Shaun Newman Podcast - #1024 - Emma Waters

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

Emma Waters is a policy analyst and conservative commentator at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Her work focuses on family policy, biotechnology, reproductive technologies, marriage, femininity, and pro-natal issues. An evangelical Christian and author of the book Lead Like Jael, she is a frequent speaker and writer on biblical womanhood, the goodness of family life, and critiques of modern feminism. Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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I always love hearing from you guys. You got some ideas on what you want to hear, guess, all that good stuff. Send that to me as well, all right? Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is a senior portfolio manager, Trivest Wealth Council. I'm talking about Martin Pelletje.

So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Martin Pelletier. Sir, thanks for hopping on. You betcha. Now, you're hopping in from Calgary. I'm about to head to Calgary, folks. Regardless, that has nothing to do with Y. Martin's on.

I'm curious, before we get too far into it, tell the audience a little bit about yourself. It's the first time you've been on the show. Yeah, no, certainly very much appreciate for having me. I'm a long-generation Canadian. My first family came to Canada in 1648, is Julien Peltier. So I'm a direct descendant of one of the five founding families of Canada. So I got some deep roots in Canada. And then my grandfather, my great grandfather, came to Alberta in 1905, the year that we became a province and set up roots with farmland given to him by the railroad.

So I've got deep roots in Alberta as well. I grew up in a small town, northern Alberta. Went to University of Alberta. What small town? What small town? It's called, people pronounce it legal, but it's called LaGalle after father LaGal, a small little Francophone town. A lot of French Canadians settled there for land.

And I went to you, U of A over to Europe for a bit, went to school there, traveled, came back, did some investment banking for 10 years, and then started an investment firm back in 2009, 2010, and now running investments for a select group of families. families, endowments, and foundations out of Calgary, but clients across Canada and some even overseas. Okay, fair enough. Well, forgive me. I come from small town, Saskatchewan. So anytime you say small town, I'm like, I think I got a smaller small town than you.

But regardless. 1,200 people. Yeah, well, I grew up in a hamlet. It doesn't get any smaller than that. All right? There's more cats and dogs than there are people. I truckle. I love small town, Saskatchewan, regardless.

Okay. So your background in essentially watching the economy of the world, correct? Yeah. So I started off looking at there's something called top down versus bottom up investing. I was very much bottom up looking at companies, oil and gas companies in particular. I was a research analyst and then traveling around the world, which opened my eyes and looking at, you know, Middle East, India, South America and oil and gas companies. and then transition to more general portfolio. And over the last decade or so, geopolitics and global macro is playing a much greater role on investment decisions and how we look at companies. So we have to become more global in regards to our connections, our data, our research.

And I think that's a problem for Canada, but I've certainly tried to differentiate myself by focusing on that global approach and how does it impact capital flows and investment. it. Well, I tell you what, a global approach right now as a straight-of-hormuz has been, I don't know, essentially non-existent closing in on, well, not a month, but certainly multiple weeks now where, you know, I think you'd probably know the, you'd probably know this better, but, you know, like what was it average, a regular day through there was 70 plus ships? Now you went down to zero. That's a pretty extreme, you know, from one to the other.

You know, you see the videos coming out of, you know, I've seen videos at India. I've seen videos out of Australia and different things going on there with shortages. But, I mean, when you're talking about globally, what the U.S. is doing in Iran is affecting not just Iran. It's affecting the world. Well, I think it's much bigger than that. The U.S. under the Trump administration has repositioned itself

around strategically around the age. build out and securing energy and securing resources and critical minerals for that build out. You can see that with what they've done with the Suez Canal. You can see that what they what they've done in Venezuela and Cuba. You can see that with what they're attempting to do with Greenland and now the Middle East with the Strait of Hermos. This is at the same time moving away from globalization, sort of de-globalization trend away from integration with other markets and other developed markets, even emerging markets. So there's a race between the U.S. and China in particular.

