Shaun Newman Podcast - #1146 - Mike Merry & Mira Metter

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Mike Werry and Mira Metter are a Toronto-based Canadian husband-and-wife filmmaking team. Mira Metter directed and wrote the 2026 documentary Broken Country, while Mike Werry co-produced it. They created the film after observing shared declines in everyday Canadian life—particularly around affordability, healthcare access, housing, and related issues—and out of a desire to document those changes for their children’s future. Metter is a Canadian filmmaker born and raised in the country; Werry is a former finance and tech executive who transitioned into film producing.To watch Broken Country Documentary:https://www.brokencountry.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]’East Apothecary - USE promo code SNP for 15% off your orderhttps://thepowerofplants.ca/Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

This is Brett Weinstein. This is Tom Lomago. This is Bruce Party. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is Dr. Pierre-Core. Hi, this is Frank Paredi. This is Danielle Smith.

This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crowe and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. How's everybody doing today? Today is actually Thursday. If you were paying attention, I obviously slipped us by a few of you. I thought yesterday was Thursday. So I'm going to equate that.

I'm going to chalk that up to leave. leaving New York City and being frazzled by the time I got to Philly to record the intro. We are in Philly now. And, well, happy Thursday. It's Thursday. It's not, you know, I've had this time warp. I was sitting here getting ready to record the intro, and I'm like, wait a second, I mess this up. So, happy Thursday, okay?

We're in Philly. It was a beautiful day today, a little bit of rain, but a beautiful day today. And today's interview happens. I've got to give a shout out to Zubi for reaching out to me. It's all about Broken Country, the documentary. We'll get to that. You'll get to that here shortly. Big news, the Cornerstone Forum returns May 15th, 2027.

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watching on Spotify, YouTube, Rumble, X, Substack, Facebook, all the things. You know the drill. subscribe share it with a friend and if you haven't tuned into substack we got the week in review on sundays we got bonus questions again today airing on substack only for the paid members they're always a lot of fun um now let's get on to that tale of the tape today's guests are a Toronto based Canadian husband and wife filmmaking team I'm talking about Mike Wary and Mira met her so buckle up here we go welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today I'm joined by Mike Wary and Mira Metter. Folks, thanks for hopping on.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Thanks for having it. Well, it's the first time you've ever been on. So we've got to start here. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Give us a little bit of a background. So not only myself, but others can get a feel for who they're listening to. Sure.

I could start. Mike Wary, you know, I'm, let's see, my career has been varied. I started off actually in politics. and worked for a couple years in Queens Park in Ontario. And ended up mostly in banking and then moved into the technology sector, where I did entrepreneurship for many years, leading sales teams and customer success to really stage startups in Canada and different places in the world. And for one reason or another, I got sucked into 50.

film. And that sort of led to this journey. And, uh, yeah. When you say you got sucked in the film, how do you like, I mean, you just don't pick up one day and go, you know, let me do a documentary, right? Like that, that doesn't, those two things don't go together. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Okay. So I've, I've executive produced a few films. Okay. And to be exact. Executive producing is different than producing and what we did on this film, but, uh, executive producing is largely, you know, money and financing. And I got a call late one night. It was like November of 22. And a couple of guys said, hey, we got this Orlando Bloom boxing movie. Do you think you can help us out? And I said, it was like a fun thing to do. So why not? And one thing led to

another and all of a sudden here I am doing movies. And yeah, that sort of led to the conversations that Mira and I had about doing broken country. Mira, tell us a little bit about yourself. So I'm born and raised in Toronto. My background is more in the arts. I worked in fashion. I worked mostly in advertising as an art director and then creative director,

move my way through publishing, emerging platforms advertising. And then I did a number of years working on content production for large beauty brands. And through that lens, I got a taste of docu-series. And they entrusted me with creating a lot of different documentaries for their philanthropic arms of their brands. And then slowly I started to see some subjects that I wanted to explore on my own. And the conversations, as Mike mentioned,

that we were having became more and more urgent. And that was sort of the root of where we started Broken Country, where he took his sort of executive production film background in my extensive creative production background. And we decided to do this little crazy venture. How long did it take you to film this and put it all together? So the research really started May of 24.

