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Drug poisoning polycrisis & U of C crackdown, feat. Euan Thomson
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Through projects including the national business coalition Each+Every and his publication Drug Data Decoded (www.drugdatadecoded.ca), Euan Thomson has put his heart and soul into combatting the ongoing drug poisoning crisis, and he joins us on this episode of the Progress Report to bring everyone up to date with the crisis's current status.
But Euan of late has also been an ally to the Palestinian solidarity movement and it's in that capacity that he took a beating from police during last year's violent crackdown on demonstrators at the University of Calgary. In this episode Euan and Jeremy also discuss the crackdown, and why one Calgary Liberal candidate in particular is implicated in the story in a bad way.
Full show notes and our other content is available at www.theprogressreport.ca.
Jeremy's article for The Maple on the U of C situation, mentioned in the episode:
https://www.readthemaple.com/liberal-star-candidate-helped-shut-down-pro-palestine-encampment/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Progress Report. I'm your co-host, Jim Storey, here with your other co-host, Jeremy Appel, recording from Amiskwchew, Skigan, in Treaty 6 territory, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta.
00:00:27
Speaker
ah guest today is Ian Thompson, an activist concerned with the opioid drug poisoning crisis primarily. Ian publishes a lot of work on drugdecoded.ca chronicling everything that's going wrong in the drug poisoning poly crisis.
Opioid Crisis Activism and Personal Updates
00:00:44
Speaker
ah But Ian was also mixed up in the UFC crackdown against Palestine demonstrators last year. And I know Jeremy is really antsy to ask him some questions about that.
00:00:58
Speaker
Jeremy, how are you doing? How, how things been? We got a big snowfall here last week. you getting out and about? yeah a bit, you know, here and there trying to go to the gym a few times a week.
00:01:11
Speaker
um And yeah, just, just keeping busy, keeping very busy with progress report stories and, Other things, baseball is back. So I've been watching the Jays as much as I can, who seem to be quite a bit better than they were last year, but it's still very early in the season.
00:01:42
Speaker
So, yeah, that's what I've been up to lately.
Fitness Routines and Influencer Discussion
00:01:48
Speaker
Been hitting the bench a lot. Myself ah bit here in the apartment. Are you familiar with ah Dr. Mike Isretel? I watch a lot of the the fitness YouTubes and Jeff Nippard is my favorite guy, but he's not quite as prolific as posting as Isretel.
00:02:08
Speaker
And watching a bunch of Isretel's videos got me to buy this app from him that designs workouts. And man, I have just been wiped out lately. The the stuff that this thing prescribes, like 100 stair cabs a night and i am not eating nearly enough hamburgers to be putting on weight either.
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, I have the opposite problem. ah that Dr. Mike doesn't talk to you enough. Well, you know, just reach out to him. He's a, he's a cheerful guy. He likes to talk to folks.
00:02:39
Speaker
I think speaking of talking to folks though, why don't we, um why don't we, we get right into it with our guest because people did not log on to hear about our workout routines. Ewan, welcome. Great to have you on the show.
00:02:50
Speaker
It's, it's been a minute too. have you been? I've been good. No, no, I'm, I'm actually here for the fitness and wellness stuff you guys have to offer. So like go nuts. I, I need more of that in my life. So,
00:03:03
Speaker
um yeah If you've got any like smoothie recipes or or anything, just just feel free to break rank of whatever we have to talk about today and let's talk
Opioid Crisis in Alberta
00:03:12
Speaker
smoothies. i mean i'm ah I'm a big creatine evangelist myself. and I think that's the one thing you've got to get on if you're if you're getting really into the the weightlifting is is creatine. It's like the only real supplement.
00:03:24
Speaker
Well, I was hoping you'd offer something where I don't need to do the weightlifting part. I can just have the smoothie. So if you've got any that, let's let's hear it But anyways, yeah. that does ah Those electrodes that you put on your your abs.
00:03:38
Speaker
Well, um I am a very interested in getting a bit of a lay of the land. ah regarding the drug poisoning crisis in Canada lately. And I think that off the top is is just the general question I want to start with, is just how have things been going recently?
00:03:54
Speaker
Because there has been a lot less coverage of the issue lately, which is something and I want to hop into in a minute. But i compared to the last couple of years when there was a lot more reporting on this issue,
00:04:10
Speaker
And now with everyone you know fixated on the American politics stuff going on, um i think a lot of this has gone dark and people are not really aware of the current situation.
00:04:23
Speaker
So how are things going? Not just in Alberta, but across the country.
00:04:29
Speaker
We're in a really dark situation right now. I feel like this is almost one of the the darkest phases of the crisis in some ways, because we've gotten to a point now where 100 plus deaths a month in Alberta is totally normalized and, you know, almost getting to the point where the government is patting itself on the back for for a job well done.
Government Critique on Opioid Crisis Response
00:04:52
Speaker
now that only 100 people or 110 or 120 people are dying per month, preventable deaths. And ah they they still have not got any control over the situation. Right now, we've kind of dropped down to that that level that we were at at at the base of 2022 pandemic.
00:05:13
Speaker
um sort of reduction in deaths. It was a temporary reduction where between, you know, the two biggest peaks in the crisis so far in 2023 and 20, sorry, 2021 and 2023.
00:05:25
Speaker
And um we've just entered this and again, like another big rise in EMS dispatches, which are a surefire, um you know, forecaster or predictor that that deaths are also going to show up with a big rise.
00:05:42
Speaker
yeah especially in Edmonton. um Edmonton looks like the the hotspot right now. There's massive, massive overdose issues going on again in Edmonton and no solutions whatsoever on the streets. there's and The government has wiped out all of the essentially useful tools for combating this and and continue to erode more and more tools every every month or two. So yeah, this is ah this is a really big issue, though deaths are down temporarily right now pretty much across the country in most provinces, although Quebec and New Brunswick have seen massive increases.
00:06:19
Speaker
um You know, it's not going to last. And the more that we crack down, the more that Trump and and and the Canadian government conspire to keep cracking down and trying to go after fentanyl suppliers at the border and everywhere else,
00:06:34
Speaker
the more they're going to just create new innovations in the market that are going to be, you know, increasingly easy to hide and get across borders and increasingly easy to get away from police and and so on.
00:06:46
Speaker
That's the iron law of prohibition, right? Yeah. So I'm, think most people are sort of bracing for, we're already seeing is the problem. Like we're already seeing in Saskatoon, Edmonton, Red Deer has made an announcement like the other day, Red Deer had,
00:07:03
Speaker
15 overdoses in 24 hours, which is like absolutely unheard of for that city. um You know, in a in a whole quarter, that team at the overdose prevention site might respond to 400, you know, as a maximum total overdoses in 90 days in a quarter.
