952 – Transcript

Just Right Episode 952

Air Date: February 18, 2026

Host: Bob Metz

Program Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this program are those of the participants.

Clip (Sliders S04E06):
Uncle Ray is frozen. So? He’s as dead as a mackerel. No, he’s not. Oh, I’m sorry. You’re a Canadian and I don’t think they have this technology up there. Uncle Ray is in a state of suspended animation. His body functions have been lowered, but he’s alive. It’s the way they handle all people here when they become too much trouble.

Bob Metz:
Welcome everyone. It is Wednesday, February the 18th, 2026. I’m Bob Metz and this is Just Right, broadcasting around the world and online. Join us for an hour of discussion that’s not right wing. It’s just right.

No, Canada doesn’t have the technology to freeze its seniors when they become too much trouble. Canada has made instead, and it’s a made in Canada option. One of the few things Canada is exporting these days.

The world has been taking a heightened notice of Canada recently, for reasons not the least of which included the Tumbler Ridge, BC mass shooting, an event that, beyond the tragedy itself, is symbolic and representative of the tragic state of Canada. And this is significant. When I use the word state in this context, I am referring to the condition of Canada, not to its identity as an independent state, which it can no longer claim to be.

There’s an avalanche of evidence that demonstrates this, and we have only enough time to investigate the tip of the iceberg, which we shall do commencing right after our reminder that you can write us at feedback@justrightmedia.org.

Hear us on WBCQ and on Channel 292 Shortwave, follow and like us on your favorite podcast platform, and visit us at justrightmedia.org, where you can access all of our social media links, archive broadcasts, and the support button that makes it easy for you to support the show. Because as always, your financial support is appreciated and is what makes this show possible.

Only you can save Canada. That was the title of a 1991 Canadian bestseller written by William Trench, and in which the forward to the book was written by yours truly.

This past January 22nd, I was saddened to have learned, upon receiving a personal phone call from his daughter Diane, that Bill had passed away on December 13th at the age of 91. Bill was a good friend and a longtime supporter of this show and of the Freedom Party of Ontario.

His book, Only You Can Save Canada, was endorsed by the likes of Peter Worthington and David Somerville, who was then the president of Canada’s National Citizens Coalition. And in the forward of that book, Bill wrote, In addition, a special word of thanks to Bob Metz, who unselfishly devoted hours of his time to assisting me on this project, and whose experience, knowledge, and wise counsel proved invaluable.

Looking back, the sad reality is that nobody tried to save Canada, and worse, that the book proved to be prophetic, in the context certainly of today’s Canadian zeitgeist. So there’s a certain sense of loss and tragedy on my part, not only about the passing of Bill Trench, but also about what appears to be the passing of Canada itself.

For the record, I still maintain, as I wrote in the forward to the book, that, quote, Canada should have the highest standard of living in the world bar none. Canadians should be sharing in a prosperous economy, a clean environment, and a society that respects individual rights and freedom, end quote.

But that was no longer the country called Canada back in 1991 when I wrote that, and it is not the Canada of 2026.

So let’s kick off today’s conversation with Stephen Crowder’s February 11th take on the February 10th, 2026 Tumbler Ridge, BC shooting. In very mind, that this is less about the shooter and the event itself than it is about Canada.

Clip (Steven Crowder, February 11 2026):
Let’s get to what is in the news right now, this shooting in British Columbia. It’s weird that this didn’t catch on as far as being covered by the media. Why was it not covered anywhere for a good long while in comparison to other shootings? Why do I want people to know about it right away? Right. Interesting. Why did we not have the same kind of reaction in comparison to other mass shootings?

But I will tell you, when you’re facing an absence of information, look to how the left is treating it, and that’ll be a pretty strong indicator. If they don’t cover it, there’s something there that they don’t want to touch, and I saw that right away.

So off the bat, for those of you who haven’t been following it, shooter in British Columbia killed nine at the time of this broadcast, injured another 25. This is a really large-scale, tragic one, and here’s the news report.

So this is one of the biggest tragedies that our province, our country, and certainly the rural town of Tumbler Ridge has ever seen. We’re still triaging other victims, and I don’t have updates on whether that number could rise. The scene was very dramatic, and there were multiple victims that are still being cared for.

The reason why is if it is not a shooting that helps them push the narrative of gun control, that helps them push the narrative that the common denominator is easy access to guns, or right-wing extremism, they try and bury it.

This is the same media who has said that the greatest threat to, well, domestically, is right-wing extremists, or white males, as you heard Don Lemon, people like Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, CNN as a whole, MSNBC, I guess it’s called MS. Now, that’s what you’ve heard them say. That’s why they don’t want to touch this.

So let me give you a couple of key facts, and then I’ll tell you what they want you to believe, and I’ll tell you what is accurate.

The RCMP’s district commander referred not only to the shooter as a gun person, which is odd, but every part about this clip is suspicious. None of those people are the gun person. That includes the deceased gun person. Okay, and then separately, do you know the gun person’s relationship to the school? Not at this time, no.

Okay, so right away, gun person, look left! Right. That seems odd. Could just be that they’re tripping over pronouns because they don’t know what to do.

This comes from Cosman… Georgia. Georgia. Juno News, a former post-millennial editor, wrote, I just spoke to Jesse Stines. Uncle Russell, who identified Jesse as a suspected Tumbler Ridge’s shooter, Russell described his nephew Jesse as, quote, transgender. Public YouTube account belonging to Jesse also bears the trans flag and an SKS rifle.

