Grubstakers - Episode 89: The Irving Family feat. donoteat

Episode Date: August 14, 2019

This episode has some Epstein death discussion at the start but it is mainly focused on one of the richest Canadian families, the Irvings. We're joined by YouTuber donoteat who helps guide us through understanding the chillingly medieval power held over the eastern seaboard of Canada by these secretive old money oil canucks. American listeners will get to learn that there is a kleptocracy known as New Brunswick right on the border with the US state of Maine. If there's editing problems with the ep sorry I gotta sleep tweet at our twitter account and I'll fix it tomorrow. donoteat can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/donoteat01 https://twitter.com/donoteat1

First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world. Berlusconi flatly denies that any mafia money helped him begin a start in the dynasty. I have always had a thing for black people. I like black people. These stories are funnier than the jokes you can tell. I said, what the fuck is a brain scientist? I was like, that's not a real job. Tell me the truth. But anyway. Welcome back to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined here by... Andy Palmer.

Steve Jeffries. And so we got a very special guest this week. We're very excited. A listener recommended, a guest on this podcast recommended. Multiple people have told us he's their favorite left YouTuber. He's very entertaining, very smart, and we're so thrilled to be joined by the YouTuber DoNotEat. Real name Justin is here today. Hi, thanks for having me on the pod. Thank you. And I guess for people who are not familiar with what you do, you're a YouTube

City Skylines, excuse me, a YouTube City Skylines Let's Player who uses that to explain different concepts in housing issues. Would that be a fair description, or how would you describe it? I use Cities Skylines, you know, to do visuals, to explain sort of urban policy, history, to, you know, talk about transportation, land use issues, from more of a generally left-wing perspective than, you know, especially like mainstream urbanists do. So, yeah, that's me. And throw on some uh funnies in there too but city skylines like the politics of the game or maybe the politics of sin city sim city excuse me are if you were to analyze the politics you would probably say it's kind of a neoliberal view

of city management so i guess my question is are you using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house uh yeah i'd say that's that's probably about accurate i mean i have to turn off about half to three quarters of the gameplay in order to you know tell the stories i want to tell you know it's not like the game is going to let you you know simulate stuff in any way other than what it wants to do unless you're you're willing to uh go over this that their steam workshop and download five million mods i will say the most realistic part of sim city is when i um demolish entire blocks of houses and i'm completely indifferent to all of the lives i am destroying

um but so we we had you here today and you suggested we do an episode about the Irving family in Canada, who is very fascinating. I learned about them on your recommendation and we'll get into them in just a second. But I guess first, before we go any farther, we should mention up top that it's very hard to do this kind of comedy podcast uh when you've lost a friend yeah a giant of the podcast world uh has been taken from us um so as of saturday uh august 10th jeffrey epstein was found dead of an apparent suicide strangled in his prison cell and uh okay so uh who do you think did it i just think it's a shame we're not going to get the snl cold open of uh kate mckinnon as hillary strangling him with fiber

wire then saying live from new york it's saturday night well i mean it has to be someone who is actually capable of getting the job done yeah Yeah. Which basically eliminates 99% of like public figures who you'd think would do it. Yeah. I think it's like Wexner. Yeah. Or it's like, I don't know, maybe Mike Pence did it.

Calling in a favor for the, for the VP spot. I don't know. It's just interesting where it's like, okay, so Jeffrey Epstein is dead now. And then, um's it. Right. Like the all of the loose ends are just going to be forgotten about all the money people gave to Jeff Epstein, all the Glenn and Eva Dubin being accused in those documents of trafficking children and being involved with him. It's just something where there were some listener requests to like revisit it and do another episode already. And I think I'm kind of like, I just want to see how this settles. Because what I'm most curious about is what happens a year from now, you know?

Like a year from now, is it just kind of people talking about either Epstein and Trump or Epstein and Clinton and never both? And, you know, Glenn and Eva Dubin are back in high society. You know, Leon Black is not talked about in connection with this anymore. Like, does this all just disappear? That would be when I would want to follow up on it. Yeah, like three days ago, we were saying like, OK, let's, you know, wait. We've got the documents now, but so much more is going to come out in the discovery process of the trial but there's plenty of civil court cases that are still going forward yeah but that's my guess is

that a lot of those stay in the background for quite some time yeah but that's the thing is like we have such information overload that you know the day before epstein got whacked the 2 000 pages come out and then in these 2 000 pages as we mentioned glenn dubin is a hedge fund billionaire and he's alleged that he raped a child or virginia roberts when she was a child that's alleged in there but we have such information overload in the society that it's like if pages and pages just come out showing that know, say 20 or 100 billionaires are all part of some giant pedophile conspiracy theory or conspiracy, I should say. Like, unless there's any actual, let's say, prosecution of them, it's just the kind of thing that's going to disappear where, you know, eventually the New York Times will start stop mentioning it. Eventually,

you know, it'll just be her word against theirs if there's not like actual, say, video evidence or whatever else the case is. I'll also say, so we're recording this on Sunday. So within the last 24 hours, The Atlantic released three articles about how it was definitely a suicide. So I think if you want to get to the bottom of this, you should look into who owns The Atlantic or maybe some of the connections of the editors. Yeah, mysteriously, all of those articles were published two hours before they found the body. I'm just going to say,

I think all the civil cases will go ahead. They'll sue his estate for an insultingly low amount. Every victim's going to get $45 cash a 20 gift card it's it's gonna be dumb and they'll have to sign like an NDA almost certainly but it is something where I guess it is very uh disturbing and um it just doesn't make any sense to me because southern district of new york even even if you're like let's follow cold hard incentives here southern district of new york were the prosecutors against epstein this is going to be the media case of the century any prosecutor on this makes their career you know so they have a lot of it they have every single

incentive to keep jeffrey epstein alive and weeks before this, he either was attacked or tried to kill himself. So they knew something was going on. And it just doesn't make sense to me where Southern District of New York didn't just recruit podcasters to watch him at all times. You know, like I would have been willing to sign the visitor logs and sit in the jail for three hours, you know, twice a week. And then we just get enough, you know, hundreds of Brooklyn podcasters. We'll make sure he gets to your trial. You got enough people to cover three shifts easily. You could do that

with Crispin, Mullen, Present Company. Yeah, I mean, we'll just have a punch card system. Sign in, sign out. Just be like, I'll do it. It's a job guarantee for podcasters. i'll do it for free but the condition is you can't open my bag on the way into the facility

because it has something in there that i require to stay awake but yeah i mean it is just something where i just don't really understand like again the of course the occam's razor explanation is always incompetence. You know, like we shouldn't underestimate that. Just people fucked up or, you know, whoever on their shift wasn't watching and something happened. But it's just so bizarre where, again, the incentives, at least for the Southern District of New York, were to treat this guy like a vip because it was the case of the century but you know maybe they did intentionally allow something to happen because somebody talked to them or maybe you know i think it was like something happened through the guards i don't think the southern district right much to do with it what

but i'm saying like they they are prosecutors they know prison conditions they know what mcc and manhattan is like you know they managed to keep el chapo alive to the trial so it's like well the the the worry with el chapo was just keeping him in the building right now that when he died he wasn't actually under suicide watch right they took him off suicide watch within like a week yeah yeah but didn't tell anyone the decision to do that was dubious right yeah and like some guard who was supposed to be watching him wasn't of course watching him i think i think the southern district's interest in epstein wasn't probably as great or manageable as the interests of the accused in this case. I just want to say congratulations to the family of the guard who wasn't

watching. All right, Mr. Epstein, I'm just going to leave this coil of rope here and I'm going to go use the restroom. I'll be back in a minute. Oh,

there's nothing to tie it to. Here's, here's a, here's some more bed sheets. Here's some more bed sheets. Here's a, here's a diagram showing how to tie a noose. I would like to congratulate that guard's children

on their full-ride scholarship to Harvard University, their admission to the Kennedy School of Government. But yeah, no, and so we're going to release, by the end of this week, we're going to release a Patreon episode on Glenn and Eva Dubin, who we've mentioned here because they were, of course, in these 2000 Virginia Roberts pages,