00:07:22
Speaker
They had 15 in a single day at the end of March, and it happened to be the same day that the government closed down the only overdose prevention site in town. So great, great timing.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. is Is there any indication of what is driving this latest spike? I mean, beyond the larger structural problems, what's specifically going wrong here? Is there is there a ah really bad batch of something in circulation?
00:07:50
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean, it's it's going to still be fentanyl and derivatives primarily. You're starting to see some some different drugs make their way, medicines and that sort of thing make their way into the supply and in different places. But, you know, at the end of the day, we're still mainly dealing with drugs.
00:08:09
Speaker
unregulated fentanyl, uh, concentrations with, you know, other stuff mixed in and and people not
Policy Impact on Drug Use and Overdose Risks
00:08:15
Speaker
knowing what they're taking. So, um, that's fundamentally the issue. And it always really has been uh, just different supplies showing up with different concentrations and compositions of, of partly opioids and partly other stuff.
00:08:31
Speaker
Um, and And people either not having the safe place to use that to to test it out or or the ability to go slow and do tests, you know, test um doses. And as a result of people being chased into alleys and and away from away from businesses and away from transit stations and and into unsafe places and having their drugs seized by cops all the time.
00:09:00
Speaker
um they're having to take greater risks. And and that's the situation we're in Alberta and and nothing that is in place right now is going to alleviate that, which is the biggest problem.
00:09:11
Speaker
mean, I remember a pretty passionate argument coming from Dr. Elaine Hishka. Obviously, you're familiar. The the listeners,
00:09:22
Speaker
Dr. Hishka is a drug policy researcher at the University of Alberta and one of the more prolific pro-harm reduction voices in academia around here.
00:09:37
Speaker
ah Dr. Hishka was writing book just about a year ago about how dangerous bringing policies in to crack down on what the government terms open air drug use would be because they would drive people to then use in secluded areas where no one would see them or be able to help them if something went wrong.
00:10:01
Speaker
And I guess that's born fruit, huh? That's, I mean, that's, What i attribute in part the the issue in Edmonton to is just the incredible level of aggression that the Edmonton police have been using for the last couple of years.
00:10:19
Speaker
They've really been testing out the worst forms of of poverty policing in Edmonton you know for for ah for all of Alberta to adopt later.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so we're seeing it now roll out in Calgary as well. The Calgary police are going on this crackdown, this rampage against unhoused people primarily. um And every time they make a drug seizure, it's usually ah couple of grams or whatever. It puts that person in immediate risk of death because that person now needs to replace their supply and they're going to take risks to to get their dose one way or another. So um yeah, this is why like there's good science now showing us that every time a police bust happens, people are at, you know, sometimes two times higher risk of overdose overdose.
00:11:05
Speaker
and overdose death.
Media Influence on Drug Policy
00:11:06
Speaker
Now we've got mortality data associated with this as well from the states. um So police busts kill and Edmonton does that better than anywhere.
00:11:17
Speaker
Or at least Edmonton does that more than anywhere. i I think something that's particularly sick about the situation in Emerson is that its it hasn't just been testing ground for these new policies, but it's also been kind of an exhibition ground for them.
00:11:35
Speaker
I think back to the start of this trade war discourse with the Americans, the tariff war stuff. And one of the first reasons that they cited for the the Trump tariff program was all of this fentanyl coming in from Canada. And they specifically cited the terrible situation in Edmonton that we see in all of these these photographs, all of these all of this media coming out of Edmonton.
00:12:05
Speaker
And immediately when I read that, I thought, look, Wait a minute. like I know exactly which photographer they they've got to be talking about, right? Arthur Green, who was doing like poverty porn, exploitative stuff about unhoused people and people who use drugs in Edmonton for several months until it thought that that sort of pro bono bootlicking happened.
00:12:37
Speaker
got him some goodwill from the UCP and how he works as a UCP, was he a press secretary, a comms guy? Yeah, for the Minister of Public Safety, Mike Ellis, who at that time, i believe, was the Minister of Mental Health and Addiction. um it' It's wild to think that, you know, that stuff that he was cooking up,
00:12:59
Speaker
and maybe what the Americans have have been using as their their initial justification for for this tariff war justified on the basis of this phantom fentanyl threat that they say is coming from Canada.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think people kid themselves when when they say, you know, American drug warriors aren't watching what's happening in Canada.
American Influence on Canadian Drug Policies
00:13:24
Speaker
I actually think that there's a lot of crosstalk between the folks that are um leaning on drug policy in the States and the people that are doing the same up here, you've got, you know, like the Safe Supply Committee was a perfect example in 2022 that the UCP ran.
00:13:43
Speaker
They brought in like a whole bunch of Americans to to talk about how bad an idea of safe supply was. You know, Michael Schellenberger was like one of the star witnesses for that, right? That came in. Absolute fucking villain of a guy.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah. So there is, there's a lot of interest from the States in pushing these policies in Canada, or pushing back against, uh, you know, like quote unquote woke drug policy to make sure that it doesn't take root in Canada because that represents a massive threat to the American drug war, which is one way that, that the U S flexes its muscle around the world.
00:14:23
Speaker
Dale McPhee, big shell burger fan. who
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, i um it's it's it's a very odd topic overall because people now, I think, look at the American claims of of mass fentanyl coming in from Canada, and they understand that that that stuff is ridiculous, that that's a lie.
00:14:50
Speaker
But I don't think many people are connecting all of the dots here and understanding how much of the entire drug wars is based on lies and theatrics about that. i I wonder, like you're your more situated in this specific issue.
00:15:08
Speaker
Do you think that Trump's fantastic claims about fentanyl are going to shift any Canadians' positions on this issue? Or do you think that Elbows Up is going to continue to include following American orders on drug policy?
00:15:24
Speaker
I think that the issues of the drug war are actually finally being made a little bit more clear to people. They're seeing, like, I'm seeing a lot more comments from unexpected places of around how, um the weaponization of, of the borders and, and fentanyl getting across the borders was just like a red herring thrown by Trump in order to, you know, turn the gun on us and be able to, bully us into submission. And, and that sort of,
00:15:54
Speaker
that That's actually, that gives me a lot of hope, I think, because, you know, finally people, because it's affecting their own personal self-interest, they can finally see what the drug war is actually about.
00:16:07
Speaker
um So I do see some glimmers of hope there. And, ah you know, the elbows up thing so far hasn't really bled into like policing policy. It has certainly drummed up like nationalistic military fervor um and you know understandably in some ways, I guess, but but it hasn't it hasn't gone like bled into the way that we talk nationally about policing.
