant family.
That's when I came here.
But it wasn't wholesale.
We'll just bring half a million people in here.
We'll just put them, you know, have their dinner wherever we want to put them.
It's just the reason why the liberals are doing this.
There's only one reason.
If you took the immigration out and compared the GDP numbers to the population that would be here, we would be in such negative territory.
It would be devastating to the economy.
Right now, if you can bring a bunch of consumers into the country, you can still make those GDP numbers look semi-okay.
That's what they need to bring the consumers into the country.
If they stop migration, the real GDP numbers, because they stopped oil and gas exploration, they've stopped pipelines, they stopped all of these industries.
And ultimately, they've tried to replace it by consumerism.
We'd be in real trouble here once the rating agencies took a look at us and say, this is nothing but junk bot status here.
So I'm for immigration, but I'm not at the numbers they're bringing in because when I was on the healthcare region, when I was on the board, at that time, immigration levels were far, far lower than they are now.
And we are still overburdened on our system.
Now you add another 100,000, 200,000 people to the roles in Saskatchewan.
It's going to be absolutely devastating.
Oh, and by the way, when I was in the health region, the first meeting I had, basically after the first sort of session we had, I was asked by the board chair, what do you think after being on the board for three months?
And I said, I sure certainly don't want to get sick in this system.
I saw how bad it was.
That's telling, hey?
It is telling.
It's absolutely scary.
So, so I and the crazy thing is it's been bad for a very long time.
I can recall being pregnant with my now 12-year-olds.
This would have been 13 years ago and coming down like very newly pregnant, okay?
It was still a big secret.
Nobody knew that I was expecting, but came down with just a vicious, vicious stomach issue and had to spend, and oh, and also I was nursing.
I was nursing a baby and pregnant and viciously ill and was in a hallway with people that were huffing Pepsi bottles right, like literally right next to me.
And I remember checking myself out of the hospital because I was so horrified.
Like after 40 hours, I also had a bag of IP liquids and I was feeling better, but I was so horrified.
I took my IV out of my own arm and just left.
Like I just left the hospital.
And I was on John Gormley's show, okay, the next day.
He wanted to hear about this hallway medicine, it was called, hallway medicine at the time.
So for at least 13 years and now for 400,000 extra people, that's still just the level of care that's been maintained.
And yet, and yet we shovel like wheelbarrows full of money at the healthcare system for no change in it whatsoever.
None.
None.
So anyway, all of this to say, all of our infrastructure is being stretched and it's not good.
It's not good.
And the thing is, this has not been thought out.
And the whole idea behind this is there's been absolutely no font behind this, right?
Unless they're trying to collapse the system, which they may well be, right?
There's no fault behind any of this immigration.
The numbers are too large for any country to handle it.
And I don't care where they come from.
China Deals and Cultural Incompatibility00:04:55
I don't care if they come from India or from Turkmenic Saskatchewan.
I don't care.
But the reality is it's too much for any civilization to be black.
I care.
I care where they're from.
I care about cultural compatibility and language compatibility.
Okay.
And I don't want the rainbow railroad from the United States coming straight into Saskatchewan.
I'm just going to say that.
Okay.
With Chapel Rowan, with Chapel Rowan and her song that mentions Saskatchewan that makes it all popular in the LGBTQ groups.
I don't want that for Saskatchewan because here's the thing.
We are culturally incompatible.
So I will just leave it at that.
You know, about this Chapel Rowan thing, I just got to mention this, even though it's not on topic.
Yeah, sorry.
She mentioned the word Saskatchewan is because it rhymed.
Not because it was a great place to be.
It's because it rhymed in her song.
And we're like, yay!
You know, these are the same people that go to a rock concert and the guy looks in the back of the guitar and there's a piece of paper tape to it said, where are you tonight?
Saskatoon.
How are you guys doing?
Saskatoon.
Yay!
Like, come on.
Are we that stupid of a population?
She mentioned us in a song.
Oh, look, people notice us.
Like, we're way better than that.
We are way better than that.
Thank you, Mikey.
We are way better than that.
Are we going to talk about Sean Foyd, by the way?
Yeah, we can in a second.
I want to talk about this.
First, this is interesting.
Look at this, Sheila Gunread.
So Premier Scott Moe is headed to China to talk about canola, which is the job of the foreign affairs minister of the entire country, which I think is Doug Ford, the way he won't shut up about Donald Trump.