Yeah, April, May of 24. And I researched and onboarded a great team of researchers and journalists to help support me. Because again, my background is arts and creative direction. And so I had this idea and I knew how to make it. but I wanted to make sure that this was fact-led and well-researched. So production started on principal photography November 24, and I shot all the way through till basically July 2025. And then I did a couple of pickup shoots this past summer,

but it's been about a year of editing. Maybe a better question that is. At what point did the idea for broken country, you know, like I was saying to, once again, I was telling you before we started recording, my wife was sitting beside me as I was watching the documentary. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is like not PTSD, but like, I'm like, this is what I do. I literally talk through all these issues. And I'm like watching it is unique because, or interesting, unique. I don't know what the word is. I'm like, sitting here, I already know.

I already know. I'm like, oh, like, okay, they're going to talk about this now. And I'm like, it was really well done. And I think if you don't know what's going on in Canada, it's a must watch because it's going to break it down for you in lots of easy ways, I thought, right? And the human aspect of all the street interviews was, I thought, really well done. But I guess I come back to it. Like, at what point where you're like, I think we should do a documentary on what's happening

in Canada? And I guess the second question I'd have on that. is did you start with, I think, I know what's going on, and then when you started doing all the interviews, did it get like, holy crap, we didn't even factor in these things? So to answer the first, I'll answer the first part and then the second. So really, I think there was a few things that happened sequentially that really kind of prompted me, us to start this, this documentary journey. So one was like having a bump in with the health care system and needing to access the emergency room for not something major, but that we were told we had to go to the

emergency room to handle it because there was no capacity to manage it anywhere else in the healthcare system. And while waiting, you know, nine, ten hours and emerge with my laptop, because I was working, I was walking around a major hospital listening to people who had, like, who were waiting in the waiting room with like brain injuries from like falling off of scaffolding that had been airlifted in that were sitting beside me waiting. And they were there because their emergency rooms and their small towns were closed. And then walking around the hospital to see the hallways lined and sometimes double lined with gurneys of people, senior citizens, and particularly, just like wasting away in the hallways.

And I was just kind of baffled that this was the state of our health care system and that it was clearly not keeping, it wasn't serving people. Then the other thing that happened shortly after that was we were in Vancouver visiting a friend, and Vancouver is such a gorgeous city. and we, you know, we're, like, she had flown in from Australia and we're like getting our kids together. And, you know, you don't see them that often. And so we're staying in a hotel together. And we step outside and everywhere we went all through like this beautiful city.

It was just riddled with addiction and substance abuse and crime and violence in open air. And it was like I was freaked out. out, like, as a mother with two young kids, she was freaked out. We didn't feel safe in broad daylight. And I was like, this is not normal. And then we saw that replicated across different places that we had visited throughout the balance of that year. And I was like, that's it. That's quite alarming. Like, how did that happen? And then we saw a lot of people lose their jobs. Businesses closing, like mass layoffs. for large businesses,

telcos, publishing, media, banking, like all of these industries just shuddering. And I'm like, where is absorbing these skilled people? Like, how are they, how, what is happening? And how are people sustaining themselves? And then you'd see in the news

all of these, this stuff about this food bank need, this dependence on food banks. And I was like, that's it. And we kept having, having conversations over and over again about all of these things and wondering, is this the best place to raise our kids? What is the future outlook here of this country? If things just keep degrading and the systems that we depend on keep getting worse and worse and worse. And we don't even feel safe because every car, every other house on our street had a car stolen. And not only did they

have their car stolen, they had their house broken into to have their car stolen. And so when you don't feel safe anymore and you don't feel like the systems are caring for you and you don't understand why, like, your streets are riddled with addiction, I just, I just couldn't, I couldn't not find out what happened. So is the first part. And then the second part of your question is, what was the second part of your question well well it's funny because and and uh i should have thrown this at both of you since you're both sitting side by side feel free to jump in whenever you want to add things in there's you don't have to wait for me um the second part was you set off with like okay oh i was i was in Toronto we're in an emergency room this doesn't seem right everybody's

sitting here then you go to vancouver you're like this is a beautiful city which it is right it's sitting right on the coast, not to mention the mountains right there and everything, but it's dirty, crime-written, dangerous, homeless, et cetera, et cetera. And then you just keep going, like, something is off here. And so you set off to find out what it is. And I was wondering if you set off thinking, oh, it's, you know, I don't know, if you had a specific thing you thought it was. But, you know, you do, like sitting here, this will be episode 11, 46, let's say, over the course of five years. And there's been many more conversations in that time. But when I hear 4,500-ish street interviews and talking to experts and all the things, like, even I can admit when I started off,