I personally think it was a mistake to allow China into the World Trade Organization because that essentially gutted the manufacturing sector in the U.S. And now they're finally responding to it. Not that I'm supporting Trump policies by no means, but it certainly is part of evaluating what's happening. Whereas in Canada, we tend to look at things not from an inversion, which I tend to like what like to do is what I mean by that is looking at us from an outsider's perspective. We tend to view ourselves to be more important than anything else, and that's driving

policy. So, for example, we've been reacting to the negativity of Trump towards Canada, and rightly so we should be upset, but we've been repositioning ourselves with China, for example. And I think that's a mistake. And we need to take a look at ourselves and say, okay, how do the Americans view us absent this Trump administration? How do other countries view us? And are we relevant and what do we bring to the table instead of just reacting, being more proactive and repositioning ourselves in this new global world that is destabilizing? So do you think, I don't know, I watched, I forget if it was whoever sent it to me. Kevin O'Leary had basically, you know, keep an eye on Canada because people are going to want a place where you can trust the energy you're getting roughly.

I'm paraphrasing what he said, folks. So you see everything happening in the world. And if you're a Canadian, you're sitting in here in Alberta, you're watching our policies and the bureaucratic state we have kind of strangle the energy industry. Maybe I'm being a little hyperbolic, but, you know, certainly holding it up. And then you hear Kevin and Larry go, you got to watch Canada because what's happening over in the Middle East, you know, it's going to put a lot of pressure or a lot of good pressure, I would say, on Canada. Do you agree with that statement? I do. It's putting a lot of pressure to move away from this huge net zero focus and decarbonization. Now, I'm a fan of clean technology.

I lived in an equal community. I'm not a fan of extremes. I'm not a fan of net zero. I had a high energy rating on my house, not net zero, but I was producing almost as much energy as consuming, but not perfectly. So if we can set standards to a balance not going to the extreme that what we've witnessed over the last 10 years, we were told when we did speak out, and myself included by the federal government that energy security was a thing of the past that we needed to move to this new clean

energy future so that means imposing significant regulations on the growth impeding the growth and expansion of oil sands and now we're seeing and AL&G we were also told that there was no business case to it and now instead of like for example if we had pursued more rational approaches towards energy development, co-energy development along clean energy development. Maybe we could be sending $2 billion worth of LNG to Europe so they don't have to buy Russian gas to support their military incursion against Ukraine. And instead of now we're sending $2 billion to Ukraine. So there's no quid pro quo and nothing getting back in return.

So we have to hopefully this is bringing awareness to this issue. to across Canada and there's been more support for for pipelines but the depth of the situation i just don't think Canadians are are grasping anyway the ones that are have controlled a voting block in this country and we're we're still going down the path of of of still excessive regulations we're having MOU discussions uh bill c69 still exists which is an anti-infrastructure built and riddled with all kinds of policies, to prevent pipelines from getting built or other infrastructure projects getting built.

And we're trying to circumvent that with an MLU, which is absolutely ridiculous. We need to make solid and lasting changes to include the growth of energy so that we never face the kind of situation that we're facing today. Now, we can help the world in times of crisis like they're seeing now. And we're running out of gas and got in, in Oshk

Australia, in India, there's huge lines for gasoline. This goes to show you that hydrocarbon still is continuing, demand and is still continuing to grow, maybe not at the same pace as it was two decades ago, but it's still growing, and we have the option to be a part of that. When you talk about the MOU and ridiculous, walk me through your train of thought on the MOU. Well, there's all kinds of conditions tied to that memorandum. random of understanding. So what we're doing is we're negotiating policy between Alberta and the

federal government. And there's conditions tied to that. So for example, instead of saying we need to increase LNG exports and infrastructure to support that, and we're going to remove restrictions to do that, and same thing with oil pipelines, there's conditions being set. And part of those conditions is, for example, increasing the industrial carbon tax from in Alberta. where we had capped it. And so we're still in this negotiating phase to meet these clean energy requirements, carbon capture and other things when the world is saying, let's just get your oil. Let's just get your natural gas.