Glenn Dubin was accused of rape, and Eva Dubin has been accused of trafficking children for Epstein. And it is just something where, you know, we're going to do the episode, and we'll see if these people get away with it. Because to me, that's always the big question, is the billionaires. Not like there's multimillionaires too, but just the actual billionaires, the actual 2000 most powerful people in society. And, you know, you have at least three who are directly linked to this guy, either financially or through accusations. And you have to imagine just the social circles they run in.

More people than that were aware. And it is just something where it disturbs me the possibility that he's dead. Now it's all just hearsay and everything goes back to normal. But so we'll see what happens with that story. Check out our Patreon episode later this week for a bit of follow up on Glenn and Eva Dubin and just a couple of the billionaires who are linked to Epstein and what all they have been up to. So I wanted to transition to the Irvings, the subject of this episode.

And Justin, I know you were the one who suggested the Irvings to us, and it was very fascinating to do research about them. But I just wanted to start by asking you, what made you interested in the Irving family? So I was interested from the first time I went to this uh this place no one knows about right it turns out if you keep driving up interstate 95 you get to a place called banger in Maine I hardly knew her and then you take a road called the airline across Maine and then you cross the border and it turns out what's around Maine isn't like a void despite what it says on maps you go to New Brunswick which is where which is the province

of Canada which is entirely controlled by this one group of companies the Irving group of companies they own they own the gas stations they own the construction companies they own the lumber companies they own they own housing they own all the uh they already said gas station you did they own all the newspapers um it's absurd uh one in ten people in this province work for this one group of companies and And it's the most incredible corporate feudalism that you never would expect would happen in the first world. Right, yeah, like I think Americans, or some of them, maybe on the liberal or even left side,

have this view of Canada as like this kind of comparatively social democratic paradise to the United States. And then you learn about the province of New Brunswick, which is just basically a giant company town right on the border with Maine. And it's all controlled by the Irving family. I mean, we're getting harsh on them, but we should remember that they do keep the creature from it out of Canada. And that's mostly how they rose to power. We'll get to that later. So I guess just to kind of start for an introduction i well i guess the first absolute thing i would say is if you are listening to this podcast and you are living in new brunswick canada

i would recommend you hit the pause button and immediately get a cancer screen because new brunswick canada uh in addition to everything else the irvings are doing there they've been spraying a ton of uh glyosate, which you might be familiar with is the Roundup herbicide. Just from this article here, glyphosate is the world's most widely used herbicide and is sprayed heavily in New Brunswick to encourage the growth of softwood trees,

which are coveted by the pulp and paper industry. It is also linked to destroying wildlife and increasingly cancer. And it just so happens that New Brunswick has the second highest rate of new cancers in all of the Canadian provinces. Wait, a chemical designed to kill life is linked with cancer?

Yes. Yes. It's doing its job. Nothing in SimCity3000 prepared me for this development I mean this is like Irving Irving Co is like if you're playing SimCity

and like suddenly there's a little development of industrial zone that you didn't create and then you tried to bulldoze them and nothing happens though and then suddenly they just have an advisor in your little tab and you can't shut them off i do imagine the irving's pr people had to encourage them to stop referring to the population of new brunswick as weeds

um but so it is just interesting where again, this Canadian province right on the border with the U.S. state of Maine. And there's a fascinating article in Le Monde. They've interviewed Don Bowser, an expert on political corruption. He says there is less transparency and public consultation in New Brunswick than in Kurdistanistan guatemala or sierra leone uh basically the citizens of this province cannot get information on the taxes and license fees that the biggest enterprise in their province pays or how much public aid it receives uh it just so happens that new brunswick's current premier a guy named blaine higgs is the is a former irving Group executive who worked in the oil sector for more than 30 years. And so, you know, it is just something where they just blatantly own the actual government of New Brunswick.

And like you mentioned, they employ anywhere from 8 to 12 percent of the population, even more in the city of St. John. In the city of St. John, it's like one out of St. John. And the city of St. John is like one out of four. And that's not even the people who depend on the Irving business to sell whatever goods to actual people who are employed by the Irving. So the knock-on effects are such to the point where

this is, again, just a Canadian province controlled by one family in an absolutely futile manner. And they pay the least in the developed world for insulin really yeah so it just highlights that you you can have great social democracies uh in conjunction with corruption you win some you lose some no i mean it's really like i think i think there's an idea in the left that the more social democratic reforms and democratic socialism even that you get, the less corrupt government will necessarily also get. You need Irving in order to have $30 insulin.

That's what I'm saying. Worth it. No, we have Irving in the United States. Yes. But we don't have enough yet. Don't have enough Irving. Yeah. We have We don't have enough yet. Oh, you said there were some gas stations earlier. There was a gas station as far south as Waterbury, Connecticut.

Oh, wow. The Irvings are the sixth largest landowner in the United States, and that's primarily because they have like 1.25 million acres of forest in the state of Maine. So, as far as the U.S. goes, the state of Maine is their biggest presence. So we should look up insulin prices in the state of Maine

just to see if they're cheaper than the rest of the United States. I mean, before you criticize that, just remember it's been over two decades since Tim Curry ate any children in Maine. And that's a no-spall part due to the work of the Irvings. But I guess just like from this article in the Dominion, to give an overview of what's informally called the Irving Group of Companies, because they have more than 200 subsidiaries. And this is all privately held by the Irving family.

So it's very hard to get information about this. These are not publicly traded companies, but they include, according to the Dominion, among other things, oil speculation, refining and shipping, gas stations, food products, massive land holdings. We mentioned the forestry, pulp and paper, hardware stores, home building. But significantly, they own all three Englishuage daily newspapers in New Brunswick. Apparently, the only daily newspaper they don't own is in French, but they are the ones who publish it. They own a lot of radio stations. They own, like, most of the weeklies as well. New Brunswick is almost all English-speaking, right?

I think there's, like, a split. It almost all english-speaking right i think there's like a split it borders quebec so you know there are some there's some bleed over but yeah like near they have they have a hand in almost all levels of the news there yeah right like according to lamond essentially in um there they've been so the oil refinery in St. John is the largest oil refinery in Canada. They do 100-some thousand barrels a day. And it's like the main, let's say, employer in the town. Yeah. But there have been repeated fires and explosions there.