Government Opacity and Data Suppression
00:16:34
Speaker
So that that's kind of hopeful for me, I think.
00:16:37
Speaker
A bit of a shame, i think, that the the discourse has not gone in that direction yet, because if you look at like what the Americans have demanded of us and what we have done,
00:16:50
Speaker
The border control and drug policy stuff, that is primarily the thing that they have been pushing us to do, right? And the Canadian government officials have been appeasing them on it. We have increased border patrol spending.
00:17:07
Speaker
We are increasing funding for drug enforcement at the behest of the Americans. we' We're doing what they tell us to, not really in the elbows-up spirit, I don't think.
00:17:20
Speaker
But people seem to be overlooking it a lot, and to the same degree that they are overlooking another very MAGA policy, which I bet you and Jeremy will get into in a minute.
00:17:34
Speaker
But there's one other thing that I wanted to ask you about, which is about your experience trying to get your hands on data lately. I mentioned at the start of this segment that there's been a a lot less reporting to talk about and a lot less ah fewer stories have been coming out about the drug poisoning crisis, even though the crisis itself has not abated and is as at bad as it always was.
00:18:00
Speaker
But we're not seeing much of it in the papers. We're not seeing much of it online anymore. and I think a big reason behind that is that the the government is releasing far less data. It takes a lot of work to do all the legwork yourself, as you very well know, because you you do some deep investigative stuff for Drug Decoded.
00:18:21
Speaker
and When you cut reporters off from kind of the the quick hits from being able to report on academic studies or on new releases of government data,
00:18:33
Speaker
you you really clamp down the the entire conversation. People just can't really talk about it. I mean, I've been struggling for weeks just to get Edmonton's frostbite statistics out of AHS.
00:18:48
Speaker
Like AHS has been cracked into multiple pieces now. and It's almost impossible to get information out of them. And I can't imagine that the Alberta recovery model folks have been any more forthcoming with the data for you. What's your experience been like trying to actually get information out of them lately?
00:19:06
Speaker
Well, I suspected that the Alberta government was sitting on a lot of stuff that wasn't being published because because we have good evidence of that having happened already. um I don't know if you'd remember you remember Charles Resnel and who am I thinking of up in Edmonton? I think it was Anna Younger.
00:19:24
Speaker
for the journal a couple of years back, both published independently. I think Charles was in the tie and obviously, uh, Yunker was in the, um, in the journal and they, you know, they pulled out some of these reports of like zone by zone, city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, drug poisoning, death numbers, um, that should have been published. Like these were reports that were made public every year.
00:19:48
Speaker
And then suddenly they weren't anymore by the UCP. um so So these types of reports are really important because it they're compiled by people with painstaking amount of work to put in, to put this all together, gather the data and show like what's really happening at um at a micro scale across the province.
00:20:08
Speaker
um It turns out that those weren't the only reports being swept under the rug. um ah you know, while this massive increase in yeah EMS dispatches and likely deaths was happening in Edmonton, you know, over the last few months up until February, March, um the UCP was scrambling internally. And I got a hold of the data, the the correspondence to show this, to try and continue hiding a document that they'd been sitting on since 2021. And it was a complete medical examiner's death review, similar to one they did
00:20:43
Speaker
ah in 2019. And it shows, you know, things, statistics around things like how many people are dying after being released from incarceration, how many people are dying who are indigenous versus non-indigenous.
00:20:58
Speaker
And these sorts of really critical stats that um the government really doesn't want people to know because they show things that are uncomfortable for the government and that really betray their policy direction. So have you guys helped address the number of workers that are dying, the number of tradespeople, the number of, you know, transport, transportation workers and so on that are dying of drug poisoning. These are really disproportionate numbers, people in construction.
00:21:25
Speaker
um the sorts of things that will actually lose the UCP votes if it's understood better by the public. And so, um yeah know, and they're just like hiding this stuff instead of, you know, doing their job and responding and issuing alerts the for the toxic drugs that are circulating in Edmonton for months and causing all these EMS dispatches to rise.
00:21:48
Speaker
They're just like playing politics and hiding documents. So I finally got them to, four you know, I forced forced them to release that in late February. They finally did. But it took a long time to get it out. And really, they should have been willingly putting it out because it was already done in 2021.
00:22:04
Speaker
um And of course, they had to brush this up and like they had to like prepare it for release because they didn't want the original draft to go out. So I'm not fighting them for that.
00:22:14
Speaker
Fun stuff. The life of an investigative journalist.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, I would like to see yeah i would i would like to see more like media attention on this again, but I think that, again, it just comes back to that issue of like it's not a new story anymore. media is bored of just saying that all these deaths are happening.
00:22:34
Speaker
um Unfortunately, we've now normalized 100 plus deaths every month. And um you know it's sad to say, but the public doesn't seem that interested, at least if you're asking the media. So...
00:22:48
Speaker
um I think we need to get to back to a point as a society where like these stories still matter, even if they're just sort of routine reporting. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I wanted to ask you, Ewan, is the Canadian press reported ah last week um about a study
00:23:12
Speaker
Health Forum that said that ah drug decriminalization
Safe Supply and Harm Reduction Debate
00:23:19
Speaker
and safer supply policies were associated with an increase in overdoses in BC.
00:23:27
Speaker
I wanted to ask if you're aware of this report and if you could rebut it for us. Yeah, sure. So this, this is a second study from a research group that for some reason just came out of the woodwork and decided to be experts on safe supply and decriminalization. I have no idea what is driving this, but, uh, they, ah the this, this study essentially boils down to them trying to, draw a timeline between decriminalization going into place and, um,
00:24:03
Speaker
and safer supply, you know, increasing in BC and the drug poisoning crisis taking off in like 2020, 2021 into the heights that it reached in BC. And it was very odd the way they rolled this out because they sort of used Saskatchewan and Manitoba as control groups.
00:24:26
Speaker
And like the BC and Saskatchewan, ah like death numbers basically rise and fall together. so they're like, oh, like, look, decriminalization drove a bunch more deaths in BC. I think it's kind of what they're trying to say. They're trying to associate these things.
00:24:44
Speaker
um But right beside it on the graph, like Saskatchewan is also rising really quickly. um So it's just, it's a silly study. It's, it's, ah it also is, you know,
00:24:57
Speaker
not showing deaths, it's showing hospitalizations was their kind of primary outcome metric and ah associated with safe supply. So they did this sort of measure of like people who are on safe supply ah versus not, I believe. And they showed that people who are on safe, safer supply showed like higher hospitalization levels or something.
