Shaun Newman Podcast - #221 - Gerry Ritz

Episode Date: November 22, 2021

Former Canadian politician. He served as a member of the House of Commons for Battlefords-Lloydminster for 20 years along with being Canada's Agriculture Minister from 2007 - 2015. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500  Like the podcast? Support here: https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

Check, check, check, check, check. Check, check, check. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday. Hope everybody's having a great Monday morning. I hope you had a great weekend. We got a little U-7 hockey and my wife had her birthday. And overall, it was a good weekend.

I got no real complaints, not that anybody wants to listen to me to do that anyways. We got a cool one on tap for you today. Before we get there, let's get on to today's episode sponsors. Carly Clause and Windsor Plywood, builders of the podcast studio table. And I should probably share a picture on social media of this bad boy again. Like, for all you new listeners,

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I'm talking about Jerry Ritz. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Jerry Ritz. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today, I'm joined by Jerry Ritz. So first off, Jerry, we took a couple technical issues, but we're finally rolling.

Well, when you live out in the country, every day on computers and new adventure. Yes, this is true. Now, before we get rolling, I know people from my area know exactly who you are, but the thing is, I got listeners from across Canada, into the States. So would you mind giving a brief background on yourself so people can get a feel for who Mr. Jerry Ritz is? Well, of course, Sean. Jerry Ritz, I was a member of parliament representing a great part of Saskatchewan. I'd call it West Central, but some call it northern.

Agriculture, oil and gas, and a lot of industries that feed into all of that. I represented that area for almost 25 years. The first few, I was a constituency assistant for the MP at that time. I was its campaign manager and went on to run a mobile office forum in the summer throughout the area. It's a big, big chunk of ground. I think you can put five Prince Edward Islands in it. And at the end of the day, then I got myself elected in 1997, did that for a little over 20 years. 10 of those, almost 10 of those years in Cabinet, which were really an eye-opening experience for me. For the vast majority of that, I was the Minister of Agriculture and Agra Food for Canada.

We did start out with the weed board attached to that. We did finally take away that mandatory sentence that Western Canadian farmers faced. So a lot of the agricultural groups across Canada got to know me on a first name basis, working with them on trade issues. And of course, we spent a lot of time in the U.S. too, our major trading partner. We had country origin labeling thing that popped up, which we eventually won simply by going after them on a lot of other fronts and letting them know that trade was a two-way street. So it was very interesting. A lot of travel, a lot of work with industry groups that I still stay in time. It's good.

When you talk about cabinet being eye-opening, I'm curious. What does that mean? What was eye-opening about being a part of cabinet? Well, I was very fortunate Prime Minister Harper. It's the first time agriculture was ever on what's called Priorities and Planning. That's the Cabinet of Cabinet. And there are subsets of that. I was on, there was one on security. So we were briefed by MI5, MI6, CIA, FBI, Homeland Security after 9-11, of course, our own CIS and RCMP and so like that. We knew what was going to happen long before it would long before it happened. It was a very interesting part to be involved in. I also sat on the trade and economic subset and, you know, various other parts of priorities and planning that was very eye-opening. A lot of stuff we can't talk about.

You know, it's 30 years. It's locked down and so on. But it was a very eye-opening thing for, you know, a young guy from Saskatchewan to be a part of. Yeah, just to sit in the meetings with even uttering the phrase FBI and CIA, everybody's eyes perk up a little. Oh, yeah. I mean, our military was very well liked at that time. We're having a bit of a problem now. But, you know, in that day and age, Canada was well respected part of the five eyes. You know, G20, G7 meant things. It's all gone by the wayside lately. Now it's all about the color of socks you wear. Why do you think that is? We've got a person leading that really doesn't care much about what Canada's status is on the world. He'd rather be taking the day off and, you know, goofing off. than actually beating a country.

He's just not up to the job. Hasn't been. I'm not being political. I'm, you know, I'll, uh, anybody. On National Day of Reconciliation. Yes. Yes. He's surfing.

He's surfing. Like, you don't have to sit here and get political to know that that's just a moron move. It just is. Well, and blackface. I mean, who would have survived that in a political realm? Anywhere in the world. But here. It's just mind-boggling to me.

Yes. little bit eyebrow raising for sure. Now, as much as I'd love to go down the Trudeau rabbit hole, because we could certainly sit there for an hour and have a few people, chuckling. I want to, I want to stick it closer, a little bit closer to home. I mean, we can certainly talk about Canada as well, but you knew what when I made the call, I'd been offered you by a mutual friend to bring you on. And just, just try and give us some insight into how the government is, maybe some understanding of why the government is doing what it's doing. I don't know how much insight you could give you.