I thought, oh, maybe it's over here. And I've had lots of different conversations that give you perspective. That many conversations will give you perspective. I was just wondering if you started out with a notion of like, I think I know what it is and whether or not that was true. Yeah, no. So like the thing was is that I came into the with genuine curiosity, trying to figure out what actually happened to the systems that everyone really depend on, like what actually was the thing that that set it off track? When did it work? And when did it break? Because it's clearly there's a lot that's not working. And then I wanted to juxtapose that with how people are actually doing. And so the street interviews, everyone has

asked the same sort of block of questions so that you, could really get a sense of how people were doing in real life, not in like, you know, sort of these side poles that you don't really hear what the questions are and you don't really like understand who the sample is, like just regular people, all ages, all walks, all, all, all, everything. How are they doing, how are they feeling about these exact same questions over and over again because I think that is really the the crux of it is that people are not okay and I wanted to know why I think to sort of to to jump in on a few different things that same Vancouver trip I was super stressed out I was working on another movie and so I was up at like four o'clock in the

morning and doing work obviously you know east coast time west coast time and I went for a should like a mental health walk at 10 a.m. And, you know, walked out of the hotel and, you know, just saw meth pipe, crack pipe, meth pipe, crack pipe. And then I got thirsty and I'm in, I'm in Yale town. And I walk into a 7-Eleven. I can't remember the corner that it was in. And I'm just to buy a bottle of water so I can continue on my walk. And in walks, a fentanyl addict. And he ends up stabbing the the 7-Eleven clerk. And I'm sitting here and all of a sudden I'm just trying to go out like a little mental health walk to clear my head.

And I'm in the middle of a place. How was your mental health after that, Mike? It wasn't great. You know, like coming back to the hotel, I'm like, somebody just got stabbed. And, you know, I think, so two things. One, this started out very much so trying to understand research led, you know, what was going on in the country. There was no grand plan to, we knew sort of the broad

subjects that we were going to cover. But if you've ever done a documentary, and if you've, I think doing a documentary from a true sense, you know, it starts from research, it starts from data, it starts from a lot of that stuff. And then you start sort of moving around and chasing stories. And you find different things. So like I remember we were in Vancouver, we interviewed a guy named Bo Jarvis, who runs West Group, one of the biggest developers in Vancouver. And he was talking about how, you know, all the development charges and how hard it is. And the reason why, you know, the units that are 500 square feet cost so much is, is not because that's how much they want them to be. It's because that's how much extra charge is added on by the, by government regulation.

And you're saying, you know, we're being told to build more sustainable. sustainably. But it's actually cheaper for us to import wood from the United States or from Norway than it is to get it from BC. And so that led us to Fort St. John in remote northern BC covering the pulp of paper mill that had just closed, that decimated the town, right? They moved to the United States. And covering that story, we got some amazing footage out of that. And that sort of talks a lot about the decimation of small town Canada and the middle class that we're seeing. And I remember, you know, we were in, this was late in shooting and mirror shot awake in the middle of the night. We were in Vancouver and I think I got it. And, you know, that's when the story started to come

together. But that was right at the end of the shooting, right? It was more us trying to understand And how I was going to piece it together. Yeah. You know, I, I took so many interviews and so many stories and talked to so many people. And it was a lot. Like, there's definitely things that I couldn't include in a two-hour film. You just can't. And it was just really hard to figure out, like, how to make it all flow based off of actually what we learned.

Yeah. A, I should, you know, like, where can people find it? I've, you know, like, I went and watched it. And once again, I go, like, for people who are paying attention, there's going to be things in there that you're like, yeah, I know about that, I don't know about that. But, like, the overall film of it, like the entirety of it was very well done. Where can people go and find it?

And then maybe share with somebody who's like, I don't know what's going on. It's like, oh, check this out. hours and you're going to be filled with a lot of like oh i thought something was going on there where can they go and and find this www broken country.com and i'll say it like three times broken country.com broken country.com that is the place to watch it right now. It's also in some landmark theaters yeah so on that website you can actually see theaters that it's going to be playing in we've got more and more theaters who are lining up to show it across the country, which is great. And then, you know, hopefully in the next week or two,

it'll be available on a few different, a few different places. But, you know, everybody should watch it. And our hope, you know, really is that this isn't, this film covers a lot. It's made for Canadians, right? It's made for us to, I want all 40 million Canadians, or at least the 30 million, Canadians who are, you know, of age to watch and understand this to actually view this film. That would be my dream. One of the things that, you know, you talked, the full scope, I thought, you know, you had, I would say your standard Canadian, your First Nations, your immigrants, all chime in. Then you had a series of people that I've interviewed, and then something that I'd never heard of before.

