Shaun Newman Podcast - #1106 - Ken Drysdale

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Ken R. Drysdale, P.Eng., CFSA, FEC, is a nationally respected professional engineer with over 40 years of experience, including nearly three decades leading the development and management of national and regional engineering firms. As founder of Accutech Engineering Inc., he built the company into Canada’s most recognized name in Arctic project design and development before successfully negotiating its sale in 2015. Now focused on forensic engineering, he continues to prepare expert reports, provide testimony in trials, arbitrations, and mediations, and has served as both arbitrator and mediator in complex disputes. Drysdale is also Chair of the National Citizens Inquiry and principal author of Canada’s largest citizen-led investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic response.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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All right, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest has 40 years as a professional engineer. I'm talking about Ken Driesdale. So buckle up. Here we go. Well, welcome to the Sean Neumann. podcast today I'm joined by Ken Driesdale. Sir, thanks for hopping on.

Well, it's wonderful to be out here at like 6.30 in the morning and the beautiful day out here in Manitoba. It's good to see you. Yeah, it is. You're my final interview in Manitoba, which unless somewhere along the roads,

I bump into somebody from Manitoba. This is the final one before we headed into Ontario. And I thought about it all last night after, you know, we had Mel and the kids over, for supper and Rosalie, if you listen to us. Thanks again for the meal. It was fantastic.

And I sat and I stooped on it because I'm like, man, what do I ask? Can't a vote. But then you printed it off again and I'm like, yeah, okay. Since being in Manitoba, I keep stumbling into something that got talked to me five years ago by an MLA in Alberta, Shane Getson. And that was these economic corridors. and now I want to say somebody had said there was a better spot than Churchill even back then but regardless for most of us the economic corridor idea makes a ton of sense and then they talked about Churchill and you know and oh it's a great idea and then five years goes by but right before

I left with the premier I sat down with her and the economic corridor chat came up again and I was like oh this is interesting and then I come into Manitoba and only took a couple of interviews you was in and Churchill came up and then how important Churchill is and not only from a deep water port standpoint but you know like a tourist standpoint like a world attraction standpoint and then the more conversations I had on it can then everybody said oh it can't be done like you know there's just there's just too much look at the map and I so I look at the map and I go yeah it's a lot of water so it's more than that it's it's permafrost it's all these different things and so then I roll in here last night and I bring it up and the first

thing you say is, that's funny, I'm an expert on permafrost. So before we get into Churchill Economic Corridors, anything to do like that, permafrost, how on earth did you stumble your way into permafrost? Because I highly doubt, you know, where you grew up, you were just sitting there going, I'm going to become a guy who talks about permafrost. Well, you know, what it was is it goes back to 1981, and I was working for a structural engineering firm at the time. And we somehow landed an assignment to design a school in a place called Carl, Clyde River, Nunavut, which is up on the north part of Bavon Island.

And at the time, believe it or not, there was no guidance, no standards or anything for engineers to follow to build buildings on permafrost. And so somehow, and I don't remember how it a long time ago, we got a book from Russia that was written in Russian about permafrost. had it translated. So we learned how to do that. And then we set about designing this beautiful school out there. And I guess not a lot of people were doing that. So we got another assignment and another

assignment. And then it kind of went, my Arctic adventures went quiet for about a decade. And then I established my own consulting engineering firm. And we specialized in the high Arctic. And at that point, we were working primarily in Nunavut, and I think I've built buildings in probably 24 of the 25 hamlets and cities in Nunavut. So it's kind of really interesting, you know, how it all developed. And also how the Arctic has changed since 1981. You know, it's significantly different now than it was, how many years ago that was 40-someodd years ago.

When you talk about it's significantly different, what do you mean? Well, when you used to go up to Nunavut, let's say in 19801, even to Churchill, because you mentioned Churchill, which is in Manitoba still, but you were isolated. First off, we were flying Hocker Sidneys to get up there, which is a dual engine, small dual engine turbop that's probably 50, 60 years old. And it was very unreliable. There was no, maybe folks nowadays can't imagine this, but there was no internet. you know, you weren't making phone calls. You didn't have cell phones. So when you went up there, you were isolated.

And because the infrastructure was so primitive, sometimes you'd be up there for weeks at a time because you couldn't get out because of snow and the limitation of these small turboprop airplanes. Well, now, you know, they've got as good at Internet communications as you have your cell phones work up there. There's a lot of jet service going to the larger centers like Rankin Inlet and the Caloet.

And, you know, the, the, even the interaction between us folks from the South and the Inuit folks who live in Nunavut. It's completely different. It was, we were a bit of a novelty back then in the early 80s. You know, people would come up and they would kind of stare at you and they'd be just amazed. And now it's, ah, just another guy walking along the street. So it's the food quality, changed significantly. The buildings, particularly institutional and commercial buildings, I was probably one of the first to introduce into Nunavut,

the, what I would say, the modern way of building buildings. And up until that point, they'd build schools, you know, fairly large schools or other institutional buildings. they're just made out of wood. And the problem was that they would be getting mold. They wouldn't last long. So I think I was one of the first ones to introduce, you know, steel concrete construction up there.

And it was a real challenge getting that, getting the government to accept that we could do that. But we did. And now that has changed the whole infrastructure system up there. So when you go back to permafrost, and you're, you know, you go up there and you're with a group and you're, you know, you've never built in anything like this. When you get a book from Russia and you translate it, like what was the first thing that, I don't know, surprised you or stuck out to you about permafrost compared to just building, you know, here? Well, you know, people's understanding of what permafrost is kind of causes a lot of mystery.

all the term permafrost means is that whatever that ground is it's frozen so that ground might be solid bedrock it might be mush it might be gravel so so the term permafrost doesn't really mean it's a big challenge it can be but it just means it's frozen so you know i've built buildings on solid bedrock and it's permafrost bedrock it's frozen but so the challenge there is to use materials that don't freeze immediately upon, you know, if you're going to use concrete, it has to be a special kind of concrete. And I've also built buildings on what we call, most people are familiar with what a pile is, but up there we actually use what's called ad-freeze piles where we drill a hole into the mush. Maybe it's swampy, maybe it's watery, maybe it's something. We drill a hole,

we put a steel pile down it, and then we'd actually fill the space around the pile with a sand water mixture and that would freeze and it would hold the pile in place. So, you know, I've built foundations on permafrost, but in a whole bunch of different conditions. So again, permafrost just means it's always frozen, but it could be bedrock. It could be anything. How, when you say, I guess, coming from the farm, Saskatchewan, you know, you think of frost and how far down it goes? With permafrost, how far down does that go? About 500 meters. Yeah, so when you're talking about drilling a pile and putting a sand water mixture, it just freezes like concrete then. Oh, absolutely.

And, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that because I forgot about something. On the first building I ever designed up there, the one I was talking about Clyde River, we designed AdFreeze Piles. And we had a lot of problems of that building over time because what we didn't know at the time, no one knew. Maybe the Russians knew, but it wasn't in the book, was that if you're dealing with saltwater ice, saltwater permafrost, or freshwater permafrost, there's a huge technical difference. Because saltwater permafrost, it's more plastic and it will move over time, almost like plasticine. We call it plastic movement where freshwater doesn't. Well, it happened that that building in Clyde River was on saltwater permafrost, and we had movement problems over the years there. But again, no one knew at the time.

