Shaun Newman Podcast - #1092 - Peter Scholz

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Peter Scholz is from Calgary, Alberta, a freelance consultant who has made significant contributions to urban planning, policy development, and community engagement throughout his career. He wrote accepted policies for the UCP that include killing e-tabulators, connecting Alberta to more ports and anti-WEF policies. Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/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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This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crowe, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Tuesday. How's everybody doing today? Well, as I sit here recording this, I'm sitting at Jamie Sinclair's Campground in Regina Beach. Now, we're back on the road today heading towards Quick Dick, McDick, and Tuffnell, Saskatchewan.

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make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review. If you're along the route, so I'm going to say it again, we're sitting in Regina Beach as I record this, but by Tuesday, by the time you're listening this, we're on the road, we're heading to Tuffinil, Saskatchewan, and I'm going to be sitting down with Big Mustache Al. That's QDM's dad. I'm excited about that. And, you know, we're going to be making our work. way through. If you're along the road, just drop me an oath and we'll do our best to bump into Somnia. It's been a lot of fun so far running into some of the listeners and I would love nothing more

than to run into all of you fine folks. Finally, the S&P road trip is powered by Zeebs. It's a family owned and fine-tuned in Chesterner, Alberta. Zeebs Performance Restoration delivers expert classic car restorations, custom exhaust and performance upgrades that'll keep your ride reliable and roaring. you can visit zeebs.ca and they'll get you figured out. And of course we're riding in the Black Beast, which they built for me. And you're going to get to hear from Zane here in a couple episodes and find out why they did that. All right.

That's all I got for you today. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is a freelance consultant from Calgary, Alberta. I'm talking about Peter Schultz. So buckle up. Here we go. So welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. I'm joined by Peter Schultz.

So, sir, thanks for joining me along the road trip. We're sitting at the Weston Airport near the, or Weston Calgary Airport hotel, right where we had the Cornerstone Forum and they're graciously letting us set up. So there's a bit of echo and everything else while you kind of get it and life will go on. This is life on the road. Yeah, Sean, great to see you again. Yeah, good to see you too.

I was just saying, like, you know, like five years ago, Shane Getson was first on the podcast. We talked about the corridors, and they sounded like, wow, this is a slam dunk idea. We should be doing this like immediately. And then when I last interviewed Danielle, it was brought up again.

And I was like, well, she tried sloughing at office three years. And that was just probably her trying to shorten the timeline, but three years is still long enough. And I'm like, well, no, it's been five years because I knew about it on the podcast from Shane Getson five years ago. And here we sit five years later.

You know, you've got the MOU and all the things there, and we're going to have shovels in the ground by next year. And now they're announcing things out to Ontario. And you're like, okay, all that sounds lovely. But I'm curious what your thoughts are, because, you know, when we go back in our conversations, it's always been the railway north. And if you do that, you're going to open up things and businesses and entrepreneurs and connect communities, build communities. I guess I'm curious what Peter has to say about it. I'd say I'm getting a little bit impatient with what's gone on. I have to be careful, you know, what I say and how I say it because I'm known to a lot of people

now and I am supporting their work. I'd say, once in there you always want to not say things that could be misquoted or ever, but I think we need to rethink the people who are in the bureaucracy. I think we're still dealing with a government of Alberta bureaucracy that, was enlarged by an enormous amount during the NDP years. And I hear a lot of stories and I see a lot of stories of inefficiency and things moving slowly and things being toned down that probably shouldn't be toned down. And it is starting to get me a bit frustrated.

At the same time, I'm always happy to continue working with the government to Alberta. I find the political leaders are very supportive, and they know what's going on. They've listened to the ideas. They support the ideas, but things have not moved forward. And sometimes I just want to go down, guys, like, why do Albertans not believe in themselves? Why do Canadians not believe in themselves? Why are we always counter-questioning everything to death and stopping everything? Like, we need an actual culture change across the board, ultimately.

And it's like, yeah, there's been some bad things happen. There's been some minds that weren't taken care of, and you had tailings issue. There's been other projects that were not thoughtful. thought through properly, but more than that, we have seen projects been thought through, and billion or more dollars been spent on the environmental assessment and the detailed design and then we pulled at the last second for some ridiculous reason. And it's just a lot of hand-wringing. And I think it's time for Albertans, especially and Canadians, but Albertans especially,

to just go, guys, like, we can get things done here. We have good ideas out there, make it happen. We have the ideas ready to go. Well, I think that, you know, it seems to be. North American problem, not just an Alberta or a Canadian, right? Well, we're a lot better than the Americans are. I have gotten more support from American small companies in what I'm doing, mainly on routes to Alaska, but also looking at some work in British Columbia.

I have gotten more support from small American companies and more verbal encouragement from big American companies than I have from any Canadian company. And that's not for lack of trying. It's the Americans go, oh, that's a cool idea. Can I help you? let me open my wallet and I'll match the federal fund a federal grant or a provincial grant or something if they offer it to you that does not happen with Canadian companies so far it's not for lack of trying and that's opening up a route or a passenger train or just a train to alaska

well for Alaska we should go with a rail-based corridor which should be rail plus hvdc plus fiber. And it should follow a route from the town of Athabasca, from Scottford to the town of Athabasca, reconnecting the old Pambina railway, going up on the west-east side of Pelican Mountain at the rivermills. I assume you've talked to the government about this. Oh yeah. Do they like the idea? I invite Shane to dinner parties. He's a busy guy, but you know. Yeah, but I mean like I'm sure Daniel Smith knows my name now I was like whoa okay cool well I'm sure they get inundated with ideas but like when it comes to corridors and like that being a popular

idea right amongst conservatives wow that's a great idea I don't know how many rooms I've been in where it's like it's a really good idea I'm like no kidding we're talking about it five years ago like are we going to get on the great idea and just build it I realize there's more to it than that I realize there's a lot of land and people's land and First Nations land and a whole bunch of just things. The First Nations are better supporters than the private sector. I mean, I'm like, I'm sure it's going to be a headache, but if you don't start working on a headache, then we sit here twiddling on our thumbs five years later going, so is it being done? And everybody goes, yes, we're working on it.