Like most recently, or I'm not sure if there's been a more recent one, but in autumn 2018, there was an explosion at the St. John refinery that killed four people. And according to LeMond, a doctor doubted the accuracy of the company's statement and the impartiality of New Brunswick media coverage. So it's like, unsurprisingly, you know, when bad things happen at their properties, their media properties tend to report on them in a favorable light if they report on them at all. You know, I was watching Chernobyl, the HBO show recently, and I am just so glad that we don't have a Soviet system that just blatantly covers up massive environmental problems and massive death and just don't have that kind of corruption in the western world i mean when my local refinery blew up a couple weeks ago um it was uh you know obviously there was massive media coverage and you know there was definitely punishment and you know there there was repercussions and no none of this stuff happened uh i mean that was there actually a

refinery explosion yeah the philadelphia energy solutions refinery exploded a couple weeks ago it was the second time it exploded that month uh but this time it was in the uh yeah it's just something you sort of deal with in philadelphia like the refinery blows up every once in a while you know it's like whatever uh this time it could have been really bad because it was a hydrogen fluoride tank what that blew up. Oh, that's some fun stuff. Oh, yeah.

If that had blown up and they hadn't emptied it in time, there would have been a cloud of hydrogen fluoride would have just swept over South Philadelphia and turned everyone into goo. If I can quote one of the TAs from a chemistry class I took, hydrogen fluoride is characterized by its unique property where it eats your bones and you die slowly. Yes. I'm just imagining Lane from Mad Men taking off his glasses in a very dramatic fashion

when he hears that news. Someone should ask him what he thinks about Epstein since he's portrayed hanging enough that he's almost an expert on the topic um oh and just to mention the glyphosate article quote that came from the National Observer so sorry for not citing it earlier but I guess and you were also telling us Justin some story about you were up there or you were saying there was another explosion at

the same refinery in St. John and the well you were saying when nobody got hurt the papers covered it in a particular way yeah the papers covered in a particular way they said um you know there's a big picture of the fireball in the uh refinery on the front page and then the headline said it's a miracle you know because uh because no one got hurt so obviously there's no other repercussions that could possibly happen from a giant fireball happening in the refinery other than you know no one immediately getting hurt you know as we all know once the fire stops there's no other problems whatsoever yeah it's done yeah no it's over yeah right but so it's interesting where essentially like you know they some the irvings sometimes receive coverage from national media in Canada. That's, you know, let's say more critical. But local paper, there's absolutely no incentive to do any investigative journalism of them at all because you'll lose your job, which has happened to multiple people it's interesting since they own all the newspapers right the oil industry

in general sort of gets away with half truths and misdirection and euphemisms all the time right so like british petroleum renamed themselves beyond petroleum to sound like they were a green company right or or like exxon mobil will advertise we spent 340 million dollars last year on renewable energy. Oh, yeah. When their budget's in like the trillions, right? And it's like they're all trying to seem progressive while they're just selling oil, right? That was my favorite marketing campaign was right after the Deepwater Horizon.

There were all those like BP and Exxon commercials where they just had molecules in the background and then people in lab coats saying that they were building a better future so if you go to an irving gas station right they've done away with you know all the euphemisms right uh and they just write on the side of the gas pump irving clean gasoline burns clean yeah yeah this is the type of gasoline that doesn't have co2 i guess i'm just imagining george orwell hank hill direction i'm just imagining george orwell hearing uh beyond petroleum and thanking god that he is dead uh and so you know like uh before we even get into this family here we should just mention one more thing with regards to new brunswick we mentioned they're the sixth largest landowner in

the u.s because of these massive acres of forest they own in maine uh they also unsurprisingly own even more land in new brunswick i believe they own something near two million a little more than two million acres. But they, in addition to the land they just straight up own, according to LeMond, they also have, the New Brunswick government also trusts them with managing their public forests. And according to LeMond, they are constantly downloading, or downgrading the requirements for maintenance of these forests.

They say the most recent forest management manual for New Brunswick Crownslands reduces the size of buffer zones between forests and habitable areas, authorizes more clear-cutting, increases scheduled production volume, and cuts protected areas from 31% to 22%. And the legislation has effectively created a free trade zone for the family the natural resources department requirements cannot be modified without their agreement so i mean like you know it is just kind of funny where again you know canada our harmless northern neighbor and you just don't imagine this kind of corruption outside of, you know, the most Rachel Maddow talking point about Moscow government kind of thing. They're just like kicking the snowmobile into high gear towards global warming.

Well, because they only have like most, I think most leftists have little to no knowledge, honestly, about Canadian politics. Right. And they only know about like well they've got a great health care system and they do and they also have incredible corruptions at the highest levels just like we do actually right but so i guess like and one other thing i do want to mention before we get to the irving family themselves is uh essentially the role of the uh sa machine in their massively profitable empire. We've been mentioning this oil refinery in St. John.

So it mostly currently processes Saudi Arabian crude oil. And of course, you might be familiar with Saudi Arabia carrying out a genocide in Yemen as we speak. It's a brand new genocide. We didn't point it out a year ago on this podcast as it continued to get worse up to this day yeah so according to tankertracker.com they tracked 16 million barrels of saudi crude going from saudi arabia just in march to august 2019 And this is after Saudi Arabia threatened to do 9-11 to Canada on Twitter. So it is nice that they can settle their differences. And, you know, so of course,

there's this, again, something that Americans might be familiar with our arms deal with Saudi Arabia, but there is also a Canadian arms deal with Saudi Arabia for something like $12 billion. I believe they're sending, you know, armored personnel carriers and other light vehicles. Mounties. genocide mounties. According to nbmediacoop.org, Saudi Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company, their largest customer is irving oil and so it is just something where oh sorry it was a 15 billion canadian uh arms deal that uh the current government

uh went ahead with where they mainly send the weaponized military vehicles the light armored vehicles um so it is just something where they send them $15 billion worth of arms. You're not going to be using this to blow up children, are you? Wink, wink. Send in a boatload of armed assault mooses. We got light elk and heavy mooses. We got bears. Loonies. Yeah.

We got beavers with landmines on the back now look you can sell them serp but you can you got to stop selling them cluster serp it's not okay if it breaks into multiple pieces and drowns entire region so but, so it is just something. It'll take that Boston molasses spill to the next level. It is just something where, you know, according to this NB Media Co-op in Yemen, more than 10 million people are at risk of starving. Another 10 million are food insecure. Saudi Arabia is, of course, blockading. The U.S. and Canada are helping there. But it is just something where, you know, all of these.ading uh the u.s and canada are helping there but it is just something where

you know all of these america's already great all of these different billionaires you get if you just spend enough time doing research like we spend maybe what three or four hours per billionaire researching somewhere in that neighborhood once you get about the third hour you're like oh yeah this person should be prosecuted at nuremberg and eventually you just you follow the chain enough that you're like yeah that's their main customer and of course it should be noted the irving oil refinery again this is a privately held company so we don't know for sure but by all indication irving oil refinery is their main profit center so these billionaires the Irving family that control this province,

they're doing it by aiding and abetting and profiting from a Saudi genocide of potentially 10 million people or more. So we'll see what happens. But I guess we've given you a lot of background here, so maybe we should just dive into the Irvings themselves, the actual family, the human beings that make these decisions and um they uh they wrote a history of new york under the name knickerbocker so the irving family fortune is unique uh well not unique but it goes all the way back to the late 1800s so this is like a negative self-made score out of 10 this is like yeah fucking show up in the hospital and collect your annuities check you know i think it would still garner probably a five yeah on the forbes rating system yeah forbes

if they're looking for an exclusive interview Someone had to be alive and breathing for the bequeathment of those assets. So you have to actually be there to accept it. They had to pay someone to do a lot of paperwork. I signed the back of that check myself. That's great. That's like a three right there. Just off the bat. I learned to write.