You know, it's, I bring up permafrost, and then you bring the Russians in. And I just, everywhere I go, it seems like, if you go back far enough, we must have had a really good relationship with the Russians once upon a time. And I'm like, I just, I run into it all the time. Like, um, in, in some conversations with some Manitobans, they, they even talked about how Russia used to ship us grain to the Churchill port. and yet, you know, once again, maybe it's just the climate of how we've demonized the Russians to the nth degree. And whatever people think of that, so be it, it's just, if you go back far enough, we had really good relations or it looks like at least trading relations with the Russians. And were we skeptical of them? That also sounds like it was pretty true back in the day as well.

but I can't imagine if Russia started shipping us grain through the Churchill again. That would be a day, wouldn't it? Well, you know, we're going to get ourselves into a lot of trouble here, but the truth is the truth. You know, the Russians once were our number one, I would say, ally, and I remind folks about what happened during World War II. The Russians took the most losses. They were our ally.

They took 27 million people died during World War II fighting the Nazis. and the Russians actually won that war. It wasn't us at D-Day. It was already finished by the time D-Day started. Now, and I've worked in Russia, by the way. I've worked in Kazakhstan, which was and in Russia, particularly of Moscow. And that's kind of a funny story, too. Sure.

Because, you know, we went, I went to Russia on a trade mission, and the idea was, is that we were going to bring Western Canadian technology on grain storage, et cetera, to the Russians. And when I got there, we felt like fools because their technology was equal to or better than ours. And so, you know, I spent most of the time touring all kinds of different facilities, steel plants, grain processing facilities. I met with all kinds of government officials.

And it was great. You know, I was there for, I don't remember how long a month or something. And so I got to know in that short period of time these people, you're right there was agreements or memorandums of understanding between Manitoba, Canada, and Russia to do ice breaking in Hudson Bay and that goes back years so yeah you can't go too far without talking about the Russians they had the high experience in the Arctic with permafrost with ice breaking I believe they have the largest ice breaking fleet in the world nuclear powered by the way so yeah I mean and we

should have a fantastic relationship with the Russians. I'm not quite sure why we don't. Well, I mean, me and you met through COVID. And when propaganda is at its, you know, at the height, it's hard to break out of that, right? Because it really pushes and pulls society in different ways. And like, when you think of Russia, I go back to, you know, and why we don't have a good relationship with them.

in the middle of COVID when I first started interviewing people. I was reading different stories of different countries and how they were handling COVID. And I just went, why don't we send people for a month for two weeks, whatever time frame you wanted, and go talk to these different countries. And sure, some of them are, you know, sunny year long and have different things. They live by the ocean, et cetera. But I was like, but others don't. Others have climates that are similar to ours.

Like, why wouldn't we go on a bit of a trade mission, if you would, an expedition to find out what would work and bring it back home? And the other thought I had was why don't we put a bunch of blue-collar people in a room and go, how are we going to solve, you know, if we're worried about air quality and the transmission of COVID that way, why aren't we looking at different ways, creative ways, to get everybody back to work like as soon as possible now? In fairness, that was quite naive because, I mean, then COVID carried on and I've gone down way too many rabbit holes to think that parts of it weren't just absolutely planned. And part of the hold on society was what they wanted. In saying that, the idea still stands of like, you know, if you're going to try and do things that you've never done before, other countries have probably experienced or conquered those same things. And so to go and learn, it doesn't surprise me you went to Russia and you're like, man, these guys are, man, we should probably. just be talking to these guys. They could probably teach us a few things, right?

Like, and exchange ideas. But in our world, it seems we create enemies and we can never talk to them. And you're like, yeah, but they might hold keys to unlock things we're having challenges with. Oh, absolutely. You know, I mean, they're a huge country.

They've got, they're very innovative. I mean, when you consider what the gross national product of is Russia and you consider the gross national product of, say, the United States and the Russians are challenging the Americans around the world. I mean, that's incredible. That tells you that there's innovation. That tells you that there's focus in that country, whether you like them or not. And we should be leveraging that.

And, you know, they're open to it. They've always been open to it. Do you want to get really controversy on this discussion? Sure. I mean, look at what's going on there right now. I'm going to change the scenario a little bit. Imagine that Canada has a coup and someone takes over the government in Canada.

And then that government starts to murder people in Quebec because they speak French. Let's say that they start to close churches, Catholic churches. Let's say that they start restricting human rights. Let's say they start doing all kinds of crazy things. trade-wise, do you think the United States would sit by and say, oh, that's okay? Or do you think they might invade? Or do you think they might take action against Canada?

Of course, they're threatening now, and none of that's going on here. Now it just change those names from Canada to the Ukraine and United States to Russia. And that's what happened. And so you've got this battle going on that was caused by a coup in a neighboring country. And the Western world is involved in this. We're at war with the Russians right now. But if you were to reverse these things going on. Well, the country that I would put in place at Canada was Cuba.

Cuba is right off the doorstep of the United States. And when the communists were trying to set up things there, the United States, you know, United States said not on our watch. And now there's a whole bunch of, you know, that's a long discussion. But I mean, they embargoed everything around Cuba and they didn't hesitate. No. And there might have been protests. I'm sure there were back in the day.

But that's what the United States did on their shores. And so we look at Russia and what they're doing to Ukraine. And once again, Alberta, you probably don't know this, but about the fourth show I ever did, I brought two geopolitical guys to Lloyd Minster to talk about Russia, Ukraine. and it was only partway through I was getting texts on my phone that people said you might want to address these guys

that there's a huge Ukrainian population in Alberta and I was like, oh right I hadn't even thought about it and so when you talk about Ukraine it can be a very touchy subject where I'm from and yet I don't disagree with you like you're setting up things on their border

Russia is a superpower and you best be careful and I just come back to You know, it's funny that when, you know, all these conversations in Manitoba, which have been wonderful, the people have been wonderful. I can't speak highly enough now being here in summer versus winter. Obviously, two different things. But I think I can say that of Saskatchewan or Alberta. But, you know, you run into similar holdups that just don't make sense to me.

And then, you know, I'll have lots of people say, carefully you don't enter, uh, put into. much common sense, but it brings me all the way back to economic corridors and permafrost. And people saying, there's just too much water, the flooding, the swamp, all these different things. And I'm like, I know a lot of brilliant people. And if you put the amount of money that government loves to put everywhere, but addressing to me what seemed like very important problems to solve, it just seems it can't be that hard. Like is getting a road, a road, slash infrastructure to Churchill or to other deep water ports, that impossible of a task, Ken, with your background?

Well, you know, that's an interesting question, because what is it right now? It's 2026. Well, when they built that port in Churchill, you know, that was, I'm going by my memory now and somebody's going to correct me on this, but that was like 60 years ago. And somehow, remember I mentioned that in 1981,

when I had to design a building on Permaphras, there was no guidance, and I had to get a Russian book. But somehow we built a road, or sorry, we built a rail to Churchill 67 years ago, and it worked, except that we didn't maintain it for like 50 years. And now they're saying, well, you know, we really don't know how to build the road or rail and stabilize it on Permaphrast.

And that's just not true. It's just that we haven't had the political and economic will to do it. I'm looking at what year the, I want to say it's longer than 60 years ago, the Port of Churchill. It could have been because, you know, the Port of Churchill and Port Nelson were being discussed in about 1910. And they started, they actually chose Nelson to build the Deepwater Port. And so the Port of Nelson, they started building in about 1912 and come the war, World War I that is, they stopped because there was a shortage of man. power equipment and whatnot. And so that stopped in 1918. So I'm guessing that Churchill started construction sometime after 1918. It says it opened and began operations in 1931, 1920s it started.