Yeah. But I go, okay, so is it another, like, am I going to see it in my lifetime? Are we going to just start to open things up? I hope so. Like, I was just going over the numbers. Basically, a route to Alaska, is providing another port for the lower 48, and it's providing export and trade internal potential for the entire northwestern quarter of the country. Like, Yukon is right against Alaska, but it is still part of Canada,

and there's a tremendous amount of mineral wealth there, like billions and billions of ton of iron and rare earths and military critical minerals that can't be got at economically without rail. And so guess what? It's the U.S. Department of War that's giving money up, right? Well, because you unlock that and it's sitting right beside them. Yeah.

Now, I mean, the tone of the federal government since Carney has changed, Trudeau was trying to get anything inside the federal government was impossible. But under Carney, I actually am getting straight answers out of federal bureaucrats who are being very, very helpful. And so I'm hoping that that will go somewhere. I'm also seeing, like, Churchill is getting huge amount of attention, which is great. but the secret that everybody is afraid to say is that there's a real limitation to how much you can ship through Churchill just because of the size of the port the size of the harbor how deep it is and other ideas like ports in the Kivalik or other ports farther south that could complement Churchill are not entering the discussion so we're setting ourselves up for sort of a long-term slow failure in Churchill like we're putting stuff through there and we're going to we're going to talk about putting in year-round trade, it's not going to work once you get past maybe three, four hundred thousand tons a year. Meanwhile, Prince Rupert continues being hamstrung.

Prince Rupert, if you look at all the deepwater harbors all around Prince Rupert, Prince Rupert area could handle 250 to 300 million tons a year. It can handle double what Vancouver can handle just by geographic. So then why, from a dumb person, why isn't that like a message that resonates? Why is it is it BC and like eB and everything going on there? Is it the NDP out west that are like you're not coming to Prince Rupert or is it more complicated than that? I want to say it's more complicated, but the other hand I go, I scratch my head because I'm like,

I see what seemed to me slam dunk proposals without naming names, you know, transferring discontinuances, class one discontinuances to short lines, which means a small rail operator takes over a portion. of a piece of track that the big railways don't want anymore. The amount of, and that seems like a straight flip out, like, okay, class one trains go away, short line trains move in, and those short line trains focus on the small and medium enterprises so that the mum and pop log homes or whatever, like those kinds of companies, a lava rock company that I was talking to in British Columbia

couldn't get train service they had to use truck, but they would love to have a small train, a smaller class of train service so they could get their lava rock out. And the amount of pushback and just, I'm not even to say pushback, it's not pushback. It's just apathy. It's like, no one cares.

Can't be bothered to care. For the audience, Peter, it's been a while since you've been on it. Can you explain to any new listener, like what it is you do? Because like I'm sure there's a couple people scratching their head going, who the heck is this guy?

That is a perfectly legitimate question. I had been working in Nineveit for the Nineveit Planning Commission and doing regional planning and transportation planning, basically Northwest Passage. Like how do you get ships through the Northwest Passage? That was probably my biggest thing. And this whole Manitoba Cavalic Highway going north from Winnipeg

up into the Arctic, which is a lame brain idea. It's going to, anyway, developing that kind of policy. Like, oh, we're going to have 700 kilometer highway between Churchill and Arviot, and it's going to be open all year. And I'm like, who, like, have you any experience with a Kivallik winter storm? 110 kilometers an hour for 72 hours straight. If you were in a minivan with four or five kids, you are dead. You will freeze to death.

It's minus 35 and quenchill minus 80. It will kill you. And no one's going to be able to save you. I'm like, you're going to put a row through that. Like crazy. Anyway, I'm going on a tangent. Who am I? Yeah. So I was working up in Nunavut. And I got a call from the Alaska to Alberta Railway company said, come work first. Okay. So I go down. I relocate to Edmonton. and I get my professional transportation planner ticket to add on to my planning ticket so that I can talk. And they changed my job title like literally every day because they're just like, I'm sitting here with the former deputy minister of something from Northwest Territories, if you're more deputy minister of mines for Yukon and Dr. Ken Coates, who I can name who's like

this guy whose father built highways through Yukon and he's a Canadian historian and a member of all these big, not McDonald-Lurier Institute and has all these awards and just what roundly respected and like, you know, just mind-blowingly nice guy who's incredibly intelligent. And I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that, that he is. And I'm sitting at a table and like, you know that that thing where you're like, um, self-sabotage. Sure. Where it's like, I'm not worth the being at this table. That crossed my mind every day. And every day they change. Like, why am I sitting with these people? And eventually it just came down to, I'd be managing regional economic transformation. Because putting the railway through these remote areas, yeah, there's traffic from Memphis to the port of Anchorage, and there's traffic from Toronto to Asia that's going through. But there's also traffic between Ross River, Yukon, and high-level Alberta.

What's that going to look like? What can we take advantage of? What's the agriculture, forestry mining? Like, what's the internal trade? What about land ferries? How do people get from one place to another? So that was a joy. And while I was doing that, I found some, I kept on coming across a couple of rotten smells around the ventilators.

And I thought one thing I've learned when I live on a farm, if you smell something rotten, I mean something's dead. And sure enough, it turned out that the chairperson and the investor guy, and I can say this because they've both been convicted in a year since, had a kickback thing going on, which I'm going to go into details. But anyway, shut down the whole company. And everybody got thrown out. Well, not thrown out. We got laid off. I didn't have got my severance. So here I'm holding my two-week-old fourth daughter.