I reached out because that’s what basic journalism demands, verification through primary sources. That used to be standard practice. It was the only thing I could do while the police refused to verify basic details about the killer’s identity.

Now we go to the response from the left. This is telling the New York Times. Canada was reeling on Wednesday, a day after a shooter killed nine people and injured 25 others in a remote town in northeastern British Columbia, the third-deadliest, a shooting in the country’s history that comes amid a wider debate about gun control.

Let me be clear, there is no wider debate about gun control in Canada. It has some of the strictest gun laws in the Western world. Okay? To the point of being silly. When you talk about bureaucracy, red tape and arbitrary laws simply designed to infringe on your right to self-defense, you’re referring to Canada. There’s no debate. It has been settled by a totalitarian government in Canada. You cannot own firearms for the purposes of self-defense in Canada.

Gun control, gun violence is the root of the problem. Access to guns and it is a uniquely American problem doesn’t work here. This epidemic of gun violence is a uniquely American problem. When it comes to the sheer frequency and public response to mass shootings, the U.S. is in a category all its own. A uniquely American phenomenon. The fact that the U.S. is alone in the world for these mass shootings in schools or other places. No advanced society except this one keeps having gun massacres. America is the only country in the world where scenes like this play out on almost a daily basis. Do you guys even realize that the number one killer of children and teens are gun injuries? Why are we fighting about this? Wrong.

Well, the reason we’re fighting about this is because this country used to have a lot of men in the country and they wanted to be able to protect you. Your father would want to protect you. Men in this country wanted to be able to protect their family, their liberty, their freedoms to be clear.

And then the idea that it settled that only the United States faces mass shootings, that’s not true. And we certainly aren’t the only country that faces acts of mass violence because here’s the truth. Plenty of mass shootings have taken place in Canada. You could argue that Montreal is the founder of the FIS where I was raised. We had three mass shootings where the École Polytechnique was a big one. Concordia University Massacre. The Dawson shooting where my friends, quite a few of them were in that school when it happened in 2020. Nova Scotia. There was a gunman who was on a rampage for 13 hours, killing 22. 13 hours. I would argue that’s a tougher pill to swallow. Yeah. Because imagine you are the spouse or the father of death 18 or 19 or death 21 at hour 12 and a half.

Why don’t we treat that as a greater act of evil than people having the right to own firearms? That is a failure of the government. It’s a failure of their primary job. No one could stop that person and that mass shooting, I guess you wouldn’t call it mass shooting because it took place over the course of 13 hours. But it is by definition. That’s what led to the ban on assault style weapons in Canada, which by the way, if you’re in the States, includes pretty much every gun that you have. They can’t define it.

We do know that Canada has some of the strictest gun laws in the western world. Okay? Mass terror in general and mass killings. This is something that we see across the world, not just the western world, and it doesn’t have to involve guns. Guys, it does not have to involve guns. We have mass rammings with cars. They occur at rates that defy reason if you look at what’s happening in China. And by the way, that’s taken place in the United States and Canada.

But often the motivations, if they can’t be attributed to simply access to guns, they’re obfuscated or lied about. For example, remember the terror attack in Sydney? That was a right wing thing. Threats, be it anti-Semitism, the rise of right wing extremist groups as well. And we continue to work closely with our security agencies.

Now the reason I bring up that comparison is because like with the transgender demographic, was it 158 million Muslims on Earth believe that violence against apostates and converts is at least sometimes justified or was it 190 something million? I’m trying to remember. It was over 150 million Muslims believe that violence against non-Muslims is sometimes justified. That would seem like it’s a contributing factor. They said right wing.

So acts of evil are carried out all the time. They don’t necessarily involve guns and you can see very common ideologies that are shared with those who commit acts of evil. Islam is one of them. If you’re looking at global terror and in general leftism, you see radical leftism. We’re not just talking about murder. We’re talking about assaults as well. We’ll get into mental illness as well.

If you’re looking at the problem as an inanimate object guns, well that problem’s been solved in Canada. You see the Democrats on the stage when they debate. They point to Canada or Australia as the success story. But if the problem was guns, Canada solved it. That’s not the problem.

Yes. So 198 million Muslims worldwide support the use of violence against civilian targets to defend Islam according to Pew. There you go. 198 million Muslims. The threat is right wing extremism. No, that was an Islamic attack on a Jewish gathering that I was talking about. Didn’t say it. It seems like right wing extremism. Is that the problem? April. In Canada. Did you know this? 11 people were killed and a dozen more were injured in a Vancouver car attack.

If you don’t acknowledge evil, if you don’t acknowledge ideological influences, if you don’t understand that good and evil exist in this world, well you get it. Once you ban guns, you go, well people are still committing, I guess we’ll put up traffic barriers. That’s not going to work. I guess we’ll ban cars in the UK banning knives. It’s never enough and they ignore the root problem.

Everything the left has told you is wrong. Everything they have touched, they have ruined. Every policy they propose, every solution they present makes you worse off for having listened to them objectively.

And so if you go, our problem is gun violence, well let’s just ignore all the car attacks. Our problem is gun violence, well let’s just ignore all the Islamic terrorism. Our problem is gun violence, let’s just ignore the 42% attempted suicide rate with transgender individuals and their proclivity to violence. Our problem is gun violence.