It's built. There you go. So you think we're 100 years past that when they built the port. And somehow here we sit in 26 and, you know, I can't, well, it's not that it even can't be done. that the infrastructure to get there can't be done. Yeah, it's in my conversation. I was almost shocked when I heard this that there's, there's, um, um, cruises going, Hudson Bay cruises. I'm like, I've never heard that before. Now, it's possible, folks.

I live under Iraq. That is very possible. But have you ever heard of a Canadian taking a Hudson Bay cruise? No, like I would say if you want to go up north, everybody talks about Alaskan cruises, not Hudson Bay cruises. And from where I said, if I could get on a Hudson Bay cruise, I'm like, that would be something. Well, you know, I remember the first time I saw one of those come in. I'm trying to think of the cruise line.

I've actually sailed with that cruise line before. But I was doing a job in Arviot. And for those folks who don't know, Arviot is a small hamlet in Nunavut. And it's about at, I'd say about 7 or 8 o'clock on Hudson Bay, if you know what I mean by that. and I was out in a field doing something. I don't even remember what, maybe doing some inspection work or survey work or something. And all of a sudden, all of these people wearing identical red raincoats and red rain pants came out. And there was a guy guiding them through the town, you know, and showing them.

And I remember being shocked by that, which is insane because, look, I've got nothing against the Alaskan cruises. but if you want to experience the Arctic, you know, Inuit way of life, the history, you don't go in on an Alaskan cruise. You go to what's called the Kivalik region of Nunavut, which is in the Hudson Bay on the west shore of Hudson Bay, and those folks still, folks my age in Nunavut, were born on the land and lived traditional lives.

lives, my age. And so you imagine the change they went through. But my point is this, is that those folks still understand what their actual heritage is. They understand how they live, and they still live that way. You know, I'll never forget. We used to charter aircraft all the time when we were doing buildings, and we were building two schools in a place called Joe Haven, Nunavut. and it was on the, it's near the, people might know what, heard of Joe Haven before, because that's where those ships sunk in the water. The explorers went missing.

In any case, we used to charter airplanes, and occasionally I, you know, I wouldn't fill the plane. I'd have a seat or two. And I remember I asked a fellow engineer, actually, he was a registrar for the Association of Professional Engineers. I said, hey, listen, you want to come up for free, you know, I've got a spare seat. It doesn't cost anything.

Why don't you come along with us? So he came along with us, and he was wandering around this school. We were actually doing an addition to the school. And he and I were wandering around, and he said, Ken, you know, this is really, you know, I'm a little disappointed. This is really no different than a school down in Winnipeg. And then we walked into this room. It was like a multi-purpose room. And there were three or four tables set up, and these six-year-old kids were butchering

caribou on the table. So they were, my point is they were integrating their heritage into the school program. Which is beautiful. Yeah, but for this guy, it was so shocking to walk in his room and there's three. Where I went to college in northern Wisconsin, it was right on a bay of Lake Superior. Yeah. Very big, it reminded me in Saskatchewan, actually, minus Lake Superior. Just the people and what they're, you know, big hunting and fishing.

and every fall there would always be in our dorms. There was a back patio, and I remember deer being strung up and, you know, they'd gone out hunting and they're, and I'm like, this feels like home. You know, like this, it's just, you know, like, yeah, that's great. I mean, I interviewed the Prairie Principal from Alberta. I'm spacing on your name, so I'm using your handle that everybody uses you by. He took a small, tiny little rural school and they started farming with the school and having kids be responsible for animals. And their school went from essentially they're going to lose it to now it's, you know, has it grown to thousands of students? Obviously not.

But the idea is worth noting. And probably schools should be thinking about that of ways to get their kids involved in more than just, staring at a textbook, you know, and the way he talked about it, I was like, that's, that's a beautiful thing, right? Like, that's a good idea. And good ideas need to be shared. And I guess when you come full circle all the way back to where we started with permafrost and the Russians having written a book on it, you're like, yeah, well, those are good ideas. And if we're going to build things and do things that are stretched to the human imagination that it can be done. It's political will. It's, you know, the economic will. But if I've ever seen private companies, or if I, the way I look at

private companies is like if they believe there's a return on investment in doing it, right, there's money to be had, they'll go do it. Well, it sounds like from Alberta's perspective on, on a economic corridor, and I might add in Saskatchew to the Churchill, it seems like they're pretty much in favor of that. So when I come all the way to Manitoba, you go, well, the economic political will sounds like it's there from two other provinces to see something like that done. And what you're telling me with permafrost and everything,

it's like, no, it can be done. Like, don't get me wrong. It's not like putting a road in and, you know, know, rural Saskatchewan in the summer where you just toss some dirt and pound it down and carry on with life, right? This is a little more, you're going to have to be a little more technologically savvy, but it can be done. Well, you know, it's not even, you know, when we say technologically savvy, people are thinking about all kinds of incredible state-of-the-art science, but that's not what we're talking

about to deal with permafrost. You know, what you need to do with permafrost is you need to protect it from heat. You need to protect it from heat that might be escaping from a building or in the case of a railway, you've exposed a certain amount of permafrost of the sun. It was never exposed before because it was covered with a layer. So really, you're talking about replacing whatever it is that you've removed, putting on material that's not frost susceptible. And what I mean by frost susceptible is, for instance, gravel that's not saturated.

When you freeze it, it doesn't expand or water if you freeze it, it expands. So all you really need to do is to protect that permafrost layer. It's not that, it's not that incredible. Like, it's not that technologically challenging. How about then the waterways going there, the flooding, different things like that people brought up, is that, you know, like, I think one of the, one of the, the comments I had was, you know, like the environmental risks or the changing of waterways and different things like that. I'm like, well, I don't know. I've been through like, I know BC isn't

northern Manitoba, but like there's these things called bridges and things like that, like where you can get across waterways without having to like destroy everything. But maybe I'm just thinking way too small on this. Like is it, are you going to have to divert giant waterways in order to make sure there's no flooding that wipes out your everything you build? No, and flooding is an issue. I mean, in 2017, that rail line flooded and it was shut down for quite some time. But people should understand that that rail line is, they've done some improvements on it since 2017. But, you know, over my lifetime, I remember we used to, you know, we would take that line and it was not that big a deal.

And then I also remember about already, must be about 15 years ago, there was a huge storm up there. We couldn't bring our people home, so we put them on the train. And that train was going, I don't know what it was going, like five miles an hour, and then it would stop all the time,

and it would sit for a while, and it was freezing cold in the darn thing. And, you know, it's almost like, it's almost like they've approached us purposely that they're going to sabotage the whole thing. Now, with regard to this permafrost issue, and it's, and flooding and a couple of other things, things. That's one of the reasons why there's two proposals here for Arctic Corridor. There's one that goes to Churchill and they're calling it Churchill Plus. The feds have announced, the feds in the province of Manitoba, I believe the numbers are they've announced about 250 million, which doesn't mean we have it, but $250 million worth of work on the Churchill port and what they call Churchill Plus port, which means improving some of the infrastructure there. And keep in mind,

that infrastructure is 100 years old. And so there's that proposal, but whatever money they spend there, they can't overcome certain physical limitations of that Churchill Port. Churchill Port is actually in the mouth of the Churchill River, and that is fresh water, which means it freezes solid in the wintertime,

so there's no way to overcome that. The second big challenge there is that because it's in the mouth of the river, large ships can't turn around in it, you know, because this was made 100 years ago, right? And we didn't use those kinds of ships. Third issue is that the large ships like the Paramaxes are too deep, like they need more deep, depth water than they have in Churchill. So those things you really can't overcome by spending money in them.