Natural gas is a bridge to renewables and we want you to provide it for us. And here we are negotiating amongst ourselves to, in the midst of a situation demands, demands some urgency and capital. And that's where it gets very frustrating is we need to stop these negotiations. We need to work together as a country to help contribute to these problems. And there's a huge economic advantage to this. We have a lot of these resources and critical minerals and energy that is secure and safe that we can provide to the US in its race against China.

instead of trying to, you know, Trump is the enemy, which, you know, we have to consider the posturing from that administration. But let's think longer term. The way I describe it is when you're driving a car, I'm teaching my son how to drive, and you're on the highway, the worst thing you can do is look right over the hood, right? You want to look at where you're going because that'll get you to where you're going. You're not going to be scared. And everyone's looking over the hood in the country and no one's looking into where we're going. and I think that's a major problem. Yeah, lack of vision.

A lack of a centralized vision. I just fear that we have exactly the same government that implemented the same policies with the exception of a new leader that is trying to have his cake and eat it too in simplistic terms. I've read his book. I'm writing a book.

My books can get published in December. And it took me 10 years. to outline all my values and I'm not going to walk away from that. Ironically, his book is called values, and he's not going to walk away from those clean energy ambitions. And we're going to end up where Germany was, is now where they're saying, oh, my, oh, my goodness, we shut down all this nuclear. That was a big mistake.

We need to look and learn from the mistakes of what's happening in Europe. Instead, we're replicating many of those. So he's saying the right things and it's appealing to people. but the policies behind the scenes are not indicating a rapid transformation away from the policies that we've seen over the last decade from his same government. Yeah, I have zero faith in the liberal government, like none. One of the other things with the MOU, I mean, I'm curious your thoughts on this, is, you know, okay, let's just say we can negotiate and we can get through all the things. Then you look at what's going on in BC, though. and with fee simple title.

And you watch how Cowchin plays out, and you watch how different areas and the amount of claims, the fact that, okay, they're going to challenge it in court, that could take two to five years.

You're like, what are we talking about? The world needs our energy today. Martin, we both sit here and know, even if a shovel went in the ground today, which it will not, even if it did,

we're years away. Which means, and that's under like the best case scenario where things just, they just happen. Oh, we could just snap our fingers and go. Under the current Canadian, um, circumstances and I don't need to go into too many rabbit holes. Like you mentioned Bill C-69. You mentioned all the net zero, the decarbonization, the different things, the carbon tax and blah, blah, blah. And I mean, the First Nations requirement of what is happening out in BC, let alone anywhere else.

I just don't see any of this getting done. Am I, I hate to be the pessimistic one, because I do want to have some optimism here, but am I overstating that? No, there's a lot of things that are outside the control of the Alberta government, even the federal government looking at British Columbia, given the disaster of how that province has been managed. We have a lot of clients in British Columbia.

I actually would love to live in parts of British Columbia. is so beautiful. But the policies there are anti-business, anti-capitalism, and idealistic. And those idealistic policies have resulted in what we're seeing with some of the First Nations claims. You can't blame some of these communities for making these claims. It's in their own self-interest to do so. But as a country, that certainly can cause chaos, especially when it comes to the national unity of getting energy to markets.

I'm not a pessimist in regards to saying that we should give up, and the province is looking at other, and the federal government, to their credit is saying, you know, maybe we need to look at the keystone again. This is absolutely crazy, but we need to go down the path of least resistance. I think the telltale signs is foreign direct investment and capital investment in these types of projects. And it needs to be led by private.

industry and right now private industry has no interest whatsoever of taking on that kind of risk and capital risk and that's unfortunate so we need to ask what's it going to take to get that capital back in is it going to take some sort of work in bc with first nations probably um there's just so many hurdles and all i'm saying is instead of doing these mOUs let's identify these hurdles and specific hurdles and let's take them on one by one immediately. So that office that the federal government set up in Calgary shouldn't be a point of negotiating between Alberta and Canada and the federal government. It should be a point of working together to identify and map out specifically what are the barriers

to capital coming in and developing it, but working together, not, you know, negotiating. We shouldn't be negotiating amongst ourselves in the midst of this global energy crisis. that is getting worse by the day. I don't think, you know, when, I'll go back to Kevin O'Leary's comments, I don't think Kevin O'Leary is a dumb guy. I don't think you can hate them, you can love him, it doesn't matter, but I wouldn't say we can sit here and go, he's a dumb guy. So when he points to Canada with optimism, I sit back and I go,