00:25:21
Speaker
And it's, it's it's like it's not even deaths. It's actually kind of a good outcome if you're being hospitalized rather than dying of of drug poisoning. So um it's just that it's it's not a good study. Like you're not really controlling for the right things. There's a lot of people who are on safer supply because they're the most at risk ah group. And that's how they access that in the first place.
00:25:46
Speaker
So there's just massive, massive gaps. And of course, the right wing media ran with this and and basically tried to say, look, like now there's scientific proof that decrim and safe supply drive overdose deaths and so on and so forth. You can imagine how that all played out.
00:26:04
Speaker
So all it takes is one study and suddenly um the science is in and and the jury is in and everything ah runs against harm reduction approaches. But what we know from the evidence which is very broad and very clear and and years long and decades long in some cases is that decriminalization puts people in less contact with police and less contact with police puts people in a safer place to manage ah drug toxicity.
00:26:34
Speaker
and safer supply is very very clearly associated with survival, um higher survival. In fact one study even showed up to 90% reduction in deaths of all-cause mortality while people are accessing safe supply programs. So these these are very strong outcomes for people and robustly measured in in these cases in Canada.
00:26:58
Speaker
Although it's a really new program, we've managed to get really good science on it so far and Unfortunately, it does challenge power structures. So of course we're going have, um, a lot of, a lot of pushback.
00:27:14
Speaker
Right. And the fact that overdoses are increasing, um, when more people are, um, you know have access to drugs, I don't think is surprising.
00:27:26
Speaker
Um, I, uh, we have, uh, harm reduction programs, right. To reverse those overdoses. I mean, as you noted, it would be one thing if people and showed that there were more deaths, not ah show right.
00:27:43
Speaker
It's just that there are more overdoses. Yeah. And, and the other piece of that with the hospitalizations is, is they were doing this like on a, on a population level. Right. And so.
00:27:55
Speaker
Like, you know, you can't just give safe supply to 5000 people in BC and expect the drug poisoning crisis to go away. there's still 200000 plus people don't.
00:28:08
Speaker
aren't accessing that, who are at extreme risk of drug poisoning. um So, you know, covering 3% of people who are at risk with this intervention is is not going to have any measurable impact population wide, unfortunately. And
Colonialism, Drug Policies, and Activism
00:28:26
Speaker
so this is this has been one of the key arguments is like, oh you know, if safe supply works so well, why are there still so many deaths in BC?
00:28:33
Speaker
Well, it's because safe supply was only ever a pilot program. in very limited capacity, underfunded, under-resourced in every situation that it was deployed in and and continues to be.
00:28:47
Speaker
So if we want to be serious about this, then governments like David Eby's MVP need to deploy these things at a a bigger scale and and get those impacts. And then they won't have that kind of same backlash from the right-wing media who are easily able to run around with a study like this and wave it around and say, look, it doesn't work.
00:29:09
Speaker
Ewan, the bulk of your work as an activist, as well as a writer, ah is focused on what we were just talking about, the drug poisoning crisis and all the preventable deaths that are occurring from it.
00:29:24
Speaker
But you've also been involved ah with Palestine solidarity activism, ah you know, since ah late 2023, when Israel began its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, and now increasingly the West Bank.
00:29:45
Speaker
um And I wanted to ask you before we delve into a conversation about the encampment, which you were somewhat involved in at New Calgary, um
00:29:59
Speaker
a connection between the sort of hard reduction, advocacy, and support for the plight of the Palestinians.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah,
UCalgary Protest and Police Aggression
00:30:14
Speaker
this might seem counterintuitive to people, but for anybody that pays attention to like the history of colonialism, how drug policy has been used against Indigenous people in Canada in particular um to maintain land occupation of settlers, it should understand that what we're seeing in in Palestine right now is really the same thing playing out just with a different tool.
00:30:42
Speaker
you know Right now, they're they're going after Palestinians with with bombs after you know many, many years of of really harsh ah caging, essentially, the open-air prison metaphor and and and reality that the Palestinians have lived in.
00:30:58
Speaker
um in In Canada, we you know we still have also caged Indigenous people and and put them into open-air prisons um and real prisons.
00:31:10
Speaker
ah through the reserve system that came in into effect in 1876. And then from that point forward, it was really drug policy primarily that was used from alcohol through to opioids and and cocaine and and everything into the 1900s. But um all of those drugs were criminalized for indigenous people first ah through alcohol palp policy.
00:31:31
Speaker
and And so you need to really draw a line between The colonialism that we're seeing in in the reserve system, in land theft in Canada, and the colonialism that Israel is exerting over Palestine and Palestinians in order to to seize that land. and it's that It's fairly obvious once you see it, you can't really unsee it.
00:31:54
Speaker
And ah you were brutalized by police at the UCalgary encampment, which I alluded to during the last question.
00:32:07
Speaker
um to So um to start the on on that particular ah series of events, I guess, tell me...
00:32:18
Speaker
um what the extent of your involvement with this encampment that was set up on May 2024 was?
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, I saw a call go out early that morning on social media, and this is May 9th, and I showed up just to offer my support and Then, you know, i was working that day and whatever, but I checked in a couple times. And um that evening I came back and there was just this really nice rally going on. um there There were speakers. There was a nice crowd gathered on the on the lawn at the quad there.
00:32:57
Speaker
And I went home and we were actually driving home and spotted this massive police deployment at McMahon Stadium. And I immediately knew that that was headed for the university and for the encampment.
00:33:11
Speaker
So i went home, had supper, ah turned around, went right back to the university and got in. They had already barricaded off the whole thing around most sides. So I kind of weaseled my way in through Mack Hall and and got back to the encampment and and was kind of just trying to photograph and document what I saw as I went along. i was trying to get you know a rough rough count of how many Cops were deployed there, how many vehicles and all that. And and so I ended up at the sort of the front line of ah this standoff between protesters and and the police who were dressed in full riot gear, um head to toe helmets, batons, shields.
00:33:54
Speaker
There were people with these huge like yellow guns that I didn't know enough to identify at the time, but turned out were ah pepper bullet guns. um And it was it was.
00:34:06
Speaker
pretty intimidating. um i roughly counted about 60 plus cops on site, um a lot of lights. It was a real sound and light show.
00:34:17
Speaker
There was a guy ah kind of on the loudspeaker the whole time and and just as many siren um lights as they could throw at us. um Especially as it got dark, it was kind of disorienting.
00:34:31
Speaker
So Yeah, ah you know, there's a long story around the negotiations and everything that was that were happening between police and protesters. But by the end, the police just sort of charged us after the encampment had been cleared by protesters.
00:34:45
Speaker
um And, you know, of the couple dozen people that remained to sort of link arms and and try and hold hold a position on the quadrangle.