And I've just been laid off. And I don't get my severance. And now I just bought a new house at Eminton. Like, what do I do? Right? God provides and things happen. But it always bugged me that the business plan made so much sense. And we had all the numbers.

Like, this totally will make money. This totally can make sense. And it's not the only corridor will make money. You can double triple capacity to Prince Rupert. and increased capacity to Alaska, the two will complement each other by most of the models because you're setting them up as a full, they're 2,000 kilometers apart,

but they support each other. Because if there's an issue at Prince Rupert, you can go to Alaska or vice versa. And then if there's a major earthquake in Vancouver, then you can go to Prince Rupert or Anchorage, right? But if you have a major earthquake in Vancouver, chances are Seattle will be hit as well and Portland, and then Long Beach has got to handle all that.

how's that going to work, right? But if you've got Prince Rupert and anchors ready to go, great. And then, you know, looking at the East Coast and some people still talk about year-round shipping through Northwest Passage, not going to happen because of the ice conditions. But, yeah, so anyway, I... Would it be safe to say, like, when it comes to,

you know, looking at how to move not only people but goods, you're kind of a specialist in that area. You've been staring at different parts that people talk about, Northwest Passage, Churchill, Rupert, Alaska. I probably missed five others. You're like, well, here's what makes sense. And you're screaming at the top of your lungs every time I talk to you. And I don't actually mean it literally.

But, you know, you're like, this makes so much sense. I don't have a nice singing voice. You don't want to miss. But you're like, this makes sense. We should be doing this. And then you've ran into the bureaucratic machine that just churns good ideas. and it goes nowhere with them. Because like when I first heard about the northwest economic corridor,

or was it northeast? I can't remember now. But when I heard about the economic corridor, going to Churchill, I was like, man, that makes it. Gee, that sounds like a pretty good idea. Is it going to cost a boatload of money? Yeah, it is. But we just shipped Ukraine, 900 million again, I think was the last dollar.

I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. So we can ship money everywhere. We can pay for everybody's, everything, but when you put good business ideas ahead, it's like it takes years for them to even remotely get anywhere. You know, like even the MOU, right, the signing and then you know, the sign, okay, so we're going to go, no, no, we're going to wait a year because we got to do all the things. And I'm like, and then I run to people like you and I'm like, I'm pretty sure all the things have been done. You just got to get the right people in the room to be like, yeah, these have

all been done. We've checked all these things probably 50 times over. Here's what you want to do. And yet that message for some reason lands on my desk. but not the people in charge that I actually get to say of them or direct them. Canadian cautiousness is good. It's a good cultural attribute, but it has a negative aspect, which is to get overly cautious and overly analytical and paralysis by analysis, and that is where we're at. You know, after A to A, I started calling the nations that I had already been acquainted with,

and I said, were you actually interested in the Nassian? And I said, yes, yes, we want responsible development. And we want to be part of it. We want to be part of it before they won. And the design, the running, everything. We want to be that when we signed the treaties, we had in mind we're combining the best of both worlds. Not that we're going to be the way things worked out.

So, you know, and I was like, well, what do I sometimes see? Is I see one group is really attached to this port or that port or this route or that route. So I said, well, I'm a geography geek and I'm willing to spend a thousand. hours going through all the old archives and map it all out in one giant map. Right? And here's the be able to say here's the pros and cons of different words. So at this point I'm going like we know which ones will function. Now get the right, get the right ways in place and get the regulatory issues out of the way and let the private sector do its business. And the private sector will take it. With the private sector, when I go to them with that message, they go back, well, yeah, but we've had

so many of these places, these like frontier oil sands, the Kenzie Valley Pipeline, other projects were a billion or a billion and a half dollars was been spent on feasibility study and then got thrown out the last second. So we want to see government put in a bit at the beginning and so that we know that's not going to happen again. And I go, okay, fair enough. So then I go to government and they say where all budgets are strapped, we don't have any money.

So is that when you come to Chris Sims was on the podcast. a week ago, roughly. And she was talking about, you know, the pipeline to the West was going to cost $44 billion and that private was only going to put in 10%. So when I hear what you're saying, private companies at the current state of Canada, they're like, we're actually not going to do anything until we see government step forward and put money down first so we know they're serious about a project? There's a happy balance.

If the government covers too much of the money and too much of the ownership, you're going to get the government costing effect. I was working in Jasper in 2008 when they were putting the pipeline Trans Mountain through Jasper in 2008. They had the right-of-way all the way to Burnaby. They set it up in the 1930s. There's folks at Parks Canada that were saying to me,

my boss, actually, he said, now and today, Parks Canada would never let a pipeline go through Jasper National Park. But we have to because they already own the right-of-way because they put it in before the park existed. So they were already building that. And then it was a slow down, slow down, slow down, issue, issue, issue.

And then Shredo pumps in, buys it. It was originally going to be like $6 billion to the coast. Shredo buys it. It gets it done in two years for $40-something billion. And I have a friend in North Central British Columbia who has a friend who owns gravel mines in north central British Columbia. And he is saying, and he, so third-hand information, but this guy is saying,

I am making a very good retirement for myself because I'm being paid so much for my gravel, but I also feel unethical because I'm being paid way too much for my gravel. So that's a government costing effect. So when I say to people build a railway to Alaska for $40, 40,000 and $50 billion, that's if it's built by private parties with just an initial government kick-in in the beginning and indigenous land ownership. and then government get out of the way and let the proper professional project managers to control. But I say if this is done like a government project, like a highway is built, 180 billion.

I'm going to quadruple the price. So we'll be waiting a while is what you're saying. I'm glad you're on the case, but like you go, holy crap. You know, like, I don't know, do you see it cut? Like, I mean, you've got to be optimistic. Otherwise, you wouldn't keep trying. This is going to sound really weird. but after A-2A collapsed.