I learned to make an X, at least. But so when we talk about the irving family today there's a lot of uh descendants let's say but the two the two primary ones are arthur and jk irving uh their third brother jack died in 2010 so yeah arthur and jk are still alive um i believe yeah forbes puts uh j um forbes puts jk at about 5.5 billion u.s dollars net worth as of august 2019 they put arthur irving at 3 billion net worth so about an eight and a half billion dollar net worth for the family so according to forbes the family fortune dates back to the 19th century when uh the, Arthur and James Irving's grandfather, left Scotland and launched a general store in lumber and farming companies in New Brunswick. So J.D. Irving was a prominent local businessman in Botouche, which is a small town in New Brunswick.

And he gives birth to his son,y irving in 1899 uh casey irving for his part is uh grows up pretty well off relative to everyone else uh he tries to enlist for world war one but his father prevents that by enrolling him at acadia university in nova scotia so around you know he's born 1899 uh you know around the time of world war one he tries to go join the trenches but his dad is like no that's that's for a different class of people to get poems written about them after making futile charges into machine gun nests just to maintain british imperial power it's just like when you think about the absurdity of world war one that's why black adder is so

funny because it is just the most pointless mass slaughter in human history it's also what makes gallipoli hilarious yes it's funny because a lot of people died for no reason. Yeah. But if you just give it 100 years. But so Casey Irving, again, the father of the current Irvings, he tries to enlist in World War I. His father enlists him and enrolls him in Acadia University, but he leaves Acadia before graduating. He then joins the Royal Flying Corps and trains as a pilot. But the war ends before he sees action. But I'm sure he would have killed it over there. But so regardless, the war ends and then Casey Irving starts to sell Ford automobiles around the age of 22.

Within two years, he's kind of dominant in what's called Southern Kent County. And then he opens a gas station in 1924. He's initially franchising with Imperial Oil, but they dump him. So he has to contact an Oklahoma oil baron named Samuel Lloyd Noble. Yeah. I just want to say something that it's important that he was selling Ford automobiles because during this period of time, of course, you were required to also distribute copies of Henry Ford's newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. So he was also publishing

the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as selling Ford automobiles, right? So this is just a note that should be included. Probably hated Jews. I'm just dwelling on the irony of the Irving family publishing a pamphlet about a secretive clan that secretly controls a government they're interfering with their ability to secretly control the government yeah this would be a free market where everyone has a shot a clan that is also responsible for wars in the middle east

uh so but yeah so he's selling these ford automobiles he opens a gas state his first gas station in 1924 uh we mentioned he's initially franchising with Imperial Oil. They dump him. He has to contact an Oklahoma oil baron named Samuel Lloyd Noble, purchase a supply line from him. So he gets the gas from this Oklahoma oil baron and then sells it to Canadian consumers. 1925, he opens a second station.

And this is just he gradually expands his gas station empire from there uh to what would eventually today become irving oil so basically he got in contact with um essentially one of the guys from essentially daniel day lewis from there will be blood and much like pete holmes took the exact wrong lesson from that interaction. But so then he's 26. Apparently the Ford representative invites him to take over the franchise, a franchise for Ford in St. John. I drink your syrup. St. John, New Brunswick. He will move there to what we've talked about.

St. John is like even more so than the rest of New Brunswick, a company town of the Irvings. But around 26 years old, he moves there. He takes over the Ford franchise there. He also soon gets one in Halifax. Apparently, he gets the concession for all Ford tractors in all of the Maritimes, which the Maritimes is the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Islands. So essentially, his early business is very much selling gas, but he's working directly with Ford,

and he's their go-to guy for these provinces on the eastern seaboard side of Canada. And, you know, it's a license to print money throughout the 20s. Every car he sells is only using Irving gasoline. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's double dipping here. And that's like something that as he expands his empire, something that we've, let's say, implied but haven't really gotten into yet is the vertical integration of the Irving empire,

where they have all of these different businesses that buy from each other. They don't like the word empire. They don't like the word empire. They prefer family business. We're all a family here in New Brunswick as a whole. We're one very, very large family with a lot of dysfunction they prefer to call it this thing of ours to join our family we're going to burn a picture of a saint in your hand

but regardless you know in 1927 casey irving marries his childhood sweetheart and this is where he gives birth to his children who currently run the empire. 1928, or family business. 1928, they give birth to James Kenneth Irving. 1930, Arthur Lee Irving. 1932, John Ernest Irving. And as we mentioned, John or Jack would die in 2010. So currently the empire is split between james and arthur lee and just according to canadabusiness.com um the driven and hard-driving casey groomed his three

sons james known as jk arthur and jack to take over the business they accompanying their accompanied their father to business meetings and on tours of mills and properties earning the nicknames oily, greasy, and gassy. I like, I like how the one who was named gassy died first. I was about to ask. Yeah.

It turns out this was a warning sign of serious intestinal problems and everyone just treated it like a joke. But so you got to take those seriously man that's that's what people think did kurt cobain in too so in 1929 casey irving forms irving gas and oil which is again to distribute these gas that he's initially getting from uh the guy noble the uh the oklahoma oil man uh he forms haymarket square service stations around the same time but importantly in um uh start selling haymarket books uh i don't know if they do the books i don't think so it's a big conglomerate i mean i don't know yeah i mean they make the trees for they uh grow softwood trees for paper. Yeah, exactly. And then they sell it. They need to get it on leftist publishers. Well, obviously they sell anarchist books to make anarchists, which they can then put down with Irving Security Services.

Yeah, this is my favorite Irving publication that I got on the streets the other day. It's the Revolution paper put out by the Revolutionary Communist Party USA run by Bob Avakian. Is Bob Avakian an Irving? I don't know. He's a contractor. Yeah. He's part of the quote family. Look, if you're Irving is part Revolutionary Communist.

That'd be one of our theses on this. Look, if you're listening to this, you can stop the Irvings and their money-making activities by printing a book about them oh wait that's that's all the strategy like just get the criticism and then get journalists to write books and then fucking make money on both ends as soon as we get to whatever billionaire owns SoundCloud, we're fucked. But so, you know, so he sets this up. By 1930, he's selling gas in St. John, Sussex, Westville, just a bunch of different Canadian towns and provinces.