But this is a job for our trade minister, our foreign affairs minister.
But thank goodness, Premier Scott Moe is taking this on his own.
I'm sure he's going to go there with well wishes and strong backing of his friends in Alberta.
But I'm happy to see this considering this is an industry that is larger than the steel industry.
And the federal government is willing to burn down the economy to save the steel industry.
So I'm happy to see that at least this is getting the seriousness that it deserves from Scott Moe.
Yeah, I'm happy to see Scott Moe taking our advice when we said on the Rebel live stream that he should absolutely go to China and figure this out because the federal government was crapping the bed at such a rate that it was never going to get fixed if we just left it in the hands of the federal government.
And to be completely honest, I don't want to be dealing with it.
I'm worried.
I'm embarrassed.
Nobody at the bottom of it.
That's exactly it.
And so we, yeah, we sort of gave Scott Moe permission on our show to like go to China, get this dealt with.
And hopefully he can find some resolution to this problem, okay, this China problem.
Somewhat of an unreliable, excuse me, unreliable trade partner for the last 40 years, 40 years or so.
But God knows that the federal government is not going to do it and somebody had to step in.
And I'm happy that it's Scott Mo.
Well, the prime minister right now is busy in Poland and the Ukraine where he's actually talking about giving them troops if a peace deal is reached.
I think he's going to Latvia.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is sitting up there going, hey, what about us?
Like, do you guys want to talk with us or not?
He's not doing anything with China.
I honestly believe that Mark Carney either wants to see a destruction of the West or basically, and this is a better, this is, I think, a better idea.
I really don't think he knows what he's doing.
I think, quite frankly, he's so ineffectual.
Everybody talked about this is a negotiator, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England.
And the reality is, I don't know if the guy is an effective negotiator.
I don't know if he tells what he's doing.
We've got this, the U.S. question that's still hanging out there.
He claims it's the best deal in the world, which is utter BS.
And then basically, we've got this thing with China and it takes a provincial premier to go to China.
Why isn't Kearney on that trip?
Right, but he's making deals in Poland.
Like Poland, great, great, great country, right?
But not nearly as big or as important as China is to Canada.
I don't get it.
It's just, I just, I think he just doesn't know what to do.
Right.
So, you know, it looks like, you know, there's an old joke that basically, so the Pope was on the street on Fifth Street in New York and a colonel said, you know, I just thought Jesus walking down Fifth Avenue here.
And he says to the Pope, what should I do?
He says, look like you're busy.
That's Mark Carney.
The Net Zero Fantasy00:06:02
Look like you're busy.
Well, I can't handle this stuff.
I'm in Poland and Germany and Latvia and the Ukraine.
And, you know, get down to the U.S. and deal with these guys.
So I don't get it.
Yeah.
What do you want me to do?
Govern?
Like, I didn't get elected for this crap.
Exactly.
All right.
One last thing on my list, and then we'll get to the Sean Foyt stuff, because I think despite the best efforts of the municipal leadership in Saskatoon, I think it all went off pretty well.
But I like this one.
This is my fantasy for Alberta, because as you know, we are coal rich here in Alberta.
And Saskatchewan is saying we're not converting to natural gas.
We'll do other things with our natural gas, like heat our homes.
And instead, they're budgeting nearly a billion dollars to refurbish their coal plants.
And in Alberta, during the dark days of Rachel Notley, we accelerated our coal phase out despite having 800 years of clean burning coal under our feet basically everywhere in this province.
We retrofitted to natural gas and didn't have enough time to build new natural gas plants to coincide with the phase out of coal.
And then now in Alberta, one of the most energy-rich places on the face of God's green earth, we have threatened rolling brownouts all the time.
So I'm so pleased to see that Saskatchewan is saying we will keep our coal for as long as we possibly can.
Thank you very much.
But this is incredible.
This is actually just such an incredible move for the southeast corner of our province where coal country, where coal country is.
But this is also, this is also a pretty boss move by our provincial government, considering the federal government ordered us to stop on coal.
Don't you dare develop your coal.
Don't you dare mine it.
Don't you dare market it.
Don't you dare?
It is dead in the ground as far as the federal government was concerned.
So that our provincial government made assurances just now that our coal industry is not going to be put at risk is extraordinary for Saskatchewan and it's extraordinary for our southeast.
Now, of course, we're going to get lawsuits against this because quite frankly, it doesn't fall within the jurisdiction.
But the reality is this.