00:34:56
Speaker
They they wiped us back to the back of the quad and arrested people on the way. and And I was among them. Um, there was one moment in particular where, uh, two of us were sort of isolated from the rest of the group and, um, they, they got really aggressive with us. Um, one cop came in while I was in a sort of prone position and, ah just laid into my face with his, uh, what I think was a sap glove fist, sap gloves are like lead filing gloves, um, that are actually considered illegal weapons in a lot of parts of the States.
00:35:33
Speaker
And he yeah, he just laid into my face with multiple punches. At that point, I went down and just getting beaten on the ground. At some point, somebody was either stepping or kneeling on my neck.
00:35:47
Speaker
I was definitely thinking about death in those moments. and Uh, I looked over and I could see the guy that had been beside me and he was kind of going through it as well. And we managed to just sort of like make eye contact and reassure one another that everything's going to be okay. And even though we were both just absolutely, uh, kind of at at the end of our wits, I think. And, um, uh, yeah, we eventually got hauled away and, and, you know, the arrest happened and and got issued our charges and stuff, but, uh, yeah, was wild. Um, no.
00:36:21
Speaker
no medical assistance offered, nobody asking if I was okay to get home or if I needed any anything. It was just like, yeah, beat it, nerd. Here's your ticket.
00:36:35
Speaker
were Were you surprised by the level of ah police brutality against these protesters who um you know were literally sitting on the grass on campus?
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I was, I had seen what had happened in the States up to that point. It was only a couple of weeks before or even, even less time. i think it was sort of April 27th or so that the, that the um Columbia university riot you know, storming happened and, and the police come, you know, you remember them coming in through the the windows, smashing windows on the way in the ladders, the the huge,
00:37:20
Speaker
lines of cops and single file marching through New York City and and then l LA happened. and And so, you know, i was aware that there could be violence, um but I was pretty stunned when it got going at UCalgary and just the level of aggression and just this sort of, this sort of seeming like carte blanche they'd been given to do whatever they wanted to us um with seemingly no concern of, of any, uh, punishment that was going to arrive at their doorstep. So, um, yeah, it was, there was a certain feeling of helpness helplessness, helplessness at certain point that like nothing is going to stop this.
00:38:01
Speaker
Um, but, you know, we had a right to be there. Uh, there was a purpose of being there. We had a point to get across the students were doing something really, really important, uh, kind of something that I think a lot more and more Canadians are now seeing as like, okay, yeah, maybe, maybe they did have a reason to be doing this. Maybe, maybe they could have presented, prevented some of what we're seeing in the States now.
00:38:28
Speaker
Um, and, uh, you know, if they had been given a bit more, um good grace, I think, from from the general public and from the powers that be in the States and and in Canada.
00:38:41
Speaker
yeah But unfortunately, we're in the situation we're in now. And I think a lot of the problems that we're continuing to see in terms of the sort of rise of fascism and this turnover to um unlimited police power that that's happening in, if for sure, visibly in Alberta now, um could have been slowed or stopped if if I think those students had been more successful and more supported by the public at the time a year ago.
University's Resistance to Protests
00:39:13
Speaker
And you and I, I think, had a similar instinct after we saw what transpired U Calgary and U Alberta, and that was to um file some FOIPs.
00:39:26
Speaker
In your case, of course, you received a trespassing ticket. So part of it was for the purposes of your legal case. But I'm wondering um how you figured out what to FOIP.
00:39:43
Speaker
um I got a couple good tips from people who knew what was going on in the university. And and so one person told me,
00:39:54
Speaker
First of all, I was really stunned to see how few FOIPs got submitted by the media around this. Like UCalgary, I'm pretty sure between you and I, like those were most of them that were submitted to UCalgary over that period of concerning the May 9th protests.
00:40:12
Speaker
I still have not seen another single media report that involved a Freedom of Information request. by anybody in Calgary or Alberta media around you Alberta or you Calgary, which is staggering to think about, you know, it would have takes five minutes to ce submit one of these things. Why is, you know, anyway, but um of course I was going to be submitting free of information requests. Cause I, I not only had ah the realization that like something really stunk around this situation, around it the way the universities had deployed police power against students.
00:40:47
Speaker
But i also had a charge to defend. So i was going to do everything I could to get ahold of, of information and video and and evidence because I knew the disclosure process wasn't going to be kind to me. and And it wasn't in the end.
00:41:02
Speaker
Um, So yeah, I think I'm glad i got you know I got those freedom of information requests in very quickly because it took a long time. The university really dragged their heels and so did the police um in in getting responses to me on those.
00:41:18
Speaker
Ewan, you mentioned what was going on at the university, kind of in the administrative level in the in the halls of power. I'm interested in this. Can you tell us a bit more about what you heard?
00:41:31
Speaker
Yeah, so Jeremy and i were both given the same set of documents, about 800 pages of internal correspondence ah from mainly the president's office that detailed essentially like a premeditated plan to make sure that no student encampment got set up.
00:41:51
Speaker
they They just really did not want anything that resembled what had happened in the States or some of the universities across Canada. ah Alberta universities were really late to the game. The students were among the last in the country to get encampments set up. But when they did, they they were really effective, I think, for the short time that they existed.
00:42:12
Speaker
the The students did a fantastic job of ah building, sort of building that world that they wanted to live in and and inhabiting that for for the day or two days that that UAlberta was running, one day in Calgary. And it was very obvious that that the university administration didn't want any part of this. It was, they were looking around at the the rest of the country and and seeing how universities were struggling to probably appease that some of their, their funders appease some of the, you know, these people who hold a lot of power in, you know, the liberal party, for example, and in its silence and complicity with, uh, with the genocide.
00:42:54
Speaker
Um, there's obviously a lot of folks who, um, who have, you know, have something to lose here in, in turning against this. So, um, The universities are tied up in whatever various ways with this, whether it's, you know, associations with Israeli universities or, you know, investments in tech. Nobody really knows because none of them are are divesting and disclosing.
00:43:18
Speaker
And that's what the students were hoping to get. And so the university's administration um in in Calgary was was really resistant to that. And that that comes through. It's just it's an assumption in their communications that there's not going to be an encampment.
00:43:34
Speaker
And if there is, it's it's a bad thing and it needs to be destroyed. And and that that assumption is built into every decision that they make through that that period of about 10 or so days that you can see that things building towards an encampment led by the students.
00:43:52
Speaker
Kind of a strange position for them to take, given the long history of protest camps at the U of C. Yeah.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, Katie Anderson, a student there, a PhD student, I think has counted something like six since like the late ninety s of encampments that happened. um Yeah, from 1999 to i believe it was 2008, there were, um yeah, like five or six student encampments to protest events.