And it really covered a large scope. And I can't give you a shut out. I didn't realize Omar Links was Canadian and I was listening and I'm like I know that song why do I know that song? I was trying to like I was sitting there and I had to pause it I'm like where do I know that song from? And then I'm like no I know that song I was humming it

and then I went like to look up and I'm like Omar Links is Canadian. I didn't realize he was from Toronto. So I thought that was a you know maybe me just giving off a little bit of what I like in music but I like the song choice in the back you had a couple of his songs I think which was super cool.

but once again, sorry, I'm derailing us. When it comes to finding it and going and watching it, I think Canadians should watch it. I think Americans should watch it as well because they're trying to understand what is happening to Canada. You know, I'm sitting in, we travel across Canada, and now we're on our way down. We're in Washington, D.C., I guess this coming weekend.

And the amount of Americans I run into going, oh, you Canadians are so polite. I'm like, yeah, But this documentary, I'm like, this will give you an insight of what's actually happening. Like to me, if you're Canadian, you should absolutely watch. If you're an American and trying to understand what's happening on the north side of the border, I think this gives a full scope of like, this is what's happening. And this is why strange things are continuing to occur.

Now, I guess after you're done it, okay, you've pieced it all together. And you're sitting around talking with your friend group and you're trying to explain what's going on or the moment things went astray. Do you have a moment where you're like, this is the year or this is the moment, this is the prime minister, this is the policy, whatever it is,

is there a thing you pinpoint or several maybe? So it's funny because I think like everyone assumes like with the title broken country that this is like some sort of a hit piece on a particular government with a particular leader. And it's really not. I think that more importantly than like, pinpointing a certain individual or government, it's more about pinpointing a policy that has failed.

And that is, I'm not a policy export, but I, expert, sorry, I said export. I'm not a policy expert, but, you know, that's where, that's the research, that's the facts. Like, that's, that's what it is. And that's where the data points to and proves. And, you know, many of the experts also point to these failed policies as the things that were the trigger to the decline. And I don't want to say that it was, you know, I think one of the outcomes of the film is that it's not one specific thing. You know, you could go back and say 2014 is when things really started to escalate and go downhill. But it is bad policy upon bad policy upon bad policy with some utopian thinking and some, you know, like big promises that weren't delivered on. And that's what got us to this place.

It's not it's not some sort of I don't want to get into it. It's not some conspiracy theory or anything like that. It's a bunch. It's just bad policy layered upon bad policy. And the inability to address it and correct it. I think that's really what's happened in the past 10 years is knowing that we have bad policies that are not serving the people and not doing the right things to course correct. That's really, I think, the biggest takeaway, the biggest highlight, the biggest thing to point to is that they're problems. But if we actually name the problems and stop shaming people who name the problems, we can address the problems and move forward.

Yeah, like just look at say take immigration for example, right? You know, like for decades, Canada had an immigration system that was the envy of the world, a points-based system, right? And then all of a sudden a decision was made to allow for a rapid increase in temporary foreign workers and separate foreign students. And that led to, you know, two million people coming into the country, each year, year for multiple years. I think the current government called it a whoopsie and then all of a sudden, you know, is now sort of back to touting the idea of increased immigration. And, you know, so it is that sort of like, it's bad policy and then inability to correct it or doubling down on it. You know, when you talk about like naming them, I think you're correct in that. You know, I was writing it as I went

And I forget if I missed one at the end. There's probably a couple you can add. But I was going through like kind of the topics. I'm like, yeah, maids a bad one. The primary care that you're talking about being an, you know, like I, I laughed out loud with the lady when she's like, I just got my, my doctor, you know, like I hit the lottery. And I'm like, that's so true. You know, like how many Canadians, myself included. I don't have a, I don't have a doctor.

Right? I'm like, you know, like how wild is that? My doctor left. And so I don't have a doctor. And, you know, and you go down the safe supply. And it was just a poor idea. It was just a poor idea. And then you go, the cost of living.