I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I mean, I watched senior bureaucrats take a walk in the snow. I watched senior bureaucrats become part of the liberal machine and then get ousted, became the fall guy. That's not what professional public servants do. I was very well served by my public servants. I had four different deputy ministers in my tenure at ag, almost nine years. Only one that I'd get along with them, and we bounced her out in less.

than a year, she just didn't fit. But other than that, I mean, I still stay in touch with the other three. A couple of them, I still golf with a couple times of summer if I can make it happen. So these are professional people that really take on the job and are serious about running their departments. Ag Canada, you know, everybody said, you know, Ag Canada was one of the lesser departments. Like hell it is. I mean, we're the third largest contributor to the GDP. 13,000 plus people work for Ag Canada. We put Agriculture Canada people in the embassies and consulates all over the world where we did trade so that they knew what they were talking about. It wasn't a foreign affairs person with an ag file. So I just can't understand the politicization

that I've seen of the senior civil servants and the antagonistic almost fight perspective we've got between provinces and the federal government. This is a confederation. We're all partners in moving forward and there's different levels of expertise that are required. Of course, the federal government It has oversight on a lot of different files, joint ownership with a lot of files like healthcare. And we're seeing that, you know, the whole COVID fiasco. I don't think anybody would give them a passing grade in the way this has been handled. We're into the fourth lockdown now and now they're already talking about number five. We keep, you know, that very famous definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

We've done that in spades. We're going to do it again, you know. But now we're going to have a passport to keep score. So my question is then, I agree with you on the insanity part. I just can't figure out, like, everybody wants to write government off as a bunch of dummies and a bunch of whatever's. And I'm like, I don't think so. I just look at it and I go, I just can't understand what they're seeing. I assume they're getting immense amount of pressure from one side because people are dying and they want to protect everybody and that fear is running rampant.

But the longer this goes on, the more people that come out and talk about, you know, know, man, there's terms that I never thought I'd ever utter on a podcast, but, you know, vaccines waning. The fact that it doesn't stop transmission, the fact that, you know, they're saying, you know, in Alberta, for instance, that, you know, we're not going to mandate it on children under 18. But, I mean, everybody knows, meanwhile, kids are harassing each other all over it and kids are going to get it. If you're getting, you know, if you're unvaccinated, the rules are if you come in close contact, you can't play in. sports. Meanwhile, vaccinated, Ken, and you're going like, this makes no sense. We're losing, we're losing what we're trying to do. Explain to me then, the Ottawa senators, 100% vaccinated, fully vaccinated. They've had the double dose there, probably lined up for boosters, and 40% of

them now are shut down. They've canceled their league games because they can't field a team. So vaccination hasn't been the answer in the way that they're doing it. And this waning thing is something that's brand new. Do we take a booster every four months for the rest of our lives? The other unfortunate part is all these variants that seem to be popping up are created out of the flora that's developed within a person that's vaccinated. Somebody who's unvaccinated has less chance to get the Delta variant than somebody who's vaccinated, as I understand it. We've got all kinds of professionals, senior healthcare professionals speaking out against the way things are being done and they're being sanctioned. They're being stripped of their roles.

and basically lined up and, you know, executed in a different way in social media. Now, the big difference we've got now is social media. Everybody's an expert. And if you want to see something, you know, said, you just wait a day and somebody will pop up. But at the end of the day, there's a lot of good information on there, too. The Americans are far ahead of us on looking at the, you know, a lot of people have died with COVID, not of COVID. And any death is unfortunate. But the vast majority that we've had in Canada here, and stats prove this, are people over 80 with two or three other co-orbidities, other illnesses that are, you know, life-threatening as it is.

So COVID might have been the catalyst that brought their death about a little quicker, but at the end of the day, they were already in a situation that wasn't tenable. So now we've got, you know, we talked about a vaccine or a problem with a COVID where 99% of people went on through it. So you get the vaccine in your 99.1. Well, why would I do that? And then put myself at risk for all these other side effects that are showing up. And the younger people seem to be getting hit harder with the side effects. You know, the mycardiitis and young men and, you know, guys dropping. with strokes at 35 and so on like that, the miscarriages of pregnant women. And so it's just unbelievable. And we're playing that side down. I mean, a government has to be truthful. If you're leading your people in a truthful way, you have to realize that. And blindly going and forcing five to 11-year-olds now to be vaccinated when they're going to be the most at risk for this myocarditis and different things, young kids going into puberty. This thing attacks their

reproductive organs, you know, older people that attacks their brain. And, and, and, and, expedites things there. Heart is under duress, liver, kidneys, all the organs. You know, this stuff goes there. Pfizer first, or Moderna, one of them came out and said, it doesn't leave your arm. It just, it just feeds from there and goes into your body. And then a Canadian blew that up. Yeah. Byron Bridal. Yeah, but you're, you're speaking, the audience that, listen, lots of the people that are listening to me, Jerry, know, everything you just said. Well, there's buyers remorse for the people that did run out and get vaccinated. I'm still seeing friends that are, you know, I'm not. I haven't felt the need to where I live and my wife is very much into the naturopathic way. I haven't felt the need

to get a flu shot. I don't get the flu. I traveled extensively for eight years. And every time I went, foreign affairs gave me a list of all these different things I had to take before they'd allow me to go. I always gave them the one finger, Trudeau salute and went on the trip. I never got sick. Not once. because I was preventative in what I was taking, and I watched what I ate and drank and so on. And at the end of the day, I'm fine. My immune system works well, and that's got to be the first line of defense.