Alright. What do you do when a story like this comes up? A transgender individual carried out of mass shooting in a country with the strictest gun control policy in the western world. Well that might indicate there’s a moral rot. Let’s just move on. Don’t let the left do that. Don’t listen to them. Don’t let them steal the narrative here. Don’t let them gaslight you into this being something that it’s not.

Listen so that you hear their arguments, but don’t even allow them the chance to propose a solution, a prescription. Period. It’s always bad. Yeah. It always leads to more death. And it always leads to a worse society. The left is always wrong. It’s that simple. They are always wrong.

Bob Metz:
But of course, if the left wasn’t always wrong, it would be the right. And I’m pleased to finally see the total polarity between those two very different ideologies being recognized by Steven Crowder.

Unfortunately, what still needs to be addressed is the complete contradiction inherent in terms like right wing extremist groups. It’s one thing to point out how those labels in no way address the causes or even a description of what happened at Tumbler Ridge or any of the conditions that led to it. But it’s quite another to even accept such terms in the first place.

For the record, there is no such thing as extremism quote-unquote in the context that we’re hearing it being used. Right wing extremism, left wing extremism. But right and left are absolutes, not extremes.

You’d never hear people say something like, oh, he’s extremely dead, or he’s extremely alive, except maybe he has a humorous metaphor. Or you’d never hear anybody say, he’s center dead, or he’s center alive, or he’s far dead, or he’s far alive.

Ayn Rand put the nail in the extremist coffin way back in 1964 when she penned her essay, Extremism or the Art of Smearing. She regarded the concept of extremism as an anti-concept, explaining that, and I quote:

“The purpose of anti-concepts is to obliterate certain concepts without public discussion. And as a means to that end, to make public discussion unintelligible and to induce the same disintegration in the mind of any man who accepts them, rendering him incapable of clear thinking or rational judgment. No mind is better than the precision of its concepts.

Of all the anti-concepts polluting our cultural atmosphere, extremism is the most ambitious in scale and implication. It goes much beyond politics. To begin with, extremism is a term which, standing by itself, has no meaning. The concept of extreme denotes a relation, a measurement, a degree. It is obvious that the first question one has to ask before using that term is a degree of what?

To answer of anything, and to proclaim that any extreme is evil because it is an extreme, to hold the degree of a characteristic regardless of its nature as evil, is an absurdity. Measurements, as such, have no value significance, and acquire it only from the nature of that which is being measured.

Are the extreme of health and an extreme of disease equally undesirable? Are extreme intelligence and extreme stupidity equally unworthy? Are extreme honesty and extreme dishonesty equally immoral?

In fact, most people do not know the meaning of the word extremism, they merely sense it. Now consider the term extremism. Its alleged meaning is intolerance, hatred, racism, bigotry, crackpot theories, incitement to violence. Its real meaning is the advocacy of capitalism.

The liberal program required that the concept of capitalism be obliterated, not merely as if it could not exist any longer, but as if it had never existed. The actual nature, principles, and history of capitalism had to be smeared, distorted, misrepresented, and thus kept out of public discussion because socialism has not won and cannot win in open debate.

In an uncorrupted marketplace of ideas, neither on the ground of logic, nor economics, nor morality, nor historical performance, socialism can win only by default, by the moral default of its alleged opponents, and that’s the right.

Now consider the meaning ascribed to the term rightist within the package deal of extremism. In general usage, the term rightists and leftists designate advocates of capitalism and socialism, but observe the abnormal artificial stress of the attempt to associate racism and violence with the quote-unquote extreme right. Two evils much more plausibly associated with the Democratic Party via the Ku Klux Klan.

The purpose is to revive the notion that the two political opposites confronting us, the two quote-unquote extremes, are fascism versus communism. It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes. It sets up as opposites two variants of the same political system. It eliminates the possibility of even considering capitalism”, end quote.

And that’s how the left has been manipulating the right for as long as I can remember.

And now on the topic of gun ownership and the right to self-defense. If you are not allowed to own weapons for the purpose of self-defense, then your inalienable right to self-defense is being openly violated, and you are not a free individual in that you have no legal right to self-defense, despite the inalienability of such a right that accrues to every individual.

And of course, that is a condition consistent with the objectives of everything left, which defines Canada, a totalitarian Canadian government, as Crowder described it.

And personally, I knew a lot of people that I could have described as being a gun person, and they never harmed anyone in their entire lives. In fact, when I first heard that term used, I thought they were referring to an individual who had some kind of passion for guns and other weapons, or who had extensive knowledge of them. You know, a gun person.

But when we see coverage of the BC shooting as it was described by Wikipedia, it becomes clear that what is being attacked is not only gun ownership, but gender identity. Quote: “The Tumbler Ridge shooting occurred on February 10, 2026, when 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at home before opening fire at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, resulting in nine deaths and 27 injuries. This tragic event is one of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history.” End quote.

But given that we know that the shooter was male, the tragedy of the shooting itself is overshadowed by the horror of public authorities and media referring to males as females and expecting the rest of us to completely destroy our ability to distinguish one from the other.

Just as with the terms left and right, which are conceptually polar opposites that the left wants us to ignore, so too the polar opposites of male and female are being conceptually destroyed for the same reason, to prevent anyone from being able to think rationally and in accordance with reality and reason.