Well, everybody can see it. Like, I mean, it's just, it's so apparent. You got the, you know, from the West, one of the things coming from Alberta is we look at, like, you know, if we, when, when Germany specifically came over and like, we need this. And there's no, there's no case to be made. Yeah. Everyone, what are you talking about? They're coming to us. There's absolutely a case to be made.

the immigration, the damages crime. You were talking about how many people on your street had their cars broken into, had their houses invaded, and we're like, everybody could see this. And like when you name them, I've found on my journey across Canada, whether, you know, when you talk about like it isn't to labelize one government, one person, I found talking to people across the spectrum, whether they voted, you know, whatever, it doesn't matter. Everybody, as you talk to them, they slowly start to go to the country. isn't that safe. Like it's actually pretty dangerous. And then they, they're pretty sheepish to say it.

And most of them are like, but what can I do? I'm just one person. And I find that interesting because, you know, like we're actually more powerful than we think, but we've been undermined so long by all these policies that make people feel hopeless, that there's no hope left. And then you're demoralized and all the things. And so you don't go out and make the change that we all know we want to go back to. We want a safe place to grow and raise our families where we can actually afford a house and and criminals if they come in and you know home invade they go to jail and they don't go to jail for two days and get out right like these are pretty i think across the board not polarizing issues it's the way that it gets framed with you're in one camp or the other

camp and i guess to finish my thought what one of the things i find interesting about you two and maybe this is just from where i come from i find it interesting this documentary comes from two Toronto people because normally something like this and maybe I'm wrong on this. I feel like it would come from somebody pushing it from the West trying to be like something is wrong with our country whereas this is the East saying something is wrong with our country. You know I think okay so a couple of things just to pick up on there that you talked about right one of the things that really drove us to do this was we were having conversations left right and center with friends you know, playdates in the backyard, talking about things that were happening.

You know, there's the famous, you know, Toronto police saying, you know, leave your keys on the front step so that, you know, it's easier for the door unlocked. They could take it and go. It's not a big deal. But it was the apathy that we found amongst them. And, you know, the, well, you know, nothing is going to change. And we said, I think at a certain point, you both said to ourselves, it's time, like, this is what know how to do. You know, like, I mean, obviously, I, at the beginning of this of this segment,

I'm not a filmmaker, you know, haven't been doing this for my entire. You are now. You are now. Mira has great experience with documentary and, you know, directing and producing and all that sort of stuff. But it was getting so sick and tired of hearing the same people say over and over, well, yeah, but what's going to change? And it takes people to actually stand up and do something and to fight, And that's a real driver. You know, like I think two of the things that sort of came out of this and then is that, you know, like I'm, I don't know how many generations Canadian I am. I, you know, on one side of the family, they came over as furriers and trappers for the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1700s. The other side of the family is where United Empire loyalists who came up through upstate New York after the Revolutionary War.

So, you know, I could trace that back. On Mira's side, 100 years on one side, you know, immigrants to Toronto back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And then, you know, on the other side, second generation Canadian. And we said to ourselves, this is our country. Like this, like let's stand up and let's fight. Yeah. It was kind of like a last sort of like, let's see what we can figure out to try to make this better for, our kids, our friends' kids, like the younger generation, you know, it's funny, like,

talking to people, not just like in this, for this film, but like talking to our babysitters, you know, talking to teenagers and, and, you know, young college students. They are not hopeful. They do not want to, they don't feel represented. they're like a hyper aware of the what is on like what is coming to them you know that that that acute awareness of how bleak things are looking it's uh it's not it's not a future you know and it's not a future that people who are in who who who who are here or have chosen to be here actually chose.

It's not what it's it's not what we just thought we were voting for. You know? And I think that, you know, there are two lessons that I take out, I took out of this film that were like really deep core messages. And the first one is the outcome of the 4,500 people on the street that we interviewed. And that was, you know,

there is this generation and Miracle, talks about the younger generation, and I'm really hopeful for Generation Alpha, but there's a generation of Canadians between 25 and 45, who if you didn't luck into a job as a lawyer or an investment banker, you didn't have rich parents or whatever it was, life is so hard. It's sort of this design decline. Mirro quoted that the other day. I'll give her all the credit for that. Like it is, it is, it is, it's these people on the street who we just kept on talking to and you can feel the sense of hopelessness. And it's because every single day they're making decisions of whether or not to pay their Rogers or their, well, let's make this for a more, uh, larger audience. Their cell phone bill or their internet bell or their, you know, heating bill or their rent or like what can they do?