what does he know or what is he seeing that we sit here and you go, identify the hurdles, okay? Well, the hurdles are monumental. They are big. So why is he saying there's possibility of that? Is it because the pressure that's going to come on Canada sooner than later because of what's happening elsewhere in the world is just going to become so, I don't know, paramount,

so large that we're going to have no choice but to force projects through? Or am I, like, is that the, like, I don't know if that's optimism, Martin, or not? Well, I think things have to get worse, before they get better to have change, the kind of change that's going to take advantage of the opportunities that we have as a country. And unfortunately, things are already really bad for a large swath of the population,

youth unemployment. We still have temporary foreign worker program and young people can't find work in this country. And why does that exist? We're bringing in more students. And there was this announcement that was 150,000 visa student visa frauds. and we're back in India bringing on more students.

So we're continuing down the same path of what we've done before. And why are we gonna expect a different outcome? And where you have to see the change is among the older population that is controlling the vote. And that means pain. And so unfortunately, that means a housing market collapse. It means an adjustment to pension plans

that are no longer secured against debasement and inflation. And that means if they're going to experience some of those difficulties to finally introduce some change in government policy, unfortunately it means it's going to get a lot worse for the most vulnerable in this country. And that's where I find it very frustrating that we have to go through that exercise. My son volunteers at the food bank. I went there for the first time in a long time. And there's 900 to 1,000 families a day at that food bank. And it's not, yes, there's some immigrants.

There's some older seniors. There's families, there's single moms, a wide range of Canadians using food banks. And I find that quite shameful, to be honest. And we have to ask ourselves, why is there a large swath of the population suffering when we have what you just described and Kevin O'Leary just described, there's tremendous opportunity to generate wealth, multi-generational wealth, just by developing our resources that are here. And instead, we're going down other avenues that just haven't worked.

And so that's my frustration. I think Kevin's right. And he's maybe doing it as a call of action to Canadians to wake up. But they're just not yet, not the voter base that requires it. And to be fair, there isn't a really good viable alternative in the conservatives, in my opinion, with the leadership there. That is appealing to those who would want to switch their votes. It's appealing to those who already are more conservative in nature.

And we need something that's going to be a provide an alternative. Just like in the U.S., with the Biden administration and Kamala was terrible alternative to Trump. If there was like a Mitt Romney or somebody else is a viable alternative to Trump, maybe we wouldn't be in the situation we're in today and made the same thing for Canada. When you talk about the food bank, $900 to 1,000 families a date, that's in Calgary? Yeah.

So that is, you know, like you just go to the fuel pump right now. And you're like, just think of what that's going to do to the next 100 families, 1,000 families, whatever it is. It's just going to tighten it more. Yeah. Like, do you see things for Canadian families

over the next this year? getting better or worse? I'm trying to reframe my whole thought process to being more positive than negative. Unfortunately, I do think things are going to get worse before they get better economically and probably a lot worse over the next couple of years. Again, the policy changes are very top-down driven rather than bottom-up. If you look at the number of high-net-worth individuals leaving Canada, the staff has shown that they're going to other jurisdictions like the U.S. and Europe.

They're just not seeing the opportunities to reinvest in this country. They're overtaxed. And they're quite pessimistic. And so you're losing a tax base there. And that can be quite troublesome for an economy and look as to what's happening with the UK, where they implemented major tax changes in oil and gas and non-DOM changes. And as a result, there's like 40 or 50 millionaires leaving a day out of the UK. you don't want to have that happen.

And so we're having a declining tax base. Our productivity is quite poor. We're a real estate-driven economy that is rolling over. There's a lot of crime. And the dropping of visa requirements for Mexican citizens flooded the country with Senaloa cartel, and that's driving up crime. And so there's just a lot of these things that are not being reversed.

So unfortunately, that does mean things are going to get worse before they get better. And if you're a younger person, you got to look at all kinds of options where you want to live, how are you going to work, where you're going to go to school. You have the flexibility, mobility of labor. And same thing, if you're wealthy, you know, you need to take a look at how you can protect yourself from this worsening situation. Yeah, I don't mean to be overly negative. I'm just being very pragmatic, I think, right? Like, I mean, yeah, I want to act like the future is going to be bright here in the next six months. Yeah, I mean, you're talking years.

