I am not celebrating the firing of Ryan Jespersen from 630 CHED this week. These are tough times and it is never a good thing to see somebody losing their job.

That said, I am not shedding any tears for Jespersen either. Ryan Jespersen is a victim of the same cancel culture that he gleefully fed when Don Cherry was fired from Sportsnet.

When I pointed out that the cancellation of free speech and expression was not something to aspire to during the Cherry controversy, Jespersen responded to my tweet with the snide response below.

Indeed Mr. Jespersen. You found that out rather clearly this week didn’t you?

All Cherry had to say was “you people” in a segment and the baying leftist mobs went hysteric in their efforts to paint Don Cherry as the second coming of Hitler. It led to the end of a career which had spanned decades. Jespersen was among the mob with his little torch and pitchfork and was busily creating the rationale for Cherry’s cancelation.

Ahh yes. If only you had heeded your own advice Jespersen. You may have still been employed today.

What the fools feeding the cancel culture mob just don’t seem capable of understanding is that it is inevitable that the mob will eventually turn against them. Just ask Wendy Mesley.

This is creating a dull, vanilla world of mainstream media where personalities fear to step out of the crowd to speak something for fear of something being read into their statements.

I don’t think Jespersen is a racist by any means and I don’t think his chimpanzee comment directed at Councilor Mike Nickel’s staff was intended as a racial slur just as I don’t think Cherry was out to smear all immigrants when he said “you people”. That doesn’t matter to the baying mob which will read the worst into any statement and relentlessly react on social media.

In reality, I suspect that the firing of both Jespersen and Cherry had more to do with internal economics than with anything they said. Mainstream media is losing money on all levels and they are desperately trying to stem the bleeding. Cherry was doubtless one of the most expensive personalities that Sportsnet had and ratings were plummeting at CHED while Jespersen held the prime daytime slot. Their statements simply gave their employers the excuse to give them the boot.

Christopher Bataluk dug out the CHED ratings below.

Losing a third of listeners in two years is nothing less than a catastrophe. Jesperson may not have been solely responsible for that drop but he sure as hell wasn’t drawing in new traffic. The station clearly needs some heavy restructuring and Jesperson provided them with the justification to fire him and open up their main slot for something new. Rest assured, if ratings were climbing or even static, Jesperson would still have a job.

We need diverse voices out there even if we don’t agree with them all. Jesperson says he isn’t going away and I do hope that he finds a platform in new media.

I do also hope that Jesperson has learned what a monster “cancel culture” really is. It’s irrational, cruel and uncompromising. Feeding it will only lead to your own demise eventually.

She loves her firearms, her individual rights and small government. She was openly supportive of Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party in the last Alberta general election and she wrote a fantastic endorsement of candidate Leslyn Lewis in the BOE Report during Conservative Party of Canada leadership race.

She also happens to be transgender.

Conservatives have long held some social hangups which hold them back as an evolving political group, particularly when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identities. We are getting much better and people from the LGBT community are becoming increasingly comfortable in coming out of the political closet as conservatives.

We still have a way to go though. Transgenderism and trans issues are sort of the final and most complicated of the sexual identity package which conservatives are learning to embrace.

It takes some work to try and understand this tricky issue but it is well worth delving into. There is no better way to try and gain an understanding on an issue than in chatting directly with people who are literally living within it.

Tiffany Gillis was fantastically candid and open as we had an extended conversation about trans issues and the challenges surrounding them.

The bottom line is, we have to get better at being live and let live with our attitudes and stop judging other people over their lifestyles and identities. It makes us better people and makes the conservative movement stronger.

We finished the chat with some discussion on Trudeau’s “green” plans and some speculation as to why Jason Kenny is having such a hard time at the polls.

Listen in below:

This morning, Jeromy Farkas became the first formal contender to announce a run for the Mayoral seat in Calgary in the 2021 election. Nobody else has announced yet and Naheed Nenshi remains coy about whether or not he will seek another term.

Farkas has ruffled more than a few feathers in his term on city council and he has forced the city to examine many issues on waste and transparency which they wouldn’t have otherwise.

Jeromy has great plans and has launched a positive campaign.

He sat down with me for nearly half an hour to lay out what needs to be done, how it will be done and why he is the person to do the job.

It was a great chat.

If you want to get to know Jeromy, give it a listen below:

We all see footage and clips of protests, riots and such on the news but few of us actually venture down to those events in person to see what is going on for ourselves. 

We can’t blame people for not wanting to go to these things themselves. It can be dangerous and most people simply have better things to do. 

Unfortunately, that means that most people only get an incomplete picture of what is happening at these protests. Short clips from an often biased media are all we get and many folks have in incomplete knowledge of what goes on at these protests. 

Greg Renouf has been attending protests, occupations etc. for over eight years now. He has documented and shared what he has seen on various platforms of social media. He has been assaulted and threatened as extreme protesters try to avoid exposure of what they are really all about and who is behind them. 

Greg chats of his experiences and what he has learned in his visits to the world of chronic protesters. 


Greg’s website is at http://www.genuinewitty.com/ and he can be found at @grenouf on twitter.