And yet we've got healthcare so-called professionals that say your immunity has nothing to do with it. Well, of course it does. You know, that's what this is. Give me, we can rattle on everything. The longer this goes on, the more things that come out. So in the beginning, I think, you know, there's going to be people who listen and say,

you can't give them a break at all. They should have been exploring all this from the beginning. But in the beginning, everybody had their duration of fear, where for some, they were a month in there like, ah, this is a load of hogwash. For others, it was a year.

For others, it was a year and a half. Others, three months, doesn't matter. Here we sit. Only in this week, Sask hockey had come out saying they were going to mandate vaccinations for a bunch of elite level hockey and now that's been kind of turned over. They're not going to mandate it.

They're going to have testing and blah, blah. But I mean, Jerry, I just listened to everything you just said. Yeah. And I go, why are we still going down this path? Why hasn't Premier Moe come out and been like, you know what? We're going to have to do some things here, you know, early preventative treatment. Maybe a good idea. Geez, like how much more do we have to talk about that before maybe it becomes something

that's willing to be talked about? Sure. Well, we ended up with a with a year of no flu season at all. Everything was COVID. But, you know, the flu was pushed back a lot because of distancing, masks and people weren't feeling well and washing your hands. I mean, my hands have soaked up more alcohol than I'll ever drink. But at the end of the day, it was a good thing because it stopped all those germs from transferring and so on. And that was a good thing. But you can't do that forever. It's just not practical. The biggest thing I think that would turn this thing around right now. I mean, all of this was. done under the guise of an emergency order. Governments piled on and it was an emergency order. What that did was take the liability off of Pfizer, Moderna and the other guys, AstraZeneca and all that. And they've all hit the wall with problems. But with no liability, now they're pushing to go after five to 11 year old kids. Well, if you put the liability back on, you'd see a lot of this straightened out very quickly in my mind. Maybe that's an oversimplification. But if the drug company itself was liable for the side effects, then maybe they'd be a little bit slower trying

to get it out there. They're talking about these magic pills they've got now. Supposedly Biden's looking at ordering 10 million of them for a billion dollars or some crazy number. I mean, it's a pretty expensive bill. But at the end of the day, if it works, but they haven't got any testing to show that it works. All this stuff hit the market. I guess the one focus group, and I'm not sure if it was Moderna or whoever used it, 30,000 people. That's nothing. And they cherry-picked who they were going to test it on. If you were sick at all, if you had any kind of asthma or, you know, if you're pregnant and you weren't part of the group.

But then everybody became part of the group after they did that focus group that was very much a, you know, a perfected thing. They cherry picked and came out. The numbers still didn't look that good. But with the emergency order, they were able to flood this stuff out. Pfizer itself admits they don't have enough data to know what it's going to do to five to 11-year-old kids. So they're going to give you a half a dose.

but they're saying we need more kids getting the shot so that we have the data. Well, you're using everybody's guinea pigs with no liability. That's not right. So then why go headlong into it if you're if you're the government? Why keep going headlong into it? People wanted something. You know, you saw that poll the other day. It was Angus Reed.

And I have, well, I've got some time for Angus Reed polls. But at the end of the day, he did a thousand people, 70% said, I want my neighbor to lose their job if they want. take the jab. Well, that's ridiculous. Canada's a caring country, and we've lost all of that. The divisions that have been etched in stone in this country since Trudeau took over would fill it, would burn Bibles. I mean, it's just unbelievable what this guy has done, put petting neighbor against neighbor. Now I'm supposed to rat out my neighbor if they had too many people at a party. I mean, I don't care. I didn't get invited. I don't care. So I don't understand this whole mindset

that we'd become, you know, looking over everybody else's shoulder. It just isn't right. It can't last. So what's he going to take then? What's it going to take to change the tune here? It's going to take one premier standing up. And I thought maybe Jason Kenney was going to be the guy with Trudeau going after his oil patch like he did. But he just he just took the money for child care.

You know, I wouldn't have been in the same room with the guy. But at the end of the day, it's going to take somebody like the governor of Florida has finally stood up. 27 states in the U.S. have all passed laws that say they're not going to do what Biden tells him to do on COVID. And I mean, we were down, we have a spot in Arizona. And we didn't, we rushed home the first year. We had one night in it. We bought it, had one night and then this, the shit hit the fan, pardon my French. But we had to get home because our health care was going to be in crisis and all this kind of stuff.

We came through the border and it was like any other day. We thought, we're not going to miss the whole year. So we went down, you know, got the tests and all that kind of stuff and went, spent three months, came back, did the 14-day quarantine and the tests and all it. I've had all kinds of tests done. I've been negative every time. And I think testing, you know, they've got tests. The results are back in 15 minutes now.