What can they hold off this month so they can pay for food or they can. can do, you know, something fun. And, you know, they go home and they sit on their, you know, their phones and they scroll. And it's just, it's this just general hopelessness. I mean, I think you see that a lot in the bifurcation of the polls as well. What, wait, before, before you move on, you said two things. One is the outcome of the 4,500 and the homelessness, uh, the hopelessness, sorry. What was the second thing? The second thing is that if we ever, actually ever got our act together, Canada would be pound for pound, the greatest country in the world. Yeah. The word I always use is potential. We have such amazing potential.

Unbridled. It's unbelievable. And one of the things I was going to commend you to on, right, coming from the East, at least this is how I probably oversimplify things. But what you're doing is you're opening up a conversation. See, like in the West right now, we're what, how many days away from a referendum? Like that didn't, that didn't, that didn't come out. of nowhere. That came from people arguing and talking and then people not being hopeless anymore. Like, we're going to go and change things. We're not okay with the direction Canada's going. We're going to go and change things. Now, does it, you know, change on the 19th? I have no idea. But what's happened is so many conversations of startup. People are talking again. There's hope again.

Whether or not you're for or against, there's just so much emotion and energy put into something because they can see change if they do that. What you two have done by stepping out in Toronto, honestly, is you've opened up a conversation in the East that I think has been close to non-existent. Maybe I'm wrong. You guys live there. Maybe everybody's talking about it, you know, in their backyards. And, like, it's this huge conversation. But when I look at it and when we went through, I found everybody was a little bit cheapish to talk about it.

We're out west. There's a little more, like, no, we're going to talk about this. and we're going to have it out, and that's uncomfortable. But at the same token, they're talking about it. And you never know what a movie like this will do to spur on more conversations amongst not only your friends, but a larger community that are all concerned about something, but they don't know how to put names on it or put, you know,

like this is the policy or this is the actual thing that's going on and what that can actually grow to. It's funny because when I was flying around this country, like coast to coast back and forth filming, no one really thought that I was from Toronto. And I think like being from here and like when I say I'm from Toronto, like I mean I was grow up like at midtown like young in Eglinton like the center of the city. I'm not like I grew up in like this deep, deep suburb.

Like I've been in the boat in the urban bubble of Canada. I didn't really. I don't think that I have as much of an understanding of what it was like. coast to coast until I did a different project and I traveled across the country, pregnant, actually, and saw all these different walks within our borders and sort of getting a sense of the experience of West Coast and East Coast and Northern. And it really opened my eyes to how sheltered a lot of people who live in Toronto really are and how our experience differs so much from the majority of the rest of the country, but how interdependent this country is on each other. And, you know,

simple things like being in the airport in PEI and watching all of the men getting on a plane on Sunday night to go fly to Alberta because they work in the oil sands. And that And they depend on that work in the oil sands to support their families because that region out east is farming. And we have heavy winters. So they need that sort of interconnection. And we need money and resources from Alberta to fuel our country. And we need lumber from BC and we need hydro from Ontario and

back. Like we are actually interconnected in ways that nobody really broadly examines if you're not in directly in the resource sector. But it is our biggest strength. Yeah. I think, you know, to add on to that, I was born in Calgary, but I lived there until I was two. And so when I'm in Calgary, I will emphasize my Calgary roots. I will put on a cowboy hat and boots and, you know, put on a drawl. But I'm a Trontonian and, you know, I grew up blocks away from Mira and, you know, have lived in Midtown, Toronto, almost my entire life. It's more whispered here, the discontent. It is, it's very hushed. You know, Alberta, Saskatchewan, that sort of stuff. interior BC, it is, you know, out there and talked about much more thoroughly and deeply.

Here it's very hushed. And, you know, that's part of the things we would love to change is to bring about this conversation in this country that is not just, you know, separatism or something else. It's about, you know, we got ourselves into this mess. How do we get ourselves out? But I will say, like, I don't know why or when it had to become so extreme that you actually had to say, like, let's have a vote on whether or not we're going to be part of this country anymore for people to actually sit up and have a conversation and come

together and hear each other sides. And I think that's the thing that has really fallen off, you know, like this open dialogue where you're like, I respect you. I would like to hear your informed thoughts. Do you respect me? Can I tell you mine? If that's not in the mix, if that's not brought back into the fold

in a normalized way, then we have lost the plot here. Yeah. I think I've said it so many times. Like there's no greater act of patriotism than, you know, trying to stand up and say, hey, something is wrong here.