If anybody's watched Landman, I think Billy Bob Thornton does a pretty good job of explaining what happens when oil goes away, right?
And he talks about the windmills and saying the windmills that are being built right now won't offset the carbon footprint it took to build them.
Exactly.
So coal, coal is something.
This entire net zero fantasy, absolute fantasy, whether it be 2035 or 2050, for politicians that are talking like this, that won't be around when 2050 comes.
There won't be around in many cases when 2035 comes.
This fantasy that the world to stop the earth from getting one degree warmer.
that ultimately we shouldn't breathe because that's carbon dioxide.
We should get rid of the coal.
You've got coal scrubbers.
You've got carbon sequestration.
You've got everything taken to make sure this is as clean as possible.
And the fact is you can have a baseline of power that won't freeze our citizens in the dark.
Because in order to get nuclear up and running, which not even the greenies agree on, you have to do the construction, then the generation, then the transmission, then the retrofit.
It will cost trillions of dollars to do all this stuff for what reason?
It's a problem 100 years in the future.
This is absolute garbage.
This climate stuff is garbage.
It absolutely is garbage.
It's a made-up thing to transfer the wealth from the rich to the governments where people can pick money off from the governments and have all these consulting companies and get paid tens of millions of dollars for doing nothing.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
And I just, I, for one, maybe it's because of my age, maybe because I got a birthday coming up that I'm not too happy about.
I'm just becoming an old curmudgeon.
And this is unadulterated BS.
And that's as nice as I'll say.
Oh, I just love Mike on a tap dance.
Like you wouldn't know from looking at Mike, Mikey, that he could go on such extensive tap dances.
And yet that's just what we heard.
But no, Mikey, I agree.
The net zero fantasy that we've been chasing.
So whether it's called net zero, whether it's called green, whether it's called sustainable, whether it's called renewable, all of this is baloney.
It's just a big old shell game that they're pulling on us.
But having acknowledged that, then I think that we need to have a real quick conversation with our crown power company because our crown power company, okay, SaskPower, we just talked about that in the last piece, posted $178 million deficit or revenue shortfall.
Okay, then maybe we should stop chasing these net zero pipe dreams and start providing some value for the people of Saskatchewan.
The people of Saskatchewan do not care about the green initiatives that SaskPower has latched onto and are making us pay for, to be completely honest, nor do we care about their, you know, their DEI programs, the flags.
I swear to God, on the outside of the Sask Power building during pride season, there must be 20 pride flags flying on the side of SaskPower.
If you can show me how those pride flags benefit the people of Saskatchewan, give them value for their energy costs, well, then I might let you have them.
Stop Chasing Net Zero00:02:41
But you know what?
We all know that they don't.
Get back to what you're supposed to do.
Deliver power and as cheaply as possible and get the hell out of my life.
The end.
Make sure there's no brownouts and make sure basically everything runs as smoothly.
Sure.
You know, when we were kids, when we turned on the light switch, we knew there was going to be light there.
When we turned on the gas, we knew there was going to be heat there.
It wasn't a problem being a kid.
Now we've got problems as we get older.
The stuff's just laying in the ground, but we got problems.
Well, because it's better for us.
We should suffer because what's going to happen?
You know what?
I love my grandkids.
I've got lots of them.
My great-great-great-grandkids, I don't really care about because I'll never.
They can have the nuclear.
They can have, they can, they can take their time on the nuclear.
That's right yeah yeah, I might even like my great-grandkids, so hopefully I get to that point.
But my great, great great grandkids sorry kids, you're on your own guess what great great, great great grandpa said?
So my cares, my cares, are for three generations and that's it popping out of three generations.
You're all out of carrying out.
You guys got your flying cars.
Whatever you guys are doing, just do it, figure it out, you and your jet packs.
I often, I often think you know, like what do the people in the developing world think when they're like, gathering up their water from a river where a corpse just floats by and they're burning cow dung to cook their food over?
And I tell them, did you know that we have one of the world's cleanest burning deposits of coal?
And they said we can't use it for electricity?
And now we have.
I have, like you, I flipped the switch and nothing.
You know.
You know they must think you're insane.
Oh yeah, they must think we're in.
I just think, like I just think about the experience that my people had arriving in Saskatchewan, like in in the late 1800s, and the experience that they would have had literally nothing, had to dig out the side of a hill for their first winter, had had out of a there's one, there's one, and they had.