To me, that makes a lot more sense than waiting to get it and then trying to do something about it. Keep testing, you know, work it out that way. But Governor DeSantis in Florida and so on has stood up and said, we're opening up. And they have. And their cases have not gone through the room. They've actually got it under control now. And they're wide open.

So they're starting to see some glimmers at the end of the rainbow. But I'll tell you what, it takes a big, big political clout to go down that road all by yourself. You're ostracized from everybody else. I always bring up that you bring up Florida and Texas is another one. And there are two ways. But, you know, in the last week, I've seen Boris Johnson talk about, redefining what fully vaccinated is. I've seen the interview,

listen to the interview with New York Times and Fauci and him talk about that boosters are going to be an essential way forward. Well, Tama's saying everybody will need one at the beginning of the year. You know, six months, you've got zero coverage. Your vaccine is done. So you're

going to need a booster every four months to have any kind of coverage at all. Now, even with the vaccine and the boosters, you can still get it, you can still carry it, you can still spread it. So what's the vaccine give you. You didn't get as sick as you might have. Nobody knows that for sure. Again, it comes back to your own immunity. How you handle it. So I'm just put me in, like, this is the problem I have. I have people on like yourself that are doing obviously the same

reading as me. And so I sit here and I listen to you. I go, okay. So what, when we sit in a room in government, nobody's saying this? Is they got all the same person sitting there, Jerry? Like nobody's saying, guys, what about the study over here? What about the study over here? Why And there are studies. And the concern I have is I'm seeing more and more health care professionals. You know, the frontline people that were out there every day fighting this before vaccines and putting themselves at risk and their families at risk by being there every day. And now when they're saying, I'm not taking that vaccine because I've seen what some of the side effects are. I've seen it's not not doing the job. I'm not going to take it. They're losing their jobs. They're being ostracized by the other health professionals. Doctors that have lost access to the hospital.

they worked in. I've listened to several that were tenured professors in universities that have lost that because they dared to speak out against the, you know, the big machine. And I, I never thought I'd see that in an industrialized Western country like Canada or the U.S. I'd never dreamed. I'd see that happen. Those are things that happened in Venezuela or in 1930s and 40s, Germany. They don't happen here. But, I mean, it's scaring the shit out of me. All these people that spoke out early on were conspiracy theorists. now they're profits you know but nobody wants to go back and you know and underscore that it's been said and now it's proven to be true i don't know how we got you there's nothing we can do

i'm all for solutions like you know like exactly like to me i had um mike kuzmiskis on i bring him up a lot uh he's president's CEO of uh icor laps they do antibody testing so if you had covid you can get tests to show that you have antibodies and that would be be classified natural immunity and we all get to, but nobody will read it again. Yeah. And nobody will recognize it though for whatever reason. But it's based on science. But to me, Jerry, I go like, what? There has to be a way to get some things like that where you have the old round table, the old whiteboard meeting. You throw up some ideas. Like what like, okay, everybody's concerned with keeping people safe. We got to keep kids safe. Is it just literally showing them a

data it says, listen, guys, there's a lot of kids here. Nobody, you know, not nobody. I mean, if you got a kid with underlying conditions and everything else, like, who am I to say anything different? I just got three healthy kids. And I go, I don't want anything to do with that. Because there's one thing you haven't said, and you've said a lot, we don't know the long-term effects of it. We have no idea, like no data. So why the hell would I put it in my healthy three kids, five and under when they are healthy? And they don't have. And so, I go back to solutions. So to me, you know, my Q's Misk is coming on here.

I go like, man, that's like right now, if you do not have the shot, even if you do have the shot, government says, I tell you what, we've just spent a trillion billion dollars, we'll pay and reimburse for you guys to go get an antibody shot. That way we can tell, you know, if it's all about spreading COVID, that way you can tell if you have natural immunity to it or immunity from the shots. I think you'd have a run on those labs and all of a sudden, restaurants would be full again. Oiler games, everything would be full again.

But nobody will talk about that. That's what gives fuel, Jerry, to the conspiracies. We've got an economy that's in the toilet and no plan to start to lift it back out. Our largest trading partner, the U.S. is having the same problem. They're looking at inflationary prices the same as we are. And when you've got an economy that's soft and an inflation on top of that, that's a recipe for a disaster. How do we start to bring that back? Now I see they're starting to connect COVID and climate change.

COVID works so well getting everybody on side. They're thinking they can do the same thing with climate change. Well, I just spent two days cleaning up eight inches of snow that plugged my driveway and my yard and all that kind of stuff. Wasn't climate change. It was a winter storm. We've had them before. We'll have them again. The floods in BC, as tragic as they are, happened in 1940 the last time.