So remember, I'm now unemployed, been told I'm not getting my severance payment. I've got a couple thousand a month coming in through a rental property. I've got $3,000 a month going out for my mortgage. I've got four kids. How's this going to work? My wife's obviously just to give him birth.

He's not working. How's this going to work out? And I'm just like, and the COVID lockdowns are going down. And I'm like, why the heck am I in this country? And worship in church. it was like a divine thing. It was like, build this corridor. And I remember, like, I'm like, okay, this has got to be messed up message from God.

Have you read the memo? I just got laid off from 8 to 8, like two weeks ago. Focus on this. Okay. So I, I don't know. It's some people may say it's kind of weird, but that's one thing that goes to me. The other thing is like, it makes so much financial sense. Like any way you look at it, these corridors at the refined versions that we have now,

like for economic, for business, for development, for population growth, for defense, for strategic value, for redundancy in case there's a major event at a certain location or at one of the ports, it all works. And, you know, is this, you know, you know what the feeling. A lot of people have it. They, it's like, and here's the thing, Sean, is, at COVID we all saw the worst side of human nature. We all got to see at face value. And when I'm in a nation building workshop, I see the best side of human nature.

I see people dreaming together, wanting to build together, wanting to go, society, we could build a better place, we can do this, we can do that. And you can see the drive to build a better place to steward the land. And I'm just like, it's the best part of human nature. So that's another, that's another major driver. If you think my church example is nuts, then you can.

I don't think your church, I don't think your church example is nuts at all. I remember when I came back from Ottawa, a friend and Seth, he asked me what happened there, and I, you know, I rattled off four things. And one of them being spiritual, and he said, well, we all know it's spiritual. Just tell me about it. And I said to him, well, if we all know it's spiritual, but why don't we talk about it? It's like, because everybody would write you off as crazy.

And I started laughing and I said, oh, they think I'm crazy for 50 other things. Let's just tack one on. So, like, one of the things that I don't still completely understand. You know, we're only, you know, as we record this, day four of the trip, and, like, everything in my logical side of the brain screams, you should not be leaving Alberta right now. I mean, you've got a referendum coming up.

As a journalist sitting here, I could probably do 200 podcasts between, here and there and, you know, talk to as many Albertans as I could spur on different conversations around it, right? Like, to me, that just, it makes sense. And so I prayed about it. I've had, in my humble opinion, I've had God literally smite down plans of mine where I'm like, that wasn't going to work. And, you know, it's not like he appeared and he's like, you're not doing this. Just everything didn't work out. For this. For this, everything has worked out. And it's been in the planning for two years

well before anything in referendum was even remotely possible. And I go, well, I guess I'm following his plan because I'm like, I don't know how better to explain it. And some people will be like, oh, you're nuts. And I go, well, they can say, they can say I'm nuts all they want. I don't really care what they believe. I care what I believe.

And what I believe tells me I'm on the right path, even though I can't fully understand where it's taking me. Because it just doesn't make logical sense, you know, like I'm going to be in Washington, D.C. When the referendum is being actually voted upon. And now I hope to be back. My plan is to be back. I can't see the future. So I won't say, no matter what, I'm going to go through everything to get back.

I'm going to try my darkness to get back. But I'm like, I'm also following in something I don't fully understand. Understand the idea of it. Understand the conversations I want to have. And I'm starting to have. But like to say like, oh, that might sound weird or crazy or whatever word you tacked on. I'm like, doesn't sound crazy sitting across from me. But I've had a lot of crazy in my life where I had to come to terms with it.

Once it came to terms with it, I'm like, you know, there's people in my community that won't talk to me anymore because of COVID. And I'm like, well, that's on them. I've moved on from it. There's lots of things I still talk about from COVID. But like the way they judge or look at you, it's like, well, whatever. Like I run into a handful of these people once every. every two years, whoop-de-do. I'm not going to let it bother me.

And so if you're off-putting to any listener or to anyone else in the world, it's like, well, that's on them. It isn't on Peter. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I can totally agree. Some of the craziest things I've done

have resulted in the best responses, the best end results. Like getting married. I've got a sixth kid coming along. You didn't want to get married? I had given up on the idea because I've had too many crazy dates. I could have a sitcom of my first date experiences. Like I had so many first dates, women I met online, women I met at church, you know,

when I met at the bar. And yeah, just nuts. And so then you met your wife, obviously? I gave up. I was done. Like I told my mom, I said, there's not going to be any grad kids. Like, I'm sorry. I'm done.

I'm tired of looking and then I you know and then I met my wife and she said the first couple of days for basically a job interview because I was like doing psychological testing to see if she was nuts and smart and tough and she said I could see through it instantly but I also realized that I had to let you go through your process to ensure that you felt comfortable comfortable that I was the kind of material you were looking at you were looking for because she is smart and beautiful and tough and now soon to be a mom six number six and i just turned 50 that is nuts yeah six how old are your kids 11 and down 11 and down so you started when you were 39 37 38 i guess so i guess yeah something in that and six the father's out there after having or about to have your six. An early congratulations by the way.

The first one will change your life and your old life as you know it is now gone. The second one is about 50% more work than the first in my experience. The third one is about again 50% more work than the second one. So you're now 75% more work than the first one. But the fourth one, the belt, it's actually a margin of utility curve and it starts bending down because the older ones start getting old enough that they can help with the younger ones. And right now, I'm almost a lazy-ass dad. Like, I have to, like, like, the older girls are now, like, feeding them and changing them. They're in, yeah, well, my daughter, my daughter, uh, at Aspirant Crossing, where we're staying, she ran into a young family. And by young, I mean, I got like, uh, I'm going

say two and a half year old, maybe three year old. I'm a terrible judge of kids' ages, but, you know, like young enough. And within the first, like, they're at the park and then I show up and she's carrying this young boy around. I'm like, what the heck is going on here? And then she's befriended the entire family. So this morning we wake up, she runs to the park, she's playing, and then they come walk by. And she's sitting there with the mom, who we'd met folks. Like, it's not like I just let it run off. Yeah. But she's sitting there with the mom, the newborn, and this two and a half, and keeping it entertaining, the mom's just laughing. She's like, you got an amazing daughter. And I'm like, I chuckled because it's something that the girl is drawn to, not the boys. They have this thing set up today.