It's like walking uphill both ways to school right, but but I I think about their experience and my, my grandmother's experience raising, you know, 11 and 13 children with no power.
I look at my existence and I think, do I want to go back to that?
Like, do I really want to go back?
The whole idea of these climate activists is, okay yeah, let's do that again.
Yeah yeah, there was no power back then.
There was no running water.
Yeah, let's do that again.
Like I just it's like, and what are you guys thinking like?
Glad Reparations Petition00:08:51
What are you thinking like?
It's just stone age.
I remember when, as that came up when, when it was uh, it was um, human achievement hour rather than basically right, and that just drove the left crazy.
It is human achievement hour.
So so I don't know.
The thing is, this is just absolutely insanity, the idea that next year, one out of every five cars sold in Canadian auto dealerships has to be electric.
Nobody wants the bloody things, you guys.
Okay, just practice, practically speaking, how on earth am I going to get my family into a four passenger vehicle or a five passenger, like?
Literally, our family is bigger than any Ev available on the market right now.
What am I?
There are no 12 passenger Evs.
What were our families like mine supposed to do?
How am I going to get my money off the field right right, we'll retroactively uh, have less kids.
Right, go back, give one up for adoption.
Just go up and just talk to them all saying who's not really keen on being here?
Yeah, like survivor round, survivor rounded dinner table.
It's like whoever does not eat those beans okay okay, is gonna get an ex hug there yeah, and then you might get shipped off to the orphanation.
Climate change selfie's choice.
You gotta pick one okay, I pick two.
You guys off the house next door.
Last topic with you, yahoos.
Before I run out of time and i'll wait for a staff meeting, this is the one that Michael wanted to talk about, John's concert in Saskatoon.
Um, yeah, draws over a thousand, and it was met with loud protests.
And it was really just a gaggle of losers from the rainbow mafia showed up to shout down a bunch of Christians.
Um, and whatever you say about Sean Foyt, like, look, I'm not into Christian rock music, I'm Catholic.
I complained one time about an intrusive percussive instrument.
I sent it, I sent an email because somebody brought a tambourine to mass in the music ministry, and I was like, The Lord only needs our voices.
So, I, this is not my bag, but I believe in the right of people to be able to worship where they see fit, as long as they're not blocking any streets or breaking any laws.
And I don't think there's a place for the municipal government to weigh in the way that they have it.
I'm so happy that in Alberta, it was able to go forward at the legislature.
They have like four or five thousand people, and Sean Foyt went into the legislature building and said a prayer.
But, uh, good for the people of Saskatoon for not bowing to the cancel culture hecklers veto.
It was real close, though.
Like, it was real close because Cynthia, Mayor Cynthia Block did her level best to blow the dog whistle to alert all of the activists.
And it just so happened that all of those federally funded activists were at their cottages up north, okay, at the time of this protest at their third or fourth vacation property because they make so much money.
Um, but there wasn't that many that showed up, which is good for Sean Foyt.
But, Michael, I know that you had some thoughts on Mayor Cynthia Block.
Yeah, no, you know, you know, when she made her announcement and they actually shut her down, by the way, I thought that was absolutely hilarious.
Um, you know, I don't think that she's vindictive enough to try to shut them down, but I think she was giving them the pathway.
Here's how we shut it down: make sure that the city thinks that this is an unsafe thing to go ahead and then make it unsafe so that it doesn't go ahead.
So, you know, right now, I'm hoping I'm going to start a petition to get reparations for the people that were hurt by his Christian music because there was a bunch of people.
I saw some of their blue hair turning red.
It was amazing.
They were so upset.
The most offensive part were the people holding signs.
Basically, you know, they were the ones that were the most offensive, right?
It was, they were the one, you know, I guess love is, I guess, love is love is love unless you love Jesus, right?
Unless you love, unless you love the pre-born.
I guess love is love.
It doesn't count in those cases, right?
And the thing is, to me, I would have gone, I like I'm kind of with you.
I'm kind of, I'm an Orthodox Christian, right?
So, you're right, the tambourine thing, I can totally understand if anybody ever brought a tambourine in a Greek Orthodox church.
I was beside myself.
Okay, well, you can't do this.
Don't do this.
Like, I don't think he works at that level.
A tambourine, really, really.
But, anyways, but the thing is, it went off without a hitch.
The LGBTQ, the LGBTQ plus, and I wonder who the plus are, were not injured by this at all.
Yeah, nobody died.