So remember the maxim, the left is always wrong.

Now, if you’re wondering why I still think Canada could and should be the greatest country in the world, on this side of our upcoming bumper from a February 12th podcast of Spring Rolls entitled 50 Absurd Facts About Canada, which I thought was an odd choice for a title, given that there was nothing among the 50 facts that I would have called absurd.

But I have selected a handful of those facts that pertain to our overall theme today. While on the return side of the bumper, a tragic account of why Canada is not even a country, let alone among the greatest in the world, as described by Economy Historian on his February 12th presentation.

Clip (Spring Rolls, February 12 2026):
Canada has more lakes than all other countries in the world combined. The country contains approximately 60% of the world’s lakes. There are over 2 million lakes across Canadian territory. Of these, 31,752 lakes are larger than 3 square kilometers. The province of Ontario alone has over 250,000 lakes. If you tried to visit one lake per day, it would take over 5,000 years to see them all. Canada is essentially a nation floating on water.

Canada has the longest coastline of any country on Earth. The Canadian coastline measures 243,042 kilometers. Canada borders three different oceans, Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic. Managing and defending this massive coastline is a monumental task.

The CN Tower in Toronto was the world’s tallest freestanding structure for 32 years. Construction finished in 1976, and it stood 553.3 meters tall. The tower was built to demonstrate Canadian engineering prowess. It survived multiple lightning strikes, earthquakes, and extreme weather. The Edge Walk attraction lets visitors walk around the outside of the tower’s main pod, 356 meters above ground, tethered by a harness. The CN Tower dominated skylines and engineering records for decades.

Canadians invented the paint roller, the electric wheelchair, the Robertson screw, the snowmobile, insulin, and the cardiac pacemaker. The list of Canadian innovations is remarkable for a country with a relatively small population. In 1922, Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin at the University of Toronto, saving millions of diabetics’ lives. Joseph Armand Bombardier invented the snowmobile in 1937. John Hopps invented the first artificial pacemaker in 1950. Canadian ingenuity solved problems and saved lives worldwide.

The Avro Arrow was an advanced supersonic interceptor aircraft developed by Canada in the 1950s. The Arrow was one of the most sophisticated aircraft of its era. It could fly at speeds over Mach 2. The program employed over 14,000 people and represented peak Canadian aerospace engineering. In 1959, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker abruptly cancelled the program. All existing aircraft were ordered destroyed and cut into pieces. Blueprints and models were destroyed. Thousands lost their jobs. Many engineers left Canada for the United States, helping build NASA and American aerospace programs. The Arrow’s cancellation remains one of Canada’s greatest what-if moments.

Clip (Economy Historian, February 12 2026):
In the year 1900, the United States had a rival. There was another country in the Americas that was rich, fertile and growing faster than almost anyone else on Earth. It had a highly educated population. It had massive natural resources. It had a European culture and a booming export economy. Economists in London and New York predicted that this country would be the superpower of the 20th century. That country was Argentina.

When the world changed, Argentina didn’t. It slowly, politely and quietly suffocated. Argentina’s collapse wasn’t random. It was measurable and the same indicators are now flashing in Canada.

For the last 50 years, economists have used Argentina as a warning, a lesson in what happens when a country relies on easy money instead of innovation. But today, in 2026, Canada is displaying every single symptom of the Argentine disease. We are looking at a G7 nation that has stopped inventing, a society that has stopped building and an economy that is masking its decline with a massive, desperate population boom.

If you look at the glossy brochures, Canada is still the nice version of America. But if you look at the math, you find a country that is cannibalising its own future to pay for its present.

The OECD, the Club of Rich Nations, has predicted that Canada will be the worst performing advanced economy for the next 40 years. Not for a year, for 40 years. This isn’t a recession. This is a structural betrayal.

In his book, The Betrayal of Canada, Peter Newman argued that the Canadian elite stopped trying to build a nation and started running a liquidation sale. They traded sovereignty for comfort and they traded industry for real estate.

In a dying economy, money stops flowing to idea assets like patents or businesses and starts flowing to fixed assets like land or in Canada’s case, painted lines on asphalt. Last month, a parking spot in downtown Toronto sold for $100,000. I want you to pause and respect the absurdity of that number. For the price of a place to park a used Toyota, you could fund a four-year degree at Harvard, you could seed a startup, you could buy a home in parts of the Midwest. But in Canada, that money buys you 120 square feet of concrete.

And here is the terrifying part. It was the smart move. If you had invested $100,000 in a Canadian small business five years ago, you would be drowning in red tape, carbon taxes and payroll fees. You might have gone bankrupt, but if you bought that parking spot, you likely made a 40% return tax-free if it’s your principal residence.

This is what economist William Robson calls the productivity crisis. But I call it the lazy capital trap. The parking spot produces nothing. It employs nobody. It creates no value for the world. It just sits there. But because the government refuses to allow new construction, the supply is artificially low, so the price goes up.

We have created an economic environment where it is safer to be a landlord of a parking spot than an engineer designing the car. The Fraser Institute tracks this. They found that business investment in Canada is now 50% lower per worker than in the US. While American capital is chasing AI and fusion energy, Canadian capital is chasing the economy.

This is the Argentine disease all over again. Canada stopped trying to be competitive, stopped trying to be smart, and just decided to leverage its existing assets until the math breaks.