You'll get a chuckle out of this. They had this like little water park set up for the kids and then you had to register for it. And at one point they said, okay, who wants to have a water gun fight? And all the boys, rambunctious race over, right? They're grabbing their guns. All the girls stayed. And I don't know. Like at one point they were doing like gymnastics and stuff. And all the boys are shooting each other in the face.

One kid went off with a water balloon to the neck. And I'm like, yeah, that's boys versus girls. And when it comes to the kids, my first I was done. The second I was for sure done. It's adding into how much work it is. By the third, if we hadn't had complications, like now I talk about all the time, I would have had a fourth. I probably would have a fifth because I actually enjoy it so much.

But the shock to my way of life at the start was... It is real shock. Yeah, I wasn't ready. I just wasn't... How do you prepare somebody for it? You can't. Right? You're used to going to the gym when you want to go to the gym.

When you go to the movie, when you go and go to the movie, eating out is not like a once, it's not like a twice a year affair. Well, that's because when you go, especially when they're super young, they're chucking things off the table, they're crawling under the table. They're crawling under other people's tables. They're doing things. They're just-wining. They're screaming.

Yeah, they're just kids. And actually, I truckle now when we go to date and say, I watch somebody. And then they're like, so sorry. I'm like, you have no idea. This is the best entertainment I've had all night because it ain't my kids. I get to watch you go through it. And I will reap this later on for laughing at it because then for sure, I'll take my kids out and they'll do the exact same thing.

Yeah, yeah. My advice is ignore the world, have more kids. Yeah. you know what, they do not. I mean, you can be a soccer mom, you can be a hockey mom, it's expensive. But if you ask a kid, would you rather not exist as opposed to go to hockey every week? Most kids will say I'd rather exist than not go to hockey every week. That's my theory. I'll stick into it. Well, I'll skip to the last question I've been asking everybody before we get to anything else. Yeah. One of the things on the road trip that I've been asking people is,

you know, like do you have a favorite memory of camping maybe as a father or maybe as a father or maybe as kid back in the day where and when? Yeah, coming back from Berg Lake. Oh, is it me as a kid? Oh, you was a kid or a father. You or you can share both. Honestly, the first thing comes to mind was we were coming off Berg Lake, which is Mount Robson, up in BC. Like, it's a much do, must-do hike for everyone on planet Earth. If you can't hike it, then take the helicopter. We were up there. It was rainy. It was cold. It was supposed to be nice weather. It wasn't. And And we, the last seven kilometers, you're biking back out and the mud was everywhere. So we just got out, the two older girls, my wife and myself, were completely soaked.

We are covered in mud from head to toe and the biggest smiles. Like even I have a second daughter that refuses to smile for pictures. She is smiling like from here, here to Nebraska was her smile for six hours straight. So what is it about that then? Because when I hear and I hear like mud, cold, wet, all the things. Well, the things I hate. Well, I mean, you know, like, we think of, like, comfort as sitting inside and enjoying everybody's company.

And I don't know. I can paint a pretty funny picture. But regardless, the opposite of it is, like, outside, soaking wet, covered in mud, but everybody's happy. Like, is it just being together? Like, in your opinion, like, what is it about that moment that you're just like, man, that was so much fun? I don't know.

It just was. It was a great memory that a lot. for the rest of my life. But I don't know, it just was. I can't answer that question. Alberta Independence. Well, we're getting closer, right? The March to October 19th, I mean, time slows down for no man. And for Alberta, you know, like it's, you can say it's a long time away, but truth be told, it's really close. Your thoughts on it. I think the Alberta spirit is the way to save Canada. I'm going to say that.

I'm also going to say that my Canadian nationalism is secondary to living in a truly free country where I can say as I, where I can say as I please without risk of incarceration or legal action or, you know, economic cancellation. So and sometimes when you know, when you're dealing with a drunk spouse, then the good spouse needs to put her foot in the door and have the door ajar and say, you need to ship up, you need to shape up.

So I think Albertans should be ready for all outcomes. And I was on a podcast earlier when I warned that there are globalist imperialistic forces that are very good at shutting down independence, movements. They have proven their skills over the last three months very, very clearly, again. That's the enemy you're up against. And I when you say they've proven their skills in the last three months, what are you pointing to directly? No. The way they, like the judge's case, you know, not the, knock the wind out of the sails. I believe they pushed, is it Rath? John Rath,

is the. Jeff Rath? Sorry. I'm not good with names. I felt they got him where it got him angry, and that created a bit of a mental image. And they're playing a, you know, ignore and discredit work quietly. They're trying to make it quietly go away. So what I think, I'll say again where I think the weakness in the separatist movement, or one of the weaknesses is it's not.

thinking big enough. I use the example of White Minster, that bifurcated by the Saskatchewan Alberta declared independence, what happens the next day? Can the guy on the east side work on the west side if he's got a job there? Practical questions like that aren't people's mind. Why is it not coordinated with Saskatchewan? What about other regions of other provinces? How is this going to work? What about, you know, you meet from somebody from Scotland? the first thing they go is, you know, like, I met a guy with Scotland, the first thing he's talking, he talks exactly like an Alberta independence movement. What about Catalonia? Right? There's, I almost view it as sort of a pro-globalist and anti-globalist fight. So it can be misinterpreted how I say this, so I have to be careful how I say it. But I do see that there's a globalist elite that has been manipulating certain.