Listen below:

Race based policies are always wrong.

Let me repeat that a little louder since so few people in leadership seem to understand this principle.

RACE BASED POLICIES ARE ALWAYS WRONG!

Justin Trudeau just created a new level of systemic racism in Canada when he introduced a government program which will give loans exclusively to black people.

I don’t care what the motivations are for race based policy. It always does more damage than good.

Race based policies kept natives as second class citizens in Canada who had to get a permit to leave the reserve. Race based policies had native children stripped from their homes and dumped into residential schools with catastrophic results. Race based policies created the Jim Crow policies which made black people second class citizens within the United States.

All of the above policies are now thankfully long gone. Unfortunately, a long line of fools seem to feel that through implementing even more race based policies, they will somehow undo the damages of the past.

The only acceptable race based policies are no race based policies. We are all human and should all be under the exact same laws at all times. No racially based schools, programs or laws. What we need is true equality and the only way to get there is to remove all race based laws. We sure as hell don’t need to be adding more of them.

Identity politics are tearing the developed world apart from within and they are fed by race based policies which separate rather than unite us. Entitlement and victimhood are leading to anger and violence. Drawing further lines in the sand based on race are not going to help us all learn to live together.

Whether it’s the Indian Act. affirmative action, or Trudeau’s latest racist policy, they all will do more damage than good.

You can’t put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it and you can’t undo the damage caused by racially based policies with the addition of more racially based policies.

When will we ever learn that two wrongs never make a right?

The fiscal update from the Alberta government was terrifying as we embrace over $100 billion in debt. There has never been a deficit this large in Alberta’s entire history and there is no sign yet that it will be getting better any time soon.

Not all of this can be blamed on the pandemic. Alberta was heading into another big deficit well before we ever even heard of COVID-19.

Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and I discuss how we got into this mess and more importantly, what we will have to do to get out of it.

Alberta got debt free before and we can do it again.

When will we see a leader with the will and fortitude to do it though

Click below to download or listen directly. It was a great chat.

Go on. Look for yourselves. Just google deaths in Sweden. Its all right there in a nifty chart. The numbers were tiny by July and they are next to nothing now. One every few days out of a population of 10 million people.

SWEDEN HAS DONE THIS WITHOUT LOCKDOWNS OR MASK LAWS!

How stark does the damned evidence have to be?

Its not that Sweden did nothing. Many people voluntarily quarantined and socially distanced themselves and large gatherings were banned.

That said, schools and restaurants remained open without restriction. Masks are not in general use today and look! The plague never took off!

Yes, they had a big initial spike. It turns out that like many other nations, Sweden initially and foolishly put infected people among their seniors. A terrible error.

We need to look at today though. Sweden has proven and is proving that the lockdowns and mask laws are nothing less than utter bullshit.

No more excuses.

If masks and lockdowns were what was needed, Sweden would be the worst nation on the planet with deaths in the thousands per day. They are barely having a couple deaths per week. They are doing better than we are where we are throttling our economy and making people wear masks wherever they go like a bunch of idiots.

I am forever in Sweden’s debt because in acting as a control group, they prove all of those who are claiming that our current dropping numbers are due to mask use and lockdowns are full of shit.

Now how badly are we going to castrate our economy and panic over what has turned out to be a really bad flu that had to run its course?

I fear it will take awhile yet.

This was the most fun episode to record yet. Josh Groberman and Terry Etam are interesting characters with some fantastic insight to share on where our energy is sitting and how we can counter some of the misinformation and insanity surrounding it.

Josh is the publisher of the BOE Report which is a publication focused on Canada’s energy industry.

Terry is a columnist and author who has written an excellent book tearing into the challenges and outright bullshit Canada’s energy industry is dealing with. The title “The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity” Clearing the Air Before Cleaning the Air is perfect and the book is outright jam packed with energy information and a solid basis of common sense.

Near the end of the episode, Josh offers the most bizarre yet unique proposition to get energy projects completed in Alberta. He feels we need to open the abortion issue.

It is a fun and informative listen.

Kyle Rittenhouse is no hero. The 17 year old from Illinois heard of the budding riots in Kenosha Wisconsin, packed up his firearm and headed on down in search of adventure. Perhaps his intentions truly were to head down to help protect citizens and property from rioters but he was terribly naive at best. The kid went searching for trouble and he found it in spades.

The folks who found themselves shot by Rittenhouse were no heroes either. They were violent rioters who idiotically felt that attacking and chasing an armed kid with a rifle was a good idea. That lack of judgement led to two dead rioters and one with the better part of his right bicep blown off. It does appear that those who Rittenhouse shot had violent criminal histories but lets not pretend that he knew that at the time. He was attacked by armed rioters, he feared for his life and he did what most of us would have done in that situation; he defended himself.

What is questionable is why Kyle Rittenhouse put himself into that situation in the first place.

Maybe Kyle truly felt that it was his civic duty to stand up and protect his neighbor’s property. In light of police forces standing down in the face of riots for months, he believed that this was the only way to keep homes and businesses from being burned and looted. That rationale makes perfect sense in a police free world does it not? Is this not what community policing is all about?