And I'm going, yeah, like, I want to. I want to believe that we're going to, you know, just all of a sudden make some rational choices, some common sense moves. The world needs our energy. But it wasn't that long ago. There was no business case. And they still voted in the same government. And you're like, okay. So when we talk about things got to.

get worse before better. You mentioned housing market. What do you see there that could maybe shock some people out of wherever they're sitting comfortably? Well, the condo market's a disaster right now in Ontario. And the big question is, does that move over to the single family? And if you look at the issue there is you have a market that has gotten way out of control, especially when you compare it to the U.S., which is still quite frothy. If you take a look at the average housing price to qualify for a mortgage in Toronto or Vancouver, you need an income of 220,000 or something around there to qualify for a mortgage. Now in Canada, they consider you ultra wealthy at that tax level.

So every dollar you make is going to be taxed at over 50, 50, 55%. And so you barely get there and then you buy your house and at 10 times your income or, sorry, five to 10 times your income, depending where it's at. And you're going to have a really difficult time paying it down because you just, every dollar you make extra is taxed at, you know, 55%. That creates a real challenge. The way that works is that if interest rates stay low, you can take on a lot of leverage. So the reason why that is that $220,000 is interest rates are a little bit higher, mortgage rates are higher. So you can qualify for a lower, under a lower income if interest rates are lower. But we're in a sovereign debt situation and it's not just globally in the US, it's also in Canada,

because when you include the provincial debt as part of the federal debt, which you should, because when you're comparing it to other jurisdictions like Europe, the responsibilities of those provinces are integrated in their national level. And so when you do, we're quite poor and rated among the lowest in the OECD, and then you have household debts at really high levels. So long way of answering your question is that we're over levered, rates are going to stay higher, and the economy is going to get weaker. that's going to create a lot of softness in the real estate market and pain for those who are

over levered or have too much real estate. So if you're sitting in Ontario right now and you have a house worth, you know, a crazy amount, would your advice be it's probably time to sell that and move west? Well, that's already happening. In Alberta, I mean, we are silly enough to advertise that. And now they were saying we have too much immigration. I mean, the emigration from BC is already coming into Alberta. And my colleague has told me about a friend of his who's moving from Bank Victoria

over to Calgary and he's going to see a material tax cut on income for income tax cut for him to move over. And he gets a high grade in their home. I think a lot of that's already starting to happen. You can see that happening in really nice jurisdictions like Canmore and your bank. where a lot of interns are like, wow, I can buy a house similar to value in a really high desirable area like the mountains and it's beautiful. So that's already starting to happen. Alberta and Saskatchewan are kind of the eye of the hurricane, I call it.

We have our difficulties, but we have the energy, which is a nice floor or a backstop. We're seeing the benefits of having energy. And maybe that'll get, you know, kick BC in the butt or kick Quebec in the butt to to develop some of those resources. It certainly is influencing Atlantic Canada, who's tired of being at the bottom of the provincial level for economic growth and prosperity. When you, when you're, sorry, with, sorry, Atlanta,

Canada, sorry, the east, what are they doing there that were influencing? Well, they're starting to look at more resource development and expansion of that resource development, onshore, offshore, things that they, never had those depth of level of conversations that they're having today. I remember back in the mid 2000s, I flew out to Halifax and they were building the something called Eric Roud, which is actually showing how old I am because it's being decommissioned. But it was the world's largest

offshore semi-submersible. And they were doing a lot of, there's a lot of oil and gas, a lot of drilling, a lot of activity that has since subsequently slowed down significantly. But to see a resurgence in that of saying, hey, look, we don't, we, we, we, we want to be responsible for our own economic affairs. And one pathway forward for us is energy and resource development. And I applaud them for that. I think we need to see the same thing in Quebec. Um, and unfortunately, um, half of the, of the taxes that we pay in Alberta, um, are redirect, are not given back to us. You know, we only get half back. And the other half is given into, uh, the, uh, the capital. Quebec province and and that's not encouraging them for to take resource development,

even though it will take resources related money. And so we have to see some of these big arguments that we've had for such a long time. And we have to say, okay, let's, can we work together to do so? And as you mentioned earlier, it's not just the federal government. We have provinces that are not doing trade amongst each other, provinces that are putting up barriers. We're kind of a fractured, well-dispersed, geographically dispersed country with certain pockets of strength and other pockets of weakness. And that's going to be really hard to come together.