00:44:29
Speaker
A combination of the rising cost of tuition and housing. um So, so that was okay. um But when you're doing it to protest genocide and there's pressure being put on you, as we both saw it in the documents from U of A, from U of C, from, you know, partisan ideological organizations that think the genocide is not genocide at all and it's actually great.
00:44:58
Speaker
um Then suddenly it's actually an urgent threat.
Media and Administrative Bias Against Protests
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah. And they've sort of weaponized safety. and And this is something that has been talked about at length down the States of like weaponizing the safety of of Jewish students, for example. um And it's, it's such a, it's such a red herring because like the the students leading and, and, you know, widely supporting these encampments in large part are Jewish students.
00:45:29
Speaker
Um, And it is so like they're concerned about Palestinian safety and they don't want any part of this. They don't want their names. They don't want their religion associated with any of any of that genocide, rightly so. And, um you know, the state of Israel has just done such a tremendous job of of locking in Jewishness into into this genocide. and it that is the you know I can't speak for Jewish people, but that seems like ah a serious safety issue for for Jewish people, unfortunately. and and i can totally respect um understand the the resistance that a lot of Jewish students put up to to being associated that way.
00:46:14
Speaker
the ah you know Disproportionate amount of the incarnates you've seen across North America have been Jewish. It is quite funny. I remember ah at the Toronto Sun, Joe Wormington wrote a column about how the the U of T encampment is a Jew-free zone. And I think probably one of their digital editors um
00:46:42
Speaker
deliberately used as the feature image a photo with a Jew, say no genocide sweatshirt, like clearly visible from the encampment side, which was, if that was intentional, well played.
00:46:56
Speaker
um And, you know, it's interesting if you read the piece, which I don't necessarily recommend you do, but I did. um He talks about how these these the Jewish people are being excluded from the encampment.
00:47:13
Speaker
And he interviews one guy who's excluded from the encampment for standing with Israel, and then he's like, oh, by the way, this person's not Jewish. Side note.
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you've got to laugh at this shit, but I mean, it's hard sometimes. is I mean, especially for me, someone who knows a lot of people who, um you know, think this way, who think that the Holocaust is going to happen in Canada ah imminently if Israel isn't allowed to...
00:47:49
Speaker
do its final solution for Gaza. um And, you know, I think it just shows how in some quarters how thoroughly Palestinians have been dehumanized when it's like, okay, you think,
00:48:03
Speaker
um
00:48:06
Speaker
ah you know, another Holocaust because you saw a protest with some chance you don't understand and don't want to understand. Well, then what,
00:48:19
Speaker
going through. How much closer is that to what Jews went through under Nazi Germany than you and your um so completely normal ah life in in Canada is doing?
00:48:41
Speaker
Yeah. So um it kind of like branched out from there. I mean, as you know, from the documents, the the assumption was made that any encampment was was an evil thing that needed to be destroyed.
00:48:58
Speaker
It wasn't questioned internally. There was no evidence that anybody in the president's office was pushing back against this or or asking if this was the right approach to take. It was just, it was a given.
00:49:10
Speaker
and um And so everybody fell in line and and organized. and And what we got a hold of was really interesting because it's really rare to show that a public body that's responsible for maintaining records for for public access had actually destroyed these public records.
00:49:32
Speaker
um but But through these this freedom of information process, by by sending in parallel requests, identical requests, essentially, to UCalgary and to Calgary Police, we were able to dig up information.
00:49:48
Speaker
records from Calgary police that were no longer present at UCalgary. Suspiciously, the campus security executives had destroyed their emails and those emails were no longer available at UCalgary, showing quite likely the the plan that Calgary police had devised with campus security at UCalgary on the day of the encampment. So right around 11 AM m that day, they had a meeting over teams.
00:50:16
Speaker
Uh, there's all this correspondence on the, on the Calgary police side showing that these, this meeting happened and some sort of outcome from that meeting. But, uh, when I asked UCalgary for it, the campus security people were just like, Oh no, we we don't have any records like that. i don't know what you're talking about. And, uh,
00:50:35
Speaker
So yeah, that's that's there's a lot more to come on this, you know as it turns out, because you know there's there's reviews now happening. All of this has been appealed. We're going to try and get some redactions lifted.
00:50:47
Speaker
And I think that the UCalgary executives in campus security in particular have a lot to answer for having destroyed records, possibly illegally.
00:51:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because when you look at – because I also obtained documents regarding um the um encampment at UAlberta. And at UAlberta – um I mean, it was campus security that was saying, no, this is extremely peaceful. Like, let's just let it let it be. And then ah what happened was, you know, admin sort of got in touch with the police and sort of went up the chain of command after the U Calgary encampment was um violently dismantled.
00:51:45
Speaker
um and And then obviously campus security you know did what was told of them. But there's no it was striking that there was no indication of that UCalgary. It seemed like there was a much more unified approach and and premeditated approach to um ensuring that an encampment would you know ideally from their perspective not
00:52:18
Speaker
um would last as as briefly as possible.
00:52:27
Speaker
Well, if we're talking about decisions that are made at the leadership level, I've got to ask the both of you about something that I've seen you getting into it on social media the past couple of days. And Jeremy, you just published a piece for the Maple,
00:52:43
Speaker
talking about present Liberal Party candidate Corey Hogan's involvement in this. Corey was VP comms, is my understanding, at the university at the time.
00:52:55
Speaker
And if we're going to hop into a discussion of him, I should just disclose before we get into any discussion of Corey that Corey has been a longtime supporter of Progress Alberta.
00:53:08
Speaker
And I imagine that you probably find him on the donation lists of some other worthy causes around the province. i I had thought that he was a pretty good guy for a liberal. So I was surprising to hear about his involvement in all of this.
00:53:22
Speaker
You and Ewan have been talking and looking into this quite a bit over the past week. So can you bring us up to speed? What's the situation here? Yeah, so I mean, Corey Hogan is part of the University of Calgary's executive leadership team.
00:53:39
Speaker
Right, the ELT. And it was the ELT that issued a directive on April 29th, so less than two weeks before the encampment ah came up, saying that um temporary structures, so like tents, and overnight protests aren't allowed at the university.
00:53:59
Speaker
In one of the emails, Hogan is asked by the university's director of external relations, who's talking to the government in the aftermath, of the encampment, um asking to clarify what what policies violate.
00:54:20
Speaker
A series of them, the chief among them, the facilities policy, and then the ELT, executive leadership team directive, and says that the ELT directive um just clarified existing policies, that encampments were already prohibited And they just, the executive leadership team issued a directive to clarify that.