They built on a floodplain, not unlike, you know, just south of Calgary when that all got flooded. And they built more houses further in closer to the floodplain. So, you know, politics is about delivering what people want. And it's gotten to the point where it's everything they want, not what's best for them. And that's unfortunate. There are tough decisions that need to be made, and nobody's making those tough decisions. The people that are speaking out against this are being ostracized. So you talk about a premier sitting down with somebody saying, okay, look at this study.

The problem is that study can't even be peer reviewed anymore because everybody that agrees with it has been untenured. So they have no more letters behind their name to say, yeah, it's peer reviewed. So I don't know. I don't think we've hit bottom yet, Sean. and that scares the hell out of me. Well, that does scare the hell out of me. Because I go, I just come back. Me and Jerry are sitting at a table and we got Scott Moe and we got whoever else sitting there.

And they bring up while it hasn't been peer reviewed. And I go, like, listen, the Ottawa senators can't play an NHL game. Can we just agree that something funky is going on here and what we're doing ain't working? Yeah. Well, none of the vaccines have been peer reviewed. Good point. So, I mean, they took a leap of faith on. And guess what? They fell right off the edge of the cliff. So now let's crawl back up to the top and start over.

I mean, insisting that everybody gets their third, fourth, fifth booster just prolongs the agony at some point. You're going to have to realize this didn't work. The target was there, but they missed it. They didn't have the right arrows. So now we've got to back up. And in politics, there's no reverse. There never is. You know, we'll get a tear-stained apology from the prime minister every once in a while. but what does that deliver? What does that give us? You know, we talked in the opening about him surfing on his day of reconciliation. And I think we'll get the same thing. Oh, I'm so sorry. You know, the liability is all mine for putting you through all this vaccine stuff. Okay, how are we going to fix it? Spend more money? They keep extending the programs that keep people off the work, off job. But where does that stop? I mean, we're a trillion and a half dollars in debt for a country of less

and 40 million people. Who's going to pay it? Your grandkids, grandkids. And what are they going to do it with when we've shut down the oil patch and all of the resource sectors like they're talking about? You know, the goofy guy we got now as an environment minister, he puts everything ahead of the economy. You can't do that.

It's like demanding social programs from everybody without paying any taxes. Well, how do you get them? What makes it work? This $10 daycare, you're going to pay for that. One way or another, you're going to pay for it every day. day in daycare, or you're going to pay for it and your taxes so that somebody else gets it. So where's the disconnect then? Well, reality.

Yeah. Yeah. Reality doesn't live in Ottawa anymore. I mean, I even, but listen, I'm out in Western Canada. You're out in Western Canada. It's not like we're the Texas of the North right now. I know that phrase has been thrown around a lot. Like, it's not like we're running wild and free right now, Jerry. Like you look around Sask hockey was trying to mandate vaccines for kids. We're not running around free right now. If anything, we're in the same boat as everybody else.

Well, it's mob rule. And everybody wants to belong to something. And right now, there's something to belong to is that flock of Lemings heading over the edge of the cliff. How do you break that up? How do you stop it? This is a stampede. They have to have them and turn them.

But there's nobody out there doing that. The health care professionals that have stepped back and said, this isn't working, are trying to do that. But every time they get up on a soapbox, he gets kicked out from underneath them because they said, well, you're no longer this, tenure professor, you're no longer this, you're no longer that. And they're going after them on several different levels. Economically and spiritually and ethics wise, it's just character assassination over and over.

Some of it I blame the media. I, you know, I love to hate CDC like everybody else does. But at the end of the day, I mean, there's no truth in anything. it's it's you know Trump famously coined the fake news I think it was him anyway and I see a lot of that I mean it was said it was said a couple of weeks ago that Pfizer had gotten the go ahead in the U.S. for the 5 to 11 year olds they didn't Pfizer leaked that out that they got to trying to try to put pressure on people and of the 17 FDA people that were assessing that eight of them had economic ties to Pfizer how could they be on the panel how does that work you know it's

insider trading on a good day. So, you know, it's, it's been let known here in Canada, the Trudeau, the Trudeau Foundation have got investments in the Canadian company that build the carrier for that. Well, how is that allowed? There's, there's so much stuff out there that makes you understand why it's gotten to where it is, but how do we stop it? How do we turn it around? I wish I did. well when it comes to the cbc and and just mainstream media in general i always fall back on stats and emotion they just give the stats and emotion that benefit their narrative so obviously when the stats favor heavily favor what they're talking about they're going to show that and when it starts to change they're going to change the number they you know it's honestly it's almost sales 101 like when

the number isn't working you kind of like you change the the the the the the uh the The goalposts, right? First it was, you know, deaths or whatever, and then it was cases, and then it was this, and then it was percentage of the hospital left. It's always just a little handslide, right? And when they need a good story, Jerry, they're not talking about the kid who got mild carditis.