In 1930, he sold 8 million gallons. One of his average service stations sold 70 000 gallons he employed about 212 people in saint john 482 elsewhere uh this is just from a biography of the man uh but it is just interesting where again you know this is the year that the current billionaires were born and he's already selling eight million gallons of gas so they didn't exactly have to work all that hard uh and then the other thing that happens around this time is uh he takes over his father casey irving takes over his father's sawmill company uh which is called jd irving limited so jv uh jd irving limited is essentially the forestry side of it, where, just to kind of explain how the company mostly works today, the sons, Arthur Irving, the

living sons, Arthur Irving manages Irving Oil, he owns outright Irving Oil and its subsidiaries and then james erving owns um or jk erving owns jd erving limited which has forestry all the forests the ship building a lot of the transportation is there so that's kind of the division but it is just interesting where essentially he's makes his money in gas and then he uses it to buy his dad's sawmill. So this is very old money we're dealing with here. What happened to the family haberdashery? I think that became part of J.D. Irving Limited as well. So he starts purchasing land around this time. He gains control of a wood veneer production firm in the mid-1930s.

So the empire keeps growing and growing and uh one interesting anecdote from the 1940s is from either ottawa or london casey irving gets the contract uh to build wooden landing barges for d-days he sets up the facility in botouche are for D-Day. They were planning on multiple ones. Originally, there were supposed to be 40 different D-Days. They were built to fail, and the last one succeeds.

The famously structurally sound landing barges in D-Day. He got the contract to build death traps for thousands of servicemen. The door doesn't open. It would be a nightmare. I'm just imagining being the fucking Canadian soldier in like a wooden craft and looking

over and seeing a solid steel one holding the Americans. They're like the engineers who are sitting there and Irving walks in. Hey, could you make this easier to capsize? I think we could cut some costs right here. We get rid of the bottom. I don't think we need that.

Irving got this contract after walking into a meeting and insisting that his trees were thick enough to withstand MG42 bullets. I had the best trees. I had the best trees in all of canada could you put an arrow right on the door so that the uh german machine gunners can see where to shoot right before it opens up there's a brunswick news like desk right next when you get on to it right before you are loaded on to go to the beach. So we're worried our soldiers will be kind of afraid when they get to the beach, and they might try to stay in the landing crafts.

So if we could just make them flammable, then they would immediately run out of the landing crafts after they catch on fire. And what about morale? Oh, no, that's okay. We're going to hand out pamphlets that'll say, you'll survive in big, bold letters. Printed on Irving paper. Print it on Irving paper.

Print it on Irving paper. That's how you do it. Vertical integration. Irving hands out Henry Ford's Dearborn newspaper to every soldier who gets in one of the landing crafts. Why are so many of our soldiers defecting? But yes, no, we're exposing it on this podcast where he was clearly an anti-Semite and this was all an op to help the Germans. But it's kind of, I mean, it's kind of funny.

Well, let's say fucked up where, I don't know, he gets this contract to build wooden landing crafts uh he just so happens to have you know a sawmill and uh wood veneer factory and all this other wood production facilities uh that's who you go to right when steel would clearly be a much better option this is a big a big con by big wood yeah but you know i mean i guess people don't talk as much about world war ii of course you know we all recognize it as the good war but every war is horrible but uh there was a lot of money making opportunities in the western hemisphere for world war ii but so just kind of like skipping ahead in 1963 uh by 1963 he set up the irving oil refinery uh in 1960 um the uh in 1963 there's a strike at the irving oil refinery uh the uh the saint john workers uh walk out irving secured at this time, 1963, Casey Irving secures a court injunction against pickets at gas stations and other secondary pickets because the strikers were saying, you know, don't buy Irving gasoline.

On one march through downtown St. John, refinery workers burned Casey irving an effigy in 1963 it's a sign of affection back then yeah in canada and so this this strike actually within canada became a national issue at the concerned liberals were pointing out that it was irving gas that they used for burning him i think burning you an effigy is a very warm gesture. Yeah. That's true. See, that's the thing. Once these companies are so integrated, they always make money on both ends. You write a book about them, they make money.

Antifa was one of their main clients. You burn them in effigy, they make money. Regardless, he hires scabs, but eventually this becomes a national issue in Canada canada so there is a settlement in march 63 irving conceded wage increases uh masquerading as quote merit pay uh but a judge did make the union pay irving two thousand dollars for damaging his reputation but it is just like union lawyers tried to argue that that wasn't that wasn't possible but it is you know i mean it's it's illustrative where uh we don't have all the information about you know his early days but it is just incredible where by 1970 there's already a federal government investigation it's called the davy report and the Davey Committee. In 1970,

the Canadian federal government looks into Irving control of the province of New Brunswick. There have been three federal investigations, the Davey Report and Committee in 1970, the Kent Commission in 1981, and most recently, another Senate report in 2006, all of them looking into the fact that the irvings completely controlled all of the media in new brunswick and i i don't know i mean it is like this is why people i would ask you to please not use antisemitic tropes when referring to the irvings what in the court case was like exhibit, literally the thing we're here trying to tell you of. It just shows the structure of Brunswick News.

But it's like, I don't know. I mean, people talk about, let's say, the power of the federal government or the fact that the Canadian federal government, or at least parts of it, have been writing these fucking reports for like 50 years now, and nothing has changed. Oh yeah, it's not so good, eh? We think you should maybe sell some of these newspapers, eh? Anyway,

we'll let you get on with it. Excuse me, I know you're doing this investigation, but how would you like uh five american dollars uh so also around this time so casey irving when he's 26 moves to saint john but then in 1972 he uh innovates as many billionaires do, a unique strategy where he no longer lives in St. John. He simply visits it six months minus one day out of the year. He starts doing this from 1972 to his death in 1992.

And this is because in 1972, he moves ownership of basically every single part of his business empire into a series of trusts in bermuda that have according to huffington post never paid taxes to canada so they've managed to keep this going since 1972 and um you know you can also read articles about how like if you go through saint john like almost all of the property there is owned by trusts located in bermuda so like they've structured their entire company to be based out of bermuda and the canadian federal government has still not managed to get around to fixing this basic exploit of tax laws for again coming up on 50 years it's so he he was there six months minus one day, which is clearly engineered to avoid these tax laws.

But I can just imagine when he's coming up on that minus one day, just getting terrible diarrhea, and just having to fight it as he gets on his airplane. I'll be in the back. Hey. I'm going to go a bit Pan Am on here. Well, you know, when you make toilet paper, diarrhea is a profit-making opportunity.

That's a good point, yeah. That's what they, their fucking service stations are all meant to give people diarrhea so they can make money on the other end, too. The food not good i wouldn't imagine coffee is not very good um overall i would not rate it a high gas station convenience store uh experience and st john's st john uh in in irving gas stations in irving oh in general in general yeah it's funny there's like a CBC video from I think 1998 I believe it's CBC that the Irvings cooperated with I watched some of it it

was kind of whatever but the point is uh they always have this this mythos or propaganda or whatever you want to call it about how they're like all of the family is so attuned to detail that they're like testing the coffee and the small service stations to make sure it's the most perfect roaster brand or they're telling stories about like casey irving like at midnight realized he hadn't delivered salt to a customer even though there was a snowstorm so he went out and got it done instead of waiting for the morning and just all this other kind of bullshit i mean you can just throw the salt in front of the vehicle melts the snow it's like really it's not impressive um let's they're testing the coffee

to make sure it's just the right amount of watery wateriness and yeah tasteless tastes like tastes like burnt paper watery burnt paper it's perfect i. It's perfect. I had one of the breakfast sandwiches when I was in Newfoundland from a Irving gas station and it was gross. Disgusting. I mean, it did the job, but it was not good.