00:54:46
Speaker
But um University of Calgary law professors, Jeanette Watson-Hamilton and Sean Fluker, um wrote a blog post about this this this rationale because that it became the the existence of this directive came clear when um ah the the university got this accounting firm, an MMP, to...
00:55:13
Speaker
to write a whitewash of its approach to the encampment. I mean, that was quite clear. I mean, U of A at least put effort and hired a former judge um to write a lengthy one that actually has useful information. But this MNP review is total garbage. But it did um note that
00:55:36
Speaker
um there was this directive issued by the ELT on April 29th, and then it was updated again on on March 3rd or so um to clarify the hours
00:55:52
Speaker
um that they're using to define overnight protest and to... to um um
00:56:04
Speaker
um that that that's tent that tents aren't allowed, right? And um they noted that none of the other policies Hogan cited, right? Like the facilities policy um explicitly prohibit tents or encampments. They do say that the university has a right to regulate how protest occurs on campus, but they the facilities policy in particular includes a list of prohibited activity, which
00:56:40
Speaker
in a tent isn't one of them, right? Which to Watson Hamilton in Fluker means that they revised an existing policy and thus had to follow procedures for doing so, which they didn't.
00:56:57
Speaker
Like, um for example, having the updated policy accessible to everyone, right, on their website. They didn't do that. And so to them, that meant that this was inoperative.
00:57:11
Speaker
But, you know, Hogan, who since announcing his candidacy has been, you know, confronted on blue sky by several people about his role in... um
00:57:28
Speaker
establishing this this this framework that that enabled the university to call camp cops to campus. um He said that, no, actually, encampments have been banned from campus for like 20 years.
00:57:42
Speaker
um which again, that's simply not reflected in existing policy. The only policy where that's reflected is this one, the executive leadership team. It's unclear who from that team, but Hogan is part of that team, um you know, established out of thin air while they were preparing for the possibility of an encampment.
00:58:04
Speaker
um And ah he has totally defended the university's decision to do so, claiming falsely that none of the people police arrested were students.
00:58:17
Speaker
um At least one person who was arrested was a student who pointed that out to him on Blue Sky. um And um he compared this,
00:58:30
Speaker
yeah and you can't asking the university to end its complicity in this slaughter we're all seeing
00:58:41
Speaker
um If the Freedom Convoy set up in the University Quad and refused to leave unless they ended woke policies, which I think is, you know, just an extraordinary false equivalence of...
Political Parties and Human Rights Accountability
00:58:58
Speaker
And um yeah, I mean, it's deeply disappointing. I'm of course, you know, grateful for the support Corey gives to our organization.
00:59:11
Speaker
um But Corey, just admit you wrong. Just admit.
00:59:18
Speaker
Yeah, i some of the some of the stuff he's been posting in the past couple of days is is is kind of embarrassing. stuff Stuff that I would be very embarrassed to tell. You violated your students' charter rights.
00:59:33
Speaker
it's Freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of expression, life, liberty, and security of the person. um And yeah, just own it.
00:59:44
Speaker
Just say you made a mistake. And... I mean, his comments on the situation in Gaza in particular, which someone asked him about, um I would say are less egregious.
00:59:56
Speaker
um You know, he I mean, he said he supports a durable ceasefire. He said that Israel, you know, had a right to defend itself after October 7th, which, you know, debatable.
01:00:07
Speaker
um But that essentially they've gone too far. Yeah, this this statement that he made, you know what if what if the convoy showed up? How would you expect the university to ask?
01:00:19
Speaker
What a ridiculous comparison. Do you really think that if the convoy showed up and was causing problems and university the University of Calgary engaged campus security and CPS to come clear it up,
01:00:32
Speaker
that they would show up and start cracking heads the way that they did with the pro-Palestine demonstrators. We've seen the way that Edmonton and Calgary and Alberta police treat the convoy guys.
01:00:43
Speaker
It's extremely hands-off. You know, they were shaking hands with these guys down at Coots. The suggestion that there would be some sort of anti-convoy version of this that justifies it is nuts.
01:00:58
Speaker
No. Yeah. It'd be a box of donuts and and more handshakes and, um, and hugs and everything that we saw with the, with the coots border. Yeah. They'd they'd be showing up with treats. Yeah.
01:01:09
Speaker
Uh, I, you know, I, I have a big problem with that. And again, like, you know, I'll, I'll do respect to Corey Hogan and and what he does in the province. I think he's generally a good operator, but this is, this is it really misleading stuff. And, um I think plays right into the hand of the people that can now point at the liberal party, just like they did with the Democrat party and say, these people stand for nothing except their own self-interest.
01:01:38
Speaker
Um, Omar Al-Qaad in his new book, um, one day, everyone will have always been against this. I just, I just finished reading it. And he talks a lot about the way that the democratic party collapsed as a result of people realizing that if they can't stand up to a genocide, then they really don't stand for anything.
01:01:58
Speaker
And I think that emptiness, that sort of shell of a party became really visible to people in the run up to that unfortunate election that saw Trump come to power again and that we're all suffering the fallout for now. But like it really um laid itself bare of just the way that the Democratic Party um had had given up all of its moral legitimacy through the Biden period there, failing to respond in any meaningful way to what Israel was doing it and really supporting it and being the backstop for the whole operation, this whole land occupation and land seizure that we're now seeing um in broad daylight.
01:02:38
Speaker
And it's it's perverse. We have all of these ah these officials now and candidates, including Hogan himself, ah talking about how we have to go elbows up against Trump and against the American agenda.
01:02:51
Speaker
But what What issue out there is more MAGA than wiping out all of the Palestinians? there's There's almost nothing they're more fixated on than that.
01:03:04
Speaker
like how do How do people not connect the dots here? It's so sad that they can't see that parallel, that the Liberal Party just has this massive blind spot. They they are unable to get their head around this, and it will...
01:03:18
Speaker
Maybe they'll get to power and and get their majority and everything this this time around, but they're just they're kicking the can down road because this is coming for Canada at some point as well. There will be a reckoning around this. Canada has been complicit and it's been under the Liberal Party and everybody associated with it should be held accountable for it.
01:03:35
Speaker
um It seems like a ah real problem for the the set of folks who are, you know, not not comrades, but they are at least to the left of conservatives, the the sort of center left liberal crowd.
01:03:49
Speaker
They always seem to just stumble on this one, to choke on this. Like, what is it about this one specific issue it's that it's so hard for them to get right? Well, it's that it's I think it's that it's so tied up in in power.