They're talking about the 30-old dummy who didn't think COVID was real and now is regretting his life decisions because he's sitting in the hospital. And I'm not knocking those stories. I'm just saying there's two sides. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Well, the media runs on. ratings and politics runs on polling. And neither one of them are accurate or give you a sound stage to actually, you know, work from. One thing I'll give Harvard credit for is he was not scared to make the tough decisions and reverse certain things. It needed to be done. And I'm not seeing any of that. We're bouncing from pillar to post in our governance structures now. We've had a few provinces that have tried to stand up to the federal government and the media have pilloried them to the point where I'm not sure how Scott Moa and Jason Kennedy get out of bed in the mornings. You know, I've been there at different times on certain issues where they come after you

and they're relentless. But I'll tell you, it's hard on your family. So I give a lot of credit to the people that still are hanging in there in the political world for the right reasons. It's hard to get the job done when Parliament isn't sitting. You know, you just don't get the coverage. And even now with the funding that's gone to all of the. the different mainstream media people, there's not a lot of reality there. I mean,

their paychecks demand the story. Yeah, it's, it's, it's unnerving when you talk about it like that, you know, and yeah, politicians there to appease the masses. Well, what we all want in a leader isn't somebody who appeases the masses. We want somebody who makes the tough decisions and does what's best, right? When whatever is being said about them is set about them. Well, and to do that, you need a plan. And I'm not seeing one. We haven't had a budget that's that's anywhere close to what we need in this country for five years. So when you don't have a plan or you don't have people that are in charge of a plan, you can't get to a target. It's hard to identify the target, but you don't have a plan. And I'm, you know, we're having governance from pillar to post here. And that's not a good thing. So, you know, we, I offered the, I offered the, you know, I offered the, you know, I offered the, you know, you know, the idea of solutions, you know, and you're bringing up government and what you're seeing from in a bunch of problems, a bunch of problems. And it's all hidden behind all these different things that for some reason, the majority of public is pushing for and applauding

for. We want more of this or more of that or maybe the loudest part is. I don't know if maybe that's it. Well, Canadian, yeah, Canadians have elected minority governments twice in a role. So they've done what they think is needed to bring politicians back on track. The problem is you've got these backroom deals between the liberals in the NDP, and the block will go with anybody that funds Quebec. So that gives Trudeau basically a de facto majority government. He could fall back on them. I used to go head to head with Charlie Angus all the time. He was the greatest guy in committee going after this one and going after that one and then go into the house later that night at 5 o'clock and vote with the people he just took to task. Like,

you hypocrite. You know, you can't do one without the other. So I, you know, we're hearing stories about how Jagmeek Sin has already made a deal with Trudeau to let him govern for three to four years. Well, that's a majority government. So whatever he needs him, he'll be there. And it's all about spending more money. And when you're throwing buckets of money at something and not hitting a target, all you're doing is throwing buckets of money. It hasn't done any good. We've got $80 billion in infrastructure, we don't even know where it went. There's no track of it. There's no way to find it.

So things like that are let go. Like I said, we haven't hit bottom yet. That's scary as hell. What do you think bottom looks like? When you think about that, right? You say, I don't think we've hit bottom yet. That's scary. What do you think bottom is then?

Look back at what happened to New Zealand when the country crashed. That's what we're heading for. And that is scary as hell. Like I'm a senior on a fixed income. I will be destitute. I own my home. I wouldn't be able to maintain it. I couldn't pay the taxes and the utilities.

So where does everybody go? You take a wheelbar to town to buy a loaf of bread. I mean, I can shoot a deer off my deck if I have to. We can grow a garden. We can survive, but I can't live here because I couldn't carry it on. So that's the end game and that's scary as hell. And people are going to say, you know, he's lost his marbles. But I'll tell you what, tell me.

show me how we're not going to hit that bottom. Yeah, I'm going to sit here and say, I don't think you sound crazy, Jerry. Listen, look at the two years we've been living through right now. We justified all of this spending because everybody's doing it. Guess what? That just means the whole world is in crisis. You know, the only people that may be able to come through this are Russia and China and other oligarchic dictator-type countries because they can force their people to do things

that you can't do in a democracy. So they might survive. So that means the rest of us are resources that we're going to leave in the ground. You know, we're not going to do our oil and gas. We're not going to do our forests. We're not going to, we don't even want agriculture done the way it is. We're going to start curtailing how much fertilizer guys could use. They're musing about how many kilometers I can drive in a week. You know, I mean, I'm 30 kilometers. to go get the mail. So how do you, how do you do that and treat everybody fairly and squarely? You can't. You make rules for the people, you know, the beltway that elects governments gets pandered to, and that's unfortunate. But at the end of the day, the rest of us pay the bills.

I mean, you, you know, you're annoyed and you see what's happened with the oil patch. I mean, we've had crashes before, but this is way beyond a crash. This is they're not dialing back up again. The investments are disappearing out of the country. So there's so much more. the demand is there for fossil fuels in the world, to fuel industry and so on, but we're not going to supply it. Biden's screaming at the OPEC countries to produce more oil. He needs it. After, you know, a couple of years or a year after, he canceled Keystone XL, which would have given him what he needed from a friendly nation. Is he going to open Keystone X-El? No. He's going to demand Saudis send them a few more tankers of oil, which is ridiculous.