It kind of reminds me of the Scottish clans rising up against the English. And if they were able to, and then they were under William Wallace, then they made some progress. but we're all fighting amongst ourselves and we need to unite ourselves. And unfortunately, I just don't see that happening under Carney, although others in Ontario do. I just don't see that happening in Alberta or Saskatchewan or Quebec, where we actually need that leadership to unify the provinces. Well, talking about the fracturing, you got Alberta independence movement. You have Quebec separatist party movement.

Your thoughts, I mean, sitting here in Alberta, what are your thoughts on Alberta as an independent, you know, like looks like it's going to be a referendum this year, Martin? I obviously don't know that because obviously the petition numbers haven't come in or anything. But your thoughts on that? Well, looking, there's a lot of people that are very frustrated in the province, obviously and that's fueling a radical approach to the forward progress with the country. And I don't believe that the appropriate amount of work has been done to evaluate that.

But I would look at it as not something that should be discarded. This is not, just like the trucker protest, you may have disagreed with it or people may have disagreed with it, but there was a lot of people there. And there was a lot of people that were upset. And they implemented the Emergencies Act, which I don't want to get into. But so they hit, you know, a nail with a sledgehammer. And instead, we need to say, again, do the inversion, put ourselves in these people's shoes who want to leave and say, why do they want to leave?

What is their frustration and look at it. Why did the truckers? Why did they do what they did? And try and encompass some sort of rational thought so then you can respond to it appropriately. But instead, it's more of an aggressive approach and shrugging it off. I think both in Alberta and in Quebec, we need to figure out why there is that movement. And why is it growing now? And maybe it has something to do with the policies we've seen over the last 10 years.

Because we certainly didn't have these kinds of discussions, certainly in Alberta under the Stephen Harper years, or even under John Creche years, or even under Brian Maroonie years. None of this was, I mean, Trudeau won, yes, with the senior. There was a lot of frustration, but we haven't seen it since Trudeau, too. And now you have the exact same government on the same MPs with a different leader. And we're seeing these movements. Yeah, well, you go back to. the trucker convoy, it was frustration. It was an authoritarian government implementing rules, and there was frustration. And instead of talking to those people, they put the Emergencies Act on,

which has been deemed unlawful since then. I mean, I guess Carney's government is appealing that again, but it was deemed unlawful. And the right thing or the common sense, the pragmatic thing would have been to just go talk to them, which they didn't do. And so then you, fast forward to independence and you go, I think Daniel Smith is, I think, I guess I should, I don't know how much I paid attention. I think she's engaged more so than any politician ever did in the COVID time. They basically just name called and ignored that side of the issue. And so you go, whether you like it or not, it's happening. And so, So then the question becomes whether or not it has validity or why they're upset.

And I would say that independence people are upset because of, you know, everything going on in Canada, everything we've talked about. And how do we pragmatically get out of this? Right. Like all the things going on. And you go, well, it's going to take pain before change comes. Well, what change, like, where does it have to get to pain wise before people change? change the thought process of how we're going to get out of this.

And what government can undo all the policies that are happening right now? Martin, maybe you have, you know, oh, actually it just takes Pierre to get in and we can undo a bunch of the policies we have. Or maybe not. We don't know. And the way I look at it is, imagine you have a parent or some parents. You've got these, you know, you've got these kids. And one of the kids misbehaves and you just come down whole.

and they're grounded and their internet's cut off and your phones cut off. You take and close off their bank account and it's like, boom, like this is, you have another kid that is misbehaving and you just say, okay, let them misbehave. They'll come through it, right? And so we're seeing this kind of duality play out. Well, how's that going to make the kid who got the smackdown feel, right? When you're allowing, so you're almost like picking favorites or pursue to pick favorites. You're seeing protests in this country that are shutting down roads and other things that are, they're allowed to do that because ideologically maybe the mom and dad have the same kind of beliefs or maybe not, but they're taking a different approach with one versus the other.