The second proposal is reviving a project that they started in 1910, and it was canceled due to technological issues at the time and the war, World War War War War War. Now, the Nelson River proposal, that's the secondary port, actually cuts off about 300 kilometers of rail or road line that goes through Muskeg and the difficult permafrost. And a lot of that's through rock. There's still permafrost there, but it really cuts down that issue. And it does provide you with a deep water port. They're talking about building on like a terminal island about a mile off the shore.

and you're in salt water. So that means, generally speaking, Hudson Bay, because it's salt water, freezes in the wintertime about a meter thick, meter and a half thick, and somewhat reinforced hull, oil tankers and stuff, can manage that without even ice breaking capacity. So not to mention if you got even a little bit of traffic,

the ice breaking will be going on constantly, I would think, right? So already that, That would be a, you know, when you're coming through the first time and there's nobody been through, you've got to break all that ice. But if you actually started to have a bit of traffic, it would never actually get, well, I don't think it would set up as hard as what the first time through would be, correct? Yeah, it all depends on what the shipping frequency is, right? But, I mean, they're talking about, at Nelson River, they're talking about an oil shipping capacity between quarter of a million and half a million barrels. put that in perspective. Alberta's total outputs about 2 million barrels a day.

So, you know, that's a significant portion of what Alberta is shipping out. If you can also ship out LNG, that was one of the major aspects of the feasibility study on the Nelson River. And then you've got potash, you've got Manitoba minerals. I mean, you know, the Port of Churchill currently operates from about June to first week in November. That's it. This thing could be around. So I'm a little bit puzzled myself about, and I say this carefully, the discussion or the promise of spending $250 million in Churchill.

Because, you know, I've been working in the Arctic for a long, long time, and I can't tell you how many of these promises I've heard, they're going to build a highway to rank an inlet Nunavut. They're going to do this. They're going to do that. And they spend a whole lot of money and a whole lot of advertising. And then it just kind of goes, and so you wonder with what I would call the,

the fundamental limitations of Churchill, mainly freshwater, frozen solid, you can't break that with an icebreaker, and the restrictions of depth and the restrictions of a ship being able to turn around. Like those are fundamental. You can't change that by spending money on it. So I'm not sure what the,

consideration is and why would you want to maintain a did an additional 300 kilometers of permafrost railway they have to know this don't they oh yeah this is not like i mean i i'm no i'm no rocket scientist uh scientists sitting here folks i've done how many conversations in manitoba that even you know like just my previous conversations in alberta that go back five years and then you know i think about it right before we left interviewing the premier and this conversation coming back out of i'm like i'm no rocket scientist. I'm just a guy who, you know, sits and talks to people. And over the course of several conversations of Manitoba, stumbled back on Churchill, the importance of it, and within talking to what,

20 people, 30 people, 50 people, it ain't 100. You've already ran into, okay, actually the real limitations of the Churchill is freshwater versus saltwater. And then, you know, the, you know, modern ships versus what used to be there. And you go, okay, that actually makes a ton of sense. So it shouldn't be the economic corridor to the Churchill. It should be the economic corridor to Nelson. And not only does it come with all the added benefit of saltwater, larger ships can turn, etc., etc., now you've shortened the distance 300 kilometers as well.

That all actually sounds like a lot of positives. Oh, yeah. And, you know, kind of the terminus of utilities and good rail and road is Gillum, Manitoba. And there's a power station there. Now, from Gillam, Manitoba to Churchill is, like I said, over about 300 kilometers or more, through the worst kind of muskeg and stuff that you can think of, where if you just extend that line straight out, you hit the Hudson Bay where Nelson is. So you could extend to actually having utility power there.

You know, you can put in a road because if we're talking about Churchill and we want a road there, so you're not just fixing up an old railway. You're going to have to build a road beside it through the worst permafrost areas. And again, you know, keeping in mind what permafrost is. Yes. But going straight to Nelson, now it's a green site, which means there's nothing there. That's not true. I've actually been there.

And don't ask me how I was there. I can't remember, but I know I've been there, and I remember walking. There's an old trestle bridge there that used to go out to this little island. And I've been on there, and I've walked it. And I was telling my wife about it, Rosalie. And she said, well, what were you doing there? And I don't remember. But I was doing, but the point being is that for me not to remember,

that's going to be like in the late 80s. And for me to have been there, it's because someone was talking about doing something. So 40 years later, after I was there inspecting the infrastructure, they still haven't done a damn thing. So it kind of gives you a window into this, all of these promises that they keep making and do nothing. You've been to Manitoba all your life, correct? Yes.

Do Manitobans, I know you can't speak for all Manitoba, but do they care about it? I actually, like, you know, in Alberta, we need to get our goods to market. is a pretty water cooler conversation. I think a lot of Albertans, whether they realize they're not, it gets talked about quite a bit

because obviously we don't have a big giant body of water to just go, and out we go. So pipelines are a big conversation. Why deep water ports come up is because of, you know, lots of different reasons, but essentially, you know, when I think about it, in the middle of COVID, and when Biden was in and they just canceled pipelines,

people had to get really creative. And I think of the rail lines became a lifeline for a lot of oil companies specifically, but probably other companies I'm not even thinking of. You know, he mentioned potash and I'm sure Saskatchewan has their thoughts because once again, they're not connected to a giant water port. And so you just look at, you know, so then you look at a map, right? It's very simply, you know, well, the obvious place is going through BC.

We already have lines going through BC, but then you have EB. say things and not only eby, but, you know, tons of different groups of people, it would be said, not on our watch, right? You're like, okay, well, we could go north, you know, that's a long way. We could go south, but, you know, we saw it with Biden, and you just never know what's going to happen with the president there, whether they're going to open up new, and then you have the conversation that happens. You don't want to rely on one customer.

Okay, fair enough. So then the obvious choice comes to the Hudson Bay. But here in Manitoba, it just, just seems to me like you're sitting on this huge opportunity where provinces to the west of four certain would use it. I think there would be an economic boom for Manitobans, I think, but I could be wrong. Do Manitobans even think about it? You're going to get me kicked out of here. Look at, I'm going to answer you this way.

Manitoba is a bit of a microcosm for Canada overall. Canada is the richest country in the world from a natural resources standpoint, and yet we're moving towards or are in poverty for a lot of our people. You know, when you compare our production or our earnings per population to the United States or our productivity to the United States, it's in a tank. Think about Manitoba. So Manitoba is actually on the same petroleum. reserve that Alberta and Saskatchewan is.

Alberta produces 2 million barrels a day. Manitoba produces 45,000 barrels a day. Think about that. Manitoba has one of the largest potash reserves similar to Saskatchewan. We almost shipped nothing. They're talking now about a big development with potash and that's kind of pushing the corridor a little bit. Manitoba, sorry, let's back up.

Alberta and Saskatchewan have actually explored their mineral and petroleum reserves across their land. I think Alberta's explored 80 or 90% of what their potential is. Manitoba's explored somewhere around 15%. We have one of the greatest fisheries in the world in Manitoba. And I'm not talking about Hudson Bay, although that's a fishery too, but just two lakes, Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba. One of the greatest freshwater fisheries in the world.

And I live on Lake Manitoba. and there's nothing. There's very little coming out of there. It hasn't changed. It's gone down since I was a child. Recreation-wise, this lake that I'm looking on, Lake Winnipeg, 10th biggest lake in the world,

freshwater lake in the world, where I'm just going to, I'm looking across at the lake right now. If I take my boat out onto that lake, which you would think is an incredible recreational resource. The beaches, you're staying at the beach. I'm on the beach here. I can't fill up my boat with gasoline anywhere on this lake.