factors to their advantage for a very long time. If you talk to Matt Arette, he's going to be talking back to the 300 families of the Roman Empire. Whether I fully buy into that, I can't, I'm not sure, but you see the actions of a few. You see the shopping sprees of Ukrainian, certain folks in the cities of London right now. You're like, there's stuff going on here that, obviously, is coordinated and it's it fits you when you look at historical patterns you see that you get entrenched elites that usually come to power because they have some history of doing things really really well but then the corruption creeps in and they start using that power to ill effect and we have to think of the global context here so what I our issues with Canada is not Canada

Alberta is not angry at the concept of Canada. Alberta is not angry at the concept of being part of Canada. Alberta is angry at the fact that $300 billion has been siphoned off to Ottawa and then redistributed to other provinces are used to support an immensely bloated bureaucracy and many inefficient social services across the country. We're angry when we see that 20 or 25% of the budget of New Brunswick is based on Alberta transfers. We're angry that that Quebec climate activists point the finger at us and say terrible things like,

you know, we don't have a culture or we're a non-entity or something like that. That's insulting, right? What gives you the right to say that? These are valid concerns, but these concerns are shared by other groups all over the world, and I believe the Alberta Independence Movement needs to broaden. its scope at least the Saskatchewan, which is right next door, at least to the Kootenese or northern British Columbia right next door, who have exactly the same complaints, right? And think about that. Like you go to England, you know, I

think, well, Britain is the center of the city of London, well, there's a city of London, which Tom Luonga will go on one of his rants about, which by the way is really funny. When he's going, when he's swearing a lot, I like to turn it up to two times And it's really funny. Just everybody try that one. Tom Long was in a rant, put it up two times. It's really funny.

That's a side point. But like go to Nottingham. Like go to Shropshire. These are everyday people. Everyday people in Britain, England. You know, they know it better. You heard a podcast. I had you had a podcast of somebody in Ireland.

And she says, yeah, they know the situation. Well, Martin Armstrong would talk about, you know, Once it starts, you can't put it back in the bottle because it's going to cross borders and the stage has been set. Everywhere in the world is upset with their governments. Yes. So let's focus on that. And while we're at that, focus on strengthening our institutions as a province. And by focusing our institutions as a province, we make ourselves more financially credible and secure and more sovereign.

with or without declaration of independence. And you have to do that stuff if you're going to... When you're talking institutions, you're talking about the pension and things of that nature? I actually think the pension is pretty minor. Now that I'm independent businessman, I had to look into the Canada pension plan. And it's the biggest graft. Like, I was outraged for three days. Like for any other pension plan providing what they provide, our rates should be half.

Okay. What it is, it's a slush fund. to spend money wherever they want. Like, you work for, if you work for, you do the math, if you work from age, whatever it is, say 25 to 65, 40 years, and you earn 50, 60, 70, 80, I plugged this into a computer and said, okay, you plug it in and you pay your Canada pension rate. What is your, when you retire at age 65, what is your nest egg?

What is your nest egg? And it's over a million bucks. Okay. And then I go, well, you're being paid maximum, I think it's like $900 to $1,200 a month for the rest of your life. So, okay, so if you're drawing down off that million bucks, $1,200 a month and you live to $105, that $100 million is now $2 million. You're not even eating at the nest egg that you've built. It is a tax. CPP is a tax.

So that's another, that pissed me off because it's the law you have to buy into it. But if I want to invest in a pension fund that gives me $1,200 a month, whatever the dollar equivalent is when I retire in 20 years, if I retire, hopefully I'll be building a railway somewhere and I'll be busy and just drop dead at the age of 85. Happy. Happy with a hammer and striking a building a railway somewhere. That's what I'd like to do. Or eaten by a bear, like, you know, Legends of the Fall, that'd be really cool. Actually, no, that would be really miserably. Anyway, it would be a cool story, a cool myth for your kids to talk about, but it might be a little bit of awesome to go that way

unpleasant even if you're like, you know, really old and people. We're going on a I'm going on a crazy tangent, but I do that. CPP drives me nuts like when I got into it. Like this is this is theft. This is greft when they say, oh, we got 500 billion here and 500 billion there. I'm just like yeah, great. Okay. How much are your staff getting paid and like and God forbid you you don't, you know, like if you're reporting on your EI or your, you know, you're reporting on your payroll is off by like two days. It's like, oh, that'll be 10% fine off your total payment for the year. Like, is every sociopath that doesn't want to go behind jars just go straight to the CRA or the CRE? Yeah, but this whole thing about a pension plan transfer, that's important, but it's also not

important. I feel it's like it's a political... Okay, so then what do you think is important? The most important one, I think, is FinTrack. What FinTrack is... So banking. Banking. So FinTrack is...

I'm not an economist, but... Yeah, I was just talking to Brad Oland on the way here, so... He knows everything. Yeah. It's his idea. But I took his policy wording, and then I stupefied it. Stupidified it so that I could understand it. And it's just basically...

province, if the province as an organization that is doing the terrorism funding and the organized crime tracking, then we don't have to use the federal Fintrack system. We can use a provincial fin track system that is constitutional. And then our provincially registered financial institutions, which are mainly, basically the credit unions, are not subject to federal Fintrack. What that means is You can't have, you can't shut downs. Right. And suddenly, everybody will have an account in Alberta. Suddenly, credit unions that are worth a billion will suddenly be worth $50 billion.