I'm not saying the approach that they took with the softer approach is the right one or the wrong one or that, you know, the one that they took a hard stance. But there's a view to be inequality and that that has to change. that has to change fundamentally. You have to be parents responsible because you can't be a parent if you're trying to get votes and get voted in to be the parent. And then the one who's misbehaving

that you're going soft on is going to be the one that's going to keep you as mom and dad, right? You need to come in as mom and dad and make changes. Like there's a great saying our family does. Our motto is,

I mean, are always being in control, but we're in charge. And the government may not always be in control of situations, but they need to be in charge. And they need to say, okay, this may cost us votes, but this is the right thing to do. So until we see that, and I doubt because if you bring in another, we've had previous governments, conservative governments that have not implemented pipeline progress prior to the Trudeau government coming in. We didn't have a lot of these infrastructures built out on their previous governments. So we need to have a fundamental change.

That's really hard, right? And it's not just a Canada thing. Look at the U.S. It's a mess. Look at Europe. It's a mess. But there's an opportunity for real change. Look at Australia with Miele coming in.

And he's like, okay, we're going to knock things down to the studs and rebuild it and do things properly. And that's painful. And it's not popular. But that's, we're not at that point yet, but we're going to get to that point. And I'm like, why do we have to wait? Why don't we just do it now? And that's the frustrating part. You mean Argentina?

Yes. Yes. I think you said Australia. Oh, Argentina, sorry. Yeah, Mili and Argentina. Maybe I'm thinking of Australia because it's snowing out right now and I'm thinking about the sun. Well, it's possible.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I certainly don't want to get anywhere near where Argentina got to. right like i mean that that's a a pretty scary thought you know like we would like to change course before then and you would like people to you know like the the parent's analogy martin is it's not a terrible one right i mean the two kids thing i was thinking uh at the start when you first started talking about it i was thinking of quebec in alberta they're both looking at separation independence as an option and you see how both are kind of handled. That is a similar, a similar idea.

And to use the parent analogy, they're both handled differently. One with almost care, Quebec, and you go politically, there's a reason why that is. I mean, they hold a lot of cards right now. And then Alberta has been, I would say, demonized. I mean, when you have Premier Ebby coming out calling Tray. than Daniel Smith having to go on record saying like, I mean, that's like a million people. I'm not going to say that. And, you know, and then her getting attacked for that.

When you have Apple to Apple comparisons, fair enough. When you go to ideologies, you know, and different protests, I assume what you're meaning is protesting key infrastructure, maybe, like energy projects and them standing in front and shutting that down to the comparison. of the Freedom Convoy, which was, you know, they talk about bridges, they talk about ports, not ports, sorry, what am I looking for here? Port of entry, but that's water. I'm talking land. Forgive me. I'm talking about coots and different things like that. But like Ottawa wasn't shutting that down. That was a simple protest,

whereas, you know, and the heavy handiness that was given on that was very ideological. I mean, it's been proven out now with the court ruling, right? It was, it wasn't justified. So to me, I don't know. The parent analogy is interesting because you just fast forward and we've had this same government now going on, what is it? Is it going on 12 years? And you're like, at some point, when do you throw off the shackles of what we have right now? And part of the country certainly doesn't seem like they're they're interested in that we have orange man bad to the states and we're going to we're going to have carnie in and he makes great speeches but you come back to the policy i don't know you've mentioned policy a bunch of times have you seen any changes in the policy with the current

administration no so we're seeing the same kind of parenting uh that we've seen of the last 12 years and to expect anything different is is just because you change uh in the composition of that leadership is I think wishful thinking. What you have to do as a parent is you have to keep the kids in line. Okay, you have to keep, obviously, that's federal policies, to keep the kids in line and working towards a common objective. But you also have to walk the fine line of saying, we're going to, you are who you are,

and we're going to help you and empower you to become what you want to become, even if that means supporting you with one of your siblings, who you're fighting with, mediating and trying to come to some sort of resolution and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and you can't do that during periods of of of dysregulation and right now we're in a period of dysregulation among some of the provinces and uh so you what you need to do is you need to get uh the the kids regulated and there's a process for doing that we call you know regulate uh and relate and then respond and

and so we need to go through a process almost a psychological process we need a psychology for can't psychologist for Canada. And they need to, our federal government needs to start acting like parents and getting everybody working together and not fighting each other because there is an imperative threat coming from the South. And we need to work collectively to respond to that. And that means the siblings getting along. And that means some of the siblings putting away, giving away some of their self-interest.