It was perfectly fine.
Nothing happened as if we, and we knew nothing would happen.
The only thing that would happen is the people protesting would make jerks of themselves, right?
So, we stop them.
And it's just, it's a bloody shame.
And, you know, this is the one thing that annoys me more than anything else.
If a government wants to shut down anything, all they have to say is two words: public safety.
And then they get the ability to shut down everything.
I saw when I was on the health board.
If a union didn't want to deal with a situation, they would cry patient safety.
Then all of a sudden, everybody would get tired and everybody would shut up.
Public safety.
Oh my God, it's going to be unsafe.
Who's it unsafe for?
It's unsafe for hurt feelings.
That's it.
He played, you know, you know, and the thing is, the pride parade is way more offensive to people than Sean Freud's concert was.
Sure.
Right.
So let's be honest here.
This is, it was a whole whack of nothing.
And I'm glad that they didn't shut it down.
I'm glad city council and whoever got decent advice to say, okay, just let it go.
And they let it go because, you know, like I said, he's not my style either.
But if they want to, every Saturday, there is a protest in Saskatoon for the Palestinians.
Every Saturday anti-Semitic slurs, but that's not, is that safe for the Jews in our community?
Absolutely not.
So I'm glad he was able to do it.
I'm glad there were the protesters were so few in number.
And I'm glad he was able to move on to Alberta.
Yep.
Yeah, that it was even, that it was even considered, though, and it was applied.
It was applied in other jurisdictions.
His concerts were canceled numerous times.
And the council culture mob won in that case.
But pertaining to this exact story, I saw a quote and it was just so profound that I had to write it down and remember it forever because it applies to so many segments of current Canadian culture.
So whether it be the LGBTQIA community, whether it be kids in school, whether it be COVID, the quote was, safety must not be the altar upon we sacrifice our freedoms.
And I went, huh, we must not sacrifice our freedoms on the altar of safety.
And so whenever, whenever you, like as thinking people, whenever you hear somebody say it is a safety concern or it is a safety risk, you really must think to yourself, what are they actually trying to stop from happening?
See, and it's only a safety concern when it comes from the right.
It's never a safety concern when it comes from the left.
The BLM protests, right?
Although they were relatively peaceful in Saskatoon, but they were completely unpeaceful.
Well, mind you, they were mostly peaceful in the U.S., according to the U.S. mainstream media.
The thing is, if the right want to congregate and do something, then there's always safety concerns.
But when the left want to congregate and do their Palestinian marches and want to do basically their LGBTQ marches, right, they don't ever have to worry about right-wingers kind of about destroying their parades because right-wingers aren't like that.
They don't do that.
The left-wing do that, right?
Not the right wing.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, never us.
Never us.
You guys, I'm going to be late for my staff meeting.
Thank you so much for helping me kick off, I think, the inaugural recording, the Saskatchewan soapbox.
I hope our viewers write in and let me know exactly what they think of you two.
Nicotine Pouches Controversy00:08:34
And I say that.
Oh, I don't want that.
I do because I know it's going to be good.
And you know what?
We'll try this all again in a couple of weeks, hopefully.
And we'll have even more horrible things happening in the culture to talk about then.
I can't wait.
Thank you guys.
Thanks, guys.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
Well, everybody, the last segment of the show is yours because I want to know what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
So if you have a comment, and really, please, if you're watching this, I want to know what you think about the discussion I had with Lise and Michael.
Do you want more of that?
Less of that?
Do you want us to loop in some Manitoba-based issues into the show?
Because I'm open to doing that.
Send me an email at sheila at rebelnews.com.
Let me know what you think.
Because I do care.
I want to know your opinion.
Because, I mean, you watch the show, so I want to give you something that you want to watch.
And I also go looking in the YouTube comments because I'm curious what you think about my other work at the company.
For example, this week I launched a campaign to free the nicotine.
Canada has this crazy set of regulations wherein, if you want to consume nicotine, which is not bad for you, nicotine is addictive, but so is this stuff, right?
So hard drugs, and the government will give you those and the crackpipe to do them with.
But nicotine itself is not inherently bad for you.
In fact, it is prescribed to people with degenerative neurological disorders.
So we know it's good for your brain.
And yet, in Canada, you cannot get access to nicotine, really, unless it has all the other bad stuff in it, like the tobacco and the additives, the cancer-causing stuff, which is crazy, right?