Why? Because if I'm going to put my money somewhere, I don't want them taking it. They look at the level of ideology in Ottawa versus the level of ideology in Alberta, and there's no comparison. The other thing I was get rid of, the death of the income tax. it's time to think about that seriously because I'm thinking about how is it bureaucracies are bloated how is it that we have such slow regulations

how is it that because they're fat and happy because they're fat and happy and what was the income tax for it was for to fight World War I against the Germans who were bad for some reason that we never really fully been explained

World War II Germans we understand they're bad but World War I Germans why were they bad I don't get it but any so we had this world we had this tax which never won away. It went up and up and up and up and up and up and then we have corporate income tax as well. And I'm thinking to myself, what would happen if you end income tax and corporate income tax? What happens? Amount of time that's freed up. Like I have got to do my own taxes like as an independent

businessman. So I'm putting in two days, three days a year, if I'm lucky, sometimes up to seven days on my taxes. I only have maybe 300 working days a year. That's 1 to 2% of my working time is spent on how much I need to pay the government. Same for everybody else. Now, if you get rid of those taxes and you tie government revenue

to government expenditures. So, for example, let's say our gas tax is set, specifically to create the budget for Alberta, highways. So, you know, there's your gas price and then a portion of that gas price is tax, or if there's an electric tax on your electric charging car. You know, whatever. I'll pull a number of it in there. Say you raises $10 billion a year. That's the budget for highways, right? And you have to adjust that, but that creates an accountability. So if I'm driving from my house to Banff and I

across the highway maintenance line, which is somewhere near Canmore, and the road goes from clean and dry to an ice sheet, I am more inclined to call and complain that the Canmore office has done a really crappy job of taking care of this highway, and by the way, there's now six semis in the ditch when on the other side of the highway divide line,

it's doing fine. I've only seen that two or three times, so I'm not sure that's actually true, but I'm just giving, I'm pulling examples out of the air. But I see, people feel a connection to the association. Now, the drawback to that is you'd have to bring in a sales tax. You have to bring in property transaction taxes,

which means that transaction taxes are whenever you buy something, there's a fee on the bank charge or whatever of a few cents. But you see it, every charge, and then you know what's going into which revenue pot. So things like paying for politician salaries and those kinds of health contributions that can go into a general revenue fund,

but then you're seeing I'm paying for this, it is going to the service. And that would, in my mind, create a culture of accountability and move us away from kind of just fat and happy for everybody. Yeah. It's a lot of ideas. You go back to Alberta independence and you go, in one sense, you're like, we need to think bigger.

And bigger is you need to talk to your neighbors and find out what they're doing and get them on board because they're all. seeing the same problems. Then you go, actually part of it is we need infrastructure. Your infrastructure is money, is protect the money, or at least become the one that controls the movement of money, so then you can reduce things and attract businesses here. And if you did that, you'd be more wealthy of a province than you could probably ever imagine, which would allow you to do things that need to get done. But as long as you stay where Ottawa controls everything, you're going to be in the same predicament for the next 100 years.

If you do is what I just suggested, in 10 years, Alberta will have 10 million people. Ontario will have less than 10 million people. And even if we're part of Canada, it won't matter because we are Canada. So do things that are going to attract the right people to come, right? I think the right people are coming. People are coming for the right reasons. I think right people, I think a lot of right people are coming. But I also think we've been hammered.

if we didn't wire all the immigration questions on the referendum. Like, anyone can see it. They look around like, what is happening to our province? I feel like I'm about to see it all across Canada when I go, right? Or as I'm going, I'm already going. It's a lot more in other parts of the country.

But you're also going to see, like I was just in Toronto a couple months ago, and Winnipeg and Vancouver. There's immigration issues, yes. but there is a general degradation of cultural quality. I don't know how else to put it. Like, I'm walking through downtown Toronto, and there was this, you know, middle of the day.

I'm there for conference. Middle of the day, 2.30 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon. Not a site, not some weird neighborhood, just Main Street. And there's a woman going on. You know, she's flashing. And if something came out of me, I don't know, I had this Puritan in me. And I said, have you no self-respect woman? And she's like, I ain't got no respect.

It's my boobs that get me the respect. At least that was an honest answer. And I kept walking. And they were like, they were like trying to, there's three of them. And they were like throwing insults at me trying to get a rise on me. I'm just like, I'm going to keep walking. This is too weird. And then go around a corner and there's a guy taking a leak in an alley.

Now that's not a new thing. But in my mind, if you really have to go right now and your dude, And you go into that alley, you go to the back of the alley, you go behind a trailer, a garbage can or something, you get down on your knees so nobody can see you. Right? This guy was like at the edge of the main street. He didn't care. Facing the street. I'm like, okay, what happened to Toronto the Good?

Like, I can still feel it buried deeply, but I'm not seeing it anymore. And, you know, same stories in Vancouver. in Winnipeg but not to that extreme. It's like okay what is going on here? Like poor leadership? It's not it's it's it's yeah poor leadership but it's but it's worth it's probably worse than that it's not just poor leadership where they're inept and they're stupid it's that they're actively destructed deconstructing what Canada was. Yeah right I mean I mean the ideal is or what the ideal is sure they're undermining all the core

foundations of civilization and I mean I viewed as a bit of continuum the land that is Canada has is its own voice. And we, our culture, what we think of as Canadian, you and I would think of as Canadian culture is rooted in a few hundred years on that. And some of the more intense discussions I've had with First Nations, I start going, you know, it's like, you know, this,

when I hear the settler discussion. Sure, right? I just go, I'm not a settler, I was born here. Like I go to Europe. Yeah, I definitely, I feel like sort of when I go to the Elks, I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel a Thai. When I go to Israel and half Jewish, I feel like a, I feel like there's some sort of deeper route. But I'm like, no, but I'm important here. I'm in tune with this land, right?

I'm, and that affects the culture in its own way. So I feel when people come, even though they're coming from a very different background, that over the generations, that there's a Canadianess that's going to come out simply because of where we are, something we don't have control over. It's just, it's the land, our relationship with the land, and the winters and the forest and mosquitoes sometimes. There's a certain resiliency that builds up. Man, they've been brutal though.

Man, are they brutal right now? I mean, you gotta love the amount of rain and precipitation we've had, like it's been wonderful. But one of the things that comes with that is a ton of mosquitoes. Like it is just... Absolutely. It's just, I crawled in the trailer last night. I was just like, I just can't do it.