And I think some of it's transparency too. if, for example, if our sibling in Quebec, if they had to hit a box, right, that they're, that they are willing to accept energy infrastructure, willing to accept the build-out out of infrastructure through their province and they have to hit this box in order to receive half of the revenue that tax revenue would pay out in the province of Alberta to receive that revenue, they have to acknowledge that it comes from a large chunk of it comes from energy, and they're receptive to having energy development in their province. And if they don't want to receive the money, they, sorry, they don't want to have any of that infrastructure, then they have

to hit the box, then they're not going to receive the money, right? That's just good old parenting and transparency. So then you might be surprised what the sibling says when half of their income or like a good chunk of their revenue for the budget goes away, they may be down well, okay, let's do some energy here, right? So transparency and acting as a parent and enforcing this. In BC with First Nations, what the federal government did and working around the provincial government with that separate negotiation, that's just ridiculous, saying, okay, First Nations, which is another, I guess,

that may be offensive, offensive to travel Canada, maybe this original parent of Canada, or whatever the case may be. But they're another, they follow in the purview of the federal government. It's like, we need to, you need to get on board with this. And we're going to have, this is the economic profitability. Here's how we're going to, I mean, there's reserves within cities and some First Nations groups are doing fantastic things. Let's, let's work with that.

And you have to work with your other sibling in British Columbia. And this is what's going to happen. So we need to kind of have that kind of, that kind of. of leadership to self-empower these provinces, to make smart decisions, and to remind them, there's consequences to making bad decisions. In Canada right now, is there anything to point to where you're like, people should pay attention to this? Here's something positive going on.

I think one of the positive aspects of what's happening is it's. creating a self-focus and reflection on our role in the world, our role in the Arctic, in Arctic sovereignty, and the strategic role that's going to play going forward from a geopolitical standpoint. Our role in technology and military tech, I think that's important. We're looking at maybe building some new technology in Canada,

military technology, can spin off corporate technology companies because it de-risters or platforms. That's encouraging. And looking at the resource potential that we have and getting on the same page as to the development of those resources. And I think there's a lot more openness to that right now versus where it was, you know, before this whole Iran situation, certainly before Trump. Any final thoughts for Canadians before I let you off, Martin?

No, I think the gist of it is, is that there's, and it's not just Canadians, I travel and there's a lot of anxiety and worry about the future, right? And we just don't know how that's going to play out. What we can do is things within our own control and focusing things on a daily basis and not get just lost in all of the negativity that we're seeing out there. So you look at what you can do and adapt to accordingly. And so if you're a younger person in this country and you're not feeling appreciated and there isn't opportunities for growth, be willing to take the risk. And I hate telling

this, but you know, look at areas that you can prosper and grow. There's a bit of influx of young people back in the Calgary where they had left after 2014. So that's encouraging for us to see these young people come back, although they have higher levels of unemployment. and look at areas if it means working in the U.S. or in Eastern Europe or, you know, explore those kinds of avenues. Don't be discouraged. If you're an older person, you know, you're going to be okay. The Canadian dollars isn't going to collapse on us. Maybe you don't want to own government bonds for a number of different reasons, but make some adjustments. Maybe you sell your house and you can rent as rents are coming down and you have the mobility

and you start traveling more and enjoying your life. So don't get, Don't allow this negativity to lock you down. My advice to politicians is wake the hell up all of you. In the provinces, Daniel Smith, wake up. Eby wake up. Federally, Carney, come on. You can't have your cake and eat it too. We're going to have to have some compromise here.

And let's get our shit together. And let's do this as a country. Forget about this elbows up nonsense. Let's put her elbows down, get shovels in the ground, and start making money for everybody and start playing like we do hockey. Like in hockey there's no elbows up. It's puck in the net.

And let's start doing that. I tell you what, if we can agree on one thing, Martin, politicians wake up. You got me smiling on this side. Thanks again for hopping on, Martin. Appreciate you doing this. You betcha.

Thanks again for having me.