There's no infrastructure. The roads are a mess. We had the Port of Churchill, we haven't really put any significant money in for 100 years. I don't want to focus in and say necessarily, say something terrible about Manitoba because this is really what we are in Canada. We want, but we don't want. we've got politicians doing the most insane things

but we don't want to get involved you know we want to be able to you know we're happy we go to a restaurant on a Friday night and we can go to the football game we don't want to be involved in politics we're able to moan and groan and the result is is that we have the greatest wealth in the world

under our feet and not just in oil or uranium or potash or you name it we have it fresh water We have the largest freshwater preserve in the world. And yet, we're dropping into poverty. We're dropping into poverty. You can't, you know, we brag about the things that we have that have failed health care system.

I know we're drifting here, but to answer your question, it's not just Manitoba. Healthcare system, what was the last time you were in an ER? What was the last time you tried to get a doctor? I could tell you a funny story about that, but, you know, our army has actually an operational capacity of about 15,000. It's different than what they tell you folks on the news. I don't know if you've interviewed Catherine Christensen about that. I haven't.

It's incredible what we've done or not done, no, what we've done to this country. And so I guess that's perhaps not as focused of an answer as you wanted. No, I think I grew up in Saskatchew. And so far on the road trip, the two worst provinces for roads, bar none, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. And I remember coming across Manitoba when we biked it 20 years ago. It's the only place in Canada had the cops called on us because, you know, you know this as well anyone. It's gravel shoulders. And so like, you know, we were taking some secondary highways and, you know, you can imagine you can't get over.

And so the cops got called on us. and they came and I don't know what they thought they were going to find. And she was a lovely lady and she's like, huh, maybe just pull over every once in a while to let a semi go by kind of thing. And we're like, oh, okay, you know, like the highway wasn't that busy. Like it just, it's a Manitoba highway in the middle of the country.

But we're like, okay, sure, yep, not a problem. And, you know, 20 years later, the Manitoba highways, in my opinion, are no better. I've been all across province now, not all of it, obviously, but enough. And I'm like, This is super strange. Like, how is it possible with all the, you know, possibilities that a simple thing that I think governments are supposed to take care of are in this much disrepair, I guess, where you come from Manitoba, Alberta, the highways are phenomenal. I think they're phenomenal.

Growing up right on the border, I remember it as a kid going across. You just see it. You go from Saskatchewan and cross the border. Immediately it changed. you drop down from Manitoba in the United States, it immediately changes. As high as I think of Alberta's highways, the Americans have phenomenal highways. It's just impressive. Everywhere you go, they're just beautiful.

And yeah, there's lots of road construction, but they're like upkeeping their highways. It's impressive. Manitoba, you know, the road sucks. They just do. But the country itself or the province itself is absolutely beautiful. Once again, I realize it's summer and it's not the, the dead of winter. But I just look and I just see so many possibilities.

And it reminds me of growing up in Saskatchewan where everybody left Saskatchewan went to Alberta for work for everything. Even Lloyd Minster for the longest time was growing, but it was growing to the Alberta side. Nobody wanted to live in the Saskatchewan side. That's starting to change, right? Obviously they had the NDP there for a lot of years

and now with the SaaS party and there's lots of people who don't like the SaaS party. But the direction of that province has changed. I wonder, you know, like with the NDP being elected, and I know I don't know the full political history of Manitoba, is it an NDP thing? Is it just leadership across the board in Manitoba? Because I know a lot of smart people from Manitoba

that got their head on their shoulders and doing really cool stuff. So it can't just be one leader, but maybe it's just going back to the microcosm of, they're just not involved politically. And when you're not involved politically, you kind of get the results that you allow to happen. Yeah, you're right. You know, there's a lot in there that you were just talking about.

We currently have an NDP government, and we float between NDP governments and PC governments, progressive conservative governments. Frankly, there's no difference. It's an interesting thing in Manitoba, you know. It's like sitting down and playing cards, and you've got 52 cards in the deck, and you're counting out the cards, for instance.

And you reshuffle the cards and you lay them out again and you keep expecting that it's going to get better. But you never add any new cards to the deck and you keep reshuffling and reshuffling and reshuffling. So you don't have development. You know, you've got government spending hundreds of millions of dollars in these insane projects that they have. You know, there's a whole bunch of them that they spent.

hundreds of millions of dollars on and they're sitting there doing nothing. You know, government bragging, we're doing this or not to bring business into the, no, they're not. They just get in the way. And this is coming from somebody who's been involved in this directly. You know, I used to do business all over the world. And I'll never forget. I was doing business with a group in Austria. And it was at the time when biodiesel was the big thing.

And then, of course, canola would be the feedstock. And so we were going to build, these Austrians wanted to build in Manitoba a crushing plant to crush Canadian canola and shipped the raw oil to Austria where they refine it into biodiesel. And this was a thing that I had negotiated with these folks from Vienna. And when they came to town, the government of Manitoba found out about it. And I still remember our interesting leader of industry trade and whatever it's called nowadays.

And they found out I had these people in town and they, oh, they wanted to be involved. And they wanted to, they wanted to contribute. And I remember sitting with these guys in the legislature. And the government wanted to impress us and have lunch with us. And these folks from Austria were, you know, they weren't like blue-collar people. They were very wealthy people. So they knew the finer things, living in Vienna, you know, if you've ever been to Vienna. and we were down in the basement at this point of the legislative building

and like what would have been a cafeteria trying to impress these investors who were talking about investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Manitoba and the other things that they did to kind of almost sabotage my efforts you know the project didn't go ahead in the end and it wasn't their fault in the end but these government people who get in the way who tell the voters that you know we're doing this or not to attract business government doesn't attract business at least not in manitoba they don't because they haven't got the capability of doing that they need to get out of the way

they need to get regulations out of the way they need to support exploration instead of putting roadblocks in front of exploration they need to if they're going to do anything they should be doing it in the areas of education and innovation and getting the heck out of the way for us because there will never be a change in in Manitoba. If we keep shuffling the same 52 cards and think we're going to get a different outcome, we need to start adding to that deck, which means bringing in investment. That means getting out of the way of innovation.

Government doesn't innovate. I've never seen government innovate, and I've done business all over the world. They need to get the heck out of the way and let those of us who know how to innovate, innovate. When you look at Alberta, because you've been all over the world, all the different places you've been, and you've been living here all your life,

and then you see Alberta. You know, like you grew up and you would have watched Quebec have its referendums. Now it's come to the West, a referendum coming to the West. As a Manitoba, as a Canadian, do you have any thoughts on what you're witnessing out in Alberta? What I'm

What I'm And you know It's not just in Alberta Alberta is the one Talking about it loudly right now You know folks One of the things we really Lack as a people

Is an understanding of history It's so important We don't teach it anymore in schools We don't teach civics in schools We don't teach proper history in schools And if you look at at what happened to not just Alberta, but Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, even British Columbia to an extent. If you look at the uneven representation we have in Parliament, it's always

been that way. You know, each of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Vancouver get six senators. And in Alberta, the ratio of population to senators, like 800,000. You know what it is in Newfoundland? Forty thousand. I mean, have you got any Supreme Court? judges? Well, there's kind of one from the West, but he was born in, he or she were born in Montreal. You've got taxation. You've got Quebec preventing pipelines through their territory, which by the way is crap because the federal government has the ability to expropriate and force that issue, but they don't, so we're buying oil from other places. Now, it's true that the refineries in Eastern Canada are not set up for Alberta oil, but that could have been changed.