So wages are stagnant, a parking spot costs $100,000. How does the average Canadian survive? They borrow. This is the darkest statistic of all. According to the Niagara Independent, Canadian household debt has hit 377% of GDP. Canada is now the fourth most indebted people on the planet. Canada isn’t rich, it’s just leveraging its future to pay for its present.

The country used cheap credit to hide the fact that wages were flat. But now the credit card bill is due. The loonie, the Canadian dollar, has been depreciating for a decade. Canadians are paying 2026 prices with 2010 wages, using credit cards to bridge the gap.

This isn’t the first time Canada has flirted with bankruptcy. In 1995, the Wall Street Journal published a famous editorial calling Canada an honorary third world country. Back then, the debt was out of control, the dollar was worthless, but in 1995 the government admitted they had a problem. They slashed spending. They took the medicine.

In 2026, Canada is doing the opposite. It’s doubling the dose. Instead of fixing the underlying productivity crisis, the government is printing money. They’re creating a wealth effect where people feel rich because their house value went up. So they borrow against it to buy cars and vacations. But that house value is fake. It’s built on a bubble of cheap debt and restricted supply. And unlike 1995, nobody in Ottawa is coming to take the punchbowl away.

But debt isn’t just a number on a spreadsheet. It destroys your ability to act. When you are drowning in debt, you can’t take risks. You can’t start a business. You can’t quit your job. You become fragile. And that fragility has bled into the very soul of the nation. Canada has forgotten how to stand on its own two feet.

So Canada has a population trap, a productivity crisis and a debt bomb. But the most dangerous problem isn’t economic. It’s existential. Canada has forgotten how to be a country.

To understand this, we have to go back to 1879. Prime Minister John A. MacDonald launched something called the National Policy. It was a bold, expensive plan to build a railroad from coast to coast and use tariffs to force Canadians to trade with each other, not the United States. The goal was independence. He wanted to build an East-West economy that could stand on its own two feet.

But over the last 40 years, Canada dismantled that vision. As Peter Newman argued, the elites sold off the National Policy for parts. The country signed free trade deals that turned the economy north-south. It stopped building an independent nation and started building a branch plant.

Canada is a satellite state. When the American economy booms, it gets the scraps. When it crashes, it gets the bill. And nowhere is this clearer than in its defence. Canada has the longest coastline in the world, including the melted Arctic, which is now a major shipping lane for Russia and China. And yet, it has almost no operational submarines to defend it. The country’s entire national security strategy can be summed up in one sentence. If the Russians come, call Washington.

It’s a G7 nation with the military autonomy of a protectorate. It relies on the US for its defence. It relies on the US for its trade. It relies on the US for its technology. It isn’t a partner anymore. It’s a client. And being a client is dangerous because clients can be fired.

But perhaps the most tragic export isn’t the oil, or the lumber, or the sovereignty. It’s the people. Because when a country stops building, stops defending itself, and stops rewarding talent, the talent leaves.

Bob Metz:
You’re listening to Just Right, broadcasting around the world and online.

Now, there’s a stark contrast for you. Canada as it once was and might have been, and Canada as it has become after decades of socialist rule. Given its vast expanse and natural resources, one can only attribute Canada’s failure as a nation to intent, because not even stupidity alone can account for such stupidity. It’s too stupid for stupid.

You really have to ask yourself how it is that much smaller countries in Canada, in every category you might imagine, have fared so much better than Canada.

When in 1995, The Wall Street Journal published that editorial calling Canada an honorary third world country. And when during that same year, the Canadian government actually slashed its spending, the timing of this was certainly telling.

Because by that time, Bill Trench’s Only You Can Save Canada had become a Canadian bestseller, having gone into its second printing. And at the same time, another influential Canadian book arose on the scene. Canadian historian Joe C.W. Armstrong’s monumental work, Farewell the Peaceful Kingdom, The Seduction and Rape of Canada from 1963 to 1994.

Both of these now deceased authors spoke regularly at Freedom Party of Ontario events, and each of their books had a profound effect on the broader Canadian political landscape of the time.

And even then, almost half a century ago, Joe Armstrong had already arrived at the following conclusions about Canada and I quote, Canada is not a democracy. It is nearly a totalitarian society, frighteningly close to a dictatorship. The proof is overwhelming. Canadian sovereignty no longer exists. Canada’s demise is certain. There is so little love of individual freedom among the majority of her citizens that her destruction is unavoidable now. Freedom is never debated here. It is taken as a given. That assumption alone will destroy the country. Freedom can only exist in the heart and soul of each citizen devoted to preserving it. But most people in this society have no idea what personal freedom is. After 10 years of struggle to document what has happened, I find myself far more disillusioned with the general populace than I am with Canada’s leaders end quote.

Pretty depressing if you stop to think about it. But even creepier was an observation made in Armstrong’s book that speaks directly to a topic that has been on the top of our own discussion list recently, artificial intelligence. And written on page two of the introductory chapter, I quote, increasingly it is evident that technocrats will be the only ones with great wealth while the bulk of humankind sinks to a level of slavery previously unknown.

In his transient work, Technopoly, the surrender of culture to technology, Neil Postman writes, it is to be expected that the winners will encourage the losers to be enthusiastic about computer technology. They will tell them that their lives will be conducted more efficiently. But discreetly, they neglect to say from whose point of view the efficiency is warranted or what might be its cost end quote. Well, AI anyone?