Like, I feel like they're biting me. Somehow they're getting underneath my collar on my, I'm just like, I'm done with this. Going inside the trailer, I'm done with mosquitoes for a night. And, you know, but, you know, you go a year ago and out on the farm, it was just, it was dry, right? And you were begging for moisture. And now you've got it. And one of the things that comes with it. Now on the farm when we're leaving, the other thing that comes after mosquitoes,

all the dragonflies and the dragonflies come and clean them up right and that's cool to see come through too nature's such a yeah come faster please yeah well isn't that true but nature's such a cool thing to just see how it all works you know i go when you hear about all these billions of dollars being spent on foreign aid i get frustrated because i'm like if you guys are just focus on killing off the egypti mosquito which is the mosquito that carries dengue fever malaria and all the other scary bugs like the world would you're I think that guy in the Netherlands

calculated out was like 100 to 1 if you can eliminate these diseases once and for all yeah and I'm just like why don't we get rid of all mosquitoes lower heads people say it's ecologically important I'm like how any final thoughts before I let you out of here I'm always full of thoughts man well I know that so is there something you want to

you want to make sure that gets on the record before we because one thing about it is you know I I realized it with Chuck is like, I'm not going to talk to Chuck for a year. I mean, there can be certain circumstances where I'll do virtual. And I'm not saying I won't do any virtuals. Yeah. There probably will, you know, be virtual interviews along the years we go. But like, one of my goals isn't to do many.

I want to go and sit with people like this. I'll be it probably not in the Weston. But regardless, you know, I want to sit with people. So when I think about it, I go, okay, wow. Peter, you got things to say. Now's the time to get it out of the way before we move on. I'm going to say that if there's listeners who are interesting investors, interesting, oh my gosh, interested in investing in corridors.

You know, reach out to me through you if you're okay with that. Sure. And happy to give you a briefing or anything else I can. I can't believe how many planes of food. flown over us and how loud it is down this hallway. That's crazy. I mean, obviously, right by the airport. If you pass my two financial reforms in 10 years, it's going to be like frickin O'Hare like here. Fair enough. I just, yeah, O'Hare's a terrible. I'm not sure about Calgary being six and a year. O'Hare is probably one of the worst. It's terrible. It's so massive.

But Atlanta's bigger, but it's fun. And Singapore is bigger and it's really fun. Well, there's lots of fun airports. O'Hare's just not one of them. No, it is not. It is not. I got a lot of things I want to talk about, but all of them need like 20 minutes. And we both got to hit the road. Well, I'm more worried about your time than mine. And I promised you a donut. So whether we get that in or not, Peter was having a rough day. And he was talking about going to get a donut.

I'm like, I'll buy you a donut after we're done. So appreciate you doing this, meeting me here. And, you know, like when it comes to the corridors, I just hope in a year's time, we're not still sitting here going because like eventually I'm just going to go this is never going to happen until you get somebody in and they're just

going to it's happening and I'm probably because I have a whole bunch of texts saying well we've got this going on we got that going on it's like yeah but when you listen to Peter talk it's like yeah but the obvious choice is Prince Rupert if you're going to go to the Churchill it isn't just one port it sounds like it should be many ports

Churchill is too limited when you go to the northwest the north that we call it northwest passage? Northwest Passage, yeah. The shipping area. Yeah. You're like, that'll never work. At least at the... It'll work in the summer. It won't work in the winter. Right. So you go, like, there's limit... Who wants it to work part-time? It's like switching all of our power to wind and solar. It's like, where we live, that doesn't make any sense. So you go, while I'm optimistic about things being announced, it's like, if it was pretty, if it just,

if they just started to hit it out of the park, you know? You know what? Here's where we're going, boom, this is what we're doing. I should have said this to the Lord. This is how I'd summarize it. In all of my research, with all of these dozens, if not hundreds of corridors, I basically found two winners. One is a phase one, phase two. Rupert to Churchill, strengthen that.

They're already connected by rail. Just strengthen that link. Get the ports better. Get your ice conditions better. And get your insurance packages and stuff. Because at Churchill, it was one of the things hobbling Churchill was the insurance by Lloyd's of London. And get the railway fixed finally. and put in, make sure it's actually working

because they're just throwing, they're trying to fill up the ice holes with cash. They're not actually, they need to do it properly. Rupert to Churchill, focus on that one. And then do a T. Edmonton to Anchorage. Those two are the winners.

With time, you're going to see that Churchill gets full. And there's other options along the coast. There is Port Nelson to the south. It doesn't have a eugenonic capacity either, but there's deepwater harbors up in Kivalik, which actually have better ice conditions than farther south. So I see that Rupert line splitting

Churchill and Kivalik. And on that, top of that, you've got the Alberta line. Now, people talk about Grace Bay. I don't see it as a transcontinental port. I see it as a very important seasonal shipping port for the mines in that region. And that's in a nutshell what I see as the plan that will work. Vancouver is very full.

putting another heavy oil pipeline through Langley and right next to White Rock, out to Point Roberts, which is already looking at double, which is on a Fraser Valley floodplain, where you can't get a Panamex or a Hormuz-sized oil freighter in there. I'm just like, why? Why? There's so many other locations. There's so many other locations.

The coast of British Columbia is like 2,000 kilometers, but if you look at all the fjords, like, find another spot. Why does it have to be going through suburban language? Like, good luck. It's, I would not want to be the guy going in, I grew up in Mission, B.C. I would not want to be the guy to be negotiating a pipeline right away throughout its fruit. Yikes, but, and I'm going on a tent. No, that's fair.

Well, I mean, you're just pointing out some of the shortfalls of the idea, right? Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, thanks very much, John. Yeah. Well, thanks again. for doing this. On again.

Thanks a fun.