You know, there's so many things. You know, these questions lead us to all kinds of branches of all kinds of things we could talk about. It's not just in Alberta. Saskatchewans fed up. Manitobans less so are fed up. Quebecers are fed up. And I don't think it's got to do with any kind of special deal because, let's face it, Quebec has an incredibly special deal with Canada.

Can you imagine Quebec's one of our richest providences, and yet they get most of the transfer payments? Do you know why that is? Because they have a special deal about how they calculate... What they do to calculate transfers is they calculate the wealth of the population. And in Alberta, they count all of the wealth coming out of the oil production. Well, Quebec, their biggest production is hydro.

That's discounted. So it makes Quebec's earnings per capita much less, which means they get transfer payments where Alberta doesn't. So they've got special deals, but they still want to get out. Quebec has a special deal with immigration. They control immigration into the province. Alberta doesn't, but Quebec still wants to leave. So it's not about a special deal.

It's about not feeling part of the whole and being treated as something different than the whole, the whole still being what used to be called Upper Canada. And that's a big issue. And until we address that issue, and if we address that issue, it will address the other issues as well. Because this Alberta separation, in my opinion, would be very difficult without some kind of consolidation with Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Because right now, Alberta is really relying, I think, 70% or 85% of all the oil production, and Alberta goes to the United States.

Alberta sells it at a significant reduction to the Americans, and the Americans just kidnapped, of course, the president of Venezuela and took over the country, which is the same kind of oil that Alberta produces, and it's right there on the Gulf. So do we think if Alberta separates, they're going to get a better deal out of the Americans? So I'm not anti-separation,

and I understand what the pragmatics are, but thinking we can do this alone without the three prairie provinces going along with it and developing the corridor through the Hudson Bay. That's a really difficult road to hole. Yeah, it's me and you both could sit here and go, so then how do you fix Canada? And then you bring up the impossibility almost

of getting a constitutional change of the magnitude we're talking. And you can just do the math and how many people you'd need to have on board, how many provinces you didn't need to have on board, et cetera, et cetera. And you go, man, I think that's how Albertans got to where they're at. Yeah. As they looked at that and they said, you know, I bet you that's how Quebec got to where they're at. It's like, we are, if we don't do it, then it won't be done.

Yeah. And, you know, I had a lady. She actually spoke at the Cornerstone Forum, um, Karen Katoos. Whiskey. Talk about it isn't the places that have, you know, you think it was, it was a conversation on, on the most oppressed and who gained freedom first. And she thought it would be the most oppressed gain it first. They've been, they've been kicked around for so long. They must be the ones to get their freedom back first. And what she found was, actually, it's people with the most freedom that gain more freedom first. And everybody falls along. So when I look at Alberta, it's self-eastern. evident to me. They're the only province in all of Canada after COVID hosted their premier and we're done with it. We're, you know, like lots of people in all of Canada, heck the world, love Daniel Smith. And Albertans, there's a good chunk of them that aren't happy with her and want her to do more. And it's interesting because I'm like, I think a lot of provinces feel like, you just be happy, you've got a premier that can talk and, you know, has her head on

her shoulders. And Albertans, you know, and I go back to Karen Katowski's idea. is they're not, they're not okay with just the status quo. They understand how much better life could be if we just went and did it. And we want other problems. I think like as I travel Manitoba, I'm like, man,

it'd be cool if Manitoba would just pick their heads up and realize what they have sitting around them. Maybe they do realize that. It's just being here for 10 days. I'm like, man, this is a beautiful province. I wouldn't have said that 10 days ago. I wouldn't even thought to say. said it. Well, you know, like going to Victoria Beach yesterday and just seeing what's there, I'm like,

this is like, I don't know where this feels like, but it doesn't feel like Manitoba. Like, it's something you'd find in, honestly, somewhere down in Arizona or something, right? Like the little community there. I'm like, this is really cool. And I didn't expect that to be there. You know, you're, And so Manitobans, you know, it's, you're friendly Manitoba. And it's, it's been crazy to be around so many and the kindness that's been showing to not only myself but my family. But then when you just take a step back and you look at the possibilities that we're sitting here, it's like you just need to unlock them. And great things could follow. Cooperation between provinces and everything else.

You know, every time it seems our premiers get together, it seems like they're in an argument. And the argument's got to stop. If we just start of working together, we could push the federal government wherever we want to push them. Well, you know what the issue is, really? And this has got to do with what I like so much about

the fundamental of what's happening in Alberta. And what do I mean by that? In my opinion, every political movement, every governing scheme will fail if the people aren't involved. Every single one. We were talking about it last night. You know, we were sitting around, you know, having a beer, and your kids were running around the kitchen, right?

And what I said to you is, you know, if we were to put a bunch of cookies on that, island in their kitchen and leave the room for a couple hours. Even though we told the kids not to eat the cookies, they're going to eat the cookies. And that's what we've done with our governments in the West. The people don't even know how their government works. School board elections get 10% turnout. It's about 10%. Municipal elections get about 30% turnout. And in Manitoba, about 35 to 40% of every municipal official is elected by acclamation. What that means is nobody ran against them.

They got zero votes. They got the job because they're the only ones that showed up. This is the same across Canada. We've got turnout in provincial elections at about 50%, 49%, whatever it is. And federal isn't a hell of a lot better. You've got parties in this country on all levels

who don't listen to the people. They don't need to listen to the people. They're not trying to get the 45% or 49% of people that never vote to vote. They don't even focus on. I gave a speech at a strategic planning session for the PC party of Manitoba in February at a, well, it wasn't a formal speech.

I stood up and, you know, me. And I said, well, why are we spending so much time trying to get the five or six percent of the voters who vote NDP this time and conservatives next time, why don't we go after the 40-something percent? Oh, no, Ken. Oh, they never vote. We've done study. No. If they go after the 40-some-odd percent, 49 percent, 45 percent, whatever it is of disenfranchised citizens who don't vote, Those citizens don't vote because they don't believe it makes a difference. And the reason it doesn't make a difference is those same folks who are disenfranchised aren't doing anything.

They're not getting involved. They're not going out to the school board meetings. They're not showing up when the government comes up with some insane program. They sit at home. They think about the football game. And you can see I'm emotional. I'm emotional. You know, I got involved in all of this stuff during COVID like many of us did.

And when I was involved with the National Citizens Inquiry and writing with the other three commissioners writing the 2023, 5,000 page report, about halfway through that process, it dawned on me that this wouldn't have happened had the government feared the people, had the people been involved. And so we started Manitoba Stronger Together. And you know, all Manitoba Stronger Together is it's a non-partisan educational group that you join for free. There's doesn't have a bank account. Don't take donations. Can't buy our membership. We don't sell coffee mugs. And we're making a huge difference in Manitoba right now.

There's a municipal election going on. And we've changed the way the elections are done here. We started a training program for people who wanted to become part of, who wanted to run but didn't know how and didn't know what the job involved. We've got municipalities now offering those similar programs that never happened before. We're supporting, I don't know how many different candidates are 20, 30 candidates. We do a program on it. We introduce candidates.

And you know, we're hated by the government for educating people. We don't take a position on anything. educating people. We're changing legislation. They brought in this metropolitan region plan a couple of years ago. And we had that, we didn't get it canceled, but we got 11 of 18 municipalities to get themselves out of the darn thing. And we're hated for this. Now, having just said what I said, do you know that the government of the province of Manitoba has an educational department whose responsibility is to do what we're doing? And we approached them last year.