They have a Canadian competitor that's pretty big, actually. For coffee and breakfast stuff. Tim Hortons? Tim Hortons, yeah. They pulled out of Penn Station, which is where I would always get their stuff from. Yeah, Tim Hortons is Canadian. Oh, I guess with the name Tim Horton, it shouldn't be surprising. Tim Horton should advertise by saying, Now without any Roundup in the...

I'm excited for the Irving commercial, like advertising their clean Roundup program. But I guess like what I wanted to illustrate here is by the 70s at the absolute latest, the Irving family controlled New Brunswick to the point where it was and still is a company town. And so you can just kind of go through that where we've talked about, I don't know if we've mentioned it on this episode yet, they're kind of the opposite of a multinational where the entire idea is if you just control everything within one province or one area, you can, again, have your suppliers,

your suppliers are all owned by the Irvings. They sell their trees that they clear cut. They sell to their sawmills, to their paper mills. They transport it on Irving trains or Irving shipping. I guess the one exception with that is their forestry holdings in Maine. Yeah. And they do a fair amount of trade with the u.s but as far as their start they're not a multinational for sure with respect to the structure of their company

right even though they have like 200 subsidiaries like you said yeah just all accordioned into larger divisions they're all in uh you know new brunswick right and it's interesting where like yeah and so again you know they have their oil refinery, they sell that their gas stations, you know, they use that oil to fuel their fleet of trucks for logistics, you know, or in the lumber side, they have the home building, they have Kent, which is like their own Home Depot in Canada. I don't know if they have US locations as well. But I mean, you're coming down on them controlling all of new brunswick but in their defense uh irving script is has a better exchange rate with the dollar than the canadian dollar it's one of the best performing currencies in the world so especially in canada yeah but so

somebody else i think it was actually a reddit, pointed this out, is the fact that this is all privately held and this is all vertically integrated, so they sell to each other. This actually makes it very advantageous for all their tax sheltering and their Bermuda trusts. Because, you know, if you're selling from one division to another, you don't have to accurately report, say, profits or costs or whatever it just gives you another way to do little shady accounting where you can move all of this money offshore and i've been trying to look for it i can't find it but maybe a few of their subsidiaries are possibly publicly listed right i don't know i found one of those irving irving resources inc which i wasn't sure was related to their home Depot type group. We should buy one share

and show up to the public stock meeting and be like, so why were the landing crafts made out of wood anyways? Because I don't really get that. I don't think wood stops machine gun bullets. We thought the shelling was going to take care of the nests.

They stupidly incorporated it as a workers' co-op during the 70s to shut the hippies up. They were wooden shells. The first cut of Saving Private Ryan portrayed the Irving Beach landing, but they had to scrap it because

the audience kept throwing up. So many splinters. They shoot through the it because the audience kept throwing up. So many splinters. They shoot through the front of the boat. They use softwood that they would normally use for their paper mulch or whatever. It's actually a paper boat. Fold it out of a newspaper. The soldiers just went after it. It's fucking paper

it's like it's like the scene everyone knows from Saving Private Ryan where the landing craft arrives and then the door comes down and everybody gets machine gun but the door is still up still bouncing off the water

jump celebration of the Nazis like they built it out of fucking paper and then like the soldiers that do get out drown because the irvings got a contract to outfit them with clogs do you do you know how many one-on-one meetings he had to have in ottawa i'm just thinking uh there's an anarchist bookstore in philly called wooden shoe books which i realize now must also be on uh but so you know and so obviously when you have, let's say, 200, more than 200 different subsidiaries, just every single area of the province of New Brunswick and also some other neighboring provinces, as well as a lot in the U.S. state of power and it's again a license to print money and

especially when as we've mentioned here they control the government of new brunswick and you know according to lamond uh one expert says it's basically impossible to get elected in new brunswick if you're a direct opponent of the irvings like you can be neutral on them you can not say anything but if you're actually going to criticize them like you're dead to rights so again they own all three major daily english papers all this stuff that we've hopefully hammered into the ground by now so i just kind of wanted to talk about some some greatest hits that have happened with the family uh since then because this irving oil refinery again the largest oil refinery in Canada, in 1994, there was a strike. The workers went on strike, and Irving's very viciously managed to break the strike by 1996.

And this is just a roundup of it from the Dominion paper in 2003. They say, when the 27-month strike at Irving oil concluded in 1996 with a humiliating defeat for the union the company required a process of ideological re-education which was essentially a means for the company to control the hearts and minds of its now broken labor force refinery workers spent two weeks at a local hotel with facilitators from an American consulting firm where they were required to go through a reorientation agenda which included quote venting emotions

quote problem people and a participation in a quote public declaration they say America doesn't export anything anymore please let it be McKenzie I like they just made a corporate gulag yeah it's like the daily daily hate yeah go to gulag eh

just imagining like this public declaration just making that and then going home and watching some documentary on north korea and being, they're so brainwashed over there. Having to pledge fealty to some sort of God that controls whether or not they live or die. Oh yeah, just continuing from this article, successful completion of the first week of this program was a prerequisite to being, quote, invited to week two. If you weren't, you were of course fired which involved quote team building exercises for union members and their former colleagues who crossed the picket lines as well as replacement workers who had been kept on week two in turn was followed by a practical test at the refinery lasting up to four weeks workers were assessed every day and did not

get full pay until they passed the entire program. And according to the Dominion paper, returning workers at the refinery said the reorientation program was, quote, a bitterness test and a attitude alteration exercise. Workers were told that they were misled by their local union and to doubt the credibility of executives of their national union. And, you you know it was essentially called by the workers a brainwashing exercise but if you happen to read the papers in new brunswick you would not hear any of that uh the new brunswick papers published the names of 37 striking workers who were fired by the company under the headline not welcome at the refinery

the reorientation itself was described as a, quote, back to work program. That was a, quote, tough transition for the men who, quote, failed and were told to go home. But it is just something where, you know, the New Brunswick government at the time, the New Brunswick government at the time also had made a bunch of loans to Irving businesses. Unsurprisingly, you know, they get all sorts of tax credits and loans and these sorts of things. So they could have, if they were not a captured government, threatened to call in those loans if they hadn't, you know, been completely captured and owned by them.