Man, listening to you hurts my brain. In a good way, Jerry, in a good way. I just I sit here and I think politicians are on a next level, so bright, so smart, they're dealing on their best interests. And then I listen to you and I go, man, it's a complete nutter fuck show. And I apologize to my mother for saying the old F bomb. But like, I mean, you can't sit there and listen to that and go, oh, wow, we're in great capable hands. Nope, I think it's a complete opposite. And the longer this goes on, the worst it's going to get. And the fact that we're at, and I'll bring it back to COVID for a second, the fact we're at where we're at, which is like, listen, I think everybody's starting to pick their head up and go, man, there's a lot of doctors talking.

Man, there's a lot of employees not back and down. Man, there's a lot, a lot, and yet the push is on. You know, you said China and Russia will probably make it through this because they're dictated. We've got world leaders. Yeah, but we've got world leaders listening to Bill Gates. instead of listening to, you know, doctors that are speaking out with, with the credentials and the resume to know what they're talking about. Bill Gates is talking about population control. He's going to get it. You know, our kids are in peril. I mean, my grandkids, I, I weak for them. I mean, I don't know what their, what their future is going to look like. I really don't.

And I'm trying not to be pessimistic. I'm trying to stay positive, but we can turn this around. We're very industrious in Canada. But we're losing all of that. We're no longer part of the global situations that we should be. We're part of the global riffraff, if you want to call it that, where we rely on governments to do everything. And the last, you know, I mean, government sets the regulations and the standards so nobody gets left behind. That's their job. But right now, we're pitting everybody against each other and celebrating when somebody gets left behind.

You lost your job because you wouldn't take the vaccine. That's, you know, good. That's ridiculous. you know, whatever happened to my body, my choice. The same people that were screaming about that are now saying, I have to do this because if I don't get vaccinated, your vaccine won't work. That's ridiculous. You're protected.

You know, I hear all these things on Twitter and that a lot. And you see these people, well, we used a vaccine to get rid of polio, but I didn't need a booster shot every four months. You know? And I'll point out when it comes to polio. Polio was back in the 1800s. And it didn't happen over a year and you had the fix. It actually had a couple of hiccups in there that, oops, we better try that again.

You know, when I listen to you, Jerry, another thing that comes to mind, you know, there's been a lot of talk and debate in the western side of Canada, is separation. All the things you just talked about with where Canada's heading, turning into a bad part of New Zealand's history, wheelbarrel full of money to get things. Would it not, well, not would it. I won't put words in your mouth. Are you suggesting then that separation does have its part here? Because, I mean, you're either tied to the ship that's going down a road you do not want to go or you do something about it.

Well, you know, I've always been, we're stronger together than we are apart. But in the last little while, watching what they're doing and what's going to come now when they're operating as a majority government with the NDP very much, into the environmental side and so on the block too, as long as it's for Quebec, they're happy. And I see Western Canada being colonized again by Eastern Canada. We have to march to their drum, not our own. And I see that is very problematic. The real concern I have is we've got the left coast. There were talking at one point, Jason Kenney had to deal going with Trump about, you know,

a rail line going up through Alaska and exporting out through there and so good. But we need more of that, not less. we're seeing a Vancouver shutdown right now. We're completely at risk. I mean, I talked to a guy the other day and he said, what would you do if you were still the ag minister? I said, I'd be starting to push for Prince George handling a lot more greens and commodities out of there, which are not Prince George, Prince Rupert, because Vancouver's going to be a long time coming back. We've got to dip into the states to come back up, but we still don't have a port. You know, you still can't get to Vancouver to the, to the port. So there's going to be some long-term problems with supply chains and supply lines that

We can't get product out or in. And I'm more concerned about getting product out because we rely on 50% of what we produce to pay the bills. And if that's not happening, then farmers can't operate. So there's, I mean, it's just happened, but I don't see, you know, the government says, oh, we'll be there for you. Okay. But what does that look like? What does that mean?

Who's doing that planning? You know, Trudeau's not even here. He's down in the States trying to make nice with Biden and Mexico. And, you know, I mean, I watched one interview. they were talking about was his fancy two-tone socks and shoes. And I'm thinking, boy, they got this guy nailed because he couldn't answer any questions about, you know, the economy. Everything's, you know, pie to the 13th decibel.