Let's try to fix it. It's not bashing, you know, specific things. It is hard. But, you know, interestingly enough, you know, Mir did all the interviewing. And I was just the guy that sort of did manual labor and sat in the other room while she interviewed while we were producing the film. But, you know, we interviewed people across the spectrum from left to right. and every single person agree that, you know, Canada was in some way, shape, or form broken. And, you know, on very specific topics, because that's what we're talking about.

Some of the, it's just a difference of how to fix it. And, you know, that's part of the conversation that, you know, we would, we want to engender. Yeah, I mean, I don't mean to draw a line between the West and the East. that's kind of been a thing done in our country for a very long time. I just, I love to highlight the fact that the thing that surprised me the most when I was looking into it, I'm like, well, these are Toronto folks. This is cool because, you know, once again, I'll draw back to it. So many times it comes from the West.

And when you look at like how we've gotten here, I can't speak for all of Canada because, you know, in touring it, I would love to sit here and say I can speak for every province, but I only got to spend small durations while going through and seeing the stories like you say, of the fishermen flying back to Alberta to go work and then, you know, and carry on. And I heard lots of different stories. But I know for a fact, the people in Alberta right now that are at the polls voting early that are upset is because they weren't being listened to. And sometimes the only way to be listened to is to stand up and go, no, no, we're not taking

this anymore. We're going to the polls in this case. And you're either going to pay attention or you're not. And if you don't pay attention, okay, well, that's, that's showing where this relationship is going. Because a lot of people in Alberta, but that's across the board, notice there's something wrong. And the direction of our country is like, it's hard to watch. Like, driving across it, all I could think is, man, we, like, we have such potential. I don't understand how it got squandered.

I mean, I have my theories as I'm sure you do. But, I mean, sitting here, it's like, we just have to find a way to, um, give back hope to the people to get them motivate again because that apathy you both mentioned is so apparent it's almost shocking that it's it's just there it's like there there's nothing can be done about it nothing can be done about it what are we talking about we come from a long line of people who showed up here in a place that wanted to kill us all and made lives of it and i would say very good lives of it and once again had a wonderful country and now it's just slipped and continues to slip And if we don't change the apathy, you know, I get to one of the things I circled early on,

you hinted at, you know, like, not that you were going to leave the country, but I'm sure in your conversations with, I can't afford a house, you know, the weights at the hospital, all the things we roll through in this conversation is like, do I stay here anymore? And that's a, for me on this side, as I'm sure for you to, that's a really sad thought of like, we have this great country. but most people that have means are turning to do I just get out of here and move on with my life? Well, you look at it, 120,000 people left last year. Not even last year. In the first two quarters.

Yeah. And those are people that are, you know, those are high earning entrepreneurs. You know, one of the most disheartening things we don't cover this in the documentary is, you know, I come from a tech background. and we've got lots of friends in the tech and entrepreneurship sector. And the fact that most of them are not, there's two sides of this. One, the companies that get to a certain size are in many cases forced to leave. And they're forced to leave because they cannot get the funding to continue to grow in Canada. And so they have to go to the U.S.

And the U.S. says, you know, we need you to be in Canada because you're going to be overregulated or overtaxed and it's just better for everybody if you're in the U.S. We've seen two great companies, one that I used to work for and one of our best friends or one of our closest friends, they've moved down south. The second stat is that more and more Canadians are choosing to just move away from starting a business in Canada in the first place and just set up shop in the U.S. And all that means is less jobs. You know, entrepreneurship is such a Canadian thing.

You know, we are more risk avoidant and all that sort of stuff. But it is such a Canadian thing. And to say that... It's a Western thing. Yeah. It's a Western culture thing, you know, like Western society, capitalism. Like that's what this is, is like that you can have an idea, build that idea, generate jobs, generate wealth.

and like move up in life. And when you take that away through regulation and cost of living and heavy taxation and just making it impossible to function and now what we're seeing a lot and we're talking even with this past week on with friends who have small businesses and their tariffs just went out of control, well, we have 40 million people in this country, but our neighbors who we've been, you know, designing our economies to be interconnected with for the past 60-odd years, they have 360, what is it? 400 million?