As a matter of fact, I was in Edmonton when I did it. I approached them by phone and said, hey, listen, Mr. Director of the Manitoba Civic Education Department, I can't remember his name, but I have all the emails. I have all the receipts, as they say nowadays. And I said, why don't you come to our group and talk to us about how the system works? And, oh, sure, Ken. Oh, that's exactly what we do.

We'd love to do that. Well, how about two weeks from now or whatever it was? Oh, absolutely, we'll be there. A couple days later, I got a phone call. Well, you know, Ken, I've got something else scheduled that day. Ken says, well, we'll do it a week later. Okay, get a call another week later. You know, Ken, I don't think we can do it.

I said, why can't you do it? Well, we can't come out to a group like yours, you know, a nonpartisan political education group. We can't come out to those kinds of things. I say, well, they're all taxpayers. Well, see you later. So we're doing the job of a department that you're paying to do the job, the legislators hate our guts and I know that because I have connections

all through the municipalities and the MLAs and I'm told every day what I am, what they think of me and the reason they get away with that Sean is that folks aren't involved folks don't know how the system works you and I talked about earlier

you know that it's so great what you're doing right now because we're face to face and we're breathing the same air and we're looking each other and rather than being a posted stamp on a computer screen, I don't, I believe that the issues that they're having in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, you name it, are mostly because the people are not involved.

So if we want change, we have to become the change. Right. I mean, I was talking to another fellow from Alberta, a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about, I guess there's whether they're formal or informal committee set up, and they're examining, you know, should Alberta be a republic, should

it be something similar to what we have, a constitutional, whatever, and all these other things. And I said to him, well, that's great. Any one of those systems will work, and any one of those systems will fail if the folks who are being governed aren't

involved. If you lock in you know, it's really cool. We all know this, how the government says one thing, but it means another. You know, BC got some legislation a few years ago about how they could recall elected officials, right? But the rules that are put in place of that make it impossible. You have to have more people to get, to vote somebody out or to recall somebody than ever voted in the first place. So you think the legislators who agreed that,

they would do that, didn't know that. And there weren't enough people involved to keep their feet to the fire? I mean, it seems to me that if you want to have recall legislation on elected officials, it should be balanced to how many people voted in the first place and how many votes they got. Not 51% of the voting public

because you never even get that many people voting in the first place. So until the people get involved, and I don't mean there's a protest going on to the legislature this year, and let's go down there and jump up and down and have a hot dog. I mean, getting involved at the grassroots level, investing an hour or two a week, you know, we're investing 30 hours a week, something like that, on trying to get people involved and we're educating people.

But can you imagine, what's the population of Alberta right now, three million? No, it's a little over five million? Oh, there you go. That's how far off I am. So five million people. So let's just pretend that two and a half million of them are voting age. You imagine if each one of those people invested an hour a week? Well, I mean, obviously, me and you were a little different than some people.

But I think, you know, if you did a couple hours a week, an hour a week, heck, on just politics. within I don't know it's been what 16, 17 hours of conversation here in Manitoba for me to figure out

sounds like Nelson would be the spot now is there way more complexities than just knowing the spot absolutely but that's like 17 call it 20 hours

so at you know 10 weeks two hours a week all right let's stretch it out you know 20 weeks it's not even half a year

if people did that they go why aren't we doing this so getting people to engage is a difficult task and yet very reasonable ask you know I think I go back to COVID

I don't know why it took me so long but one afternoon I was just tired of hearing the statistics from people I just went out and did the this took me probably less than an hour because I mean it's simple math went and looked at Sweden's stats

and I went and looked at Florida stats because it was all public North Dakota not North Dakota South Dakota Alberta Saskatchewan Quebec Canada and I just I just went in and I just looked at the numbers because I just kind of wanted to see

and it became very very very I can't put enough very evidence that if you were over like 70 years old, there was something to be concerned about. But I think when you get to a certain age, you're probably concerned about lots of flus coming through. And the younger you went, and it was by decade rapidly. If you were under 40, you had nothing to worry about. Heck, if you were under 60, you pretty much had nothing to worry about. And yet, that's not what was being said in media. And that took myself. But once again, I was interviewing all these people. I

hadn't done it. As soon as I did the work myself, you couldn't convince me any otherwise. I'm like, They're like, just go look at all this stats. They're all sitting there everywhere. I mean, when you run into people in the freedom crowd, by and large, all of them had done that work. And you couldn't set their mind any other way because they looked into it. They all knew about the core mobility problem. They all knew about, you know, why can't we use ivermectin? Well, it's pretty simple.

If they have any therapeutic, they can't have emergency authorization. Once you understood that little hookup, you go, well, that's, That's why they're not going to allow anything because they want to put this in place. And that, you know, you think of people getting engaged. We go an hour a week. I mean, you do an hour one week. You're going to pull on a thread. And once you start pulling on that thread, it's hard to stop because you're like,

hmm, I better pull on it just a bit more. Ah, crap. Now there's a few more things. I better pull on, you know, and it was Jordan Peterson. I remember watching him. went and listened to him speak probably four or five times when he came to Alberta. And one of the last times he was talking to Rogers Place, right? Dammitz Norther's Arena.

So 17,000 people or whatever they jammed in there that night. And he said, I'm not coming to save you. Something along those lines. And then he said, you want to be saved? It's like get involved in your community and talk to your neighbors. And what you're going to find is you don't have all the animals. answers. So then you're going to have to go out and find the answers. And then you're going to get involved in a school board. And he's like, and then you're going to learn how to deal with people

because not everybody's going to agree with you. And you're going to, you're going to polish yourself. And eventually, you're going to become something very different than what you started out to do. I, man, it sucks hearing that because everybody wants Jordan Peterson to come save you. But the truth of the matter is you got to do the work. And I think so many of us know that. And we just wished more people knew that. And when it comes to politics, you know, it was David Parker, who said it's a contact sport. It's not a, you know, you got to get involved. You can't just sit on the, in the stands and watch. You've got to get involved. And I think that's what a lot of us are hoping more Manitobans, but not just Manitoba across the board, do, is get more

involved. Well, you're right. And that is the key to this. You know, your, you're, your, your, your, your premier, your prime minister, if they really thought that you were a threat? And I'm not talking about violence. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about at the polls, at the voting booth, at wherever it might be. If they thought you were a threat,

they would do what you wanted to do. And yet, they're doing the opposite of what would be of value to Canada. We're sending, I don't even know what the numbers and the millions are overseas, where we have a failed, not a failing, we have a failed health care system, we have failed roads, we have a failed policing system

everywhere in this country, and yet your taxes keep going up. And nothing improves. Nothing improves? And I, you know, yeah. But folks, if they're not involved, if they're not coming out and going to the council meetings, if they're not showing up at the ledge,

maybe you show up at a legislative session, Once a year. You imagine if every voting age person in Canada showed up with their legislature just one session, one day a year? Imagine the message that would send? Is that too much? When there's an Edmonton Oilers game, do you even think about going to that? You know, how many times a year? Of course, it's not the Eskimos.

Yeah, but it should be the Eskimos. But regardless, yeah, the Elks. I mean, I think they learned if you were Emmington Eskimos fan and they changed it to the Elks, attendance, everything. I mean, it was, you want to understand what a, uh, the group of people think, you can, you can shout at them that it's Eskimos,

whatever, but the attendance, everything has, you know, plummeted. Why is that? Yeah. Because people don't, what you're trying to put on a populace, a fan base, they didn't like it. They didn't, it's ridiculous. But, but it's, it's true what they do, what that,

What the, we had this big thing, I mentioned it before, we called the Winnipeg metropolitan region coming into Manitoba, and nobody knew anything about it. And believe it or not, the conservative government brought this thing in. And this was insane what they came up with. And in 2024, they had to do two public hearings. And they were bragging about how they'd done all these hearings and got all of this public input, you know, during COVID.