The problem is that Kyle Rittenhouse was not a trained law enforcement officer. Oh I don’t doubt that he has spent plenty of time on the range and played endless hours of Call of Duty, but at his age I think it is pretty safe to assume that he hasn’t been trained and prepared to keep a calm demeanor while in the middle of a dangerous riot.

While the North American trend has been to shit on police officers lately, it simply can’t be forgotten how important trained police officers are. Yes, there are some issues in policing that need to be resolved but when it comes to dealing with dangerous situations such as riots, they are the best tool that communities have in dealing with them. Officers are trained and equipped. They are less likely to lose composure and end up harming themselves and others. Can they screw up? Of course they can. They are far less likely to end up shooting a number of people in a tense situation than a 17 year old kid with a rifle is though.

Dangerous people are drawn to these lawless zones. Look at the crimes and killings committed in Seattle’s short-live CHAZ experiment. Look at the number of pedophiles who were found to be residing in the past “Occupy” camps, It is no coincidence that the folks that Rittenhouse shot all had criminal pasts. They were criminal losers drawn out to take part in a riot and looting. They couldn’t care less about black lives.

It is well past time to dismiss these moronic calls to massively de-fund or even abolish police forces as being the extreme and ridiculous demands that they are. If anything, we should be investing more into forces so that they may be better trained to deal with these terrible situations which we expect them to deal with.

Do we expect community guidance counselors to restrain the puke and feces covered drunk who is assailing people on the sidewalks and put him in their car? Will community based policing deal well with an armed robber high on meth? Do you really think he can be talked down? On top of all of that, these officers have to deal with being called bastards by BLM extremists and screamed at through a car window by furious Karen’s receiving speeding tickets.

Police have a tough, dangerous and lately, thankless job. They may be flawed, but they are the best we have. Instead of trying to get rid of them, we should be seeking to improve upon them.

We got a taste of a police free world as we saw an untrained 17 year old kid kill two and injure one violent rioter. As we see forces further de-funded, demoralized and even abolished, expect to see more of those kind of scenes.

This is what a world without police looks like.

Be careful what you wish for.

It has been over a decade since Naheed Nenshi was elected and his ideological agenda with the support of most of council has taken a terrible toll on Calgary’s downtown. Grand plans, massive spending and slush funds for CED have led to a city center which boasted a 30 percent commercial vacancy rate even before the COVID-19 lockdown hit. Office vacancy is now likely closer to 50 percent today.

While the price of oil and the impacts of the pandemic may be beyond the control of Calgary’s city council, the management of traffic in the city core is well within the control of the Mayor and council. Empty parking lots brag some of the highest parking rates in North America thanks to a parking supply oligopoly which is essentially controlled by the city parking authority. City subsidized condo units which bragged about their lack of parking spaces remain unsold while street parking has vanished due to a constant proliferation of bicycle tracks which sit unused for the better part of the year.

Nenshi and his fellow ideologues on council feel that if they can make the use of personal vehicles as inconvenient and expensive as possible, that Calgarian drivers will choose to stop driving and walk/bike or take the bus to work. What happened instead has been an exodus from Calgary’s downtown as residents and businesses relocate either out of the city or at least to suburban development areas such as Quarry Park in order to escape the expensive and awkward to navigate city core.

The few businesses that remain in downtown Calgary are hanging by a thread. Having lost the downtown office and residential crowds, they now rely on people driving out to visit them specifically. Chinatown has many specialty restaurants and shops which draw customers from all over the city. It is one of the few remaining commercial hubs in downtown Calgary which are still somewhat thriving.

Nenshi and council now have a plan to turn 3rd Avenue into a ridiculous and unnecessary bicycle/pedestrian route and to ban cars. This avenue is the lifeline of Calgary’s Chinatown as it runs right through it. If the fools on city council follow through with this plan, a cultural and business hub in downtown Calgary will be seriously damaged if not wiped out and all because of an almost obsessive anti-car mandate in Calgary’s city hall.

The Chinatown business association is already loudly speaking out against this absurd plan and long established businesses such as the Silver Dragon restaurant are saying that this plan would force them to close. Sadly, this will fall on deaf ears with Cagary’s Mayor and city council.

One only needs to walk down 8th avenue and count all the “for lease” signs to see how well downtown pedestrian zones are doing. A trip through the ghostly and nearly empty Eau Claire Market demonstrates how well being placed in the middle of a no car zone pays off as well. It is utter insanity for Calgary to close yet another important road downtown without any real need or demand. Unfortunately Calgary is not guided by a Mayor and city council who are bound by concepts such as economic reality.

Nobody is going to ride a bike to patronize these businesses in January. People will not continue to pay $20 to park in an empty parking lot and they won’t walk 10 blocks to a business due to the lack of street parking. They simply will shop elsewhere.

Nenshi’s plan to turn downtown into an automotive free zone may pay off in the long run as tourists come to morbidly observe a ghost town of skyscrapers. Aside from that, nobody is going to benefit from this obsession with battling automotive use in a city which sits under a blanket of snow for half of the year.

Fire Nenshi and city council in 2021!

There is no other way to fix that gang.