You can go buy chewing tobacco and stick it in your lip, but if I wanted to buy Zin at six milligrams, that's illegal, which is crazy.
And this is not an ad for Zin, but like, why is Zonic the only one allowed on the market at four milligrams?
As if you go over that amount and magically you just lose your mind.
Well, a lot of it has to do with lobbying of big pharma.
You see, you're allowed also to get nicotine gum, Nicorette, which is owned by a big pharmaceutical company.
Why?
Because they lobbied the government heavily.
So the government knows that nicotine isn't bad for you because they'll let you buy it in other forms that they approve: Zonic at four milligrams and Nicorette gum.
Why?
Because Nicorette Gum successfully lobbied the government.
And again, I reiterate, owned by big pharma.
So I thought this is stupid.
And I'm a non-nicotine user.
I've never had a delicious lip pillow in my mouth ever before.
I've never smoked a cigarette.
I've never vaped.
I'm just, I don't feel like I need to.
But if you feel like you need to, or even better that you want to, it's not my business.
And especially, I'm not taking lessons about not getting addicted to substances from the government that will give you a safe supply of opioids and the crack pipe to smoke it.
Okay.
So, you know, I thought it was stupid.
I started a campaign.
It's at freethenicotine.com if you want to sign it because, I mean, make the policy make sense.
It doesn't.
I think if you want to use nicotine, you should be able to get it in as many different flavors and in as much concentration as you want.
It is addictive, but so is coffee, so is alcohol, opioids, the government doesn't seem to have a problem with those things.
So if you agree with me that the policies around nicotine are schizophrenic and heavily manipulated by big pharma, and to see my video on it, and where I show you the studies that show that nicotine is used for neurological disorders, you can do that at freethenicotine.com.
And I wanted to know what you guys thought about it.
And the superbly fantastical Chan 943 writes, they also limit the amount of cannabis products you can purchase at one time to one ounce.
That's no different than this purchase limit.
Well, that's stupid also.
Like, if it's legal, it's legal.
Like, what is the difference?
Whether you buy one ounce or two ounces.
You can't smoke it all at once.
I think that they're worried about you selling it to the United States, like, taking it across the border into the United States, but that's the border guards problem.
It's not the consumer's problem at the store.
I don't like that rule either.
And I don't like the fact that you are limited to four milligrams of Zonic and just that brand and just that brand only, and you have to buy it at the drugstore for some reason when you could just take two Zonics and stick it in your lip.
STEM.
But I can go get chewing tobacco, skull, and give myself mouth cancer because that's way easier than getting Zonic.
Crazy.
Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Let's keep going.
Shad Williams says you can get caffeine pouches in the States.
I think you can get caffeine pouches here too.
You can get vitamin vapes.
I just, I just don't understand the rule.
And I say this as a non-nicotine user.
Sometimes I feel like I could use a quick hit of nicotine to get my head screwed on straight.
But if I wanted that, I can go up to the gas station on the highway and get a pack of darts, but I can't get, and give myself all the horrible things that come in cigarettes, but I couldn't get just the nicotine, which would probably straighten my head out.
Again, stupid, right?
Makes no sense.
Adams402 says, as a non-nicotine user myself, hi friend.
I have also not been able to understand the messed up logic behind people not being able to get readily available pouches.
Thanks for the clarification.
Of course, it is completely nonsensical and money is behind it.
Yeah, big pharma lobbying.
And so they lobbied everybody else out of the marketplace.
And then they say, oh, it's for the health of Canadians.
There's nothing inherently harmful about nicotine.
Nothing.
And if they cared about your health, they would make it easier for you to get your hands on just the nicotine over all the cigarettes, right?
But they don't care about your health.
I really don't want the government to care about my health.
But you know, they don't because of their completely bizarre rules that don't make any sense around the use of nicotine.
Like, you can't get flavored cigarettes, but you can walk into the vape store and get like a birthday cake vape that lights up like a whistle.
Doesn't make any sense.
And look, I'm not saying ban the gajillion flavors of fruit-flavored batteries that people suck on.
I'm not saying that.
I think, like, blow that market wide open, but also blow the cigarette market wide open and let people get all the nicotine pouches that they want in whatever concentration they want.
And maybe, maybe people will start thinking more clearly once they're sufficiently nicotined.
Anyway, that's the show for tonight, guys.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.
Please do let me know what you think about doing a like a Saskatchewan and maybe a Manitoba-based panel discussion on the show.