But instead, they have to go through this kind of, let's say, brainwashing exercise. That sounds really similar to union busting activities like boeing would do i don't understand where the government's getting the money to loan to them because all their money like irving doesn't pay taxes so and it's like all of the new brunswick economy so where's the new brunswick government get the money it's loaned to irving the workers i guess so i guess the workers to loan to Irving? The workers? I guess so. I guess the workers are still taxed.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, they employ 3,500 employees for that one small town. I guess that makes sense, yeah. It's interesting how in the 70s there was that outbreak of cults and kind of mass panic. And the takeaway seemed to be that, oh you shouldn't join a cult but in the corporate world the takeaway seemed to be oh they've got some good strategies here we should run a cult yeah don't join a cult start one yeah that's some good management yeah and you know so this uh dominion paper article just kind of goes through a bunch of different examples of bias unsurprisingly irving papers the three daily english papers in new brunswick are all very hostile to labor

uh there was a strike of community college and prison custodians who were walking the picket lines uh all three papers ran editorials within several days of each other using terms such as irrational unreasonable ludicrous and greedy to describe the striking workers uh you know and so they always portray labor as the uh instigating party um you know and there's like another example in uh 2002 irving loggers did a walk-off over a 30 percent wage cut uh readers of the supposed to call them italians readers of the irving papers in saint john and uh fredericton didn't get any coverage of the strike at all and those in fredericton read the headline mill workers walked out uh they learned that the workers earned up to 1635 an hour

and were told that the issue of contention was stalled contract negotiations, unquote. So basically, the coverage of this did not mention a 30% wage cut at all. So it's just like, you know, this kind of blatant again and again stuff, where clearly their media ownership and their business interests intertwine. And it's just in the fact is is you know we mentioned canadian national media coverage is sometimes critical of them but it is a local issue so a lot of a lot of this stuff just doesn't get covered by national media until say an oil refinery explodes or something like that you know so it just kind of gets swept under the rug and they're just not exposed to um uh investigative journalism or a hostile press at all.

I think the proper term for that is in case an oil refinery has a miracle. Yes, if there's a miracle. I guess the international press ended up covering once several refinery explosions occurred. Like Le Monde picked them up. Like the article that you were reading, Sean. Right. picked them up like the article that you're reading right i think like those the workers that ended up striking at those plants like this just like underscores the need for more proletarian internationalism i think yes if you're in a province which is like effectively

captured by this company um and you have a political system that's also dysfunctional, you know, basically do more proletarian socialism. And, you know, there was like another former Irving employee who, he tried to set up a paper to compete with the Irving papers. So they just completely undercut him on price because of course they can do that and gave, you know, free giveaways, cut their advertising rates to rock bottom. So why would anybody advertise with their competitors gave you know free giveaways uh cut their advertising rates to rock bottom so why would anybody advertise with their competitors you know so it's like they just have the ability to

even take these papers as loss leaders the way billionaires do in a lot of different cases just to have it be a propaganda empire i know from folks i talked to in new brunswick uh is that um you know irving bought a lot of the uh a lot of irving bought the railroad that went from St. John into Maine, right? And they cut all the passenger service, and then they started that back up with Irving buses at some point, which ran on Irving gasoline. Of course. Of course.

And those buses are now also gone. And I think Irving somehow was instrumental in getting New Brunswick Route 1 built, which is this absurd four-lane highway with no cars on it, which basically serves to get Irving trucks into Maine. They'd maybe use some Irving concrete? They'd probably use Irving asphalt, yeah. Now, there's one thing I wanted to clear up, since you have an engineering background, and we mentioned this before we started recording.

You agree with me that refineries are mostly pipes. They are mostly pipes. There are a lot of pipes in refineries, yes. But they also have tanks and other equipment. So in conclusion, I was right. And the other host shouldn't have made and other equipment. So in conclusion, I was right.

And the other host shouldn't have made fun of me. Yeah. They need pipes. You need pipes to make a refinery. Yeah. Takes all pipes to make a refinery. Is a tank a pipe? A tank is sort of like a fat pipe.

Yes. Yeah. Fat short pipe. Yeah. Okay. They also have vats. Yeah. Well, a fat short pipe. Yeah. Okay. They also have vats. Yeah. Well, a vat is just a tank with no roof.

We are learning so much about storage containers. Some of the pipes have higher pressure. Some have lower pressure. This is true. You do need different types of tanks. Sometimes you need a big sphere. Right. Yeah.

That's what's called a circle pipe. There's a lot of points of potential failure. Yes. Going from higher to lower pressures. It's true. Yeah. You might have a heat exchanger explodes, or like hydrocarbon cracker catches fire,

or the flare stack catches fire. The flare stack's supposed to be on fire um so i know we've gone a little long here but there are a few other things i want to get to just to hammer this point into the absolute ground neil reynolds was a editor at the telegraph journal and irving paper he left in 1995 he told reporters that the owner james irving called him every day telling him what he liked and did not like in the paper. So, you know, again, this is very much captured papers if you don't get this by now. And then Irving Oil and Irving subsidiaries are like horrific environmental polluters. You know, in 1970, an Irving oil barge named the Irving Whale sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It caused periodic oil spills

until the federal government razed it in 1996. In 2007, the Irving Pulp and Paper Mill in Reversing Falls released 680,000 liters of green liquid into the St. John River. The company received a fine of $50,000 that's just green engineering and the Irving oil refinery we've mentioned this a lot I was I was wrong earlier it makes over 300,000 barrels of oil a day 320,000 barrels of refined oil per day but um what i wanted to mention here is just let's say the safety thing because we've kind of got to that or we've mentioned it a fair amount uh there's there was a reddit user who says quote i work at the irving

refinery in saint john new brunswick the place is a complete dump i'm surprised the place hasn't had more explosions than it did, which is like at least... And Sean says essentially too much. At least two in the last two years. Also, the amount of hazardous chemicals and waste that gets seeped into the ground is unbelievable. In July 2013, a train carrying crude from the back end formation in North Dakota destined for the Irving refinery derailed in Quebec, causing explosion in the town center and killing 47 people. There was another train derailment carrying crude to the Irving facility in 2014. It had injuries, forced 150 people to evacuate, created a fireball, but did not kill anybody.

But it is... Miracle. Yeah. Not a miracle. Yeah. A child is born unto us. The Vatican is currently considering it for beautification. But it is, yeah.

I mean, it is just something where, very clearly, they're not up to safety standards because they own the local government that might be auditing their safety standards and it's just i mean it's horrifying to say but it is probably just a matter of time before there's like a giant fucking three megaton explosion at the refinery um but i guess the last thing i wanted to mention about the irvings is uh glyphosate glyphosate which we mentioned at the top here is essentially what's found in roundup there was recently the multi-billion dollar jury award in california for the the guys who got cancer from using roundup uh

so essentially damn it so in summary uh there's an article in the national observer uh so rod a new page for grubstakers rod cumberland was a professor at the maritime college of forest technology in new brunswick and he was fired for helping galvanize according to the national observer he was trying to galvanize the growing opposition to glyphosate spraying in New Brunswick. They actually, the Irvings, managed to, according to this, since at least 2014, J.D. Irving and other forest companies, along with provincial and federal government officials, have tried to discredit Cumberland, the professor. In 2014, for example, J.D. Irving issued a strongly worded letter from the company's chief wildlife biologist focusing on Cumberland and his research. Basically, the most recent attacks on forest management in New Brunswick by Rod Cumberland are irresponsible and are not supported by current data and scientific research, Gilbert wrote in a letter posted on the company's website. So basically, they've got the local government attacking this scientist,

looking into how dangerous glyphosate is. And they managed in 2019 to get him fired. And this also comes after 2015. So Dr. Elish Cleary was, according to CBC, New Brunswick's chief medical officer of health. She was working on a study of the herbicide glyphosate when she was put on leave in 2015 and later fired in December 2015. So the chief medical officer of New Brunswick was fired for looking into this herbicide that the