And of course, the political plot thickens when one realizes that this state of affairs is not uniquely Canadian, but global. For more on Joe Armstrong and his book Farewell the Peaceful Kingdom, check out our own broadcast of April 7, 2022, entitled, Oh Canada Farewell the Peaceful Kingdom.

Meanwhile, a quick perusal of some of the issues raised in Bill Trenches, only you can save Canada, appear to have been written just yesterday, given the zeitgeist of 2026. Here are but a few of the chapter headings accompanied by their by lines and I quote, the national debt, how to spend billions and have nothing but debt. Taxation, nothing for something. The housing market, unaffordable housing for all. Hmm, sound familiar? State education, it fails the test. The law, when common sense becomes illegal. Bilingualism, two languages or two faces. Foreign policy, foreign to reason. Multiculturalism, there is no such thing as a Canadian. Immigration, and listen to this one, give me your lying, your cheating, your feuding masses, yearning to live for free. Wow, hauntingly descriptive of today’s immigration crisis.

And more, how did we get to where we are? If it ain’t broke, break it. Socialism versus free enterprise. Socialists get bad marks and of course that’s spelled M-A-R-X. And finally, the real meaning of freedom. Freedom is never free, end quote.

Now when these two books were published, this was a very significant period in my own political life. Not only was I busy with the Freedom Party of Ontario, but both I and Freedom Party got involved with two other political parties. One federal, which was out of our provincial jurisdiction, and that was the Reform Party of Canada founded and led by Preston Manning.

And the other one, believe it or not, was a provincial party with which Freedom Party was in competition. Namely, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario under the leadership of Mike Harris, who was elected Ontario’s 22nd Premier in June 95. Running on a platform to reduce provincial expenses known as the Common Sense Revolution, many of its policies mirrored those of Freedom Party and we had no problem encouraging some of our own members to support that quote-unquote revolution.

You know, I still find it hard to believe that I actually sat at the boardroom tables of both the Reform Party and of the Ontario PCs right along, Preston Manning and Mike Harris. And with me at the provincial meeting was none other than Bill Trench, who walked away from that encounter completely disillusioned by the lack of knowledge and insight exhibited by Mike Harris.

And of course, his so-called Common Sense Revolution lasted about as long as it took to sell the idea after which Ontario PC leader Ernie Eaves veered the party sharply to the left.

Preston Manning, on the other hand, was far more principled, but allowed his Reform Party to slip away from him when it rebranded itself as the Canadian Alliance and then later merged with the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, forming the current incarnation of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Until then, both the Federal Conservatives and Ontario Conservatives shared the word progressive in their names. The Federal Party dropped that term as a descriptor, but certainly not as an ideology.

And what I learned from all of this is to never trust anyone calling themselves a right winger. Immediately upon the formation of the Federal Conservative Party and upon the election victory of Mike Harris, all the so-called Conservatives and right-wingers that I was working with, towards common causes, just dropped out of political activity altogether.

From ad hoc groups like the London Middlesex Taxpayers Coalition to the Hold All London Taxes Lobby, called HALT, the only people remaining in the political fight for the right was my immediate circle of freedom party activists and supporters.

And what I’ve seen and what I’ve observed is that right-wingers always quit being active with each tiny battle they’ve won, assuming therefore that the larger war has also been won.

This has been my eternal frustration with those who call themselves right wing, and it’s why we make a point of dismissing that label at the beginning of every broadcast of this show. They’re always winging it instead of staying the eternal course of freedom’s vigilance.

But if there is one thing that stood out for me from the previous audio bite we heard, it was this, and I quote, back in 1879, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald launched the National Policy, a plan to build a railroad from coast to coast and use tariffs to force Canadians to trade with each other, not with the United States. The goal was independence. He wanted to build an east-west economy that could stand on its own two feet and quote.

Now that sounds a bit like Donald Trump’s strategy, doesn’t it? And given what happened to Canada since dismantling that vision, Americans might better appreciate what Trump is trying to do by using tariffs to make America great again.

But as far as making Canada a great country again, things are not looking too promising as we hear on this side of our upcoming bumper, Nick Freitas on February 10th questioning why Canada is dismantling itself as a country. And on the return side of the bumper, from the February 12 posting of Canadian Hub, we learn that four of Canada’s most western provinces have already officially announced their intentions to break away from Canada.

Clip (Nick Freitas, February 12 2026):
Why does Canada seem to be slowly dismantling itself as a country? What started out as an act of virtue signalling has spiraled into a constitutional crisis over who owns the country itself.

You see, for years, Canadians were engaged in something that could only really be described as a progressive fashion statement. Land acknowledgments before hockey games, renaming a few streets and changing plaques were happening all over the country.

Take Trutch Street in Vancouver. Originally named after a Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, the city renamed it in June 2025 to this, a traditional Indigenous word almost no one can even type, let alone pronounce. And almost overnight, residents discovered their banks, insurance and government forms literally couldn’t process the new name. Mortgages, business payments and even mail deliveries all started to go haywire because some back end system couldn’t handle the bizarre string of letters and symbols.

But bit by bit, these small acts of progressive virtue signalling have grown into massive court rulings that are threatening to dismantle the entire country.