They did one in 2019 and then one in it was 21 or 22 to some kind of public discussion, you know, before they had done this report. And they bragged about incredible attendance they had. They had like attendance at each one of those meetings of about 200 people. There's 800,000 people in the region that are affected. So anyway, in summer of 2024, they actually had to, they had a detailed plan they had prepared, which was absolute insanity. and they brought it out to the public at one hearing, and it was full, and people found out about it, and there was almost a riot at the second one. They had to shut it down.

And we were running around the province educating, we were going to town after town after town, on our own nickel, by the way, because, man, remember, we don't take donations and everything else. And after that near riot, we had the premier came out, and they introduced that these are municipalities didn't have to participate anymore, and so we... And what was this? It was, you guys had it in Calgary and Edmonton.

It was called a metropolitan planning region. And you guys both in Edmonton and Calgary canceled it. But essentially it was insane. So 18 municipalities, 17 surrounding Winnipeg plus Winnipeg makes 18, including my municipality, we're about an hour outside of Winnipeg. They all joined this regional planning system. This group had Winnipeg, the city of Winnipeg had veto power over any discussion and any decision made by all 18 municipalities.

Most of the counselors who were in those municipalities had no idea until we told them. This unelected group had expropriation power. And once they were passing a regional development plan, once it was passed, it was non-appealable. And all of these little communities like the Municipality I live in lost all of their ability to do planning, you know, development, building permits. It was all under this auspices of this crazy group. And when you read their plan, oh, my goodness, it had all kinds of, every single UN program was in that. They were going to monitor you.

They, they, they, they, they, they had to get to zero carbon. I remember this. Yes. And nobody, none of these people that, what were going along with at, these municipal, each of the communities had their mayor on the board of this thing. The mayors hadn't read the damn plan. I read the plan. None of the counselors had even seen it, but they all supported this thing, and it was going to go into legislation.

We found out, we educated everybody about it. We went to, I can't remember how many of the communities and put on our own dime again these. And we had communities where we had three, four, five hundred people show up. We had communities where eight people show up. But we got the legislation changed, and we're still fighting it now. There's still seven communities in it. But my point is this, this little group with no funding just starts to talk. And we change the legislation, and we've almost eliminated this thing.

And so my point is it doesn't take like in, like you see, you don't have to raise millions. You just have to get out there and talk to your neighbors and start reading and start. And we've got a new one coming up right now that we're, we've, I personally have rented the community center just a few miles, just out where you're. And on the August 15th, we're exposing another insane scheme that the municipality is voting on and people don't know about. And so unless you get involved on a day-to-day basis, unless you, everyone's in a while, go to a council meeting, unless you, unless you, everyone's in a while, go to a council meeting, unless you, unless you, give a phone call to your MP or your MLA, they won't represent you. They'll represent who's ever banging on the door,

who's ever donating to them, who's ever showing up at the meetings. So Canadians, they don't have to make this their life thing. They just have to do it once. It's a year. Once a month for a couple hours. Put on your hockey shirt. Pretend you're going to a,

a hockey game, for goodness sake. But get involved, because it doesn't matter how many brainiacs get involved with figuring out some super-duper system to govern us. If we're not involved in the governing, we will become governed. If we're not involved with the governing, we will become governed. You know, it's really that simple. It's really that simple. Well, now let me ask you one final question, which has, it's a lighter one.

We're going across Canada and elsewhere, right, on this year-long road trip. I've been asking people their favorite memory of whether it's, you know, when you're a kid or as a father, your favorite road trip or camping story that, you know, you just think back and you're like, man, that was fun times. Well, you know, mine story is pretty typical for a Manitoba. You know, when my kids are small, So there was, we had two small kids and my wife and I, and we had this little worn out Datsun 510.

You know, if you remember the that, it's very, it's like a little matchbox with tires. You could see the road through the floor. But we needed a vacation and like most Manitobans, where would we go? We drove to Calgary. And so I remember with the kids, we drove to Calgary and then we went to Banff

and we drove from Banff to Jasper and I remember in that little car my white knuckles. I'd never been in the mountains before and the kids are in the back da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I think that was a great trip but again it's the connection between us here in Manitoba

and Alberta and Saskatchewan. A lot of us, That's where we're from. That's where our relatives are from. That's where we go to vacation. This is home to us. It's not just Alberta alone. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba,

we're joined at the hip, literally. And so I guess my favorite memory involves Alberta, the people from Alberta, the geography from Alberta, the availability of Alberta, and I would sure hate to see that that somehow negatively impacted. Yeah, well, as in Alberta now, but growing up in Saskatchewan, even in COVID, when we talked, when people would talk negatively about certain areas, even certain generations, boomers comes up an awful lot, right?

I know people from all over there. You know, we talk about, you know, like the further I go east, where I find Trump bad comes up a lot. And I'm like, I'm married to an American. Like, I, you know, it's hard for me to, you know, just be like, oh, yeah, they're all bad, right? Ottawa, when we bike Canada, the nicest man we met across Canada, bar none was in Ottawa. So, like, are there bad people in the world? Yep.

There certainly is. But by and far, I think the people, humanity wins. We just got to see it. And we got to, and it's that unity thing. It's a tough thing to get people collaborating with each other. You know, it goes back to all the way back to start. Where we started. It shocks me that Russia used to put things in the Port of Churchill.

I just, I don't know why it shocks me, but probably because of the day and age we live in where nobody could ever see anything to do with the Russia. And yet, if we educate ourselves, we're going to find Russia comes up an awful lot in our history. And certainly what you're pointing out with your road trip is, you know, the prairie provinces have a lot of history together. and it makes us allies if we just see it that way.

And I think a lot of people do. But with Alberta separation or the referendum coming up, a lot of people feel like they're abandoning, right? It's not abandoning. A lot of Albertans see it as the only way to save Canada, right? Like they just, we've got to find a way out of this. And if nobody else will do it, we'll do it. And we'll bring everybody along with us because,

something needs to change. There's too many large issues going on right now that the East has voted back in and I can sit here and say I don't understand it. I just, I don't. After 10 years of Trudeau, they could have put in Wayne Grexky as the leader for the liberals

that whole team has to go. It just needs to move on. We need fresh eyes on this. Either way, appreciate you having me out this morning. and people probably heard it kick on. It's your little waterfall. And I don't know, that's what's cool about being on the road,

not being in a studio where nothing changes in the sound. You know, it's like the sun's shining. I'm sure people on the video have seen, you know, Ken slowly get brighter and brighter as the sun's coming up. It's been hot here. Man, it's been hot and humid. But I've enjoyed my time in Manitoba, and I guess the next interview I do will be coming

from Ontario, which is going to enter in a whole group of new conversations, right? Because every province has got its ways. And certainly Alberta and Saskatchewan growing up there know it very well. Or I feel I do. Manitoba, I did not. It's been really cool to get to know how Manitobans think and some of the issues going on there. And for the audience, next up is Ontario, so that should be fun. But, Ken, I appreciate you sitting down and doing this and sharing your thoughts

and exploring my brain as I go with permafrost and different things like that, because I just find it very interesting. So thanks again for doing this. Well, it's really good to see you. It's been too long. Thank you for coming out.