Irvings are spraying all over the place back in 2015 and trying to figure out if it causes cancer. So, I mean, it is just something where, you know, you can take your pick of what the most horrifying part of this is, whether it's, you know, the Saudi genocide profiting or the fact that they're spraying glyphosate all over New Brunswick and Maine and giving the province the second highest new cancer rate in all of Canada and getting government officials and professors who look into this fired and just completely dominating the media and preventing this story from being looked into. But yeah, I mean, look, this is what feudalism is. I'm going to say the new cancer because Cancer Classic was... I will be cutting that joke i prefer crystal cancer

vanilla cancer cancer cherry yeah cancer zero it's it's pretty desperate how they have vanilla cancer cherry zero now you know cancer used to be made with cocaine. Yeah. I should go back to that. But, you know, I mean, it is just something where we have, I guess, in this Canadian province, let's say, feudalism with Medicare for all characteristics. Is that a fair description i mean you know and it is like and i see justin why you were so fascinated by these people and just you told us you drove up through new brunswick and you kind of saw all the gas stations and convenience stores all owned by this one family so it is like it's a throwback thursday you get to drive through and see the local lord of the manor who runs the company town and employs you know a quarter of the population and

then the that money feeds the rest of the population and has runs the company newspaper and everything else and thankfully you didn't have to undergo the debasing experience of taking a train yeah exactly yeah i never have to take a train to new brunswick because they don't exist thank you or anything i'll tell you the first time I knew something was up because I thought it was just a gas station. Then we got to Halifax and there's this big building that's that Irving ship building. I was like, oh, something's

up. They own a lot of stuff, don't they? And, you know, we'll see what Arthur Irving and James Irving, the two surviving, they've kind of passed some they've got got their children, unsurprisingly, coming into the business as well. So, you know, they're in their 80s or 90s. And so we'll see what happens with these companies. You know, the Irvings will transfer them to their kids.

You know, maybe something horrible will happen. And finally, the Canadian federal government will do something about this. But I guess one last thing to keep an eye on is, according toont they're uh they've already got again sixth largest landowner in the united states they have a big presence in maine but they are expanding into the government according to lamont with the support of canadian authorities the irvings managed to overturn a referendum vote to ban clear-cutting in maine and they have defeated proposed legislation on the publication of accounts. So the main local government tried to get more public information on the accounts of, of such companies.

They're also apparently trying, they have their eyes on the gold and copper deposits of bald mountain in Maine. And ecologists are concerned that mining operations could contaminate the environment with sulfuric acid and arsenic. Drop night on Bald Mountain. But so we'll see if they manage to

succeed into turning the state of Maine into the Irving's quote new colony as so many think that they might manage to do. What sectors haven't they gotten into? Like private prisons? That's probably next on their agenda. They don't have those in Canada. Well, I think. Really?

Maybe they do. I don't know. Not yet. Yeah. They figured it out, yeah. Yeah. That's their next project. Their next venture is to get into the sector of Maine. Yeah. We're getting into the Maine sector. What are Maine Holdings doing? I can't wait to drive up to Maine

and enjoy some local, organically sourced roundup with my coffee. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. Now that we've recorded this podcast, next time any of us go to Canada, we'll get detained at the border. The Irving guards are going to come out and say, you're not welcome here confiscate your passports and then send you back to the united states who won't let you in i'm gonna uh say it's probably safe to assume that the irvings are responsible for the remake of it

without tim curry probably their biggest travesty um but I guess, Justin, was there anything we didn't get to? Any stories or other information? I know we went a little long here, but thank you so much for being with us. Oh, no problem. I think if we've learned anything from this venture into the world of the Irvings is that conflicts of interest aren't real. The more you do, the less they matter um and basically you know just you know buy all the newspapers and no one will report on you and trust the system trust the system yeah yeah well the way

the irvings always describe it is they've managed to survive by just being better than all the other competitors all these massive multinationals they compete with and it's like the actual reality is and it's a pretty fascinating one that they are better it's a fascinating kind of turn on the story that we haven't really looked at yet in this podcast is there is a way to become a billionaire by just dominating a local area if you just control everything in a local area you don't have to be a multinational you don't have to have your tentacles in every corner of the world you just have to be the person where it's like you cannot step foot in new brunswick uh or we will kill you like they're they're the fucking legalized mafia of new

brunswick canada and everybody who wants to like do there's no such thing as a mafia everybody who wants to do capitalism in new brunswick has to deal with the irving family um and so and and thank you for bringing them to our attention justin is a very interesting uh trip and i guess um is there uh will advertise your youtube channel or where can people find you is what i wanted to ask you here you can find me on the twitter at do not eat zero one you can find me on the youtube also at do not eat zero one you can find me on the youtube also at do not eat zero one you can watch me drone on about urban planning and politics and land use and all other kinds of fun stuff uh on my youtube uh and make some funnies um and i think that's my pitch you'd also donate to my patreon or you could donate to the Grubstakers Patreon and get extra episodes.

You can donate to both. They're both very affordable, I think. In post, we're going to cut the part where you said donate to your Patreon. Just leave ours. Yeah. That's what we learned from the Irvings. Yeah. That's a good point. One flow of information yeah um but uh thank you for uh and i'm sorry one last time any other things we

didn't get to or do we cover all of it oh let me think um as you go further north the bathrooms in the irvings don't aren't as good that't as good. That's like one of their main things is to say our bathrooms are very clean. But once you start getting into like Cape Breton or Newfoundland, it's kind of like, well, yeah, it's like this is not so nice anymore. The Irvings took the idea that Canadian money looks like Monopoly money to a whole new level. They did. They bought all four railroads.

They bought the utility companies. And they put a piece of paper over the luxury tax spot. But that's their whole promise is like their bathrooms are beautiful in Irving's companies. It's like, look, the bathrooms look like garbage, but they have the most beautiful wooden doors. We took them off the landing craft, so try to ignore those MG42 bullet holes in the front of them. Just like the size of a fist so people can see you shitting. All red.

Red doors. It's an accent. Yeah. Look, we didn't want to clean the doors, so we're just going to have to paint them red, okay? You have no idea how hard it skipped a lot out of wood thank you so much to our guests uh justin also known as do not eat on youtube uh twitter as mentioned we'll have the links in the description uh check us out by the end of this week we'll have a patreon episode of glenn and eva dubin uh and their connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Thanks so

much for listening. And again, hit us up as always. I know there were things that we didn't get to with the Irving, so hit us up. Maybe we'll follow up with some of the children and other stuff in future. I'm Sean McCarthy. Thanks for listening. Rest in peace, Gassie.