01:04:03
Speaker
Like, the American power and the way that it's able to flex its muscle in, ah in the Middle East is tied to its presence in Israel. It's tied to the strength of Israel. Uh, and without that, their, their power will erode and their presence on the world stage will erode somewhat. And so they, they have to protect Israel for what it is for that, you know, combative attack dog in, in the Middle East for them and, uh, and maintaining, um,
01:04:32
Speaker
you know particularly Muslim people under under subservience. um you know I wanted to just come back to to like this online discussion that's continuing with Corey Hogan because like it's not just that he's misleading people um with these sorts of like re revisionist history of what the university did and and what if sort of analysis. like He's actually lying to the public um
01:05:02
Speaker
He said at one point that the policies apply to all visitors and community members, but none of those arrested were students, faculty or staff. And like beside the fact that students, faculty or staff are not the only people that should have their charter rights protected on university campus or not.
01:05:22
Speaker
Like he's lying here. There was a student arrested. And he should know that by now, nine months in. We're we're way past the time where they should be continuing to to pump these May 10th narratives that they had where nobody was injured and and ah no students were arrested and ah deflating numbers where they could and and all this other stuff.
01:05:45
Speaker
Like there was a student arrested and it was the person right beside me who also got the shit kicked out of him and was choked on the ground and you know was probably afraid for his life multiple times that night.
01:05:57
Speaker
um And Corey owes that person an apology and every other student that was there an apology and frankly, every community member that was there supporting the students a big fucking apology.
01:06:08
Speaker
And instead, what we're getting is is bullshit. We're getting literal bullshit from him and gaslighting. And for me, it's it's it's pretty painful to watch because.
01:06:18
Speaker
Like this is somebody that I respected. This is somebody, you know, I've listened to the strategists a lot. He's the one that I listen for when I listen to that podcast. Yeah, I used to watch Power and Politics for him. I liked him on Power and Politics when I was much younger and less radical. Yeah.
01:06:36
Speaker
And, you know, he's somebody that has a lot of deep connections in the media landscape in Alberta. And it's just... And and he's someone who has been helpful to left of center projects, too. I mean, I'm not sure if Duncan would have been able to get us set up back in the day if Corey hadn't been able to explain the the computer side of things to him. He helps Duncan with the with the website.
01:07:00
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's, um, frustrating to see a guy like this, uh, just like raise a flag for the evil camp. Um, I mean, we had matters of disagreement. He's, he, he's a liberal. He's not a socialist. I get that. But I, I didn't think he was villainous until starting to, to, to read about this, uh, you know, his involvement at the UFC stuff.
01:07:25
Speaker
And now just flat out denying that that guy was arrested, making these misleading statements is bad. Yeah. And unfortunately, you know, when the dust settles and we can see what happened in hindsight with all of this stuff, he's he's going to be wrapped up with folks like Mark Neufeld, who, you know, issued coverups and and worked with the government and colluded potentially with, you know, people like Marshall Smith who were calling him and telling him, don't worry about an ACERT review or ACERT's not going to investigate all this stuff that that Jeremy's reported on as well.
01:07:58
Speaker
it's just like every public body that was involved with this situation at all has got so much shit on their boot at this point. And somehow the media is still letting them get away with it.
01:08:11
Speaker
um I just, I, it's beyond me how little accountability has been forced on any of these people, but it will come eventually. It's just like, it's going to be, it could be years, but you know, we've we've got,
01:08:26
Speaker
We've been digging away a a lot of this already. There's lots more to come, but I mean, I'm just stunned at this point that the liberal nomination ended up going to somebody who it was so deeply involved with the outcome, the violent outcome, uh, that absolutely obliterated the protest rights, the charter rights of not only students, but, but community members, um,
01:08:50
Speaker
and staff and and faculty and everybody else that was there that night. i it's It's so disappointing to see that in Calgary Confederation, you know of all places where there really should be a strong, like unified resistance against a guy like Jeremy Nixon, who's running for the conservative party. But I think this this really probably is the biggest thing that's gonna throw that into and the question.
01:09:18
Speaker
Well, Corey, if you're listening, i know we've been pretty hard on you this episode. i also know Jeremy's been reaching out, ah trying to correspond with you. ah You know, if you want to come on the pod and talk about it or explain yourself, or if you would sit down for an interview with one of us you know, we'd absolutely love to do it.
01:09:36
Speaker
yeah Out of respect for your support for ours and other causes across the province, we'll give you a fair shake. But please change direction, man, please.
01:09:50
Speaker
Endorse ah the Vote Palestine pledge, Corey. um You say you support a durable ceasefire. Well, there was a path to one that Israel decided it didn't want to do um So ah if you go to votepalestine.ca, you can sign on as a candidate in support of a two-way arms embargo on Israel, recognition State of Palestine, supporting relief efforts in Gaza, including those of UNRWA,
01:10:20
Speaker
And combating anti-Palestine racism and supporting free expression on Palestine. um Again, these are radical demands, and i think all them support it, but especially those who are running against the conservatives who, of course, ah despise all those things.
01:10:43
Speaker
For sure. Yeah. I think that's a good and constructive note to end on. And, and please, if, if you are running for office out there right now and you're running on the basis of this elbows up stuff, ah you should put your elbows up about Palestine too.
01:10:58
Speaker
It's part of it. Yeah, that's right. Elbows up for Palestine. Elbows up for Palestine. Like you don't want Canada to be illegally occupied ah by the United States. Yeah.
01:11:13
Speaker
Well, um guess who's funding Israel's illegal occupation of the Palestinians? Besides Canada, which, you know you know, we have a free trade agreement with Israel. We still sell them weapons, though less than we had before, um possibly.
01:11:34
Speaker
Though there hasn't been a lot transparency on that. So also, if you get elected as Liberal MP,
01:11:41
Speaker
push for transparency.
01:11:44
Speaker
Ewan, I want to thank you for taking the time to come and chat with us today. Always great to hear from you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. this is These are tough conversations, but yeah, I reiterate what both of you said. you know Corey, if you're listening, please consider just doing a hard 180 on this. There's still time to come back and and really build a strong movement in your favor in Calgary Confederation, but you are going to be fighting students all the way forward.
01:12:13
Speaker
to your to your and minister's seat or whatever it is you're going for here in parliament. And i think this that's just an unfortunate
01:12:26
Speaker
that's an unfortunate situation have to fight through. So this is an easy one, just do it. Okay, that was great. Well, everyone, thank you for listening. And Ewan, thank you for your time.
01:12:38
Speaker
Folks, if you want to follow Ewan's work more closely, he publishes at drugdatadecoded.ca. That's his his personal platform. And if you would like to read that article that we were talking about, where Jeremy was discussing the situation with Corey Hogan, that's up on The Maple.
01:12:58
Speaker
Fellas, thanks again for your time today. Jeremy, talk to you on the next next episode. Yep.
01:13:08
Speaker
Thanks so much.