Yeah. So, like, that's our biggest, that's our biggest customer. And so most of the people that have the means, that have these businesses, that have ambition, that have the ability to create these opportunities for others, they're like, screw it. Housing has gone up 375% in the past 20 years. That's in not in Toronto and Vancouver, where it's gone up over 450% in the past 20 years. Our cost of food is insane. Our taxes are insane. Our cost of living. It's crazy. And see, yet these people are like, you know, may as well move to Charlotte or Florida or whatever. And I think a large part of Texas,

A large part of why we did this is we said, you know what? Like this is, this is our home. This is our country. And, you know, we saw so many friends that did the, you know, move south or move to different places. And we didn't want to do that. We wanted to try. To try. And we wanted to try to make a change.

And I think it's very important for Canadians, but it's also very important for Americans. but it's also very important for Americans and the rest of the West to watch and see this because it's not just a Canadian story. It's a story of what happens when bad policies are voted in and continue to abound and compound. Before I...

Well, actually, media-wise, I'm curious. Have I... I was just kind of curious. Have you done tons of interviews in Canada specifically? I'm from a Canadian standpoint, has media been receptive to the documentary or has it been a little bit, I don't know, cool waters? It's been interesting, you know, like there's definitely been opportunity, but it's come across like so jumping to conclusion and like a tacky before even like booking a time. There's definitely been really great supportive coverage.

But it's also, we haven't really sought out a lot of traditional media because I think, you know, we'd rather have the conversation. You know, I think it's a more important conversation. I think that's sort of. Yeah, I would say obviously we've done, we've done some Americans. We've done some Canadian podcasts. Interestingly enough, we've had more news coverage in the United States than we have had in Canada. That will start to change. But I think that if you look at the, you know, the mainstream media in Canada, it is not that we haven't been approached by them for discussions yet.

It's more it is, yeah, we've found a little bit of jump to conclusions. And let's be real. Like we just, we just launched this. This, this has been out now for, I guess, just over two weeks. You know, we're just getting our, you know, we're just really starting to push right now. And so it'll come. And I hope that, you know, we get treated with a fair lens as opposed to people jumping to conclusions. Because I think that's one of the hard parts.

And something we discussed so often during the filming of this. is the sort of othering, right? Othering is a big problem, not just in Canada, but in the West. If you criticize anything, you're labeled very quickly, you know, whatever term, whatever term is designed to... Negatively. I can list them off for you if you'd like, but that's all right. It's designed to shut down conversation really quickly. but our whole point is if you can't discuss a problem openly, you can't find a solution.

I agree. Any final thoughts before I let you out of here. I don't want to cut you off, but I know you got kids coming back and all that lovely stuff. And I guess if you had a final thought for Canadians who are listening or people elsewhere abroad, any final thoughts? I love for you, obviously, to watch the film. and start the conversations and take a look and examine, like, is this actually working for you? Whether you're in Canada, you're in the UK, you're in the U.S., you know, take a look around and draw your conclusions, make your, do your research, have the conversation, but do it with like a really clear lens

because these problems that we're facing were avoidable. and they can be corrected. It's just why not learn from everyone else's mistakes and avoid it. Yeah. I echo, I don't have a whole lot more to add. I would say go to broken country.com, watch the film. I hope that every Canadian has a chance to watch this. Agree with it, disagree with it, but have the conversation.

Start having conversations about what you see. going right and what you see going wrong in this country and normalize it. I will say this. You know, it's not like Canada and Canadians like all of a sudden looked around and they're like, hey, wait a second, you know, like everything is is bad. It's, it's that analogy of the boiling frog. It's like you start in a pot of water and they turn up the heat and all of a sudden it's boiling. and you're either dying it or you get out of it, but you're your frog soup. And I think that's sort of something that we all need to look at. You know, is the temperature rising here?

And can we turn this off? Yeah. Well, thank you both for doing this. Now, if you have a few more minutes, we do a little bonus part on Substack where I'm just going to ask you 10 questions. So folks, if you want to go over to substack, you can. It'll be on a lot of, well, 10 quick questions, although with two people, it might take a little longer than I expect. Regardless, we'll pause for a second.

We'll go over to Substack. Feel free to visit us there.