Remember that line? He's a lightweight. And we need a heavyweight in there right now, not a lightweight. Yeah, we need stronger leaders. Absolutely. Absolutely. What do you think of C&RL? I'd pull you into the oil side of things.

they've got a deadline of December 21st for all employees and anyone doing work on their sites to be double-vaxed. Yeah. There's more and more of these things hitting court cases and being overturned that they don't have the authority to demand that and cost you your job because it wasn't in your contract originally. I know they're dry sites and all that. I did a lot of work on oil patch to pave my farming habit. nearly years and you know, you go along with the rules, but at the end of the day, the rules have to make sense. And if it's constant booster shots, the very thing that I think these workers should be doing is saying, okay, then you sign a paper saying you're taking on the liability of what

happens to me in my family if something goes wrong here with this stuff, because we're starting to see more and more problems, more and more side effects. So I think these companies then are going to be forced to take on the liability. And I said part of the change that needs to happen right away is put that liability right back on Pfizer, Moderna, and those guys. But if companies are going to be forceful in saying you get the jab or no job, then they're taking on that liability. And apparently you don't even qualify for EI if you're bounced out that way. It's crazy. I go back to what I was going to say before and that you said, Russian, China might survive because under a dictatorship they can force you to do things and right now I never thought

I'd live in a country that used this amount of force on people to do something yeah and you're seeing it across the board that isn't just a shot at any company that's just across the board no they're being they're being forced to do it I mean a lot of them rely on some government largesse they're going to rely on an environment minister to look the other way out of certain instances and if you're not going along with all these programs that the government is promoting, you're not going to get a plug nickel. So what's crazy about that. What's crazy about that, Jerry, then, is the fact that company A, I won't single anyone out,

is getting, knows what it's doing maybe isn't right. But in order to survive as a company or to get more profitability or whatever you want, you're going to do it. And that's why you're going to push so hard, even if it's not legal. Well, go along to get along is the bottom line. And that's not going to make a strong economy for anybody. That's pretty scary. Honestly, that's unnerving on this side.

Yeah. I think it's all going to come to a head sooner rather than later. You know, when people, I see a lot of buyers remorse for people that are double-backed and saying, boy, I had, you know, know, I had some results the first time and the second time. I'm not going back for the booster. I mean, if it wears off, why would I keep doing that? Because I'm having these, you know, I'm off work for a week every time I get one of these shots. Not everybody, but enough people starting to say that it's, it's problem. Well, and what, you know, it's something I need to dig

into a little bit more, but collective thinking. You see it go through the population. Everybody thinks one thing and, you know, social media speeds that up. Um, When it comes to buyer's remorse, you're starting to see that more and more. And part of that is the amount of court cases that are being one or things being overturned, because now that picture, why is that? And this buyer's remorse idea, you're starting to see more and more across the board of like, oh, man, like, why didn't they say that? And I'm curious, maybe the hopeful side, as a lot of my closer friends would say is, you know,

Maybe the the buyers remorse folks who were misled are going to, you know, hell have no theory type thing. And that might come to bite politicians square in the ass. I think that's probably true. I think to counter that, we've got governments that have gotten away with looking the other way, pushing the narrative that they want globalization, whatever it is. and they're getting away with it right now under the guise of COVID and everything has to be done a certain way. So I'm seeing this shift from COVID to climate change and using that same kind of government overreach, I'll call it, at this point, in other aspects as well. And I think we're going to see governments overplay their hands to the point where they're going to tick people off. And as you absolutely rightly point out, you know, there's nothing worse than someone who's been pushed aside or not treated as.

they think they should be. And I think governments are going to overplay their hands very quickly here. That's why I say, I think we're going to see it sooner rather than later the changes that will convert people to look at things differently. You know, there wasn't a lot of trust with politicians to begin with. And then they looked at them as saviors. Oh, my God. You know, you look at the fiasco we had even getting the vaccines to begin with.

We had 400 million on order, but nobody had actually placed the order. They'd spoken to different people, but nobody had actually placed the order. So then they're scrambling and we're saying. stealing them from third world countries to get started. And then they come out with a, well, you know, the manufacturer says you should have your second shot within 21 to 28 days for the maximum. But we can go up to four or five months, according to who? And nobody took them to the task. It's because that's all they had. And now all of a sudden, we've got a dearth of vaccines. So they're saying everybody get there. But are they current? Are they still good? Do we even

want them? You know, they said you could mix and match. You can. You can. could do, you know, anything you needed. Just take the one you're offered and take the next one you're offered. And people have done that. And a lot of times to very detrimental, you know, to their own health, according to the experts that have been sanctioned because of speaking out on these types of things. So it's been a cluster, you know, from day one. Well, I appreciate you hopping on. I got one final question brought to you by crude master transport. Shout out to Heath and Tracy, supporters of the podcast since the very beginning. With a guy who's seen as much as you have, who would you sit down with right now and do

this with, pick their brain and see what their thoughts are on the current situation? Well, my first choice would be Stephen Harper. I mean, he's the most pragmatic, practical guy. I know I have dinner with them from time to time. We've chatted, not as much as I'd like. but I see Stock Day out, you know, leading your charge on some of this stuff as well. These are guys that aren't scared to be seen in public. Stephen is very much involved on the world stage at this point, moving things forward.

But, you know, they're planners and they're doers, and they're not scared to be in the limelight and be hammered by the media moving forward to make the right decisions. So those would be by, too, but I guess, you know, It's because I know them and respect them. Well, I appreciate you hopping on, Jerry. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure.

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