You think I’m exaggerating? Take a look at this. In August, 2025, a judge ruled that a large chunk of Lulu Island in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond is not actually owned by the Crown or the city or even the hundreds of actual residents who live there. Instead, this court ruling declared that the land was owned by the Kawachan Indigenous tribe.

Immediately after the court ruling, property titles issued by the Canadian government were declared defective and invalid. Banks froze, real estate buyers vanished and a hundred million dollar local construction project lost financing because nobody knew who really owned the dirt it was going to be built on.

Now, that sounds pretty bad. But unfortunately, once you accept that kind of court ruling in one place, you accept it in pretty much everywhere else. That’s why two other tribes are now asserting overlapping claims over the same land in Richmond, arguing that it lies within their territory.

And this isn’t limited to just one city in British Columbia either. The six nations are pushing claims over huge swaths of southern Ontario. One indigenous land claim in New Brunswick now stretches across roughly half the province’s land mass.

Meanwhile, the financial obligations tied to all this are spiraling out of control. A decade ago, indigenous related spending was a large portion of the country’s budget. But now between massive settlement funds, legal costs and newly created financial obligations, Ottawa is on track to make reparations one of its top budget lines.

To put it another way, Canada is now spending more on indigenous issues than on its healthcare system or on interest on the national debt. And only a small fraction of this spending actually reaches Canada’s first nations. Much of it gets absorbed by lawyers, consultants and government bureaucracies whose continued existence depends on perpetuating this crisis.

Now to anybody that can do basic math, this is completely unsustainable. No country can spend years insisting that its own founding is illegitimate, its institutions are oppressive and its territorial sovereignty is morally invalid and then expect everyone to keep funding the system and obeying its rules.

If the government has no moral right to exist, why should anyone pay taxes or respect its laws? And if every public event opens up by declaring that the land is stolen, how long before someone takes that literally?

Ultimately, the quiet disaster that’s building in Canada is one of its own making. For decades now, there has been a slow unraveling. What started off as a progressive moral narrative has spiraled into a legal precedent that threatens to break up and bankrupt the country. And the tragedy in all of this is that it’s entirely self-inflicted. No one is forcing Canada to erase itself from the map or spend billions apologizing for its own existence. But until Canadians realize that they are trapped in a moral prison of their own making, things are only going to get much worse.

Clip (Canadian Hub, February 12 2026):
Talk of western separation arrived on the steps of the Alberta legislature. Hundreds gathered to advocate for independence while Indigenous groups stood in opposition. CTV’s Kathy Lee on the growing divide.

A referendum on whether Alberta should separate from Canada is one step closer today. The province’s election agency has approved a citizen-led petition to gather signatures on the issue.

Part of Canada, but unfortunately it’s been this way for so long. Nothing’s gonna change. And especially with Carney in, it’s gonna get a lot worse.

Though economists have warned Alberta would be poorer without Canada, 24-year-old Ryan Cooper believes the cost of living would go down.

Mr. Speaker, I support Canada. I would like the prime minister to stand up and say that he supports Alberta. I’d like actually the members opposite to do the same. Why in every opportunity they have to offer defense, they never stand up for Canada.

The western provinces have officially announced a move that just ripped the ground out from under Canada and pushed the country into chaos. In one single announcement, over 10 million people were forced to question where they belong and who truly speaks for them anymore.

Canada is now standing on a fault line and the cracks are spreading faster than anyone can contain.

Agree that Alberta should remain in Canada. This is the question that we want on the referendum. We need to be able to stand up.

When the leaders of Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Manitoba dropped that announcement, Ottawa didn’t just blink. It froze. There was no warning, no next steps, and no referendum to soften the blow.

In a single statement, the western provinces declared that they are effectively joining the United States as states 51 through 54 and they are doing it immediately, not sometime in the future.

Ministers in Ottawa had phones ringing off the hook, lawyers pacing hallways, and MPs staring at screens in stunned silence. Parliament didn’t argue. It just quieted, the kind of quiet that comes when you realize you’ve lost control of the narrative and maybe the whole country.

Everyone watched that announcement like it was a bomb going off, and in many ways it was. There was no talk of deadlines or negotiations, nothing temperate, nothing diplomatic. It was brutal and direct.

For the first time, there is now a public timetable. So the plan is for the next 12 to 18 months to let the West decide its own fate. But Alberta, Saskatchewan, and even British Columbia have formally coordinated their separation strategy. This wasn’t framed as political posturing, it was framed as survival.

Trump continues to pitch ideas regarding U.S. expansion and redrawing the world map, among them making Canada the 51st state. So when the announcement came, it wasn’t a plea, it was a severing of ties.

Now, if Saskatchewan or Alberta were simply to declare themselves independent states, and other states were to recognize them as independent states, and the government of Canada ceased to have any control over Saskatchewan or Alberta, it may be that de facto they would become independent states as a matter of international law.

What made it even more jarring was how coldly strategic it was delivered. There were no tearful speeches about relationships or Canada’s legacy. Instead, the Premiers spoke and clipped on emotional language that felt more like a corporate board issuing an ultimatum than political leaders addressing their nation.

Donald Trump’s remarks on making Canada the 51st state, and while the idea may seem crazy to some, others think it’s time for a change.

For the first time in decades, the four provinces acted with unprecedented unity, not seeking sympathy, not asking for compromise, but making it clear that Ottawa no longer speaks for them. There was no negotiation bait. This was a clean break, calculated and deliberate, not an attempt to talk, but to reshape reality.

And why now? Part of the answer lies south of the border. The shock waves from the U.S. military operation in Venezuela have rippled far beyond Latin America. In early January, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a lightning raid and brought him to New York to face federal charges, a move that stunned the world and shattered norms about sovereignty and intervention.

For decades, what’s commonly called Wexit, right, which involves the whole Western Canadian provinces seceding, Wexit was dismissed and lack that is nothing more than a fringe peripheral issue. No more.

Trump made it clear that the U.S. would take charge of Venezuela’s government and especially tap into its vast oil resources, signalling a readiness to use power without waiting for international permission.

In a shock move, Western leaders such as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have just announced binding referendums in the next year, asking citizens straight up, do you want to break away from Canada?

For Western leaders in Canada, that event wasn’t just a headline, it was a strategic moment. They saw a superpower willing to act unilaterally, rip up conventions, and reshape borders in real time. Borders they realized are only as sacred as the power that defends them.

So this wasn’t ideology, this was real politic. Western provinces weighed their options. They watched the U.S. move into Venezuela, bypassing red tape, and thought if a global power can redraw influence in South America, why shouldn’t we secure a future where our economy, resources, and citizens aren’t left to the mercy of political indifference from thousands of miles away?

They concluded that alignment with the U.S. offered security, prosperity, and a clear path forward rather than remaining tethered to a federal government seen as failing and unresponsive.

It really does look as if Canada is about to change forever. Meanwhile, back in Ottawa, the response was chaotic in the worst possible way. Emergency sessions were called. Ministers argued over what to say next, but there was no script for this moment, because nothing like this has happened in modern Canadian history.

Instead of decisive leadership, the country saw paralysis on national display. For the people watching, Canada didn’t look like a united federation anymore. It looked fragile, suddenly unmoored, like a carefully woven. Tapestry ripping at its seams, and that’s what made this moment so emotionally gripping.

This isn’t abstract politics anymore. This is about identity, belonging, and the raw fear and exhilaration that comes when a nation is forced to confront its own fragmentation.

Experts say it’s a flashy way in a high traffic area to get the message out, but it’s unlikely to have any lasting impact.

Bob Metz:
If you ask me to believe that they are effectively joining the United States as states 51 through 54, is a bit of wishful thinking to say the least. I think the word effectively tends to put that idea into context, because as we know and covered in some detail on past broadcasts, the process for becoming recognized as a state within the United States is far more complicated and lengthy than most are aware.

So now they’ve announced a plan for the next 12 to 18 months for the West to decide its own fate. Not politics, but survival.

Now, that statement drives me crazy. Consider the implications of the phrase, not politics, but survival. Really? It’s completely about politics, and nothing else. That’s what and to suggest that survival is somehow not related to politics takes us back to the comments we reviewed by Ayn Rand.

It assumes that all of politics is anti-survival, which is certainly true of the left and of socialism, but clearly the understanding the capitalism and the politics of the right are about survival is not even a thought, considered at all.

And that’s because those concepts have been destroyed in the minds of those seeking not just political survival, but political freedom and prosperity.

Once you’ve equated left and right with stupid terms like extremism, turning each into some kind of assumed evil when the only evil ones on the left, no wonder they can’t see politics as a means to their end.

In fact, I’d put it to you that upon their so-called independence or realignment, politics will become the major consideration in their negotiations. And there are enough lefties within each of the provinces to put any dreams of survival at risk.

Just look at what’s going on in British Columbia, about as communist the provinces you can get. Take a look at that stupid indigenous street sign pictured in the image accompanying this week’s blog posting. It is alien to any culture, and I couldn’t even possibly read it to you.

There was once a saying and broad understanding that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Apparently in BC today, the only possessions protected by law are illegal drugs. While when it comes to private homes and real estate and actual property, the law is one hundred percent of possession.

And when you consider that Canada’s indigenous related spending is more than health care and the national debt, should we be surprised that indigenous groups stood in opposition to independence?

And consider the sheer hypocrisy of this. While BC has all been abandoned its responsibility to protect private property rights by allowing indigenous land claims to override even the crown’s authority, that these indigenous groups would still expect the crown to keep subsidizing them.

If they think any land claim is actually theirs, then they would be the ones having to pay their own way. Ownership means individual responsibility.

And for his part, among Bill Trench’s recommendations individuals can do were the following. Take an interest in your children’s education. Ensure that they learn about the concrete benefits of a free enterprise society and not just the theoretical glories of socialism.

And finally, think about freedom, what it really means, who interferes with your freedom, whether it makes sense for you to be prevented from doing things that cannot harm anyone else. How important personal freedom is to you. But above all, think and quote.

So if the province is intending to abandon their Canadian history and either go it alone or join the US, I wonder if their citizens would even know the difference in their everyday lives. Is this just going to turn out to be another meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

Well, that’s our closing thought to consider as we invite you to join us again next week when we will continue our journey in the right direction.

And until then, be right, stay right, do right, act right, think right, and be right back here. We’ll see you then.

Clip (Drybar Comedy, January 26 2024, Bobby Tessel):
I pulled into a self-serve car wash, they had a big banner up. It said, under new management. So I pulled my car off into one of the slots and I plugged my quarters in. And I was standing there washing my car, thinking, this is much better than the old management.